For many users a good transfer market is essential to their style of play. The trading aspect of FML was to some a major source of enjoyment, with many getting a real buzz from buying low and selling high. But for others it was a complete nightmare and appeared to be no more than a giant stock market in which one wrong buy meant millions of hard earned cash down the drain. Throw into the mixer more than a few shady deals as well and that more or less summarises what the transfer market was about in FML. So how does UFL intend to deal with this massive part of any football based game?
The biggest change that former-FML players will notice is the shift from private transfers to transfer auctions. UFL will introduce a rule whereby private transfers can only be accepted if they fall within the 50% to 150% range of market value. Any bids accepted over 150% of market value will then a trigger an auction in which any user within the GW can bid in. Any opening bids of over 200% MV will trigger a precautionary moderator investigation. It will be interesting to see how this change shakes out. On the one hand it will level the playing field as it opens transfer deals up to everyone regardless of when they are online or friends with. But will the lack of certainty over the price that will be received lead to some managers trying to hold on to assets and thus bogging down the transfer market. Depending on the flow of cash into the game it might make the market cyclical with managers only selling when they know the most people will have cash in the bank to spend. The other big question is will it really cut down the number of murky deals that take place. Only time will tell.
The other change that will be noticed is the addition of prospective transfers which is added to the standard options of loans and trials. Prospective deals are designed to give an option for a deal to be concluded at an agreed point in the future. There are both buyer and seller prospective options. The buyer prospective option favours the buyer and allows them more time to find more funds (or try to find an alternative player to sign instead at a better price with the money they have given that any buyer prospective deal gets cancelled at the deadline should the buyer not have sufficient funds). The seller prospective option is the opposite and gives the seller the chance to get a better deal from a rival manager. There is also the possibility of a prospective loan deal whereby you can agree a price prior to loaning a player. Given that players are entered into auction at over 150% market value anyway it may mean that this feature is not used to the extent that it should be. However, as we yet do not know what the plans for the economy are, and especially price control, it is a possibility that deals over 150% are indeed a rarity meaning this type of contract can come into its own. Furthermore prospective deals could become more of a long term option for managers with the maximum prospective time period yet to be confirmed at this stage. In many ways this feature could become like a first option that existed in the CM’s and FM’s of several years back. If there is an initial fee option as well then it could really spice things up, as it would open the door properly for feeder teams. At the very least it is a good idea but one which will need to be married up with the economy to give maximum benefit.
The other two options that are worthy of a mention here are pay to play deals and being able to sell players back to the game. Pay to play deals are only available for signing older players of 30 years or more who have been languishing on the free agents list for a while. Each day you play a player on this sort of deal you have to pay them a wage as well as 5% of their MV (in lieu of a transfer fee). However, it is only available in the pre-season part of the season so will probably be used by smaller teams to add back up to the squad. Without a set limit at this point in time on the number of players you can have on pay to play deals you have to wonder whether some managers will just hoover up as many as possible if they don’t have to pay for them as an insurance policy. However, this option it should be a good way of getting the under-utilised older players back into the game. Finally, there is also the option to sell any player you’ve had on contract for a season or longer back to the game for 50% of their MV. This feature should help ease the problems that many managers had in FML where they simply could not shift their low quality squad players on.
Overall, there are a lot of new options here to be used by managers. Whether or not they will solve the stock market approach issues that FML had are another question, although you could argue that was down to poor economic controls rather than the transfer market itself. Auctions should bring more equality to the table, whilst prospective transfers could really bring a whole new dimension to the party.
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