FML A New Hope

Read the beta forums today and we're not allowed to say what is happening but reading news there are plans to fix the ME!

I posted in the forums yesterday that there are many issues with the game but a ME that produces results or league tables that make sense would pull me back into the game. I might not renew both subs but I'd at least keep one going.

This new ME is not in Coppell yet though, otherwise I'd give it a right blast. It seems SI are at least on the same wave length now. Strange really that I'm reading the changelog and thinking 'yeah sounds great' but on the main forum you see a more defensive stance from SI.

Read the FML Development Blog and thought I'd post up a snapshot reaction.

Youth Academies and the future…

Ok I really don't understand why this is getting so much attention when there are bigger fish to fry.

1. Make the academy system completely transparent – No more having to guess when your allocation is going to arrive, you’ll get a full quota at the same time, every season.
2. No more having to pay the deadwood in your side – Academy players will no longer be receiving a wage until they graduate.
3. No more random ‘academy seasons’ – Academies will come in line with the gameworld seasons, with all players graduating and joining your teams at the same point every season. This will allow you to properly set up your youth teams for the forthcoming seasons.

Ok that's a bit better can see the logic behind doing it. Not paying Academy players, mmmm seems to me the more money leaves the GW the better with inflation being the way it is.

1 No more upkeep fees – Let’s make at least one academy a good thing for you guys to have, upkeep fees removed.
2 Get those players on the free list – If we remove the running costs, we can’t give you absolutely everything. So instead we could limit the amount of players you can allow to graduate to your full squad by introducing a new pre-contract system. You could be allowed to select 25% of your current allocation (per academy) to graduate. You could then pay a fee for additional pre-contract slots (up to a maximum of 50% of your allocation) to retain more players. All the rest would then graduate onto the free list, where everyone can bid on them in wage auctions.
3 Make the players younger – Academy players could be made even younger, with proper progression, a new look and even realistic height growth spurts! So that these younger players would have some where to play, we’d introduce a new under 15’s tier.
4 Improve progression – Hugely important of course – We’d need to make sure that these younger players, as well as the older ones, progress correctly. We plan to put a lot of work into the progression system, with players starting at a lot lower level and lots of interesting variations.
5 Make the YA’s more exciting – This may be controversial, but any players under 15 would not be able to identified using judging potential. We could even change the way these players’ attributes are displayed to add a new dimension to bringing through those young superstars!

I quite like, something more to do I suppose so does help a little. Depends if there is truly anything to gain. So would there be a 'tell' so if I watched a U15 squad play would I gain from spotting a youth with maybe great hidden stats.

I guess what I'm saying if youths are coming in the GW so far away from the finished article then without JP you'd have no way of knowing at all.

How does it work in real life, plenty of kids can run fast, plenty with bags of technique what your after is winners. I'm sure you could spot that at 15 so hopefully the system will seek to mirror that part of the youth game.

My son is now 14 at 10 you'd say he'd never be a sprinter but at 13.1/2 he's got some kick when running. At 15 you could say with some accuracy how fast he'd be, how good technically he could become but attitude.... Needs to play games to see how he reacts.

Maybe that's what they should do just hide mental stats at under 15, although they have to matter in the ME, oh we're back to that again.

The Perfect Hand

I was playing on Facebook got dealt an Ace and a 3. The flop produced two aces, I was holding off betting only raising a little thinking someone must have another Ace.

By the time we get to the river card three of us are left in. The river card is another Ace. There I was thinking 'omg' and the guy before me goes all in on the bluff.

Like a loon I'm still thinking well he might have an Ace then it dawned on me how many Aces are there? Only four three are out and I've got one, doh!

Needless to say I called his bluff with some confidence!

FML Again and formation rant

Well I popped into the various GW's no surprise the Voller team was doing so badly without a goalie:) Other than that Turk team seems ok in Premier League and the Coppell team seemed to have got promoted.

Was thinking about the dominance of 4-3-3 and was reading that someone had written that crossing was useless which got me thinking. I don't think crossing is that unrealistic so why do teams play with wingers in real life. It seems to me that teams in FML are able to keep the ball in the danger area to an unrealistic level.

In other words teams use the wings in real life because that's where there is space, you don't see real  teams play keep ball in the danger area (10yds around the penalty area) like you do in FML.

I guess what I'm saying is that in real life possession is lost in this danger area and in FML it's far too easy to keep hold of the ball. So then playing narrow and overloading this area is unrealistically fruitful.

Back From Hols

Another cruise done this time aboard the Azura I did buy a domain off the cuff to review cruises see the cruise critic. It's a crafty domain that one:)

Anyway gaming wise I had a blast at Betfair Texas Hold Em for proper cash before I left and joined a high buy table (well for me anyway I'm such a cheapskate) and quickly doubled my money. Then I got nervous and joined a cheaper table only to find I lost mostly what I won, I was working my way through a bottle of rum at the time so I blame that.

