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DevDiary80: “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

struś

We have been announcing this for some time and that time has now arrived.
As you know, for many years, disregarding rising costs, inflation, the need to reinvest in the service, we have kept PLUS prices constant.
However, in order to develop the game, provide new features and improve existing ones, we need to adapt to the market and introduce a new price list.
The changes will come into effect at the beginning of October.
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But don't worry, we have included some promotions in PLUS's new service delivery model that will allow you to keep your current price up for even another year.
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PLUS purchasing models and price lists:
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NEW - MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION:

As in many services with which you are familiar, this model will require a credit card and the subscription amount will be charged automatically in advance for the following month.
The standard monthly subscription price is PLN 14.90 or € 3.80/month.

PROMOTION: If you decide to join as a subscriber before the end of November this year (the date of your first card transaction counts) you will receive the special price and a guarantee to keep it for up to another 12 months.
The special price is PLN 8.20 or € 2.10 / month.

How the promotional subscription will work:
- if you have an active PLUS - when you add your credit card, the first payment will be charged and the previously purchased plus will be ‘moved forward one month’. Further payments will not be charged until "old PLUS" expires, and then the promotional price will be maintained until 12 months have passed since the first payment
- if you do not have an active PLUS - the matter is very simple, the first promotional payment will be charged when the card is added, and the promotion will continue for the next 12 months.

Cancellation of subscription::
- You can unsubscribe at any time.
- in this case, you will keep PLUS until the end of the prepaid period, after which it will be switched off.
- if you take advantage of the promotion, subsequently cancel and return to the subscription, the promotional price will no longer applies.

SINGLE PAYMENT:

For those of you who will prefer to stay with your current payment method, packages from 2 months to a year, requiring full payment in advance for the selected period, will still be active.
The new prices are shown in the table above.

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It was already about PRICES - so now about VALUES.

TUTORIAL
We realise that the game can be quite difficult for new users.
That's why we will soon be introducing an easily accessible and clear tutorial to help them understand the rules, mechanics and settle into the game.
And while it may not apply directly to those reading this message, I think we can all agree that the increase in the number of users will reflect positively on the game as a whole.

NEW VIEWS
Several sites will be expanded or refreshed very soon. There will be, for example, a ‘flag collector’ display.

TRAINING OF YOUNG PLAYERS
We will soon introduce changes in the way young players are trained, with the aim of improving the balance between playing for results and investing in squad development through training.

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The next two are new projects, still in the concept stage, which we will be working on in the coming months but will have to wait a little longer for their full introduction.
However, we want you to know that this work is ongoing and as the projects develop, information about them will be brought to you in further news.

YOUTH SQUAD
You often report that the existing junior school system needs to be changed. In fact, despite changes in various areas, this one has remained untouched. We are aware of the need to adapt youth training to the shorter season. We would also like to develop a number of additions and extensions that will make the junior schools more attractive. The changes are intended to be positive for both club teams and the u21 national teams.

CLUB INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIONS
At the moment we have the Champions League. Prestigious, but also very closed, accessible only to the strongest teams. What if everyone could take part in an international competition, without exception, regardless of country or league level?
That is what we would like to give you. The opportunity to compete against rivals similar to you from other countries. We believe that, especially for small communities, this will be an excellent occasion to strengthen rivalry and develop the team.

We also make minor changes, adjustments and corrections - that's the maintenance work that allows us to boast high availability and service continuity despite occasional slip-ups - and although you can't see this work we do, it doesn't happen by itself.

That's all for today, I hope to be able to bring you more news and details of further plans soon.

FC PaRa before next phase.

Patience and Rationality

Speedy

2024-03-27 08:26

With a new name, FC PaRa is ready for further expansion and evolutions. Plans are made, players are bought. Time will tell if we made the right decisions in all areas of the structure of the club....

Rupert Brouckaert maakt zijn intrede bij de Speedbikers!

trikke

2023-02-26 14:12

Voetbalclub De Speedbikers heeft onlangs een veelbelovende aanwinst binnengehaald in de vorm van de 17-jarige keeper Rupert Brouckaert. De jonge Belgische doelman wordt gezien als een toekomstige...

Election time!

struś

Dev Diary 79: Coaches' retirements and conditional orders.

struś

As previously announced, coaches' retirements will be implemented in the coming weeks.
Although the new functionality will already start at the beginning of the new season, fear not, coaches will not suddenly leave and you will be given at least the whole of next season to find successors.

Details below.

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Rules for coaches' retirement:

• The risk of announcing the decision to retire will occur when a coach turns 60.
• At this age (60), the risk of such a decision is very small but it increases with each passing season, and the chance of continuing after 85 or 90 will already be slim.
• The decision to retire will also be influenced by the measure of success achieved.
• If your coach is successful - as measured by meeting season expectations - he will be less likely to leave.
• If, on the other hand, the season is judged a complete failure - the coach may be discouraged from taking on further challenges and more likely to retire.
• Information about retirement, will appear in an announcement in the Pressroom on the first Saturday of the new season - a dedicated notice to any coach who makes this decision.
• In the last week of the season in the Pressroom, there will also be an info confirming the retirement of the coach.
• Coaches who announce their retirement will no longer be put on the transfer list - neither after being fired by the user nor after retirement.

Recruitment changes for coaches:

• No changes will be made to the recruitment form at this time. Nor is such a change planned in the near future.
• However, the age range of new coaches will change - previously it was 33 to 66 years, which will be replaced by 40 to 59 years.
• The age of the new coach will be random within this range and any value equally probable.

Some statistics:

• There are more than 15,000 coaches aged 60+ in active teams
• In the simulation we ran, we came up with the following results:
o Of the coaches aged 60-64, less than 5% have made the decision to retire
o For the ones aged 65-69, it was already about one/third
o For those aged 70+, it was already around 70%

Changes to conditional orders.

Due to numerous reports of an insufficient number of conditional orders - since their implementation, their number has been limited to a maximum of 10 - we have changed the way they are set.
In the new mechanism, in the match settings, in the "orders" tab, only one window for the definition of a conditional order is placed by default, but we have added an "add" button, with which you can manually increase this number up to 30. We hope this will be sufficient for even the most elaborate tactical settings.

V Druid's Cup & one official information

struś

It has long since become obvious that what sets Sokker apart from other online games the most is its community!

Your uniqueness and creativity are often manifested by various initiatives of your own, which, on the one hand, are not officially introduced into the game, but, on the other hand, thanks to your enthusiasm, passion and sense of community, enter the game and become a valuable part of it.
Chapeau bas!

Today I wanted to praise and introduce one such initiative - the Druid's Cup.

The subject of National Teams and their competitions is often controversial. It has its supporters and opponents - some of you would like to limit the influence of the NT on the game... while for others, it is the international games and the leading of a national team that makes the game meaningful.

And it is the supporters who have shown how they can organise themselves to get even more out of the game through their own actions. Over three years ago, a few NT U21 enthusiasts led by Germanek - who has led all editions - and Welchy, who gave the event its name - decided to spice up the boring friendly matches period and set up a tournament. Unofficial, for volunteers only, the running of which was based solely on their own organisation and forum discussions.
What came out of it?

Well, I am pleased to announce that the V edition of the Druid's Cup is about to begin,

Until now, each edition has been played in a slightly different formula, each time drawing inspiration from the discussions and feedback from the participants - and there are more and more of them - and so, in the current edition, 32 teams from all over the sokker world will compete. This season's participants follow the U20 formula - which will be a great test ahead of next season's U21 World Cup qualifying matches.

V edition, starting on 24th August - 32 participants

History:
I edition - 4 participants, winner: England
II edition - 16 participants, winner: Srbija
III edition - 32 participants, winner: România
IV edition - 32 participants, winner; Polska

Would you like to make permanent history in the tournament?
You can! The tournament so far does not have its own logo - but Germanek is counting on you to help with that too! He would just like the logo to include Polish and Irish motifs - referring to his roots. I know from certain sources that the author of the best proposal will be rewarded :)

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And finally, a non-tournament-related official announcement.

We are finishing developing the retirement reform for coaches.
Next week I will be able to write about the details, but already in this week I would like to reassure you - your coaches will not leave the club suddenly and unannounced - stay calm.

Supplementary elections!

struś

In recent weeks, three U21 teams have been left without managers who had to say goodbye to the game for disciplinary reasons.

We are talking about the teams:

Eesti U21
Hayastan U21
Singapore U21

In order not to deprive fans in these countries of their excitement, we have scheduled a supplementary election. We invite you to fight for the selector's seat and to choose the best and fair-play candidates.

Links to the elections:
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Eesti U21
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Hayastan U21
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Singapore U21

Dev Diary 78: The (un)predictable grace of the supporters

struś

At the end of last season, we promised some adjustments to the fans' mood system.
I can confirm today that they have been made, and also describe in a little more detail how the current satisfaction level of your fan club is determined.

Take a look at the chart and the explanations below it:

• When modifying the algorithm, we wanted it to reflect real supporters’ behaviour as much as possible.

• Therefore, the current mood of the fans is influenced - to varying degrees - by three factors, which you can see in the Office tab.
--- Rating of the current season
--- Rating of the last season
--- Level of satisfaction with recent matches

• As can be seen in the chart:
--- 30% of the influence is the results of the current matches
--- 70% of the impact is due to the fulfilment of expectations - from the previous season and the current season combined

• In a natural and smooth way, the importance of the previous season gives way to the rating of the current season.

• What is supposed to precisely reflect the behaviour of supporters who are slowly forgetting past slip-ups and merits and are beginning to evaluate the ongoing season.

• At the same time, we have dispensed with the fixed bonus or penalty for previous season's achievements which, in some circumstances, prevented the highest or lowest levels of satisfaction even at the end of the season.

• When determining the level of expectations for the following season, the influence of finances has been modified - it is still an important factor but has been better balanced.

We will observe the effect of the change and do not exclude further adjustments.

Age update - change of date

struś

We're all getting older... but starting today, one day later in the Sokker!

The moment where players age is updated has been recently moved from last day of the season (Friday, week 13) to the first day of the next season (Saturday, week 1).
This means that the long-awaited age update will come with tomorrow's update.

Sorry to inform You so late, but, at least, there is an information.

At the same time, I wish you all many talented 16-year-olds!

Tax reform - minor correction

struś

We have made a small adjustment to the tax rules.
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The previous rule:
- The amount of tax is determined when the player is sent away after the auction.

We replace with the following:
- The amount of tax (the % that will be charged as tax on the final transaction amount) is determined at the moment the player is put on the transfer list.

***I am also replacing this entry in the full DevDiary77 article.

Dev Diary 77: Tax reform (final)

struś

Dear users,
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After several more or less successful attempts, the time has come to finally introduce tax reform. Here is how it will work soon*.
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• The new rules will take effect from 15 June and all transactions finalised on that date will already be taxed according to the new scale.
• This means that it also applies to players placed on the transfer list on earlier days, who will be sent away from 00:00 on 15 June..
• The amount of tax according to the length of stay at the club is as shown in the chart.

• The tax can take a value from 8% to 50%.
• For easiness, it will operate in steps and take only integer values.
• It will still not possible to sell a player who has been at the club for less than 4 weeks.
• The first transaction of an alumni, regardless of their length of stay at the club, will be taxed at 8%.
• For other transfers, the tax will reach 8% after 105 weeks at the club.
• The amount of tax is calculated on the final sale amount of the player.
• The amount of tax (the % that will be charged as tax on the final transaction amount) is determined at the moment the player is put on the transfer list.
• You will see the percentage tax that will be charged on the final amount as you list the player on the transfer list.

* and one last point, remember this is Sokker, and Sokker is like the real life.... knows how to surprise ;)

Dev Diary 76: Nothing is Certain Except Taxes

struś

There is not much that is certain in Sokker.
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That's a kind of charm of this game. We like to keep discovering it.
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Therefore, without much commentary, I submit a picture worth more than a thousand words:
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Dev Diary 75 : Fan Moods System

Donaldo

The fan mood system has been reset.

We're back with a comprehensive explanation of how the new fanclub moods work, as we see they raise many questions and uncertainties. We apologize for the delay in preparing this description – nevertheless, we wanted to verify all reports of potential issues/bugs and confirm various cases flagged up on the game forum.

Overview

The most important information that should be the starting point for understanding the new moods is as follows: the new fan club satisfaction level is NOT a continuation of the old system. In other words, this season operates on an entirely new system, and you shouldn't refer to the mood level before this update – these are completely different mood calculation systems, and you can't say, for example, that the mood "dropped" compared to the previous season. It simply has been calculated on new grounds. We believe that most of the misunderstandings reported stem from this crucial piece of information.

Maximum moods are only for outstanding achievements

Next, what is crucial in the new system is the fact that we approach individual mood levels slightly more demanding. To achieve maximum mood, it's not enough to meet fans' expectations – the level of "fans are madly in love with their club" is for extraordinary achievements, exceeding expectations to the maximum – you can't achieve it simply by playing according to the club's capabilities. Consequently, the level of "fans believe in their club," which is 4/7, is considered an average level of satisfaction that the fans strive for when the club simply meets seasonal expectations. Any deviations from meeting expectations will affect whether the moods will rise or fall.

New moods are a component of meeting fans' expectations, but also includes fluctuations based on results, like the old system

Importantly, we've retained the influence of the old system based on the results of recent matches. We deemed it a more realistic solution – so fans will refer to whether the club meets its expectations, but they will also remember the team's recent results – so for example, if we're in a good league position as expected, but we lost the last few matches – it will affect their mood. The proportion of this influence is 60 to 40 in favour of the influence of seasonal expectations – they are ultimately more important.
To help you understand your fans' behaviour, additional information regarding their behaviour at the office will soon appear, such as:
Evaluation level of meeting last season's expectations: xx
Satisfaction level with the last matches: xx%
Satisfaction level with meeting expectations: xx%

Additional (important!) rules of the new system

1. Fans will remember last year's successes or failures. For each level above / below the expected goal of the previous season, the club will receive a modifier to the mood limit. So for example – for a club that completely exceeded fans' expectations, a +2 limit will be allocated to moods, meaning that in the new season, even if it is completely unsuccessful, moods will not drop below the level of 2/7. Similarly, if we don't meet expectations – for example, if we're one level below the seasonal goal, moods in the new season will not be able to rise above the level of 6/7.
2. The range of this modifier operates on parameters: +2, +1, -1, -2. Once again, we emphasize that this is about the limit, not a constant bonus – in other words, the modifier limits the scale in which fan's moods can move in the new season; it is not a constant bonus to the mood.
3. Fan's expectations currently only encompass league competitions. International matches or cup matches affect satisfaction with recent matches, not expectations. This is likely an element we'll expand upon in the future, and the club will receive goals for other competitions besides the league (less significant in terms of impact).
4. The impact of meeting expectations depends on the moment of the season: fans will react much more gently to the first matches of the season, and much more strongly to the last ones – which determine the actual position at the end of the season.
5. The greater the disparity between fan's expectations and the current mood level e.g. in the new season, the team significantly exceeds expectations, and if started with angry fans then the faster their mood will change.
6. Moods are currently updated after the morning update.

Election canceled in O‘zbekiston and Cameroun

struś

We have decided to cancel the elections in the following countries:

• O‘zbekiston.
• Cameroun.

These countries will be withdrawn from the competition, thus the number of teams entering the World Cup qualifiers will be reduced to 96 allowing for an equal distribution of groups and fair promotion rules.

16 six-team groups will be drawn up for the qualifiers, with the two best teams from each group advancing.

Dev Diary 74 : Summary of current development status

Donaldo

Dear users,

It's been a while since we last communicated with you, but we would like to let you know what was goin on on our side - there have been fewer changes lately, but that doesn't change the fact that even if we lacked time for regular communication with you, we are still working to develop new functionalities.

There are a few areas that are currently being worked on:

Progressive tax issue, which as you know accidentally appeared in the game and was withdrawn. We are developing this idea, however, its final form and method of calculation will probably be modified - the tax will decrease much faster to lower values, but will be higher in the first weeks of possible sale. We aim for the player sale to be approximately as profitable as it is currently after about a season spent in the club, but additional rates would be added in the case of rapid trading. REFORM GOAL: to limit the profitability of DT-type trading without penalizing users transferring players once per season or less. This reform is not aimed at fighting inflation - such comments appear on the forum - the scale of taxes in Sokker vs the amount of money in circulation is marginal, even doubling taxes would not have a significant impact on limiting inflation - it needs to be fought with other methods.

New PLUS shop - although payments are certainly not the most exciting topic for you, this is a very big change that currently absorbs a huge amount of our time. Introducing new forms of payment (the option to link a card and charge for the PLUS package in the form of a monthly subscription) is very important for us, the current system, where you have to pay upfront for the entire package, may be a barrier for a significant portion of players. Technologically, this is a very difficult project that also requires work related to legal and tax issues, which consumes a significant portion of our resources. Answering probable questions - yes, the game's price list will also change, and the monthly subscription will be the most cost-effective way to buy the PLUS package - however, we have not yet set prices, when they are prepared, we will share them with you immediately.

Development of the PRESSROOM tab - we still see its huge potential and impact on the game. We are currently introducing several new pieces of news (reports after national team matches have appeared, and a jubilee news item is being prepared for the anniversary of founding your teams, with a large portion of statistics regarding your clubs) - but this is just the beginning of the possibilities of this tab. We want to open a separate thread on the forum to collect ideas related only to this tab - new notifications or messages that we can generate - for example, it may be worth considering the option of sending injured players for a fee for accelerated treatment by a specialist, etc - the pressroom tab provides such possibilities - not only allows us to generate news, but we can also add buttons and actions that can be taken.

New pages to prepare: we are starting work on two new views in Sokker - player profile (i.e., player page) and club history and statistics. In both cases, we are open to suggestions for new functionalities or information that we can add to make the game more interesting - for example, in the case of a player, we would like to introduce his match statistics broken down by individual seasons, not his entire career, and in the case of club history, there is room to introduce achievements or expand the records section. We will also start a separate thread for both of these new pages and ask you to share your ideas.

Finally, information about Sokker's promotion and advertising. We started test advertising the game in various countries in recent months - we see quite a good response and number of registrations - we will test several more countries, from large European countries to smaller countries around the world - based on the experiences gathered, we will try to significantly increase the number of users by the end of this year.

Dev Diary 73: Bonuses, Expectations, Payments etc.

struś

Dear Users,
Traditionally, during the inter-season break I would like to summarise the previously announced changes and introduce some new ones.
Details below.

BONUSES, EXPECTATIONS, FINANCES

Seasonal bonuses

- This season, bonuses will be awarded under the old rules.
- From next season forward, the amount of the bonuses will be directly dependent on your place in the league at the end of the season.
- Approximate bonus amounts can be found in the league statistics under "bonuses".
- For example, for the Italian C.01 series https://sokker.org/league_stats/leagueID/1153/stat_type/bonus.
- Bonuses will be paid after the last round of the season.

Fans' expectations

- As announced, we are introducing seasonal fan expectations.
- Each user, via the press office, will receive information about what expectations their fans have for the upcoming season.
- You can also check the expectations for each team within a league, again using the list of statistics, this time under "expectations".
IMPORTANT: The expectations level for the first season will be for information purposes only.
- From the following season onwards, the level of fulfilment of expectations will be the most important factor influencing fan mood.
- We are currently considering how high an impact, success in cup matches will have on fulfilling expectations.

Financial reform

- Given these changes, we have not yet decided on a final adjustment of the finances by modifying the ticket income.
- We will continue to keep an eye on how the already implemented changes will affect the finances of the game and possible adjustments will not take place until after the next season.

ASSISTANT, PAYMENTS, BENEFITS

We are developing the new payment page with new features:
Here are the main ideas:

- A subscription option linked to the credit card connection will be introduced.
- The prices of the Assistant will be adjusted (they have remained the same for 15 years).
- The type of subscription purchased will affect the benefits received.
- Subscription via credit card will be the most beneficial payment method.
- The core features will remain the same, but you will receive additional benefits if you subscribe or purchase a annual membership.
• saving of training data even during a break in the use of the Assistant (during the break it will not be visible, but the full history will appear after renewal)
• saving the colour of the jerseys and emblems when the subscription expires (with other payment options, the emblems will not be visible when the subscription expires and the jerseys will revert to the default ones)
• the list of additional benefits can be further extended.

NATIONAL TEAMS

In one of the previous change packages, we introduced the possibility for the coaches of the national teams to preview the skills of the players of a given nationality (unless the owner objected). The feature has been on trial activated for all national team coaches, but from next season it will only be available to Assistant owners.

PRESSROOM

During the season, you have had the opportunity to discover how the new Pressroom works. I think this is enough time to evaluate its functionality, so I am launching an official thread where you will be able to submit your ideas on the news that appears in it. Feel free to do so in the international forum HERE.

Dev Diary 72: New Pressroom and dev update.

struś

Welcome to the verge of another season.
This is a good time to present some news, update on previously announced changes and highlight further development plans.

1. PRESSROOM

I am excited to announce that, in the coming days, the existing Pressroom/News tab will be replaced by a completely new view to keep us informed about events at the club.

