Recent Posts by Gabriel Cesario
4,177 posts(s) found
Yeah, the logic for sacking doesn’t care about when the manager joined the national squad, but it definitely should! I’ll create a bug for us to fix this and put you back there in the meantime.
Cheers
This should get better with the new feature I’m working on. Together with the ability to make offers to players that are not transfer listed I’ll implement an improved player “happiness” system that will be used to determine the likelihood of a player moving to a different club. Playing matches will still be part of it, but bundled together with other aspects such as salary, teammates, club/manager reputation, country ranking, etc, it will give you a better chance of keeping youths even if you don’t line them up in official matches.
Yep, your suggestion made me bring improvement forward from our backlog and I’m also happy to see it coming first in the poll. Check out this topic where I’ve outlined how I plan to implement this feature: http://rubysoccer.com/forums/1/topics/2958
Given the latest poll results announced this week I’ve started working on allowing contract offers to be made to players that are not transfer listed and I’ve created this topic to outline how I believe it should work and collect feedback from others to influence the way we implement it. The basic idea is to give managers the chance to go after that star player that will never go to the transfer market and let the player decide whether it is a good move for him or not. We also need to make sure there is a balance on how making offers to non listed players affect the morale of the target player and the morale of your own players.
These are the main ideas I have so far:
- Expand on the current morale idea (which is based solely on match participation) into player happiness based on a number of different factors (wage, matches, teammates, etc)
- Allow expression of interest against a player. This is not a formal offer but it is a lighter way of try and affect the player happiness so he may decide to leave his club. This can be ignored by the player if he has no intention of leaving his current club to go to yours.
- Allow direct transfer proposal to a non listed player. This will be a more aggressive way of affecting the player happiness but it may also have a greater negative impact on your own players. This again can be ignored by the player.
- Allow managers to make contract renewal offers to their own players at any point after 72 turns of the last signing. This will be one of the ways to improve your player happiness and also defend against transfer offers. Contract renewal logic will also change so that the new wage is effective immediately instead of after the current contract ends.
It will be tough to make CPU clubs react and actively participate in this new idea, but I’ll give my best to make it happen. If you have any comments or suggestions please reply to this topic, your idea may even make it to the final cut version ;-)
Cheers
That’s probably related to the new pressure handling feature that replaced stadium size in calculating the penalty received by the visitor team. CPU teams’ stadiums are usually much smaller than human managed teams’ stadiums, therefore in the past they didn’t penalize visitor teams much. All existing players when the feature was introduced received a pressure handling rating of Poor, which is the worst possible. As you replace old players with fresh ones you’ll have a better mix in your squad and sometimes can even use specific players to play away matches. The difference is not huge, but if you have two players that are very similar the pressure handling may decide who you put on the field as a visitor.
Next Enhancement
With little more than 80% of manager participation we already know the option that came first:
55% Allow contract offers to players that are not transfer listed
22% Better player match rating calculation
12% Something else
8% Money replacing investment points to improve and maintain club facilities
3% No Answer
Already started on it, but it will obviously take some time to be done properly. I may start a forum topic to discuss it or if anyone else has something to add about it feel free to create one.
@Joseppi: I gave a lot of thought about it and my intention is to move away from investment points and back to using money to improve (and maintain) the different club areas. It was clearly a mistake back then when we removed the money altogether. Truth be told we were not focused on the game when we did that and this was just an easy escape instead of putting real measure to deal with inflation.
@Dimitri: I completely agree that the ones that left would add a lot of value to this conversation. I tried to directly contact a few of the most “famous” managers to get some insight, but they didn’t leave because they didn’t like the game, they just didn’t have enough time to play due to family/work commitments. I’ll see who I can find on Facebook.
@Tukmans: thanks for the long post, it goes pretty well with our plans to allow bids to non-listed players. Hotlisting as you suggest could represent an expression of interest and an offer is a more direct approach. We just need to make sure that if you make offers or express interest in too many players it could have a negative impact on your squad as well, as they might think you’re going to the market to replace them! I’ll like your post into our planned feature regarding this.
