Football, Tactics & Glory: World News

Recently, I talked about the new scouting system in FTGW. In short, from now on you will only see the profiles of those footballers whose Giftedness is equal to or less than the average level of your scouts.

However, you will always be able to see all the footballers of your next opponent.


Players who consider themselves experts of the FTG series feel that the game is quite easy. One of the reasons for this "ease" is the ability to see the opponent's formation and footballers and adjust your tactics accordingly to exploit the opponent's weaknesses. Experienced players know that the fate of the match is decided 60-70% on the match preparation screen.

For such players, we have added a new option that can be enabled before starting a new campaign. This option does the following:

• You will not see the opponent's formation before the match;
  
• You will only see those footballers of the next opponent whose Giftedness is equal to or less than the average level of your scouts;
  
• If the next match is important to you, you can pay Glory to see the formation (this is analogous to spending your time studying your opponent thoroughly, attending their matches, etc.).
  

With this option, it will be harder to play because you will now have to guess how the opponent's footballers are positioned. As a result, matches will be more unpredictable, and you will have to adapt to the situation during the match.

In fact, guessing how the opponent has positioned their footballers is not very difficult because you will see which classes will participate in the match. For example, if you see that the opponent has a Right Forward and a Central Forward in attack, it is obvious that the Right Forward is in his right flank position, and the Central Forward is in one of the three central attacking cells. But there will be situations where the positioning of footballers will be less obvious and a bit more unpredictable. This is especially true for defence.

In this video playthrough of the beta version, you can see how match preparation happens when you do not see the opponent's formation (starting from 7 minutes 9 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/live/CL02x19bCQQ?si=1wUO75lcjZjo0_3i&t=429



Once you start the match, you will see the opponent's formation. If it turns out to be different from what you thought, you will want to change your formation to adapt.

For players for whom constant formation changes on the field are an important element of tactics, changing the position of some footballers is a common practice. As soon as the game stops (goal, corner, or free kick) your changes will be applied.

But if constant formation changes are not critical for you, and you want to make the game even more challenging, you can use an additional option that allows you to make formation changes during the match ONLY at halftime. On the substitution screen, other field cells will be blocked, as shown in the screenshot:



So, if you did not prepare correctly for the match against the opponent, you will have to wait until the end of the half to correct the mistake.

This option can make the Premier League more interesting if you have won all possible tournaments and want to maintain tension in at least some matches. Of course, you will have enough Glory to review the opponent's formation before the match. But the more prestigious the tournament, the more it will cost.

By the way, this option can be used separately from hiding the opponent's formation. Although, personally, I see the point only in the simultaneous use of these options.


I have previously written about options that make the game more difficult, making it more interesting for experienced players. With the new two options that hide the opponent's formation and prohibit changing your formation during the match, you will have more opportunities to adjust the campaign difficulty to your liking.

During game testing, I personally enjoy playing with the new options. I hope that many of you will also like these options.




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In the base game, you could open the profile of almost any footballer in the world and see nearly all the information about them, except for some details. This allowed you to directly buy a footballer from the club, bypassing transfers.

On one hand, access to such information provides great opportunities. On the other hand, we wanted scouting in the game to be more interesting and a bit closer to reality. Therefore, we have significantly redesigned it.


Now you will fully "see" the profiles of the following footballers who do not belong to your club:

• Those you are playing a match against today;
  
• Those who are on the transfer lists (they are visible until the next transfer window opens);
  
• Those who are on your watchlist (you can only add a footballer's profile to this list if it is already visible to you);
  
• All footballers from the country where you are the national team coach.
  

Footballers whose profiles are not available to you are displayed with question marks. Such a footballer cannot be bought because you do not have enough information about them.

In the screenshot, I am viewing a foreign club. Before this, I sent my scouts to gather transfer lists in England, so I could see the profiles of those footballers who are up for transfers:




You will also have access to the profiles of those footballers in your country whose Giftedness is equal to or less than the average level of your scouts. For example, if one of your scouts has a level of 3 stars and another has a level of 1 star, then the average level is 2 stars. Thus, you will see the profiles of all footballers with Giftedness of 0, 1, and 2.

