Good morning folks, I feel like this conversation has been a long time coming, but the Midseason auction has been in a very awkward spot for many iterations of the tour now and it's worth discussing its future in tournaments to come.
0. Preamble
I've dug through many threads between the SPL subforum, IS and Tour Policy. Not everything is as easy to find and there's pages over pages of discussion that I couldn't sift through, so if you have more knowledge in regards to the history of mids and policy please contribute with what you know. I'll also be mostly focusing on SPL throughout this post over SCL and other site tournaments.
1. History and Purpose of the Midseason auction
Midseason drafting has been a thing ever since SPL II, there isn't much talk of this being implemented available to the public as of my knowledge, it was probably discussed elsewhere and then directly implemented, but at the time it was a very straightforward and useful addition: it was very plausible for players to miss the SPL signups, and it was much more likely for managers to not have planned accordingly and to need new players in the middle of the season. This ran smoothly for many iterations and was never really brought into discussion, until around 2016-18, where the first concerns arrived due to Midseason buys and consequently retains being too broken. Before SPL X, players did not have to originally sign up for the tournament to be eligible to sign up for the midseason. This was then changed, which fixed the retains problem, but fundamentally changed the way mids worked.
2. Current Use of the Midseason Auction
As of right now, the Midseason is a glorified player replacement system. Out of all the post-SPL mids auctions, SPL XIII was the one with most credits, due to the 18.5k sellback credits that were given for player replacements. Very little money was actually from managers deciding to keep something for mids, and this has been showing as of recent, with the latest SPL having one singular sellback buy and nothing else. Tangentially, SCL had 4 total mids buys in 4 editions, with 3 of them being from sellbacks, and SCL I having no midseason auction at all.
This can also be attributed to a number of factors: managers have a better idea of who they want, and the extra 3k can be life or death when your credits are spread incredibly thin between the expensive players you want; the requirement for 4 substitutes leaves a lot of teams with subs that don't even touch the field, so what incentive is there to keep money and buy even more people? The average price of players is also higher than earlier spl editions, with high retain prices, consistent 20+k players, and multiple instances of ~30-40k buys per season. But at the end of the day these are not due to rulings but to the nature of the tournament, playerbase and systems, so it's not something that can be easily changed or should even be attempted to. So in the end we're dealing with an inadequate mids system.
What can we do about it?
3. Future Possibilities for the Midseason Auction
I bring forward a few alternatives for possible action, considering the option that we do want something to change. Effectively speaking we could also not change anything.
Option 1: Keep the same
Many players may not see an issue with mids as a glorified player replacement system, and while recent editions have only seen it be used in that scenario, it's true that we've seen a few instances of people keeping 3 to 6k from the auction even after the SPL X change, so technically the system is still getting used (albeit the last time this happened was 3 years ago).
Option 2: Nuke Mids
This is also an option, given indeed that the system has not been properly used in 2 years in both spl and scl. The use of mids as a replacement system is more of a formality, banned users already give out a player replacement directly, the same could be done with sellbacks.
Option 3: Replace the auction with a replacement system
My first change proposal comes in the form of giving managers an option to rebuild teams by going off the existing sellback system. As of right now, players can only be sold back if they cancer, aka don't meet the minimum requirements for activity; this could be expanded to allow managers to sellback players they don't think fit in the team: maybe you bought too many players for one tier, maybe the player is worse/less serious than you expected, maybe they just don't fit with the rest of your team chemistry-wise. This change would allow you to replace that player with someone from the midseason signups, removing potential problematic members and allowing you to rebuild.
Personally, I think this option can breed a bigger environment of toxicity than we already have since kicking someone from the team without a clear cut reason like "inactivity" can be pretty confrontational, I only suggested it because it's something that I thought of while brainstorming and it could be a spark for new ideas that build off of this concept in a better way.
