Cheating

[dragosh***]

Direct transfer is the cream of this game, the best thing in this game, and if it's cheating let the sheriffs handle it, BUT don't forbid this feature!

[zandyy]

Mosmartin,

Interesting comments. It made me think about the money supply in the game. I think that basically two factors that increase the money supply in the game over time:
1. Teams maturing. As there are more teams that have been around for longer, they produce more money because they have bigger fan bases and more stadium seats, so they manage to create more income from seat sales and advertising.
2. More teams, which get more starting money and produce money through cups, friendlies, seats, advertising and league winning.
Apart from these, the rest of the prices are constants in the game – advertising banners, players and staff salary demands, income potential – these do not change with inflation. This fact basically means that the game is becoming cheaper as you stick around longer and as there are more managers. It means that mature managers become richer relative to others, and new managers become poorer relatively, because the excess of money in the hands of mature managers is the main driver behind the inflation in player prices.
If we want to balance this on a continuous basis, we need to calculate the money supply in the game and adapt those constant costs and income I mentioned according to the rate of “inflation”. Simply raising the prizes will raise the overall money supply, thus making the problem more severe – costs have to be raised too. It isn’t that difficult to calculate this and change prices once a season. Thing is, I’m not sure it is that much of a problem. It might take longer for managers to start making enough money to buy good players, but it is still possible – just takes more time.

Back to the topic here – I understand that the discussion here has now opened up to include any idea to reform the transfer market. I’d like if I may to return to a one simple suggestion that comes to solve one simple problem.
Problem: sellers negotiate with buyers prices for direct transfers but then do not accept the offer; in affect they were just trying to boost the bid.
Solution: optional ‘buy now’ option; the seller can, after the initial 2-day cool-down period, negotiate a price with a buyer and then put on a ‘buy it now’ icon with the agreed price-tag on it. This way the buyer did not place a bid – he can simply ‘buy it now’ and the direct transfer is complete.
This solution will not increase direct transfers in unrealistic prices because there is still the first two days in which you cannot accept the direct transfer price, when other buyers can bid. The ‘buy it now’ price has to be higher than the bid – by 5%, 10%, maybe 20% - that needs to be decided. But this solution will facilitate and regulate what most posters here agree is one of the highlights of this game, namely direct transfers. It will make it much more difficult for sellers to cheat buyers into placing high bids, and there will therefore not be as much necessity for administrators to interfere.

Finally,

It should at least be impossible to accept offers within the same minute. I've seen this happen too often. Players which should cost 3M are leaving for 1M this way. That's cheating too.

But why didn't you (or the buying manager in casu) bid 3M in the first place then ?

The reason, I think, is that as sellers cannot accept bids during the first two days, buyers prefer not to go into a price-war on those days, in order not to push the price up. The idea above will actually help solve this, because as regulated direct transfer will be enabled after the first two days, buyers will place more bids during the first two days.

[dawron]

First I have to say this:
I'm really feared of "Buy It Now!" function, or any else eBay-style similar features. If we'll implemente "Buy him now!", then we'll totally change transfer market, what mean totally change entire SoccerProject.


But zandyy offered something slightly different from eBay style:

Problem: sellers negotiate with buyers prices for direct transfers but then do not accept the offer; in affect they were just trying to boost the bid.
Solution: optional ‘buy now’ option; the seller can, after the initial 2-day cool-down period, negotiate a price with a buyer and then put on a ‘buy it now’ icon with the agreed price-tag on it. This way the buyer did not place a bid – he can simply ‘buy it now’ and the direct transfer is complete.

I am sorry, but I can't find any sence in this.
Why such a change? Just becose of few people who can't get over personal experience with a liar?
Why do U need such a change, zandyy? If you negotiate price, make a bid and then the seller does not accept it for whatever reason, then You are still the highest bidder. Therefore it is still You who is going to buy the player. In such a case auction continues normally as there were no negotiations. So where is the problem?
Only one who intentionaly negotiated very low (and therefore unrealistic and prohibited) buying price has the reason to cry in such a case!

[zandyy]

Dawron,

Sorry if you misunderstood me – this is not a new suggestion, it is what I’ve been talking about all along.

Talk to any manager in the higher leagues and most (I believe) will tell you they had such experiences when they negotiated a direct transfer with a manager and placed the agreed bid (typically substantially higher than the current bid - time and security equals money), only to realise that the seller was simultaneously negotiating with another potential buyers, making similar promises. The seller in affect participates in the negotiations in order to raise his bid above realistic prices and then plays two buyers against each other. Thus, the seller manages to get higher prices. The main risk for this occur with very good players, those that are quite rare to come accross. Those players are were negotiations usually occur, and they are what the game is about in higher leagues.

