Brainstorming on a new wage system

Although the last few updates have dramatically improved the layout and user friendliness of Virtual Manager, we're still not quite done with this work. However, we've now come so far that we can start to focus more of our work on improving gameplay mechanics.

When deciding which ideas we want to develop, we look for changes that make the game more challenging and exciting, but which don't make the game much more complex for users who are comfortable with the level of complexity we have today. We also want to give managers who want to spend several hours each week on the game, a bit more to do while they're here. However, we do need to balance this in such a way that managers who play the game for 10 hours a day, don't gain a huge advantage over those who only play 2 hours each week.

In this post, I'd like to tell you about one of those ideas which we think satisfy the criteria I just mentioned: a new negotiation-based payroll system. We still haven't decided whether or not we want to include this feature in Virtual Manager, but we'd really like your feedback on this idea so we can develop it into something really awesome.

A change to the wage system has the potential of making the game a lot more interesting in a lot of ways. Overall, a new payroll system could fix the following problems:
[list]
There is a large amount of inflation in the game economy (this can be alleviated by higher wage demands on clubs that make a lot a Credits)
A club can easily remain at the top, once they are there (it is too easy to keep hold of the really good players)
Unrealistic wage demands from the players (players' wage demands don't take the club's actual credit earnings into consideration)
[/list]

One way to fix these problems is to make players' wage demands more intelligent and to have players demand much higher wages if they're playing in the leagues where the big money is made. But we think we can make it even more interesting than that.

What if all contracts were based on a contract-proposal from the player? For instance, players could make a proposal like this: I'd like to renew my contract for X days for the sum of Y Credits. The number of days would - as in real life - be based on how old the player is and how happy he is with the club. Older players would be more likely to propose shorter contracts and younger players might prefer longer contracts. And, if the player is happy, he would naturally want to stay for longer periods of time. On rare occasions, the player might be so unhappy (or old) that he won't want to renew his contract at all.

The player's wage demand could be based on how much he think he could get in a competing club, and of course, on his mood. If players of the same calibre as himself are getting much higher wages in other clubs, then he'd demand similar wages for himself. If he's in good mood, he might settle for less.

When you're presented with a contract proposal from a player, you can choose to OK the deal and renew his contract right away. But you'd also have the option of negotiating.

When a player makes his proposal, you'd see a gauge showing his tolerance. This is a measure of how open he is to negotiation. When you negotiated, your task is to drive down the wages and increase the contract duration (or not, if you don't feel like keeping the player on for that long). It's up to you to decide how aggressive you want to be in your negotiations. You might suggest that the contract duration be double of what the player proposed, or perhaps just a couple of days longer. You might want to decrease his wage by as much as 20%, or perhaps just 5%.

The more aggressive your demands, the more more the player's tolerance will drop - and the higher his likeliness of demanding even higher wages or a shorter contract duration. On the other hand, you may get lucky enough that he agrees to your demands. You can keep trying to negotiate as many times as you want, as long as the player is still open to negotiation.

If the player's tolerance goes to 0%, he will withdraw his contract proposal, and you will no longer be able to negotiate with him. He may still come around at a later date, with a new proposal, hopefully before his contract expires.

If you feel that the player is impossible to negotiate with, you can even decide to cut off the negotiations yourself. By coming back a few days later, the player's tolerance will often have risen a little bit, which will increase the chance of him meeting your demands. This means that it can often be a good idea to start negotiations early.

All of the above is still just an idea, but please tell us what you think of it, and if you've got any suggestions that would make it even better.