Proposal for rule changes II

So here comes the second proposal thread for rule changes for next Madden Figured out some people are unhappy about the resigning rule, so I thought we should start a good discussion how we could handle it better.

Just a reminder, I proposed 2 changes in the existing thread:
1. General contract extension limit from 5 to 4 years (positive reaction)
2. Slight adjustment to amount of contract extensions (no positive reaction)

If you want to read it: https://sml-europe.forumotion.com/t2052-proposal-for-rule-changes

So I guess we need to open point 2 again.
What I have seen in M18:
- Resign limit worked, but led to trades, not really resignings in FA
- Huge cap amount for better teams due to no resignings
- Best teams still stayed at the top, so maybe no huge effect anyway

As a sim player I would prefer a more sim solution than just restricting the number of resignings, so cap management would be my preferred solution. Unfortunately especially top players get low contracts or don't play a role because of very long contracts and low cap numbers in the first 2-3 years.

So I would propose the following as a basis for discussions:
- Max 4 year contracts maximum for all players (except player demands 5/6 years)
- Max 2 year contracts for players <80 OVR (prevents long contracts for low players with potential at the start)
- 2 resignings + 1 franchise tag for top 4 teams (1 expensive resigning!)
- 3 resignings + 1 franchise tag for playoff teams (1 expensive resigning!)
- 5 resignings for non-playoff teams

I guess the resignings could be monitored in the forum. I'm sure there would be 2-3 guys which would be helping voluntarily, so not everything has to be done by the commissioners.


I think this would lead to a tougher cap situation and the resignings wouldn't play such a huge role anymore. What do you think about it?

Max 2 year contracts for players <80 OVR (prevents long contracts for low players with potential at the start)


in good faith how is the point above sim? Gms sign guys and always try to get bargains and hope they outplay their contracts value.


If Im in the playoffs or in the top 4 team I will always tag the least expensive player dont see any change in the proposal.


Not digging at you just thinking does it really make that big of a difference? 


Maybe we should make the most expensive a tag then that would make a difference but if we are going back to sim would that be sim as freedom would be restricted.

zill_kills wrote:Max 2 year contracts for players <80 OVR (prevents long contracts for low players with potential at the start)


in good faith how is the point above sim? Gms sign guys and always try to get bargains and hope they outplay their contracts value.

It is more sim in my view, as neither a lower player would sign a very cheap 5year contract nor the team would commit 5 years to a bottom of the roster guy. Rarely a player is signed 4+ years if he's not a very good player.

One example in our league:
Hiero signed Tyrone Holmes as a low level player to a 6year/20M contract (if DL is correct - 6 years look strange). Very cheap contract, never bother again. After his breakthrough he is a top star und worth much more. No effect in Madden as you have him cheap already.
Another example from myself:
I signed Nicholas Morrow at about 70 overall after the first season to a 5year/4M contract. I knew he will be my user defender at an extremely cheap price for the rest of Madden 18. Even if his overall/attributes jumped, he would be one of my cheapest guys.

If Im in the playoffs or in the top 4 team I will always tag the least expensive player dont see any change in the proposal.


Not digging at you just thinking does it really make that big of a difference? 


Maybe we should make the most expensive a tag then that would make a difference but if we are going back to sim would that be sim as freedom would be restricted.

Not a huge effect, but I think yes. Unfortunately contracts in resigning are mostly well below market value (in a Madden league) and well below market value in real terms. If you resign 2, then you will get 2 "cheap" resignings, and 1 where you really have to pay top5 money for him and only for 1 year (so same problem the year after +20%).


Idea behind is that cap management will be the deciding factor for trades or resignings, not a max number of resignings determined by whatever reasons. THIS will be really sim.
Unfortunately starting contracts for sure will be completely off and in-game logic (maybe based on wrong contracts) will be off again. So only very few teams will need to make decisions based on cap.

I like the addition of the Tag as an extension of the resign limit. So if we get 5 seasons next year, the rookies will play on 4 years and a resign or 4 years and a tag.

As for 4 years, it will front load cheaper contracts, so unless the player is asking for more years I don't mind it. I like the 2 year contract idea as it means that more guys will hit FA over the life cycle of M19 (resign a guy end of season 1 will be an FA in season 4 when better).

