Well Played Soccer – Community Q&A

Right now I'm focused on two features: the Transfer Market and the launch of leagues and tournaments. I also want to add private matches, but that will probably come a bit later. I need to think about how to design this feature, because slots for private matches would be taken away from open and team matches, and the game is mainly about competing against other players, not playing within your own group. Some of you tell me that private matches are for training and playing with friends, but I believe there's nothing better than creating a team, inviting your friends to it, and playing matches against other teams! That's the best practice and the biggest thrill, because ranking and stats are on the line. Private matches, because of the high risk of stat farming, would not count towards the ranking or your statistics. I will add this feature, but don't expect it in the near future.

Today I'm focused on the Transfer Market and the league and tournament system. The Transfer Market would be a place where players looking for a club meet team owners and captains looking for players for their teams. Players registered on the transfer list could receive invitations to teams, and team owners could search for players on the market or define which players are allowed to send join requests. These could be various criteria, such as preferred position, minimum reputation level, minimum OVR level, or even nationality. I will soon publish the first mockups showing this feature. The goal is to make it easier to complete your squad and make team competition even more competitive.

And now the crème de la crème: leagues and tournaments. The league is what I want to build the game and the community around. The format will evolve. We'll most likely start with 3v3 and set up several divisions in each region (regional league: Division 1, Division 2, etc.), but in the long run it would probably make sense to introduce national leagues too, but that's for the future. Matches would be played every weekend in league rounds, and a full league season would last around 2–3 months. Each round, team owners would agree on a date for their match and the system would reserve a dedicated slot for it. We would play home and away, meaning two matches at the agreed time. For example: Mongoly and Chesterfield are scheduled to play in round one. The team owners agree on Saturday at 19:00 and send that to the system. The system then automatically creates a match room for them at 19:00 (all players get notifications about the league match early enough), and the teams play the match and then the rematch. The results go straight into the table right after the games end. This is a difficult feature because it includes a scheduling system (accepting/rejecting dates, automatic assignment when owners can't agree, etc.), player transfers between teams during the league, the problem of teams that disband mid-season, and so on, but I'm super excited about it.

The Well Played News paper would come out every Monday (after the round ends) with match results and short interviews with the best players. Playing in leagues will be completely free.

Tournaments. These are meant to be shorter and faster competitions, played over 1 to 2 days at most (for example over a weekend), giving quick trophies and rewards, though a bit less prestigious than the league. Tournament entry may be paid.

After that I want to work on improving the look of the game and making the UI clearer (the Stats tab definitely needs a big change, but that may turn into a larger, overall redesign), and focus on marketing the game and opening new regions.

The goalkeeper AI will be improved a bit. I want the keeper to be more aggressive in front of the goal, but… The goalkeeper is, and will remain, just decoration in this game. It's your job and your team's job to defend the goal: shift properly in defense, use the slide tackle smartly (most of you slide way too often), and block shots. Use the yellow joystick for that: tilt it the moment you expect a shot on goal.

I'm not planning to add a goalkeeper position to the game. It would cause a lot of confusion, because not everyone wants to play in that position, and the game is very sensitive to connection spikes, so a successful save would very often depend on your connection quality at that exact moment. Not to mention that it would require learning a completely new mechanic for saving shots and moving as a goalkeeper.

Never. I'm not planning to add them. The game would lose its pace, because it would be interrupted by fouls, players lining up for set pieces (free kicks), yellow/red card animations, players leaving the pitch, and so on. New players would also quickly pick up yellow and red cards, which would make it harder for them to get into the game and could put them off.

I respect that in other football games fouls are part of the game, but in my vision of WPS there are no fouls. Matches are meant to be dynamic, engaging, and (fairly) short.

First of all, I want to say that Turkiye is special to me, because I really like spending my holidays there 😀 I love this country for its beautiful landscapes and delicious food. I'm very happy that the game has become so popular there and I hope it keeps growing.

Turkish language was added last weekend. Let me know if some translations and texts need fixing. I've been hearing that some players complain about high latency. Turkiye is a big country and the distance to the server in Germany varies. It seems that players from western Turkiye have a noticeably better connection than those from the central and eastern parts. I'm planning to launch a dedicated server in Istanbul and I hope it will happen by the end of this year, maybe early next year. A server there should also give European players good competition, so I'm hoping for some interesting matches.

Here I'd like to kindly ask you not to leave 1-star reviews in the app stores. I understand that some of you are frustrated, but I'm doing everything I can and I have you in mind. Lowering the game's store rating won't make me launch that server any faster. Please be a little patient.

I'm not convinced. You can already play 5v5 and there are very few such matches. Would there be demand for matches with bigger squads? It would require a bigger pitch, and since this is a mobile game, I think playing on such a large pitch would feel pretty bad.

I'm planning for the first league round to be played at the end of November. League registration will open before that. I'll launch tournaments a bit later, probably in December. Please keep in mind that the league feature is complex, so the date may slip, but I'm doing everything I can to get started as soon as possible.

