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• _james
• 2020-09-25

This week we are asking you to read some information about few areas of the work that are currently in our focus.

Flash technology
We almost have all the elements prepared for Flash replacement. Match visualization is still in progress, but even that part is 60-70% completed (as it’s the most complex and difficult part). Hopefully, in upcoming few weeks we will introduce them online, after some tests. We hope to successfully replace Flash until the end of November, so it’s even faster than our first deadline, set to the end of the year.

New interface – UX mock ups of the starting page
We are still working on the new interface, so another few views are prepared. Below you can find the link to the Sokker main page, use arrows to also find registration / login pages. Main page is an important point for the experience of new users, and that’s also the reason why we decided to make it a bit more modern and clean. We also decided to split registration process into two stages, verification (using email or social media) & team creator.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/43904ee7-0c34-4df6-9b85-dccf9dc5f747-16c3/screen/32ff7126-8f14-4ef2-b049-8552c8ea6fd6/?fullscreen

Test server
We also almost completed test server preparation. Currently we are tracking down few technical issues and bugs to make it playable (match engine is still not working), and after that, probably in upcoming few weeks, we will ask users for help during the tests. First main task for test server is to check new game update mechanism, before it is implemented in original game.

Formal issues
We are also happy to announce, that after long months of legal preparation, Sokker is changing legal status for new company. Investment agreement is finally confirmed (maybe it seems like a bit late, but all formalities according to local law where quite complicated and time consuming). From users perspective there is only one important change – new data for PLUS purchases, in line with new company.
Payee:
Sokker Manager sp. z o.o.
ul. Barbórki 26, 04-511 Warszawa, Poland
Account number:
02 1140 2004 0000 3802 8036 1751

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• _james
• 2020-09-18

This week we are asking you to follow the link below to the newest graphic design proposal. In the last weeks we tried to upgrade projects we presented before, and also adjust them for new illustration guidelines, based on new portraits and overall style. We are happy with the final result, new approach combines quality with clearness and easy data presentation, we would like to follow that direction. It's still probably not the final version - in the next step we will apply it to few other page views and also mobile version to make sure that the design works well in different configurations.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/df6a16fc-0146-45c6-952e-c376ee32df9a-8a39/screen/1652e37f-6978-4eae-a851-3afe07a840cd?fullscreen

As it was mentioned before - we have focused on one view for now, but with new graphic design we will also introduce dark skin & retro one.

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• _james
• 2020-09-11

This week we have an announcement of a more comprehensive change - we want to expand the management of the junior team and introduce youth facilities in Sokker - infrastructures that can be expanded, and give various additional bonuses to our academies with higher levels. Still, it is "this for that" - larger facilities and an expanded football academy will raise the cost of maintaining the youth school.

We anticipate 4 different facilities that can be expanded as part of youth facilities:

Scouting department - responsible for the weekly number of juniors recruited, and can also unlock the option of acquiring foreign juniors. With higher levels, we will have a chance to have more juniors joining the academy in a given week (this will not affect the level of junior skills), but at the cost of increasing the price of maintaining one spot in the academy.

Levels are as follows:

1. Basic Scouting Network - Weekly Junior Growth 1-5
2. Local Scouting Network - Weekly Junior Growth 1-6
3. Regional Scouting Network - Weekly Junior Growth 2-6
4. The National Scouting Network - Weekly Youth Growth 3-6
5. International Scouting Network - Chance of Getting a Foreigner - 5%

Campus - determines the maximum number of juniors that we can have in our academy. Also, larger facilities increase the cost of maintaining a junior. The levels will be defined as follows:

1. Maximum number of juniors - 15
2. Maximum number of juniors - 20
3. Maximum number of juniors - 25
4. Maximum number of juniors - 30
5. Maximum number of juniors – 35

Analytics - allows you to effectively measure the progress of juniors and assess their level. This parameter will allow you to decide how carefully you want to track the progress of your juniors, where the basic level corresponds to the current rating system. The next levels will allow us to get closer to the previous system (the oldest users probably remember) which measured the progress of juniors with full accuracy. Of course, every next levels will increase the cost of maintaining a junior:

1. Basic level of junior evaluation
2. More effective measuring +1 jumps
3. More effective measuring +1 jumps
4. Suggested position for new juniors
5. Accurately measuring pops

Training facilities - depending on its level, we can employ a better training staff. Here, higher levels of facilities do not affect the maintenance of junior slots - greater cost will be incurred by employing a better coach. The expansion will allow us to hire a specialist with the maximum level - but it will of course be possible to use a weaker specialist or not have a coach:

1. Maximum Coach’s Level - incredible
2. Maximum Coach’s Level - brilliant
3. Maximum Coach’s Level - magical
4. Maximum Coach’s Level - unearthly
5. Maximum Coach’s Level - divine

Yes, trained eye of the users must have noticed the mention of divine trainers - this level of skill in trainers will also be introduced.

