Gameplay Needs To Be More Fun
Genesis League Goals's gameplay is just too simple. You have three actions to select from; one is usually an OBVIOUS right choice. Just do the clicking and your chances of winning will be maximal considering your team's potential.
Not only is this highly bot-able (I could make a bot myself), but I doubt GLG has the resources to track any more sophisticated bots that don't move the mouse in perfect lines after pre-established constant DELAY_CONSTANT. But an even bigg'r problem is that gameplay as such is not very satisfying and skills are most definitely not going to solve that.
Strategic Choices
First, to introduce some strategies such as targeting a player to deplete his stamina or building up morale with lateral passes, we need to see the stats of the opponent's players and the full bench. The player will in all likelihood miss a replacement for one of his positions or it won't be as good.
With the configuration of 7 players but only 5 substitutes, it is impossible to have TWO of each ROLE. Many teams won't even fill the bench and will field stronger players to the maximum roster points a team is allowed.
Considering the above, a player can choose to purposefully play on a side where the irreplaceable players reside. Coaches like Tanner, Gail, or Jurinovic give you an advantage when losing, Tailwind and Sprightly improve your passing game and Millwall with Erikson boost your team on successful tackle...
All of these can be used to target the opponent's resources rather than trying to score in the first half.
Unique Rules
There are three kinds of players.
- All-around high stats, particularly useful with Gail, Genepool, and Ivy who boost your energy dynamics (~5%)
- Players who are experts on one thing that they do well and have reasonable split defensive stats, who are perfect for substitute plays with all other coaches and Duce especially (~5%)
- Useless players (~90%)
My focus here is on the last group. You can't have a game design where nearly all assets have a minimum price and can't be effective in any given circumstance. It is better to have one low-level goalkeeper with high stats rather than to play a weak one that you can afford to progress somewhere with.
Can we change that? The best way I reckon is to introduce custom randomly applied rules similar to what was done in Splinterlands, f.e.:
- The weakest player on the field gains (+6/+6/+6) to defensive stats
- Reverse talents (shoot): every player's shooting ability is recalculated as [1 + (10 - CURRENT_SHOOT_VALUE)]
- All are Underdogs: after all coach abilities are applied, each players in the same position get an individual Underdog buff if they are on top (the first condition is to balance it against Duce, so he doesn't get a guaranteed win here)
- Strong winds: passing forward gets increased by +3 for team A (the opposite team gets this buff in 2nd half)
- Pro-active Goalkeepers: The goalkeeper who has lesser ATTRIBUTE_SUM will gain intercept equal to his block and can now intercept passes between forwards
- Universal Chaos Theory: For every round, 3 players out of the weakest 10 get 15 random ATTRIBUTE_POINTS divided randomly among all ATTRIBUTES.
- Orc Rocklobbers: Every player has one player other than Goalkeeper downed to 0 Health for the duration of the game. The effect applies again in the second half.
- The players that haven't made a play this half get a boost to (SPECIFIC_ATTRIBUTE)
There can easily be 50+ such rules that would require weaker players to utilize. Duce alone can't do that. And of course, coaches that make keeping the same team in both halves more viable, there should be something for them too, so the cards aren't devalued.
Coaches
In addition, I think some coaches should be revisited. I think that, for example, GKSkillz could apply a maximum bonus any player on the field has to the Goalkeeper Block...
Other Ideas
Of course, this is not solving the problem completely but it is the best I could think of. Do you have any ideas?
Pokud jsi chtěl vyvolat diskusi, možná stálo za to publikovat ten článek do komunity a ne jen do nemoderovaných tagů ;)
Koukam, ze to neslo do komunity. Dal jsem dokaz do prislusne sekce do Discordu, ale necekam, ze si toho nekdo vsimne.
Asi by to ještě šlo cross-postnout.
Zajimava funkce, o ni jsem ani nevedel. Ale nevadi, GLG tu myslim komunitu nema a vsechno se odehrava na Discordu, kde nejake reakce vidim.
A jaké jsou?
On prisel jeste vcera patch, ktery znemoznil strategii s ofenzivnimi obranci/zalozniky. Podil uzitecnych karet tedy klesl jeste niz. Dost lidi tak chape, ze v soucasnem stavu hra zustat nemuze.
Je tam jeden, ktery si hodne stezoval na ty strilejici obrance, ktery zustal spokojeny. Podle nej se vsechno vyresi, kdyz bude vice hracu a snizi se dostupnost top karet, ale to matematicky vubec nevychazi, kdyz je lepsi i levnejsi mit zakladni verzi top hrace, nez lvl 50 nejakeho prumerneho.
Ja se bojim, ze na nejakou zmenu uz jsme promeskali cas a ta hra nikdy nedosahne pozitivni navratnosti investice.
Jakože obránce už nebude moci mít střelbu 10? Nebo jak tomu mám rozumět? Je fakt, že góly přes půl hřiště padají až moc často, na můj vkus.
