Youth squads and double spectator weekend

Double spectator weekend

Saturday and Sunday this weekend (17th and 18th of November), there will be twice as many spectators at all matches.

You must of course have enough seats in your stadium, otherwise you will miss out on the extra income.

Youth Squads

Youth squads are moving closer. It's no secret that the scale of the changes it has required in nearly every system in the game to make it possible for a club to have more than one squad has been far greater than we could have expected.

With so many changes that reach every corner of the game, the requirements for testing and preparation are equally high. The last few months have gone almost exclusively with tests and the preparatory database changes. We had to implement a hybrid version of the game, where all current functionality uses the new database structure and logic with regards to squads.

All clubs in the game now have a hidden senior squad that players, vifa points, stadiums, etc. are attached to. Trades, transfers, trophies, matches, season updates, and much more now use the new squad data under the bonnet. The fact that the game already uses the new data means that the release of youth teams should be far less risky.

The beta period will be where we'll polish the gameplay and balance factors around economics, training, mood effects, player slots, etc.

The starting point when the beta starts will be that the senior and youth squads will each have room for 22 players.

Having 44 slots in total may sound like too many, but we have a solution for that.

If we reduce the number of slots by too much, it can quickly get too cumbersome to trade players and draw talents simply due to a lack of space. On the other hand, we also know that there were many who thought it was a bad idea when we increased the number of slot from 25 to 30.

However, the new mood system provides us with a tool that allows us to provide space for moving players in and out of the club while avoiding clubs becoming 100% self-sufficient with players.

In the new mood system, you can no longer use the well-known cheap trick of putting youth players in at the last minute of the match, if you're ahead to get a mood boost. In the future, the total number of minutes of playing time will be the determining factor for how much a player's mood increases - a single minute on the pitch won't do much.

In balancing the mood effect, we'll ask this question: "If you play 30 matches per week, how many players should you be able to keep 100% satisfied at once?".

Initially, we have set this at 15 players. With 2 squads this means that in total, 30 players can be satisfied at the same time. This way, it doesn't matter that you can have up to 44 players, as only a maximum of 30 will be happy and train efficiently.

That may be a bit too much, but that's what the beta period will clear up.