mdsll

Greg, I doubt that your B2B product can be bought for 20quid....

So comparing it is utterly pointless.

Greg Andrade

Actually, it's not a B2B product. It is BOTH a B2B and a consumer product.

But you're right: it can't be bought for 20 quid. So are you granting SI an excuse to produce a rubbish product because it doesn't cost hundreds or thousands of pounds?

It doesn't matter what the price point of a product is. There are consumer protection laws in most countries, and they exist for a reason. If you produce a substandard product and cheat people out of their money, you can be sued and even prosecuted. Product value does not eliminate liability or culpability. So I fail to see your point.

However, if you're suggesting that we would see 98% quality performance from SI if the price of FM was raised considerably, then I'd be the first in line to pay the price. Raise the price to 100 pounds, and I'll still gladly buy the game if we can avoid disasters like we've seen with FM08. And I live in the U.S., where our dollar has eroded to half the value of the pound, so that would be a $200 investment for me.

Jimbokav1971

Greg. Although I know you read my post, I don't think you fully grasped it's message.

I'm certainly not a "fanboy" and have been and continue to be critical of certain aspects of the game. That being said, it is also the only pc game that I play and I am as devoted a customer as you are likely to find.

The point I was making wasn't really that we had the power to change SI's strategy in this respect, I t was more that we have the power and we choose not to use it.

I haven't enjoyed much of my FM08 experience to date, (there have been a few little snippetts of joy, but not many), but I know that i will be waitng on tenterhooks for FM09 to be released, and that I will be first in line to buy it on release day no matter what.

So in my mind that makes me as much part of the problem as anyone who sits in a strategy meeting and decides to take advantage of my lethargy and passion for the game.

I'm a realist Greg, and because of that I know that a year from now exactly these same topics are going to be discussed by similar people. It's just life. We can either spend time moaning about it, spend time doing something about it, or spend time doing something else while SI fix some of the problems and make the game playable.

As far as I'm concerned, I've spent more than enough time moaning, and I have no intention of spending time attempting to change the status quo, so I will instead be doing something else whie awating the patch. Despite having the game loaded all day I realise that I haven't played a single game. That's a pretty sad inditement of FM09.

Unfortunately there are as many people willingly to blindly defend the game as there whinging moaners who droan on and on about the same issues and both parties seem immovable from there position. I find myself between the two groups, with a foot in each camp, but unable to feel at home in either.

Sometimes, you get your point accross far better with a quitly spoken soft word of encouragement, than you do shouting and screaming from the roof-tops.

I'm done shouting because all I have managed to do is shout myself hoarse.

The patch will be ready when the patch will be ready and the game will possibly be playable when the game is playable. Nothing I can do or say, (I used to think providing info in the bugs forum helped, but apparantly the testing team know about every bug before we post so I have been wasting my time), has any affect on this.

So what am I going to do.........

Nothing, absolutely nothing.

JJnr10

SI guys any news on the final patch already? Want to start new game but hate the bug that came with the patch, the low balance but high transfer budget bug...

Matt - SEGA

Disasters?

Greg, you entertain me year-in year-out with your lack of perspective. Do you play any other videogames? How do you think FM stacks up with them, out of interest?

Hax0r Jim Duggan

matt - you talk of people 'relentlessly blaming the testers' but from what i can tell, and certainly in my case when i've made critical posts - it's 'blaming' the testing PROCEDURES and attitude towards it - a small but important distinction. your way makes it seem like we're all accusing the testers of sitting round on facebook and youtube all day doing no work, which I don't think is the case.

I think the most interesting thing to me, and something I feel SI could maybe pick up on a bit more when FM09 rolls around, is that the very nature of a database-fuelled, in-depth simulation like Football Manager will throw up as many major balance issues and unusual situations as it does 'bugs' in the traditional sense of 'things that crash the game or shouldn't happen at all'. the closing down 'bug', for example, was an extreme example of a balance issue. It seems to me that, across the last few FM versions, SI have been brilliant at cutting out show-stopper bugs, the sort that crash your game to desktop or corrupt your save game completely, but often quite staggeringly inept when it comes to balance issues.

alright, if it was something really obscure that affected one particular player or lower league team, you'd expect it to go undetected for a while at least, but when it's stuff like the closing down, which all my FM-mad friends had noticed by the end of their first pre-season on the demo, you have to wonder what's going on! you say that you think SI had said they tried to tone down the effectiveness of closing down, and accidentally gone too far - when this tweak to the game engine was made, why wasn't it immediately tested to see what effect it had? surely someone would have noticed sharpish that if even the Gattusos of this world stand off a defender for 30-40 yards at a time, there's a problem. Other examples would be on past versions where clubs selling a player in monthly installments would end up paying the installments to the buying club! surely in a football management game, the financial model and transfer market must be extensively tested?

