Not a Footium Blog

Retirement

It will probably happen to all of us one day, but that’s the topic of today’s blog. What could retirement in Footium look like? How does it work now? What do the community want?

That’s all to come!

The Status Quo

At the moment, retirement is a very static and fixed event in Footium. When a player reaches 31, this will be that players last season, and they retire at the end of it.

They have also very handily added a little UI indicator to let you easily identify when that is happening to your players (thanks Footium!).

There have also been indications that retired players will have a role to play even beyond the end of their playing career.

This could lead to two things:

• Preserving the value of retired players. If retired players continue to have value, it may help preserve the market for these players.
• Deeper strategy around player choice. There may be some tie in to the leadership statistic in whatever role retired players may have, so this may be an even more highly prioritised statistic.

Community Thoughts?

As with all things, it’s fun to do a little snap poll to see what people’s thoughts are on this.

I would obviously caveat this by saying 26 users is not a huge sample! Interesting nonetheless.

I would like to give a huge shout out to the one person who wants a lower retirement age! The one and only!

It’s interesting that around 2/3 of respondents want to see SOME kind of change to retirement, but they don’t necessarily agree on the way forward.

Some want a fixed retirement age (but different), whilst the largest choice made was for retirement age to be a variable.

How do other games handle retirement?

It might be quite interesting to look at how other products handle retirement.

FIFA – So FIFA is a really interesting one. I went into it thinking that retirement was a ‘fixed’ age, set to each player in career mode. So this is how players like James Milner have good longevity, whilst some players are on their way out early doors. However, the age isn’t ‘fixed.’ There is some variety, and generally this can be affected by things like contracts etc. These appear within a range.

MFL – Players have a hidden ‘longevity’ stat. This is a flat number from 0-10 and essentially fixes the retirement age between 32 and 42. You don’t know this stat until your player announces retirement. Longevity is also linked to player performance, which starts to deteriorate 3 seasons before retirement.

Football Manager – Players generally retire around aged 36, on principle, but this is again affected by things like contracts. Quite aligned with FIFA.

Options For The Future – Simples!

I want to briefly touch on the 3 simple options.

• Keep retirement age the same. This is the simplest option, but one thing I think is key for this, is that Footium users have now locked value and assets into Footium. If some of these assets now retire earlier, this may throw this out of kilter. Keeping the system the same prevents this.
• Lowering the fixed retirement age. Shout out to the person out there who wants this. Realistically, there could be some logic to this. Most academy prospects come in at 16. If you were to set retirement at 28, for example, you’d get exactly one year of seasons out of each player (roughly). Nice round number.
• Raising the fixed retirement age. Similar to the above, but the other way round. If retirement was raised to a fixed age higher than the current one, you get more seasons out of your assets.

One thing to bear in mind is that any changes may have some influence on market factors. If players retire quicker, there will be more churn, more need to buy players. If players retire slower, there is less churn, but player values may be influence by this as well.

The complicated options – variety!

I would like to point out that when I started tweeting about this, I hadn’t actually looked at how MFL do retirement, but one of my proposals is broadly similar to their system. There are some disadvantages which I’ll look at.

Suggestion 1 – Longevity Stat.

So this is broadly similar to what MFL currently does. I think that age 42 may be a slightly too high upper limit, which is what MFL currently uses.

This would work by having an underlying, ‘Longevity’ statistic on each player. This would be the deciding factor in when a player retires. Longevity could be hidden (the MFL way), or it could be public with a little bit of variance.

As opposed to the very fixed method of MFL (0-10, directly adding a year of play time for each number), if the scale were to be larger (0-100) and still have an element of randomness, this could also be a method.

I am always a huge proponent that some mystery is key to a game’s longevity. If everything is predictable, known and quantifiable, discovery is lost. This blog wouldn’t exist without wanting to learn more.

However, Leadership in known in Footium. Stamina is known in Footium. Yet we don’t know exactly what the impacts of these numbers are. I think it’s vary practical that your player could have a public longevity statistic, but the exact impact of this is not known as there’s variety.

A benefit of Longevity being public would be that it would have some influence on the market for players.

However, the statistic being hidden would keep even more mystery!

Fundamentally, this approach works in a broadly simple way. Players have an underlying statistic that determines retirement age. The exact method could vary.

It’s also worth understanding that this will have to be updated onto existing players (unless it’s already a secret statistic…) if it were to be added.

Suggestion 2 – Dice Rolls.

I quite like this one, but maybe that’s my own personal bias towards my own brain.

I wouldn’t be opposed to a simple dice roll to cause some variety.

Once a player reaches a certain age, a dice roll with diminishing returns could then begin.

At the end of that season (or during), a dice is rolled, with a % chance that the player continues playing. If the dice goes against them, you get a lovely notification saying they’re hanging up the boots, and they retire at the end of that season.

This would be a diminishing return, so as each season goes by, the chance a player continues playing is reduced.

This removes the statistic, but could be implemented quickly and maintains the mystery.

Suggestion 3 – Augments/Boosts.

This is probably the suggestion that I’m most up in the air about what it looks like.

One of the key benefits of something like this, in my mind, is that it will raise revenue for Footium. I want Footium to grow and succeed, and even though some find it distasteful, I think opportunities for them to widen their income streams is what will ultimately benefit us all, and keep us playing.

This is also the option that could best fit in with some of the other options suggested. It could work in tandem with other suggestions, as a nice top up to those potential systems.

So, there would be some baseline system in place, either the current system, or a variation, and this would sit on top.

When a player approaches retirement, you would have the option to apply an NFT item to them (boost/augment/contract, call it what you want), which would grant them an extra season (or multiple!).

This NFT item should be able to be earned in multiple ways.

I think having paid and unpaid options to earn this is really key. I’m all about boosting Footium’s accounts and keeping us playing for longer, but I still like a non purchase option.

A few methods to obtain could be:

• Performance rewards (for results in game)
• Direct purchase from Footium (spend that cash)
• Bounties (discord competitions etc)
• Opensea sales (win a ‘contract’ nft you don’t need? flog it)

This method allows perhaps the most player control, as you will have direct control (to some degree) over how long your player plays for. It allows you to also preserve value on your key assets, and adds a new item to go into the Footium market!

Conclusion

A lot of this is spitballing, but I really liked going through these ideas. I think it’s a really exciting time to be in Footium, as we’re in at a super early stage.

I feel valued in this community, and it’s exciting to see where this may go.

What do you think about these ideas? Let me know.

See you all on the pitch!