Subscription cancelled.
Fuck this game, fuck the shitty match engine, fuck it up the arse, fuck everyone involved with it, i'm done. The game is horrifically broken.
Form is a complete fucking joke. Just because I lost a few games toward the end of last season and despite replacing much of my squad, why does this mean I have to start the next season in bad form ?
Why, despite having the best squad in the division in terms of ability can I not win a single game ? Why ? All of my players are prime match engine hackers, they are better than any other team in the division. My tactics are perfectly set up to exploit all the ME holes, yet I STILL CANT FUCKING WIN A GAME DUE TO THIS BULLSHIT FORM CRAP.
I've had 6 CCCS, i've had 60% possession, he scores with 1st shot on goal. He scores with 2nd shot on goal. I continue to dominate the game, it's 2-2. He's down to 10 men, OF FUCKING COURSE HE SCORES THE WINNER with his 3rd shot on goal.
I'm playing an all youth team with an average ability of 11. Most of his players don't have more than few attributes in double figures, yet he totally destroys me ? How on earth is this football ? What's changed from last season ? I replaced a load of 16k AF players, who won the division, with good players worth money?
Every game is freak series of events where I dominate the game and get screwed over by something totally bizarre. I've seen this in beta where I went from finishing 2nd in Premier League to relegation spots in the Championship in the space of 2 weeks. Right. Ok. That's not random is it ? Nope, not at all.
Like it's going to get any better with the new ME changes. We were complaining about this youth team crap in DECEMBER, NINE MONTHS ago. Why wasn't it fixed then ? How much longer before the new ME stuff is released ? It will no doubt still be broken in some new exciting way.
The 433 thing was well known before the reset too, it was moaned about on the beta forums quite a lot but again, "there's nothing to see here, move along"
There's absolutely nothing of interest in development for the game as far as I can see either. Youth academies are bollocks, I don't give a shit what they do with them, I have absolutely no interest in this whatsoever.
What else is there in the pipeline... Cheating, Market Value and Moderation apparently. Great, that's really going to give me something else to do isn't it.
The game is full of half arsed, half finished features like reward points, stadiums and CPU challenges which add absolutely sweet fuck all to the game.
Develop _things to do_ No one gives a crap about how Market Value is calculated. It's not even as though you can play in fun competitions due to this minor/major form rubbish which I have also been moaning about for probably going on 18 months now. I'm pretty sure the reason I started this blog was partially down to that.
I feel sorry for Ov in a way because he's spent a lot of time developing the game and listening to feedback for the whole thing to be ruined by the shitty ME. The new FAs work well (in general), things like player pools were cool and the injury system is a massive improvement. Well, the system is, having 5-6 players injured every fucking game isn't.... but I digress again.
But why was starting a new GW and the resultant economy effects not tested before the reset ? No new GW was run any further than half a season so no one ever saw what was going to happen to the economy, no one knew what would happen with inflation. Things like all the players becoming unlocked at the end of season 1 went unnoticed.
Why was no proper XFA structure put in place ? Some GWs are pretty good for this, but why was no specific XFA event organises appointed to create and run community competitions ? My other GW was a joke, it wasn't until I complained to support that they finally decided to start some, and even then the ones they did were shit, had stupid rules and were completely pointless due things like home playing rights being on in every competition.
What would make me play again ? FML + the old match engine we had before 1.3 (I'll pay everyone's sub for a month if the current one is even playable before the end of this year), a proper PvE structure, no major/minor form and someone with some sense appointed to be in charge of the XFA in every GW. I'd also remove half the mods for being complete clueless fuckwits (tmaz ones are all fine)
I'd also want a new GW, not because of the catching up thing, but because the database is fucked on most GWs now due every other player being an Olympic sprinter - again, raised at least 6 months ago about there being too many high paced regens. I noticed this in Miller well before the reset with just about every team filled with massively pacey youth players.
