S20 State of the League

[Canadice]

State of the League

This has been one of the more exhausting off-seasons in a long while with the first expansion process since S7 and the biggest Prospect Draft in league history. One clear indication of the increase in activity is that we surpassed 200 weekly activity checks multiple times during the season as well as the bounty submissions amassing a whopping 171 million over 194 bounties compared to 32 million over 33 bounties in S18.

It is clear that the amount of new users last season brought in is leading us into a new era of the SSL and we have already seen the excitement spread from the S20 class to the rest of the league. One of the initiatives taken by two of the new users (@everyonesawinnerbaby and @TontoTut) has led to the creation of a new department, the Sticker Department. The goal of this new department is to continue to offer stickers of our league’s players, expanding beyond the Academy class, in the seasons to come!

The next sections cover some changes to the league structure and/or Rulebook: (TLDR at the end)

Matchdays
As we have previously announced, the expansion to 10 Major and Minor teams has required us to rethink the league structure in order to accommodate the increased number of fixtures. For comparison, S19 saw each team play 14 league games and at minimum 3 group stage games in the cup for a total of 17 competitive games during a season. This season will see every team play 18 league games, already more than the previous overall total, which causes quite a bit of matchday congestion in our schedule. The Cup will now be restructured to a pure knockout round tournament, as it was when the league first was created, giving teams at minimum 2 games for a total minimum 20 competitive matches in a season.

The effects this increase in matchdays (a set of games) have had on the simming schedule are twofold:

• one more “behind-the-scenes” effect is that there will only be one proper tactic deadline per week. Teams are still able to submit individual tactics for every matchday as they have before but the simmers and commentators will be given greater flexibility in their availability to record prior to the premiere.
  
• the effect you will all notice is that we have increased the number of matchdays per week from 6 to 7 and started the season a couple of days earlier. The previous schedule for premieres had single matchdays on Tuesdays + Fridays and double matchdays on Wednesdays and Fridays. This will continue while adding on a new single matchday on Thursdays. The full schedule can be found in the SSL Calendar.
  

Player Banks
The league has always tied the Bank to the player rather than the user but this information has been hard to find so we have now added it into the Rulebook.

Code:

a. A player's earnings from contracts, bounties, league jobs etc. are accumulated in the player's bank. The player may use the bank to purchase upgrades for their player, for example seasonal training, positional experience, traits etc.

b. The player bank is tied to the player, not the user, so when a player retires, any balance left in the bank can no longer be used.

Player Earnings and Regression (the big one)
When the league originally took form there were only 6 teams, no Academy season, and quite a different view on the uncapped and capped TPE earnings. As the league grew, tasks have both been kept the same and changed but the BoD has not taken any actions looking at the complete picture of earning. One clear effect we can see is the increase in draft class peaks from 2053 in the S1 class to 2184 in the most recent regressed class of S10. This is a 130 TPE increase over the course of 10 seasons which, if left unaddressed, projects to hit a 200-250 TPE increase in peak compared to S1 players in just a few seasons. Another consequence of the TPE inflation has been prolonged player careers lasting for over 3 calendar years. This is probably a divisive topic but three years is a very long time to stick with a player, I am myself very well aware of this fact just recently retiring my S1 player at an Academy level of TPE after my 11th regression.

This past season the BoD along with the help of engaged users in the League Office has taken a hard look at our current system, trying to figure out how we can adjust the current rules and systems to get back to our roots where a player reaching over 2000 TPE is considered an achievement and in some capacity reduce the length of a player career by a couple of seasons. It is important to note that players at around 1600 TPE are considered world class players relative to FM standards, so there is no lack of ability to actually create great players that can have an impact in the game with the 2000 TPE peak in mind. Some nice graphs showing the current TPE projection and the planned changes will be shown at the end of this post.

The BoD have voted to approve the following changes:

Training Camp
The addition of the Academy artificially increased the number of seasons in the Training Camp schedule. Originally intended to be three seasons of incremental declines from 40 TPE, we now have 4 seasons of 40 TPE, three seasons of 30, three seasons of 20 and the remaining seasons 10 TPE awarded at the start of the season.

Starting in S21 (next season) the Training Camp TPE will be structured as three seasons of 24 TPE, three seasons of 18 TPE, three seasons of 12 TPE and the remaining at 6 TPE.

Player Store and Monetary Earnings
Starting in S21 we are completely removing the cap on earning money from jobs and bounties. This decision was a tough one, balancing the incentive of producing media for the league or doing a job with the value of money in relation to max earning for your player. The reason for capping the earning was to limit the need/focus on money compared to other sim leagues in the simiverse, but the changes we’ve made throughout the years (increasing the cap, introducing bounties) eventually led to this current decision to remove the cap entirely. The only limit to Bounty earning is the set number of submissions for a specific category.

