Economy Update — December 2022

Hello Champs! We have teased it for a few weeks, now it’s finally time to dive into the details of our upcoming Economy Update 💰.

We will cover the following topics in this article:

• Tournament rewards changes
• Star Athletes (Reward Tiers)
• Legends requirements changes
• Rarity bonus changes
• League rewards (and MGC) changes

⚠️Changes will be active starting Gameweek 49, with most of them being deployed soon after Gameweek 48 ends.

Tournament Rewards

Three action points will be deployed for Tournament rewards.

1. We’re adding additional fixed position rewards thresholds with more meaningful rewards, and extending the percentage positions.

The objective is to increase the amount of positions with meaningful rewards overall, with significant new rewards in the added fixed positions, and smaller rewards given to a wider range of players in the updated wider percentage positions.

2. “Star Athlete” rewards are being added for the podium tournament positions. Star Athletes are a selection of athletes performing well recently (details below).

The objective of the “Star Athletes” reward system is to make sure top rewards are never disappointing, without effecting new players and small wallets.

3. Finally, we’re making several other targeted changes to many individual positions which Managers have expressed that they don’t feel are rewarding enough, or are sometimes even too rewarding.

We will continue working towards a progression of rewards between each position, and each division, that feels logical to managers. There will always be some fine-tuning to do gameweek to gameweek — as other changes and market conditions may change what makes sense, so continue sharing your valuable feedback!

Star Athletes (Reward tiers)

How are Star Athletes defined?

• To start, “Star Athletes” will be comprised of the top 110 Athletes by draft price
• There is a position ratio of 1:4:4:2: 10 GK, 40 DEF, 40 MID, 20 FW

110 is currently ~20% of our total distributed (active) athletes, which should be small enough to guarantee good performers, and large enough to not over-distribute a select few athletes! 🔥

Draft price is calculated considering a players “Last 15” score, with additional weight on their “Last 5”. Additionally, we have recently changed it so that a DNP counts as a 0 score in the calculation (instead of being ignored), so an inactive player will be much cheaper. This means that the the Star Athlete list should be highly relevant to current performance, and should only include the most active athletes!

These athletes CAN still be received in a normal unpacking or as a reward, it is just that they are guaranteed in certain cases.

Legends Division Requirements

❌Current requirements

• 1+ Unique
• 5+ Mythic
• Max 8 Epic
• Commons can’t be used

🆕Updated requirements

• 1+ Unique
• Mythic cards
• Epics & Commons can’t be used

Since the start of tournaments the difference between MYTHIC and LEGENDS divisions has been very minor for those that own a Unique card. We have seen the decision of which to enter be based on number of entries vs rewards, with Legends sometimes having MORE entries than Mythic, and cases where users who could enter Legends opt for Mythic as a strategic choice. Entering a higher division should always be preferable once you have a solid team for it.

We recently increased the prizes in Legends with this change in mind, which some Managers rightly pointed out is quite a large jump over Mythic, but hopefully the increased restrictions will make it clear why the larger jump between division rewards are now deserved.

Rarity Bonus Values

We are tweaking the rarity bonuses value the following way:

• Common — 0%
• Epic — 15% > 25%
• Mythic —25% > 50%
• Unique — 50% > 100%

It is a fundamental change for our rarities and we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it!

Below is the full context for this change.

The original values were quite modest to give higher value to athlete choice over rarity bonuses, putting the focus on the fantasy gameplay of making the right picks. What this has resulted in over time is that having an epic card of the “BEST” players is often better than investing more to have a Mythic or even Unique of just a good player. For example a Unique card that scores 100 (150 with modifier), will lose to an Epic card that scores 135 (155 with modifier). Similarly, Common cards are still very powerful even when considering the 30% bonus of epics (rarity + condition), as it is easy to have a LOT of the best players as Common. An example of this situation is the Legends division, where almost every team consists of 1 Unique and 5 Mythics (required), while the rest are Epics of only the best athletes. While prioritizing the right picks is great, the benefit of investing in higher rarities is clearly not enough currently.

This has been more recently highlighted by the condition bonus, which should only be small in comparison, but is currently equal to an epic rarity modifier. This makes the rarity bonus feel less important, and it also feels bad when you lose HALF of a cards total bonus over time.

Most importantly it has had an effect in the marketplace, where the best strategy for most players is to only ever consider the top athletes, with epics being the best bang for your $CHAMP by far. Which is creating a situation where the top epics are overpriced but still make up the majority of sales, while everything else is left behind unless it is an ultra cheap filler.

Since leagues do not include bonuses, and higher rarities are restricted in lower tournament divisions, we now feel that we can safely reward the larger investment of higher rarities without ruining the usefulness of lower rarities. We hope that significantly increasing rarity bonuses will not only feel better, but will also improve the health of the economy, making a wider spread of cards desirable: suddenly a mid level Mythic athlete may be a better choice than an Epic Bannan. Additionally, this should make earning a higher rarity reward more valuable (even when it is not a top performing athlete), as there is more inherent value in the rarity of the card.

League Rewards and MGC (coming soon!)

We’re aiming to make the following changes either for GW49 or right after.

• ⬆️League reward thresholds will give a higher amount of MGC and keep distributing Common cards
• ❌League rewards thresholds will not distribute Epic Cards or CHAMP anymore
• 🆕Top 100 in the global Leagues leaderboard each Gameweek will receive 1 Epic Card and 200 Champ.

Some gameweeks reward nothing, while one 8–0 match can inject hundreds of Epics into the marketplace at once. These changes are being considered to better focus the purpose of Leagues, and to stop extreme cases of distribution!

What can you do with your MGC? 🤔

Progressing as a free to play player with MGC has been tough so far!

Unlocking your first Epic through a Jumbo Pack is a real challenge: you have to be there on time and snipe the Pack when there aren’t enough for everyone.

We are reconsidering our MGC offers to propose a compelling and sustainable way to progress in the game. Which will aim to also include options for spending larger amounts for players with a large stockpile, and to accommodate increased MGC rewards in top tiers.

More details about that next week! 🤩

What’s next?

We hope these changes will address many of your concerns, and be a step in the right direction! It is of course only a step, and we will continue to asses how these changes progress.

Next week we will also have our sexy team builder update for Leagues and Tournaments on top of these changes, so it will be a big week for UC!

We’re only getting started 💫