This is a brand new problem, a problem without any clues
If you know the clues it's easy to get through
But you look confused and you don't know what to do
It's hard to get an answer if you haven't got a clue
If you work it out tell me what you find
We can have a few decent days and nights
So following on from moaning about the ME I want to complain about form some more. Specifically the fact you seem to have separate form in different competition classifications. So your major FA form appears to be completely unrelated to the form you will have in XTRA competitions which are minor.
I suppose the common denominator would be morale, but as with most things related to the ME, this doesn't seem to do anything either. In fact it doesn't ever actually seem to change with skills anyway.
How on earth are you supposed to manage your team when they play totally different in one competition compared to another ? Is my DC actually really poor or is he just one bad form in one competition class ? Can my striker really score 1 in 1 or is his real ability 1 in 10 in the FA games ? Who knows! Is my GK really an idiotic chump who scores an OG every third game in the FA or is he actually a pretty good keeper?
I've been pretty much unbeaten in all XFA games so far this season until today when my form has randomly decided to turn in that. Youth GK super keepering and one shot wondering to rank 700. Meanwhile FA form has picked up again as I pasted someone 4-1 in-between.
My main striker has 23 goals in 35 games and an average of 7.29 in unofficial games (I haven't played any friendlies - just XTRA) yet he has 7 goals in 23 and an average of 6.70 in official games. There's little difference in the overall ability of the clubs in either of these competitions, so which one is correct? I have no idea! Why is he shit in the league but shit hot in the XTRA ?
As per usual i'm totally confused as to what the hell is going on.
Meanwhile, my youth team has finally found some games to play. This adventure hasn't started off especially well as I usually have 3 players off injured within the first half and rarely finish the game with a team. One particular incident sums up my youth team thus far. 1-0 down at HT I make a tactical sub which is going to turn the game in my favour. The sub takes the kick off and passes to the other guy in the centre circle, except the action of KICKING OFF INJURES HIM! 16 bloody seconds on the pitch, all he's done is kick off and he's off injured.
Friday 30 April 2010
Thursday 29 April 2010
Damaged Goods
I don't think I have had a moan about the ME since launch so I figured it was about time as it is still annoying me on a daily basis.
Lets start off with the conclusion if you don't want to read my ramblings - The ME sucks, it's the worse ME in the history of the CM/FM series - including CM4. It looks more like football, but that's it.
Lets start with the players. Player attributes are generally completely meaningless with only a few seemingly making much difference to anything. A player with strong physical attributes will constantly outplay supremely technically gifted players no matter what the gap in quality. People seem to think this is only happening now because the general standard of players is poor, I can assure you this is not the case and it will be exactly the same once better players are unlocked.
It's all about the physical attributes and especially pace and acceleration in offensive players. As I posted before, I managed to get Jermaine Beckford to score 40 odd goals on FM10 in the Premier League / Champions league when he has a CA of around 120.. I don't really bother paying any attention to technical attributes any more as they simply don't do anything.
The issue is though, the general quality of your team, regardless of whether you pack it with physical attributes, actually has almost no bearing whatsoever on whether you will win the game or not. The only time this doesn't apply is where there is a massive difference in the overall CA of the teams which are playing each other.
Results are almost entirely based on your form no matter how good your team is. But form seems to be based on absolutely nothing I can understand. There's just no link at all between anything in the game as far as I can tell. I've gone from runs of 40 odd games almost unbeaten to 40 odd games with one solitary win - with the same team and tactics. What changed? Nothing, my team suddenly change from being unbeatable - which was stupid anyway - to not being able to win anything - which was equally demented.
Even when you are on good form, you will totally out of the blue get absolutely hammered by a very poor team. It's not always a case of entering bad form either, the team will be poor, manager offline, no match plans, no special formations and nothing of note. They come out hell for leather and before you know it you are 5-0 down. You change formation, you change your tactics, you change the players but nothings happening??? This awful team who has lost their last 10 games is suddenly running through your team like it doesn't exist.
These random results happen all the time, there's almost no way to know when it's going to happen. It's not a case of just losing a game, that's cool, it's a case of getting utterly destroyed for no apparent reason. Then ten minutes later you beat them 5-0 or something.
Which brings me on to my next point. The ME is a harsh mistress... never treats you right. I know what people are going to think when they read this, but, you almost never lose a game fairly. Why can't you play a team which is a bit better, they play better than you and they win the game - just occasionally? What happens is you completely hammer a team into the ground and they score 4 long shots with players who have <10 in the attribute. They score a last minute equaliser, their GK gets MOTM, your GK decides to throw the ball into the back of the next in the last minute. The losing team always turn into supermen in the last 15 minutes when they are behind regardless of whether any tactical changes have been made.
I just want SOME normal games, where one team plays better than the other and wins the game? Is this too much to expect ? Every game ends in some kind of calamity or some crazy once in life time event. I win as many games as I lose in this ridiculous fashion too. If I think back over this season's game and try and think how games the scoreline/match stats was a fair representation of what happened on the pitch, the answer probably doesn't reach double figures.
Knock Knock. Who's there ? Some fucker injuring 10 players every game. Too many knocks...
Home form is far far too strong, the only way you can win games away form home is if you have managed to get yourself on super form. The home/away split in most competitions is frightening.
It's almost impossible to lock a game down too. You can dominate a game in terms of possession and CCCS but if you look at the match stats at the end of the game the actual number of shots for each team tends to actually be quite similar. I'm not playing any kind of attacking strategy but every match is an end to end kamikaze display of attacking football. Even when i'm playing quite defensively I end up watching my entire team bomb forward like morons in the 85th minute of the game. Next thing I know, an injured player on 45% condition manages to run round my entire team and score a wonder goal. Oh yeah, condition doesn't seem to do much either.
What possibly annoys me more than anything though is the fact a group of school children can match or even totally out play a team of senior professionals. You see this all the time, a team of 15/16 year olds who can bend it like Beckham, pass like Xavi and score like they are Wayne Rooney. But as we already know, player attributes don't do anything ! I went off on one about this in beta and got told with home advantage taken into account there was only an average of 15-20 (or something, I can't remember) difference in CA when I lost to one. I don't care, there's no possible explanation I can accept for losing to a youth team unless they are all geniune wonder kids.
I've not even mentioned tactics yet. We all know wingers don't work any more, can't cross, strikers can't head, full backs can apparently phase shift into wingers while defending at the same time. Who knows, there's not much point doing anything with tactics other than playing a narrow formation.
gah, I could go on for pages about this but I need some food. I'm actually doing pretty well at the moment, so this isn't sour grapes about losing - Although the fact i'm doing so well is stupid because my team is poor, I just know how to manipulate the ME as much as possible.
Lets start off with the conclusion if you don't want to read my ramblings - The ME sucks, it's the worse ME in the history of the CM/FM series - including CM4. It looks more like football, but that's it.
Lets start with the players. Player attributes are generally completely meaningless with only a few seemingly making much difference to anything. A player with strong physical attributes will constantly outplay supremely technically gifted players no matter what the gap in quality. People seem to think this is only happening now because the general standard of players is poor, I can assure you this is not the case and it will be exactly the same once better players are unlocked.
It's all about the physical attributes and especially pace and acceleration in offensive players. As I posted before, I managed to get Jermaine Beckford to score 40 odd goals on FM10 in the Premier League / Champions league when he has a CA of around 120.. I don't really bother paying any attention to technical attributes any more as they simply don't do anything.
The issue is though, the general quality of your team, regardless of whether you pack it with physical attributes, actually has almost no bearing whatsoever on whether you will win the game or not. The only time this doesn't apply is where there is a massive difference in the overall CA of the teams which are playing each other.
Results are almost entirely based on your form no matter how good your team is. But form seems to be based on absolutely nothing I can understand. There's just no link at all between anything in the game as far as I can tell. I've gone from runs of 40 odd games almost unbeaten to 40 odd games with one solitary win - with the same team and tactics. What changed? Nothing, my team suddenly change from being unbeatable - which was stupid anyway - to not being able to win anything - which was equally demented.
Even when you are on good form, you will totally out of the blue get absolutely hammered by a very poor team. It's not always a case of entering bad form either, the team will be poor, manager offline, no match plans, no special formations and nothing of note. They come out hell for leather and before you know it you are 5-0 down. You change formation, you change your tactics, you change the players but nothings happening??? This awful team who has lost their last 10 games is suddenly running through your team like it doesn't exist.
These random results happen all the time, there's almost no way to know when it's going to happen. It's not a case of just losing a game, that's cool, it's a case of getting utterly destroyed for no apparent reason. Then ten minutes later you beat them 5-0 or something.
Which brings me on to my next point. The ME is a harsh mistress... never treats you right. I know what people are going to think when they read this, but, you almost never lose a game fairly. Why can't you play a team which is a bit better, they play better than you and they win the game - just occasionally? What happens is you completely hammer a team into the ground and they score 4 long shots with players who have <10 in the attribute. They score a last minute equaliser, their GK gets MOTM, your GK decides to throw the ball into the back of the next in the last minute. The losing team always turn into supermen in the last 15 minutes when they are behind regardless of whether any tactical changes have been made.
I just want SOME normal games, where one team plays better than the other and wins the game? Is this too much to expect ? Every game ends in some kind of calamity or some crazy once in life time event. I win as many games as I lose in this ridiculous fashion too. If I think back over this season's game and try and think how games the scoreline/match stats was a fair representation of what happened on the pitch, the answer probably doesn't reach double figures.
Knock Knock. Who's there ? Some fucker injuring 10 players every game. Too many knocks...
Home form is far far too strong, the only way you can win games away form home is if you have managed to get yourself on super form. The home/away split in most competitions is frightening.
It's almost impossible to lock a game down too. You can dominate a game in terms of possession and CCCS but if you look at the match stats at the end of the game the actual number of shots for each team tends to actually be quite similar. I'm not playing any kind of attacking strategy but every match is an end to end kamikaze display of attacking football. Even when i'm playing quite defensively I end up watching my entire team bomb forward like morons in the 85th minute of the game. Next thing I know, an injured player on 45% condition manages to run round my entire team and score a wonder goal. Oh yeah, condition doesn't seem to do much either.
What possibly annoys me more than anything though is the fact a group of school children can match or even totally out play a team of senior professionals. You see this all the time, a team of 15/16 year olds who can bend it like Beckham, pass like Xavi and score like they are Wayne Rooney. But as we already know, player attributes don't do anything ! I went off on one about this in beta and got told with home advantage taken into account there was only an average of 15-20 (or something, I can't remember) difference in CA when I lost to one. I don't care, there's no possible explanation I can accept for losing to a youth team unless they are all geniune wonder kids.
I've not even mentioned tactics yet. We all know wingers don't work any more, can't cross, strikers can't head, full backs can apparently phase shift into wingers while defending at the same time. Who knows, there's not much point doing anything with tactics other than playing a narrow formation.
gah, I could go on for pages about this but I need some food. I'm actually doing pretty well at the moment, so this isn't sour grapes about losing - Although the fact i'm doing so well is stupid because my team is poor, I just know how to manipulate the ME as much as possible.
Tuesday 27 April 2010
What ? What You Got
Before the relaunch I was thinking hard for something I could do at the start of the GW to get a jump on the other managers. I came up pretty much blank, with player pools, locked players and the like everything was pretty much locked down tight.
I came up with one solitary idea. Build a youth academy in a respectable footballing nation where no one else has built one. The logic behind this was that the best players generally go to academies and seen as I would have the only one in that region, and it was an area capable of producing good players, I might, just might win the lottery and get myself some top potentials.
As things transpired I couldn't carry out this plan due to issues with my starting pool I needed to spend money on players - Although I did later build a 1.5 star academy in Romania which only had 1 other academy there. Ironically I got a mail off the manager (after he read my blog about it I think) and he told me he had got some top potentials from it!
Anyway a big complaint is doing the rounds in my GW at the moment. The guys who build 5* academies are very aggrieved that those who punted up the small academies first have taken all the best players! I've seen people talking about closing the, threatening to quit the game and all sorts of daft things.
Talk about a short term view ! Now the 5* acadamies are operational, you are going to get more players, so effectively you have more of a chance of one of those being high potential - just because you are receiving more.
In the first week of the GW there was maybe only 10 people playing the lottery, so of course they were going to win big prizes! Now there's 100s playing, but you are buying more tickets with your 5* academy. I guess we still probably get more high potentials generated toward the start of the season too ? Longer term viewpoint required I think !
I sold my first grad for 60k, he was pretty good to be fair but didn't fit my formation and my second one is in my youth team looking okay. Just waiting to hit the jackpot, i'll likely be closing it around season 3 when there's more acadamies though.
Meanwhile i've moved the seniors over to the EFA which appears to have 23 teams in my division, running 3 times ! Not sure what's happened there, but i've been moaning about lack of games so I wont complain about that one. All of the XTRA competitions have started, but I hadn't noticed they all had home playing rights set when I joined, bad times as my AI lost a load of games today. Will likely be withdrawing from all of those if they stay on next time.
I came up with one solitary idea. Build a youth academy in a respectable footballing nation where no one else has built one. The logic behind this was that the best players generally go to academies and seen as I would have the only one in that region, and it was an area capable of producing good players, I might, just might win the lottery and get myself some top potentials.
As things transpired I couldn't carry out this plan due to issues with my starting pool I needed to spend money on players - Although I did later build a 1.5 star academy in Romania which only had 1 other academy there. Ironically I got a mail off the manager (after he read my blog about it I think) and he told me he had got some top potentials from it!
