This month, we've worked on big changes to how new teams are created in Hattrick. Hattrick will no longer reuse teams, which will make things smoother for new users and also change how botification of teams work.
In addition to this and a set of smaller improvements around the site, we want to give a heads-up to a new international league that will open next season: The Hattrick Homegrown League.
Let's start with the announcement of the Hattrick Homegrown League. This new international league for additional teams will open next season. It is inspired by the user-led Homegrown Competition that has been running in the Anniversary League for the last two years.
The Homegrown League will be a permanent league and a place where no teams may buy players. In other words, the only way to compete is through effective youth development, training, and excellent management skills. For once, traders have no edge.
The Homegrown League will work like any other additional team, which means it will take up the slot included in Platinum or require an additional team license. By popular demand, we will make a fourth team slot possible in time for this release.
We will return with more information about the Homegrown League closer to the season start, but we wanted to give everyone a heads-up, because we know this new league may affect how you want to plan for your additional teams.
The key part of this month's release is a significant change to how Hattrick assigns new teams. When Hattrick started, we reused old teams when someone left the game and a new user signed up. This structure saved space and performance for us in the short term, as it meant we would wipe clean squads and assets for teams when the managers left. But it had many drawbacks, and it's a design choice we have regretted many times in the 25 years since.
This week, we will start a new way of assigning teams, ensuring every new team gets a unique identity. We are starting small, testing the new method in the Swedish league first, before we start rolling it out to others after the next season break.
For new users, the changes will mean that teams will be created faster and that new users can start playing immediately. They will not inherit the context of taking over an older team.
As part of this same project, we will also change how Gamemasters check new teams. Instead of placing teams that needs to be reviewed on a waiting list before assigning them, users will always get their teams immediately and can start playing. However, some teams that need an extra review will have a few restrictions during their first days. If this happens, the new team will, for example, be unable to bid for players or post in the forums during the first few days. They can, however, place match orders, hire staff, and many other things.
Most existing users should notice no change from this at first. During the season, however, you will see that botification of newly ownerless teams will work differently. Instead of replacing ownerless teams with bots during the season, the system will label ownerless teams as "In Administration." Such teams will keep their players but perform far worse than before. As before, this drop in performance only happens from week 8 onward, and only to teams that were left ownerless in the first half of the season.
A big change is that during this period, the original owners can return and reclaim their teams.
At the end of the season, in Week 16, teams "In Administration" leave the league system and are replaced by a bot team or a new human-owned team.
When a new user signs up for a league, they will get a completely new team with no history. This new team will usually take the space of a bot in the league system, but if no suitable bot team is available to be replaced it might replace teams that are "In Administration" instead.
One way this will manifest on the site is that series tables, and match fixtures will now make more sense. Teams will not change their names midway through the season, and new users will not have to wonder about matches their team was supposed to have played weeks earlier. In the future, club histories will belong only to the manager that created the club and not be shared between a long list of unrelated managers.
Later this year, we will build on this change to allow returning users to connect to their old teams rather than reclaim some of the context they left behind today. We have lost count of the number of returning managers who have begged us for this over the years. Finally, we will be in a position to save club legacies in a proper way.
In addition to the team creation change, we have some smaller announcements:
- We have added the possibility for users to check the availability of additional teams slots in a league without needing to close one of their teams first.
- When starting a new additional team, you will now be able to choose a "Preferred style of play," and you will also receive other extra small boosts that were, until now, only given to new primary teams.
- On the Team History page, we added an Overview Table, similar to the feature in Foxtrick.
- We've added filters specific to Hattrick Arena on the Team Analysis tool
- We've improved how we show top achievers and recruiters in the overview page for each league.
- We now show the highest position you ever reached in a specific Ladder.
- We now highlight the skills that have been revealed in youth training when you click the "reveal all" button.
We hope you enjoy the release!