One month after release, AFC2020's still a ways out from losing the Early Access tag.
A number of users have asked what's next, so what better way to celebrate a month on sale than to discuss next steps for the game?
Before the features, a big thank you to everyone who has gotten in touch with their support and recommendations to improve the game. The launch has been great and based on the statistics and feedback it seems as if quite a few of you enjoy the game - the average per-user playtime at the moment is over six hours! Thanks also to those who have sent their save game files to help patch the game - when something goes wrong, the save files have been extremely helpful in fixing it.
So, what needs to happen for AFC go to "full access?"
First, the game must be completely crash-free. The game's at a point where crashes still occur, but the events leading up to each crash get a little more random. Many of the crashes end up being oversights or minor programming errors which don't get caught until the game crashes. Perhaps this sounds a bit unprofessional, but for instance, one recently fixed crash only occurred when a player who had been selected for his league's best 22 had I believe retired from a career ending injury before being selected to the best 22. Many of the fixes being made are minor and shouldn't impact the majority of users, and almost every reported crash has been patched within 48 hours and usually under less than a day, and several features added since launch, including requiring team confirmations and the ball trail, were user suggestions.
The game must also be comfortably bug-free. Many of these have been fixed over the past months, a couple known ones remain, including the fact you get too many notifications when free agency begins, and two players will occasionally interchange over and over again with each other. These'll hopefully be fixed by v0.7.0.
There's also a few features missing that should be added before the game can be officially called "full access:"
1. Player meetings should be up next. This hasn't been completely written yet so may get pushed back, but you'll have a certain number of meeting points you'll be able to use each week on a certain number of actions. Trying to make unhappy players happier will be more "expensive" than chatting with your contented star about training. You'll be able to access this through the "Coaches Meeting" tab.
2. Hotseat multiplayer. This has been written but it hasn't been tested at all, apart from determining it wasn't ready to go at the launch date a month ago. The game's optimised for multiple human coaches to play on the same device, but the final touches haven't been made yet due to the prioritisation of launching the game before the start of the season.
3. Manual interchanges. Much requested, this shouldn't be terribly difficult to implement, and will be in the game as soon as it works. This hasn't been a priority based on the game's design plan of making a working simulator and then "dropping in" human coaches.
4. More league customisation options. Since the original AFC, several users have asked for customisation options like league expansion, folding teams, and promotion/relegation. Pro-rel may not make it in as it's very niche, but league expansion has been placed on the short list. Also, did you know you can make your own scenarios if you want a bit more control than the custom league editor? Being able to export your current league instance to a scenario is on the to-do list.
5. More seasons dating back to 2014. This is just a straight data migration issue. 2014 is almost done, and the 2015-2018 seasons need to be adjusted. This doesn't seem to be that popular of an addition based on feedback but it also requires no programming. If you have any interest in creating seasons dating even further back please get in touch. The game has basic features built out for adding in rule changes over time, but a lot of the rules (rolling interchanges versus the old substitution rules, the veterans rule) haven't been implemented.
6. The game supports women's football leagues, but scoring needs to be made more realistic before these leagues are turned on.
7. A better sense of media. Currently all news articles are being migrated to Articles.csv, a text file, which lets the game pull from any number of generic story templates. More "hooks" will be added with time to allow the world to have more interesting news articles and media.
8. Stats and website export features - this is basically implemented but a more robust export feature will be necessary for the users who want to use the game to run online leagues.
9. Make the game more tactically interesting by working on AI coaching. This is the hardest one.
Once all or most of this is done, the game will be ported to Mac, probably the biggest request/question that's come in from users. The Mac port should be relatively easy, but it's difficult to support since Macs require a Mac and the game's sales won't justify purchasing a Mac to launch on Mac.
Thanks again for your support and if there's anything you think was missed or any further suggestions you might have please get in touch on the Steam forums, on Facebook or Twitter, or on the game's Discord channel!