Would like to see the player salaries/contracts simulate what the game is simulating, American pro football, same as the 32 cities used for standard leagues, the field & rules, and the game in general.

The game as it stands does not even come close to simulating pro football when a league leading or successful QB, RB, or WR is receiving a ridiculously low salary or bare minimum. Looking at a majority of the dominant league champion teams, and on-going division winners shows that their "room under cap" is usually $30 milllion and up, which allows them to bid extremely high amounts for "marquee" FA's without having to make room on their rosters to do so, which is a major part of professional football team management, what this game is attempting to simulate as much as possible.

Implementing this in the game should not be very hard to do and would increase the strategy and planning to be successful, putting that part of the game on a more equal level with the other key aspects,....drafting, game planning, and player/roster compositions.

As it stands now, team salary cap and room under cap are not doing what they are supposed to do if the game priority is to simulate. Successful, high rated linemen and kickers, do not make the same or more in salary than successful/high rated QB, RB, WR, DB, and LBs.

There have been some recent updates that will gradually make this more as you describe, but the next game engine will become a bit more aggressive. Hope to have some of the fundamentals in play for MFN-1's next offseason.

You are making a lot of assumptions about positional value when you haven't been playing the game all that long. The highest overall QBs are usually not the best QBs in the current sim (typically these guys are better passers but do not move well). Having highly rated WRs is nice but you can put up big numbers still with mediocre WRs that have a few key skills. LBers barely matter at all for most schemes, they rarely even come close to being the leading tacklers on most teams and I've had quite a few very good defenses with absolutely terrible linebackers. I had a championship team in MFN8 with one WLB that was rated highly in future overall but is still developing and the rest of my LBers were literally 50s and 60s overall.

Sure this is a football simulation, but the salary cap is not the only reason that certain teams put together strong rosters and dominate. Personally I don't want to see teams being torn apart every offseason simply because they drafted well and now those players want to be paid 20% of the cap. Realism is cool and all but in any game there needs to be a limit on realism in favor of making a good and enjoyable game. If people are putting in more time and effort to build a strong roster, manage their cap, draft well and sign select free agents then they should have a strong team. Why should this game be completely catered to making the game easier for those that aren't as good at it as others? Maybe those guys should look at why they are not doing as well and learn from that instead trying to get the game changed to suit their deficiencies.

To that, I reply... throw out the salary conditions and aspect all together then, it does not have relevance for the dominant players in the game, same for coaches salaries, a non-factor. I agree with you on making the game enjoyable and rewarding those, who def include you, for investing the time and effort to compete and win league championships. Another answer may be to make the positions and their values also simulate better, why not? This is a professional football simulation isnt it? There's a real good balance in there somewhere, not there yet, but from what JDB is stating, as someone who prefers more of a simulation I hope that is going to be the direction. Same goes for TE's & FB's on offense, not anywhere close to the factor they are in the real game of football. I dont know what the server can & cant handle, but you could also have different league types, like one for those who want more realism, a better simulation, and a different league for those who don't. Same goes for the idea of having something like "Rookie Leagues", Veteran Leagues, and Champion Leagues, putting players with similar experience and ability into "competitive" leagues. And keep the "Kingdom" leagues, where the dominant teams have been created and go on as long as the owner wants, with no real threat to that dominance from game play. That is why salary cap structures were created for the American professional football league, to make it more competitive and interesting, unless you like seeing teams win it year after year. Like the Yankees in baseball for almost a century, some people prefer dynasty team situations, especially so if you own that team.

I'm in favor of having the player's salary demands be more in line with their value.

Note I said "value" and not "ratings".

I also think the demands should be more than solely the minimum bonus amount the player will accept.

The players should demand salaries in line with their worth, not their ratings. There are plenty of players in real life who have great "skills", but aren't any good in games (like QBs/OL in MFN). You don't see them getting paid the big bucks just because their "skills" are comparable to the best players in the league.

On a related note, I really dislike so much of this game being dictated by the AI's "default" ratings.

First, it leads to a lot of confusion because we have no way of knowing what these ratings are.

Second, the AI's opinion of what makes a good player is often (if not always) different than what actually makes a good player. We (humans) know what is important to have in each position. The AI does not, and I suspect the default ratings reflect this.

Third, with the AI using it's own ratings (instead of player performance) to determine what the salary demands for someone should be, we are going to have situations where a bench warmer is demanding a top salary, and a league leader is signing for peanuts.

Fourth, with the new player favor feature, we are going to have situations where a player is unhappy being #2 on the depth chart because the AI thinks he is rated higher than the starter, but the owners do not.

The QB position has always been the single most important position on a football team, pro or otherwise. Would like to see it be the same both in value and performance/effect on team for this "simulation", just my preference and opinion. Would also like to see LBs, TE's, & FBs reflect and "simulate" what theyre values are in the real game.

In the current sim DEs, HBs, and CBs are probably the 3 most important positions generally speaking. HBs value contractually should be lower though imo than some other positions because HBs are pretty much always hurt and tend to retire earlier.

That is definitely the case with the current game version, which is a great "work in progress" imo. Im a fanatic football game person, so I tend to want more of a simulation to the real game. Im also realistic, a simulation can only go so far before it becomes more difficult and tedious, time-consuming to play and you start losing more players than what would be considered acceptable or normal for an online game of this type. There is a balance point, like most things in life. The basic aspects of the game, like the importance of the QB position relative to both individual and team performance, is what I would like to see strongly reflected in this game. And with that, the salary structure being both relative and relevant.

Sometimes we forget just how much of a work in progress this game really is.

This is still beta. We aren't even to version 1.0 yet.

Even with all it's flaws, it's still pretty great.