HTs on Global/Sorting

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AOW vs. AIM

31 From: HT-Bjorn To: 666kajet 653584.8, answering 653584.1 2003-11-14 18.42
There have been more factors considered as well. For instance, we'd somewhat rather encourage AOW than AIM because AIM tend to go along with a midfield with wingers playing towards middle, which we think have been used slightly too frqquently (compared to IRL and compared to how we get a broader variation of tactics). AOW on the other hand encourages the use of offensive/normal wingers wich is on the "wanted" list. Differently put, the AOW being slightly (very slightly) more effective in doing its thing than AIM is part of the "lessen the playmaking dominance" package. Not much, but then, the difference you mention between AIM and AOW isn't that much either.

32 From: HT-Bjorn To: dturnip 653584.20, answering 653584.18 2003-11-14 20.42
In a thread before these tactics came out (I think) he mentioned that the chance of an attack coming on the left right or centre was roughly equal.

I have never said that.

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Cards

43 From: HT-Hasse To: fidemaster (2053056.20), answering 2053056.19 17-11-2004, at 15:04
Well, I retired after the 2000 season so I can not say for sure what has happened after that. Another problem is that each country has its own translation of the original text and that might result in slight variations due to language issues.

We were to tick a box on the matchreport for each yellow card and we had two boxes to choose from:

1. Something which could be translated as "foul play" or similar. This included bad tackles, pushes, handball and all other physical offences during play.

2. "Unsportsmanlike conduct", which included things like protests, bad comments to other players, sabotage of free kicks etc, diving, exaggerated celebrating of goals, wearing of dangerous jewellery etc.

Leadership / Bob / TS

44 From: HT-Tjecken To: Sb8heand 2047484.17, answering 2047484.15 16-11-2004, at 12:37
Correct, there is in fact one single player with excellent leadership. And he was created the "natural way", so there is a chance for a player to get excellent leadership - even if it's a very, very, very, very, very, very little chance.

46 From: HT-Hasse To: Tjosan (2047484.122), answering 2047484.117 16-11-2004, at 17:18
Whoever tried to deny Bob was tweaked? None of the persons present at the time had anything to do with that fact though.

Bob was pulled like any other youth but was later tweaked (as an Easter egg) when it comes to his beloved team member thing.

47 HT-Hasse

More or less correct but the fact that it used to be my player had no part in it. Neither had I any part in giving him this face.

Basically the story was that when the player faces were introduced those in the HT-team who worked with that wanted 2-3 players who were special for some reason, to give them special faces as a sort of easter-egg. This happened a while after the introduction of the faces. With Wozniak being the first non-Swedish superstar in the game he was an obvious choice. Especially since he also played in the very first World Cup final.

The other players were Bob Sunesson and Marc O'Farrel. I don't know the story about O'Farrel.

Trading + Team spirit

48 HT-Hasse
The TS penalty was introduced to penalise daytraders.

Actually it was not. It had nothing at all to do with daytrading. That it hurt some kinds of daytrading was just a side-effect.

Ok that is fine, but can you explain what was the reason it was introduced?
Surely not just for realism?

Yup. That was the sole reason. This was also stated in the information that was published at the time.

secondary skills

49 HT-Hasse
(it staat voor secundaries)

I don't know the current parameters of the match engine (mainly because I do not want to) but in my personal experience it has a lot more impact even today than what people generally think.

When I start restructuring my team (which will happen pretty soon) I will build a team which is quite different from the one I have today.

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league system

55 HT-Tjecken over het uitbreiden van het aantal divisies in (2035249.23):

I will not go in to details, but there are some really good reasons why we can't change the series system without doing a total redesign. A total redesign is not something we plan to do as it will be very time-consuming. Very. Or in other words so very time-consuming that it's in fact impossible.

Rent a player

56 By: HT-Hasse To: Helker (2184210.33) as reply to 2184210.1 14-12-2004 at 18:03 Over het verhuren van spelers

Suggestions with a lot of thought behind is great! However, when it comes to this specific case the basic idea is about as old as Hattrick itself. There are a number of reasons why this is extremely unlikely to ever be realised. First of all it opens up for abuse in several ways.

The biggest reasons though are the ones below:

• It would seriously hurt the market. It would make it a lot more difficult to sell certain types of players.

• It would benefit the extremely rich clubs, who can afford buying lots of players and then rent them to others and get them trained. After that they can recall them and sell them with an enormous profit.

• It would be a disaster for not so rich clubs. They can not afford to buy a lot of players and rent them to others. Furthermore these are the clubs who have average players for sale. Those players would become virtually impossible to sell. Those teams would be left behind for good.

