If you want to play but don't want to pay a high price, sign up as a player.
This is so easy to say but unrealistic. The matter of the fact is our community does not have quality non playing managers. Just think about past signups and the only one who fits the bill is Ticken. As mentioned in a previous section, this isn't a tournament with huge stakes nor is it a spectator sport, so it is difficult to find competent people that are willing to purely manage. Also, those that wish to manage aren't necessarily the top players either. They are viable players who should be in the tournament, but they aren't at the same level as some of the other top tier managers. If they buy themselves for that top price, they might handicap their team which is undesirable. However, if they do not buy themselves it could be a disservice to the player pool and go completely against your whole point of improving the quality.
We want good managers and we want the best players in the community playing. If you wanna prevent managers from playing, you are only getting one or the other. If you wanna set a high price for every manager, you are again not getting both. If anything that ruins the balance between teams even more. Wanka mentioned the top teams always being the same, but it isn't mainly about exceptional drafting or anything, but the Krows and Gengars have an excellent advantage with their manager buys. If we set the same price for every team, it only furthers the gap between them and the ones with weaker manager pairs who still accept the responsibility to play. They normally compensate for their lack with their extra money but in this scenario they don't have that security. I absolutely oppose the fact that all managers should have the same price or that they should only be allowed to get one manager. You are doing a disservice to the quality of the tournament with that kind of system. The only logical system where only 1 manager is allowed to play would be similar to how NU does it where assmans are optional. However, I am not a fan of 1 manager teams either.
As for retains, I personally think the 2 retains ended up not being that problematic as the Houndooms failed to make playoffs. It is hard to judge for the Gengars as they lost Feitan early on. Nonetheless, I do see it as something that could be problematic in the long run so it's understandable if we reduce it to a 1 maximum. In terms of the boosting the retain price by an addition +3k for every time a retain happens. I think it is a reasonable enough system, however if it is being implemented then it should be taken account from the start of retains and not just last year. When it comes to the removal of retains in a 6 slot tournament, I disagree. Managers who build their teams with the prospect of retaining someone next year shouldn't be punished from a new system. The tournament worked fine with manager buys and 2 retains last time as I said in the first line, so hypothetically 2 managers buy and a retain shouldn't be a major problem.
Essentially, putting all managers at the same price or limiting the amount of managers that can be bought will either ruin our already limited pool of manager options or further hurt a player pool whose questionable quality resulted in discussion on changing the whole format. We do not have the community to support non-playing managers, and we cannot expect playing managers to drag along a mediocre non-playing option as an assman in order to respect the 1 buy only rule. It's easy to say "just buy yourself" when you are a manager whose set price would be practically half your draft one, but for those whose manager price could possibly be double or even more their draft price, its an agonizing decision. If we want the best quality tour, we shouldn't be imposing these limitations.
