I feel veterans are a bit undervalued in this game. Free Agency is always littered with vets with good skills, but they're really tough to sign and they're worthless to teams in rebuilding. Here's two ideas to help balance that out a bit:

1) Announcing Retirement - Take the ambiguity out of signing/resigning a vet. In the NFL, its not uncommon for a vet to announce he'll retire at the end of the year/end of his contract/in two years. Have some vets announce their retirement to replace the retirement %. Alternatively, something to define how long the 9+ year vets should be signed for.

2) Have young players learn from vets - Progression is currently split between HC, Coordinator, and Position Coach at 50/30/20. I propose ~5% should be taken away from head coach and added to Veteran presence. This could be tweaked as needed.

These two things would help

http://mfn2.myfootballnow.com/community/5/489?page=0#2558

The link above is to a post I made awhile back regarding some thoughts of my own on how to better simulate the importance of veteran players in the game, which I think may speak to some of your concerns.

As to retirement announcements, it's exceptionally rare for players to declare in advance retirement plans, as this is a decision generally made during the off-season (most especially after failing to get signed anywhere). I think the retirement % is sufficient enough indicator to make an informed decision, although I would like to see a little more variable input factoring into the % rather than a simple static increase with age.

Disagree, I just had a player hang up his cleats with a 20% chance of retirement.

I would also playing on your teams Haha

wooooow lololol

20% chance is 1 out of 5 ... so pretty normal that significant number of player retire at that point.

I think what should be taken into account for vets also is the base salary the player had for the next seasons for retirement probability and decline in speed, acceleration and strength after some year... somewhat will bring some headhaches to owners negociating long term deal with vets :).

Do we really need position coaches in the end is the big question?We have found out if you play rookies they improve faster and vets decline with aging and amount of playing time.The one way too make it work is too have a training facility and use the coaches in the training complex.Other games use this type of method with coaches.Just others may not like the idea in here with a training complex.My thinking is it is more how you use your players in formations and learning them over time.Then you know where they fit in best on your team.The position coaches are not doing any of that for us.Plus we can save how we want too use the plays and formations.Not all players are 3 down players.

Although it requires a bit of work, a GM can use the overrides in the game planning section to spot use players. This both preserves their endurance and allows you to emphasize specific skills on plays called.

Miow!