57 By: HT-Hasse To: Allanamin 2184210.36 as reply to 2184210.34 14-12-2004 at 18:24 Who would rent his players to someone if they did not get trained? I would certainly not do it. Every week the player gets older and is not trained properly he loses value.

It would also still be devastating to the market. Instead of buying players lots of users would rent players.

friendly cups

58 By: HT-Hasse To: ricouryves 2190245.5 as reply to 2190245.1 15-12-2004 at 20:22 Het gaat hier over het ondersteunen van friendly cups in hattrick.

Hattrick used to have a system similar to that but it did not work since a lot of organizers did not take the full responsibility to manage their cups properly. Starting cups was obviously more fun than actually taking care of them. It is highly unlikely to come back in any form.

59 By: HT-Hasse To: MonsieurBon 2190245.9 as reply to 2190245.6 15-12-2004 at 20:50 Because it creates more trouble than it adds to the game.

That people do not play friendlies or do not use all supporter features does not hut anyone else than themselves. When someone starts a cup and then abandons it hurts others and creates extra work for our GMs.

It was removed for a reason and will most likely never return

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newbies and new features

96 From: HT-Tjecken To: Iedereen (2349939.141), answering 2349939.132 17-01-2005, at 13:07 These recent changes will not hurt newbies at all, I think these changes will give newbies a much better game experience. It might be harder for them to expand their arena, but making a game easy is not the formula for a good game experience. And game experience is very important, and in fact what this is all about.

It is a better experience to start out small and grow than starting big and shrink. It's a better game experience to be forced to choose between different strategies/actions for your teams growth than having one obvious strategy/action to "choose". So even if the game may be a _little_ more difficult for newbie’s (because they start with 100 supporters and the fact that it will be more costly to expand your arena, even if the need for expanding a 12k arena isn't that big the first seasons), they will for sure gain from a better game experience.

What about the game experience these changes have on our "old" user then? Well, it's not as dramatic as for the newbie’s, but it may force you to think twice before expanding your arena. The costs side of the economy haven't been changed much since the start of Hattrick, which in fact may have hurt the game experience because salaries are the only cost today that really counts. The changes we've made which affects the cost side lately have all been adding game experience, just think of the "change coach" feature today compared to the old one, and we hope that the increased arena expanding costs also will give you a slightly better game experience. Does this mean that more costs will be increased? Well, maybe - but we will announce such things well in advance on My Hattrick.

Finally, I heard some of you saying things about the economy will be even worse because of this. Let me just remind you all about that the economy is growing (as I stated a few weeks ago) really good, and the new public (and fan) formulas will make it grow even faster as spectator income will be much higher than before.

starting conditions

97 From: HT-Hasse To: mind_hunter666 (2359874.4), answering 2359874.1 17-01-2005, at 19:18 Every time something in the game changes someone will gain and someone will lose. The only way to avoid this would be to never change anything at all. Using that principle Hattrick would still be played only in Swedish, with a couple of thousand users only.

On the other hand there are lots of things which are better for you who started now than for others who started previously. For instance you start with an equivalent of 300,000 EURO. When I started I got 75,000 EURO. I also got a smaller stadium (6000) and worse players.

And yes, you start with 100 supporters. But you also start with a lot more generous supporters than those who started a season ago. Most of them have lost a couple of hundred supporters. You will most likely gain quite a lot of supporters right from the start.

98 From: HT-Tjecken To: Pranas (2349939.188), answering 2349939.150 17-01-2005, at 15:58 The difference in when you started playing have always mattered, and there is now way to change that from happen if we don't like a game where all new starting teams will be just as good as the best ones in the league. Time does matter, and will always do so - yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Also, I don't agree in your predictions about the gap will be bigger. It may be more expensive to expand your arena, but new users will also start with an arena almost twice (yes, it's almost doubled!) as big as before. With the increase ticket prices they have a chance to make even more money than "older newbie’s", and at the same time be able to invest money in your players (which in fact is really funny, especially for a newbie).

As I said in my earlier post, making a game as simple as possible to reach the skill as older teams have is not the same thing as a good gaming experience. It may be your opinion, but not our. The best game experience is to start with something small and develop it with your own hands (and brain!) to something great, and it should not be as playing a self playing piano.

"feature" vs. "bug fix"

99 From: HT-Tjecken To: Pranas 2349939.208, answering 2349939.206 17-01-2005, at 17:57 Yes, sometimes we don't have the same opinion as some of our users. That doesn't mean we don't listen to users. That's in fact two different things.

And if you, or anyone else, see every new feature or every change to the game as "fixing an error", I really recommend you to look at things a little bit differently. Just because we change things don't mean they were wrong before, but we found a way to make them better. We do make mistakes too of course, after all we're human beings, but we don't make mistakes all the time.

