Correction of "match times" in the newly opened leagues

As you know we have opened leagues in 8 new countries this season. However, there was a small error in the allocation of match times for the league and national competitions in these newly opened leagues.
We had previously announced the match times to be

0200/1400 UTC : USA, Brazil
0300/1500 UTC : Romania, Norway
0900/2100 UTC : Greece, Turkiye
1000/2200 UTC : Australia, Malaysia

We were surprised that the mistake went unnoticed (or may be those who noticed didn't report), but these will be fixed for next season.

New Competitions

Two new competitions will start from next season.

1. Challengers Trophy
This will be the third tier international competition with the same structure and competition format as the champions cup and super cup. 32 teams will take part in a two-legged group stage with 8 groups of 4 teams each. Two teams qualifying from each group will then progress to a two-legged knockout phase which ends in a one-legged final.

2. Pride Shield
The winner of the Champions Cup and the winner of the Super Cup will face each other in Round 1 of the following season in a one-off match.

The qualification spots for all the three international competitions are also re-allocated starting this season. Two teams from each country will enter in these competitions (total 6 teams), top 2 teams in the division 1 of each country will qualify for the Champions Cup, next two for the Super Cup, and the 5th and 6th placed teams for the Challengers Trophy.

Player Rating updates

We know we have tweaked rating calculations of players a couple of times already in recent seasons. But this time it is intended to make the ratings much more in line with a player's ability to perform in the match simulator, as we try to accurately reflect a player's real performance potential in his rating calculation.

From next season, a player's rating will be calculated based on the effective value of his key attributes. The effective value of each attribute will be calculated based on his "experience" attribute as described below.

1. If the attribute is higher than the player's "experience", the effective value of that attribute will be the average of the displayed value of that attribute and his "experience".
2. If the attribute is lower than his "experience", then the effective value of that attribute will be same as the displayed value.
3. Rating is calculated after applying a weightage to the effective value of each of the player's key attributes. The key attributes for each position will be the same as it is now, and the weightage will also remain unchanged. You can find the key skills and percent weightage for each position in the tutorial

Use of "Experience" attribute in the match simulator

In the current match engine, experience of a player is used separately to simulate "reading the game", "vision", and "decision making" during each situation that arises during a match. Even though this is a good approach, this makes the use of experience attribute a bit complex, and more importantly causes unexpected imbalances between the perceived rating of the player and his actual performance output on the pitch. So we are taking the route of simplifying things going forward.

The direct use of the experience attribute will be dropped, and instead it will be applied on other attributes indirectly by using it in the calculation of effective value of attributes as explained above. The effective values of all other attributes (except stamina and hidden attributes including those revealed from scouting) will depend on experience of the player, and these effective values of the attributes will be used by the match engine instead of a player's actual displayed attributes.

Intensity instead of Pressure in Team Instructions

Currently, your team instructions while setting up tactics allows you to specify "Pressure" as "Always", "Own Half only" or "Near Goal". We have found that this is a bit confusing even for users that have been around for sometime. We have also decided to change the way it works, so decided to rename it to "Intensity".

Intensity means how hard your players will work (or try to work) during a match, in terms of game tempo, running off the ball, apply pressure and cover opponents to try to win the ball back when not in possession. This is slightly different to how "Pressure" works right now since it is considered only when you don't have the ball. "Intensity" will now reflect the overall effort - both with and without the ball.

Playing at higher intensities will cause more fitness loss for your players, so it is advised you use it with caution during phases of the match. Coupled with the changes to "Fitness Loss" as detailed below, it could be something that you need to manage carefully in your tactics going forward.

Stamina and Fitness Loss during matches

The fitness loss of players during a match would be reworked slightly making the "stamina" attribute a bit more important. It would mean that players will lose more fitness in high intensity matches, and will no more be able to play two such matches every round without significant drop in fitness unless they have very high values in stamina. Managers will need to lower the intensity for friendlies and "easier" matches to manage fitness of players throughout the season efficiently, and this will also encourage them to train more stamina on players especially since stamina is not part of rating calculations.

There might be more updates ready for the next season, I will add them as they get confirmed. We will also announce this in the News in another week, just waiting to make sure we have covered all important updates that needs to be announced.

And as usual, please feel free to discuss this below.

Tegimus wrote :
The effective values of all other attributes (except stamina and hidden attributes including those revealed from scouting) will depend on experience of the player, and these effective values of the attributes will be used by the match engine instead of a player's actual displayed attributes.

Could you implement a view that shows (also) the adjusted/effective values of the players ?

Is it also possible to leave the old league standings until the match has been watched?

Great update!

Pride Shield
Don't know why but i don't like that name 😜

Fathima wrote :
Pride Shield
Don't know why but i don't like that name 😜

Shouldnt it just be called Winners Cup?

Yeah, or Winners Shield

Or sell the naming rights:
Grand Matrix Cup
Red Bull Shield
Tegimus Infotech Trophy
etc.