Anyway a big complaint is doing the rounds in my GW at the moment. The guys who build 5* academies are very aggrieved that those who punted up the small academies first have taken all the best players! I've seen people talking about closing the, threatening to quit the game and all sorts of daft things.
Talk about a short term view ! Now the 5* acadamies are operational, you are going to get more players, so effectively you have more of a chance of one of those being high potential - just because you are receiving more.
In the first week of the GW there was maybe only 10 people playing the lottery, so of course they were going to win big prizes! Now there's 100s playing, but you are buying more tickets with your 5* academy. I guess we still probably get more high potentials generated toward the start of the season too ? Longer term viewpoint required I think !
I sold my first grad for 60k, he was pretty good to be fair but didn't fit my formation and my second one is in my youth team looking okay. Just waiting to hit the jackpot, i'll likely be closing it around season 3 when there's more acadamies though.
Meanwhile i've moved the seniors over to the EFA which appears to have 23 teams in my division, running 3 times ! Not sure what's happened there, but i've been moaning about lack of games so I wont complain about that one. All of the XTRA competitions have started, but I hadn't noticed they all had home playing rights set when I joined, bad times as my AI lost a load of games today. Will likely be withdrawing from all of those if they stay on next time.
Sunday 25 April 2010
I've Got a Feeling
I'm going to make a prediction that as season #2 starts the economy is going to go through a massive depression. Transfer fees and MV is going to drop and the number of transfers is going to go down dramatically with swaps dominating the big transfers.
Having done a spot check it looks like around 75% of clubs or even more are currently in debt. I'd love to see what the average balance is in the GW - I bet it's a negative value ! I'm on a quite staggering -£1.5m balance right now although my wages are decent, i'm predicted profit and I hopefully have some good youth assets.
Due to the initial pools being unlocked at the end of the first season a huge amount of money has gone out of the GW. It's not been transferred from one team to another, it's just vanished. The 20x signing on fee for teenagers is a killer too.
It's not all doom and gloom, obviously everyone must currently be projected to be back on an even keel within 28 days and we will see prize money coming into the projected toward the end of week 2 or 3. But those teams who don't earn a strong league finish are going to be struggling for money going into season 3 and we are going to start seeing player reputations/wages going up too so some teams could have financial problems.
My second prediction doesn't really come from any fact basis but i'm going to predict most academy graduates are going to be awful next season.
We have been told the database is supposed to be kept in check with a consistent PA balance so have a database resembling something like what we started with. Due to financial restrictions there's thousands of youths retiring right now because they haven't found a club but all the good ones have been picked up.
So in one swoop a massive proportion of the lower quality youth players have just been effectively deleted by the database. Some of these youths are far from awful too, it's just there's that many youth teams around yet. So i'm guessing to compensate, it's going to generate more poor players than you would see normally.
I've just managed to cobble together a youth team ready for the season too. No injuries in youth games has allowed me to get away with a small squad. I'm going to need a lot of luck to win big money in the seniors I think.
Having done a spot check it looks like around 75% of clubs or even more are currently in debt. I'd love to see what the average balance is in the GW - I bet it's a negative value ! I'm on a quite staggering -£1.5m balance right now although my wages are decent, i'm predicted profit and I hopefully have some good youth assets.
Due to the initial pools being unlocked at the end of the first season a huge amount of money has gone out of the GW. It's not been transferred from one team to another, it's just vanished. The 20x signing on fee for teenagers is a killer too.
It's not all doom and gloom, obviously everyone must currently be projected to be back on an even keel within 28 days and we will see prize money coming into the projected toward the end of week 2 or 3. But those teams who don't earn a strong league finish are going to be struggling for money going into season 3 and we are going to start seeing player reputations/wages going up too so some teams could have financial problems.
My second prediction doesn't really come from any fact basis but i'm going to predict most academy graduates are going to be awful next season.
We have been told the database is supposed to be kept in check with a consistent PA balance so have a database resembling something like what we started with. Due to financial restrictions there's thousands of youths retiring right now because they haven't found a club but all the good ones have been picked up.
So in one swoop a massive proportion of the lower quality youth players have just been effectively deleted by the database. Some of these youths are far from awful too, it's just there's that many youth teams around yet. So i'm guessing to compensate, it's going to generate more poor players than you would see normally.
I've just managed to cobble together a youth team ready for the season too. No injuries in youth games has allowed me to get away with a small squad. I'm going to need a lot of luck to win big money in the seniors I think.
Saturday 24 April 2010
Smile
Okay this is probably going to be a bit of a weird post but..
I've been accused of a lack of rage lately, and on reflection this is true. Why is it true ? Because I believe they have pretty much fixed the game. Over the months post the reset announcement pretty much every issue regarding the problems with the game was debated to the smallest detail on the beta forums. The discussions were often head spinningly complex and some of the stuff discussed was right out there - We even managed to get a proper proposal for my "delete the FAs!!!!11" idea at one point, but that never came to be.
If my memory serves me correct, I recall the slogan on the Championship Manager 1 loading screen was "Made by football fans, for football fans" - or at least something along those lines.
I don't feel like i'm playing a game any more, I feel as though I am part of the game. What was the last game you played where you directly had some kind of power or influence on how the game was made and what it included ? Seriously, when did that last happen ? When did you get to speak to the developers of a game you like and give them opinions on how to make it better, which they actually pay attention to ? When was the last time you wrote some mad blog and got an email from a developer the next morning ? The answer is almost certainly never.
I did get invited to the infamous council meeting but I didn't attend, but I did however post on the forums everything I thought needed to be changed to sort the game out. And just about everything has been changed to something along the lines of what I said - not that i'm trying to take some credit, but because they were sensible changes.
What I am trying to say is I don't feel like i'm playing a game any more, rather I feel like I am playing MY game. Every single person has a voice to influence the future of the game, SI have made it our game. I was actually slightly nervous at launch thinking, "i hope people like it" knowing that I had taken part, with everyone else, and had some influence on what was actually being released!
So does this mean no more rage ? Of course not, i'll no doubt be back soon when the ME has pissed me off ;)
My only gripe at the moment is (other than the ME being utter dog shit), I feel like the game has been fixed but the GWs (or at least mine) is simply not being run in a manner to fulfil it's potential. There's still a total lack of any competitions or any community feeling despite being on a busy and active GW. Going back to what I said before, I feel like they are ruining all the hard work everyone has put into OUR game. Don't really know if I can be arsed moving to another GW and starting again, again tbh.
The lag issues sound like a pain, but fortunately there's been zero lag at all on my GW.
Oh and i've put my old youth development guide on here now - see links on top right (due to more unfounded random bollocks being spouted by people who ought to know better) should still be fairly current.
I've been accused of a lack of rage lately, and on reflection this is true. Why is it true ? Because I believe they have pretty much fixed the game. Over the months post the reset announcement pretty much every issue regarding the problems with the game was debated to the smallest detail on the beta forums. The discussions were often head spinningly complex and some of the stuff discussed was right out there - We even managed to get a proper proposal for my "delete the FAs!!!!11" idea at one point, but that never came to be.
If my memory serves me correct, I recall the slogan on the Championship Manager 1 loading screen was "Made by football fans, for football fans" - or at least something along those lines.
I don't feel like i'm playing a game any more, I feel as though I am part of the game. What was the last game you played where you directly had some kind of power or influence on how the game was made and what it included ? Seriously, when did that last happen ? When did you get to speak to the developers of a game you like and give them opinions on how to make it better, which they actually pay attention to ? When was the last time you wrote some mad blog and got an email from a developer the next morning ? The answer is almost certainly never.
I did get invited to the infamous council meeting but I didn't attend, but I did however post on the forums everything I thought needed to be changed to sort the game out. And just about everything has been changed to something along the lines of what I said - not that i'm trying to take some credit, but because they were sensible changes.
What I am trying to say is I don't feel like i'm playing a game any more, rather I feel like I am playing MY game. Every single person has a voice to influence the future of the game, SI have made it our game. I was actually slightly nervous at launch thinking, "i hope people like it" knowing that I had taken part, with everyone else, and had some influence on what was actually being released!
So does this mean no more rage ? Of course not, i'll no doubt be back soon when the ME has pissed me off ;)
My only gripe at the moment is (other than the ME being utter dog shit), I feel like the game has been fixed but the GWs (or at least mine) is simply not being run in a manner to fulfil it's potential. There's still a total lack of any competitions or any community feeling despite being on a busy and active GW. Going back to what I said before, I feel like they are ruining all the hard work everyone has put into OUR game. Don't really know if I can be arsed moving to another GW and starting again, again tbh.
The lag issues sound like a pain, but fortunately there's been zero lag at all on my GW.
Oh and i've put my old youth development guide on here now - see links on top right (due to more unfounded random bollocks being spouted by people who ought to know better) should still be fairly current.
Holding out for a Hero
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
Or I did, until I stumbled across a chap by the name of Joffre Guerron who had about a 1 in 3 goal ratio. He cost me £250k on a 4.5k wage, and... i've never seen anything like this guy. Well, actually I have and he was called Sergio Aguero. I've completely by accident signed a cheat player! I think he's scored about 6 hatricks in 20 games. He's only ever been injured once so i'm expecting him to get injured for the entire season in my first match ;)
Loving the new finance system, I am currently £1.1m in debt and still spending! Trouble is, I haven't really signed any stars and ended up with loads of youth players. So I decided I may as well just sign a youth team so I can keep em all fit as I can't risk loaning them out. Because i'm sure I can afford it... hmm!
Problem now is my spending kind of required me to win something to ensure financial stability going into season 3 and this is looking somewhat difficult now. Results are still strong and I think I can do it as long as I stay injury free.
Second problem is I have switched to the EFA and I know from experience it is extremely difficult to maintain your form over the 3 runs. In a normal season you are likely to hit a dip in form at some point. Now if you are in the EFA and this dip happens just as the third run starts, you could end up finishing near the bottom after being at the top end in the other runs. It's a risk, but I need more games due to nothing else to do.
Speaking of the EFA, another one of my current annoyances is the fact that once the first and second runs complete you cannot see the standings after they have been reset. So if the games resolve at say 12pm and your ORGs are on the ball then they could be reset by 8am the next day so by the time you log on you have no idea where you finished or what your AI% is !
So rather than following the normal FML mentality as per my previous post, and not doing anything yourself, I have come up with the following solution until something is coded in:
Miller AFA Results
It doesn't matter for qualifying but once the season is going proper I hope some of the live orgs decide to do something similar.
As a tip I would strongly advise calculating the AI % per season as you can see on the tables above. Otherwise it takes AGES to go through 3 seasons of results, and you can have teams 3 divisions lower/higher than where they started so it becomes a Ctrl + F nightmare. I reckon it would take at least 2 hours in a properly full FA just to work out who is above the AI. If you 'promote & relegate' teams on the spreadsheet after each run it suddenly becomes a 5 minute job.
Still nothing much else happening in my GW. We got a load of XTRA competitions set up a week or so ago finally but for reasons I can't really be bothered investigating none of them are even starting until season 2. Just when we need more games, the week the season starts.. yep!
Beta team finished 6th in first season/run in the Premiership, not bad for a 2 season old team really. Just taking it easy and building up some funds.
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
Or I did, until I stumbled across a chap by the name of Joffre Guerron who had about a 1 in 3 goal ratio. He cost me £250k on a 4.5k wage, and... i've never seen anything like this guy. Well, actually I have and he was called Sergio Aguero. I've completely by accident signed a cheat player! I think he's scored about 6 hatricks in 20 games. He's only ever been injured once so i'm expecting him to get injured for the entire season in my first match ;)
Loving the new finance system, I am currently £1.1m in debt and still spending! Trouble is, I haven't really signed any stars and ended up with loads of youth players. So I decided I may as well just sign a youth team so I can keep em all fit as I can't risk loaning them out. Because i'm sure I can afford it... hmm!
Problem now is my spending kind of required me to win something to ensure financial stability going into season 3 and this is looking somewhat difficult now. Results are still strong and I think I can do it as long as I stay injury free.
Second problem is I have switched to the EFA and I know from experience it is extremely difficult to maintain your form over the 3 runs. In a normal season you are likely to hit a dip in form at some point. Now if you are in the EFA and this dip happens just as the third run starts, you could end up finishing near the bottom after being at the top end in the other runs. It's a risk, but I need more games due to nothing else to do.
Speaking of the EFA, another one of my current annoyances is the fact that once the first and second runs complete you cannot see the standings after they have been reset. So if the games resolve at say 12pm and your ORGs are on the ball then they could be reset by 8am the next day so by the time you log on you have no idea where you finished or what your AI% is !
So rather than following the normal FML mentality as per my previous post, and not doing anything yourself, I have come up with the following solution until something is coded in:
Miller AFA Results
It doesn't matter for qualifying but once the season is going proper I hope some of the live orgs decide to do something similar.
As a tip I would strongly advise calculating the AI % per season as you can see on the tables above. Otherwise it takes AGES to go through 3 seasons of results, and you can have teams 3 divisions lower/higher than where they started so it becomes a Ctrl + F nightmare. I reckon it would take at least 2 hours in a properly full FA just to work out who is above the AI. If you 'promote & relegate' teams on the spreadsheet after each run it suddenly becomes a 5 minute job.
Still nothing much else happening in my GW. We got a load of XTRA competitions set up a week or so ago finally but for reasons I can't really be bothered investigating none of them are even starting until season 2. Just when we need more games, the week the season starts.. yep!
Beta team finished 6th in first season/run in the Premiership, not bad for a 2 season old team really. Just taking it easy and building up some funds.
