Welcome to another issue of …

Nope.

Today it’s time for the very first preview of the next large update which is scheduled to come to your devices mid of june.

We do this because for some feature changes it is vital to know about them as early as possible. And this is definitely the case for:

Specialists Re-vamp

First question first: Why do we even touch the specialists? Aren’t they working properly?

Well, mostly. But first of all, the specialist’s abilities are not very transparent. Yes, they are documented properly in the Wiki, but you cannot directly see inside the game how specialists work. And this is going to change.

KiO 9 will mark properly positioned specialists on the setup screen. And the specialist rating will be just the number of players marked that way. (Obviously, this does not apply to superstitious players, as their ability counts towards their strength independent of their position, and they also never count towards the specialist rating).

Of course the match analysis will also be changed slightly to cover this change, because the new specialist rating can have values from 0 to 11 while the current can only reach 5. Also, specialists who would do something, but not as much as they could, will not be marked and not counted towards the specialist rating.

Two examples should help to understand how this works.

If you have a crossing specialist but only a header specialist in your defense, but not in your offense, the crossing specialist will NOT be marked or counted. While it can happen that he plays a crossing to your center back header who then could score a goal, this is rather rare compared to the situation where you have offensive headers.

Also, if you have an ace specialist in a non counter formation (not 541/4231), he will not be marked as positioned correctly. Yes, playmakers like to play deadly passes to aces, but those don’t get any bonus when shooting on the goal. So this is clearly inferior compared to having a superstitious striker with reasonably high bonus.

The new, completely transparent specialist rating will also allow us to introduce new specialists without changing the rating formula, as they simply count 1 if positioned correctly (which you will be able to see in your setup) or 0 if not. And we use this option to introduce the…

The Hammer

We are introducing the Hammer as central back and def midfield players only. He will be able to fire long shots towards the goal, but mainly when playing defensive formations 343/352. This significantly improves those formations when playing 541/4231, as they often have problem to score enough goals to win. We know that this used to be frustrating, so we’re gonna change it.

While we’re at it, we are also slightly modifying…

The Cat

But why? Isn’t the cat great and perfect? Yes, he is. He is so great that each team has one. And that’s exactly the problem. If each team has the same goalkeeper, it makes no difference. No strategic options. No use of synergies. Same setup also means more random influence. So we’re going to make the cat weaker and this will make the superstitious goalie playable, if you have enough mascots or boosts. It’s important to understand that we change the cat to reduce random. Also it’s important to understand that this change can have influence on prices on the transfer market, or on your decisions which player to fetch when you activate your next rookie contract. This is exactly why we communicate this change so early. Now you’ve plenty of time to think about possible changes to your strategy before the change becomes effective.

Spring Cup

Now, enough words, let’s join this weekend’s Spring Cup! Win presents for 1st and 2nd place, and have fun playing!

And while you’re at it, we are going to work on the update. Seeya!