Subject: »[info] Dev Diary 77: Tax reform (final)

So if you want to make progress you have to counter this change by even more farming for a longer period of time.
Great stuff :)

Exactly.

In my case, instead of investing into my first team and fighting for top, I decided not to buy anyone, concentrate on national cup (ticket money) and I'm training youths in 1 league game.
So any money that I would lose during this season I make up by not investing into the team... great change for the game :D

My experience is similar, I had a decent 65 rating team but after I realized that my fans will be constantly furious with midtable ranking in the top league, I decided to sell it off and start full farming mode with very cheap veterans for starting lineup.

Now when my entire starting team is bought for less than €200k, I couldn't care less about fans mood and revenue :)

They way it is now, nothing can be done properly against the farming without harming the ''normal'' playing style. We don't need to focus on how to counter farming, but how to stimulate playing for the best position.
So that means there has to be 2 things done.

1) Make the end seasonal bonusses much bigger! If you want people to stimulate fighting for a place within the 1st class league, then you need to have bonusses exceeding 5M to play in top league and even at least be 10M for playing champion!
Also, give more revenue possible for higher playing! If you're playing in 1st class, you'll be wanting a stadium exceeding 50k places and with good results, it should be full house so you are stimulated to expand more. If we want the football to be a primary source of income, in stead of farming, then all means to stimulate football, including more income from results, should be implemented!

2) Grow the game in managers. More managers means more players, more players means more offer on the TL, which means less demand and lower prices, with exception of the top class players, who, on their turn, are not baught for profit in selling, but for results, which leads to profit in playing!
Off course, this point is the hardest to reach, but if the first point is adjusted, then this might give newer players more perspective.
Off course, I still support the idea to give new managers much more tools to play with like better players, coaches, stadium and starting funds, and that should be given to attract new managers more in staying and at least give the game more credit for trying out, in stead of leaving, realising they are planets away from reaching high class football.

It's maybe a high shot, but at least you give the game more reason to be played like a football manager, in stead of a broker.

Off course, I still support the idea to give new managers much more tools to play with like better players, coaches, stadium and starting funds, and that should be given to attract new managers more in staying and at least give the game more credit for trying out, in stead of leaving, realising they are planets away from reaching high class football.

It's maybe a high shot, but at least you give the game more reason to be played like a football manager, in stead of a broker.

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At least I see this passage similarly.
You've described this section very well!!!

On one hand i do agree that its how it should be (giving more incentive to play in higher leagues).
On the other hand, if you give more money to the teams on top, then it would be hard for new teams to get higher.

But at the moment i do not have any good solution on mind.

Imho we (they=devs and owners) should focus on bringing new managers, but more importantly keeping them.
That would bring the most advantage for both us (managers) and owners (more $$$).

I agree with giving greater weight to the awards, it is very poor.

Well, I understand that it is not the case but I think it is good to share it, for those who play HT you will understand me, they dealt a hard blow to farming by limiting the budget of the teams, this made it more important to focus on farming, which was what they did. most equipment. Compete 2-3 seasons and farm another 8-10 seasons.

Regards

Change the system with fan moods now.This is not only hard for us we play at high level but especially for new users.I heard one newbie who started the game this season and he has 5/5 vicrories but he looses fan.Do something now because the future of the game will be very bad
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As the guy above writes. And also make it a priority to retain new players, welcome messages, a tutorial, the opportunity to play a virtual match, tasks for them to start with. Otherwise, there will be 5,000 of us in a year and 4,000 in two years

To add to that. I think the gap of time it takes for newbies to try to "catch up" to managers who have been here for years is a big ask. And that's where new people will drop the game.

I think there needs to be even quicker cycles when a team peaks because the game still feels too slow.

Possibly changing the aging system or season structure again.

It is a slow paced game. You cannot change that without changing the very core of the game in which most of the existing managers feel comfortable. If the pace will be risen again I think lots of older users will not take it serious anymore. Lots of the existing managers are working parents and they cannot pick up the pace due to private life. What you propose is another kind of game.

