ManagerLeague : Online football manager : Developer Diary, Part 8

Developer Diary, Part 8 (02/06/2009 03:29)

For the 8th time, it's time to reveal what is going on behind the scenes at ManagerLeague Headquarters.
The previous seven chapters can be found here:
Chapter 1 :: Chapter 2 :: Chapter 3 :: Chapter 4 :: Chapter 5 :: Chapter 6 :: Chapter 7
If you have not read them yet, do so now.

I am sorry it has been a while since the last update, but it is only due to us being very busy.
This will be long entry though, with a lot of information, several screenshots, and also a highly anticipated list of changes.

First though, I wish to address a frequently asked question:
"When can we expect the new ManagerLeague to go live?"
My answer still remains the same, "When we are done."
However, we have internally targeted season 50 for the launch of the new version, but unfortunately, I have to tell you all that we are not going to make it.
It's a shame, as it would fit nicely with such a "round" number as 50, and it's a shame because we have worked night and day, weekends and hollidays, trying to make our deadline.
It is clear now though, with 100% certainty, that we are looking at a delay.

For now, I can only say that the target date is currently July 9th, so season 51.
As for WHY we are delayed, this is due to a lot of different factors:
- We had to spend a lot more time to fix things for Internet Explorer 8 than we had anticipated
- Some features proved to work better "in theory" than in reality, and they will have to be redone
- My development-time has been eaten up by maintenence-tasks now and then, more so than I had hoped
- The design-changes we decided upon proved more difficult in some areas than we had thought
- We have spent so much time on this upgrade, we simply do not wish to release it before it is FINISHED
- We're a small company, with no "extra staff" to fill in if someone is ill

So, thats the status right now. We have things to do, they will take a little longer than we had hoped, but we are getting there, eventually.

Let me grab anoher popular question these days:
"When can we TEST the new ML, on the development-server (also known as DEV)?"
We (developers + admins) have been testing for a while already, and fixed bugs and problems along the way to get rid of most of them. When we feel we are ready to open up for more testers, we will do so. Right now though, we are incapable of handling more feedback than we are getting, and so it would not be right to just open it up.
You will be clearly notified when the time comes, that much I promise.

So, with those two questions out of the way, let's get down to the good part!
Here are some screenshots, with some explanations below each one.
As always, click on the screenshot to see it full-size.

This is the new Preferences-page, which has had a serious facelift as you can see.
We have made it much easier to upload the different items, and improved usability a lot.

Then there is the new Mail-section.
We have divided it into 3 parts:
- Message-list (top left)
- Selected message (bottom left)
- Contacts / Friends / Blocks
There are also some new icons at the top, and the 3 first ones have tooltips saying "Inbox", "System messages" and "Sent items". Clicking one of them will update the message-list accordingly, so we finally have the much requested "Sent items" view. :)
Most of the other icons here are rather self-explaining, and not new, except for the flag. This is just a way of "flagging" a message, in case one is something you wish to get back to later. Flagged messages will show a little flag in the message-list, you'll see when the time comes. All of these buttons have tooltips which will explain them, of course.

The message-list doesn't need a lot of explaining, and as you can see it shows clearly which message you have currently selected.

The Selected-message section should also be easy enough to understand.

The "contact-list" on the right has 3 views, named Contacts, Friends and Blocks. clicking on one of the three buttons there will of course update the list to show your selected list, be it friends, contacts or blocked managers.

So, pretty straight-forward :)

We have also given the forums a little do-over, and this is the result:
- Better top-navigation throughout the forums
- Some pretty new smileys are available
- Smilies will now be inserted at your cursor's postition when writing, rather than at the end (when you click on them in the list)
- No more double-posting if you happen to hit F5 to reload
- A handy "quickview-list" of threads in the selected forum also when you are inside a thread, for easier navigation.
- A pretty darn cool design
- Support for easy-to-use-multiple-post-quoting (huh, say again??) (no worries, you'll understand when you use it)
- Limitied the Quote-levels to 1 to keep threads more tidy (again, you will understand when you use it)

The last screenshot today, is of the new Player Details popup, the one you get when you click on a player. It should also be pretty straight-forward, so I won't bore you with an explanation. But it looks pretty cool though!

See, I said this was going to be a long entry :)
And this is where it gets REALLY intresting for those who have been playing for a while....The list of changes you can expect...
Now, before I give you the list, along with my comments, please note the following:
The list IS INCOMPLETE, as testing WILL influence this list.
The list IS incomplete, as it does not list all the GUI-changes tied to the new design. The list is a list of important changes to the game-system, new features, and other items it is important to mention.
Finally, the list is INCOMPLETE, as some things didnt't work out as well as we had hoped. So we wil change some things here regardless.
However, what the list does show, is the direction in which we are heading with these changes, what you can expect, and possibly "warn" you about changes that might affect your choices in the time before the changes are "live".