Initially, automatic notifications will include:
- information on call-ups to national teams
- national team match reports
- information about an alumni player on the transfer list
- information about new members of the youth team

The list is not closed and we already have some ideas for further notifications, for example::
- club records (individual and team achievements, record transfers)
- information on fan expectations
- reports on the most interesting training effects

At the other hand, we are realising that nobody knows better than you what other information should be there, so there will be a special forum topic where we will be waiting for YOUR IDEAS, and we will implement the best and most popular ones!

Some of you have asked about further plans for the CLUB NEWSPAPER. We want to revise this element as well, but for the moment, from a club website perspective it remains the same. The only change is the view of the newspapers in the Word tab of the Pressroom view. Ultimately, we plan to integrate these functionalities more tightly.

If you want to see right now how the new view looks like, check it out at the link: https://sokker.org/en/app/pressroom/inbox/

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2. FINANCIAL REFORM

As we announced prior to last season, the financial reform is not yet complete. We are not backing down from these declarations and we see the need to fine-tune club income and costs, however, we have decided that one season of observation after the introduced salary changes is not enough and we are postponing further steps until at least the following season. Thus, with the new season, the announced new algorithm counting the number of fans in the stadiums and thus adjusting ticket revenues will not be introduced.

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3. FURTHER PLANS

Below, for the moment without details, are the topics we are currently working on. More detailed information will follow as the implementation deadline approaches.
- we will introduce fan expectations set at the beginning of the season and a new fan mood system based on them.
- we will replace sponsorship bonuses with rewards for relevant league places - this will allow the bonuses to be better aligned with attitude throughout the season and not just at the end of it.
- we will extend the substitutes' bench to 7 places.

I hope you are satisfied with the information provided.
I wish you good luck and satisfaction in the pursuit of your goals in the coming season,

Dev Diary 71 - Finance reform - the first step

struś

Today I wanted to return to an issue that was already announced at DD#69, i.e. the reform of club finances.
At that time we were already seeing a noticeable process of steady wealth increase for clubs at every league level.
To a large extent, this is the result of a lack of cost balancing for significantly increased ticket revenues. We announced at the time that we were considering various scenarios but we want to make a final decision after a thorough analysis of the financial data - to ensure that no group of users is either harmed or privileged.

What did the analysis of club finances reveal?
- After the competition reform, at each league level average revenues significantly exceeded average costs.
- Before the competition reform, the average weekly "financial result" was better in the higher leagues - but this was a minor difference.
- After the competition reform, the gap increased significantly, which meant that clubs in the high leagues made very high profits, while those in the lower leagues also gained, but not as spectacularly.

That's why our efforts are focused on rebuilding the correct balance on two levels:
- On a club scale - to balance costs and revenues.
- On a global scale - to eliminate significant differences in profits between teams playing at different league levels.

It is easy to conclude from this that the reform will affect strong teams to a greater degree.

As you are probably used to prosperity and have forgotten that you need to keep an eye on costs, making all the changes suddenly could be painful for some of you, so we decided to divide it into two parts.

Part one, introduced with the upcoming season will be about COSTS.

Increase in salaries of all field players:.
- We have made a simple assumption that fits in with the results of our analysis, which pointed to the need to increase the running costs of all teams, but to the greatest extent of the top ones.
- Therefore, all field players, with the age update, will have their salaries increased, but the better the player, the higher the increase will be.

Decrease in goalkeeper salaries:.
- The salaries of these players have always been ruled by slightly different rules and this will remain the case. Goalkeepers' salaries will still be relatively high, but will be slightly reduced.
- After the changes, the best field players will be able to earn more than the top goalkeepers.

Below, to better illustrate the effect of the above changes, is the result of a simulation of the changes in player salaries for Poland after this season:

You may notice that the increase in players' salaries, depending on the league level, is in the range of 15% to 33% which should translate into an increase in overall running costs of a few to a dozen percent.

Change in player sales tax:.
- The existing player sales tax will increase from a marginal 5% to a more reasonable 10%.
- The tax on listing a player remains unchanged.

Part two, scheduled for further season will refer to REVENUE.

Over the coming season, we will evaluate the effects of the implemented cost changes and only after a thorough analysis will we introduce a second adjustment - relating to revenue.
At this point, we anticipate that the increase in costs related to players' salaries will still not offset the increase in revenue after the competition reform.
Therefore, the most likely scenario will be a reduction in match revenues.
We plan to change the behaviour of fans, who will, as a result, become more responsive to ticket prices.
Therefore, in order to maintain the current attendance, price reductions will be necessary.
How much? This we will know after the upcoming season.

Dev Diary 70: Improvements for National Teams.

struś

Today, a brief update on the changes related to the national teams.
One relates to the functionality already added, the other is developmental, depending on your feedback.

MAKING PLAYERS' SKILLS AVAILABLE TO NATIONAL TEAM COACHES

We have introduced the possibility for national team coaches to see the skills of their country's players.
We are aware that not all managers wish to reveal the skills of their players, which is why we have introduced the option of setting the visibility for each player separately.
In the player view, there is an additional icon to turn visibility on/off and information about the current visibility status, respectively:
- Sharing skills with NT coach is enabled. - indicates the visibility of the player to the national team coach and provides an icon to disable it "disallow for this player"
- Sharing skills with NT coach is disabled. - means no visibility and provides an icon to enable it "allow for this player".
We hope this solution will satisfy both groups of users - supporters and opponents of the accessibility of national team coaches to the players skills.

!!!ATTENTION - we have set all players to visible by default!!!
National Team coaches will not be able to see the skills of the players (even enabled) until next week.

ONE MORE TIME ABOUT INJURIES IN NATIONAL TEAM

As the recent change regarding injuries suffered by players in national team matches was met with a mixed reception, we decided to ask you about your most preferred solution.
This is only a poll at the moment, but we will take a close look at the results and do not rule out further modifications if one of the options gains a significant majority.

We propose three solutions:.
1. Leaving the current compromise (friendly matches of the national team on an arcade basis, with no injuries but also no training efficiency benefits).
2. Remove injuries from the national teams completely, but also no training bonuses (i.e. all national team matches on an arcade basis).
3. Restoring injuries to all national team matches, but increasing the benefits of a player playing for the national team (e.g. more fans coming to club matches, financial compensation if a player is injured, shortening of injuries, refund of the player's salary, etc.).

The poll is available at THIS LINK and is open to all users.
We encourage you to express your opinion.

Dev Diary 69 - Changes, fixes, plans.

struś

Welcome back after some break. In today's material, I'll talk a bit about the current changes and improvements, reveal some future plans share the new look of the club's homepage. I kindly invite you to read the article below.

CHANGES AND RECENT IMPROVEMENTS:

Declines in the skills of senior players.
For a number of seasons you have raised objections to Sunday skill adjustments for senior players, arguing that it was impossible to react and possibly replace a player in such a short period. With this in mind, we have moved the skills review to Thursday, so that all skills changes (both drops and increases) occur on the same day. There has been a bit of concern as to for sure the drops are now not happening twice a week. Let me clarify, not only do they not, but the last Sunday before the change was free of drops. With this change, the skill reports and charts should work better.

Injuries.
Finally, the player injury issues were resolved. As we know, there was a point during the implementation of the changes where players, despite being injured during a match, were not excluded from further games - as in arcade matches. We guess that this was the bug you were most pleased about, but it had to be removed. Injuries now work as planned, which means:

Injuries will remain active if players have suffered them in:
- League games,
- National cups,
- Friendly club matches,
- Champions League matches,
- National Teams official games.

Injury-free matches:.
- National Teams friendly ganes,
- Arcade matches.

Please note that appearances in injury-free games do not affect the training efficiency calculation.

Minor fixes:.

- If we're already talking about arcade matches - we've also removed the other effects of these games. They no longer affect either the club ranking or the tactical discipline of the players,
- We have improved the player stats accounting - until now, if a player came in from the bench and had no contact with the ball, the match was not counted for his stats,
- We have fixed a bug that did not allow to put some results (ex. 0-0) in the game studio Prediction(s) and comments,
- In the line-up selection menu, we have improved the functionality of the "view" button, which did not work if two tactics were set up,
- In the squad table view, we added the possibility to expand "tactical discipline" into "teamwork" and "experience".

NEW LOOK OF CLUB HOME SITE:
We are still working on the new design of the club website. It's not 100% ready yet and we're still giving ourselves some time to tweak it, but you can take a look here already:
https://sokker.org/pl/app/my-club/.

A QUICK SHOT ABOUT THE PLANS:

Financial reform.
It is easy to see that shortening the season while accumulating matches has significantly affected the economics of the game. Instead of 7 "home" games in 16 weeks, we have 11 such games in 13 weeks. In addition, pre-season bonuses fall more often. So far, we have not interfered in any way and are observing the effects. After this period of observation, we are now sure that a reaction is necessary and are considering various scenarios. The most likely ones are:
- an adjustment in the number of fans willing to come to the stadium,
- increasing the weekly salaries of top players (we note that teams in the higher leagues have benefited the most, so the adjustment should remove this advantage),
- an increase in certain fees and/or taxes.

Managing players from abandoned teams.
To date, there are no clear and standardised rules relating to the players remaining in the squads of teams whose owners have been removed from the game. The practice is to put players who are members of national teams on the transfer list in such a situation. This is possible after reporting to the administrator and his ad hoc action. This is not an optimal model - first of all because it is not equal for everyone. It happens at various points during the season, with the result that sometimes a strong team without an owner beats some of its opponents and is sold out before meeting the next ones, We want to avoid such situations, so in the perspective of a few seasons, rules will be developed to introduce automatic player listing, eliminating any participation of administrators and arbitrary decisions, And there will also be specific 'transfer window' periods during the season, when such listings will take place.
We hope that, in addition to standardising the rules, the introduction of "transfer windows" can be an interesting add-on for many users during (for example) the mid-season break.

Dev Diary 67: Significant and minor fixes.

struś

The intensive work on the two big reforms, which were undoubtedly the reform of the league system and the reform of training, resulted in a lack of time for minor adjustments and generated additional errors and problems.
Now is the time in which we focus on detecting and correcting them.

Incorrect assignment to new leagues.
The biggest and most impactful problem for users was the incorrectly working algorithm for assigning new leagues for direct relegation and promotion.
It turned out that when assigning teams to new leagues, the system incorrectly ranked the teams - instead of creating an aggregate ranking table from the whole season and assigning teams to the respective leagues according to this, the system ranked the teams by ID ignoring the actual results.
The error has been located, the algorithm corrected and, most importantly, it will be applied back, which will mean a reshuffling of the league line-ups for the directly promoted and relegated teams. The error did not affect teams playing in the play-offs.

Minor, recently resolved issues:
- corrected training reports (previously displayed incorrect information)
- corrected Thursday form update - for some time all changes were limited to +/-1
- added possibility to open a player's profile from the training settings view
- added ability to delete coaches in the new transfers view (previously only players could be deleted)

Translations:
The fast pace of the reforms did not allow the content to be made available immediately with local languages. These backlogs are being made up and for languages that have already been developed by our Linguists are being introduced. If there are gaps or inaccuracies, please contact the Linguists appropriate for your language directly.

Warm-up matches:
We have come to the conclusion that with the changes to the league structure and training, there is no need to artificially maintain another type of match which were warm-up matches during the inter-season break.
The current season was the last one in which warm-up matches played on a play-off Sunday gave the effectiveness of training as official matches. With the current possibility of playing three matches a week, the opportunity to optimise training is so great that it no longer requires such strengthening.

That's it for today, and we're back from working on further fixes and improvements.

Dev Diary 67: Significant and minor fixes.

struś

The intensive work on the two big reforms, which were undoubtedly the reform of the league system and the reform of training, resulted in a lack of time for minor adjustments and generated additional errors and problems.
Now is the time in which we focus on detecting and correcting them.

Incorrect assignment to new leagues.
The biggest and most impactful problem for users was the incorrectly working algorithm for assigning new leagues for direct relegation and promotion.
It turned out that when assigning teams to new leagues, the system incorrectly ranked the teams - instead of creating an aggregate ranking table from the whole season and assigning teams to the respective leagues according to this, the system ranked the teams by ID ignoring the actual results.
The error has been located, the algorithm corrected and, most importantly, it will be applied back, which will mean a reshuffling of the league line-ups for the directly promoted and relegated teams. The error did not affect teams playing in the play-offs.

Minor, recently resolved issues:
- corrected training reports (previously displayed incorrect information)
- corrected Thursday form update - for some time all changes were limited to +/-1
- added possibility to open a player's profile from the training settings view
- added ability to delete coaches in the new transfers view (previously only players could be deleted)

Translations:
The fast pace of the reforms did not allow the content to be made available immediately with local languages. These backlogs are being made up and for languages that have already been developed by our Linguists are being introduced. If there are gaps or inaccuracies, please contact the Linguists appropriate for your language directly.

Warm-up matches:
We have come to the conclusion that with the changes to the league structure and training, there is no need to artificially maintain another type of match which were warm-up matches during the inter-season break.
The current season was the last one in which warm-up matches played on a play-off Wednesday gave the effectiveness of training as official matches. With the current possibility of playing three matches a week, the opportunity to optimise training is so great that it no longer requires such strengthening.

That's it for today, and we're back from working on further fixes and improvements.

Dev Diary 66: Training - principles and guidance

struś

A new training mechanism will be launched today.

Below is a description of the assumptions and a short guide, worth reading to avoid surprises next Thursday :)
In the following days, the below texts will be additionally inserted into the rules of the game and into the hints on the training page.
This process will take a while, translations into further languages and proper attribution of the content are necessary.

PRINCIPLES

TRAINING:
To develop the skills of your players, you can take advantage of the several training options available. The optimal choice of training settings and the correct assignment of players to the right rosters will be key to achieving success and training your own star players.
Remember that the ultimate success is greatly influenced by a player's talent, which is an individual and secret skill. Its value can only be estimated by observing training progress.

ADVANCED TRAINING:
The most effective training to rapidly develop selected skills for selected players.
- Available for up to 10 players in a given week.
- Requires assigning a player to the advanced training list and selecting the formation with which he will train.
- The player will intensively train the skill indicated for the selected formation in the "PLAN YOUR PLAYERS' TRAINING" table. Other skills will be developed only slightly.
- The effectiveness depends on the number of minutes played in the week before training (the preceding Friday to Wednesday) in official, friendly and national team matches.
- If there are no minutes played in the selected position, the player will receive advanced training at 50%.
- The real increase in a player's skills depends on the coaching staff, with the value of the coached skill with the head coach having the greatest influence, followed by the sum of the overall level of the assistant coaches.
* additional information under the "?" sign next to the list of advanced training players

FORMATION TRAINING:
In order to ensure the development of players who did not catch the advanced training, formation training is available, which is much less effective, but still allows some progress to be made and, very importantly for older players, prevents a decline of skills.
- Training is available to all players who have not been selected for advanced training and who have played at least one match in the week prior to training (any range of minutes).
- Requires the player to be assigned a formation to train with.
- The player will moderately train the skill indicated for the selected formation in the "PLAN YOUR PLAYERS' TRAINING" table. Other skills will be developed to a minor effect.
- The effectiveness depends on the number of minutes played in the week before training (the preceding Friday to Wednesday) in official, friendly and national team matches.
- In case of a shortage of minutes in the selected position, the player will not train.
* additional information under the "?" sign next to the list of formation training players

TYPE OF TRAINING VERSUS FORMATIONS:
Player skills are divided into two categories, positional and complementary.
Positional skills can only be trained for the formations corresponding to them, namely:
- Keeper - GK (goalkeeper)
- Defending - DEF (defender)
- Playmaking - MID (midfielder)
- Striker - ATT (striker)
what to keep in mind when setting up the "PLAN YOUR PLAYERS' TRAINING" table.
Complementary skills, i.e. Stamina, Pace, Technique, Passing, can be assigned to any formation and will be trained with the same effect for each formation.*
* additional information under the "?" sign next to the "plan training" table

EFFECTIVENESS:
In order to manage the training of your players more easily, you can use the information about the projected training effectiveness.
For this purpose, there are two additional columns in the training menu:
- Games (matches)-which indicates how many minutes on the formation selected for training and in which type of matches the player has played since the previous training. The higher the total minutes, the higher the training efficiency will be.
- Eff. (Efficiency) - indicates the projected training efficiency with the chosen formation. The higher the value, the higher the skill gain.
If the Eff. column shows "!", try to better adjust the position assignment or field the player in an extra match.
Remember that ultimately the speed of player development is also determined by talent and the quality of the coaching staff.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GUIDE
The following information will be in the relevant sections of the training settings page - they will provide a quick hint.

Plan the training of your formations
- Indicate the skill to be trained for each formation.
- Skill types can be repeated for different formations.
- The skill selected for a formation will be trained more effectively for players with assigned training for that formation.
- Remember, however, that player skills are divided into two categories, positional and complementary.
Positional skills can only be trained for the formations corresponding to them, namely:
- Keeper - GK (goalkeeper)
- Defending - DEF (defender)
- Playmaking - MID (midfielder)
- Striker - ATT (striker)

The complementary skills i.e. Stamina, Pace, Technique, Passing, can be assigned for any formation and will be trained for each formation with the same effect.

Formation training
- For each player in this list, specify the formation with which he will train.
- The player will receive an average effectiveness training of the skill assigned to this formation in the training plan and a slight training of the other skills.
- The condition to receive training is to play any number of minutes in the week before training. However, the higher the number of minutes, the more effective the training.
- If there is an exclamation mark in the Eff. (Effectiveness) shows an exclamation mark "!", this means that the player in question will not be trained. Try changing his formation or fielding him in an extra match to reduce the risk of his skills dropping.
- The + button on this list, takes the player to the list of advanced training players

Advanced Training
- You can add players to the advanced training list from the formation training list by pressing "+".
- You can add a maximum of 10 players
- For each player on this list, specify the formation with which he will train.
- The player will receive an intensive training of the skill assigned to this formation in the training plan and a slight training of the other skills.
- The efficiency is related to the number of minutes played in the assigned formation in all matches in the week before training. Keep this in mind!

Important note: We do not intend to give all the information directly. As with the old mechanism, you will have to discover and estimate some of it yourself. Therefore, do not ask for exact calculations on efficiency, impact of trainers, etc. We will not answer these questions.

Dev Diary 65: Training reform - we're taking off!

struś

With great joy and satisfaction,
I am pleased to announce that
the programming work and tests
for the implementation of the new training rules
have been completed !!!!

Next to last season's competition reform, this is certainly the biggest change and the biggest challenge our team has had to face. It is safe to say that with these changes in place, we will finally welcome the new Sokker that the development team has been talking about since the beginning of the work.
This does not mean that we will stop there, but the most important milestones have been reached!

CALENDAR OF TRAINING RULE CHANGES:

- [14.07.2022] this was the second-to-last training under the old rules.
- [15.07.2022 - 21.07.2022] the whole week from tomorrow until next Thursday is the last week in which the old training rules apply, remember to position your players accordingly.
- [21.07.2022] on this day will be the last training under the old rules
- [22.07.2022] on this date the new rules will take effect, this will also be the first match day to count towards the new training algorithm.
- [22.07.2022] the old training settings page will be replaced by a new one with the interface shown below.
- [28.07.2022] on this day your players will train under the new rules for the first time.

WHAT IT WILL LOOK LIKE:

At this link you can get a little familiar with the look and mechanics of the settings. The link is already working, you will see your players there, but until 22.07.2022 the settings made there will not have any influence on the game. This is just an exercise.

https://sokker.org/pl/app/training/training-setup/

RULES OF THE NEW TRAINING:

We wrote in detail about the rules in Dev Diary #63 - it was a while ago, you might want to remind yourself before the changes take effect.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have done our best to render the best possible version for you. Remember, however, that training is always the essence of our game and, as well as being attractive, it is also very complicated and difficult for developers.
We have to reckon with the fact that with such a major change interfering so deeply into the structures of the game, bugs may appear and there is no other way than to correct them during the current season.
Let's hope there are as few of them as possible!

I wish you all a GREEN THURSDAY.

Dev Diary 64: The final touches to the training reform.

struś

Work on the training reform is slowly coming to an end.
The main programming changes have been completed and are currently being tested on the test server.

Before the changes can be implemented on the main server, the interface to the new training needs to be tweaked and the long-term development of the players tested. We need to make sure that the changes do not cause anomalies in the game and do not upset its balance.
This work will take a few more weeks, which means that the changes will come into effect during the season, we estimate it will be the third or fourth week.
We have decided that it is better to do more work before the changes are implemented in order to minimise the number of adjustments on the main server once they are available, which could affect the stability of the game.
The changes will be preceded by an announcement and will take place after a full training cycle, after one of Thursday's updates.

After that, we will work on adapting the training reports to the new rules. This may take another couple of weeks but will not cause any further delay.

Regarding the questions asked during the season. The rules described in Dev Diary #63 will still apply, but after listening to your feedback and reconsidering, we have removed the training bonus for playing against a stronger opponent.

