The Youth Market - Someone has to be unhappy

This weekend I'll begin a series on features I would like to see implemented in future FML updates. But one thing that definitely won't be making the list is changes to the Youth Academy system. Given the uproar on the official forums here and here you might ask why not?

Well because I believe the current system is about as good as you can get. Yes, there are minor alterations I'd make if i was starting from scratch, but now that academies are in I think the development team's time could be better spent elsewhere. As for major changes, I simply don't think they'll work.

You see, the truth is that the youth system can never make everyone happy. Most of the 1000 managers in a game would like to have youth teams at U17, U19 and U21 with 18 good quality prospects in each (defined as say 3* plus PA). That means they need 9 new 3* grads a year. But the database simply can't sustain this. The database size is 50000, which given a roughly even spread of players over the ages of 16 - 34 means that in each year group there should be about 2500-3000 players. So each season 2500-3000 new youths should be created, and of these I can't believe that more than 2000 will be 3*+ PA. So on average each of the 1000 teams can only have 2 new 3* PA youths per season.

Let's just pause to compare those numbers directly:
The average team would like 9 x 3* PA new youths a season.
The average team can have 2 x 3* PA new youths a season.

You don't need to know a lot about economics to know that demand at 450% of supply is a recipe for prices going through the roof. Before academies this was expressed through massively high youth wages, and so the community demanded academies. Now the supply-demand imbalance is expressed through the building of loads of academies, and people are again unhappy. But with this supply/demand inequilibrium there's simply no way to make everyone happy. Someone has to be unhappy. The question is who should be unhappy:

- under a pure market system (like before) those who can't afford it are unhappy. This on the whole means new players, and so makes them more likely to leave. Not good.
- under some sort of youth draft system (as Jakswan has eloquently argued for) the top teams (who get the last picks) are unhappy. I think this is better than a market system, but if you're SI do you really want to piss off some of your best and most dedicated players? Not if you can help it I would have thought.
- under a pure luck system (a few random PA youths crop up in your squad at the start of each season) a random selection of people are unhappy. Plus everyone who (like me) likes more strategy in their game is disappointed. And indeed anyone who wants to have a youth team without the hassle of having to negotiate to buy 16 players off other managers isn't going to be too thrilled either.

Which leaves us with the option of a hybrid system - perhaps combining some sort of market force of how much money you invest with some element of luck, whilst allowing new managers to bring some promising youths in to the gameworld through their starting squad?...

Oh wait, that's what we've already got...

Vollernomics: The Success Gap

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.