Budget getting cut despite success

[totroi]

Hey guys,


i am doing a save with the Diamondbacks. I have made the NLCS both seasons (losing to Atlanta both times). During each season, the Accounting section of the game made it look like my Budget would be going up. This would make sense as

a) overall it should always go up on average, right?
b) i run a great team, which shows promise to win the league


However, after both seasons the Owner informed me of a budget much lower than what was promised during the season. Right now it again shows a promised increase for 2026, but i do not trust it. Can someone explain this to me? Should i be more aggressive with extentions during the season maybe?

[Brad K]

Edit the owner so he is more generous with money and more interested in winning.

[Mr. Marlin]

Dear Totroi.

We know EXCACTLY how you feel!

Love,
Peter Bendix
President of Baseball Operations
Miami Marlins

[stevezog1]

I posted about this very thing last week. It's not like previous versions of OOTP, it's a problem.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by stevezog1

I posted about this very thing last week. It's not like previous versions of OOTP, it's a problem.

It's entirely possible an owner would behave this way. If you don't like the way the game is treating you, change that.

If this isn't the challenge you want, get rid of it or give yourself a different one. In the past I have done things like reduce the market size to see if I could build it back up.

[OutS|der]

.

[LansdowneSt]

In the first year on that screenshot, he cut you to precisely $16m because that is the default amount of cash you are allowed to carry forward. You can see the $16m at the top of the screenshot too. If you want to raise that a bit via the financial tab in League Settings, you could at least get to retain some additional benefit of your managing of the books from the previous year.

[stevezog1]

I have played OOTP for at least 10 years. 25 is the only iteration of the game in which this has happened. Look at the screenshot. The owner is taking almost $100 million in 2027!!! That has never been the case in other versions. I actually mentioned this to my wife and I never mention trivial OOTP stuff to her but this is different than in the past and causes a major problem. Sure, you can change the budget, that's what I do, but I've never had to do that before and it feels like cheating.

[stevezog1]

His budget starts at $210 million. He increases revenue by almost $20 million the first year and gets his budget cut by $17 million for that season. That totally makes sense to some I guess.

[mytreds]

Do you have owner goals on? What’s your owners personality?

[Brad K]

stevezog, if you're not willing to accept any random finances the game challenges you with, then change the finances to a challenge that interests you. Or no challenge at all.

It's not cheating to set up the game the way you want. For example, people adjust the scouting accuracy from the default. Is that cheating? Of course not.

[stevezog1]

Brad K, what I have been saying is that this is a bug. I have played OOTP for a long time, buying the new version each year for at least 10 years and playing the exact same way each time.

This is the only version of the game in which the owner takes increasingly more money from the team each year no matter what. Change the owner to a generous owner and they only take less but they still only take.

I will make the changes to play the game so it suits me, but this version of the game is fundamentally different than past versions because of this.

[Brad K]

I find myself in the unusual position of defending the game!!!

Jesus and disciples, please take note!!!

[Bagpipes5]

A lot of people here are saying to just edit it. But if you are playing Challenge Mode, which I assume most people do, you cannot make this edit.

I am having the same problem. My budget gets cut by $10-20 million each year. Problem is computer teams are also going through the same thing in my saves and the race to cut payroll is very real. 10 years in and most teams are operating in the red, making them about impossible to trade with.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by Bagpipes5

A lot of people here are saying to just edit it. But if you are playing Challenge Mode, which I assume most people do, you cannot make this edit.

I am having the same problem. My budget gets cut by $10-20 million each year. Problem is computer teams are also going through the same thing in my saves and the race to cut payroll is very real. 10 years in and most teams are operating in the red, making them about impossible to trade with.

OK, now THAT is a defect.

It would be interesting to know what percentage play in challenge mode.

[Shdoxz]

Originally Posted by Bagpipes5

A lot of people here are saying to just edit it. But if you are playing Challenge Mode, which I assume most people do, you cannot make this edit.

I am having the same problem. My budget gets cut by $10-20 million each year. Problem is computer teams are also going through the same thing in my saves and the race to cut payroll is very real. 10 years in and most teams are operating in the red, making them about impossible to trade with.

I've had similar issues with trading coming to a deadlock due to teams all being in the red. Some of it is definitely from budgets being cut, but I also keep running into teams who have signed their star players (young studs like Holiday/Langford/De La Cruz) to INSANE extensions where they buy out the arb years for ~$30m per year, but then escalate to $65m well into the players 30s! In a recent save, by 2029, shopping around any player making over $15m only shows a dozen or more very good but way over played stars. Like the O's sign Rutschman and Holiday to huge contracts and then immediately try to offload them because they can't afford a team with two players taking up $100m+ in payroll. It definitely makes for some odd financial situations that feel off - I should not be able to sign fairly young 2 WAR free agents to minor league contracts because no one else has any money.

Are the inflated contracts maybe a product of whatever algorithm getting thrown off by Ohtani's contract not being deferred in game?

[LansdowneSt]

No, Ohtani is at the present value. Non issue.

There has always been a Jekyll and Hyde problem with the AI and the contracts it signs vs the contracts it has the day after they are signed. THAT is the core problem imo on money management. The immediate buyer’s remorse followed by the next aggressive signing. Repeated. Then again. …

[imnotsammysosa]

Originally Posted by stevezog1

Brad K, what I have been saying is that this is a bug. I have played OOTP for a long time, buying the new version each year for at least 10 years and playing the exact same way each time.

This is the only version of the game in which the owner takes increasingly more money from the team each year no matter what. Change the owner to a generous owner and they only take less but they still only take.

I will make the changes to play the game so it suits me, but this version of the game is fundamentally different than past versions because of this.

You’re absolutely right about this and I’m not sure why you’re being gaslighted. I had a long term save with the notoriously generous Marlins in OOTP 23, and, with no inflation, my payroll was north of $300 million by the late 2030s. Why? Because we just won, baby.

[OutS|der]

.

[imnotsammysosa]

Originally Posted by OutS|der

I can argue this isn't realistic at all and shows that 23 was broken. The Marlins dump salary after winning. Aggressively. So this happens.

We dismiss complaints like this cause generally people will provide very limited examples such as just their team having a lower budget for a couple years.
Stuff like this can easily be explained away by a number of reasons.

When you present more data like all teams are in the red in the future making trading come to a standstill, shows this is a widespread issue and should be looked into.

This is the biggest mistake most make on these forums, they present problems that are limited and personal to their game and rarely back up their claims with league wide data or any digging beyond their own experience. When you can show that an issue isn't baseball being baseball then we tend not to "gaslight" the problem.

God forbid I draw from my own personal experience in playing every version of the game for the past ten years. Same thing happened on my Rangers save that spanned OOTP 19-21. Sorry those computers have gone to the great beyond so I can't send the files for your inspection.

As far as the Marlins, yeah, it may not have been realistic, but that isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about the way the game has worked for years. And if that's changed, fine. Not everyone has to like it, but let's not pretend it worked differently than it did. If you hit the majority of your owner goals and won ballgames, the owner wasn't cutting payroll.