Say you want a revolution ?

Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

I think everyone knows I dislike the current FA structures. I don't like the pace, I don't like the anti climax every season - due to the way the league result is usually determined by waiting for AI against an inactive team or some such. I don't like how I have nothing to do most of the time unless I want to play some friendlies ? So what to do ?

The Super FA is the answer.

Step 1 - Delete the Weekly Cup. It doesn't work. The AI dates mean that you often tend to get double AI awarded so one team plays without the other having chance to play. I have nothing against AI whatsoever, but you have to at least have chance to play the game.

Step 2 - Actually just delete everything except the reputation cups because these run over the entire season so the AI dates land better and give the lower rep teams chance to win something.

Step 3 - New competitions!

FML is not an MMO - Why not ? It's Fantasty Football because there is nothing to do most of the time. You pick your team, tactics, then play a few games. This is not the way. I want to have a situation whereby I always have the opportunity to do something, have the chance to win something and play for something. 1.3 AI teams are step forward but are not currently enough. So what can we do within the current structure ? The FAs are governed by fairly strict rules so lets trial things in the Super FA.

I want the following:

The Weekly league - (possibly the 10 day league, so it just runs twice, unsure at the moment) This would first of all be tiered according to reputation. The number of tiers would depend on interest. So lets say we run 2-3 tiers - This means that every 7-10 days a season would complete and restart thus giving you chance to go for a title 2-3 times in a season against a comparable level of opposition. Even if you end up waiting for AI, it's a quick hit!

The Weekend League - Runs from Friday evening until Sunday night. Again tiering would depend entirely on numbers. This would be a quick hit for the weekend managers. This would probably run with smaller numbers - maybe 12 or so per division to give you chance to get the games in.

Quickplays! The most fun I have on FML these days is when I run my weekend quickplays. I tend to run 5-6 teams who play twice and they last around 2-3 hours. I sometimes run a couple of these each day and it's a quick hit but I really enjoy playing them and it's live games. It would be much cooler if there was a Super FA title at steak. Maybe a nightly quickplay ? One on Saturday and Sunday afternoon and or evening ?

Cups Ok So I don't like the weekly cups because they don't really work. While i'm all for tiering I think occasionally the big boys should pay a visit to the little guy. So we have a season long competition. The first stage would be some kind of qualifying competition - perhaps a big league, teams play once, neutral venue. Then it's time to mix things up - Top 10 get split off into their own competition, next 10 their own comp and bottom 10 their own competition - then they play to decide the winner of each cup, gold league, silver league, bronze league etc. Again this means that they got chance to mix it up with the big boys, but then in the same competition they now have chance to still win a title against similar level opposition. (it would be totally pointless to throw games in this instance)
.

Ok I need to go to bed now, i'll finish this tomorrow!

What does a Scott Sinclair buy you ?

I've been going on about how difficult it is to sign any decent youths due to a poor number of good quality players, so here's an example of the normal goings ons.




Decent enough youth with good potential, but was he worth this:





So it cost him around £4.7m for this particular player. Deals like this are far from the unusual! Fortunately he incurred a £1.4m idiot tax.

In other news St John is now open for new users. Come and join the fun, you can sign a great team of old men for nothing who will be useless in a few weeks when 1.3 is released, you could sign some awful youths or you could just save up 5 seasons to buy one decent youth player. Sounds like it's going to mucho fun for the new users going forward!

Wage auctions are on and all of the talent in the GW is locked down except the odd few players with deactivated teams who have now been snapped up. I've found the formula to win wage auctions if anyone's interested (Base demand*Idiot)+1

The parting of the red sea.

First off, some people may have noticed I deleted my preview of 1.3. While everything posted was accurate and true I decided it was a little unfair once the announcement to delay 1.3 had been made and I had a dev emailing me about my issues with it!

In summary though as it stands today, the new ME is very poor (the new build apparently fixes some of the problems, which I wont go in to - but unless you want to see your GK throwing the ball into his own net every other game, you don't want to play it as it !)