Therefore, scouts will now be even more important, just as they are in real life.

For example, in the screenshot below, I am viewing a club from my country. Since the average level of my scouts is 3 stars, I do not see footballers with a Talent level above three stars:




What should you do if you don't want or can't improve scouts, but still need to gather information about footballers? For this, we have introduced a new mechanic: the ability to hire agents for a certain period.

Now on the Club Improvements screen next to the Scout Centre, there is a button that allows you to open the agent hiring screen:



There you can select the level of Giftedness of the footballers you want to see and the duration for which you want to hire agents. This will cost money, but it might be a more affordable option than spending Glory on improving scouts:



Thus, you can completely avoid improving scouts by spending Glory on, for example, the Youth Academy. And when you need to find a footballer, hire agents for 1-2 months.


If you upgrade both scouts to 5 stars, you will see all the footballers playing in your country. However, you still won't see footballers in other countries.

In previous versions of the game, you could go to any foreign club of your continent playing in the Premier League and buy a footballer there. Now, by default, this option will be unavailable.

You can still send scouts to other countries and hope that the foreign transfer lists will include the footballers you need. But if you don't want to rely on luck, you can use the new mechanic: Establishing a foreign agent network. However, you will need to learn the corresponding coach skill. Without it, this option will be unavailable:



Next to the Scout Centre, there will be a button that opens the Foreign Agent Network screen. There you can hire agents abroad. However, the level of agents is limited by the average level of your scouts. So, if the average level of your scouts is 3 stars, then the maximum level of foreign agents can also only be 3 stars. This means that in the selected country, you will be able to see all footballers with a Giftedness level equal to or less than 3 stars.

Establishing a foreign agent network is not a cheap pleasure. But you will spend Money and Glory only once. You will not need to spend money constantly. And if, for example, you like a certain foreign football culture (e.g., you want to constantly buy technical footballers from Brazil), you can easily do this in any league of that country, not just in the top league as it was before:




Previously, it was just a list that improved game comfort. It did not affect the gameplay. However, now the Watchlist is a full-fledged element of the new scouting system.

Imagine a situation where you see an interesting footballer in one of the transfer lists. You will see their profile for another six months. In the next transfer window, if the club no longer lists them for transfer, their profile will be closed to you. You will not be able to buy them directly from the club.

However, footballers you have added to the Watchlist always have their profiles open. So, if you add an interesting footballer to the list when you first see them, you can buy them directly from the club even six months or a year later because the information about them will be available to you.

If you have a club without scouts, your list allows you to add only 3 footballers. With each scout improvement, the list increases by 1. So, you can increase it to 23 items. There is also a coach skill that increases the list by 3. This skill can be improved three times, so the total capacity of the list can be increased by another 9 items.


Despite the fact that the cost of footballers on the transfer lists was significantly lower than when you buy a footballer directly, many players did not use the extended transfer list. The first disadvantage is the cost of sending scouts to gather the list. The other disadvantage is that it is not often that you can find exactly the footballer you need there.

We have resolved the first disadvantage - the cost of sending scouts to gather information for the Extended List has been reduced by 5 times.

The second disadvantage still remains because this is the essence of transfer lists: you see who is available on the market and decide whether to use the available footballers or take the initiative and search for footballers elsewhere.

But if you have weak scouts, transfer lists are an important source of information about footballers. Even if you see someone interesting who you cannot buy, you can add them to the Watchlist so that the information about them remains available.


And now we come to perhaps the most interesting part - the footballer search screen.

Previously, you could open the screen of any club, browse all the footballers, and buy the one that suited you. I liked this mechanic because you got to know the clubs and footballers better. But the problem was that if a player was focused on efficiency, they would sift through all available clubs to find the exact footballer they needed.

The search for a footballer was a routine process. However, we could not allow an automated search for footballers, as it would make transfers much less interesting.

One of the reasons we created the new scouting system is to prevent automated footballer searches from making the game less engaging.

So, now we give you the ability to search for a footballer according to various criteria: cost, level, age, Giftedness, presence of certain skills, attributes, class, etc. You can combine the necessary characteristics to find exactly the footballer you need:



But there is one catch. You can only search among those footballers whose profiles are available to you. This means that if you have undeveloped scouts and only have access to your personal transfer list, the Search screen will only look among all the footballers in your country with Giftedness 0 and those who are on the transfer list.

