FML development: First look at v1.7

[Tsakalaki]

Managing player morale

Yesterday we made a forum post outlining some operational changes that had recently been made to the team. We talked about reviewing core areas of the game and making changes to them. One particular feature kept cropping up and that concerned the morale of players.

In Live currently

Currently all matches produce lasting morale changes which depended on player performance, the result, but depending on your activity rating, the changes would be smaller (high activity) or larger (low activity). This often caused unexpected morale swings and a system that at times could be difficult to understand or affect.

Eventually, over a flat time-based system, morale would gradually ‘recover’ to a neutral ‘ok’ mid-point.

In addition to match-based morale, players had a ‘happiness’ level based on their situation at the club but this was more a frustration than anything else, as there was little you could do to persuade a player not to be unhappy about many situations, and players would always sign for the club who bids them the most money anyway including the one they have grief with.

In the future

The good news is that in 1.7 we’ve ripped out the old system and implemented a new model. The key differences are now that

- Only major matches produce lasting morale changes, and the effect is no longer moderated by activity rating.

- This is more in-keeping with the way FM does things and means morale changes are more consistent from team-to-team and don’t depend on your activity in the Gameworld

- Morale recovers to a neutral ‘ok’ mid-point through playing major matches, much like playing major matches constitutes the passing of time for the purpose of recovering players from injury

- The ‘happiness’ system described above is no longer in the game. It might be replaced in future, but only in an FML-tailored way, and only if enough controls over player interaction are added at the same time.

Looking to the future of player morale, what do people think about morale changes based on specific in-game events, such as if the manager sells players very soon after signing them then maybe players in that manager’s squad would show their disapproval on the pitch?


We’d love to hear your views in the forums….








Introducing Team Talks

Team talks, a popular feature of Football Manager is finally making its FML debut with the release of 1.7.

This fantastic match day control is entirely optional and not giving a team talk has no negative player reactions associated with it which varies slightly from the implementation within Football Manager.

It’s addition is aimed at addressing a commonly raised issue in the forums in so much as managers sometimes have a lack of control in matches. This feature gives additional tactical control and hopefully it will allow you to handle certain situations differently.
The options are available on panel within the match screen that also brings together controls for match strategy and playing style adjustments in one convenient place.




Power to the PC


Since the release of 1.6 we’ve been monitoring a number of reported issues and one in particular to do with the match day experience that left us scratching our heads a little.

Eventually we managed to work out that these bugs were all happening on PowerPC Macs which ceased production in October 2005 and who Apple stopped actively supporting in the summer of 2009 when they announced that Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) would only run on Intel based processors.

During this process we also discovered that the Football Manager team had stopped supporting PowerPC Macs for the release of Football Manager 2010.

Due to the nature of the bugs being found, the age of the machines in question and a general lack of machine availability here we would like to announce that as of November 16th 2010, Football Manager Live will also no longer be supporting PowerPC users.

In order to understand the effects of this decision, we ran some checks across all live gameworlds since the reboot.


PC Vs Mac usage

Unsurprisingly, PC was the dominant force and 94% of all sign ins since March have come from Windows users. Power PC itself accounted for 0.27% of all sign ins. Windows Vista was the most popular operating system however its dominance is under severe pressure from Windows 7. Mac users seem to be liking 10.6 (Snow Leopard)


FML sign ins by Operating System

[Tsakalaki]

Wonderkids, Wonder Wages

Usually in the world of football all we’re hearing about is how players are getting paid far too much money these days. Well, in FML, the opposite seems to be true and some of the top players (especially the young ones) may instead have been asking too little. This is why, for the next major update; we’ve been looking into this area in quite a lot of detail and have come up with a few tweaks and changes that, we feel, will dramatically improve this area.

I’ve already spoken about young players not asking enough, so the best place to start is with that. Previously, the game would use age to implement a cap on wages so that young players would not necessarily get paid as much as their experienced counterparts. Whilst this made sense logically (if you’ve been playing for longer, you should get paid more), it probably wasn’t realistic – at least for the Messi-like wonderkids who, in real life, demand wages befitting their status as the most promising (and like Messi, sometimes already the best) players in the world. So, the first change we’ve made is to remove this cap. Wages are now dynamically linked to reputation – if a player is putting in the sort of performances to earn him a 5 star rep, then he’ll start asking for 5 star wages!

