An interview with Ratsia - Hattrick 足球經理

http://www79.hattrick.org/Community/Press/?ArticleID=18589

An interview with Ratsia
作者 HPE-Dantekavala

Ratsia (88666) is the 'most stalked' user in HT (except HTs): more than 400
users bookmarked him to read his posts, he's playing the game since 2002 and
he's well known as a very interesting person. And when editorials are
published, a lot of users start to look for his posts, to check the ideas of
an HT user "who knows". With this interview, we try to give you some more
information about him, and his ideas/proposals about HT.

Ratsia經理創隊2002年，是一位以有趣聞名的經理，是除了官方人員外最受矚目的經理，
有超過400人標注他看他的文章。當官方社論被發佈後，很多玩家開始看他的回文，
看這位HT萬事通的想法。

這篇社論是他的專訪，是他對遊戲的分享。


Hello Ratsia and thank you for the great chance to interview on of the most
popular managers in Global. We read your posts in the forum every day but
only few of us know who is the real person behind the avatar of Ratsia. Let's
start with an easy one. Could you please introduce yourself?

你能介紹自己嗎 ?

Oh, but this is the hardest one...

也許這適最困難的問題..

I am a 36yo guy from Finland, living with my baby girl and her mother in
Helsinki. I am a computer scientist, working on machine learning, artificial
intelligence and data analysis at University of Helsinki, where I lead a
small research group. During my free time I enjoy board games, good food, and
all the usual stuff like hanging around with friends. For some weird reason,
most of my friends are also in academia but working in different fields,
which might have an influence on my communication style.

作者現實生活自我介紹，略。

The above is who I am today, but during the soon 13 years I have played the
game I have naturally gone through various stages in life. I started and
finished my PhD studies while playing HT, got married and divorced, and both
bought and sold my first apartment. If you remember my writings from days
long gone, the posts probably do not reflect the current me that well.

以上是自我介紹。我也玩這款遊戲13年了，HT橫跨我人生很多階段，攻讀博士(開始HT)、
結婚、離婚、買人生第一間房、賣人生第一間房。
以前的文章無法完全的反映、詮釋現在的我，有跟文的老玩家是知道這點的。

You play Hattrick since 2002. Obviously you have achieved a lot. Can you tell
us the short version of your team story? Do you believe that you have reached
your limit or there are other things that you would like to do with your team?

你從2002開始玩HT，能簡單介紹你的球隊歷史嗎。
你認為你的球隊已經到達了極限 ? 還是仍然能開發出開玩法、新可能性 ?

I think I could write thousands of words on this, but I try to be brief.

對這點我有很多能說，不過我會試著簡短表達。

I indeed started in 2002, right before the Finnish league started growing
rapidly. I started in div IV and promoted twice in a row, only to find myself
in div II after less than two full seasons of playing while at the same time
the new managers in Finland were being placed in div VI. Combined with a
serious fan bug that gave some teams (like mine) hundreds of fans at once,
this gave me a very strong head-start compared to the masses. Nevertheless,
it still took me 10 seasons of playing in div II and III before promoting to
Mestaruussarja, the Finnish top division that by then was the most
consistently strong series in HT according to Alltid. I went on to play 12
seasons in a row there, winning the national title four times in 2007-2008.
During the first three I was playing the best football in the series, but the
forth one was a real fluke; I didn't lose any matches and won by 12 points
even though the series had one very strong trader and several other teams
that were better than mine.

我從2002芬蘭語開放後開始玩HT，從四聯開始，接著兩賽季連升兩級。
升二聯的同時期，芬蘭的新玩家已經要從六聯開始了。

得益於當時的球迷bug，有些球隊(比如說我的球隊)，立刻得到了數以百計的球迷，
比起其他同期的球隊，我的球隊因此得到了非常有優勢的起步。

儘管如此，在升上芬超前，我花了10個賽季在二聯、三聯，
根據alltid，芬超一直是HT競爭最激烈的聯賽小組。

我在芬超連續待了12個球季，在2007-2008拿了四次冠軍，
其中前三次，我是實至名歸的最好球隊，而第四次冠軍是僥倖，我沒有輸任何一場球、
領先12分的優勢奪冠，但是當時有個非常強的交易型球隊，也有一些比我好的球隊。


