Interesting reading.

"Over the past year or so however, I’ve realised that I no longer get the same enjoyment out of writing the game; for me the halcyon days were probably when Paul and I were writing CM2 and the whole thing was a lot more personal. Although it’s been fun to work with such talented and enthusiastic people, being a smaller part of a bigger team just doesn’t give me the same creative satisfaction."


The above is a quote from, 'Open letter to the CM Community - by Oliver Collyer August 7th, 2001 @ 12:25'

In short, this was (part of) a post from one of the two founders of Sports Interactive explaining that he was leaving the company (coding the then Championship Manager series). Whilst on the whole it was pretty standard stuff upon reading it, there is one line from it which is very relevant to the game we currently play now, FML.

"being a smaller part of a bigger team just doesn’t give me the same creative satisfaction"

He now has the opposite of that statement in Football Manager Live, he is very much at the helm once again and surrounded with what it would appear a very sparse team. This team may be happy with the pacing of development (fast in their eyes due to the numbers), but that is not what the customer wants to see or hear.

Let's say it is four months of development per major update. What we would ideally like to see is four months of dedicated development towards new features with a sprinkle of nice little extras for the more hardcore of users.

What we actually get is (due to the small team), the following four months after a major update, two of those months are spent tweaking and fixing the last update and only two months development time from the whole team (or only 2 months code time from OV as the case may be) is dedicated to new features. This short time frame usually results in bare bones features and the inability to expand upon older features.

Take youth academies currently. They are very much a 'click and wait for the randomness' kind of feature and we have no evidence to point towards them changing anytime soon.

Stadiums came into the game around January 2009, and other than the nerfing of their effectiveness financially and a couple of graphics tweaks they appear to be an indicator for the fate of the youth academies.


Will this game follow the same path as the Championship Manager/Football Manager series? - starting small and allowed to expand into what could potentially be a huge game, or will it be constantly reigned in and essentially bottlenecked by a limited development team?

And will that mean this games ultimate demise?

"Nurse required in fracture clinic"

Injuries

Even though I read some of the more informed blogs about the new injury system (forum rants etc), it has to be witnessed happening to your team before you see just how much your original strategy and your future plans get screwed. Safe to say I didn't listen to any of them.

My starting FML strategy is going the same way as my strategies in the game Theme Hospital (pictured above) used to go many years ago. I chose the minimum 16 staff at the start, all junior doctors of course to save money (then again I was given no consultants, more like older doctors who were about to be struck off anyway). Just the one nurse to manage the physio side of things, she is currently in the staff room stressed out already (why did I buy that pool table?). So far it's all going a bit 'NHS'.

EPIDEMIC ALERT

Injuries seem to be the epidemic alert of FML. Everything could be going smoothly for a while and you are reaping the rewards of good management and good planning, then suddenly, 6 of your best players come down with 'bloaty head syndrome' (coming soon in the form of crazy wage demands) and your season is practically over.

It is the right system though I feel for the game, it's just at this minute in time, injuries seem more like a pandemic rather than an epidemic.

Voller Database

Locked players only (over 100k AF)

Acquisition Fee/Number of players

1 million - 3.5 million .... 29

500k - 975k .................. 51

250k - 475k .................. 88

150k - 250k .................. 332

100k - 140k .................. 392


100k - 140k (unlock dates)

29th ............. 4 players
30th ............ 26 players
31st ............. 26 players
1st ............... 25 players
2nd ............. 24 players
3rd .............. 26 players
4th - 13th ..... 26 players per day

Looking at the 4 players unlocked tonight, each player will be unlocked just under an hour after the last one. Obviously when there are less players to be unlocked (higher AF's) this may change.

The 26 players per day thing seems pretty pointless to me. They have accomplished the goal of making sure that the players released at certain stages of the game now correspond to roughly the amount of cash 90% of managers can afford, giving everyone a chance to bid and to keep teams even as well.

I can't see any harm in unlocking all the players (with a minimal spread like my example 100k - 140k) at the first unlock date. So,

100k - 140k players currently get released 26 per day over 16 days in game

What would be better is,

All 100k - 140k players unlocked on the day the first 100k player is unlocked

No more unlocked until 16 days (so the first 150k player still gets released on the day he would have done anyway)

150k - 200k players all unlocked then no more until the date of the first 210k player was due

Season 1 unlocks will have a maximum AF until season 2 unlocks start - make sure the last spread has the maximum AF for season 1


The current system is very limiting in terms of strategy, interest and diversity. There is hardly any risk involved in this system (which is probably what Si wanted but isn't there enough hand holding going on already?) and there certainly isn't any kind of strategy in it - you either wait or you don't.

People can't say my suggestion is kind of like a transfer window because until the next level of AF, those players would have been locked anyway. Also, this unlock system only lasts until the end of season 3, after that no-one will ever be locked again.

Make the first 3 seasons a bit more interesting because they definitely need it.

Tabula Rasa

My only mention of pre-reset FM Live I promise (maybe)

Unlike the Titanic, FM Live did not hit an iceberg. The RMS Live was instead sent out on its journey with lots of holes in its structure which quite frankly were pissing in water from day one.


Some of those holes were freshly opened by the paying customer (needing only their fingernails it must be said), some smaller holes were also made bigger by the customers but the majority of the holes were there from the beginning.


The RMS Live had been taking on water for far too long and while Sports Interactive's small crew (can an MMO with any ambition be manned by so few?) were busy plugging holes and removing water I still have this vision in my head of the SEGA team on the upper decks, pulling off bits of their own ship, dismantling the life boats and grabbing any flotsam they could find to build other ships of its kind, regardless if they get to where they are going or not.



What kind of subscriber were you towards the end?

One of the violin players going out in dignity

Balls to the women and children policy, I'm not happy

You told them about your socks being wet for most of the journey, you just wished they would have listened

I met a woman with great tits, I wasn't going anywhere


Voller
Opened 24th March 2010
1.5.3 (build 4743)