So i'm off work this week, having my first sick day in nearly 3 years! Noticed an email in my inbox about the beta containing the new FM11 ME stuff. I'm undecided if I am going to buy FM11 this year as i'm still quite enjoying FM10 and i'm involved in a nice network game at the moment. But I was intrigued to see what the new graphics, stadium stuff and animations looked like so I decided to give it a download.
Surprisingly I still have a team (barely) which had finished 2nd in the 3rd tier of the OFA. It's interesting to note that without any involvement from me for about 4 months and a stadium on 0% my team has continued just fine and amassed a £10.8m balance.
Anyhow seen as i'm getting bored of nothing to moan about I figured if I created a team I could get involved with stuff on the forums again. To avoid me inevitably becoming annoyed I decided to take a new route and sign an all Columbian team.
The team so far is bloody awful so I wont become annoyed as I will deserve to lose most games. I don't intend to play many live matches, so i'm going to play it a bit like traditional fantasy football.
To add to the crazy i'm going to play 4-4-2. I've created a pretty funky 4-4-2 on FM10 so i'm not sure how it will translate into the new ME but it's working pretty well on there.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Saturday, 18 September 2010
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
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
Friday, 17 September 2010
Otherside
Phone rings the other day....
"We have just had a baby on the Sims, what should we call it?"
"Franco" I suggest with enthusiasm
"Are you playing Football Manager??!"
Rumbled again.
Been playing some FM10 to pass the time these days. Although it's running an older version of the ME than FML it just seems to work so much better, presumably because the AI teams are fielding teams which represent a professional team rather than the weird stuff you get on FML.
Like, youth players are terrible, older players seem to play just fine and the 433 seems far less effective. My 35 wins in a row record was foiled by a 2 legged cup tie where I was 4-0 up, so a few things are the same ;) It's easy to see why SI might be scratching their heads sometimes when it all works so well on their flagship game.
The biggest difference is the effect or knocks, or rather the lack of an effect they have. If a player receives a knock you are often hard pushed to even work out which player it is because they lose so little condition. On FML a knock is usually the end of a game for a player but on FM10 they lose about 5-10% condition more often than not!
Secondly there's far far less injuries in matches. I get about 1 injury every 10 games that results in a player having to leave the field. It just feels more like what you would expect to see in a real football game rather than "ffs not again" as your 4th player goes off injured on FML.
Another thing came to mind too which is the perception of whether you should win a game or not. I was losing to Birmingham and I could feel myself becoming annoyed thinking "who the fuck are Birmingham and how dare they score against me!!" I found myself clicking on them trying to find out what their average squad ability was like you would find in FML. Except there is nowhere to see this, then I thought, well it is 2015, I actually have no idea how good they are other than their league position. Rage pacified because I was no longer sure if I should be expecting to win the game or not.
It does make me wonder if perhaps the ability of opposition teams should actually be hidden on FML so you can work it out for yourself by actually looking at the players. Ignorance is bliss and all that.
Oh and on FM10 you still get the "red arrows of doom" on young players just like you do on FML. It's not a problem on FM10 either, it's completely normal!
I see team talks are now coming to FML which I wouldn't really welcome. I remember when team talks were being discussed before they came into normal FM a few years back. My comment at the time was, unless there was literally hundreds of different things you could say, they would be pointless and annoying. Five years on there's still about 5 options and it is pointless and annoying. Fortunately on FM you can get your assistant to do the talk for you.
On FML you will have to do it because if your opposition is using them wisely then you are going to disadvantage yourself and potentially lose games because of it. The optimal talks don't even make sense half the time anyway so any experienced FM'ers are instantly going to have an advantage of knowing what to say and when.
I'm not really missing FML much at all and I think it would be difficult for me to return when i'm not available to play as much as I was a year ago. If they removed FAs completely and made everything ad hoc reputation based league structures then that would still appeal to me. So you could just join up to an official weekend league when you are around or a week long league then have a week off. That would be pretty cool and mean you'd have something to do when online and wouldn't miss stuff when you were offline. But that aint going to happen is it !
"We have just had a baby on the Sims, what should we call it?"
"Franco" I suggest with enthusiasm
"Are you playing Football Manager??!"
Rumbled again.
Been playing some FM10 to pass the time these days. Although it's running an older version of the ME than FML it just seems to work so much better, presumably because the AI teams are fielding teams which represent a professional team rather than the weird stuff you get on FML.
Like, youth players are terrible, older players seem to play just fine and the 433 seems far less effective. My 35 wins in a row record was foiled by a 2 legged cup tie where I was 4-0 up, so a few things are the same ;) It's easy to see why SI might be scratching their heads sometimes when it all works so well on their flagship game.
The biggest difference is the effect or knocks, or rather the lack of an effect they have. If a player receives a knock you are often hard pushed to even work out which player it is because they lose so little condition. On FML a knock is usually the end of a game for a player but on FM10 they lose about 5-10% condition more often than not!
Secondly there's far far less injuries in matches. I get about 1 injury every 10 games that results in a player having to leave the field. It just feels more like what you would expect to see in a real football game rather than "ffs not again" as your 4th player goes off injured on FML.
Another thing came to mind too which is the perception of whether you should win a game or not. I was losing to Birmingham and I could feel myself becoming annoyed thinking "who the fuck are Birmingham and how dare they score against me!!" I found myself clicking on them trying to find out what their average squad ability was like you would find in FML. Except there is nowhere to see this, then I thought, well it is 2015, I actually have no idea how good they are other than their league position. Rage pacified because I was no longer sure if I should be expecting to win the game or not.
It does make me wonder if perhaps the ability of opposition teams should actually be hidden on FML so you can work it out for yourself by actually looking at the players. Ignorance is bliss and all that.
Oh and on FM10 you still get the "red arrows of doom" on young players just like you do on FML. It's not a problem on FM10 either, it's completely normal!
I see team talks are now coming to FML which I wouldn't really welcome. I remember when team talks were being discussed before they came into normal FM a few years back. My comment at the time was, unless there was literally hundreds of different things you could say, they would be pointless and annoying. Five years on there's still about 5 options and it is pointless and annoying. Fortunately on FM you can get your assistant to do the talk for you.
On FML you will have to do it because if your opposition is using them wisely then you are going to disadvantage yourself and potentially lose games because of it. The optimal talks don't even make sense half the time anyway so any experienced FM'ers are instantly going to have an advantage of knowing what to say and when.
I'm not really missing FML much at all and I think it would be difficult for me to return when i'm not available to play as much as I was a year ago. If they removed FAs completely and made everything ad hoc reputation based league structures then that would still appeal to me. So you could just join up to an official weekend league when you are around or a week long league then have a week off. That would be pretty cool and mean you'd have something to do when online and wouldn't miss stuff when you were offline. But that aint going to happen is it !
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
White Flag.
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.
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.
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.
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