I really like this topic, thanks for creating it Dimitri! We’ve been monitoring the number of users for the last 3 months and I can confirm we’ve lost quite a few. I would like to hear from managers that are still playing what are the things they don’t like, if they ever thought about leaving (and why) and what they think would bring more users to the game.
I think the reasons you guys already stated are valid ones, at least to some extent. The morale change is still a controversial one but it was made much easier than when it was introduced, and changes like the player evolution model is something that takes SEASONS to really kick in due to the nature of the game, which is something we may have to consider when making future changes. The investments model is something I really thought could work out but I am recognise we haven’t approached it correctly, especially in the beginning when we got rid of money altogether.
Anyway, we’ve been trying to attract more users but it’s been tough to find the time to do it properly. In the past we relied on existing users inviting friends to play and that worked out pretty well, but with the reduced number of users we have now this has ceased to happen. Not to worry though, we’re not giving up :-)
Starting next season you will be able to configure player tactics in your formations. That means you can give your players specific orders with regards to Passing Style, Passing Distance, Passing Priority, Shooting Distance and Tackle Intensity, or let them use the corresponding team orders that are already available today. This should bring an extra level of control to managers and improve the tactical aspect of the game.
That’s right, friendlies do not help players improve, they are now merely a way to play against other managers for fun or using the match to test something in your formation or tactics. Players will only improve by training (early in the career) or playing official matches (initially only training will do it). The “Next Step” coach report will tell you more specific requirements associated to playing matches, if any.
Yeah, ideally we should keep a historical record of retired players so that these odd things don’t happen. It would be also interesting for statistical purposes such as best goalscorer of all time, best avg rating, etc.
@Joseppi: yes, you still get emails for player improvement
@Roberto: in the old system all players developed in the same way, faster when in the youth academy (on average 8 times per season) and slower after that (on average 4 times per season) until they reached their peak, which usually happened between 23 and 25 years old. It was very predictable and not very realistic. In the new system players will reach their peak at different ages, some even on their 30s, but the number of times they improve during their career is still roughly the same so it means on average they will improve less times per season than before. The player Evolution Profile tells you when you can expect the player to improve faster or slower and the Full Potential report tells you whether the player reaches his peak younger or older. This should give you an idea on what to expect in terms of number of improvements per season. If your evolution stage tells you the player has a lot to improve check what the Next Step report says. It may tell you the player will not improve again this season, no matter what you do, or it may tell you that the player still benefits from training, so no need to play him in official matches…it may even tell you the player needs to play international matches, so no need to use him in league matches if you don’t want as he won’t benefit from it in terms of evolution.
All in all I believe the new system makes developing players more interesting, but of course we can tweak it if needed. It will take some time for managers to get a real feel of the new system effects because most of the existing players had already reached their peak when it was introduced, that’s why we reduced players skills by 5 to try and speed up this process.
Please feel free to shoot us more questions or suggestions.
Coaching screen now has a column indicating the report “age”. This should help you in analyzing your existing reports and deciding which ones to request again.
When modifying a scout search there was a bug that prevented you from blanking out the value of a field. This has been fixed.
Cheers
You will not receive messages about bad morale players anymore, only when the morale becomes critical or goes out of critical. We’ve realized these message only clutter manager’s inboxes and are not very useful as the manager can easily check morale status from the formation screen when deciding which players to use.
Maybe I could increase the progression speed of the searches instead and we see if that works better? I mean, it’s not exactly what you’re asking for as it would potentially give you more than 1 suggestion albeit from different searches, but the end goal of receiving more suggestions would be reached (unless of course you have only one search configured).
The new scout search model is in place. In the scouting screen you can define your search criteria, these searches will be progressed during the tick and, once 100% is reached, you’ll get a message from your scouts with a player recommendation or advising that no more players have been found. The in-game help has some more details if you’re interested.