We hope the changes will meet your expectations!

Compensation for the time Sokker was unavailable and the reasons for the breakdown.

struś

On behalf of the entire Staff I would like to apologise to all users for the weekend's technical problems.

As compensation for the weekend inconvenience, the assistant function will be enabled for Thursday and Friday for all users.

You have also asked about the reasons of the breakdown and the possibilities of preventing similar situations in the future.

The direct cause was a problem with connecting to the database, which required an improved configuration. We are aware that the new server is still undergoing tuning, which combined with the work on the changes in the on-line mode is associated with a certain risk of failures.

In the near future, perhaps already in the next season, we want to introduce the functionality of automatic suspension of transfers in case of technical problems, so that even if a failure occurs, it will be less annoying.

UPDATE: Information about service unavailability on Saturday

struś

Due to confirmed cases of transfers that were not transferred despite the deadline during a server crash, we are extending the ability to undo transfers to all transfers between 12:00pm on Saturday and 9:00am on Sunday.

Additionally, the time to request a transfer reversal is extended to 24:00 on Thursday.

Information regarding the unavailability of the service on Saturday.

struś

As you may have noticed, we had a major game server breakdown on Saturday.
At the moment the situation is stable and we are able to take some measures to mitigate the effects of the crash.

The most affected users were those who were selling their players during the crash. Therefore we are opening the possibility of reversing transfers of players whose deadline was between 12.00 and 17.30 CET on Saturday. Later transfers have been postponed.

IMPORTANT: To undo a transfer, the selling player must report to the local game administrator with a request for cancellation. The deadline for such requests is Wednesday 11 May at 10.00 a.m. Requests made after this date will not be processed.

No adjustments will be made for replays of matches that took place during the breakdown.

Dev Diary 62: Some more answers before the season starts.

struś

I hope we have all cooled down after the league reform and allocation of new leagues.
First official matches today, I hope there will be no less excitement than in the last two weeks :)

Meanwhile, the Developers are not idle. New topics have been taken on board, here are a few words about them:

TRAINING:
The training reform remains a priority for this season. An internal meeting has been held to define the goals, and the developers are getting to work. The plan is to accomplish it during the current season and implement the new rules from next season.
You are probably curious about the details, and there are quite a few questions about this on the forums. I will answer them during the season, systematically expanding your knowledge. For a good start:
Q: Will the "warm up" matches this week count for training like official matches as it was announced?
A: Yes, this change has been made and matches between seasons will affect training like official matches.

Q: What about pace training? If max 10 players can be trained, will it remain the slowest skill to raise or will it be improved?
A: Pace will remain the slowest trained skill. The reform should reduce the situation where all players in the stronger leagues have a pace close to the maximum. In our opinion, this will make the games more attractive and increase the value of pace skill itself.

Q: Will you give a compensation by changing the skilldown age or intensity? to give players a livespan like before?.
A: This is not planned at this time.

INJURIES:.
Exact injury information has never been directly provided by the game developers. It will remain that way as well. The only official information is the one about the reduction of the average duration and the frequency of injuries. The "by how much" information will not be publicly stated, although in time you will probably be able to estimate it. Observations gathered during the current season can be used to further calibrate these factors, but it is to be expected that the new league system will not be kind to teams with only 11 players.

NATIONAL TEAMS.
Q: At which week will the World Cup start next season?.
A: The start is scheduled for week 5.

Q: When NT managers will be able to see players skills?
A: We don't know yet - it is a work in progress. Probably before the end of the current season, but the priority remains training reform.

Q: Will nt matches be treated as an arcade match?.
A: There is no final decision yet.

Q: Do you plan to start a European Championship for both senior and youth national teams?.
A: There is no more room in the current international championship calendar for additional continental competitions.

In addition I would like to point out that with 17 qualification groups for the World Championships, the rule that 2 teams from each group will advance to the finals will not be kept. I will publish the exact rules soon.

COMMUNICATION / PRESSROOM
We see the need to further improve our communication and for this purpose the PressRoom tab will be developed during the season. In addition to "front page" information, it will also present smaller announcements and advice for beginners. It should also be convenient to introduce an icon with the number of new messages or information pieces - as it is in the Summary tab.
For the moment I can present one of the projects showing the direction of changes: https://i.ibb.co/gJnTkVk/pr.png.

SOME RESPONSES TO OTHER QUESTIONS:.
Q: Will the delay of matches be solved in the coming season break?
A: Once the new server environment is optimized, the problem should be solved or strongly minimized.

Q: How many weeks does the Cup lasts in Poland?.
A: There will be 2048 teams competing in the Poland Cup which will translate into 11 rounds.

Q: Tutorial or documentation of the game - Do you plan to improve?.
A: Yes, but only after further changes have been made to the main areas of the game.

Q: How can i change my region?
A: Currently you can ask the game administrator. In the future you will be able to do this yourself.

Q: What about grass regeneration?
A: Currently no changes are planned, although we will observe the turf situation in the current season and then draw conclusions.

Q: Will the substitution slots (bench) increase?
A: Such changes are being looked at as possibly being carried out in the future, along with changes within the conditional commands.

Final assignment to new leagues.

struś

The first assignment to new leagues had errors. To fix this the entire procedure was checked and carried out Tuesday once again. As a result, some of you have been reassigned to new leagues. Your relegations, promotions or lack of them, other than in the previous league structure, are the result of a change in the number of individual league levels and not an incorrect assignment.

Summary:
1. The current assignment to the new leagues is final, will not change anymore.

2. There are cases of changing the order of assigning teams to a given league - for example, the team which, according to the scores, should be assigned to place No. 3, was assigned to place No. 5, and the latter - the other way around. This has no effect on the composition of the leagues.

3. League rounds will be arranged accordingly to the assigned places. The schedule will be similar as before, the teams from places 1 to 6 will face each other at the beginning and end of the season - at the same time the teams from places 7-12 will also compete directly. Mid-season, on the other hand, will be top-bottom clash times, and will be filled with matches between the higher seeded and the lower seeded teams.

Now we have a few days to adapt to the new situation, get acquainted with the league and opponents, and on March 27 the competition starts. I wish you all success!

Minor problems:
Visualizations of the older matches are still not working - the database of these matches has not been connected to the new server yet, it will be added in the coming days.

Current technical issues

struś

Dear users.
The last days were very difficult both for us and for you. Despite the great commitment, many things went wrong.
The time will come for a moredetailed explanation of this situation, now the most important thing is to minimize the losses.

1. Assignment to new leagues.
There were errors while sorting teams - there are single cases of teams that have been incorrectly assigned at each level. This forces us to reschedule the leagues - the moment of this correction is being planned right now. We will inform you shortly when it will take place. Thus, the composition of the leagues in which players are currently found, or their level - may still change. Of course, the final schedule will take place according to the rules we gave in the previous announcements - it will also take into account the results of the play-offs played, there will be no need to repeat them.

2. Transfers.
Due to numerous problems with the availability of the website, we are introducing a one-time option to verify and retrieve transfers which ended yesterday (14.03) after 19.00, when the greatest technical problems took place.
You can report such transfers:
- via the contact form to Administrators in the Staff tab.
- or by writing an e-mail directly to the Administrator responsible for your country.
Each case will be investigated and assessed individually, and transfers clearly deviating from market prices will be retrieved.

3. Planning friendies.
We know that some of you have a problem with accepting friendly matches. Logging out and back in fixes this error.

4. Service stability.
Unfortunately, after migration, we are still having big problems with the stability of servers. Optimization works will be carried out throughout the week, and their completion is planned for coming weekend.

We hope that the implementation of the above actions will contribute to the normalization of the current situation.

Reform issues - important info!

struś

As you have certainly observed, we’ve encoutered serious technical problems during the implementation. It resulted in complete shutdown of the game/service on Saturday and further problems with the game today - now we're just finishing overdue Satuday events (like e.g. NT and arcade matches).

We'd like to apologise everybody for this situation - unfortunately with such big change as league reform, combined with implementing new morning update and moving database to new, faster server - it ended with a lot of errors, which didn't appear during earlier tests and test deployments. Unfortunately this is the risk, which we always bear - not all bugs can be detected during the tests.

Nevertheless, developers worked over 16h yesterday and finally all the work planned for Saturday were successfully finished, and we're just a little step from the final reform.

However - our problems affected the users - among other by postponing transfers, which in face of qualification matches is really big problem.

Therefore, we are urgently implementing a solution that will at least partially remedy this delay - we are postponing today's play-offs to tomorrow, they will be played in the evening hours.

Thus, the schedule for the upcoming updates is as follows:

1. standard Sunday morning update will happen tomorrow morning
2. qualification matches will be played tomorrow, early evening
3. Tomorrow, after the qualifications, there will be a league reform (announcing new 12-team leagues) along with a classic Monday update (form, fan club, etc.).

Once again, we sincerely apologize all user for this situation.
To compensate these incoveniences all Plus users will get 7-days prologation of their subsrciption. For other users - they will have it activated for 4 days next week(from Thursday till Sunday)

Dev Diary 61: Gameplay Reform – supplement

struś

Since publication of the previous Dev Diary there have been a lot of questions and requests for clarification of provided information. Moreover, there was created dedicated topic on international forum where anyone could ask for additional details of the reform.
I will try to answer to the first set of these questions in today`s edition of DD. I hope, it will help You to prepare properly enough for the upcoming season.

GAMEPLAY CALENDAR
I think the figure below will provide answers to most of Your questions:

NEW LEAGUES ASSIGNMENT - clarification
With the end of the current season, the teams without owners will be withdrawn from the game so in the new league system they could be replaced by new, active users.
These bot-teams won't be completely removed from the game. If any of their previous owners will decide to join our community once again, he or she will be able to reclaim his or her team and start again from the lowest division in his or her country.
The teams which were assigned to new users in recent weeks will be assigned as all other teams in the new league system. There will be no new rules for treating them in any special way and we acknowledge the fact that some of them will be given single league promotion "for free".

JUNIOR LEAGUES
The structure of the junior leagues will not be changed but the number of matches played in junior league will be decreased and adapted to the new length of season which is 13 rounds.

NATIONAL TEAMS
Matches of national teams, both junior and senior ones, will be played on Saturdays.
World Cup preliminaries will feature groups up to 6 teams. This will let their duration to be reduced to 10 weeks. The detailed rules of awarding promotions to the World Cup finals will be presented in the next announcement.
Work on the mechanism to share skills of NT players with NT coaches will be conducted during the season. The exact term of releasing this functionality is unknown.

TRAINING
Please take note that there might be a case when a player will play club match on Friday and national team match on Saturday. And, according to the rules, in such case he will receive training basing to the formation which was set during national team match. Potential performance in the Sunday or Wednesday match will let You reconfigure that training to the formation which was ultimately selected in the club match.
Another problem might occur when the player will receive a red card during the Sunday match which will exclude him from the Wednesday match, and thus he will only receive training appropriate to the part of the match he played before getting the red card.
In case of appearing in several different formation during the week, only the last match will be taken into account, exclusively.
- Example One: player who played in three different matches with formations MID-DEF-MID respectively, will be trained as if he would play only the last match with a MID formation order.
- Example Two: player who played in three different matches with formations MID-DEF-DEF respectively, will be trained as DEF according the same rules as currently with two matches played in the trained formation.
We are aware of the issues mentioned above, but they won't be resolved during the transition season. The increased number of players which might be trained is itself enough to compensate that inconvenience.

INJURIES
Due to increased intensity of matches calendar, the following changes will be introduced:
- injury proneness of players will be reduced
- average duration of injury will also be reduced
Additional change in the matter of National Team games is also being considered. More details soon.

SERVER PERFORMANCE
Along with gameplay reform, the game will be moved to the new server. This should cause:
- daily updates to be much faster and more stable,
- lack or at least significant reduction of delays of the league matches.

ATTENTION! Works on the server environment will be taken between 18.03 and 20.03 CET. We do not plan to disable the website but there might be availability problems so it is advised to avoid putting players on transfer list so they would have transfer deadline during these days.

[URL=https://info.flagcounter.com/cuqF][/URL]

Dev Diary 60: Gameplay Reform – it is happening!

_james

Let me start by sharing a few personal thoughts with you. There are news that you write because you have to, and there are also news when you enjoy typing every single letter, the announcement of which is the culmination of many months of hard work. The announced effect is the beginning of something long awaited, and the changes introduced are not only technical maintenance of the game, but its significant development. Therefore, with great satisfaction, on behalf of the entire Sokker Team, I announce that the start of the new season will be preceded by the long awaited reform of the tournament structure! ~Raul

THE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES:
- Extending the composition of each league - from the current 8 to 12 teams.
- Changing the calendar of competitions. The season will be reduced to 13 weeks in which matches will be played according to the scheme: league matches on Wednesdays and Sundays, cup / friendly matches on Fridays. Each team will play 22 league matches in a season instead of 14.
- Change of promotion rules. Most importantly, from the next season, league winners will always be promoted directly. On the other hand, teams in 2nd place will have their chance in play-offs. Places 3-6 will be safe, teams ranked 10-12 will demote directly, and those ranked 7-9 will have to defend their league presence in play-offs. We hope that this will affect the fierceness and attractiveness of the competition and each team will be committed to fighting for its goal throughout the season. Link to the new tournament calendar

NECESSARY ADJUSTMENTS:
- The new system assumptions are that each lower league level has 3 times more teams than the preceding higher one, and therefore: 1 x 1st league, 3 x 2nd leagues, 9 x 3rd leagues, 27 x 4th leagues, etc. This change makes possible introduction of new promotion and relegation system, but also makes each level more exclusive and prestigious.
- The effect of the reform will be a change in the total number of teams at each league level. While the I and II levels of the game will increase their numbers, starting from the third league number of teams will be reduced. This is exactly illustrated by this table.
- The above changes require a new assignments to individual leagues. At the beginning of next season, old leagues will be reset and ALL teams will be assigned to the new leagues based on their performance this season, creating completely new composition of each league. We describe the rules of attribution in detail below.

RULES OF ASSIGNMENT TO NEW LEAGUES:
1. We play play-offs, promotions and relegations, as usual, at the end of the season.
2. We keep the score (points, goals) with which a given team was relegated or promoted.
3. We delete teams without players (e.g. in PL there are nearly 400 teams).
4. We sort the teams according to the collective tables of a given level of the game, assuming that:
- First, we sort the teams that fell from a higher league level (direct relegations from higher leagues, and play-off losers from higher leagues)
- Then the teams that stayed at the given level (losers in play-off for higher level, winners in play-off for current level, and safe places 2-4)
- At the end, we sort the teams that have advanced to a given level (direct promotions from lower leagues, and play-off winners from lower leagues)
5. We remove all bot teams from the rankings. We adopt one rule: no login in the last 50 days. These teams will not be completely removed and if the owner returns someday, he will be able to resume the game with his own team, with his own resources, but from the lowest league level.
6. The tables created in this way will be the basis for assignment to new leagues.

NECESSARY BUT UNPOPULAR EFFECTS:
- As described above, the number of middle and lower levels of the game will decrease.
- The consequences of the change in the number of teams at a certain level will be situations in which:
a) teams that, according to the old system, would be promoted to a higher level, will remain at the current level.
b) teams that, according to the old system, would remain at the current level, will be assigned to a lower league.
- It is math, and a necessary, one-time adjustment.
- We hope that the increased possibility of promotion from next season and the greater attractiveness of the tournament will be a compensation for the owners of these teams.
- Despite many hours devoted to searching for solutions, in order to introduce changes, it was not possible to find a better solution. It is a necessary, but probably unpopular, effect.

THE EFFECT OF CHANGE ON TRAINING:
- Awaited by you, training reform will not start until the season after, so the next season will be a transitional period. New rules of the game, but still the old rules of training.
- Consequently, thanks to 3 "training" matches every week, it will be possible to train more players: e.g. 3 players with GK, 9 ATT, 15 MID or DEF and as many as 33 players training pace.
- It is also a small gift for you for your patience - use it for the season, in the next season there will be new rules.
- Shortening the season will reduce the number of trainings from 16 to 13 possible so far. Remember this when planning the careers of your pupils.

In final words, we hope the competition next season will be as fierce as the discussion under this post! Good luck to all of you! ~Raul

Dev. Diary 59: The new system for setting up your squad

_james

In December, we made changes to the way we select players for a match. These are quite unique changes - we had them introduced to the old composition view, without replacing it with a new view, like we did with other subpages implemented so far. We opted for such a change due to the fact that this was a key view that discouraged new users from playing Sokker. We know from the research that it caused the most problems, it was unintuitive and without help of someone experienced, new player was practically unable to correctly set up squad for a match.
As the corrections made are for the old view, we were a bit limited with options. We improved the most key elements, further development of this view will continue in the future in form of a completely new version of it. However, it will be largely based on these changes.

The key changes we made:
1. Ability to view the skills of each player.
2. Select and place players, instead of selecting from the drop-down list.
3. View of all players from our club.
4. Highlighted injured players.
5. Highlighted incorrect match orders (e.g. too many of them).
6. We moved all squad editing options to the squad setting screen (i.e. the ability to load settings from another match).
7. The squad setup screen is now the first view that we move to when setting the squad (not the summary as before - it caused a lot of problems for new players who did not understand how to edit options from the list).
8. We added a pop up message informing you that you need to save changes when you try to exit the page view.
9. After changing a tactic, its preview reloads (previously it was necessary to refresh the page).

We are aware that, after the changes, conditional commands for a given match from which we are loading the line-up are not loaded. Unfortunately, it is quite time-consuming for this option to work after the changes. We plan to restore it, but it is not a priority.
At the same time, we are aware that a lot of controversy was caused by an error, as a result of which managers of national teams were able to see players’ skills on this screen. The bug has been fixed, but we understand that this is a step backwards. Therefore, we would like to remind you at this point that we already announced the idea for a tool that will solve this problem. A checkbox will appear in the profile of your players, selecting which will make the skills of a given player visible to the manager of given national team. Thus, the decision whether to make a player visible to NT coach will remain with users. However, it will not be necessary to update players. Their skills will be visible to the national team manager on an ongoing basis (also in the squad selection view). This feature will be added as soon as the league reform work is completed, which is currently our top priority.

In upcoming weeks we will introduce you to the exact rules of the league reform that will take a place at the start of the new season. We know that you need the most accurate information, but for now we can reveal that it is worth competing for the highest possible seed in terms of this reform. That's why we encourage you to compete in leagues with full commitment and play for the highest league positions and promotions.

Dev. Diary 58: Further plans for changes in the game

_james

We are back with the long-awaited next update on our progress. There is an interseasonal break ahead of us which is a very important time for us to implement significant changes in the game code. It will allow further development of a comprehensive update of the code for morning updates. This affects all the game mechanisms that take place in the background and they are usually updated every morning and push the game forward - starting from league schedule, through promotions, relegations, as well as all cyclical events from training to junior recruitment or sponsorship calculations. The existing code responsible for all these actions was outdated and did not allow us to introduce further changes related to the game mechanics (training reform, but also the reform of the league system or the announced changes in junior schools).

This weekend (November 27-28) we plan to implement new code because it is the safest time for such a big change. Lack of official matches will allow us to correct any errors on an ongoing basis without causing too much inconvenience to players. We believe that the change will go smoothly but the risk of new problems that we did not find on the test server still exists.

Implementation of the new update will not introduce ANY new elements to the game. This is a change of the game code to a newer one, suitable for further work but it will not change anything in the current gameplay.
It is at the same time a key change for further reforms to be implemented - the league system reform as well as the training reform. After implementing the new code, we will begin preparations for implementing both reforms that we are planning for the next season (61).
The competition reform will be a priority for us. We predict that its implementation in season 61 is practically certain. The training reform, on the other hand, can be implemented simultaneously, or a season later. It depends on the development issues - how well will reforms work together from a code standpoint, and whether all the necessary tests (e.g., training speed, etc.) will go smoothly.

We know that you all look forward to seeing new changes in the game. We are trying with our entire team to implement them as soon as possible but we must balance between the intensity of subsequent implementations and the risk of errors as well as the logic of subsequent changes which are often related to each other and arise from each other. We are doing everything in our power to complete the project as soon as possible.

To comment on the latest changes, we would like to briefly summarize that we have implemented a new view of the team composition, we have corrected several minor bugs related to the previously introduced views, we have also added the option to save the player's login. Soon, we will prepare separate DD about all this.
Currently we are working on the next views: the new finance tab (works are already well advanced, we should implement it in the game in the coming weeks) and the new club tab (we are looking to implement it by the end of December).

Election time is here!

_james

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a Senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the homepage of the respective country, then click on National Team (Senior or U21), and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country's forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users' Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term.

Elections end on the 5th of December, so start preparing your speeches, questions for candidates, and vote!

Dev. Diary 57: New Home Page & Schedule View

_james

We are pleased to announce that we have almost completed work on two new pages which will soon be introduced in the game. These are already available for testing but still have some bugs and our team of developers is working on its final version.

New Home Page

The first of these pages is the new Sokker start page. It has been prepared in accordance with the new graphics. It is adapted to both PCs and mobile devices.

