Hi everyone,

v0.4.0 is out. It is the third stage of the roadmap, and honestly the one I spent the most time on. Many of you reached reputation 99 and then had nothing left to chase, and the career ended at season 32 whether you wanted it to or not. This update is about those two walls, plus a couple of things I promised on the forum. Here is everything in detail.

Above 99: Renown

• Reputation still runs from 0 to 99. Once you have reached 98, the reputation you earn through your work no longer disappears at the cap. It builds up as Renown, which has no ceiling and never goes down.
• Only real work feeds Renown. Reputation you buy (office, travel, lifestyle, media) and event cards do not count.
• There are 6 new agency tiers above Legend Agency, 12 in total. Each one adds a head coach slot, a monthly club meeting or a junior agent slot.
• The top of the world ranking is now decided by your Renown over the last 5 seasons. The world's 5 strongest agents collect Renown too, so one weak season can cost you first place.
• Agent of the Year goes to whoever collected the most Renown that season.

A career with no end

• The forced retirement after 32 seasons is gone. The phases are Rising, Prime and Veteran; Veteran starts at season 20 and simply keeps going.
• You can retire whenever you like from My Career, as long as you have played at least 5 seasons, your cash is not negative and media scandal is below 50.
• New achievement: On Your Own Terms.
• If one of your careers was forced to retire at 32 under the old rule, you can continue it from where it stopped.
• I ran the world forward 100 seasons to make sure it stays alive. Retired stars are replaced by young players and the pool stays at 47,500. World transfers now respect a squad ceiling of 28 and at least 2 goalkeepers, and a sacked coach no longer walks back into the same club.
• Saves are pruned at the end of every season. At season 100 a save went from 3.46 million characters to about 2.04 million.
• A save that had overflowed into IndexedDB and could not be read on launch used to look empty, and you could start a new career on top of it. That can no longer happen.

Your legacy carries over

I wrote on the forum that finishing a career and starting a new one would let you carry your legacy. That is in.

• Every career is recorded in the Agency Archive, separate from your save slots: seasons, legacy score, yearbook, legends, discoveries and goals. Deleting a slot does not delete its archive file. You will find the archive on the main menu.
• Careers in the archive earn Pedigree. Your best 3 careers count, and a new career can spend up to 3 points on small Starting Advantages: Ready Network (Network +10), Scout's Notebook (2 extra market intel reports in your first week) and Extra Club Brief. I kept these small on purpose. In testing they make a difference in season 2 and fade by season 3.
• Your legacy also raises the Mastery Cap. A career with no archive stays at 8 picks. With Pedigree it goes to 12, and up to 16 with a strong archive (12 at 1 point, 13 at 4, 14 at 7, 15 at 10, 16 at 13). Spending points on advantages never lowers it.
• Levels 9 to 16 are earned with Renown, from 500 up to 6,000. On my measurements a strong agency reaches level 9 around season 6 and level 16 somewhere near season 37, so it is a long road. Picks above 8 go into your second and third branch.

Scenarios

This is the surprise I mentioned. When you start a new career you can now pick Free Career or a scenario. Scenarios work with any specialisation and difficulty. Starting Advantages are off in a scenario; the Mastery Cap still applies.

• Bankrupt Agency: you take over an agency that went under. €40K in cash, €350K owed to the bank, reputation 30 and three players at clubs. The bank already saved this agency once, will not do it again and will not open new credit. Your office only has room for 2 players, so you need to make space before signing anyone. Goal: clear the debt within three seasons.
• Crumbling Giant: a once big agency. Reputation 60, a level 2 office, €400K in cash, a lawyer and a scout still on staff, four players. Its three best players left for three different rival agencies. You can bring them back with Win Back: the usual requirements for taking a rival's player do not apply to them and their odds are higher, but most of them need the Legal Advisory course first. Goal: within two seasons, raise your portfolio value to what the remaining squad and the three stars are worth together.
• A scenario panel on the Overview shows your goal, progress and time left.
• If you miss the goal, the career does not end; it carries on as a normal career. Bankruptcy still ends it. The result is written to the Agency Archive.
• The ready-made start does not count toward your legacy, and achievements you already meet at setup will not unlock in that career.
• I tuned both with an automated player. In Bankrupt Agency it survived 65% of the runs and cleared the debt in 49%. In Crumbling Giant 67% reached the goal. Not easy, not impossible.

Generational Goals

• 11 long goals on My Career that span decades: The Crowning, Cradle to Farewell, World Tour, Coaching Tree, Academy Line, Quarter Century and more. The reward is reputation or Renown and a title in the archive.

Screens

• On the main screens the header now stays fixed and only the list scrolls. League Table, Overview, My Players, Player Search, Offers, Market, Messages, the profiles and the negotiation table.
• The player file was rebuilt and fits on one screen: one header, a strip of key numbers on every tab, and new Development and Relationship tabs. For a player without a club, the Development tab explains why it is locked and sends you to Find a Club.
• The Offers screen was rebuilt: a dense list on the left, the selected offer's file on the right. Lots of offers no longer stretch the page.
• Market Intel uses the same layout. Every player you have in the position is listed with his acceptance chance and his own Propose button, or with the reason he cannot be offered.
• The Wealth tab was cleaned up.
• Links in the Overview briefing, in messages and in lists now land on the right inner tab, not just the right screen.

The market grows with you

• I measured it and did not like what I saw. A new agency saw about 10 listings in its first months and then around 6, so a big agency in season 3 saw fewer than a brand new one. Now, as your peak reputation passes 50, 75 and 90, more market intel and more club briefs come in. On average that is about 6 listings at reputation 30 and about 10 at 92.

Fixes

• Editor: a league or club saved in an earlier session, then deleted and built again, was silently dropped on save. Thanks for the report about the three-tier Albanian league.
• The result of offering a player from Market Intel or a club brief was never translated, so some of those notices showed up in Turkish. A rejection now also tells you why: position, budget or both.
• The notice that pops up at the bottom when something is blocked was hard to see. It is now bigger and colour coded, stays for 8 seconds and does not close while your mouse is over it.
• Loan buttons in Finances now say why they are disabled.
• At reputation 99, previews showed "+0 reputation" or numbers that were never applied. Every preview now shows what the game actually applies.
• Replying to a message no longer makes the screen jump.
• Injury Risk used the quality colour scale, so a low risk looked red. Fixed.
• An untranslated result in the "Nightclub Footage" event is fixed, along with a few other translation gaps.

Old saves

Old saves open safely. If you spent seasons at the top, you get a starting amount of Renown based on them, so you do not start the new tiers from zero.

Cloud saves were on the roadmap for this stage. I dropped them and spent that time removing the career limit instead, which felt more important. If you run into anything, the forum and Discord are the best places to tell me. I read every report.

Thanks for playing.