Cheers
Oops, my mistake. CPU teams were not respecting this requirement. I’ve just fixed that and marked your player to be returned from loan next turn.
Coaching influence on player evolution is back, but not exactly the way it was before. Each evolution step will have a recommended coach level attached to it, your Next Step report will tell you what that level is (existing reports will have to be re-generated). If your coach level is below that recommendation, it will take longer for the player to complete that step and improve.
Investment points come from national league, national cup and international cup results. I see that last season, in comparison to the previous one, you did better in the national league and cup but you did not participate in any international cups, so you’ve got 0 points from that, probably the reason why in the end you lost 2 points this season.
Cheers
You’ve got it almost right. The pre-programmed full potential only existed in the first version of RubySoccer, we then moved away to making available a percentage of the average potential every season, which was the model we used before the last changes. Now the player has a pre-programmed number of times he will improve (which I’ve been calling steps), and each step has an age and type associated to it. More differences below.
Before: coaching level determined the number of points for each player improvement, you obtained points by “training” or by playing matches. The more important the match competition more points you got. Players stopped improving in a season when all skill points made available where obtained and stopped improving at all when the full potential was made available and skill points obtained. This used to happen between 23 and 25 years old for players in a team with good coaching.
Now: player has a pre-programmed number steps that will become available each season based on his evolution profile. In order to improve the player need to fulfill the step requirements, i.e. train for a number of turns or play a number of official matches, etc. Friendlies play no role in player improvement anymore. Once all steps up to the player current age are completed, the player stops improving for the current season. Once the player reaches the maximum age for his profile all steps will become available and he stops improving once all are completed (even if he is past 30 years old now).
To be changed: coaching has no influence on how fast a player complete the steps, but that will change soon (I’m already working on it). Once I’m done I’ll associate a coach level to each step; if the team’s coach level is less than the step coach level it will take longer for the player to complete the step and improve (more matches, more training, etc). If the coach level is equal or above the coach level for the step there will be no penalties. I’m planning to add a coach level recommendation in the Next Step report.
For a Next Step report, the answer “I’m not sure how this player can improve” means that the report failed OR the player has nothing else to improve. The combination of results from other reports will tell will which one…or you can just try requesting the Next Step report again if you prefer.
The answer of “I do not believe this player will improve further this season” means that the player will still improve in the future, but he’s reached the maximum he could for his age. Each evolution step is tied to an age and the player can only complete a step once he reaches the minimum age for it. The number of steps that become available for the player each year depend on the player’s evolution profile (which is outlined by the result of the Evolution Profile and Full Potential reports). Remember that, for older players that reached their maximum before the changes, the Evolution Profile report will always result in a “I’m not sure” type of answer.
Thanks Fabio, bug raised in our system so we remember to fix it.
I think you’ll see that, in time, the full potential report will be easy to interpret the way it is, in other words, you’ll be able to guess an age from what it says. Regarding next steps, the current report is specific enough to say “play in another country” or “play international matches”, maybe you just haven’t seen one of those yet. The only caveat to that is that it will show the “easiest” next step available, which doesn’t necessarily mean the player wouldn’t evolve by doing something else. For example, your next step report may say “The player will still benefit from training”, but it doesn’t tell you whether or not he could already improve by playing official matches. I’ll think about changing that to show multiple types of improvement.
Now, Fabio’s comments.
5 points reduction: I completely understand the reason why you and other managers got upset. It was a tough call about something I was thinking about doing for a while and the new player evolution model was the final trigger point that made me decide to do it. Player evolution was mostly predictable and didn’t require manager intervention the new system is here to break this paradigm and reducing the points will make it relevant sooner rather than later.
Coach reports: I think it will take some time for people to get used to the coach reports results, especially because they are useless for all previously fully developed players (except in order to reveal star bonus). I plan to change scouting in the future to be more Football Manager – like, where you assign a country or competition to be scouted and then receive player recommendations back.
Coaching role: you have a good point there. I’ll think about a way to have the coaching or maybe real training have a stronger influence on the player development.
