So, you want to own a team
Teams are given out at the start of every season. So if you put yourself on the wait list in the middle of a season, you’re not going to be getting a new one until the coming offseason. Teams are usually restricted to Rookie leagues only, but some years you can request a team at the Sophomore level.
Before you do try to own a team, keep in mind – team ownership is DIFFICULT. You will have your team for at least one full season, and you’ll have control of other people’s players during that season. Make sure you’re up for the responsibility.
Who is playing on my team?
When you get your team, it will obviously need players. Thankfully, it comes stocked with CPU players! They are useless. The computer puts stats into CPU players literally at random – HBs with points in jumping, CBs with tons of points in Power Pass Rush, all kinds of other bad builds. You will want to replace every single CPU player with human players, ideally 43 of them (a full roster).
To get human players, the easiest way is to build your own. You can field a full 43 man roster of your own players, and if you boost them, it’ll cost you roughly 12,000 flex per season, depending on exactly what your roster set up is. That works out to about $100 per month, which is beyond the price range for most people, so you’ll probably need to recruit.
Recruiting
To put together players for your rookie team, start with people you know. If you have real life friends in the game, get together and have them make a few players for you. If you have players on other teams in the game, get to know your teammates – get friendly with them and ask them to make players for you. When it comes to recruiting, you always want to be networking. Spend time around the forums, answering newbie questions in FAQs, contribute to debates in General Discussion, join the debauchery in FFA. Essentially, create a reputation for yourself, make friends, and have them make the core of your roster. If people think you’re smart, knowledgeable about the game, funny, or just entertaining, they’ll want to play with you.
Hopefully, you’ll have a handful of agents in, ready to make at least 10-15 players. The next step is usually to go to the Teams Looking For Players forum and create a thread for your new team. List out what positions are open/which ones are taken – it’s a good idea to list out the name of the agent next to whatever position they’re taking (it helps you for organizing things, and people may be impressed when they see certain agents listed). You’ll want to have this thread going sometime during the last third or so of the season, when people are starting to plan out their future players. It may help you recruit if you give your team a name already (if your team name is a reference to something, it may attract other fans) or to lay out your planned strategy (getting people interested in a power running team, or an all zone defense, or whatever other schemes interest you).
Keep in mind that a lot of the commitments you get here are “soft” – some agents will end up not making the player they committed to. But most should honor it, giving you a much closer to full squad. Make sure the agents give you links to their players once they create them (creation date doesn’t matter, as long as rookies have 0 games played).
Once you get your team, send out contracts to the players. If you don’t have a fully recruited roster, you’ll need to do a bit more work…
Your first, and generally worst, option for filling out your roster is checking off the “Auto Fill Roster” button on your roster page – this will have the game send out contracts to tons of people for you. There are two problems with this – first, the players the game recruits could be terrible, or just not fit your scheme. Secondly, the computer doesn’t pay much attention to logic – if you already have two quarterbacks, but no safeties, it’ll still send contracts to QBs, leaving you with three guys at that position but nobody in the back of your secondary.
What you should do is go into the “Players Looking For Teams” forum and the Marketplace. Both are going to be filled with players eager to find teams, but you’ll need to do some work to get them. Just randomly tossing out contract offers will get you a player or two, maybe, but you’re better off sending PMs to agents, telling them about your team, your strategy, your GLB history, or just something funny. Many agents appreciate the personal contact of a PM, and those lines of communication can strongly improve your chances at landing the good players.
Between all these methods, you should be able to land a pretty full roster, ready to compete when the season comes along!
Roster Management
Contracts
Obviously, players all have contracts. Every contract in GLB2 is a one season deal (you can send out extensions once the playoffs start), and there are no trades, though as owner you can cut players without consequence.
Contracts can be either low, medium, or high. Medium contracts are the basic, standard contract. A high contract will make a player gain chemistry points twice as fast, and will also give a +25 bonus to a player’s Heart attribute. Low contracts, on the other hand, cut chemistry gain speed in half and cap total chemistry for a player at 50 (and if you renegotiate someone down to a low contract who had more than 50 chem, it’ll drop down to 50 instantly). In general, you’re going to want to avoid low contracts – you really only need low contracts if your team is going to have more than 2 or 3 superstar players. Your team is usually going to be mostly medium contracts – but you’re going to want to get as many players up to High contracts as possible. You can’t “keep” your money – it’s only used for contracts, so make sure you use up as much cap space as possible with high contracts. In general, you’re going to want your QB and HB with highs, along with whichever players seem to have morale problems.
Player Retention
Towards the end of the season, your roster page will be filled with “EXPIRING” tags. This means you need to send out extensions for next season (or you did, but people didn’t accept yet). If you want to keep your roster, give people a reason to stick around! Winning, of course, is a great way to do that. But just in case you don’t go undefeated, you’re going to want to make people want to stick around.
Having an active forum is often a good idea – have threads where you talk about the recent games, looking at a highlight reel, explain the tactics choices you’ve made. If people on the team seem to be fans of something (a real sports team, another video game, a TV show), have threads talking about that. Don’t be afraid to ask people to introduce themselves and see what they like – the worst than can do is not post. Personal touches often make things nicer.
Some players, however won’t be coming back. It helps to ask around midseason for verbal commitments for who is and isn’t sticking around, and as soon as you start getting some people saying they’re gone, start looking in Players Looking For Teams again – a lot of soon-to-be free agents start looking for a new home before the playoffs even start, and getting things lined up early makes your offseason go a lot smoother.
