Hattrick United

So, did we manage to complete the new invite system and take it all the way from idea to finished feature on this camp? The answer is: Yes, almost. It’s not really in releasable shape, it certainly needs some polishing here and there (hence the almost). But we got all pages done and it worked.

When we started working on this the first day of the camp, we didn’t really know if the stuff we came up with would be worth keeping in the end. It’s really an enhanced tempo compared to the daily situation, and you don’t have much time to think about different things (or to make studies etc) - you just have to make decisions on the fly. And code while decisions is being made. But when the time was out and we looked at what we got -we felt  it’s definitely worth keeping. And releasing it.

So, all in all it was a great weekend. And in case you’re wondering what we did besides working (and enjoying some nice food and wine); we played games. Surprise, eh? For this trip we couldn’t bring any big board game, but we played a game called Resistance a couple of times. And another game called Poo quite a lot (I guess you can figure out what that game is about…).

Being back at the office now we want to give this new invite system some polish, to give it the look it deserves, and there are some more functionality we want to include as well. Because not including it now would simply not be a wise decision. So this week we will do just these things; polish it and include the functionality we want to add. And then test it of course. We did actually have other plans for this week, but we feel we better get this done while we’re at it. Because it’s worth it.

And now for something completely different…

Code camp.

With the first version of Tournaments done and before we start working on the next bigger project, we’ve relocated ourselves for a code camp over the weekend.

Dev campers in action. From left to right: Johan, Erik (barely shown), Klas (more or less hidden), Chris, Ulf (well, his back at least), Bodin (hidden behind Ulf), Jakob, Klaus, Aartspam, Mammo, Michael and Gusy (temporarily next to Michael, her original spot is in the middle of the table between Aartspam and Mammo)

What we want with this camp is not to build something big, but to build something new from idea to finished feature within these days. Naturally, this something should be nice and useful. And of course, we also want to have a good time together and have fun along the way. That’s just as important I think.

As you might have guessed from the latest news announcement, we’ve done some fixing and tweaking with our invite system. But to the honest, these fixes don’t make invite system good enough. And there are no fixes or tweaks that will make it good enough either. It’s just not…good, fact is it’s quite the opposite. So, with this in fresh mind – we decided to have a go on a new invite system. You know, a user-friendly one.

It feels like we’ve come a long way today, so I got good hopes that we’ll have ourselves a better invite system at the end of the weekend.

(As I know some of you probably will ask what our next (bigger) project is, you will get information about that quite soon. Rest assured.)

So the Supporter feature we’ve been working on for while hit Stage for testing earlier this week, and while it’s not exactly common procedure to share any information about features being tested on Stage – I thought I should do just that. Because this is not just another Supporter feature, it’s much bigger than that.

This feature is called Tournaments.
You can say that Tournaments are the unofficial club competitions of Hattrick: You can play with your first team without risk of injuries or red cards that could affect your regular matches, and you can play against the people you want. Supporters can create (or join) a tournament, and non-Supporters can also join in for the cost of some credits. Tournament matches are played once a week, on Mondays.

A little bit more detailed tournament matches will use the same match data as regular matches. So your players’ current form, skills, experience, injury status etc on the match day will be used. The same goes for your team’s formation experience. Whether your current team spirit and confidence will be used (or a fixed value) it’s still very much up for discussion though. Tournaments will have their own card status, so any red-carded player in normal Hattrick will still be able to play tournament matches.

Tournament matches don’t count for training, nor do they give any experience (player or formation). Easily put, nothing is saved after the match into normal Hattrick. Moreover, there are no injuries in tournament matches and any card a player gets will only count for matches in the tournament. All in all, this means you can use your best players without risking anything, making friendly cups truly competitive. And may I say more fun and challenging as well?

What’s important to be aware about is that what we’re doing now is the basic version, which will be included in the Supporter package. The cup format will be league with playoff, for either 4 or 8 teams. A tournament for 4 teams will take 4 weeks to complete (5 weeks for 8 teams) and you can participate in one tournament at a time.