Changes must be brought with a minimum on changing the code of the game. Imo, the fastest thing we can do is to adjust bot teams to have a similar fan base as a 5y old team. It will raise sponsorship and revenue for newer teams. Obviously the current fan base system is bugged and needs adjustment as well, but in it's core, bot teams need to be better. I thinkbthat bot teams should have AI like managers who adjust tjeir team similar, but without the drive to promote. At least newer teams will have a proper challenge and will learn to make tactical adjustments more quickly. And here a good tutorial, preferably an interactive one, will help.
Imo the devs need to make a summary on what is really needed within the game and then start working with priorities. Random minor adjustments nobody asks for are imo low priority and thus not necessary to work on until much further within the development.
I hope they can recognise their mistake in the mood system and at least revert it or adjust it to more appropriate standards.
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I agree that there's different ways to achieve this but I think long term this is probably going to be the difference between keeping the older user base satisfied and growing the game with retaining a new user base. Which has been the challenge of what to prioritize in SK.

When I hear stuff (in forums) like we don't want multi-divine players and the juniors seem to be getting worse. It seems anti-climactic. Slows the game even more. But every decision should be to make it quicker in whichever avenue is chosen. Why not have better teams overall, better players, better juniors. The balance seems to be off is my main point
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If the change in fanmood was to "even the odds" between established clubs with lots of money and newer clubs with no money, then I agree that it's not the right lever to pull.

I'm sure there are simple solutions for most problems: if we don't want to have multi-divine-players, add more skilllevels on top and make higher skilltraining slower (I think that is already in the pipeline).

As for new managers: I don't think new managers quit, because they cannot get first place in a few seasons and if they would, then no matter what you change they might leave; because there is only one spot at the top and there will always be a lot of managers fighting for it. I remember Greg having statistics of when people leave and the majority left after the first login into the game. I'm unsure how it is today and how this has changed. Maybe it would be good to take those statistics on a regular level and try a few changes for new teams and see if the behavior changes and more of the new player stay.

If the goal is to retain players:
As posted in other topics (https://sokker.org/forum_topic/ID_forum/1261/ID_topic/3620082/pg/1):
- give new teams better starting team (younger, talented, skilled) so they don't have to sell everyone right away,
- maybe start out with a few youth players or have a system giving them youth players faster.
- maybe give more sponsor money if they really need more money (I'm unsure that's the problem here)
- and the most important one has always been: a welcome video and later visual tutorial with steps that they have to go through for rewards. Show them, what sokker is capable of with the tactics system and watching your matches. If the dev-team has no resources of making one, make a competition in the forums: let people give ideas, find funny clips from matches or let them write and shoot their own video that would be the first thing people see to understand what makes sokker special and unique and worth playing and reward the best ones with plus or merch or a weird new sokker marketing badge to flash around.

More difficult fixes:
- international leagues for everyone also helps new players that otherwise only play against bots (look at my league as an example)
- I also very much liked special events in other games that are completely independent of the main game but lets you gain rewards for your main team. For example you have an event twice a year of 2 weeks where you get a new team of players with all skills on tragic and then you get 10 trainings every day and a system that lets you play 10 games a day (battery that fills up and you gotta use the energy or you lose the matches) against other managers in the event to raise in leagues and you will try to make your trainings and tactics in a way that makes you end up on top in the end. Of course this isn't easy to build up, but it would at least be totally independent of sokker except for the rewards, so it doesn't break anything in game, it brings something fresh that still nobody HAS to do and it gives a few weeks of even playing ground when new players can compete against the greats of sokker and actually win maybe :D I have seen such events in onlinefussballmanager.de in a totally unacceptable form as that game is horribly pay2win (nobody should play it), but the events are very fun otherwise if one changes the format into something a little less grindy.
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great ideas!

I'm sorry Raul.

I appreciate you working to try and improve the game.

But sometimes mistakes are made. After a few weeks I think we can say that nobody likes the change in the mood of the fans. I humbly ask, like me, I believe many, to go back...

I agree with you.

@Raul
"Yes, it's true that with this change, users who have a large budget but don't invest it will be "penalized" – but that's logical. If we have a league where teams are fairly evenly matched, it's a mid-level league, and one of the managers has a huge frozen budget – why shouldn't fans expect championships from them?"



Yes Raul.
That's very, veeeery logical,
All supporters have a knowledge about club budget.
It's logical.
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<facepalm>

This is the stupidest explanation you could produce. I'm a supported of a huge club and guess what - i have no idea what is his budget.
What makes supporters expectations? Last season stand, current team level, club reputation and incoming transfers. But I understand that in Sokker, budget should have some impact on the "expectations" (say 25% of the 60% mentioned in pressroom announcement, so 15% total). But as I read some of the forum posts, currently, budget is the MAIN factor. In fact, the new mood system punishes managers for maintaining a healthy budget balance and rewards managers for being close to the bankruptcy. This is unfair and not logical at all and you should revise it ASAP.
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