Five years ago, i started playing this nice little game called Hattrick. Not little in a sense, it was alraedy the world’s largest online football simulation game and with increasing player base and much more room for growth. Watching the game progress, from the transition from cash player value to the TSI system, from the old ratings (which had reached it’s limit) to the new ratings, and from the celebratorial fact that Hattrick reached a player base of close to one million. Some progress took hard time to accept but nevertheless, it was all for the better. Then, there was this time where i played a friendly cup and found Alltid Hattrick, with it’s beautiful site and the ever-welcoming community. Flip over, and Alltid became enthwine into my Hattrick life. Always opening both sites at the same time whenever i get online, scheming to win my first Alltid Visitors Cup (of which became Alltid Plus Cup when i got supporter). I had yet to do it.

That was the Hattrick i knew and loved. A while later, Hattrick started introducing advertisements to it’s site. A colourful banner on the top, and then an annoying Google bar on the right. My heart sank. All of a sudden, browsing my beloved Hattrick site was an eyesore. Part of that or something else, i no longer spend hours on the Hattrick site looking to improve my team, no more waiting on transfers, and no more searching for the perfect country to visit for a friendly.

The Hattrick i knew and loved was a Hattrick without banners on top and definitely without the annoying Google ads on the right.

Hattrick needs a community site.

On September 1 2008, Hattrick announced that Alltid will be integrated into Hattrick. Waves of congratulations landed on the Alltid site as the article was published. I added in mine too. Under the shadows of those pretty words, this was probably the biggest blow to me in my entire Hattrick life, and also for those others who had hold the community so dear. A site where i had my life of Hattrick, a site where i had my first Hattrick friends, a site whose community at certain times became the sole reason i continue playing Hattrick, a site where… …

Is it progress? To those who had put their heart and soul into the Alltid site (to which i salute), it is progress in a sense. Then, there are rumours that the Alltid stats is supposed to be a tool to pull more people to pay for Hattrick… umm… Supporter? What did this word ’supporter’ meant in the beginning anyway?

Sometimes in life we take things for granted. Days ago i was still grunting about having to write another Alltid cup report. Never did i know i won’t be writing reports for Alltid anymore, nor win my long-awaited Alltid cup, nor even, in a few months time, have a glimsp of Alltid’s warmth anymore.

I know that i’m in no position to change something, and definitely not deserving the world to change for me. And with all i can, i guess writing this would be my sole contribution at least.

To promote or not to promote? A question which spins in the minds of most Hattrick managers. On the dictionary, promotion may seem a beautiful word, meaning that you have advanced in life. But is it actually an advancement? What if you promoted – gained the 10% supporter growth, but lose nearly all the matches, drop 10 supporters every round, and then get demoted, losing your 10% again. Worst still, what if you fail to get demoted, get stuck for one more season in the division, and watch day after day as your beloved team deteriorates?

A phemomenon ever-present in small to medium sized leagues is that how the quality level of the teams drop from a higher division to a lower. For larger and older leagues, the transition from division to division had more or less been smoothen. As for the leagues types mentioned earlier we could see a team which barely survive in a certain division, when entering a lower division, could dominated it. Likewise, a team who is totally unable to survive in the division, when demoted, could survive well and easily bag a top four finish. So is it correct to say if a team finds itself not a contender for the title, demotion is the answer? I would think so. When you play in a division losing half your matches, other than losing the supporters and supporters income, you actually also lose a chance to maximise your arena income and not to mention the chance to go further in the national cup. And then there’s the prize money you get when you finish the season on podium.

So, compare this to what the word ‘promotion’ and ‘demotion’ actually means, is there a problem with the Hattrick system? Does promotion just stand as a sort of honour rather than a road to progress of your club? Look at the difference between the German Bundesliga and their second division, or take a look at the number of clubs going bankrupt after dropping out of the EPL. But then again, that is just a small percentage in the large football world. The lesser divisions in Germany and England and the rest of the world also suffer a little from the above-mentioned syndrome. However, the system usually doesn’t act as mean to you as the Hattrick system when you find it hard to survive in a higher division. Then, there are also some bad examples like the Malaysian league system where a division two club could easily play better than a division one club.

