retired_soccer freak

I don’t agree.

When selling a player, it takes a while till the player is actual sold. It can take up a week, two weeks and even longer.

Sure if you have a star player, everyone is hunting for.

When all is settled down, FM is asking for GO/NO GO or delay of the actual transfer.

It this particular case, it’s allowed.

What’s unacceptable is that after your confirmation it would ask again if you are sure. You already had the opportunity to correct an eventual mistake. Else you could think about the following procedure:


Ronaldhino accepted a transfer to Manchester United for 1 Euro.

Will you allow this? [YES], [NO], [DELAY]

Select [YES]

Are you sure that you’ll allow this? [YES], [NO]

Select [YES]

Are you really sure that you’ll allow this? [YES], [NO]

Select [YES]

Are you really really sure that you’ll allow this? [YES], [NO]

Select [YES]

This is your final chance, are you really sure that you’ll allow this? [YES], [NO]

Select [NO]

Are you sure that you’ll cancel the entire transfer? [YES], [NO]


During other issues, like sending a scout to somewhere it doesn’t harm at all. If you make a mistake, just recall him.

Point is, make sure people can undo any situation. And if it is not possible then it’s bad luck. Nobody is saying you have to drive with 150 mph against a wall. Nobody can prevent this, but if you’re sane then don’t do it.

If you’re sane, than do not sell Ronaldhino for 1 euro… </BLOCKQUOTE>

Ok, that was a bad example, but you know that whiners are going to flood the board blaming the lack of re-confirmation for all their woes.

retired_Calin

If you are doing transfer deals, its worth to pay some attention, no?

After all you're dealing about millions of euros.

And in most other cases, you just can cancel/undo your action.

Point is, SI could eliminate most (if not all) of those nag screen and give us a less demanding system. It will be percept as it runs faster (and it actually does a little)

Also, as Super Bladesman suggested, SI could use a little checkbox. If you like nagging questions then keep the checkbox on. If you don't like it, unselect the checkbox...

retired_bsine

The O.P. makes quite good points.

I'd like to chip in some thoughts on usability and in-game navigation.

The "nag" buttons, selecting multiple players for status change (implemented in '07), match flow screens, keyboard shortcuts, skin, all tie into usability.

FM is a game that gets heavy usage due to its multi-year, open-ended structure and replayability.

My fingers and eyes definitely feel the strain of playing for extended hours ! And this is where the usability of FM becomes either a boost or a burden on the addicted (who isn't !) FM player.

I like the O.P.'s points on the "nag" buttons. We can do without them.

I saw some posts on the new mail box feature for '08 that pertain to usability.

As it is, now users must click proactively to seek out some news items that were automatically presented in '07 and before.

Some people say "aw, you guys are lazy, it's just a button that needs clicked!"

Well, play FM for hours and hours (oh what fun!) and those button clicks add up and then add up some more.

I use keyboard shortcuts intensively, Cntrl+R to go to training, F10 to go fixtures, Shft+H to see world transfers, etc. Why? Well, it makes the game "easier" to play for longer.

And this is the same core reason that i welcomed the Control+click & Shift+click to select multiple players, introduced in '07. Love it !

Well, i better make a concrete point instead of just philosophizing more.

The gist of what i'm leading to is: Please pay more attention to usability, SI ! You're doing a better job than before, but you can do even better.

As for specifics:

1) i find arranging friendlies to require couple more mouseclicks than i'd think necessary. why do i have to go to the fixtures screen first, click the "select other team" button, then choose my opponent? it'd save me much time if i was given the option to arrange a friendly on a pull-down for any team's information screen.

2) for '08, there's been some heated debate on the matchflow screens. well, without delving into that specifically, i feel that it's always best to provide the option of level of detail in play vis a vis screens and auto-prompts. this would apply to match flows, for one, yes.

more choice is always desirable, and giving FM users choice in game play with respect to types of news items that are auto-presented, screens auto-prompted, perhaps even media items types to be included in game play, would be excellent.

