[retired_cashmere]

I am shocked that the current developer stance on this problem is that it doesn't exist. I've seen countless posts on the subject where players have achieved the boards long term expectations or even exceeded them within the time frame the board proposes and the boards reaction to this is to state that either the long term expectations were not met or that the player is making no effort to achieve their goals. Not to mention personal experience of the same.

As an example, of my likely final top flight game in 8.0.1 after a slow start as Newcastle I finally turned the club in to an all competition dominating side. Upon renewal of my contract for the 2nd time they set my long term goal as winning the league in the next two years. My contract was to last four years.

1st year I came 2nd, won the Champions League. 2nd year won the league, won the Champions League.
3rd year won the Champions League, came 2nd in the League.
4th year won the league once more.

Boards comment on my progress to achieving their long term expectations : The board is very disappointed that you appear to be making no real effort to achieving their long term goals.....

Excuse me?

Very well, I'll start a new season as Newcastle now once I have the new patch and proof you shall have. To state there is no problem as things stand is irresponsible

[retired_halfshell69]

Thanks for the response,

a question though; some of the points i brought up i wouldn't quite classify as "bugs" - e.g. no consideration of the draw when commenting on cup progress, no option to play youth in league cup, etc. These are issues that i would certainly class as faults, but no save game is going to provide evidence for them.

I can elaborate on the examples i gave if they haven't crossed your mind (although in the linked thread i think i've explained them quite thoroughly) but i'm not sure every problem we've commented on can be supported by a saved game - or rather it would be supported by EVERY saved game.

Sorry if that isn't particularly clear, i do ramble on sometimes. I will be along to the bugs forum shortly to provide a saved game btw, as i think (ignoring turkey/defore problems) the board confidence is the only MAJOR issue i have with 8.0.2, most other areas are excellent, although it did take me a while to fix my 4-5-1.

[retired_leannesherman]

Miles - Good on you for replying today, 'tis Saturday and all

30 testers (I guess from your explanation most are contracted) is not an insignificant team size. However, if this board expectation feature is indeed as harsh as a few people have suspected, I would imagine the test team would have logged it. If not, and it is as bad as some people have suggested, there is room for test improvements. If it was recorded as a problem (as noted elsewhere) then it was obviously waived.

I think you used to have select external people (perhaps some from the forum) testing things for you. Not sure why that changed (dodgy copies being released early?) but maybe that would catch some things that SI (well, you Miles ) claim not to have seen. Board Confidence is one.

Previously through a couple of versions it was the goalkeepers settings changing to that of an outfield player when making a sub mid-game. Through 06 and 07 (maybe 05 too but I dont recall) I've always had to manually reset the keeper to having keeper instructions whenever making a sub. A few people mentioned this yet SI said they'd never seen it. I'm amazed, because it happened all the time. Lo and behold it popped up in 08 demo, people mentioned it again and eventually, with some effort, it was found and fixed.

Yet I'm still suffering with it because I havent moved to '08... yet Absolutely loving 07.

[retired_dalcar]

Masquerade - can you please point out where I, or anyone else from SI, has stated that there is no problem?

Ched - faults/bugs are the same thing. Saved games are necessary for fixing anything like this, as the individual scenario has to be recreated.

T4RG4 - as you can see from my posts on the matter, I have not seen it personally in multiple saved games, going up to 20 seasons. So it's affecting some people, and not others, and potentially certain board configurations. Thing is, we don't really know, as we haven't seen it ourselves, nor have any valid saved games, so it's nigh on impossible to analyse.

The "bunch of offsite testers" are the select external people you speak of.

[retired_cashmere]

well considering that it's been stated in the 8.0.2 patch thread that it could be the final one I'm assuming either it's considered that there is no problem with the boards confidence or that there are no plans to fix it if there is.

While you may not be denying it's existence in so many words the general response so far has been resistant to it's existence, no matter how many people post about problems. Yes, they're not posting their save games and I can see why that would make things difficult to fix, hence why I plan to start a game myself in order to provide some assistance to fixing what I see as a glaring and game ruining issue. But on the other hand I've yet to see SI acknowledge it as a problem anywhere, in opposition to such numerous complaints.