If this becomes successful, which we really hope and think it will, we plan to add more options in Hattrick Gears in that case. Such as more cup formats, bigger cups, single matches, more tournaments and so on.

There’s a lot more to say about tournaments, but these are the most important things. And you know, I have to hold on to some exclusive stuff for the release material as well.

About the release, there is not date set yet. It all depends on how the testing proceeds and the feedback we’ll get. So far, however, the feedback we’ve received has been very good. Actually, very very good. I would say it’s likely that this will be the best feature ever.

So, is there too much random in the match engine? To be honest, it’s impossible to answer on as it’s very subjective. There is no right or wrong here, it really depends on what you prefer (which may not be what the guy next to you prefer). But lets make an attempt to break things down a bit at least.

First we have to separate “real random” from what one could call “feeling of random”. Each week more than 1 million matches are played in Hattrick. The vast majority of them are “normal”, but these matches never get recognized. Quite naturally, I mean why would they? Still, you have to remember them as well.

But of course, every week there will be some few matches which are “unnormal” – and they will be recognized. A lot. And after a while recognizing matches like these, you will start to believe that there is a lot of random in the match engine. And each time you get to hear about another one, it will add to this feeling.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not blaming you for feeling things the wrong way – absolutely not. In my belief feelings are what’s important in games and what you should take seriously. But when we talk about this topic we have to try to separate these two from each other, as it’s two separate things. And that any attempt of curing will fail if we don’t know what we’re supposed to cure.

Ok, some facts about “real random” then: During the years we’ve deliberately decreased the random factor a couple of times. In all honesty, there’s also been cases where a feature has affected random as a side effect, and in some cases increased the random factor somewhat. But all in all, fact is that the random factor has been decreased over the years and that ratings are much more important these days.

There also been user studies supporting this, a while ago a user compared the number of “surprise matches” (taken from Alltid) from season to season, and there were indeed fewer cases of surprise matches in present times than in past times. Another user compared Hattrick matches compared to real life football, which naturally is in a way impossible to do but nevertheless very interesting. The result? Hattrick matches had fewer surprises than real life football.

But even though these things say there is less random in the game, the feeling you get from reading the forums is the total opposite. And it seems each time we’ve decreased the random factor in the game (and announced it), it seems this feeling gets bigger. And when you think about it, it’s perhaps not that strange: Because when we say something has been decreased – people start to look more intense on this and especially notice examples of the total opposite.

There is also one thing more that is important to be aware about. Teams are much more matured today compared to the past, we have a lot of more matches where team strengths are leveled and almost equal. And as a result, you may feel that random has a more decisive role.

To conclude: The random factor in the match engine is smaller today compared to the past, but the feeling of random in the game has increased (in my belief). And if we should learn something from the past, it’s that a real decrease of random in the game engine doesn’t necessarily mean users will feel it’s less random – it can actually have a fueling effect (I would actually say that the last time we decreased it, it had just that effect). So, before we do anything about the “real random” we should do something about how you experience random instead. To explain it better, to make you see what’s (un)luck and what really wasn’t. That’s where we have to start, and I think we will be able to have something to show you during this year.

At the end of the day I personally think the amount of random (real random) is at a pretty good level, in case you’re wondering. The real challenge for us lies within explaining it better and making it feel more logical, and I would also say that we probably will have to look at the match engine in regard to leveled/equaled teams at some point. But lets take it one step at a time. And remember, no matter what will happen and how much random decreases – there will still be surprising results. And they will be talked about.

Winter in Sweden in general means a temperature below zero and snow. I like that. It also means colds, fevers, flus and other diseases. I like that less.

For my own part I haven’t picked up anything so far (which is normal as I very rarely get sick), however you can’t say the same about my kids. Kids also have this tendency of putting these disease “records” on repeat, they just go round and round and…you get the picture. So, the last couple of weeks it feels like I’ve been at home taking care of sick kids just as much as I’ve been at work, and I know more of my colleagues have shared the same experience lately. Or been sick themselves.