3) well, i think there are other instances where having a sort of "choose all" button would be good.

for instance, i like to send out my youngsters on loan. i like to choose, "can play cups", "can play vs. me" "can be recalled" for these loans.

well, user-friendly enough, sure. but, again, when the save game tacks on year after year and my youth team gets large. choosing these three options on loan offer replies can be painstaking.

why not have a "choose all" button?

another example is for sending kids to affilates for loans. sometimes i let the player choose by selecting all affiliates for loan. again, why not, a "choose all affiliates" button.

on subject of transfers, could a "repeat previous reply" button be implemented for transfer queries and bids.

this is what i mean. often times, the same team bids the same amount (or around there) for one of my players over and over and over. i end up doing the same reply over and over...

same thing for enqueries from these teams.

a "keep same reply" button would be handy here.

well, there are more thoughts, but i should cut my post to make it somewhat user-friendly.

retired_euluis

Sir EW, this might be the best post I've ever read on the forums, possibly only second to some of the brilliant tactics threads.

However, I couldn't disagree with you more on most of what you are saying.

NAG SCREENS

The "nag" screens are important, very important for many of us. I, for example, play a lot during work, where my focus might be a bit different than when I play at home. This means I may click somewhere I really didn't mean to click. Or even forget which message is on the screen and click the wrong option before realising it. You must remember, not all people play the game the same way you do. However, wouldn't it be relatively feasible to have them optional? Ie. go to options and untick "safeguard screens"? Surely would work for me.

NO MATCH, JUST RESULTS

You can already do this with friendlies, go to the manager options and tick the "assistant/coach takes charge of friendlies" or similar. Now, I understand that you want this for more matches, I personally wouldn't use it on FM but I can certainly see the reasoning. I use it (abuse it, more like) in FIFA manager, or did until I binned it.

SCOUTING

I agree, scouting isn't particularly fun. Then again, I can't see how it will ever be "fun".

I often send my scouts out to find certain positions, age groups or whatever I am needing. Simply done with the "criteria" part of the scout assignment.

However, I find it irritating that when I am buying a player who plays, for example, as a midfielder and a defender. I am buying him as a defender and the scout compares him to a midfielder. That's just not what I want.

The problem with the number of scouts is that it doesn't really reflect scouting networks. At least I can't imagine that Man Utd have 10 scouts only and send them all over looking for talent. Surely they have these scouts who in turn have contacts all over the world who do the initial reporting. They would then take further look at those that come up during that process. At least, that's how I imagine it working in real life.

READING PLAYER SKILLS

The problem can surely not be related to the best players in the game, I mean, take a look at Kaka and you see all blue, he must be great. I would imagine the problem coming with the second tier players and below. I find it quite hard to figure out the initial requirements for the leagues I play in. I find myself pouring through the teams that are predicted to finish top and looking through their players, seeing what the standard is at the top.

Sometimes players with a medium of 10 in the important stats are stars, sometimes 13 or 15. Then again, I'm the manager, this is my job. I don't want the game to tell me everything.

And I think your quick look system is simply a rehash of the current positions screen. That tells you everything about where the player is useable.

ASSIGNING TRAINERS TO TRAINING TYPES

This one still troubles me. I set my training to all 7 stars, then I see what happens when I automate it. 3-4 stars everywhere except goalkeeping. Then again, it takes less than a minute to set your coaches assignments, not seeing a problem here.

SQUAD SELECTION

Now, I don't see anything there that would matter or be new.

Players with most/least general experience: Can't see the point, you ought to know which players you are using more/less than others? And if not, their age should be a good clue.
Players with most/least played games this year: Well, this is right on the selection screen. An entire column just for games played this season.
Youngest players: Change the view and voilá, you see their age and can sort by it.
The fittest palyers: Again, a column on the selection screen.
The ones with the best motivation: I'd guess the motivation comes through the pr icon and the others are just normally motivated? Either way, not a factor for me.
The latest arrived players: This I just plain don't understand, neither the purpose or how it matters?

And how long does it take to select a squad? for the games where I clear the selection it takes me all of five seconds to throw it back together. It is, after all, our job to select the team, no?

IMPORTING OLD SAVED GAMES

Seen this discussed time and time again. It's not possible/feasible. Besides which, if you want to keep playing that save, keep playing that save. I would much rather SI spend time on improving the new game and new features than work on something like this. No offense, just don't see how it's worth it.

