Subpage under development, new version coming soon!
Asunto: [News] Comments & Questions
Hi friends:
New forum:
Sokker development (Click here).
You can post there all the ideas you have to make the game better.
(editado)
New forum:
Sokker development (Click here).
You can post there all the ideas you have to make the game better.
(editado)
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.
„Beginners 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!
(editado)
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.
„Beginners 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!
(editado)
Dev. Diary 2: MAIN ASSUMPTIONS
more info and ideas in Sokker Development (en) forum
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.
more info and ideas in Sokker Development (en) forum
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.
I like reading about the updates but can we please delete the stickied post? It just doubles things up and because it is locked, we don't have the chance to comment anyway
Fixed publication is to avoid spam and thereby lose information in the middle of spam.
So we have this second topic for comment.
If you want we only put information in the fixed topic, and in this topic only to comment. what do you think?
So we have this second topic for comment.
If you want we only put information in the fixed topic, and in this topic only to comment. what do you think?
The league reshuffle.
Is this just pushing managers together from the save division of the same country or will this be combining some countries together?
I put in a really good idea in the developers forum, which people seem to like, and it will save a huge amount of server load, plus it will let people play against other humans.
For the Asia and Oceania region, it would mean a completely full Div 1 and 2, and depending which option was used, an almost full div 3.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the idea (with combining countries):
UPDATE FROM A LATTER POST - HERE ARE THE NUMBERS USING THE FIRST IDEA
This is long, but mathematically shows why this needs to occur.
I was working on some quick combining and came up with this (using less than 30 users as a cut-off)
AFC/Oceania = 15 countries = 95 users. Div 1 and 2 full + 3-4 users in each div 3. --> if combined with Indonesia, would be 5-6 teams in each div 3 (total teams 128) , and if with China as well, almost full div 3 which would mean more likely to have say half active users in div 3 (as total teams 160). Would leave one nation from RL AFC out (Viet Nam), but if added them, only brings total to 247, so would be ideal for having 3 full divisions, with inactives going to div 4.
Africa = 9 countries = combined 57 users = Div 1 and 2 full + a few extras in div 3.
North/Central America teams = 9 countries = 89 teams. Full Div 1 and 2 + about 3-4 in each div 3. -> only countries missing are Mexico (42 users), USA (45 users) and Cuba (81 users). If these were combined in, would make total of 257 teams (Full div 1, 2 and 3. Would leave 1-2 users in each div 4 depeding if they made div 4 32 or 64 leagues. If making 16 leagues would be 4 users in each div 4)
South America = 3 countries = 67 users. Full Div 1 and 2. 3 users in each div 3. Most other South american countries (6 in total) are 80+ users except Venezuala at 67, which could be added to make div 4 a nicer place to be.
Europe = 19 countries = 215 users. Div 1, 2 and 3 full, with a healthy 47 users left over for div 4. Could also add in Hayastan (31 users), Letzbuerg (36 users), Norge (41 users), Ostereich (43 users) to make the div 4 much more healthy/or leave as separate.
So without the added ones I have put in after the "->", we could combine a total of 55 countries, in to 5 leagues, comprising of just 523 teams total, so that these countries have more to play more, more human people to talk too, and more active players to test their skill against.
It would also massively reduce the number of bot games currently played by the ME (assuming all have a full div 3 full of bots, that is 6912 matches, 140,000 player updates etc. per week, processed by the servers that do nothing but waste money and server load). This is equivalent to over 2x the load put on the server by Polish users in wasted resources. It the div 6 leagues in poland were also halved in size (which still leaves poland massively over supplied), it would save over 10,000 teams worth of matches per week, which is the equivalent of the entire sokker community, so effectively halves the server load -> Saves $$$$
To put in comparison, these combined leagues would use just 14% of the processing power of the above.
Of course, all these individual countries would need to retain their nation they are playing for, or else people (including myself) wouldn't be for it.
