I think it is clear to everyone at the moment that something drastic must be done with the game to put it back on track. We’re missing two main things at the moment: time and motivation. There’s only so much we can do about lack of time, we won’t compromise work and family to work on the game, but when we do have free time we need motivation to spend a few hours on RubySoccer every now and then.

With that in mind, one of the possibilities is moving RubySoccer to a freemium model where the game would remain free-to-play but managers would be able to make in-game purchases to either unlock more features or gain some kind of benefit. By doing this we would have to get rid of real life club and competition names which in my opinion is a very nice feature. How would everyone feel about that?

Even without real life club names I’d like to keep the structure of countries, national leagues and cups and international competitions. The difference would be that each manager would them create his/her own club and join a particular country. Let’s not worry about the specific mechanics of that right now.

I have some more ideas to discuss but I think I’ve said enough to get this started.
Cheers

Sincerely, i like the game as it is right now. For me, the only handicaps are the match’s algorithm and the youth upgrade calculation. The match algorithm tends to give a great emphases on goal keepers (even when they are not that great) making it hard to score goals even when we have 20/25 shots on target. The other remark is the youth players: it’s very rare to have 2 or 3 reasonsable good players that we can promote to the principal squad. Most of the time, the game gives you an average rated player player that will eventually end up in the free transfer. Once in a while a Ronaldo or a Messi could came along :)

Free game and with real club names, excellent!!!

I have to say i like the way the game is right now too. The only problem i have with it is that from day one we’ve never been able to use normal world formations like 4-4-2, 4-3-3 and 5-3-2 for example as play only seems to happen in the center of the pitch and therefore managers just line their players up through the center of the pitch.

Another problem is that players from brazil and England are better than other countries and therefore everyone seems to buy players solely from those countries. A way to solve that could be to implement a team bonus wereby a team fielding say 6 homegrown players would get a small performance advantage in the match over a team full of foreign players. It would also help international teams too. Additonally regarding international teams, managers gets fired way too easily which makes it kind of pointless even applying and again that is something which cud be improved.

As for getting rid of real life club and competition names, i wouldnt be in favour of that as one of the unique aspects of this game is having real clubs in real competitions as its something most onlines games dont have.

é verdade que a nivel dos resultados muitas vezes o homem do jogo é o gr com tantos remates no alvo torna se por vezes irrealista ( jogo meu na taca em Casa 21 remates 13
19 remates no alvo 11
90% passes acertados 76% e perco 0-1 )
… o mercado anda fraco deveria dar para fazer propostas a jogadores sem treinador mesmo que nao estejam na lista e o sistema consoante o valor e o valor do jogador aceitariam ou nao, mas nao permitir isso entre treinadores reais para nao se ser " constantemente " abordados por jogadores que nao queremos vender… eu contino a achar que nao deveria se perder o dinheiro no fim da epoca podermos esclher em ficar com o montante e ter menos pontos para investir ou entao perde lo e ter mais pontos…

I don’t see why we should get rid of real life clubs. At the moment most managers take a look at the players and not at the name of the club. Ok, some managers want to play with Barcelona, Real Madrid or Manchester United but nowadays these ‘famous reallife clubs’ are not the big clubs in rubysoccer. In England you have Coventry City and West Bromwich Albion, in Spain you have Elche and Racing Club Ferrol, and so on. So why do you need fantasy names?
I do think it’s more important for a footbal game you don’t have reallife players like Ronaldo or Messi because then you have only 1 of them. In Ruby you have lots of topstrikers and I don’t mind mine names Roscoe. I just need a topstriker.

Most important to get this game back on track is to fix the economy. Nowadays the market is static. Why selling your topstriker if you loose the money anyway because there isn’t an alternative on the market. Managers give millions for a single player because they know they shouldn’t manage their cash at all. If the market is fixed the game will be more dynamic again and more attractive. New managers will come and stay.
The management department are good in my opinion but there need to be another concept for the money. Contractclauses are one thing but they won’t fix the whole economy system.
I want to pay for this game to unlock more features like a more specific scouting department , a better youth training or additional playerspots available in your squad.

I also agree with Jorge you could make the youths more random. They can rely on the countryranking but not for 100%. In real life England is a topleague but they don’t have many good youths. Belgium is a small league but they have a golden period for youths.

I’ve written enough for the moment…Other opinions?

Thanks everyone for the opinions so far, let’s keep it going. Just to make it clear, getting rid of real club names is just a consequence of going freemium (if we do that) due to licencing issues, not something we simply want to do. Summary of what has been said so far:

-match algorithm needs improvement: GK too important, real-life formations can’t be used as too much happens in the center of the field
-youth generation algorithm needs improvement: smaller countries should have a better chance of having good youths
-bonus performance for fielding homegrown players
-player market: allow proposals to non-listed players
-economy: budget reset every season is not a good thing, bring back team money concept and improve departments

Cheers

and lets not forget moral

Well, Gabriel and Danilo, I am not sure if you remember our conversation on Skype years ago, I warned you of this very thing happening. I actually reluctantly enjoy saying this : “I told you so!”. Never mind, life goes on.

