Wednesday 28 August 2013

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.


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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.


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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).


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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


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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)




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