Here's a question to start with. How much was the financial difference between finishing top of your first season qualifying league and bottom?
If you answered "£1.65m" go and stand in the dunce's corner. If you said "we can't be sure exactly, but it could be as high as £3.21m" then congratulations - have a gold star. Huh, says the dunce, that doesn't make sense. The top prize money for season 1 was £2.2m, the bottom was 550k, the difference is £1.65m. But the truth is that figure can be almost doubled by what I term the success gap - the difference that inflation has made to the squad values of someone who at the end of last season was able to put together a top rate squad, versus the person who couldn't.
Let me explain, using my data (read more about this sample here and feel free to disagree if you like). As Season 1 drew to a close, MVs were almost exactly equal to AFs. A quick off the mark manager at the bottom of a division could in theory have pulled together a team of 11 players with 12-14 in key attributes of their positions for a total of £373k. Today that squad would be worth £957k, an increase of 584k. Meanwhile, a quick off the mark manager who finished higher up their qualifying league could have in theory have nabbed a team of 11 players with 15+ on key attributes in their positions for a total of £1.48m. Today that squad would be worth £3.63m. An increase of £2.15m. This second manager has experienced a rise in their squad value by £1.56m more than the first manager, purely as a result of inflation.
The £1.65m extra prize money the league winner earned was exactly that - earned. We can argue on the forums until the cows come home about whether that is a fair amount. Personally I think it's fine, in line with "give us something to play for" it's awarded to those managers who managed to perform well in season 1. But they have not done anything to earn the extra £1.56m - all they've done is sat and watch the MV go up and up and up, sometimes every few hours.
This - in a nutshell - is why inflation is bad for a gameworld.
Monday, 10 May 2010
Sunday, 9 May 2010
Mid-season mid-table mediocrity
It's been a busy few days for me IRL so I haven't found time to finish the final article in my Vollernomics series. Apologies - it will be coming soon but in the meantime a quick update on the team.
So far in the league we are P21 W8 D5 L8 F22 A23 Pts29. You can't get much more mid-table than that! I'm reasonably pleased though: it's a tough division and despite my supposed buy buy buy strategy I haven't bought as many players as others - still waiting for the right guys to come along. At the end of the season roughly the top 13 will go in to the highest tier for the final qual season, but given that there's always the risk some top teams from other FAs might decide to transfer in to the TFA I'd like to make sure I finish top 11 to be on the safe side. It's going to be a challenge though - I'm missing several key players through injury including my star CB for 15 games.
In the cups I've traditionally either lost in the first round or gone really deep in the tournament so when I picked up some early wins I got quite hopeful. But last 16 defeats in both means we can "concentrate on the league" from here on in.
With being busy I haven't actually logged in all that much since the bank holiday, so many of these outcomes have come from my match plans. I've spent quite a lot of time setting up the plans and I think it's been time well spent. Whilst the interface is a pain, the functionality of the match plans is really great. I remember a time when if I couldn't log in for 3 or 4 days I'd be very nervous logging back in to see how far back I'd fallen. It felt like I was punished for having a life. Now I can set up the team the way I want, and consequently am really curious to log back in to see how they've been getting on. Of course the downside is that when they fail I only have
myself to blame... ;)
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Vollernomics: Inflation estimated at 313%, youths over 450%
In the second of this series on the economy in GW Voller (if you missed the first, find it here or just scroll down!) I look at the headline figures on inflation.
And they're pretty shocking. 313% over last season means a player is now worth more than 3x what he was a season ago.
Before we go any further, disclaimers are important. I can't be certain in my sampling methods. The last post outlines why. In addition, to produce an inflation figure I ought to have prices from last season to compare to. I don't, because I hadn't thought of starting to collect the data then. However, at that time I remember that MV was almost always exactly AF or just a few k higher. And whilst AF's have risen slightly in the last season, they're not hugely higher. So I am using current AF figures to estimate player MV at this time last season, in the expectation that these two factors will more or less cancel each other out. Finally, I had to decide how heavily to weigh the 33 categories I sampled in my inflation "basket". In the end I decided that all 11 positions should be weighed equally, and that superstars should be considered to make up 20% of the basket, core senior players 50% and youths 30% - this was based on a pretty arbitrary estimate of how many transfers in the past season have fallen in each category. Oh and finally the system relies on MV, which some think is a load of rubbish. Actually I don't think it is, but even if you do you can't blame me for that - blame SI!
