What a 24 hours! The Lionesses roared their way to European triumph and now…some big CLUB news for our Club Owners (COs)!
The MLS Test has finished. As a team we learnt a lot, mainly that our knowledge of MLS players’ is woeful. More importantly however, we loved watching our Founding Club Owners test the Player Engine and receiving tons of fantastic feedback. Thank you!
With the MLS Test coming to end, it’s now time to test the Player Engine out in Europe.
Did someone say SEASON ZERO?
What is Season Zero?
From the beginning we’ve outlined our ambition to build a world class entertainment experience. This takes time. So whilst the MLS Player Engine Test was probably as little as 10% of the final game, Season Zero will start with about 12% of the final game we envisage. Throughout the season we’ll be learning, testing, learning, retesting and of course…building! And we’ll be doing it together. We want Season Zero to be an exciting experience where COs get to know - and help shape - the game you want to play for decades. We will start with a relatively simple feature list, with updates dropped over the course of the season.
Season Zero is a season-long playing experience for our Meta & Gold Founding Club Owners. On an invitational basis we’ll also be opening up to other players from our waiting list. To join the waiting list, sign up on the website now.
An important thing to note is that unlike future seasons where your club progress will continue indefinitely, there will be a reset of your squad at the end of Season Zero. This shouldn’t change your club’s ambition however; there’s super exclusive prizes up for grabs, your competitive rank to secure, Season Zero trophies, achievements plus lots more 👀. Our community means everything to us and our COs can be confident they’ll be getting some of the coolest items to build their club and/or trade with other players later on. What’s the point of being early if you don’t get swag to flex in future? Hey….there may even be a few surprises along the way too.
Downloading and Logging In
In the coming days, Founding Club Owners will need to download the latest version of the app. This can be done in the same way as the MLS Player Engine Test. Founding COs will receive an email from TestFlight in due course when Season Zero is ready to download.
Approval times by App & Play stores are out of our control so first access to Season Zero for iOS & Android Founding Club Owners may well be on different days (Android is typically available beforehand). If any issues, contact us via email or open a support ticket in Discord.
For those who are not Founding Club Owners, if you receive an email from TestFlight, you’ve been selected to test in Season Zero and can follow the steps above.
Key Features at beginning of Season Zero
CLUB now features all players from the EPL and select teams from Europe:
To provide balance between the leagues, a scoring modifier based on the UEFA Coefficient is used (a goal in EPL is currently worth more than Ligue 1 for example as shown below). We will be testing this thoroughly!
We have introduced a simple substitution feature for the start of Season Zero. A maximum of 3 substitutions can be made during the gameweek. This means you can play actively during the gameweek to improve your team! A substitution can be made at any time before the gameweek ends.
As substitutions are available, COs will now be required to have 16 players in their Squad. 2 GK, 5 Def, 5 Mid, 4 Fwds.
The starting budget is currently 650M for Clubs.
What else is new?
Clubs will now open the game to find their starter stadium. It ain’t much, but it’s yours! Over time, COs will be able to upgrade their stadium to match their ambitions.
COs can now choose a starter kit and badge. There will be opportunities to customise and upgrade the look and feel of your club through gameplay. Founding COs will have their founding kits/badges available shortly.
Gameweek Dates
We will now be moving to more consistent deadlines: the CLUB gameweek will run from 5pm UTC Friday to 9am UTC Friday (6pm &10am BST).
We may vary this from time to time, should the football calendar warrant a change. The Next Gameweek screen will display the gameweek start time in the local time set on your phone. Not a bad set of games to get us underway either! 👇
Rules
Full rules are available in the app by clicking the “?” from the Live/Next Gameweek screen.
For the opening weeks of the test COs will be able to make unlimited transfers each week. We want to let COs experiment early on, and also this makes it easier to keep the show on the road if any bugs are encountered early.
Be aware that performance in the opening gameweeks will likely be used to seed placings when the divisional ranking system opens (details coming soon).
A captain gives a 50% bonus to a players score.
Cover System. A player being used outside of his primary role will receive a -25% scoring penalty e.g if Harry Maguire were used as a LB rather than as a CB. The game clearly highlights players in their optimal role in green when placed on the pitch. Amber means they are suffering a penalty for “covering” a role they would not normally play.
As always, notes on known bugs & limitations plus more patch notes can be found in our Discord.
Let’s Go!
So, Season Zero is almost here. A lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into getting us to this point in such a short space of time. We can’t wait to continue testing and building with our community! 👊 #ClubGame
