• struś
• 2022-03-11

Since publication of the previous Dev Diary there have been a lot of questions and requests for clarification of provided information. Moreover, there was created dedicated topic on international forum where anyone could ask for additional details of the reform.
I will try to answer to the first set of these questions in today`s edition of DD. I hope, it will help You to prepare properly enough for the upcoming season.

GAMEPLAY CALENDAR
I think the figure below will provide answers to most of Your questions:


NEW LEAGUES ASSIGNMENT - clarification
With the end of the current season, the teams without owners will be withdrawn from the game so in the new league system they could be replaced by new, active users.
These bot-teams won't be completely removed from the game. If any of their previous owners will decide to join our community once again, he or she will be able to reclaim his or her team and start again from the lowest division in his or her country.
The teams which were assigned to new users in recent weeks will be assigned as all other teams in the new league system. There will be no new rules for treating them in any special way and we acknowledge the fact that some of them will be given single league promotion "for free".

JUNIOR LEAGUES
The structure of the junior leagues will not be changed but the number of matches played in junior league will be decreased and adapted to the new length of season which is 13 rounds.

NATIONAL TEAMS
Matches of national teams, both junior and senior ones, will be played on Saturdays.
World Cup preliminaries will feature groups up to 6 teams. This will let their duration to be reduced to 10 weeks. The detailed rules of awarding promotions to the World Cup finals will be presented in the next announcement.
Work on the mechanism to share skills of NT players with NT coaches will be conducted during the season. The exact term of releasing this functionality is unknown.

TRAINING
Please take note that there might be a case when a player will play club match on Friday and national team match on Saturday. And, according to the rules, in such case he will receive training basing to the formation which was set during national team match. Potential performance in the Sunday or Wednesday match will let You reconfigure that training to the formation which was ultimately selected in the club match.
Another problem might occur when the player will receive a red card during the Sunday match which will exclude him from the Wednesday match, and thus he will only receive training appropriate to the part of the match he played before getting the red card.
In case of appearing in several different formation during the week, only the last match will be taken into account, exclusively.
- Example One: player who played in three different matches with formations MID-DEF-MID respectively, will be trained as if he would play only the last match with a MID formation order.
- Example Two: player who played in three different matches with formations MID-DEF-DEF respectively, will be trained as DEF according the same rules as currently with two matches played in the trained formation.
We are aware of the issues mentioned above, but they won't be resolved during the transition season. The increased number of players which might be trained is itself enough to compensate that inconvenience.

INJURIES
Due to increased intensity of matches calendar, the following changes will be introduced:
- injury proneness of players will be reduced
- average duration of injury will also be reduced
Additional change in the matter of National Team games is also being considered. More details soon.

SERVER PERFORMANCE
Along with gameplay reform, the game will be moved to the new server. This should cause:
- daily updates to be much faster and more stable,
- lack or at least significant reduction of delays of the league matches.

ATTENTION! Works on the server environment will be taken between 18.03 and 20.03 CET. We do not plan to disable the website but there might be availability problems so it is advised to avoid putting players on transfer list so they would have transfer deadline during these days.

[URL=https://info.flagcounter.com/cuqF][/URL]

• _james
• 2022-02-14

Let me start by sharing a few personal thoughts with you. There are news that you write because you have to, and there are also news when you enjoy typing every single letter, the announcement of which is the culmination of many months of hard work. The announced effect is the beginning of something long awaited, and the changes introduced are not only technical maintenance of the game, but its significant development. Therefore, with great satisfaction, on behalf of the entire Sokker Team, I announce that the start of the new season will be preceded by the long awaited reform of the tournament structure! ~Raul

THE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES:
- Extending the composition of each league - from the current 8 to 12 teams.
- Changing the calendar of competitions. The season will be reduced to 13 weeks in which matches will be played according to the scheme: league matches on Wednesdays and Sundays, cup / friendly matches on Fridays. Each team will play 22 league matches in a season instead of 14.
- Change of promotion rules. Most importantly, from the next season, league winners will always be promoted directly. On the other hand, teams in 2nd place will have their chance in play-offs. Places 3-6 will be safe, teams ranked 10-12 will demote directly, and those ranked 7-9 will have to defend their league presence in play-offs. We hope that this will affect the fierceness and attractiveness of the competition and each team will be committed to fighting for its goal throughout the season. Link to the new tournament calendar