Roughly around the time I finally demoted from Mestaruussarja, I stopped
playing the game for real. I have always had very strong voluntary
constraints for my team and around that time I started to increasingly feel
that there is too much mental pressure for me to continue even a semi-serious
effort. I had always avoided trading as much as I could (though I must admid
I took part in the events that resulted in invention of skilltrading; I
stopped doing it as soon as I realized what it was about), I intentionally
stayed away from the most profitable training types, and I never took
advantage of the ridiculous interest feature we had back then. However, by
2008 or so I had come to realize that even if I ignored all those elements,
my total wealth (and hence team strength) would still be almost solely
determined by how much I take advantage of the "gray area", such as reaping
some hundreds of thousands extra when buying or selling a player, or by using
player types that are known to be more powerful than what the community
realizes. I could not continue playing with the constant pressure of "If I
sold one guy today and replaced him with a slightly better one, I would earn
300k for free" looming over me, so I decided I will not even try. Since then,
I have been casually cruising around, ending up as a medium-quality div
III/IV team that will definitely not promote any higher. Nowadays I also
completely lack motivation (and largely time) and a few times I have also
forgot to place a lineup, so there really is no risk of progress. I no longer
even have a youth squad and I do not have energy for using the transfer list,
but I should still be able to hang around in div IV for as long as I want to.

文實在太長了，從這裡開始就不翻了..

In HM I never had good success, though I managed to win a few matches there.
I've also never been in the cup finals. Both of these are consequences of my
playing style: I always cared more about consistency and the overall progress
than individual matches, refusing to buy any kind of temporary players except
in some very rare cases (and 99% of time I would not have money anyway).
Related to this, I feel that my biggest achievements with the game are also
in the consistency regime. FC Vompatti sits on third place in the all-time
list of Mestaruussarja and played 22 seasons in a row in div I/II between
2004 and 2010, in a country that back then was amongst the strongest ones, if
not the strongest. The other thing I am somewhat proud of is having reached
at least the 5th round in the national cup every single season I have been in
the cup. This includes even the very first season in 2002, so the streak
covers soon 13 years of cup seasons with at least 5 rounds. Is there anyone
in whole HT who can beat that?



How could contributions (and possibly tactic effectiveness) be tweaked so
that there would be multiple equilibria and no single "best" line-up.

The easy way out would be to make the different lineup choices to have clear
drawbacks, by dramatically changing the non-linearities or even by adding
explicit penalties like "with only two defenders the opponent gets a few CA
events for free, with additional 50% boost for attack ratings". Then we would
get something like 4-5-1 beats 2-5-3 which beats 3-5-2 which beats 4-5-1, but
without other major changes this might actually just make the game worse.
Such second-guessing mechanics essentially reduce the game into a glorified
rock-paper-scissors, which I personally do not like at all.

A more practical way would be to just tweak the player contributions to
better balance the various overall tactics and lineups. The core of the
engine works well, so we would not need any dramatic changes. Instead, a
competent game designer should spend some weeks carefully analyzing,
simulating and tweaking the player contributions and other numerical details.
This has never been done, yet it would be way more important than adding new
elements or re-designing some particular current elements completely.

Let's say they will let you run Hattrick for a year. Which would be the very
first 3 things you'd change or implement?

This might come as a surprise, but none of those things would be about the
game itself but instead about how it is run. The first thing would be to
completely change the way the developers interact with the community; instead
of explicitly avoiding contact with the community, the all developers would
need to allocate time for community relations (primarily via forums). The
second change would be to hire a game designer, a person capable and
responsible of balancing the numerous fine details in the engine etc. The
third change would be to incorporate more data-driven decision-making,
especially to further improve the financial status and user-base; HT has full
control on their platform and hence could very easily record a lot of data
about their customers to influence decisions on interfaces, supporter prices,
moderation policies, and whatever.

What about the new staff system? Do you think it has achieved its purpose or
need some changes/improvements?

The old staff system was, in terms of low-level mechanics, the most poorly
designed part of the game. It had zero transparency, required no action ever
except to utilize loopholes, and even had some choices that were strictly
worse than some others for all relevant variables. In practice we could,
however, ignore it.

The new system is clearly an improvement, but only because it is more
transparent. There is still never any reason to touch the choices except
again to utilize loopholes and possibly when switching from one extreme
tactic to another if one is into such things. Roughly as good system could
have been designed and implemented in a day or two at any point during this
century, so in the end we didn't get anything out from the hugely delayed
"major change". Renewing that part of the game was perhaps the best
opportunity ever of improving the core game, but the developers passed it.

Luckily we can still completely ignore the feature. I wouldn't even remember
what kind of staff members I have; when the system was launched I picked
some, and have no intention of ever changing them.

Thank you for your answer. As I can understand, you are not satisfied with
the current status. Without spending a lot of time on it, what do you think
that has to be improved in the new staff system?

What it would need is purpose, and probably the best one would be more
medium-term decisions. HT has short-term decisions in form of lineups and
long-term decisions in form of squad selection and training, but very little
medium-term ones besides TS management. Staff would be a natural instrument
for introducing more of those, things we set for perhaps 4-8 weeks and that
has notable effect. The Staff member choices of all clubs should also be
public.

A practical example of could be: "Counter attack consult for 6 weeks.
Improves CA conversion rate by 2%/level during the first week, 4%/level
during the second we


--