Soccer Star

All direct from Glynn...

CONTACTING GLYNN

I knew it was a mistake ever giving out this email address as people soon forget what I said.

So in short, the glynn5 address is NOT a Soccer Star address. Do NOT use it for Soccer Star related questions and if you do, don't expect a reply or any action. The only reason I ever suggested using this address was a) If you just wanted to casually chat about SS (i.e my response isn't urgent and requires no action) or b) If something bad has happened that requires me to log onto the SS machine urgently.

So basically, don't use the glynn5 address and if you do, don't expect any action or response.

Or in other words, the glynn5 address isn't for Soccer Star AT ALL so if you use it, you use it at your own 'risk'.


FORUM RULES

ALL AREAS

1) Abusive or threatening behaviour will not be tolerated on the Soccer Star forums. Remember that Soccer Star is just a game and we want to maintain a fun atmosphere on the forums. Threatening or abusive messages - including private messages - will lead to a warning or a ban from the forum, and possibly from the game itself, depending on the severity of the abuse/threats.

2) Racism or any form of bigotry will not be tolerated on the forums. Again, a warning and/or a ban will follow.

In short, please try to friendly to other members at all times. If you have a particular issue to raise with another player, email me at soccerstar@soccerstar.org.uk and I'll deal with it.

3) No politics in any way allowed. That is politics in it's truest meaning and not just literal politics (ie any real life event in the news)



TRANSFER AREA

Transfer posts - Okay, following complaints about some of the derogatory comments made on some transfer posts it seems time is ripe to re-iterate Glynn's rule on what is acceptable within the transfer forum.

No manager should make any derogatory comments about players another manager is attempting to sell. The selling manager can if they choose, make derogatory comments about their own players but that is their choice.

Any comments that managers are unhappy with should be pointed out to myself and the offending remarks will be withdrawn immediately. I will try to remove comments as soon as they are made but as I don't have time to read every post I need the manager concerned to point them out to me whenever possible.

These rules were set out by Glynn last year and unfortunately got lost when he did his clean of the forum so some managers may not have realised.

Hopefully the need to do this won't happen too often but please do not hesitate to contact me if you are unhappy with forum comments.


Transfer Cash offers - Following a few comments the past few days can all managers please make sure they only make Cash offers in the transfer market area for players they actually want.

It seems in an attempt to be "humourous" that some managers are upping bids on players only to then pull out.

This is unfair on other managers bidding on the player and more importantly it is unfair on the seller.

No recriminations or slights on anyone on the forum but please can all managers just be sure they want a player before saying they will pay x amount for them. [/b]

AUCTION MARKET AREA

Promise of bids/Interest - No manager may make a promise to bid or state they are interested on a player on an auction market opinion post. This is to prevent managers being misled into listing a player expecting to get a bid or certain amount of money as whilst the manager making the promise/comment may be genuine a missed order file etc could result in no offer being made and the seller feeling cheated into listing a player. There have been complaints about managers making promises and then not keeping to them and this is the best way to avoid any issues between managers.

There is obviously no way to stop a manager making a promise in private via pm, e-mail etc but any seller needs to be aware that a promise to bid via pm/e-mail/verbally cannot be relied upon.

Status Updates - To enable fair bidding for all on foreign players created by the program and sold by the SLFA no enquiries as to their status prior to their sale are allowed. Enquiries once sold are allowed but not before.



GAME RULES


DEBT

From Glynn - I know everyone has been saying I should have done this for years, and I've been threatening it for years, but after losing £50 yet again to a manager in debt, I'm now going to enforce this rule.

From next week, any team starting the week in debt will NOT have any orders received.

If a team goes too far in debt (anything over £10) then expect the team to be treated as a dropped team and to have players deleted by the program. This will be the responsibility of the managers and the players will not be re-instated as any manager with issues has plenty of opportunity to contact myself before it reaches this stage.

HOTMAIL ISSUES WITH SS TURNS

If you're not getting Hotmail turns, I will now INSIST that you switch to a non-Hotmail email address and will just delete your Hotmail one

BIDDING ON OWN PLAYER'S ON THE AUCTION MARKET

This one was mentioned some time ago and was deemed unfair, unfortunately the post is no longer on the forums so it's still happening occasionally and the managers can claim ignorance. So I'm keeping this one up as a sticky now to make sure everybody knows.

