New abilities

While working on the new match simulator we've been thinking about how we could improve the game's current way of handling player abilities. Today, I'd like to tell you about our progress.

The current player abilities have annoyed us for quite some time. They are overly complex. For example, what does it mean that a player has an "off the ball" of 98? In a match, how will he behave different from a player that has only 80? Alas, even we developers find it hard to answer that question. Thus the abilities have always felt "mysterious" to a lot of people.

This recent forum topic shows better than anything how confusing the abilities can be when you delve into the details.

So how does a good ability system look? Our goals for the new abilities are these:

• It has be easy to get an overview
• It has to simple and intuitive
• The correlation between the players' abilities and their performance in matches has to be straightforward
• We must be able to convert to the new abilities without affecting the players' overall strengths relative to each other (no players will become weaker/stronger as a result of the conversion)

With inspiration from a lot of other football games (FIFA for instance), we have developed this draft:

• We'll lower the number of abilities to 10: Finishing, dribbling, tackling, speed, acceleration, passing, stamina, leadership, heading, penalty taking.
• We introduce a new ability scale: 0-100. Though, most players will be born with abilities at around 30-45.
• We introduce a new "overall rating": A weighted average of abilities that'll take the players' positions into account. For instance, finishing will "weigh more" for attackers than for defenders.

This system has obvious benefits. We'll remove all "mystique" by only using abilities that are easy to grasp. What do you think "heading" means? Right! How well a player heads. Through the new scale, we make it easier to assess the relative strength relationship between players. A player that have 100 in speed runs twice as fast as one who have 50 (the current scale does not support this property). The new "Overall rating" (will replace the current "Ability total") will make it very easy to asses the overall strength of a player.

We do not wish to affect the training system. Therefore it follows, that the daily increments must be regulated by the same formula as the abilities. In this way we ensure no one will hit the "ceiling" of 100 in each ability. Put in another way, 100 will be the new ~450: A level which is extremely (if not impossible) to reach in one attribute.

As I said, this is just a draft. For instance, we still need to work on the keeper stats.

We expect to implement this system sometime in the new year. We're looking at it already now to make sure the new match simulator will support the new system when it's ready.