ADVISOR SYSTEM

Never used it so can't really comment on it. However, I think something of it's kind is needed, surely there are at least some new buyers every year? And new buyers who don't have a lot of knowlegde of football? I know I would have killed for a good advisor system in the first NFL games I bought. I didn't know anything about the sport other than I enjoyed watching it, that ain't enough to know how a team works or what's involved in the sport.

LINKS

I believe the manual mentions that every name is clickable? If so, reading the manual helps. And it stands to reason that once you see that one thing is clickable, you figure that more things might be clickable? If it is too hard to remember that things are clickable then you have more serious problems than this, in my opinion.

MORE NEWS IN MATCH OVERVIEW

Aside from the fact that I can't for the life of me figure out why people play like that I think you are using the wrong screen. Surely the &lt;your team&gt; stats is the screen for you? Or even a split screen combo?

FACEGEN

Agree whole-heartedly! Facegen is the most brilliant thing to be included in the game since.. I don't know what

STADIUM

I'll admit to having loved making my own stadiums in various games. However, I always thought it was higly unrealistic and gimmicky. Some concrete real life proof would be needed and more than one or two instances.

FM2008, WORTH THE MONEY?

Well, I like most of the new things I've seen, mostly the new things in the match engine.

Either way, I agree that it is worth it!

I hope I've done your post justice with my reply

retired_Calin

Thanks for enjoying the posting.

Usability engineering isn’t about dealing all of YOUR personal requirements. Usability is about dealing the requirements of the targeted average user.

So it’s possible that some issues are fighting with your own personal requests.

Usability engineers will create a few user profiles derived from marketing info or surveys.

Such a profile is outlining who the user is, what’s their frequency of playing, their education level or age and gender. Are they familiar with similar software? Etc…

Most of the opinions I wrote are not just opinions, but common best practices used in the world of usability. For some of them there’s even empirical evidence that it is working like it is.

I’ll comment all your points and add some references to back it up.


NAG SCREENS

Each nag screen should have a checkbox, to make clear you want to see it returning or not. So it’s optional. If you still want it then you have the option.

However, some nag screens are just totally not needed at all, ‘cause about many items you are already informed in your News screens (or it could pass through the News screen at least).

By instance when doing something delicate as firing a player or team member a nag screen isn’t needed, ‘cause you’re informed by this through the News screen. A smart ‘Cancel’ button in that news item would do the trick. If you fired Ronaldhino by accident, then you still have an opportunity to cancel the process.

Other items are not delicate at all and you can undo (or there’s even no reason to) it rather easy, things like scouting a player, arranging a friendly match.

The avoid-the-nag-screens, is already mentioned by several usability experts. One of them is Alan Cooper (www.cooper.com) author of some nice usability book “About Face”. Cooper is more or less the father of the look and feel of Visual Basic.

There are several reasons why Nag Screens are not working. At first glance it’s looking good. It is a check to prevent a user is making a mistake, right?

But by thinking wise, one can always find a way to avoid them. Allow that people can make mistakes, but make sure they can undo it discretionary.

It will fasten up the progress, reduce the read-fatigue and lower the risks on RSI.

We would not accept the nursing behaviour of Nagging Screens in elevators or whatever every day used objects, so why do we accept them in software? We are used to it!
Programmers are using them since decades ‘cause they are easy and cheap to write.

But with some clever thinking almost ALL nag screens are avoidable.

Besides Alan Cooper, I add some other sources:
Czaja and Sharit, 1997; Smith and Mosier, 1986; Zimmerman, et al., 2002.


NO MATCH, JUST RESULTS

It’s not the same. I want to have the credits for the win/lose of the match. And it can only be arranged for friendly matches anyway.

A match is costing 3 minutes at minimum. I’m one of those players who’s interested in just the results in the small games.

FM2008 is a pretty slow game, by enhancing the speed it’s focussing me longer on the game and thus enhancing my personal enjoyment.

And again, I see it as an option. If you don’t like it then don’t use it. But I know that many people just would use this option.

Sure one can corrupt the results. But that’s currently also possible. If people want to corrupt their game, it’s their business.


SCOUTING

I like to hook 1 scout to 1 specific region to maximize the scout knowledge. It’s currently not possible when I want to cover all regions then each scout is dealing minimum two and some will have to do three regions. So their player knowledge is not maximized.

