• struś
• 2024-04-16

There is not much that is certain in Sokker.
.
That's a kind of charm of this game. We like to keep discovering it.
.
Therefore, without much commentary, I submit a picture worth more than a thousand words:
.

• Donaldo
• 2024-04-05

The fan mood system has been reset.

We're back with a comprehensive explanation of how the new fanclub moods work, as we see they raise many questions and uncertainties. We apologize for the delay in preparing this description – nevertheless, we wanted to verify all reports of potential issues/bugs and confirm various cases flagged up on the game forum.

Overview

The most important information that should be the starting point for understanding the new moods is as follows: the new fan club satisfaction level is NOT a continuation of the old system. In other words, this season operates on an entirely new system, and you shouldn't refer to the mood level before this update – these are completely different mood calculation systems, and you can't say, for example, that the mood "dropped" compared to the previous season. It simply has been calculated on new grounds. We believe that most of the misunderstandings reported stem from this crucial piece of information.

Maximum moods are only for outstanding achievements

Next, what is crucial in the new system is the fact that we approach individual mood levels slightly more demanding. To achieve maximum mood, it's not enough to meet fans' expectations – the level of "fans are madly in love with their club" is for extraordinary achievements, exceeding expectations to the maximum – you can't achieve it simply by playing according to the club's capabilities. Consequently, the level of "fans believe in their club," which is 4/7, is considered an average level of satisfaction that the fans strive for when the club simply meets seasonal expectations. Any deviations from meeting expectations will affect whether the moods will rise or fall.

New moods are a component of meeting fans' expectations, but also includes fluctuations based on results, like the old system

Importantly, we've retained the influence of the old system based on the results of recent matches. We deemed it a more realistic solution – so fans will refer to whether the club meets its expectations, but they will also remember the team's recent results – so for example, if we're in a good league position as expected, but we lost the last few matches – it will affect their mood. The proportion of this influence is 60 to 40 in favour of the influence of seasonal expectations – they are ultimately more important.
To help you understand your fans' behaviour, additional information regarding their behaviour at the office will soon appear, such as:
Evaluation level of meeting last season's expectations: xx
Satisfaction level with the last matches: xx%
Satisfaction level with meeting expectations: xx%

Additional (important!) rules of the new system

1. Fans will remember last year's successes or failures. For each level above / below the expected goal of the previous season, the club will receive a modifier to the mood limit. So for example – for a club that completely exceeded fans' expectations, a +2 limit will be allocated to moods, meaning that in the new season, even if it is completely unsuccessful, moods will not drop below the level of 2/7. Similarly, if we don't meet expectations – for example, if we're one level below the seasonal goal, moods in the new season will not be able to rise above the level of 6/7.
2. The range of this modifier operates on parameters: +2, +1, -1, -2. Once again, we emphasize that this is about the limit, not a constant bonus – in other words, the modifier limits the scale in which fan's moods can move in the new season; it is not a constant bonus to the mood.
3. Fan's expectations currently only encompass league competitions. International matches or cup matches affect satisfaction with recent matches, not expectations. This is likely an element we'll expand upon in the future, and the club will receive goals for other competitions besides the league (less significant in terms of impact).
4. The impact of meeting expectations depends on the moment of the season: fans will react much more gently to the first matches of the season, and much more strongly to the last ones – which determine the actual position at the end of the season.
5. The greater the disparity between fan's expectations and the current mood level e.g. in the new season, the team significantly exceeds expectations, and if started with angry fans then the faster their mood will change.
6. Moods are currently updated after the morning update.

• struś
• 2024-03-15

We have decided to cancel the elections in the following countries:

• O‘zbekiston.
• Cameroun.

These countries will be withdrawn from the competition, thus the number of teams entering the World Cup qualifiers will be reduced to 96 allowing for an equal distribution of groups and fair promotion rules.



16 six-team groups will be drawn up for the qualifiers, with the two best teams from each group advancing.

• Donaldo
• 2024-03-03

Dear users,

It's been a while since we last communicated with you, but we would like to let you know what was goin on on our side - there have been fewer changes lately, but that doesn't change the fact that even if we lacked time for regular communication with you, we are still working to develop new functionalities.