I've heard that contracts have been tweaked in M19 to be somewhat more realistic. Also, since the progression system levels up OVR instead of just being able to pump up key attributes and keep the OVR low it should also make it much more difficult to re-sign highly valuable players for dirt cheap. So its possible that the initial reason for the re-signing limit could be eliminated. If higher OVR players require realistically high contracts then the teams with more high OVR players will be limited by their cap and be forced to let some good players walk.

But in case we're disappointed by EA again I think there may be another way to get the desired effect. I'm not a fan of needing a calculator to play a game but because the re-signing rule did not really help this year, and in fact may have been counter-productive in some cases (see JC Tretter), I think a simple calculator could be a better option to force people to pay more realistic salaries, thus limiting the top teams from being able to re-sign all their players. If the game is actually forcing people to pay above what the calculator says then thats great and we won't have to use it but I think its good to be prepared in case the average salaries are still much lower than true NFL numbers.

I like your suggestions on contract length too @ParaAUT and this is what I'd suggest we do:
- 4 year contract maximum for all players 80 OVR or higher
- Max 5 if player is asking for more years (6 or 7 year contracts won't be allowed. Will just have to balance out with more money or tag them)
- Max 2 year contracts for players <80 OVR (prevents long contracts for low players with potential at the start)
- No re-signing limits but re-signings need to be at or above contract calculator suggestion (Calculator is based on spotrac top average salaries per position, OVR, Age and DEV)*possibly an additional factor that would require a small percentage higher if Team OVR at 90+ or made playoffs etc*
- Limited number of trades of expiring contracts (this way players will actually hit FA instead of just being dealt by top teams) *possibly fewer allowed for top teams*
- Re-signings will not be allowed until Week 15 (this should stop people from saving Skill Points in order to sign guys to cheaper contracts and also makes it easier to keep track of as the transactions log for W15 still shows up in the offseason)
- Skill Point Hoarding/Stashing (another possibility we can vote on but not absolutely necessary)
Only 1 Skill Point progression per week to help prevent SP stashing for cheaper contracts and limit huge boosts for playoffs. So even if you earn 5 SP at the end of the regular season for Awards you can only spend 1 per week as long as you are in the playoffs. If your season is over you can spend the remaining SP. *Checks will only need to be made in weeks 15-17 and offseason re-signing period for resigned players and when teams are in playoffs.*
- Free Agent contracts in the offseason do not need to be salary calculator approved. The open market determines value.

The max year restrictions will be implemented for M19. We will put the contract calculator/re-signing limit to a vote but I'm happy to hear opinions or suggestions before posting a poll.

Hey @brza37

Interesting mix up! I just want to add/ask

1) "Max 5 if player is asking for more years (6 or 7 year contracts won't be allowed. Will just have to balance out with more money or tag them)" could the HC resign the player with photo evidence then it be re-edited back down to the maximum of 5 by a commissioner? If the contract system isnt great then HC may feel like they are getting penalised and also then if we throw more money at a player isnt then that becoming unrealistic in itself? 


2) Where is this calculator from? is it a @dwevans creation? 

Cheers

1) Re-editing back down to 5 is a good idea. We could do that instead of forcing more money, as it could negatively impact lower rated teams if we force them to overpay to compensate the contract length demands.

2) The original calculator is from The Gaming Tailgate but I modified it to match 2018 top salaries from sportrac and also have our new max contract length rules and DEV modifier

Right:

Calculator sound like a really interesting idea however if its not worked out correctly I think it won't be fair on some teams if madden doesn't do real life salaries in the game and we do the calculator to spotrac top average salaries per position than some people are screwed like who might be taking the rams next season because all of the player salaries will be out of proportion and they will be forced to lose guys even though in real life teams will find ways how to fit guys in we in m19 won't be able to. Not sure if I've written this correctly but I think for us to link the calculator to real life salaries we need to make sure that the salaries in game from the start are spot on or really really close. Otherwise maybe we can link the calculator to in game salaries say top 5 at position? I hope I made sense on this.
Maybe we can do this after the first season once we got an influx of crazy offers and that would average it out a bit?