However, don’t worry; we don’t want to screw up the teams you’ve put together already so we’ll be introducing this change gradually. We’ve done this by making it so that a player’s next wage (or wage demand) can never be more than whatever is the higher of the following:

• His Current Wage multiplied by 3 (so if his current wage is 5k, this would be 15k).

or

• 10k above his Current Wage multiplied by 2 (again with 5k, this would be 20k).

Therefore a 5 star player currently on 5k would only ask for his next wage increase to be to a maximum of 20k – not quite 5 star wages straight away, although the wage demand after that will definitely start getting expensive! So if you’ve managed to build a team of 5 star wonderkids all on low wages, then congratulations for your achievements so far, but there will be some work ahead on keeping that team together!

Secondly, we’ve removed the effect of playing position on wage demand. Previously, strikers would ask for more than other positions, for example. However, this only makes sense if they bring greater benefits to the team such as shirt sales etc. but as that isn’t simulated in FML, we thought it better to simplify it. As before, it’s now purely linked to reputation. If a player is good enough, he’ll be asking for top dollar, whatever his position.

Also, there used to be some code that would make wage demands lag slightly behind reputations. I.E if a player gained reputation, then his wage demand wouldn’t immediately follow suit but would take a little while to ‘catch up’. This has been removed altogether to make wage demand more responsive to reputation changes and thus more responsive to performances on the pitch.

Finally, players will still demand more money the longer they spend at a top club, just like they do currently, so all-in-all life at the top won’t be a stroll!

These changes will simplify dramatically how wage demands currently work in game, making them much easier for you guys to understand, and as importantly, predict, in order to help manage your team.

[Tsakalaki]

The Youth Strike Back!

When we first started talking about Youth Academies back in January this year, prior to their release in the 1.4 update, they quickly became one of the most hotly anticipated new features that the game had ever seen.

With such expectations it’s not surprising that, after they arrived, they were subject to a lot of scrutiny. Many of you loved them; but some of you didn’t and told us as much in the forums. Well, we’ve been listening to all your feedback and are pleased to announce that in the next update we’ll see the first part of a two stage overhaul of the Youth Academy system that will see the system become more transparent, easier to use and fairer for all.

For now, we’ll be talking mainly about the first upcoming stage with only a little insight into what’s planned ahead.

Operation Youth Academy – Phase 1

If we were to summarise the changes in one sentence it would probably go something like this:

“We’ve re-designed the youth regeneration system to ensure that every Youth Academy receives an exact number of graduates over a season (rather than an estimate) alongside ensuring that a steady stream of free agents keep being produced all whilst making sure that a balance of Potential Ability is kept across the database.”

Ok, it was quite a long sentence but there it is. The old system worked well for those who had Youth Academies but it took away one of the most interesting parts of the games in finding a gem from the free transfer list before anyone else did. We want to bring that back.
Youth Academy

Spoiler: show

How does it work?

Before we get onto the free agent list though let’s cover off that first point first.

“We’ve re-designed the youth regeneration system to ensure that every Youth Academy receives an exact number of graduates over a season (rather than an estimate)”

This works as follows:

• The estimated number of graduates an academy receives over a season has been replaced with an exact amount. So a 5 star youth academy will get 16 players per season and a 1 star academy will get 4.
• Effectively the season will be divided into 4 drafts each lasting 7 days. On the last day of each draft all open academies will see a quarter of their expected number of graduates come through.
• Odd number graduates will see the last round of each draft producing slightly fewer players. For example, if you expect to get 10 players over a season you will get 3 players for drafts rounds 1, 2 & 3 and only 1 player in the last round.
• The youth academy panel now shows how many graduates you should get for the current round and on what date you will get them.

So no more queries or misunderstandings about how many graduates you should get. It’ll all be there right in front of you and easy to understand on the Youth Academy panel.

So what about free agents?

Free agents will now come through on a daily basis regardless of the number of youth academy graduates. And it won’t be just the dross either, there will be a good chance that the next Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi could well end up undiscovered by the Youth Academy system. Trawl through the free agent list, take a gamble or two and you could well end up with the next World Famous superstar for next to nothing but watch out – you won’t be the only one trying this!

