Standing in the Way of Control

There's an interesting post on the forums at the moment here It links to Civilization creator Sid Meier speaking at a games development conference. He's a pretty clever chap responsible for many great games down the years and he makes some wonderful points which are ever so pertinent to FML.

Introduction to the game

He speaks about how important the first 15 minutes of a game are for the player stating they should be compelling and fun. It should make the player feel comfortable in the world and introduce them to loads of cool stuff and plant the seed that even cooler stuff is going to happen later on.

FML scores 0/10 on this front. It's a case of enter the Gameworld, read a few introductory text screens and pick some very poor players. Then you get taken to the match selector to play a CPU team. Once that is done then you might be waiting around for 15 days never mind 15 minutes for the season to kick off!

The player is not only left feeling slightly bewildered, but they have no good players, no specific short term goal or challenge and nothing else to do for a long period of time.

If FML had a proper PvE environment then this wouldn't be so much of an issue because a player could jump into that instead.

You see this 15 minute rule in so many games these days, how many racing games give you a super car fully kitted out with a big turbo and the best go faster stripes around at the start? You have a bit of a race before being dumped in a Fiat Punto but at least you know what you have to look forward to eh. You see it in other games too, the first example which comes to mind is a game I tried on the 360 last week which is Prototype. You start the game fully loaded with all your powers and abilities before regressing back to the start.

I suppose you could apply this to FML if you gave it some thought. Give a new manager Buckton Titans to manage for a day. Let them play in a proper PvE league and smash everyone in sight, hell let them play real players but not effect ranking points. Let them manage the England team for a week or so, whatever, think outside the box! Give them something fun and easy to do once they join up. Playing CPU challenges does not fall into the fun category ;)

Randomness

Sid Meier also speaks about how "acts of randomness need to be treated with a great deal of care" and that the player wants to be in control. If something is perceived to be random then paranoia strikes and the player looks for the worse possible explanation as to why something happened.

He goes on to speak about how a player is willing to accept something good happening against the odds as being completely normal. The psychology of the player is that they used a great strategy or they were cleverer. But conversely if something bad happens then the game is broken, something is wrong the game is cheating!

He says it is Important the player understands why something happens and how to prevent it from happening next time.

The above few paragraphs are some of the biggest problems you have with FML! The whole damn thing feels random and you have no bleeding clue what the hell is going on or why. Even after playing FML for so long I can give literally no explanation as to why I could have an appalling team smashing every team in sight only to sign a handful of better players and not be able to win a single game. I suppose I am guilty of accepting the good times as my own ability but blaming anything that goes wrong on the game being broken. But what else should I blame, I can see literally NO logical or rational explanation as to what is happening - therefore I blame the game.

I think first off to resolve this more transparency is needed about how certain aspects of the game work. It often seems that no one actually knows how certain FML specific things interact with the ME and I mean no one at SI !

Example, on my FM10 game my squad is very well blended together so much so "they are willing to die for each other" Now I read this and it's pretty clear what it means! So on FML, does this feature even EXIST ? Is there a hidden team blend rating like the FM series ? I've asked before, I don't know ?? Who does ? Does signing lots of players have a negative effect ??

Another example, players who can't speak the native language have communication problems on the pitch on FM. Surely this can't be in FML can it ? That would make no sense at all, but is it in ? We just don't know... The ME on FML has so much weird shit happening that it wouldn't surprise me if it still was.

Effect of changing tactics ? Time taken for squad to gel ?

I could reel of a couple of dozen similar questions to that which i've never found out the answer to on FML which is common knowledge and explained in game on FM. Sometimes some of these questions are put to Paul C and he doesn't seem to know either! I'd suggest a Q&A where some of these queries are answered.

I suppose they may as well add in the assistant feedback from FM10 too. It's not great, it's not THAT useful but it's something and some of the points can be of interest on occasion. But again, many of the points relate to how a player is used to playing and language issues and the like, the things we don't even know are in FML! But it does provide some useful information which you can adjust your tactics to, like explaining your long passes are not connecting or opposition instruction suggestions. It's useful if you are not very good at watching the game or just not watching it at all. I usually have a look over it when i'm in a bad patch in a game and all my players are performing well with no confidence issues. Sometimes I make a change based on the advise.


The odds

I've spoken about this a lot myself and in fact mentioned it in my last post. But players struggle to accept defeat against the odds, especially me. Sid talks about how when they displayed odds in game for example 3/1 players would just see the 3 and think that because they had the much bigger number they would always win. It's easy to forget that 1 time out of 4 the other team would win.

I think it would be beneficial to hide club reputation and the opposition average ability screen from anyone except the manager of that club. I've spoken about transparency earlier but I just don't think these are needed! You can easily look at opposition players and an opposition squad and get a feel about how good a team is. You don't need to be an experienced player to understand someone worth £5m is going to be better than someone worth £500k.

This would help alleviate some of the stress of when you are losing badly, you're looking for an explanation and you see the opposition club has an average ability of 12 while yours is 15. You see the bigger number and straight away move onto the game is broken theory. Reputation is probably less important but you could just change it to the ranking banding, so elite club, bronze club etc.

Anyhow, i'm probably the point where i've wrote so much no one is reading so i'll stop for now