A team can NEVER bid for it's own player on the AM. This is now a game rule.

Any team doing this will be punished by removal of all proceeds when the bidding is complete, or removal of the player if they end up winning him.


COMPLAINTS

I'm now making this a forum rule, so please read carefully.

If you have any complaints about Soccer Star, me, the program etc, please make them to ME, not to Rich, and certainly not to the entire forum. There's a growing tendency for people to point out every tiny error I make, and this isn't good for the image of the game. Even worse, when people get in touch with me and we work out what's happened, half of the time the error is THEIR fault, and not mine (e.g they missed out an ID code, typed it wrong etc). But instead of coming onto the forum and pointing that out, nothing is said so everyone just assumes it was my fault anyway. So the damage is done already.

In my defence, there are still nearly 400 teams in Soccer Star, and most do several orders and I get MOST of them right. Of course I am human, and if I type in 3000 orders every week and I get 1% wrong, that's 30 errors a week I'm making. 1% isn't bad, but 30 SOUNDS bad if everybody decides to report it.

If you want to reduce errors on your turns, I have some advice. Go to email (if you aren't already) and use the email client, since you'll then be typing in most of your orders yourself.

Anyway, for the good of the game, I'm now banning complaints of this sort from the forum and will delete any posts I see. As I said at first, please report all errors to me and I'll try to sort them out ASAP.


LONG ORDERS - WRITING OUT

Most of you know this already, but it does still happen quite a bit, so for new players and as a reminder to everyone else.....

If you have a very long order, for example a transfer involving several players, there's an issue at my end where the order scrolls off the screen and onto the next line. If you then issue another order on the next line, it can get over-written meaning I can't read the order. Therefore, if you have plenty of room (for example you're only doing 2 or 3 extra orders that week), leave a space between the orders - write orders on line 1, 3 and 5 for example. If you don't have room, then try to put the longest order on the last line which can't get over-written at my end.

NAMING OF PLAYERS AND TEAMS

As you're already aware, I don't allow the use of famous names in the game. Not just footballers, but ANY famous name. Well I'm extending this now, so that I'm no longer allowing continual use of the same name, even if that name isn't famous. Half the point of the rule was to stop the confusion caused by endless duplicates. Well it's becoming more and more common for people to keep using the same name for their players, over and over and over and it's getting messy. So from now on, if I recognise a name, I'll get the computer to name the player instead. If you can't think of a name, just tell me to get the computer to name him.

Also no team names will be allowed that I consider to be silly, stupid or likely to cause offence.

NUMBERS IN THE YOUTH TEAM

I warned everyone about this a few months ago, and said I'd give you a few months to sort out your squads in anticipation of this, so nobody has any cause to complain.

If you have less than ELEVEN youth players, your youth trainer will be sacked and your youth funding will be reduced to zero. It will remain like this until you employ at least 11 youth players. This is to stop people employing just 1 youth player in an attempt to give him all of the training. I do not consider this to be fair, nor in the spirit of the game, which is why I'm putting a stop to it.

I've noticed that a few people have totally ignored my message from a few months ago (and I know they saw it because they commented on it) and still have only one or two youth players in their squad. Sorry, you were warned.


SWAPPING TEAMS

You cannot change teams from one manager to another. It's way too open to loopholes and cheating, causes me an immense amount of work and quite frankly, makes no sense since the team will be culled anyway. I also intend in the near future to improve the culling of teams so that grounds, followings and setpiece/corner / attack/defence ratings are also reset. So there's absolutely no need for teams to change hands like this as it benefits nobody and simply confuses matters when there have been recent transfers (which I immediately see as suspicious, even if sometimes they aren't).