NECESSARY ADJUSTMENTS:
- The new system assumptions are that each lower league level has 3 times more teams than the preceding higher one, and therefore: 1 x 1st league, 3 x 2nd leagues, 9 x 3rd leagues, 27 x 4th leagues, etc. This change makes possible introduction of new promotion and relegation system, but also makes each level more exclusive and prestigious.
- The effect of the reform will be a change in the total number of teams at each league level. While the I and II levels of the game will increase their numbers, starting from the third league number of teams will be reduced. This is exactly illustrated by this table.
- The above changes require a new assignments to individual leagues. At the beginning of next season, old leagues will be reset and ALL teams will be assigned to the new leagues based on their performance this season, creating completely new composition of each league. We describe the rules of attribution in detail below.


RULES OF ASSIGNMENT TO NEW LEAGUES:
1. We play play-offs, promotions and relegations, as usual, at the end of the season.
2. We keep the score (points, goals) with which a given team was relegated or promoted.
3. We delete teams without players (e.g. in PL there are nearly 400 teams).
4. We sort the teams according to the collective tables of a given level of the game, assuming that:
- First, we sort the teams that fell from a higher league level (direct relegations from higher leagues, and play-off losers from higher leagues)
- Then the teams that stayed at the given level (losers in play-off for higher level, winners in play-off for current level, and safe places 2-4)
- At the end, we sort the teams that have advanced to a given level (direct promotions from lower leagues, and play-off winners from lower leagues)
5. We remove all bot teams from the rankings. We adopt one rule: no login in the last 50 days. These teams will not be completely removed and if the owner returns someday, he will be able to resume the game with his own team, with his own resources, but from the lowest league level.
6. The tables created in this way will be the basis for assignment to new leagues.

NECESSARY BUT UNPOPULAR EFFECTS:
- As described above, the number of middle and lower levels of the game will decrease.
- The consequences of the change in the number of teams at a certain level will be situations in which:
a) teams that, according to the old system, would be promoted to a higher level, will remain at the current level.
b) teams that, according to the old system, would remain at the current level, will be assigned to a lower league.
- It is math, and a necessary, one-time adjustment.
- We hope that the increased possibility of promotion from next season and the greater attractiveness of the tournament will be a compensation for the owners of these teams.
- Despite many hours devoted to searching for solutions, in order to introduce changes, it was not possible to find a better solution. It is a necessary, but probably unpopular, effect.

THE EFFECT OF CHANGE ON TRAINING:
- Awaited by you, training reform will not start until the season after, so the next season will be a transitional period. New rules of the game, but still the old rules of training.
- Consequently, thanks to 3 "training" matches every week, it will be possible to train more players: e.g. 3 players with GK, 9 ATT, 15 MID or DEF and as many as 33 players training pace.
- It is also a small gift for you for your patience - use it for the season, in the next season there will be new rules.
- Shortening the season will reduce the number of trainings from 16 to 13 possible so far. Remember this when planning the careers of your pupils.

In final words, we hope the competition next season will be as fierce as the discussion under this post! Good luck to all of you! ~Raul

• _james
• 2022-01-09

In December, we made changes to the way we select players for a match. These are quite unique changes - we had them introduced to the old composition view, without replacing it with a new view, like we did with other subpages implemented so far. We opted for such a change due to the fact that this was a key view that discouraged new users from playing Sokker. We know from the research that it caused the most problems, it was unintuitive and without help of someone experienced, new player was practically unable to correctly set up squad for a match.
As the corrections made are for the old view, we were a bit limited with options. We improved the most key elements, further development of this view will continue in the future in form of a completely new version of it. However, it will be largely based on these changes.