So, let's go:

### New teams
New teams will now start with 10 millions more than before to ease their start and increase their enjoyment and options during their first season.

Making life a little easier for fresh teams, allowing them to buy 1 more player they "need"

### Transfers
There are now more information in each bid-message you get, not just that someone has made a new offer for one of your players...This makes it easier to track a "bidding round" so to speak..
When you are outbid, the notification-message will now show who placed the higher bid, and how much it was.
The page previously known as OFFERS, now called My Transfers, has a lot of new functionality and information.
The former +/- 9.9 Quality limitation has now been changed to + 9.9 only (No downward limit)
The former limitation to young players you wanted to sack has been removed, so you can sack anyone you want
Sacked players are no longer deleted from the system. In stead, they "go on vacation" for a while (the exact time is random, but he will be gone for "several" hours to avoid cheating), then they enter the market as teamless players.
Buying a player does not always reduce your teamstats any longer. The first 3 purchases every season will not touch your team-stats, whereas every purchase afterwards will reduce your teamstats quite a bit more than before per purchase. Stats with a value of 70 or more will drop as much as 3 points per purchase, then 2 points down to 60, and then 1 point.
New feature: Autoaccept : You can specify an amount for the player that will force you to sell him. A handy way to draw attention to your players, and to avoid the risk of non-responsive sellers.

These changes all aim to balance the transfer-market a bit, providing new teams with a chance to pick up sacked old players from better teams etc.
Also, we get rid of the stupid need to have rubbish players on good team to drag down their average quality. Now they can always buy a Q72, Q73 or whatever Q they want.
The change in affected teamstats is to combat "full rebuilding" , and to remove the punishment of normal players who buy 1-3 players per season.

### Economy
- The fortune-tax has been increased from 2,5% to 4% , but players with less than 100 millions will still not pay any fortune-tax at all.
- The Agent-fees have been increased from 0.5-3 % to 2.5-10%.

These are just continuation-updates in handeling the inflation. Normal teams are not serisouly affected.

### Training
All training is now handeled in the same section, with a new interface.
Click on a players attribute to train it, plain and simple..
It is now a bit more efficient to train your youngest players through normal training than it used to be. At the same time, it is a little less efficient to train them in friendlies. (!)
The learning-curve based on age has been modified a little also, adjusted a bit to make it easier to learn if you are older, and harder if you are younger.
Bottom line is, it will now take longer to gain a lot of attributes for young players. (!)

The changes in the training-setup are brand new, when it comes to the learning-curve. We need to look carefully at this, and see if we can manage to compare it with the real game.
The main reason behind this change is to try to flatten out the actual gaining-curve a bit. It is one of many changes to stats and gaining. Please note the change under Season Change BBQ.

### Friendlies
You can now issue open challenges to teams from higher, lower or the same division as you are in.
Simple statistics has been added to the friendlies page, about Win-percentage etc
The number of friendlies you can play per season has been dropped from 250 to 200.
The max-income per friendly has been INCREASED from 250.000 to 300.000 to compensate financially for the drop in friendlies.
The time-limit of 5 minutes between accepting open challenges, has been reduced to 3 minutes.
The time-limit above is set to 0 once you issue an open challenge.
It is now a bit more efficient to train your youngest players through normal training than it used to be. At the same time, it is a little less efficient to train them in friendlies.

The number of friendlies have been reduced to further reduce the max gain possible in a season. It also reduces the amount of time required to play ML on a "pro" level a bit.

### Season-change
The "BBQ-effect" has been completely rewritten. It will no longer drop stats that have not been increased during a season, unless the player is 32 years old or more. This will have a rather great impact on stats in the long term, so we shall monitor the situation carefully. The most immidiate benefit comes to our new players, specially those who start late in a season, as they would quickly end up with a team much worse than they started (with with the old setup).

I hope this will make it less frustrating for new players who often see their team becoming worse after the first season-change than it was when they started.
This is also something that will have a huge effect on overall stat-gains in the game, allthough there will be less difference for those training their players very hard.

### Simulator
The performance-calculation for goalies has been slightly changed, and should give a better view of what they did.
New match-types have been implemented for League Cup and Department Cup matches
Some new invisible features have been added to support the real-time stats and event-cards in the new match-report
See notes about "learning" under Training.

As you can see, there are not a lot of feature-changes in the simulator, apart from the required changes to make the new match-report work as it should.

### Messages
You now have access to your Sent Messages
You can now choose to view Only System-sent messages (new bids, stadium upgrades, sponsor bonsus payouts etc)
Messages can now be flagged for easier retrieval
The right-side of the new messages page gives you easy access to Contacts, Friends and Blocked users