Новини

I will focus on news for the game in this editorial. Yet I will start with saying a few words about the current situation.

The economical situation right now
When we announced faster training a year ago we also said that the prices on the transfer were likely to fall. This was also something we wanted as they were so high that incomes from the transfer made all other costs and incomes insignificant and irrelevant, making the game a bit one-dimensional. Prices have since then started to fall, especially this last season and we want them to continue to fall some more as well. But the speed of the decrease is currently too high to be healthy.

If we look at other game economy figures, the average user still makes money on weekly basis. But less than some time ago, and the amount is slowly decreasing for each week. The main reason for this is increasing salaries (as a result of training). So while the economical situation is not at all critical right now, it will become critical and the average team will start to lose money each week - if we don’t do anything about it. But we are!

(If you’re interested in reasons and arguments around this you can read the old editorial from July 2007 about the economy. While the situation now is far from the same as back then (and especially far from as bad), the reasons and needs to do something about it are the same.)

What we will do about it
To avoid a critical situation from happening we have planned two actions:

- Lower the salaries next season (details below).
- Start implementing the new staff system, after the summer (more details below)

The new staff is really not about economics, but it will have quite an impact on the economy as well and help the economy to balance itself to a higher extent. Depending on if the new staff is ready for release in October (that’s our aim) or not and naturally depending on how the economy situation will progress until next season’s end, there might be more actions.

It should also be clear that we don’t intend to push transfer prices up with our actions, we still consider them too high to be good for the game. But the speed of the price decrease is too high as already mentioned.

Lower salaries next season
Your players will get a lower salary next season (at each player’s birthday), compared to what they would have got otherwise. The Player Union and the Club Owner Federation have agreed on these terms:

- 50% discount on secondary (and third etc) skills salary wise.

- All Outfielders will get a salary discount, and higher the skill the bigger the discount.
A divine monoskilled outfielder will for example get about 30% lower salary, a titanic around 15% lower, a brilliant around 10% and an excellent around 5% lower. Passing will however get a smaller discount than other skills (but will benefit much from the discount on secondary skills)

- Keepers will also get a discount, but a larger discount the lower the skill is.
Titanic to divine keepers will for example get a discount of about 4-5%, while world class gets around 14%, brilliant around 20% and excellent almost 40%.

The structure of keepers’ and outfielders’ salaries is totally different, hence the different discounts. Keepers’ salaries are much higher on low and medium levels than for other players, but lower on high levels and a lot lower on very high levels – despite that they contribute a lot more to your team than other players. We don’t want high skilled keepers to be more powerful than what they already are.

Important news for the season after next
As I told you in my last editorial about the game development in February, we want to make it more beneficial for you to keep players in your team over a longer period of time. And also make your own youth players more valuable as well. For the season after next season (starting in late October) we will introduce a player loyalty bonus:

- Your players will gradually perform better and better the longer they play for your club, up to a certain limit.
To illustrate: A titanic player that has played 3 seasons for your team will perform better than a titanic player you just bought. But a player that has played for nine seasons will get the same bonus as one who’s played for seven.

This bonus will be introduced in two steps: Half for the season starting in October and then full effect from the season after that. The max bonus a player can get will be around 10-15% in the end (so 5-7,5% the first season). A player’s past time in your club counts when this is released.

- Players which have belonged to your team during their whole career (and where your club is their mother club) will get a performance bonus when they play for your team, as he always gives a little extra when playing for the club in his heart.
Please note that any youth players you’ve once sold and then rebought will not get this bonus.

More detailed information about this will come during next season.

New staff
I’ve mentioned the new staff system quite many times by now, but this time I will be a little more detailed. What we want with the new staff system is that it should give you clear information on the effects of each staffer, so that you can make proper decisions. It should also open up for more ways to play the game, support and balance different strategies, feel more personal and give you a better club feeling. And allow the economy to balance itself according to the decisions you managers make.

This really sounds like a lot, I know, but it’s perfectly possible. Let me explain the basic concept:

- You hire one person for a staff role, at a certain level of your choice. The higher level, the better he is.

- You will know what effects he will have on your team, as it’s clearly written out.

- You will only be able to hire one staff member of each kind, and you will have a limited amount of slots. In other words: you have to make a choice of which options you want to use.

- Physios and doctors will be merged, but there will still be more staff roles than today.

- All staffers will naturally have positive effects on your team, but they will also have downsides. One can say the cost for staff is not only money, but also other resources such as training, form or fans.

- How much a staffer costs in salary depends on how many managers that have chosen that kind of staffer. Ie, the price is set by the user collaborative and it will therefore also vary over time.
More information about staff will be given during next season.

How it will help the game economy
As you probably understand this will have a considerable effect on the game economy, but it’s perhaps not so easy to understand why it will help the economy. The answer is because you can trade training for money. Meaning, you can waste part (or all) of your training and get money (from spectators and sponsors for example) in return.

So if you find it hard to make any profit on your trainees on the transfer, you can decide to throw away training and get money in return that way instead. Such an action will in turn be good for the game economy as it will inject money to the system, money that then can be used to buy players and help keep the prices stable.

Also, if very few users use a certain staffer that one will be really cheap, so at some point that staffer will become a good pick. And vice versa, staffers that many managers use will be expensive, making other picks more beneficial. This will also help strategies to balance themselves.

Limits for unlimited strategies
With the new staff we will also introduce upper limits to hoarding and trading. Other strategies have this; there is a limit for how many players you can train and at what speed you can train them for example. But you are in control of these limits, by hiring assistants to increase your training speed and similar.

Controllable limits like this will be introduced to hoarding and trading as well. For trading there will be a limit to how many transfer listings you can do each week (and you can accumulate these up to a certain amount). And if you want more listings you can hire an agent.

Those who have a lot of money on their account - and intend to spend it - will have to deal with the taxman, but an accountant can help you with increasing the limit where wealth starts being taxed and also with paying less tax.

There is still some finetuning of these limits to be done, hence why I can’t give you more details at this point. But none of these limits will affect the normal manager much, that should be clear.

What about improved ratings?
I talked about improved ratings in my last editorial, and that this was top priority for the game. But because of the economical situation the new staff system has become more important and top priority for the game. Improved ratings is naturally still on, but for later.