The key changes we made:
1. Ability to view the skills of each player.
2. Select and place players, instead of selecting from the drop-down list.
3. View of all players from our club.
4. Highlighted injured players.
5. Highlighted incorrect match orders (e.g. too many of them).
6. We moved all squad editing options to the squad setting screen (i.e. the ability to load settings from another match).
7. The squad setup screen is now the first view that we move to when setting the squad (not the summary as before - it caused a lot of problems for new players who did not understand how to edit options from the list).
8. We added a pop up message informing you that you need to save changes when you try to exit the page view.
9. After changing a tactic, its preview reloads (previously it was necessary to refresh the page).

We are aware that, after the changes, conditional commands for a given match from which we are loading the line-up are not loaded. Unfortunately, it is quite time-consuming for this option to work after the changes. We plan to restore it, but it is not a priority.
At the same time, we are aware that a lot of controversy was caused by an error, as a result of which managers of national teams were able to see players’ skills on this screen. The bug has been fixed, but we understand that this is a step backwards. Therefore, we would like to remind you at this point that we already announced the idea for a tool that will solve this problem. A checkbox will appear in the profile of your players, selecting which will make the skills of a given player visible to the manager of given national team. Thus, the decision whether to make a player visible to NT coach will remain with users. However, it will not be necessary to update players. Their skills will be visible to the national team manager on an ongoing basis (also in the squad selection view). This feature will be added as soon as the league reform work is completed, which is currently our top priority.

In upcoming weeks we will introduce you to the exact rules of the league reform that will take a place at the start of the new season. We know that you need the most accurate information, but for now we can reveal that it is worth competing for the highest possible seed in terms of this reform. That's why we encourage you to compete in leagues with full commitment and play for the highest league positions and promotions.

• _james
• 2021-11-28

We are back with the long-awaited next update on our progress. There is an interseasonal break ahead of us which is a very important time for us to implement significant changes in the game code. It will allow further development of a comprehensive update of the code for morning updates. This affects all the game mechanisms that take place in the background and they are usually updated every morning and push the game forward - starting from league schedule, through promotions, relegations, as well as all cyclical events from training to junior recruitment or sponsorship calculations. The existing code responsible for all these actions was outdated and did not allow us to introduce further changes related to the game mechanics (training reform, but also the reform of the league system or the announced changes in junior schools).

This weekend (November 27-28) we plan to implement new code because it is the safest time for such a big change. Lack of official matches will allow us to correct any errors on an ongoing basis without causing too much inconvenience to players. We believe that the change will go smoothly but the risk of new problems that we did not find on the test server still exists.

Implementation of the new update will not introduce ANY new elements to the game. This is a change of the game code to a newer one, suitable for further work but it will not change anything in the current gameplay.
It is at the same time a key change for further reforms to be implemented - the league system reform as well as the training reform. After implementing the new code, we will begin preparations for implementing both reforms that we are planning for the next season (61).
The competition reform will be a priority for us. We predict that its implementation in season 61 is practically certain. The training reform, on the other hand, can be implemented simultaneously, or a season later. It depends on the development issues - how well will reforms work together from a code standpoint, and whether all the necessary tests (e.g., training speed, etc.) will go smoothly.

We know that you all look forward to seeing new changes in the game. We are trying with our entire team to implement them as soon as possible but we must balance between the intensity of subsequent implementations and the risk of errors as well as the logic of subsequent changes which are often related to each other and arise from each other. We are doing everything in our power to complete the project as soon as possible.

To comment on the latest changes, we would like to briefly summarize that we have implemented a new view of the team composition, we have corrected several minor bugs related to the previously introduced views, we have also added the option to save the player's login. Soon, we will prepare separate DD about all this.
Currently we are working on the next views: the new finance tab (works are already well advanced, we should implement it in the game in the coming weeks) and the new club tab (we are looking to implement it by the end of December).

• _james
• 2021-11-22

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 homepage of the respective country, then click on National Team (Senior or U21), and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country's 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.

Elections end on the 5th of December, so start preparing your speeches, questions for candidates, and vote!