I hope you see what i'm getting at, this is a pretty rambling post - my suggestion would be that in future, you devote at least a couple of your testing staff purely to finding game balance issues, gameplay bugs like the board confidence fiasco, the scottish league fixture generation being totally messed up and closing down, and checking for blatant inconstencies in the game data (Crouch playing for Liverpool (URU) and Beckham in the aussie league, the Canadian midfield brothers having their surnames capitalised differently - De Guzman and de Guzman, and certain leagues and nationalities being massively overpowered on certain versions - that sort oo thing) - because at the moment those are the sort of 'bugs' and balance issues that are always in the retail version in great quantities, yet always picked up on immediately by the fanbase and often quite simply fixed once SI are aware of them

urbanjunkie

Perspective appears to vary from one person to the next. I am not playing with the beta patch. I have completed my first season. I've created a tactic from scratch and saw my team finish 3rd and win three cups. I did not find a single 'show stopper' bug or in fact come across anything that made me think I should stop playing.

Can the game be tweaked further? Of course it can, and has already. I'm patient and don't mind waiting for the proper patch. Fact is, I've played the game since its incarnation, and every game has had its 'problems' pretty much like every piece of software (OS or gaming does) - this isnt an excuse, and yets it would be wonderful if software was 100% on release, but that doesnt appear to be the world we live in.

Theres a ton of stuff I would love to see in the game, and by its very nature the FM entity is almost like a continued work in progress. It can always grow and progress.

Personally think theres been an almighty knee-jerk this year. Yes - there are bugs (before someone attacks me for defending SI) but in no way is the game 'throw out the window' material.

Not when I find myself punching the air in delight, having worked my b*llocks off putting together a tactic that comes good with such drama.

I've had a look round, I've seen the 'bugs' people have complained about sure, some look to be a pain in the arse. Are SI going to ignore them? Of course not. So why worry? It will get sorted.

Have Microsoft ever released a OS that is 100%? Windows ME? Windows Vista?

I suppose, SI 'could' release a FM every 2 years instead - giving ample time for uber-testing and behind closed door patches - but I'll tell you this, when people can't go 10 minutes before asking 'when is the patch out?' do you think they will be willing to wait 2 years for a new release?

I dont know, maybe I'm just too easily pleased.

Jimbokav1971

urbanjunkie. Despite not being blessed with your success, that's exactly what I thought after playing the game for 1 season. Unfortunately, the "showstoppers" as you call them, materialised after that initial season, and as I would guess that you are managing a big club, you will encounter neither, so good luck and enjoy :thup:.

urbanjunkie

Jimbo, hence what I meant about perspective (probably not the right word when I come to think of it).

I'm also quite anal with details and info, and knowing there are issues in the lower leagues will annoy me, but if they are showstoppers then SI will now be aware and fix them.

I do see your point, and if I was a lower league manager I'd probably be frustrated. I think the fact that SI have their doors open allows for people to be demanding to a point which I dont think happens elsewhere.

There are bugs that I'm sure will become apparent when managing a big club too.

I think my point is, with every version - there are always bugs and they are always sorted out.

Maybe I'm wrong to accept this. But I'm comfortable with it.

Jimbokav1971

unrbanjunkie.
I agree with everything you have said.

I promised myself that I would stop posting in here yesterday, but I get soooooooo angry when I see people connested with the game stating the game is "playable".

It frustrates me immensely that the game is classed as "playable" right up to the point at which it becomes "unplayable". I find the whole thing proposturous.

Either the game is "playable" or not "playable". I'm not saying that it is "unplayable" for all, as you are just one exemple of many, who have no long term significant issues with the game at all.

But if as we are led to believe, the testing team are aware of these "significant and game-ending" lower league bugs, before we even post them in the bugs forum, then they must agree that to a large portion of the FM community, (ie anyone who intends to gain even a single promotion), then the game is "unplayable" in the long term. If they agree that they game is "unplayable in the long term", then to state that the game is "playable" in the short term quite frankly befggars belief.

For me it has become far less about the individual faults within the game, and far more about the blatant misinformation, (maybe that;s a slightly more polite term than I used last time), that seems to be coming from people connected with the production and distribution of the game.

If the game is classed as "playable" because more than 50% of the people testing the game did not encounter the bugs, then maybe it's the terminology that is wrong. I don;'t care if the lower league managers that encounter these bugs make up only 10% of the FM gaming community. When you encounter one of these bugs, it is a game ending bug for no other reason than you cease to be manager of the club at which you were managing, through no fault of your own. Now to comment repeatedly, that this does not make the game "unplayable" to many, is silly in the extreme. It still happend though on an almost daily basis, and it is this which I take exception to, and not the state of the game itself.