You can't fix it without solid data to analyse, fine, but at least take the step to acknowledge that it is a problem

[retired_svand67]

In fairness there seems to be a misconception among patrons of this forum that Miles Jacobson is personally involved with the development of FM 2008, that he is the Boss Man and responsible for all goodness or lack of.

I get the impression he's just Miles Jacobson, a man who happens to work at S.I. but not on this project (as I seem to recall he said somewhere not long back) and as such you can't take his comments as being representative of the development approach and/or aknowledgement and resolution of issues.

Correct me if I am wrong Miles .. but aren't you just 'being on the forum' as opposed to 'being the official line from SI'?

If so, what he says he thinks and feels about the game isn't gospel. Its just how he thinks and feels about the game - opinion as subjective as mine.

All you can do really is start threads in the Bugs forum, with supporting evidence if prompted. Let them deal with it.

[off-topic conjecture]

The reason I think we're all getting so het up and hot under the collar is that there is a general concensus S.I. have their head in the sand when it comes to getting issues addressed.

Nobody likes to feel that they are effectively being ignored, most of us deal with it as we know from experience the nature of big business. However when it goes on and continues to be raised in new threads and posts in increasingly negative and aggressive terms, there is that temptation to unload both barrels at the next available employee that pops his head up.

This in turn makes them want to restructure the forum and feedback element of the site to remove that 'bad vibe' burrow deeper into their own marketing propoganda and it becomes a domino effect.

S.I. you need to seriously look at the structure of your testing and Q&A. It is simply letting too much slip through the net and sounds like a vast nonlithic network of people many of whom (having read their comments on this and other sites) claim to be reporting issues that are not being addressed pior to shipping.

We all blame them, and Si. The reality seems to be poor communication and a reluctance for the development teams to actually listen to criticism.

All sounds like typical corporate ****.

Same modus operandi that brings us hogs like Windows Vista. Its just the nature of the beast.

Other software houses have much much smaller teams and only have to release on one or at most two platforms at any given time. They aren't diversifying all over the place and frantically developing three or four or more different iterations of a title or theme in parallel on several different sites etc.

When you go from a single product line to that sort of business model quality always takes a nose dive.

It just so happens that the games industry has the least patient, most vocal and least tolerant target audience. Other companies have twigged that extensive public beta testing is a viable alternative to internal political minefields. Presumably it was decided this wouldn't work at S.I or they haven't cottoned on to the shift in the games industry in terms of product delivery, quality, timescales etc.

Or it isn't an issue, since Miles claims the company is recording healthy sales and solid growth.

*shrug

[/off-topic conjecture]

:thup:

[retired_dalcar]

Gubbs - what you write about me there is not entirely true, no. If I put "personally" or "in my opinion" on a post, then it is just that. If not, then it would be the company line, as I am the Studio Director at Sports Interactive. I am not a coder, but then I never have been a coder, but am still "the gaffer", much in the same way as a football manager doesn't score goals, but is still the manager of the team that does the goalscoring....

As for the rest of your post is your opinion from the outside, without looking in, and is a very barbed view of what I see day in, day out in the studio.

We regularly state that criticism is fine, as long as it's constructive. Destructive criticism doesn't help anyone - we don't respond well to it, and nor should we. With any bug, in any software, examples are needed to fix any problems, whether they are ones that we've seen ourselves, or ones we haven't. The process is exactly the same for people at the company logging bugs as it is for the end user - without a saved game, a bug report is pretty useless (unless it's a UI issue, or an issue that happens ever single time) as the game is so expansive.

Reading some of your posts, I'm not sure that you acknowledge that your opinion is your own, and not necessarily that of everyone. You fail to acknowledge that just because you dislike something, it means everyone does. For example, I dislike onions and don't understand why anyone would like them, but I acknowledge that lots of people do and either avoid them, pick them out of my food, or, when that is impractical, eat the food anyway and just like it a little bit less.

In your conjecture, you have made many wildly sweeping statements in your post above that are simply not true, not just about us as a studio, but about the industry in general. I won't go into detail on that, because I don't want to get involved in yet another pointless flame war.