Strela 10 dava ted sanci na gol okolo 4-6% a pokud mic povedes doprostred hriste, tak to dela nejakych 8-14% (az 15% od meho kouce je v tom uz zapocitane).
To je mezi tretinou a ctvrtinou puvodnich sanci a vyrazne byly oslabeny i strely zalozniku.
I tak je to extrémně hodně. De facto je to gól z půlky, těch padá jako šafránu.
To je rozhodne pravda, ale tohle nema byt verohodna simulace fotbalu. Ted musi vsichni hrat uplne stejny tym, jakkakoliv jina strategie uz neni mozna. Spatne z hlediska herniho designu a sam si zminoval, ze hra te nebavi. Hledat alternativni cesty bavilo me.
Jo, ale když to mají hrát fanoušci fotbalu, tak to musí být alespoň trošku realistické. Možností volby rozestavení počínaje a herními situacemi konče.
A pokud to nemají hrát fanoušci fotbalu, zakoupení licence k americké MLS bylo plýtváním penězi.
Obviously, even that few tiny options what we could call 'tactics', 'strategy' were killed in further favor of that 5%.
They don't really need bots, how some of the 7 top players, no sub teams do: they just register, let it on auto-play and they won... :)
Hard to talk about 'gameplay', when it's all about: who can pass to FW after dribble and then score.
Next to that, they nerfed everything, what gave few other options, especially shooting from DF, MF (good to know it's an arcade game :), they 'forgot' to nerf the FWs defensive stat, what is insane high, even 9-10PA, DR players got always under 50%, most of the time under 30% chance vs. 9-10 def stat FWs.
Passing require 2 players stat, also involves the MF handler stat (DR), and who knows why, there are no MFs with high dribble and pass + at least 1 more other useful stats (shooting is not useful with MF anymore, and i talk about players, outside 5%). Meantime, FW def stat stands alone, untouched. Pretty much similar situation in MF case.
There are plenty solution, what the 5% won't like, but if GLG doesn't change it, this game is dead. The 5% will play for a while, but playing vs. the same teams will be very boring and annoying, too, and their winning % will decline badly. (Anyway, the 60%+ over the field wasn't enough, they wanted 80%+, now they got it, so lets see, how they like that.)
I don't know how they suspect any kind of success from an arcade game, when 80%+ : 'failed action'.... :) matches are boring and annoying. 0-x losses, or 0-0, 1-1, rarely a 1-2 or 0-2... once again, arcade game... :)
Solutions:
1., Nerf FWs and MFs defensive stats (and if that would give extra for the other side shooting, then feel free nerf DF, MF shooting to ZERO, but then give something instead, compensate it)
2., Player cap, you can have 1 player over 50 RP in starting7, 1 between 45-50, 1 between 40-45 and the rest under 40. (kinda radical, but they must do something)
3., Make the game equal to everybody, so 7 starter, 5 subs ( max. 1 GK , the rest field players) is a must or give penalty for those teams whose don't use 1 gk sub and 4 field subs, something like -10% / empty sub on hole team
4., With current rating system, match-making only between +/-200 rating. (also more people will play, if they know, they will get an opponent, who against they have at least some small chance, instead of zero)
5., League system, instead of ranked rewards. it's not a fantasy card game. this ranked rewards thing doesn't fit for a team sport game. (at least, that part would look like a football game)
6., Separate the top 5% completely, in each tier. We got it, they are the best, they can compete vs. each other separately for the highest rewards, and leave the 90-95% alone. (I guess, the match-making issue would be solved asap :) )
7., At the moment, the combining is pointless, because a 1-4bcx top players team without sub can easily reach regional, almost sure national, and i suppose, even global tiers. All 6 hard stat and below players are worth nothing atm. (actually, the 7-8 stat players not far from that either) So change XP bonus. It should give 0.1 to hard stats / XP level instead of 1% what favor only top 5% of cards again, so zero reason to combine anything else atm
8., make a football manager version. don't care the visuals, very good in 90s' style, but a playable one, what is not a pay to earn game, but really involves something, what people, who play similar games, really like. and if someone want to waste time for this arcade version with 5% of top cards just do it, and the rest of us can play something with them, what is much nearer to our expectations, instead of this very simplified, primitive 'gameplay'.
Perhaps none will solve the actual issues, it's in the core but at least worth to try, as it is pretty much a dead end at the moment.
Anyway probably the last point is the best option. (just have to keep those far from that, who likes this actual 'arcade gameplay' :) ) Even just copy a 90s football manager game and attach the NFTs would make most of the people much more satisfied. Then everybody would get what they've wanted. Probably plenty people who left it earlier would come back, if they would see, there is some kind of gameplay, what makes them remember to football.
4, 6 are unnecessary, giving players an option to decline such matches would suffice. I can second everything else.