I am not sure you need to get rid of the real life clubs and competitions, but you need to do it in a different way.
Take a look at OSM (online soccer manager) , they do have real club and player names. You coach only for a season then next season you take a new club in same or different league. It’s a meta game really of getting as much points and competing against other players.
Game is “FREE” although to really enjoy it you need to make in game purchases so you can have more staff, and train better etc.

Depends on what kind of game world you want to setup but if you want to keep the current model as it is, that would be THE best for hardcore managers (as myself). So here is my shortlist of suggestions:

1) Keep same model of the game world as it is, get rid of any trademarked stuff, such as the club loos, that is the first thing that will be attacked.

2) Keep game free but add content to be unlocked, such as (some at least):
a. better youth academy
b. better scouting – finding the best possible younger players
c. better economy – possibility to invest, to gain more funds

3) Make an app that is the scouting tool, the app should not be for free
4) make an app that is the youth dev tool, not for free
5) make an app that is the economy management tool, not for free

Really you could keep the game for free, and make the extra stuff around it paid features.

A BIG issue is cheating in such games : make manager reputation really count, so in order to make more than 1-2 transfers/season, you should unlock something or gain something. Maybe meeting the requirements will unlock “transfer cards” that will allow you transfer a player from a certain country/continent. At the end of the season you could have a finale where the board meet with you and summarize what you gained/won.
So you achieved 5/6 goals then you can draw 5 cards that will have a serious impact on your club/manager/players/youth/etc.
cards could be something like:
1) the next “Ronaldo” card, so you apply this card you a youth player then you know this player is destined to greatness.
2) the giant-killer card, your club (if smaller) should be able to win against any big club on certain game(s)
3) economic boom card, your club makes BIG money next season, return of investment etc..
.. and so on.. some could be real rare cards while others are not so..

You could exchange any number of cards for transfer “permits”, so you had 5/6 achieved goals, you could then exchange 5 of the cards for transfer, or only two, keep the rest.

THE CARDS are your managers cards, so they go with you to any club you move on. A real nice career development can be achieved!!

Now, remember you only managed 5/6 goals, at the “FINALE” you draw 5 “good” cards but also one “bad” cards. The “bad” cards could be something like:
1) Injury on key player (for the rest of the season) – random of course, you have no control over this.
2) Economy manager running away with clubs money, leaving you only 20% of the funds available
3) Players (x number of random players of your squad) were partying in the local pub, dragging their fitness level down so they are not in form
and so on..

I would also consider removing MONEY from the game, maybe the CARDS could be the CURRENCY for you as manager. Then you could build up a stack of cards before taking on managing a BIG club. That would get rid of the cheaters big time.

I know this makes the game a totally different kind but it also makes it more easier to get at mainstream audience, not only the hardcore managers.
It would make it harder for cheaters, specially if you remove the currency in the game.

Well, some thought anyway

/BK

Thanks for your thoughts Berhan. I know you told us so and we could certainly see it coming, but some habits are hard to change. Anyway, on to the interesting stuff.

As usual you are giving some crazy ideas, most of them in a good sense. Points 1 to 5 are really great and in-line with what I’ve been thinking. To be honest I haven’t done any research on what we need to remove in terms of club names, logos, etc so that we are not infringing any copyrights.

The cards idea is very radical and would fundamentally change the mechanics of transfers and the economy in general as well as introduce some interesting management and random events concepts. I’m a conservative person and would probably do some “fixes” to the current state of things before going through this more radical path, but I have to say I like the sound of it. The game needs a reset and that would be a good time to introduce innovative concepts.

Cheers

reset it now, add some attribute boosting for a couple seasons while you work on it. im sure you can beta it before implementation ( the plans that is)

we could all use a moral boost people leaving and the game not being populated as it should be it has been frustrating. i think i can speak for everyone when i say that we dont expect everything all in one shot ( hey that would be fucking awesome) but do what you can…. all we want to see is progress at what ever level you can manage…( you having a kid right?)

i disagree witih card thing, but i think board bonuses like " we at the board think you are doing an amazing job… we would like to extend YOUR contract."

managers should be on a contract. as much as i Love being Sunderlands manager i think i should earn it…. surely not the only Sunderland fan :)
then have season expectations…. then at the near end of your contract you can recieve club offers from other clubs and decide where to go… the more prestige the more bonus to things of your deciding. this is just my own idea…

Removing real life club names, giving managers contracts and all the other superficial changes are all well and good but it wont change the fundermental problem that everyone seems to complain about and thats the match engine. Removing club names wud make the game less attractive as i really couldnt see me getting excited about managing a team called Joe Bloggs United or The Manchester Raiders for example!