There are a few areas that are currently being worked on:

Progressive tax issue, which as you know accidentally appeared in the game and was withdrawn. We are developing this idea, however, its final form and method of calculation will probably be modified - the tax will decrease much faster to lower values, but will be higher in the first weeks of possible sale. We aim for the player sale to be approximately as profitable as it is currently after about a season spent in the club, but additional rates would be added in the case of rapid trading. REFORM GOAL: to limit the profitability of DT-type trading without penalizing users transferring players once per season or less. This reform is not aimed at fighting inflation - such comments appear on the forum - the scale of taxes in Sokker vs the amount of money in circulation is marginal, even doubling taxes would not have a significant impact on limiting inflation - it needs to be fought with other methods.

New PLUS shop - although payments are certainly not the most exciting topic for you, this is a very big change that currently absorbs a huge amount of our time. Introducing new forms of payment (the option to link a card and charge for the PLUS package in the form of a monthly subscription) is very important for us, the current system, where you have to pay upfront for the entire package, may be a barrier for a significant portion of players. Technologically, this is a very difficult project that also requires work related to legal and tax issues, which consumes a significant portion of our resources. Answering probable questions - yes, the game's price list will also change, and the monthly subscription will be the most cost-effective way to buy the PLUS package - however, we have not yet set prices, when they are prepared, we will share them with you immediately.

Development of the PRESSROOM tab - we still see its huge potential and impact on the game. We are currently introducing several new pieces of news (reports after national team matches have appeared, and a jubilee news item is being prepared for the anniversary of founding your teams, with a large portion of statistics regarding your clubs) - but this is just the beginning of the possibilities of this tab. We want to open a separate thread on the forum to collect ideas related only to this tab - new notifications or messages that we can generate - for example, it may be worth considering the option of sending injured players for a fee for accelerated treatment by a specialist, etc - the pressroom tab provides such possibilities - not only allows us to generate news, but we can also add buttons and actions that can be taken.

New pages to prepare: we are starting work on two new views in Sokker - player profile (i.e., player page) and club history and statistics. In both cases, we are open to suggestions for new functionalities or information that we can add to make the game more interesting - for example, in the case of a player, we would like to introduce his match statistics broken down by individual seasons, not his entire career, and in the case of club history, there is room to introduce achievements or expand the records section. We will also start a separate thread for both of these new pages and ask you to share your ideas.

Finally, information about Sokker's promotion and advertising. We started test advertising the game in various countries in recent months - we see quite a good response and number of registrations - we will test several more countries, from large European countries to smaller countries around the world - based on the experiences gathered, we will try to significantly increase the number of users by the end of this year.

• struś
• 2023-09-15

Dear Users,
Traditionally, during the inter-season break I would like to summarise the previously announced changes and introduce some new ones.
Details below.



BONUSES, EXPECTATIONS, FINANCES

Seasonal bonuses

- This season, bonuses will be awarded under the old rules.
- From next season forward, the amount of the bonuses will be directly dependent on your place in the league at the end of the season.
- Approximate bonus amounts can be found in the league statistics under "bonuses".
- For example, for the Italian C.01 series https://sokker.org/league_stats/leagueID/1153/stat_type/bonus.
- Bonuses will be paid after the last round of the season.

Fans' expectations

- As announced, we are introducing seasonal fan expectations.
- Each user, via the press office, will receive information about what expectations their fans have for the upcoming season.
- You can also check the expectations for each team within a league, again using the list of statistics, this time under "expectations".
IMPORTANT: The expectations level for the first season will be for information purposes only.
- From the following season onwards, the level of fulfilment of expectations will be the most important factor influencing fan mood.
- We are currently considering how high an impact, success in cup matches will have on fulfilling expectations.

Financial reform

- Given these changes, we have not yet decided on a final adjustment of the finances by modifying the ticket income.
- We will continue to keep an eye on how the already implemented changes will affect the finances of the game and possible adjustments will not take place until after the next season.


ASSISTANT, PAYMENTS, BENEFITS

We are developing the new payment page with new features:
Here are the main ideas:

- A subscription option linked to the credit card connection will be introduced.
- The prices of the Assistant will be adjusted (they have remained the same for 15 years).
- The type of subscription purchased will affect the benefits received.
- Subscription via credit card will be the most beneficial payment method.
- The core features will remain the same, but you will receive additional benefits if you subscribe or purchase a annual membership.
• saving of training data even during a break in the use of the Assistant (during the break it will not be visible, but the full history will appear after renewal)
• saving the colour of the jerseys and emblems when the subscription expires (with other payment options, the emblems will not be visible when the subscription expires and the jerseys will revert to the default ones)
• the list of additional benefits can be further extended.


