Just not sure why there are no restrictions on people buying players from their host country. There will probably be a crap ton of farm teams that just help out the NT and U21 NTs.
A little surprise in the announcement, yes. Initial thoughts: I believe it is an intentional "pay 2 NT-farm" feature, in other words legalizing NT-farming by monetizing it. Financially dedicated fans of their local NTs will be able to train twice as many NT trainees as before. There are some positives to this:
- Utopia teams will be extremely weak financially to start with - no startup bonus and division IV incomes - so in the first few seasons, expect only low-potential U21-farming, at most.
- Introducing a legal road to farm for NTs (not for individual teams!) will make illegal farming less of a contentious issue. A community that is passionate about its NTs (well, U21s mainly) can pay to farm, achieving an increase of training spots (at constant size of the talent pool) by a factor less than 2, a community that doesn't care - won't, no hard feelings.
- Expect div I/II Utopia leagues to be cut-throat competitive, so there will be little slack for micronation-type NT-farming there. And to farm senior NT players in div III/IV requires old money, which Utopia teams won't have for a long time.
- That Utopia starts at div IV means BBs expect not much more than 1000 Utopia teams initially, of which only a fraction will care more about U21-farming than about competition - so this will remain a marginal issue anyway, no big effects on senior NT competition expected for the next 15 seasons if you ask me.
I have no issue with the whole Utopia move at all. I have no issue with the cost, the structure, the rules etc. Seems like a good idea and as good a time as any I suppose to offer it up.
What I like BEST about it is~all paid teams. This cuts out a lot of stuff, farms the topic you touch on above but I totally disagree with your analysis
#1 I think there will be very few people willing to pay $10 to farm when they can farm for free. Anyone getting away with farming up until now...will not pay to farm just 1 team. They wont stop or change their behavior one bit.
#2 Many teams are being created in specific countries just for the sake of drafting (upping the odds of drafting is another way to put it) players of that nationality. This kind of draft farming can't be done in the Utopia leagues since they will draft their own nationality
#3 People who run farms run more than 1. They run 5 or 6 or more and they are constantly closing and opening new ones for a variety of nefarious reasons. Utopia wont change any of this
#4 People should get even more angry about this farming issue and what it is doing to the game. The imbalance in the market place has to do with micronation money and farm players. micronation free high division incomes with little to no real costs= inflation. Constant player farming = higher supply. So you give a bunch of money to the shoppers and a bunch of expert farmed players in the market...nothing changes. Utopia has no impact. The major issues of farming aren7t helped one bit.
The micronation issue is not helped one bit.
Still i like Utopia and am glad for it to be about. I guess if I was gonna wish for one thing it would be that they didn't give it unique players but had the drafts random draws of all the nations in the world. I guess they were worried about people complaining if Utopia people had their NT players (which they can still get them off the market anyway). To me we can keep some realism if we give random nationality of players to Utopia and don't create a new player nationality.