Big update for you this month! It includes some very significant Match Engine improvements with the aim of making more attributes more important and improving the general flow of the game. We also aim to make the match experience more enjoyable and rewarding to encourage managers to play matches ‘live’ and have added a couple of new features that will make playing those matches all the more important.
Enhancing the match experience further is a brand new Hot/Cold Player feature. This new feature will give you more things to consider in each match and make playing matches ‘live’ more important as you potentially try to tailor your tactics to which players are on form!
Also in this update is another brand new feature: Player Traits. Players who graduate fully scouted from your academy are awarded special traits. We won’t list out what they are… but there are a number of these to be discovered! The new feature will better reward managers who interact with the academy process and give additional reasons why bringing youth through is a very feasible alternative to the transfer market approach.
To ensure that academies are more accessible for managers who do not upgrade their academy or newer players who are as yet unfamiliar with academies, a couple of changes have been made to make these easier to get to grips with. The ability to see which attributes are next to be revealed and the ability to see the overall/ceiling of the player for fully revealed players is now available for trials that haven’t been upgraded.
We've also added the option to convert unused Youth Recruitment Points into Development Points for graduates. This gives managers more flexibility to develop academy players instead of relying solely on the transfer market.
This update also includes a much-requested addition: a Club Profile*** area for every team. This will allow teams to easily show off their achievements/trophies, and in addition, it shows details of each team’s current league position, recent results and most recent lineup/formation at a glance.
***Please Note: A last minute issue has prevented us from deploying this area - we will be doing a follow-up release in the next week or so to get this into the game!***
Finally, this update includes various smaller tweaks, visual improvements, and bug fixes. A detailed list of the main changes follows below.
Match Engine Update
- Big Match Engine Update, including lots of changes to the core Match Engine.
- This includes balancing changes to the majority of attributes.
- Too many changes to list here. Try it out to see what has changed!
Hot / Cold Player feature
- In every match, each team will have 2 ‘hot’ players and 2 ‘cold’ players in their starting lineup. Hot players receive a boost to every attribute. Cold players receive a reduction to every attribute.
- Each team will also have 1 ‘hot’ player and 1 ‘cold’ player on the substitutes bench.
- You find out which of your players are hot and cold at half-time. At this point you can use this extra information to better enhance your decision-making.
- You only find out which of your players are hot and cold, NOT your opposition’s players.
- Bot teams do not have hot/cold players. All bot player attributes are unaffected by this change.
- The new Player Traits system will interact with the Hot/Cold Player system. Find out how when you have players with these!
Player Traits Feature
- Player Traits affect various things in the matchday experience. They interact significantly with the new Hot/Cold Player feature.
- When the last attribute for an Academy Player is revealed, the player is considered ‘Fully Scouted’ and receives a Player Trait.
- Academy trialist players that are not fully revealed do not graduate with a Player Trait. This ensures that traits are not common and make these players special.
- In rare circumstances, players can graduate with 2, or even more rarely, 3 Player Traits. These players will not be common, and some interesting combinations could be possible!
- If a player has any Player Traits, they keep these their whole career and they do not gain or lose traits during their career. i.e. If they sign for another club they keep their traits.
- Player Traits only function in Competitive matches (i.e. they have no effect in friendly matches)
Youth Recruitment Point Conversion
- Youth Recruitment Points can now be converted into Development Points for graduates (note: this can only be done while a player is a Youth player, when they become a Senior player it can no longer be done).
- You can convert any unspent Youth Recruitment Points into Development Points at any point in the season.
- The conversion rate is 1 Youth Recruitment Point = 500 Development Points. Development Points can (as is now) be used to reveal training options, add/change positions, and recover players from injury.
- This feature has been added to allow users who don’t always spend all of their Recruitment Points to put these points to use elsewhere
Friendly Match Lobby Change
- No longer an exclusive Supporter Feature - all managers are now able to create matches in the Friendly Match Lobby. This should help managers with and without Supporter Days find matches with specific conditions and/or opponents as they wish
Other Academy Changes
- All managers now receive a partial ‘Foresight’ ability as part of the Academies. This will allow managers to see the next 3 attributes that will be revealed for a player even if they don’t have an upgraded academy. This is represented by the letters A, B and C to denote the next three attributes that will be revealed for a player
- The ability to see the Overall and Ceiling of an Academy player is now available to everyone, not just those that have upgraded their academy.
Other Changes
- Help text / tooltips / wording improvements
- Numerous bug fixes and visual improvements