• _james
• 2021-09-12

We are pleased to announce that we have almost completed work on two new pages which will soon be introduced in the game. These are already available for testing but still have some bugs and our team of developers is working on its final version.


New Home Page

The first of these pages is the new Sokker start page. It has been prepared in accordance with the new graphics. It is adapted to both PCs and mobile devices.

You can check it out here:
https://sokker.org/app/pl

The website is already operational, the registration and login options are also working. Soon, we will also add screenshots from the game itself and some preview screenshots of Sokker matches. After the tests are over, it will be the only home page of the Sokker and the current one will be replaced by it.


New matches list view

The other page is the new view of our team's matches. We have arranged it in the form of a list, which is much clearer than the current version of the presentation of matches in two columns. In this case, we are still working on the aesthetics (too many colors, some too bright), not all options work and there is no filtering by season (it will be available soon).

You can see it here:
https://sokker.org/app/season/schedule

Nevertheless, the view improves many functions. Within it, the following options will be available:
1. Simple color marking of the match type;
2. Marking empty slots for friendly and arcade matches;
3. Positioning the site on the current week [/color]the current week (the next match in the middle of the screen);
4. A separate tab with arcade matches (it will be separated from regular matches to simplify the view);
5. Of course, all items on the list will be links (to teams or competitions).


Next steps

Parallel to making corrections to these two new tabs, we are already in a very advanced stage of the work on the next subpage - the new version of the finance tab (with significantly expanded statistics). As a reminder - here you can see its appearance and functionalities:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/891825ba-8631-45da-9d35-8eb62d7f3b6d-dc4b/?fullscreen


Changes in training and the league system

We are also working intensively on this element. Unfortunately, we are not able to declare whether we'll be able to implement both changes at the beginning of the next season. This is currently our highest priority, and we will devote 80% of our backend resources to the training system in September - but it is also a very complex change. We can already see various complications related to the reform. We will try to provide the exact implementation dates in the next Dev. Diary. We are aware that the planned reform is currently the most important to players.

• _james
• 2021-08-02

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 homepage of the respective country, then click on National Team (Senior or U21), and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country's 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.

Elections end on the 15th of August, so start preparing your speeches, questions for candidates, and vote!

• Matsuyama
• 2021-07-27

The holiday season was not helpful to keep our frequent communication, but today we make up for it with a long entry describing the status of our work. We hope that the numerous changes that appeared on the server made up for lack of information.

Training reports - beta version

You have been able to find a new tab on the Training page for several weeks - "Main Team Progress" showing the progress of all players in the form of a table.

Clicking on a given player from the list opens the training history of a particular player from week to week. This option has been activated this week. We can’t wait for you to try it. There may still be bugs with this view and improvements are underway as soon as this week.

The most important functionalities of the new training reports:

1. Marking of all skill changes of players;
2. Possibility to sort the players by any filter;
3. Logs training type and number of minutes played in all types of games;
4. History of the player's training (PLUS users have access to archival data for the entire duration of the subscription).

During the tests, the tab is available to everyone. Ultimately it will be a functionality only for PLUS users.

We are currently working on the following fixes:

1. Correct counting of minutes played (errors appear in case of injuries and international matches);
2. Marking the weeks in which the player was injured;
3. Improving the readability of the training history of a given player (squeezing the elements);
4. Adding picture of the player;
5. Adding hyperlinks to the player's profile or nationality;
6. Various other minor bugs, such as improvement of separators in amounts, overlapping texts, etc.

This is not all the news on training reports!

Work is underway on the "Weekly Report" card, which will be a simplified view of training changes in our team. It will contain information about the type of training and about coaches, the progress in the junior team and on a new graph visualization. It will include a scrollbar scrolling function and it will mark weeks in which the athlete missed training.


New transfers - a list with a summary of conducted transfers

Another big element that we managed to implement is a completely new tab summarizing the transfers carried out. This is the default tab that opens after entering the Transfers page and there we can find a list of all players that we are trying to buy or sell.

