Progression and Salary Cap Miscalculations

[ccb99]

I apologize if this post does not belong here.
I generally try to play games as "un-modified" as possible. In Madden 08, I play franchises as the "owner only," meaning that I simulate every game and the only actions I take are management decisions (drafting, signing, etc.) However, as the franchise goes on, I have noticed two particular aspects which removes all of the fun: Players progress WAY too fast, and the salary cap grows too quickly in comparison to player salaries.
Here's an example of what I am talking about: using the default roster, I simulated 25 years into the future. At the end of the 25 years, I noticed that the AI-controlled Saints had a 99-overall player starting at almost every position, and they were winning the super bowl nearly every year. However, even with all of these 99-overall players, they were still under half of the salary cap.
Conversely, AI-controlled Patriots were stuck with their best player being a 79-overall, the team was miserable ("I'm suing the Patriots for emotional damages"), and they had a losing season every year. This primarily led me to the conclusion that the salary cap expands too quickly.
Onto the second problem: I started another franchise and simulated a single year. The default roster only has four players rated 99-overall, but after simulating the first season, there were more than 20 players rated 99-overall. These two poorly designed elements combine to create an eternal lose-lose situation for any team which is not successful in the first 3-5 years, and a situation which is completely unrealistic.
As I mentioned before, I prefer to play as un-modified as possible, but all of the fun is taken out due to poorly designed mechanics. I am searching for a solution to at least one (but preferably both) of these problems which requires as little effort as possible.

TL;DR: Franchise mode in base game has two game-breaking problems: salary cap increases too much and players progress too fast. How would I go about fixing these for a realistic franchise mode?

(Side note: I am perfectly willing to use editors, but since I use Windows 10, I often encounter problems

[Danchat]

I apologize if this post does not belong here.
I generally try to play games as "un-modified" as possible. In Madden 08, I play franchises as the "owner only," meaning that I simulate every game and the only actions I take are management decisions (drafting, signing, etc.) However, as the franchise goes on, I have noticed two particular aspects which removes all of the fun: Players progress WAY too fast, and the salary cap grows too quickly in comparison to player salaries.
Here's an example of what I am talking about: using the default roster, I simulated 25 years into the future. At the end of the 25 years, I noticed that the AI-controlled Saints had a 99-overall player starting at almost every position, and they were winning the super bowl nearly every year. However, even with all of these 99-overall players, they were still under half of the salary cap.
Conversely, AI-controlled Patriots were stuck with their best player being a 79-overall, the team was miserable ("I'm suing the Patriots for emotional damages"), and they had a losing season every year. This primarily led me to the conclusion that the salary cap expands too quickly.
Onto the second problem: I started another franchise and simulated a single year. The default roster only has four players rated 99-overall, but after simulating the first season, there were more than 20 players rated 99-overall. These two poorly designed elements combine to create an eternal lose-lose situation for any team which is not successful in the first 3-5 years, and a situation which is completely unrealistic.
As I mentioned before, I prefer to play as un-modified as possible, but all of the fun is taken out due to poorly designed mechanics. I am searching for a solution to at least one (but preferably both) of these problems which requires as little effort as possible.

TL;DR: Franchise mode in base game has two game-breaking problems: salary cap increases too much and players progress too fast. How would I go about fixing these for a realistic franchise mode?

(Side note: I am perfectly willing to use editors, but since I use Windows 10, I often encounter problems

The problem with progression is with the location of the progression points. The default points put one point in the Championship game and one in the Super Bowl, so the handful of teams that make that far get waaaay too much progression. Plus there are certain positions that get too many boosts (CB) and some get too few (WR).

I would use the NZA 2.0 editor to change the number/location of progression points. You can also use the editor to lower the cap number, which I find is a necessity. Also, to balance teams' caps, make sure rookie contracts are lowered. NZA 2.0 also has a feature that overhauls the rookie contract pay scale. The default will pay massive sums to high 1st round picks and actually make their contracts higher than the best veterans in the game.

[Theov]

Using the editor you can remove the progression checkmarks in the playoffs. This should make the top teams progress as fast as the other teams.
Also, after every season make the moral of all players 99. Team Distraction (role) players take AWR away from other players. So if you have a bad team, the players will lose moral, which makes the AWR go down, which makes them lose etc etc into a deadly spiral of sucktitude.

Lower the salary cap, so the best 5 teams are over the cap (or whatever you find a good benchmark) - forcing the best-paying team (or best teams in general) to release players into the FA pool. So they can be picked up by lesser teams who need them.

[jakethesnake]

Using the editor you can remove the progression checkmarks in the playoffs. This should make the top teams progress as fast as the other teams.
Also, after every season make the moral of all players 99. Team Distraction (role) players take AWR away from other players. So if you have a bad team, the players will lose moral, which makes the AWR go down, which makes them lose etc etc into a deadly spiral of sucktitude.

