Sunday 12 December 2010

Swan Song Part 3

Ok October the Council and News of the reset and a long epic post pretty much repeating what I had said for the last 18months. However a reset, they would finally get this game nailed. Basic issues like the churn rate would be solved and everything would be rosey right?

Lets not be all doom and gloom the injury and new team rep systems being trialled in beta were a step forward.

The economy is important this dawned on me during the reset that one of the greatest issues facing FML is inflation. SI's management of this is just appaling here is how it has gone down:

  1. Pre Reset - I said Stadiums will kill the GW economies, SI said no.
  2. Reset - Teams incomes need to match the player database to control inflation, at reset income levels are such that GW's will experience Hyper Inflation. SI said no.
  3. Season 2 After Reset - Do something about inflation now it will be less painful than doing it in season 6. SI said no.
  4. Season 6 After Reset - Your proposals to change Aq Fee to the high Sign On Fee will crucify some economies second guessing the economy is too dangerous do not implement this change. SI said no.
  5. Season 7 After Reset - After some of the economies went into meltdown do not attempt to tweak income as you will never get it right. SI said no.
Now these changes are not minor tweaks to a game these are raw basic changes that change the game on a massive scale. Getting something like this wrong once is unforgivable, but FIVE TIMES, they have been wrong five times now (well four as they haven't yet implemented their latest botch up). The were wrong compared to me, AN AMATEUR.

I am going to cut this short, the real issue with FML is the Gameworlds die. With a bit of imagination you can create a rags to riches type game. This would have mass appeal if you get the numbers playing then everything else can fall into place and FML can go from strength to strength.

One day it will happen it is sad to see the game yet again fail. maybe there is life in it yet after all if you can get the numbers up it can limp on. However if you read my Practical SEO Walkthrough this was posted over a month ago.

To recap, one the big search terms for football manager is Online Football Manager. Now this is a very commercial term and I would suggest that if SI changed the title tag of the FML Homepage to contain this text as a Page Rank 5 site they would rank highly for it overnight.

Look even despite the marketing and the spikes Football Manager Live still does not hit those highs.

3 comments:

Chris said...

Yea they are morons. I left after the reset. I used to be a football manager fan but now refuse to buy football manager 2011 and try to put as many people of SI's products as possible.

Sandokan said...

Sad to say but I think that FMlive is a big beta test for the korean mmo

Sandokan said...

Maybe it is already been said: I think the whole FMlive is a big beta test for the Korean mmo...