Assistant Manager / Player Auctions / Match Engine Improvements

Hi everyone

We’re doing a mid-month update this month as we’ve got a number of fixes/improvements that are ready to deploy now that improve the gameplay experience, and we’ve decided to get these in asap rather than waiting until the end of the month. We are also trying to get the game to a state where we can actively try and push for more users asap.

There’s a series of improvements to the brand new Assistant Manager feature. The changes are in response to feedback received from the userbase, as well as taking into account the data for how the feature is being used.

Having more direct pvp competition for player signings as well as more choice of players to sign is something that many people have asked for so we’ve made some changes to push the game more in that direction. In particular, only being able to sell players for 50% of transfer value when no transfer bid has been received for them was particularly punishing for those who aren’t particularly good (or interested) in squad management. Increasing this to 75% is hopefully a better overall balance for not punishing these managers, whilst at the same time still giving meaningful benefits to those who are active in the squad management side of the game.

The couple of match engine player behaviour improvements help a lot with the overall flow of matches.

There’s also quite a few bug fixes that we wanted to get into the game asap.

Note: items below labelled with a “^” means this change will take effect starting at midnight UTC tonight.

Assistant Manager Changes

• Assistant Manager no longer prevents you from playing other match types when you have overdue matches, unless it is the final day of the league period
• Assistant Manager can now start playing matches for any clubs whose manager hasn’t logged in for 10 consecutive days, starting from the very beginning of each league period
• Better balanced league period distribution of Assistant Manager match requesting (far less back end heavy)

Transfer System Changes

• Players can now be sold for 75% of value when no transfer bid has been received for them that day
• Balancing changes to player valuations ^
• Balancing changes to starting bid for Player Auctions (all bids made today before the update have been removed)
• Increased amount of players that are part of the Player Auctions each day ^
• The players that are part of the Player Auctions each day now shuffle around more to create more variation in players on the list on a day to day basis ^
• Min(imum bid) column added to the Player Auctions page

Match Engine Changes

• Balancing changes to dribbling behaviour (defensive role players now attempt dribbles less)
• Balancing changes to passing behaviour (less long range passes end up going out of play)
• Fixed bug that caused substitution icons not appearing correctly in some situations

Other Changes

• Balancing changes to Financial Stability club ranking metric ^
• League Results widget for the weekly league tables now only show results that pertain to clubs involved in that weekly league rather than for all clubs in the division
• The Overall Standings screen now includes a Results tab that shows results from all leagues in a tier
• Squad Layout now has improved sorting order logic for Positions (sorts by rank/side rather than alphabetically)
• Order of position icons for players now shows in order from left to right of most defensive to most attacking and left then centre then right
• Fixed club logos not displaying correctly on custom sorted league tables
• Updated design of match notification window (that appears bottom right)
• Fixed club logos not displaying correctly on the match notification window
• The League Fixtures widget on the home layout now always shows days and hours remaining in the league period window (rather than only showing hours in the final days)
• Fixed Club Rankings text not appearing correctly on first load sometimes
• Fixed club logos not displaying correctly on match welcome panel on the left side of the screen
• Fixed rare bug that caused the match fixtures/results widget not displaying WDL icons for matches that have been played
• Updates to Portuguese translations