NATIONAL TEAMS

In one of the previous change packages, we introduced the possibility for the coaches of the national teams to preview the skills of the players of a given nationality (unless the owner objected). The feature has been on trial activated for all national team coaches, but from next season it will only be available to Assistant owners.


PRESSROOM

During the season, you have had the opportunity to discover how the new Pressroom works. I think this is enough time to evaluate its functionality, so I am launching an official thread where you will be able to submit your ideas on the news that appears in it. Feel free to do so in the international forum HERE.

• struś
• 2023-06-19

Welcome to the verge of another season.
This is a good time to present some news, update on previously announced changes and highlight further development plans.

1. PRESSROOM

I am excited to announce that, in the coming days, the existing Pressroom/News tab will be replaced by a completely new view to keep us informed about events at the club.



Initially, automatic notifications will include:
- information on call-ups to national teams
- national team match reports
- information about an alumni player on the transfer list
- information about new members of the youth team

The list is not closed and we already have some ideas for further notifications, for example::
- club records (individual and team achievements, record transfers)
- information on fan expectations
- reports on the most interesting training effects

At the other hand, we are realising that nobody knows better than you what other information should be there, so there will be a special forum topic where we will be waiting for YOUR IDEAS, and we will implement the best and most popular ones!

Some of you have asked about further plans for the CLUB NEWSPAPER. We want to revise this element as well, but for the moment, from a club website perspective it remains the same. The only change is the view of the newspapers in the Word tab of the Pressroom view. Ultimately, we plan to integrate these functionalities more tightly.

If you want to see right now how the new view looks like, check it out at the link: https://sokker.org/en/app/pressroom/inbox/

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2. FINANCIAL REFORM

As we announced prior to last season, the financial reform is not yet complete. We are not backing down from these declarations and we see the need to fine-tune club income and costs, however, we have decided that one season of observation after the introduced salary changes is not enough and we are postponing further steps until at least the following season. Thus, with the new season, the announced new algorithm counting the number of fans in the stadiums and thus adjusting ticket revenues will not be introduced.

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3. FURTHER PLANS

Below, for the moment without details, are the topics we are currently working on. More detailed information will follow as the implementation deadline approaches.
- we will introduce fan expectations set at the beginning of the season and a new fan mood system based on them.
- we will replace sponsorship bonuses with rewards for relevant league places - this will allow the bonuses to be better aligned with attitude throughout the season and not just at the end of it.
- we will extend the substitutes' bench to 7 places.


I hope you are satisfied with the information provided.
I wish you good luck and satisfaction in the pursuit of your goals in the coming season,

• struś
• 2023-03-12

Today I wanted to return to an issue that was already announced at DD#69, i.e. the reform of club finances.
At that time we were already seeing a noticeable process of steady wealth increase for clubs at every league level.
To a large extent, this is the result of a lack of cost balancing for significantly increased ticket revenues. We announced at the time that we were considering various scenarios but we want to make a final decision after a thorough analysis of the financial data - to ensure that no group of users is either harmed or privileged.

What did the analysis of club finances reveal?
- After the competition reform, at each league level average revenues significantly exceeded average costs.
- Before the competition reform, the average weekly "financial result" was better in the higher leagues - but this was a minor difference.
- After the competition reform, the gap increased significantly, which meant that clubs in the high leagues made very high profits, while those in the lower leagues also gained, but not as spectacularly.

That's why our efforts are focused on rebuilding the correct balance on two levels:
- On a club scale - to balance costs and revenues.
- On a global scale - to eliminate significant differences in profits between teams playing at different league levels.

It is easy to conclude from this that the reform will affect strong teams to a greater degree.

As you are probably used to prosperity and have forgotten that you need to keep an eye on costs, making all the changes suddenly could be painful for some of you, so we decided to divide it into two parts.

Part one, introduced with the upcoming season will be about COSTS.