You can check it out here:
https://sokker.org/app/pl

The website is already operational, the registration and login options are also working. Soon, we will also add screenshots from the game itself and some preview screenshots of Sokker matches. After the tests are over, it will be the only home page of the Sokker and the current one will be replaced by it.

New matches list view

The other page is the new view of our team's matches. We have arranged it in the form of a list, which is much clearer than the current version of the presentation of matches in two columns. In this case, we are still working on the aesthetics (too many colors, some too bright), not all options work and there is no filtering by season (it will be available soon).

You can see it here:
https://sokker.org/app/season/schedule

Nevertheless, the view improves many functions. Within it, the following options will be available:
1. Simple color marking of the match type;
2. Marking empty slots for friendly and arcade matches;
3. Positioning the site on the current week [/color]the current week (the next match in the middle of the screen);
4. A separate tab with arcade matches (it will be separated from regular matches to simplify the view);
5. Of course, all items on the list will be links (to teams or competitions).

Next steps

Parallel to making corrections to these two new tabs, we are already in a very advanced stage of the work on the next subpage - the new version of the finance tab (with significantly expanded statistics). As a reminder - here you can see its appearance and functionalities:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/891825ba-8631-45da-9d35-8eb62d7f3b6d-dc4b/?fullscreen

Changes in training and the league system

We are also working intensively on this element. Unfortunately, we are not able to declare whether we'll be able to implement both changes at the beginning of the next season. This is currently our highest priority, and we will devote 80% of our backend resources to the training system in September - but it is also a very complex change. We can already see various complications related to the reform. We will try to provide the exact implementation dates in the next Dev. Diary. We are aware that the planned reform is currently the most important to players.

Election time is here!

_james

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a Senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the homepage of the respective country, then click on National Team (Senior or U21), and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country's forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users' Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term.

Elections end on the 15th of August, so start preparing your speeches, questions for candidates, and vote!

Dev. Diary 56: Summary Of New Elements And Upcoming Changes

Matsuyama [del]

The holiday season was not helpful to keep our frequent communication, but today we make up for it with a long entry describing the status of our work. We hope that the numerous changes that appeared on the server made up for lack of information.

Training reports - beta version

You have been able to find a new tab on the Training page for several weeks - "Main Team Progress" showing the progress of all players in the form of a table.

Clicking on a given player from the list opens the training history of a particular player from week to week. This option has been activated this week. We can’t wait for you to try it. There may still be bugs with this view and improvements are underway as soon as this week.

The most important functionalities of the new training reports:

1. Marking of all skill changes of players;
2. Possibility to sort the players by any filter;
3. Logs training type and number of minutes played in all types of games;
4. History of the player's training (PLUS users have access to archival data for the entire duration of the subscription).

During the tests, the tab is available to everyone. Ultimately it will be a functionality only for PLUS users.

We are currently working on the following fixes:

1. Correct counting of minutes played (errors appear in case of injuries and international matches);
2. Marking the weeks in which the player was injured;
3. Improving the readability of the training history of a given player (squeezing the elements);
4. Adding picture of the player;
5. Adding hyperlinks to the player's profile or nationality;
6. Various other minor bugs, such as improvement of separators in amounts, overlapping texts, etc.

This is not all the news on training reports!

Work is underway on the "Weekly Report" card, which will be a simplified view of training changes in our team. It will contain information about the type of training and about coaches, the progress in the junior team and on a new graph visualization. It will include a scrollbar scrolling function and it will mark weeks in which the athlete missed training.

New transfers - a list with a summary of conducted transfers

Another big element that we managed to implement is a completely new tab summarizing the transfers carried out. This is the default tab that opens after entering the Transfers page and there we can find a list of all players that we are trying to buy or sell.

Functionalities of this element are:

1. More extensive player statistics visible at a glance (age, value);
2. Possibility to see the player's skills without going to his profile;
3. Possibility to bid a player from the list without going to the profile;
4. Changes refreshing live, we can follow the progress of the auction from the list view;
5. Information on the number of clubs interested in the player;
6. Possibility to remove the observation of a player;
7. Possibility of observing the player without having to bid him in the auction (pin icon in the player's profile);
8. Countdown to the auction end (visible exact second of the end of the auction);
9. Marking the auctions in which we are winning with a green icon.

At the same time, we are also working on some missing elements here, such as coach observations (not yet implemented).

Overview - fixes and changes

A lot of changes have also occurred in the Overview, from a series of fixes for various smaller elements (e.g. adding full financial data for the last season in the finance section, improving various visual elements, etc.), to larger implementations such as the introduction of a completely new section - the calendar with a preview of the current week in the game.

The calendar currently shows only the events that have already taken place, however it will soon be supplemented with hints about events related to the coming days (such as information about when the friendly league rounds are scheduled or when the age of players changes due to the new season).

Team registration automation

We have also entered the 21st century in terms of team registration. Late - but finally we've automated team assignment (vs. admin's manual work up until now). Now, most submissions are accepted by an algorithm that checks account credibility and the team is assigned immediately (unless there are serious doubts about the account). Any further verification takes place in the background. The user can immediately start the exploration of the game.

Automation is already working. It still requires changes to the content of the registration e-mails. We are currently working on rewriting them.

What are we working on now?

In recent months, we have sped up the work significantly and we are very pleased that more and more new features appear in the game and that the changes are starting to become noticeable. We hope that you are also satisfied with the results you are seeing.

In addition to the works mentioned earlier, we are currently working on several new elements:

1. New home page with simplified registration and login process;
2. New training system;
3. Match scenery (for both players - 2D and 3D). We also plan to prepare a 3D player to run on mobile devices;
4. There are also other elements in the queue for programming work - the season view (match calendar and list view of matches) and the view of new, significantly expanded finances (both were presented in dev. diaries);
5. On the other hand, in graphic design, there is a new view of the squad selection.

We hope that you are going to like the changes, we are asking you as always to support our work with PLUS and please invite your friends to join Sokker community!

Dev. Diary 55: New main page (sokker.org) project

_james

Due to vacation we had less communication in recent weeks, but it's finally time for next Developer Diary!
This time we would like to present you our projects about the new Sokker main page = www.sokker.org

You can find our projects trough the link below:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/b3833988-63b2-4ae6-9ed8-6273a4927fc1-e6d0/grid

Sorry for so much Polish text, it was easier for our designer you use native language - of course we will introduce new pages in English, and then linguists will translate them locally.

What is important on presented projects:
1. New main page is quite simple and oriented towards new users - main goal is to introduce the game to beginners and motivate them to register;
2. Registration process is much simpler than it was, and combined with automatic team assignment it will reduce time to create a new team to a minimum;
3. Login page is also simple and embedded into the new design;
4. You can also check how will the main page look on mobile devices.

Hopefully, the new main page will be implemented till the end of the current season.

Dev. Diary 54: Overview page: bug fixing & features

_james

Last two weeks we were mainly focused on bug fixing for the Overview page. Most issues seem to be solved, others should be fixed in the upcoming days.
From today we will start with local translations for your native languages, and probably in the upcoming week it should be introduced.

We decided to develop some small features based on the current data displayed in the overview page:
1. Club summary contains current data of your team, we will compare it to the last season's results to make you able to easily asses your team's progress;
2. Same thing will be done with the finance widget, there will be an option to check last year's overall results;
3. We are also developing an option to check competitions other than the "short" league table - national cup (or other cups) will be included in that widget too.

Other important changes:
1. Transfer auto refreshing - probably you noticed that transfers near the end (2 minutes) are auto-refreshed every 4 seconds;
2. Registration page - we decided to make it simpler, we have reduced the number of fields required to register a new team, hopefully it will help us to get more users in the future.

If you still notice any bugs about the Overview please report it on bugs forum.
One of our programmers will continue Overview page development, but the rest of the team moves on to next few challenges: training reports, welcome page and registration process, and match viewer intro.

Dev. Diary 53: Overview page published!

_james

Well, finally!

We are happy to announce that the first completely new subpage, the Overview page, is published :)
For now it's a BETA version, probably we will find some bugs that need to be fixed, but it's ready and can be used by managers.
You can find it here: https://sokker.org/app/overview

Link to the Overview page will soon appear on the left side menu. After all bugs are fixed and language translations made we will set Overview page as the new default page after login.

It's a really BIG STEP forward for the development team. Crucial things are:
1. It's the first page of the new Sokker design (developed from the scratch);
2. During development we prepared design styles and code frame that will allow us to work much faster on other subpages;
3. New page is also better suited for beginners, and notifications (guidelines) presented in overview will help to make any key decision-making easier;
4. New design is much better suited for mobile devices than the old site was.

There are two important widgets that are missing (presented in previous DD regarding the Overview), which will be developed soon:
1. Transfers overview;
2. Weekly timeline.

Dev. Diary 52: Few new features

_james

Feature No. 1
We have finally introduced new player portraits. There are still few small things to be fixed with them, but overall we are pleased with the final effect.

We will keep improving it:
1. Link hair color with beard (with small chance of different colors);
2. Link match kits with current club colors (and hopefully in the future with kits design, as stripes, etc.);
3. Too high chance for beard (most players have it now);
4. Lack of bald players.
We will also constantly expand portrait data base with new illustrations.

Feature No. 2
Transfer auto-refreshing - last few days we tested auto-refreshing on player bidding with few chosen clubs - seems that the feature worked well and we will introduce it this week for all of you. Mechanism is simple, when bidding is close to the end (2 minutes) bidding window will refresh automatically every 4 seconds, with no need to refresh the page.

Overview page - we found few bugs during our tests, but it seems that new page will be introduced this week as beta version.

Dev. Diary 51: Finance tab - final project

_james

Short update this weekend!

We are pleased to share with you another page that is almost ready for development: the new Finance tab.
It was presented few weeks ago as a UX project. Since then the project was finished by our graphic designer.

Please check the new Finances tab here:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/891825ba-8631-45da-9d35-8eb62d7f3b6d-dc4b/

At the same time we are getting ready to publish the Overview page (yes, we know it's taking much more time than we announced). But the good news is that the Overview page is finally introduced for testing at the test server, so we are really close to introduce it in the game (hopefully, next week).

Dev. Diary 50: Training reports

_james

The Overview tab development is almost finished, so very soon you can expect its deployment. A little reminder how it looks:
Desktop:
Mobile vertically
Mobile horizontally

Now we're starting our works on further subpages, which will be changed, and these are connected with training.

This is a priority because of few reasons:
1. As soon as possible we'd like to ensure in SK professional reports, because we believe that monitoring progress of players should be simple from the game level, without necessity to use any external programs.
2. Good training reports are also a basis to implement a new training system - this will help to control progress of players in prepared system.

We're working to prepare few tabs, you can see the details below:
1. Training reports tab (all reports)
2. View for particular - selected report
3. List of detailed training progress of all team
4. History of progress for a selected player
5. View of the graph for training of a selected player

Dev. Diary 49: Updated 3D Viewer

_james

Few important announcements with the start of April.

We have finally fixed bugs reported for the 3D viewer, now you can use the new version, which seems to work much better. However, some bugs still may occur; please report them on Bugs forum.

List of main improvements:
1. Proper substitutions' names;
2. Stadium displays correctly (there were some parts missing sometimes);
3. Weather conditions fixed (in most of the games there were visuals of water on the pitch);
4. Roof on the camera side is hidden;
5. Goalkeeper shirts uploaded (no longer are the same as field players);
6. lots of other small features.

Another part of our work that is close to the end is portraits generator. We uploaded all the illustrations and we can create portraits, you can check out the generator here (refresh the site to display another portrait): https://sokker-postacie.codee.dev/
Hopefully we will introduce new portraits to the game next week, two at max.

Unfortunately, our work on the Overview page is delayed - due to covid our work wasn't as fast as we expected. But the Overview page is already at a quite advanced stage Our new deadline is the middle of the month, at the latest the 3rd week. We hope that the community will understand it, we are trying to do our best to deliver all changes as soon as it's possible.

Happy Easter to everyone and take care!

Dev. Diary 48: New finance tab - UX project

_james

Together with current development process we are preparing new proposals for next few pages and innovations. New finance tab project is almost done, so you can check our proposal using the link below. New tab will be much more detailed and will allow you to check your club finances from few different perspectives. What's important, today you can check out the finance overview page. That will be the main page for finance checking, but as you can see at the top of page there will be also an option to check more detailed tabs, like dedicated reports for costs or incomes. That will allow you to compare wages of players and coaches, track your tickets incomes divided by type of game, etc.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/2b98312f-bdde-4faa-b61c-8166f9e8c5aa-7ecb/?fullscreen

In the presented project you can find a few new features, like:
1. Club finances are separated into operational part and dedicated part for transfers;
2. Reports in different time periods, starting from weekly, ending with whole season overview or even last season results;
3. You will be able to compare seasons;
4. Seasonal predictions based on your current costs and average incomes per week;
5. Trend chart to summarize season week by week;
6. Dedicated summary for youth school.

It's just a few improvements, we hope you will enjoy the presented idea. Some of new features will only be available to plus users (we still haven’t decided which ones).

Dev. Diary 47: Automatic registration

Matsuyama [del]

Dev. Diary 47: Automatic registration

We are right about to start working on automatic registration in Sokker. Currently this is a manual process, and because of that users often have to wait even few days for the confirmation of the team and the unlocking all options. It's highly complicated compared to other online games, where in most cases creating an account enables immediate start of the game. We'd like a similar process on Sokker. There will be an automat registering the teams, which will be assigned immediately during creating an account, if there are no contraindications (e.g. connected with duplicated IP number). Development will last few weeks. Planned end of works will take place about April/May.

Dev. Diary 46 - Notifications

_james

Another good info, and another news piece that is not much for reading, but rather for watching. We're working on notifications on the overview screen, which will be displayed to users after logging. Below you can see visualization of basic notifications regarding "necessary" things to do in the club:

Dev. Diary 45 - Final match setting

_james

Today, news with not many words, but full of, not only visualizations, but realistic (developed) screens. The matches will soon be available with really advanced settings. By clicking the following link you can see the options, which will be available while watching a match:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/9faf77f6-a275-4579-afc1-cc567489231a-cafc/screen/8a693ab3-0f7f-4686-823c-9aaa440292b6/?fullscreen

Most important changes:
- pre-match intro (summary of team forms, current table, team stars),
- match settings panel (options for match, camera, speed, replays),
- summary of match data and match facts/statistics,
- timeline with possibility to skip to the match event of choice.

Dev. Diary 44 - Latest fixes

_james

Below you can find the list of minor and major fixes which have been done:
1. Light skin - white background changed for a little darker one, so it would be more pleasant to look at;
2. Font change - bigger font size was set as default, which made the forum and other elements more readable. In few places it breaks the layout (e.g. choosing the position of a player in match settings view), but it's the first thing to fix;
3. League tables - the colour scheme was changed (especially the contrast for the dark skin);
4. The colour of pops - pops of player skills are distinguished with light green colour in the dark skin (again, a matter of contrast);
5. Mobile - trimming of elements was fixed - it's possible to scroll left and right (e.g. tables);
6. Left menu - it was embedded permanently (it's no longer necessary to scroll down whole page content to see the clock, for example).

Dev. Diary 43: New navigation & 3D visualization!

_james

LET'S GO! As you can see, today we completed the first major deployment of new elements on Sokker. And there is a lot of them at once!

New design

Navigation & two skins:
1. There is new navigation and page layout. Side and top panels, which have been designed from the scratch, are the first new elements of the new Sokker layout. New design will be developed further (deploying new layout page by page);
2. Other elements (particular pages) have been adjusted color-wise, so it looks consistent everywhere. However it’s not the final layout yet, it’s only a temporary adjustment of old content of the site to the new navigation elements;
3. There are two skins for now – light and dark, you can change them in the settings;
4. In accordance to the announcements, we are working on a skin inspired by old Sokker classic.

Navigation changes

Few elements changed their place, which we’ll have to get used to. Below is a short list of those changes:
1. FINANCE tab – it’s now under the OFFICE;
2. PLAYERS tab – it’s under the CLUB page (direct link is currently named TEAM, which will better suit its new function). The club page will be available by clicking on logo or team name. All names and descriptions are deployed in English and will be translated to local languages shortly after;
3. There is change of place of few elements – the left panel will contain only those elements that are directly connected to our club (and NT) management (and the FORUM tab), whereas the top panel will contain „additional” tabs, like World, Country, Search, Rules or Settings;
4. Also notifications and mail will be displayed on the top, which have different icons now. Number of awaiting „items” will also be displayed there.

3D match visualization

At the same time we deploy new 3D match visualization. Ultimately 3D version will be available only for PLUS users. For now it stays open for everyone for the test phase. 2D version is not gone – it’ll be an alternative, available for everyone.

IMPORTANT: it’s a test version. It means that there may be (and surely will) some bugs – we kindly ask to report them in proper forums. We haven’t managed to fix some elements, e.g. displaying of spectators – therefore they won’t be visible yet.
Current visualization interface (visualization menu) is also temporary – currently we’re working on design of matches, which should be kept as live match broadcast, with full match intro, animations, etc.

In the end, some fixes, which were done as well:
1. Rule of 4 weeks is not in effect for transfers cancelled by admins;
2. The score board for 2D visualization is moved to top (since it was sometimes hidden because of resolution setting for some browsers);
3. Again there will be ball icon over the goalscorer!

Dev. Diary 42: Bugs fixes - status

_james

We are delighted to announce few pieces of positive information:
1. The decision was made, two skin options will be deployed at once - light and dark, so everyone could find something for themself;
2. Light skin project is ready, you can check it out here: https://xd.adobe.com/view/6cca5199-4603-4d79-a720-3296347dd569-3999/?fullscreen (you need to press arrows to check all graphics);
3. Work on the new GUI is at a quite advanced stage now, the new menu and both skins will surely be deployed in February;
4. Soon, we'll start working on the retro skin - we need to make it clear with you, the users, what do you mean by "retro" - and on which skin should we base it. For that purpose, we'll make short survey in the coming days;
5. A fix for the match visualization, the player names are displayed now! Some users found it already - it was possible to enable this option with "Home" button on your keyboard. Unfortunately not everyone has that button so it was changed to "N" button. What is more, displaying names was defined for enabled by default;
6. There was one more fix for match visualization, which for many was really crucial during watching - player name is now displayed after hovering the mouse cursor over a player.

A short brief about fixes/enhancements we've been working on lately:
1. 3D matches - we're working on fixing some smaller bugs;
2. Automatically postponing transfer deadlines during serve problems - we're about to define technical conditions which must be fulfilled to make it, we have invented a "mechanism" checking whether server is working;
3. Fixing 4-week grace period for transfer after cancelling a transfer by admin - our backend developer started working on that task, but he has to find the best solution. The work is in progress but it's hard to predict if it can be finished this week;
4. 2D match viewer for iPhone users - The new test environment was bought to check different web browsers - the problem is being verified there. The thing is that HTML animation is too "heavy" on iOS and web browser doesn't run it. We're working on making it lighter so it could meet the limits.

Dev. Diary 41: Bug Fixes

_james

This week we bring a quick update on the bugs that we have recently fixed.

1. 2D matches HD quality (displaying a match in the full screen does not downgrade its quality).
2. Charts - we have both improved the senior’s talent charts and implemented junior player’s chart.
3. There were also some missing elements that were not originally transferred from Flash, such as the mood and the fan club charts or the account balance chart. New charts have been implemented there.

Simultaneously, we are working on:

1. 3D matches - we have another delay in implementing this option, but it looks like we are getting closer. We will probably release it without fans (currently this element generates the most errors), other elements of the player look good;
2. Automated transfer deadline delays in the event of a server crash (currently, we can only intervene manually which for various reasons does not allow us to react on time in most cases);
3. Fixing a bug with a transfer being cancelled by an admin - now, after cancelling a transfer by an admin, the rule of 4 weeks from purchasing a player applies again;
4. Availability of the 2D viewer for iPhone users (the problem has not been solved yet, but we are close to eliminate the causes, unfortunately it turned out to be quite complex and time-consuming).

The rest of the work is in progress, as reported in previous Dev. Diaries.

Dev. Diary 40: More interface pages

_james

As our programmers are working on the new interface and the Overview page, that will be introduced as the first one, we are developing few more pages with UX and graphics designers.

Please check out the new look of the following subpages:
Calendar (list view): https://xd.adobe.com/view/6776ad00-0299-4a3f-b5de-5ccbe8a18d91-3225/?fullscreen

Calendar (monthly view): https://xd.adobe.com/view/6776ad00-0299-4a3f-b5de-5ccbe8a18d91-3225/screen/ad7df139-83a3-43fc-9466-a714711e7063?fullscreen

Training, team overview: https://xd.adobe.com/view/f5c67c60-4ccc-4885-9834-6313e5de91e1-a095/screen/1fac8341-e2a9-4e64-b9d3-25d4eb7cabcb?fullscreen

Training, player history: https://xd.adobe.com/view/f5c67c60-4ccc-4885-9834-6313e5de91e1-a095/screen/cb4ceac6-1f7f-490e-a352-6952ca375a9d?fullscreen

Training - weekly report: https://xd.adobe.com/view/f5c67c60-4ccc-4885-9834-6313e5de91e1-a095/screen/f8ee5e0e-37f9-4817-a884-1671fec4556d?fullscreen

New training system interface (10 slots to fill): https://xd.adobe.com/view/f5c67c60-4ccc-4885-9834-6313e5de91e1-a095/?fullscreen

Trainers list: https://xd.adobe.com/view/f5c67c60-4ccc-4885-9834-6313e5de91e1-a095/screen/695c5415-a4dc-43d5-b88e-1357a8f42f3a?fullscreen

We are open to all comments and ideas. Please remember that presented views are still a work in progress.

