About
The game is completely free to play, though there is an optional Supporter Service as well as a Mobile Service, both available by in-game purchase. The normal service includes the ability to change the training type, hire and fire your staff, buy and sell players, set your lineup for the match, invest in a youth squad, and run the club as an owner of a football club would. As with any manager game, the player must assign positions to the players and choose among some basic tactical and strategic options. Hattrick is always under development, and the game developers are constantly adding new features to the game and enhancing the current ones. These additions, and proposed ideas, are usually accompanied by debate in the game's conferences.
Basics
Basics
Every user in Hattrick has a team of his/her own. The user has almost unlimited control over their team, as long as he plays within the economic and tactical restrictions. As a result, many different types of teams in Hattrick exist. The team's type is generally shaped by the training program set up by the user, as well as the formations played.
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Registration
All registrations must be validated by a non-automated Hattrick GM (one of five types of administrators within Hattrick). This validation period is required to prevent automated mass registrations and generally lasts a few days after the user has requested a team, but may last as long as a month if the user's country is filled to capacity and has a long waiting list. Once users have submitted a request, they may see their position in the country's waiting list by logging in to their newly created name. After the administrator has validated that the user does not already have a team and is indeed a resident of their requested country, the user receives a team. Nearly always, the newbie takes over someone's old, defunct team and the team's position in the league structure with an initial set of players, a weak coach, a small stadium, fanclub, and staff; once in a while and much more common in smaller or newer countries, the owner will take over a "bot team," or a team in control by the server. There is no advantage or disadvantage to what type of team a player takes over; every team begins with roughly the same skill level of players. The player is then free to manage his or her squad, sell and purchase the players, define a training scheme, and so forth.
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Gameplay
Hattrick combines the elements of economic management, tactical options, and community interaction. To consistently win, it is necessary for a manager to utilize all three of these elements. The basic idea of Hattrick is to manage a football team wisely, whether it be in buying and selling players, setting the team's lineup, or expanding the arena to the perfect size. The main tasks of a manager every week include choosing a friendly if the team is not in the national cup, setting the optimal lineups for both the league game and cup/friendly game, "pulling" a player from the team's youth squad and either selling, keeping, or firing that player as needed, monitoring the team's training program to track the progress of the trainees, and tracking the economic progress of the team from week to week to make sure the club is making a profit over time.
During almost every hattrick week, a dedicated manager completes all of these tasks. In addition, teams have a number of tasks that must be completed, including transferring players as needed, expanding the arena if necessary, and hiring the best staff for the team's needs. Hattrick is never-ending,[3] but the vast majority of teams play to win games and ultimately reach the top of the league's pyramid; therefore, when a team consistently wins games at every level, that team has "won" the game. Managing a Hattrick team to success takes patience and skill, as w
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byHattrick history
history
Season 7, which began in July 1999, marked some real progress in the game. New tactical options were added so that teams could change their formation from the fundamental 4-4-2. Teams could also set their players' individual tactics, such as offensive or defensive. After Season 7, ExtraLives AB was formed and the team began development of Version 5.0. Roughly nine months later, Hattrick V.5 was launched.
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Season 11: Modern Interface
Season 11 marked the launch of Hattrick 5.0, and with it the current graphical interface. Hattrick also added more nations beyond Sweden: Denmark, Finland, Argentina, Germany, England, Italy, Spain (later changed to Mexico), and the USA. Users who had previously played in Sweden and new users alike filled these nations. At this time the game had a user-base of roughly 12,000. The launch of Hattrick 5 shaped the game as it is today, adding features such as live matches, which replaced the matches that previously occurred during downtime each night, instant transfer processing, 15 different player skill levels including the current peak level 'divine,' and the "stars" system for player performance rating.
Following Season 11, additional important changes also took place. At the beginning of Season 12 teams were placed in the same series as they finished and the promotion/demotion system was established. Hattrick Supporter was launched before Season 13, and the conferences system was added for Season 14. Hattrick mobile was also added in time for Season 14. With these changes, the game began to grow much more quickly, and development was made easier since for the first time the developers actually made money from the game beyond advertisement revenue. Then, Season 15 introduced even more changes.
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Season 15: Version 6 Released
Season 15, which began in January 2002, marked the launch of Version 6, the current version of Hattrick. Version 6 added the first official National Teams, and with it World Cups and International Friendlies. The first World Cup was held at the end of the season, with Sweden beating England 4-0. The developers also added Special Events, a concept very familiar to those playing today. Special Events allowed players with special traits (such as Powerful or Head specialist) to perform a certain way in a match, whether by scoring a goal, surprising an opponent, or growing more tired due to the sun. Version 6 did not solve the growing economic problems within the game, however. The developers resorted to giving out 200,000 Euros (or the equivalent in each country's currency) to each team to boost the in-game economy, which had entered the equivalent of a depression.
