Hattrick 6.6 At a Glance

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Alf

disastrous (-) would be something between 0 and 0.333

what's your rationale behind that?

FM

[Mr. Wednesday]

Here's my plan for ratings:
* Start with the current method of adding up the cardinal numbers. Add/subtract 0.33 for +/-.
* Multiply by two to maintain compatibility with the older ratings.

It should work out pretty well. Because of changes in coverage with the new system, old NSIs won't be exactly replicated most of the time, but we should still be in the same ballpark. Obviously, midfield will result in a bit of variation.

I'm not sure how I'm going to make the transition in my database. Hopefully, I can just convert my NSI fields to floats. I'm looking at a very long update tonight as I go back and refresh matches.

I'll see what the CHPP conference has to say about it, and I'll also post this recommendation at www.hatstats.info.

[Alf]

I don't want to go to floats, integers suits me better.

old NSI =~ new NSI * 2/3 + 9 (roughly) using disastrous (-) = 0, disastrous (1), disastrous (+) = 2, etc...

[Alf]

dola, I am witing for a few days to do anything. database has been backed up !

[Raven Hawk]

For me this is all change that I can get used to. I am, however, very disappointed that I will have to get accostomed to a new ratings system. I worked so hard to get my team up to magnificent-titanic ratings, now they're going to take them away. On the reality side, however, should a Div IV team really be described as World Class? I think not. My bigger concern lies in the amount of time it will take to improve your attributes. When I first started two years ago, one of the hooks for me as a newbie was the fact that I could clearly see my team improving through ratings. Something tells me that this hook won't be there for players who begin their HT careers now. Just my silly thoughts.

[nickfox45]

this is coming from someone whos only been with HT for half a season, but all of you out there who are complaining about your team not 'looking' as cool now or being worth as much seem a little ridiculous. wouldnt you rather have a better game overall than see 'world class' playmaking? and its not as if your players are any worse, your passable playmaking looks just as bad as someone else's who now reads 'poor'. gimme a break.

[FrogMan]

Now that I've looked at a few of my old matches, I kind of like the ratings, I get a feeling they are more "precise".

For exmaple, here's my last league match, with ratings "before" and "after" 6.6...

Before:

	NSI
Midfield: magnificient	12
Right Side Defence: excellent	8
Central Defence: excellent	8
Left Side Defence: excellent	8
Right Side Attack: inadequate	5
Central Attack: formidable	9
Left Side Attack: outstanding	10
	84

After:

	NSI
Midfield: passable	6
Right Side Defence: weak (+)	4.33
Central Defence: weak	4
Left Side Defence: weak (+)	4.33
Right Side Attack: poor	3
Central Attack: inadequate (-)	4.67
Left Side Attack: inadequate (+)	5.33
	87.3

Looking at this tells me that my my magnificient midfield was just that, a middle of the road magnificient, while both my wing defenses were better than my central defense. Now I can see it, before I couldn't, as they were all excellent...

My only gripe with it is not so much to look at my team and see it looks bad, it's just that it's tough to relate one to the other, from "before" to "after"...

FM

[Mr. Wednesday]

I haven't finalized my preference yet, I need to sit down and do some calcs to figure out the impact of 0-based halving rather than 1-based halving (if any impact at all).

[NAIWF]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

Now that I've looked at a few of my old matches, I kind of like the ratings, I get a feeling they are more "precise".

Looking at this tells me that my my magnificient midfield was just that, a middle of the road magnificient, while both my wing defenses were better than my central defense. Now I can see it, before I couldn't, as they were all excellent...

My only gripe with it is not so much to look at my team and see it looks bad, it's just that it's tough to relate one to the other, from "before" to "after"...

FM

I agree with you. My biggest complaint last night were that my 2 best NSI games (90 & 87) both came out to 47's since a magnificent and brilliant midfield both were halved to passable. With your new calculation utilizing the (+/-) the 90 became a 95.3, while the 87 became a 91.3, which shows the proper difference again. I've got no complaints about the system now, but last night I was really upset because it would be impossible to scout properly.

[Mr. Wednesday]

I tried two alternatives for my best match ever (NSI=78). Alternative one, enumerated above, produced NSI+=83.3. Alternative two, using zero-based indexing (subtract 0.67 from component ratings for alternative one), doubling, then adding nine to reindex to the old NSI basis of disastrous=1, produced NSI+=80.3. A little figurative back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that this is the right way to do the calculation.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Dola, both of my two best performances are scaling higher now. I'm getting NSI+ of 80.3 and 79.7, against NSI of 78 and 76. It runs even higher if I don't use the adjusted zero-based scaling. I'm going to back-calculate my "old-scale" ratings and see how they compare.

I think the end result here is that I'm going to use a different corrective addition than 9. It feels like I'm not properly accounting for "float" in the old numbers.

[FrogMan]

I'm not too sure what you're trying to come up with. I'd be quite happy with doing it the way I did, (-.33 or +.33, then multiply by 2) even if it's not identical...

I don't feel like we absolutely have to come with something identical with what they were in the past. The same ballpark works for me. I could even get used to doing it straight, without the multiplying by 2 part of it...

FM

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by daedalus

Team ratings
Honestly, all I can think of as I read the furious complaints about this is: "PEOPLE WILL LOSE POSTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Could they have handled it better? Absolutely. As was mentioned, since it only effect a few teams (in relation to the number of active teams present in Hattrick), they could have just added a numerical value to the levels of Divine to distinguish between the "really" divine and the just "kinda" divine". (As an aside, my serie's champion played a Qualification game against a D.III team that put up a divine midfield which would suggest that it isn't just the National Teams and maybe the top Swedish league or just the Major League that was putting that up. At least, it *was* divine before the change brought it down to "merely" world class.)

On the other hand, all these names (poor, weak, brilliant, magnificent) are just tags to represent a hidden numerical value. Who cares if they added "righteous" and "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to represent something above "divine" and "substandard shite" and "why bother?" to represent something under wretched or if they just changed what tags goes with which numerical values? The important part is that they didn't actually bent you over and handed your serie-mates some lube. The tag you got for a grade went down . . . and so did your serie-mates. If you were both Supermen (or -women) before, you're now both Mighty Mouses. Same shit, different spelling.

I mean, I agree that it's depressing to have been building toward one of named tags and now end up with a "weak" or an "inadequate". But, yeesh, it's not exactly the end of the world.

Dude, that last part was priceless. My thoughts exactly...

I heart daedalus

FM

[Mr. Wednesday]

I'm sorry, I'm just getting a little obsessive about doing the conversion right.

