Yet Another Brand Idea

[Gustav 6,430]

I've had this idea for a while, but it wasn't until @BladeMaiden wrote up an idea of her own that it occurred to me that I should actually go out and do something about it. As we all know, brands were viciously murdered by Quik and the gang after the last tournament, cutting out a vital part of my enjoyment for this league--just kidding, I didn't care about brands one bit, and that's exactly what the problem was. I signed with Viking, collected my paycheck, and looked at nothing at all through the whole tournament. 

 

If I might be bluntly honest, what does signing with a brand get you in terms of satisfaction, or general league-related good stuff? Money, and that's it. I signed with the only brand to offer me a paid spot, and after collecting my measly $500,000, more or less checked out completely. I couldn't tell you what we did. I couldn't tell you how we did. I couldn't tell you who won the tournament. Sure, I knew all these things at the time, and commented on some game threads for potential golden heaps of lottery goodness (and the league knows how I feel about that already, so I'll move on from lottery talk), but I forgot them as soon as I closed out of the thread and got on with my life. 

 

So what would keep players coming, and keep them coming back? In this world of TPE inflation, I refuse to introduce the idea of extra TPE rewards, as much as I like collecting a few uncapped every once in a while. What I'm suggesting is that we do the exact same thing, but with an improved pay structure. Here's what I mean:

 

A spreadsheet illustrating Jolt Juice endorsements of S65. Many thanks to @Nykonax for this info

 

 

As you can see, twenty roster spots exist on every brand team, fifteen paid, four unpaid, and one for the brand executive's player. If we're talking about Jolt Juice, only Arnor Sigurdsson and Apollo Hackett signed on without receiving some sort of payment, so if everyone else on the team thought just the same way as I do, fifteen players collected their paychecks and immediately stopped caring. So, what can we do about this, without handing out TPE rewards to everyone who participated and contributing to the inflation problem?

 

What I'm proposing is a structure which pays players at the end of every tournament based on both individual and team performance. Under the former system, the average player received $800,000 for their services, executive players included. I don't intend to change that with my system, but my system gives a bit more variance than the previous. Basically, sign with a brand, without any discussion of payment, and then receive payment later, to be determined based on what actually happened rather than the player's perceived value at the start.

 

To make it equal parts individual and team performance, first we'll slice the pay above in half, to get:

2x $1,000,000

1x $750,000

3x $625,000 (I'm throwing in what used to be the executive player's pay here)

2x $500,000

3x $375,000

5x $250,000

4x unpaid

 

Here's what, under this system, we'd see for individual pay, which I think would be best done based on fantasy points--you don't get  But, this system drops out of the good and drops into the meaningless pretty quickly, so to make it more interesting, while keeping the average pay the same, I'd suggest:

3x $1,000,000

3x $750,000

2x $625,000

2x $500,000

2x $250,000

8x unpaid

This is to maintain a competitive atmosphere among members of a team, which would, in theory, make the brand tournament a bit more interesting.

 

So, what about the team part?

As we covered earlier, your average player earns $800,000 for participation in the tournament. We took away half of that money for the individual player performance payment covered earlier, and now we'll go about distributing the other half. Basically, we'll ensure that each team receives an average of $400,000, yet again. Here's what I say:

1st place: $1,000,000

2nd place: $750,000

3rd place: $500,000

4th place: $400,000

5th place: $250,000

6th place: $250,000

7th place: unpaid

8th place: unpaid

So, yes, it's still possible to be unpaid--we'll have up to 16 unpaid players in every tournament. But--we'll also have our 2-million-dollar players, and everyone will have the opportunity to go for big money. The main difference isn't the difference in pay; it's the fact that the games actually matter for payment rather than simply being there.

 

Is this viable? Possibly. But should we even bother?

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

7 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

Is this viable? Possibly. But should we even bother?

 

No. Work involved =/= reward, and the player store is currently balanced around contract money only. It would be something else that would need to be changed to accommodate this, for something that admittedly isn't really liked by many except as a way to earn more money and/or TPE.

[Nykonax 1,564]

I'm confused. So people sign on with a brand for no money at first, then like 8 million is divided up based on how many VHL fantasy points they would've earned? Then some more is split up evenly based on where the team finishes?

 

It seems like all the good players would just sign on 1/2 brands to get the most money at the end.

[omgitshim 902]

You'd have to rebalance the fantasy scoring system a bit too to make it more balanced over each position.