I don't really know what happened myself, as this sort of came out of the blue. My best guess is that it stems from a disagreement Holly had with CJ about a rule change in one of his leagues. I'm not posting this to debate that rule, but Holly immediately quit all of CJ's leagues, including his XFL team right before the playoffs.

Whatever the disagreement, it happened and he left those leagues but he stayed here. I thought that everything was fine until a couple days ago when Seth asked me if I talked to Holly because he hadn't logged into MFN for 17 days. I had not spoken to him, then the next day, yesterday in fact, I went to check his other teams and noticed he finally logged in on 4/1 early morning.

If he had still not logged on, I was considering replacing him since the playoffs are coming up. Obviously I prefer active owners in the playoffs vs AI. OK, he's logged in and everything is fine right? I guess not, since he left of his own accord. I do not have an answer for why he left, as we hardly ever communicated directly with each other. I also don't know why he would choose now to leave.

I really wish Holly would have contacted me if he had concerns about whether or not I was going to adopt CJ's rule, if that's what his problem was with me and/or the league. If it was something else entirely, he could have told me that too. He chose to say nothing and leave, so like you all I'm left to speculate.

For me, I no longer care why he quit because he's gone. If anyone ever has any issues, problems, or concerns about the way the USFL is run, please contact me via PM. I'd rather talk about any issues and try to work a compromise rather than have someone quit abruptly without warning, keeping the issues to themselves.

Just noticed the Wildcard schedule. Holly was scheduled to face CJ, so I'm really surprised he quit now. If I was Holly and I was mad at CJ, I would love the opportunity to knock him out of the playoffs.

If anyone knows someone who wants to take over, tell them to apply. I'm going to post our opening now.

He hasn't responded to me since I reached out about the German league.

Full disclosure, he never communicated with me about quitting my leagues or why.

He posted this in the following thread.

https://gm-football-league.myfootballnow.com/forums/1/108?page=4#853

Re: Suggestion of a Rule

By hollyhh2000

3/07/2021 7:56 pm

welcome to communism

If you read the thread, he made other comments about democracy and the limited time I implemented this rule.

The truth is, I knew nothing about this as someone brought it to my attention and after personally experimenting with free agent contracts....I realized the danger and inequity these contracts can create especially in competitive leagues with limited high quality free agents.

After he quit all my leagues, I reached out to him via PM with this but he never responded.

I see you quit my all my leagues and that's fine...I can only guess it's because of the max contract rule being implemented.


The rule really needs to be changed to ABSOLUTELY NO adjusting of future base salaries in free agent contracts. As it stands now, anyone can create back loaded contracts whose total value is high but well over 50% of the contract can be avoided by cutting the player in year 6 without much of a dead cap number.

I honestly didn't want to post all this in the main forums which only would create more problems then its worth.

Do you think the example contract is fair? Especially for say a 8 year vet or higher that rates in his 90s?



Note the last year of the contract is for 30 million in base salary which can be cut with only a minimal bonus to eat of the cap. Thats 30 million out of the 41 million dollar contract which will never be paid.

The only way these contracts happen is if the base salaries are manually manipulated...thats why I created the rule.

This isn't mortgaging the future of the team....it means creating a false 41 million contract that in essence is an 11 million dollar contract.

He never responded to PM.

I don't understand the thoughts on leagues being run democratically. Mine are pure dictatorship because I created them, established the rules, monitor and enforce the rules plus dedicate hundreds of hours to add content and create a deeper richer level of immersion.

The only democratic element to my leagues is the ability to leave them if you chose but my leagues remain full because what I'm offering is in demand.

Greg is a great league admin and much more democratic then myself but in the end....you can't please everyone, all the time. If someone thinks outlawing those ridiculous back loaded contracts takes away from their ability to manage their team then honestly....they don't belong in my leagues.

Sorry for the long post

CJ

As I pointed out in your thread, the rule doesn't accomplish anything. Manipulating the last year of a contract doesn't really make a player more likely to sign with a team since it doesn't influence guaranteed money.