Thursday 22 April 2010
Better Man
Why didn't you win the league this season ?
Is it because:
A) The teams finishing above you won more games
B) You lost more games
The answer is B.
Why didn't you win your last game ?
A)The team which won scored more goals
B)You didn't score enough goals.
The answer is B.
I applied for another job recently, I didn't get it. Was this because the person who applied for it was better ? (they were) or because I wasn't good enough. It was because I, ME, MYSELF wasn't good enough.
Now consider just about every FML whine of late, corners, 433, initial squad farce - Look at what YOU are doing wrong. It is YOUR fault that someone playing 433 is beating you, it is YOUR fault that someone is scoring more corner goals than you.
So some teams have restarted and signed up loads of players who were dispensed by the pools reserved the teams which never signed in. SO WHAT! There's some good players available for sure but there's nowhere near enough to create some super teams, there's not 100s of wonderkids available as some will have you believe. There's not even any bids on half the players i'm going to sign and i'll bet my left bollock that all of these teams don't end above me next season. In fact, i'll bet both seen as it's impossible as they will be in a lower qualifying group.
How about, instead of worrying what players other managers have, you worry about what players you have and perhaps spend less time whining about it and more time doing something about it. Even if you finished bottom of the league you should still have been able to sign enough players to be better than these restarting squads.
Apparently ALL of the best players have now been taken by all these restarters, but you could quite easily put together a team from the free list good enough to destroy the bottom qualifying tier.
So what of these 'dirty restarters' ? Nice plan ! I'm afraid maybe these managers were cleverer than you and thought outside the box to come up with a plan to beat you. I haven't restarted but we (my FML buddies) actually discussed this in the first week of the season. We suspected this could be a very viable strategy if the first season went wrong. As my pool was awful I suspected I would have to do this myself, but I managed to turn it round with some signings and win the league.
We came up with this idea by thinking about the game, thinking about what WE were going to do rather than worrying about what OTHER PEOPLE were doing.
So what if they sell a player on for a huge profit ? It doesn't affect you, sort your own house out before moaning someone has a better one than you.
The information is out there. Don't take for granted what mods tell you in game as they are often wrong. They have been going on about season 3 being the unlock date for a long while but this was obviously wrong. Go look on the forums, read every thread, understand every little detail of the game and do anything and everything you can think of to make your team the best they possibly can be.
People want everything handed to them and just look to blame everyone else for their own failings. Fix this, fix that, it's not fair ! You fail at anything in life because you are not good enough, not because someone else is better than you.
Even little things, like when the auto patch server was down the other night. I explained how to bypass this and get into the game, but everyone just ignores me and whines about it being down instead. You could have fixed this yourself!
As for last night before the fix when they were instantly signable. Best night of the game so far... it was great fun. There was scandal, chaos, activity, fun, banter... This is what it's all about !
With the audience FM has always had I suspect many managers are not familiar with the cut-throat nature of online gaming. You must do everything and anything possible to get ahead right down to the most minute detail.
Is it because:
A) The teams finishing above you won more games
B) You lost more games
The answer is B.
Why didn't you win your last game ?
A)The team which won scored more goals
B)You didn't score enough goals.
The answer is B.
I applied for another job recently, I didn't get it. Was this because the person who applied for it was better ? (they were) or because I wasn't good enough. It was because I, ME, MYSELF wasn't good enough.
Now consider just about every FML whine of late, corners, 433, initial squad farce - Look at what YOU are doing wrong. It is YOUR fault that someone playing 433 is beating you, it is YOUR fault that someone is scoring more corner goals than you.
So some teams have restarted and signed up loads of players who were dispensed by the pools reserved the teams which never signed in. SO WHAT! There's some good players available for sure but there's nowhere near enough to create some super teams, there's not 100s of wonderkids available as some will have you believe. There's not even any bids on half the players i'm going to sign and i'll bet my left bollock that all of these teams don't end above me next season. In fact, i'll bet both seen as it's impossible as they will be in a lower qualifying group.
How about, instead of worrying what players other managers have, you worry about what players you have and perhaps spend less time whining about it and more time doing something about it. Even if you finished bottom of the league you should still have been able to sign enough players to be better than these restarting squads.
Apparently ALL of the best players have now been taken by all these restarters, but you could quite easily put together a team from the free list good enough to destroy the bottom qualifying tier.
So what of these 'dirty restarters' ? Nice plan ! I'm afraid maybe these managers were cleverer than you and thought outside the box to come up with a plan to beat you. I haven't restarted but we (my FML buddies) actually discussed this in the first week of the season. We suspected this could be a very viable strategy if the first season went wrong. As my pool was awful I suspected I would have to do this myself, but I managed to turn it round with some signings and win the league.
We came up with this idea by thinking about the game, thinking about what WE were going to do rather than worrying about what OTHER PEOPLE were doing.
So what if they sell a player on for a huge profit ? It doesn't affect you, sort your own house out before moaning someone has a better one than you.
The information is out there. Don't take for granted what mods tell you in game as they are often wrong. They have been going on about season 3 being the unlock date for a long while but this was obviously wrong. Go look on the forums, read every thread, understand every little detail of the game and do anything and everything you can think of to make your team the best they possibly can be.
People want everything handed to them and just look to blame everyone else for their own failings. Fix this, fix that, it's not fair ! You fail at anything in life because you are not good enough, not because someone else is better than you.
Even little things, like when the auto patch server was down the other night. I explained how to bypass this and get into the game, but everyone just ignores me and whines about it being down instead. You could have fixed this yourself!
As for last night before the fix when they were instantly signable. Best night of the game so far... it was great fun. There was scandal, chaos, activity, fun, banter... This is what it's all about !
With the audience FM has always had I suspect many managers are not familiar with the cut-throat nature of online gaming. You must do everything and anything possible to get ahead right down to the most minute detail.
Wednesday 21 April 2010
Virtual Insanity
Got my squad looking fairly decent in preparation for the new season but I need a whole new defence. There's literally no good defenders anywhere though, none due to unlock, none on frees, none in transfer auctions and mine are dying.
Was listening to the FM Britain webcast thing, just chilling and then logged back into FML shortly after the downtime, at around 8.03pm.
Hmm, what's this ? Some players from the initial pools from inactives have been signed. Do we have some new managers ? Have some teams restarted already ? The mods had been telling everyone the initial pool players didn't unlock until season 3, I was fairly sure this was was incorrect but I decided it wasn't worth me getting involved again. I investigated further, they haven't restarted, hmm, they haven't private transferred them and they are not new teams ??
Holey shit..... All the initial pools players have unlocked and are available to instantly sign WITH NO TAX !! Where's my fucking list ??? Damn, lost it in last format... never mind... GO GO GO !!! Punted in a few names, signed em up.
Solved my defensive problem fairly quickly with 3 instant signings including Robert Huth. We had something like 170 teams never signed in so as you can imagine, a shed load of players got released. Not long later and I have 9 new players, i'm running out of money. Turn off auto extends !!! Close the academy !! Get me more money!! I squeezed another 2 players out.
35 players sitting in my squad, 11 new signings and no tax. I'm going to be rich ! My team is ace !
There was something like 600 transfers in an hour.
Will be interesting to see how they fix this. League games have been played, loads of teams have restarted, players sold.
It was hell of a lot of fun though :D
Oh, I nearly forgot the funniest part of the night. In the middle of this, we get a mail, my GW has decided NOW is the time to run it's first ever quiz !
Was listening to the FM Britain webcast thing, just chilling and then logged back into FML shortly after the downtime, at around 8.03pm.
Hmm, what's this ? Some players from the initial pools from inactives have been signed. Do we have some new managers ? Have some teams restarted already ? The mods had been telling everyone the initial pool players didn't unlock until season 3, I was fairly sure this was was incorrect but I decided it wasn't worth me getting involved again. I investigated further, they haven't restarted, hmm, they haven't private transferred them and they are not new teams ??
Holey shit..... All the initial pools players have unlocked and are available to instantly sign WITH NO TAX !! Where's my fucking list ??? Damn, lost it in last format... never mind... GO GO GO !!! Punted in a few names, signed em up.
Solved my defensive problem fairly quickly with 3 instant signings including Robert Huth. We had something like 170 teams never signed in so as you can imagine, a shed load of players got released. Not long later and I have 9 new players, i'm running out of money. Turn off auto extends !!! Close the academy !! Get me more money!! I squeezed another 2 players out.
35 players sitting in my squad, 11 new signings and no tax. I'm going to be rich ! My team is ace !
There was something like 600 transfers in an hour.
Will be interesting to see how they fix this. League games have been played, loads of teams have restarted, players sold.
It was hell of a lot of fun though :D
Oh, I nearly forgot the funniest part of the night. In the middle of this, we get a mail, my GW has decided NOW is the time to run it's first ever quiz !
Tuesday 20 April 2010
We are the Champions
Makes no sense, my team was awful ! I'm amazed, pleased, surprised and confused, 2 games in hand too. Played 442 all season!
Current balance -£826k and dropping!
There's a static page on the top right of the blog for my projected income calculator, dunno if anyone has tried it but it seems to be working well for me.
Monday 19 April 2010
Talkin Gypsy Market Blues
So I have one fit striker left and my best player, average wise is injured for the remainder of the season, he could make it back for last 2 games. Still sitting top of the league but things are not looking especially good. I've been waiting for my prize money before making my move, but then I thought, hang on, it's paid in 4 instalments next season anyway. Time to make my move, spending time!
Wrote one of my magic transfer mails, injured best player gone for £100k two minutes later (MV 50k) Bids on my 'fine high potential youth' straight away as well as some other players.
To the Market Place ! "Looking for pacey strker, 16/16+ pace/acceleration, worth at least 100k"
PM number 1 comes in - "how much you got to spend "
Me - Up to £1m
PM Number1: Links to a 15 year old MC with 10 pace.
Me - I'm looking for a pacey striker ?
PM Number1: Links to a defender..
PM Number 2 comes in - Links to a 28 year old striker, worth 16k.
Me - I'm looking for someone a bit better than that thanks
PM Number 2 - You said a pacey striker
Me - I also said worth more than £100k ;)
PM Number 2- GL with that /leaves
I love it I really do. no sarcasm
PM3 comes in - Links to someone fitting my criteria! Good times!
/10 minutes later a deal is agreed, alas he's taxed, so the deal is off.
PM3 - How about "really awful player, low ability/potential
me - Not really what i'm after, i'm looking for pace.
PM3 - Trust me, I have the experience, pace doesn't work
me - I have experience too and would like some pace.
PM3 - You NEED this player, he's a target man! £150k. You wont score unless you buy him.
me - I'll leave it thanks.
PM3 - Ok, £100k
me - Mate, I don't want him for free.
Not to mention people demanding ridiculous fees ! I think I was probably a tad drunk after 2 hours of similar conversations to the above but I appeared to have bought some players! They look alright!
Had a 16.5k bid on Sinama-Pongolle, only 3 bids in but alas i'm out bid AGAIN! I was totally convinced this was my man, but once again not. Annoyingly, all the players I decided not to bid on, the final wage was way below what I would have paid ! I've missed out on 2 players due to the scouting bug too, damnit.
Time for plan B, pointed out to me by the real St John union of old, reunited once again. £250k for plan B, 4k wage. 3 games, 6 goals and 2 assists later from plan B and the league is once again looking good.
Current balance is -£651k and i'm planning to spend at least another million if the bank will allow it. I don't believe in playing it safe, i'm going all out, all or nothing, death or glory and all that. I want at least another five players, but i'm totally refusing to deal with anyone asking for silly money.
Wrote one of my magic transfer mails, injured best player gone for £100k two minutes later (MV 50k) Bids on my 'fine high potential youth' straight away as well as some other players.
To the Market Place ! "Looking for pacey strker, 16/16+ pace/acceleration, worth at least 100k"
PM number 1 comes in - "how much you got to spend "
Me - Up to £1m
PM Number1: Links to a 15 year old MC with 10 pace.
Me - I'm looking for a pacey striker ?
PM Number1: Links to a defender..
PM Number 2 comes in - Links to a 28 year old striker, worth 16k.
Me - I'm looking for someone a bit better than that thanks
PM Number 2 - You said a pacey striker
Me - I also said worth more than £100k ;)
PM Number 2- GL with that /leaves
I love it I really do. no sarcasm
PM3 comes in - Links to someone fitting my criteria! Good times!
/10 minutes later a deal is agreed, alas he's taxed, so the deal is off.
PM3 - How about "really awful player, low ability/potential
me - Not really what i'm after, i'm looking for pace.
PM3 - Trust me, I have the experience, pace doesn't work
me - I have experience too and would like some pace.
PM3 - You NEED this player, he's a target man! £150k. You wont score unless you buy him.
me - I'll leave it thanks.
PM3 - Ok, £100k
me - Mate, I don't want him for free.
Not to mention people demanding ridiculous fees ! I think I was probably a tad drunk after 2 hours of similar conversations to the above but I appeared to have bought some players! They look alright!
Had a 16.5k bid on Sinama-Pongolle, only 3 bids in but alas i'm out bid AGAIN! I was totally convinced this was my man, but once again not. Annoyingly, all the players I decided not to bid on, the final wage was way below what I would have paid ! I've missed out on 2 players due to the scouting bug too, damnit.
Time for plan B, pointed out to me by the real St John union of old, reunited once again. £250k for plan B, 4k wage. 3 games, 6 goals and 2 assists later from plan B and the league is once again looking good.
