• MatzeG
• 2020-04-24

Dev. Diary 3: Status of work

Today we will inform you about things that we are already working on and describe some elements that we changed or will change in the upcoming days. As mentioned in our first news Flash replacement is our main priority right now. We will give you more details about that and about some other improvements.

Flash
The process to replace Flash started a few weeks ago. We already found developers who rewrite all the game elements based on Flash. The work needs to be completed step by step, of course, and the most time-consuming parts, e.g. the match engine, need a lot of work and patience. In the upcoming days we will replace a few Flash elements like:
1. Stadium viewer
2. Players portraits
3. Post game summary and statistics

We have already been working on the match kits configurator and the tactic editor. They still need to be improved in the upcoming weeks however.
We will also fix the problem with Google Chrome and the 2D match viewer. It will only be a temporary solution, but it should help some users to enjoy the game until the new visualization is completed.

Game engine – code upgrade
Parallel to replacing Flash we also started rewriting the back end, especially the “daily update”, which pushes the game forward day by day. Due to outdated technology some pieces of code need to be replaced with PHP. Our work on that part will be invisible for users (and also doesn’t affect gameplay), but it is necessary to give us a chance to implement any other, more advanced changes connected with Sokker and its game mechanics.

Leagues - reorganization
For now we have a lot of abandoned divisions in Sokker. There is also some potential for reducing the number of leagues at some levels. After the current season we will merge leagues and delete unnecessary divisions.
This should lead to more exciting rivalries between new managers, since they are facing more human controlled teams even in the lowest divisions. We will also drastically reduce the number of bot teams.

Other changes
300 sec. match viewer waiting time deleted – We decided to remove that element. Users without Plus will not be forced to wait for their game to start. To be honest – video-advertisments before the game will be introduced with the full relaunch of the game, but for sure with shorter duration than before. The advertising on YouTube is the best benchmark for it, with an included countdown button.

Relegation bug in junior leagues – There is a bug, that allows users to stay in their junior division even if they are endangered with direct relegation. Using the withdraw option and then joining the league later again, managers can reset their position and start a new season in the same division. That bug will be fixed and withdrawing a junior team will result in relegation to the lower level league.

• MatzeG
• 2020-04-17

Dev. Diary 2: MAIN ASSUMPTIONS

Today we would like to share with you our main assumptions, in terms of the changes we are working on. Thanks a lot for the exciting discussions at Sokker Development forum, sharing your best ideas and a very clear vision of what is most important for you in the game.

The assumptions we have prepared will keep us straight in evaluating different solutions, creating new ones and help us as a guide for the game development direction.

GAME SPIRIT

First of all we would like to share with you the things, that won’t change. After last week's consultations via forum we see practically full compliance. Moreover, we also fully agree with you about some major points:

Game without pay2win – Competitions were honest and this won't change. We don’t want to develop any paid bonuses giving a real advantage over players without a subscription. Of course the game needs revenue to be developed (especially in case of needed changes), so that's why we'll work on PLUS ideas to make it more attractive, but you won't be able to “buy” a better place in league or any other improvements.

Game engine, tactics and 2d matches – These things will be changed only as much, as it’s necessary according to technical problems (flash expiration, new code, etc.). We believe, that one of most important game advantages is the option to make a real impact with tactics and to see how our ideas are executed by the players on the field. Visualization is simple and intuitive. We will develop it, but we will try not to lose its original spirit.

Simplicity – The main aspects of Sokker are easy and simple to learn. It’s also easy to notice the impact of our decisions on various elements of the game. We will avoid unnecessary new elements and try to focus on upgrading and extending current ones. Some of the changes and novelties will be designed for more advanced players, but there will be no need to use them for everyone.

Moderate game timing – Sokker is different than a lot of quick mobile games and we believe, that it’s a huge advantage. Our game needs patience and long term thinking, giving a chance to fit for different players. There is no huge difference between everyday players or those, who have much less time. But, few elements will be changed for sure – according to the fact, that the current length of a whole season is a barrier for new players.

Community – Being a Sokker community member is not only building your own best club, it's also the atmosphere and fun around the game. We'll keep an eye on forum and relationships and try to make them alive. There is no need to change too much in that area, but for sure we'll add some improvements which can benefit conversations.


CHANGES

So, what will be changed? Here you can find the main game areas that need to be upgraded or developed from scratch. These are not final ideas – it’s a kind of overall map for you, to point out the most important priorities to be addressed.

Play to win – The current game mechanism is demotivating for players focused on results. We will propose some solutions to change that, giving extra motivations for winning, new official competitions to fight in. One of the biggest issues is, that club development is possible only by using a second match in the week for training. That lead us to some upgrades about the training system (but one training update per week on Thursday will not change). Our new idea is to avoid forcing managers to let all their players play for training.

Competition optimization – We want to address the issue of the extremely long season in Sokker (only 3 full seasons per year, which is demotivating for many new players) and also give managers a chance to join different kinds of tournaments. We will propose a new competition idea, with some small game acceleration, to make the season shorter, and to add a completely new Cup. We want to present our ideas for consultation in the upcoming weeks.

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.

Easy to learn, hard to master – Sokker is an easy game and it should stay that way. But many game areas have a great potential to be extended, as long as the manager is given the choice to explore them or not. We want to let you some freedom to decide how deep you want to dive in. It’s a kind of a major development philosophy we will follow. It will be implemented in different areas, from game interface to stadium or youth school management. It’s also most important for beginners, to give them guidance and the right path to learn the game step by step (few options will even be blocked for new managers).