DD39: Next upcoming changes --> new layout, graphics and overview page!

Matsuyama [del]

DD39: Next upcoming changes --> new layout, graphics and overview page!

Goodbye Flash, welcome new year! After Flash replacement we can now focus on our main goal - general Sokker update.
And here are the most important news - we decided to introduce changes one by one, starting from new interface. Instead of preparing one great Sokker update, you will be able to see changes much more faster, one after another. We believe that it is a much better solution, helping us to avoid too many technical issues, or new bugs.

From user perspective it seems as really good news. New interface will be introduced page after page, starting with already presented OVERVIEW.
Overview will be our starting page, each of us will find that page just after login, and it will work as our comanding center - with all major informations, linked to most crucial game elements.
Here you can find actual look:
Desktop: https://xd.adobe.com/view/7cb4195d-54e8-49fe-b5d1-f77fafc2ca2d-29e7/screen/637a11bf-361c-4623-bf89-9fd6f3fc043b?fullscreen
Mobile vertical: https://xd.adobe.com/view/dd87c6d5-113c-4cee-a05d-7a8cb625c951-88d4/screen/2e6b0f52-3047-41f7-b0bb-5be0b460b8f5?fullscreen
Mobile horizontal: https://xd.adobe.com/view/dd87c6d5-113c-4cee-a05d-7a8cb625c951-88d4/screen/2f6fc0eb-c8ba-4d98-9055-9ebfa2662f91?fullscreen

First new page will be introduced in two steps:
1. in next 2-3 weeks we hope to develop new menu system (left bar and top bar, as its presented on links above), and adjust current sokker motive to new colors & fonts.
2. after another few weeks, we will introduce overview with all options you can see on project.

It means, that even in current season we will enjoy new graphics and first new page made in 100% from the scratch. After that we will replace next subpages one by one, starting from most popular (as calendar, training, or finances). New pages are not only about new graphics - in many cases, you will find lots of new elements - as on overview page.

Overview, short summary of upcoming innovations:
1. Alert center - you will be informed, if any crucial action for your club is needed - as trainer appointment, squad selection, friendly setting).
2. easy access for last 3 games and upcoming one (with hidden results)
3. week summary, with all important information
4. pressroom - that will help us to inform all users about most important news (in the future it will also contain news about our own club, generated by the game)
5. Club summary (with one new feature - seasonal fans expectations)
6. Transfers shortlist - it's probably most advanced element, with a lot of new features - bidding in real time (no need to refresh site), list view with key information, bidding from list level, option to skip player if we are no longer interested, or even option to roll out players skills.

We are really excited about upcoming changes, and we strongly believe that even this first page of our development will bring quite lots of new functionalities and features.

Dev Diary 38: Last changes - Summary

_james

As most of you know, we made a number of changes last week. It was not only the replacement of key Flash elements (such as the implementation of a new tactic editor and 2D match visualization), but also significant update of the Sokker code. Thanks to these changes it will be possible to significantly accelerate the game's development.
Of course, we did not avoid errors, but we tried to respond to the most important ones on an ongoing basis. Nevertheless, we managed to escape major failures, which should be considered a moderate success given the scale of these changes.
The changes also moved us to a new server - much newer and more efficient than the previous one.
We are at the very end of the first stage of our Sokker development project: eliminating all Flash elements and preparing the game for further development.

Until this stage is closed, we have to:
1. Convert the match report graphic to HTML;
2. Change the tactic view in the match settings to HTML;
3. Convert junior charts to HTML;
4. Introduce the 3D match visualization.

Elimination of remaining bugs that are still to be repaired:
1. Scheduling friendly leagues (priority);
2. Fixing bugs in the tactic editor (priority);
3. Correcting the charts (so that they correctly indicate trained and untrained weeks);
4. And any other less serious reports (remember that you can report bugs - preferably directly on the Bugs Forum).

We are aware of the forum comments related to the transition to the newer Sokker theme. We are very sorry, but we couldn't keep developing two themes any further. We have to focus on one now, because it will save us a lot of resources and time. It will significantly speed up the work on the planned change of the Sokker interface along with the new look (presented in previous Dev Diaries). However, it is important to mention that, as part of the introduction of the new interface, we are planning to prepare a few skins. Apart from the default ones based on new graphics, we are also planning a retro skin in order not to forget about the rich and long history of our game.
Although there are still a few tasks to be worked out, along with the above-mentioned works, proper programming works on subsequent changes have already started. The order of implementation of individual elements that we announced in Dev. Diaries last year will be announced in a week. The important information is, however, that you will not have to wait for those updates as long as for Flash elimination - we hope that you will see some changes in the current season.
Keep your fingers crossed, we strongly believe that 2021 will be a turning point for the future of Sokker!

Dev Diary 37: Final Flash replacement

_james

Today we are introducing Flash replacement. It is possible that you will encounter temporary issues with game access today and tomorrow, but have hope to avoid such serious complications. It's also possible that new game bugs will occur – together with flash replacement, we are also introducing huge game code actualization that will be the foundation for future game development. There will be no new options this time, but the game code was rewritten in many places – so possible bugs can be connected to different parts of the game, not only to Flash replacements.

What will change today?
• 2D Match viewer (retro version) – existing 2D viewer rewritten to HTML technology (from Flash). What is important, this viewer should also work with mobile devices;
• Tactic editor (basic version, without copy/paste button – we will add this function soon);
• Player faces (with current faces design, not the new one);
• Default left side menu – we are changing menu location to left side navigation. It’s coherent with the upcoming new layout, and we believe it’s a good time for current users to start using left menu, to make the switch to new layout smoother when it finally gets introduced.

Question mark about charts replacement – we still have some technical issues, it's possible to introduce them a bit later.
At the same time, there is an important information – Flash blockade for browsers is planned globally for January 12th, not today. So in case of any problems – we still have a few days for additional work.
About the new 3D viewer – it's almost ready, but there are still some elements that need to be improved. We decided to introduce it a bit later, we hope, in 2-3 weeks’ time.

Election time is here!

_james

It is election time again! You have the opportunity to stand for election as a potential national team coach (Senior or U21) of any nation, and also vote for a potential Senior and U21 coach of your nation.

To access the election page, go to the homepage of the country in question, then click on National Team (Senior or U21), and then click on the link to the Election page.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country's forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] (e.g. [NT] Raul or [U21] Mekene). Please do NOT spam forums, send SK-mail directly to people for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of those activities will result in forum banning and/or financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from the job. It is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you will serve.

Elections have started on the 21st of December and end on the 3rd of January, so start preparing your speeches, questions for candidates, and voting.

Dev. Diary 36: Final update on Flash replacement

_james

New Year is almost here, and we are also close to the end of Flash replacement process. Today, please read a few final pieces of information about next steps and deadlines that we are planning for next two weeks of December.

Match viewers

We are happy to inform, that our work with match viewers is close to the end.Old 2D viewer is almost done, you can check final view here:
https://sokker-viewer-2d.netlify.app/
There are still minor issues to fix (ball size, or game result information, for example) but there are no serious problems that could stop us from implementing that viewer with the end of the year.

New viewer (that will combine new 2D and 3D view together) is also at a quite advanced stage, and close to the testing stage. There is a huge chance that this viewer will also be available with the end of this year, probably as "early access" for plus users. But you need to remember, that it will be a beta version, dedicated for public tests - we believe, that Sokker community can help us with detailed feedback about new viewer.

Other flash elements

Rest of the flash elements are also prepared and waiting on test server - they are combined with Sokker backend code upgrade, so from developer perspective, it's quite a huge replacement to be made. It's possible that some new bugs and issues may appear after implementation, that were unnoticed during testing - that's why we decided to introduce that update close after Christmas (like 28-29.12), to avoid technical problems during that unique time.

We are totally aware, that flash problems are getting more and more serious last days - but we hope that New Year will be a fresh start for Sokker without any flash technology elements, and we will proceed to our next task - general Sokker update.

Dev. Diary 35: More Graphics Projects - Desktop and Mobile

_james

We continue to work on the new look. You saw our approach to the new layout in previous Dev. Diaries, with dark and light versions. This time, we focused on transforming one of them (dark) into other views. We are also sharing with you how the graphics display on smartphones (there will be two page layouts - vertical and horizontal).

Thus, we are happy that we can present you a new view, already fully coloured (the overview tab - a new tab where you will be directed straight after logging in). And both finished views: club website and overview - we also present you on mobile. We are still slightly tweaking the designs so the watchful eye may notice some minor changes (slightly polished colours, better contrast, new icons).

Desktop view - overview view (welcome page after logging in, player view):

https://xd.adobe.com/view/caedb853-28a5-4e4b-8166-e0ba38b5eea6-9fbe/?fullscreen

Desktop view - club view (any club in the game):

https://xd.adobe.com/view/5ee9debe-be81-4533-80f5-ab0805ddf2f5-0bba/screen/9b64c8c0-8af7-4368-a02d-d48b1d324036?fullscreen

Mobile views (use the side arrows to see individual views vertically and horizontally):

https://xd.adobe.com/view/41b6bb04-265b-4533-bc77-1b4cbf8ba24c-14e5/?fullscreen

Dev. Diary 34: New editor – Work update

_james

Short note today - last week we were finishing new tactic editor, and it's finally done. Currently, new editor (without flash), is uploaded and linked on test server. We can start tests (all admins are involved), as there are still bugs that need to be tracked down before we upload the editor to sokker.org. Anyway, it's one of the most complicated flash elements, so we perceive that step as one of the most important in current stage of the project.

Flash is still our key focus right now, but next week we will also share with you few more graphics from the new interface!

Dev. Diary 33: New Match Viewer – Work update

_james

This week please discover more graphics and work in progress screenshots from our current main challenge - new match viewer. We are working simultaneously with few elements, like stadium visualization, player animations, or field textures. As we are getting closer to the final results, we will, from time to time, reduce the length of our Developer Diaries, and instead of text, present more screens or graphics.

New 3D / 2D viewer:

https://ibb.co/0mJmMRq
https://ibb.co/2YHK8tG
https://ibb.co/tCS9jcz
https://ibb.co/kJQq92J
https://ibb.co/QmKd1S7

Old viewer conversion:

We are also working on translation of old viewer (2D) from Flash to HTML. Here we are also moving forward, and this week we can share a set of animations with you, prepared in HTML - as you see, we have all player animations almost ready, and we can move into final part - configuration between graphics/animations and match engine data.

https://skaldy.com/mv/

Dev. Diary 32: New Match Viewer – Preview

_james

Today we would like to share with you a work update on the new 2D/3D visualization. As we have described in previous episodes of Dev. Diaries, the new visualization is meant to be the main way of watching matches and it has been designed to support both 2D and 3D view modes simultaneously. You will be able to clearly see it in the preview graphics presented today.

Currently, work is underway to optimize the way the match is displaying in the new visualization (to make it efficient even on weaker computers), as well as work related to the animation quality of players and their play.

At the same time, we are developing the entire graphic design of the visualization and we can present these elements to you today.

Check out the link below and use the arrows to see all 7 views we have prepared:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/9c019e7e-0ac2-48c6-b3a8-95e021b303ee-c952/?fullscreen

The views are displayed in the following order:

1. Match loading screen - the view that is displayed at the very beginning of the match loading. You can see the video advertising option here - this element will only apply to players without a PLUS subscription - but it can be omitted using tokens - i.e. additional in-game purchase.
2. Then there is a series of views of the match intro that are displayed as the players run onto the pitch (that is, before the match starts). Here we have one by one - a presentation of the kits of both teams, a potential advertiser, the line-up of both teams and the tactics.
3. In the fifth view you can see how the match is displayed - at the bottom you can additionally see a time bar, which allows you to scroll to selected situations. These situations are also marked on the bar with the colours of the teams and icons.
4. The last two screens are the menu view with view options and camera modes. These are two propositions for this view, the content is exactly the same, the only difference is the shape of the drop-down menu.

We hope you like the new proposals.

Dev. Diary 31: Short workload update

_james

This week we would like to share only a short note about our current work progress with you. We are extremely involved in the most important part of Flash replacement, and it's our main focus now. The most difficult part of this job is to implement tactic editor and match viewer. Our Flash replacement deadline with end of the year is still safe, but because of the news that Flash starts to be blocked on some browsers or devices even before the end of the year, we feel responsible to give this task priority. So we ask for some patience – we believe that in the next Developers Diary we will share some good news about this part of our job.

Dev. Diary 30: Welcome Page (Overview)

_james

Some time ago, we presented you with the overview tab. It's a completely new tab that is supposed to collect all the key information related to running your club and to be a kind of team control panel. You will find it immediately after logging in to your account. Ultimately, the page will probably be configurable for your own preferences (you will be able to choose which elements you want to have at hand, and which ones to hide or move down the list). However, in the first approach, it will have the same appearance that it had in one of the previous Dev. Diaries:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/cd353768-7ee6-4813-b032-a68f0b5d0772-9866/?fullscreen

This week we would like to ask for your help in developing this page. We are especially interested in the first section that you can see on the website - notifications. Its goal is to create a place that will remind you of the key actions that you should take. The game will remind you of them, along with a link pointing to the right place.

Below are some examples of notifications:

1. The need to choose the line-up for the next match;
2. Training setting;
3. Hire of a coach;
4. Planning a friendly match;
5. Signing the contract with the selected coach;
6. Contracting a player from an auction.

These are only preliminary suggestions, and this is where our request for help comes in. We would like you to propose us some other possible notifications to make the game easier for you. Please comment on the Sokker Development forum.

Dev Diary 29: First of mobile!

_james

This week we are asking you check out our approach to mobile access. New SK interface will be adjusted for mobile much better than current one. We will use PWA technology to extend mobile functionalities, like possibility to pin the app icon to your mobile screen, or access to the app store.
We just started first conversions of desktop views to mobile ones, and today we can share with you our proposal for the new training. Following the link below you can find views that were already presented (desktop ones), but please use arrows (right/left) to move to other views – some of them are vertical, and they are dedicated for mobile.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/8f579f9b-ac2b-4b10-bd96-209398a9ac3b-da04/screen/4dad627e-4477-44a6-85a3-641e32ff7d52?fbclid=IwAR2_9e0F5LIuhS6ufoRjhFVAkzqejXZZBo5_zuMrpA7vYnoO4q2rRlPGIiM&fullscreen

You can scroll pages down, to see all information in each particular view (just make sure that the cursor is on the mock up when scrolling).
You can also check out mobile main page proposal, here:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/bb14f20f-7245-4fa8-a6b8-73fe9462dea9-ee47/screen/09fe94a3-f06b-463b-8464-e52b163cb2d6?fullscreen

Few more updates about current work:
1. Test server is almost ready to start. Currently, most of admins registered their teams, unfortunately we still face some issues that need to be fixed – but probably from this weekend we will be able to start first tests.
2. In the coming weekend we plan to start flash replacement for the tactic editor. If everything works out fine, flash will be removed from that part of the game next week.

Dev. Diary 28: Final Graphic Design

_james

Today we are pleased to present the final version of the new layout which we have accepted for implementation. Currently we are presenting it in the club view but in the coming weeks it will be developed in other, already designed views. The final version does not differ much from the one we presented a few weeks ago but we have refined a few elements (e.g. shading, vertical inscriptions, colors). What's more, we are presenting two basic views - light and dark layout, as these two directions were best welcomed in the surveys.

Light layout:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/0647534c-87cf-471a-a0de-8f04eaa40bb9-5314/?fbclid=IwAR2R9Jh0X_zEfidVEXc3dh9A7y9hoO8NrB3d47TYePqh58VaUe7TMMpPxdc&fullscreen

Dark layout:

https://xd.adobe.com/view/0647534c-87cf-471a-a0de-8f04eaa40bb9-5314/screen/483ee952-18e3-4c15-9b36-31abfb6e43b0?fbclid=IwAR2R9Jh0X_zEfidVEXc3dh9A7y9hoO8NrB3d47TYePqh58VaUe7TMMpPxdc&fullscreen

It will also be possible to combine different menu items and general view - this means that as a part of personalization the user will be able to use the light menu in the dark game view and vice versa.

Dev. Diary 27: Test Server & Works On New Visualization

_james

Test server

A very important step in the development of Sokker is ahead of us - we are starting tests of the rewritten back-end code which has been updated from an archaic version from years ago to a newer one. Due to this change, it will be possible to start implementing new features in the game mechanics. The largest part of the code concerns daily updates that update the game in the morning. The new code has already been implemented on the test server and after initial tests in a narrow developer group we will begin to expand the tester base.

Starting from next week, all admins will be invited to the tests. We assume that there will still be numerous errors due to new code not being fully compatible with the user interface, so we do not want to overload the server with too many testers at the start.

However, after fixing the first errors discovered within this group, we plan to open the test server for more users. The exact rules for setting up test teams will be announced along with the rules for using the test server, reporting bugs, etc.

The changes that have been introduced for now are primarily a refresh of the game code. There are still no new elements in there that are not included in the current version of the game (in other words, it is the same game, only the code behind it is a newer technology). But after the update is properly tested, we will implement the announced solutions to it.

New 2D and 3D match visualization

Works on the new visualization are also moving forward. It combines two view modes, 2D and 3D. New version will only have one link to launch the match (not two, as it is now - separate for 2D and 3D). The whole visualization will be three-dimensional, but the default camera position will reflect the 2D one, which is the greatest advantage of the current 2D - a static shot of the entire pitch. To use the potential of 3D the user will have the option to change cameras during the match. It will also be possible, for example, to set replay preferences and watch instant replays on cameras other than the main view of the match.

Currently, we have managed to fully translate the match visualization engine into Unity. The next step is to apply the right animations, textures, refine all elements, adjust the scale (e.g. the size of the players).

Here we are sharing with you a few screenshots of the ongoing works:

https://ibb.co/DtKNTX0
https://ibb.co/F7hQ6sg
https://ibb.co/rs8hgDM

Dev. Diary 26: Organizational Matters

_james

Problems with payments for Plus

In recent weeks, we have received a large number of complaints regarding the dates of Plus activations - we are very sorry for the numerous delays, they resulted from the fact that we changed our legal status (new company), changed bank accounts and granted access to payment processing. We have now completed this process. Plus should already be accepted on a regular basis. On this occasion, we want to briefly recall our recommendations for purchasing subscriptions in the game:

1. We encourage you to use automatic transfers by external suppliers (DotPay, Skrill, PayPal) - for these purchases Plus is activated automatically, it does not require manual confirmations from Developers.
2. In case of traditional transfers from the local bank - Plus will be activated within 48 hours from the moment the funds are credited to the game account. Please remember that transfers can arrive after some time (e.g. due to the weekend).
3. If after 3-4 days from sending the transfer Plus is not activated, please report such complications in the thread "Plus problem" in Sokker International forum - or directly to Developers - Mekene and Raul. From the beginning of this month, they will be responsible for allocating Pluses paid in the traditional way.

We hope that payment problems will no longer arise and at the same time we thank you for all the donations which will largely finance the further development of the game.

Formal matters

In addition to working on the next elements of the game, we are currently busy with work organization. Currently, a number of subcontractors are working on the development of Sokker, so we would like to share with you a list with the scope of tasks they carry out:

1. 2x front-end programmers - a team of two has started working on the new interface that you had the opportunity to see in mock-ups and preliminary graphic proposals.
2. 1x back-end developer - one person is currently working on the code for the game itself, which is being gradually rewritten to a newer version. This person also completes the test server setup.
3. UX developer - a dedicated person works on mock-ups that we publish regularly. Currently, after working out a few different views from the desktop level, he starts working harder on the mobile view.
4. 2x graphic designer - a two-person team of graphic designers is working on the finalization of the graphic design - you have already seen the initial proposals in previous journals.
5. 1x programmer specializing in Flash - finishes fine-tuning Flash elements that require replacement before the end of the year. Currently, the most of the work is to convert the current match visualization to a newer technology.
6. Development studio - a separate subcontractor is working on a completely new match visualization which will cover the demand for 2D and 3D views in the next year.
7. Draftsman - at the same time, work on the illustrative elements is underway - the initial direction of the players' faces has already been presented, now more versions are being drawn to power the character generator.

Apart from the above team, of course, all 4 developers (Damian, Greg, Raul and Mekene) also actively participate in the development of the game. As you can see, the scope of the work is very wide and multi-threaded, at the same time, in recent months, we have managed to complete all the necessary composition required to implement both assumed stages of development - 1. Flash replacement, 2. Game release after a general refresh.