Option 4: Free Money
Here's the option I'm most fond of: giving everyone an X amount of credits for free to be spent solely in the Midseason. The main detriment to the use of midseason is that holding onto 3k or more credits can be a difficult commitment given that you are pretty much "delaying" the buy of a player and not making use of them for 4 weeks, and most managers will rather trust themselves in predicting what slots they are gonna be weak in instead of waiting half the tour before that. This would also be good for the undrafted playerbase: you know who's lacking in the tier you're best at, so which manager you should focus your tryout efforts with. Also gives you extra weeks to prove your worth and allows the manager to take a step back and look at the pool while discussing with their team for potential strong pickups they may have missed on. Now onto money options
500-2.5k: While not outright an entire player, it reduces the amount of money you should save up to a more reasonable price. While giving 2.5k can lead to an "obvious" saving up 500 credits, giving something like 500 or 1k can be more contentious, since getting a player for 2k is obviously good, but some managers may consider that extra money worthwhile for upbidding. Nonetheless something we can discuss on.
3k: Free player for everyone, with extra money being saved up in case you want to upbid or get more than one. The idea of introducing a new player to each team every season can be very interesting and shake things up a little bit, and would make mids way more lively.
3.5k+: The upper end of the spectrum, a combination of the first and second option. Gives everyone a free player with upbid credits or the possibility to get potentially two players without having to spend the usual 3k min bid. Not the best imo but worth taking into consideration.
4.1: Reducing the minimum amount of subs
In the case of giving each team a free player at every mids, you could consider the idea of reducing the minimum subs to 3, since teams will always buy a 4th sub in the midseason. This can reduce the worry of teams getting too big, with too many subs that never get to contribute or hit the field.
4.2: Reducing the minimum bid at Midseason
Another option to giving people free money, is reducing the minimum bid for players from 3k to something like 2k. This would also help with savings commitment without making too many changes to the system. It's virtually similar to giving everyone 2k but it could end up being wonky with retains being cheaper.
Option 5: Other
I'm sure a lot of the players and managers have already thought about midseason and how they would like it to be changed, so hopefully everyone can drop their ideas if they have any.
0. Preamble
I've dug through many threads between the SPL subforum, IS and Tour Policy. Not everything is as easy to find and there's pages over pages of discussion that I couldn't sift through, so if you have more knowledge in regards to the history of mids and policy please contribute with what you know. I'll also be mostly focusing on SPL throughout this post over SCL and other site tournaments.
1. History and Purpose of the Midseason auction
Midseason drafting has been a thing ever since SPL II, there isn't much talk of this being implemented available to the public as of my knowledge, it was probably discussed elsewhere and then directly implemented, but at the time it was a very straightforward and useful addition: it was very plausible for players to miss the SPL signups, and it was much more likely for managers to not have planned accordingly and to need new players in the middle of the season. This ran smoothly for many iterations and was never really brought into discussion, until around 2016-18, where the first concerns arrived due to Midseason buys and consequently retains being too broken. Before SPL X, players did not have to originally sign up for the tournament to be eligible to sign up for the midseason. This was then changed, which fixed the retains problem, but fundamentally changed the way mids worked.
- One of the original intents of mids was "If you missed out on the original signups", which was repeated in every midseason signup thread. This is no longer the case, so it's important to discuss this when thinking about the future of mids.
- With little to no incentive for managers to not spend their credits, given that the player pool remains the same and 4 weeks aren't enough for someone to suddenly become buyable, the midseason no longer serves the purpose of allowing managers to rebuild their teams if they are lacking in some department.
2. Current Use of the Midseason Auction
As of right now, the Midseason is a glorified player replacement system. Out of all the post-SPL mids auctions, SPL XIII was the one with most credits, due to the 18.5k sellback credits that were given for player replacements. Very little money was actually from managers deciding to keep something for mids, and this has been showing as of recent, with the latest SPL having one singular sellback buy and nothing else. Tangentially, SCL had 4 total mids buys in 4 editions, with 3 of them being from sellbacks, and SCL I having no midseason auction at all.
