Novitâts

The new mobile app kept us busy most of this year. It was a big project, but one we think will pay off in many ways going forward. Even so, we are happy that the app is finally out so that we can take a break from big projects and get busy with releasing new features for the game again.

We have put together a list of smaller projects, each of which we can finish in a week or two. This will be our main focus for the coming development period, until the season break in November. Once there, we will make new plans and there will be a new roadmap. Here are a few of the bigger things we will be working on.

* Increased probability that additional time is added to matches, and that events happen during this time
* Threaded HT-mails
* Several improvements to the Friendly Pool, and the addition of a pool for Single Matches
* Youth Academies: Increased size to 18 players, removal of cards and suspensions, show historic series tables as well as some smaller updates
* Improvements to the Transfer Hotlist
* Implementation of Training camps - a way for you to trade skill training for boosted loyalty, formation experience or injury recovery (each one max once per season)

We will also have a feature vote for our Platinum supporters, where they get to pick a new Supporter feature!

In addition to this, we are preparing work on a few projects that we are likely to start implementing during the season that starts in November.

One of these involves a new ranking system in Hattrick, which would rank teams not only on their position in the series system (as it is today), but also on things like squad strength and how well you as a manager deploy that strength. In this project, we collaborate with professional statistician Matteo Dimai, aka LA-Artod. We think this new ranking system will be the basis for many interesting things in Hattrick once in place, from pure statistics to new competition types.

A second is a review of how our HT communication towards users works. Many users wish for more frequent updates on how dev work is progressing, and for us to participate more in forums, which we completely understand. This is something which we need to balance against our own work process, which is based around three month dev cycles where we first discuss and plan, then prefer to work away as distraction-free as possible towards the goals we have set up. An obvious first step to us seems to be to organise the communication that already does happen (MyHTs, Editorials, SysInfos, release notes, HT activity in the forums, dev blogs, Facebook and Twitter updates) in a new way, where the important stuff really does reach as many users as possible, without you having to know where to look. From there, we can figure out what needs to be added to the mix - for example, a smarter way to link our forum activity to those users who never visit the forums, through some sort of forum digest or similar. Again, this is not a development project, yet, but something we are working on within the community team.

Finally, we are still working on a larger redesign of the Hattrick site (and app). Late last year we ran a design competition, and we received some very nice proposals for a future Hattrick. While none of this work have been implemented, these proposals have been important points of reference for us when we have worked with the redesign of the app, which has involved a lot of decision-making about how we should display information in Hattrick in a consistent way. While from a user perspective it may feel that little has happened, the idea of a respectful redesign of Hattrick into a more modern and more beautiful site (and app) is still very much alive. Now when the new app is out, we will pick up where we left off with a few of the designers in order to continue the work towards a new visual design. But, like the rating system, this is not on our list for actual implementation during this period.


Thank you for your attention. See you again in November!