You often ask us about deadlines, we also see signs of impatience in terms of the number of changes and the pace of the work. Please be patient and remember the original assumptions. Our goal for 2020 is a successful replacement of Flash - and here the deadline will certainly be met. At the same time, work on a general update of the game is already underway - there are still 2-3 seasons to implement this change, but taking into account the complexity of the entire project and the number of elements that require work - in our opinion, this deadline should be accepted positively. We do our best to implement the changes as soon as possible, but we also want them to be of quality and properly prepared.

Dev Diary 25: Work summary

_james

This week we are asking you to read some information about few areas of the work that are currently in our focus.

Flash technology
We almost have all the elements prepared for Flash replacement. Match visualization is still in progress, but even that part is 60-70% completed (as it’s the most complex and difficult part). Hopefully, in upcoming few weeks we will introduce them online, after some tests. We hope to successfully replace Flash until the end of November, so it’s even faster than our first deadline, set to the end of the year.

New interface – UX mock ups of the starting page
We are still working on the new interface, so another few views are prepared. Below you can find the link to the Sokker main page, use arrows to also find registration / login pages. Main page is an important point for the experience of new users, and that’s also the reason why we decided to make it a bit more modern and clean. We also decided to split registration process into two stages, verification (using email or social media) & team creator.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/43904ee7-0c34-4df6-9b85-dccf9dc5f747-16c3/screen/32ff7126-8f14-4ef2-b049-8552c8ea6fd6/?fullscreen

Test server
We also almost completed test server preparation. Currently we are tracking down few technical issues and bugs to make it playable (match engine is still not working), and after that, probably in upcoming few weeks, we will ask users for help during the tests. First main task for test server is to check new game update mechanism, before it is implemented in original game.

Formal issues
We are also happy to announce, that after long months of legal preparation, Sokker is changing legal status for new company. Investment agreement is finally confirmed (maybe it seems like a bit late, but all formalities according to local law where quite complicated and time consuming). From users perspective there is only one important change – new data for PLUS purchases, in line with new company.
Payee:
Sokker Manager sp. z o.o.
ul. Barbórki 26, 04-511 Warszawa, Poland
Account number:
02 1140 2004 0000 3802 8036 1751

Dev Diary 24 - Game graphic design - Update

_james

This week we are asking you to follow the link below to the newest graphic design proposal. In the last weeks we tried to upgrade projects we presented before, and also adjust them for new illustration guidelines, based on new portraits and overall style. We are happy with the final result, new approach combines quality with clearness and easy data presentation, we would like to follow that direction. It's still probably not the final version - in the next step we will apply it to few other page views and also mobile version to make sure that the design works well in different configurations.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/df6a16fc-0146-45c6-952e-c376ee32df9a-8a39/screen/1652e37f-6978-4eae-a851-3afe07a840cd?fullscreen

As it was mentioned before - we have focused on one view for now, but with new graphic design we will also introduce dark skin & retro one.

Dev. Diary 23: Club Facilities – Youth’s Academy

_james

This week we have an announcement of a more comprehensive change - we want to expand the management of the junior team and introduce youth facilities in Sokker - infrastructures that can be expanded, and give various additional bonuses to our academies with higher levels. Still, it is "this for that" - larger facilities and an expanded football academy will raise the cost of maintaining the youth school.

We anticipate 4 different facilities that can be expanded as part of youth facilities:

Scouting department - responsible for the weekly number of juniors recruited, and can also unlock the option of acquiring foreign juniors. With higher levels, we will have a chance to have more juniors joining the academy in a given week (this will not affect the level of junior skills), but at the cost of increasing the price of maintaining one spot in the academy.

Levels are as follows:

1. Basic Scouting Network - Weekly Junior Growth 1-5
2. Local Scouting Network - Weekly Junior Growth 1-6
3. Regional Scouting Network - Weekly Junior Growth 2-6
4. The National Scouting Network - Weekly Youth Growth 3-6
5. International Scouting Network - Chance of Getting a Foreigner - 5%

Campus - determines the maximum number of juniors that we can have in our academy. Also, larger facilities increase the cost of maintaining a junior. The levels will be defined as follows:

1. Maximum number of juniors - 15
2. Maximum number of juniors - 20
3. Maximum number of juniors - 25
4. Maximum number of juniors - 30
5. Maximum number of juniors – 35

Analytics - allows you to effectively measure the progress of juniors and assess their level. This parameter will allow you to decide how carefully you want to track the progress of your juniors, where the basic level corresponds to the current rating system. The next levels will allow us to get closer to the previous system (the oldest users probably remember) which measured the progress of juniors with full accuracy. Of course, every next levels will increase the cost of maintaining a junior:

1. Basic level of junior evaluation
2. More effective measuring +1 jumps
3. More effective measuring +1 jumps
4. Suggested position for new juniors
5. Accurately measuring pops

Training facilities - depending on its level, we can employ a better training staff. Here, higher levels of facilities do not affect the maintenance of junior slots - greater cost will be incurred by employing a better coach. The expansion will allow us to hire a specialist with the maximum level - but it will of course be possible to use a weaker specialist or not have a coach:

1. Maximum Coach’s Level - incredible
2. Maximum Coach’s Level - brilliant
3. Maximum Coach’s Level - magical
4. Maximum Coach’s Level - unearthly
5. Maximum Coach’s Level - divine

Yes, trained eye of the users must have noticed the mention of divine trainers - this level of skill in trainers will also be introduced.

In addition to affecting the cost of maintaining one spot in the academy, the facilities will also require a one-time fee for their expansion. The fees will increase significantly with successive levels - on the one hand, to enable running of the academies even among beginners (the basic infrastructure will be within reach practically from the beginning of the game), on the other hand, the most advanced levels will come with a significant cost. We do not provide exact amounts due to the fact that it will need to be adjusted during tests.

Dev. Diary 22: The Season Break’s Summary And Mock Up Fixes

_james

Last week, we made a few of the first gameplay changes. There were some complications, so we are presenting a summary of these actions along with the information about any errors that we had to correct.

Friendly matches during the inter-season break - starting from last week, it is possible to arrange friendly matches on Sunday if the team does not play an official match. However, it turned out that this option does not work if someone has an arcade match scheduled on the selected date. Hence our decision to remove the arcade matches scheduled for last Sunday and the next one to allow users to arrange friendly matches. At the same time, the bug has been fixed and it is not possible to arrange arcade matches on Sunday.

Merging the last divisions in individual countries - We have merged the last divisions in countries with more than 3 levels. The change went with complications, some teams had to be restored manually after the disappearance from their leagues (they were not assigned to any league for a moment), but right now, everything has been fixed, and the merged leagues are already working.

Youth league bug - The bug with the number of teams in the first junior league has been fixed. Teams that took places 9-11 in last season have been removed from these leagues. Thus, all first junior leagues currently have 8 teams, as originally planned.

We are also presenting a few improved mock ups (the changes are cosmetic, but it's worth checking):

Team page:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/5f3a2456-43da-486e-7382-e867e1422a43-290b/screen/1861a9a5-3a96-4ff7-bdd3-80eaf86b9e08?fullscreen

Home page (after logging in):
https://xd.adobe.com/view/3cf4a5be-3f89-4703-b36c-e2d6dce78584-69a7/?fullscreen

Calendar and planner (you need to use side arrow keys to see all the views):
https://xd.adobe.com/view/07259a81-6525-42c0-8b8d-82ec0d178717-5276/

Elections

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 31st of August and end on the 13th of September, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Dev. Diary 21: Changes To The Season Break

_james

Today we are presenting to you the status of work related to the off-season.

Introducing the possibility of playing friendly matches on Sunday (if you are not playing an official match). Therefore, this change applies to this Sunday, the day when some teams play the playoffs, and the next Sunday, which until now was a week of no matches. We were able to introduce the change only after the Wednesday matches had been played, hence its late addition. We encourage you to use Friday and Saturday to arrange friendly matches.

Merging the last divisions in individual countries - at the beginning of the next week (after promotions and relegations), we will be reducing the last divisions in terms of number of leagues for countries where the occupancy rate at the given level is low. Depending on the number of users at a given level, the number of leagues will be reduced by half, or even four times in some cases. Of course, we will make sure that a certain amount of space for new users remains after all.

The junior’s league bug - the possibility of staying in the junior league by exploiting the game bug has now been fixed, but the problem with the teams that had cheated in this way and returned to the league despite being placed in relegation has still not been resolved. We have several junior leagues this season with an additional team, or even with two. We decided to move the teams manually according to the table order - so places 9 and 10 in the junior league will be moved to lower levels and the numbers of teams will return to the correct value.

Dev. Diary 20: Schedule - Mock-ups

_james

Thank you for your comments so far, on the initial design and the mock-ups that we have presented. Many of the comments helped us to improve our ideas, add new options, or change the location of some elements (e.g. the trophy table will be moved from the overview tab to the view of each club).
This week we are presenting another view to you - the schedule. We will be grateful for any comments regarding this element of our work.

The schedule will be implemented in two forms:
List view - where we can see all matches of your team. The tabs segregate the content into lists of matches of the first squad, and the junior team. Arcade matches have also been moved to a completely different tab.
Calendar view - where we can see the schedule of matches, but also icons of individual events in the game, such as training. You can easily get an idea of the timing of the upcoming matches using the calendar. The view is just a mock-up, hence the lack of colours - but individual types of games will be marked with different colours. Do not worry about marking the training on Tuesday - it is just a working icon, the training does not change, it will take place on Thursdays.

Both mock-ups can be found at this link (to go to the next one use the side arrows on the keyboard):
https://xd.adobe.com/view/07259a81-6525-42c0-8b8d-82ec0d178717-5276/?fullscreen

Dev. Diary 19: Overview Tab

_james

While we were working on the new design of the website and user experience, we decided to create a new tab - overview. Its purpose is to collect key information for the manager in one place and make it available immediately after logging in. After implementing the new Sokker look, this page will be the first one we see.

Here you can see the mock-up for this page:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/cd353768-7ee6-4813-b032-a68f0b5d0772-9866/?fullscreen

Key functionalities:

Alerts - in the upper left part you can see a box of rotating messages - there are 4 notifications in the mock-up, the first of which informs of the lack of a set lineup for the next match. Notifications will assist in making key decisions - they will remind you to set up your squad, training, to arrange a friendly match, warn you if a player is unable to play, etc.

Calendar - we are adding a weekly timeline so that every player (including beginners) can easily check the events of any day in a week - those from the current day will be described in detail (e.g. Income from sponsors), but it will also be possible to go through the upcoming days of the week.

References to key information - on the start screen you will also find a link to the training report for the week, a box with a summary of the games in which you participate with redirections to details, the press room tab, and a summary of the club's trophies. Here you will also find information about your fan club and collected key data about your team (its value, average age, etc.)

Transfers - another feature that will appear here - in the form of a summary of the upcoming auctions that interest us. The full transfer list will be available in the transfers tab. However, you can already see a few improvements here - the ability to bid from the list (without having to enter the selected player) or providing key information about the player (age, value). It will also be possible to delete auctions that are no longer interesting to us. An interesting addition will be the number of players who follow a given auction.

We welcome any suggestions or comments regarding this view.

Dev. Diary 18: A Short Summary Of The Further Changes

_james

We are coming back this week with some information about the incoming changes.

We contracted an illustrator who started working on the illustrations in the game. We already have the first examples of new players' faces - it shows the direction in which we will prepare the illustrations for the character generator. Do not get attached to the presented pictures in the form of circles - the final form of the players’ images for the page view still needs to be refined.
Link to the player portrait examples

At the same time, work is underway to improve the two graphics directions selected for further development. At the link below you can see the evolution of the first design (icons, fonts, buttons and headers have been improved; the overall design has been refined). Parallel to this, work is underway to improve the second (darker) design.

Finally, we will decide to combine the best elements of both directions into one coherent idea, which will be implemented in two versions - light and dark.
Link to the preview of the merged design

Changes to the rules

It is a right for users to preserve the composition of their leagues and the identity of their land. At Sokker, we build the national leagues of any country for its natives and inhabitants. Users can only have a team in the country where they reside or in their country of origin. We monitor IP addresses from which users access Sokker to verify their residence. Sokker does not support the use of tools that can modify or hide users' real IP (I.e. TOR, VPNs, Proxies, etc.). These provisions have always existed in the game but in order to make them clearer and easier to understand the first chapter of the rules has been updated. Please read it and, if you feel affected by some of the stances described there, please contact the Sokker Staff. Our goal is to help all users to play Sokker with respect to the game’s spirit.

Dev Diary 17: New graphic design: results

_james

This week we would like to share the results of the last poll with you, which was dedicated to the graphic design.
We collected almost 400 votes, and decided to work on the two most popular directions and merge them into one, in two different themes - light and dark.

You can find find the results here:

And more detailed data for each one of two best projects:
Option 1
Ratings for the option 1

Option 2 (v4 in previous poll)
Ratings for the option 2 (v4 in previous poll)

Please keep in mind, that those two proposals are the starting point for further work - we believe that there is potential to increase the visual quality even more. In upcoming weeks our designers will merge projects into one coherent line, and we will share it with you in upcoming weeks.

We also started our work on the new illustrations, like player portraits, club emblems or infrastructure. Portraits presented in the design proposals are our benchmark, but they need to be created from scratch in order to be used in the portrait generator (separate elements mixed together).

Dev. Diary 16: Flash - Work Progress

_james

This week we would like to recap the status of work on in-game Flash. We have replaced the first few elements (T-shirts, kits editor, some charts, etc.), but there are still more elements waiting for replacement.

However, working through them is time-consuming - in most cases they are interactive elements, such as the tactics editor or match visualizations. Because of this, it takes more time, but still, work is in a quite advanced stage on most of the elements.

Tactics editor and player pictures are waiting for implementation in the coming weeks.

Work on the 2D conversion is underway - we can already show you the translation of the footballers' run animation into a new technology - you can check this out here (footballers run after the cursor, you can check how they behave - of course, the animation is accelerated). This conversion will be a temporary solution for the coming months (due to the end of flash support at the end of the year).

At the same time, work on a new visualization of the match engine was contracted - it will be straightaway prepared in two versions - 2D and 3D. It will include new, higher quality animations and a higher overall level of graphics. However, the work will last until the end of the year.

Dev. Diary 15: Sokker Graphic Design

_james

In recent weeks you have had the opportunity to see the mock-ups of the new Sokker - they were only a map of functionalities, not a graphic design proposal. Works on the new look of the site have been going on for several weeks and today we would like to present 4 design propositions, which are an important step for us to continue working.

Please provide feedback on the new graphics, give us suggestions, and fill out the survey. We tried not to overdevelop it, so we are asking for answers to only a few key questions.

Survey link

Here you will find links to the 4 proposals:
Option 1: https://ibb.co/ZVK7pTB
Option 2: https://ibb.co/BZ2nKpW
Option 3: https://ibb.co/8cvr1vs
Option 4: https://ibb.co/Ptj9T40

Dev. Diary 14: Training - The New UX

_james

We are coming back this week with the next stage of work on User Experience. This time, we prepared training-related views, because we feel that this element of the game is currently underdeveloped, and many users monitor the progress of their teams through external programs.

IMPORTANT: the projects you see today are mock-ups - sketches of the new page, showing how its navigation will work, how the elements will be arranged, and what the information architecture will be. These are NOT graphic designs. We are currently working on the new graphic design, and the mock-ups you see are only a starting point. However, this is a separate step in our work. Therefore, when assessing and commenting on these works, remember that we are talking about sketches, not the final project.

Prepared views fulfill several functions:
1. They present changes related to the training reform (10 training slots to be filled) - it shows how it will be possible to assign players to "advanced" training;
2. They add additional views that allow you to track training progress in several different configurations - weekly reports and general statistics for the senior/junior team;
3. They add a table view in the training history of a selected player, showing his progress over time;
4. They show the coaching staff’s view, they also complement it with showing the "effectiveness" of individual members of the staff.

Work is still underway on the view of the charts presenting changes in player attributes.

UX projects can be seen here. Use the cursor (right/left) to switch views.

For these projects, we also ask you to rate and give suggestions that will help us improve the proposed solutions.

The link to the form is here.

At the same time, works related to the visual identity of the game are ongoing parallel to the UX work. In just a week, we will present 3 new designs for discussion and evaluation.

Rules - Registration

dewb

Chapter 1 of the rules about Registration, has changed. The main changes are related to the use of VPNs, TOR, or other IP modifying tools, and some rules about the country where a user is registered and the country where he actually lives.

Please read it as it may affect both new users and current users. If you have any doubts about the changes and how it may affect you and your team, please contact the staff.

The changes are already published in English and will be gradually translated into other languages.

Dev. Diary 13: Linguists & Supported Languages

_james

In recent weeks, many linguists have done a great job helping us translate information about the development of the game and distribute our diaries locally. The work of linguists has changed over the weeks from volunteering to a much more professional work, and also more important work - their responsibilities will probably increase in the future due to the essential support in translating of the new game elements that will be introduced.

That is why we decided to give more prestige to the Linguist position and to reward people who support us in this way with PLUS.

Moreover, the number of Linguists will be adjusted to our current capabilities - we decided to support the 20 most key languages (they cover around 95% of all users) - we will work on these languages officially.

Of course, we do not exclude the development of less popular languages - that will be possible under the existing rules, where smaller communities have undertaken the same translations. We will provide solutions that allow it, but they will be additional languages - not covered by an additional benefit in the form of Plus for people who decide to do such work.

At the same time, we will make minor permissions changes in the coming week that will allow Linguists to use the source content - so they can, for example, copy the content of the post intended for the translation along with the original formatting.

Arcade match error - putting the player on TL

The arcade matches bug has been corrected, there will no longer be situations where a player was willing to be placed on the Transfer List after playing these unofficial matches. The error was eliminated at the beginning of the week.

Other bugs related to arcade matches (impact on the ranking & increase of experience and teamwork) already have prepared fixes - however, they are related to the morning Game Updates, which have been completely rewritten into new code and are currently waiting for testing. After carrying out these tests the issues will also disappear.

Dev. Diary 12: Transfer Window

Matsuyama [del]

One of those changes that we mentioned in the early Dev. Diary was the restriction of too intense trading. Sometimes it dominates over other elements of the game, which should be more important in a football manager game.

Therefore, another change we are making is the period preventing the player from being put on the transfer list for a specified time after purchase. To begin with, this period will be set to 4 full weeks from the date the player was brought to the club. Depending on the effects of this restriction, we will decide whether it is satisfactory or should be changed.

The need to keep the player for 4 weeks in our club will force managers to take a more prudent approach to completing their squads, will prevent them from getting players "just for one match" (we do not think that it is good for the game, a much better solution is to encourage users to maintain the appropriate team reserve, the introduced rule will indirectly affect it), but above all - it will significantly reduce the possibility of earning quickly through trade alone.

We analysed various solutions to this problem proposed in the forum. We decided to choose the simplest and working in the same way for everyone. It doesn't complicate the game, it probably changes the approach to many decisions that have to be made as part of the game (e.g. a different approach to the bench, but also a different approach to "bargains" on the market, where in addition to buying a player you will need to think about its wage, usefulness and/or the ability to find place in the team), but such dilemmas and decisions will be equally interesting.

At the same time, we do not think that it blocks development for business managers. The search for opportunities will continue without change, it will still be possible to earn on trade - we only eliminate transfers that were unreal (selling a player within the week of purchase).

Dev. Diary 11: New Interface - First Mock-ups

_james

Dev. Diary 11: New Interface - First Mock-ups

This week we would like to share with you the first page views of the new interface prepared by the UX designer. They are the result of extended work both on a group of new users (whom we asked to set up accounts and analyze places where they get lost, problems with navigation, understanding of the game, etc.), and also taking into account the comments of current users.

IMPORTANT: the projects you see today are mock-ups - sketches of the new website, showing how it's navigation will work, how the individual elements will be arranged and what the information architecture will be. These are NOT graphic designs. The new graphic design is currently under work and the mock-ups you see are a starting point for it. However, this is a separate step in our work, therefore, when judging or commenting on these works, remember that we are talking about a sketch, not the final product.

New navigation – layout

Currently, we have several possible page settings in Sokker - the old interface and the newer version. Each of them can be modified with graphic skins and menu layouts. Most users use the newer version of the interface (nearly 80%), and most of them use bottom navigation. This layout is also default for new players.
During the audit, it turned out that it is also a basic barrier because of which new players do not stay in the game. The bottom icons are lacking descriptions and as consequence new players quickly get lost. They are unable to navigate the game and give up Sokker very quickly, practically not reaching most of the game elements.
As you will see in the new projects, the main navigation of the new interface will be pinned to the left, complementary navigation will appear at the top of the individual tabs. This organization will make it much easier for new players to engage in the game (instead of icons we have full descriptions of the tabs, this is also a layout commonly used in this type of games).