You will not see footballers from other countries. You will not see more gifted footballers. And in order for the Search to include as many footballers as possible, you need to develop scouts, establish a foreign agent network, gather transfer lists, etc.


I like how all the new mechanics harmoniously interact with each other, creating a new, interesting scouting system. You can completely ignore scouting and develop your club through, for example, youth. But you can also create powerful foreign agent networks and find exactly the footballers you need. This adds a whole new layer of possibilities that allow you to find the footballers you need without breaking the game.

At first glance, it may seem very complicated, but the whole system was created comprehensively so that each element is logical and interacts well with other game mechanics.


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.

In the Manager's Journey expansion, mechanics for transitioning between clubs and fulfilling management tasks have been added.

We've designed these mechanics so players can either build their career by moving between clubs or stay with one club, elevating it from the Amateur League to the pinnacle of world football. If you were part of this club, management couldn't fire you, even if you failed to meet the tasks set before you.

Furthermore, the ambitions of different club managements varied, affecting the difficulty of the tasks. If you developed your own club, management's ambition was low. Therefore, players could relax a bit more about failing tasks because the tasks themselves were not very ambitious.

However, we received feedback that when developing a single club, it would be nice if management occasionally set tasks specifically for club development, not just for advancing in the league table.


When tasked with achieving a higher league position or escaping relegation, it's hard to focus on youth and development. So, we decided it made sense to add tasks that allow players to concentrate on long-term improvements to the club, without worrying about immediate results.


In FTGW, we added 4 new types of tasks:

1. Improve infrastructure and hire staff - you will earn management satisfaction points each time you upgrade the stadium, youth school, scout center, etc., and whenever you hire new coaches, medics, scouts.
   
2. Feature juniors in the starting lineup who were signed this or next season - you will earn management satisfaction points each time your junior takes to the field.
   
3. Purchase and field players aged 25 or younger with relatively high Talent for the club - you will earn management satisfaction points for buying the right player and for each game they play.
   
4. Develop the club as you see fit - you will earn points for actions taken from the previous three tasks.
   

League position still matters, so there will be minimal expectations, but often these will be very achievable, such as simply not getting relegated.

New tasks will be issued for 2-4 years depending on the difficulty level, type of task, and current situation at your club.


If you work with only one club, management will alternate between development tasks and result-oriented tasks. Essentially, you're a co-owner of the club, so your job is to achieve long-term success.

Other clubs will not often give development tasks. In most cases, clubs will try to improve their league standing. But occasionally, you'll find clubs willing to spend a few seasons improving infrastructure, developing youth, or finding a talented player and integrating them into the team.


One of the most experienced FTG players is helping us test FTGW. He recently started streaming his gameplay on hard mode with some new options (which we haven't officially talked about yet).

In one of the streams, he was given a club development task. You can see more details here: https://www.youtube.com/live/6STbZ7QKLcc?si=rz-KcwQrEdsYtlNL&t=3575 (Steam does not allow for posting the link in a more convenient format).

If you're interested in FTG, I highly recommend subscribing to his channel to get notifications about new streams. And generally, it's worth watching his playthroughs, as he uses unconventional tactics and has a very deep understanding of the game.


In our last update, we discussed possibly releasing the game in Early Access this summer at a higher price than the final game would cost. Thanks to everyone who left feedback approving or disapproving this step.

After careful consideration, we've decided to forgo this idea for now, primarily because we want to impress you with new graphics. While the core of the FTG series is its mechanics, we want the game to immerse you more in real football, and graphics are also very important for this. So, we've decided to delay Early Access until the new graphics are at least in a basic functional state. We want FTGW to be associated with a new look.

This is an ambitious task for our small team. First, we are rewriting the animation engine. We are embedding the possibility for future expansion, the ability to create beautiful replays, and the future possibility of creating women's teams (they won't be in FTGW, but the engine will allow us to add them later). And overall, we want to make more realistic players, more realistic stadiums, etc. And that involves a lot of work.