Now, the figures. As mentioned the headline figure this methodology produced is 313%. But the broken down findings are also quite interesting. The inflation rates on superstars (245%) and core senior players (256%) were very similar, indicating that the very top players aren't experiencing an enormous spiral in prices beyond others of a lower quality. But there is a big difference with youths, where inflation was at 455%. Indeed youth goalkeepers were the most inflated area of the market as a whole, coming in at a whopping 503% - i.e. costing 5x more than they did a season ago.
Positions wise inflation was fairly uniform. Defenders (300%) lagged slightly behind midfielders (323%), goalkeepers (325%) and strikers (329%) but I reckon that is probably almost within the margin of error of my samples.
What does all this mean? Well, there's good news and bad news. Firstly, the good news. I think it tells us that the database is fairly well balanced. If there was a real shortage of quality strikers for example, we'd expect to see striker inflation much higher than other categories. It isn't. There is a very slight bias against wingers and wide midfielders (inflation 309%) compared to central midfielders (inflation 336%) but I had expected this might be a much bigger gap given the popularity of narrow formations under the current ME.
The outlier figure is obviously youth. However, I think this is at least in part temporary - explained by it taking a while for academies to churn out the full quota of youth players the game expects. But in part it's probably down to the bias of many managers towards youths. That will probably sustain but even so if you're not already in it, youth certainly doesn't look to me like a good route to go down just now. The market is valuing even a fairly standard youth at 3.5x AF (16k v 55k) so you'll pay through the nose for your purchases, and as supply from academies increases I think there's a fair chance those prices will fall back again.
So on the whole the database is balanced and consistent, and apart from the current situation with youth and the trickle of unlocked players I think supply is fairly constant. The bad news is therefore that the new system has failed to control rises in demand adequately, and consequently prices have been pushed up hugely. This was entirely predictable because of the extra £975m in prize money that is flowing in to the GW this season (compared with last season) as a result of Season 1 performance, and without many more ways of it flowing out of the GW - wages have stayed pretty much stable, and no-one needs to do serious stadium work yet. More bad news is that next season prize money will increase again. However, higher team reps may cause greater wage rises and incentivise higher levels of stadium investment. Plus anecdotal evidence suggests a lot of teams are in debt right now, so they may choose to use increased winnings to pay that down. I will have a small wager that next season we will see significant inflation, but that it will be (just) under 100% - i.e. we won't see player prices doubling.
Ah but, I can hear you say... why does this inflation matter? In fact, isn't it good that teams have more money, it makes the game interesting by encouraging transfers and the community activity they provoke. Well whilst those are indeed good things, I think the damage caused is much greater. I'll outline why in the next post. If you can't wait until then, go and read back the forum posts by myheadhurts whilst discussing the post-reset economic model. (S)he was spot on...
And they're pretty shocking. 313% over last season means a player is now worth more than 3x what he was a season ago.
Before we go any further, disclaimers are important. I can't be certain in my sampling methods. The last post outlines why. In addition, to produce an inflation figure I ought to have prices from last season to compare to. I don't, because I hadn't thought of starting to collect the data then. However, at that time I remember that MV was almost always exactly AF or just a few k higher. And whilst AF's have risen slightly in the last season, they're not hugely higher. So I am using current AF figures to estimate player MV at this time last season, in the expectation that these two factors will more or less cancel each other out. Finally, I had to decide how heavily to weigh the 33 categories I sampled in my inflation "basket". In the end I decided that all 11 positions should be weighed equally, and that superstars should be considered to make up 20% of the basket, core senior players 50% and youths 30% - this was based on a pretty arbitrary estimate of how many transfers in the past season have fallen in each category. Oh and finally the system relies on MV, which some think is a load of rubbish. Actually I don't think it is, but even if you do you can't blame me for that - blame SI!
Now, the figures. As mentioned the headline figure this methodology produced is 313%. But the broken down findings are also quite interesting. The inflation rates on superstars (245%) and core senior players (256%) were very similar, indicating that the very top players aren't experiencing an enormous spiral in prices beyond others of a lower quality. But there is a big difference with youths, where inflation was at 455%. Indeed youth goalkeepers were the most inflated area of the market as a whole, coming in at a whopping 503% - i.e. costing 5x more than they did a season ago.
Positions wise inflation was fairly uniform. Defenders (300%) lagged slightly behind midfielders (323%), goalkeepers (325%) and strikers (329%) but I reckon that is probably almost within the margin of error of my samples.
