Hello Hattrickers!
A few weeks ago, we ran a survey to learn more about your Hattrick experience. We promised to share a summary of the results with you.
We repeated a few of the questions we used for one survey in 2019, and as well questions from a far older survey in 2009. In this way, we were able to get a sense for how our changes have impacted you. When we can draw conclusions around this, we will mention it here. Spoiler alert! In almost every aspect, we have had at least some improvement 🙂
Every once in a while, we make changes to our menu system. A few years ago, we added a dropdown menu while more recently, we restructured the World page. We feel we are doing OK in this respect, since we increased the number of users that find the navigation easy from 27% to 31%, while dropped the not satisfied users to 3% from 4%.
We knew from the previous survey that newbies enjoy the transfer market, with around 39% wanting to spend time trading when they start a new team. Over time, trading becomes less interesting for users. Only 4% say trading helps maintain their interest in Hattrick over the long term. Promoting and winning titles maintains the interest in Hattrick for 53% of our users, while 32% get their main motivation from training their players.
We are also happy to know that 96% of the users have the intention to still play Hattrick in a year from now and that only 3% are unsure if they will stay.
Something we also try to improve is our presence on Social Platforms. We know from both our surveys that not all of you (43%) find it important to see us out there, but for the rest, Facebook, Youtube and Instagram are the top 3 choices.
When we plan our development, we often have to strike a balance between taking on complex but worthwhile projects that take a long time to complete, and making more frequent feature releases that make users feel the dev team is active and that good things are happening in the game.
For several seasons, we have tried to have at least periods where we make smaller and more frequent releases, maybe once a week, rather than focus on big projects where we end up in radio silence for months. 83% of you like this approach and we plan to continue like that, at least to have such periods in between the bigger projects (the last of which was the big National Team and the World Cup revamp).
66% feel that it is better to introduce bigger changes in a slower and more deliberate fashion, rather than making big updates in one go, that may force users to adapt plans with less advance warning. 14% of users believe we don’t need any big change in Hattrick at all.
When we asked, back in 2009, what users wanted us to focus our development time on, the number one priority was improvements to the Match Simulation. This time, more users voted for options such as player training and development of the team economy (total 47%), causing Match Simulation to drop to position number 3.
We also asked a few questions about how easy it is to understand different aspects of the game. In game mechanics, game rules and team economy, the situation is quite stable with small improvements (70-80% of users are happy with those). The new training page and all the nice tools we implemented the last few seasons had a great impact in how well users understand the training mechanisms, with happy users jumping from 71% to 79% compared to the previous surveys.
It’s super nice to present positive results. We are happy. You are happy. Everyone is happy! However, it’s time for our first negative feedback. The understanding of the match engine dropped from 73% to 50% compared to 2009. It’s a little hard to make comparisons across 12 years, but this is still a significant drop. We believe this happened for two reasons.
First, we have introduced several new features where “simplicity” was not at the forefront. Man marking is one such example. Second, we have in recent years walked a path in Hattrick from mystery about how the game works towards absolute transparency. We think this has probably triggered a shift in the perception of Hattrick to something more of a number simulation and less of a football game. The paradox here is that the more explicitly we tell you about how the game works, the less in control you will feel, making the game feel unpredictable. This needs more thought, and we see it as perhaps the most important finding in the survey. We want to strive for a game where the basic concepts are simple and communicated clearly, but where algorithms don’t get in the way of just enjoying the game. We promise that we will get back to this later this year with another survey, dedicated to our Match Engine.
Managing your staff members was supposed to be fun and an interesting challenge. There are not many that are unhappy about the system either. 1 out of 3 have a neutral opinion and 46% of the users are quite happy. Can we do something to push those neutral to the happy users group? In a similar area, 63% of our users want us to develop more facilities for their teams. Training and medical centers were a few examples we gave during the survey.
At the end of the summary, we have the financial part of the game. 66% of the users are happy with the financial overview and the tools we offer. However, as we see in the chart below, 28% of our users don’t feel comfortable with the Board and the financial limitations it imposes, while 41% of users like it. It’s remarkable that 31% of them are neutral or not sure about it. Can we do anything during the rest of the year to improve this and make more users happy without affecting those that are already satisfied?
Once again, we thank all the 76 347 users who took the time to send their feedback. We appreciate it and we encourage you to do it anytime in local and global fora.
Very interesting and encouraging. Can I ask what the 305388 Credits stands for. I tried to search Credits on the vlog and couldn’t find anything
Ok, I understand Mathematically that it is 4 credits to every user that participated, does that mean you will add 4 credits to each participating user?
If so, I can’t wait… !!!
