◆ Announcement

Let the games begin. Leagues have been created, matches begin on Monday.

Hey, After bunch of last minute work, I have officially pressed the button. The leagues are drawn, every club has its seat, and season 1's full fixture list is public. The world starts playing on Monday, August 3rd, first league matchday at noon New York time. Nothing moves until then: no training, no aging, no matches. Use the weekend to set your lineups and pick a sponsor. The pyramid opened with a fully populated Proleague & 1.1, and an almost fully human 1.2. There are two "buffer leagues" in the division below, so 2.1 and 2.2 are filled bot teams. They will be taken over by humans eventually. I wanted a healthy buffer in case there is an influx of players in the first season- since seasons last around 3 months. Little information about some of the changes that went in today, all serving the same idea: the bots are filler, and the game belongs to the people playing it. Bot clubs no longer enter the Starleague — every one of your players still enters and qualifies through the preliminaries as always. With so many bot teams, the starleague had a real risk of being overrun by their players. Bots already never promote; now they're also first out the door and relegated with priority, giving up their place before a manager-run club does even when they finish above it (a bot that actually wins its division is safe — that would just look broken. So managers, please beat the bots, it would be embarassing if we didn't.). This means that over time the bottom divisions will be where the bots live while humans tend to surface upward. And if a crowd of new managers ever arrives at once with no seats left, six or more waiting clubs now get a division of their own on the next Sunday rather than waiting for the off-season. Some cosmetic changes have gone in too on the UI side. For example, the condition will now show a color coded description when a player wears down. Truthfully, condition won't be too big of a factor in the first season besides the KOF league phase and late-season starleague runs. Condition is being reworked, and I will post more about it when I commit that change. If it doesnt make it live before Monday, the change will wait until season 2. The rework targets older players specifically, so this won't affect much of season 1 anyway. That's it. As always, this thing is AI-built and it shows, so if something looks wrong it probably is — tell me and I'll look into it. Hopefully this is the last announcement that I email out to all of you in a while. Keep checking the front page & discord for the most up to date news. So, good luck, have fun. Or as the pros put it, glhf. -Joni / VaultDweller