We are very proud of our forums, and our record of listening to our customers. As is pointed out many times in these forums, very few developers would even think to go to their own forums, let alone interact with their customers, let alone have it coming from the level of Studio Director or the co-founder of the studio in Paul Collyer. We've made it clear in the "these forums" post that many of the team have stopped coming here because of the abuse given out for what we believe to be a superb game and which you correctly point out, is selling healthily. To record levels.

I also vehemently disagree that the product quality is dropping due to the other projects we are working on - quite the opposite in fact. The different games that we have worked on, and are working on, has lead to better games allround due to having seperate teams working on them, with different ideas and ways of doing things, all of which can be utilised within our other games if the teams working on them decide to.

The truth is much simpler than the conspiracy thoeries.

[retired_cashmere]

before I submit any save in the future could someone clarify for me what 'a challenger for the premier division' actually translates in to? In previous games 4th or 5th is apparently not good enough

[odie072]

Hi,

Just wanted to add a few comments ...

I agree with previous posters that there are pretty basic issues with confidence.

I start as West Ham (e.g.) and are told 'challenge for the prem title in two years' - how realistic/unrealistic is that?

Liverpool's goals are to reach every semi final at least and challenge for prem - takes utterly no account of who you draw in the cups and champions league in eventual feedback.

Was playing as Liverpool, beat Man Utd 5 times in one season (cups, champs league and premiership) yet the fans were still mentioning that I lost to Everton away from home about 15 games ago.

There is no ability as mentioned to field weaker teams and give your own priorities to the League cup (or totally irrelevant Charity Shield) for example - you lose and you get reprimanded.

These aren't bugs ... they are basic parts of the game that don't work properly or reflect what happens in reality as such.

[Ansthenia]

First of all let me say that I haven't even played FM08 yet. Every year I wait until around February to buy the game. This is because I know there will always be patches issued and I can never commit to a career game when I know the game will be improved and I never play anything but career games so I always wait until February. I would also like to point out that I am in no way saying that as a dig at SI, Miles anyone, I am juststating how I go about buying the game.

Right, I can now start what I wanted to say. Obviously having not played the game yet, I can not comment on bugs, data issues etc. What I can say is that there appears to be a lot of people saying there is a problem with 2 things in particular. Board Confidence and Grey Teams.

However this post is not only not a rant at SI it isn't defending them either. What I am saying is that with this many people having problems, there is a good chance that they are well founded, however, the problem is that a lot of these people posting about problems don't help themselves in any way what so ever.

They post in this forum for a start. If you have what you consider a bug, post it in the bugs forum, it's what it's there for, and there is no excuse for anyone using the line of "someone else has posted a thread about it" because the more threads about the same problem the better, it's going to be taken more seriously the more threads there are, until it gets to a stage where there is a recognised thread for the bug that everyone can contribute to, and not have everyone post seperate threads (although how many of you would listen and not go opening another thread anyway is debatable).

If you have what you feel is a bug, you should post in the bugs forum, with a title that helps SI amd their testers identify it properly, along with the version of the game on which you are having the problem helps. Then you don't get a situation where Krondo posts that there are 156 resukts for Board Confidence when in reality, as Miles points out, most of those threads are in regards to the boxed version or patch 8.0.1

A thread title along the lines of [8.0.2] Board Confidence Bug is sufficient, as opposed to "ZOMG Board r retards" or something similar. Followed by a simple post outlining the problem, and sending a save of your game (as close to the date of the problem that you can get it) to SI's FTP servers, with any relevant information included.

Unfortunately a lot of people on these forums are far too lazy, stupid to follow simple instructions or simply can't be bothered to go to the effort to help SI even though they want the problems fixed.

It also doesn't help when the same thread is posted over and over again by barely literate imbeciles who seem intent on butchering the English language and having no other intentions than spouting vicious vitriol at SI and in some cases posting extremely angry material that they deserve to get banned for.

For those of you for whom English is not your recognised language, obviously that last paragraph doesn't apply to you, just those people who are here simply to have a go at SI in text speak.

As for Grey Teams being too good, this has appeared to be an issue since FM07 but it may get missed in testing as people would normally prefer to test the match engine against proper teams, but it is hard to defend it still being a problem after so long. But like I say, I've not yet played this version and will do so soon, and I may find there is no problem with Grey Teams at all.