Free transfer database, no one is interested

[Jorgen]

I am editing a free transfer database. So far I've edited thousands of players to be without a club. For testing purposes I started games with FC Bayern, Man Utd and Real Madrid. As all teams have (aslmost) no players at all, all players I wish to give a contract are not interested, or must think about it, because the quality of my team is too low. That could be true for a small town club trying to give Ronaldo a contract. But if I offer Cristiano Ronaldo a contract with Real, Bayern or Utd, he has to think about it too and actually is not interested. How can I create a free transfer database, without having this problem? This happens with all players I tried (C. Ronaldo, Messi, Suarez, Lewandowski, Jeroen Zoet, etc.)

[speedas]

You should report this in the bug forum section.

Make sure your clubs have default reputation.

[Jorgen]

I only changed all teams to none.

I did not change anything else

I now have reported it in the bugs forum too.

[Dave Fairbairn]

Have you changed the teams' available transfer budgets to compensate for the missing players? If not then even the big teams will have nowhere near the needed available wages to buy these players.

[HUNT3R]

The players are looking at your current squad (which there isn't one) and not willing to risk it.

It's basically the same as here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/459423-Your-squad-is-not-strong-enough?p=10867622&viewfull=1#post10867622

[Jorgen]

Have you changed the teams' available transfer budgets to compensate for the missing players? If not then even the big teams will have nowhere near the needed available wages to buy these players.

No I didn't change anything at club level, only at player and staff level. I did it all over again, with a fresh database, and had the same results. In the end, lots of IA controlled clubs have players, but 90% of the worlds top players do not sign contracts.

The players are looking at your current squad (which there isn't one) and not willing to risk it.

It's basically the same as here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/459423-Your-squad-is-not-strong-enough?p=10867622&viewfull=1#post10867622

I do understand the mechanics/thinking behind that, but club reputation should be kept in mind too, I think. This would mean we would never be able to enjoy a free transfers database.

[speedas]

The workaround solution would be to select all the top players in the editor and change their world reputation, I would say 160 reputation max.

[Jorgen]

Will try that, thank you.

Would that have any bad effect on their abilities, or careers, like them not being in all CL matches and such? Or end up at really bad teams?

Oh and another downside I think about right now, would be them being not loaded into the game. What I do right now, is load a big database with all players from international squads, all players with continental reputation and all players with national reputation. This would still not give me lots of players. If I make all players with a reputation above 150, now have a reputation of lets say 125, the game would miss a lot of them, I think. So it would be tricky to find out what is the right balans between lower reputation and still getting loaded into the game.

[Dave Fairbairn]

I'm pretty sure CA and PA would decide all that.

[Jorgen]

Thanks. Will try to edit those things and see if that works.

Now deciding what level reputation I give those players.

current, home, world rep 140: some players came to test and I could sign some top Dutch players, but almost no foreign stars. Highest rep foreign players was Corluka (tested with Ajax)

current, home, world rep 125: tried to sign Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lewandowski, Robben with Milan and Juventus: no succes

I can make the club reps go up, or the division reps, but I want to have a realistic football world, but without contracts at the start

But I even tested that. Set all highest domestic division to 180 reputation

Set all clubs with reputation of 5000 and higher to 9500. Still no success. Or even worse: now less players want to test or sign for me. (At Ajax)

Short try with Real Madrid: Ronaldo does not want to sign a contract. Isn't even interested in talking.

So my conclusion: this years game is not suited for a free transfer game.

Any ideas?

[speedas]

Really disappointing. And I'm short of ideas.

I was thinking about creating a fake payer with perfect attributes and duplicate him to fill all the clubs (only the half of the squad), then retire them with an ingame editor with mass edit function after Ronaldo & cie chose their club, then wait the other players to sign for the other half of the squad. But the whole process would be too complicated to do, maybe still impossible.

So here the improved process:

1) Create a new database and mass edit all the players supposed to be free agents in your other database. These players should have perfect attributes. Mass change also their names to make them recognizable. Predefine a retirement date for these players

2) Merge this database with your free transfer database. To avoid errors (if any), load your free transfert database and duplicate all the free players to attribute them a new unique ID. Main issue is that the player graphics packs will no longer work.

3) Create a new game and pray.

This might work only with these three conditions:

- the AI managers take the retirement dates of their own players into account when they decide to hire new players.

- the free players don't take the retirement dates into account when they look at the other players before signing in a club.

- no squad limit but I'm afraid there is one.

So it's a really desperate one lol.

[Jorgen]

Thanks for helping! This would mean (a) a lot of work and (b) it's a lot of guessing

I can also just try to only make the top players (like CA 160+ or 175+) available on a free transfer, but if no club has such players, it could mean again that Ronaldo and co. would not like to come.

Another possibility would be to set contract endings / future release dates in the near future with no possiblity of contract renewal (if that is even possible) So all players are available on a free transfer, but teams would still be filled with quality players. Only downside is, that you can't re-sign a top player at your own club, because he don't want to...

Will try some of these things and let you know if I found a solution for the problem.

Edit:

OK, loaded all players with a CA of 100 and removed future transfers. Tried to set contract end, but that was no option when selecting 24.000 players at once. So that is no solution.