New Price Change Rule

If you have not taken the time to read through the new MLS Fantasy Manager rules for 2015, or watched the new Starting Lineup video, you’ve not yet read about one of the BIG changes to the game this year: Performance Based Price Changes!

There are already threads popping up on /r/FantasyMLS about who likes it and who doesn’t. Personally, my initial thoughts are that I like it and here’s why.

The Pros

Last season, several players put a lot of time into trying to figure out just how price changes worked. There were also several times where I say people say that they just wished MLS would tell us how it worked and make it not such a big mystery. Well, now they have! The way the new price change rule works is plainly stated and it uses a simple method (average scores) that make this element of the game fall less into the realm of the elite. This is good news for any new players just getting into the game.

This method also gives you a better chance to grab cheaper players who are earning more points than others in their price range. Before, cheap high performing players were snatched up and their prices soared. If you were not on top of the market, you were going to miss out on a $0.2 increase or more. This may not seem like much, but it adds up over a season.

There is also no more sell penalty. What you see is what you get. This makes it easier to, One, know exactly how much you will have to work with for your next transfer, and Two, means you can get the player back without a hit you’re your overall budget.

The Cons

I’m not going to just be a blind fan boy to this new price change rule. There are a couple of downsides I can see. It will be harder to build value. So if you dream of a midfield with five $10+m players, think again. You also will not be able to organize mass trades to try and get a $0.2 bump out of a player during a wild card.

Transfers for the new round are locked until all gamed from the current round have been played. This has to happen because it will let MLS calculate the average for price changes, but also that you could miss the first jump that a cheap high performing player has.

Overall, it’s a good system that follow’s the same pattern that the MLS Fantasy bonus system does, rewards based on performance, bot external factors. What do you think? Feel free to post below, join the live chat, or make a post at /r/FantasyMLS.