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Season 29: League reform
Announced more than a season in advance, the league reform was a major project that was completed during the off-season prior to season 29, in April 2006. At this time, the game's membership was 800,000 strong and the largest countries had swelled to over 60,000 users each, or 12 levels. The league reform intended to solve the problem of league pyramid capacity, since the growth of larger leagues, such as The Netherlands or Sweden, had made it necessary to add a new pyramid level almost every season. Before the league reform, the league pyramid only expanded in size from division 1 to division 6; pyramid levels in division 6 and below were all comprised of 1024 leagues. Combined with the fact that new teams are only assigned in the bottom two divisions, this pyramid structure caused major problems with "bot teams," or ownerless teams, as they were accumulating in the lower divisions of large HT nations; Hattrick relies on the regular promotion/relegation system to move bot teams to the bottom of league pyramids over time.
When the bot problem was at its worst, about half of the teams in a league level in Argentina, a country that would otherwise fill its league pyramid, were bots,[6] which barely offered any resistance for the active teams. To alleviate this problem, the league structure was changed so that levels 8 and 9 would double in size to 2048 leagues, and 10 and below would increase to 4096 leagues. Following this restructuring, all bot teams at that time were relegated to the bottom division, replacing them by promoting extra teams from lower divisions.
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Season 32: Youth Academy This section requires expansion.
A major addition to the game was introduced with the Youth Academy, which was presented as an alternative to the relatively simple Youth Squad system. Keeping with the regular stance that no big changes should be forced upon the users, the developers made switching to the new system optional, and the old and new systems can be used in parallel. Just like with the old system, a manager can only promote one player to the youth squad a week.
Whereas the old system was a straight weekly payment, allowing up to one player with semi-random characteristics to be promoted to the squad every week, the new system introduced a two-tier setup where prospects (suggested by 1 to 3 scouts) may be taken up into a separate youth squad, with its own separate matches and training. To promote a player to the youth squad, the manager must "call" the scouts and give a player an offer. If the player turns down the offer, that player is permanently unavailable to the team, and if the manager turns down an offer they will not be able to return to the original offer.
The quality of the youth players must be actively evaluated by the user, judging from match and training reports since unlike the old youth system, their individual attributes will not show up. Less talented players must be weeded out, concentrating training efforts on the "rough diamonds". Part of the skill in managing the Youth Academy is determining which players have aptitude at various positions based upon the various, and at times cryptic, comments from the Youth Academy coach. When a player is estimated to have reached his full potential, he can be promoted to the regular squad, revealing his skills in the traditional way. At this point, the player is indistinguishable from "regular" players and may be fielded, traded or fired.
Hattrick Supporter
Supporter
The most common purchase is Hattrick Supporter. The purchase of supporter unlocks a number of features considered by many to be the best features of the game, such as federations or the arena designer. "Hattrick Supporter will not give your team any in-game advantages, but rather deepen your experience of the game,"[14] according to the game developers. Supporter costs roughly $30 per year (or $9 if purchasing for three months) and is a one-time non-subscription purchase. In addition to receiving a star next to their name in conference posts and on their team page, supporters also access a large number of premium features.
Supporters can join up to five federations, which are essentially extra conferences. Some federations offer additional off-site features to members, such as an automated logo designer or team statistics. Federations commonly organize friendly cups amongst members or interfed cups against other federations. Anyone can start a federation, so long as they have Supporter and an empty federation spot. However, federations must have at least five members within the first week of federation creation (and for every week after that), or they will be deleted.
Paying members have additional customization and interaction options on their club pages as well. Supporters can display their own team logo, design their own match kits, write press announcements, and view notes written to them in their guestbook. Only supporters can sign guestbooks, though anyone can view guestbooks. With Supporter users can also see the faces of the players in Hattrick, choose numbers from 1 to 99 for their players, retire their players to the hall of fame for their club, and write text for their players to say to anyone who happens to view that player's page. Supporters who viewed the team page of Bob Sunesson, a special player on one of the developers' teams, were treated to an easter egg in the game - Bob's face was covered by many different objects and changed upon each view. Bob was fired after Season 28 for an unknown reason, though it likely had something to do with the large amount of notes regarding Bob that HT-Tjecken, his owner, received.[15]
Supporters receive a flag collection page, on which players can view their flags in five different categories: countries from which their supporters hail, countries their team has visited, countries their team has been visited by, countries from which their players originate, and countries in which players who originated in the squad are currently playing. Flag Collecting is a very popular hobby amongst supporters, particularly in the category of visiting countries. It is not uncommon for teams in small countries to receive upwards of 100 friendly requests in a week, since small countries are the hardest flags to collect. Those who enjoy designing buildings can design the appearance of their stadium in various different ways - choosing the layout of seats, adding a roof and lights, choosing the surrounding area in the city, and choosing colors for each addition, using the flash-based Arena Designer.
Supporters receive training reports which document training pops, or level jumps in skill. Supporters can also access a plethora of other statistics involving many aspects of the game - both statistics about their own team and general statistics about the league, including the top teams in certain criteria. Hattrick also offers several minor features to paid members, such as bookmarks and a notepad. Users may also support other teams, both supporter and non-supporter, and view the teams that support them. Finally, Supporters have the option to purchase a website for their team called a clubhouse. Clubhouses have many intricate statistics features and offer automatic updating of many team statistics. Users can customize many aspects of their clubhouse, similarly to the options available from a low-priced webhost.
