I'm still around but not in a gaming sense currently. I did buy FM2010 (downloaded Football Manager 2011 via Steam) and had a brief blast on that.
I had a few seasons with Sheffield Wednesday taking them to the top ten in Premier League over five seasons and then with AFC Telford taking them to League Two before kind of just getting a bit bored of it. Still many hours enjoyment from what remains a great franchise.
On a slightly separate note if I can buy a game from Steam it remains my favourite choice. I have lost count of how many games I have bought and lost the discs for, all you need with Steam is a log in and your entire back catalogue is there.
Still occasionally log in to FML but the Beta seems to have gone very flat lately not much going on at all. Feels like they are just going through the motions but that may just be me.
Swans are still in the hunt! I never thought I would see them return to the top flight and just be dreaming of that is a very nice surprise.
Meanwhile my many websites continue to do quite well I thought I'd break from furniture and go more geek with Computer Repair Stores. I used to own a shop like that, tough to make a decent living out of it though. Currently still freelancing in Web Marketing and SEO. We came up with quite a good name I think OMG Web Marketing, I commit blasphemy every time I say it, awesome!
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Plants V Zombies
Since formatting my PC I wondered what the heck it was before having a good old blast on this, classic game proves you do not need amazing graphics.
FML pop into Coppell now and again, odd got double relegated there for some bizarre reason which I couldn't quite fathom then joined EFA to try and bounce back up but that only has two leagues so finished 5th then got relegated (as you do). Still enjoyable for the odd lunchtime though and still not worth £5:)
My youth academies are in the old style obscure nations and producing short defenders is not quite my cup of tea so will relocate come close season to Germany or something.
Work wise stuff goes on with contracting still mostly SEO, PPC marketing stuff, manage to grind the cost per click down anyway, SEO is always a longer term thing.
Other than that pretty hum drum really.
FML pop into Coppell now and again, odd got double relegated there for some bizarre reason which I couldn't quite fathom then joined EFA to try and bounce back up but that only has two leagues so finished 5th then got relegated (as you do). Still enjoyable for the odd lunchtime though and still not worth £5:)
My youth academies are in the old style obscure nations and producing short defenders is not quite my cup of tea so will relocate come close season to Germany or something.
Work wise stuff goes on with contracting still mostly SEO, PPC marketing stuff, manage to grind the cost per click down anyway, SEO is always a longer term thing.
Other than that pretty hum drum really.
Friday, 11 February 2011
FML Stuff
I was enjoying myself in Nunez but got out of the habit of logging in, around a week ago I thought 'omg best get in' only to find the account needed paying and then put it off for a day and by the time I actually was there with credit card in hand found the close season was almost over so put it off entirely.
I will get back into retail just that I do not think it offers real value currently, pity really as Nunez seemed like a really good GW.
Still have a beta team in Coppell which is going ok despite extended periods not logging in, do have a load of YA's so have a backlog of winning raffle tickets to ponder over.
Still contribute in beta as well, with regard to the beta forums I basically now say what I think, too old and ugly to be worried about hurting some feelings. Besides I can't imagine they want a beta full of yes men, if they do the best kick me out. I might have faults (the missus has a very long list of my faults) but being a yes man has never been one of em!
Other than that being doing a bit of poker and blogging. All the sites now I have set up as independent sort of review sites where I collate reviews. My income from them though dropped really badly for the last two weeks before going back up and now exceed the levels they were at before. Very weird!
I will get back into retail just that I do not think it offers real value currently, pity really as Nunez seemed like a really good GW.
Still have a beta team in Coppell which is going ok despite extended periods not logging in, do have a load of YA's so have a backlog of winning raffle tickets to ponder over.
Still contribute in beta as well, with regard to the beta forums I basically now say what I think, too old and ugly to be worried about hurting some feelings. Besides I can't imagine they want a beta full of yes men, if they do the best kick me out. I might have faults (the missus has a very long list of my faults) but being a yes man has never been one of em!
Other than that being doing a bit of poker and blogging. All the sites now I have set up as independent sort of review sites where I collate reviews. My income from them though dropped really badly for the last two weeks before going back up and now exceed the levels they were at before. Very weird!
Morale Moaners
Lots of moans on various forums about how morale dictates too much in the game and how you cannot do much about it. A common complaint is 'I do not have the tools to do anything about it!'. The truth is course you have almost as much as a real life manager, others will argue that a a real life manager can talk to the players and I have to smirk, come on do you really think that part of the game is ever going to be simulated.
I also have a chuckle when I listen to some of the posts that seem to know exactly what Ferguson did wrong or why results have gone wrong in real life, honestly surprised they are not doing the Liverpool job they seem so certain.
However I do sympathise, I myself have whined about it a lot using terms like 'loaded dice' etc however, now I am at one with it all.
I have no doubt written this before but this is my perception of morale based on an hypothetical example.
Neutral - Neither good or bad you could flop either way, you lose a game to a late unlucky goal and the bad run starts.
Bad Run Part 1 - You can see the confidence is gone in the players as they cannot do the most basic of things (anyone remember Torres in the World Cup?) You have to play cautious here, you are going to need players that will grind out a result, a good captain can make this run end much faster.
Bad Run Part 2 - Players are playing better but the results just do not seem to come, a brave sub might turn the tide here.
Bad Run Part 3 - This is bizarre world, the loaded dice zone players play great but you get unlucky, what can a manager do, the answer, nothing! How many times in real life do you hear a manager say 'if we keep playing like that results will come' and this is a horrible time but patience and results will come.
Good Run - Finally you get the break and have turned the corner how long you can keep this going will depend on the players, the tactics, how you rotate your team and who you play. It seems to build up, win, win, win, overconfidence, go back to Bad Run Part 1.