Main differance between that and Facebook is no one idles so it's much quicker. Often you see players on Facebook time out and leave the table. So when it's real money everyone's attention is on the game. 

Quick blast of Bejweled Blitz, I see one of the FML guys is getting far too good at that now!

Can't see me pulling another 450k in a few days anyway.

Now must dash to catch up on FML so will probably be back later to moan about that:)

A New Fad Poker, Texas Hold em

Thought I'd give this a try as it's so popular. I watched a few youtube vids to figure out how to play it and thought I'd ease myself into via the Facebook Texas Hold Em free game.

So far yeah it's good whilst I get the game there are some things I still don't get and you sure do need to have played it a lot to get used to it all. A few times I thought I had 'the nuts' only to find there was something I hadn't thought of. Seems weird that two days ago terms like 'the flop', 'river card' and 'big blind' were all foreign and now know what they mean.

Making mistakes with pretend money is a fairly chilled experience. I'm sort of idling in it a fair bit mostly folding but enjoying trying to call what hands users are playing with.

Doesn't cost anything and it's interesting trying out new things.

I haven't really bothered with the XBOX much as although the RROD cotton wool bud repair works fine the old XBOX's had DVD drive issues as well and sadly this is one of them.

Still playing the odd game of FIFA online and Bejweled Blitz which are both good for a quick blast. FML I have finally broken the habit of logging in although having paid £40 up front for a game I no longer play is galling, such is life.

EA Sports gunning for SI's Market

Eurogamer posted up an article where Koehler Executive Producer of FIFA Manager states

"Football Manager is the main game in the UK, but FIFA Manager has around 95 per cent market share in Germany,"

Interesting, he had some things to say about FML

"Football Manager Live is probably the best you can do with a classic approach to the game for a limited number of people. There is very tough competition between the players and for every game you must have a loser, and they get very frustrated,"

Later on he goes on to say that he's impressed with the numbers playing browser type games.

From a personal point of view I last played FIFA Manager a few years ago and it seemed to be treading the same path as Football Manager giving me too much to do. I just want to play a Football Management game where I can finish a season in a few hours.

Personally I like the rags to riches theme so things that fit into this would be creating a stadium, building up youth etc. I don't want press conferences or to be doing match talks that means I have a drop down box saying 'try harder'. I wish the developers would focus more on a better Match Engine with proper stadiums like the old Classic USM.

It's a hard balance between Sim and Arcade.

Still going to keep an eye on FIFA Manager might be time to try this franchise again.

Another Right Back in Tier 3

This is my right back in Coppell we're currently struggling away in Tier 3.


Now compare him to the 19yo I posed a few days back.

I mean come on!

On Live Any Good?

I'm intrigued by On Live, for those that don't know it's a gaming service where top games are run on a server so all your PC has to capable of is running video.

I've a laptop which can't really handle 3d and there is no way I can ever play an FPS without a mouse and keyboard.

I've read a few reviews though and I'm reading choppy frame rates and 150ms ping, so competitive FPS gaming isn't doable. Still Mass Effect 2 and Assassins Creed 2 I'd like to have a blast of.

Then I looked at their prices, ho ho not today thank you!

FML Is there Hope?

I was thinking there was hope so started formatting a post looking at these overpowered youths.

I was in Turk and you know what it's bazonkas

I really suspect that youth as such ain't the issue but a combination of things. I think it goes like this. Youth v Senior.

1) We're much worse than this team (according to rep) so will be well up for game.
2) As we're super fast runners and jumpers we'll use athletics to beat them, in other words take full advantage of a weak Match Engine.
3) Senior team loses

So it's not youths developing too fast if that were true then their CA would reflected in Biography and their Aq Fee would rise.

Now I do know that in Beta a change was made to how players gain rep (players don't gain rep in lower leagues) but a change must have been made to the ME otherwise lower tier teams would get spanked silly.

In old FML given how important rep used to be in the ME (you'd be inconsistent without it) then it has adversely affected these super athletic youth teams. The Match Engine was always weak in how it was over reliant on physicals (see T Bag's blog).

So in summary one thing was changed then it had a knock on affect.

As I say I was going to do a long post to demonstrate this and started looking:-



I'm just speechless, ok 7.56 in Div.1 so it's not Premier League but I had a tier 3 in Coppell (which is near the bottom despite being best CA).

The Match Engine was never perfect but it USED to produce ranks where they made sense now I have no idea.

So is there hope.... I did allude to the fact that SI didn't seem to care which maybe was unfair but in my eyes the game has turned into a joke. I mean I'm trying to be constructive but what can you say.