Teams are given out at the start of every season. So if you put yourself on the wait list in the middle of a season, you’re not going to be getting a new one until the coming offseason. Teams are usually restricted to Rookie leagues only, but some years you can request a team at the Sophomore level.
Before you do try to own a team, keep in mind – team ownership is DIFFICULT. You will have your team for at least one full season, and you’ll have control of other people’s players during that season. Make sure you’re up for the responsibility.
Who is playing on my team?
When you get your team, it will obviously need players. Thankfully, it comes stocked with CPU players! They are useless. The computer puts stats into CPU players literally at random – HBs with points in jumping, CBs with tons of points in Power Pass Rush, all kinds of other bad builds. You will want to replace every single CPU player with human players, ideally 43 of them (a full roster).
To get human players, the easiest way is to build your own. You can field a full 43 man roster of your own players, and if you boost them, it’ll cost you roughly 12,000 flex per season, depending on exactly what your roster set up is. That works out to about $100 per month, which is beyond the price range for most people, so you’ll probably need to recruit.
Recruiting
To put together players for your rookie team, start with people you know. If you have real life friends in the game, get together and have them make a few players for you. If you have players on other teams in the game, get to know your teammates – get friendly with them and ask them to make players for you. When it comes to recruiting, you always want to be networking. Spend time around the forums, answering newbie questions in FAQs, contribute to debates in General Discussion, join the debauchery in FFA. Essentially, create a reputation for yourself, make friends, and have them make the core of your roster. If people think you’re smart, knowledgeable about the game, funny, or just entertaining, they’ll want to play with you.
Hopefully, you’ll have a handful of agents in, ready to make at least 10-15 players. The next step is usually to go to the Teams Looking For Players forum and create a thread for your new team. List out what positions are open/which ones are taken – it’s a good idea to list out the name of the agent next to whatever position they’re taking (it helps you for organizing things, and people may be impressed when they see certain agents listed). You’ll want to have this thread going sometime during the last third or so of the season, when people are starting to plan out their future players. It may help you recruit if you give your team a name already (if your team name is a reference to something, it may attract other fans) or to lay out your planned strategy (getting people interested in a power running team, or an all zone defense, or whatever other schemes interest you).
Keep in mind that a lot of the commitments you get here are “soft” – some agents will end up not making the player they committed to. But most should honor it, giving you a much closer to full squad. Make sure the agents give you links to their players once they create them (creation date doesn’t matter, as long as rookies have 0 games played).
Once you get your team, send out contracts to the players. If you don’t have a fully recruited roster, you’ll need to do a bit more work…
Your first, and generally worst, option for filling out your roster is checking off the “Auto Fill Roster” button on your roster page – this will have the game send out contracts to tons of people for you. There are two problems with this – first, the players the game recruits could be terrible, or just not fit your scheme. Secondly, the computer doesn’t pay much attention to logic – if you already have two quarterbacks, but no safeties, it’ll still send contracts to QBs, leaving you with three guys at that position but nobody in the back of your secondary.
What you should do is go into the “Players Looking For Teams” forum and the Marketplace. Both are going to be filled with players eager to find teams, but you’ll need to do some work to get them. Just randomly tossing out contract offers will get you a player or two, maybe, but you’re better off sending PMs to agents, telling them about your team, your strategy, your GLB history, or just something funny. Many agents appreciate the personal contact of a PM, and those lines of communication can strongly improve your chances at landing the good players.
Between all these methods, you should be able to land a pretty full roster, ready to compete when the season comes along!
Roster Management
Contracts
Obviously, players all have contracts. Every contract in GLB2 is a one season deal (you can send out extensions once the playoffs start), and there are no trades, though as owner you can cut players without consequence.
Contracts can be either low, medium, or high. Medium contracts are the basic, standard contract. A high contract will make a player gain chemistry points twice as fast, and will also give a +25 bonus to a player’s Heart attribute. Low contracts, on the other hand, cut chemistry gain speed in half and cap total chemistry for a player at 50 (and if you renegotiate someone down to a low contract who had more than 50 chem, it’ll drop down to 50 instantly). In general, you’re going to want to avoid low contracts – you really only need low contracts if your team is going to have more than 2 or 3 superstar players. Your team is usually going to be mostly medium contracts – but you’re going to want to get as many players up to High contracts as possible. You can’t “keep” your money – it’s only used for contracts, so make sure you use up as much cap space as possible with high contracts. In general, you’re going to want your QB and HB with highs, along with whichever players seem to have morale problems.
Player Retention
Towards the end of the season, your roster page will be filled with “EXPIRING” tags. This means you need to send out extensions for next season (or you did, but people didn’t accept yet). If you want to keep your roster, give people a reason to stick around! Winning, of course, is a great way to do that. But just in case you don’t go undefeated, you’re going to want to make people want to stick around.
Having an active forum is often a good idea – have threads where you talk about the recent games, looking at a highlight reel, explain the tactics choices you’ve made. If people on the team seem to be fans of something (a real sports team, another video game, a TV show), have threads talking about that. Don’t be afraid to ask people to introduce themselves and see what they like – the worst than can do is not post. Personal touches often make things nicer.
Some players, however won’t be coming back. It helps to ask around midseason for verbal commitments for who is and isn’t sticking around, and as soon as you start getting some people saying they’re gone, start looking in Players Looking For Teams again – a lot of soon-to-be free agents start looking for a new home before the playoffs even start, and getting things lined up early makes your offseason go a lot smoother.
Edited by pottsman on Apr 10, 2014 16:24:33
