Nominate Football, Tactics & Glory for the Steam Awards 2023 - Labor of Love
Some of you have been playing FTG since Early Access (2015-2018), some discovered FTG in its release year (2018), while others heard about it in the last 5 years.
Throughout this time, we've listened to your wishes, comments, and feedback. And all this time, we've been improving the game, adding both major and minor enhancements. We've released a large number of free updates, as well as 2 DLCs that significantly changed the gaming experience.
FTG for us is not just a game. It's our dream game.
It's a football manager that truly entertains, that allows you to make important decisions and see clear consequences, that respects the player and their time, and at the same time, offers the opportunity to play for hundreds or thousands of hours, creating your own stories that happened only in your football world.
And if we survive this damn war, we will continue to delight and surprise you with new and interesting gaming experiences in the world of Football, Tactics & Glory.
Although a niche game can't compete with games in more popular genres, you still vote for it in the category 'Labour of Love'.
Also, if you haven't written a review yet, please do so, as it really helps us. And if you have time, write reviews for those DLCs you've played too.
Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the game to crash
Sometimes, if you skipped the screens too quickly after the match, the game could crash and it was impossible to continue the campaign after that.
Fixed a bug and updated the game.
National teams in Football, Tactics & Glory: World
One of the features of the new game will be national teams. In this article, I would like to explain how competitions between national teams will be organized.
I want to make it clear from the outset that I will not be describing how you can become the coach of a national team here. That's quite a large topic, which I will cover in another article. Here, I will describe how tournaments with national teams will work in our game.
Nationalities
From now on, footballers will have their nationality displayed. Young footballers will have the nationality of the country where their youth academy is located.
At the beginning of the campaign in Premier League clubs, a certain percentage of footballers from other nationalities will be generated (percentages taken from real statistics). However, if you see a Brazilian footballer in a European club later on, it means the footballer was born in Brazil and was bought by a European club.
For example, here is the footballing journey of a talented footballer from India, who was noticed in Europe, where he spent most of his career. However, he chose to finish his football journey in Colombia. That is, he was able to play on three continents.
Nationalities work as the basis for creating national teams. They also will be linked to football cultures, which I will discuss in another article.
For now, we do not plan to impose restrictions on foreign players. We want to see first whether this complication is really necessary for the game.
Universal tournament generation algorithms
When we were developing continental tournaments like the European Cup and EFA Cup, we encountered the challenge that players can have a vastly different number of countries. Therefore, we had to develop universal tournament generation algorithms that take into account all situations while allowing the tournaments to look realistic.
These algorithms turned out to be a solid foundation for developing tournaments for national teams. Players can freely change the number of simulated countries on each continent. For example, someone might play with a large number of countries in Europe but a smaller number on other continents. And someone else might simulate up to 8 countries on each continent.
We had to develop a new and rather complex system for generating national tournaments that adapt to the number of generated countries and at the same time strive to maintain the realism of the tournaments.
Additionally, new rules for determining which teams can advance from a group have been introduced into the game. A team that finishes third in a group may be able to advance depending on their performance compared to other teams that finish in the same position in other groups. For instance, if the rules specify that the top two teams automatically advance from the group, while the third-place team can advance based on their results (goals scored/conceded, victories, etc.), we will show the player what affects these results and continuously display which of the third-place teams will advance from the group:
Overall, considering that we do not know in advance the configuration of countries each player will have, we are confident that our algorithms can handle any situation. And yet, national team tournaments will be as close to reality as possible within the framework of our game's conventions.
World Cup (WC)
Every 4 years, the World Cup will take place. The tournament will be held in the same years as the corresponding real-world tournament.
The World Cup consists of two parts:
Qualification Stage
Final Stage
If a player starts the game during the year of the final stage, we will simulate the qualification stage that occurred before the start of the game. So, some of the matches will already have been played.
Qualification Stage
Two years before the start of the final stage, the game generates a qualification stage calendar.
To generate the qualification stage, the system needs to know how many teams from each continent will play in the final stage. For this, we primarily consider the strength of the continents (remember that you can change the strength of continents before starting your campaign in Manager's Journey).