Club view, mobile browser view

In the link below you can see the basic view - the view of the selected club. As you can see it has been slightly expanded so that more key information about a given team was available on its first page.
Club page views

The link contains several views - use left mouse click or keyboard arrows to see all of them. The first is the view of the player's club (Tornado Pirates). By scrolling the page down you can see how the horizontal tabs move to the top bar.
The next view is the site of another club we visit (Almost Religious). As you can see, the layouts are the same, the club view is universal, and we want the home page of each club in the game to look the same.
The following screens show the mobile view. By now, almost 40% of the access to Sokker is from mobile devices so we pay a lot of attention to this element. As you can see, the game will encourage the user to turn the phone, thanks to which the display of elements will be the most effective (this is how other mobile managers work, from Football Manager, to Top Eleven, and many others).

Press room

Another view is the press room - a completely new Sokker feature that will add a story element to the game. You can find various types of information here, examples can be seen in the sketch. Basically, here you will receive messages generated by the game itself (match summaries, information about records, training reports, and many others), as well as your own publications (club's newsletter), and have the ability to follow other teams (selcting them as "watched").
Press room page view

Match viewer

Next, we want to present mock-ups prepared for the match view. We also have a lot of changes here. First of all, the match loading page looks different (first view). After loading the match, we see players running out onto the pitch, preparing for the match - and we get several short intro screens previewing the match, such as displaying match settings, line-ups, key information about clubs or games. In further views (switch using keyboard arrows) you can also see the match half time screen and a new view of camera mode settings, along with a possible choice between 2D and 3D.
Match page views

Comments and next steps

Finally, we share with you a link to the form in which you can leave your opinions, suggestions and ideas regarding the presented views.
Work is currently underway on further screens (including training). Sketches of individual elements of the game will be created in succession.

Give us your opinions

Dev. Diary 10: Further planned implementations

_james

Dev. Diary 10: Further planned implementations

Today we would like to share with you a list of several changes and improvements that we have planned for further work. They are planned and probably will be introduced prior to the general game update planned for a later period, but of course they require time and testing so we ask for some patience in this case.

The system of removing bots from leagues after the end of each season
We want the game to concern primarily real players, therefore we want to remove bots from higher leagues so that real users can replace them. Bots will be deleted from the league tables at the end of the season (and their points will be zeroed), which will be followed by direct promotions of the teams from the lower leagues. This rule applies to the higher leagues - on the lowest levels bots are obviously needed so that leagues are full and that there is room for new users.

Possibility of playing a friendly match instead of a play-off match
One of the ideas gathered on the Sokker Development forum is the possibility of playing matches on the days when play-offs are played to avoid the training disadvantage (sometimes it pays off to intentionally take part in play-offs to get additional training). We will add this option. It was already planned in the new schedule, but we hope that we will manage to implement this before the main update of the game.

Determining of the length of a light injury
We will add information showing how many days is left to heal a minor injury.

Seasonal summary of the club's finances
We will add one more financial perspective showing the status of club finances on a seasonal basis compared to the previous season.

Interface - direction of the changes
Finally, important information about the game interface (primarily the navigation system and the page template, where you can then apply a skin – graphics). Currently Sokker has two interfaces - the oldest, known from the beginning of the game and the newer. Both interfaces will be replaced with the new one, developed by experts for User Experience, which means that the website will receive a new template and navigation. It will be possible to apply different graphics to this template. A new graphic design will be developed (the job has already been contracted), but it will also be possible to use old graphics (in other words, the navigation and the page layout will change, but the old graphics will be possible in the new version as a retro option).

The new interface will be introduced along with the general game update. Until then, our work will continue only on the current interface (used by 70% of players), support for the old interface will be suspended (because it would require 2x more work and thus would generate high costs). For this reason, we recommend players who are still using the old interface to upgrade to the current version, as the older one will become less efficient with each subsequent change (some changed elements on the old interface are not working anymore - e.g. a new view of stadiums that have been rewritten from Flash to HTML).

Dev. Diary 9: Test server and code upgrade

_james

Dev. Diary 9: Test server and code upgrade

This week, we want to briefly summarize the status of work that is taking place in the background of the game. It can be invisible to users, but it is absolutely crucial so that more substantial implementations can be done as soon as possible. On the occasion of the last small corrections (mainly the replacement of some Flash elements - like stadiums, shirts), the server crashed several times (we had interruptions in access to the game), which shows that even small changes can affect Sokker's stability. In order to minimize the number of such situations, we intend to further use the test environment before implementing improvements to the official version of the game.

Purchase of a new server and setting up a testing environment

In recent weeks we have bought a new server with a stronger configuration, which will be used in the first step to test our implementations. The test environment is being set up this week and in the coming weeks we will be able to work in it - this will improve our work and allow us to quickly share its effects on the game.

Game code upgrade

Over the last months, work on the Sokker code has been ongoing - obsolete elements of the code from PHP 5.3 (not already supported) have been rewritten to a newer version (PHP 7.4), while the code of the morning game update mechanism has been updated (waiting for test stage). These changes were necessary to allow any more advanced changes to be implemented.

A team of programmers

Meanwhile, we plan to expand the programming team with another two people - to work on frontend and backend. Recruitment for these two positions is ongoing and we hope that the final interviews will take place soon.

Works on the new game interface (UX)

At the same time, work on the new interface has been underway for over a month, general assumptions for the new navigation have already been made, as well as the first views of a few selected pages (club page, club news, match view, home page). At the moment we are talking about mockups - black and white sketches of elements of the page. They are the starting point for new graphics. Work on the graphic design has also been contracted.

Next steps

After improving the code and preparing the test environment, we will be able to accelerate with changes that will be "visible" to players. On the top of the list will be repairing several errors (such as the impact of arcade matches on the ranking or the desire to place a player on TL), and some minor improvements in the page view (such as the ability to remove the observed bidding from the secretary's office).

Dev. Diary 8: The Game System - The Final Decision

MatzeG

Dev. Diary 8: The Game System - The Final Decision

The game system – research

Last week, we asked you to fill out another survey and share comments on the two final proposals. Thank you for plenty of votes, comments and discussions. As the final result it turned out to be very tough to make a final decision.
During the week we will publish a more detailed report to share detailed results with you and today's Developers Diary will focus on key conclusions and our decision.

Key conclusions from the study:

* Option 1 won with around 50% of all votes, turning out to be the most popular. Your second choice was option 2 with 35%. Enthusiasts of no change is 15%.
* It is quite clear that we have two strong camps - it can be seen when we compare the analysis of the assessed options - both proposals receive a maximum rating (7) among their supporters, while opponents usually do not like the opposite option rating it at the lowest possible level (1).
* There are fears of playing 4 matches a week - the option to play with such a frequency received only half the number of votes than the option to play 3 matches a week.
* The most definite results we got from the poll on the number of teams in the country’s leagues - over 61% of participants voted for the option of 12 team leagues and this was the most popular answer. Greater extension of leagues did not get your approval - about 14% of voters voted for 14 team leagues, about 17% for 16.

It is quite clear to us that with such divided votes it will be difficult for us to choose an option that is satisfactory to all but at the same time we have to move on with further work and make the final decision.

New game system

We are deciding to choose a calendar based on Option 1 but for now we are giving up the international cup (we are expanding leagues to 12 teams and introducing two league matches per week) - this means up to 3 official matches per week as preferred by most of you. Only after implementing this system and getting to know what your acceptance is, we will be making further decisions about the possible addition of other games for all players (international).
Below is the final calendar.

Other information

Here are some additional elements / ideas that are important to us and may explain the proposed calendar.

Inter-season break : For now we do not want to give up the inter-season break. A pre-season-week seems to be sensible, considering the shorter length of the season. It should be taken into account that this is a period of average attractiveness in the game (and slower training) so a special kind of friendly matches should be introduced for this period.
Warm-up matches : This is a special type of friendly match that will be possible to play during the season break and play-offs only (for teams that do not take part in the play-off-matches). They will differ from the classic friendlies in training effectiveness - they will allow you to train your players in a similar way to official matches.
Structure of a number of divisions : Currently the leading multiplier of common league levels is x4. In the new system of enlarged leagues, we will be more flexible, and we will adjust league levels to the current situation in a given country, so as to ensure that teams of similar levels will play on the same league levels and the lowest level will be beginner friendly.
Enlargement of divisions and small countries (containing a few users): We agree that for small countries, enlarging leagues is not as attractive as for larger countries. But along with the changes, we plan to conduct intensive marketing activities that are also more focused on the markets which currently have the smallest amount of users. Thus, the problem should be reduced when we are recruiting new players. However, if this shall not happen - we will consider various ideas to solve this problem (such as ideas of merging countries into large groups).

Next steps

A new calendar will be introduced in 2-3 seasons, along with the training reform. Preparation requires time spent on development but also a large number of tests and simulations to make sure that everything works together, and the game is well balanced.
We intentionally started presenting changes from these two elements (calendar and training) because these are the most comprehensive changes we have planned and consultations regarding those had to be performed first.
Once again, thank you for filling the survey, a large number of comments which finally contributed significantly to our decision in this regard.

Dev. Diary 7: Season calendar - final voting

MatzeG

Dev. Diary 7: Season calendar - final voting

The game system – research

Three weeks ago, we asked you to complete a survey and share your comments on the proposals for the new competition calendar. Thank you for the extensive discussion. Many comments and new ideas were extremely helpful and some of them we included in the final proposal.

The winner of the survey is option 3 - a calendar based on increased number of teams in the league to 12 and 2 league matches a week. The calendar is completed by two further types of games - the International Cup (with group stage) and the National Cup. This option obtained over 60% of all votes and the choice of this option was supported by over 450 people. The results can be viewed at the survey link (we have just unveiled them for you). Here is the summary.

We are also pleased that only about 15% of users chose the option to leave the system unchanged – it shows us that you are open to see changes in the game.
At the same time, we know that some of you have submitted your own proposals on the Sokker Development forum as you were not satisfied with proposals 1 and 2 in the survey. We can see that these proposals have clarified into one fairly coherent alternative with 3 matches a week.
For this reason, we would like to introduce to you two final proposals for the vote.

Basic assumptions

Before you vote, here is some important information. First of all - we need to systematise the discussion because it is currently taking place at very different levels of generality - from the very general assumptions of the season, through the structure of individual types of competitions, to very detailed elements (such as promotions, relegations system, number of play-off matches, etc.).
At the moment, we are interested in the highest level of this discussion - mainly regarding the general system of matches (how many matches per week) and the number of matches in which we will participate, plus the structure of the league (how many teams in the league). These are the most important problems that we want to resolve first and then proceed to refining individual competitions or other, more detailed issues.
Therefore, when assessing two calendars, look at them primarily as a proposal for the number of matches per week and the number of teams in the leagues. We are still open to discuss the other elements (e.g. play-offs).

Other information relevant to your choice:
1. It is worth remembering the training system announced two weeks ago.
2. Elements related to the length of the season - will be adapted to the chosen solution (i.e. the length of the time of the injury, training pace, age of juniors, etc.) Try not to let these aspects of the game to suggest you anything when choosing your preferred system.
3. The graphics present "guaranteed" matches - those in which we will certainly play. Black frames additionally show where the next rounds of cups end. This makes it easier to assess the actual level of game intensity (remember that in cup competitions 50% less teams play at each subsequent stage).
4. Friendly matches can be placed in slots freed by cups, but they will lose significantly impact on training.
5. There was an interesting idea for a special "warm up" match which would be an alternative for teams not playing in the play-off, where the training effect would be similar to an official match. It will be considered but at the moment it is not the subject of the survey.

National Cup - is announced in the option presented a week ago, where all teams start playing in the National Cup and then the teams from the lower leagues have a chance to compete in the cups of individual league levels.

The International Cup - is announced in the initial proposal for further discussion - the cup combined with the group phase, which desire is to give each manager a certain number of guaranteed official matches, then the games take place on the basis of play-offs.

Cup discussions take place independently and are not subject to review in this survey.

Two system options

Option 1: (4 matches a week –> 12 teams in the league)
This is the winning line from the first vote, it remains largely unchanged. Its key assumptions are two league matches a week – they allow to increase the number of teams to 12 in each league.

Option 2: (3 matches a week –> league system unchanged)
This version is inspired by discussions on the Sokker Development forum. It is included in the 14-week calendar and maintains the league system in its current shape (one league match per week).

Summary:
From the development point of view, we consider both proposals to meet the requirements of our work on the development of Sokker. On the Developers' side, the preferred option is the first one, based on a system of two league matches per week. It seems optimal for us for several reasons:
1. Sets league matches as the primary competition guaranteeing two matches per week.
2. Cup games are additional challenges that enrich the game without creating too much training difference compared to those who drop out (10 available slots will be divided into fewer matches, but they can still be used).
3. Beginners starting the game during the season receive a team with two matches guaranteed.
4. We are shortening the season by 25%. It allows us to accelerate training slightly, while limiting the number of multi-divine players (thanks to faster aging).
5. It makes the main challenge of the game introducing young players to competitions mainly in league matches (giving you at the same time two matches weekly available), cup matches are an additional reward and expand the possibility of training rotation in several matches (we prevent one type of competition from being selected as "training").
6. Despite 4 matches a week, it does not seem too intense to us - remember the quickness of elimination from cup matches with subsequent rounds, only the best and most engaged players will play in such a number of matches.

Option two will require more work related to better matching of training bonuses so as not to give too much advantage to players who will play in cups longer than others (i.e. 3 official matches per week vs. one league), will also require adding bots to the cups (for a new player starting the game during the season to have a more interesting entertainment than just one league match per week). However, these elements are possible to address, which is why we present both options for discussion and assessment, understanding that regardless of which one will be chosen, we will have a significant change in gameplay compared to the current system.

Questionnaire

We have expanded the survey with several options that will allow us to better evaluate existing proposals.
In addition to the overall assessment of each of them and the choice between them, it is also possible to answer additional questions:
1. Preferred number of teams in the league
2. Number of matches per week
3. Playoffs (one match or rematch)
4. Inter-seasonal break or lack thereof
In addition, at the end we put a demographics questions that will allow us to better analyse the distribution of votes by country of origin, league level, experience, etc.

The game system – summary

The two proposed systems address many Sokker problems (of course not all, but this is a starting point for solving subsequent ones), give more emotions to all players, keep the important rule of assigning specific games to a selected day of the week. We hope that combined with information on training reform, changes will begin to appear more consistent and clearer.

Date of changes, method of implementation

Finally, we want to assure you – we still have a few seasons to play with the old game system. Changes require preparation and then detailed checking on the test server. We will not decide to introduce any new system until we are sure that all elements work in it, and at the same time it will give you time to think about tactics for the upcoming changes.

Increased game speed – tools

At the same time, given the greater number of matches per week, we will also develop a number of additional tools and improvements that will help you manage your teams faster and more efficiently, so that additional matches are not a problem. Works on the new interface and its improvements are underway, changes will be implemented, e.g. setting the squad for individual types of games, we will increase the reserve bench, we will allow to plan friendly matches in advance, and many more. Access to Sokker from mobile phones will certainly be significantly improved.

VOTE HERE -> Season calendar SURVEY

Dev. Diary 6: Leagues optimisation & National Cups idea

MatzeG

Dev. Diary 6: Leagues optimisation & National Cups idea

Off-season leagues optimisation

On Wednesday we made small adjustments to the league structures. Abandoned divisions have been deleted, and several users from those divisions promoted to higher levels. Most countries now have 3 division levels, except for a few countries with a large number of users. We reduced the number of teams by almost 100 000.

Unfortunately, we faced technical problems with merging leagues together – and we won’t be able to tighten the number of leagues on the lowest levels. For the upcoming season the number of leagues in the remaining division stays the same, but we will prepare an additional merge for next season (it needs to be developed from scratch).

New season calendar proposal

We still need some time to adjust our final proposal for the new season calendar. Changes will be announced next week, together with quite a wide poll to measure different elements of our idea, to give us detailed data, if there is still need to refine the idea. We hope you can still keep patience :)

New formula for National Cups

According to the discussion about the National Cup and the results of our poll, we are able to announce our final proposal for that competition. The development will take some time, but it’s possible, that the new cup format will be introduced faster, than the general game update, maybe even within the next 4 months. We see, that most users prefer to play for some cup within their “reach”. This motivates us to add an extra cup for lower divisions. However we also think it's good to have a chance to play in one general national cup, too, and compete against the best teams. That’s why we decided to merge both ideas in one system (great thanks for some ideas from Sokker Development Forum that inspired us to do so). Below you can find a short summary of our final proposal.

National cups will be prepared in two versions - the National Cup, where all teams from the country can participate and League Cups, where only teams from the lowest divisions can play. The National Cup will start in the first week of each season, the League Cups a few weeks later. Teams from the lowest divisions, that drop out of the National Cup until the start of their league cup will also start in this cup.

Elections

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 11th of May and end on the 24rd of May, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Dev. Diary 5: New training changes

MatzeG

Dev. Diary 5: New Training changes

This week we would like to present our new training approach. You will find all informations below.
At the same time we are working on the final version of the new season calendar. That part will be presented next week, as it still requires some time.

Training changes

The training system is going to be adjusted. The main goal is to fit the maximum number of trainings into a higher number of matches in a week. This will make training more flexible so that it is possible to build the team not as trained formation vs untrained but more as it is in real life - experienced players vs young players introduced to the first team.

The key change is that instead of having one training match order you will be able to prioritise training for several formations at the same time. Obviously ther will be some limit which is 10 slots per week to allocate.

Additional rules to new training:
1. We keep training match order limits – you can train a maximum of 6 strikers, 2 goalkeepers. Playmakers and defenders will fit into the limit. You can assign a different skill for each of the 4 positions.
2. The players assigned to the 10 training slots will always receive training, even if they haven’t played a match during the week. However, they will receive a significant bonus to their training depending on how many minutes they played.
3. Minutes played in official games will be much more valuable than the same minutes gained in friendly games.
4. To achieve a training bonus which is close to maximum, the player that you set in a training slot should collect about 90 minutes across the week’s official matches.
5. The players who played but had not been put into training slots will only receive general training and just a bit of the training for their match-order.
6. The players who are not assigned to the training slots and who are not playing a match are slowly losing their skills.
7. The players who played an official match and against stronger teams will gain an extra bonus to their training.
8. In the scenario of speeding up the season up to 13 weeks, training speed will be also increased but to a lesser extent. In the scenario of 14 weeks’ season, training will rather stay at the current intensity. Scenarios will be presented with the next Dev. Diary.
9. The effectiveness of the coaches will be visible – you will be able to make decisions about your coaches seeing how their skills affect the effectiveness of each of formation’s training as also the general training.
10. The exact proportions and dependencies will get confirmed after several number of tests on the new testing server. We will simulate appropriate number of speeded up seasons to make sure that the game is balanced accordingly.
11. Stamina training needs to be reworked a bit. The other training rules remains unchanged.

Dev. Diary 4: League system

MatzeG

Dev. Diary 4: League system

Today we are going to open the discussion about something that already became a hot topic on Sokker Development forum – How we want our league system to be organized. We have listened to you and among all of your ideas we have selected three options. Here are the key points that we want to achieve in our new league system:
1. Shorter season: We are targeting 12 weeks, which would be 25% less than now.
2. We want you to have the opportunity to play more games. Currently those teams eliminated from the National Cup are only left with one league match per week.
3. We want to keep our moderate week flow as much as possible. Sokker is not a fast arcade game with matches played every day and we would like to keep this unique character of the game.

Below you can see visualisation of three different season fixtures with description. We are putting it up for your discussion. We would love to hear what you think, so please share your opinions with us on Sokker Forum and please take a minute to fill out the survey. Feel free to share your thoughts about your own ideas and amendments. Before we show you our three options, we want to propose some new general rules first.

International Cup – we are introducing a new international cup which is very similar to the very well known UEFA Champions League. The competition format will consist of a group stage with home-away system and the two best teams from each group will play in a knock-out system. In play-off there will be only one match. The losing team will be eliminated from the cup.
It is important that all players will get the opportunity to play in a cup. This will be a great chance to compete against other players from different countries and of course this will provide you with better match earnings. The competition format will be similar to our league system. Lower levels will have more teams. On the highest-level champions of the top leagues will play against each other and consequently if you are the champion of one of the lower leagues you will play against a team from a different country at a similar level to even out chances. The Cup will be designed in a way that the higher level you play, the better financial rewards you get, and fans will be more likely to buy tickets. By doing this we are aiming to motivate you to try to achieve the highest possible position in your league.

National Cup – we want to start a discussion about two possible options:
1. All teams from the same country are eligible to take part in the National Cup. This means that clubs from lower leagues might get the chance to play against one of the top teams in their country.
2. As an alternative to this proposal, we will have two Cups: A National Cup and a League Cup. Only teams from leagues 1-3 will play in the more prestigious National Cup. That way we should be able to keep a higher level of competition and teams from league 4 and lower will be less likely to get eliminated in the first rounds. Leagues lower than 4th will be divided into regional cups (4 League Cup, etc.) accordingly to number of leagues on certain level. One cup will never have more than 512 teams.

We will open a separate topic on Sokker Development Forum with an attached survey to give you the opportunity to have your say.