Skill point stashing I agree on where you force to use this straight away however I do not agree with it being capped after the season with the awards- if the guy got it it means he earned it and he should be able to use it as he peaked during the season not after it. Also how would this be policed? Sounds like a big job.

Signing players week 15 onwards is that sim? Not disrespecting but I think we sign guys when the possibility presents but we just need to make sure there is no skill stashing/hoarding and when the guys time comes it comes. But I think this is more for keeping track than point hoarding and its easier to manage? If so than we should look at this as we are constantly adding more on you guys shoulders. From running the peewee league I can see where im losing it and not managing it.

The Rams will get killed according to the current rules with limited re-signings. A ton of the new players they just got are on the last year of their contracts. With the salary calculator they should have a better chance of re-signing players but at least for realistic value.

I believe the game already bases contract demands on position rankings and the average salaries of players ranked around them. So if contracts are correct in Madden we technically shouldn't need a calculator.

RE: Skill point stashing I just don't think reward based XP makes sense and I don't see how its sim for players to suddenly get significantly better in the playoffs because they had a good season. But thats another issue. The reason for the stashing limit would be to prevent people from re-signing a guy for cheap in Week 15 then pumping them up 10 OVR points for the playoffs.

Signing players in Week 15 and on makes things immensely easier to track. And I feel its more sim as most contracts are not extended during the season. They are usually extended in the offseason, during training camp or near the end of the season. There were 67 contract extensions between Week 15 and now compared to just 14 during Week 1-14 last year.

As an alternative suggestion, why not only allow player resigning in the Offseason Re-sign week? Have contract limits for <80 and >80 like you said, but as you only have 1 shot to resign them, if you low-ball an offer you risk losing them to Free Agency and forced to use the tag... This is a high risk strategy or you overpay. The "negotiation" element is already there as the player shows you his demands and the resign screen shows you what a fair offer should be.

Add: This could get rid of resign limit too, as you're likely to lose a couple of players to "not resigning" or cap management.

I thought of that but I think it will be more of a disadvantage to less experienced Madden players. Experienced guys know almost exactly where the threshhold is that players will always agree to while less experienced guys will tend to offer what the player asks for and then lose the player or have to tag. Also if contract demands are still low then it will still be possible to sign players to cheap contracts.

Nice that there's a discussion now!

I really like the suggestions with 2 year contracts (< 80 OVR), 4 year contracts and 5 years (if asking 5+). If it's possible to edit 6+ year contracts just down to 5 years and the cap is then spread over the 5 years, then I really like this suggestion too.

I'm not too sure about the calculator. I like the idea in general to give certain players market value in resignings and use a calculator for that. For all players I fear that's too much. Especially in the first season often there are 15-20 players to resign. If you have to calculate every value and someone has to check the correct value, that's just too much work needed in my view. This year I feel players at about 80-85 overall have quite realistic demands, so they are not the big problem. If we could use the calculator for 85+, then there are maybe max 2-3 players for each team. It would be easier to calculate too as players at 85+ OVR would likely demand about Top 5 position money.

Second one I'm not sure about is the timing of resignings. I like the idea of late resignings or only off-season, but if someone can't be online for 2-3 days, then he'll have no chance for a single resigning - that's really tough. If we have good rules on resignings, I feel like that's not needed.
Is SP/XP stashing really a problem? I can't really remember examples where this has been a problem. The biggest jumps with XP are possible for rookies (no contract issue) or for award winners. There will be not many players which will gain very much XP and have to be resigned. At least I didn't see a problem this year with that.


Generally I think we need to figure out rules which work for all guys. I am definitely sure that maybe half of the league will have no problems with using salary calculators, resignings only in a couple of weeks, max contracts amounts, etc. - but I fear that we are losing some guys here. We have some guys not that active in the forum or telegram and likely won't use such calculators. They will break the rules unintentionally then or just drop out because it's too complicated. So as simple as possible

Need to remember, if a player wants a 4 year contract and you only offer him 2 because he is under 80 overall, he wont sign and you lose him.

Azza wrote:Need to remember, if a player wants a 4 year contract and you only offer him 2 because he is under 80 overall, he wont sign and you lose him.