However, it might be the case that a continent is strong, but the player simulates a small number of countries there. For example, a player might be playing in America but simulating only 4 countries in Europe. In that case, the generation system will need to primarily consider the number of countries being simulated on different continents.
Ultimately, once the number of teams is determined, the system calculates how to structure the qualification stage, taking into account the number of national teams on that continent, the number of teams that should qualify for the final tournament, country rankings, and realistic group distribution.
Therefore, the qualification stage can look entirely different on each continent. For example, here's how the qualification stages in Europe (groups of 5 teams) and America (league of 10 teams) look:
National team camp
Three days before national team matches, footballers are invited to their national team camps. At the same time, the club cannot have less than a certain number of footballers so that it can continue to play in club tournaments.
The calendar will mark the dates when footballers are invited to the national team camps. So, if you have such footballers in your team, you can prepare for this moment.
Of course, top clubs may find it challenging to cope without their best performers. Additionally, national team footballers may return fatigued or injured.
On the other hand, they gain more experience, and your club will earn Glory for your footballers' participation in national team matches.
You will be able to go to the screen of any national team and see from which clubs its footballers came. If there is no one in the camp of the national team, then you will see the team from the previous call up. For example, here's the England national team:
Final stage
The best national teams from all continents gather for the final stage of the tournament to determine the world champion.
Depending on the number of countries in the game world, the final stage can consist of 32, 16, or 8 teams.
The teams are then divided into groups of 4 teams each. Just like in the real world, the system will strive to place teams from different continents in the same group.
Continent Championship (CC)
Every 4 years, each continent will hold its own Continent Championship: the European Championship, the American Championship, the Asian and Oceanian Championship, and the African Championship.
Each continent will have its unique way of organizing this tournament. Additionally, we've created unique cups to emphasize the distinctiveness of these tournaments.
Similar to the WC, the CC consists of both a qualification stage and a final stage.
Qualification Stage
If fewer than 13 countries are being simulated on a continent, there won't be a qualification stage. All simulated countries on that continent will directly enter the final stage.
However, if there are 13 or more countries, the teams will be divided into groups of 4, 5, or 6 teams, depending on their number. The distribution in groups is based on the country ranking, meaning each group will have very strong, average, and very weak national teams.
We use the overall country ranking rather than the national team ranking because, at present, we don't see a need to introduce an additional ranking.
The qualification stage begins after the conclusion of the World Cup, two years before the CC final.
Since the game is built around the Autumn-Spring calendar and European tournaments, the CC will have a calendar more similar to the European Championship. However, if we can introduce uniqueness and realism to the CC for other continents, we strive to do so.
Final Stage
The structure of the CC final stage depends on the number of participating teams. If there are fewer than 13 countries on a continent, they will all be distributed into groups of 3, 4, or 5 teams.
If there are more countries, the final stage can have 8, 16, or 24 teams.
Statistics
Storing and displaying statistics has been quite a challenge for us. The important time unit for tracking statistics is the season. However, for national teams, one game cycle consists of one and a half years of qualification and a one-month final stage. We had to carefully consider how to align our statistical display format with the formats of national tournaments.
Here's an example of one of the screens:
In the qualification stages of the European Championship, the England national team finished second both times. This allowed them to advance to the final stage. There, in the first case, they finished third, and four years later, they reached the quarter-finals (QF).
On the other hand, during the World Cup qualification stages, the team secured the first position. However, in the first final stage, the national team only finished third in the group. But four years later, they made it to the semi-finals (and lost in the match for third place).
And here's another chart, this time for the Brazil national team:
In the America Cup, there were no qualification stages (because there are less than 13 countries). In the final stage, the national team finished third and second respectively. In the World Cup, the team made it to the final stage both times but was stopped in the quarter-finals in both cases.
Watching national team matches
Some players expressed a desire to watch national team matches. Within our team, we are also interested in implementing this feature. Therefore, we plan to implement this mechanic.
In the calendar, you will be able to select which match you want to watch, and when the time comes for that match, you can start watching it in viewing mode.
In the future, if enough players show interest, we will consider allowing you to watch matches from continental tournaments or any matches happening in the game world.