TAKING OVER VACANT TEAMS

From Glynn - Firstly, let me say once again that I have no issue with anybody taking over vacant teams - that's the only way the game survives. I also have no issue with people picking and choosing who they want to take over - it makes sense to look for a team you're happy with. However, a manager with a lot of very strong teams dropped out when we stopped postal turns and as soon as Rich advertised them, they were requested by dozens of managers, which highlights a potential problem - the fact that managers want ready-made teams and may possibly be planning to asset-strip them.

As you're all perfectly aware, asset-stripping is the most blatant and common form of cheating in the game and will lead to a complete ban if players are caught.

So, I've decided on a new rule which I'll be enforcing from today and will also apply to any new teams taken in the past few days. Put simply, any super-star players (over £2.5M pro or £1.5M youth) will have his ratings reduced severely, or perhaps just be deleted from the team.

I'm going to review those strong teams taken recently and will email anybody with any action I'll be taking. I'm aware that many managers may drop the team because of this, but for the overall fairness and balance of the game, I think this is a necessary (and probably well overdue) change.

This is happening more than I'd hoped because it's a new thing and I'm not in the habit......

Anyway, if I give a team out and I forget to cull them and somebody notices, I WILL cull them afterwards. So if you get a team that I forget to cull, don't get upset if I then contact you afterwards saying they're going to be culled - this isn't intended to victimise anyone, it will apply to every newly-managed team.

TEAM STRIPPING

This is more of a warning to newer managers, but also a reminder to older managers as well.

For those who aren't aware, team-stripping is when somebody takes over a team for the specific purpose of sending the players to another of their teams, or to a friend's team. Even if the players are sent for full price, this is still considered cheating as it allows very easy access to the best players, which we all know are very difficult to come by. The reality is that the team could sell these players for 5/6/7 times that value on the AM.

If you take over extra teams, you MUST be seen to be doing your best for that team. It IS ok to do deals which are mutually beneficial to your clubs - for example, one team might have a spare midfielder, the other might have a spare defender - a Swap of those players would be fair as both clubs are benefiting.

All of this should be common sense, but people are still trying it.

I'm now clamping down on this far more severely as there's no excuse for it any more. I've terminated the membership of a manager today for team-stripping. From now on, if I feel a manager may be unaware of these rules (e.g he's a new manager), he will receive a warning and all deals will be reversed. If he persists, his membership will be terminated.


WHAT CONSTITUTES CHEATING

All of the following is directly from Glynn despite my name being on the post.

The following is a list of rules which constitute 'cheating' in Soccer Star. They will lead to club fines, players deleted or an outright ban from the game.

1) Team stripping - The oldest and most obvious of all cheating methods, and the most unacceptable. In short, if you take control of more than one team, you cannot use any of your teams merely to benefit the other(s). For example, selling players from one team to another for very low prices (or very high prices simply to raise Cash). Even if you continue to control the stripped team, this is not acceptable. Equally, getting a friend/relative to help you out in this way is totally unfair. Punishment for this will usually involve the transferred players being deleted and/or club money taken from the club bank. Persistent cheating of this kind will lead to a ban from the game.

2) Fixing results - Similar to above, if you control more than one team, or a friend controls another team, you cannot deliberately try to fix a match result, by playing an understrength squad. Removing one or two players from your squad may go unnoticed, but removing your entire first team and replacing them with the reserves certainly won't - and will be considered cheating.

3) Lying about your players stats to other managers - Since the addition of inter-league transfers to the game many years ago, this has become a possibility. Since it is not possible for a manager to scout a player from another league, it won't be possible for him to verify the stats of the player you're selling to him, meaning he simply has to trust you. If you deliberately lie in order to gain a favourable deal, this will be considered cheating. At the very least, the deal will usually be reversed as it's usually hard to prove what has been said, but if it can be proved that you lied, you'll have the money you received removed from your clubs balance, or have your membership terminated.

4) Lying to me in order to gain game advantages. Unfortunately, from time to time, there will be errors in the game, or I will make input errors. I am happy to fix these manually. However, should you report an 'error' to me that has never occured in an attempt to receive free money/players, I will consider this blatant cheating and your membership will be terminated. Please don't be offended if you report an error and I ask for proof - I will usually do this. Also, bear in mind that I have daily backups of the game for the past several years, so it's usually possible to check any claims.