But the trouble with the beta is there's about 15 people who post on the forums. So you get about 3 people who think something is wrong, a couple who disagree and the rest don't have an opinion on that issue. So SI see 3 people moaning about something (433 anyone? Youth teams anyone?) then think it's not an issue. Then it gets rolled out in live and everyone is going mental about it while a few people are sitting there banging heads on desks thinking.... Well I did say....
There's simply no enjoyment in the game any more, there's no rhyme reason to results, there's no reason to do anything tactical. It's like noughts and crosses, where you know if you do the right thing first you will win every single time. There's absolutely no logic to anything you need to do. You just play 433, play narrow, get loads of pace and jumping and you win. Until completely out of the blue hit bad form and you simply cannot win under any circumstance.
I don't think the game is ever going to succeed. Considering what needs adding, and factoring in SI time, I reckon we are looking at another 18 months of development time. A lot of people say the game was more fun before the reset but if you think about it nothing much has changed. But I enjoyed it more too, why ? Probably because the game has always been fun for the minority, for the few teams at the top of the pile. In the new FML, this isn't even fun any more so even the top teams are bored. Since rankings were killed, since money making competitions were removed (and not filled by some decent XFA stuff in most GWs) there's nothing to do as a top team and making money is easy. Then you don't need any skill because you just do the 433 with pace. Right now I feel like I did before I said the game needed to be reset.... a few months later it was.
Anyway i've kinda quit several times before, but my main team subscription lapsed a couple of months back and my second account IS cancelled now, so that's it.
If I was given a free 12 month subscription right now, I wouldn't use it. I don't even want to play the game for free. It's a complete waste of time logging in, to do nothing, so you can get AI to play league games where the result will depend on which way the wind is blowing.
I could ramble on about this for about another 10,000 words but everyone has probably stopped reading by now.
If anyone still is reading now, every single thing i've moaned about on FML has become a big problem/issue a few months after I said it would. So if you want to make the game good by doing one thing, listen to me and.... Sort out PvE
Rage out.
Wednesday 18 August 2010
Sunday 15 August 2010
Oh Shit!
Wage auctions have gone epically bad and i've not really managed to sign anyone. I changed tact and went for players on the free agent list too but lost out on them too ! This wasn't especially helped by the fact I was away for the weekend and missed a couple of days of wage auctions either. I've punted in on a load of old free agents which should hopefully last a season or so and get me promoted.
I'd decided to configure email alerts for transfers and was checking these on the iphone while out with the GF. She was interested in knowing what I was doing, so I figured this it was about time to explain FML to her.
She was not impressed. I'm not allowed to play it any more, the other girls there were also deeply offended and they all seemed to have had some kind of bad boyfriend related FM experiences.
I'd decided to configure email alerts for transfers and was checking these on the iphone while out with the GF. She was interested in knowing what I was doing, so I figured this it was about time to explain FML to her.
She was not impressed. I'm not allowed to play it any more, the other girls there were also deeply offended and they all seemed to have had some kind of bad boyfriend related FM experiences.
Friday 13 August 2010
Wouldn't it be nice
Things seem pretty quiet it the world of FML of late.
The only hot topics seem to be the ongoing ME saga and the major/minor competition form seems to finally be getting some attention after I have spent the last year or so complaining about it !
Those issues aside there seems to be a general despondence from many of the long time FML'ers. I think in the past there was always a big issue to unite people, like the Gameworlds were dying, the game was going to die and various other big issues. I really don't think we have any massive issues like this any more. I think due to this people are starting to see the bigger picture and they are thinking "you know what ? I'm kind of bored"
Of course, many are bored because of ME related issues but it goes further than that and back to the age old issue of there not being a right lot to do. Other than a few daily things to do you are essentially limited to playing matches.
So what exactly is it people DO want from the game ? I'd have thought that PvE would have been of massive interest to people. A proper engaging PvE experience where there is always something for you to do when you want to do it and how you want to do it. Something to take away from the stress and worry of official league games.
But judging by the lack of interest in the what would you like to see in PvE thread, then maybe not ?
I don't get it, what do people want to do instead ? Play Poker ? Top Trumps ? What else is there to do in an football game other than play matches ? I really don't think an MMO can work without a proper PvE experience. I don't know of one which works on a purely PvP basis, although I guess there probably is one.