Current balance is -£651k and i'm planning to spend at least another million if the bank will allow it. I don't believe in playing it safe, i'm going all out, all or nothing, death or glory and all that. I want at least another five players, but i'm totally refusing to deal with anyone asking for silly money.
Sunday 18 April 2010
Money
FML gets a little confusing sometimes these days.
What with all the wage multipliers, tax, profit tax and all that jazz. I never really quite know where I am with my finances. What will my projected be if I bid on this player and then that player ? What is the multiplier on this player. Only this morning I declared to my mate I could probably afford to bid £20k on 2 separate players, as it turned out I couldn't even afford it on one because I had forgot youths had a 20x signing on fee.
FML really needs a 'project finances' button so you can see what your finances will look like after you have made a bid. So anyway, I have taken matters into my own hands and created a projected finances calculator to work out what my projected will be based on bids in wage auctions and or transfer auctions.
Anyway, if you want to give it a whirl you can download it here: (it's an excel spreadsheet)
Wage Calculator
Just complete the bits in green.
There's a fair chance that i've buggered something up as I had various problems with it and my Excel skills are not the best in the world. I'll be amazed if there's not something wrong with it, so let me know what you notice. I'm finding it most useful already.
What with all the wage multipliers, tax, profit tax and all that jazz. I never really quite know where I am with my finances. What will my projected be if I bid on this player and then that player ? What is the multiplier on this player. Only this morning I declared to my mate I could probably afford to bid £20k on 2 separate players, as it turned out I couldn't even afford it on one because I had forgot youths had a 20x signing on fee.
FML really needs a 'project finances' button so you can see what your finances will look like after you have made a bid. So anyway, I have taken matters into my own hands and created a projected finances calculator to work out what my projected will be based on bids in wage auctions and or transfer auctions.
Anyway, if you want to give it a whirl you can download it here: (it's an excel spreadsheet)
Wage Calculator
Just complete the bits in green.
There's a fair chance that i've buggered something up as I had various problems with it and my Excel skills are not the best in the world. I'll be amazed if there's not something wrong with it, so let me know what you notice. I'm finding it most useful already.
Saturday 17 April 2010
Dazed and Confused
I don't really have anything to rage about at the moment so i'm going to ramble about various things.
First off, the first thing which has enraged me tonight is AI rights. I've challenged this guy about half a dozen times this season, I have challenged him 3 times today (knowing AI was about to be awarded tonight) and left the challenge in for 15 minutes, yet he refuses to play me ? But what's this ? He's won AI over me from sitting online for 15 hours a day. Makes sense, of course... I left some 'appropriate' feedback to reflect my feelings on this matter. (which appears to have been removed, I though it was accurate and fair) I made sure he had to wait the full 5 minutes after he started the game against me too. (He's near bottom of the league, I won 5-4 following some serious ME bullshit)
I played bottom of the league yesterday, he had 0 shots and drew 2-2, like you do. My GK threw the ball into his own net and my DC scored an own goal. He managed 1 shot in the last minute to make the match stats look less retarded. Then there's the match where some guy who had 10 men from the start put 4 past me...
I've most likely won the league like(of course..) but still..
What else is happening ? Well i'm on the GW of comedy it seems. First off some mod buys a shitty youth for 750k, then everyone goes off on one. Then, despite the transfer being totally legal and approved, the player is released to "set an example" of good transfer behaviour and the guy steps down as a mod, totally unrelated. Anyway, the other record breaking transfer, also at £750k also involves a mod, who to "set an example" puts him in transfer auction for £1, then sends a personal mail to the entire GW to advertise the fact he's "setting a good example"
Yeah, I really have no idea either...
Anyway, I was moaning about the lack of XTRA FA competitions lately. So I logged on the other day to find about 20+ competitions set up in the XTRA FA. On closer inspection this appears to be month long Super Man vs She-RA competition or some such bollocks. The GW has positively being crying out for such a thing! Anyway, some normal competitions appeared not so long afterwards, which all filled very quickly, alas none have started - i'm sure there's a good reason behind this...
Beta is going well, following my recipe for success. But check out this RS draft, it's NEVER going to happen like this on live but blimey, here's some talent for you: (the like's of Pato returned but didn't make the screenshot list!)
Rooney sold for £10m, Messi £13m, Ronaldo £9m, Aguero £10m
First off, the first thing which has enraged me tonight is AI rights. I've challenged this guy about half a dozen times this season, I have challenged him 3 times today (knowing AI was about to be awarded tonight) and left the challenge in for 15 minutes, yet he refuses to play me ? But what's this ? He's won AI over me from sitting online for 15 hours a day. Makes sense, of course... I left some 'appropriate' feedback to reflect my feelings on this matter. (which appears to have been removed, I though it was accurate and fair) I made sure he had to wait the full 5 minutes after he started the game against me too. (He's near bottom of the league, I won 5-4 following some serious ME bullshit)
I played bottom of the league yesterday, he had 0 shots and drew 2-2, like you do. My GK threw the ball into his own net and my DC scored an own goal. He managed 1 shot in the last minute to make the match stats look less retarded. Then there's the match where some guy who had 10 men from the start put 4 past me...
I've most likely won the league like(of course..) but still..
What else is happening ? Well i'm on the GW of comedy it seems. First off some mod buys a shitty youth for 750k, then everyone goes off on one. Then, despite the transfer being totally legal and approved, the player is released to "set an example" of good transfer behaviour and the guy steps down as a mod, totally unrelated. Anyway, the other record breaking transfer, also at £750k also involves a mod, who to "set an example" puts him in transfer auction for £1, then sends a personal mail to the entire GW to advertise the fact he's "setting a good example"
Yeah, I really have no idea either...
Anyway, I was moaning about the lack of XTRA FA competitions lately. So I logged on the other day to find about 20+ competitions set up in the XTRA FA. On closer inspection this appears to be month long Super Man vs She-RA competition or some such bollocks. The GW has positively being crying out for such a thing! Anyway, some normal competitions appeared not so long afterwards, which all filled very quickly, alas none have started - i'm sure there's a good reason behind this...
Beta is going well, following my recipe for success. But check out this RS draft, it's NEVER going to happen like this on live but blimey, here's some talent for you: (the like's of Pato returned but didn't make the screenshot list!)
Rooney sold for £10m, Messi £13m, Ronaldo £9m, Aguero £10m
Wednesday 14 April 2010
When the Man Comes Around
Seems that the normal FML youth player fetish is well under way in most GWs as usual, but i'm going to explain why you are doing it wrong.
On old FML, building an all youth team was a very viable strategy. Even if you had quite a few on high wages you could pretty much sit back, lose all your games, watch them develop and if you had some decent ones and some luck you are suddenly swimming in high reputation superstars that half the GW is after.
Sell a couple on and you were in for a big cash bonanza, keep em and rise up the leagues to start your domination albeit 10 seasons behind everyone else.
I know a lot of people enjoy the youth side of things which is fair enough, play the game how you want, but if people are hoping this is going turn their teams into rich super clubs in the future then think again.
The first major issue you have now is prize money forms a huge proportion of your income. If you are in the Premiership battling out for top spot then you could possibly pull in £4.4m for taking top spot - that's a hell of a lot of cash! But you have an all youth team, your not in the Premiership, you are in the depths conference you are probably looking at closer to £1.5m if you win it, which would cover about £55k wages. You are really going to struggle to amass a team which is high enough potential to achieve anything on the wage budget you have available.
So your plan is struggle financially then sell on your player for mega bucks and make your move. So, who exactly is going to be buying this player for mega bucks ? The guy who won £4.4m in the Premiership I hear you cry. But is he really ? Assuming we are a few seasons into the game his wage bill will be spiralling out of control and he will need to invest heavily in infrastructure while being very shrewd in the market to keep wages down. Sure, teams near the top ARE going to have more money for sure, but they wont be paying £5m+ for your players. They will probably be too busy complaining on the forums anyway ;)
The second problem you have is your team reputation wont go up as it is directly based on how well you perform in official competitions and only 25% of it is based on the players at your club - who will all be low reputation due to the league you are in! So again, you are going to be pulling in far less money on this front too and it will not go up unless you start performing in the league no matter how good your players potential may be.
So your someone who's actually not planning to sell any of your players. You have somehow gathered together a top bunch of youth players and they are all looking like they are going to be stars. So now you are hammering your way up the leagues and heading to the top. Now on old FML you would be in prime position right now due to all your players locked down on low wages. But as you start heading up the leagues, your player reputation is going to rise, your club reputation is going to rise, your players are going to start demanding more and more money and you will need to invest heavily in the stadium. So assuming by some miracle you even get the team to work, what exactly have you achieved ? You are in exactly the same position as the guy who signed a proper team and won the Premiership 7 seasons ago, except you have gone through 7 seasons of being shit.
As I say, i'm sure there's a lot of satisfaction in creating a youth team and rising through the leagues but it is in no way an optimal or efficient strategy. It's likely to leave you bleeding money, being far behind the top teams for a long while and in a worse position by the time you actually catch them.
But what about youth academies ? I'm going to build loads and get some great players! As Jakswan puts it, it's all a bit of a lottery, but look at the costs. A 1* academy costs around £200k build and around £100k a season to maintain. For that cost you could have put together a full 16 man youth team at the start of the GW from the free agent list !
Even I jumped on the bandwagon with this one, but there's tons of -7's on the free agent list in my GW and while they would never have become world beaters they would have all turned a GUARANTEED huge profit. If you are running a 5* academy you are looking a huge £1m expense in the first season. Think about that for a second.... one million pounds.
You are extremely unlikely to get this money back. Youth academies are fun and yeah, the better players are generally going to end up there but you should see them as a luxury rather than an essential element of your youth empire.
So what is the best strategy for making money ? Rather shockingly, it's to create a
decent senior team and win football games! If you missed the boat early on and didn't make it to the Premiership then you can still make a lot of money. It's just a case of putting together a workman like squad on cheap wages and bobbing around in the Championship / Division 1 which will earn you a nice amount of cash.
The final point i'd like to make is the managers paying £500k+ type fees on youth players at this stage of the GW. Unless you were very lucky with your initial pool, you have essentially condemned your team to the lower leagues - your choice. But you have given another team all of the tools they need to dominate the higher leagues early on. If you are hoping to catch them one day, giving them a massive head start probably isn't the best course of action. I've heard of the tortoise and the hare, but the last time I checked, the tortoise didn't give the hare a rocket powered jet pack.
On old FML, building an all youth team was a very viable strategy. Even if you had quite a few on high wages you could pretty much sit back, lose all your games, watch them develop and if you had some decent ones and some luck you are suddenly swimming in high reputation superstars that half the GW is after.
Sell a couple on and you were in for a big cash bonanza, keep em and rise up the leagues to start your domination albeit 10 seasons behind everyone else.
I know a lot of people enjoy the youth side of things which is fair enough, play the game how you want, but if people are hoping this is going turn their teams into rich super clubs in the future then think again.
The first major issue you have now is prize money forms a huge proportion of your income. If you are in the Premiership battling out for top spot then you could possibly pull in £4.4m for taking top spot - that's a hell of a lot of cash! But you have an all youth team, your not in the Premiership, you are in the depths conference you are probably looking at closer to £1.5m if you win it, which would cover about £55k wages. You are really going to struggle to amass a team which is high enough potential to achieve anything on the wage budget you have available.
So your plan is struggle financially then sell on your player for mega bucks and make your move. So, who exactly is going to be buying this player for mega bucks ? The guy who won £4.4m in the Premiership I hear you cry. But is he really ? Assuming we are a few seasons into the game his wage bill will be spiralling out of control and he will need to invest heavily in infrastructure while being very shrewd in the market to keep wages down. Sure, teams near the top ARE going to have more money for sure, but they wont be paying £5m+ for your players. They will probably be too busy complaining on the forums anyway ;)
The second problem you have is your team reputation wont go up as it is directly based on how well you perform in official competitions and only 25% of it is based on the players at your club - who will all be low reputation due to the league you are in! So again, you are going to be pulling in far less money on this front too and it will not go up unless you start performing in the league no matter how good your players potential may be.
So your someone who's actually not planning to sell any of your players. You have somehow gathered together a top bunch of youth players and they are all looking like they are going to be stars. So now you are hammering your way up the leagues and heading to the top. Now on old FML you would be in prime position right now due to all your players locked down on low wages. But as you start heading up the leagues, your player reputation is going to rise, your club reputation is going to rise, your players are going to start demanding more and more money and you will need to invest heavily in the stadium. So assuming by some miracle you even get the team to work, what exactly have you achieved ? You are in exactly the same position as the guy who signed a proper team and won the Premiership 7 seasons ago, except you have gone through 7 seasons of being shit.
As I say, i'm sure there's a lot of satisfaction in creating a youth team and rising through the leagues but it is in no way an optimal or efficient strategy. It's likely to leave you bleeding money, being far behind the top teams for a long while and in a worse position by the time you actually catch them.
But what about youth academies ? I'm going to build loads and get some great players! As Jakswan puts it, it's all a bit of a lottery, but look at the costs. A 1* academy costs around £200k build and around £100k a season to maintain. For that cost you could have put together a full 16 man youth team at the start of the GW from the free agent list !
Even I jumped on the bandwagon with this one, but there's tons of -7's on the free agent list in my GW and while they would never have become world beaters they would have all turned a GUARANTEED huge profit. If you are running a 5* academy you are looking a huge £1m expense in the first season. Think about that for a second.... one million pounds.
You are extremely unlikely to get this money back. Youth academies are fun and yeah, the better players are generally going to end up there but you should see them as a luxury rather than an essential element of your youth empire.