5) A new rule, effective immediately, states that you CANNOT deliberately play an understrength squad, in order to do transfers. For example, you can't play 10 men and sell another, if you don't have anyone to cover for him. If you don't have cover, then he'll be put into the squad for the game and the deal will be cancelled. I have a situation where a team is down to 5 men and loads of transfers are going on. I can see that there may be a long-term project going on - players coming and going, but I'm not allowing teams to be played temporarily understrength while this is happening.

6) I'm getting more and more complaints about this lately, so let me warn everyone that I consider this to be blatant cheating.

If you offer somebody a two (or more) part deal, and then only complete one part (the part that benefits you) and then refuse to do the other part, I will have no hesitation in reversing the first part of the deal and terminating your membership if I see proof that you've done this.

Even worse, I'm hearing that people are offering players that they don't even own as parts of deals. Again, I consider this blatant cheating. If you don't own a player, you CANNOT offer him as part of a deal.

If anybody has any evidence of this sort of behaviour, please report it to me immediately and I'll take action. The culprits will be punished and thrown out of the game if they continue to do this.

Once again, I would recommend that people hang on to their old PM's until all deals are completed, as these can be used as evidence to help me track down cheating.


FROM GLYNN REMINDER RE CHEATING

There's been a bit of 'back and forth' lately over what is and what isn't cheating. This is written down in the rules, but it needs to be more prominent, so here's a reminder of that section only. Please be aware of what is and isn't allowed in the game. This is the section from the rules.

TEAM STRIPPING

This is more of a warning to newer managers, but also a reminder to older managers as well.

For those who aren't aware, team-stripping is when somebody takes over a team for the specific purpose of sending the players to another of their teams, or to a friend's team. Even if the players are sent for full price, this is still considered cheating as it allows very easy access to the best players, which we all know are very difficult to come by. The reality is that the team could sell these players for 5/6/7 times that value on the AM.

If you take over extra teams, you MUST be seen to be doing your best for that team. It IS ok to do deals which are mutually beneficial to your clubs - for example, one team might have a spare midfielder, the other might have a spare defender - a Swap of those players would be fair as both clubs are benefiting.

All of this should be common sense, but people are still trying it.

From now on, if I feel a manager may be unaware of these rules (e.g he's a new manager), he will receive a warning and all deals will be reversed. If he persists, his membership will be terminated.



EXPLOITING GAME BUGS - MESSAGE FROM GLYNN

This topic has reared it's ugly head again, so it's time to make an official statement about it and keep it stickied.

From now on, anybody deliberately exploiting bugs in the game in order to gain an advantage over other managers will be punished, the punishment being at my discretion.

If you see a bug/fault in the game which is exploitable, TELL ME ABOUT IT. Don't try to use it to your advantage.

I'll post extra posts regarding specific exploits below.

The most recent example of this has been to deliberately play without a goalkeeper, a bug which has existed since the game was started, although there are dozens of sections in the program designed to fight against it. I spent 3 hours last night attempting to get this to work correctly, to no avail. I will continue to work on this over the weekend and unfortunately, the solution will be to make reserve goalkeepers utterly useless, something which is slightly unfair on those who end up without a goalkeeper through no fault of their own (although it could be argued that it is their own fault for not keeping a sensible amount of keepers in their squad).

In the meantime, DO NOT attempt to exploit this bug. If I see any team playing without a goalkeeper, when they have a goalkeeper available, I will put the goalkeeper in myself and will switch out their best players for the reserves as a punishment. This may not be necessary if I manage to fix the bug over the weekend anyway. I'm not going to say when the bug is fixed, so just assume that from now on, if you attempt this, I'll either manually punish you, or you'll fall foul of the new system which will make your reserve goalkeeper unable to stop any shots at all.

If you attempt to sell goalkeepers, leaving yourself with none, I will personally create the worst-possible youth goalkeeper, immediately promote him and play him as your goalkeeper. Bear in mind that this WILL be fixed soon anyway, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Incidentally, for those who are concerned that this may have affected their own results, I should point out that you don't gain much by doing this anyway. The system ignores the player playing in position 1 anyway (or whoever has been selected as the reserve goalie), so it makes no major difference. There are cases when it can help though, but I won't explain what these are. It does also have various benefits on the squad, rather than on the match. Again, I'm not going to explain. The disadvantage would be that your real keepers aren't gaining match experience and fitness, so when the bug is fixed, you'll be struggling with weakened goalkeepers.