Potential Distribution

One risk of allowing free agents to come through regardless is that having too many high potential youths in a gameworld risks tipping the balance of the player database. There needs to be bad players because otherwise how else can you tell the good players apart? To answer that we’ve simplified how Potential Ability is created. The main way we’ve done this is to no longer tie Potential Ability to nationality. No longer will high profile nations such as Brazil, Spain, and England etc generally produce the better quality players. The new system means that any nation could produce the next big star. This allows us to easier balance how many high potential players there are in a world alongside meaning that each gameworld will, over time, start to take on its own flavour. If loads of people decide that they want to build a Swiss academy, then the gameworld will slowly start to have more of a Swiss feel to it.

What’s next then?

That’s it for the first phase, but it’s not all we’ve got planned. At the moment, you’ve got your 5 star Youth Academy and you’ve got your 16 players arriving, on a plate, for you over the course of a season. Well, we want to add a bit more strategy to that so the next step for youth academies is to have a pool of players assigned at the beginning of each round. From this pool you will be able to select a number of these players to join your academy. However, you’ll only be able to take on your set amount (e.g. 5 star academy would have a max of 16 players) per season. This means you’ve got to make snap judgements on who you want to keep. Make the wrong decision and you could end up letting the next superstar slip through your fingers and onto the free agent list.

We won’t go into detail at the moment on how this is going to work now as we’ll save that for when we’re close to its release. For now though, the first phase is still a massive step forward. It makes the Youth Academy system more transparent and easy to understand whilst bringing back a key part of the game – finding those unknown superstars before anyone else does!










This Time it’s Social

Community has always been a major aspect of the Football Manager Live experience and now it is going to become even easier to share your moments of glory (and despair) with a wider audience than ever before.

In the next update, FML will be introducing YouTube and Twitter integration for the first time, allowing you to submit your match clips or news items directly to the web from the game client.
Upload 3D match clips to YouTube

Spoiler: show

Share Your Match Clips on YouTube

You’ll now be able to select your favourite clips, upload them directly to your YouTube account and share them with the world straight after the game.

Uploading your clips will be incredibly easy, via a new ‘Upload To YouTube’ option available when viewing back any match clip in the 3D match viewer. Clips can then be uploaded in a range of formats straight to your YouTube account, ready to be shared and compared with your friends and rivals alike.

Feed the World

As well as uploading your clips, major in-game news items will also now be able to shared straight to your Twitter account.

With the next update, your FML News Feed will feature a new ‘Twitter’ button alongside each item, which will allow you to post it straight onto your Twitter account. You can post the news item exactly as it originally appeared in your feed, or alternatively you will also have the option to edit the item before posting if you want to put your own spin on the news.

Get Uploading

You will have the option to store your YouTube and Twitter login details within your FML account should you wish, allowing you to upload from the game in two quick clicks. We will also be investigating the possibility of expanding such features further to include other social networks, such as Facebook, in the future.

This is an example upload from BETA gameworld Miller, recorded at the lowest (and fastest) quality, 360p.

[Tsakalaki]

Player Progression Q&A

Q: What goes in to developing a player and working out his progression in FML?

• The progression system in Football Manager Live is based on the FM system. Still, there are many different factors that all tie into how progression works in FML, which we’ll outline below.
  
  Players who are not considered to be in the top 60 best players at a squad will not be deemed as training due to passing the club’s training facilities ceiling. So progression will suffer for any of these players.
  
  Unlike FM, in FML managers don’t have the ability to hire coaches and change coaching schedules. So in FML, coaches and coaching schedules are all set to a normal default level which will allow players to progress.
  
  Each game month (which is equivalent to about 2-3 real days) players will go through their progression cycle. What happens first is the player’s training level is determined based on a number of factors for each training category (attacking, defending, ball control, and so on). The player’s mental traits such as determination, professionalism and ambition will affect these training levels as well as how much the player enjoys training the attributes in each category. Once this is calculated, it must meet a certain level or above to have some positive effects – if it doesn’t, it can have negative effects on attributes. This training level can be lower for younger players – as their attributes will be lower – so this allows them to still progress.
  