Friendly matches
Our game is built on the premise that just by looking at a footballer, you understand their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, friendly matches don't make sense in the game. Because of this, there won't be friendly matches for national teams either.
Final words
Overall, national teams are more like end-game content. In lower leagues, the only way to interact with national teams will be the ability to watch your favourite team's match and track statistics.
But when you manage a successful Premier League club, national teams will be part of your football life. You will periodically lose your best footballers for a week or two. In return, you will gain Glory and a sense of pride for your club, which produced such outstanding footballers.
At the same time, you will know that the entire system of national tournaments works quite realistically (at least in Europe).
I've described the general mechanics of how national tournaments work. But we will also allow you to become a national team coach. More details about this will be covered in one of the future articles.
How to follow the development progress?
First and foremost, visit the game's page and add it to your wishlist. This way, you will receive an email from Steam when the game goes into Early Access or Full Release.
Secondly, click "Follow" to be notified whenever we publish news on Steam.
The great place to get notified about news and discuss them is our Discord. Also, to follow our news, you can subscribe to our mailing list: Email subscription.
В гру добавлена підтримка Steam Deck!
Our game was reviewed by Valve and verified for Steam Deck back when this device was released. However, it turned out that despite Valve's verification, the game didn't display controller glyphs. This made playing FTG on the Steam Deck uncomfortable. Some players even found ways to fix this issue by reconfiguring the controls.
For a long time, we couldn't address the problem because our country was in the midst of a war.
But recently, we acquired a Steam Deck and finally fixed the game's control system, adding the ability to play on this wonderful device.
The update has been added for both the main game and each DLC.
Enjoy the game!
How the loaning mechanics will work in Football, Tactics & Glory: World
Players have been asking us for a long time to add the ability to send footballers on loan. The main reason why players need this is to be able to develop their youth. Because in their own club, it's risky to field inexperienced footballers, whereas on loan, a prospect could gain experience.
It is important for us that new mechanics add new interesting dilemmas to the game, that players make interesting decisions, and that the game world becomes more alive. That's why we needed time to plan loan mechanics that meet our standards of interest and at the same time don't provide players with an ultimate tool to exploit.
When we started working on FTGW, we decided to implement the loaning mechanics first. As always with new mechanics like this, we're making them part of the game world, where if it's available to the player, it should also be available to other teams.
The player sends a footballer on loan
You can choose any of your footballers and press the "Loan out" button. The game will try to pick two clubs that could potentially put the footballer on the field:
One club - from your league or higher. A footballer would be happy to play there, because in higher leagues footballers get more experience. Therefore, it will not be necessary to convince the footballer to get there. That is, the cost of Glory will be minimal. However, the level of other footballers in this club will be higher than yours. Therefore, the chances that he will enter the field will not be very high.
The other club will be eager to have your footballer in their lineup. Often, this will be a club from a lower league. Despite the footballer's reluctance to play in a lower league, they are more likely to gain real experience. To persuade him, you will have to spend a significant amount of Glory. But if you have big plans for this footballer, then it's worth it.
We don't force other clubs to use your footballer. Clubs independently decide whether to field them in matches or not. Therefore, there's no guarantee that the footballer will gain experience. But in a weaker club, he is more likely to see regular playtime.
Footballers on loan earn both general experience and specialization experience for each match they participate in. If a loaned-out footballer gains a new specialization level, you will not be able to continue the game until you choose a new specialization ability for him. In other words, you retain control over the footballer's development; the game won't make decisions for you.
Additionally, interest from other clubs in this footballer grows with each match he participates in. Therefore, if you intend to develop a footballer for future sale, sending them on loan makes sense. However, it might cost you Glory.
Of course, if you play in the Amateur League, no one will take your footballers on loan.
Other teams also send footballers on loan
During the open transfer window, other teams can also send their footballers on loan. If they have players aged 22 or younger who lack regular playing time, these clubs search for suitable teams where their footballers can gain valuable match experience.
In the footballer's profile on the Career screen, you can see when and at which clubs they were on loan.
Other teams offer you to take their footballers on loan
You may also receive an offer to take a footballer on loan. If an AI club sees that you might be interested in their footballer, they send you an offer.
