Age Rerates – Leadership & Coach Bonus Changes (Hotfix: July 31 2017)
To add an incentive to keep around older players, we have added a Leadership bonus to all players that qualify at the Pro Level. Additionally, we are decreasing the Experience and Development bonus that coaches apply to rerates by half (10% is now 5% and 5% is now 2.5%). This is being done to add another factor for the GM to decide if it’s better for their team to play a younger player on the pro instead of the farm.

The Leadership bonus is based on your league’s UFA Age and is generated if that particular player is over the UFA Age (28 by default) and played at least half the regular season on the pro team. The player will generate a +0.1% to ALL PRO PLAYERS (again, Pro qualifying) for every year they are above the UFA Age. For example: A player that was 30 years old would grant all Pro qualifying players a +0.2% increase bonus on their rerate increase chance (30yo – 28yo * 0.1%) if they played at least half their games on the pro team.

This bonus is cumulative. So multiple players qualifying will grant higher bonuses. It is quite possible to stack old players to get a high bonus, however, you will have to weigh that against not developing your younger players and possibly dealing with Salary Cap issues.

The default bonus for being considered a farm player has changed from +10% to +5% for players of all ages. This decrease is designed to make the GM really look at their team and see where the best place is for their players to rerate. If that’s the pro team, they’ll need to get them the pro games to qualify as a pro players, if that’s the farm or juniors, they can move them down. This will also put more emphasis on maximizing your coach’s (both pro and farm) Development and Experience skills.

The default bonus for being considered a junior player has changed from +5% to +7.5%. Overall we are targeting an average of +7.5% bonus to the increase chance, so the bump to Juniors was needed to keep it as a viable option.