For anyone that does not know, guaranteed money is what drives a player's decision to sign with a team. If multiple teams are offering the same amount of guaranteed money, it's an evaluation process to figure out which team the player will sign with. No idea how this evaluation process works:



Look, I follow the rules in the leagues that I play in. But the attitude around rules and deciding what's "right" in a league is what is driving people to quit.

Rules that make sense are the ones that cover up exploits like the Punt Block Rule and the DE minimum weights rules. (You could even say that the minimum RB weight rule is covering up an exploit too, but it's debatable.)

Rules that don't make sense are using default salaries when signing FAs. It is _not_ an exploit. The person that suggested it is a long time veteran and should know how free agency works. And for someone like holly, the rule should have been "just let me sign all the FAs so I don't get mad because your team is better than mine" rule.

Does it **** he left? Yes.

Does greg run a good league? Yes.

Is everyone leaving MFN because the game is broken and all the private leagues are starting to require law degrees? Yes.

---

Update: Also, for what it's worth, I prefer leagues with weight minimums and roster minimums anymore because it forces you to get more creative with your game planning (and really separates out the good X and O players).

So these aren't glitches?

Actual contracts in MFN-8






I'm not an expert and I have no idea how the A.I. chooses between contracts but you are saying a 6 year 14 million dollar contract with 7 million in bonus wins over a 6 year 74 million dollar contract with 6 million in bonus?

If that's true then the rule means nothing and nobody is hurt...right?

And this rule came from Senna86 who has like 5 months experience and isn't in my league. Manually manipulating the base salaries has many other effects besides this one so I banned it.

JDB says bonus is the primary thing with base salary playing a lesser role.....that doesn't mean it's a none factor. I don't want to rely on the A.I.'s logic to do the right thing so I made the decision.

If it's a waste of time then no harm no foul. I'm not limiting anyone's ability to offer giant contracts or sign free agents

No, they are a feature in the game. My point is that they aren't influencing who signs with who as much as you think.

That's great so the rule means nothing and hurts nobody

I mean, yes, that's how I would understand a rule that was put in place in the league, but I also don't play FA since I build teams through the draft and select trades.

But, anyway, it does take away a psychological aspect of the game that players like holly and smirt do use that is not an exploit.

Here's a bad analogy, so don't anyone get offended if you are this person in your poker group. Backloading a contract like this is like the person at the poker table that stacks up all their chips when they are the next to bet to see if they can get you to raise your bet and give up your hand. It's exactly this kind of low stakes BS that annoys me greatly.

How this works in MFN is that guaranteed money is going to determine who the player selects, and the rest is just noise. We can quibble about what those other factors are, but you might as well roll a dice. So if I'm the chip stacker (and, trust me, I am never the chip stacker at my table), I decide how much I'm going to bet in advance and set that as my guaranteed money.

Now, I'm going to backload that final year to a ridiculous amount. On your end, you get to see what the TOTAL bid is but not the guarantee. What I as the chip stacker want to do is force you to make one of two choices:

1) Raise your bid and pay more guarantee money. Likely overpaying for a player that you don't necessarily want or need.

2) Fold.

How I play FA when I do play it is by largely ignoring what someone else has bid and determining the max amount of money I want to spend on a player in guaranteed money. I then bid that amount. If it's a max contract, then I will fiddle with it and make it a super max contract, but I also understand that this doesn't actually determine who the player is going to sign with.

Do I win a lot of these? Probably not. But in the end, I don't want to spend more than the amount that I set.

Once you see the psychological aspect of this, it makes sense why someone would get annoyed by a rule against it even though it means nothing in terms of game code.

Finally, those contracts that you used above are a great example of how to psych someone out of bidding on a veteran. Salary after all goes POOF, gone, when a player retires or is traded.

Super max contract is my go-to. I've never once did any other type contract, though, with back-loading. Enough follow my dealings to know what I do in FA!

I recall trying to chase Lellow in a league where he won like 9 titles in a row and Dragon was on him hard, too. I messed up a super max contract by a smidge and Lellow got the elite player. That became a driving force to never lose out again or go down in an equalized bid. Competitive thing. You look at the Lellow and say if I'm gonna compete I need to drive at this and never leave an opening.

BUT...if everyone has a no super max rule then the game changes and you got to come at it different, mentally.