While i'm generalising a lot here, the FM titles have always tended to attract a different type of gamer to normal games. I always got the impression that many FM players never really played _other_ games. There's nothing wrong with this but I think it is giving people some kind of tunnel vision where they are just seeing PvP and live games as the be all and end all.
There's 24 hours in a day, there's people online from other timezones, many leagues only have ~40 games in a season.... That's a couple a day. What are the odds you are actually going to be able to PvP all of these games ? Are you going to come online and sit there for 12 hours waiting for the time the other manager comes on ?
Maybe you WOULD stay online for 12 hours if there was something else to do ? But I have a life and don't want to spend 12 hours online. Yes, because everyone who starts playing an MMO does it with the clear intention to spend their entire life on it don't they ? I remember about 10 years ago, being up at 3am in the morning fucking mining ore on Ultima Online. Why ? I have no idea at all why this seemed like a good idea. But alas, when I finally woke up the next day I logged on to wrestle come cows for several hours. During this time period I got PK'ed several times and had all my stuff stolen (ahh back when MMOs weren't fairly safe land... anyway I digress), met other players and had lots of fun.
I remember mining for a few hours when someone decided to come visit my mine with the intention of killing me. Unfortunately for him, i'd acquired some mage skills, trapped him in my mine with a wall and a blade spirit before teleporting away and watched the comedy from outside.
The point of this story ? I was online doing PvE and as a consequence I ended up in a PvP scenario, and the reason I was online to do the PvP was because of the PvE. Is this making sense yet ?
Anyway, reward point stuff and about a million other small things would be pretty easy to add into the game at some level i'd imagine but with FML progress is always slow. PvE would no doubt be a bigger job to properly but i'd imagine it would be entirely possibly for it to form the focus of a proper update. From the recent Korea announcement I get the impression that the FML development is RB doing something with youth academies while Ov does the rest of the coding.
Before the reset Ov seemed to be coding 24/7 so I expect he's back to sane hours these days which is making progress even slower. Will this ever change, will the team ever get better ? I read this probably little known and inactive blog a few months back which makes me wonder if it will?
The only hot topics seem to be the ongoing ME saga and the major/minor competition form seems to finally be getting some attention after I have spent the last year or so complaining about it !
Those issues aside there seems to be a general despondence from many of the long time FML'ers. I think in the past there was always a big issue to unite people, like the Gameworlds were dying, the game was going to die and various other big issues. I really don't think we have any massive issues like this any more. I think due to this people are starting to see the bigger picture and they are thinking "you know what ? I'm kind of bored"
Of course, many are bored because of ME related issues but it goes further than that and back to the age old issue of there not being a right lot to do. Other than a few daily things to do you are essentially limited to playing matches.
So what exactly is it people DO want from the game ? I'd have thought that PvE would have been of massive interest to people. A proper engaging PvE experience where there is always something for you to do when you want to do it and how you want to do it. Something to take away from the stress and worry of official league games.
But judging by the lack of interest in the what would you like to see in PvE thread, then maybe not ?
I don't get it, what do people want to do instead ? Play Poker ? Top Trumps ? What else is there to do in an football game other than play matches ? I really don't think an MMO can work without a proper PvE experience. I don't know of one which works on a purely PvP basis, although I guess there probably is one.
While i'm generalising a lot here, the FM titles have always tended to attract a different type of gamer to normal games. I always got the impression that many FM players never really played _other_ games. There's nothing wrong with this but I think it is giving people some kind of tunnel vision where they are just seeing PvP and live games as the be all and end all.
There's 24 hours in a day, there's people online from other timezones, many leagues only have ~40 games in a season.... That's a couple a day. What are the odds you are actually going to be able to PvP all of these games ? Are you going to come online and sit there for 12 hours waiting for the time the other manager comes on ?