Status : Running (Started on 06/06/08 9:00 CET)

TAGGING FORM

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06/06/08 - 1.9:00 , 2.11:00, 3.15:00, 4.17:00

Goalkeepers : INTG

Playmakers   : INTG

Wingers        : INTG

Forwards      : INTG

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the previous posts can be found here.

What is going on in the Hattrick transfer market? A player I had no trouble buying for €1,300,000 two seasons ago now costs at least €3,000,000(€3,500,000 to be secure). A more reliable source gives data as follows :

The line graph shows players with Titanic attribute (goalkeeping and playmaking, all ages) in sale prices and the bars show the numbers of sales of the specific players in Germany from the end of season 32 to season 35. A very clear pattern any eye could observe is how the line increases and the bar dips at the start of Season 34. More about that later.

In reality, as society progress, price increase is somehow inevitable. With the increase of income levels, the spending power is also increased. It all seems very clear to be an effect of The New Contract at the end of Season 33 – more earnings from supporters and fans. For a look at the price development of Hattrick, take a Titanic midfielder, 22 years and passable form (our subject player). €1,300,000 in Season 33 and shooting up to over €3,000,000 in Season 34 onwards. There was however a little period of time (early Season 33) where a similar player could be bought for a price sub-1,000,000. But that was just a low in the market. A stable price for the past seasons was €1,300,000. The greatest price surge could probably be observe in players Mythical and above, from total worthless (less than €250,000) to a price of around €1,000,000 – 2,500,000 before stabling down in Season 35. For players around the Solid capability, much change wasn’t observed. For the purpose of this article, we will be putting our main focus on the mainstream players (worldclass-titanic).

There are two likely happenings in the near future : one, the transfer market stays within 10% aggregate of now, just like in the world where people earn more and prices increase. A chance of an occasional inflation, but if we are looking at that, we could say that the peak had alraedy been achieved. From the end of Season 33 where prices start to increase day by day, it went to a point where our subject player sells for €4,250,000, stabilizing later at around €3,250,000. The continued rise was unexpected by many, until it finally reach the point where people were not willing to offer anymore. So sellers kept their expectations low. It can be seen like this :

A second prediction would be that it was just a normal Hattrick thing where prices rise, and it would fall back to the €1,300,000 one day. I wouldn’t think that is true. Falling back to the dear 1.3million may eventually happen, but not in the field of our vision. The increase in price we are facing this time has a reason. A clear and simple reason – people getting more money to spend. And unless people lose their income, there shouldn’t be a situation of price stabilizing at a lower value anymore. If we look into the real world, look at Singapore. A develop country today which prices were once lower than neigbouring Malaysia. Singapore just became richer and richer and today, cost of living is more than double that of its neighbour. What I am trying to say here is that when society gets higher (precisely more income), the price of everything increases. It’s natural and not something happening where there’s a shortage of supply and prices shoot up for the moment.

As you can see in the chart above – the green bar moves up a level. Maybe you would observe the difference between the stable black lines and the green bars are different at the stable start and end point of the chart. That’s the point of it, and a glitter of hope for this second prediction. While income had just risen by less than 50%, prices had increased by 200-300%. Would the market drop and make the 200% back to the supposed 50% rise? If so, the stabilized drop should mean €1,500,000 , no longer €1,300,000. Another viewpoint is that we shouldn’t count it by percentage, but by the extra money teams are starting to get, and that we should take the whole transfer market into consideration. It’s terribly hard to predict whats going to happen. Earth faces it and so does Hattrick.

On a lesser perspective, let’s look to the people around us (in Hattrick). Just look in your league and the news of transfers. How many are there? It had been considerably low with only youth players and anything cheap going around these days. And just look at the data of the first chart. The conclusion – people are suffering from the current price. Many are holding off buying plans for the moment, although there are some who can’t wait anymore. However since the changes in the past season had given people deep pockets, I believe I have enough evidence to say that the market will fall not too long from now – only to climb back quickly again.

Credits to HTPE for the use of their transfer market graphs.

Welcome to TheHattrickWorld, a site dedicated to writings on the Hattrick.org world, be it future predictions, comments on current Hattrick progressions, or simply how much we like the good old days. We welcome any writers interested in contributing for the site.

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