So what is the best strategy for making money ? Rather shockingly, it's to create a
decent senior team and win football games! If you missed the boat early on and didn't make it to the Premiership then you can still make a lot of money. It's just a case of putting together a workman like squad on cheap wages and bobbing around in the Championship / Division 1 which will earn you a nice amount of cash.
The final point i'd like to make is the managers paying £500k+ type fees on youth players at this stage of the GW. Unless you were very lucky with your initial pool, you have essentially condemned your team to the lower leagues - your choice. But you have given another team all of the tools they need to dominate the higher leagues early on. If you are hoping to catch them one day, giving them a massive head start probably isn't the best course of action. I've heard of the tortoise and the hare, but the last time I checked, the tortoise didn't give the hare a rocket powered jet pack.
Tuesday 13 April 2010
Dumb
Seems to be a few posts on the forums of late from people who are saying they are bored. I do hope they all give the EFA a try as it is much more exciting with seasons which only last a week. It's much faster paced and there's pretty much always something to play for and always something to do. The allowed AI is 75% too so it's not even as though you need to actually be online that much to play all of the games.
The only problem is it's a bloody nightmare to ORG. It took me around an hour and half yesterday to, properly, work out the AI % for all of the teams in the beta. I made a little spreadsheet to record all the data for all 3 runs. I figured going forward it would probably be beneficial to actually up date this after every run as it would be much less time consuming rather than having to go through 3 runs at once, which was effectively 360 or so team standings!
Furthermore, what really winds me up about this FA is if your not around when the league ends you have no ability to see the league standings so you can totally miss where you actually finished if your offline for that day as there's no way to see the previous table. On top of this you can't see what your AI % is either so you can't really be certain you are under the required level. Due to the launch of live I thought I actually might have been over, but wasn't sure!
So last night I decided the best course of action was to create a site which I would update after each run. On here I was planning to list tables of where everyone was at with their AI% so they knew if they were over and needed to bring it down. I was also planning to include screenshots of all of the league standings so if anyone happened to be offline (even as an ORG I have no idea where I finished in 2 runs until I saw the screenshtos yesterday). I had some nice tables and layouts for all of the AI %'s and standings and ready to upload tonight and was going to update it regular.
But I have discovered this is probably a waste of my time. Because tonight I was informed of the latest FML rule. Your not allowed to link to ANY website at all, in the game, anywhere. While I would probably get away with this in the beta, because it's not policed by fucking retards, I guess it's probably not worth my time attempting to do something useful because it's actually against the rules.
Another made up rule ? Another stupid decision by Sega. Who knows. It's apparently covered in the latest code of conduct.
The only problem is it's a bloody nightmare to ORG. It took me around an hour and half yesterday to, properly, work out the AI % for all of the teams in the beta. I made a little spreadsheet to record all the data for all 3 runs. I figured going forward it would probably be beneficial to actually up date this after every run as it would be much less time consuming rather than having to go through 3 runs at once, which was effectively 360 or so team standings!
Furthermore, what really winds me up about this FA is if your not around when the league ends you have no ability to see the league standings so you can totally miss where you actually finished if your offline for that day as there's no way to see the previous table. On top of this you can't see what your AI % is either so you can't really be certain you are under the required level. Due to the launch of live I thought I actually might have been over, but wasn't sure!
So last night I decided the best course of action was to create a site which I would update after each run. On here I was planning to list tables of where everyone was at with their AI% so they knew if they were over and needed to bring it down. I was also planning to include screenshots of all of the league standings so if anyone happened to be offline (even as an ORG I have no idea where I finished in 2 runs until I saw the screenshtos yesterday). I had some nice tables and layouts for all of the AI %'s and standings and ready to upload tonight and was going to update it regular.
But I have discovered this is probably a waste of my time. Because tonight I was informed of the latest FML rule. Your not allowed to link to ANY website at all, in the game, anywhere. While I would probably get away with this in the beta, because it's not policed by fucking retards, I guess it's probably not worth my time attempting to do something useful because it's actually against the rules.
Another made up rule ? Another stupid decision by Sega. Who knows. It's apparently covered in the latest code of conduct.
Sunday 11 April 2010
What Will You Do (when the money goes)
And maybe that's the reason why,
You're playing for a one-man side,
It's alright when you're winning though,
But, when you lose, you lose alone.
Team update time I suppose ! Not much to update as I haven't played an official game in or seen an opponent in 6 days and have another 3 days to go before the first AI lands.
Predicted points has me top of my group but I can't see it happening. I can't win any friendly games any more, everyone's team is getting better all the while. I was forced into playing my hand early due to my terrible pool which is why I wanted to get as many games as possible in. It would be a collapse of epic proportions if I finish below 4th though so prize money should be good. Trouble is, by my count I need to buy at LEAST 5 players and my older players have lost 2-3 points in some attributes already.
So you remember on the original launch GWs where there was insane inflation at the start and ridiculous transfer fees ? Well, it seems on my GW this is happening again and I just can't understand it!
Not too shabby, but £750k a piece! One of them has ended up being released but it was apparently give the go ahead by the mods before the buyer later said he was leaving.
These are not isolated transfers either, there's crazy fees all over the place. A 27 year old striker, who's CA135 according to FM10 DB has just gone for £650k ! Due to deals like this everyone is demanding around 10x MV for players. People are openly advertising youths as 3.5* potential and wanting 10-15x MV for them, and the bizarre thing is people are biting and buying them!
I think i'm only annoyed because I don't have anyone I can sell, I can't even shift some average players for £1 - who are ironically better than half the youths who are going for silly money.
Well we got a quickplay last night ! The first 32 man quickplay was announced and filled in 3 minutes, then a second one was announced and that filled in 4 minutes, so it seems maybe there was some demand after all. Didn't go quite so well today when they opened 2 at once, advertised each in a different place resulting in both half filling then forgetting to start them so I withdrew after waiting a while.
I saw some super 15 year old wonderkid and was inspired to build an academy in Romania as there's only one there and it seems like a reasonable footballing nation.
Still really bored in all honesty, going to see what the EFA is like next season. I suspect it's going to hinder potential prize money opportunities with 3 runs. From my experience in beta I go from top of league in one run to bottom somewhere near bottom in another.
I reckon my sub must be due to expire shortly after the final qualifying season finishes. I'll see how it goes, but i'm not leaning towards renewing if i'm honest. I think the game has changed for the better but I just don't like my GW at all, the core game experience (in terms of your day to day) hasn't actually changed at all from the original launch, except there's even less of worth to do. I actually enjoy playing on the beta GW more than I do live.
Speaking of the beta, a quick mention to my heroes who won me promotion today. I had at around 4-5 players injured pretty much all season with suspensions on top. Every game was a battle but they seemed to fight for every ball in every game and even with my massive injury crisis they fought to the very end. Due to some issues at the start of the season this run lasted 5 days and I essentially played the season in 3 days. It's probably been my second favourite season ever on FML despite the fact I didn't play 1 human!
You're playing for a one-man side,
It's alright when you're winning though,
But, when you lose, you lose alone.
Team update time I suppose ! Not much to update as I haven't played an official game in or seen an opponent in 6 days and have another 3 days to go before the first AI lands.
Predicted points has me top of my group but I can't see it happening. I can't win any friendly games any more, everyone's team is getting better all the while. I was forced into playing my hand early due to my terrible pool which is why I wanted to get as many games as possible in. It would be a collapse of epic proportions if I finish below 4th though so prize money should be good. Trouble is, by my count I need to buy at LEAST 5 players and my older players have lost 2-3 points in some attributes already.
So you remember on the original launch GWs where there was insane inflation at the start and ridiculous transfer fees ? Well, it seems on my GW this is happening again and I just can't understand it!
Not too shabby, but £750k a piece! One of them has ended up being released but it was apparently give the go ahead by the mods before the buyer later said he was leaving.
These are not isolated transfers either, there's crazy fees all over the place. A 27 year old striker, who's CA135 according to FM10 DB has just gone for £650k ! Due to deals like this everyone is demanding around 10x MV for players. People are openly advertising youths as 3.5* potential and wanting 10-15x MV for them, and the bizarre thing is people are biting and buying them!
I think i'm only annoyed because I don't have anyone I can sell, I can't even shift some average players for £1 - who are ironically better than half the youths who are going for silly money.
Well we got a quickplay last night ! The first 32 man quickplay was announced and filled in 3 minutes, then a second one was announced and that filled in 4 minutes, so it seems maybe there was some demand after all. Didn't go quite so well today when they opened 2 at once, advertised each in a different place resulting in both half filling then forgetting to start them so I withdrew after waiting a while.
I saw some super 15 year old wonderkid and was inspired to build an academy in Romania as there's only one there and it seems like a reasonable footballing nation.
Still really bored in all honesty, going to see what the EFA is like next season. I suspect it's going to hinder potential prize money opportunities with 3 runs. From my experience in beta I go from top of league in one run to bottom somewhere near bottom in another.
I reckon my sub must be due to expire shortly after the final qualifying season finishes. I'll see how it goes, but i'm not leaning towards renewing if i'm honest. I think the game has changed for the better but I just don't like my GW at all, the core game experience (in terms of your day to day) hasn't actually changed at all from the original launch, except there's even less of worth to do. I actually enjoy playing on the beta GW more than I do live.
Speaking of the beta, a quick mention to my heroes who won me promotion today. I had at around 4-5 players injured pretty much all season with suspensions on top. Every game was a battle but they seemed to fight for every ball in every game and even with my massive injury crisis they fought to the very end. Due to some issues at the start of the season this run lasted 5 days and I essentially played the season in 3 days. It's probably been my second favourite season ever on FML despite the fact I didn't play 1 human!
What's the Story ?
It's nice to see that in the post reset world that the forums have come back to life and we are seeing some interesting blog posts and new sites appearing. Over the past few months we have pretty much only had Jakswan's blog to read.
So I thought i'd do a quick round up of all the blogs that have caught my attention or had a post that I have enjoyed reading this week.
The corner debate rages ever onwards on the forum with some people claiming it has completely turned the rankings on their head while others are claiming it has not actually been fixed at all. Over at Fortuna Aeternitas , Guido has an opinion similar to one of my previous stories in We Are Catering for Idiots which has been my favourite read of the week.
Meanwhile the ever present Gameworld One has returned with a redesigned site and some interesting, albeit not exactly mainstream articles. I understand a new podcast has been apparently recorded which is something to look forward to.
If you are interested in stats or want to know how to make some minor skin/text amendments then there's some good stuff over at It's a Numbers Game which I found quite interesting. It has some useful information on jumping and the effects of pace/acceleration on average ratings which is worth reading.
Chief ME complainer during the beta , second only to myself, Guilherme Meyer's blog can be found at Huracan FC where he
gives out some of his tactical secrets and has a little moan about being robbed again ;)
Over at Refuse, Resist, Ramble Rik has wrote a nice piece about how the the roles of Moderators, Chat Helpers and Organisers fit into the (ideal) world.
Tom Delgado usually has something entertaining to say when his seemingly never ending quest for success has taken another turn for the worse. It doesn't sound like things are going much better for him so far as When FML isn't Fun describes, or take a look at his beta exploits here.
Los Elephants is worth checking out too.
I'm sure there's probably some I have forgot about as I always forget the bookmark them so let me know if there's some other good ones that are worth reading. I prefer reading the general game blogs rather than the ones solely focussed on "my team is doing.." stuff.
The best forum thread this week has been Official Quick Play Competitions where Durera has made some absolutely brilliant posts and suggestions on how competitions and XTRA FA stuff ought to be run. I really hope someone is listening to him, I PM'ed him and suggested emailing support to make sure RT had seen it - I hope he does.
Even my GW appears to have a blog! which looks like it's gonna be a winner.
Comments should be working again now, not entirely sure how I managed to break that... even reverting to the default templates wouldn't fix it ! Thanks for pointing this out go to Rik.
So I thought i'd do a quick round up of all the blogs that have caught my attention or had a post that I have enjoyed reading this week.
The corner debate rages ever onwards on the forum with some people claiming it has completely turned the rankings on their head while others are claiming it has not actually been fixed at all. Over at Fortuna Aeternitas , Guido has an opinion similar to one of my previous stories in We Are Catering for Idiots which has been my favourite read of the week.
Meanwhile the ever present Gameworld One has returned with a redesigned site and some interesting, albeit not exactly mainstream articles. I understand a new podcast has been apparently recorded which is something to look forward to.
If you are interested in stats or want to know how to make some minor skin/text amendments then there's some good stuff over at It's a Numbers Game which I found quite interesting. It has some useful information on jumping and the effects of pace/acceleration on average ratings which is worth reading.
Chief ME complainer during the beta , second only to myself, Guilherme Meyer's blog can be found at Huracan FC where he
gives out some of his tactical secrets and has a little moan about being robbed again ;)
Over at Refuse, Resist, Ramble Rik has wrote a nice piece about how the the roles of Moderators, Chat Helpers and Organisers fit into the (ideal) world.
Tom Delgado usually has something entertaining to say when his seemingly never ending quest for success has taken another turn for the worse. It doesn't sound like things are going much better for him so far as When FML isn't Fun describes, or take a look at his beta exploits here.
Los Elephants is worth checking out too.
I'm sure there's probably some I have forgot about as I always forget the bookmark them so let me know if there's some other good ones that are worth reading. I prefer reading the general game blogs rather than the ones solely focussed on "my team is doing.." stuff.
The best forum thread this week has been Official Quick Play Competitions where Durera has made some absolutely brilliant posts and suggestions on how competitions and XTRA FA stuff ought to be run. I really hope someone is listening to him, I PM'ed him and suggested emailing support to make sure RT had seen it - I hope he does.
