Up and about for next season

	This is an official Hattrick Editorial
	originally published 2010-10-05 10:30:00	by HT-Tjecken

 
We can look forward to a quite calm season’s end this time. The only things that will happen are two things we gave you a heads-up about last season:

• General training removal
• Salary adjustment for older players

You will find all the details inside, as well as some background and other development news.

When I started playing Hattrick back in 1998 and for some years thereafter, having players older than 26 was considered foolish and training general was a waste. That’s quite a contrast to today, where a very good strategy has been to use older players (who are cheap salary-wise) and constantly train general to keep their form up. Actually, this strategy has been too powerful.

Even though I find it a little bit amusing that general training and old-timers have made a journey from unwanted to wanted, I have to say that oldies being a superior strategy is just as much fun as players being considered dead at the age of 26, ie Not that fun at all.

Using older players will continue to be a viable choice, but with these two changes for next season we will cut some edges of this currently overpowered strategy. As we have said many times before, there should be many ways to success, but none of them should be allowed to be superior.

General training removal

At the start of next season you will not be able to train general anymore, you will have to choose another training option. While we like the thought of managers being able to manage players’ form in some fashion; it shouldn’t be possible to do it constantly week after week. As such, we will remove this option for now, but it may return in another form some time in the future.

Regarding excellent form

For quite some time now, it hasn’t been possible to reach excellent form without training general. This will now change, and players will once again be able to reach excellent form.

Salary adjustment for older players

We will increase salaries for older players (=29 or older) in two steps. Currently older players get a yearly age discount of 1/8 of their normal salary. Next season it will be 1/9 instead, and the season after that 1/10.

This means players will not really get a higher salary (as long as his skills are the same). They will just get a lower age discount than usual at their next salary update (on their birthday).

To illustrate: Adam Adams is 28 years old and his salary is 80.000. Currently his yearly age discount is 1/8 (80000/8=10000). This means his salary would be 70.000 when turning 29 and 60.000 when turning 30 etc.

Using the same example with 1/9 yearly discount (=8889), means a salary of 71.111 when turning 29 and 62222 when 30. And with 1/10 yearly discount (=8000) it means 72.000 when turning 29 and 64.000 when 30.

The last discount is currently given to player when turning 35. Next season, it will be when turning 36 and from there on when turning 37. Note that any skill changes affect a player’s normal salary, and thus also the age discount.

Easy way to know next season salary for older players

If you just want to know how this will affect your older players’ salaries next season, the above may sound a bit complicated. But there is a simple way to know:

Going from 1/8 to 1/9 next season means in practice that old players will lower their salaries by about 10%. This regardless if they are 29, 32 or 35 or how big their salaries are, it’s true for all old players. If a player’s salary is 100.000 before his birthday next season, it will be around 90.000 after it.

Going from 1/9 to 1/10 the season after that means in practice the same thing; about 10% lower salaries regardless of how old the player is. If the salary is 90.000, it will be 81.000 afterwards.

Upcoming staff system

In my editorial last season I wrote a few words about the new staff system which is currently being designed. Quite logically many became curious about when it will be introduced. And even though I can’t give you any definite date, the following news may ease some of your curiosity:

The new staff system is the next major game reform to be implemented. At the earliest, the new staff system will be introduced the season after next one. However, it might also be introduced rather later than that. We will keep you updated.

General development news

We have now relocated to Malmö and are currently setting up our new organization. It will take some time to get up to speed, and this is one of the reasons why we can’t set a definite date for the new staff system yet. It’s simply too hard to say how much we will be able to take on during the autumn.

We also want to hold off from bigger game stuff for a while, partly because we've recently made quite a few changes and it makes total sense to let these things sink in first. And partly because we have other open projects (not core game stuff) that we really need to finish now before we start up anything new.

During this autumn, concluding these open projects (such as CHPP for example) will be prioritized, and we will also give some extra attention to fixing the smaller things which have been put on hold whilst we do other “more important” things.