The Hattrick Hall of Fame, Part 2: What to Write
Written by
sterlingice
In the first part of this three part series, we looked at the "Who". This time, we'll look at the "What". How do you maximize the current Hall of Fame format and how do you tie the rest of the Hattrick experience into the Hall of Fame?
Before adding a player to the Hall of Fame, some preparations could be in order. We'll talk in Part 3 about the eligibility requirements and Hall of Fame planning, but just remember, there are limits to how often you can add a player, particularly if you only have Gold supporter. Also, if you want your player to have a nickname before they enter the Hall, they will need to have it before they enter. If the nickname does not exist in the database, you will have to budget some approval time.
For some players, I like to include information from a previous team. You're collecting information about a player who has probably been on multiple teams in Hattrick, some for many seasons. While some were just trainees, a means to more hattrick bucks, others may have been youth pulls or have other special attachments to a team. In particular, if I pick up a player as a veteran, that previous owner may have some good stories from the prime of that player's career. You'll want to give said owner a few days time to put virtual pen to paper. Of course, don't spam others or break any other rules of the game.
While you can edit your player information at a later time, I find it helpful to collect and write everything for a new player at once to limit redundancy and inconsistency. One of the things I will do is open up every browser tab I'm going to use before starting and also start a little text file.
Once a player is named to the Hall of Fame, you lose access to some of that information. A Hall of Fame player's entry only includes access to "Transfer History", "Memorable Moments" and "Best Performance". However, "Player Development" and "Performance History" are gone as are access to "Supporter Statistics" showing the player's 10 best games. This is not to be confused with some of your team history records under "Supporter Statistics". "Highest rating", "Most matches played", "Clean sheets", and "Captain most often": these are kept for all of your players and over all time. However, "Most red + yellow cards", "Most goals", and "Most times best player" are single season only. This can be unfortunate as, by the time you're retiring a player, he likely won't be filling up the stat sheet in his final season as you'd keep him around rather than retiring him. Think about which of those are applicable to the player you are writing about. If you retire a player to the Hall of Fame, those windows will be forever unavailable.
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Let's look at the Hall of Fame entry for a single player. As there is not a manual for the Hall of Fame, let's look a little more closely at exactly what is included. In the Hall of Fame interface itself, many items are static and self explanatory. They cannot be edited and are broken down into a few categories:
1) Important dates: "First day with club", Date "retired"
2) Clubs: "Last club", "Former clubs"
3) Stats specific to your team: "Seasons with club", "Total matches for club"
4) Matches specific to your team: "Last match for club", *"Best match", *"Best Performance"
5) Career stats for all teams: "Career Goals", "Career Hattricks"
*Appears to be specific to your team (unconfirmed)
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After that, there are two dynamic items where I would suggest taking the entire Hall of Fame into consideration: "Hall of Fame Category" and "Current career". I say "dynamic" because you can go back and edit them late. I am certainly guilty of swapping around some of my "current career"s. After all, what's to say that your Hall of Fame players don't change jobs from time to time? Though, I do think the "Hall of Fame" category is a bit more static as a big time goal scorer probably won't suddenly change into a "Great Keeper" or "Great Coach". On the whole, I like to keep a balance for aesthetics. For instance, with my 17 player Hall of Fame, I try to keep, at most, 5 of each type of career or category.
First, there's current career. Personally, I like to coordinate them so all of my players do not look alike. I could see others trying to get them all as similar as possible. However, one player as an "Actor" does not look like another player as an "Actor": they have different clothes and a different look. Personally, I assign the careers arbitrarily based on whatever strikes my fancy. To give a peek into my thought process: Erwin Vickers had the look of an old tv newsman- clothes, face, and all; I like Xacobo Armengol's snazzy looking suit; and Allan Brik is "only" a hotdog vendor because he was a career backup. But I could see a team make all forwards into actors, pick the most colorful outfits for each players, or whatever. Just like everything in the Hall of Fame: it's your team so do what fits your personality and desires.
The "Hall of Fame category" is more of a statistical category. For most types, you get an additional statistic displayed on the main Hall of Fame page and those are noted on the table below. The ones with asterisks are "bonus stats" - the only way to see that statistic for a Hall of Fame player is to put them into that category. Just a note: if you have really old players-from before 2006- this can play havoc with their stats. For instance, Mick Starks was an original Houston Hippopotami, dating back to January 2003 but it lists has first date at 2006. This causes his days with the club count to be off by several hundred. I suspect some older stats just aren't in the system as they were kept at that time.
