Your scout searches now have an extra checkbox that can be set for when you want to restrict the results to only players that fit your current transfer budget. Of course that applies only to transfer listed players, if your search includes non-listed, free or loan listed players those will still be present regardless of the “within budget” checkbox.

Another minor improvement was regarding the penalty you get in your scout search progress when you have players in your hotlist without having a corresponding scout report for them. If you have your own players hotlisted without a scout report they won’t affect the progress of scout searches.

Changes released earlier this week:

1) You can now create Reminders to be automatically sent to you in a future turn. They can be accessed from your Mail screen in the top right corner sub-menu
2) Fixed bug on coach report result where minimum predicted main skill could exceed 100
3) Scout reports are not deleted once you buy a player, they will still be accessible from the player info screen until they expire.

Another couple improvements to scout searches:

• when you update inactive scout searches they automatically become active
• scout searches now have a sequential id that is referenced by in-game messages that advise you an on-going search has failed to find any suitable players

Improved the player tooltip in the formations screen. It now contains the player’s pressure handling and traits. In addition to that the skills are shown in the same order as in other game screens.

When multiple teams are bidding for a player, the player decision will be like a raffle, where each team bidding for the player will have a number of “tickets” to compete based on how good is their offer, using same parameters we use today (wage, priority and stars) plus making use of the contract length. This way any bid would have at least 1 ticket to compete, ensuring small teams always have a chance greater than 0. Of course big clubs will most likely be competing with a much higher number of tickets and will still have a higher chance of hiring the player, and that’s how it should be.

The contract offer screen now includes the suggested contract length as well, in order to guide you on what to offer. As a rule of thumb, players that are still improving will prefer short contracts, players at peak will prefer medium contracts and declining players will prefer long contracts. This does not affect contract renewal…yet!

We have updated the “Negotiation failed” message to show your odds for winning the dispute and the odds for the team that hired the player. This is just to give an idea of how strong your offer was compared to the winning one, remember that even the ones with lower odds can win.

The number of spots available for international competitions in a given country is now based on the league ranking, not on the country ranking. In practice very few countries will be affected, as both rankings are almost aligned, but the aim of this change is to try and get stronger teams in the international competitions, as in theory the league ranking is a better representation of team strength in a given country top division whereas the country ranking is based on the team’s performance in international competitions.

We are not changing the number of spots available (yet), meaning for example that the 7th ranked European league will still have the same number of spots in the new system as the 7th ranked European country would have in the old system. Also, the country ranked will still be used to determine youth quality and as an evolution step requirement.

Three changes related to contract renewals:

• players will now take into account the contract length offered, meaning they may ask for a higher wage if you don’t offer their preferred length
• when the player rejects an offer that was not for their preferred contract length, their counter offer will include two options, one with the length the manager offered and one with their preferred contract length
• you can only renew player contracts after at least halfway through their current contract, instead of always being 72 after contract start

You will now get messages when a player from your hotlist goes to the free transfer. Transfer listing was already covered and we had this gap for a long time, it has finally been addressed.

When firing retiring players the contract break fee is now calculated based on end of season or contract end date, whatever comes first. Previously it was calculated always based on contract end date, even when it happened to be after player retirement.

Players will now automatically return from loan if their “first division” or “team qualified for international cup” clauses are breached when the teams that had loaned them are relegated or knocked out from an international cup, respectively.

Our traditional massive tech upgrade has been applied to the server. While this ensures we always have a modern stack, it may also impact some of the screens. Please let us know if you see anything broken.

The error margin of suggested wages has been reduced by 25%. Hopefully your negotiations team will give you better wage suggestions from now on. Of course you can still get the odd suggestion (less frequently now), especially at lower investment levels, in which case you should probably follow your gut.

National team managers are now able to select any class S or class A players to the squad instead of being strictly limited on what the game considers to be the best for a particular position. Where there are not enough players with those classes for a given position you will still see additional players listed as options.