Even my GW appears to have a blog! which looks like it's gonna be a winner.
Comments should be working again now, not entirely sure how I managed to break that... even reverting to the default templates wouldn't fix it ! Thanks for pointing this out go to Rik.
Friday 9 April 2010
Good Times, Bad Times
I don't know if anyone really reads my incoherent ramblings but I do quite like writing them and I expect this post is going to turn out that way.
I was going on the other day saying it was "all about your form!" and tonight has kind of highlighted this again to me.
I restarted last season on the beta and signed players as per my previous post for my template for success. However, due to the reset I haven't give them the due care and attention they deserve. I play and ORG in the AFA (EFA in live money) and managed to finish mid table in the Championship in the first two runs of the season without really playing much. I was hoping to try and add some weight to my point that player ability doesn't actually mean very much at all but lack of actually playing has hindered this a little.
Meanwhile, my team on live could do no wrong. I log on, get hammered then fluke some last minute winner, score some total fluke, score 2 in stoppage time, score offside goals and everything you can imagine. I've been tinkering a bit on live with some trials and tactics and lost several friendly games yesterday. Tonight I set up a quick play and my team which previously could do no wrong has been thoroughly beaten by pretty much everyone. I ain't too fussed by this, I actually don't mind losing when it's logical, and I deserved to lose these games tonight.
But i've been playing 2 GWs at the same time tonight and my beta team which was previously generally getting pasted all over the place by far better teams has taken the place of my live team! Suddenly they can do no wrong, PP has me top of the league! While typing this I remembered I kicked off a game 5 minutes ago, no worries, it doesn't need my attention, i'm unbeatable! (bollocks, they have just scored... brb! - yeah i've been 2swed!) None of the injuries are sticking tonight, nothing is going wrong.
Back to live, coming up to the last quick play game. The opposition is down to 10 men and my previously unbeatable team can't string two passes together, they can't do anything. They finally get a late equaliser and hold onto the draw like their lives depend on it. It's only a friendly competition, there's no stress and i'm not really fussed, just testing things out and all that.
But it really does highlight just how quickly and deadly seemingly random changes of form can be.
The beta team is in the AFA and we are on a 5 day season at the moment due to some previous issues with the league not starting. So when I logged on I had a shed load of games to play. As per my previous post I started by playing the easy home games first, then progressively working my way up to the more difficult teams to get my form going. This FA is the way forward, I haven't even played an FA game in the last 5 days on Live ! I really think more people ought to try this FA, it's so much better than the standard ones. There's always games to play and the AI limits are pretty relaxed and even if you fail in the first run of the season you have another couple to completely turn it round!
Anyway I didn't get a response to my email to support (I did say I didn't want one, and I don't) however, i'm sure it was just a coincidence that SA10 turned up in the GW tonight. Probably just a coincidence the MP rules changed to some resembling common sense and one of the default EXTA FA competitions actually started. Good work chaps.
I was going on the other day saying it was "all about your form!" and tonight has kind of highlighted this again to me.
I restarted last season on the beta and signed players as per my previous post for my template for success. However, due to the reset I haven't give them the due care and attention they deserve. I play and ORG in the AFA (EFA in live money) and managed to finish mid table in the Championship in the first two runs of the season without really playing much. I was hoping to try and add some weight to my point that player ability doesn't actually mean very much at all but lack of actually playing has hindered this a little.
Meanwhile, my team on live could do no wrong. I log on, get hammered then fluke some last minute winner, score some total fluke, score 2 in stoppage time, score offside goals and everything you can imagine. I've been tinkering a bit on live with some trials and tactics and lost several friendly games yesterday. Tonight I set up a quick play and my team which previously could do no wrong has been thoroughly beaten by pretty much everyone. I ain't too fussed by this, I actually don't mind losing when it's logical, and I deserved to lose these games tonight.
But i've been playing 2 GWs at the same time tonight and my beta team which was previously generally getting pasted all over the place by far better teams has taken the place of my live team! Suddenly they can do no wrong, PP has me top of the league! While typing this I remembered I kicked off a game 5 minutes ago, no worries, it doesn't need my attention, i'm unbeatable! (bollocks, they have just scored... brb! - yeah i've been 2swed!) None of the injuries are sticking tonight, nothing is going wrong.
Back to live, coming up to the last quick play game. The opposition is down to 10 men and my previously unbeatable team can't string two passes together, they can't do anything. They finally get a late equaliser and hold onto the draw like their lives depend on it. It's only a friendly competition, there's no stress and i'm not really fussed, just testing things out and all that.
But it really does highlight just how quickly and deadly seemingly random changes of form can be.
The beta team is in the AFA and we are on a 5 day season at the moment due to some previous issues with the league not starting. So when I logged on I had a shed load of games to play. As per my previous post I started by playing the easy home games first, then progressively working my way up to the more difficult teams to get my form going. This FA is the way forward, I haven't even played an FA game in the last 5 days on Live ! I really think more people ought to try this FA, it's so much better than the standard ones. There's always games to play and the AI limits are pretty relaxed and even if you fail in the first run of the season you have another couple to completely turn it round!
Anyway I didn't get a response to my email to support (I did say I didn't want one, and I don't) however, i'm sure it was just a coincidence that SA10 turned up in the GW tonight. Probably just a coincidence the MP rules changed to some resembling common sense and one of the default EXTA FA competitions actually started. Good work chaps.
Thursday 8 April 2010
Livin' on the Edge
There's somethin' wrong with the world today
The light bulb's gettin' dim
There's meltdown in the sky
Greetings,
This mail is regarding the GW Butragueno.
I don't especially want or expect a reply but I wish to express some concerns relating to the manner in which this GW is being organised, or not as the case seems to be.
With reduced emphasis on everything but official FA competitions I hoped that moderators and organises would take it upon themselves to turn GWs into a vibrant place of activity and interest. I anticipated this may take the form of friendly competitions run via the XTRA FA in terms of Quick Play competitions, weekly competitions, additional cups and games.
From what I can gather, several of the other GWs are running such competitions, yet in my GW we have had nothing whatsoever. I have asked, as have several other people why this is and the question is either ignored or answered with a strange non-nonsensical response. "We need to advertise it, people need to join, there's not many competitions in the XFA"
As a customer and supporter of the game I find it totally unacceptable that decisions relating to how GWs are run appear to be left completely in the hands of moderators who can apparently do as little or as much as they please. There needs to be some kind of vaguely consistent approach to how extra competitions are handled - they are least needs to be some.
I am really unable to grasp what the issue is here, why can my GW not have extra competitions and games to play ? I simply do not understand what the problem is. From what I can gather, organising the initial qualifying seasons is a fairly automated process so it's not as though their whole time is tied up dealing with this aspect of the game.
Could you please prod someone in my GW to actually do something and create some competitions please ? Failing that, i'd perhaps suggest replacing them with people who have some interest in making this game succeed.
Also some kind of clarification and consistency in relation to rules across GWs would be useful. Why have I always been allowed to use formatted text in the Market Place on previous GWs but this is not allowed on my current GW ? Why do I HAVE to state my JP level and assessment % when advertising youth players ? I could be lying about either fact anyway ? Surely the responsibility should lie with the buyer to discuss this with me. Is there really a rule stating i'm not allowed to post a link to a player that ONLY I have bid on in a wage auction ? I'm told that there was an official mail sent about this, unfortunately I did not receive this. I did request this to be forwarded to me so I could fully understand any additional rules which are not included in the Code of Conduct but unfortunately no one was able to provide this to me. In addition to this there are various other rules i'm fairly certain are simply made up.
Kind regards
-----
email I have sent to support tonight. Had enough already.
The light bulb's gettin' dim
There's meltdown in the sky
Greetings,
This mail is regarding the GW Butragueno.
I don't especially want or expect a reply but I wish to express some concerns relating to the manner in which this GW is being organised, or not as the case seems to be.
With reduced emphasis on everything but official FA competitions I hoped that moderators and organises would take it upon themselves to turn GWs into a vibrant place of activity and interest. I anticipated this may take the form of friendly competitions run via the XTRA FA in terms of Quick Play competitions, weekly competitions, additional cups and games.
From what I can gather, several of the other GWs are running such competitions, yet in my GW we have had nothing whatsoever. I have asked, as have several other people why this is and the question is either ignored or answered with a strange non-nonsensical response. "We need to advertise it, people need to join, there's not many competitions in the XFA"
As a customer and supporter of the game I find it totally unacceptable that decisions relating to how GWs are run appear to be left completely in the hands of moderators who can apparently do as little or as much as they please. There needs to be some kind of vaguely consistent approach to how extra competitions are handled - they are least needs to be some.
I am really unable to grasp what the issue is here, why can my GW not have extra competitions and games to play ? I simply do not understand what the problem is. From what I can gather, organising the initial qualifying seasons is a fairly automated process so it's not as though their whole time is tied up dealing with this aspect of the game.
Could you please prod someone in my GW to actually do something and create some competitions please ? Failing that, i'd perhaps suggest replacing them with people who have some interest in making this game succeed.
Also some kind of clarification and consistency in relation to rules across GWs would be useful. Why have I always been allowed to use formatted text in the Market Place on previous GWs but this is not allowed on my current GW ? Why do I HAVE to state my JP level and assessment % when advertising youth players ? I could be lying about either fact anyway ? Surely the responsibility should lie with the buyer to discuss this with me. Is there really a rule stating i'm not allowed to post a link to a player that ONLY I have bid on in a wage auction ? I'm told that there was an official mail sent about this, unfortunately I did not receive this. I did request this to be forwarded to me so I could fully understand any additional rules which are not included in the Code of Conduct but unfortunately no one was able to provide this to me. In addition to this there are various other rules i'm fairly certain are simply made up.
Kind regards
-----
email I have sent to support tonight. Had enough already.
Tuesday 6 April 2010
Tick Tock
8 days to go until my next game, good times.
Been outbid on various players so far, can't afford more than about £18k wages on anyone with a £110k signing on fee, about £10k short of buying anyone then.
Had a disagreement with a mod when I told him I don't follow made up rules.
Still no competitions, events or anything of interest running.
Nothing else happening.
Been outbid on various players so far, can't afford more than about £18k wages on anyone with a £110k signing on fee, about £10k short of buying anyone then.
Had a disagreement with a mod when I told him I don't follow made up rules.
Still no competitions, events or anything of interest running.
Nothing else happening.
Sunday 4 April 2010
Recipe for success
I'm fairly certain everyone thinks i'm a bit mad and most of the stuff I go on about is wrong, so bearing that in mind i've decided to share with you how to become a great team with a few easy steps. Of course, as with most things no one will listen to me so it makes no difference.
Ingredients
11 Players
1x Corner hacker
1x good corner taker
3x Fast strikers
2x Fast fullbacks
-Simple tactical knowledge
The Formation
Set up a simple 4-3-3. You can use the tactics creator to do this. You want to set it to be more fluid, you can choose control strategy if you think your players are superior but you may wish to stick with standard strategy instead. Passing should be set to more direct and roaming set to stick to position.
The Players
For all players you should avoid anyone with stamina below 14, you can compromise on DCs.
Technical and mental attributes are not especially important, it's all about the physicals, you want players with very strong physical attributes.
Fullbacks should have the following attributes. Pace & Acceleration must be at least 16 (the higher the better) and tackling around 14. Nothing else really matters but other defensive attributes are useful, but mainly look for the physicals.
Central Defence - Heading/Jumping - at least 17/17, this is important for corners. Pace & Acceleration should be at least 12. (higher is preferable but hard to find on a budget) Tackling and marking are the next attributes to look for but are of less importance. Filter on heading/jumping at 17 and tackling 14 then pick the best.
Forward, central - This is your money man. This needs to be your best player, he must have pace & acceleration at least 16+ (preferably higher) with strong dribbling ability. Finishing, composure etc are not important although they are obviously desirable. The faster and strong the better, this is the key.
Forwards, right and left - Pay attention to the footedness of the players, you want to ensure you have a left and right footer. Again, pace & acceleration is required here, you want 17/17 ideally with good dribbling attribute. Nothing else really matters but again, finishing and the likes are desirable.
Midfield - Doesn't really seem to make much difference what you do here. Just go for the physicals, as strong as possible. You obviously want to be looking for good passers and those with beneficial midfield attributes, dribbling is beneficial too. You want a DM in the middle then and at least one decent AMC on one of the sides. I've always been a bit crap at finding midfield players tbh, what i'm trying to say is go for someone who's reasonable in midfield but has very strong physicals.
Make sure one of the above players has at least 17 in corner taking.
The Tactics
You now need to go to all of your individual player instructions and set long shots to rarely. If you have a midfielder with especially good long shots you may want to allow ONE player to be set to sometimes.
Set corner aim to far post, set free kick aim to best header. You want to be taking inswinging corners so a corner taker for the left foot and one for the right would be useful.
You want your best header on attack far post and your second best header on challenge GK (both of these must be DCs, it doesn't work with strikers) and a third player on near post flick, a striker will do for this. Ensure you have plenty of players back so you don't get caught on the break - at least 3.
Duck N Dive
Also known as DnD ;) Ok something you need to understand now. The quality of your team and tactics actually has very little bearing on the result at all. This is absolutely crucial, you must manage your form. It's all about the form.
Therefore you need to ensure you have good form and mitigate any potential dips. You have a massive advantage in home games so you need to start your league campaign by playing a weak team at home to get a strong result. Pick your games carefully, you ideally want to play as many home games, against weak teams, as possible to start you off. It doesn't matter if you leave yourself with a load of away games as you will be on top form by then.