I don't know if it's worth it, though. I've settled on an "accurate" method of using 1/6, 1/2, 5/6 as the (-), normal, (+) points, working off a zero base, doubling, then adding 4.5. It's messy. But for my 78, it seems about right, I get a 78.8 going forward and then a 78.8 going back.

I'm still mulling over possibilities for how I implement all of this stuff.

[DataKing]

OK I've had at least a little time to digest the new information. Here are my initial thoughts on the changes presented in 6.6:

Transfer Changes - Agent Fee: Personally, I like anything that makes life more difficult for day-traders (and to a lesser degree, day-trainers), so I'm all for the change in agent fees. This especially hurts the day-traders that make a small margin on their transfers, but rely on a ridiculous quantity of transfers. Finding margins that will cover the higher agent fees will be more difficult. I think the fact that Inter Sthlm, a daytrader, won the Swedish championship really brought home the problems that daytrading represents.

Transfer Changes - Last Owner Money: I can only assume that youth squad promotees will be exempt from this rule. But it could pose a problem in the case of teams who play their youth pull in a match (due to injury problems and the like) and then sell them off. But it's hard to judge the effect this will have now.

Regional Transfer Markets: I have concerns about this one. If you look at the size of the regions, you'll quickly notice that North America is the smallest of the eight. Now, it's possible that North America may be hurt by this because, as the smallest market, if someone who is looking for a new player is going to skip a market, North America is the one that they will skip. Granted, most owners will look at all eight transfer markets making this a non-issue in most cases, but I also feel that some owners out there (read: the exceptionally lazy ones) may skip over North America and the other two smaller regions entirely. Perhaps, perhaps not. I think only time will tell.

Transfer Compare: A nice tool for newbies, and another attempt to curtail daytrading. It is of limited use for teams dealing with higher-end players, for obvious reasons, but this shouldn't be considered a weakness. Owners with experience should not need such a tool to determine the going rate for a certain player they're looking to sell.

Counter-Attacks for all: I'm a little intrigued by this one, but don't expect it to make a large difference in matches. I think this will be one of those two-or-three-times-per-season sort of events that, while they may have a significant effect upon a given match, will have little effect on the season as a whole. My one concern is that this may serve to counteract the "less random in attack/defense" by adding a new random element to matches.

Reduced midfield penalty for CA tactic: I don't have enough experience with CA, so I'll refrain from comment and allow the CA experts in the audience (lytic) to voice their opinions.

Less random in attack/defense: I'm all for a change that reduces the importance of midfield from it's current elevated status, so this one sounds good to me. However, what does not appear to have been addressed is the apparent weakness of defense when compared to attack. I was hoping to see defense given a little bit of a boost, but that does not appear to be the case here.

Very minor adjustment to Defender/Keeper importance: It figures that this would come into play right when I am considering a keeper upgrade for SSFC. :P But seriously though, I think this is a good move for the reasons that have been already stated; two many teams have been getting good defensive ratings with a good keeper and substandard defenders. Hopefully more of a premium will be placed on quality defenders now.

More common weather/special events: So long as this does not equate to more frequent specialty goals, then I am all for this one. Specialty effects have been so minor to this point that a player's specialty has been a virtual non-factor. This now gives one more little detail for managers to pay attention to.

Clearer confusion events: This one hardly ever comes into play for SSFC, but it's still a good move in my opinion. More accurate information can't be considered a bad thing.

Smarter chance reporting: I'd have to question the sanity of anyone who thinks this is a bad thing.

More intelligent fans: The new formula seems to make a lot more sense than the old one to me.

Better penalty contest: Quick! Somebody tell Becky's Babes to load up on Technical specialists. I like this move as well, as scoring and technique should have some effect upon penalty contests. I do have one questions though; the details don't mention experience as a factor. An oversight?

Assessed Value Becoming TSI: I have no problem with this one whatsoever, as it's a case of apples and apples. We all know that "Assessed Value" is a joke when compared to the actual value of a player, and I think that TSI will make more sense and be less misleading for new owners. As for the rest of us, it's just a different rating scale for us all to get used to. Not a big deal.

New Salary Formula - Health Removed from Formula: I'm lukewarm on this one, as it seems like it would be infrequent enough to not make much of a difference. It's not as though this sort of thing could be exploited (you can't make your players get hurt). But I can see the concern at the higher levels, where player salaries are much larger than what a lot of us are used to dealing with.

Stamina only affects playmaking: This one makes perfect sense to me.

Multiple Skills Cheaper: I know that the Hattrick team was hoping to make secondary skills more important, but I don't see how that has been accomplished here. I don't think that salary has been the reason behind most owners training a single primary skill, rather than secondaries. It's more a matter of on-the-pitch performance and particularly resale value on the transfer market that determines what people train, not salaries.

Team Ratings Split: The biggie, in my opinion, and the one most likely to cause consternation (and it already has, by some of the rants I have already seen here). But first, I'd like to propose what I think is the reason for the Hattrick team going this route (i.e. cutting match ratings in half).

When I started playing Hattrick in the fall of 2002, there were only 15 ratings. Shortly thereafter, "Divine" was moved from #15 to #20, and the current #15-#19 ratings (titanic - utopian) were added. The reason for this was that players as well as ratings were reaching Divine (which equalled #15 back then, if my memory serves correctly). Basically, they were in the same situation that they have been in recently, where the highest rating was meaningless because it was being exceeded. And it didn't take long for the "new #20 Divine" to be reached and exceeded either, particularly in match ratings. So, this time around, rather than adding additional ratings, the HT team decided to halve the values for match reports, therefore making a "match rating Divine" now the equivalent of #40, rather than #20.

The problem here isn't what we have already heard as the most common complaint (WAAH! My old magnificent midfield rating is so much prettier than the passable rating I get now! WAAH!). Here is the problem with the new ratings as I see it: A number of other changes have been made in 6.6 to make life easier on the newer player (TSI, transfer compare, etc), but the new ratings system has done more to increase the game's learning curve than any of the previously-mentioned elements have done to reduce it. Allow me to explain by example:

In the standard 3-5-2, I know that three outstanding midfielders and halfway decent team spirit should give me an (approximately) outstanding midfield rating, with modifiers applied for other quirks in the particular formation that I've chosen (pinched wingers, offensive CDs, etc.). I also know that the scoring ratings for my forwards and the defensive ratings for my defenders and keeper should roughly equate to the offensive and defensive ratings that my team should receive in a match. Now, obviously these aren't straight one-to-one relationships between player and team ratings, and there are all sorts of factors that could modify some of those ratings (coach preference, offensive and defensive orders, etc.). But we know that these match ratings should be at least somewhat close to the ratings of our players.

