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Managers' Development Discussion Thread - Player Agents
This is one of a group of threads inviting discussion from all managers about the proposals for developing various parts of Itsagoal.

It is important to realize that although each of the proposals has been formulated after much thought and discussion, none of them is set in stone. The members of the Think Tank have done their best to consider topics from all angles, but do not claim to have thought of absolutely everything.

This is therefore the chance for everyone to get involved with discussion. Please therefore read through the proposals, and make your comments.

For this process to be both useful and manageable, please do not stray from the topic being discussed. Threads will be closely moderated to keep them relevant.

We expect there to be differences of opinion, and would encourage all managers to engage in positive discussion. In the end, Itsagoal is Ron's game, and he will make the final decisions, but we want to hear from you first!


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Player Agents

For the purpose of this discussion lets assume that a player falls into one of 4 categories of potential.

Poor, Fair, Good and Great.

Problem:

The transfer market (TM) doesn't move well because all the managers are trying to sell players of a similar ( low ) potential and buy the players of a higher potential. They are experienced managers all at the same or similar point in club development. This makes it hard for managers to obtain new players of the right potential at a reasonable price. It is also very hard to move low potential players as there are few buyers in need of lower potential players.

The YA does not contribute enough players of a higher calibre.
Not all managers have the time or want to rely on the YA.

Proposal:

To facilitate the purchase of a limited number of new players from agents.
Agents would become a mechanism by which players could be bought.
This would run alongside the TM.

There would be certain constraints and limitations.

Only players of 'Fair' or 'Good' potential can be purchased this way.
'Great' would still come from other sources.
A club would be limited to buying 2 players a season in this way.


Detail:

The price for the player is set by the system, and will be high. It will in part be calculated using their potential rather than their current skill level. Equivalent players on the TM will sell at the same level or lower, so buying from the transfer market will be preferable.

There will be a new tab in the 'Transfers' section titled 'Agents'. This tab will display the list of players on offer to the manager. (Each manager will be provided their own list, they are not in competition to sign the player before another manager does.) The list will change daily.

The manager will have 24 hours to purchase the player.

The position, attributes, age and quality of the players will vary. Over the course of the season all managers will be offered a similar range of players to ensure everyone has a similar opportunity.

Players purchased this way will have a high sell on clause in their contract, that clause will scale down the longer the player is with the club.

The trained level of the player on offer will be similar to average level in the purchasing club. So players will be ready to play, but still have scope for further improvement.

Its less useful to the top clubs, as they will require 'Great' players, and those are only going to come through the YA and the TM. That means that lower rated clubs can use this facility to help them catch up with the bigger clubs.


Benefits:

This helps to address the lack of reasonable quality players on the transfer market.

Will help to manage transfer market inflation.

Money comes out of the economy

The pricing and quality of the players available can be tuned as time goes on, allowing us to increase / decrease the impact on the TM and the economy.

More scope to improve the quality of youth players entering the game.
Because only great players enter via the academy, we can improve the quality.



Considerations:

Concerns raised that this process is too easy and will detract from the TM and reduce manager interaction.

Managers will still need to use the TM, at the moment they cant because its stalled, so there is very little interaction anyway. Hopefully this measure will encourage more activity in the TM as prices deflate and there are more players around. Moving forward we can reduce the impact of this if we see the TM is able to service demand.

Concerns raised that this is over complicating the game.

To mitigate that we can present it within the 'Transfer' system area with clear instructions and help. Its likely to be a simple interface on a single page.

Negative impacts to the TM

Tuning - We may want to tweak things like the number of players on offer at a time, how frequently we change the list and so on. Possibly add filters too if required. The point here is balance. We have to make it workable but not so simple that it has a negative impact on the TM etc. The point is that getting that balance is detail which we can resolve.

Good idea.

I get what this idea is trying to achieve, and in essence I like it, however you state that the problem is "The transfer market doesn't move well", so I'm struggling to see how this is addressed by introducing Player Agents. I'm pretty sure this will make the Transfer Market worse, if not largely redundant, becoming a place only to buy and sell "Great" players - a playground for the richest clubs, if you like.

