Subject: »[info] Dev Diary #76: Nothing is Certain Except Taxes

There is not much that is certain in Sokker.
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That's a kind of charm of this game. We like to keep discovering it.
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Therefore, without much commentary, I submit a picture worth more than a thousand words:
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In that thread we allow some general discussion about Dev. Diaries. Happy to hear your comments.

We all historical players love sokker, it's part of our daily routine, I fought with my girlfriend several times because I gave more attention to sokker than to her :-)

we were sad about the fate of sokker and now you are giving us new hope.

so: Thanks! :-)

First of all, I would like to thanks everyone for their effort to make the game better. And here I post some of my thoughts:

GAME SPIRIT
Game without pay2win - definitely agree
Game engine, tactics and 2d matches - Agree as well, no big changes needed. We need to keep the spirit of the game
Simplicity - I agree that basics of all the main game areas are simple to learn (and they will be especially if Tutorial is implemented)
Moderate game timing - I am worried about the impact of shortening the season.
Community - Activity on forum comes with active managers. That is the core.

CHANGES
Play to win - I am worried about the idea of changing the training. I would need a better explanation behind its idea.
Competition optimization - does this correspond with the idea of training changes? Because adding new competitions would affect the current training system. In general, I am for more competitiveness
Game balance - I agree with new teams having problems to reach higher division. I already stressed the problem of the existence of a huge gap between beginners and old users and I support the idea of improving the starting condition for beginners. Overall these changes will need to be very considered very thoughtfully. I think that that the same assumptions as have been made here, should be done solely about game balance and game style you want to support. Because there is a constant threat that the changes could endanger some of the game styles. I disagree that the system promotes daily trading. I am definitely one of the users who had the most trades in sokker history. I will repeat that arcade matches bug must be fixed and then the possibility of buying and selling players will be reduced significantly. Trading is about risking the resources (money, time, training places, line-up places) to make a profit. It comes with a deep knowledge of market, the abity to predict future trends and a longterm planning. I talk here about the trades which take one season or longer. The shorter trades are possible as well, but they are quite rare. For very young players (16-18yrs) there is a possibility to make a huge money if you have luck on big talent and he pops up fast. But for every such player, there are several players which are robberies for buyers. I keep the database of all best players at this age category several seasons back and I have the prices of first purchase and other resells, so I know what I am talking about. Selling any other players than these youngsters on daily bases doesn´t make enough money to even talk about it. Problem might be only number of trades, but here again i point out to the arcade matches bug

Easy to learn, hard to master - I love to have the freedom of choice how to play the game. For me, it is an absolute priority, so it is great to hear this.
Goals and achievements - I support any changes that motivate users to play the game.
Storytelling - We had many initiatives like that in the Czech community. News about top divisions, national teams, even some yellow journalism. It had faded out with the decrease of active community members. Here I point it to what i said in the Community part.
Bot teams elimination - I guess you mean from the divisions which are higher than the one where are new users added? Well let me express you my experience. I have promoted several times from the lowest (4th Czech division to the top division). For me, the inactive users were pretty much as bad opponents as bot teams. Users who logged in just once in a week or two. They didn't make any changes in match settings. It was easy to prepare against them because I knew what they are going to play. They were not active members of the community. I could not discuss the games with them. All I wanted was to get out of such dead leagues. Just bot team elimination from competitions does not eliminate this problem.
New graphic design and UX - I like the option of keeping the old design and I agree that changes in this area are the must to keep up with the competition
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I am worried about the change in the training system after reading this.

New players can reach the top.
Most of the players in lower division simply don't listen to advice.
I have one of the strongest teams in Bosnia, but half of Bosnian managers still think they know the game better than me.


I would also like to add one more thing.

Engine has many issues. It needs work.

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Game balance – With the game's long history it’s easy to notice what areas are not balanced enough. Currently we have a huge number of top players, even in low divisions (like in Poland). The transfer system promotes daily trading and benefits managers, who are slowly gathering their founds to invest after a few seasons in their “dream team”. New players have huge problems to reach higher divisions.
All these issues are very complex and connected, so we need to act carefully and with some different, but consistent solutions. We need to upgrade the game mechanics to create more balance: to give some motivation to reach as high as your team can get, and also to help beginners improving their teams much easier than experienced players. It will be much more difficult to train the best Sokker players and differences between league levels should become less significant. To achieve all that we need to change the game economy, training speed, and a lot of small parameters, that need to be analysed and tested.

this is certainly the most important part and it will be carefully evaluated. Especially with regards to trading on which I'm very much in agreement, as is now very unbalanced the game in favor of traders.
This part is very, very important. Otherwise it makes the game uninteresting and benefits from a unique style of play (the traders).

