TM Ireland - Trophymanager Ireland

IFK Norrköping (the Swede Brit) talks to DFC (the Dutch Kiwi) about future TM development, multiple teams and Irish blokes...

Who´s DFC?

DFC's Day Job

I'm Eippie, a dutch 31 yr old father of two who works as a forensic scientist.

Five years in the game soon, still having the same interest as earlier or does it go up and down?

It obviously goes up and down depending on results ;) but i started a long term plan around season 14 which ended about now. Seems to have worked as i won the double last season* and have decent odds of retaining the league. I didnt actually plan beyond this season so interest is going down quite rapidly atm (also due to the direction the game is/has taken). I feel i have taken the team as far as it could go with the YA luck i have had in the past, so meh, we will see what happens. Likely also to be due to my arch enemy taking a few seasons off from winning everything by adopting a kiwi only policy, so the titles do feel a bit shallow.

Yep looks like you have the title in the bag with four games to play. Team still pretty young so can you see anyone catching you coming seasons?

When Basecity starts to play normally again he should easily win the league again. I lack a good GK and FC so will be trying to improve those positions in the next season. Defense and midfield look ok for the next 3 seasons. I dont consider myself to be ahead of the pack tbh. Half my team seems to be injury prone so i could easily end up 5th next season.

How is the DT work on a daily basis?

Better than i expected tbh. We basically do five things:

1. We handle the bugs forum and combine the most important ones into a thread in our DT forum where Thomas can quickly see what is new, what is important and let us know what he has fixed.

2. We keep an eye on and participate in the GD forum. I personally dont do it too much but Socialla/Emeral usually are the ones that make the translation to the DT forum. 3-5 are topics usually started by Soren

3. We brainstorm about different aspects of the game. What is wrong (most of the things are common knowledge), how do the MTs see the situation, whats to improve, what impact will it have etc. Basically discussing things to get the MTs on our side whilst they defend their position ;)

4. When soren is creating a new part of the new TM site, we get asked to hunt for bugs on it.

5. When the bug hunting in 4 is done, a few days/weeks after that we get the fully designed version of the page and the bug hunt starts again, but this time with comments on the design of the page as well. Sometimes we dont talk to Soren for weeks and sometimes we have discussions daily, so its up and down.

Sounds like a lot of time is needed for the DT stuff to test everything correctly and sort the bug/DT forum?

It can be time consuming but luckily i spend about an hour in total per season on setting lineups for my own team so i have plenty to spare. Its also with leaps and bounds, when they dont want input, it boils down again to just controlling the bug / DT forum and i already had the bug forum in my package as IFT.

I see you try to involve your community in the DT stuff, any good ideas coming from them that might be implemented in the future?

I always try to get our community involved. When i started my long term plan around S14-15, we had lots of new users in NZ but they didnt stick around long. As my long term plan involved not spending too much time on the team itself, i created an ASK DFC thread in our forum. We have since edited it a bit and renamed to Ask NZ but it was basically me answering about 20 pages of questions. I believe that helped setting the community in NZ a bit and we still have a fair few users active on the forum from those days. Hence why i also opened a DT thread and get their input. Most users know how to contact me and will sent me a PM or mention it in the match chat but having a thread like that is good as it keeps things open to see for everyone and get them up to date. I have users a fair few ideas from NZ users in discussions in the DT bit but there are soo many obvious things to improve first that it is hard to pinpoint exactly who said it first ;)

How much do the MT´s listen to you and your ideas btw?

I have the impression that they at least read everything, the time to reject/approve the idea can vary a lot :). Most of times we see evidence of our input, especially in the brainstorm parts of the development and how parts of the new site look (or the statement that it will be included in the first upgrade to the new site). Occasionally they will just read a discussion and say that they dont agree or dont believe the point. For example, i can tell them a hundred times that late late bloomers are a stupid feature or that small countries are not irrelevant, but they consider it a charm or dont care about them. Fair enough, cant win them all, even if they sometimes are wrong. Good thing about having a small group and close interactions is that we can be as blunt as we like without creating a massive fuss. Being dutch, i often post something a bit more blunt than most and we all know how direct Soren can be, so occasionally the forum must be a great place to read stuff for the neutral reader :)

