[retired_macca1875]

Holiday Game Idea

Does loading a league make a difference to the fortunes of the clubs and the country?

This is an idea to test something I have always wondered, exactly how much of a difference does loading a league have?

The idea is to report on the fortunes of the club and national teams from 10 countries over a prolonged period of time, comparing the loaded leagues against the unloaded leagues.

The fixtures could look something like:

Argentina vs Brazil
England vs Spain
Belgium vs Holland
Denmark vs Sweden
Northern Ireland vs Wales

Where the home team is the loaded league and the unloaded league.

Every season a comparison between the two countries could be made, comparing the clubs fortunes in continental competition using the club/nation coefficients and the nation's fortunes using the FIFA rankings. Reports could be made using a combination of rankings/coefficients and progress of individual clubs.

[retired_charytine]

Your idea has my backing dafuge. :thup:

Would be interesting to see the results of this. Like you I have wondered what effect loading leagues has so would be interesting to see how it effects things.

[retired_0PETE1]

That is something I have always been interested in also, so would fully back this :thup:

[retired_stesska]

I've got a couple of ideas for a challenge.

A career challenge, small clubs to your favourite club

Firstly what I've noticed a lot of challenges are based around managing one club. Most of my longer term CM/FM games I've played I've usually managed one club. I'd like to play a game where I move around clubs, having a bit of success in different countries and building up my reputation.

New PCs are a lot faster with FM now, on my new PC I loaded all divisions from between 8 and 11 nations with large db and its still quick. So that wouldn't be an issue for a lot of people when it comes to loading several leagues. Again a lot of challenges are about loading one nation. Anyone with slower PCs could load 2-3 nations, so the challenge would be available to everyone.

I also haven't got a really good long term game going with Charlton since CM 00/01. I'd like to try and earn the job and make them as big as possible.

So the idea for the challenge would be to have a career, encourage everyone to move clubs and play in different leagues. You'd start unemployed and look for a club with an obscure or local reputation and go from there.

Eventually you'd hope you've done well enough to earn the job of the club you support.

As more popular challenges have shown, a simple challenge works best, so I wouldn't want to include too many rules and restrictions. That way the challenge could be played with any combination of leagues, db size etc.

I tried starting this myself, but there were issues with the match engine (in the 8.0.0 and the beta patch) meaning it was too easy, I was thrashing other teams. They seemed to think we had no chance. It should be improved in the official 8.0.1 patch.

Another idea is something thats been mentioned before...

Welsh "Double" Challenge

You could start in the Welsh Premier, or as one of the Welsh clubs in England (including Merthyr Tydfil and clubs promoted to the Welsh Premier).

The aim would obviously be to make the club do as well as possible, and evnetually take control of the national side.

Not sure what would work best, but a rule could be that you are only allowed Welsh players and staff. This wasn't a restriction in the San Marino challenge, and that worked pretty well as everyone still tried to sign players from San Marino.

As an option, you could play an extreme version, in SMSL's challenge style, only using Welsh players that come through your academy.

Any opinions on either of those?

[retired_charytine]

Scoham.

The first idea I really like. I've always wanted to do something like this, tried it a few times but always been too attached to my starting club.

I think I might be more inclined to make it work should it be a proper challenge with a specific aim. :thup:

[retired_stesska]

I've always found that, you feel like you just can't leave the club, but this time I'd like to play a game that way.

Should have said the aim would be to win the top division and continental competition (so Premier League and Champions League in England) with the club you support. Of course you can take that further and try and make the club the biggest in the world.

[Emm]

I think the key to a holiday game is to make it REALLY specific.

dafuge's idea is excellent :thup:.

He compares 2 nations, (and that will be ebough for many), but also has the hidden depth of already having an inkling into what will happen and why, and this will be the real guts of the holiday experiment.

In terms of an idea for a challenge, I look at what we have at the moment, and it is all much of a muchness.

The dafuge thread is legendary on it's own and needs no explaining.

Gundo's challenge id dafuge's challenge in a small country.

Everton Blokes, Jeffhardy's, GAYAC, SMSL's, & foxmad's challenges are all good in their own rights, but are all very similar in that they are all hufely long term games like dafuge's and Gundo's.

The Fat GK challenge is unique I suppose in that it can run alongside any challenge, and it has seasonal as well as long term records.

How I first got speaking to dafuge was years ago and we did 2 single season challenges on CM03/04 (I think). One was managing East Bengal in India and the other was managing a Brazilian lower league team, (can't remember who), and each challenge only lasted for a single season.

A lot of people don't have the stomache for a long terms save and seem to spend theirr time drifting from 1 challenge to the next. Starting one after the other without ever really getting into it.

My main idea is that we should introduce a monthly challenge, that should last for exactly 1 calendar month, and be played over the course of only 1 season. People could nominate Nations or Divisions, Or we could simply ask Frank when he updates himself for FM08.

I would stick with the challenges that I currently participate in, but I think it would open this forum to a wider audiance, and maybe with whatever plans Ter has up his sleeve in terms of advertising, this may be something that will happen in any case.

[retired_stesska]

Good point about short term challenges. There aren't many of them, although I'm sure I've seen a few but they've not been popular.

[retired_macca1875]

Originally posted by Jimbokav1971:

How I first got speaking to dafuge was years ago and we did 2 single season challenges on CM03/04 (I think). One was managing East Bengal in India and the other was managing a Brazilian lower league team, (can't remember who), and each challenge only lasted for a single season.

I've been thinking of resurrecting this for a while. Back in the days of the CM forums I started a series of challenges that were based over the length of one season, with a time limit of two weeks for people to complete them. A new team in a new country was chosen for each challenge, with some kind of table produced at the end of the two weeks.

If there any suggestions on this one, we could bring it back. Since then, the challenges forum has been created, so often people have a long term save on the game. How about making it a monthly challenge? Would people be able to manage a season with another team alongside their own games?

It was Santa Cruz

[retired_macca1875]

Sign-Up Idea

This is one that I've been wanting to do, but just couldn't because I've always had a game on the go.

It's based on the Murder Mystery Party idea. The setup is based on the usual sign ups, where every player chooses positions, attributes etc. but the creator comes up with a list of distinct personalities for the players, which are assigned via e-mail. These could based on things like 'thinks he is far too good for the team' to 'is having an affair with the GK's wife'. It would be up to the people taking part to drop subtle enough hints throughout the thread so that others could guess which personality belongs to them. Obviously the list (or a brief rundown of them) would need to be posted at the start, so that people could try to guess which people have which people have which personalities. The winner could be the first person to e-mail the creator with the correct list, with a maximum of say three guesses.

I think this could create an incredibly interesting thread to read and it could encourage people to be a lot more creative with what they contribute to the sign-up threads. It could create far more of a story, rather than just an update on a team, with far more people contributing to the thread.