Game spirit changes and the rest
agree on everything, just a little worried about timing (i hope not too fast, I like our timing and slow play)
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Game balance - this will be "make or break" for old users.

I also am +1 on what slavista said about trading

I don't believe in changing the trade market. Every player must be free to play the game as he likes. If a trader, who puts a lot of effort in the games makes more proffit then he deserves it.

I think having total freedom as a manager is the most important thing about Sokker.

Also making it more easy to rise to the top isn't a good plan i think. I believe in the survival of the fittest in all ways in Sokker. If u can't make it to the top then it means your business isn't working and that you are making the wrong decisions in choosing players, training players , economy and tactics. Only the best players will fight on the top. There is no room for making it easier. This makes it a great challenge for everybody.

I was playing sokker 6-7 years ago and resuming playing was a beautiful thing, but even more beautiful is seeing this attention and new passion that sokker is transmitting to us.

Happy to be plus and to contribute actively to this dream that continues. Long live sokker

cassiopeia to fizz_alin
I don't believe in changing the trade market. Every player must be free to play the game as he likes. If a trader, who puts a lot of effort in the games makes more proffit then he deserves it.

I think having total freedom as a manager is the most important thing about Sokker.

+1 absolutely agree

cassiopeia to cassiopeia
Also making it more easy to rise to the top isn't a good plan i think. I believe in the survival of the fittest in all ways in Sokker. If u can't make it to the top then it means your business isn't working and that you are making the wrong decisions in choosing players, training players , economy and tactics. Only the best players will fight on the top. There is no room for making it easier. This makes it a great challenge for everybody.

+1 as well. Thank you for mentioning this. I think that quality differences between divisions should not become necessarily less significant. I think that actual system is pretty balanced. The only problem is between the division where new teams are put and the one division higher. For more information look at this topic


Game balance
It will be much more difficult to train the best Sokker players and differences between league levels should become less significant.


One more thought on Training:

I saw a discussion on polish forum that Divine skilled players should not be so common. This corresponds with what you are saying here (Currently we have a huge number of top players, even in low divisions (like in Poland).I agree with that. But I don´t want the training to become anymore slower. So perhaps shortening the season a bit (We will propose a new competition idea, with some small game acceleration, to make the season shorter) could solve the problem alone. Only question is how much is a bit - if reducing the number of weeks from 16 to 14 would be enough or if this also means that number of teams in a league and whole division system would have to change (Is that the new competition idea?)

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It's a long post with no concrete what was done last week and not much detail what was accepted from all the threads we posted all week we need details.
Also worried about training it's impossible all the teams to be on top so people finding other beauty and reasons to stay like building best players for NT removing that option they will quit

Calm down. It's just 1 week since they posted the development thing. You can't just decide an idea and start working on it immediately. No need to start complaining within 1 week.
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Play to win – Good. More competitions, like IRL I hope :) Letting the training even if the players don't play (maybe at 50% or something) sounds good too, if the number of players allowed in the team is limited

Competition optimization – Removing the "no games week" could be a good idea, but I guess you are thinking on removing the "round trip"... Not sure if I'm for it

Game balance – This sounds good. Currently, the only way to become greater is by daytrading or by training. Winning matches has barely no influence in the economy. If top divisions sponsors rewarded our teams with much more money, it would be worth to achieve these divisions regardless of the cost in players adquisition, making it more "live for today" rather than "save and spend"

Easy to learn, hard to master – The "easy to learn" part can be improved, certainly. There are areas that could be more intuitive, like the aforementioned stadium, the youth school or the tactics editor. I see the second part quite intriguing :)

Goals and achievements – This seems a great way to motivate new users until they can catch up with olders users

Storytelling – This sounds like a Social Network . Good for the days we are

Bot teams elimination - Good. We don't need more than 7 bots at most to complete the last group of every country. The rest could be eliminated and the human teams rearranged at the end of the season

New graphic design and UX - This was almost mandatory :P

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We didn't say at any point, that everyone will be at top. Take a look for new users, there is huge gap between starting position and most experienced players. We need to give them a chance to grow up and have fun from the game.

About “long post with no concrete” – well, it’s just second Dev. Diary, and to be honest, it’s crucial to give you first some overall perspective, before we will post some solutions. Why? Couse in most cases changes in one area affect another one or more, we need to have clear guidance to evaluate ideas, and about that is todays news.

and how this will help them ?
It will be much more difficult to train the best Sokker players and differences between league levels should become less significant.

it will just remove possibility for them to train NT players