Now, all of that has been thrown out of the window. Those same three outstanding inner midfielders are now going to give my team an inadequate midfield rating, rather than the outstanding rating that they used to produce. It's easy for those of us with experience to simply say (well just cut the ratings in half), but I don't think that the correlation will be as easy to figure out for newer players. Learning the way that the match ratings work, and determining the relative strengths and weaknesses of your own team versus those of your series-mates, is going to be a more difficult task now than before. Also, by the straight head-to-head nature of midfield, this is going to cause some very strange and confusing possession ratings in lower-level matches. ("My opponent had a "wretched" midfield rating just the same as me...so why the hell did he get 60% possession to my 40%?). Obviously, this becomes less of a concern at higher levels.

Personally, I would rather have seen the HT team revamp the ratings levels, increasing it to a 30 or even a 40 point scale. There are any number of adjectives that could have been added, both on the lower end (mediocre, average, typical, etc) as well as the higher end (superior, fantastic, remarkable, incredible). This would have allowed the engine to maintain the same rough equivalent between match and player ratings as has existed in the past. With 6.6, the way things stand, you have the same 20-point ratings scale, but each of those ratings means two entirely different things, depending on whether you are referring to player skills or an individual match rating. This can only serve to cause confusion, particularly among newer players.

Anyway, there's my take on the changes. Some good, some bad. I guess we'll have to wait and see just what sort of long-lasting effects these changes have on the game.

[OldGiants]

Originally Posted by Carligula

Wouldn't it be easy to keep everything in cardinal numbers?

passable(-) = 17
passable = 18
passable(+) = 19

and divide everything by 3 to scale it back to the old system?

This is the best solution. Hope it happens.

Now that they've redone all the old matches with the new ratings, why ever go back to the old system? It's not needed even for discussion. In a very real sense, the HT gods have now given us ratings that are 6 times as precise as the old system. This is good.

There has never been a relationship between the nomenclature of player skills and the nomenclature of team skills, despite using the same terms. That is, having three Passable IMs didn't get you to a Passable midfield rating for your team. The new system widens that gap, that's all.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by DataKing

I think the fact that Inter Sthlm, a daytrader, won the Swedish championship really brought home the problems that daytrading represents.

If I understand DrDDD's past comments correctly, he's not a daytrader so much as a player forced into daytrading to avoid his team's salaries. There may be either a sell-off in the Allsvenskan or a few teams that crash out hard after they exhaust their cash.

Regional Transfer Markets: I have concerns about this one. If you look at the size of the regions, you'll quickly notice that North America is the smallest of the eight. Now, it's possible that North America may be hurt by this because, as the smallest market, if someone who is looking for a new player is going to skip a market, North America is the one that they will skip. Granted, most owners will look at all eight transfer markets making this a non-issue in most cases, but I also feel that some owners out there (read: the exceptionally lazy ones) may skip over North America and the other two smaller regions entirely. Perhaps, perhaps not. I think only time will tell.

One thing that helps is that after the initial posting of the zone info, the zone sizes won't be readily available. Then it will come down to convenience (for users within the zones) and history in particular markets, and my experience to date is that the U.S. player availability is better than one would expect for the number of active teams.

Less random in attack/defense: I'm all for a change that reduces the importance of midfield from it's current elevated status, so this one sounds good to me. However, what does not appear to have been addressed is the apparent weakness of defense when compared to attack. I was hoping to see defense given a little bit of a boost, but that does not appear to be the case here.

It's hard to say how this works without knowing exactly what the random effect was and how it's being changed. If the effect used to be as a bit of an equalizer, it will help good defenses and hurt bad ones.

Very minor adjustment to Defender/Keeper importance: It figures that this would come into play right when I am considering a keeper upgrade for SSFC. :P But seriously though, I think this is a good move for the reasons that have been already stated; two many teams have been getting good defensive ratings with a good keeper and substandard defenders. Hopefully more of a premium will be placed on quality defenders now.

Yeah, but the defense trainers aren't the ones getting killed on prices (even if the market has grown a little soft there now), it's keepers who are way undervalued. This change makes an existing game balance problem even worse; at this point, other than as a startup program, I would recommend against keeper training.

New Salary Formula - Health Removed from Formula: I'm lukewarm on this one, as it seems like it would be infrequent enough to not make much of a difference. It's not as though this sort of thing could be exploited (you can't make your players get hurt). But I can see the concern at the higher levels, where player salaries are much larger than what a lot of us are used to dealing with.

I'd guess that higher salaries here will be offset by lower salaries due to stamina and secondaries.

Stamina only affects playmaking: This one makes perfect sense to me.

This was widely anticipated, but it's interesting to note that we finally have an official word that PM is the only skill affected by stamina. Everyone knew it, but the rules were vague on the point.

Multiple Skills Cheaper: I know that the Hattrick team was hoping to make secondary skills more important, but I don't see how that has been accomplished here. I don't think that salary has been the reason behind most owners training a single primary skill, rather than secondaries. It's more a matter of on-the-pitch performance and particularly resale value on the transfer market that determines what people train, not salaries.

It at least makes the secondary handling for super-high-level players more sane. It's hard to say whether that will actually have an effect on people training them.

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by Carligula

Wouldn't it be easy to keep everything in cardinal numbers?

passable(-) = 17
passable = 18
passable(+) = 19

and divide everything by 3 to scale it back to the old system?

There's certainly something to be said for doing it that way. The "scale it back to the old system" is really the only complication here -- do we want to maintain backward compatibility, and if so, what's the best way to do that?

[saintjo]

i personally am surprised that there were no changes to passing as far as training. it makes no sense that you cannot train defenders in passing without playing them out of position in friendlies.

[rickJ]

As I'm starting to get it is that HT wants those upper levels to be 'elite' levels, in real life no D.V or IV teams are going to have world class midfields and such, not sure why they didn't just want add more denominations though, all my thoughts on why that'd be rejected were torn apart by this change (hard for everyone to re-learn denominations, too complex, etc).

Right now my only issue with the +,- thing is that they're too significant, having an arithrimetic sign telling apart teams doesn't feel as significant as a new word. Plus there's the fact that 3 WC players can now equate to a weak rating, how does that make sense to newbie?

Changing it this much they might as well have made different scales for players/matches.