So maybe Si do care but they don't seem think it's that bad so, no, I don't hold out much hope. I suppose if you forget football and play the ME as is you could enjoy it but to be honest the economy is bolloxed and the game is so slow it's dreadfully boring.

Sadly I'm stuck with a pre-paid sub for a while yet.

FIFA Online - The Story so Far

I don't know quite how this is going to play out but so far it does have that 'just one more go' feel to it.

Last Three results
W 4-2
D 0-0
L 0-1

First Game Swansea 4 v 2 Darlington
Often the goals are samey in FIFA but give you an idea the 4-2 we went 3-0 up and it does seem that there is rubber banding in place. The first two goals I scored were as a result of ball played into space and neatly tucked away in the bottom corner.

The third goal came off a corner their goalie flapped at it and my DC chested it and volley it home. The fourth goal was from a low cross played into the space and my striker slammed it home of the volley.

Second Game Blackpool 0 v 0 Swansea
Typical messy 0-0 didn't create much neither did they.

Third Game Leicester 1 v 0 Swansea
Had a few chances to win the game but got mugged, our corner they broke and through ball puts their striker for a 1v1 in the 90th minute.



Some features are very gamey:-



Overall though I like the games, I haven't found any exploits yet and even if I did as it's not so much PVP but PVE I don't think I'd use them anyway.

I'm a bit concerned about the levelling system where the opposition gets harder the higher the rank you get not the league your in.

I tried World Cup mode mainly to see how Messi played and wow what a difference can turn on a six pence and is quick with the ball as well.

So think I'll play till I can get some players like him:)

FML: Multiplayer online football management simulation game?

Tried to get me money back:-

Thank you for contacting FML Support.

Before purchasing a subscription the Terms and Conditions must be accepted upon commence of the contract. ... Ticket Closed

let me translate:

We've got your money hahaha.

DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE
1. The Service is a massively multiplayer online football management simulation game provided by SEGA which allows you to interact with and play against other online users.

Football management simulation, I don't know what football you watch but it ain't in FML now.

Legally correct? Maybe. Ethically correct? No.

More FIFA Online

Although it's somewhat cheesy I've played this a fair bit now. It's odd you play single player through the leagues but can play V's other managers. The Co Op mode seems to be the real focus though.

The difficulty setting is dynamic dependent upon how good or bad you do. Overall I think I'll stick with this for a while. The price is right, free!

Reading EA's faq they reckon they have 17,000 sign ups playing the open beta which isn't too shabby for a game that hasn't had much marketing thrown at it.

The control system is I think decent although I seem to lose the plot in defence a few times. When I first started it was a breeze I was winning games easy but then I started to get some proper results.

Told Ya: Argentina Fold

Well there you go didn't I say there was nothing wrong as such with the England National Team.

At least England gave Germany a game, came back from 2-0 down, Argentina were totally outclassed.

FIFA Online Beta - Snapshot Review

After my last post

Blogger Alin Vlad said...

Have you tried Fifa Online Beta? It's free for the moment and open beta.

Good shout, thought I'd have to have a dabble with this.



I was intrigued by the control system more than anything and after five minutes I was passing the ball in a natural way. It's odd actually because you don't really pass to feet in football but to space and in this is a doddle to do that.

Sadly it's one of those games that causes my laptop to shut down (a fault of the laptop not the game) but from the five minutes I definitely want to give it more time.

By the looks of it you kind of play single player (taking over Swansea saw me playing AI championship games) but I'm assuming the transfer system is with other managers and of course have the option to play other managers.

Looks really promising. the graphics are awful compared to say XBOX360 FIFA10 but still for a free game, wow.

Expect some more on this!

Oh Yeah now this is football

My son had an old Xbox 360 in the attic which had three red ringed, or RROD. A few goggle searches later and two cotton wool buds it was fixed.

So I downloaded FIFA 10 demo to have a proper play, my word how things have moved on, I can see this being almost perfect come FIFA 11 when they introduce player personality's.

The Be a Pro mode is very appealing with almost everyone I've spoken to liking the sound of it. Your a player and potentially manager Apparently you can create you own team in the full game and have a few mates also playing.

I also got strangely addicted to PGR4 and the bikes don't know if it was a quick fad thing or I might get into that a lot more. That game is a bit old now though.

Seems no matter what I do my laptop crashes in Trackmania,. I keep thinking it's fixed but then at a random interval it reminds me it's not by the laptop rebooting.

I have Assassins Creed 2 to try so going to give that a blast.

FML for the first time in almost two years I'm not checking the forum or logging in I felt I carried a candle for the game but I think we're done now. So maybe it's time to go to money claim online.