Functionalities of this element are:

1. More extensive player statistics visible at a glance (age, value);
2. Possibility to see the player's skills without going to his profile;
3. Possibility to bid a player from the list without going to the profile;
4. Changes refreshing live, we can follow the progress of the auction from the list view;
5. Information on the number of clubs interested in the player;
6. Possibility to remove the observation of a player;
7. Possibility of observing the player without having to bid him in the auction (pin icon in the player's profile);
8. Countdown to the auction end (visible exact second of the end of the auction);
9. Marking the auctions in which we are winning with a green icon.

At the same time, we are also working on some missing elements here, such as coach observations (not yet implemented).

Overview - fixes and changes

A lot of changes have also occurred in the Overview, from a series of fixes for various smaller elements (e.g. adding full financial data for the last season in the finance section, improving various visual elements, etc.), to larger implementations such as the introduction of a completely new section - the calendar with a preview of the current week in the game.

The calendar currently shows only the events that have already taken place, however it will soon be supplemented with hints about events related to the coming days (such as information about when the friendly league rounds are scheduled or when the age of players changes due to the new season).

Team registration automation

We have also entered the 21st century in terms of team registration. Late - but finally we've automated team assignment (vs. admin's manual work up until now). Now, most submissions are accepted by an algorithm that checks account credibility and the team is assigned immediately (unless there are serious doubts about the account). Any further verification takes place in the background. The user can immediately start the exploration of the game.

Automation is already working. It still requires changes to the content of the registration e-mails. We are currently working on rewriting them.


What are we working on now?

In recent months, we have sped up the work significantly and we are very pleased that more and more new features appear in the game and that the changes are starting to become noticeable. We hope that you are also satisfied with the results you are seeing.

In addition to the works mentioned earlier, we are currently working on several new elements:

1. New home page with simplified registration and login process;
2. New training system;
3. Match scenery (for both players - 2D and 3D). We also plan to prepare a 3D player to run on mobile devices;
4. There are also other elements in the queue for programming work - the season view (match calendar and list view of matches) and the view of new, significantly expanded finances (both were presented in dev. diaries);
5. On the other hand, in graphic design, there is a new view of the squad selection.

We hope that you are going to like the changes, we are asking you as always to support our work with PLUS and please invite your friends to join Sokker community!

• _james
• 2021-06-11

Due to vacation we had less communication in recent weeks, but it's finally time for next Developer Diary!
This time we would like to present you our projects about the new Sokker main page = www.sokker.org

You can find our projects trough the link below:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/b3833988-63b2-4ae6-9ed8-6273a4927fc1-e6d0/grid

Sorry for so much Polish text, it was easier for our designer you use native language - of course we will introduce new pages in English, and then linguists will translate them locally.

What is important on presented projects:
1. New main page is quite simple and oriented towards new users - main goal is to introduce the game to beginners and motivate them to register;
2. Registration process is much simpler than it was, and combined with automatic team assignment it will reduce time to create a new team to a minimum;
3. Login page is also simple and embedded into the new design;
4. You can also check how will the main page look on mobile devices.

Hopefully, the new main page will be implemented till the end of the current season.

• _james
• 2021-05-22

Last two weeks we were mainly focused on bug fixing for the Overview page. Most issues seem to be solved, others should be fixed in the upcoming days.
From today we will start with local translations for your native languages, and probably in the upcoming week it should be introduced.

We decided to develop some small features based on the current data displayed in the overview page:
1. Club summary contains current data of your team, we will compare it to the last season's results to make you able to easily asses your team's progress;
2. Same thing will be done with the finance widget, there will be an option to check last year's overall results;
3. We are also developing an option to check competitions other than the "short" league table - national cup (or other cups) will be included in that widget too.

Other important changes:
1. Transfer auto refreshing - probably you noticed that transfers near the end (2 minutes) are auto-refreshed every 4 seconds;
2. Registration page - we decided to make it simpler, we have reduced the number of fields required to register a new team, hopefully it will help us to get more users in the future.

If you still notice any bugs about the Overview please report it on bugs forum.
One of our programmers will continue Overview page development, but the rest of the team moves on to next few challenges: training reports, welcome page and registration process, and match viewer intro.