The manager and their assistant are able to purchase themselves for a variable cost that uses the following calculation: 12,000 credits + (1000 x the players' total W/L record across the most recent individual PLs). The PLs considered are AGPL, 1v1PL, NFEPL, and ZUPL. For example, if a player went 5-2 in the most recent ZUPL and 1-2 in the most recent AGPL, their total win/loss record is 6-4, resulting in a positive score of 2, and they would cost 14,000 credits. In the event that a player has maintained a negative record, managers and their assistants will maintain a minimum price of 12,000 credits. The budget of auctions is fixed at 100,000 for a minimum of 10 players.
just going to take a moment to point out that this system has numerous flaws which are not conducive to a good draft. i understand the intent was to 'balance' managers buying themselves (with some managers being considered 'steals' at a more standard price like 15k and others being overpay) but the current system is not fleshed out at all.
the determining factors for a manager's price do not accurately represent a manager's skill. using past PLs is understandable, but:
1 - oldgens for some reason affect prices? like tack stated in the screenshot above, they'd be priced at 20k because they had a good record in BW ZU, a tier that has absolutely no relevance to UMPL. if the reasoning for this is "filtering out oldgen games is too much effort" like i've been told, i'd like to point out:
a- there's only 12 players to look into
b- the extra hassle is evidence of the current system being bad
tack is also hardly the only example of this. hys is one of the top current gen nfe players but would cost 12k because he went 3-6 in
sm nfe. in contrast, ho3n costs 18k largely because he went 5-2 in
oras nfe. neither of these tiers should have any bearing on UMPL but for some reason currently do.
i don't feel any inclination to look at the 1v1/ag/zu standings in great detail but i'd put money on similar results occurring in other tiers.
2 - the PLs being looked at may as well be oldgens; in the finals of ZUPL II, klang and stonjourner were S rank pokemon. at the time of writing this,
stonjourner is unranked, and klang's evolution klinklang is sitting comfortably in the c ranks (edit: ston is C+ too, point still stands). the data used to determine prices is wack. this is especially notable in the case of landon, someone who has already signed up as a manager.
to elaborate on this, landon
won the most recent ZU open and is currently considered to be one of the best ZU players in current meta, but went 1-3 in the most recent ZUPL and is currently priced at 13,000, just 1000 distant from the minimum possible manager value.
1v1 is in an equally odd situation, because unless the intent is to use a year+ old PL (doubtful) their current PL is still ongoing, meaning any aspiring 1v1 player is not going to know how much they actually cost as a manager/assman until the 10th of april
(? actual 1v1 players please correct me if i'm wrong) at the earliest, almost a full week after managers are chosen. this impacts their expected budget and i can only assume
(i've never managed before) delays their draft plans.
3 - the current system does not take into account that a manager can only play one tier at any given time. if someone like ho3n (proficient in both zu and nfe) opts to manage and buy himself, he still has to purchase a player for whatever tier he isn't focused on. assuming he chooses to play NFE (just as an example), he's being priced 3K higher than he should be just because he's also capable of flexing into ZU. this is a minor issue compared to the aforementioned problems, largely because of the decision to only charge 1000 credits per win, but it's still an issue. it deters good players from dipping their toes into other tiers and could be far more noticeable next year if this tour inspires UM players to branch out more. using ho3n as an example again, if he were to meet the same record next year and also add a 2-0 record in ag & 1v1 as a sub slot he's jumping from 18k to 22k and he's still only playing one tier at any given time. if oldgens
arent included (they shouldn't be) this also impacts pricing because if ho3n commits to only playing oldgens while staying up to date with current meta he's effectively costing nothing for the next umpl because he technically has no records to base his skill off of. including oldgens is not a solution to this because oldgen ability has little to no bearing on current gen ability.
4 - NFE and 1v1's most recent PL went on for two more weeks than ZU & AG. 1v1's current PL also currently has a tiebreak in semis and could possibly have a tiebreak in finals. this means that a top player in NFE or 1v1 is statistically likely to cost upwards of 2000 more than a top player in ZU or AG which just doesn't make sense for player ranking. players should not be punished for playing in longer tours.
potential fixes, in order from worst to best:
3 - fuck it bro let managers play in as many slots they want to make up for the fact they're costing credits for every tier they've played
pros: funny
cons: none at all, definitely.
2 - go the whole hog with the current system; put the work in and use more up to date, accurate data. scrap ZUPL data, use ZU seasonal data. scrap NFEPL data, use NFE Open or OMPL & OMFL data. i have no idea what the most up to date records would be for the other two tiers but hopefully there's something relatively recent to work off.
pros: gives a far better representation of how good a player actually is at their tier, allows hosts to base tiering off most recent current gen results available.
cons: still not going to be accurate, especially when ZU is having likely meta-changing shifts tonight and NFE may or may not be having some pretty sharp meta changes relatively soon. to be blunt there's no good way of trying to balance out prices. which is why fixed pricing is the only reasonable solution in my mind. players who have had a dip in activity and not played in the recent tour (but have still been active in the community) will not have data (this is also a current problem).
1 - easily the best solution and it's not even close; do what every other pl does and use fixed pricing. 15k is my personal shout because it's low enough for realistically any manager (managers tend to be good at at least one of the tiers) to at least
consider buying themselves, and high enough to not be an absolute steal for most players, at least when factoring in the fact that the players also have to manage and will likely have to split their efforts across multiple tiers. i've been informed that ubers pl uses 20k which i think is fine too, more punishing for worse-playing managers but still a solid choice if there's concern that certain managers might still be massively underpaid for. zu uses 12.5k which imo is far too low but whatever, it's still better than having one of the best ZU players at 13K and a worse ZU player (no offence intended ho3n ily) costing 5k more based off an oldgen performance.
in truth the price itself doesn't matter so much as the consistency does. there's no fair way of determining the "worth" of a player in the tiers UMPL is going to involve so it's better to just have everyone at the same flat number.
pros: no way for hosts to manipulate prices (i don't think it'd be characteristic of any of the hosts to do this, but preventing even the chance of it is objectively good for the tour), no room for disagreements over individual manager pricing, debatably "fairest" way of pricing.
cons: someone who feels confident managing on their own effectively gets a free pick for 15,000. could fix this by removing ass men but i know people like ass men. could also fix this by raising prices to 20k like ubers does.
to be completely blunt i think any decision that doesn't result in fixed pricing is a bad decision, but i understand there's multiple factors at play and not everyone can be happy with the end result. thank you for reading.
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