Strategy loss: another good point. We need to rethink the investment areas so they are all similarly relevant to make the decision to invest in one of them instead of another to be a real trade-off.
Just as I wrote this I’ve added some new related improvement tasks to our list. Thanks again for your feedback, Fabio!
That’s great feedback Fabio! I’ll write 2 posts, this one answering your questions and another one to address some of your comments. Here we go.
“Are player still evolving the same way (i.e. playing matches or having 100% stamina)?”
Yes they are, but we have two main differences now. Players will not fully develop by just training anymore, training will only take them, on average, to little less than half their development path. The other difference is that there will be more specific requirements as players get closer to their final evolution steps, such as playing for a first division team, playing for a team that is not from his home country, playing international cup matches, playing top tier (CL and Libertadores) international cup matches, playing for the national squad, getting a man of the match award. Not all players will get all this different requirements and on time we can adjust the odds of each one appearing.
“Skills have gone down 5 pts. How does that affect existing players potential? If a player had the potential for Tackling 94, and was 92, it became an 87. Now will the player (most likely) improve another 2 points (becoming 89) or will he eventually reach the 94?”
Potential went down with skills, so in your example the answer is 89.
“Will new players have the potential past players had (i.e. quite a few reaching 94+) or has that changed?”
Not all of them, but some will still have the same potential as past players. We’ve made this variable as now we have players that can reach their full potential at different ages. Some won’t have all potential available until 30 and they can continue improving even past 30 if they haven’t improve all they could yet. They still start losing skills from 31 so you could have a player improving and losing skills at the same time!
“It was mentioned that secondary countries will not have as many good players. What does that mean exactly? How are secondary countries defined, by Country ranking?”
We have a main number used to generate players skills, let’s call it seed. This seed is higher for the top 2 countries in the ranking and then decreases as the country’s position gets worse. At some point in the past we decided that lower ranked countries should be able to occasionally generate good players, meaning they could sometimes use that the seed to generate players could randomly be higher than the country’s position. This led to awesome players in all countries, because the ones the used the lower seeds were naturally discarded by the teams. The last change is that this seed is now per skill, so lower ranked countries can still get higher seeds, but it is unlikely they will get higher seeds for all skills. Not sure if my explanation was too confusing, I hope you get the idea.
“Can a player’s ability to handle pressure ever change? Only for better, or for the worse as well?”
Not yet, my plan is to include this with the introduction of actual Training where the managers can have some input on how to train their players.
All good now, I’ve removed the asterisk (*) for renewed contracts and added up the remaining contract time with the new contract time to get the total turns left instead. You should now be able to sort by that column.
We have just introduced the concept of inactive countries. Such countries function as normal except that you cannot manage a club in them, you can only manage their national squad. The goal with this is to group managers together in the same countries to increase the level of interaction between them.
As more managers join active countries we have some logic in place to activate additional countries. Similarly, if a country becomes empty and the other non-empty countries don’t have enough managers then the empty country will become inactive. We can always consider manually activating countries if people have a good reason to ask for it, otherwise we’ll stick to this new model.
Cheers
New managers that join RubySoccer from now on will be able to get up to three formation suggestions to help them in learning the game basics. Figuring out that real life formations may not work so well in RubySoccer can be tough on newbies so this feature aims to make the transition easier. Of course they will still have to figure out tactics, strategies and how to best use their players, all the system will do is suggest the positioning of players in the field without actually assigning players to the positions.
Additional player statistics added: fouls, successful passes (%), shots on target (%), goals scored (or conceded) on free kicks, penalty kicks and headers. Statistics screens are likely to change to better accomodate all this extra information. All these new stats will have 0 values for now and will start to be populated as matches happen.
Other minor enhancements:
- new youth players were getting skills improvement straight away, that will now stop
- coach reports results have been improved to be more useful for the Next Steps and Full Potential reports, later on I’ll update existing reports to reflect that
- when players go out of critical morale their morale is not “reset” anymore, they just go back to neutral and don’t lose the recent match participation history