Wage demands for older players are NOT going down at all. You probably wont really have to pay much more than you do now but your not suddenly going to get old players cheap - none of my old men want a lower wage at all. Despite this they have had huge declines in most areas with some losing 1+ in various attributes in less than 7 days - this is with coaching 5 offsetting the decline.

One of the reasons for the 1.3 delay has been cited as "player progression" so i'm not sure if this refers to player regression or the fact most regens are complete arse or not.

Either way it's lose lose for me now. From what I saw on the beta server of my world, it was clear that much of my team had to go. So I have had to sell them for virtually nothing and replace them with shite regens. So if they suddenly decide to do something about regression then i've sold my ace team for no reason at all and no profit. It's not even worth me TRYING to sell some of them... it's like, what's worth more to me? £1 or their 4* rep ?

My favourite memory of FML is of club legend of Franco Brienza being my best player until the age of 36 and him generally destroying most teams single handed. He was my team, he was my captain, penalty taker, free kick taker, corner taker, top scorer, top assists, top appearances, top average, top MOTM, from MC, for about 7 seasons running... why take things like this away! A true legend who finally hung up his boots, after some serious regression I might add, at the age of 36 - I don't find this too unrealistic. Franco now lives on in a WOW char I created ;)

Now I have to put up with players like Bobby Badshot who are shite until they age of 26, average for 3 season, then need to claim disability living allowance by the time they celebrate their 30th birthday. I wouldn't mind the regression issue if there was more than a handful of good regens that were available for less than £5m.

I'm still being punished by my 'rage sale' about 4 seasons ago when I sold my entire team for about a 10th of their true MV. FML really does punish your mistakes - I really should have had the highest financial clout in the GW by now (or top 3) but i'm still living on the bread line. I got by with some nous signing older players that no one wanted, but now even I don't want them! I just can't see any point in signing anyone over the age of 28 any more. FML has been seriously ageist in the past but I was always one of the people willing to sign the old men but now i've joined them! Wasn't 1.3 supposed to stimulate the signing of older players..? Were people really complaining about older players being too good ?

I just can't see where this game is going any more and I just cannot comprehend any of the decisions behind 1.3. I seriously can't see the benefit to ANY of these decisions ? Forget realism for gods sake! think fun, think retention! Why try and compress the database into a situation where most players will only have a few good seasons ?? I'm already bored now I have had to sell my team and buy some chumps... I makes my wince thinking what I have just paid for an average 21 year old DC.

I used to enjoy watching my players strut their stuff and execute their PPMS and all that. Now it's "oh Bobby Badshot shoots over the bar" again.

Me me me - I've heard suggestions about how people only complain when something effects them, but i'm not going to moan about something which doesn't am I ! I've had a few snide comments about how the new ME will be the end of my team and all that... think again fools.

I do want to have a massive moan about how CPU teams are an ace idea but poorly implemented but I think i'll save that for another time.

Super lol

So I was moaning about the Super FA going to a knockout after the league stage. I come home today to find that AI rights were awarded today, both teams have 24 hours to play against each other. The other manager was online before me while I was at work and has now played and beat my AI.

Rendering the whole league and season in the Super FA utterly pointless and determined by a 1 off AI game I never had the chance to play. Honestly... sort it out. Anyone with eyes can see this is an idiotic structure.

Well done

Over on St John this season, all new users were pretty much forced into joining the NUFA. Now I suggested this wasn't an especially great idea because it is essentially a wasted season and the lower leagues are pretty much all AI anyway.

Now mark this day in your calendar because i'll admit I was wrong. I'm declaring this strategy a success and suggesting every GW should adopt this immediately. Looking over the three NUFA divisions we have they all have a pretty damn respectable AI % which is better than some of the main FAs. Obviously they are getting to play teams of their own level and there doesn't seem to be many deactivated teams suggesting that at least some of our trials have taken out a subscription.

The number of managers online has been at a record high throughout the entire season and the transfer market has been great too. I don't know who came up with this idea, but well done, you have my seal of approval. Bearing mind I hate everything, ever, this is very high praise indeed.

