[Aggie]

This is, as I see it, the nail on the coffin of my hattrick carreer.... I wished we had some stability for a change.

With the new match engine in place we will now focus on other areas of improvement. But there is some news for next season; things we believe will have a nice impact on the game and don’t require brand new development.

Foremost you will be able to train your players considerably faster from next season on. There are also changes to the staff system, and a change to how Special Events are distributed.

As mentioned in the Hattrick reboots editorial we will slow down the introduction of new game features for a while, which is pretty natural after last season’s major changes. Now this doesn’t mean nothing will happen – there are some things planned for next season:

Increased training speed
Next season we will speed up the skill training. Training is a key area in Hattrick, and one of the best moments of the week is to check your training to see if you’ve got any skill-ups. Speeding up the training will make that moment even more exciting and it has several positive effects for the game as well.

It further promotes multi-skilled players and leads to greater player diversity. It makes it easier for new users to see the effects of training, and helps them make their teams competitive faster. It also makes it more beneficial to build a team around players you have trained yourself compared to just training players to sell on the market.

Training change in details
Training will be much faster up to formidable level, after that the speed up will decrease gradually up to titanic (where it will reach today’s speed). Above extra-terrestrial training will slow down gradually compared to today, and at divine level it will be much slower.

We will also make age matter less when it comes to training, and as a result of that the speed increase will be bigger for older players. Secondly this also means the level where training starts to become slower (compared to today) will be higher for older players than for younger players.

Some examples:
- Up to formidable, a 17 year old player will train about 50% faster than today (=150% of the current speed). After that the % of the speed up will decrease gradually.
- Up to formidable, a 23 year old player will train about 75% faster than today (=175% of the current speed). After that the % of the speed up will decrease gradually. Above extra-terrestrial it will gradually become slower than today (and the higher the skill, the slower the speed).
- Up to formidable, a 26 year old player will train about 85% faster than today (=185% of the current speed). After that the % of the speed up will decrease, and above magical it will gradually become slower.
- Up to formidable, a 29 year old player will train about 95% faster than today (=195% of the current speed). After that the % of the speed up will decrease, and above utopian it will gradually become slower.

Please note that a 17 year old player still will train faster than an 18 year old, and he in turn faster than a 19 year old and so on. The difference will however be smaller.

Skill drop changes
Age will also become less important for skill drops - so age related skill drops will slow down. However, skill related skill drops for skills above titanic will speed up (the higher the skill the faster the drop).

A nice consequence of these skill drop changes - coupled with the increased training speed - is that the best national team players will be trained in secondary skills and the best players may not even be divine in their main skill.

Academies keep their current speed
To keep the balance between the youth academies and the scouting network (so the academies don’t produce much better players), youth players in the academies will keep their current speed. This means training in your senior team may be faster than in the academies (depending on your staff settings), but keep in mind that training a player in the academy means you don’t have to give up a training slot for him in your senior team.

Prices on the transfer list might fall
Because of the increased training speed prices on the transfer market are likely to fall a bit. This is something we consider being a good thing though, as the prices currently are a bit high in our opinion. Lower prices on the market means match and sponsor incomes become more important, and that’s a nice side effect of this change.

Coming salary changes
Related to this we would like to give you a heads-up that we plan to slowly increase older players’ salaries the coming seasons. This - together with the removal of general training (see below) - is to ensure that older players are not more beneficial than what they already are.

At the same time we will also slowly lower the salaries for very high skilled players. In the future we want the best players in the game to be affordable in the top series, and this – together with the training changes – will be a step in that direction.

General training removal also coming up
We would also like to give you a heads-up that we plan to remove general training (as we know it) as a training option later on. We like the thought of having an option to boost players’ current form once in a while, but it should not be something you can use week after week.

Staff changes
As I mentioned in the "Our view on Hattrick" editorial last year, we want to clean up areas of the game that contain "dead end" options and the staff system is one of those. I also mentioned that you will have to make a choice between different strategies (you will not be able to use all strategies to the max at the same time).

With this in mind we will now make a few modifications to the staff system. These modifications (see below) will also pave the way for a completely new staff system, which is currently being designed.

- Goalkeeping coaches will be merged with assistant coaches.
- Accountants will be removed
- You will not be able to hire more than 10 staff persons of the same type.
- You will not be able to have more than 30 staff persons in total.

If at the start of the next season, you have more than 30 staff persons hired, the board will first fire psychologists (but leave at least 1). If that’s not enough they will fire physiotherapists (but leave at least 1), and after that doctors.

Some short words about the upcoming staff system
Our intention with the new staff system is that it should feel a lot more personal and provide better feedback of the effect of different staff persons. It will also serve as a corner stone when it comes to choosing your game strategy; which strategic options (and to what degree) you want to utilize.

There will also be new staff types such as agents, which will put a limit on your trading capacity. And if you want to maximize trading, it also means you will have less room to improve match performance, training etc.

Special event distribution change
As you most likely know; the more you dominate the midfield today, the higher the chance to get a special event. Next season we will make midfield less important when a special event is distributed. It will now be exactly according to the ball possession.

This means having 55% ball possession means a 55% chance to get each special event (you must also have the right players/specialties for a particular event to get triggered of course).

The reason for this is to make midfield a bit less important than what it currently is. As a second step we will also connect special events with attack and defence ratings in the future.9