The new scout is coming!

As we have mentioned earlier the current scout system has a number of problems. Therefore, we're happy to announce, that we'll soon be releasing an updated and improved scout system, that the entire game will benefit from.

We have been working hard on improving the scout in these four areas:

[b]Realism[/b]
In the current scout system you can scan for instance entire Brazil for new youth players and with a good accuracy determine whether any of these new players will become super stars when they grow up. The scout is able to do this even before the newly created players has ever trained and/or played their first match! And this process takes only around 30 minutes with a good scout. This is clearly not very realistic.

The new scout cannot search through an entire country in 30 minutes. Instead you must define which leagues you want your scout to monitor. The scout will then visit all clubs in the chosen leagues, and see how well each player performs in training. When he has gathered enough data he returns with a report.

[b]Difficulty[/b]
With the current scout system, it is far too easy to find the future superstars - well, at least it is for large large well financed clubs. Shortly after a new player with a high potential is created, he's bought up by some large clubs right away - often this is a few hours after the player is created, before he even does his first training. This must be changed in order to maintain Virtual Manager as a challenging game for everyone.

The new scout keeps and eye on the players he is monitoring for a period of time. He watches their actual training passes (just a real scout would). Thus, it takes longer time for a scout to actually discover a talent. This means that medium sized clubs will have a higher probability of buying the player before he ends up in a top club.

[b]Server performance[/b]
The current scout system is too demanding in server resources. In the beginning it ran just fine, but as we've increased in managers and players, it cannot cope anymore. It has to be changed. This is also the reason why the feature is sometimes disabled Sunday evening when a lot of managers are online.

This will be of course be fixed with this new version :)

[b]Bans[/b]
The current scout system gets its data from hidden "secret" numbers (for instance "the potential number") that only he can see. These numbers are not always accountable. This makes it hard for our Cheat Hunters to determine whether a trade is over-priced or not, because it might have been taking place because of an inaccurate estimate from the scout.

The new scout system looks and reveals only the same information that is publicly available: the training passes. This makes it much easier for the Cheat Hunters to spot overpriced trades, and bans made on a weak foundation will be more seldom.

Furthermore, we call tell you that this change in the scout system, is a part or larger optimization of the game, in which we among others things will make players' career process more unpredictable. Of course, we will inform you when we have more of this ready.

We hope to have the new scout system ready for you in around two weeks.

Oh, and please leave tell us how you feel about this change - we'd love to hear from you! :-)