We may need to check then what the players are expecting at the start of Madden.

As far as I remember this year players under 80 OVR normally don't expect that much, maybe maximum 2-3 years. Of course it was very easy to give them 5 year contracts and they were happy to accept that. If the rule stays like that, we need to check the year expectations in Madden 19.

@brza37

not sure if I wrote it correctly but what i meant was. Lets say contracts in m19 are bad and off like completely and say your Eagles have cox signed at a deal that is well below market value compared to what it should be to real life and its also a long term contract you pick the eagles and you have him locked up for 4 to 5 years (all of m19) at a discounted madden 19 rate and because of this you get more cap to build your super team even more where other guys who get teams with shorter contracts will be paying for a same calibre player more because their salaries will be linked to the real world. Doesn't that put those teams at a disadvantage against you in this scenario? I'm not sure myself maybe I am missing the point of the discussion but I think this won't be fair or am I wrong here?

Not arguing just sharing my opinion

zill_kills wrote:@brza37

not sure if I wrote it correctly but what i meant was. Lets say contracts in m19 are bad and off like completely and say your Eagles have cox signed at a deal that is well below market value compared to what it should be to real life and its also a long term contract you pick the eagles and you have him locked up for 4 to 5 years (all of m19) at a discounted madden 19 rate and because of this you get more cap to build your super team even more where other guys who get teams with shorter contracts will be paying for a same calibre player more because their salaries will be linked to the real world. Doesn't that put those teams at a disadvantage against you in this scenario? I'm not sure myself maybe I am missing the point of the discussion but I think this won't be fair or am I wrong here?

Not arguing just sharing my opinion

I agree with you - but it's a difficult question.

One example I know:
Derek Carr has about 22-25M cap per season in real life (125M/5 years)
In M18 he had about 15M cap per season
In M19 (initial rating list) he has a 98M contract. Unfortunately there is no information on years, but if they just calculate it for remaining years, then the figures look ok. If the cap is way off again, it makes a huge difference.

In another example Cousins has a 80M contract figure in initial rosters - 4,5M signing bonus. Overall figure looks quite ok (84M), but bonus not.


Let's say you need to resign Wentz now - what figure is right then? 25M-30M/year like Carr, Cousins,... or 15M like original Madden roster?
If a team like Rams has to resign everyone like real figures, then it's a disadvantage of course.


But you won't get 100% anyway. Some teams last year were nearly not affected by resigning rules, because most players were on rookie contracts or already signed. Some others had loads of resignings and couldn't sign them. That will still be the case with a new rule with some teams... (but that is still a part of team selection)

Im for the calculator but it has to be based from values in game. Maybe we can agree that if its a guy in top 5 at his position it has to be record breaking deal compared to the other top salaries in game? Or maybe we need to add percentages on top of the average top 5 salaries. Maybe we can get those percentages from real life by comparing by how much position salaries rise year on year? Average and then top salaries per position?

Just ideas

What determines top 5 for a position? Just overall is or is it productivity? 

Great example is Browns HB Rodriguez Saunders - based on overall he's probably around mid 30s in terms of rank, in terms of production based on current season he's ranked 4th overall. When it comes to contract year and working out what is realistic for player is it considering the productivity over the actual overall - which surely would be more sim? If you consider the 2014 Donald was drafted by Rams and Dee Ford was drafted by the Chiefs. Its contract year in 2018 and Donald will receive over 100m deal (from what I've read) but Ford was much less productive over his first 4 years - he wont get a huge payday like Donald purely and simply because he is more productive not because of how some cowboys fan (lol) at EA rates him.

I'm probably wrong to ask/present my thoughts so if I am sorry for this and just move passed my question

Bartell wrote:What determines top 5 for a position? Just overall is or is it productivity? 

Great example is Browns HB Rodriguez Saunders - based on overall he's probably around mid 30s in terms of rank, in terms of production based on current season he's ranked 4th overall. When it comes to contract year and working out what is realistic for player is it considering the productivity over the actual overall - which surely would be more sim? If you consider the 2014 Donald was drafted by Rams and Dee Ford was drafted by the Chiefs. Its contract year in 2018 and Donald will receive over 100m deal (from what I've read) but Ford was much less productive over his first 4 years - he wont get a huge payday like Donald purely and simply because he is more productive not because of how some cowboys fan (lol) at EA rates him.