Does Socijala still demand hugs every day or have he toned that down a bit? :)

All a bit Gay in the DT Forum

We put him in a room with BBU and Emerald for a week and i havent been asked for a hug since. So yea, that worked. he does still call people "mate" far too often though. In all seriousness, he is good at being a DT as he is one of the few bothered enough to discuss everything to the bone with BBU when the rest have given up, he controls the GD forum mostly and somehow has the gift to get Thomas to post ont he forums. So id actually give him a hug if he asked for it as he deserves one (just not too frequently and for the love of god stop calling people "mate"!) Was thinking of sending Nenad a hug bear in the end :) He´s a good lad with phenomenal workrate anyway.

Most people have given up discussing with BBU so can´t blame them, do you have different roles in the DT work or do you guys just jump in everywhere you want?

There is no official role distribution, most of the things have shaped up due to our TM history and previous roles. Some DT's hardly post anything but for the active DT's it should be evident from the posts on the forums who does what. For example, Nenad/me are better at bug hunting whilst Emerald/Snobs are better at design stuff. Guess we have a lot of people who wants to be DT´s in the future, any advice to them on what to do do have a chance down the line? To have a chance i would say that the main criteria is to show that you can string a few words together that form some constructive criticism without turning into a cynic. There are plenty of examples of users who have shown in the past that they are able to do just that (for example whsb/grumpy as your local users who i see most often in general) but adding new DT's is a decision solely made by the MT's. We have been pushing recently for a few DT's to be added but we only have a small influence on actually getting them added. Its near impossible to see why they picked the current DT's. Some are evident, some i scratch my head and think why?

Can we expect any real surprises in the new TM like any brand new features we haven´t even heard about yet?

Nah. It all looks prettier, more complete and the design is completely different but nothing really new*. I have to say that the things we promise in the bug forum about stats etc being implemented in the new design, that they actually are there. Cant say anything about the red card bug as ME testing is not something we have done yet.

Looking ahead to the new TM, whats the biggest changes we can expect and what do you like most so far of what you have seen?

So far it all looks a bit prettier and seems to function better. There will always be people who disagree with design choices but for me it is easier to navigate and has a better structure. Amount of pages is going down so some useful pages are lost. Stats also look a lot better and easier accesible. (And they actually seem to work). But lots of stuff isnt done yet, for example we dont really know yet how they will implement the userguide which Crumbhill is currently writing. For the rest, we havent seen much of the new ME or improved ME, whatever you want to call it. We havent done anything yet with conditional orders, the recent blog by Arman was the first time we saw the page as well. We have been intensely discussing facilities and youth development so i hope that will create a better part of TM as well. Not in the final stages there though.

Multiple clubs like it or not they will be implemented, any info about how many clubs everyone can have or the costs for it or is that still only discussed?

For the record, i think implementing multiple clubs is a terrible decision. For the rest, no comment.

If you got full control in TM for a day, what changes would you make and what features would be gone/added?

Who are these Irish Spammers...?

First of all i would introduce a script that condenses Bobz posts to either the point in 12 words or less or replaces all the text with *see previous, identical long reply*. Reading General isnt much fun these days.... Features are easy, i would change QM's to one a day for everyone (and being able to challenge buddies), make the transferlist usable again to non-PRO, get rid of transfer pimping and comments, give people more influence on training players and make Bteams for U21 only. Getting rid of REC is probably also a good idea. A bit trickier but i would probably also attempt to make mentality do something as it doesnt do anything today. I would also make a few of those irish blokes that always spam general - asking to become teamsters of any kind - FT's. Only for the pleasure of taking it away again :)

You been here for a while now, what are you most happy with so far. A certain game, title or something else?

I was happy with the success of the ASK DFC thread seasons ago. For the rest i am happy with my long term plan working out roughly as i hoped. Looking at the team and where it came from 8 seasons ago is satisfactory.

Is there anything else you like to add which I haven´t asked about?

Not really. I could say a lot about how i have build the team or what i consider to be annoyances in TM but that would take another few pages ;) Thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain a few things. And more people should follow the Joker's motto; "Why so serious?" ;)

Thank you for answering my questions so quick, and big congrats on winning another title this morning :)