Dont think that wording is the best the idea was to make it possible for managers to get even those mid ranged players that don't appear on the market at the moment. Don't agree it will become a place for only great players as don't forget once all the changes are in place most of these will be coming from YA not reset clubs. The hope is that it might eventually add something to the market once we all work out the best way to get the most from it.

Having more players available via a player agent could improve the transfer market. People might use this system for a bit of profit by selling their new acquired player.

From what I've read, the players bought via Player Agents will be more expensive than the Transfer Market. If you can sell these players for a profit, then doesn't that go against the principles of the Player Agents?

Not convinced about that. I know buying players on the Transfer Market is a nightmare right now, but I'd almost like to see the changes made to the TM first to see if that improves things, before trying Player Agents.

I see where you're coming from, but I think that you need to look at all three player-acquisition changes in the big picture to see the potential here:

- Player agents allows purchasing of 'fair and good' players at a premium
- Youth Academy will now produce more fair, good and great players

So at the moment I feel the biggest problem is that it is so difficult to get good players out of the Youth Academy. On my 2nd account, I've picked up two 38-rated youths for my academy, but on this account the highest I've seen is 2 players at 26 in 5 seasons.

Once the Player Agents and Youth Academy changes are implemented, you'll see this impact:

- More 'fair and good' players will be available, which will encourage players to sell-on their poorer performers.
- Once the poorer performers have been cycled into the Transfer Market, the quality of teams will rise.
- Once the quality of teams rises, managers will be able to feed their better players into the transfer market, whilst in moments of desperation still have access to Player Agents to cover some shortfalls.
- Once the YA changes are active, more 'good and great' players will then begin to cycle into the clubs, which will then allow managers to push their 'good but not quite as good' and older players into the TM.

So what I feel we're likely to see in the long-term (possibly over 2-3 seasons after all changes have been implemented) is a bit of a glut of players into the TM, the prices won't be as ridiculous because demand will be significantly lower.

This is just my theory, though, but I feel it's a pretty accurate outlook as to how things will occur.

And I can tell you right now that the Player Agents will be getting a few visits from me the moment they materialise, I could really do with some good defenders!

Great idea about the agents, I think being able to use the agent only twice in a season will be great.

Whatever happens, I hope there will be players that will want to actually sign on for more than one season.

Maybe, but it does depend what others are willing to pay.

The other benefit that is not mentioned is that if a manager desperately needs a player to avoid the sack he will have the ability to purchase one, obviously at a premium

It would be possible to have flexible pricing in the PA system, so that one thing it does is to take some of the heat out of the TM. Managers won't by on the TM if they can get a better PA deal.

But this will go against the philosophy of the idea and if you can sell PA players for a profit on the TM, then the system isn't working.

The intention is that you wont be able to make a quick buck out of them, in the long tem after you have had a player for a few seasons, maybe you will be able to sell at a profit. If so thats fine.

Ron

I hear what you're saying, donnymayhem, but I'm just wondering about the fact that with all of the updates together we're improving player quality across the board too much...
- YA brings in good and great players
- PA brings in fair and good players

This means every club will have the opportunity to improve their squad quality relatively quickly, and the "poorer players" you mention will, over time, be removed from the game - and not feature on the TM, as you suggest.

I do understand the principles, but I just feel this could make the game too easy for "lazy" managers. Surely an improvement to the YA is enough.

Ok great. Thanks Ron.

PA - This allows a manager to get a player quickly but at a cost.

So it allows a managers to fix issues if they cant find what they need on the transfer market. The YA is longer term planning. At the moment the TM is stalled, so PA will be important, as time goes on, we may adjust the cost / quality of players available via the PA to keep the game challenging and keep the TM active.

As clubs improve the PA become less useful to them. So it may help weaker clubs build more quickly but as they improve the will depend on the YA much more.

Its a great feature that will allow us to control TM inflation, player population and it will hopefully have a really positive effect on the TM.

Ron

I agree that the TM has stalled. But don't you think that the proposed TM changes will rectify that?

Even if it does, the agents would simply be ANOTHER OPTION to obtain certain players, which I think is nice to have (and obviously one of the first things to be implemented).


I have a question to the actual way it works. It says we have 24h to purchase a player. Do we negotiate with the players after clicking on purchase or how does it work?

I think the combination of changes, i.e. the TM,PA and the YA should do yes.

Ron