So you have lost 1 game in your opening 11 of the league, everything is looking pretty good and your squad is generally stronger than the majority of the opposition.
So it begs the question, why is every player on poor morale ? Who knows...
Even a striker with a 0.71 goal per game ratio wants to kill himself because he is so unhappy with life.
Whatever..
Guess i'll just have to wait 3 months until someone realises that this is actually broken.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Friday, 11 February 2011
Hello
I had an email recently about how one of my live teams had some cash in the bank and how I should come back.
So still being rather sceptical I decided to fire up the beta after spotting the icon on my desktop.
I had £16m in the bank so I went to look for some players. Not really sure what is going on with finances and stuff now. There's BV, TV, MV, PV and I think I got an STD too. I decided to just pay no attention to any of it seen as I had plenty of cash. After a week or two of casual play, and admittedly not making any attempt to read up, I don't know what any of it means still. But I shouldn't really have to go find out should I ?
I just bought some random players which looked okay, discarding any fannying about looking for special attributes and all that. I just signed some seasoned professionals and good all rounders who had a decent value. Played a few games and didn't notice much difference in the ME, still makes you lose games in the most rage inducing way and you still don't lose games fairly.
Anyway I think I won something like 7 in 12 games yet all my players still had poor morale. Pushed on to 3rd in the league but all my players are still suicidal which seemed to result in poorer results as it got worse for no logical reason. I did randomly find I actually had a second squad, which was seemingly hidden now you can have more, and found a player in there who hadn't played a game for 6 seasons who was better than all my strikers, which was a bonus.
Logged on most evenings and sort of enjoyed the game but i'm playing for like 20-30 minutes a day (easily enough time to play all my fixtures) and not paying for it. Logged on for first time in 2-3 days, no games to play, nothing to do, logged off. Same old story really.
The game looks a bit more professional now and things like the in game browser are nice touches but core gameplay wise, nothing has changed.
Still waiting for the revolution, not evolution.
So still being rather sceptical I decided to fire up the beta after spotting the icon on my desktop.
I had £16m in the bank so I went to look for some players. Not really sure what is going on with finances and stuff now. There's BV, TV, MV, PV and I think I got an STD too. I decided to just pay no attention to any of it seen as I had plenty of cash. After a week or two of casual play, and admittedly not making any attempt to read up, I don't know what any of it means still. But I shouldn't really have to go find out should I ?
I just bought some random players which looked okay, discarding any fannying about looking for special attributes and all that. I just signed some seasoned professionals and good all rounders who had a decent value. Played a few games and didn't notice much difference in the ME, still makes you lose games in the most rage inducing way and you still don't lose games fairly.
Anyway I think I won something like 7 in 12 games yet all my players still had poor morale. Pushed on to 3rd in the league but all my players are still suicidal which seemed to result in poorer results as it got worse for no logical reason. I did randomly find I actually had a second squad, which was seemingly hidden now you can have more, and found a player in there who hadn't played a game for 6 seasons who was better than all my strikers, which was a bonus.
Logged on most evenings and sort of enjoyed the game but i'm playing for like 20-30 minutes a day (easily enough time to play all my fixtures) and not paying for it. Logged on for first time in 2-3 days, no games to play, nothing to do, logged off. Same old story really.
The game looks a bit more professional now and things like the in game browser are nice touches but core gameplay wise, nothing has changed.
Still waiting for the revolution, not evolution.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
I Me Mine
Well I haven't been on FML for some time. Something else occupies all of my waking time now as well as my sleeping thoughts.
This game is Minecraft.
I'd say it ranks in the top 5 games i've ever played and it's like £8 or something. Go buy it.
http://minecraft.net/
(don't bother with the free version, it's not the same)
Imagine as a child someone told you if you went digging in your garden, you'd find loads of fucking awesome lego. Like LOADS of it and awesome caves, and with this lego you can build whatever you want. This is Minecraft.
I risked showing it to the girlfriend, who is now also addicted to it. I've turned her into a complete geek.
I have had quite a stressfull week, I burnt my bloody house down the other day and spent many hours rebuilding it. THEN I burnt down my entire estate, I came up from a mining trip to find everything which I had spent a week building, in flames. I felt physically sick but once again I rebuilt.
To make this vaguely football related, i'm currently building Elland Road. It's gonna be awesome.
Anyway, best go. I need to make sure the lava waterfall doesn't burn down my treehouse again, i'm keeping an eye on it while building my 2nd space invader above a nearby mountain.
This game is Minecraft.
I'd say it ranks in the top 5 games i've ever played and it's like £8 or something. Go buy it.
http://minecraft.net/
(don't bother with the free version, it's not the same)
Imagine as a child someone told you if you went digging in your garden, you'd find loads of fucking awesome lego. Like LOADS of it and awesome caves, and with this lego you can build whatever you want. This is Minecraft.
I risked showing it to the girlfriend, who is now also addicted to it. I've turned her into a complete geek.
I have had quite a stressfull week, I burnt my bloody house down the other day and spent many hours rebuilding it. THEN I burnt down my entire estate, I came up from a mining trip to find everything which I had spent a week building, in flames. I felt physically sick but once again I rebuilt.
To make this vaguely football related, i'm currently building Elland Road. It's gonna be awesome.
Anyway, best go. I need to make sure the lava waterfall doesn't burn down my treehouse again, i'm keeping an eye on it while building my 2nd space invader above a nearby mountain.
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Columbia
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.
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.
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.
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