Hopefully you have now won all of your early home games, have followed my above team advice and are now in top form. You are almost unbeatable so challenge the good teams now ! If you go more than 2 games without winning - be that a draw or a loss - DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER. STOP STOP STOP. DUCK AND DIVE. Get yourself on DND. Stop what you are doing, you are about to enter bad form. You need to find someone bad to play or someone suffering injuries, someone else bad form. Duck in and out of DND and snipe your targets, you MUST get yourself back to winning ways or you are screwed.
I've experienced going 40 odd games being completely unbeatable to literally not winning a single game in 40 games, believe me - bad form is a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Avoid leaving games to your AI if at all possible, it's far easier to beat other peoples AI. If your on bad form, make sure you check who's online in your league before removing yourself from DND. Only do so if there's some easy teams about.
Matches
If you are not in control of the match within the first 15-20 minutes or the opposition is looking dangerous you need to change things immediately.
Hassle opponents and pump ball into the box combined are good shouts. If you have done as I have said you should have vastly superior physical dominance and stamina over the opponents and should be able to take advantage.
If that's not working try run at defence. You should have tons of pace in your side and good dribbling so you can run straight through them.
Avoid going massively attacking if you are losing. If you are going to lose, your going to lose, take a 1-0 defeat over a 3-0, it will mitigate form and morale reduction.
If you are losing but have been dominating the play then control/attacking strategy is a worthwhile change. Pay attention to the condition of the opposistion players and try and push home your physical dominance if possible.
If you are playing a title rival and it's going sour then it's time to get dirty. Get stuck in, your aim now is to injure as many players as possible to create problems for them in other games. Hassle opponents and hard tackling are a must.
If someone has an especially annoyingly good player you may want to hard tackle him from the start to try and injure him, if one of your DCs gets booked then you need to remove this immediately.
Key points
Physical players - do not compromise.
Stamina - avoid <14
Manage your form - duck n dive!
Cooking time
About a season
If your feeling adventurous then try the above without playing 433 but another narrow formation instead.
Of course, i'm totally deluded and wrong about everything so this simple formula wont win you any games, so don't bother trying it ;)
Taste
Hit submit team, sit back and enjoy your 3 strikers bamboozle the opposition defence, i'd suggest eating some nuts at the same time.
*** for reference - i'm currently only employing about half of the above, due to an awful pool, mainly the plan for next season!
Ingredients
11 Players
1x Corner hacker
1x good corner taker
3x Fast strikers
2x Fast fullbacks
-Simple tactical knowledge
The Formation
Set up a simple 4-3-3. You can use the tactics creator to do this. You want to set it to be more fluid, you can choose control strategy if you think your players are superior but you may wish to stick with standard strategy instead. Passing should be set to more direct and roaming set to stick to position.
The Players
For all players you should avoid anyone with stamina below 14, you can compromise on DCs.
Technical and mental attributes are not especially important, it's all about the physicals, you want players with very strong physical attributes.
Fullbacks should have the following attributes. Pace & Acceleration must be at least 16 (the higher the better) and tackling around 14. Nothing else really matters but other defensive attributes are useful, but mainly look for the physicals.
Central Defence - Heading/Jumping - at least 17/17, this is important for corners. Pace & Acceleration should be at least 12. (higher is preferable but hard to find on a budget) Tackling and marking are the next attributes to look for but are of less importance. Filter on heading/jumping at 17 and tackling 14 then pick the best.
Forward, central - This is your money man. This needs to be your best player, he must have pace & acceleration at least 16+ (preferably higher) with strong dribbling ability. Finishing, composure etc are not important although they are obviously desirable. The faster and strong the better, this is the key.
Forwards, right and left - Pay attention to the footedness of the players, you want to ensure you have a left and right footer. Again, pace & acceleration is required here, you want 17/17 ideally with good dribbling attribute. Nothing else really matters but again, finishing and the likes are desirable.
Midfield - Doesn't really seem to make much difference what you do here. Just go for the physicals, as strong as possible. You obviously want to be looking for good passers and those with beneficial midfield attributes, dribbling is beneficial too. You want a DM in the middle then and at least one decent AMC on one of the sides. I've always been a bit crap at finding midfield players tbh, what i'm trying to say is go for someone who's reasonable in midfield but has very strong physicals.
Make sure one of the above players has at least 17 in corner taking.
The Tactics
You now need to go to all of your individual player instructions and set long shots to rarely. If you have a midfielder with especially good long shots you may want to allow ONE player to be set to sometimes.
Set corner aim to far post, set free kick aim to best header. You want to be taking inswinging corners so a corner taker for the left foot and one for the right would be useful.
You want your best header on attack far post and your second best header on challenge GK (both of these must be DCs, it doesn't work with strikers) and a third player on near post flick, a striker will do for this. Ensure you have plenty of players back so you don't get caught on the break - at least 3.
Duck N Dive
Also known as DnD ;) Ok something you need to understand now. The quality of your team and tactics actually has very little bearing on the result at all. This is absolutely crucial, you must manage your form. It's all about the form.
Therefore you need to ensure you have good form and mitigate any potential dips. You have a massive advantage in home games so you need to start your league campaign by playing a weak team at home to get a strong result. Pick your games carefully, you ideally want to play as many home games, against weak teams, as possible to start you off. It doesn't matter if you leave yourself with a load of away games as you will be on top form by then.
Hopefully you have now won all of your early home games, have followed my above team advice and are now in top form. You are almost unbeatable so challenge the good teams now ! If you go more than 2 games without winning - be that a draw or a loss - DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER. STOP STOP STOP. DUCK AND DIVE. Get yourself on DND. Stop what you are doing, you are about to enter bad form. You need to find someone bad to play or someone suffering injuries, someone else bad form. Duck in and out of DND and snipe your targets, you MUST get yourself back to winning ways or you are screwed.
I've experienced going 40 odd games being completely unbeatable to literally not winning a single game in 40 games, believe me - bad form is a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Avoid leaving games to your AI if at all possible, it's far easier to beat other peoples AI. If your on bad form, make sure you check who's online in your league before removing yourself from DND. Only do so if there's some easy teams about.
Matches
If you are not in control of the match within the first 15-20 minutes or the opposition is looking dangerous you need to change things immediately.
Hassle opponents and pump ball into the box combined are good shouts. If you have done as I have said you should have vastly superior physical dominance and stamina over the opponents and should be able to take advantage.
If that's not working try run at defence. You should have tons of pace in your side and good dribbling so you can run straight through them.
Avoid going massively attacking if you are losing. If you are going to lose, your going to lose, take a 1-0 defeat over a 3-0, it will mitigate form and morale reduction.
If you are losing but have been dominating the play then control/attacking strategy is a worthwhile change. Pay attention to the condition of the opposistion players and try and push home your physical dominance if possible.
If you are playing a title rival and it's going sour then it's time to get dirty. Get stuck in, your aim now is to injure as many players as possible to create problems for them in other games. Hassle opponents and hard tackling are a must.
If someone has an especially annoyingly good player you may want to hard tackle him from the start to try and injure him, if one of your DCs gets booked then you need to remove this immediately.
Key points
Physical players - do not compromise.
Stamina - avoid <14
Manage your form - duck n dive!
Cooking time
About a season
If your feeling adventurous then try the above without playing 433 but another narrow formation instead.
Of course, i'm totally deluded and wrong about everything so this simple formula wont win you any games, so don't bother trying it ;)
Taste
Hit submit team, sit back and enjoy your 3 strikers bamboozle the opposition defence, i'd suggest eating some nuts at the same time.
*** for reference - i'm currently only employing about half of the above, due to an awful pool, mainly the plan for next season!
Saturday 3 April 2010
I'm the chairman of the bored.
I'm in the Vintage FA right now and I have played 22 games in the first 10 days or so. This was a deliberate tactic to play as many teams as possible early on while I had good form and before they had the chance to sign players as they unlocked.
So now I have 11 days to go until any AI lands, I have played all of the active teams in my qualifying group and as per normal FML the rest seem to have signed up and not even bothered playing the game. Half my group is inactive or has signed in just a couple of times so i'm unlikely to meet them live.
But maybe something interesting is going on in my GW ? Yeah, I can dream. As per usual, it seems no one has the slightest interest in doing anything whatsoever to make the game fun. It's almost like they want the game to fail ? Maybe they used up all their energy sucking arse to become mods in the first place and can't be bothered to do anything else ?
The number of players on my GW has slowly dropped from 200+ online back down the normal FML number of around 80-100. Why ? Because there's nothing to fucking do, there's literally no reason for me to be online for the next 11 days.
When is the Xtra FA starting I ask. When people have had the chance to join i'm told. What ? Everyone is already in it ? When is the ladder starting ? Soon i'm told.
Seriously, I just don't understand ??? What IS the problem here. Why can't competitions be run ? What IS the issue ? Am I being unreasonable expecting there to be official competitions to be running every day ? I'm paying for this game and there's no reason whatsoever for me to even be online. I know what to expect from the game, i'm not expecting some amazing new single player experience the next time I log in, but why can't we make the best of what we have got ? Why ??
Before live relaunched, when the beta GW was busy it was great, there was always something going on, some event, quick plays, quizzes, RTG for a while, competitions to beat the CPU teams etc etc.
Qualifying is done, as I've stated before you know what the league table is going to look like after a few days. I'm going to finish 1st - 3rd, there's no doubt.
Next season I think i'm going to head off to the Extra Time FA to give me something more to do, and it looks much easier than my current FA so I should be a shoe in for a bit more prize money.
Anyway, i've become so bored i've decided to forget my keep it tight strategy and i'm blowing as much as the bank will allow on a bid tomorrow. I've thought about this extensively and it's a no lose situation, I hope.
Cya in 11 days time barring signing in to make bids!
So now I have 11 days to go until any AI lands, I have played all of the active teams in my qualifying group and as per normal FML the rest seem to have signed up and not even bothered playing the game. Half my group is inactive or has signed in just a couple of times so i'm unlikely to meet them live.
But maybe something interesting is going on in my GW ? Yeah, I can dream. As per usual, it seems no one has the slightest interest in doing anything whatsoever to make the game fun. It's almost like they want the game to fail ? Maybe they used up all their energy sucking arse to become mods in the first place and can't be bothered to do anything else ?
The number of players on my GW has slowly dropped from 200+ online back down the normal FML number of around 80-100. Why ? Because there's nothing to fucking do, there's literally no reason for me to be online for the next 11 days.
When is the Xtra FA starting I ask. When people have had the chance to join i'm told. What ? Everyone is already in it ? When is the ladder starting ? Soon i'm told.
Seriously, I just don't understand ??? What IS the problem here. Why can't competitions be run ? What IS the issue ? Am I being unreasonable expecting there to be official competitions to be running every day ? I'm paying for this game and there's no reason whatsoever for me to even be online. I know what to expect from the game, i'm not expecting some amazing new single player experience the next time I log in, but why can't we make the best of what we have got ? Why ??
Before live relaunched, when the beta GW was busy it was great, there was always something going on, some event, quick plays, quizzes, RTG for a while, competitions to beat the CPU teams etc etc.
Qualifying is done, as I've stated before you know what the league table is going to look like after a few days. I'm going to finish 1st - 3rd, there's no doubt.
Next season I think i'm going to head off to the Extra Time FA to give me something more to do, and it looks much easier than my current FA so I should be a shoe in for a bit more prize money.
Anyway, i've become so bored i've decided to forget my keep it tight strategy and i'm blowing as much as the bank will allow on a bid tomorrow. I've thought about this extensively and it's a no lose situation, I hope.
Cya in 11 days time barring signing in to make bids!
Friday 2 April 2010
I'm cancelling!!!11
Actually i'm not, i'm fairly happy at the moment. However, reading the forums it seems any minor little thing is causing people to threaten to cancel their subscription. In my opinion it's generally a blatant excuse for general ineptness.
Lets look at the common reasons:
Corners
Oh my god, someone has scored 20 goals from corners in 20 games. I'M CANCELLING!!!
T-Bag says: There's not a lot wrong with corners, have you TRIED defending them ? Pretty much every single one I have scored, my corner man hasn't even been marked by a defender ? Do you need an explanation why your 5'6 winger can't mark my 6'6 DC ? There are a few too many goals coming from corners though, so go provide some links so they can reduce it a little.
Injuries
I've had 5 players injured in 10 games, omg omg, this is ridiculous, I should always be able to play my best team at all times, I'm not going to win the league now because I have injuries. I should never need to use any subs or backup players, what is this nonsense!
T-Bag says: Go buy some more players fools. Go create a football squad rather than a team of 11 players. It's not exactly a novel concept when managing a football club.
But but, I can't afford any players ? If you genuinely can't afford to buy some more players for 16k then you are an idiot and deserve these problems. If you can afford 16k i'll be happy to point out dozens of great players you can buy.
Someone got a wonderkid in their pool
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!! Someone got a wonderkid in their pool and I didn't !! No one should get wonderkids, everyone should get one! This guy is going to be the best team in the world forever just because he got this this player. He's going to sell him for £20m and beat everyone forever.
T-Bag says: So fucking what ? Sort your own team out instead of worrying about what someone else got. Go find some players to make your club better, make your tactics the best they can be for your players, win something, win some money and go buy the wonderkid off him, go buy another one. My pool was bloody awful, one of the worse I have ever seen yet i'm top of my qualifying group. Why is that ? Maybe because I spent a little bit of time sorting my team out ?