Anyway I do have something to rage about. I am currently in "Tier 1" of the Super FA and have a most enjoyable season. I've been fighting hard against the random FA results and pushing on hard to win this at all costs. As 1.3 is going to destroy my club, this is the season I must win everything possible while I still have the chance! My best squad has been deployed in every game to maximise chances of winning every game and my fringe players have been left green booted on the bench. Alas the league has drawn to a close and I unfortunately missed out on first spot by a measly single point but finishing and impressive 8 points clear of 3rd position. I think it was a fair reflection of the league and was happy to concede to the better team in this instance.

Then I remembered an earlier rage post... the league section is completely pointless because the top 8 go into a knockout to decide the winner!?? What the hell ? I've been drawn against 7th position in the league, who also happens to be my current nemesis team. So i'm probably going to go out of the competition now despite playing a 29 game league campaign, it's going to be ended by a random knockout competition which has no relation to the LEAGUE we just played.

Super FA still = Super shit !

Pat Sharp has the rage

As the tumble weed blows through the gameworlds and the carcases of AI teams lay dead by the road I decided to attempt to create a friendly competition with some prize money to play some games. *shock horror* No one will join competitions normally because they know a few of the top teams will take their money - Sensible chaps on my gameworld. So what can I do to give something back to the little guy ?

In true Robin Hood style I decided to let the lower finishing teams take away more prize money than the winners of the competition (i.e. me) To cover all the bases mid table also won more than then top two teams and some other random finishing positions took even prize money too, all in all there was a pretty good chance that most teams would make a a bit of cash except me, but i'd get some games. I called my latest masterpiece "Whole Lotto Fun!" prizes to be won, whoaaa fun house... Where's the twins ??

But apparently this kind of competition is not allowed, because 9 seasons into the game, teams are apparently going to attempt to lose every game to win £12k ? Riiiiiight, ok! As moderators are seemingly not allowed to moderate the game, I had a visit tonight from "Support Moderator" who told me I wasn't allowed to allocate prize money to teams finishing bottom of the league.

I've deleted the competition now and created a new one instead. I've entitled my new competition "Fool on the Hill" - Winner takes all. Oddly enough, no one will join this one.

Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer,
(HINT - I'm not the fool)

It's a sad state of affairs when this is the most entertaining thing which has happened all week.

In another shock turn of events, tonight, I bought... A REGEN!!! It cost me £1.1m for a 2.5* potential (yes, the regen database quality is that bad) I broke my policy of database only... Results have rapidly gone down the pan.

Rage back

Seen as i've been asked by several people.... i'm back.

I didn't delete the blog out of rage, far from it. I deleted it because I decided I no longer cared and no longer wished to be part of the community. Basically on the basis that 1.3 is going to ruin the game, my main GW is boring and lacks any commitment to make it interesting, there's no benefit to playing the game as opposed to logging on for a few minutes each day, every new update seems to focus on people who don't actually play the game and is essentially going die anyway within a few months due to lack of decent quality regens.

I really hate it when people make some comment about how they are going to go play WoW but seen as i've never played it properly before i've decided to do just that!

My AI seems to win me games without causing any blood pressure issues and I can still log on to play my AI games.

Anyway it seems my GW is going to be cloned to test 1.3 for a couple of weeks before release so hopefully I should be able to confirm I am right and it in fact will be a crock of shit. Not sure how much I will be able to tell about player declines in two weeks though but there should be some indication as to wage increases at least.

I shed a tear earlier when my players put 7 goals past someone in the top 40 knowing after 1.3 my team of legends will basically become awful. My youth team was decimated and disbanded due to bugs, my stadium was constructed on misguided information about atmosphere (there's still about £5m left to pay there) and my new strategy of signing old players has now been patched out of the game. No matter what I try everything is ruined by patches and or bugs.

FML is quickly becoming glorified fantasy football with requires a degree in accountancy to work out taxes and the like.