Even small clubs could have more than 9 or 10 scouts. I don’t like the limit. If I hire too many scouts then I’m a bad manager and I pay for it literally by the exploding salaries.

Some teams are not interested in scouting, other teams use it very intensively.

In reality, I can compare any player with any other. But my FM scouts, compare the scouted ones only with the best player (on that position) in my team.

If they fix this, than FM Genie Scout is almost of no use anymore. And the solution is rather simple. In the scouting screen they just could add a dropdown box, filled with all your players, to make clear whom you want to compare with the list of the scouted players.


READING PLAYER SKILLS

No it is something different as a rehash of the current positions screen.

In the quick look, you can quickly see who’s a good or bad player. Or a medium one!
It doesn’t teach you everything about some player, for the details check the details.

This system is not invented by me, it’s in use in almost any other football management game.


ASSIGNING TRAINERS TO TRAINING TYPES

I’m riding in the desert on a horse with no name.

It doesn’t take much time, but it still is. Why having a function with no purpose, ‘cause if you want to setup your training well, you still have to do it manually!

That’s a pure usability issue.

From a functional view and like many people wish, I think the entire training system should be reconsidered. I saw once a nice implementation of training schedules, I think in Ultimate Soccer Manager or UEFA Manager (but I am not sure anymore which). In one of those managers, you could fine-tune lots of training issues on a day to day basis. There was fatigue level linked with each training item and thus you know when you are overtraining your players.


SQUAD SELECTION

I assume you misunderstood my proposition. It’s not about viewing, it’s about selecting.

I have some doubts that it really is costing you only 5 seconds to select the fittest eleven of a squad of 22.

Yes, selecting is our job. I just want to have some tools to make my life easier.

This is also a feature you see in a lot in other managers.

I’ll comment the proposition a little more.

•Players with most/least general experience

Yes, you know who they currently are, but it’s about fast selecting a squad. Also, I was not talking about age, but more about played games in their career.

•Players with most/least played games this year.

The same as above, but then for the current season. I use such low experience selection for playing an unimportant cup game against some low league club.

•Youngest players
•The fittest players
•The ones with the best motivation

•The latest arrived players

Sometimes, in the summer season, while doing friendly games I want to play with my newest possible players.

Maybe SI should make it possible that we can create our own kind of ‘selection macros’, ‘cause it is clear that anyone else is seeing this one different.


IMPORTING OLD SAVED GAMES

Technical there is not one problem: it’s even not that hard to code. From a functional point of view some issues have to be solved. By instance what to do when some league is resized in number of teams? But for all those items a solution could be found. And sure some compromises have to be taken.

It’s a way of respecting and rewarding ‘old’ customers.

Now I have to say goodbye to my FM 2007 saved game and I really don’t want to.
40 game years are lost!


ADVISOR SYSTEM

I have no doubts that the Advisor System is working for the newbies. To make things clear: it will work.

Only, based on assumptions and on some raw user profile data it seems that it is not worth the pain. The effort by the development team is somehow of no use.

It’s all about ‘Frequency of use’.

Mostly a system is designed for the ‘ease of use’ or for the ‘ease of learning’. It’s rare that you have to combine those two usability targets.

The advisor system is an example of an ‘ease of learning’ target.

The problem is:

•There are not that many new players
•The new ones are used to interface rather fast ‘cause their frequency of use is high.

Thus the newcomers do not benefit enough for a long time from such an advisor system.

If FM2008 was rarely used than fulfilling ‘ease of learning’ goals would be acceptable (and in a way mandatory)

Even if your piece of software is targeting predominantly ‘ease of use’ goals, dealing ‘ease of learning’ goals in such occasion is acceptable if they are cheap to implement.

And I could be mistaken, but I assume the Advisor System was rather an expensive one.

This whole concept is outlined by another usability expert, Deborah Mayhew, in her book ‘The Usability Lifecycle’.

But again, I can be mistaken. I’m basing myself on assumption and unreliable data.

To make a perfect analysis I need to know how many real fresh new users buy FM2008.

How much newbies ran away in FM2007 after playing the game a few times.

I need to know how much hours those newbies are spending on the game on week or month basis.

LINKS

No, not all names are clickable (some real life old trainers, stadium names, etc…).