So, unfortunately, at least until autumn, you won't be able to try out the exciting new features that have been added to 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.

Earlier, I wrote about the introduction of national teams in the game. But besides the World Championship being added to the game, you'll also be able to participate in it by taking charge of a national team.


As a manager, you earn Reputation points by completing club tasks. The higher your Reputation, the more prestigious clubs will send you job offers.

Similarly with national teams. Starting from a certain level of Reputation, you will begin to receive job offers from teams that have not achieved great success. Moreover, if you simulate countries on other continents, you will receive invitations from those countries as well. As your Reputation grows, more prestigious national teams will want you to take charge.



The management will expect you to achieve certain successes with the team. Weaker teams will expect you to get them to the final part of the tournament. Average teams will expect you to reach the semi-finals or at least get out of the group in the final stage. And strong teams, of course, will expect you to win the tournament.

At the beginning of development, we planned to make it so you could only take charge of one thing: either a club or a national team, as that would be realistic. But since national team matches are rare, and you cannot develop it the same way as a club, the gameplay in such a case would be boring. You would need to wait long periods to just play 1-2 qualification matches, while only once every 2 years there would be an interesting final stage of the World Championship or the European Championship (or Americas, or other continents).

Eventually, we decided that you would manage the national team alongside managing a club. We managed to create a convenient interface that allows you to easily navigate between two different line-ups.


A few days before the match, you will need to invite 25 footballers to the national team's lineup.

On the left, you will see the list of players who were invited for the last match, and on the right - all the players of this nationality who play in the Premier Leagues and First Leagues.



If a footballer cannot be invited (for example, the club won't release him because it would lack players), an "Attention" icon will appear next to him. By hovering over it, you will find out why the player will not be able to play in the upcoming matches.


On the day of the national team match, the flags of the participating countries are displayed on the main screen. Preparation for the match is similar to club matches. That is, you see the opponent's team and choose a formation to counter it.



Unlike the club, there is no infrastructure to improve here. Also, there is no possibility to train players (because their development is the responsibility of the owning clubs). However, you have access to statistics, the ability to change the kit, and upload your own team logo.

When managing the national team, you won't have Money or Glory, as there's nothing to spend them on.


Overall, when managing a national team, it's easier to lose Reputation than to gain it. Firstly, to accept an invitation to a national team, you need to spend a large amount of Reputation. It can only pay off if you successfully lead the team for at least 2 seasons in a row.



Furthermore, to motivate footballers, you will have to use your Reputation, not Glory as in club football.

On the other hand, successfully managing a national team for several seasons in a row will earn you an extraordinarily large amount of Reputation.


I've already written here about statistics. It's worth adding that you can view statistical data for each national tournament just as you view statistics for club tournaments. Moreover, statistics for the qualifying rounds and final stages will be collected separately.




We spent a tremendous amount of time implementing national tournaments and the mechanics of managing national teams. But when you start a new campaign, you won't immediately see all these mechanics. It might seem like not much has been added to the game. Because this is largely endgame content.

You start the game in the Amateur League, living the adventure life of a manager overcoming difficulties on the way to the Premier League. And only after earning enough Reputation, when you've made a name for yourself as a good manager, will you get access to a large part of the new content.

Of course, you can follow national tournaments without managing a team. You can watch national team matches, follow the World Championship, and view statistics. But managing a national team will only be available when you reach the top leagues.

And if you want to start the game managing a national team right away, you can do that. You'll need to "issue" yourself a large amount of Reputation when creating a campaign. After accepting an invitation from a club, you will also receive an invitation to take charge of a national team.




Unfortunately, due to significant technical difficulties, we are unable to release the game in June as planned. Most of the new mechanics are working. However, we decided to rewrite the graphics engine, which turned out to be an exceptionally complex and laborious task. If we succeed in what we have planned, it should impress you.

Therefore, we are currently considering the idea of releasing the game in limited Early Access in June. We will temporarily increase the price of the game to limit the number of players who get access to the game. Those who want to support us will be able to buy the game, play it, and provide feedback on various mechanics. At the same time, most players will see the game in its final form at launch with a reduced price.


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.