In addition to affecting the cost of maintaining one spot in the academy, the facilities will also require a one-time fee for their expansion. The fees will increase significantly with successive levels - on the one hand, to enable running of the academies even among beginners (the basic infrastructure will be within reach practically from the beginning of the game), on the other hand, the most advanced levels will come with a significant cost. We do not provide exact amounts due to the fact that it will need to be adjusted during tests.

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• _james
• 2020-09-04

Last week, we made a few of the first gameplay changes. There were some complications, so we are presenting a summary of these actions along with the information about any errors that we had to correct.

Friendly matches during the inter-season break - starting from last week, it is possible to arrange friendly matches on Sunday if the team does not play an official match. However, it turned out that this option does not work if someone has an arcade match scheduled on the selected date. Hence our decision to remove the arcade matches scheduled for last Sunday and the next one to allow users to arrange friendly matches. At the same time, the bug has been fixed and it is not possible to arrange arcade matches on Sunday.

Merging the last divisions in individual countries - We have merged the last divisions in countries with more than 3 levels. The change went with complications, some teams had to be restored manually after the disappearance from their leagues (they were not assigned to any league for a moment), but right now, everything has been fixed, and the merged leagues are already working.

Youth league bug - The bug with the number of teams in the first junior league has been fixed. Teams that took places 9-11 in last season have been removed from these leagues. Thus, all first junior leagues currently have 8 teams, as originally planned.

We are also presenting a few improved mock ups (the changes are cosmetic, but it's worth checking):

Team page:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/5f3a2456-43da-486e-7382-e867e1422a43-290b/screen/1861a9a5-3a96-4ff7-bdd3-80eaf86b9e08?fullscreen

Home page (after logging in):
https://xd.adobe.com/view/3cf4a5be-3f89-4703-b36c-e2d6dce78584-69a7/?fullscreen

Calendar and planner (you need to use side arrow keys to see all the views):
https://xd.adobe.com/view/07259a81-6525-42c0-8b8d-82ec0d178717-5276/

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• MatzeG
• 2020-08-31

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 31st of August and end on the 13th of September, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

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• _james
• 2020-08-28

Today we are presenting to you the status of work related to the off-season.

Introducing the possibility of playing friendly matches on Sunday (if you are not playing an official match). Therefore, this change applies to this Sunday, the day when some teams play the playoffs, and the next Sunday, which until now was a week of no matches. We were able to introduce the change only after the Wednesday matches had been played, hence its late addition. We encourage you to use Friday and Saturday to arrange friendly matches.

Merging the last divisions in individual countries - at the beginning of the next week (after promotions and relegations), we will be reducing the last divisions in terms of number of leagues for countries where the occupancy rate at the given level is low. Depending on the number of users at a given level, the number of leagues will be reduced by half, or even four times in some cases. Of course, we will make sure that a certain amount of space for new users remains after all.

The junior’s league bug - the possibility of staying in the junior league by exploiting the game bug has now been fixed, but the problem with the teams that had cheated in this way and returned to the league despite being placed in relegation has still not been resolved. We have several junior leagues this season with an additional team, or even with two. We decided to move the teams manually according to the table order - so places 9 and 10 in the junior league will be moved to lower levels and the numbers of teams will return to the correct value.

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• _james
• 2020-08-21

Thank you for your comments so far, on the initial design and the mock-ups that we have presented. Many of the comments helped us to improve our ideas, add new options, or change the location of some elements (e.g. the trophy table will be moved from the overview tab to the view of each club).
This week we are presenting another view to you - the schedule. We will be grateful for any comments regarding this element of our work.