  The second part of progression goes through the players attributes and makes changes if and when necessary based on the training level and information about the player in question. The main factors are rate of improvement (which alters with age, playing time, morale, mental attributes). The better this is, the greater the positive effects will be. Much lower scores will have greater negative effects. This is used in combination with the training level above, the importance of each attribute to the players position (e.g. finishing will be more important for a striker) and training limits to produce an increase / decrease / no change amount for each attribute. At this point, a manager’s coaching skills are evaluated and used to adjust these changes where applicable. Of course, certain attributes are affected differently depending on a player’s age. For example, pace and acceleration are less likely to increase much after a player is into his 20’s.Similarly, some attributes may never be affected, such as natural fitness and determination.
  
  Once these attribute changes are made, the system adds up at the total of these changes and calculates how much current ability (CA) points they are worth and adds them to the players existing score for CA.

Q: Why does the progression rate for some players appear to decrease?

• The progression (or regression) of a player’s attributes is displayed on their profile page. A concern from some is why some players have orange arrows (indicating a slight negative movement). There are a couple of reasons why players may have orange arrows and all have existed since FML was first launched:
  
  Crossing an attribute threshold
  
  Often when a player is created, some of his playing attributes will sit on the threshold between two whole numbers. For example, if dribbling is 13.5, then it is displayed on the player’s profile as 14. However if it were to drop by 0.01 to 13.49 it will be displayed as 13. This is not normally a significant enough change to display an orange arrow and under any other circumstances would result in a yellow arrow being displayed. But the simple fact that the attribute has changed from a 14 to a 13 on the player’s attribute panel means it has to display a down arrow. This tiny amount of change is virtually insignificant in a match itself.
  
  Low training level for the attribute
  
  This was more of a problem a few versions back, when there wasn’t a specific training level set for a younger player to reach in order to have a positive effect. This shouldn’t be much of a case anymore, but can still occur if a player has poor attributes in a training category combined with poor mental traits, which could cause him to be unmotivated to train in that area.
  
  A player is close to reaching his peak or has already peaked
  
  Players continue training and can still have positive attribute changes once they are reaching the peak point of their career (which can vary in age from player to player). However, the player’s overall CA will stay the same or have little room to grow – due to the limit of his potential ability (PA). Therefore, in order to allow some attributes to increase further, it will start to cost the player in other areas of play. This effectively simulates that as a player that is getting older, his mental attributes will continue to grow but his physical attributes might start to decline.
  
  Sometimes small decreases can be seen across attributes after progression has taken place for a player. If the total of the positive changes that have been made doesn’t equate to a single CA point, but some attributes have progressed too high for the player’s CA, some attributes are brought down to balance the player back in line with his CA. These changes should be fairly rare throughout a player’s career. In the recent 1.6 release, a change was made so that the number of times this happens was reduced.
  
  A final other problem was that previously progression was too fast for younger players, causing some to reach their peak too early, which in turn lead to a lot more players showing down orange arrows earlier than expected. The underlying cause of this issue was resolved in the recent 1.6 update.

Q: Even youngsters with seemingly high potential appear to lose attributes at some point, despite the fact that they are gaining other attributes, how come?

• Some players may decrease slightly in some attributes over the course of their career, despite progressing well on the whole, but these will only be minor amounts. As explained above, there are a variety of reasons that could cause players to suffer slight set-backs in training or progression.

Q: Is the game reflecting real life football progression?

• Players can lose in attributes just like they can gain them. Generally, as players progress through their career the majority of their attributes should develop. But they can also lose attributes at certain points, which is arguably very realistic. Players are all different; some may lose physical attributes earlier than normal, some suffer injuries and longer spells without playing and such factors can impact progression. This happens in real life; some players don’t train so well some months or lose form. There are a number of reasons players could slightly dip in certain areas of their game and FML will reflect this in their progression.

Q: Is this realistic approach similar to the method used in FM then?

• The progression system in FML is based on the same system in FM, but there are some reasons why effects may be more or less noticeable in FML. The main reason is that there is no way to see minute decimal changes in players in FM, where only whole numbers are displayed. Another major difference is that in FM a manager can take control of training and coaches to try and minimize any negative effects and attempt to regain attributes in certain areas (or at least prevent them from dropping further).

Q: What are the current plans for the progression area of the game?

• Progression is a part of the game that we are always trying to evolve and make improvements in. We take into consideration feedback from the forums, beta testers and FML community at large. With FM2011 now released, we’ll be continuing to make the tweaks and changes necessary to keep FML up to speed in the future. When we do this we’ll also be reviewing bugs and other suggestions for improvement.