Goals and achievements – Only a few managers are able to fight for the highest prizes, since there are not too many places in the top divisions. But we know, that everyone of you has individual goals and aspirations about different game challenges. That’s why we will develop new, more feasible achievements, starting with seasonal goals, a more detailed team history and progresses presentation, ending with some new ranks and statistics, not only connected with game results.

Storytelling – This is a very important point for us, but untill now it is almost non-existing in this game. A lot of users tell stories for themselves, create own rankings, summaries, club articles, or even some “Sokker news” initiatives. We believe that most of you want to feel that history of your club being alive. Managers write their own stories, create legendary players and the game world is dynamic and full of events. We will apply storytelling on a few areas:

Dedicated „pressroom” page – Here we will see news about our club and competitions, but also reports from our staff, like training summary or tips from our assistant, and many more.

Extended statistics and records – This will give you a chance to follow different rankings and summaries, based on team, competition or players.

“Follow” option – You'll get the ability to follow news about some other parts of the game – national teams, contests, specific players, etc.

Bot teams elimination – Sokker is most attractive when we compete with real players. Therefore clubs without managers will be withdrawn from competitions at the end of the season.

New graphic design and UX – We need to redesign game graphics and user experience, to make it suitable for current times. We will focus on new players, to give them a chance to engage in the game and learn it with some tutorial help. For some fans of the classic design: There is no need to worry, we will keep the old graphic as an option, too.

Summarizing: As you can see, the areas that we are working on are not a revolution for the game. We rather focus on the best parts, to improve and rebuild them if needed. The development process will be long enough to give the managers a chance to fit into the new reality and adjust their club strategy.

In the upcoming months we will share more detailed solutions with you, divided on specific areas, to consult them more closely and one by one.

• MatzeG
• 2020-04-10

Development Diary 1: COMMUNICATION & CONSULTATIONS

Let us introduce first publication of weekly cycle about Sokker development. For the start we will present our ideas for project transparency and overall communication, closely linked with community involvement and consultations, to give you possibilities to affect our direction and upcoming range of changes.

COMMUNICATION

Development Diaries – every next Friday you can expect another work summary. In that kind of news we will publish different scopes of information’s – focused on already made upgrades and changes, sometimes based of prepared ideas, or encourage you for discussion about specific range. Our main principle is to keep project regularity and transparency.

Sokker Development (en) – we created dedicated forum, pin up as default for any user. Its purpose is not only to take over “Ideas” forum role (so give you chance to share own ideas and update requests), but also to create a place for complex game development communication. You will find there any news and information published by Dev’s and general discussion about all changes.

Please note: creating new forum doesn’t mean, that we will forget about “Ideas” forum. All threads gathered there will be soon researched and analysed in terms of our current work.


CONSULTATIONS

As we mentioned in Monday announcement about Sokker Development Project, we believe that community involvement is a necessary part of whole process, to keep proper “game spirit” and use its full potential.

From the early beginning your engagement is noticed, we receive and read lot of great ideas. But to give them a chance to get realized we need to organize the way of working between us, prepare form and sequence of applications. Discussion will be proceeded in stages, to set specific topics and areas to start consultations with.

At Sokker Development (en) you can find first three consultations threads:

„Sokker – main motivation” – we would like to know what is essential for “game spirit” for you, what exactly keeps you in the game for such a long time.

„Most expected change” – from the other side, we would like to read about opposite – most annoying, demotivating part of the game, that maybe sometimes even makes you to think about leaving.

„Begginers problems” – with game development we need to make Sokker more attractive for new users, so we will be glad to hear your opinion about new managers and problems they force, why it’s so hard for them to keep playing?

As you can see, we will start with some general discussions, but extremely important. Based on your responses and thoughts we will set some crucial game values and project assumptions, to find a clear guidance for game development direction, choosing new ideas and evaluate relevance of proposed solutions.

Hope to meet you soon at Sokker Development (en), we count on your help and knowledge!

• MatzeG
• 2020-04-06

We are pleased to announce that the terms of the Sokker investment agreement have been reached. The purpose of this agreement is to keep continuous improvement and work on further updates which has already started.

As per the agreement, the game is granted funds for further development and two new people join the group of owners – Raul and Mekene. They also join the group of game’s developers and give us support in project management, marketing and game design. Both of them know Sokker almost from its beginnings, therefore we are more than happy to have them truly engaged on-board, devoted to the spirit of the game.

The Sokker improvement plan involves the two-stage activities:
1. Securing the stability of the game in the case of Flash support expiration on web browsers. In the coming months, specific elements of the game, written in this technology, will be replaced. Starting with smaller elements, ending with the most time-consuming visualization of matches.
2. Upgrading the game significantly, which hasn't been done in recent years. We plan to implement couple of changes like adapting the game to the up-to-date reality and current standards, including both- enhancing interface, UX, graphics, but also the gameplay itself (additional options, changes and improvements to some of the current functionalities). Also, the entire back-end of the game will need to be rewritten and updated. The effective date of these changes will not come before the first stage of work is completed.

SK community will be kept informed as the work progresses. Meanwhile we are planning a wide review of implemented changes, remaining open to new ideas. Hope we can count on your support!
We strongly believe that this is a turning point in Sokkers history and the return to its best days.

• MatzeG
• 2019-02-18

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 18th of February and end on the 3rd of March, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• MatzeG
• 2018-10-28

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 29th of October and end on the 11th of November, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• MatzeG
• 2018-07-08

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 9th of July and end on the 22nd of July, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• MatzeG
• 2018-03-19

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 19th of March and end on the 1st of April, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• MatzeG
• 2017-11-26

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 27th of November and end on the 10th of December, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

• MatzeG
• 2017-08-07

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 7th of August and end on the 20th of August, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!