Not a Footium Blog

How’d you like it? How’d you like it?

Footium’s fourth season is here, and it’s looking like the biggest one yet! Payouts, transfer changes, more legendaries, injuries and own goals are all ready to come to the pitch!

The Headlines

There’s a hierarchy of which updates will have the biggest impact on the game, but here’s some summaries.

Season 3 Prize Claiming – Prize pools are still climbing, and you’ll be able to claim your winnings soon. Total Prize Pool: Over 70 ETH (~$234,536 at $3350 ETH). This compares to 65.458ETH in Season 2 and 68 ETH in Season 1. It’s good to see it is still very stable.

Payout Places – You will now win prize money all the way down to 7th; which is a significant change in payout distribution and reduces the percentages for the higher places.

Registration System Overhaul – This introduces a bunch of new changes; free agents, season-long player contracts and changes to transfer windows!

Legendaries – Legendaries are BACK! These players sell for multiple ETH sometimes, and are still the best players in the game. Will you be getting one?

Injuries – Injuries are coming! This will mean it’s even more important to rotate your squad, or lose players for 50 hours.

Own Goals – Are you sick of random goalkeeper goals? Own goals are here. Enjoy!

What does it all mean?

There’s a lot changing, and it will have both intended and unintended consequences for the Footium ecosystem going forward. We’ll try and expand on what each change may mean, and how to plan around it.

Prize Payout Changes

I recently saw some discussion in the discord between those who wanted more top-heavy prize payouts and those who wanted more even distribution. Now we know that we are looking at a more even prize distribution from season 4 onwards. 1st to 7th will be getting prizes, as opposed to 1st to 5th.

The new prizes are below:

1st – 37% (-5%)

2nd – 23% (-3%)

3rd – 14% (-2%)

4th – 10% (the same)

5th – 7% (+1%)

6th – 5% (+5%)

7th – 4% (+4%)

One of the most notable elements of Footium for me so far has been how stable the prize pool has been. When comparing to other products; the consistency of the prize pool has been very refreshing. Many games have been boom and bust, with some huge prize pools at points, followed by a struggling ecosystem and total crash of prize pools. It’s early days, but this suggests that Footium’s current prize ecosystem is working well.

It’s interesting to note that at one point there was a medium article with 1st to 9th payout percentages so this has been in some state of flux for a couple of years.

The stated aims of the changes are:

• Support for Mid-League Stability
• Reduced Incentive for Deliberate Relegation
• Enhances Prize Gaps Between Divisions

Let’s go through each of these in order.

Support for Mid-League Stability – This is an interesting one. Our predominant experience in Footium so far is in Division 8 and Division 7. In both of these Division, there are definitely some Zombie and/or very inactive teams that would win these prizes. At higher levels this won’t be a problem, but it will be interesting to see if at lower divisions if it leads to some more money going back into the ecosystem from unclaimed prizes. I also think for newly promoted teams, this will lead to some more season on season stability. Back to back promotions are more achievable at lower divisions, so a small prize for being promoted and then coming mid-table will really help with stability.

Reduced Incentive for Deliberate Relegation – Once the ecosystem settles in Season 4, it’ll be great to see how this plays out. If you come 7th in Division 1 (at the time of writing), you get 0.27945 ETH. If you were to go down and come 1st in Division 2 (at the time of writing), you get 1.33607 ETH. So whether people do still choose to deliberately relegated will be something to keep an eye on.

Enhances Prize Gaps Between Divisions – I think this, in partnership with the above, will be a big part of the picture for reducing sandbagging. It will be great to see how this turns out.

Legendary Players & Distribution

The change from League Split to Divisional Split is the biggest change here; and intended to send more money to higher divisions.

Here’s what the difference looks like in real terms. This example is based on 1 ETH proceeds (this would be the proceeds from a roughly 2.1 ETH sale).

Under the previous system, the prize money would be split as follows (not accounting for season split):

Division 1 – 8 would be 0.00392ETH per League, 1/255th of the proceeds.

Under the new system, the prize money would be split as follows:

Division 1 – 0.125ETH per League (up 3188%)

Division 2 – 0.0625ETH per League (up 1594%)

Division 3 – 0.03125 per League (up 797%)

Division 4 – 0.015625 per League (up 398%)

Division 5 – 0.0078125 per League (up 199%)

Division 6 – 0.00390625 per League (down 0.36%)

Division 7 – 0.001953125 per League (down 50.18%)

Division 8 – 0.0009765625 per League (down 75.1%)

So a major change in distribution.

Injuries

A great ‘on the pitch’ update for the upcoming season. Once below 45% condition, players will be at an increasing risk of injury. This will increase exponentially; by the time the players end up around 20% they will have a huge chance of injury.

This applies to condition lost in training as well. I am not clear whether this means a player will be able to get injured in training, but be careful if you do lots of back to back training and then stick them in a match.

This will not impact reserve players. Reserve players will now start every match with 100% condition. It’ll be interesting to see whether this means that a team with regular zombie players at 20% condition will be worse than 100% condition reserve players.

Given the stamina deep dive we’ve been doing, it’ll be great to dive in and see how likely injuries are.

Registration System Changes

This is the area that may have the biggest impact for the upcoming season, and the one which we may need to see in action to truly understand the ramifications.

Limited Transfer Windows – These will be coming after season 4, but interesting to know in advance that mid-season windows will have caps on unregistering.

Season Long Contracts – This currently says that at the end of a transfer window, players are now tied to their registered clubs for the duration of the season. Once mid-season limited windows come in, it’ll be good to see whether players are registered until the end of the season, or for a full season. I have been guilty of transferring players from one of my clubs to another mid-season, so I think this brings a lot more strategy to pre season.

Free Agents – Players who remain unregistered become free agents. This will be perhaps the biggest change to squads in the game so far! You’ll be able to strategically get players out of your squad, and see who’s available on the Free Agent market to bolster your squad. Stuck in 3rd and want to aim for promotion? Maybe get in a top quality free agent!

There will be preseason testing on this, as well as more explainers coming. We will try use this feature ASAP and get some thoughts in.

Own Goals

A very brief one, but Own Goals are coming to the game! Goalkeeper errors were sometimes showing as the keeper scoring a screamer, which, whilst very funny, is not accurate!

Of the 2720 goals scored at the 22 world cups, 54 have been own goals. This is just under 2%. It’ll be interesting to see if it’s the same in Footium!

Match Engine V2

It’s great to have confirmation that this is coming down the line. Footium has an amazing foundation, but the next steps for the game engine will be vital.

I think, given the ownership of players and clubs, and the investment gone into the ecosystem already, that it’s very important Match Engine v2 doesn’t drastically change the meta. This has happened in other projects, and annoyed massive chunks of the community.

Footium has shown a deep commitment to the community, and all changes have been considered, timely and released only when ready. It’ll be great to see how Match Engine v2 upgrades what we have now and fires us into the future.

Timescales? We don’t know, but for now, let’s let them cook!

Are you all ready for Season 4? We certainly are!

Let’s see you all on the pitch!