As for contracts i cud quite easily see managers getting sacked right left and center like international managers currently do. The board was 100% happy with me, i played and lost the next match and i was sacked. Hardly realistic and sadly i havent bothered with international management since.

Better youth academy is a good idea and cud be done similar to the current training ground were u use points to improve it with a bigger pool of youth players too.

Training is one thing the game is missing though as managers have no input into this which is odd given its a fundermental part of being a football manager. Being able to control training and perhaps focus on training specific attributes would be good.

There are several questions need to be answered before going forward I think:

1) If it’s about (lack of ) time, then it’s more about planning (badly) really. We all have job, family and so on. That is not an excuse but motivation.
2) Reset will add very little, the game is same, it will give us 10-20 interesting seasons then it’s all over again. I say add MORALE AND RESET!
Is the MORALE working?

3) Are you really willing to commit to maybe what’s the last effort to do this right?

4) Card thing: you have to see this beyond your own needs.
What is the best manager sim out there, are you competing against it?
I YES, then you should ignore the card thing.
If NO, then you should try to get other audience than the normal hardcore FM fanboys.

You need to find other ways to introduce new players to the game. Login through facebook, facebook game, apps. A 5 year old kid should be able to play it. The game is HARD to get for mainstream players, and the card thing would make it easier for people who haven’t played manager games for the past 20 years, to try and maybe like it. Yes, it adds a whole new level of excitement, the end of the season would be BEST thing in a game, what kind of cards you would earn, and so on. You either understand how BIG this is or you don’t.

Davison, you could still have an interesting career to earn your way to your favorite club to manage.
The card thing really offers on the surface real fun way to play the game, get rid of cheaters, or make it really hard. On deeper level it’s really about strategy and “playing your cards” well to achieve your goals. Maybe even have a mission based thing, like:
1) Achieve this and that in 5 seasons to unlock this and that
2) Beat a rival club 3 times in a row to unlock this and that.
3) Cards can be “invested” to unlock/achieve things in training/competition/end of season.

Anyway, a change is always a good thing no matter what you change.

/BK

Some comments for you 4 questions, BK:

1) It’s more lack of motivation than lack of time at the moment…that should change in a month or so. I’m speaking for myself on this one, Danilo still has the lack of time issue.
2) A reset would be nice but I’d rather do it with less countries (to have more managers on the same leagues) and with some new feature. New countries would be re-introduced slowly.
3) I am, hopefully that won’t change
4) Still not sure about that…I kinda like it but I want to fix other things first (such as the match engine)

Cheers

4) Match engine
Can be fixed very easily, all you need is real life data of say 10 seasons (per country).
Then you sort it, from best win to highest defeat (per week game) and let a team “win” the result.
The team’s chances depend on team strength, manager ability and a few hidden things.
So the results are in the DB already.
So for each turn, you sort the teams according to the criteria above (squad, manager, team) and they get the result best matching their place in the table with the results. So managers have to compete on DAILY basis to get the best “points”/day. Not logging in on a day(match day) will rank them lower in the sorted table (which can still be enough to win a game).

If you are talking about match replay, who cares about such stuff?
Seeing a result is enough for most people. Maybe who assisted, who scored, yellow, red cards, injuries, man of match simply as a text would be enough for most needs.

If you do not want to use real data (or have the data of 10 seasons of real life football) then you could randomize the results.

/BK

I agree that match replay is not that important and we could generate the results based on other factors without having to simulate the whole thing as we do now. Even though it would mean a complete re-engineering of the engine I’m inclined to do that rather than adjust the current one. If that means more realistic results and statistics I’m all for it.

I’m not too sure about your real life DB of results suggestion, BK. I’d rather do calculations based on the players and strategies during the match and come up with a reasonable score and statistics based solely on that. I could even use real friendlies from FT and MT to test a new engine once it’s done…hmmm.

Yeah, sometimes re-doing is a better option.

Real life results db would remove all unnecessary discussions of unrealistic results. Requires some work though. These days data is cheap, for a monthly fee of 9 dollars you get all the major games results (all the past seasons as well). Just saying.

The risk of doing calculations based on players and strategies is basically saying you are the expert and know how a strategy beats another strategy.
Which can be tricky. Unless you really do have that knowledge. If you do you should try managing a real team, I’ve been there and done that, very fun.

You really say you want to do NEW things but quickly fall back to the conservative ways of thinking. If you really want to be successful with the “new” game then you have to target something else than you did until now.

Look for some of the “Casual Connect” videos on YouTube, they have lots of talks about gamification, monetization and so on. If you want to reach the mainstream, you need to target daily users, not just do a niche game few people want.