In order to limit the effect of this we have also decided to implement a limit on buying TPE from the Player Store to max 18 TPE per season starting in S21. Some changes will occur in the store systems to make the purchasing a linear function of money/TPE so you do not have to lose out on money if you purchase smaller chunks of TPE at different times throughout the season. In order to make the cost of one TPE something reasonable without the need for infinite decimals, the cost will adjust to 425 000 per TPE compared to the current 416 666.666… per TPE of the World Class Training. In total purchasing 18 TPE in this new system will be 7 650 000, which is an increase of only 150 000 compared to the current cost.

Regression
This section covers the biggest change we’ve planned to tackle the TPE inflation. Starting with the S20 regression, the regression of this season, we have adjusted both the classes being affected by regression and the regression percentages from

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Regression is a loss of TPE starting at the end of the player’s 9th season after creation according to the following percentages:
9: 10%
10: 10%
11: 15%
12: 20%
13: 25%
14: 30%
15+: 40%

to the following

Code:

Regression is a loss of TPE starting at the end of the player’s 8th season after creation according to the following percentages:
8: 10%
9: 15%
10: 20%
11: 25%
12: 30%
13: 35%
14+: 40%

In summary, the first regression now begins one season earlier and the regression percentages increase by 5 percentage points every new regression.

Another addition to the regression phase of a player’s career is that we will limit the max attribute value of all physical attributes (except Stamina and Natural Fitness) by 1 for every regression the player is affected by after their 2nd regression. For example, a player will after their third regression (11th season) be allowed a max of 19 in their physical attributes. This will automatically be set in the portal when you update your player so that you do not have to count the max yourself.

The two main reasons for this addition is that we want to address the focus on physical attributes in some capacity and try to mimic the real life scenario of older players focusing more on their mental and technical attributes compared to their physical form.

Finally we have also adjusted the auto-retirement rule to now also include active players. The rule has changed from

Code:

Inactive players affected by regression with less than 500 TPE will be automatically retired.

to

Code:

Inactive players with less than 600 TPE and active players with less than 500 TPE at the time of regression will be automatically retired.

Conclusion
The combined effect these changes will have on the TPE progression can be summarized in the following two figures.


This figure shows the TPE Peak trajectory of a max earning player at the end of every season. We have defined a max earning player as someone who completes all weekly and career tasks, gets the average TPE from the seasonal (24 per season) and weekly (15 per season) predictions throughout their career, and purchases the max amount of TPE from the Player Store (18 per season).

The dashed grey line shows the current structure where the projected peak of around 2300 TPE happens in their 9th season just before regression hits. The planned changes gets us to the blue line (labeled as Proposal in the figure) which in comparison has a slightly flatter increase and the peak of around 2050 happens in the 8th season just before regression hits.

The increased regression percentages also has an impact on the back-end of a player’s career, making a player move below 1000 TPE in the 14th season (two seasons earlier than current), eventually evening out below 500 TPE after the 18th season leading to an automatic retirement. To put this into context, 14 seasons is 126-130 weeks (ca 2.5 years) with our 9 week seasonal calendar, adjusting for the 2 week World Simulation Football Classic happening once every calendar year.


If we focus on a player’s career peak defined as having more than 1700 TPE, the current system sees a peak length of around 8 seasons (ca 72 weeks / 1.4 years). The peak number of seasons with the planned system is 5 seasons (ca 45 weeks / 0.9 years) which is still quite a lot of time for your player to be one of the top members of the league.

Note that these projections do NOT include the yearly WSFC tournament which would increase the TPE earned by around 30 TPE every five seasons. The reason for the exclusion is that it is unclear at what point in a player’s career the WSFC tournament(s) occur so it is difficult to project when the additional TPE would be added to a player, but we can on average expect an additional 30 TPE to the earnings and peaks.

A full spreadsheet of the numbers can be found here with two sheets, one for each system.

TLDR
Changes starting in S20 (this season)

• More games!
  
• Fewer tactics deadlines.
  
• New earlier regression and percentages.
  

Changes starting in S21

• New training camp scale
  
• No limit on job and bounty earning
  
• Limit of 18 TPE purchasable in the Player Store per season
  

/Commissioner

[omniscius]

Excited to see how these changes effect the league longterm.

[Wiggli]

The reason for capping the earning was to limit the need/focus on money compared to other sim leagues in the simiverse, but the changes we’ve made throughout the years (increasing the cap, introducing bounties) eventually led to this current decision to remove the cap entirely.

Not sure I totally understand the rationale for removing the cap on earning. I see how introducing bounties gives league participants another way to stay engaged outside of jobs, which can lead to a stronger, more active community. I see how increasing the cap promotes a higher level of activity whether that be through jobs or bounties. But I don't see how either of these lead to the conclusion that the best course of action is to remove the cap entirely.

I personally found the capped earning attractive when joining the league. I could pick a subset of activities that I enjoyed the most and felt were my best way to contribute to the league to meet that target activity level. With no cap it creates a sort of obligation for people that want to maximally participate to do everything. I would have preferred an increase to the cap, or maybe separate the cap between bounties and jobs.

[FaraDian]

Curious to see how the single deadline goes. Since there will be player updates in the middle of the week, we may not be able to fully account for those changes. With season results often dependent on a single result, I do worry that we won't be able to accurately test and prepare for big games that occur several days after the tactics deadline. I believe this should be reviewed with feedback from managers and tacticians at least after the season if not during.

