An Open Letter about Player Agents

Is good see your comentaries parka  

Yeah, I don't personally think anything has been that out of line so far. If there was no interest in Rush, I don't see his signing as an issue. Same thing for Deng - we were what, like a full week into FA and no one even noticed Deng wasn't with an agency? Then everyone is up in arms?

And OP, I don't know if I could make an argument for starting Ridnour over Teague. I mean, your stacked at PG. And it really should go Thomas/Teague/Free Agent. If POR was offering legit 2nd string minutes, then that's something.

Dylan (SAC) wrote:

DennisJ (BOS) wrote:For now I didnt see any rude comments, only criticism. If you decide to accept being a PA you should be able to handle criticism. And criticism should be allowed. Especially if signings like Williams ("wants to play for a winner" with below 40 in the "Play for winner" attitude), Deng (below MLE), Rush (min), IT (re offer problem) take place. I believe all the criticism was constructive criticism.

There's a fine line between criticism and flat out disrespectful. Criticism is obviously okay and encouraged, but there were some comments I read that were just disrespectful and rude.

Maybe I missed a few comments or we just evaluate those comments different. Depending on life experience or social influences some of us rate a comment as criticism and others as direpectful.
Whatever.

Maybe it would be better to run one Agency with 4/5 agents or something. So it wouldnt be only one guy deciding if Rush rushes into a contract or a guy with below 40 "Play for winner" only wants to Play for a winner..
But like said, lets finish this farce to get the season started.

@SS: didnt even Check ingame FA, I believe most of the others didnt too. Especially guys without the Game like Higrade. That should be the reason for their displeasure.

DennisJ (BOS) wrote:@SS: didnt even Check ingame FA, I believe most of the others didnt too. Especially guys without the Game like Higrade. That should be the reason for their displeasure.

Believe it or not - I don't currently use the game either. I was referring to the list of available free agents that has been posted on the "Index" tab for several weeks now. I know I'm a bit more obsessive than most, but I have copied and pasted each version of that list into excel every time it has been updated and then sorted by each skill hundreds of times.

Don't need to have the game to put extra effort in. My Bobcats made the ECF with me ever inputting a submatrix. Just about level of involvement, really. Same applies to free agency, imho.

Sun Scorched (CHA) wrote:

DennisJ (BOS) wrote:@SS: didnt even Check ingame FA, I believe most of the others didnt too. Especially guys without the Game like Higrade. That should be the reason for their displeasure.

Believe it or not - I don't currently use the game either.  I was referring to the list of available free agents that has been posted on the "Index" tab for several weeks now.  I know I'm a bit more obsessive than most, but I have copied and pasted each version of that list into excel every time it has been updated and then sorted by each skill hundreds of times.

Don't need to have the game to put extra effort in.  My Bobcats made the ECF with me ever inputting a submatrix.  Just about level of involvement, really.  Same applies to free agency, imho.

I had no problem with the Deng signing, just speculating why those guys were angry about it. Just mentioned it above because so many GMs were upset with luol joining the Lakers. I dont know what the reason was.

orangeparka wrote:I enjoyed all my dealings and the back-and-forth with the agents, even if Luke Ridnour went to POR instead of MIA (not sure why, but a little randomness can happen IRL and is acceptable IMO).

I'm not sure why people are upset about being unable to sign players. We had like nearly a week before players started signing, that's more than enough time IMO to have expressed interest/feelers in a player.

Like the Brandon Rush thing. Apparently no one made a single offer or interest before he signed with MIA. Then after he signed some people were up in arms. Like, you had the whole week lol.

I'd also enjoy the interaction I suppose, but the agents take ages and ages to reply... I actually have to send a reminder every single time I am awaiting a reply. Perhaps the agents divided the GMs into two groups 'those I like' and 'the rest'. I am clearly in the latter as my experience is very different to yours and, in theory, it shouldn't be.

Brandon Rush thing should have been handled very differently. Lack of offers does not mean that he needs to sign for a MIN so early... it is the agency's job to 'get the best offers for our client'....

In fairness, there is also the risk of losing all interest entirely. It is a double-edged sword, to be sure.

andrei (POR) wrote:

orangeparka wrote:I enjoyed all my dealings and the back-and-forth with the agents, even if Luke Ridnour went to POR instead of MIA (not sure why, but a little randomness can happen IRL and is acceptable IMO).

I'm not sure why people are upset about being unable to sign players. We had like nearly a week before players started signing, that's more than enough time IMO to have expressed interest/feelers in a player.

Like the Brandon Rush thing. Apparently no one made a single offer or interest before he signed with MIA. Then after he signed some people were up in arms. Like, you had the whole week lol.

I'd also enjoy the interaction I suppose, but the agents take ages and ages to reply... I actually have to send a reminder every single time I am awaiting a reply. Perhaps the agents divided the GMs into two groups 'those I like' and 'the rest'. I am clearly in the latter as my experience is very different to yours and, in theory, it shouldn't be.

Brandon Rush thing should have been handled very differently. Lack of offers does not mean that he needs to sign for a MIN so early... it is the agency's job to 'get the best offers for our client'....