Hall of Fame category - "Additional Statistic"
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Great Scorer - "Career Goals"
Great Rating - "Great Rating" (highest star rating)
Hattrick Scorer - "Hattricks"
Total Matches Hero - "Matches for club"
Training Matches Hero - "Best player in X training matches" *
Faithful to Club - "Days on Club" *
Member of Honour - No additional statistic
Great Keeper - "Clean sheets for club" *
Great Coach - No additional statistic
These more or less pick themselves, depending on the player you retire. Forwards will probably be "Great Scorer" or "Hattrick Scorer", coaches will be "Great Coaches", etc. The "Training Matches Hero" one was the only one I hadn't used prior to starting work on this series. While playing around with what each title did, Volfs Treibahs, a backup forward most of his career in Houston, was perfect for that as he was the best player in an astounding 46 training matches. He truly was the best guy on the team who didn't start for a long time. However, there is some flexibility in that if a player is in the Hall of Fame, he likely excelled in different aspects of the game including good ratings, longevity, or, failing all else, qualifies for the "catch all" category of "member of honour".
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Next, there is the "most memorable match" which asks for a match number and a 500 character summary.
I have a giant spreadsheet of all of my games where I name a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd best player for each game, as well as goals, cards, injuries, etc. If not for that, I think this would be the most difficult section for me, especially considering your Hall of Fame players have been on your team at least 100 games if not 300 or more. Also, I try not to pick the game where the player had his best rating. That game is already noted in the Hall of Fame record, so I try to add another one.
For forwards, this can be easy. If you have a player who scored 4 goals in a single game, you're probably done. Go to "memorable matches", pick one of the games where the player scored a hattrick, and tell the story of that game. However, for middies, wingers, defenders, and keepers - a hattrick is rare and finding a hattrick in a meaningful game is even moreso. Typically, any hattrick would be in a 10-1 1st round cup game which is probably not your most notable or exciting.
This is one of those cases where one of those windows I mentioned earlier in the article can come in handy. If you go to a player and select "Supporter Statistics" prior to retiring the player, it will list the top 10 games, rating-wise. Also, it's not just for your team but for each team he played for: maybe the player's most memorable game was not sporting your jersey but someone else's. It will give you additional games to data mine for those players who put up high ratings but not many goals.
Another possibility is to pick a game that has significance to the team. Look at some of the most meaningful games in your team's history like qualifiers, first games in a new series, games in long cup runs, etc. Maybe the player had the highest rating in a qualifier or that fluke hat trick mentioned above was in a 10-1 first round cup match of the season where you made your deepest cup run ever. In short, you can wrap the player around a game where the story writes itself.
Finally, there's always the brute force method of going through every game the player played and finding that time he made a crucial stop in the 89th minute or scored a goal in extra time. This can get a bit time consuming for those players who had 200 or 300 games and you might have 5 or 20 tabs open with games that you have to compare.
Speaking to three entries for the Hippos: John King's chronicles Houston's record setting run in III.3; Donald Sidorczak's describes how having an uber winger was a huge advantage to the team; and Edwin Phelan's highlights a 5 goal outburst. Tie it to your franchise's or player's history however you want.
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Finally, there is the most important entry: the blank box right under the player's name. I saved this for last as you may have collected information throughout this entire process which you could use. It's 500 characters in length and can be tied together with a Press Announcement, where you have an additional 1000 characters. Keep in mind: your PA changes while this is static and will always stay with the player. Now is the time to choose which items are important enough to put in the player's entry and which are "relegated" to the Press Announcement. If you've been taking notes as you've been going through this process, it's likely you'll have a lot of information to use. More often than not, the harder part is editing down to fit the space.
Team statistics are a large cluster of information to pull from. Along with the aforementioned tabs with stats like "most matches played" and "highest rating", there are some other free tools at your disposal. One I have recently started using is called HT-History. On your "My Hattrick page, go to the green "Community" header and select "CHPP Products". Under "Manager Assistants", look for "HT-History". It lists franchise totals for everything from goals to minutes to cards and can filter based on game type, season, or a number of other criteria. Just a head's up: some of the stats are slightly off compared to what HT produces. For instance, I have a "Total Matches Hero" player in my Hall of Fame with have 4 more games than in HT-History. And, no, at 200+ matches, I don't know where the discrepancy lies.
Some other ideas are to speak more to that memorable match or list some "famous" teammates such as other team Hall of Fame members. Talk about your upcoming league game where you are "retiring the player's jersey". Make up quotes by the player or from his coach or teammates. It's your team and your players, color it with your personal brush. One thing I like to do to start the Hall of Fame entry is "retire the number" so no player can use it again. Every couple of seasons, I'll do a quick little writeup on the HHH (I've just taken to calling my HOF the Hippo Hall of Heroes) as a whole and list every number and player in that's been retired. Plus it helps remind me which numbers not to reuse.
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In a simulation that is so often purely about the numbers, telling these stories can be a way to add a nice dose of your own personality and flavor to the game. In Part III, we'll look at some long term planning and possible ways the HT devs could enhance the experience further.