Wage quit

I had wrote a big rant on how the changes to wage demands were idiotic. However I can't be bothered, I don't care any more. It's clear this game has no direction and no future - at least within the existing GWs. All of the current GWs are going to have to be reset in a few patches time for the game to succeed. There's no decent regens and the database players are retiring - whatever way you spin the new wage demands, a top quality squad is going to cost you a shit load more. New players have no chance to have any fun because there's no decent players left any those that are left are going to be totally unaffordable to them due to wages. With the odd decent regen selling for £5-7m I fail to see how they can ever succeed now. The strategy for my second team is now totally defunct and unmanageable so I may as well cancel that account also.

Every new update seems to further alienate those people who log on for more than 30 minutes a day so I think I may as well join them. I'll probably ride it out and i'll make sure I turn the lights off when I leave but I wont be putting so much effort in going forward.

I've tried to improve things in my GW and failed, i've tried suggesting things on the forum and failed. The only way I have managed to achieve anything of note is by ranting and raving like a fucking idiot until someone pays attention.

I've got a couple of unopened FML boxes - if anyone wants em for a few quid, drop me a mail.

The new ME and life on the other side

So the new ME, I have been reading some self improvement books of late.... of course not! The 1.3 patch has finally been given a tentative release date and that of course sees the introduction of the new ME.

So I have been doing some testing on the latest build of the ME to see how my tactics work, if they work and what needs to change. I've read a few other previews of the new ME and everything sounds pretty positive but none of them really answered the questions I wanted to know.

Is it really 4-6-n0 more? Well it seems like 460 does actually still work reasonably well from my initial testing. Now I would point out here that I use a different version to the most common one that you see on the gameworlds and it still seems fairly solid. It doesn't work in quite the same way and i'm not sure if there will be any benefit to using it though. I also tried my own version of the most common version you tend to see, with the 3 central AMCs and this wasn't so effective. Well, it was a bit strange, it was either a huge win or a game where you would have about 3 shots on goal. The one certainty is it wont put an end to the 460 !

The other most common complaint is the number of corner goals we see on the current ME. I must say I was quite surprised by the number I was scoring on the new one - probably more so than I do now! Rather than a standard corner bang into the net the ball tends to drop first then someone else slots it in but I rarely saw a game which didn't have a corner goal or a goal from an indirect free kick onto a defenders head. This was with a defender who had 16 jumping and 15 heading too so i'd expect to see more with the higher attributes amongst the top DCs.

I haven't yet seen a super keeper and long range efforts seem more prevalent. I haven't seen a 3-0 up fucked it up yet either, but without team talks and the like on FML it's hard to judge how their removal effects the ME.

I've played something like 6,000 games on the old ME so it's impossible to draw any proper conclusions but I think those expecting something revolutionary and game changing will be sorely disappointed. It does seem much better of course, but it's not going to suddenly turn good teams bad and set pieces will probably still rule the day.

In other news I reactivated my second account and moved it into a different GW. I have to say it was very slim pickings on the initial squad front. Anyone even half decent and affordable who was under the age of 29 was already contracted. I think this links into a shrinking of available quality in the database. It's a bit of a problem really and makes it much more difficult for new teams to put together a decent squad. I went down the route of an old man squad who can get results with my youngest player aged 30!

I always thought those forum stories about newbies getting challenged by existing teams were untrue but seems they are not! On my first night I started getting these challenges from 3.5* and 4* teams ? I have no clue why they would do this, if they win they get no ranking points and if I win I get shit loads. I declined most of them of course but ironically the one that stuck in my mind was some guy who mailed me after I declined his challenge telling me to look at online managers to find games.. Anyway he's ranked in top 20 and I beat him in the Super FA today which amused me.

But the problem is, for a new team in an existing GW - There is nothing to do. It is so much worse than when you are an established club. I have 1* activity rating so if I play any friendlies I am just opening myself up to injuries and I can't afford a big squad. The change list claims activity rating has been changed from 3* to 5* for new teams which I find interesting seen as it's not currently 3* ! All the new teams are on 1* as far as I can see.

Then you are in a lower division league where have the teams have given up so you spend the entire season waiting for AI games which isn't exactly the best introduction to the game! The only people that seem to stay are those that get involved in chat in the lobby or their FA room because it's not like there is much else for them to do.