We gave reward points to everyone that participated and answer the survey. Those reward points can be exchanged to either Credits or Supporter Gold package.
Oh, I thought It was credits… I assume that is 200 reward points to get 4 credits.
Diolch!!!
En vez de los puntos prefiero me devuelvan los casi 700 mil que me sacaron por la venta de un jugador a un equipo de otro país que ni se quien es que luego se convirtió en boot. Ésto es malisimo. Están arruinando el juego en vez de mejorarlo.
Oooo….verry good…i wait for thr enginematch chestionaire….it will be werry interesting….the big problems of many surprising results ob games…and the big power of long shots teams…..
I am waiting for years for this kind of chestionaire…you should do it yearly 😉
More than 70 thousand answers implies than a lot of gamers are concerned about the development in an active and qualitative way. That’s a good news ! Even if the number of players doesn’t increase.
If I am not mistaken, there were no open questions to give feedback, share painpoints or ideas. I think this was a missed opportunity.
Closed questions are easier to compare or draw conclusions. But I agree, they don’t include any weight factor (importance to player). For instance, if the match engine is the only reason why people quit, perhaps this items should be valued more..a recap of open questions can be helpfull to find out the most urgent items to all players..
To me, it looks like the usual self-referential statement you always make (“we’re too good to be real!”). Anyway, you happy? Good.
1. Long Shots tactic needs urgent review
2. Midfield was trumped to the level where ball possession won’t matter anymore
3. Youth teams have plenty of room for improvement
4. Why not allow 2-3 type of training, all at once. Similar to the youth teams.
5. End season bonuses are super low, compared to the investment one make to win the league
6. Supporter pricing is way out of reach. There was no COVID in the HT world?
7. Lower your pricing or your supporters will stop supporting your future development, and with that, the game will fade all together
Agree!
Agree!!!
Wholeheartedly agree!
agree 100%, Hattrick doesn’t need a survey just tack action on your 7 points.
On a previous survey I can´t remember how long ago, maybe one year ago Hattrick asked open questions where we managers could make two or three written proposals. Did Hattrick read those proposals?
I think from that you can obtain really significant improvments for the game with much more value than making multi options questions
Not understanding how the match engine works is not related with man marketing feature, please don’t waste time on that way.
And I’m totally confused with this “The paradox here is that the more explicitly we tell you about how the game works, the less in control you will feel, making the game feel unpredictable. ” if you told me how it works and I can’t control it, it is because I never had control on it but I didn’t know.
1- Why not impose players loans?
I think there are lot of situations in which you got a player you want for the future but at the time you can not train. At the same time will be another manager needing a player like that at least for one season and maybe can also train him. Instead of have that player stopped without training you loan it to other club for one season, the player continues growing, the manager of the other club is happy and everybody is happy. I think that could be a great step for Hattrick.
2- Instead of have players with the speciallity of “Header” why not create a new habilitie called “Air game” or something?
Every player can be bad or good for shotting with the head.
And also create a training that could improve that hability. A player with a high hability like that can be determinant in corner, free kicks situations. For attacking and for deffending as well.
3- Why Goalkeepers can not kick free kicks? In real life Goalkeepers can do it and it’s a shame to have a goalkeeper with high hability on shooting free kicks but can not use him for that.
1 el ceder a un jugador solo fomentaria las trampas y mas un jugador entrenable, en caso de ser aceptadas las cesiones los jugadores no deberian de evolucionar
porque fomentaría las trampas? Yo acepto ceder un jugador mío a otro equipo creyendo que el manager del otro equipo lo va a utilizar (lo cual haría que mejore su forma y condición) y además podría entrenarlo o no, en una habilidad que sea de mi interés. Si no lo hace, es un riesgo que yo corro al cederlo a otro equipo.
Además al ser una cesión no hay transferencia de plata. Solo el equipo que recibe al jugador se hace cargo del sueldo, por eso no veo por donde estarían las posibles trampas. Si en caso de haber cesiones los jugadores no pueden evolucionar entonces no tiene sentido la cesión.
Si la trampa lo pensas por el lado de que se le podría ceder el jugador a un equipo amigo para que lo entrene, si este equipo amigo es un usuario activo de hattrick no va a pensar en el bien de su equipo, no va a utilizar un jugador solo por hacer favores. En cualquier caso los Game Masters podrían controlar eso con mecanismos similares que las que usan para controlar transferencias sospechosas.
The loan idea is fantastic; loan could be recalled by home club if the training type isn’t followed and list loaners under preferred training types; individuals could even bid on the loanees with % of wages as the governing metric.