This can also be attributed to a number of factors: managers have a better idea of who they want, and the extra 3k can be life or death when your credits are spread incredibly thin between the expensive players you want; the requirement for 4 substitutes leaves a lot of teams with subs that don't even touch the field, so what incentive is there to keep money and buy even more people? The average price of players is also higher than earlier spl editions, with high retain prices, consistent 20+k players, and multiple instances of ~30-40k buys per season. But at the end of the day these are not due to rulings but to the nature of the tournament, playerbase and systems, so it's not something that can be easily changed or should even be attempted to. So in the end we're dealing with an inadequate mids system.
What can we do about it?
3. Future Possibilities for the Midseason Auction
I bring forward a few alternatives for possible action, considering the option that we do want something to change. Effectively speaking we could also not change anything.
Option 1: Keep the same
Many players may not see an issue with mids as a glorified player replacement system, and while recent editions have only seen it be used in that scenario, it's true that we've seen a few instances of people keeping 3 to 6k from the auction even after the SPL X change, so technically the system is still getting used (albeit the last time this happened was 3 years ago).
Option 2: Nuke Mids
This is also an option, given indeed that the system has not been properly used in 2 years in both spl and scl. The use of mids as a replacement system is more of a formality, banned users already give out a player replacement directly, the same could be done with sellbacks.
Option 3: Replace the auction with a replacement system
My first change proposal comes in the form of giving managers an option to rebuild teams by going off the existing sellback system. As of right now, players can only be sold back if they cancer, aka don't meet the minimum requirements for activity; this could be expanded to allow managers to sellback players they don't think fit in the team: maybe you bought too many players for one tier, maybe the player is worse/less serious than you expected, maybe they just don't fit with the rest of your team chemistry-wise. This change would allow you to replace that player with someone from the midseason signups, removing potential problematic members and allowing you to rebuild.
Personally, I think this option can breed a bigger environment of toxicity than we already have since kicking someone from the team without a clear cut reason like "inactivity" can be pretty confrontational, I only suggested it because it's something that I thought of while brainstorming and it could be a spark for new ideas that build off of this concept in a better way.
Option 4: Free Money
Here's the option I'm most fond of: giving everyone an X amount of credits for free to be spent solely in the Midseason. The main detriment to the use of midseason is that holding onto 3k or more credits can be a difficult commitment given that you are pretty much "delaying" the buy of a player and not making use of them for 4 weeks, and most managers will rather trust themselves in predicting what slots they are gonna be weak in instead of waiting half the tour before that. This would also be good for the undrafted playerbase: you know who's lacking in the tier you're best at, so which manager you should focus your tryout efforts with. Also gives you extra weeks to prove your worth and allows the manager to take a step back and look at the pool while discussing with their team for potential strong pickups they may have missed on. Now onto money options
500-2.5k: While not outright an entire player, it reduces the amount of money you should save up to a more reasonable price. While giving 2.5k can lead to an "obvious" saving up 500 credits, giving something like 500 or 1k can be more contentious, since getting a player for 2k is obviously good, but some managers may consider that extra money worthwhile for upbidding. Nonetheless something we can discuss on.
3k: Free player for everyone, with extra money being saved up in case you want to upbid or get more than one. The idea of introducing a new player to each team every season can be very interesting and shake things up a little bit, and would make mids way more lively.
3.5k+: The upper end of the spectrum, a combination of the first and second option. Gives everyone a free player with upbid credits or the possibility to get potentially two players without having to spend the usual 3k min bid. Not the best imo but worth taking into consideration.
4.1: Reducing the minimum amount of subs
In the case of giving each team a free player at every mids, you could consider the idea of reducing the minimum subs to 3, since teams will always buy a 4th sub in the midseason. This can reduce the worry of teams getting too big, with too many subs that never get to contribute or hit the field.
4.2: Reducing the minimum bid at Midseason
Another option to giving people free money, is reducing the minimum bid for players from 3k to something like 2k. This would also help with savings commitment without making too many changes to the system. It's virtually similar to giving everyone 2k but it could end up being wonky with retains being cheaper.
Option 5: Other
I'm sure a lot of the players and managers have already thought about midseason and how they would like it to be changed, so hopefully everyone can drop their ideas if they have any.