The days off getting in early and copying & pasting a list of wonderkids into search have gone. Take what you have got and go MANAGE your bloody team. Sell some players, buy some more. I managed to sell the utter crap in my starting pool so I know it's possible.
Where are my skill points?
SUPPORT ARE THE LOSE, I SHOULD HAVE 50m SKILZ POINT BUT I ONLY HAVE 30m. I'm quitting unless they are all returned within the next 6 hours.
T-Bag says: Skills don't do anything. Next.
Other
This is a genuine point someone made in my GW. Some guy set up a quick play competition for 20 teams, then reduced the number to 10 so had to remove some clubs. To be nice he sent a mail asking people to confirm within 5 minutes and he would remove the away/offline people to get the competition going.
Some guy was AFK at the time then went into a rage he got removed and said he was quitting and moving to another GW.
Another guy was going mad that our FA had no U17 competitions and couldn't seem to understand the explanation that there was only 10 U17 teams on the whole GW.
T-Bag says: What is wrong with everyone ? I must conclude that now everyone has had an equal start and they can no longer hop to another GW to perpetually start again they need a new excuses for anything that goes wrong. Stop trying to justify your own problems with half arsed excuses and threats to leave the game. Someone is always going to make it to the top before everyone else, just play your own game and have fun. The FAs have been tiered in such a way that it actually works much better at the middle/lower levels than it used to so you should never really be having any contact with the better clubs if they do break away.
THINK about what is causing whatever issue is effecting you then THINK about what the solution might be. Tip - It's the bleeding obvious one staring you in the face.
Lets look at the common reasons:
Corners
Oh my god, someone has scored 20 goals from corners in 20 games. I'M CANCELLING!!!
T-Bag says: There's not a lot wrong with corners, have you TRIED defending them ? Pretty much every single one I have scored, my corner man hasn't even been marked by a defender ? Do you need an explanation why your 5'6 winger can't mark my 6'6 DC ? There are a few too many goals coming from corners though, so go provide some links so they can reduce it a little.
Injuries
I've had 5 players injured in 10 games, omg omg, this is ridiculous, I should always be able to play my best team at all times, I'm not going to win the league now because I have injuries. I should never need to use any subs or backup players, what is this nonsense!
T-Bag says: Go buy some more players fools. Go create a football squad rather than a team of 11 players. It's not exactly a novel concept when managing a football club.
But but, I can't afford any players ? If you genuinely can't afford to buy some more players for 16k then you are an idiot and deserve these problems. If you can afford 16k i'll be happy to point out dozens of great players you can buy.
Someone got a wonderkid in their pool
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!! Someone got a wonderkid in their pool and I didn't !! No one should get wonderkids, everyone should get one! This guy is going to be the best team in the world forever just because he got this this player. He's going to sell him for £20m and beat everyone forever.
T-Bag says: So fucking what ? Sort your own team out instead of worrying about what someone else got. Go find some players to make your club better, make your tactics the best they can be for your players, win something, win some money and go buy the wonderkid off him, go buy another one. My pool was bloody awful, one of the worse I have ever seen yet i'm top of my qualifying group. Why is that ? Maybe because I spent a little bit of time sorting my team out ?
The days off getting in early and copying & pasting a list of wonderkids into search have gone. Take what you have got and go MANAGE your bloody team. Sell some players, buy some more. I managed to sell the utter crap in my starting pool so I know it's possible.
Where are my skill points?
SUPPORT ARE THE LOSE, I SHOULD HAVE 50m SKILZ POINT BUT I ONLY HAVE 30m. I'm quitting unless they are all returned within the next 6 hours.
T-Bag says: Skills don't do anything. Next.
Other
This is a genuine point someone made in my GW. Some guy set up a quick play competition for 20 teams, then reduced the number to 10 so had to remove some clubs. To be nice he sent a mail asking people to confirm within 5 minutes and he would remove the away/offline people to get the competition going.
Some guy was AFK at the time then went into a rage he got removed and said he was quitting and moving to another GW.
Another guy was going mad that our FA had no U17 competitions and couldn't seem to understand the explanation that there was only 10 U17 teams on the whole GW.
T-Bag says: What is wrong with everyone ? I must conclude that now everyone has had an equal start and they can no longer hop to another GW to perpetually start again they need a new excuses for anything that goes wrong. Stop trying to justify your own problems with half arsed excuses and threats to leave the game. Someone is always going to make it to the top before everyone else, just play your own game and have fun. The FAs have been tiered in such a way that it actually works much better at the middle/lower levels than it used to so you should never really be having any contact with the better clubs if they do break away.
THINK about what is causing whatever issue is effecting you then THINK about what the solution might be. Tip - It's the bleeding obvious one staring you in the face.
Thursday 1 April 2010
Kung Fu
Full on, I moved to Hong Kong
With Bruce Lee's brother and Johnny Wong
I've posted about injuries before but I thought I may as well do a more considered post this time.
First off the old injury system was stupid on all levels. It used to drive me insane how I would get players injured in some random QP which didn't even have any prize money thus leaving me short in the league. Then I would end up dodging opponents waiting for my player to come back.
Of course I usually had some kind of backup and I really wanted to give some of these guys a shot, but why would I ? I could wait a day and have a HHN striker scoring a hatrick or I would give some chump i'd taken a punt on a chance. There's not even a decision to make here, you log off and wait. I wanted to have to play my fringe players but it simply wasn't worth the risk especially when no one else was doing this either.
So finally injuries are changed to a match based system so you can no longer dodge games and crucially you can play as many friendly games as you like without the chance for your season to go down the pan.
Great ! Except now I don't play any friendly games because there's no point ! My old GW pretty much avoided the DYM thing and people had the sense not to join them. There was only one guy running them and they were rank/reputation restricted so I was never allowed to join. "DYM rank 50+!!" etc. We did manage to get a few small prize money competitions running regular, there wasn't much cash to be made but it gave you something to play for.
The second reason I'd play friendly games was to try and win team of the week or push on up the rankings. Again there's no longer any point to this either as the prize is RP 100k and the rankings are soon going to be meaningless again once we split into Bronze, Silver etc. So I can now play as many friendly games as I like, except I don't want to play any now.
The main complaint is predictably people who are unhappy with the amount and length of the injuries being sustained. People are used to being able to have squads of 16 players with slender cover but this isn't enough any more. A football management game which doesn't require squad management isn't really much of a management game is it ?
Generally i'd say you are looking at having 2-4 players out at all times which is probably about right. Obviously some people are going to get unlucky but perhaps they have injury prone players or no physio skills to help. I'd say you should be looking at least 1 backup player for each position. So if you play 4-4-2 you would want 4 strikers, 4 DCs, 4 wingers etc. In the old days I would have just gone for 1 backup striker, 1 backup DC etc.
I do however think there are a couple of perception issues which are seeming to exaggerate the problem a little. The first is the ME shows every single knock as a highlight where as on FM10 it barely shows any on key highlights so you don't even notice some of them. I would say there does seem to be far too many knocks but when the ME is showing you 5+ every game then they really stick in your mind.
The second is a bit of a flaw with how the injury system works because the problem it solved has actually created a new problem. You are only getting players injured in official games, so who are you playing in official games ? You are playing your strongest 11 players, therefore the only players you are ever going to see injured are members best 11.
If you go look at clubs in real life i'd guess you would see that every single one actually has quite a lot of players injured, but how many of them are reserve team players and how many are youth players who don't figure in the first team ?
We are told that the injury rate in FML is lower than real life and i'm sure it is. But on FML the only players getting injured are first team players so i'd assume that the percentage of first choice players injured in FML is actually much higher than real life.
My other annoyance is the number of players getting injured during matches, whether they stick or not. Many don't stick for me which is nice but it's more common to see a player go off injured than it is to get through a game without someone getting injured. Between both teams you are looking at 2-3 players, or often more, getting slightly injured every single game with many more knocks on top of that. This is totally unrealistic, it doesn't happen on FM10 and it doesn't happen in real life. I never use all of my subs any more because you can guarantee that someone is going to get injured at some point.
I'd like to see match based injuries reduced by around 50% but training injuries increased by the same value to compensate. Now i'm sure this would lead to much rage when people logged on to find out that their star striker has picked up a 25 match injury falling over a cone in training. But at least this way, ALL of your squad is going to be susceptible to injury rather than just your best 11. Every match I play at the moment I know there's a good chance that one of my best players, and I don't have many "best players"!! is running the risk of getting himself crippled. I'd rather log on instead and find out that my backup youth striker has put his back out stretching for the TV remote.
I do actually generally like the new injury system including the amount of injuries but I do have some rage. When a player comes back from an injury they tend to be on 85-90% condition depending on how long they have been out for. In case you have missed this, condition no longer increases with time either ! So this means you have to play games to get condition up too. With the way that it drops in game now it would be silly to risk a key player on 90% because he's going to become useless fairly quickly.
If a player comes back on 85% fitness, the first game will tend to take him to about 92% fitness, then each game after that seems to only increase fitness by 1-2% ! So you need to play a ridiculous amount of games to get them ready. CPU clubs will do - I actually spend most of my time logged on banging out games in challenges trying to make sure everyone is back up to fitness.
With Bruce Lee's brother and Johnny Wong
I've posted about injuries before but I thought I may as well do a more considered post this time.
First off the old injury system was stupid on all levels. It used to drive me insane how I would get players injured in some random QP which didn't even have any prize money thus leaving me short in the league. Then I would end up dodging opponents waiting for my player to come back.
Of course I usually had some kind of backup and I really wanted to give some of these guys a shot, but why would I ? I could wait a day and have a HHN striker scoring a hatrick or I would give some chump i'd taken a punt on a chance. There's not even a decision to make here, you log off and wait. I wanted to have to play my fringe players but it simply wasn't worth the risk especially when no one else was doing this either.
So finally injuries are changed to a match based system so you can no longer dodge games and crucially you can play as many friendly games as you like without the chance for your season to go down the pan.
Great ! Except now I don't play any friendly games because there's no point ! My old GW pretty much avoided the DYM thing and people had the sense not to join them. There was only one guy running them and they were rank/reputation restricted so I was never allowed to join. "DYM rank 50+!!" etc. We did manage to get a few small prize money competitions running regular, there wasn't much cash to be made but it gave you something to play for.
The second reason I'd play friendly games was to try and win team of the week or push on up the rankings. Again there's no longer any point to this either as the prize is RP 100k and the rankings are soon going to be meaningless again once we split into Bronze, Silver etc. So I can now play as many friendly games as I like, except I don't want to play any now.
The main complaint is predictably people who are unhappy with the amount and length of the injuries being sustained. People are used to being able to have squads of 16 players with slender cover but this isn't enough any more. A football management game which doesn't require squad management isn't really much of a management game is it ?
Generally i'd say you are looking at having 2-4 players out at all times which is probably about right. Obviously some people are going to get unlucky but perhaps they have injury prone players or no physio skills to help. I'd say you should be looking at least 1 backup player for each position. So if you play 4-4-2 you would want 4 strikers, 4 DCs, 4 wingers etc. In the old days I would have just gone for 1 backup striker, 1 backup DC etc.
I do however think there are a couple of perception issues which are seeming to exaggerate the problem a little. The first is the ME shows every single knock as a highlight where as on FM10 it barely shows any on key highlights so you don't even notice some of them. I would say there does seem to be far too many knocks but when the ME is showing you 5+ every game then they really stick in your mind.
The second is a bit of a flaw with how the injury system works because the problem it solved has actually created a new problem. You are only getting players injured in official games, so who are you playing in official games ? You are playing your strongest 11 players, therefore the only players you are ever going to see injured are members best 11.
If you go look at clubs in real life i'd guess you would see that every single one actually has quite a lot of players injured, but how many of them are reserve team players and how many are youth players who don't figure in the first team ?
We are told that the injury rate in FML is lower than real life and i'm sure it is. But on FML the only players getting injured are first team players so i'd assume that the percentage of first choice players injured in FML is actually much higher than real life.
My other annoyance is the number of players getting injured during matches, whether they stick or not. Many don't stick for me which is nice but it's more common to see a player go off injured than it is to get through a game without someone getting injured. Between both teams you are looking at 2-3 players, or often more, getting slightly injured every single game with many more knocks on top of that. This is totally unrealistic, it doesn't happen on FM10 and it doesn't happen in real life. I never use all of my subs any more because you can guarantee that someone is going to get injured at some point.
I'd like to see match based injuries reduced by around 50% but training injuries increased by the same value to compensate. Now i'm sure this would lead to much rage when people logged on to find out that their star striker has picked up a 25 match injury falling over a cone in training. But at least this way, ALL of your squad is going to be susceptible to injury rather than just your best 11. Every match I play at the moment I know there's a good chance that one of my best players, and I don't have many "best players"!! is running the risk of getting himself crippled. I'd rather log on instead and find out that my backup youth striker has put his back out stretching for the TV remote.
I do actually generally like the new injury system including the amount of injuries but I do have some rage. When a player comes back from an injury they tend to be on 85-90% condition depending on how long they have been out for. In case you have missed this, condition no longer increases with time either ! So this means you have to play games to get condition up too. With the way that it drops in game now it would be silly to risk a key player on 90% because he's going to become useless fairly quickly.
If a player comes back on 85% fitness, the first game will tend to take him to about 92% fitness, then each game after that seems to only increase fitness by 1-2% ! So you need to play a ridiculous amount of games to get them ready. CPU clubs will do - I actually spend most of my time logged on banging out games in challenges trying to make sure everyone is back up to fitness.
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