retired_ramanan_5

Management Simulation vs Playability - How to make the game fun again.

If you are like me and have played Football Manager / Champ Manager for at least 10 years, I am sure you will remember the days when you could easily spend a whole night playing the game just to get through a season or rebuild our team for next year. However the latest versions of the game have felt more like a 9-5 desk job rather than something I would sit down to play after I finished work. I would like to give my opinion on how to improve the playability of the game and would hope others will do the same as I believe these forums to be a place for constructive criticisms and positive attitudes rather than just here to have a rant about the game.

First of all, I would like to point out to all the anal forum inspectors out there that I have searched through other topics and I know this debate has been raised numerous times. The idea of the post is to once again highlight these issues and make my own thoughts known.

Secondly, I am in no way trying to put down anyone who works for the game. The simple fact is that they have made the best Football Management game ever created and continue to do so, but I hope that they continue to listen to the customers and look to meet the needs of their customers.

With that in mind I would also like to say that I am a very experienced player and have exhausted each game that has came out including FM 2008 and there is no button, setting or preference I havent clicked on. So, smarmy comments to the question Why is the Game so slow? such as Detail Level Too High or Computer not fast enough are not appreciated.

Ok, introduction done.

Like I said I have been playing FM 2008 and there are just too many things that bore me about this game now. I absolutely love the feeder club stuff, I love most of the new features each year it is released but yet there are too many things in the game which just don't make it fun anymore.

Such as:
Team Talks - Good Idea, but when I let my Asst Manager do it, especially on 8.02 he gives random team talks or none at all. Simple Answer: better the Asst Manager, better the team talks.

Media - Yawn Yawn Yawn - "Berbatov to feature against old club" REPLY, "Media looks forward to upcoming fixture" REPLY, Tottenham to bid for 38 year old I forgot was on my shortlist REPLY ZZZZZZZZZZZZ Simple Answer: Get on with it!!!! If I want to comment I will go to Player> Media Interaction and select my own media interactions, or again why not ASST MAN do this e.g Poyet at Spurs

Game Level - Ok so I admit, going back to the Diablo and 4-1-3-2, Robbie Keane, Tonton Zola Moukoko, Andri Sigporrson supertactics is not the way, but having played the game 10 years and yet having to scroll through hours of shortlists, best players, tactics and whatever forums just so I don't get beat by W.B.A again is just annoying!!!. There is no pick up and play value to Football Manager anymore and it makes it yawn!

Bugs....: Yes, I know that as each thing is changed in the code 1000 other things change and it is impossible to make a bug free game. But personally I don't care if the Indonesian second division has too many subs, I want to be able to do proper team talks and not have to download stuff just because some prat makes Defoe earn $1m a week. urgh come on!!!!!

TRAINING: I just played 3 seasons of CM01-02 and enjoyed it a hell of a lot. The main reason was because players actually improved when you signed them. Like I dunno, the obsurd thought of buying a highly rated youngster and him actually reaching his potential when you have state of the art everything and the best coaches in the world. Simple Answer: No game Sports Interactive have produced has gotten training right, they overhaul, overhaul, overhaul and get it wrong again and again, so just build a simple system that works, CM 01-02 was close.

There are many many more ideas I can give to the game and I hope people take this seriously and put their own pointers in too. My main arguement is the Fun Factor.

Football Manager is a GAME. It should feel like a game when you play it. Management simulation is fun to a point, but when it takes you 3 days to do a season it is fun no more. Here are the guidelines I would like to see applied to FM 2009 to make it fun again!

Average Season - should take no more than 8 hours continuous play.
Assistant Manager - Let the computer do all the things you find tedious e.g Media, Team Talks etc and do them to the standard of Assistant Manager that you hav hired
In Game - Very Fast Commentary should mean Very Fast, maybe even simulate game option?
Training - Anything that makes your young PA players actually reach potential in a good environment
Team Talks - 8.02 Asst Manager For the Fans or None every time is not a team talk, No Major bugs in FM 2009 PLEASE!!!
Media - Detail options, I do not want to have to click through 300 players signing new contracts because my shortlist has to be so big because the game is too hard for me not to miss a player

Simple Answer- Make the Assistant Manger do all the crap you don't want to do to speed the game up and make it playable again. The boffins who have 20 hours a day to do everything themselves can still have the option to do so, and the 95% of the rest who want to pick up and play the game because their team in real life simply isn't as good as they would like to be, well we get our game back!

Thanks SI, and I hope many more customers will produce their own ways of making the game playable again.

clearls

I dont understand, I find the game immensely fun.

retired_ramanan_5

Congrats to you!

Anyways two more reasons things need to change.

In how many editions now has the Penalty Shoot out bug been?

Here we go, one of the most fun and dramatic and ultimately playable features of the game ruined!
GOAL FOR TOTTENHAM!!!!
..............pause................ (oh well I've missed!)
SAVED!

zzzzzzzzzzzz

And 'CORNER BUG' How does this happen!!! So I put my Centre Back to Challenge Goalie and I get an extra 40 goals a season.

Must do Better.

retired_pamd

Although i find the game stupidly addictive and fun i sort of see the point. I played Fm 05 the other day and i loved it. It was the most fun i have had on a game in ages. Even though it may be techincally and graphically better to navigate and play i think the main reason behind the fun factor on 05 was the speed at which a season went. It was alot quicker, this meant the youth talent developed properly and a career could be played better. When an (actual) week of playing meant a few seasons rather than a few months. To get far on a game now a-days it takes weeks and weeks of effort , and in the past it was simply easier to get along way.

Either that or i'm growing up more than i thaught and slowly loosing more and more time :eek:

retired_martina

Please don't forget the fun from football itself. where does it come from. I think as a fan we'd love to watch the matches of our favourite team. So playing the football management simulation game we should feel fun from both managing the team/contribute to the club and watching the nice performances of your lads on the pitch through 2D match engine. So it is always frustrating and boring when noticing some flaws or absurd events happen on the 2d screen and when pressing continue button with no more excitment cos everything is commonly get used to and just repeating.

retired_nnifeitak

Real life management would be a hundred times more repetitive than FM is.

retired_martina

Well OK Fine! Just as if I hadn't said anything. Let's repeat! Oh yeah.

retired_nnifeitak

Well how do you propose to make it not repeditive without quitting after a season or two every game?

retired_nnifeitak

Should add I agree the media is far too repetitive, but overall management is always going to be about routine.

retired_lgkramer

Game too slow - I agree, unless you have Dual Core and 2gb of RAM. Then it's fast.

I too am sick of having to talk about a former player before a game 3+ seasons after he left!