[Airhog]

I have no qualms with redoing the NSI to reflect the changes. I would rather see us go back and halve all of the previous ratings, rather then make the new ratings compatible with the old. I know that halving the old ratings doesnt get an extremely accurate picture, but its close enough for me.

On another not, I have never been infatuated with the NSI like other people. Yes, it is interesting to see how well my team fares against other teams. But im not all obsessed with getting some magic NSI number. Does it really matter that my team got a 75NSI last week? Not if my team won it didnt . And thats what really matters.

[rickJ]

Originally Posted by Airhog

I have no qualms with redoing the NSI to reflect the changes. I would rather see us go back and halve all of the previous ratings, rather then make the new ratings compatible with the old. I know that halving the old ratings doesnt get an extremely accurate picture, but its close enough for me.

Seems like a fine quick solution, unless you have some easy way to automate it

On another not, I have never been infatuated with the NSI like other people. Yes, it is interesting to see how well my team fares against other teams. But im not all obsessed with getting some magic NSI number. Does it really matter that my team got a 75NSI last week? Not if my team won it didnt . And thats what really matters.

Same here, I always put the lineup that best suits my opponent, if that means 15 less NSI and 4 few stars for 1 more goal, so be it

It does feel good to still be near the top of the charts after sabatoging your rating like that though

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by Airhog

On another not, I have never been infatuated with the NSI like other people. Yes, it is interesting to see how well my team fares against other teams. But im not all obsessed with getting some magic NSI number. Does it really matter that my team got a 75NSI last week? Not if my team won it didnt . And thats what really matters.

Despite being the grand keeper of the rankings around here, I see it exactly the same way. I don't care if my team is ranked 40th if it meant I PICed, won, and got my team in a better position for the upcoming 2 or 3 matches...

FM

[sterlingice]

I'm sure you're all dying to see my thoughts on this but you're going to hear them anyways *shakes fist like an angry old man*

Transfer market
We're changing the fees on transfers. The longer the player has been on your team, the less fees you have to pay when you sell him. Don't sell players the same day you buy him - wait a couple of weeks at least.

I think I'll have to make a second post about this, suffice to say I think it will help with controlling daytraders. But that's a tough nut to crack and there are a lot of subtle (and not so subtle) economic ramifications that this will have on the game. So, I'm glad they have taken aim at daytraders but this will be a big change.

Regional transfer lists
To make it easier to search the transfer market, you can now search within 8 "zones" instead of each country separately, for instance "Western Europe" or "South America".

You know, I've been back and forth on this issue for the longest time because I thought something needed to be done to muck up daytraders but since they already did something, this is completely unnecessary and detrimental. And I say that from an almost completely selfish perspective but follow me with this.

As GE said, "The transfer zones may eliminate day trading but now you will never find a "great" buy."

That said, this is really good news for smaller countries. You won't be screwed because your team is in Hong Kong or something like that. With the new changes to try and stop daytrading, the rich would have gotten richer and the poor would have gotten poorer. Usually when I was looking for bargains at 3-4am, the only person I would be bidding against was a daytrader. In a small country, you were at least guaranteed to sell higher level guys for 75% of their value because some Swede would turn around and sell them for 110% in Sverige.

Conclusion: So, while I'm a little bitter about this, I guess I have to put aside my selfishness so that smaller countries can do better.

Transfer compare
This is a new feature on the player page that brings up a list of recent transfers for similar players. To help you can find the right price.

HAM has had this for quite a while. I'm wondering if they just co-opted the HAM engine. I think this is just another change that makes the market more vanilla like the daytrading change. I'll address this with the daytrading changes.

Total Skill Index
Instead of the old "assessed value" of a player, we will call that value "Total Skill Index". This is to not confuse newer users who might think that the old "assessed value" was correct.

I think a majority of people are being unduly hard on them for this change. As a newbie, a lot of us based our new purchases on assessed value and got ripped off (buying an Inad keeper for $100k, that kind of thing). So, I have no problem with them trying to change things. The problem comes in because the new display looks like this: "Total Skill Index (TSI): 2190 (219 000 US$)"

To complain because you lose a couple of zeroes is kindof silly. This isn't like cutting all the ratings to shreds (I'll get to that), this is just a minor tweak to help out newbies who don't have a giant support system like people joining through FOFC so that they can retain new players by eliminating one possible source of possible confusion. Just eliminate the dollar display. Then again, they could have just done this by putting "THIS IS NOT THE VALID TRANSFER VALUE" in big, bold letters for players in the first month of playing (i.e. put a little flag in the programming that switches over after a month that makes the disclaimer valid for newbies).

Conclusion: Good Idea, Poorly Implemented

Match engine
We've improved the match engine in a couple of minor ways.
Midfield now gets slightly less important compared to attack and defense
Anyone can get a Counter-Attack, although the chance is very small unless you use the Counter-Attack tactic
The Counter-Attack tactic makes you lose somewhat less midfield skill than before, so it is a little better
A large number of small changes that improve presentation of the match report

I'll have to see these in action, but these sound reasonable, even for the middie trainer in me. Hopefully this is the end of the midfield nuking as our market has been crushed and there is still a glut of good middies in the market since hattrick is a long term game and thus good strategies have to be changed slowly and over lots of seasons.

My biggest worry is that people will all follow the same route (for a better articulation, check out Havok's dynasty) as offense is becoming the new midfield. It has high profit, is an easy way to improve your team if you have a servicable midfield, and with even less of a downside because it's nice but not necessary so selling trainees won't cause too many fluctuations. However some of that is offset by the need for good passing so trainees cost more.

The bigger problem I see is that defense's weakness is still not addressed. I don't understand how defensive players command such high prices these days. My guess is because supply is so low because no one wants to train it because it's so tough to do off the bat (i.e. you lose a lot early when you train defense and that really stunts the growth of your team). I know I'm not the only one who is planning on buying a really badass keeper and just calling it good with my defense (get something like a magnificent keeper to cover up for only formidable and excellent defenders). I know there are a few out there that will disagree with me, but c'mon, if you build a team these days, it's still midfield, offense, defense in order of importance and while offense is starting to approach midfield, the gulf between defense and the other two is widening.

Lastly (among the major changes), I hope the changes to CA make it a viable option. The introduction of tactics was a very good change to the engine, but CA was always the bastard child that never worked. There were great uses for the other three in that pressing could be used for upsets,

I get really excited every time they tweak the presentation of match reports. It's silly but the dynasty writer in me (hey, pipe down all of you!) really likes having more details to work with. Hopefully they don't screw over utility writers too much.