Yes, I'll add this in early November. Team owners will be able to change the team name (no more than once every 90 days, so the team doesn't lose recognition) and set their own colors for shirts, shorts and socks. Open matches will also be played in different colors to add some variety.

I get tons of questions like this from you. Especially from Asia, recently also from North and Central America, and South Africa comes up too. North America and Asia are on my shortlist. For North and Central America I'm planning to launch a server in Dallas, which should give good comfort to players from the USA, Mexico, and most of Central America. The planned launch is end of November / early December.

As for Asia, I'm planning to launch a server in Singapore, but that will come a bit later. Asia is a tough market and I need to think carefully about pricing for paid packs and ads, because there's a high risk the game won't sustain itself there the way it does in other regions.

Well Played Soccer is a cooperative online multiplayer game. It requires you to be present on the pitch. If you leave a game on purpose, you ruin the experience for the other players. Your reputation is not lowered when you get disconnected for reasons beyond your control and you try to reconnect to the game. Matches are short, so even if your connection is weaker, finish the match and then make sure you have a good connection for the next ones. Penalizing players for leaving matches is nothing new in the world of online games. Dropping your reputation even to 80% carries no additional sanctions, and every penalty is removed after 30 days (I may shorten this), so your reputation recovers. I understand that for many of you these penalties may feel harsh, but I want the game to offer a high level of comfort and good sportsmanship.

That's why the reputation system was introduced. Here I'd like to say a big thank you to the moderators for handling reports of messages containing profanity and racist content. We get hundreds of such reports every day and we try to review them as they come in and hand out penalties fairly. For those who report, I have some advice: don't provoke others into insulting you, because the system knows the context of the reported conversation, so in such cases you will also be penalized for provocation. Currently, in about 25–30% of cases the provokers are penalized too. Sometimes only the provokers, because it turns out the reported message is barely offensive at all, while the provoker was using very inappropriate language and simply baiting the other person.

When a player's reputation drops to 50%, they are automatically and permanently banned. Despite these strict rules, banned players make up about 0.7% of all active players. I take building a solid community in our game very seriously. If someone repeatedly breaks the rules (and you really have to try hard to drop to 50% reputation), there is no place for them in our community.

Well Played Soccer is based on precision and fast decision-making. Because of that, the game is very sensitive to connection instability. On top of that, there's the issue of mobile devices, which are usually under some load: they have various apps running in the background that use the network, scan Wi-Fi networks, send data packets to manufacturers, etc.

Speed tests check the speed of your connection, but not its stability. They also query test servers that are often located in your own country, while WPS servers are located in Germany (Europe region) and São Paulo (Brazil region), and the connection quality from your location to those can be completely different.

WPS uses servers from well-known providers that offer stable connections for production use. Believe me, I don't cut corners on servers and I care about players having a good experience. Also keep in mind that if you play from a location far from these servers, both latency and connection instability can be higher.

In general, the topic of server connections is very complex and depends on many factors. For example, your internet provider may decide that on weekends and evenings it routes traffic along a slightly different, longer path than during the week (when the load is lower), and then you'll see an extra 10–15 ms of latency or some instability. Or the neighbors and people in your building or home put load on the connection at certain hours, so the router near where you play sometimes can't keep up and, for example, drops some data packets.

What you can do on your side: connect your phone over Wi-Fi via 5 GHz; turn off excessive Wi-Fi network scanning on your phone; turn on gaming mode on your phone; and limit background apps where possible. I hope that as the game grows in popularity and revenue, I'll be able to open servers closer to your locations, but at the same time I believe the current infrastructure already gives many players a good experience and competitive matches.

Arabic language support is in the plan, but it will come a bit later, because it requires adding support for a right-to-left layout so you can read content properly in Arabic. Also, the planned launch of the Istanbul server may improve your gaming experience soon.

I'm not planning to, but I'm looking into it.

Yes, there will be gameplay improvements, but they'll come a bit later. I will definitely reduce the range of volley shots a little (only a little, because right now they're fairly easy to block by tilting the yellow joystick at the right moment); I'll introduce the goalkeeper AI improvements mentioned above; and shots from the near post should be easier for the goalkeeper to save.

You can share any ideas in the community chats on Discord. I look at them from time to time. I'm not creating a dedicated suggestions section because… I'm already tired of them. I get suggestions from you through many different channels: TikTok, e-mail, etc. 99% of these suggestions come from other games. I respect the current games market, I try to stay up to date and bring to WPS the features that fit here, like the private matches mentioned in the first question. However… I want Well Played Soccer to set a completely new standard in mobile football games, and for others to copy WPS. I have my own vision of the game, one that goes beyond just playing. I want Well Played Soccer to be an entertainment hub where players will want to play, but also watch matches and follow the competitions.

I have a lot of determination to make that happen. One advantage I definitely have is that I develop the game on my own. That lets me move fast, without complicated corporate processes or pressure from shareholders for quick profit. On the other hand, without external funding, scaling the game to new regions is a bit delayed. My costs are low. I don't have to support 20–30 staff, so I truly believe in making a game with no pay-to-win and with a healthy community that respects itself. I hope you'll be with me on this journey.