There can be a temptation here. On one hand, you're trying to develop your own footballers. On the other hand, if you're playing in a lower league and have ambitious goals, a good footballer in your team can be beneficial. Especially if you don't have many footballers overall, they're getting fatigued, and they need a solid replacement.
However, there's one catch: to accept a footballer into your team, you'll need to pay a small fee in Glory. This showcases that you genuinely intend to provide the player with experience rather than just taking them for the sake of it.
However, when the footballer returns to his home club at the start of the transfer window, you will be rewarded in Glory for:
every match the footballer played (even if it was just a brief appearance)
every level the footballer attained
every specialization level the footballer achieved.
In other words, by taking a footballer on loan and providing them with match experience, you can earn Glory.
Final words
From now on, loaning will be a fully integrated part of the game, on par with transfers. You will be able to send footballers to gain experience in other clubs. Other clubs will also be able to send their footballers on loan to other clubs, including your club as well. This will allow you to navigate some seasons more confidently or earn Glory.
We've implemented this mechanic quite a while ago in the development version. It has already been tested and we enjoy playing with it. We're confident that you'll enjoy it too.
How to follow the development progress?
First and foremost, visit the game's page and add it to your wishlist. This way, you will receive an email from Steam when the game goes into Early Access or Full Release.
Secondly, click "Follow" to be notified whenever we publish news on Steam.
The great place to get notified about news and discuss them is our Discord. Also, to follow our news, you can subscribe to our mailing list: Email subscription.
Bug Fixes
Found and fixed a multithreading bug that could cause the game to crash.
Reworked loading and saving the game a bit to prevent possible damage to game progress.
Added additional information fields to reports. This should help us in case a player sends information about problems with the game.
Bug fixes
- Fixed a very rare bug that could cause the game to crash in the first season. - Fixed a very rare bug that could cause the game to crash during transfer calculations. - Fixed a very rare bug that could lead to crashes in the middle of the season after a coach moved to another team. - We also found several potentially dangerous places in the code that could lead to crashes, but we did not receive any reports about them before. We still fixed them and updated the game.
Have fun! ːcannonshotː
Small bug fixes in all versions of the game
After a recent update to Steam Overlay, it started malfunctioning with our game, such as poorly displaying notifications about friends' current games and having other issues. We have ensured that Steam Overlay works correctly with FTG and all DLCs.
In the Hot Seat mode, the ability to select a team from modifications was missing. Additionally, the list of selectable countries for team selection was displayed incorrectly. This has been fixed (the issue was only present in Manager's Journey).
In the Korean and Chinese localizations, information regarding interest from other clubs was not displayed on the Contracts screen. This has been fixed for Football Stars and Manager's Journey.
In matches, we have replaced the banners for Football, Tactics & Glory with banners for Football, Tactics & Glory: World.
We have added a banner in the main menu to remind players about Football, Tactics & Glory: World.
Football, Tactics & Glory: World has been announced!
While working on the new DLC, we realised that our new plans are so big that they go beyond the DLC format.
Firstly, we don't have enough capabilities of the current UI engine to develop the game further. Secondly, the new mechanics change the feel of the game quite a bit, making it more ambitious. Therefore, we decided to release a new game Football, Tactics & Glory: World.
How is this game different from Football, Tactics & Glory?
First of all, the game is based on Football Stars + Manager's Journey. The game will have everything that was in these DLCs + new large-scale mechanics.
Main Feature
I want to remind you why I decided to create FTG. While playing various football management games, I realised that I didn't like a lot of things about them. Gradually, I was building a picture in my head of a football management game I would love to play. FTG is the realisation of these ideas.
And while I am happy to play FTG with all its DLC, there is one thing I dreamed of but was unable to implement - a variety of football cultures in the game.
I wanted to have a completely different style of football when playing in Brazil compared to playing in Germany. I wanted to consider the cultural background of a footballer when buying them in transfers. So, a centre-back from Ukraine would have different playing nuances than a centre-back from Turkey. I wanted to see a clash of different playing cultures when watching a match between the English and Spanish national teams.
