What we know so far... Part II

The second part of the Gameplay Guide continues talking about the general gameplay aspect and focuses upon skills and infrastructure.

This is where we see the first major change from FML. Skills as something that you learn by investing time are thankfully gone and in their place are staff. The skills system in FML never really seemed to work as intended, especially once everyone had been playing for a fair few months and had all the same skills as eachother. Even the specialisations didn't appear to make a tangible difference. That being said it is hard to say for certain that the introduction of staff will solve these problems without having seen them in action. What we know so far is that there are 6 areas of staff (Coaches, Scouts, Developers, Physios, Agents and Press Officers) which will provide you with benefits in different elements of the game ie agents will get you a reduced/increased transfer fee or wage. These categories follow broadly on from FML but cover all the core bases that you would expect. The number of staff you can have is rightly limited to the status of your club so that the smallest teams will have only a handful whereas the biggest teams will have substantially more. The ability to buy, sell and even loan (they can be simultaneously hired by numerous teams at the same time) staff should also add another element of strategy to the game. You can even pay to send your staff training courses to improve their abilities. The added dynamism means that if you play your cards right you can gain an advantage (for instance if you need a new stadium you may sell your scouting staff to purchase some developers and thus save on your stadium). All of this adds helps create a more rounded game with more to do than just playing matches.

Infrastructure was one of the first big modules for FML and hopefully it will be in UFL from the first day. The plan is to have 4 areas of infrastructure, twice as many as in FML. As you would expect stadiums is the first on the list. It's not rocket science to expect a bigger stadium to earn a higher income than a small one, although at this point we don't know if its only the corporate seats that matter. The previous blog mentioned youth academies so there is little need to go into much detail here. The 2 new areas of infrastructure are pencilled in as being training grounds and medical centres. Building or improving your training ground will give you 2 benefits. The first is a slight improvements in certain aspect of training. The second is the number of players you can train which is a substantial improvement upon the set in stone figure that existed in FML. Medical centres, on the otherhand, will improve the recovery rate for injured players although they do need to be matched up with the physio staff for ultimate effect. Apparently the benefit can be up to a 70% reduction in injury time so this may well be a popular area for investment amongst many players!

Overall these areas again look promising. The change to staff from skills is a particularly logical and well thought out change. The ability to improve, buy and sell adds a whole new dimension. The infrastructure module is more or less what you would expect. However, whilst all of this sounds good on paper I think it is important to stress that until we can get our grubby paws on the real thing it is hard to say whether they will work out as intended.