6v6 Ref Wages - $4,000?

Hey all, I'm gunna get straight to the point. Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the last few weeks would know there's been more than a couple of instances of public discord in the Discord (no pun intended I swear), and a variety of things have been fiercely argued. I'm not here to talk about any of that, please do not bring it here.

I want to collect everyone's opinions and pitch to the staff the idea of increasing pay for 6v6 battles to $4,000. This has been a topic with some heated debate and I feel that it is one worth attention. All of the points I bring up will be relevant to me personally, I hope others will help in contributing their PoVs and we can discuss this in a civilized manner. I will say this again, please keep all other irrelevant issues out of this thread, and please do not devolve into shit-slinging.

I understand that reffing is considered a low effort profession compared to pretty much every other profession, and I don't disagree. However, a while back the decision was made to increase the payouts in 4v4+ battles to help create incentive to have larger, more competitive battles. Ref wages weren't changed at this time. I think the ref wages up to 4v4 are very generous and don't need revision, but for 6v6 we're sitting at $3k for the ref, while the loser gets $2.5k as a "consolation prize", and the winner gets a whopping $5k. But right now, I personally don't feel like reffing is worth my time or effort for a 6v6, and while I definitely feel rewarded for battling a 6v6, I don't for reffing one and I feel a bit of a pay increase would help. Let me elaborate.

1. Time/Effort Investment - It's personally feels a bit of a kick in the teeth that I'm getting paid nearly as much as the loser, for doing the monotonous task of reffing. Why would I want to do the usually boring task of reffing, when I could enjoy the URPG's battling system myself and still get on average (assuming an even w/l) MORE money than I would for reffing. 6v6 battles often take over two hours, which is a lot of personal time investment. I have to sit my ass down at the computer, and do little other that watch the chat, plug in mechanics to a calculator, and make sure things are working, so that two other people can have fun AND get paid more than me. For something which is both a voluntary role, and a very much crucial one to the backbone of the URPG, reffing 6v6s just aren't something I really want to do.

2. Difficulty - I mentioned this above; I do understand that reffing is one of the easiest professions, probably only harder than Judging. I also understand not wanting to reward $5k for reffing to match the winner, because that might make reffing too unfair for something that is relatively "skill-less", and wanting to award the winner for winning etc. However, reffing is not a brain-dead profession. Sure, it's easy to read the encyclopedia, press buttons on the calc, and away we go. But there is a lot of things that we're required to know, that are very much outside the bounds of usual knowledge.

If it was easy, why do people fail ref tests? Because there is a lot of knowledge of URPG unique rules, how to roll dice for different moves, interactions between a lot of different moves/abilities/etc (eg Prankster vs Dark type). We all know this, but I think some people take for granted just how much refs need to know, and we do NEED to know it because refs are expected to be the be-all-and-end-all as far as making your battle fair and balanced. There is still a lot of knowledge required to becoming a ref, just like any other profession. And while I could sit down and earn $5k for an average effort art curation, even upto $10k for a good one, in a couple of hours, I feel that a couple of hours for $4k in a 6v6 ref is still fairly balanced.

There are some other evident issues with the community and refs right now, like the example where I've often been forced to ref if I want to play URPG at all because the only other people who are around either can't or won't ref. I don't want to get into that here and I really don't want this thread to derail into shit-slinging at each other because some people should ref or whatever. But I think that increasing the pay up to $4k would make me feel a lot better and like my time is still worth it when I want to battle but I'm forced to ref instead, because right now I don't feel like reffing a 6v6 battle is worth my time OR my concentration, and ESPECIALLY when I'm reffing when I wanted to battle instead.

 

Finally a structured argument with a reasonable suggestion for a specific change. Hell, you even addressed that the current underappreciation felt by referees is also partially due to the shit attitude the community has right now.

Having looked at the numbers I do agree that $3,000 for a 6v6 may be a little low, if we look only at the economic viability of reffing vs battling. I think ref wages being in the middle of win/lose is fair in this regard, and means that the money earned from reffing remains roughly equivalent to a 50% battling win rate.
Since $3,750 is a shit number, $4,000 is reasonable.

I don't want to close this off just yet though because I really don't want to have to address this issue again, at least not in any short time frame.
If there ARE other issues people want to raise regarding any battle/reffing payments, or any other reasoning for/against this, please do before I make a decision.

 

tfw no structured argument with a reasonable suggestion for a specific change

In all seriousness, I'm really glad Fabled posted this and really grateful that Staff responded. Fab's covered all the points fabulously, and I agree with all of them. Hopefully this gets the official OK pretty soon.

There was also something brought up in #trainers-court by Swift, Ash, and Fab about bumping E4/Champ ref pay (current E4/Champ pay is 8/4/4 as a reminder). It seemed the idea there was to raise it to $5,000 and that seems pretty fair to me, as it retains the bonus over regular 6v6s, but doesn't quite hit that sweet average between winner & loser. Realistically, most referees aren't losing out for reffing one as they can't actually do E4/Champ themselves due to steep requirements that eligible trainers must meet.

Thanks again for listening!

 

I would strongly support bumping E4/Champ ref pay significantly. While reffing is low effort when you've had a lot of experience, reffing at this tier is not. Definitely in support of 6k or so for ref.

Also, side note: there have been many well structured threads and posts in trainers court.

 

I think he was referring to this specific issue this specific time, which up until Fabled made this thread it was just unstructured complaints over discord. You guys are right about there being structured posts before in TQ.

Also, even though I'm no ref, I could agree with Syn over E4/Champ pay. It's easy to see that it takes a long time/effort to ref those and it's (generally more) challenging.

 

Yeah the other night I was arguing to keep it at 5k but tbh I don't even know why. Guess I was just trying to keep us from getting too money happy, but looking at it now, the points about it not coming up often anyway and qualifications do kind of justify raising it a bit higher.

 

Change made:

Ref Wages [March 12 - March 26] + Announcement