/BK

yes and can we have some tits on page 4 of the rubysoccer newspaper ffs come on

sure, also some players interviews where players talk about their fear to be abducted by aliens..

We could call page 4 “Davison Section”.

/BK

Personally I think the match engine is the most important part of the game that needs to be worked on, so that some actual real world tactics or similar can be used and tactics maybe able to overcome a stronger team.

I also think that allowing larger squads with morale being introduced would be good. Maybe with the idea that certain players if they become unhappy could cause unrest within larger squads.

I also believe that currently it is too hard to please the board. A few seasons ago I managed to avoid relegation from the Premiership in the last day of the season, however the board still hated me and at the end of the season they were 1% happy with me. The next season I almost made the Champions League and they were still less than 25% happy with me. Once you get into the low figures, unless you are a miracle worker it seems very hard to please the board. Therefore reading the ideas of manager contracts would be an absolute disaster in my mind. Especially if you took on a more challenging role as manager, there would almost be no hope of survival.

I could suggest ideas all day long, but without a better fully working match engine (I do appreciate your work) I’m not sure they are worth it. I’m not sure if anyone remembers but there was a football management game called Player Manager by Dino Dini with the top down Kick Off view on the Amiga (yes I know I am old). That had a really simple tactics engine, where the field was divided into 12 squares and you could place your players via drag and drop to anywhere on the field dependent upon whether you or the opposition had the ball. You could see the 12 squares for possession and without the ball. You then clicked square 1 – 12 and could place your men for when the ball was in that square with and without the ball. You could also turn on lines to see where they had run from. This was really simple, but ultra effective in my mind. (http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/player-manager/screenshots/gameShotId,113568/ – sorry no videos I can find) Maybe something like this could be added for more depth when overhauling the match engine section.

Why do you guys keep talking about match engine this and match engine that?
Are you developers? Have you written one? I say yes on both questions when it’s about me.
I wrote a document back in 2002 about how to do a match motor thinking, it’s in Swedish (unfortunately) but translation software is better these days.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bajtc82uzqee73b/MatchMotor.doc

How the results are simulated is important but really not THAT important as long as players (read users) know how to win a game, ie what is required to win against an opponent (stronger or weaker – does not matter). You could simply setup a table where a formation beats another and a third beating the second and so on. Not that important. In a while people will learn about it and start implementing it in their strategy. Or some people won’t care. I have been trying to figure out how RS works but given up, because it’s too much randomness. You have to start treating your users as they know football (specially those who really do know football).
To really create an epic game – sure – there has to be a great engine behind it BUT to get to first stage, maybe a simpler solution would do better things for you at this stage. First goal has to be to go mainstream, and attract as big audience as possible.

You have to really put elements in the game where you measure the knowledge of the manager in order to reward/penalize them with:
- better scores / worse scores
- better players / worse players
- better economy / worse economy

Sniff wrote something that is VERY important to give the users a great feedback of the game and that is to read user action and react upon that.
That is what I have been preaching since day one. A smart game engine (not the match engine) should read HOW user plays every time they log in and measure actions – then reward / penalize.
That is to read the fine print if you will.

Example:
- If Manager A check’s Manager B’s team 10 times and changes their tactics before a game then they are not sure how to setup their strategy = penalize.
- if a player is scouted and looked at by managers more than others, then that player is more important/valuable – add something to that player.

Measure who did setup the first team with less clicks – give some sort of bonus, maybe an extra chance of scoring.

/BK

AND THERE MUST BE BIG OL TITAYS ON PAGE 4 FFS

THIS IS A GOOD TALK SO FAR :)

Davison you are of legal age to buy your own milk, stop talking about titties. You should see some professional help about that though.

/BK

im just bringing some comedy into the discussion ya fook.

:)

k so 10 days later anything been done in them days ?

Just came back to delete a post from Davison, for old time’s sake. Hell, it felt great. :D

lol :) it was a deserved motivation….maybe you will get shit done ? . you lot havnt updated shit or done shit in nearly a year and now we are more than a month since any communication.

Yes, yes…it’s been a month without communications! I’m a father now, thank you very much. I have no plans to abandon RS…I mean, it looks abandoned now but you know what I mean. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, especially when watching the World Cup.

@BK: I don’t claim to be a master tactician or have a great understanding of which tactics works better against others…what I plan to achieve with a new match engine is a better way to calculate outcomes based on players attributes and positioning. Clearly the “real time” simulation we use is very sloppy and does not provide realistic moments during the match, as can be seen in the replays. I’ll probably re-write it in a way that will not be replayable, at least not with the level of details we currently have.

gabriel then just post something like… once every two weeks ? so i dont get seperation anxiety lol

I’ll do my best. Yesterday I spent some time designing what I think the new match engine should look like. I’ll share that with Danilo after some more work.

This projects is so over.