I also have a chuckle when I listen to some of the posts that seem to know exactly what Ferguson did wrong or why results have gone wrong in real life, honestly surprised they are not doing the Liverpool job they seem so certain.
However I do sympathise, I myself have whined about it a lot using terms like 'loaded dice' etc however, now I am at one with it all.
I have no doubt written this before but this is my perception of morale based on an hypothetical example.
Neutral - Neither good or bad you could flop either way, you lose a game to a late unlucky goal and the bad run starts.
Bad Run Part 1 - You can see the confidence is gone in the players as they cannot do the most basic of things (anyone remember Torres in the World Cup?) You have to play cautious here, you are going to need players that will grind out a result, a good captain can make this run end much faster.
Bad Run Part 2 - Players are playing better but the results just do not seem to come, a brave sub might turn the tide here.
Bad Run Part 3 - This is bizarre world, the loaded dice zone players play great but you get unlucky, what can a manager do, the answer, nothing! How many times in real life do you hear a manager say 'if we keep playing like that results will come' and this is a horrible time but patience and results will come.
Good Run - Finally you get the break and have turned the corner how long you can keep this going will depend on the players, the tactics, how you rotate your team and who you play. It seems to build up, win, win, win, overconfidence, go back to Bad Run Part 1.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
The Match Engine and Real Life
Let me start by saying the Match Engine is not perfect and anyone who reads this blog will know I do not hold back if I think something is wrong with the game.
Reading the forum I suspect there is something up with red cards although I have not experienced this myself and corner exploits need to be kept on top of. However I think the ME (apart from a spell after reset where physical stats were overpowered) largely delivers realistic results. I'm not talking here about events but the end results.
However a lot of forum posters seem to think that this is not true because they have the wrong view of how random a game football is in reality.
So today for example a poster who is top of a league goes away from home gets a draw and says this is unrealistic claiming that in real life 1 in 40 games is a shock.
That is factually incorrect. How can I substantiate this well.....
Reading the forum I suspect there is something up with red cards although I have not experienced this myself and corner exploits need to be kept on top of. However I think the ME (apart from a spell after reset where physical stats were overpowered) largely delivers realistic results. I'm not talking here about events but the end results.
However a lot of forum posters seem to think that this is not true because they have the wrong view of how random a game football is in reality.
So today for example a poster who is top of a league goes away from home gets a draw and says this is unrealistic claiming that in real life 1 in 40 games is a shock.
That is factually incorrect. How can I substantiate this well.....
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Youth Academies Unbalance the Game
Recently I went back to Coppell and I had forgotten I had built so many youth academies (duuno why and their not German, doh :( ) but it occurs to me that after a couple of seasons I have no got a load of high PA players.
Ok I got a load of rubbish as well but still it does you make you more secure for the future. It occurs to me that now with Youth Academies is two fold.
1) Money
2) Time
Prior to youth academies you could join a GW spend your basic £50k a day youth (on higher wages) and there you go you have your youth sorted. Now that option is not available as time is as big, if not bigger part of the investment.
Not that I have a solution it was just a thought really.
Ok I got a load of rubbish as well but still it does you make you more secure for the future. It occurs to me that now with Youth Academies is two fold.
1) Money
2) Time
Prior to youth academies you could join a GW spend your basic £50k a day youth (on higher wages) and there you go you have your youth sorted. Now that option is not available as time is as big, if not bigger part of the investment.
Not that I have a solution it was just a thought really.
Friday, 21 January 2011
Good ole FML
Nunez I enjoyed the Pre Season it was quite nice to have a projected of £1.5m and trying to spend that in the best possible way (or not as the case may be) was good fun. Something quite addictive about looking at stats and players and trying to undercover a bargain.
Started the season and I think it is clear that we are likely to be heading for middle of the table, no relegation as we are in the bottom tier and after 7/8 games in the first few days already have that middle of the table / middle of the season feel. This would be fine of course if the season only lasted say 10/12 days but now I will not log in much as I'm just really waiting for the next close season to come round.
It is alarmingly easy to just lose touch. Still what I have played I have enjoyed.
News in beta looks great, well one thing looks great, the other thing is great but currently very very wrong. Cannot say too much.
Fix A
Say we have issue X and the cure is A, A does not work because B is broken, so fix B?
Fix C
Instead of fixing B we introduce a new extra fix called C which actually makes X worse and instead of removing C what they will do is add D.
Fix D
D will actually make X even worse again, so lets add E, that makes it even worse.
Fix E
The whole system is buggered lets reset and start again.
Currently we are at fix D and I can see fix E coming in.
I fell like the boy who cried wolf but all the villagers are dead from Wolves :)
Started the season and I think it is clear that we are likely to be heading for middle of the table, no relegation as we are in the bottom tier and after 7/8 games in the first few days already have that middle of the table / middle of the season feel. This would be fine of course if the season only lasted say 10/12 days but now I will not log in much as I'm just really waiting for the next close season to come round.
It is alarmingly easy to just lose touch. Still what I have played I have enjoyed.
News in beta looks great, well one thing looks great, the other thing is great but currently very very wrong. Cannot say too much.
Fix A
Say we have issue X and the cure is A, A does not work because B is broken, so fix B?
Fix C
Instead of fixing B we introduce a new extra fix called C which actually makes X worse and instead of removing C what they will do is add D.
Fix D
D will actually make X even worse again, so lets add E, that makes it even worse.
Fix E
The whole system is buggered lets reset and start again.
Currently we are at fix D and I can see fix E coming in.
I fell like the boy who cried wolf but all the villagers are dead from Wolves :)
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