Conclusion: Necessary changes to midfield and CA, Defensive weakness still not addressed

Salaries
The formula that decides player salaries has been changed. Secondary skills (for instance, passing or defending for midfielders) will be cheaper. Also, stamina only matters for the salary of players with high playmaking, and it won't matter to the salary if a player is injured or not when the salary is set.

This had been expected as soon as they announced the "salary changes" to 6.6. I believe there is a thread here where Havok speculated on the stamina change and I said secondaries. They did both. The problem with this is that there was no warning, and they had to have been thinking about this for a while so some established players like Havok were hurt because his plans had factored in previous methods.

Still these were changes that badly needed to be made. I mean, really, it's not like a defender's salary should arbitrarily be inflated for a skill he doesn't use. And, they really seem to be wanting a more secondary based game so this is the first step.

However, if they really want to get people excited about training secondaries, don't make training them take so long so people can actually get their players some extra skills. Just off the top of my head, something to the effect of, if a rating is below, say weak, it only takes 1 week to move it up to the next level because if these are excellent athletes you are training so the learning curve on basic skills should be pretty low. Obviously this suggestion needs more fleshing out, but you get the idea: if you want people to have more well rounded players, the hattrick gods will need to fascilitate it.

Conclusion: Needed to be done, Could you give a little more warning since this is hugely influential on training

Team ratings
The team ratings have been halved: This means that if your team used to get "excellent" midfield, it will now only be called "weak". It is just as good as before, of course, but a change such as this one had to come, or else we'd end up in a situation where all teams had "divive" ratings everywhere, which would make impossible to compare teams.

I've never understood how I can use 3 magnificent midfielder with passable to excellent stamina can only put up an excellent or formidable midfield rating total (probably because my wings don't have that great of playmaking). So, to completely nuke ratings, I'm pretty sure

The plus/minus change is of little comfort and spinning it as a "new scale [that] will not only be "longer" than then the old one, [and] will be 50% more detailed than the old one as well" is just insulting to us. This only affects the top league teams and national teams and to penalize the rest of us by nerfing our ratings for .01% of teams is just downright bad. To say nothing for utility writers.

The change has received unanimously poor reviews here and, I haven't visited the hattrick forums yet, but if we're a decent cross section of the hattrick world, I'm not sure this will stick. I hope they find a better solution.

Conclusion: We finally know what the true ratings of Natty Teams are, ...At the expense of killing 99.99% of other team's ratings

I almost want to do a "looking back at 6.5 changes a season later" post but that will have to wait as I still have to look at two aspects of this one and I have to get going.

SI

[Poli]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

I heart daedalus

FM

My job.

[finkenst]

We can always just cancel our HT subscriber memberships.

[AAGunner3]

Question:

Less random in attack/defense? How, by tying it to midfield?

Maybe PM trainers have little to worry about?

[sterlingice]

Ok, now I've had some time to get at it more than just a cursory glance so there's a giant treatise on hattrick-onomics on the way but it's still only about half complete. Here's a couple of quick hits:

Originally Posted by Raven Hawk

For me this is all change that I can get used to. I am, however, very disappointed that I will have to get accostomed to a new ratings system. I worked so hard to get my team up to magnificent-titanic ratings, now they're going to take them away. On the reality side, however, should a Div IV team really be described as World Class? I think not. My bigger concern lies in the amount of time it will take to improve your attributes. When I first started two years ago, one of the hooks for me as a newbie was the fact that I could clearly see my team improving through ratings. Something tells me that this hook won't be there for players who begin their HT careers now. Just my silly thoughts.

This really describes it for me perfectly. I can get used to my team being inad or pass or excellent or whatever. But when you train for an entire season early on and you don't even improve, that would have probably made it much less interesting for me. I liked being able to see my ratings go up and up and this takes that away. Tho, maybe with the plusses and minuses, that will be different.

As an aside, I've always thought that was a weird jump. In fact, I think formidable should be between passable and excellent. "Sure they're formidable, but they're not excellent at it". But I mean you go from inadequate to passable, sure. But then you need a couple of levels like "above average" or "pretty good" before you get to formidable and then excellent. Then when you start getting into the upper levels, well, I'll use this example. If you have three people watching, say Mark McGwire, take batting practice and they describe him as "magnificent", "brilliant", or "titanic"- do they mean they see his skills differently or that he's simply really, really, really, really good? When you get above, say, formidable, it all seems like the same term (except divine because it's the best and, for some reason, world class has always stuck out in my mind). Just arguing sematics here. No real substance (or is there, see below). But it's always been a pet peeve of mine.

Originally Posted by nickfox45

this is coming from someone whos only been with HT for half a season, but all of you out there who are complaining about your team not 'looking' as cool now or being worth as much seem a little ridiculous. wouldnt you rather have a better game overall than see 'world class' playmaking? and its not as if your players are any worse, your passable playmaking looks just as bad as someone else's who now reads 'poor'. gimme a break.

Speaking of semantics, isn't that what this change is all about? Don't mean to single you out, nickfox45, but your post pretty much leads to what I want to say so it's a great example. So I want to try and illuminate the other point of view.

First off, you can't just brush this aside as saying "a better game overall" which is what I'm seeing from a lot of people. Basically the "how can you possibly complain about something this minor" response is common. Well, if it's so minor, why make the change at all? Leave it as it is because people were happy that way. They don't bring the issue up, no one was really complaining about it, so why make the change.

But they did decide to make the change. The problem, of course, came in because top league teams and national teams were having trouble tracking their levels above divine. However, how many teams even get ratings above divine to the point that the change had to be made? So, what I see this as is an issue between few and many. In the end, they could have just left the ratings the same and that would have meant national team (and other major teams) were left wondering just what ratings the other teams were getting (i.e. levels above divine). Or they could have done the "divine + X" solution or something to slightly inconvenience the top leveled people. But instead, they choose to cut the ratings of everyone to satisfy a very low percentage of the teams, all at the top.

Again, "What's the big deal"? Well, we rate our teams based on our ratings- it's only a text based sim. Our ratings are what we base our team on. And to all the current members, they just saw their ratings that they had worked so hard for, disappear so that the team you worked so hard to build looks like the one you originally got. It's purely pyschological and can be overcome in the mind, but it's still a shock and in the end, how many of us won't be going "Ok, so I got an inadequate this week. That was what, formidable?" because that was the rating system we are used to and that's how we view the game.

Will it matter to incoming teams? Maybe (as stated above) but maybe not. They weren't used to having a team with excellent and formidable ratings so to see their team start at wretched and work up to poor isn't much except for the occasional "Wow, I have three formidable playmakers, wonder how that only makes up a poor midfield when they are on the same scale".

