Pitwall news

This morning the website was down due to a network upgrade in the data center. Around 10:30 the problems were solved and the website was available again. The hourupdates need to be caught up, and that what will be done this morning.

A rather significant change is coming to Pitwall this week. The persons contracts negotiations system is something that is quite important to the game, and it's something that I feel is not developed enough yet, mainly due to seeing many teams being able to offer 0,- salaries and fees to drivers. This is something I intend to change, and since it wasn't something that was clearly intended to be like this the change will be immediate.

In the negotiations phase there will be more flexibility whereas the person demands rely more on their power position (similarly as to how the sponsors negotiate). A minimum number of races clause will be added to the negotiations, to prevent persons being stuck in an inactive team. Finally in the negotiations process the feedback will also be changed so that it makes much more sense. This means that there will be less, but more relevant feedback.

Right now we're in a system where the head staff is the leader, and you're able to hire additional persons and employ them. This will change as well by introducing a tier structure that allows the creation of junior positions (for example: 1 head designer, and 2 junior designers). In the facilities page you might have seen "staff space", this is the total number of persons you can assign in a staff position. Every team will have a minimum of 5 staff spaces as that comes with HQ1. Every upgrade to a higher HQ tier gives 2 additional spaces. The staff module also gives an additional 2 staff spaces. Every staff space allows a person to work, and all those persons that can't be assigned to a position will not be able to be employed in any development/production/negotiations. Needless to say, this will have an effect on their morale.

Finally an important change is that in real life it happens very often that prima donna sport stars feel they're underpaid. This will also be introduced in Pitwall. Persons who feel they're underpaid will complain, and the more they feel they're underpaid the unhappier they will be. Persons in your own team will allow negotiations at any time, unless they want to leave the team. So contracts can be improved generally at any time.

These changes are planned to be introduced this week, and it should result in a more structured and more fair contracts system.

In order to lower the learning curve of the game, I've done some research on why and where people get stuck when starting to play the game. I came to the conclusion that the lack of information, and on the other side the information overload on all the screens were the reason that most people stopped playing before properly getting started.

To fix this I've spent quite some time on adding information to the help section. All the pages now contain the most basic information, and they are styled in a wiki kind of way so that the information is easy to spot. More information will be added in the future as the game is being developed.

Another common problem was that people just didn't know where to start. The only real way to fix this was to create a tutorial for the game. New players will now be helped by the tutorial which shows up at the very top of the page. The tutorial is interactive, so it will only advance when the members perform the right actions. Those actions include (but are not limited to): founding their team, entering a competition, signing suppliers, signing staff/drivers, starting negotiations with sponsors, creating/producing parts, etc.
Once the tutorial has been completed the team will have a basic car that can be taken to the track immediately. To accomplish this I've made some changes to the way the new team bonus works. Persons will now join immediately and new teams won't have to wait for the person to choose the team. Suppliers will also sign immediately and there's no need to wait for the next hour update anymore. And finally parts are produced immediately as well, no more waiting for the next hour update either.

All of these actions are done to reduce the number of people who run away screaming from the complexity of the game. Because I couldn't know which members didn't finish their basic setting up of the team, I've enabled the tutorial for everyone. You can always go through it to know what is going on in it, but obviously if you already have a team you won't be able to go through it in the interactive way. You can always end the tutorial by clicking "End tutorial" on the right top corner.

One area that I felt that was quite hard to get an overview of was the scouting area. It was very difficult to get to know which persons were actually worth looking after, and going for. Because of this I've added a very handy panel to the scouting page, called Knowledge.

This panel that allows to filter by job type shows all the information your scout gathered from every person in the game in a nice overview. It lists the contract length of the person, their job type, how good the knowledge of the scout of that person is, how many reports so far, what the average rating is, and all the characteristics of the person (based on their job type). With this panel, it should become much clearer which persons are actually worth going for.
Because this panel almost makes the Scout reports panel obsolete, I've limited the results of this panel to 20 results so that this reports panel is now only showing the most recent reports.

I did a lookup on all the reports that were done, and I noticed that a huge majority of the reports are driver reports. This makes sense with the driver roaming. To improve this I've introduced staff roaming as well. If there are no staff to scout, then a random staff member will be scouted. This staff member needs to be part of a team (so no scouting of free staff), and they also need to be in a role (so head designer, or head commercial for example).
Furthermore I've made some improvements to the mechanism that scouts staff, so that there should be more staff scout reports (non-roamed). Also to improve the actual report on the staff members who are non-roamed (so a requested scout report by the manager), it's now only possible for the scout to file a report on staff who are in an active role at a team.

These changes should make it more easy to get to know which persons you should go for in the game. More cool changes coming up!

The coach now has an extra skill called "Judge ability". It's a feature from Pitwall 1 that makes its return in the game, but in a slightly different form.
As it was correctly mentioned by a few members, it doesn't make sense that you would have to scout a person who is already working for you day in day out. Because of this, the coach can now judge everyone who works in the team. That also means that if you don't have a coach, you won't get any additional information. The judging ability is taken from the head coach, so if you have multiple coaches then only the head one will count.

There's a limit as to how much the coach can judge however. But depending on the judge ability skill and the coach his experience he will be able to judge the skills of the person until about halfway of the spectrum. To get the full detailed information of the skill set, you will still need to assign a scout.

The change has been committed to the game straight away, as it's not a very big game play change. More information about additional future changes coming up soon.

At this moment a lot of focus has been going in improving the UI and making the learning step a little smaller for new members. In that light I will be adding content to the help section in the next days, and I will also add new blue tutorial boxes to the pages for new members.

I've also recently decided what gameplay changes should be made, and I will share some information on what changes are coming up. Today I will talk about person contract negotiations changes that are coming up. These changes will be implemented in the game straight away once they're developed and tested. All other gameplay changes that I will talk about in the next few days will only be implemented at a season change.

As discussed in the forum, I will be making changes in the contract negotiations with persons. The biggest change here is that the persons will use their power position much more than with the current system. It will be similar to the sponsor negotiations, where the sponsor knows his power position and use it. It means that if a driver knows he's wanted (or if he still has some time on his contract), he will be much harder to negotiate with. This also allows us to have more flexibility in negotiations. The fact that you're a division 2 team might be a big negative for the highest ranked designer (for example) in the game, but then you might be able to persuade him much more (than the current system) with other interesting options (such as money, good length, good bonus, etc.).

Another feature that will be introduced in person negotiations is minimum number of races. To prevent teams from hiring many drivers, those drivers will now require a minimum number of races that they can do or it will be considered a breach of contract. This also allows other teams to negotiate with drivers who are stuck with an inactive team. This is also true for staff (such as designer, mechanics, ...).

The feedback that a person gives you when negotiating will also be changed, as it's a bit of a mix of feedback right now. It will be channeled more into an overall feedback, but still keeping the information of happiness regarding the salary, bonus, etc.

A final change that is coming up is based on feedback from some new members that I received. It's quite annoying for new members that they have to wait quite some time for new persons to join the team. To improve this, persons will join straight away when they are happy with a contract. This done to reduce the waiting time for members, and to allow them to actually start playing the game.

That's all for the contract changes. The next days I will be releasing more info in regards with staff, development, drivers and sponsor gameplay changes.