Increase in salaries of all field players:.
- We have made a simple assumption that fits in with the results of our analysis, which pointed to the need to increase the running costs of all teams, but to the greatest extent of the top ones.
- Therefore, all field players, with the age update, will have their salaries increased, but the better the player, the higher the increase will be.

Decrease in goalkeeper salaries:.
- The salaries of these players have always been ruled by slightly different rules and this will remain the case. Goalkeepers' salaries will still be relatively high, but will be slightly reduced.
- After the changes, the best field players will be able to earn more than the top goalkeepers.

Below, to better illustrate the effect of the above changes, is the result of a simulation of the changes in player salaries for Poland after this season:



You may notice that the increase in players' salaries, depending on the league level, is in the range of 15% to 33% which should translate into an increase in overall running costs of a few to a dozen percent.

Change in player sales tax:.
- The existing player sales tax will increase from a marginal 5% to a more reasonable 10%.
- The tax on listing a player remains unchanged.

Part two, scheduled for further season will refer to REVENUE.

Over the coming season, we will evaluate the effects of the implemented cost changes and only after a thorough analysis will we introduce a second adjustment - relating to revenue.
At this point, we anticipate that the increase in costs related to players' salaries will still not offset the increase in revenue after the competition reform.
Therefore, the most likely scenario will be a reduction in match revenues.
We plan to change the behaviour of fans, who will, as a result, become more responsive to ticket prices.
Therefore, in order to maintain the current attendance, price reductions will be necessary.
How much? This we will know after the upcoming season.

• struś
• 2023-01-25

Today, a brief update on the changes related to the national teams.
One relates to the functionality already added, the other is developmental, depending on your feedback.



MAKING PLAYERS' SKILLS AVAILABLE TO NATIONAL TEAM COACHES

We have introduced the possibility for national team coaches to see the skills of their country's players.
We are aware that not all managers wish to reveal the skills of their players, which is why we have introduced the option of setting the visibility for each player separately.
In the player view, there is an additional icon to turn visibility on/off and information about the current visibility status, respectively:
- Sharing skills with NT coach is enabled. - indicates the visibility of the player to the national team coach and provides an icon to disable it "disallow for this player"
- Sharing skills with NT coach is disabled. - means no visibility and provides an icon to enable it "allow for this player".
We hope this solution will satisfy both groups of users - supporters and opponents of the accessibility of national team coaches to the players skills.

!!!ATTENTION - we have set all players to visible by default!!!
National Team coaches will not be able to see the skills of the players (even enabled) until next week.


ONE MORE TIME ABOUT INJURIES IN NATIONAL TEAM

As the recent change regarding injuries suffered by players in national team matches was met with a mixed reception, we decided to ask you about your most preferred solution.
This is only a poll at the moment, but we will take a close look at the results and do not rule out further modifications if one of the options gains a significant majority.

We propose three solutions:.
1. Leaving the current compromise (friendly matches of the national team on an arcade basis, with no injuries but also no training efficiency benefits).
2. Remove injuries from the national teams completely, but also no training bonuses (i.e. all national team matches on an arcade basis).
3. Restoring injuries to all national team matches, but increasing the benefits of a player playing for the national team (e.g. more fans coming to club matches, financial compensation if a player is injured, shortening of injuries, refund of the player's salary, etc.).

The poll is available at THIS LINK and is open to all users.
We encourage you to express your opinion.

• struś
• 2023-01-21

Welcome back after some break. In today's material, I'll talk a bit about the current changes and improvements, reveal some future plans share the new look of the club's homepage. I kindly invite you to read the article below.



CHANGES AND RECENT IMPROVEMENTS:

Declines in the skills of senior players.
For a number of seasons you have raised objections to Sunday skill adjustments for senior players, arguing that it was impossible to react and possibly replace a player in such a short period. With this in mind, we have moved the skills review to Thursday, so that all skills changes (both drops and increases) occur on the same day. There has been a bit of concern as to for sure the drops are now not happening twice a week. Let me clarify, not only do they not, but the last Sunday before the change was free of drops. With this change, the skill reports and charts should work better.

Injuries.
Finally, the player injury issues were resolved. As we know, there was a point during the implementation of the changes where players, despite being injured during a match, were not excluded from further games - as in arcade matches. We guess that this was the bug you were most pleased about, but it had to be removed. Injuries now work as planned, which means:

Injuries will remain active if players have suffered them in:
- League games,
- National cups,
- Friendly club matches,
- Champions League matches,
- National Teams official games.