Also, I suppose I haven't addressed the other changes either but I'll get to them. Tho it should be noted that I ranted about keepers and defenders and they are taking steps in that direction. I think someday they may just have to split those two ratings altogether but who knows, for now.

SI

[OldGiants]

"However, if they really want to get people excited about training secondaries, don't make training them take so long so people can actually get their players some extra skills. Just off the top of my head, something to the effect of, if a rating is below, say weak, it only takes 1 week to move it up to the next level because if these are excellent athletes you are training so the learning curve on basic skills should be pretty low. Obviously this suggestion needs more fleshing out, but you get the idea: if you want people to have more well rounded players, the hattrick gods will need to fascilitate it."

I could not possibly agree more.

Passing, in particular, needs to become a viable training option. The shorter timing on lower levels is an excellent idea. And as someone else pointed out, the current exclusion of defenders from passing training makes no sense. If the HT gods want to make CA a viable tactic, a nice way would be to allow passing training for all a team's players, much like setpieces is now. This would allow CA to improve through better passing secondaries on the defenders and provide an additional off-season training option.

Edit: Why not a 'team passing option' that would apply to everyone and replace the ludicrous 'shooting' option that serves no real purpose?

[Havok]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

Speaking of semantics, isn't that what this change is all about? Don't mean to single you out, nickfox45, but your post pretty much leads to what I want to say so it's a great example. So I want to try and illuminate the other point of view.

First off, you can't just brush this aside as saying "a better game overall" which is what I'm seeing from a lot of people. Basically the "how can you possibly complain about something this minor" response is common. Well, if it's so minor, why make the change at all? Leave it as it is because people were happy that way. They don't bring the issue up, no one was really complaining about it, so why make the change.

But they did decide to make the change. The problem, of course, came in because top league teams and national teams were having trouble tracking their levels above divine. However, how many teams even get ratings above divine to the point that the change had to be made? So, what I see this as is an issue between few and many. In the end, they could have just left the ratings the same and that would have meant national team (and other major teams) were left wondering just what ratings the other teams were getting (i.e. levels above divine). Or they could have done the "divine + X" solution or something to slightly inconvenience the top leveled people. But instead, they choose to cut the ratings of everyone to satisfy a very low percentage of the teams, all at the top.

Again, "What's the big deal"? Well, we rate our teams based on our ratings- it's only a text based sim. Our ratings are what we base our team on. And to all the current members, they just saw their ratings that they had worked so hard for, disappear so that the team you worked so hard to build looks like the one you originally got. It's purely pyschological and can be overcome in the mind, but it's still a shock and in the end, how many of us won't be going "Ok, so I got an inadequate this week. That was what, formidable?" because that was the rating system we are used to and that's how we view the game.

Will it matter to incoming teams? Maybe (as stated above) but maybe not. They weren't used to having a team with excellent and formidable ratings so to see their team start at wretched and work up to poor isn't much except for the occasional "Wow, I have three formidable playmakers, wonder how that only makes up a poor midfield when they are on the same scale".

Also, I suppose I haven't addressed the other changes either but I'll get to them. Tho it should be noted that I ranted about keepers and defenders and they are taking steps in that direction. I think someday they may just have to split those two ratings altogether but who knows, for now.

SI

I wanted to respond to Nick's post earlier today but i had to go to work. Now i see SI has basically said what i wanted to say. It almost seemed like he was baiting half of us who don't like the new ratings into an arguement. Kinda pissed me off.....

How the hell does he know it makes a better game overall..... i sure as hell don't think it makes the game any better what-so-ever. Changing everything around just for a 'VERY" few top teams and national teams????? add + (whatever) next to the divine and lets get on with it. Or add like 5 more levels then if they top that add the + (whatever).

The HT gods took something that could have been so dam simple and made it complicated..... doesn't seem like a hole lot of thought when into it.

[vex]

Originally Posted by Havok

I wanted to respond to Nick's post earlier today but i had to go to work. Now i see SI has basically said what i wanted to say. It almost seemed like he was baiting half of us who don't like the new ratings into an arguement. Kinda pissed me off.....

How the hell does he know it makes a better game overall..... i sure as hell don't think it makes the game any better what-so-ever. Changing everything around just for a 'VERY" few top teams and national teams????? add + (whatever) next to the divine and lets get on with it. Or add like 5 more levels then if they top that add the + (whatever).

The HT gods took something that could have been so dam simple and made it complicated..... doesn't seem like a hole lot of thought when into it.

What's sad is I know they put a lot of thought into it. I emailed the devs 2-3 seasons back and they said that they were going to change how the match ratings were calculated.

[One_to7]

I'm really against adding new levels or adding Divine++++ (well, not reall against it, but I think it'd be a bad idea).

New teams simply shouldn't be that good. Do you really think a team in the botton division or two in their nation that's never played a game together would be good? I mean, VI in the US would be comparable to what? Middle school? They shouldn't be getting excellent anything's honestly.

Divine should also be nigh impossible to reach. It's god-like for pete's sake. In the old version you could get a divine defense with a 4 star keeper, a defensive coach, and no defenders higher than formidable. And this was a V team. I just don't think teams should be getting divine+30 ever.

As for why I'm against simply adding new denominations: Some of the current ones sound stupid already. Extra-terrestrial? C'mon. I don't even want to think about how that would translate to all of the HT languages. Nevermind what the new terms would be. I just think that it makes sense that lower level teams will get bad ratings. Premier teams will still get good ratings, but still not as good as national teams. And........well, that just makes sense to me.

[sterlingice]

Market Fluctuations and the Hattrick Universe
(i.e. I'm not entirely sure Hattrick Dev thought through all of the ramifications of their market changes)

I think there are a lot of subtle economic change coming via 6.6 and I can't say I'm entirely thrilled with them. It's as if they were tired of all the "get rid of daytrading" threads so they took all the suggestions and implemented them all just to show everyone writing there "SEE! HAPPY NOW?!?" The problem with this is that there are a ton of unexpected side effects and that one of the overall effects is that it greatly helps the lazy and "less educated" hattrick users so that there is no reward for spending more time on the game, trying to improve your team.

A lot of these changes have been made to "vanilla-ize" the transfer market. It's a complete 180 from their usual song and dance of "we'd like to reward people for spending extra time on the game". It appears that if you put together the Transfer Compare change with the Regional Transfer Lists and there will be scant few bargains to had. I can't say for certain that's true, but I've been racking my brains and I'm not sure how to find a bargain and more.

