News

As I mentioned in the release editorial about Tournaments, our plan was to have the next version of Tournaments ready within a few months. That plan hasn't changed, but we will however split that version into two parts in order to make some features available for you sooner. I don't think you have anything against that, right?

Next Tournament version
So, the next tournament version - we can call it 1.1 - will include the following:

- League with playoff cup for 12 and 16 teams
- Single elimination cup format for 4, 8 and 16 teams
- Separate trophy shelf
- An option for the cup creator to pay for all participants
- Possibility to opt-out, if you don't want to receive any tournament invites.

Our aim is to have this version ready in a few weeks time.

For the version after that, version 1.2 then, we'll include:

- Open tournaments (anyone can join, no invite needed)
- Option to create a tournament without playing in it yourself
- Option for non-Supporters to create tournaments through Gears
- Minor usability and visibility improvements

Our aim is to have this version ready before the (European) summer.

There will be more updates after these, and we won't stop after this. Just so you know.

Detailed match ratings
Improved match ratings has been at the planning stage for a long, long time now; you've probably heard me talking about it earlier on. And this is a very dear project for me, it's very central in the game experience, so I'm glad to be able to say that we've begun working on this one now. We're still quite early in the development process, but as we progress further we will share more information (you know, like screenshots and stuff) on our dev blog.

Needless to say this will make your games and your match reports so much more interesting to read and dig into. This will also open up better analysis of your games and a better understanding of how the game engine works, which in turn will make it easier for you to understand (or find an explanation to) the end result in a game.

This is what it will mean
The default way to show ratings will be the average rating for the whole game, just as today (although it will get a new and better look of course). But you will also be able to view:

- Sector ratings for different times in the match (in frequent intervals)
- Graphs of the sector ratings development throughout the match
- Player ratings (star ratings) for different times in the match (in frequent intervals)
- Graphs of the player ratings development throughout the match
- Event highlights, to see how an event (a substitution for example) affected the ratings

I can't say right now exactly what time interval for ratings will be possible in the end, but it'll be at least every 10 minutes.

Stars will be yellow
With this we will also remove the different colours on the stars, and just show the average star rating with yellow stars. To be honest different colours have never been a particularly good way to show how tired players get, it's been hard to understand what they mean – and now there is no need to show different colours anymore either as you'll have graphs instead.

Ratings release
When will this be released then? The best answer I can give you is: when we think it's ready to be released. We're still early in the process and as this is something which is very central in the game – we want to make it really good. We don't want to rush it through and release something we're not satisfied with. We'd rather make it worth waiting for.