I'm probably wrong to ask/present my thoughts so if I am sorry for this and just move passed my question

Hopefully OVR and performance at least has a better correlation in M19.

If you have a rookie now at 75 OVR and he really plays well, he gets dev upgrades and gains OVR (no increase of single attributes!!). So let's say at resigning after 4 seasons he has 90 OVR and will demand the money for 90 OVR.
If you have a great season with a contract year player and he gains no OVR, then there's a difference. But honestly I can't see a logic how to handle that...

@zill_kills Madden already takes positional ranking by OVR into account for contract demands. So if we want to do it based on Madden contracts we don't need a calculator at all. Also, the main problem with Madden salary caps in the past has been that they don't implement dead money from previous years and the bonus money is usually off. So we started off the season with tons of teams having much more cap room than they should have had and teams being able to cut players for lower cap penalties than normal. If we change from re-signing restrictions to salary minimums it doesn't matter much in terms of fairness, there are will still be teams negatively or positively affected due either the fact that they have more players needing to be re-signed or because EA messed up the contracts.

@Bartell, stop apologizing Thanks for presenting your thought. I agree with Para that productivity will play more of a role in OVR this year because of the new progression system. Since you progress by OVR nearly every time instead of just improving in single attributes it will be less and less likely that a 75 OVR player is one of the leaders in stats. At least after that initial good season his OVR will be boosted significantly as well as his contract demands.

brza37 wrote:@Bartell, stop apologising Thanks for presenting your thought. I agree with Para that productivity will play more of a role in OVR this year because of the new progression system. Since you progress by OVR nearly every time instead of just improving in single attributes it will be less and less likely that a 75 OVR player is one of the leaders in stats. At least after that initial good season his OVR will be boosted significantly as well as his contract demands.

OK sorry

In terms of development I guess we just don't know exactly - I guess what you're saying is correct in theory as long as the development and in turn overall is reflecting the productivity. We might only know at the end of S1 how development will look - its not beyond reason to think that come end of S1 a player could top stats chart and not be elevated too highly in terms of overall etc - then over the following couple of seasons the same could still happen but the player would still continue his stand out performance. I'm not been against the concept or anything. Just maybe worthwhile reviewing this side of things in the first season or two.

Sorry :d

brza37 wrote:"Re-signings will not be allowed until Week 15 (this should stop people from saving Skill Points in order to sign guys to cheaper contracts and also makes it easier to keep track of as the transactions log for W15 still shows up in the offseason)"

The logic behind this may not work. The reason transactions are lost is because the transactions feed only has a limited number of slots. When practice squad players are signed this fills it up enormously and pushes earlier transactions out the bottom end of the feed. This may still happen at week 17 even if week 15 is the earliest signings are allowed.

Additionally this creates problems in the case of absences, CPU will not adhere to this rule and all that has to be done is re-signings streamed at week 15 for a record before all the chaos descends.

This is probably an unnecessary additional rule.

brza37 wrote:- Skill Point Hoarding/Stashing (another possibility we can vote on but not absolutely necessary)
Only 1 Skill Point progression per week to help prevent SP stashing for cheaper contracts and limit huge boosts for playoffs. So even if you earn 5 SP at the end of the regular season for Awards you can only spend 1 per week as long as you are in the playoffs. If your season is over you can spend the remaining SP. *Checks will only need to be made in weeks 15-17 and offseason re-signing period for resigned players and when teams are in playoffs.

This again can cause problems. In the current system, age only increases when you are eliminated from the playoffs or your season ends. When your age increases so does the cost for new traits. Maybe this will change in the new system, but limiting when these are spent will negatively affect worse teams.

Either you say they can be spent freely OR say they can only be spent once you are eliminated so it is the same for all.

brza37 wrote:- Max 2 year contracts for players <80 OVR (prevents long contracts for low players with potential at the start)

What if a player has a career year - wins MVP etc etc. Is it realistic they would still be signed to a 2 year deal? Does performance count or only OVR?