That is not a really great result in total. Looking at the actual user no. that participated, this is not something to pat your own shoulders with… Bad reachout tto all users. For whatever the reason was. Old problems remain “same old, same old”. Well, as long as you are happy with it and all the fish keep eating your feed 🙂
Hi Team, it should be more action. In Germany we have nothing to do Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays (if friendly at home), Thursdays, Fridays. It’s quite boring the most days of the week. Maybe it’s better to play 2 league games in the week? 16 weeks of a season is much long for a online game.
Mezu said it above: end season bonusses are low, and 10k for best goalgetter: it’s a joke?
best regards!
Ein Ligaspiel pro Woche reicht, ansonsten wird es Stressig.
Ein Ligaspiel pro Woche reicht, sonst wird es zu Stressig. Man kann sich nicht nur um das Spiel kümmern, es gibt im Leben auch was anderes. 😉
Was ist denn daran bitte stressig? Sogar im echten (Fussball)Leben gibt es 2 Pflichtspiele pro Woche. Und das ist sehr wohl anstrengender als das hier 😉
IN GENERALE MI STA BENE,CAMBIEREI L,ALLENAMENTO TIPO GIOVANILI,COSI DA NON ASPETTARE ANNI CHE UN GIOCATORE POSSA DIVENTARE MULTISKIL,
Para mi lo unico mejorable es la economia, el que quiera ahorrar dejarle que ahorre como antiguamente, yo tengo atrapados 25 millones en el banco que no puedo hacer uso de ellos
More than half of the users did not answer the questionnaire, still you are happy…for what exactly???
You must all be out of your mind if you think that telling others who the engine works has a negative effect on them… We don’t live in the dark ages…I really don’t think that any of the HTs know how the engine actually works…you all remind me of Desmond in LOST who pressed buttons for years without knowing the reason…Try to actually develop HT and not just praise yourselves….
Probably you are the Desmond in our case 🙂 If you knew a couple of things around surveys, you would knew that the average response rate in online games is around 18-20%. 30+% in this survey is extremely high.
your username is very original and somewhat prophetic.
I recently published a paper in peer review journal using a questionnaire for the COVID pandemic and its consequences on health. The questionnaire was developed by WHO (not the band)/ The response rate was 8.5%, comparable to previous studies in the field . The significant results were well accepted by the scientific community.
I do know a few things regarding surveys: the one who administers the questionnaire should explicitly state 1) if it is anonymous or pseudo-anonymous, 2) describe how the data will be used, 3) the years the data will be stored for, 4)how one can ask to delete this/her responses and during which period, 5) when the data will become anonymous, 6) how will these data shared with. Moreover, surveys should be 7)well structured and 8) have at least some open questions.
thank you for spreading the knowledge regarding surveys and let’s just hope the HTs live up to your name…
I vote for player loans between my own teams. It’s frustrating to sell fresh 17yo players because they don’t fit to the training plan of my 1st team but would be perfect for my 2nd team.
I propose a loan for a limited time, a weekly fee and to keep the HG-bonus when the loan is over.
Obviously this is not the right place, but I would like to make some comments:
i) In my opinion the engine has two main problems:
a) it is practically impossible to win the match for a team much weaker than the opponent, something that is one of the great attractions of real football.
b) It generates results that are too random.
They seem contradictory things, but in real football when a very weak team beats a powerful one, it is not because the latter has largely dominated the match and lost 11 clear chances to score, but because its coach devised the right strategy to disrupt the opponent’s game. This should be the factor that allows the weaker team to win, and not random (By the way, it seems to me that “random” sometimes does not work in the engine, perhaps because pseudo-random is not the same as random).
ii) Training is more difficult to modify because it is an essential part of the game, but, ideally, teams should always put what they have to win, and not e.g. a lineup with 5 youth defenders because otherwise they don’t train “defense”.
iii) I don’t like trading, it is already overdimensioned enough in real soccer. I think that trading could be enabled only between seasons, with the possible exception of new teams during their first weeks.
iv) “long shots” should not be a specialty?
Right now we’re planting some freaking tree around, this is a page of celebration so please don’t bother asking for improvements that we will never make until the last seed is in place. After that we’ll release new social features to satisfy the 43% of the 33% of the users. That’s our goal. So go pay the supporter and have fun without any idea about the game. I mean what is a game. Planting tree, new “social” button, get supporter payment, celebrate ourselves. Profit.
Maybe next time, you’ll award 1 month of supporter for free for those who participate in the survey. That is if you want more users to participate. Anyway, 200 reward points is too little, you can get like 4 credits on it 😐
Hi Tasos. Above you state “We promise that we will get back to this later this year with another survey, dedicated to our Match Engine”. Just wondering what the status is of this?