There are 8 new inactive teams in Germany in both dimensions, which means the bottom 3 teams in 2. Bundesliga will be relegated by the end of the season. The teams added are currently in the top 2 German divisions in real life and therefore deserve a place in the game.

As discussed in our Facebook page, we have completed the change where CPU teams will always lose bids against managers, unless the wage offered by the managers are lower than the minimum the player would accept.

Players with performance bonus stars only provide their bonus while they’re on the field. If they are not playing or leave the field for any reason, their bonus stop being applied. Similarly, if they enter the field during the match then their bonus start being applied.

This should not only be more realistic in terms of players only being motivated if their star teammates are playing but also it will avoid situations where rich teams would retain such star players just for their bonuses, even if they were not intending to use them in the field.

The player Aggressiveness attribute has been removed from the game. We realised the attribute was not relevant enough to influence managers buying/selling decisions or match results. This is a small but important first step in simplifying some aspects of the game and also making room in the user interface in preparation for our mobile app.

The number of players you can buy from the same manager per season has been increased from 2 to 3.

Your scouts can now be requested to only look for players of a given nationality. By default they will look for any nationality. Remember we are talking about the player’s country of birth, not the country he is currently playing in.

The manager settings screen has a new layout and a new option where you can choose how many turns in advance you want to see the contract expiring icon beside the player’s name in the player list screen. The default value for everyone is 36 turns, but you can now change it to 0, 12, 24 or 72.

If you have been following the news you know about the huge bushfires burning across Australia. We have decided to donate all the net income from ruby sales in the month of January to support the firefighters and wildlife groups below:

https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/supporting-cfa#donate-cfa

https://donate.wwf.org.au/donate/koala-crisis/koala-crisis?t=AP1119W03#gs.q9q1o5

We have made a change so that coach reports are never inconclusive. This means that when you go check a completed report it won’t say things like “I’m not sure how this player can improve”. We felt the way things were it was very frustrating sometimes, especially if your coach level was not that high and you had to wait a long time for a report result only to find out it was inconclusive.

Thank you so much for your additional rubies purchases in the month of January. We have now completed the donation of the full amount received (minus paypal transaction fees) to the following initiatives:

National Bushfire Disaster Appeal

Koala Crisis

We have just completed a substantial technical upgrade of our entire stack. If you find any issues, please let us know.

Currently fixing an issue on FastTicker’s last tick. All matches were played successfully, the problem happened when creating the round of 16 for international competitions. We already know what the issue is, hang in there!

It is my pleasure to announce that TestTicker is finally up and running! This dimension is much smaller than the others, has only 8 countries with 1 division each, but includes the newcomers USA and Mexico. As an exclusive feature you will only be able to apply for teams of class C or lower while unemployed, you can only apply for higher class teams if you are already managing a higher class team (e.g. you took your initially D team to class B, so now you can apply to other teams up to B class).

As stated in the dimension description the main intention is to test new features and, when required, the dimension will be reset. There will be 6 ticks per day which will run 1 hour after FastTicker’s ticks, the first one is scheduled to run in 41 hours from now. This should give everyone plenty of time to apply for the teams they wish. Given everyone will have 0 points in the manager ranking the assignment when multiple people are applying for a team will be random.

Enjoy!

The existing points system for the country ranking does not work for TestTicker in its current format where the competitions are shorter, especially the North American ones. For now I’ve manually fixed the points from season 1 using a new formula that I am planning to automatically apply from season 2 onwards. It awards a team points based on the class of the opponents it defeated or tied with in international competitions, even including the Club World Cup which is ignored by the formula currently in place. If all goes well the new formula may prove to be useful even for FastTicker and MediumTicker in the future.

Bug fixed: when viewing international cup titles by country the totals now include all teams, including inactive ones.

Bug fixed: draws for North American international competitions now take into account the teams’ countries in order to avoid same country matches as far as possible.