Lower the salary cap, so the best 5 teams are over the cap (or whatever you find a good benchmark) - forcing the best-paying team (or best teams in general) to release players into the FA pool. So they can be picked up by lesser teams who need them.

That's an interesting suggestion, lowering the cap; might give it a try sometime.

The deadly spiral of sucktitude (great phrasing) is somewhat realistic in theory; success/good morale often breeds success and ineptitude/low morale also tends to spiral; however the way Maddden08 implemented it is just waaaay over the top.

[Theov]

Using the editor you can remove the progression checkmarks in the playoffs. This should make the top teams progress as fast as the other teams.
Also, after every season make the moral of all players 99. Team Distraction (role) players take AWR away from other players. So if you have a bad team, the players will lose moral, which makes the AWR go down, which makes them lose etc etc into a deadly spiral of sucktitude.

Lower the salary cap, so the best 5 teams are over the cap (or whatever you find a good benchmark) - forcing the best-paying team (or best teams in general) to release players into the FA pool. So they can be picked up by lesser teams who need them.

That's an interesting suggestion, lowering the cap; might give it a try sometime.

The deadly spiral of sucktitude (great phrasing) is somewhat realistic in theory; success/good morale often breeds success and ineptitude/low morale also tends to spiral; however the way Maddden08 implemented it is just waaaay over the top.

tl;dr -> I use the cap number in the 2nd list.

In my franchise I use 99MOR thing I said.
I also use a formula to raise the cap every year by a decreased percentage. In Madden, every year the salary cap increases with 6%.
So it looks like this: (note that obviously the absolute increase grows exponentially.

6% per year cap increase
Year Cap in M
2007 106
2008 112.36
2009 119.1016
2010 126.247696
2011 133.8225578
2012 141.8519112
2013 150.3630259
2014 159.3848075
2015 168.9478959
2016 179.0847697
2017 189.8298558
2018 201.2196472
2019 213.292826
2020 226.0903956
2021 239.6558193
2022 254.0351685
2023 269.2772786
2024 285.4339153
2025 302.5599502
2026 320.7135472
2027 339.9563601
2028 360.3537417
2029 381.9749662
2030 404.8934641
2031 429.187072
2032 454.9382963
2033 482.2345941

I changed the percentage increase - so that every year, the percentage is a bit lower. This makes the yearly increase grow less fast. It gives a more balanced result (not everyone is 40M under the cap) and doesn't need any research. Every offseason I check the file, see the number, and edit the cap number.
Looks like this:

Year Cap in M
2007 106
2008 112.2275
2009 118.6805813
2010 125.3563639
2011 132.250964
2012 139.3594533
2013 146.6758246
2014 154.1929606
2015 161.9026086
2016 169.7953608
2017 177.8606404
2018 186.086695
2019 194.4605963
2020 202.9682474
2021 211.5943979
2022 220.3226668
2023 229.1355735
2024 238.014577
2025 246.9401236
2026 255.8917031
2027 264.8479127
2028 273.7865298
2029 282.684592
2030 291.5184855
2031 300.26404
2032 308.8966312
2033 317.3912885

[grabursock55]

Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead, but I have a question that is relevant to it.

I am running a promotion/ relegation league. As teams move up the ladder, their salary cap increases, if they get bumped down a division, their salary cap decreases and they have to (usually) cut players

So I was planning on setting teams cap in one of the editors. The division 1 teams would get x amount of money, div 2 would get y amount, and division 3 would get z amount of money.
After reading this thread, I see that salary cap increases yearly. Why is that? Do players ask for more money in later seasons as a sort of "inflation" calculator? Interested to hear about It.

Thanks!

[Danchat]

Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead, but I have a question that is relevant to it.

I am running a promotion/ relegation league. As teams move up the ladder, their salary cap increases, if they get bumped down a division, their salary cap decreases and they have to (usually) cut players

So I was planning on setting teams cap in one of the editors. The division 1 teams would get x amount of money, div 2 would get y amount, and division 3 would get z amount of money.
After reading this thread, I see that salary cap increases yearly. Why is that? Do players ask for more money in later seasons as a sort of "inflation" calculator? Interested to hear about It.

Thanks!

There is a degree of inflation, especially with the rookie contracts. I believe players / free agents will ask for more later on, but I do not believe the increases are close to as big as the gains the 1st round rookies get. I am just going off my memory and I could be wrong.

Having relegation in a Madden franchise sounds like a fun concept, but you'll probably have to manage the cap manually since I don't believe there is a way to have teams get different salary caps.