There are opposing economic forces working here that I don't think a lot of people are taking into account. There will be a significantly decreased demand for players now that daytraders aren't artificially inflating those numbers. In the past, to land a player, you'd have to pay at least 80% of his value unless you were really damn lucky. Some daytraded would bid you up until they wouldn't make a substantial profit and then you would get a bargain at 90% but not the same bargain you hoped to get originally.

I'm certainly glad the days of the frequency daytraders are over but they did carve themselves out quite a niche in the hattrick economy that we will just now start to understand when it disappears. And maybe it won't entirely. If I see a formidable defender going for $300K then I'll bid on him even if I don't need him and then either find a spot for him to play or turn around and sell him for twice that and make some cash even with the increased fees. And I somehow doubt I'm the only one.

In the past, the market was driven by overpayers, to an extent. Things like "Oops, I didn't know that a formidable playmaker could be bought for less than $1.5M" or "I'm desperate for a brilliant playmaker for my qualifier and I'll just spend him in the offseason". You only needed one person to pay the price you were asking unless you were begging for a bidding war by starting your players well below market value.

But under the new system, just look at how this will work. If you try to put your guys for sale at a price above or even equal to the "past sales" price, every buyer is going to look at that and decide "Nah, I'll just wait for a cheaper one". Bidding wars won't help because, unless someone falls in love with your player, everyone will stop at that "past sales" price and that is what he will go for.

So, in the end, sure I'm just bitter because my bottom line will be hurt. Which would be no big deal except that my savings don't go to weaker countries or something like that. In the end, this just rewards those who don't want to go to every country, those who don't want to spend time trying to price players, those who don't pay for supporter to get the benefits of bookmarks, those who don't feel out the market when trying to determine a selling price, and those who just don't want to do a little work to make their hattrick team better.

Now, if someone can tell me where all of these changes are leading, what I should train, and for how long, then tell me now because I have no clue and I'd like to be ahead of the curve. In fact, if you can get me in on the ground floor of training and be a season ahead of everyone else, then I'll drop every complaint I have and sell my soul to do better... maybe not. But seriously, if you know where this is going and what effects it would have, I'd be really curious to hear. I just think they made so many changes that interact with each other in ways they don't understand that the devs are going to be as shocked as everyone else when things go horribly, horribly wrong.

Finally, the final "we need to monitor the economy extra closely, and if need be, we may make some minor adjustments" section of the update both scares and comforts me the most. Comforting, of course, because it means if there are bad things they will just be temporary and the devs will try to put them right. However, I think the last sentence allows for them to either hide behind or just convince themselves that they can use the "well, it's just temporary" excuse. However, in situations like this, days become weeks become months and nothing ever gets done as you live through the "market correction" and the devs do nothing.

Let's see how it works out. But, at first blush, I think this will take a big bite out of training profits and is going to have a huge effect on the hattrick economy that I just can't predict. Those who are smart and design a training plan will still profit most but the advantage will be much less because prices across the game will be depressed and I have no idea where that money will go (into increasing trainee prices?). But, we shall see. We may have neutered daytraders but at what cost?

SI

[Qwikshot]

I agree with the idea that Hattrick initially wanted you to make an effort looking for players (bargains).

This goes against that in every way. Now everything will be priced accordingly. There will be no bargains (unless you are up in the wee hours).

That is the greatest disappointment, my greatest thrill was finding good value picks...now everything will be equaled out.

The skill ratings are to me pointless, I now have a weak midfield after several weeks are passable/solid. My brilliant plus two outstandings now seem quite worthless to my competitors' inadequate/passable midfields...

Somehow, I feel this makes midfield more important and it harder for small time teams to train anything but midfield.

I also think it's crucial to stick with a 3-5-2 now.

I read a lot about advantages to strikers, but I have yet to see a reason how.

I'm disappointed but I'll keep playing...my division is impossible to escape from anyway.

[rickJ]

Originally Posted by Qwikshot

The skill ratings are to me pointless, I now have a weak midfield after several weeks are passable/solid. My brilliant plus two outstandings now seem quite worthless to my competitors' inadequate/passable midfields...

Somehow, I feel this makes midfield more important and it harder for small time teams to train anything but midfield.

I also think it's crucial to stick with a 3-5-2 now.

I read a lot about advantages to strikers, but I have yet to see a reason how.

I'm disappointed but I'll keep playing...my division is impossible to escape from anyway.

The internal ratings the match engine uses haven't been changed one bit, it's just instead of a solid against a weak it's a weak (+) against a wretched. Possession numbers and all that remain the same.

The advantage for the forward trainers is the reduced randomness part, as most seem to understand it, the stronger defences will stop attacks more and better attacks will be more likely to score on each attack. Damaging the midfield only teams even more because it used to be that throwing crappy attacks at good defenses would still manage enough goals to win as long as had more chances then their opponent.

[GoldenEagle]

I think it was daed who one said Hattrick is so simple everyone can play it. I think SI and the others have hit the hammer with the nail. These changes are nothing but complex. I think this could be the beginning of the end for HT.

[Mr. Wednesday]

I think you might argue that they should have tried going to the regional markets before adding in the scaling for agent fees (and, to a lesser extent, last club money -- I understand the loophole Bjorn says they were trying to close here). The daytraders thrive on market inefficiency, and a lot of that inefficiency exists because the low number of players on the market in small countries makes it a waste of time for the average buyer to go there.

That's the only change I'd classify as "complex", though.

Honestly, I don't think that (globally) the market dip predicted by SI will come to pass. As I said, DTers were running on market inefficiency. They didn't create demand, they just translated it from one market to another. With the transfer zones to accomplish that now, the niche they served will diminish.

[sterlingice]

I'm just not sure where the money will go. I've been kicking this around with a couple of people tonight and have no real solution still. The system is a closed system so the money has to go somewhere but I'm just not sure where. Regardless, I do think my prices as a person who goes bargain hunting will go up and my profits from selling players by having patience and preying on people (i.e. letting my players out on the market for more than a week at inflated prices and waiting for a buyer) who have none will go down.

SI

[Mr. Wednesday]

Originally Posted by AAGunner3

Question:

Less random in attack/defense? How, by tying it to midfield?

Maybe PM trainers have little to worry about?

I'd assume they're reducing the chance an inferior offense has of scoring against a superior defense (and vice versa). This will tend to help both sides of the scale, I should think. Fewer WTFs induced against a strong offensive team, better chance of denying goals for a strong defensive team.