I was considering a big rant on ME related issues for small teams but I wont bother with that ;) The only thing I find interesting so far is how I am finding it MUCH easier to beat/draw with the 3*/4* teams but some of the other new teams are pasting me all over, even at home... I've taken apart most of the big teams I have played and had a few games they have been lucky to walk away with a point but the other small teams are doing me over pretty frequently.

Anyone out there?

Does anyone even read my random moaning ? Who knows, but I like moaning even if no one listens.

Last season I was calm - I was determined to stay this way, not become angry or annoyed ever again and thus not need to post on here again. It's not working. My monitor received several vicious right hooks the other night. Pre season was good, I acquired all my targets within the first couple of days of the wage auction and went on an intensive pre-season. I played many games and perfected my tactics to the nth degree so everything was perfect (with the new ME coming soon I might just reveal those tactics people are trying to copy some day soon ;) )

I reckon I had about 1-2 defeats in 60 odd games so I was pretty confident about the new season. Of course this was false confidence because we all should know by now the LEAGUE IS RANDOM! So I have pretty much drawn every single game so far and my team have either not turned up, have been one shot wondered, super keepered or some such bullshit. I had an hilarious game earlier where the match engine refused to allow me to remain more than 3 goals ahead and it finished 6-4 ! Crazy times.

Anyway I actually feel weary just thinking about how bad the ME is and how pointless the FA games are.

What's annoying me now is how no one seems to actually give a shit about this game. It would be a piece of piss for the orgs to, ya know, BLOODY ORGANISE something to make the game more interesting (nb - I do actually play on more than 1 GW - if your not sure if this is aimed at you, it's probably not) but it seems people are either too retarded or lazy (maybe both, a retard with ME maybe?) to actually do something.

The Super FA seems like SI/SEGA/Whoever, gave the gameworlds the chance to create whatever the hell they like to do something interesting and innovative. During my travels have I seen anyone use this to any effect ? No. Over on St John we had 2 seasons of 2x40 team leagues which involved the top 4 spanking everyone in sight every game. I pointed out how this was an idiotic structure which doesn't help lower reputation teams and suggested changing it so it was tiered. So they decide to tier it with 2 separate leagues with 60 teams in each... ??? What ?? I obviously pointed out how this was even worse than before and I was informed this wasn't actually the final structure - then why the hell announce it ?

Anyway it gets changed after my moaning to 2x30 team leagues, or as they like to call them... "tiers" Not only this, after the initial league, half the league goes into a knockout to decide the winner. Honestly, who comes up with these ideas ? I think orgs should be required to take some kind of IQ test before being appointed. If they score a higher IQ than a glass of water they would be allowed to move onto the literacy test.

I decided to complain to who I thought was the lead mod about these issues, but apparently it's nothing to do with him either. So can someone please tell me who the hell the responsibility lies with ? Is there anyone out there capable of organising some kind of half decent competition for me to play in ?

I want daily/nightly/weekend Super FA quickplays and the like, to encourage people to PLAY matches against each other, live, on FM, like, FMLIVE! Hey... that could make a great game, oh, wait. I want competition structures where the best team wins rather than a league which then goes to a knockout... A knockout ? I'd like to knock out these idiots.

I think I've seen my point proved about how everything on FML is so reactive and nothing is proactive too. I've been moaning about the XEFA playtimes for 5 months now and we had a vote about this which was instigated by a mod. The motion was passed to make the XEFA start earlier, good times. Or not, because nothing was done about it. 5 months later I had left the FA, along with many other members due to the poor play times. Seemingly due to an another incident where I was complaining there was no early evening xtreme FA, the play times get changed! Now half the FA has left and it has loads of Canadians in and the play times are totally inappropriate for it's current members!

Honestly... Everywhere I look i'm surrounded by idiots. I've been involved in running an online gaming community (probably a damn sight bigger and more successful than FML) before so I am aware of exactly what it takes and what is required. What it doesn't require, is appointing people to organise things who have no clue about the game, what people want and who only got the position by being an arse kissing toss pot.