What does all this mean? Well, there's good news and bad news. Firstly, the good news. I think it tells us that the database is fairly well balanced. If there was a real shortage of quality strikers for example, we'd expect to see striker inflation much higher than other categories. It isn't. There is a very slight bias against wingers and wide midfielders (inflation 309%) compared to central midfielders (inflation 336%) but I had expected this might be a much bigger gap given the popularity of narrow formations under the current ME.
The outlier figure is obviously youth. However, I think this is at least in part temporary - explained by it taking a while for academies to churn out the full quota of youth players the game expects. But in part it's probably down to the bias of many managers towards youths. That will probably sustain but even so if you're not already in it, youth certainly doesn't look to me like a good route to go down just now. The market is valuing even a fairly standard youth at 3.5x AF (16k v 55k) so you'll pay through the nose for your purchases, and as supply from academies increases I think there's a fair chance those prices will fall back again.
So on the whole the database is balanced and consistent, and apart from the current situation with youth and the trickle of unlocked players I think supply is fairly constant. The bad news is therefore that the new system has failed to control rises in demand adequately, and consequently prices have been pushed up hugely. This was entirely predictable because of the extra £975m in prize money that is flowing in to the GW this season (compared with last season) as a result of Season 1 performance, and without many more ways of it flowing out of the GW - wages have stayed pretty much stable, and no-one needs to do serious stadium work yet. More bad news is that next season prize money will increase again. However, higher team reps may cause greater wage rises and incentivise higher levels of stadium investment. Plus anecdotal evidence suggests a lot of teams are in debt right now, so they may choose to use increased winnings to pay that down. I will have a small wager that next season we will see significant inflation, but that it will be (just) under 100% - i.e. we won't see player prices doubling.
Ah but, I can hear you say... why does this inflation matter? In fact, isn't it good that teams have more money, it makes the game interesting by encouraging transfers and the community activity they provoke. Well whilst those are indeed good things, I think the damage caused is much greater. I'll outline why in the next post. If you can't wait until then, go and read back the forum posts by myheadhurts whilst discussing the post-reset economic model. (S)he was spot on...
Monday, 3 May 2010
Vollernomics: Introducing Vollernomics
Over the course of the next week I will be publishing a series of pieces on the economy in my gameworld, GW Voller. I'm doing this for two reasons: firstly that economics is actually something I know a little bit about so I may be able to contribute more than my usual rambles; and secondly that I believe the economy is actually the single most important thing to a smoothly functioning game that retains players over the long term. Basically everything that people discuss on the official forums that isn't moderation or the match engine comes down to economics. The problems of FML v1 were almost exclusively economic - unofficial money comps, the sudden introduction of stadiums and of course inflation. This series of articles will focus largely on inflation, because - for reasons that will become clear over the week - I believe it is the greatest threat to the otherwise excellent FML v2 succeeding.
"Numbers Mrs Landingham, if you want to convince me, show me numbers." - President Bartlet, The West Wing
Lots of threads on the forums have discussed various aspects of money in the abstract, I hope to add to the debate by showing you some numbers. They won't be perfect, I don't have access to the same kind of data that SI (I hope!) do. And of course they only apply to one gameworld - others may be different, although I suspect they won't be.
The rest of this post will set out the methodologies I've used so that those of you who are more numerically focussed can pick over it and decide if what I've found is going to be worth anything. My own view is that this method is far from perfect, but it's a good start and enough to give us a reasonably accurate impression.
Over the period 30 April - 2 May I looked at a sample of over 600 players across the gameworld. To select the sample I first looked at 11 of the common player roles (Goalkeeper, Full Back, Wing Back, Ball Playing Defender, Stopper, Ball Winning Midfielder, Advanced Midfielder, Wide Midfielder, Winger, Target Man, Poacher) and picked out five key attributes for each, using largely those selected in game but tweaked somewhat to reflect what I think many managers look for - for example only one of the roles above lists pace as a key att in game but it's something that I know a lot of people look at so I added it to several other roles as well. Then for each role I looked at three types of players:
(1) the senior (aged 22-31) superstars who have 15+ in each of the 5 key attributes
(2) the senior (aged 22-31) core squad players who have 12-14 in each of the 5 key attributes
(3) the youth (aged 16-21) players who have 10-13 in each of the 5 key attributes. I deliberately capped this at 13 to avoid a few wonderkids distorting all the figures.
So 11 roles and 3 types of player gave me 33 categories. In each of the senior categories I then picked a sample of 20 players, drawing 2 players from each "year group" where possible. For each of the sampled players I looked at their AF and their MV. On occasion to get a proper sample for the superstar category I had to drop the attribute requirements slightly. Where I did this I then multiplied up the AF and MV proportionally to reflect how much more better quality players might cost if there was a linear progression (I'm sure there's not, but this was the best I could do). For youth the sample size was 18, with 3 players from each "year group" from 16 up to 21.