Are next season’s changes to the way experience is used in the match engine expected to change players’ match performances compared to the current system?

Bill Beaver wrote :
Are next season’s changes to the way experience is used in the match engine expected to change players’ match performances compared to the current system?

Performance ratings might change due to the way the values of experience and other attributes will be used by the match engine. But the updates for the match engine next season does not include any changes to the way matches are simulated in general.

As disclosed earlier, a much bigger update is coming soon though, which will see huge differences in match simulation and impact of lineup and tactics compared to the current system.

So, say a player is currently rated 70 based on 80 exp and 60 attributes. Next season that player’s rating would be capped at 60. Do I understand correctly that, though his published rating drops by 10, his expected performance in a match in season 24 is likely to be broadly unchanged from what it is now?

The effective values of all other attributes (except stamina and hidden attributes including those revealed from scouting) will depend on experience of the player, and these effective values of the attributes will be used by the match engine instead of a player's actual displayed attributes. Can we have example with numberS?

1. I would vote for Super cups to be played in every country on the first day of the season between last season's Top league winner and the winner of National cup instead of Pride shield.

2. At the moment, stamina doesn't add anything to player's overall rating. Will it change starting next season?

3. Does stamina help players to stay more fresh during a game compared to the ones with lower stamina or does it only apply after the match to count the fitness loss? In other words, does player's abilities decrease during the match according to his stamina rating or does it only effect his fitness rating straight after the match?

Straw poll on minimum Stamina Levels.

Up to now I train stamina to 30 and then forget about it

What are people targeting to cope with stamina changes?

I don't train set pieces at all - anyone notice any advantage with high set piece stats?

Bill Beaver wrote :
So, say a player is currently rated 70 based on 80 exp and 60 attributes. Next season that player’s rating would be capped at 60. Do I understand correctly that, though his published rating drops by 10, his expected performance in a match in season 24 is likely to be broadly unchanged from what it is now?

No. Currently, experience is used directly by the match engine independent of other attributes. So the inclusion of the experience attribute in a player's rating calculation is just an approximation, trying to reflect its effect on a player's performance.
That will change. Experience will not be used by the match engine directly anymore, but it will be applied on other attributes so it will affect player performances indirectly. So if there is a big drop in rating for a player next season due to his experience being too high, then of course there will be a drop in his performance levels.

Vasilis wrote :
The effective values of all other attributes (except stamina and hidden attributes including those revealed from scouting) will depend on experience of the player, and these effective values of the attributes will be used by the match engine instead of a player's actual displayed attributes. Can we have example with numberS?

Let's say a player has 60 experience, 80 tackling, 40 heading and 50 stamina.
The match engine will see his tackling as 70 (tackling is more than experience, so average taken) and heading as 40 (heading is less than experience, so actual value of heading is taken). However his stamina will be always 50 regardless of what his experience is.

samtis wrote :
1. I would vote for Super cups to be played in every country on the first day of the season between last season's Top league winner and the winner of National cup instead of Pride shield.

2. At the moment, stamina doesn't add anything to player's overall rating. Will it change starting next season?

3. Does stamina help players to stay more fresh during a game compared to the ones with lower stamina or does it only apply after the match to count the fitness loss? In other words, does player's abilities decrease during the match according to his stamina rating or does it only effect his fitness rating straight after the match?

1. It doesn't need to be instead of the Pride shield, can be considered as a separate competition.
But it needs further discussion, who is next in line for qualification if both the league champion and the national trophy winners are the same team, what if one of the teams are in another competition like Pride Shield etc.

2. No. I think I have answered this before.
Stamina doesn't affect performance directly. But a player's fitness drops throughout the match and stamina plays a big role in how fast a player gets tired. But it won't be accurate to include it in rating since the player's performance only drops as he gets tired, a lower stamina player might still perform at the same level as a higher stamina player (assuming everything else is equal), the difference will be in how long he can sustain his performance at that level.

3. Fitness loss happens throughout the match. You can use in-game changes to make substitution to take out tired players.

Fathima wrote :
Yeah, or Winners Shield

I like this, might give it a go.

Michael wrote :
Straw poll on minimum Stamina Levels.

Up to now I train stamina to 30 and then forget about it

What are people targeting to cope with stamina changes?

I don't train set pieces at all - anyone notice any advantage with high set piece stats?

Nowadays it's easier to get stamina up from a low value since the cap of potential applies to each skills separately. I would say 50-60 should be decent. Just manage your game intensity, if your players have low stamina then dont play too many games on high intensity, use high intensity only for matches where it is absolutely necessary.

If experience is problem for users, with match engine and rating calculation change, maybe experince don't affect to game and we can spend it to train attribute of that player.

Şövalyeler wrote :
If experience is problem for users, with match engine and rating calculation change, maybe experince don't affect to game and we can spend it to train attribute of that player.

Experience is still very important, to get your player to use their attributes to full value and also to give experience to young players. It only becomes irrelevant for performance of old players when they already have enough xp and other attributes start to drop