Maybe you WOULD stay online for 12 hours if there was something else to do ? But I have a life and don't want to spend 12 hours online. Yes, because everyone who starts playing an MMO does it with the clear intention to spend their entire life on it don't they ? I remember about 10 years ago, being up at 3am in the morning fucking mining ore on Ultima Online. Why ? I have no idea at all why this seemed like a good idea. But alas, when I finally woke up the next day I logged on to wrestle come cows for several hours. During this time period I got PK'ed several times and had all my stuff stolen (ahh back when MMOs weren't fairly safe land... anyway I digress), met other players and had lots of fun.
I remember mining for a few hours when someone decided to come visit my mine with the intention of killing me. Unfortunately for him, i'd acquired some mage skills, trapped him in my mine with a wall and a blade spirit before teleporting away and watched the comedy from outside.
The point of this story ? I was online doing PvE and as a consequence I ended up in a PvP scenario, and the reason I was online to do the PvP was because of the PvE. Is this making sense yet ?
Anyway, reward point stuff and about a million other small things would be pretty easy to add into the game at some level i'd imagine but with FML progress is always slow. PvE would no doubt be a bigger job to properly but i'd imagine it would be entirely possibly for it to form the focus of a proper update. From the recent Korea announcement I get the impression that the FML development is RB doing something with youth academies while Ov does the rest of the coding.
Before the reset Ov seemed to be coding 24/7 so I expect he's back to sane hours these days which is making progress even slower. Will this ever change, will the team ever get better ? I read this probably little known and inactive blog a few months back which makes me wonder if it will?
Monday 9 August 2010
Without Me
The season wasn't going too badly in all honesty, then as I mentioned in my last post I was going to be away on Saturday.
On my return I found my AI had lost 8 games in a row which pretty much relegated me. My AI has something like a win ratio of 20% compared to my online win ratio of around 55%
If I had been there to play the games i'm convinced this wouldn't have happened. The other problem was I couldn't reselect my players returning from injury so I play around 6 games without my first choice players because they had been injured for one game.
We have match plans, but i'd much rather have some way to select your first choice 11 depending on certain criteria like fitness and the likes. So if a striker gets injured while i'm away I would be able to select who the AI should play instead of him. This is another reason why I don't like playing XFA competitions because it means I have to reshuffle my team for every game to put the injured players back in the starting 11. I'm not trying to sound lazy, but it causes issues if i'm offline because i'm not playing my best 11.
My match plans, while basic, essentially replicate what I do while online so I don't really understand why my AI is so terrible. I don't know why people always whine about losing to AI teams because they are so much easier to beat.
While typing this i've just logged in and found that technically i've not been relegated and there's a fair chance I would stay up if I win my last 2 games, especially as one is against another team in the relegation zone. Alas they both have AI rights over me and I was moaning about previously.... I had 3 MCs get injured and stick in the last couple of games and another is suspended. So once again, the game has decided to make every player in one position unavailable...
I'm not going to bother playing the games because it's false hope, once you are at this stage of the season the finishing positions are pretty much set in stone, predicted points is rarely wrong and things don't change much. I'll just hope for some AI ME magic as my AI must be due to actually win a game sometime soon.
Anyway the EFA season appears to have finished 3 days before the actual GW season ends so i'm going to take a break for a few days before seeing what I can do in wage auctions. As i'm on bad form now, I pretty much need to buy an entire new team, which I probably needed to do anyway.
So all in all a fairly enjoyable and eventful season. Two promotions and one relegation so i'm still up on where I started from.
On an unrelated note i've noticed that most of the active bloggers seem to be on GW
Turkyilmaz, with me, Jak, Rik and Thom. It's a bit of a strange GW compared to the others I have been in and seems fairly relaxed and sensible. It's not as busy as Butragueno was and there was always something mental going on there which I do kind of miss but it just seems a more mature crowd on Tmaz. I've not really got involved much in anything due to time restraints and a lack of interest in things these days though.
The mods seem good too compared to other GWs I have been in, probably the best in fact - I've not really seen them do anything or talk complete balls/provide misinformation. Being seen but not heard is the way to moderate... Other GWs take note.
