B Teams becomes Youth Teams

Since my last post, where I introduced you to our future B Teams feature, we've mainly been working on the technical preparations that are required for the game to support 2 teams within the same club. It's a bit more complicated than you'd think, since it extends into many different systems, such as transfers, leagues, season update and much more.

Alongside working on the technical aspects, we've also started discussing the finer details and rules that need to be balanced in such a way that this feature becomes an exiting new gameplay element, that fits well into the wider game.

In this blog post I'd like to tell you about some of the thought we have about this balance.

Why should you have a B Team?

Let's start by defining what it is, that we'd like to achieve with this new feature.

The feature has to be a bonus for the managers developing talents. It's our intention to give an edge in training to the managers who choose to let their young players play some matches - even if the players will a bit more tired. It's a shame that it's currently more worthwhile today to keep your youth players locked up in a training factory like battery hens for several years, before you finally let them emerge from the darkness to play some matches.

Another aspect to B Teams will be the excitement of leading another squad to victory, and it'll give you the opportunity to test your young players in actual matches.

Finally, it should be possible to use your B Team players as reserves for the A Team.

Having a B team will, of course, be optional.

What do we need to avoid?

• Having a B Team should not be a burden to the managers who like developing young talent - quite the opposite.
• Having a B team should not be a huge financial bonus - nor a burden. It should just about break even.
• The large wealthy clubs should no be able to create Super B Teams full of star players that will steamroller over smaller clubs' A Teams in the leagues.

How do we achieve these things?

We need some mechanisms that limit the earnings potential and how far the B teams can advance in the leagues.

B teams also need to provide a bonus, somehow, to the managers developing young talent.

We will achieve these things with the following steps:

Age limitation

First of all, we will institute a maximum age of 21 years, which means that B Teams are now officially being renamed to youth teams.

The age limit will provide a completely natural dampening effect on how far the youth team will be able to advance in the leagues, and on how much they'll be able to earn.

Limit to the size of the youth team's stadium

The maximum size of their stadium will be limited to an appropriate number of seats. Exactly how many, has not been decided yet.

Player mood must work the way it was originally intended

Player mood was added to the game many years ago, and it was an attempt to ensure that you don't just train your players, but also let them play some matches. But, as we all know, it's easy to circumvent. All you have to do, is put the player in at the last minute in order to give them a mood boost.

Therefore we will also take a look at the mood system and get rid of this exploit. Instead of giving players a mood boost just for showing up at the match, we'll keep a running tab of how many minutes a player has been on the pitch recently, and require a certain number of minutes per season in order to maintain their mood. The exact number has not yet been decided. We will probably make the minutes count for double, if youth team player is allowed to play a match with your A Team.

We might also introduce an extra mood level, which will yield a bonus to training beyond what 100% mood gives you today. If so, players will only be able to reach this mood level if they play a lot of matches and only if they're on the youth team.

All of these effects will need to be balanced against energy loss in such a way that it will be worthwhile to let your youth players play matches.

There will be a section on the site, where you'll be able to keep tabs on the the play time that each player has had recently, and see how their mood is affected. That way it'll be easier to plan which players you want to give some more match time.

Cups for youth teams

The youth teams will (at least in the beginning) play in the same leagues as the A teams.

But, in order to give you an opportunity to test your youth team's mettle against teams at the same level, there will be a number of new cups just for youth teams.