And even if it was, it’s still wise to make sure that links look like links.

It’s just reusing the user his/her already gained knowledge. In the case of links, most of us know how they look like and how they work. So why not reusing this knowledge?

Also, in a piece of text, as used as in FM2008, the links are most of the time, key items. By giving them the look and feel of a link then those words are different as the rest of the text and thus are recognized much easier and often used.

The scientific evidence for this is rather overwhelming.

I have several sources for this one:

Bailey, Koyani and Nall, 2000; Coney and Steehouder, 2000; Evans, 1998; Farkas and Farkas, 2000; IEEE; Larson and Czerwinski, 1998; Miller and Remington, 2000; Mobrand and Spyridakis, 2002; Nielsen and Tahir, 2002; Spool, et al., 1997; Spyridakis, 2000.


MORE NEWS IN MATCH OVERVIEW

It’s a usability error due they are not consistent. The behaviour of software should be as predictable as possible. This is influencing both ease of learning and use.

In the screen I’m talking about you see news about red cards but not yellow ones.
You see news about show-stopping injuries but not the small injuries.

This is clearly not consequent.

Also why should I split up my screen and pollute the area with too much information? I just want to have the essential info in THAT screen. There’s room enough.


STADIUM

I don’t know how many other real life managers were deeply involved in the design of a stadium. I assume not a lot. But that doesn’t matter. It’s fun to do for US, so...

The two names I gave is real life proof.

Are there other people here who have knowledge of managers driving the design or building of a new stadium?

retired_mmmcdermott

This has been a good thread and some good points have been raised but as always nobody will agree on everything

Totally agree with this one

I don't think the ethos of FM is about instant results. It removes the reality - the more you speed these results up the less detail you have in your simulation. I certainly don't agree with your view on this but agree that it could be implemented as an option - the only problem being the flood of complaints that will be received about the inaccuracy of results when employing this option

This is a limitation imposed by the board - and it impacts on your wage bill. A manager is always limited by what his board will allow.

This would be a nice feature

I disagree with the assessment of FM Genie Scout - In reality you have no convenient value to compare players - its purely a judgement call and a manager will rely heavily on his advisors (scouts, ass man etc). This would be the equivalent of chatting to God and asking who is better: Rooney or Tevez

Hate the training system - often feel intimidated by its complexity - more often than not end up searching the forums for a schedule and then implement that.


SQUAD SELECTION

I assume you misunderstood my proposition. It’s not about viewing, it’s about selecting.

I have some doubts that it really is costing you only 5 seconds to select the fittest eleven of a squad of 22.

Yes, selecting is our job. I just want to have some tools to make my life easier.

This is also a feature you see in a lot in other managers.

I’ll comment the proposition a little more.

•Players with most/least general experience

Yes, you know who they currently are, but it’s about fast selecting a squad. Also, I was not talking about age, but more about played games in their career.

•Players with most/least played games this year.

The same as above, but then for the current season. I use such low experience selection for playing an unimportant cup game against some low league club.

•Youngest players
•The fittest players
•The ones with the best motivation

•The latest arrived players

Sometimes, in the summer season, while doing friendly games I want to play with my newest possible players.

Maybe SI should make it possible that we can create our own kind of ‘selection macros’, ‘cause it is clear that anyone else is seeing this one different.[/QUOTE]

Creating all of these time saving mechanisms sound great in principle but will the added cost in development and testing time really be worth the added benefit. There is also the danger of cheapening the experience - there is the very real possibilty that the user will use these options and not become engaged in the game and get bored of it very quickly alienating them from the franchise in general

This all comes down to the database structure. If extra attributes are added, or the structure is changed significantly then this could be a problem. But, I must agree with you - this would definitely encourage more people to take the step up

I didn't like the advisor - tried to use it to find features that I didn't know about but soon got fed up.

I think that this is very much a user specific issue. I personally like to split my screen so that I can see the match overview as well as keep an eye on the opposition formation, or see the match stats, or the current scores at a crucial part of the season.

If implemented as an option then I would agree but I don't see Rafa Benitez having too terribly much influence on the redesign of New Anfield. Football managers are transitory creatures and certainly, in general, have no experience whatsoever in stadium design.