Training – this will be discussed in details in a separate Developer Diary where we are going to introduce proposition to changes, but as you can already see an increased number of matches will require a little bit of different approach to training. We want to give you more flexibility while setting up your squad. There will be a balance between the desire of upgrading the skills of your junior players and trying to achieve good results in official games.

Promotion and relegation Play-offs - Teams will fight in play-offs where the winner of two games (home and away) will be awarded with a promotion to a higher league. Teams that aren't playing playoff games can play friendly matches instead.

Friendly matches – From now on friendly matches will only have a minor effect on your training. You will be able to play friendly match only after being eliminated from the cup. This will not apply to Arcade matches as they have no effect on Sokker reality.

Propositions to the league system

Option 1
Each season has 12 weeks. Each week has three matches that are played on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Three league matches will have to be played on a weekday. Since the International Cup requires six matches during group stage, moving a few league matches to weekdays at the end of the season will allow us to play two official matches almost every week, even for teams that are already eliminated from the cup.

Option 2
In addition to option 1, league matches and cup matches will always take place on the exact days as previous weeks. Additional league matches will be scheduled on Tuesdays. Due to the same reason as above those matches will be played at the end of the season.

Option 3
This proposition is the most revolutionary. We are increasing the number of teams per league to 12. Similar to the current league system, each week day will have its own competition assigned. The biggest change here is that there will be two league matches weekly but as a benefit, we will be able to increase the number of teams per league to 12. This will also affect the promotion and relegation system: The two best teams will have a chance to get promoted to a higher division, the six teams occupying the last six positions can be relegated.
Apart from league matches we have set two consecutive days for the national and international cup.

We cannot wait to see what you guys are thinking and what your choices are. We would like to ask you just for one thing before you leave your comments. Try to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who just joined the game. As much as we value our current users, we would also like beginners to get more involved in the game.

You can find the polls here:

* League system: https://www.webankieta.pl/ankieta/523386/league-system-options.html

* National Cup: https://www.webankieta.pl/ankieta/523392/national-cup-options.html

Facebook profile
Last but not least we would like to invite you to join our official Facebook profile where you can find up to date information regarding game development.

Dev. Diary 3: Status of work

MatzeG

Dev. Diary 3: Status of work

Today we will inform you about things that we are already working on and describe some elements that we changed or will change in the upcoming days. As mentioned in our first news Flash replacement is our main priority right now. We will give you more details about that and about some other improvements.

Flash
The process to replace Flash started a few weeks ago. We already found developers who rewrite all the game elements based on Flash. The work needs to be completed step by step, of course, and the most time-consuming parts, e.g. the match engine, need a lot of work and patience. In the upcoming days we will replace a few Flash elements like:
1. Stadium viewer
2. Players portraits
3. Post game summary and statistics

We have already been working on the match kits configurator and the tactic editor. They still need to be improved in the upcoming weeks however.
We will also fix the problem with Google Chrome and the 2D match viewer. It will only be a temporary solution, but it should help some users to enjoy the game until the new visualization is completed.

Game engine – code upgrade
Parallel to replacing Flash we also started rewriting the back end, especially the “daily update”, which pushes the game forward day by day. Due to outdated technology some pieces of code need to be replaced with PHP. Our work on that part will be invisible for users (and also doesn’t affect gameplay), but it is necessary to give us a chance to implement any other, more advanced changes connected with Sokker and its game mechanics.

Leagues - reorganization
For now we have a lot of abandoned divisions in Sokker. There is also some potential for reducing the number of leagues at some levels. After the current season we will merge leagues and delete unnecessary divisions.
This should lead to more exciting rivalries between new managers, since they are facing more human controlled teams even in the lowest divisions. We will also drastically reduce the number of bot teams.

Other changes
300 sec. match viewer waiting time deleted – We decided to remove that element. Users without Plus will not be forced to wait for their game to start. To be honest – video-advertisments before the game will be introduced with the full relaunch of the game, but for sure with shorter duration than before. The advertising on YouTube is the best benchmark for it, with an included countdown button.

Relegation bug in junior leagues – There is a bug, that allows users to stay in their junior division even if they are endangered with direct relegation. Using the withdraw option and then joining the league later again, managers can reset their position and start a new season in the same division. That bug will be fixed and withdrawing a junior team will result in relegation to the lower level league.

Dev. Diary 2: Main Assumptions

MatzeG

Dev. Diary 2: MAIN ASSUMPTIONS

Today we would like to share with you our main assumptions, in terms of the changes we are working on. Thanks a lot for the exciting discussions at Sokker Development forum, sharing your best ideas and a very clear vision of what is most important for you in the game.

The assumptions we have prepared will keep us straight in evaluating different solutions, creating new ones and help us as a guide for the game development direction.

GAME SPIRIT

First of all we would like to share with you the things, that won’t change. After last week's consultations via forum we see practically full compliance. Moreover, we also fully agree with you about some major points:

Game without pay2win – Competitions were honest and this won't change. We don’t want to develop any paid bonuses giving a real advantage over players without a subscription. Of course the game needs revenue to be developed (especially in case of needed changes), so that's why we'll work on PLUS ideas to make it more attractive, but you won't be able to “buy” a better place in league or any other improvements.

Game engine, tactics and 2d matches – These things will be changed only as much, as it’s necessary according to technical problems (flash expiration, new code, etc.). We believe, that one of most important game advantages is the option to make a real impact with tactics and to see how our ideas are executed by the players on the field. Visualization is simple and intuitive. We will develop it, but we will try not to lose its original spirit.

Simplicity – The main aspects of Sokker are easy and simple to learn. It’s also easy to notice the impact of our decisions on various elements of the game. We will avoid unnecessary new elements and try to focus on upgrading and extending current ones. Some of the changes and novelties will be designed for more advanced players, but there will be no need to use them for everyone.

Moderate game timing – Sokker is different than a lot of quick mobile games and we believe, that it’s a huge advantage. Our game needs patience and long term thinking, giving a chance to fit for different players. There is no huge difference between everyday players or those, who have much less time. But, few elements will be changed for sure – according to the fact, that the current length of a whole season is a barrier for new players.

Community – Being a Sokker community member is not only building your own best club, it's also the atmosphere and fun around the game. We'll keep an eye on forum and relationships and try to make them alive. There is no need to change too much in that area, but for sure we'll add some improvements which can benefit conversations.

CHANGES

So, what will be changed? Here you can find the main game areas that need to be upgraded or developed from scratch. These are not final ideas – it’s a kind of overall map for you, to point out the most important priorities to be addressed.

Play to win – The current game mechanism is demotivating for players focused on results. We will propose some solutions to change that, giving extra motivations for winning, new official competitions to fight in. One of the biggest issues is, that club development is possible only by using a second match in the week for training. That lead us to some upgrades about the training system (but one training update per week on Thursday will not change). Our new idea is to avoid forcing managers to let all their players play for training.

Competition optimization – We want to address the issue of the extremely long season in Sokker (only 3 full seasons per year, which is demotivating for many new players) and also give managers a chance to join different kinds of tournaments. We will propose a new competition idea, with some small game acceleration, to make the season shorter, and to add a completely new Cup. We want to present our ideas for consultation in the upcoming weeks.

Game balance – With the game's long history it’s easy to notice what areas are not balanced enough. Currently we have a huge number of top players, even in low divisions (like in Poland). The transfer system promotes daily trading and benefits managers, who are slowly gathering their founds to invest after a few seasons in their “dream team”. New players have huge problems to reach higher divisions.
All these issues are very complex and connected, so we need to act carefully and with some different, but consistent solutions. We need to upgrade the game mechanics to create more balance: to give some motivation to reach as high as your team can get, and also to help beginners improving their teams much easier than experienced players. It will be much more difficult to train the best Sokker players and differences between league levels should become less significant. To achieve all that we need to change the game economy, training speed, and a lot of small parameters, that need to be analysed and tested.

Easy to learn, hard to master – Sokker is an easy game and it should stay that way. But many game areas have a great potential to be extended, as long as the manager is given the choice to explore them or not. We want to let you some freedom to decide how deep you want to dive in. It’s a kind of a major development philosophy we will follow. It will be implemented in different areas, from game interface to stadium or youth school management. It’s also most important for beginners, to give them guidance and the right path to learn the game step by step (few options will even be blocked for new managers).

Goals and achievements – Only a few managers are able to fight for the highest prizes, since there are not too many places in the top divisions. But we know, that everyone of you has individual goals and aspirations about different game challenges. That’s why we will develop new, more feasible achievements, starting with seasonal goals, a more detailed team history and progresses presentation, ending with some new ranks and statistics, not only connected with game results.

Storytelling – This is a very important point for us, but untill now it is almost non-existing in this game. A lot of users tell stories for themselves, create own rankings, summaries, club articles, or even some “Sokker news” initiatives. We believe that most of you want to feel that history of your club being alive. Managers write their own stories, create legendary players and the game world is dynamic and full of events. We will apply storytelling on a few areas:

Dedicated „pressroom” page – Here we will see news about our club and competitions, but also reports from our staff, like training summary or tips from our assistant, and many more.

Extended statistics and records – This will give you a chance to follow different rankings and summaries, based on team, competition or players.

“Follow” option – You'll get the ability to follow news about some other parts of the game – national teams, contests, specific players, etc.

Bot teams elimination – Sokker is most attractive when we compete with real players. Therefore clubs without managers will be withdrawn from competitions at the end of the season.

New graphic design and UX – We need to redesign game graphics and user experience, to make it suitable for current times. We will focus on new players, to give them a chance to engage in the game and learn it with some tutorial help. For some fans of the classic design: There is no need to worry, we will keep the old graphic as an option, too.

Summarizing: As you can see, the areas that we are working on are not a revolution for the game. We rather focus on the best parts, to improve and rebuild them if needed. The development process will be long enough to give the managers a chance to fit into the new reality and adjust their club strategy.

In the upcoming months we will share more detailed solutions with you, divided on specific areas, to consult them more closely and one by one.

Dev. Diary 1: Communication & consultations

MatzeG

Development Diary 1: COMMUNICATION & CONSULTATIONS

Let us introduce first publication of weekly cycle about Sokker development. For the start we will present our ideas for project transparency and overall communication, closely linked with community involvement and consultations, to give you possibilities to affect our direction and upcoming range of changes.

COMMUNICATION

Development Diaries – every next Friday you can expect another work summary. In that kind of news we will publish different scopes of information’s – focused on already made upgrades and changes, sometimes based of prepared ideas, or encourage you for discussion about specific range. Our main principle is to keep project regularity and transparency.

Sokker Development (en) – we created dedicated forum, pin up as default for any user. Its purpose is not only to take over “Ideas” forum role (so give you chance to share own ideas and update requests), but also to create a place for complex game development communication. You will find there any news and information published by Dev’s and general discussion about all changes.

Please note: creating new forum doesn’t mean, that we will forget about “Ideas” forum. All threads gathered there will be soon researched and analysed in terms of our current work.

CONSULTATIONS

As we mentioned in Monday announcement about Sokker Development Project, we believe that community involvement is a necessary part of whole process, to keep proper “game spirit” and use its full potential.

From the early beginning your engagement is noticed, we receive and read lot of great ideas. But to give them a chance to get realized we need to organize the way of working between us, prepare form and sequence of applications. Discussion will be proceeded in stages, to set specific topics and areas to start consultations with.

At Sokker Development (en) you can find first three consultations threads:

„Sokker – main motivation” – we would like to know what is essential for “game spirit” for you, what exactly keeps you in the game for such a long time.

„Most expected change” – from the other side, we would like to read about opposite – most annoying, demotivating part of the game, that maybe sometimes even makes you to think about leaving.

„Begginers problems” – with game development we need to make Sokker more attractive for new users, so we will be glad to hear your opinion about new managers and problems they force, why it’s so hard for them to keep playing?

As you can see, we will start with some general discussions, but extremely important. Based on your responses and thoughts we will set some crucial game values and project assumptions, to find a clear guidance for game development direction, choosing new ideas and evaluate relevance of proposed solutions.

Hope to meet you soon at Sokker Development (en), we count on your help and knowledge!

Sokker- big changes are coming!

MatzeG

We are pleased to announce that the terms of the Sokker investment agreement have been reached. The purpose of this agreement is to keep continuous improvement and work on further updates which has already started.

As per the agreement, the game is granted funds for further development and two new people join the group of owners – Raul and Mekene. They also join the group of game’s developers and give us support in project management, marketing and game design. Both of them know Sokker almost from its beginnings, therefore we are more than happy to have them truly engaged on-board, devoted to the spirit of the game.

The Sokker improvement plan involves the two-stage activities:
1. Securing the stability of the game in the case of Flash support expiration on web browsers. In the coming months, specific elements of the game, written in this technology, will be replaced. Starting with smaller elements, ending with the most time-consuming visualization of matches.
2. Upgrading the game significantly, which hasn't been done in recent years. We plan to implement couple of changes like adapting the game to the up-to-date reality and current standards, including both- enhancing interface, UX, graphics, but also the gameplay itself (additional options, changes and improvements to some of the current functionalities). Also, the entire back-end of the game will need to be rewritten and updated. The effective date of these changes will not come before the first stage of work is completed.

SK community will be kept informed as the work progresses. Meanwhile we are planning a wide review of implemented changes, remaining open to new ideas. Hope we can count on your support!
We strongly believe that this is a turning point in Sokkers history and the return to its best days.

Elections

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 18th of February and end on the 3rd of March, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Elections

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 29th of October and end on the 11th of November, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

It is Election time!

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 9th of July and end on the 22nd of July, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Election time is here!

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 19th of March and end on the 1st of April, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Election time is here!

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 27th of November and end on the 10th of December, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Election time is here!

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 7th of August and end on the 20th of August, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Election time is here!

MatzeG

It is election time again! You will have the opportunity to stand for election as the national team coach (either Senior or U21) of any nation, and vote a senior and U21 manager for your own nation.

To access the election page, go to the respective country homepage, then click on National Team, and then Elections.

If you stand for election, it is recommended that you open ONE thread in the appropriate country forum after the elections start. Please prefix your thread with [NT] or [U21] , e.g. [NT] greg or [U21] damian. Please do NOT spam forums, SK-mail people directly for votes, or spam users Guest Books. Any of these spam activities will result in forum banning and/or a financial fine.

Please remember that a user who has been elected as an NT manager will not be able to resign from their job. Therefore when you stand for the NT job, it is not only for fun, it is also your responsibility to serve the full term which the people that voted you into the job thought you should serve.

Elections start on the 17th of April and end on the 30th of April, so start preparing your speeches, asking candidates tough questions & voting!

Web Developer wanted!

greg [del]

We are seeking a Web Developer to carry out Sokker Manager web page modifications on selected user ideas or requests.
It is planned as an extra job for the programmer, 1-2 hours daily, 5 days a week. Also possible is an extra bonus eg. 10% of Sokker income rise after implementation of selected ideas.

An ideal candidate would meet these requirements:
- experience with developing web pages, proven with portfolio
- good knowledge of php programming
- experience with MySQL databases
- experience with at least one php framework
- active Sokker club manager and activity on forums

If interested, please send your CV with portfolio of web pages (links) and your expected wage per hour to sokker@sokker.org .

Notice that Sokker Manager website code is quite ancient, it was developed In 2003 and is not even object-oriented In most part. Ok, you have been warned :)

We are looking also for someone with Adobe Flash Animate CC knowledge to convert all Sokker Flash animations on the site to HTML5. Separate, one-time job only (also expected wage, CV and portfolio).

Nieuwe bondscoach verkiezingen

Charles Hill

Het is weer verkiezingstijd voor bondscoaches! Alle managers mogen weer de bondscoaches voor hun nationale teams kiezen. Er moet een bondscoach voor het nationaal team en een bondscoach voor het nationaal team U21 gekozen worden. Om te stemmen in je eigen land dien je naar de pagina van jouw land te gaan, vervolgens het nationaal team en nationaal team U21 te kiezen en dan de 'verkiezingspagina'. Managers kunnen zich daar ook verkiesbaar stellen om mee te doen in de strijd om de nieuwe bondscoach of bondscoach U21 te worden.

Ook kan iedere manager zich in alle andere landen verkiesbaar stellen, maar nooit voor meerdere verkiezingen tegelijk. Om je verkiesbaar te stellen in een ander land, dien je via de pagina 'Wereld' naar het land van je keuze te gaan, vervolgens het nationaal team of nationaal team U21 te kiezen en dan de 'verkiezingspagina'.

Als je je verkiesbaar stelt, is het verstandig om één topic te openen op het nationale Sokker forum van het land waar jij je verkiesbaar hebt gesteld. Begin je topicnaam met [NT] of [U21] en daarna je managernaam. In dit topic kan je vervolgens beschrijven waarom jij de meest geschikte kandidaat bent om de nieuwe bondscoach te worden, bijvoorbeeld jouw prestaties en ervaring. Spam alsjeblieft geen fora of gastenboeken en val mensen niet lastig via SK-mail om stemmen te werven. Hier zal streng tegen worden opgetreden.

Bedenk dat bondscoach zijn niet alleen een eer is, maar ook een grote verantwoordelijkheid met zich meebrengt. Je kan tussentijds geen ontslag nemen! Dus éénmaal verkozen zul je de volledige termijn moeten afmaken.

De deadline voor de bondscoach verkiezingen is 8 januari 2017, wees er dus op tijd bij!

Kerstcadeautje

Charles Hill

Het is ieder jaar weer een verrassing of de kerstman Sokker gaat bezoeken en alle managers één dag gratis Plus geeft. Hou Sokker daarom tijdens eerste kerstdag goed in de gaten en mis het niet!

Gratis Plus is leuk om bijvoorbeeld 3D wedstrijden te bekijken met alle beschikbare opties, de kleuren en het ontwerp van jouw wedstrijdtenues aan te passen en alle statistieken van jouw team en spelers in te zien.

Mag de kerstman langskomen dit jaar, dan bij dezen alvast heel veel plezier met het kerstcadeautje.

Fijne feestdagen!

Nieuwe bondscoach verkiezingen

Charles Hill

Nieuwe bondscoach verkiezingen

Charles Hill

Nieuwe bondscoach verkiezingen

Charles Hill

Kerstcadeautje

Charles Hill

Nieuwe bondscoach verkiezingen

Charles Hill

Het is weer verkiezingstijd voor bondscoaches! Alle managers mogen weer de bondscoaches voor hun nationale teams kiezen. Er moet een bondscoach voor het nationaal team en een bondscoach voor het nationaal team U21 gekozen worden. Om te stemmen in je eigen land dien je naar de pagina van jouw land te gaan, vervolgens het nationaal team en nationaal team U21 te kiezen en dan de 'verkiezingspagina'. Managers kunnen zich daar ook verkiesbaar stellen om mee te doen in de strijd om de nieuwe bondscoach of bondscoach U21 te worden.

Ook kan iedere manager zich in alle andere landen verkiesbaar stellen, maar nooit voor meerdere verkiezingen tegelijk. Om je verkiesbaar te stellen in een ander land, dien je via de pagina 'Wereld' naar het land van je keuze te gaan, vervolgens het nationaal team of nationaal team U21 te kiezen en dan de 'verkiezingspagina'.

Als je je verkiesbaar stelt, is het verstandig om één topic te openen op het nationale Sokker forum van het land waar jij je verkiesbaar hebt gesteld. Begin je topicnaam met [NT] of [U21] en daarna je managernaam. In dit topic kan je vervolgens beschrijven waarom jij de meest geschikte kandidaat bent om de nieuwe bondscoach te worden, bijvoorbeeld jouw prestaties en ervaring. Spam alsjeblieft geen fora of gastenboeken en val mensen niet lastig via SK-mail om stemmen te werven. Hier zal streng tegen worden opgetreden.

Bedenk dat bondscoach zijn niet alleen een eer is, maar ook een grote verantwoordelijkheid met zich meebrengt. Je kan tussentijds geen ontslag nemen! Dus éénmaal verkozen zul je de volledige termijn moeten afmaken.

De deadline voor de bondscoach verkiezingen is 18 oktober, wees er dus op tijd bij!

Nieuwe bondscoach verkiezingen

Charles Hill

Nationaal kampioen en bekerwinnaar

Charles Hill

Na een spannende laatste ronde in de Eerste Klasse is de kampioen van België KFC Putte geworden. Ondanks een verloren wedstrijd was het toch voldoende omdat F.C. Djem, die tweede is geëindigd, niet verder kwam dan een gelijkspel.

De kampioen van Nederland was al eerder bekend. N.T.V.V. is met een straatlengte voorsprong de beste van Nederland. De strijd in een rechtstreeks duel om de tweede plaats in de Eredivisie is gewonnen door Pixies.

Beide kampioenen zullen volgend seizoen uitkomen in de Champions Cup.

Aankomend weekend worden de promotie- en degradatiewedstrijden gespeeld, iedereen veel succes met deze wedstrijden!

De Beker van België is dit seizoen gewonnen door MyTeam FC en de KNVB beker door Aruba Falcons.

Nieuwe bondscoach verkiezingen

Charles Hill

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