We also have a GW blog which is worth checking out STUFFED and I wish them all best with it.
On my return I found my AI had lost 8 games in a row which pretty much relegated me. My AI has something like a win ratio of 20% compared to my online win ratio of around 55%
If I had been there to play the games i'm convinced this wouldn't have happened. The other problem was I couldn't reselect my players returning from injury so I play around 6 games without my first choice players because they had been injured for one game.
We have match plans, but i'd much rather have some way to select your first choice 11 depending on certain criteria like fitness and the likes. So if a striker gets injured while i'm away I would be able to select who the AI should play instead of him. This is another reason why I don't like playing XFA competitions because it means I have to reshuffle my team for every game to put the injured players back in the starting 11. I'm not trying to sound lazy, but it causes issues if i'm offline because i'm not playing my best 11.
My match plans, while basic, essentially replicate what I do while online so I don't really understand why my AI is so terrible. I don't know why people always whine about losing to AI teams because they are so much easier to beat.
While typing this i've just logged in and found that technically i've not been relegated and there's a fair chance I would stay up if I win my last 2 games, especially as one is against another team in the relegation zone. Alas they both have AI rights over me and I was moaning about previously.... I had 3 MCs get injured and stick in the last couple of games and another is suspended. So once again, the game has decided to make every player in one position unavailable...
I'm not going to bother playing the games because it's false hope, once you are at this stage of the season the finishing positions are pretty much set in stone, predicted points is rarely wrong and things don't change much. I'll just hope for some AI ME magic as my AI must be due to actually win a game sometime soon.
Anyway the EFA season appears to have finished 3 days before the actual GW season ends so i'm going to take a break for a few days before seeing what I can do in wage auctions. As i'm on bad form now, I pretty much need to buy an entire new team, which I probably needed to do anyway.
So all in all a fairly enjoyable and eventful season. Two promotions and one relegation so i'm still up on where I started from.
On an unrelated note i've noticed that most of the active bloggers seem to be on GW
Turkyilmaz, with me, Jak, Rik and Thom. It's a bit of a strange GW compared to the others I have been in and seems fairly relaxed and sensible. It's not as busy as Butragueno was and there was always something mental going on there which I do kind of miss but it just seems a more mature crowd on Tmaz. I've not really got involved much in anything due to time restraints and a lack of interest in things these days though.
The mods seem good too compared to other GWs I have been in, probably the best in fact - I've not really seen them do anything or talk complete balls/provide misinformation. Being seen but not heard is the way to moderate... Other GWs take note.
We also have a GW blog which is worth checking out STUFFED and I wish them all best with it.
Saturday 7 August 2010
Everyone Hurts
Seriously, this injury patch crap can just fuck right off now.
It happens EVERY single season. You have no injuries at all, then suddenly ALL of your fucking defence gets injured or ALL of your midfield gets injured. It's clearly been coded in to work this way or it's a bug because it happens way too often for it to be coincidence.
My DC goes off injured, I bring on a sub, he goes off injured. Both stick. Next game another 2 defenders go off injured.... There's strength in depth but what are you supposed to do when you have 6 strikers injured ? As I did last season..
But it just doesn't end there. My defence are all injured for 5 games, I only have 4 AI games to play today. I'm going to be away until Sunday night. So, this means that after 1 AI game tonight which will be played against me, some of my players will be back and fit. But I can't leave them selected because the AI will play them while they are half dead.
I wont be here to play 10 CPU games to get them fit either. Speaking of which, i've just had to play AN HOUR AND HALF of CPU games to get my midfielder back to match condition (he's still only on 96%) after he returned from injury.
Not that it made a fucking difference because my 4th defender went off injured in the 6th minute leaving me with no central defenders left, so on comes my right back and a short time later he's on a 5 and i'm losing.
I suspect this is going to destroy the season because i've got 6 AI games tonight and I wont be here and wont be able to select the right/fit players.
It's like the game FORCES you to be hardcore, because you have to be there all of the time but when you are on there's nothing to do except grind through CPU games to get fitness back up. Then you miss a single day and a month's worth of effort is ruined.