Injury-free matches:.
- National Teams friendly ganes,
- Arcade matches.

Please note that appearances in injury-free games do not affect the training efficiency calculation.


Minor fixes:.

- If we're already talking about arcade matches - we've also removed the other effects of these games. They no longer affect either the club ranking or the tactical discipline of the players,
- We have improved the player stats accounting - until now, if a player came in from the bench and had no contact with the ball, the match was not counted for his stats,
- We have fixed a bug that did not allow to put some results (ex. 0-0) in the game studio Prediction(s) and comments,
- In the line-up selection menu, we have improved the functionality of the "view" button, which did not work if two tactics were set up,
- In the squad table view, we added the possibility to expand "tactical discipline" into "teamwork" and "experience".

NEW LOOK OF CLUB HOME SITE:
We are still working on the new design of the club website. It's not 100% ready yet and we're still giving ourselves some time to tweak it, but you can take a look here already:
https://sokker.org/pl/app/my-club/.

A QUICK SHOT ABOUT THE PLANS:

Financial reform.
It is easy to see that shortening the season while accumulating matches has significantly affected the economics of the game. Instead of 7 "home" games in 16 weeks, we have 11 such games in 13 weeks. In addition, pre-season bonuses fall more often. So far, we have not interfered in any way and are observing the effects. After this period of observation, we are now sure that a reaction is necessary and are considering various scenarios. The most likely ones are:
- an adjustment in the number of fans willing to come to the stadium,
- increasing the weekly salaries of top players (we note that teams in the higher leagues have benefited the most, so the adjustment should remove this advantage),
- an increase in certain fees and/or taxes.

Managing players from abandoned teams.
To date, there are no clear and standardised rules relating to the players remaining in the squads of teams whose owners have been removed from the game. The practice is to put players who are members of national teams on the transfer list in such a situation. This is possible after reporting to the administrator and his ad hoc action. This is not an optimal model - first of all because it is not equal for everyone. It happens at various points during the season, with the result that sometimes a strong team without an owner beats some of its opponents and is sold out before meeting the next ones, We want to avoid such situations, so in the perspective of a few seasons, rules will be developed to introduce automatic player listing, eliminating any participation of administrators and arbitrary decisions, And there will also be specific 'transfer window' periods during the season, when such listings will take place.
We hope that, in addition to standardising the rules, the introduction of "transfer windows" can be an interesting add-on for many users during (for example) the mid-season break.

• struś
• 2022-09-14

The intensive work on the two big reforms, which were undoubtedly the reform of the league system and the reform of training, resulted in a lack of time for minor adjustments and generated additional errors and problems.
Now is the time in which we focus on detecting and correcting them.





Incorrect assignment to new leagues.
The biggest and most impactful problem for users was the incorrectly working algorithm for assigning new leagues for direct relegation and promotion.
It turned out that when assigning teams to new leagues, the system incorrectly ranked the teams - instead of creating an aggregate ranking table from the whole season and assigning teams to the respective leagues according to this, the system ranked the teams by ID ignoring the actual results.
The error has been located, the algorithm corrected and, most importantly, it will be applied back, which will mean a reshuffling of the league line-ups for the directly promoted and relegated teams. The error did not affect teams playing in the play-offs.

Minor, recently resolved issues:
- corrected training reports (previously displayed incorrect information)
- corrected Thursday form update - for some time all changes were limited to +/-1
- added possibility to open a player's profile from the training settings view
- added ability to delete coaches in the new transfers view (previously only players could be deleted)

Translations:
The fast pace of the reforms did not allow the content to be made available immediately with local languages. These backlogs are being made up and for languages that have already been developed by our Linguists are being introduced. If there are gaps or inaccuracies, please contact the Linguists appropriate for your language directly.

Warm-up matches:
We have come to the conclusion that with the changes to the league structure and training, there is no need to artificially maintain another type of match which were warm-up matches during the inter-season break.
The current season was the last one in which warm-up matches played on a play-off Sunday gave the effectiveness of training as official matches. With the current possibility of playing three matches a week, the opportunity to optimise training is so great that it no longer requires such strengthening.


That's it for today, and we're back from working on further fixes and improvements.