In today's interconnected world, the cultural differences in playing styles between countries aren't as significant. However, we still notice that some countries have an athletic, powerful style of football, while others focus on technical skills, some prioritize defence, and others prioritize attack.
Therefore, the key feature of the game is the unique characteristics of each country, ie Different football cultures.
In the base game, we will assign specific characteristics to each country ourselves. But we will also provide the ability to reassign these characteristics in modifications. So you can experiment and create your own unique football world.
Screenshot from dev build: Qualifying stage of World Championship in Europe. The first team from the group directly qualifies for the Final stage. Several best teams that finished 2nd in the group will get qualified as well. FTG:W will conveniently show the ranking of best second teams so you will easily understand if your team qualifies.
National teams
The game will introduce a significant set of mechanics related to national teams:
Footballers now have nationality
Every four years, the World Championship takes place. Each continent has its own qualifying stage, followed by the final stage with the best teams.
Similarly, every four years, each continent holds its own continental championship. Depending on the number of countries on the continent, there may only be a final stage or both a qualifying and final stage.
A few days before national team matches, coaches invite the best players from their country to the national team camp. This means that if you manage a top club, you may temporarily lose some of your players. However, this will earn you Glory.
You can watch matches of any national team.
All the statistics collected for clubs will also be collected for national teams.
A footballer's career will reflect his participation in the national team
Screenshot from dev build: Screen of Spanish national team. Little logo icons on the footballers show what clubs they are from. Looks like Barcelona FC is the main contributor of footballers to the national team.
You are the coach of the national team
By gaining a certain amount of Reputation, you will start receiving invitations to manage national teams. The higher your Reputation, the stronger national teams will send you invitations.
Managing the national team will happen concurrently with club management. You can select the best players from your country, prepare tactics for matches, and participate in the continental championship and World Championship.
Screenshot from dev build: Screen of coach editor.
Manager's portrayal
Now you will have your virtual avatar. You can customize not only the face but also the clothing, with separate options for good and bad weather.
Reactions of the coach to scored and conceded goals will be shown in matches.
Screenshot from dev build: as you can see from the screenshot - it is cheaper to send the footballer to a higher league club, but he will barely have any chance to play.
New transfer mechanics
You will now be able to loan out young footballers to lower-league clubs. However, you will need to spend Glory to arrange the loan.
AI clubs from the higher leagues will offer you footballers on loan. To hire a player, you will need to spend a small amount of Glory. But for each appearance of this player on the field, you will receive bonus Glory.
AI clubs will also loan out footballers to other AI clubs.
The automatic player search screen - you no longer have to manually search for footballers by switching between clubs. On the new screen, you set the search criteria, and it shows you all the known footballers who meet the desired criteria.
Other new features
There will be other new features and improvements that we are not ready to announce yet.
When will the game be released?
We plan to release the game in March-June 2024 (unless we have to change our plans due to the war).
We haven't decided yet whether to release the game in Early Access a few months before the full release or not.
Starting in late 2023/early 2024, we plan to provide free access to the game for modders who want to create modifications for the new game.
How much will the game cost?
The planned price in Europe is 35€.
If you have purchased the original game and both DLCs, you will be able to buy the game at a lower price.
We will create a special bundle that includes both DLCs and the new game. Its price will be slightly lower than the total sum of all the products in it.
And since you already have all the DLCs, the cost of Football, Tactics & Glory: World will be lower for you.
How do I follow the progress of the game?
First and foremost, visit the game's page and add it to your wishlist. This way, you will receive an email from Steam when the game goes into Early Access or Full Release.
Secondly, click "Follow" to be notified whenever we publish news on Steam.
The great place to get notified about news and discuss them is our Discord. Also, to follow our news, you can subscribe to our mailing list: Email subscription.
Crash during celebration animation fixed!
We spent several months looking for this bug. In parallel, several other problems were found and fixed. Now we hope that the game works as stable as possible.
If you turn off the celebration animation, you can turn it on. Those players who have disabled optimization in a separate utility can also enable it again.
In addition, we fixed an incorrect calculation of starting Reputation for the specific case of creating a campaign with a small number of countries.
