Subject: »[info]DevDiary 80: “Price is what you pay, value is what

Bo!
"Forget about it!" but also " Forget about it!" :-))) (Donnie Brasco - film)

ahahahah beautiful film:-)

Radoslav Slavchev
Bulgaria
Experienced Defender

this guy is far from a defender he has only 9 def skills How do they actually determine the star of the team ..

I really hope I've read this wrong, but are they really trying to force NT managers to have plus just so they can see the skills of players they manage?

NT coaches do more for the game and keeping managers interested in playing (rather than leaving), than any advertising sokker has done in the past 15yrs. You lose NT coaches because they don't like being forced to pay for plus and they will be replaced, but replaced by people who don't care at all about the nation they are looking after (can be seen with many teams in u21 where seasons go by without the NT manager making a forum post).

What do you think will happen to sokker numbers when passionate people leave or step down because of changes like this? Users will continue to leave due to minimal community involvement which will greatly reduce the number of potential plus buyers.

As I said, I hope I have read that wrong, but if I haven't, it is extremely short sighted and a clear money grab based around the comments made many times in the past that the NT is the only reason many people even log in and play the game
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If anything, it should be the opposite. NT managers get free plus or at least free components of it (ie player skills, stats etc). So that there is incentive for people to get the community involved, having fun and voting for that NT manager

I dunno man. I was more surprised to see it wasn't a requirement all along.

You talk about 'value added' yet still too cheap to buy a sub?

It's not horribly expensive today for what you get. In fact I'm going to probably reup before the price goes up.

I hope that latest press room article was released by accident. Making NT player skills only visible if the owner of the player has the box ticked AND the nt manager has Plus is insane. That’s a huge in game advantage for Plus and a major own goal of you wanted people to care about NTs and or paying plus.

I mean that just screams of we want more money from plus but know what we offer isn’t good enough so what else can we push behind a paywall. That’s not how payment models should work. You don’t take away existing features and put them behind paywalls. The change for Nt player skills was way too important to be pushed behind a paywall.

You shouldn’t make it such that someone with plus is basically essential for an nt manager that interferes with the election process and fairness.

Guys, if you want to see bonuses and expectations for your league/teams, just change leagueID from that example to yours:

Example: Italian C1 https://sokker.org/league_stats/leagueID/1153/stat_type/bonus


Insert your league ID instead of xxxx:

https://sokker.org/league_stats/leagueID/xxxx/stat_type/bonus
https://sokker.org/league_stats/leagueID/xxxx/stat_type/expectations

So for my league i got this:

Vice-championship below expectations F.C. Bears
Vice-championship total failure Sparta LE
Vice-championship total failure Rudar Vrdnik
Vice-championship above expectations Orionci
Top half of the table above expectations FK Radnički
Top half of the table above expectations FONTANA NBG
Top half of the table below expectations Kucke sa Medaka
Top half of the table goal achieved GoyaNS
Top half of the table below expectations FK Slavonija
Top half of the table below expectations Omladinac
Top half of the table above expectations JUNUZI
Brave fight for any points great success FC Blue Angels


Can anyone help me try to understand what does all of this mean? : )

Avoiding direct relegation great success Baltimore Arsenal FC

Gee, I guess I did okay this year.

Given NTs are not an individual team and is an elected responsibility from users within that country (not even guaranteed), NTs should not fall into that plus category period, especially for essential features. Skill showing was the best new feature and that countered people sending fake skill updates (either to get them into nt or as a means to avoid having them play nt games). At least now if they block skills you know they’ve blocked them and not hit outright lying or intentional ignoring skmails etc.

I agree, great feature!

I love it, although there are users who hide skills.
Whatever their reason might be, I don't understand it.

Cheap has nothing to do with it. If they need more money then bump plus up with no additional changes. If plus is “cheap” then people will pay it and they won’t have revenue issues from it. If you lose subscribers then plus isn’t cheap and has extended beyond what its worth. Problem is they know putting plus up alone won’t sell it to people and actually may reduce their plus subscribers, so that’s why they add these extra pieces there as an “incentive” - I’d call it holding nt management to ransom myself to justify a price increase. That’s all it is.

Those who don’t pay for plus are already bombarded by advertisements on every page load, so they’re already earning income from people not paying plus.
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Lol this has nothing to do with personal plus and all to do with the NT.

As NT coach if done right and with passion, you keep people interested in the game, which means they are more likely to stay in the game, therefore more likely to bring people to the game and more likely to buy plus themselves.

Good NT managers have always been vital to this games survival.

You start forcing NT managers to buy plus or work at a disadvantage and then you start losing good managers and all the positives they bring. Once upon a time, most NT managers interacted with the community and there was prestige behind it, now it is used by many just to have another team in the game without any care or interaction with the community, and therefore none of the benefits I mentioned. There is likely a direct link between communication in forums for NTs and rank of the country (in a general trend).

This move pushes away good NT managers who benefit the game and and profits of the developers but who don't want to buy plus for any number of reasons for their own team.

Other games have NT managers seeing skills of players they would manage as default and have for years, sokker has only just caught up and now want to put it behind a pay wall.

It's very obviously an attempt at a cheap cash grab but it will likely actually cause more harm than good in the long run. What a way to continue to destroy loyal managers who have continued to help keep the game running along in their own communities (and yes, I no longer have plus because the 'improvements' have basically all hurt small nations, but I have advertised in Australian forums, talked to ex sokker managers and brought back enough people to qualify for plus multiple times).

logically speaking, if you spent so much time on a game, why would you NOT buy PLUS to support its development though? This is what I will never understand. The PLUS price is absolutely cheap in today's currency. The only reason I could justify not paying it is if I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy the game starting out - or I was some high school kid who didn't have a job.

NT managers like to think they are doing this 'great work for the game' but the reality is no, you're not doing anything that can't be replaced. There are no shortage of folks around looking to be NT managers that have PLUS. Moreover, I could argue the biggest thing the national team program brings to the table is more injuries for its player owners.

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The reason I am not sure they can get away with charging a lot more than now (different issue, to be fair) is because browser games have kinda gone by the wayside. I know they say "price hasn't changed in years" but to that I'd also say "yeah, and you have a much smaller user base now than before because gaming has gotten much better over that time".
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You don’t pay for something if the development is non existent or they don’t focus on areas of the game that most impact you. Development is snail pace , there is next to no communication, the revenue is unfairly biased to larger country bases (sponsorship/gate receipts), there is no formal tutorial, the transfer market is unfavourable for our time zone, 3 matches a week and shortened seasons when no one wanted it, need I go more?

You don’t give money to things like that. If you get poor service there’s no way you tip anyone and if you were 1-2 hours late at serving I wouldn’t be paying for the food either. Good thing I don’t have to deal with expected tipping culture because I’ll never understand why you should tip if you get bad service