Навіны

The match report is the heart of Hattrick and for almost 20 years, this pure slow-moving text match report has had a surprisingly consistent appeal to our users and a lot of us love to follow games as they happen on the web site, even if many of us nowadays also complement this with the mobile app or mobile notifications. Over the years, we’ve always resisted calls to develop a 3D viewer for Hattrick, simply because it would have to be a purely aesthetic layer on top of the match engine and as such, we think users would get bored with it quickly. If we decided to revamp the match experience, it would have to be in a way that played up Hattrick’s strengths as a game, not trying to pretend it is something it is not.

New live commentary

That’s why for our new take on the match viewer, we decided to redesign the text reports themselves. We’ve added a completely new live commentary, which is unique to the live experience, and in which events are reported as they happen, second by second. These events are threaded, meaning that events that start out the same way don’t necessarily end the same way - you won’t know for sure how an event ends until the second it is over.

We’ve also added a completely new class of events, where commentator’s talk about the context of the current game - for example how the team’s title chances will be affected by a win or a loss, or if a certain player has reached a personal milestone during the game. This a whole new set of information, which is not critical enough to put into a post-game match report but which can be highly interesting while watching it live. We’ve actively tried to give the live experience a better flow, with fewer dead periods, where nothing at all happens for long stretches of time.

Many events have been tweaked and reworked, to make them work more like they would in a live situation. For example, reports on injuries from early in the game may become available later on, as doctor’s have had a chance to make a first estimate. And exact attendance won’t be known when a game starts, only later in the match.

The more current, more concentrated match reports will stay in place as they are - they will fill the role of a post-game summary, just as today. The live match report will be richer and more informative, but not saved for more than a week after the match is played.

Stoppage time

We’ve made match times a little more fluid, by adding stoppage time in Hattrick. When a match has been very eventful, the referee may add an additional few minutes of playing time at the end of the match! And there is a small chance that events that would normally have happened during regular time happens during stoppage time instead. The amount of stoppage time depends on how eventful a match have been, of course, and will be indicated by the referee close to the end of regular time.

Showing all goal chances

Until now, not all chances that happen during a match have necessarily been reported. In the new match viewer, we will be more generous on this front and show them all. For users who do not follow the match live, complete information about goal chances will of course also be available also in the post-game report, as part of the match statistics.

Shorter half time

We’ve reduced the half time break to 5 minutes. We also did consider actually reducing the match speed altogether in Hattrick, there is no reason a match could not be presented in let’s say 30 minutes rather than 90 minutes. But for now, we won’t do that. We will, however, use a faster default for relive matches, to see how this change feels and how you as users react to this.

The pitch viewer

The visual centrepiece of the new live viewer is the perspective view of the football pitch, in which you see both teams, the players and the current formations displayed at all times. There are also dynamic graphics for weather, current subs on the bench and a highlight that goes on to show where an ongoing attack is taking place. The pitch has three tabs, so that you can switch between the view of your formation and views of your sector ratings and player ratings, respectively. These stats are all live, so that you can see in real time how the teams match up with each other.

Player cards and team cards

While inside the live viewer, clicking a team name or a player name brings up the details of the clicked entity directly inside the viewer, rather than leading to the static player page on the regular site. The cards will have the updated information from inside the game, for example when it comes to goal statistics or injuries. This will give you a quick way to double-check the status of your players or the stats of your opponents, without leaving the viewer.

Following other games

As before, you can of course follow a lot of other games while using the live viewer. We have added a new feature from the overview page, which suggests games that may be of interest to you, be that an important National Team match for your home league or other matches from your series. When you open a match in the match viewer, and leave the overview, you will have the current scores from all your followed games available in your scoreboard, directly above the pitch viewer.

The chat

The chat lets you talk to other managers who are online at the same time as you. Chats are linked to the active match or competition. While you can always read what has been written in the chat of a match you follow, you can only write in a chat if your team is part of that competition. For your series, all matches share the same chat, so you can talk to the other managers in your series (but not with managers in other series of the same division). In the Cup, in the first rounds each match has a separate chat, whereas in the final rounds of the Cup the chat is opened up to all remaining teams and managers. In private tournaments, all participants can talk with other. The web chat rooms are synched with the mobile chat rooms, so a discussion started in one place can continue in the other, and vice versa.

How the launch will work

A lot of work has been going into the new match viewer, and this is especially true for everything that has to do with the new event texts - they have all been written from scratch and this has led to massive amounts of work for our fantastic LAs, who have translated the new events to their languages. But it have not been possible for all LA teams to complete this in time for the first release, which is why we have made the launch of each language version flexible.

When you visit the new match viewer, you will automatically get your normal language if this is already available. If it is not, you will be offered to choose to use English or any other available language you prefer. This will be a local setting in the live viewer only, so you keep using your normal language on the rest of the site. When your local language is ready for the live viewer as well, it will automatically kick in, without any action needed on your part.

If you prefer to NOT use another language temporarily, you will still be able to use the live viewer, but it will be using the regular “post-game” type events instead of the new live events.