Another old bug which was exploited but is now fixed was the trick of reducing your youth team to 1 player, which had the disadvantage that you'd lose every game (and therefore ratings for your youth player) and you'd lose the benefits of extra players, but had the advantage that your trainer would always work on the same player. This is now fixed and if you have less than 11 players, the trainers no longer work. I'm fairly sure this fix has worked because everybody now has a sensible youth team.

_________________
Cheers
Rich

CHARSCOT WANDERERS.........WPL1
DEP EL CELTICO.........................WPL37
WASCISCO RED SOX...................WPL43
ZIASTE NEQUENO.......................WPL24
CASTLE ROCK FURIES..................WPL31
OSSUS STELLA SEI.....................ELZ56
REVELSTONE..(C 05/6, 08/9)........RH15....(191T)

Once again this issue has cropped up, so I'd like to try, once again, to clear up my thinking on this.

I'm sure you'll all agree with me that the game would suffer if I allowed ridiculous/silly/rude/offensive/bizarre names, for both players and teams. Some of you may think that the occasional player named 'Mickey Mouse' is fine, but I suspect that most of you would prefer not to see that. Likewise, I'm sure you can all think of rude or offensive names that you wouldn't like to see in the game. At the same time, others may find those names acceptable or amusing and some might not even see them as rude/silly/offensive at all. And in some cases, I might not even notice that they're rude while I'm typing them in (several spring to mind from the early days of Soccer Star that are now unfortunately etched into my mind).

What I'm getting at here is, there are various opinions on this plus it's possible for me to make mistakes or oversights while typing in the names.

Equally, I decided back in 1986 that Soccer Star does not use real-life names for either players or teams. If I allow you to name your team Manchester United and copy the names of all the Man Utd players whilst others are called Tolbury City with fantasy names, it just looks plain bad. So either it's real-life names (which at the time would have required an almost impossible amount of work, there was no internet back then) or fantasy names. I settled on fantasy names for the reason just mentioned, plus I personally prefer it.

But likewise, this is impossible to enforce completely. I'm sure there are plenty of real-life footballers called 'John Smith', so I can't just ban that name. Likewise, I don't have a full knowledge of every footballer ever to have played the game, nor the name of every team. Indeed, I suspect that my knowledge probably amounts to less than 0.01% of all players ever to have played the game. So whilst I might spot a 'Kevin Keegan', I'm not going to know the name of some player playing for some vague Madagascan Division 2 side.

So what I'm getting at here is, if I recognise a name or don't like the name, I have the final say on whether or not it stays. I know for example that one of you knows a lot of Notts County players, past and present and occasionally tries to slip them through. As a Notts County fan, I tend to recognise them whereas I probably won't know a Shrewsbury player, for example. It's pretty hit and miss.

So when players or team names slip through, that doesn't mean that I'm taking sides. Indeed, one of the managers who I've been accused of siding with got into quite a heated debate with me over this very issue and was considering dropping sides because of it. For the life of me, I don't know why this stresses people out so much and once again, it's probably my own fault for being so lenient over things.

And yes, I'm well aware that some very obvious team names have slipped through in the past but in the most obvious cases, this happened before the rule applied (i.e probably back in 1991) and before I ran the game or I was being brain-dead at the time.

So to summarise, the rule is this. If I recognise a name as real-life team or player, I won't allow it. If I don't like the name, for whatever reason, I won't allow it. Don't take it personally. It applies to everybody, all managers must stick to the rules and all managers will occasionally fall foul of those rules. If I don't allow a name, just choose another. And don't get into a 10-email debate with me over whether or not you're happy with my decision. The decision is final, if I don't allow a name, I don't allow a name. Choose a different name, it's that simple.

Sorry for the rant but I don't understand why everybody thinks this particular rule is up for debate.