Oh blast! I just wrote this entry, then stupid Internet Exporer (I use it now and then for testing-purposes only) asked me if I wanted to allow popups, and it ended up reloading the page, deleting my completed entry! Gah, I hate it when that happens, 45 minutes down the drain. Oh well, nevermind, let's get down to business!
Once again, it's time to reveal a little tidbit of what we are working on in the coming update for ManagerLeague.
This is the fourth chapter in the Developer Diary, and you can find the previous chapters here, here and here.
If you have not read them yet, do so now.
For the past week or so, I have been spotted frequently in the Norwegian forums, in a few selected but important threads.
The topic? Transfers, economy, how new users meet barriers today that were not so obvious before, and some problems with player-value. And that is just for starters. Then there is the term "rebuilders" of course, which is is hot topic these days.
We have a number of updates planned that touches these topics, and I have been asked to shed some light on it.
I would like to remind everyone that this may not be the complete list of changes that has to do with these topics, nor should they be considered guaranteed until testing and financial simulations have been completed.
Let's just get cracking.
Point 1: More money for sacked players
As a helping hand to new teams, we have decided to increase the amount they get for sacking "worthless" players from their starting team. This will help a bit towards solving the problem where they can not afford the players they need, while more established teams can not find buyers who can afford the players they wish to get rid of.
Point 2: Value-adjustments of low-Q players
Some flaws in the value-formula have been pointed out, and will be corrected. This is likely to make players with a low Quality cheaper, so newer teams can actually afford a Q 68 replacement without blowing the budget for the entire season.
Point 3: Sack'em if you got'em
Right now, your chairman will not allow you to sack young players with a certain quality, due to their potential.
This artificial limitation will be removed, putting YOU in control.
Point 4: Sacked players remain in the game
Right now, a sacked player will be deleted from the game. This was introduced as an anti-cheat feature.
We are changing this, so they will "go on vacation" for a random time (for the sake of argument, say 12-24 hours) before they re-appear as teamless players on the market. This will have several nice side-effects, like bringing more money out of the game, but also allowing new teams access to seasoned veterans who are no longer welcome with a bigger club.
Point 5: The +/- 10 Quality limit
This feature was implemented at a time where we did not want the richer teams to intrude with bids on the typical Q70 youngster, leaving them for the newer teams. This has the side-effect of blowing up the price on the youngsters they COULD get hands on, into the 400 millions range. It also lead to a lot of major clubs having a bunch of rubbish players just to drop their average quality.
This seems very strange, very artificial, and has to be fixed.
The new limit will be + 10 only (No downward limit).
This should also stimulate the transfer-market a bit, with more buyers able to buy the mentioned youngsters with a bit lower Quality.
Point 6: Oh no, please, more taxes again?
My original diary (before IE deleted it) had a funny joke here about the global financial crisis, but since I can't recall what I wrote, it has been moved to the parallell dimension that holds lost socks, lost jokes and lost friendlies.
More to the point, the fortune-tax will be increased from 2,5% to 4% (for those with more than 100.000.000 $).
We do not wish to stimulate "hoarding" or "saving" in ManagerLeague, and would rather see the money in circulation to improve the balance. It also helps a bit on the inflation, if not by much.
Point 7: A maximum number of players purchased per season???
This point has not been decided yet, but I figured I might jot it down in case it turns out to be imeplemented.
Our feeble attempt of limiting this with a penalty to the team-stats per purchased player, has indeed failed.
It is now actually more beneficial to make many purchases at the same time, when starting a "rebuild", than to buy 1-2 players per season, leading to very homogenous (identical maybe?) teams with 20 players of the same age.
To get away from the artificial "all 17 year old players"-teams we see now and then, we are considering a hard limit to how many players you can buy per season. I said CONSIDERING!
So, as you can see, there are a number of changes here that will change some dynamics in the game, specially when it comes to buying and selling players. This, with the added "auto-accept amount" we described earlier, should hopefully help the transfer-market a bit.
We will also clean up Active Transfers to something more usable, and the new My Transfers section (and it's ease of use) should help too.
We also see the need for better information for our new users, as we seem to lose a lot of them rather quickly. We don't belive that they leave "cause the game sucks", as we have strong indications that many leave before even having a chance to consider the game.
We also acknowledge the fact that "rebuilding" is more a symptom of something not being right, than a bad thing on its own. Staying at "the top" is almost impossible without complete rebuilds, and this is a situation we have to improve. Most of these listed changes help newer teams, but we have not forgotten about all you veterans either. That's information for a later chapter though.
I will leave you this screenshot of our new Champions League section (click it for a full-size version), and the observant reader might pick up on some new statistical information there, as well as the great graphics supplied by Coach Mac.
Happy hunting out there, and may all your matches end victoriously!
Until next time
- Spinner