Yeah, the thing is I guess there's also players receiving similar offers from just one team and instead of singing they just waiting day after day to just see if another offer arrives.

I'm not saying one or the other is the perfect way to act, cause I don't even think there's one perfect way of doing it. What I'm saying it's that this variety of ways of acting exists (and at some point it should, since they're different agencies), so I don't think we can say Rush signing was the 'normal' way of doing it just because he didn't receive any other offer, cause there's also players receiving similar offers by just one team and they're deciding to wait. It just depends on agents, players, and sure many other factors that we don't know.

Just calm down.. Forget about that topic..
We're going to have the right time to evaluate every PA, to make appointments about every mistake committed at that FAP..
That's the first time that PA system is happening, not only here but in any Sim League. Do not forget that Agents have no model to follow, we have no rules for PAs, we're just trying to run things based on what we know, what Agents know, and trying to get the positive things about that system to use again, and to correct the negative ones.
Next year it will be a much more improved system. There will be some rules to follow, commissioners can create a "model" for all Agencies to follow..
Calm down, try to stay positive, make some suggestions instead of only criticizing the system when it's feedback time.. Help this league improve, forget about complaining and disrespecting the ones who are currently trying to help us GMs improve our experience here.

Stop complaining, let's end that Free Agency Period, and reply to the performance survey. That way we're going to IMPROVE, that way we're going to have more fun playing this game.
Remember that's a league made for us to have fun, not to complain and to be something bad and stressful.

Totally agree with you guys. In particular about the 'fun' part... i suppose this one of the key reasons why people complain - the 'fun' is not there... but yeah hopefully all of us will learn from the experience

Marcos_Beck (OKC) wrote:Just calm down.. Forget about that topic..
We're going to have the right time to evaluate every PA, to make appointments about every mistake committed at that FAP..
That's the first time that PA system is happening, not only here but in any Sim League. Do not forget that Agents have no model to follow, we have no rules for PAs, we're just trying to run things based on what we know, what Agents know, and trying to get the positive things about that system to use again, and to correct the negative ones.
Next year it will be a much more improved system. There will be some rules to follow, commissioners can create a "model" for all Agencies to follow..
Calm down, try to stay positive, make some suggestions instead of only criticizing the system when it's feedback time.. Help this league improve, forget about complaining and disrespecting the ones who are currently trying to help us GMs improve our experience here.

Stop complaining, let's end that Free Agency Period, and reply to the performance survey. That way we're going to IMPROVE, that way we're going to have more fun playing this game.
Remember that's a league made for us to have fun, not to complain and to be something bad and stressful.

Sorry.. but? There are rules. We had a pretty long discussion about it (I know you joined later) and decided there have to be rules the PA have to follow. That you are believing there are no rules isnt a good sign! Seems the PA arent following the rules at all if somebody who didnt know about the rules has the opinion there arent rules. (finest english, trololol)
Rules have been violated, no doubt, but PA will improve next year and failures made wont happen again. Its learning by doing, so Im fine with it, but actually its really no fun like andrei already said.

Here's the thing though from my standpoint and my standpoint only.

Not gonna say the name of the GM or Agency but I have a very good idea of who is running one Agency in particular simply due to how they corresponded to certain things as a GM which is very similar to how they ran their Agency and it is not a good thing.

I get the "we're using our own personal time to do this" I get that, BUT if you are strapped for time as is, you shouldn't be running FA.

FA is far more hands on as an Agent and if you hardly have time to properly respond to pm's etc as a GM then no way will you have the time to properly reply to Player offers.

Flipside of this is GM's can't keep sending "feeler after feeler" of "Would Player X be interested in playing for Team X IF I offer..." cause after a while what Agency in their right mind would take that type of GM seriously?

It's supposed to reflect real life business strategies and I side with any agent regardless of prior contact with any GM who practices the 'window shopping technique", if you want a guy make an official offer.

anyway I think FA has been enjoyable and I am being 100% honest when I say this, If I didn't sign one single guy it woulda been my fault cause there absolutely was a financial line I wasn't gonna cross, not for Iggy or anyone else and every Agent I've dealt with knows this and had a team came and outbid me, then the better GM woulda won.

Overall FA has been a success so PA's please do not bow down or submit and change your practices because this is a reflection of real life, some businesses have good business practices, some do not and just like real life if you have a bad experience with a particular business/ Agency you don't have to deal with that particular Agency and obviously if they don't get their clients signed they'll either be moved to another Agency or handled in game which may be more beneficial to you as a GM.

No doubt, Ive sent to much feelers lately, especially to your Agency Willy. The reason for it is I dont want to be considered a lowball-offer GM but on the other hand I dont want to miss another Rush. So you have to be annoying with feelers.

@DennisJ

I'm not a PA, I was saying they likely get tired of receiving feelers but not actual offers from the same GM's instead of official offers from those same GM's.

Probably gets tiresome communicating the same response if it's not an official offer.

Isn't a major benefit of using agents the ability to send out feelers and see what players are receiving? Otherwise it's just like the game when we're asked to submit a bid for a player whose market value we know nothing about. May as well use the DDS game if that's the case.

I don't want to make a 10 mil offer for a player if he's received no interest or only a 6 mil offer.