On the whole I feel there are some valuable suggestions here but I certainly don't agree with all of them

retired_dego72

It's a usability design error many software titles are suffering from.

If you didn't want to quit, why did you select this menu item anyway?

And if you accidentally did, all you have to do is restarting again...big deal.

Imagine that your car would ask such silly questions...

"Are you sure you want to break (Y/N)? *CRASH*" </BLOCKQUOTE>

Leaving that particular confirmation out would be madness, and is certainly not a design error.

When using FM or any application in a Window it is very easy to accidentally click on another windows X, and the "are you sure" dialogue is an essential safety net, not a design flaw as people do make mistakes- and not only ones with "low self esteem" as you pointlessly said earlier.

After all restarting and having to play say a months worth of games is a pretty big deal for some.

retired_dego72

It's a usability design error many software titles are suffering from.

If you didn't want to quit, why did you select this menu item anyway?

And if you accidentally did, all you have to do is restarting again...big deal.

Imagine that your car would ask such silly questions...

"Are you sure you want to break (Y/N)? *CRASH*" </BLOCKQUOTE>

Why? Because if you are tired and you accidently wished to do something else instead of quitting/whatever else.

From what I read, you want it to be removed because you want to speed up things. What if you make a mistake (which can happen to anybody e.g. a slip of the hand), then you'll need to undo those actions which take longer to undo than by just reconfirming actions. Like taking your example, "All you have to do is restart again", that takes a longer time than to simply click a "No" button.
I'm sorry I have to disagree with you. </BLOCKQUOTE>

Sure. But how many times you slip your hand to the exit of the game?

Not that many times. I'm pretty sure that in 95% of the time you actually just want to quit.

And in the very rare occasion you were mistaken -&gt; just restart.

Btw, you have to do several handlings to exit the game…. </BLOCKQUOTE>

Im amazed that a usability engineer doesnt realise that selecting quit isnt the only way to quit the game.

Its very easy- be it by clicking the X close button, or even accidentally doing Alt-F4 thinking your closing a different active window.

Even external apps rebooting your PC can quit FM.

retired_Calin

It's a usability design error many software titles are suffering from.

If you didn't want to quit, why did you select this menu item anyway?

And if you accidentally did, all you have to do is restarting again...big deal.

Imagine that your car would ask such silly questions...

"Are you sure you want to break (Y/N)? *CRASH*" </BLOCKQUOTE>

Leaving that particular confirmation out would be madness, and is certainly not a design error.

When using FM or any application in a Window it is very easy to accidentally click on another windows X, and the "are you sure" dialogue is an essential safety net, not a design flaw as people do make mistakes- and not only ones with "low self esteem" as you pointlessly said earlier.

After all restarting and having to play say a months worth of games is a pretty big deal for some. </BLOCKQUOTE>

Unless it is saving your game before you quit.

Again, that Nag Screen isn't needed there.

retired_Calin

It's a usability design error many software titles are suffering from.

If you didn't want to quit, why did you select this menu item anyway?

And if you accidentally did, all you have to do is restarting again...big deal.

Imagine that your car would ask such silly questions...

"Are you sure you want to break (Y/N)? *CRASH*" </BLOCKQUOTE>

Why? Because if you are tired and you accidently wished to do something else instead of quitting/whatever else.

From what I read, you want it to be removed because you want to speed up things. What if you make a mistake (which can happen to anybody e.g. a slip of the hand), then you'll need to undo those actions which take longer to undo than by just reconfirming actions. Like taking your example, "All you have to do is restart again", that takes a longer time than to simply click a "No" button.
I'm sorry I have to disagree with you. </BLOCKQUOTE>

Sure. But how many times you slip your hand to the exit of the game?

Not that many times. I'm pretty sure that in 95% of the time you actually just want to quit.

And in the very rare occasion you were mistaken -&gt; just restart.

Btw, you have to do several handlings to exit the game…. </BLOCKQUOTE>

Im amazed that a usability engineer doesnt realise that selecting quit isnt the only way to quit the game.

Its very easy- be it by clicking the X close button, or even accidentally doing Alt-F4 thinking your closing a different active window.

Even external apps rebooting your PC can quit FM. </BLOCKQUOTE>

You can't forsee everything. Your computer could crash as well....

And by selecting X, it just should save your current game...