AND having a national cup for only those of your nation ID number would need to stay, to give everyone a chance to battle only their own nation at some time in the season
(editado)
Is this just pushing managers together from the save division of the same country or will this be combining some countries together?
I put in a really good idea in the developers forum, which people seem to like, and it will save a huge amount of server load, plus it will let people play against other humans.
For the Asia and Oceania region, it would mean a completely full Div 1 and 2, and depending which option was used, an almost full div 3.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the idea (with combining countries):
UPDATE FROM A LATTER POST - HERE ARE THE NUMBERS USING THE FIRST IDEA
This is long, but mathematically shows why this needs to occur.
I was working on some quick combining and came up with this (using less than 30 users as a cut-off)
AFC/Oceania = 15 countries = 95 users. Div 1 and 2 full + 3-4 users in each div 3. --> if combined with Indonesia, would be 5-6 teams in each div 3 (total teams 128) , and if with China as well, almost full div 3 which would mean more likely to have say half active users in div 3 (as total teams 160). Would leave one nation from RL AFC out (Viet Nam), but if added them, only brings total to 247, so would be ideal for having 3 full divisions, with inactives going to div 4.
Africa = 9 countries = combined 57 users = Div 1 and 2 full + a few extras in div 3.
North/Central America teams = 9 countries = 89 teams. Full Div 1 and 2 + about 3-4 in each div 3. -> only countries missing are Mexico (42 users), USA (45 users) and Cuba (81 users). If these were combined in, would make total of 257 teams (Full div 1, 2 and 3. Would leave 1-2 users in each div 4 depeding if they made div 4 32 or 64 leagues. If making 16 leagues would be 4 users in each div 4)
South America = 3 countries = 67 users. Full Div 1 and 2. 3 users in each div 3. Most other South american countries (6 in total) are 80+ users except Venezuala at 67, which could be added to make div 4 a nicer place to be.
Europe = 19 countries = 215 users. Div 1, 2 and 3 full, with a healthy 47 users left over for div 4. Could also add in Hayastan (31 users), Letzbuerg (36 users), Norge (41 users), Ostereich (43 users) to make the div 4 much more healthy/or leave as separate.
So without the added ones I have put in after the "->", we could combine a total of 55 countries, in to 5 leagues, comprising of just 523 teams total, so that these countries have more to play more, more human people to talk too, and more active players to test their skill against.
It would also massively reduce the number of bot games currently played by the ME (assuming all have a full div 3 full of bots, that is 6912 matches, 140,000 player updates etc. per week, processed by the servers that do nothing but waste money and server load). This is equivalent to over 2x the load put on the server by Polish users in wasted resources. It the div 6 leagues in poland were also halved in size (which still leaves poland massively over supplied), it would save over 10,000 teams worth of matches per week, which is the equivalent of the entire sokker community, so effectively halves the server load -> Saves $$$$
To put in comparison, these combined leagues would use just 14% of the processing power of the above.
Of course, all these individual countries would need to retain their nation they are playing for, or else people (including myself) wouldn't be for it.
AND having a national cup for only those of your nation ID number would need to stay, to give everyone a chance to battle only their own nation at some time in the season
(editado)
With the junior league upgrade.
Completely agree the bug needs to be fixed.
But relegation should only occur if there are teams to move up in to the league. If there are not teams (as is the case with Aus junior A-League, then it will mean just 6 teams in junior A-League and 2 in the div 2 league.
Completely agree the bug needs to be fixed.
But relegation should only occur if there are teams to move up in to the league. If there are not teams (as is the case with Aus junior A-League, then it will mean just 6 teams in junior A-League and 2 in the div 2 league.
I'm going to propose it internally to the DEvs. Thank you for this contribution, which is very very interesting and I like it: Senior Leagues and Junior leagues.
I also like your idea. Dont know if devs where talking about fusing "little" countries but is a pretty nice idea, more challenge for sure, and probably better incomes.
But we need to keep current countries for NTs and Youthteams.
But we need to keep current countries for NTs and Youthteams.