Managers go for direct transfers not only because they want to secure low prices. Other, and maybe more substantial reasons, include having the player there immediately; ensuring that the player doesn’t slip away; a need to fire players in order to complete such a transaction; or just simply avoiding a price war, which typically results in higher-than-average prices.

Did I manage to explain this well?

[C.A. Peñarol]

I stand on the fence on this idea, but something off topic here. i recently asked asked a manager how much he wanted for direct transfer for a CM i wanted and he said 4mil, so i explained i didn't have that money at that time but i would bid anyways at 3mil so the days went on and no higher bids were made. at the end i bought him for 3mil and saved myself a mil cash

sorry if it's a bit off topic, but i haven't read through all the posts made in this thread i hope this contributes something :S

[Frrfrr]

Direct transfer is the cream of this game, the best thing in this game, and if it's cheating let the sheriffs handle it, BUT don't forbid this feature!

dragosh: I believe this game has many more features which make this game uniqe and fun much more then direct accept ...
Honestly I dont get the point what fun is in it? You just send email, you get one, make a bit and get player - if he is not liar. If you sell same, but vice versa ... If one side is cheater then you get just disgusted ... Absolute majority of my trades is fast transfer, but I believe the fun is somewhere else, not in this ...

I understand from here that the biggest problems are fast transfers(when they are cheap) made by people in A,B,C divisions.
However people in lower divisions are based on fast transfer to grow so you can't forbid them. Also you can't discriminate somebody for being good in order to ban these transfers for A,B,C.

mosmartin: you got good remarks, but let me discuss 2 issues
1. fast transfers are good, even for A,B,C divis, but if the teams are independent. If they "friends" then it sux - this is cheating ... selling to friend cheaper due to whatever
2. lower divis I believe dont get hit ... In lower divis you dont need any fast transfer at all I think ... and you able to grow very fast ... i started fast transfer in D or E if I remember .. but ... no need before ... or very few ...

There are plenty of strategies how to play this game even without fast transfer, however, the managers would have to get use to the system ... and change the player acquisition system. I understand this is the reason why many managers are reluctant to it, while used to this system

[mosmartin]

1. fast transfers are good, even for A,B,C divis, but if the teams are independent. If they "friends" then it sux - this is cheating ... selling to friend cheaper due to whatever

How and who decides if the seller and the buyer of a certain player are friends?
I don't see any reasonable argument for such a decision. So, I'm open to proposals but I think that after all you can only assume they are friends, like you assume now that he's cheating without enough evidence.
We should be carefull with this kind of thing because anywhere in the world the assumption is made of "not quilty" instead of "quilty". This means that we have to assume they are not friends and arguments and evidences should be brought to prove otherwise.

2. lower divis I believe dont get hit ... In lower divis you dont need any fast transfer at all I think ... and you able to grow very fast ... i started fast transfer in D or E if I remember .. but ... no need before ... or very few ...

Well lover divisions get hit just like higher ones, even more if you think they don't have the same budget for transfers that higher division teams have. So, let's take the situation where we are both trying to by a player and you can easily offer 3M and I might have only 2.5 in the bank and my only chance is to get that player on a fast transfer.

I think the best solution is to implement a set of measures, starting with division and cup prizes, continuing with friendly cup adding a bonus option and finishing with transfer market so that the game will become even more interesting for the managers.

There are plenty of strategies how to play this game even without fast transfer, however, the managers would have to get use to the system ... and change the player acquisition system. I understand this is the reason why many managers are reluctant to it, while used to this system

Even if you are used to something, when a proposal for something better comes on the windows everybody should accept it, and it probably would.
I think that we just didn't had that proposal, that will suit so many of us.
Cheers

[sljivovica]

The problem is, that the current system is very good for those who use it right.
Besides the bad behaviour of some people, it is a good way to get rich quicker, and also manage your team better (lose Teamspirit on Friday right after the game, so you have 2 days to get back to 100%)

Personally I think this system is good for those who spend a lot of time on SP, but not so good for beginners who don't know the value of some of their players. For that reason, I would like the direct-accept-system to go away and let everybody get the market value for their players.
The bad side... you don't know on what day your player will be sold.
I'm willing to take that negative side, but I guess many are not...

[dawron]

Personally I think this system is good for those who spend a lot of time on SP, but not so good for beginners who don't know the value of some of their players. For that reason, I would like the direct-accept-system to go away and let everybody get the market value for their players.
The bad side... you don't know on what day your player will be sold.
I'm willing to take that negative side, but I guess many are not...