The game simply doesn't work, it's neither casual nor hardcore. If you want to get anywhere you HAVE to be online all the time, but there's no hardcore element to the game other than "sitting online"
It happens EVERY single season. You have no injuries at all, then suddenly ALL of your fucking defence gets injured or ALL of your midfield gets injured. It's clearly been coded in to work this way or it's a bug because it happens way too often for it to be coincidence.
My DC goes off injured, I bring on a sub, he goes off injured. Both stick. Next game another 2 defenders go off injured.... There's strength in depth but what are you supposed to do when you have 6 strikers injured ? As I did last season..
But it just doesn't end there. My defence are all injured for 5 games, I only have 4 AI games to play today. I'm going to be away until Sunday night. So, this means that after 1 AI game tonight which will be played against me, some of my players will be back and fit. But I can't leave them selected because the AI will play them while they are half dead.
I wont be here to play 10 CPU games to get them fit either. Speaking of which, i've just had to play AN HOUR AND HALF of CPU games to get my midfielder back to match condition (he's still only on 96%) after he returned from injury.
Not that it made a fucking difference because my 4th defender went off injured in the 6th minute leaving me with no central defenders left, so on comes my right back and a short time later he's on a 5 and i'm losing.
I suspect this is going to destroy the season because i've got 6 AI games tonight and I wont be here and wont be able to select the right/fit players.
It's like the game FORCES you to be hardcore, because you have to be there all of the time but when you are on there's nothing to do except grind through CPU games to get fitness back up. Then you miss a single day and a month's worth of effort is ruined.
The game simply doesn't work, it's neither casual nor hardcore. If you want to get anywhere you HAVE to be online all the time, but there's no hardcore element to the game other than "sitting online"
Tuesday 3 August 2010
I'm a believer
So run #3 of my first season begins and I find myself in the Championship.
There's clubs here with average ability of 19 ! I'm screwed aren't I ?
Time to pray for some special ME magic to be on my side.
Sunday 1 August 2010
Time for Heroes
It's been a long hard run in the EFA this time round. As the dust settles from run 2 I have 5 players out injured, no midfield left, suspensions all over the place and a lack of funds to bring in replacements.
Fortunately, I have won promotion to the Championship with a 3rd place finish ! I'm so proud of my team. I was the 4th lowest ability team in the division and could see a massive gulf in class in various games. Watching my team run round like headless chickens getting totally out classed, but they never gave up and grinded out the results when it mattered.
I stuck to my own advice and didn't panic in any games, just let the magic of the ME do its job. I was massively screwed over on several occasions with last minute equalisers and winners for the opposition all over the place but I had my fair share of ME bullshittery on my side too.
So i'm half way through the first season of my 3 season plan to win the Premiership and i'm 1 tier away. I really can't see me getting promoted for a 3rd time in a row next run though.
As i'm starting with half my team injured or suspended i'm going to have massive problems but i'm going to go for it, all out to win promotion. There's no other way, forget about the building for the future, everything is now, death or glory. If it's not looking good after a few games the plan is to avoid relegation, then buy a completely new team for season 2.
Fortunately, I have won promotion to the Championship with a 3rd place finish ! I'm so proud of my team. I was the 4th lowest ability team in the division and could see a massive gulf in class in various games. Watching my team run round like headless chickens getting totally out classed, but they never gave up and grinded out the results when it mattered.
I stuck to my own advice and didn't panic in any games, just let the magic of the ME do its job. I was massively screwed over on several occasions with last minute equalisers and winners for the opposition all over the place but I had my fair share of ME bullshittery on my side too.
So i'm half way through the first season of my 3 season plan to win the Premiership and i'm 1 tier away. I really can't see me getting promoted for a 3rd time in a row next run though.
As i'm starting with half my team injured or suspended i'm going to have massive problems but i'm going to go for it, all out to win promotion. There's no other way, forget about the building for the future, everything is now, death or glory. If it's not looking good after a few games the plan is to avoid relegation, then buy a completely new team for season 2.
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