But this week I made it down to Malmö at least. Among other things we had a bigger meeting around the new Supporter feature I mentioned in my last blog post. We’ve ran into some technical problems with it (or rather things related to it), which have delayed the whole project. And are still delaying it, even though I think we’re out of the dark tunnel now. But it will not be ready for Stage tests this month, which was our plan.

I also sat down with Klaus to talk about the state of the Hattrick economy. As you know, we constantly monitor the global economy as it’s not self regulating, and it’s one of Klaus’ tasks to collect information and analyze it. As it is, the average team is making a surplus every week and the surplus right now is about the same as it was at the same time last season.

However, as it looks the average team’s surplus will become smaller for each week from now on, which of course isn’t a healthy situation in the long run. Prices on the transfer is also falling (as a result of the increased training speed some seasons ago), and while a price decrease was something that has been rather good for the game overall –  it can naturally not go on forever.

All in all, there’s no need for any immediate actions. But for the season after next (the one starting in June), we will most likely have to take action. And if our predictions are correct, you’ll get more info about this on editorial space during next season.

Whatever happens in the Hattrick office stays in the Hattrick office? Well, not necessarily. Here’s what’s been happening (and happens) behind the curtain lately:

First we have spent some time on our internal bug reporting system, as it wasn’t in line with how we’re working anymore. The background here is that we’re aiming on becoming better and more efficient on handling bugs and similar issues, but we realized that we would never reach that aim with a tool that is very inefficient to work with. So even though this meant working with the backend (which is not really the general focus right now), it just needs to get done. And we believe it will pay off in the end as well.

There is still some things left to do in this area as well before we can use our upgraded tool for real, but at least we’re getting closer and closer to that date.

We have also started working on new stuff for Supporter, to strengthen our Supporter package. I will come back with more info regarding this work in January, when I also expect it to hit Stage for testing.

And personally I’ve started to prepare coming sprints (=task/project we focus on for a certain period of time), writing specs and letting my creativity loose a little – which feels good to start with after my parental leave. This said, the board’s decisions about the Supporter format might have an effect on what the development team needs to focus on early next year, and the board haven’t finalized their discussions yet and reached a decision (it’s not that far away as I understand though). But with this in mind, I’ll hold on further information about these sprints until the board has made their decision and I know more about how the upcoming schedule will look like.

And with that I have only one (or two) more thing to add:

Merry Christmas and a happy new year! I hope you all will have a splendid holiday. See you next year!

Lately we have spend a whole lot of time to fix the problem with the constant match delays, which have haunted you for a while now. And I can  now glady say that these problems should be out of the world, and your matches should start on time from now on.

What we’ve done is a lot of site optimization. Because it’s often not just one culprit or one reason to why delays like this happen, it’s many small things which build up and together cause delays to happen.

But with the optimization we’ve now done, the site looks faster than ever. Which feels great, as you now get the experience you should get – but also because we can focus on more amusing tasks again.

Just so you don’t get the wrong image here; we usually pay a lot of attention when writing our code, so that it’s efficient and doesn’t use more load than needed. This is something you don’t really have to care much about if you just write code for a low traffic site, but for a site like Hattrick it’s really crucial. Yet it’s clear that we have to pay even more attention to this. We also need to have more thourough checks so we don’t reach the barrier for how much load the servers can handle on match times (when the load from all online users are the highest). And if so optimize the site in time, before you experience any delays.

On a totally different note, but related to stuff that returns to normal: My days as (almost) a full-time father is over. I’m back.

(Adding a disclaimer at the bottom is alwas a good thing: Now please don’t read this post as there will never be one single delay ever again, there’s always a risk that something out of the ordinary happens. Just read this as the days of constant match delays should be over. Thank you.)