What’s new

You can now sign in without a password. Ask for a sign-in link and one arrives by email: it works once, expires after thirty minutes, and replaces any earlier link you had asked for. Opened in a different browser from the one that asked, it checks with you first rather than signing you in. Nothing about how the game is played has changed: no fixture has moved, no format has changed and no result has been recomputed. The limits on how many links one address may ask for are settings now rather than numbers in the code, and they are the ones that were always intended. Links that arrive inside a notification are a later change: for now a link signs you in and takes you to your worlds.

You can now have an account. Registration, confirming your email address and signing in with a password all work, and one account can belong to several worlds. Nothing about how the game is played has changed: no fixture has moved, no format has changed and no result has been recomputed. The limits on how often a password may be guessed and how many accounts one connection may create are now written down as settings rather than buried in the code. The numbers themselves are the ones that were always intended. World 1 remains invitation-only, so joining it still needs an invitation that does not exist yet.

The clubs you play against have started coaching. Every AI club now sets a training plan for each of its players, chosen from what that player still has room to improve and what the club is short of. Until now nobody in the game had a training plan at all and every player trained unfocused. Before each evening kicks off, every club with a fixture is also checked: enough fit players and a starting five that can actually be fielded. No fixture has moved, no format has changed and no result has been recomputed.

The clubs you play against have started managing. Until now every AI club fielded its best five by rating, shared the minutes out evenly, played the same balanced game plan and turned down every offer without looking at it. They now pick their five, their minutes and a game plan that suits the squad they actually have, and decide for themselves when to call a timeout, when to sit a man in foul trouble and who takes the last shot. Each of those choices is made through the manager in that chair, so a cautious one and a gambler will not play the same fixture the same way. They also put a price on their own players now. No fixture has moved, no format has changed and no result has been recomputed; what has changed is how well the same games are played.

Every club now has a manager. Until now the clubs the game runs had nobody in the chair, which sounds cosmetic and was not: how well a club judges players is built partly on its manager, so with no manager there was no judgement to build on. Each AI club is given one at world creation, with the same career attributes a human career has. They start better at the job than you will, which is deliberate: they have been doing it for years of world time before you arrive, and you catch up by doing the work. Nothing about your own club has changed and no result has been recomputed.

AI clubs now know what a player is worth to them. Every manager weighs a player by what the squad needs and by their own character, so a screener is worth more to a side that has none, and a good player on a bad contract can be worth less than a solid one on a cheap deal. What their scouts believe about a player moves that number too, so a wrong report costs a club money. No player has changed and no result has been recomputed: this is what the other clubs think, not what anybody is.

AI clubs now have characters. Every AI manager has their own preferences, so no two clubs value the same player identically, and any club can turn out to be anything. Their character is fixed for as long as they are in the job: sack them and their replacement is a different person. Every decision an AI manager or an assistant takes is also written down from now on, with the reason, so an absence report can tell you what was done in your name and why.

Your club now builds up knowledge of players by watching them. Every game week the scouting ledger records who you have seen: every man in your own squad, every player you have faced, and, more thinly, everyone else in your league and your country. What you know fades if nothing renews it, so a player you watched two seasons ago and have not seen since is a player you no longer really know. Watching is worth something and it is not worth a scouting department. Nothing here changes what you can see on a player page yet; it changes what your club knows, which is what the bands and your scouts' confidence are built on.

Things now happen to your squad. Every game day each club draws from a small catalogue of life events: a player falls ill, picks up a knock in training, or is pulled out for a rest after a heavy run of minutes, and, separately, the everyday texture of a delayed bus or a mix-up with the kit. None of them asks you a question yet, and none of them can decide a season: an absence is short and never becomes a real injury. Players now come back from an absence rather than staying out for ever, and they return carrying some tiredness.

Your players now develop. Every game day each of them trains, ages and rests, and what changes is written down attribute by attribute so you can see why. Young players improve fastest, and which of their qualities improve depends on their age: legs peak first, skills later, and reading the game keeps improving long after the rest has started to go. Minutes matter: a man who plays develops faster than one who does not, and minutes teach him things training cannot. Potential is a soft ceiling rather than a hard one. Tiredness carried between fixtures now falls overnight, and form fades on any day a player does not appear.

Matches are now played from your squad as it actually is. Morale reaches the floor for the first time, a happy player is worth a little more and an unhappy one a little less, and so does tiredness carried between fixtures, so a man who played 40 minutes two days ago starts the next game with less in the tank. Playing someone out of position costs him, by more the further he is moved. After every match your players 'form moves on what they did against what they should have done, and they tire by how hard they were used. Your rotation settings now reach the engine: the point you want a tired man taken off, and your quarter-by-quarter units if you set them. Two rotation settings that never did anything have been removed.

Your assistant can now step in for you, and how far it may go is your delegation level. Orders you saved are always used first. They only count as out of date two game days after you last touched them, and orders saved for one specific fixture never go out of date at all. Where your assistant does step in, anything your level does not cover stays yours: at "in-game substitutions" it may run the rotation but not change your starting five or any minutes you set yourself. Nothing about how a match is decided changes.

Clubs without a manager now field a team on their own: the strongest available five for the positions, a Balanced setup, minutes shared across everyone fit, and no transfers accepted. It is deliberately plain: a stand-in that keeps every fixture playable, not an opponent with a plan. Nothing about how a match is decided changes.

The six tactical presets, Balanced, Run and gun, Grind it out, Inside out, Perimeter attack, Lock down, are now complete setups you can choose in one click, and the game will tell you which of them suit your squad and why. Four new ways of reading a player (outside shooting, post scoring, transition, endurance) are used to work that out. No rating, rule or result changes: this is a new way to set up, not a new way for matches to be decided.

Two match-engine values are corrected against what the new measurements showed: pressure at the free-throw line, and how often an aggressive defender wins the ball to go with the fouls he was already committing. Completed results are untouched; matches simulated from here land slightly differently in tight finishes.

The calibration suite can now measure the things a whole league averages away: how much a cool head is worth in the last minute, whether a squad built around one idea beats a balanced one, what a timeout actually buys. This changes nothing about the game: every rule, rating and result is exactly as it was.

The calibration suite can now say which of the tuned values each of its measurements protects, and which ones nothing measures yet. This changes nothing about the game: every rule, rating and result is exactly as it was, and the only difference is that a future balance change can be traced to the measurement that justified it.

A limit on how often a wrong operator key may be tried. Nothing in the game changes: no rule, no rating and no result moves, and nothing a manager can see is different. It is recorded here because every change to the tuned values is announced, including the ones that are not about basketball.

Rivalries now have rules. Sharing a country or a city counts for something but is never enough on its own. A derby is earned on the floor, by close games, playoff eliminations and title races. A rivalry that has had nothing happen in it for a few seasons fades. Nothing about any match already played changes.

The end of a season is now written down as a sequence: when the table becomes final, when the awards are decided, when the history is archived, when the new season and its fixture list are built, and when day 1 is armed. Nothing about your calendar moves. What changes is that a rollover interrupted half way now picks up where it stopped rather than needing somebody to notice.