And what about advertising? I mean advertising = spaming others by personal messages. When You spam e.g. 200 managers, then You'll sell player for more then the real (or usual) "market" price. So You got the same result - managers who spend more time on SP (spaming) make much more money. That is a fact and You can't do anything against it. Belive me, I am sending advertising messages to random managers (using SPFA feature "Who is online" for fast and effective search) and it works.


The current system is absolutely O.K. and there is no need for change. Any change of it would change the entire gameplay and it mean different game from current SP. There are things to be improved, but not the core system. Transfer list should be more userfriendly, maybe there could be a search function and so on, but it is another story...



To zandyy:
U did't misunderstood me. I know what your intentions are, but my opinion is 100% opposite of your's. There is nothing what need to be changed. If you recognize somebody is exploiting negotiations about direc transfers for his own profit, then let it know to your friends and make the press announcement about it. The SP community then shall exclude such a manager.

[zandyy]

If you recognize somebody is exploiting negotiations about direc transfers for his own profit, then let it know to your friends and make the press announcement about it. The SP community then shall exclude such a manager.

I started this thread after the third time such a thing had happened to me in one year. I thought I had a solution that will completely prevent it from occurring yet again. I tried advertising, but so far the last manager that did this to me is doing very well. In fact, you will see him in E next season, with a team that can win in D and lots of money to spare. Thanks to the current system, such managers can do quite well.

Not many managers go on the forum or read press releases dawron. If you want something like this solved, you have to either adapt the system to make it impossible, or start involving sheriffs, which is an idea nobody liked here. It is a growing problem that many managers from higher divisions have encountered, and your solution of advertising it doesn’t work. No offence mate, but I think that now that you join division D next season (congratulations!) you will understand it a bit better. At least, once you start buying expensive players you will.

[dawron]

No offence mate, but I think that now that you join division D next season (congratulations!) you will understand it a bit better. At least, once you start buying expensive players you will.

Maybe I'll, zandyy, but maybe I'll not. I'm free spirited character with respect to both life ways - to the way of a good boy on the first and to the way of a badboy on the second. As truly neutral I don't consider neither of them as the "right" or "false". And more I don't want to make just one of them possible for choosing" (as You wish to do so).

Even I usually act following the role/way of the good guy whose word can be trusted (and it is my way on SP from the begining), I don't have any problem with the badboys (or cheaters as You call them). I am allways ready to solve any kind of act with/against them on my own. And if they will hurt me, then they will feel my revenge. I know very well how to act in the badboy role.

If I'll find the top SP divisions to be playable only for the badboys elbowing others, then I'll switch for this way too. Everybody has this possibility.

[lee400]

dawron, no criticisms, but can we all keep it cool?
You are driving all of us off topic...

Personally, I don't really care whether you can act like a "bad boy" and a "good boy". And I'm sure Zandyy also has better things to think about (great manager!).

And of course, we all have respect for you whether you agree or disagree.

So any comments ON TOPIC from anyone?

[zandyy]

Guess what?

It’s happened to me again. This time it’s Romanian manager Farcas Narcis. I was bidding for a player of his when he approached me and suggested I up the bid substantially for an immediate transfer. I did, and he never accepted – I’m still waiting.

We have got to find a solution to this nonsense. If we don’t feel like dealing with these people one by one, we have to adapt the transfer market system so that these things would not be possible.

Sjarel – some other ideas that can help, if my previous ones do not go down well:

- How about simply enabling bidders to cancel their bid? This way, I could cancel my bid now and the cheating seller will be left with no bidders at all.
- How about making any exchange of messages between managers who bid on each other’s players public? Simply, all messages appearing straight bellow on the bid page, whether the buyers or sellers like it or not. This will make things much more transparent.

Meanwhile, if anyone has any ideas on what can be done about this specific cheating manager, to make him feel such behaviour is not acceptable (Dawron, you seemed to be quite confident you know how do deal with such people), then please do let me know. It’s my problem today, it will be your tomorrow.

[shoon]

- How about simply enabling bidders to cancel their bid? This way, I could cancel my bid now and the cheating seller will be left with no bidders at all.

I like your first idea but in this way, if you're on top of the offers and you make a new one for a direct transfer or whatever the system should allow you to get back to your last offer, so you'r still on top after all. Something to make a little defend from liers will be a nice update.

[Zé da Silva]

- How about simply enabling bidders to cancel their bid? This way, I could cancel my bid now and the cheating seller will be left with no bidders at all.

Wasn't that possible in the past? At least that's the idea I got from this game message.