I worry that the sample may be a bit small, but frankly I didn't have the time or inclination to do a bigger one (have you any idea how tedious it is?!) and where in a couple of categories I experimented by taking several samples I found the results came out pretty similarly. So I hope the results I have found are fairly accurate.
Comments on this methodology are very welcome. I will try to repeat this process every season as the series of data could be quite interesting. However, it is a pretty time consuming task, so any volunteers to help would also be much appreciated.
In the meantime, I hope you are interested by the results, which I will start posting tomorrow.
"Numbers Mrs Landingham, if you want to convince me, show me numbers." - President Bartlet, The West Wing
Lots of threads on the forums have discussed various aspects of money in the abstract, I hope to add to the debate by showing you some numbers. They won't be perfect, I don't have access to the same kind of data that SI (I hope!) do. And of course they only apply to one gameworld - others may be different, although I suspect they won't be.
The rest of this post will set out the methodologies I've used so that those of you who are more numerically focussed can pick over it and decide if what I've found is going to be worth anything. My own view is that this method is far from perfect, but it's a good start and enough to give us a reasonably accurate impression.
Over the period 30 April - 2 May I looked at a sample of over 600 players across the gameworld. To select the sample I first looked at 11 of the common player roles (Goalkeeper, Full Back, Wing Back, Ball Playing Defender, Stopper, Ball Winning Midfielder, Advanced Midfielder, Wide Midfielder, Winger, Target Man, Poacher) and picked out five key attributes for each, using largely those selected in game but tweaked somewhat to reflect what I think many managers look for - for example only one of the roles above lists pace as a key att in game but it's something that I know a lot of people look at so I added it to several other roles as well. Then for each role I looked at three types of players:
(1) the senior (aged 22-31) superstars who have 15+ in each of the 5 key attributes
(2) the senior (aged 22-31) core squad players who have 12-14 in each of the 5 key attributes
(3) the youth (aged 16-21) players who have 10-13 in each of the 5 key attributes. I deliberately capped this at 13 to avoid a few wonderkids distorting all the figures.
So 11 roles and 3 types of player gave me 33 categories. In each of the senior categories I then picked a sample of 20 players, drawing 2 players from each "year group" where possible. For each of the sampled players I looked at their AF and their MV. On occasion to get a proper sample for the superstar category I had to drop the attribute requirements slightly. Where I did this I then multiplied up the AF and MV proportionally to reflect how much more better quality players might cost if there was a linear progression (I'm sure there's not, but this was the best I could do). For youth the sample size was 18, with 3 players from each "year group" from 16 up to 21.
I worry that the sample may be a bit small, but frankly I didn't have the time or inclination to do a bigger one (have you any idea how tedious it is?!) and where in a couple of categories I experimented by taking several samples I found the results came out pretty similarly. So I hope the results I have found are fairly accurate.
Comments on this methodology are very welcome. I will try to repeat this process every season as the series of data could be quite interesting. However, it is a pretty time consuming task, so any volunteers to help would also be much appreciated.
In the meantime, I hope you are interested by the results, which I will start posting tomorrow.
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Shanghai Dynasty: The Second Generation
Introducing the Season 2 Shanghai Dynasty...
GK Sebastien Martens. Returns after a good first season. Nothing to
write home about but solid and improving all the time.
DR - Yildaz Emrah. Not been as good as his atts suggest he might be.
Looking for more from him this season.
DL - Lukas Koci/Mikko Sinisalo. One taller, one quicker, so I swap
them round depending on the opposition. May well be my top target for
a position to improve, but with so few sides employing wingers these
days it seems a waste to spend big on full-backs.
DC - Sorin Ene. A bit inconsistent, but has the right atts and two
good games for every dodgy one.
DC - Erwin Tol. A rock. Signed on a 2yr deal which will take him past
30, at which point few other managers would want to sign him so I
suspect he'll see out his career with us.
MC - Albert Cuenca. My biggest offseason signing. Wages of 12k/day are
higher than I'd like but he is on wage demand (no-one else is
interested in a 29y/o it seems...) and a very talented ball winning
midfielder. With influence 20 he is also this season's captain.
MC - Kenneth Paul. Now 22, Paul is starting to grow in to the player
he should be. He does still tend to go missing in the big games
though, and will likely be the one to miss out if I decide to switch
to a 4-4-2 at some point.