[GoldenEagle]

I think the main concept SI was saying was that with the Transfer Compre tool - everything will be so flat in the transfer world. The TCT will establish a set price for every single player eventually. Is this what we want? It gives us market stabillity but as SI said - at what price?

[Mr. Wednesday]

I have no intention of using the transfer compare as a bible. I will continue to set both my willingness to sell and my willingness to pay based on a variety of factors. Transfer compare is a useful tool that saves me a lot of work monitoring the market, but I don't expect the peaks and valleys in player sale prices to disappear. I'm not sure it will decline substantially, either.

[rickJ]

Actually I don't see that happening either, while the old system was hard to wade through to find a bargain it was an epic bittter boring battle to find that ideal player. I think we're going to see a lot of people going after players from their home country with good experience and nice SP as opposed to settling for the first one that fit their main critera.

And of course they'll be willing to pay more for that certain player skewing the listed similar players all over the place due to these intangibles.

[GoldenEagle]

I think everything will become automated. If I want an outstanding playmaker for example, then I am going to have to pay $2 million. There will be no more hoping to find a bargain but I know I want to have to overpay for him either.

[Desnudo]

Originally Posted by rickJ

As I'm starting to get it is that HT wants those upper levels to be 'elite' levels, in real life no D.V or IV teams are going to have world class midfields and such, not sure why they didn't just want add more denominations though, all my thoughts on why that'd be rejected were torn apart by this change (hard for everyone to re-learn denominations, too complex, etc).

Right now my only issue with the +,- thing is that they're too significant, having an arithrimetic sign telling apart teams doesn't feel as significant as a new word. Plus there's the fact that 3 WC players can now equate to a weak rating, how does that make sense to newbie?

Changing it this much they might as well have made different scales for players/matches.

I agree. Why not add more denominations? Or do as suggested and just tack a number onto divine? That seems the simplest solution that allows 99% of the community to keep on doing what they're doing.

I could care less about whether my midfield says inadequate or weak, but it seems illogical to look at your ratings from three brilliant midfielders and see something half of that. That's my problem with it. Just an extra level of complication when there were easier solutions.

[cheetum]

The only change I don't really care for is the team ratings, but not for the same reason as others.

Part of what has always appealed to me about Hattrick, is the fact that skills and ratings are represented to the player as approximations not exact figures. For example, lets say in Match A your midfield is solid and in match B your midfield is formidable. What you are able to determine from this is that your midfield was stronger in Match B. What you cannot determine is exactly how much stronger. It could be a huge difference (Match A=6.00 and Match B=7.99) or almost no difference at all (match A=6.99 and match B=7.01). This to me is part of what makes hattrick great.

With the new system lets say your midfield in Match A is now represented as poor (+) and in Match B, weak (-). Now we can determine a little more easily the difference in the two matches!

Many of you already have already pointed out that the new team rating system provides a more accurate representation of your teams performance, but whether or not it makes the game better is debatable. Sure, its difficult to tell if Norway's "divine" attack is really stronger then Sweden's, but isn't that part of what makes it fun?

[One_to7]

Originally Posted by GoldenEagle

I think it was daed who one said Hattrick is so simple everyone can play it. I think SI and the others have hit the hammer with the nail. These changes are nothing but complex. I think this could be the beginning of the end for HT.

How is this more complex at all? It's only going to be difficult for older users who need to learn the new rating system. People signing up now won't be set back at all.

[Peaker]

Having read alot of comments on the changes of 6.6, I agree with Daedalus. While getting used to the "new ways" will take a little time, the games must change to grow. A couple of those changes I could do without... but I'll adapt.

[nickfox45]

to everyone who i seem to have pissed off, my rationale for saying that these changes to ratings made the game better was based mostly on the fact that now your feedback from how your team did during matches will be more exact and therefore more useful. and i think THAT makes the game better.

and sterlingice, not to single YOU out or anything, but you really didnt refute anything i said, you only used it to segway into another argument. i pretty much agreed with what you said about the changes being merely in the mind, and easily overcome, it just seemed everyone was more willing to bitch than deal with the changes.

FYI, i never mind being singled out.

[Tellistto]

In all honesty, I've read alot about this here and in the conferences. The changes to team ratings, I admit, are a radical change that affects the majority more than it does the minority of teams. Having said that, I'm not overly assed about it. I haven't been around a long time, no, I just got my first passable rating at MF in week 14 which is now I don't know what. But you know...I just don't really care. I understand that your team is an extension of your own ego, and having it whacked down and being told YOU SUCK hurts. It really is a psychological issue. Nearly everyone has an ego, and having it bruised will ruffle feathers. Time will tell just how this change really affects the bottom line for the HT devs. We as players DO have some power, you know. Just remember that if this is really so bothersome to you.

Tell

[The_herd]

Been thinking of this since I got home from work last night. I really don't think that bidding wars are going to be affected too much. Most get into bidding wars, not because they don't know the price that the player should go for, but because they are impatient. That could be because they really need to replace an injured player, need a new trainee replaced, or just really like the skill set on a player and don't want to wait for another player to come along. I know that I am usually in a situation where I target a player and unless his price gets out of hand, I keep bidding, because my schedule limits my chances to scan the market for players.

The Price compare is going to be like a yellow warning signal to some, but its not going to stop them from bidding. Others are going to ignore it and go all out for the player they want.

I think the missing money SI is talking about goes to people that lose out to day traders (just a theory, but it has to even out). People that set prices a little low hoping for a bidding war, and end up getting screwed by some guy thats logged on 16 hours a day, puts in a bid with 3 minutes left and snatches him at a bargain price.

I'm not a big fan of the change in GK importance, not because I just bought a nifty new keeper, but because this may end up lowering the price of keepers, which would really damage keeper training. Its already something that takes extreme patience. Lowering potential profits won't help. If that ends up being the case.

As a new scoring trainer, I'm pretty happy with the changes to midfield, I saw my wife put up these attack ratings in her last league match:

Right Side Attack: passable (+)
Central Attack: solid
Left Side Attack: weak (-)

against this defense:

Right Side Defence: inadequate
Central Defence: weak (+)
Left Side Defence: weak (+)

And end up with 1 goal because she lost midfield.

The new ratings system is something that we will just have to adjust to. We can bitch and bitch about it, but I don't think they're going to change it back. Yes, I agree that they shouldn't have made a change that affects .1% of teams in hattrick, but we don't make the desicions.

What it comes down to is we need to give the changes at least a season before we start predicting the end of hattrick and how much they suck. They are some significant changes, and they were bound to get some opposition from the hattrick community, but I don't think any of these changes ruin the fun of playing the game for most of us.