Just about all of the flaws and issues which lead to the eventual closure of the original GWs have been fixed and there seems to be sensible policies in relation to new GWs and placement of teams. I suspect once we see 3D introduced we might get some advertising and some new GWs up and running for those folks.
But i've been wondering of late, is everything which caused the game to fail for the many the very thing which made it enjoyable for the few ? Back before player tax, things like trading players was fun, winning money in friendly competitions was fun, pursuing the world ranking spot was fun, going for team of the week was fun (many late nights waiting for the news item to come through!) for that sweet £100k.
It was essentially survival of the fittest with the weak either quitting or stuck at the bottom of the food chain, but if you were at the top it was great fun. Now we have equality and equal rights with everyone striving for mediocrity. I do support all of the changes and some of the original game play mechanics were blatantly way off the mark.
But I am wondering if i'm actually not going to enjoy the game any more. I think many of the fixes have inadvertently created a brand new problem - there is actually less to do, or more accurately, less things to do which have any meaning. There's no point me playing any friendly games because I can't win any money, nothing for team of the week and rankings are uninteresting now.
I can't really think of any way to make any money or do anything interesting at the start. Had a little discussion about starting strategies with my friends who are carrying on and while we have a couple of ideas we are not really able to come up with much to help rise above everyone else.
So it all leads on to the age old problem of there being little reason to actually be online. Say you are in a traditional FA playing about 38 games a season you are looking at a couple of games a day. You could probably play through them in 30 minutes or so but now there's no play times so what are the chances in those 30 minutes you are going to be on at the same time as your league opposition ?
I'd quite like to play in the AFA but from the beta i'm seeing that everyone wins AI rights over me despite the fact I am usually on for a few hours a day so my only option is to sit online all day, not doing anything, in the hope that someone from my league comes online.
There needs to be a proper PvE structure built into the game to keep people online. Challenges are, erm, a bit naff ? I actually play quite a lot of these to get players match fitness up after injuries but there's no emotion or interest attached to them. Oh look I beat Tinpot Town in a challenge... great ? I got some RP too, cheers.
You need a proper PvE structure whereby you have something relevant and engaging to do at any time you wish. The main benefit to this, aside from giving you something to do, is you will be online more and thus more likely to come across your league opponents. What I really want is the ability for my FML team to compete in real life leagues against real life teams. So while waiting for my league games I could be having a crack at winning the Premiership. It's been mentioned before, but there's murmurs of licensing issues around this, but we have the players, are the teams not covered ? If not, fine, do something else interesting ! Use real life players (static DB copies) and create some new teams or something, then knock up some competitions.
Back to the equality thing, i'm sure that the cream will still rise to the top but there is one final leveller, my most favourite thing in the world - The ME. Even if you manage manage to put together a top team while balancing the books you still have the ME spewing out random results all over the place. The main reason i'm really not actually that excited about the reset next week is because the ME is just so awful.
My last post was about my FM10 game, so how is it going this season ? Finished 2nd in the league, won the League Cup again and won whatever the UEFA cup is called these days. Jermain Beckford managed to score an astonishing 48 goals. Seriously ? My team team is still awful - It's possibly worse than last season because I spent £16m on a wonderkid DL and £15m on a striker that has been injured all season - transfer budget gone and all my other players sold! Had to play random youths in some games because my squad is so tiny.
It's just boring because I know I will beat all the good teams and lose to the crap ones. I was worried when I was 5-0 down to Ajax in the semi final of the UEFA but I won 7-5 on agg, job done.
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