Staff: a feature evolution

In today’s Dev-Blog we want to show you what we have planned for the staff in the future. What we don’t like about the current staff system is the constantly sinking motivation that can only be countered by pay raises, which leads to constantly increasing staff expenses. We also want to put the staff management more into focus for the manager.

 GUnext Mental Coach

Efficiency vs. Motivation

The motivation will be replaced by the efficiency value. Every staff member has an ideal salary that is dependent on the qualification and experience. For example, if you pay your coach his ideal salary his efficiency will not decrease and stay at the current level. If you pay him too little, the efficiency will decrease over time. If you want to increase his efficiency, you have to pay him a salary that is above his ideal salary. As the ideal salary increases with higher qualification and experience you will have to keep a closer eye on your staff in the future.

                                                                                  GUnext Coach

Contract duration

Staff members will not stay with you forever anymore. They commit to a contract duration of a maximum of (around) 9 seasons. After that they leave and you have to hire a new employee. Applicants with a high starting qualification however will not agree to a long contract duration and are relatively expensive (as now).

                                                                    GUnext Physical therapist

EDIT: Staff Training

Training will stay pretty much the same. Premium account users will now also have the chance to adjust the training duration. Next to the standard duration of 10 days the training can also be set to 7 or 14 days, with adjusted effect.

The next chance for your veterans 

Like now you can find employees with employment ads and random job applications. There will now also be another way: Player-Coach and Player-Staff.

You have probably had to say a painful goodbye to one or more players that have been loyal players in your team for many years, just because they got too old. For your veterans there will now be a new way to stay with your club: You can prepare them for specific staff roles and then hire them for example as coach.

This is now it works: You can start preparing players from your team for a specific staff position once they turn 30. The player can still play in matches, but he also shows up in the staff section as “aspirant”. He does not have any effect yet, but he can be trained. During the training however he can not play in matches.

The staff skill of the aspirant depends on his player skills. Some personalities are especially suited for special staff positions and receive a bonus. After at least 3 months and at least one training session you can properly move him into his new position, for especially good conditions. Your old staff member on that position will automatically be dismissed.

Overview of the bonuses:

• Coach
• Depending on the player position the Coach’s personality is set:
• very offensive - Attacker
• offensive – Wing player
• balanced – Mid field
• defensive - Defender
• very defensive – Goal keeper
• Bonus for personality charismatic
• Assistant Coach
• Bonus for personalities aggressive or ambicious
• Physical therapist
• Bonus for personality diligent
• Mental coach
• Bonus for personalities balanced or fair
• Goal keeping coach
• Has to be goal keeper
• Youth coach
• Has to have been drawn from the team’s youth
• PR-Manager 
• Bonus for personality popular

                                                                      GUnext Fitness Coach

A final word 

Our decision on personalities as you can see above is, that we will keep the personalities. The community opinion was clearly leaning towards keeping them (Choices 1 and 2), plus, for us option 1 (Adjusting flexible and inflexible) is clearly the least labor intensive. This allows us to spend more time on other features. This means, the personalities will stay. However, we are not sure yet if we will perform a complete overhaul at a later time. 

Best regards,

Renke (Game Designer)

                                                                                GUnext Youth Coach

                        

Community Questions

Hi everyone

In today’s blog post I want to answer a few questions that you (the community) have asked in the last weeks. But first I want to introduce myself. My name is Robert and I am Product manager for goalunited. At the moment I take care of goalunited 2013 and make sure the game director can put all his energy into goalunited next. But now to your questions…

1.   Will there still be quadrants/sectors in the match calculation in goalunited next?

Yes, in goalunited next the field will still be split into sectors. Even though players will not be able to be placed freely on the pitch anymore, they will still be assigned to a sector. Here the players will have, as now, the most influence in the matches.

2.   Will the player personalities work the same way as right now?

Kind-of… As many of you have already noticed the personalities “flexible” and “inflexible” will not make much sense anymore with the new formations. Currently we are discussing three options:

Option 1: Adjust personalities

The personalities “flexible” and “inflexible” will be adjusted to the new system and kept. “Inflexible” would receive a bonus on all positions suitable for the player type. On all other positions it would receive a deficit.

“Flexible” would receive a bonus on specific positions in some formations. As this bonus would not be given in all formations, the personality would not have a deficit.

How those positions would be defined we will explain at a later time, if we choose this option. At that time we would also give you the bonus details. We also need to run more tests to make sure the balancing is right.

Option 2: Switch personalities

All “flexible” players would receive the personality “confident”. “Inflexible” would be turned into “aggressive”.

Option 3: Remove all personalities

Personalities would be removed completely from the game. This option would make the gameplay a lot easier for new managers, and help those players that don’t want to pay attention to the personalities.

No matter which option will be chosen, the personality system needs a big adjustment with goalunited next. But we will not be able to find the time to do this before the launch of goalunited next. It is not possible yet to tell you when and how we will adjust this game aspect.

From our point of view it would be best to remove all personalities from the game for now. But here we greatly appreciate your opinion. 

Which option would you prefer for the character customization?

3.   Will the sub-skills of the wing players lose a lot of their importance?

In comparison to the other player types the main skill of wing players has a much smaller effect (for example on the average strength). The sub-skills on the other hand have a much greater weighing. This right now makes it seem as though wing players are weaker than other player types.

This issue will be resolved in goalunited next. All player types will then have a main skill, a secondary main skill and two „sub-skills“, the weighing will be about equal for all player types.

This means that 2 sub-skills will lose their importance, while the main skill will become more important (for wing players).

4.   Which influence will energy and form have? (Those values were not shown on the overview we posted in the blog on April 26)

The influence of form, energy and endurance will not change in goalunited next. The design draft in the blog post only shows part of the screen. In the live version this screen will be “scrollable”. On the tablet you can “swish” the screen left and right, in the browser you can click left and right, to see all values. Overall the game overview will still show all known values.

5.   Will there be changes to the base strength calculation (Especially of the wing players)

In question 3 I have already answered this in part. The base strength will still use the same values. A small change will come though: The base will not go up in 0.2 point increments anymore, but in 0.1 increments.

6.   Will the position limits (no more than 7 players per position effective in training) be removed in goalunited next?

No, the limit of no more than 7 players per position without a training penalty will stay active in goalunited next. This will encourage balanced squads and prevent farm teams.

7.   Will goalunited next be a new game?

goalunited next will be an update for the game and all existing accounts. All of your clubs will stay as they are and can be played on the new version.

8.   Why is there only one trophy? (Shown in the published pictures)

All the screens we have shown you until now are pictures that we use to design a user friendly goalunited. None of them are final. Especially on things like the trophies we are simply using place holders. Those help us see what the design will look like for real accounts, without wasting time on details. So don’t worry, all of the trophies you have earned will stay!

I hope that those answers will help you answer your most important questions. We will keep answering community questions in the upcoming blog posts.

One more thing: in the picture you see the new mentor on the right. He is a forerunner of goalunited next and will soon also offer his helpful suggestions in goalunited 2013.

Best regards,

Robert (Product manager)