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

I wait many conditional orders...

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Please update the rules: https://sokker.org/rules

My personal thoughts about priorities:

1. Medical treatment to reduce injuries

2. New tactics editor

3. New youth academy

At the same time, a list of little changes could be introduced every new season, to keep the feeling that something is being done during long developments:

- Arcade leagues, which would work like friendly leagues, only for plus users

- Hall of Fame, for players of our club we appreciate for any reason. Maybe a page listing them would be enough, keeping their list of played matches and transfers

- Random league schedule instead of the predictable one we have, or at least avoid the mirror schedule we have now

Statistics are always cool but I wouldn't priorize them

tactical editor you mean just a new one to make it work on mobile, right? or some now approach?

Yes, there is a huge rules update prepared by staff members - hopefully will be published soon.

I don't see the latest dev diary in my pressroom. Maybe issue with it?

I read the dev diary on the first page of this forum thread, if anyone has the same issue.
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First of all, thanks for the refreshingly honest communication. I appreciate that.

It's also very satisfying to hear that the rules will finally be updated, yay. Regarding the priorities, I could go down the selfish road, but in light of your promotion efforts, I feel that the first priority should be the implementation of some kind of tutorial to make those new users stay. It doesn't have to the premium-gold-galaxy edition at first - even some rudimentary version of a tutorial will work wonders, I think.

More users staying means more plus-users, which means more funds for accelerated development in the future. One can dream, at least ;o)

Only by constantly pushing our SOKKER game forward,
also constantly increases the fun of SOKKER-playing!

Only with a high degree of commitment, will it be possible
to attract new SOKKER managers :)


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It means a lot that you share and communicate with us.
I think communication is key in having more appreciation from the community. So please, keep communicating to us in a frequent way. It doesn't have to be daily or even weekly if you don't have time, but make sure we don't stay behind in the dark.

Have you considered accepting help from the users / the community about all plans and problems the game and the users have?
Lots of great minds can help you reach your goals and bugfixing faster, I'm sure. There are some brilliant technitians and developpers between the community.
Will they be able to help you the way you intended to work, I don't know, but surely, many users can help on certain things to give you time to work on other things we, users might not be able to help. You can ask the community for help and specify the specific points you need the help for. Then users can answer and apply for help.

I rather like you to work on 1 specific case, communicate about that to the community and keep us posted about the progress of the project. As I said...no need to do that on a daily, or even weekly basis. Just communicate towards us, give us an estimated time in which you hope to be ready and then if your deadline is passed, inform us it needs more time and maybe a quick work on why it will take longer. People appreciate honesty and we're fully aware that this is a side project, not a full-time job. We have time and understand you need time. But communication MUST be promised to us. It's the least you can do and it doesn't take heaps of time.

Also, for the rules...please don't leave your Linguists and Admins in the dark! They are a tool and a means to bring your message over to the community. So use it if you please...

For the rest... Welcome back! Good to hear from you again!

+1

Check this out, Raúl. I did It in just a few hours:

https://raqueto.com/sokker/sete

It's not only that works on mobile, It also has:

- multiple selection
- copy&paste a set of players
- mirroring a set of players
- mixing tactics
- sharing tactics from/to NT...

It makes it faster to compose new tactics, that what new users need

The only tutorial we can probably implement at this moment is a simplified solution based on the pressroom tab. We can prepare a series of news articles to appear there, in the form of, let's say, several dozen tips that will be generated based on specific conditions. For example, selected 2-3 news articles generated upon the first login of a new user, then additional ones after each subsequent login - some of them could be linked to, for instance, visiting a certain page in the game - for example, upon first visiting the player's page, a news article in the form of advice on their skills and what to pay attention to could be generated. This solution is currently the only realistic one, and we can start such a project together with the users, even on this forum.

maybe it is simple idea, but i belive it can be good enough.

interesting tool, but refering to my point about two types of tasks - i belive it is rather the more complicated one.
I think if we want to upgrade generator with new options, then we need a new tactic page for this, and that means we shouldnt stuck in the middle (fixing it just a bit), we know form expercience that it is most time consuming and problematic for the future.

So if we decide to focus on tactics editor - then lets make it a priority ahead of youth school and make it even better.
Our idea was to make also same type of generator for users, especially for new ones - to dont force them to edit all 35 squares - i belive you can predefine your tactics, crate first square, and give some instructions for the generator to make the tactic for you (like - high pressing, static defence, etc. to make generator understand how you want to move your players when ball goeas up or down). anyway, all new options from tool you presented can be added too ofc.

Honesty has probably never been an issue in communication; I have always tried to respond transparently and explain our perspective. The problem was certainly the lack of communication, but it simply stemmed from a lack of time. As I mentioned, the investment pool (in other words, our private funds, which allowed us to join Greg and Damian and start developing Sokker again) simply ran out, which in turn affected priorities (at least my personal ones) in terms of time availability.

Besides Sokker, I run a company, which has faced many challenges in the past year, and I haven't been able to allocate time as I used to - from my perspective, a well-functioning company will eventually allow me to engage in game development, so I disappeared from here, focusing on my primary business. The situation looks much more stable now, and I hope to be able to appear here more often. It probably won't be as frequent as at the beginning of development, but I will try to have days from time to time where I will be available for at least a few hours to address key issues.
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