[Daleks]

The reason for capping the earning was to limit the need/focus on money compared to other sim leagues in the simiverse, but the changes we’ve made throughout the years (increasing the cap, introducing bounties) eventually led to this current decision to remove the cap entirely.

Not sure I totally understand the rationale for removing the cap on earning. I see how introducing bounties gives league participants another way to stay engaged outside of jobs, which can lead to a stronger, more active community. I see how increasing the cap promotes a higher level of activity whether that be through jobs or bounties. But I don't see how either of these lead to the conclusion that the best course of action is to remove the cap entirely.

I personally found the capped earning attractive when joining the league. I could pick a subset of activities that I enjoyed the most and felt were my best way to contribute to the league to meet that target activity level. With no cap it creates a sort of obligation for people that want to maximally participate to do everything. I would have preferred an increase to the cap, or maybe separate the cap between bounties and jobs.

I did initially share the same worry. A big advantage of this league is indeed how accessible it is and that you can do the things you like doing and still be maxing.

However, and I must admit that all these changes benefit me a lot personally, I see a lot of positives in it. A lot of the storytelling in this league was done by new people, who are the only ones without jobs. Now, we will see some more veterans share some more interesting stories, perspectives and some more deep bounties. And with the 18 TPE store upgrade being limited to once a season (big part why I think this cap removal will be alright), there will be some interesting decision making in the store section. Better weak foot, more traits or more positions are now all very intriguing options for those going the extra mile. 

So yeah while I am maybe not 100% sure still, I think it is overall a net positive. Most of the store upgrades (aside from weak foot) are mostly 'horizontal' rather than 'vertical' upgrades. Maybe some reservations about how players can more easily access new positions now, but considering all these changes being made to reduce TPE inflation (and thus leading to lower attributes across the board), such players would still be a worse option in those newly gained positions than someone who is completely dedicated to that position and levels the attributes accordingly.

Back to the post: everything else seems nice to my very newbie eyes. I think the physical limits seem ultimately kinda irrelevant, especially due to the earlier and harsher regressions, but it does immitate real life a bit more and does reel in the physical meta in FM a small bit. And yeah, 2-3 years with the same player (and most of the time same team) is a very long commitment for a hobby such as this. Although, such a long career is still on the extremes and don't represent the average user, but faster cycling of players should lead to more interesting league states and variety.

But honestly, the thing I care about the most is MORE GAMES! Yes!

Very excited to see the future of this league!

[Wiggli]

The removal of the cap works well if the rationale is something like, "We want the most active players to be able to differentiate themselves more." (kept in check with the TPE cap, so it is limited to greater access to traits/weak foot/position).

It works less well if the rationale is "we want to allow people with jobs to still fully participate in bounties" (counting jobs and bounties separately more directly addresses that)

My worry is if the rationale is something like "we need more people to do league jobs" removing the cap could be counterproductive. More grading needed, some potential job fillers moving their attention to bounties instead.

Another worry is that it limits the ability to add more bounty types in the future, since that would amount to increasing the earning cap.

Each of my full seasons I've submitted bounties after being capped, so I also am someone who stands to benefit from the cap removal. But I do know that the ease of being a 'max user' here was something that made it attractive, just trying to understand the reasoning for moving away from that.

[Canadice]

Curious to see how the single deadline goes. Since there will be player updates in the middle of the week, we may not be able to fully account for those changes. With season results often dependent on a single result, I do worry that we won't be able to accurately test and prepare for big games that occur several days after the tactics deadline. I believe this should be reviewed with feedback from managers and tacticians at least after the season if not during.

We intend to try and keep the public FM file as updated as we can after each game so compared to last season you would get access to the updated builds on Tuesday compared to Wednesday. Updates are still only being added to the file on Mondays so there are no updates handled during the week.

This is definitely something we will be keeping tabs on for both the managers/tactician and simmers during the season and evaluate as needed.

Edit: I now realized what you meant, that the updates are added to the file after/during the tactic deadline on Mondays for the games of the week. Yes that would be the biggest change compared to last season. Something to keep track of for sure!

[Domffl]

wow, so as soon as the commissioner retires his S1 player, all the sudden no one can have players below 500 tpe anymore. Sounds like someone is trying to protect their legacy as the longest career in SSL history.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of the tyrannical oppression.

But also, thank you Canny for keeping this league afloat. We couldn't do this without you! <3

#TiredOfTheTyranny

[Canadice]

wow, so as soon as the commissioner retires his S1 player, all the sudden no one can have players below 500 tpe anymore. Sounds like someone is trying to protect their legacy as the longest career in SSL history.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm tired of the tyrannical oppression.

But also, thank you Canny for keeping this league afloat. We couldn't do this without you! <3

#TiredOfTheTyranny

There is a path where you could have more than 500 tpe at the time of regression for a decent amount of seasons even now.

[By-Tor]

SHL Regression changes got me and now SSL regression changes got me. I got got smh