The schedule will be implemented in two forms:
List view - where we can see all matches of your team. The tabs segregate the content into lists of matches of the first squad, and the junior team. Arcade matches have also been moved to a completely different tab.
Calendar view - where we can see the schedule of matches, but also icons of individual events in the game, such as training. You can easily get an idea of the timing of the upcoming matches using the calendar. The view is just a mock-up, hence the lack of colours - but individual types of games will be marked with different colours. Do not worry about marking the training on Tuesday - it is just a working icon, the training does not change, it will take place on Thursdays.

Both mock-ups can be found at this link (to go to the next one use the side arrows on the keyboard):
https://xd.adobe.com/view/07259a81-6525-42c0-8b8d-82ec0d178717-5276/?fullscreen

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• _james
• 2020-08-14

While we were working on the new design of the website and user experience, we decided to create a new tab - overview. Its purpose is to collect key information for the manager in one place and make it available immediately after logging in. After implementing the new Sokker look, this page will be the first one we see.

Here you can see the mock-up for this page:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/cd353768-7ee6-4813-b032-a68f0b5d0772-9866/?fullscreen

Key functionalities:

Alerts - in the upper left part you can see a box of rotating messages - there are 4 notifications in the mock-up, the first of which informs of the lack of a set lineup for the next match. Notifications will assist in making key decisions - they will remind you to set up your squad, training, to arrange a friendly match, warn you if a player is unable to play, etc.

Calendar - we are adding a weekly timeline so that every player (including beginners) can easily check the events of any day in a week - those from the current day will be described in detail (e.g. Income from sponsors), but it will also be possible to go through the upcoming days of the week.

References to key information - on the start screen you will also find a link to the training report for the week, a box with a summary of the games in which you participate with redirections to details, the press room tab, and a summary of the club's trophies. Here you will also find information about your fan club and collected key data about your team (its value, average age, etc.)

Transfers - another feature that will appear here - in the form of a summary of the upcoming auctions that interest us. The full transfer list will be available in the transfers tab. However, you can already see a few improvements here - the ability to bid from the list (without having to enter the selected player) or providing key information about the player (age, value). It will also be possible to delete auctions that are no longer interesting to us. An interesting addition will be the number of players who follow a given auction.

We welcome any suggestions or comments regarding this view.

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• _james
• 2020-08-07

We are coming back this week with some information about the incoming changes.

We contracted an illustrator who started working on the illustrations in the game. We already have the first examples of new players' faces - it shows the direction in which we will prepare the illustrations for the character generator. Do not get attached to the presented pictures in the form of circles - the final form of the players’ images for the page view still needs to be refined.
Link to the player portrait examples

At the same time, work is underway to improve the two graphics directions selected for further development. At the link below you can see the evolution of the first design (icons, fonts, buttons and headers have been improved; the overall design has been refined). Parallel to this, work is underway to improve the second (darker) design.

Finally, we will decide to combine the best elements of both directions into one coherent idea, which will be implemented in two versions - light and dark.
Link to the preview of the merged design

Changes to the rules

It is a right for users to preserve the composition of their leagues and the identity of their land. At Sokker, we build the national leagues of any country for its natives and inhabitants. Users can only have a team in the country where they reside or in their country of origin. We monitor IP addresses from which users access Sokker to verify their residence. Sokker does not support the use of tools that can modify or hide users' real IP (I.e. TOR, VPNs, Proxies, etc.). These provisions have always existed in the game but in order to make them clearer and easier to understand the first chapter of the rules has been updated. Please read it and, if you feel affected by some of the stances described there, please contact the Sokker Staff. Our goal is to help all users to play Sokker with respect to the game’s spirit.

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• _james
• 2020-07-31

This week we would like to share the results of the last poll with you, which was dedicated to the graphic design.
We collected almost 400 votes, and decided to work on the two most popular directions and merge them into one, in two different themes - light and dark.

You can find find the results here:

And more detailed data for each one of two best projects:
Option 1
Ratings for the option 1

Option 2 (v4 in previous poll)
Ratings for the option 2 (v4 in previous poll)

Please keep in mind, that those two proposals are the starting point for further work - we believe that there is potential to increase the visual quality even more. In upcoming weeks our designers will merge projects into one coherent line, and we will share it with you in upcoming weeks.

We also started our work on the new illustrations, like player portraits, club emblems or infrastructure. Portraits presented in the design proposals are our benchmark, but they need to be created from scratch in order to be used in the portrait generator (separate elements mixed together).