Well here we are relaunch date announced loads of work done on the mechanics of the game to try and learn from past mistakes.
Just to recap:-
Attended the council, was impressed very talented bunch at SI / Sega and seemed determined to get it right. Lots of ideas floated and naturally at this time I heard how grim things were and secondly that the reset was a definite.
The announcement of the reset I was expecting more meat on the bones and got the impression that SI were looking to 'flatten' the GW's.
Flatten in that no great teams or dire teams, the council were suggesting that the opposite be done.
Turns out that wasn't the plan, although in returning stars GW I think this will happen anyway. See previous post.
So FM Live still doomed?
I'm expecting a lot of managers will leave early on. They'll cite loads of excuses but honestly they'll go for the age old reason, they can't win / progress.
The target market is FM10 and a lot of them play as Man Utd so when their not Man Utd their off. The other big demographic is the rags to riches bunch and a proportion of them will stick around, the games biggest appeal is still to the LLM or Simulation type manager.
A few will stay hopefully Si still have appetite for the game and the FM10 free offer will be rolled into the existing GW's.
Here is the critical time. If Si are cute with new GW's (taking the top from one GW and getting them to move into new GW's) then everyone can progress a little.
The heavy user or hardcore as they seem to be called will be a little frustrated with the pace of the game. The casual s it depends how many there are at the start.
I just can't see that many that many will be bothered paying £50 a year for a game they play casual. I can't see that same person wanting to play it competative. I could be wrong of course although I do work in marketing it's still a hunch.
If I was working on this I'd look for data to support or disprove that position.
So conclusion from my time in the beta GW's Horton and Miller, there is a little more to do in an older GW and if your good enough you can progress.
I don't think FM Live is doomed. The capital investment in terms of hardware and coding has already been made and if it can break even in terms of maintenance then the game will plod along at least. It'll probably do that off the back of free vouchers in FM10.
Overall FM Live is a better game now the downside it moves slow, it's pace is slowed to that of the most casual manager. It has a slightly broader appeal but at the same time might alienate the heavier user. It always was a careful balance.
Think I'll do a FAQ on Youth Academies and the new wage system next.
2 comments:
Jak, I'm not in beta so not that well placed to comment but my impression is very much that there'll be a big difference between the first 3 seasons of a GW when everything will go slowly, and after that when the new system (with the Hardcore FA etc) is set up so that those teams who want to play faster can.
But it's those first three months that could be the problem. I wonder if SI might be wise to put out an "eve of the reset" message sometime this week to say "look, the start of the new GWs is going to be very different to the start of new GWs in the past and it'll all happen much slower. We appreciate that this will be frustrating to some people, but it's NOT because we want to stop the best managers achieving the most, it's because we want it to be the best football managers who do well and not those who can best game the system. We believe the new setup will produce stable GWs after 3 seasons which can take off from there," and then preferably add... (!) "provided this does happen, we'll then be backing up the product with some serious marketing after the 3 months is up around the time of the world cup."
The current dev blogs etc are great, but unless you put them all together and read between the lines it'd be easy to miss the implications for the pace of a new gameworld. A more upfront statement might help do the trick, and pacify those who would otherwise be unhappy.
That's a good point m8 I think they should be more up front about it.
Maybe they should embrace people having a few accounts and give a discount for extra accounts.
Does cure the slowness of the game a little but I'm not that rich to be able to afford more:(
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