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scoring a goal

104 HT Bjorn: The difference between one team's attack ratings and another team's defence ratings, says nothing definite about the chances to score goals. Defence ratings can only be compared with other defence ratings, attack ratings only with other attack ratings.

So you could say: when I met team A, they had poorer defence ratings than team B, (I had the same ratings) - But I still scored more against B. That’s strange.

But you can’t say: I had titanic defence, while he only had magnificent attack. Titanic is better than magnificent, so it has to be a bug that he scored against me.

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general statement

146 From: HT-Bjorn To: Iedereen (2636166.29), answering 2636166.1 25-02-2005, at 20:28 Everyone,

Let me state here and now, once and for all:

• I have not stated, and I will not state, whether the game engine is linear or not.

• In a matter such as this one, there are very few members even of the HT-team who knows for sure exactly how it works. Remember that not every word spoken by a person with HT-prefix should automatically be considered an official statement representing the whole HT-team. (Although, you may consider this particular posting an official statement from the only one who knows for sure about this particular question :).

• The Match Engine works exactly as it is intended in this respect (whether that be linear or non-linear). This also implies that there is no reason to suggest fixes for this or that, because we are well aware of the implications of how it works, and have designed the game engine as a whole based on that design.

• I will (probably) not answer any follow-up questions in this or other threads about this matter, beyond what I state above.

hidden skills

147 HT-Hasse: In your opinion, about how many hidden skills are there for a player?

None. And we have stated that very clearly numerous times

possession

149 From: HT-Tjecken To: redrobert (2942648.123), answering 2942648.109 19-04-2005, at 10:19 the possession that is mentioned is from the 45th/90th minute. that's what ht-bjorn is saying and everything i observed so far proves this right.

That's correct.

150 From: HT-Tjecken To: Ratsia 2942648.125, answering 2942648.124 19-04-2005, at 11:03

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And it's looking more and more like it is too non-linear, so that even a small difference in possession averages a huge difference in how the chances are allocated.

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For example, the difference in that particular match was by no means small. Elkabong's opponent had roughly 35% higher midfield rating. This is roughly the same as difference between average div III and div I teams in relatively established countries (difference measured by Hatstats, which is linear function of ratings and thus comparable to studying the difference of individual ratings). Yet, like you said, Elkabong was a favourite in that match, even though his midfield was in a sense two division levels below the opponent's midfield and the only part of the ratings that was better for him was attack.

So, the question is "what is a small difference". I would never call 30-50% difference small, regardless of the rating in question. Getting 30-50% advantage on some area requires significant investments. Assuming identical formations (and other variables) this means roughly 30-50% better players. For example, "excellents instead of passables" or "supernaturals instead of outstandings". IMO those are huge differences.

A 10% difference indeed is quite small, and in case of midfield it will give 52% possession and thus probably on average slightly less than 6 chances for the dominating team. This will not be a decisive thing in the match. Even 20% difference, which is not that small anymore, will only give 55% possession and probably 6-7 chances. It's still relatively easy to counter that by dominating other ratings.

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Fix it up so that it is linear or at least close to it.

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It could be tweaked a bit, but a linear system would be quite catastrophical. If the scoring probabilities would be linear as well, there really wouldn't be anything for us to play, because it would not matter how you position your players (strong side versus weak or vice versa and so on). Linearizing midfield alone would not cause exactly the same effect, but it would make midfield have almost no value at all if scoring formula remained the same as it is now.

Very nice post in a very nice thread I must say. I love to read those threads like this where users really try to discover new stuff instead of just stating the same old myths again. All users participating and reading this thread will/can actually even learn a lot from it (apparently even including elkabong this time :)).

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Leadership

154 HT-unknown Ex-coaches still lose leadership

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health updates and training

Keywords: (training), (health update)

From:	HT-Hasse		(5124789.20) as reply to (5124789.5)
To: TommieW			8-2-2006 at 21:16
In every country there's first the daily health update, and directly after that the training. That is incorrect. In fact there is no way of knowing which is updated first for a specific player.

Keywords: (training), (health update)

From:	HT-Hasse		(5124789.22) as reply to (5124789.21)
To: TommieW			8-2-2006 at 21:20
Then I stand corrected. I always assumed the health update would be finished before the training starts (since it doesn't take that long and starts earlier) To be quite clear it actually used to work that way once, but that was a very very long time ago (my guess is 2 years+).

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game version

Keywords: (Hattrick version)

From:	HT-Jonas		(7146698.89) as reply to (7146698.85)
To: roselan			18.10.2006 at 20.03
Actually 7.1 or something like that, but never mind that :) /HT-Jonas - Lead Game Designer "Adding a famous name to a quote makes the quote look more reliable" - Albert Einstein