AMR - Giuseppe Costa. Surprised me in a good way last season. Has a
habit of making great late runs to the back post and tucking the ball
past the keeper. More please.
AMC - Luis Carranza. For some reason his MV is only 120k but I rate
him much more highly than that. Scores and sets up goals. A bit
streaky mind.
AML - Oleg Shevchuk. The Ukrainian wonder started last season really
well but tailed off towards the end. Could use him in top form this
year.
FC - Sergey Kokoev. My 750k signing at the end of last season. His MV
today is 625k but I reckon I could get double that for him so I
consider it a good investment. He's only 5'10 but strong and good at
holding up the ball. Plus he's a clinical finisher, when he mangages
to find space, which isn't as often as I'd like.
The other player worth noting is Israel Santos, my 19 y/o hot prospect
FC. I've already had an offer of £1m for him but I'm not ready to let
go yet. I reckon by next season he'll be worth at least 1.5m and in
any case with only 3 strikers in the squad I need him. May join Kokoev
up front in a 4-4-2 from time to time.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Buckling up for the inflation rollercoaster
One of the few advantages of not being able to log in much at the
moment is that it gives me more time for cool reflection on strategy
and future direction. I've got a few ideas for further developments in
the game which I may well post on here next week. But in the meantime
I've been pondering team strategy.
moment is that it gives me more time for cool reflection on strategy
and future direction. I've got a few ideas for further developments in
the game which I may well post on here next week. But in the meantime
I've been pondering team strategy.
Those who have followed this blog from the start will recall my
original strategy was not to have much of a strategy for the first few
years, to see where I came out in the wash and then to implement a
longer-term plan. But that idea has been blown out of the water by
what has happened. Firstly the team has done much better than I dared
expect, and secondly when I investigated the GW finances I found that
lots of cash will be flowing in to the GW over the next few years
without many new ways to spend it. To me this must equal inflation,
and we're starting to see it already in Voller, with prices of player
transfers rising. Yes there was the infamous £3.25m deal, but there
have been lots of other transfers too. As other managers see prices
rising they demand more. A manager who wanted 500k on Saturday for a
striker I was chasing was demanding 750k by yesterday. And as other
managers see their finances graph looking like a healthy green take-
off path they become more willing to pay these raised prices
I think this trend will continue for 3 seasons now, as each year prize
money rises and teams have more cash to spend. It may be worst in
season 2 because wage demand rises will also start to kick in during
the following seasons, but I think it will continue as those wage
rises may well not be as big as the prize money increases. The problem
is likely to be particularly acute at the top end of the market as the
prize money increases will be greatest there.
This trend will only stop after Season 4 or 5 when prize money stops
rising year on year and the seriously big wages kick in. At that point
I think we might even see some temporary deflation - particularly at
the top end of the market where the biggest wage rises will come -
until things calm down and the economy settles in to a long term trend
of low inflation.
I plan to collect data on this in the coming months and see if my
projections prove correct. More of that in a later post...
In the meantime, what does this mean for team strategy? Well, it means
now is the time to buy! With inflation on the way, provided you don't
go crazy now your investment is likely to be worth it as player values
and prize money rise. I paid the 750k for that striker and don't
regret it - he's 24 so just coming in to his prime and already 15+ in
half a dozen key atts, and 12+ in pretty much everything else that
matters. And he's on less than 8k wages with 2 seasons left on his
contract. I predict he'll be worth £1m+ in a season's time. I hope to
add a couple more players soon too - a DM and a LB are top of the list.
The key then will be to pick the right moment to stop buying and start
saving. You don't want to do this too soon, or you'll see other teams
improving faster than you on and off the field. But you really don't
want to do it too late, or you'll find you're still in debt with wage
demands rising and a need to sell players - only your players are now
worth less than they were a few weeks before. The smartest managers
will have actually started saving a while before that point, and have
built up a warchest that will allow them to pick off some of these
cheap buys and take their team on even further.
So I think my conclusion is the following:
- Season 2: Buy buy buy, pushing the overdraft to the limit.
- Season 3: Clear the debt from S2 and start the investment process,
getting cash in to the stadium to yield rewards later.
- Season 4: finish stadium investments and start building the warchest.
- Season 5: keep building the warchest until the market turns and then
cash in.
Sounds simple doesn't it. Of course it won't be. But from the evidence
I think it's the logical approach to take. Jakswan is in the same GW
as me and as an inflation sceptic plans to take a more conservative
approach, so it will be interesting to compare which works best.
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