Clown
A clown can be identified among the players of a team as a popular guy that has solid leadership.
Although a section of the rules formerly claimed that a "clown" would help maintain team spirit, the Hattrick developers have confirmed that no such effect exists. Anyway, a coach with good leadership was generally considered to be more important to team spirit management than the player with the highest leadership on the team (the team leader), even among those who believed in the effect of a clown.
However, the Hattrick Mythbusters editorial that dispels the myth of the clown also dispels the myth of team leaders and of anticlowns.
The original rules section read as follows:
| This is an extract from the Hattrick rules, Chapter 19 | |
| Football's not only numbers and mathematics. It's about psychology as well. Your team has to want to win; they have to put in the effort; they have to believe in themselves. Hattrick tries to simulate this in different ways. Events, and above all match results, affect the team psychology. Also, all players have a "personality". They can be nice or nasty, leaders or loners, temperamental or calm, or why not cheaters or something else? Leadership and agreeability are only applied to the player with the highest leadership factor, "the team leader". If this person is agreeable, the team atmosphere will be as well, and if he's nasty you might end up with a really nasty atmosphere in your squad. A coach with strong leadership abilities might counteract a disagreeable "team leader" amongst the players. | |
The impact of coach leadership was described as follows:
| This is an extract from the Hattrick rules, Chapter 16 | |
| Essentially, the coach has three abilities:
[...]
| |
Clown Factories
In the early days of the game, some managers developed real clown factories, team where other users go to find quickly a clown player for sale. As the manual itself certified that they were really working, there was no question that every team needed one. By searching specifically for clowns and then using daytrading, the clown factories became a profitable business. Players with low skills and low TSI were sold at high price.
At that time, other users felt that searching and acquiring clowns was a waste of time and HT-money. One such user, Laurghita, manager of the team Mormoetii, started to bought clowns and immediately fired them. He was also known as The Clown Slayer.
The myth of the myths turned out to be false, despite the fact that even the rules claimed the opposite. it could have been a planned implementation which hit the rules but was never realized. The the rule section about this was removed.
Anticlown
After the clown, his opposite was called the anticlown, a nasty fellow with solid leadership.
Even if not mentioned in the manual, there was a widespread belief that the team leader would affect team spirit, so if that player were an anticlown, then there would be a very negative effect on the team spirit. That days it was not uncommon to see a player with great skills been sold at low price just for his character and for the fear to have an anticlown in squad.
