Subject: »[JNRS] Junior Schools

So next week I will face Man Utd again for the 3rd time in 5 games lol. The youth league fixtures are so unrandom/rubbish.

It is shocking how neglected the junior side is. They could do so much more, especially about training, and make this game more attractive.

There's an attitude problem amongst the people in charge, there always has been.

If it's a big problem, it's too big to fix.

If its a small problem, it's too small to matter. Ignoring that having 100 small problems is a pretty big problem.

That's not really true, they plan to fix the youth school, but they are doing things step by step (and usually the make wrong choices / mess up the details, but that's another story) and they have very limited funds, so things go extremely slow since 2 or 3 years.

Saying that Youth School should be fixed is easy, there are obvious details that can be added like a foreign youth chance etc.

But I'm yet to see an idea how to actually properly fix the youth school in order to make it more interesting / controllable and at the same time not messing up the game dynamics with producing too many stars compared to now.

It's on their priority list, but IMO they will just mess up the youth school and the end result with be worse than we have now.

How to tell you are in a junior league without saying you are in a junior league...

Previous round:
1:1 Armitage Shanks - Cycle of Bikes
0:1 Chuck Norris FC - Linkin Park
1:1 Padstow Rovers - Stiffs
1:1 Northern Thistle - Eudaimonia FC
1:1 SQUEEZERS - Elmstead Legends
1:1 Thamesmead Town FC - Man United 1995-96

Has there ever been a discussion in the past about some sort of user buyout? Has Greg ever considered selling Sokker? I wonder what it's even worth. Does anyone know the Plus subscriber number? There is so much talent across the userbase, along with understanding what is good for the game or not, the game could really thrive again.

I think Plus subscribers are usually about 10% on average of the whole user base (In England when we had about 120 users, it was 12%). Plus costs about £3pm, or £36pa.

User numbers right now are 9,000 (right now there are 2,500 logged in), so i estimate Sokker generates around £32k per year revenue in Plus subs.

Perhaps the game is worth a touch more than i thought, i can't imagine server costs can be that dramatic, nor staffing...i'd be surprised if anyone works on the game full time any more.

I missed there are other sub options, but oddly, an annual sub is actually more expensive than doing it monthly (i think)...

The Plus subscriber numbers are on Sokker-Manager I think. My understanding is that there was a partial buyout a few years back.

I do think the community is under utilised in a sense. The users have kept this game going basically since it's inception, filling in the cracks, finding fixes and tools to get around all the problems. I firmly believe that a handful of voluntary coders let loose could sort of so many of the things that need fixing, but it'll never happen. Greg is a control freak and despite the fact that he's no longer interested in this game, he's still roadblocking a lot of suggestions.

That buyout really changed nothing as ultimately only greg does the coding.

That's not true, the coding is actually done by people hired from outside. I think greg does no coding at the moment anymore, unfortunately he is the one who created and understands the match engine code:P

@Dougnut_jimmy
There was a partial buyout like 5 or 6 years ago by Raul and his friend. They've got some % of the game and their "buy-in money" was all spent on re-writing the code (not ME), fixing layout and all other things that were done so far (Int Cup, new training system, new fanmood system, new league system etc.). Unfortunately that money dried up like 2 years ago or more already.

If not for the investment of new partial owners, the game would probably be dead already because previous owners didn't intend to invest the money to rewrite the code for match viewer etc. and all that was written in adobe Flash, which stopped working in 2020.

I know I was disgusted with Padstow for ruining the results in the league last night ;)

In other weeks there have been virtually all 0-0 too.

Simple fixes would be to play every team home and away and that be the season. Another would be to maybe give a player their outfield position maybe, I had an outfielder get a 9 last night! a 9!

I mean that's the youth league, who actually cares about that. I meant fixing the youth school as in the incoming youths / distribution / less random luck and more knowledge/skill etc.

It would be good if we could see a talent range from the start and a what position they may be.

I don't necessarily care about the youth league hence I have such a young team playing weekly, but it does het boring playing against the same teams and obviously the match quality literally stinks. lol

A lot of problems could be sorted simply by revealing the player skills. As it is, it's complete nonsense.

Player skills and actual talent would be the dream ;)