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Improving the Site, Promotion etc...; We need some help
Topic Started: Jan 27 2011, 03:17 PM (823 Views)
Aljarov
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Pretty clear that the community is not exactly hitting the heights i had hoped when I launched it. I appreciate it's pretty simple, and really just forums right now.

I'd like some suggestions to features, sections, etc... that might help improve traffic, and more importantly, fire up a community that interacts, works together, plays together and ultimately improves the game.

I'd be open to offers for help, but even if people could let me know where else they frequent, especially boards, so that I might look at how other sites are working.

I know the most recent version of the MLS code has disappointed some, but that shouldn't undermine the entire North American community, after all, there's enough ex-pats and fans of other leagues that I'm surprised many even noticed.

Anything anyone can do to help the site would be appreciated....this includes:
Writing articles/Guides
Helping compile packs (logos or faces, kits etc...)
Data updates
Fantasy Leagues
Online gameplay
Media/Journalist EDT files

Obviously, the massive US/Canada XML file last year was a big hit, but was a preposterous amount of work, especially for something that is hard to carry over from one version to the next. I'll be working on ways I can (legally) include more of the information we'd like to use in the official version (though expect no progress on including NCAA teams) but I simply cannot afford the off-the-clock time I put in last year on the expansion pack. I know I was by no means the only person involved in that, but, many hands make light work as they say. Even coordinating it was difficult.

Anything anyoine can do to help bring people here would be appreciated as well. We have almost 250 registered members, but in reality, maybe under 10 that EVER post anything on a regular basis, and even that is down to a trickle.

HELP!
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Coasterkoa
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I know that personally a lot of the game's issues, both relating to the American database, the game in general and other database issues, have seriously dampened my enthusiasm about the game. When 11.3 comes out we'll see how much my opinion changes.

I'm down to help all across the board though.
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SaintsCanada
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What Coaster said.

The work and discussion re FM10 is long done (almost a year now since it was done), and FM11 so far is very bad from both a general game-play and especially a North American leagues angle.

If 11.3 fixes things the way we all hope it will, things will come back to life, I hope. I know I'll be far more active. We will busily make our xmls, and discuss the game, I'll put up some challenge games, etc.

11.3 will be out soon.

Hopefully in future years versions 0-2 don't suck so bad, and we will have year-round participation on the site. There are site additions you can make I guess in the meantime, but really the quality of the game is the most important thing, something that is out of your hands.
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Aljarov
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I have the mother of all January updates to do, probably 110 new players to create and a slew of transfers with the teams all going crazy this off season.

I've already started to input stuff ahead of FM2012 (even though I've not even signed my contract, we dont even get our contracts until like April/May). I'm hoping the sooner stuff is in the better.

I've found the general gameplay to be fine, aside from the 3D engine on my PC, which is a local issue and not SI's fault. Obviously i'm disappointed with the MLS stuff and haven't even had a proper career game in MLS myself this year as a consequence.

I wish there was something we could do in order to improve the code....in the past I offered to sponsor the license for USL via the old community (who knows if it would have worked, or if we could have raised enough money). I wish I could think of something that would work to assure our coding requirements were met.
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Coasterkoa
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Aljarov
Jan 28 2011, 03:18 PM
I have the mother of all January updates to do, probably 110 new players to create and a slew of transfers with the teams all going crazy this off season.

I've already started to input stuff ahead of FM2012 (even though I've not even signed my contract, we dont even get our contracts until like April/May).  I'm hoping the sooner stuff is in the better.

I've found the general gameplay to be fine, aside from the 3D engine on my PC, which is a local issue and not SI's fault.  Obviously i'm disappointed with the MLS stuff and haven't even had a proper career game in MLS myself this year as a consequence.

I wish there was something we could do in order to improve the code....in the past I offered to sponsor the license for USL via the old community (who knows if it would have worked, or if we could have raised enough money).  I wish I could think of something that would work to assure our coding requirements were met.

Don't your assistants help you with the creations of players and such for their respective teams? If you're doing everything on your own, you're doing way too much work.

As far as non American database issues:

1. Players ask for too much money. In previous versions how much a player asks for was heavily tied to what players already at the club were making, which was a decent way of doing things, and now it is not very dependent on that and as a result you see a lot of clubs paying 3 or 4 players extremely high wages and the rest on peanuts. Similarly, when playing my edited US database, you see low rep, low CA players signing second division clubs for a minimum of $60k when in real life these players would probably accept $20k and $60k would only be paid to the star players.

2. Squad management in created leagues is horrid. Most players on each team will be registered and unregistered quite a few times, and each player will only likely play 60% of league games or so, regardless of how fit the player is or how important he is to the team.

3. Not being able to start in January 2011 (or 2012 for next year). This is a huge hindrance in my opinion and I understand why it's not happening currently, but I would make this one of my top priorities for the American database. It can be remedied by loading the Norweigan database as well, but you get the idea

4. Mexican database still has way too many players with high abilities transferring all over the world (unless Lillingston was as good as Guillermo Franco when he transfered to MLS, please ignore this), and signs MLS's best non-Mexican players. As a result, MLS is full of Mexican players, and the MFL teams have a ton of American players who have no ties to Mexico. The Brazilian, South African, and South Korean databases (to name a few) have similar issues. I'm working on something right now to summarize each database. The main issue is not that the top end players have high CA's, but that the depth of the teams in these countries is insane, meaning you can pick up their bench players for really cheap, but have them be starters in other leagues.

5. After 10 years, the American national team doesn't get any better, but Mexico is now a top 5 team. Every single save.

6. Canada is too good. They quickly become the number 3 in the region.

7. Players with speed and two footedness cannot be accurately represented by the game. Case in point: Landon Donovan (I realize this is a game issue, not a researcher issue).

8. Not enough North American leagues. At the bare minimum, Honduras and Costa Rica should have working leagues as well. These are very difficult to recreate with the advanced editor.

9. The CONCACAF Champions League should have less importance for MFL and MLS teams.

I should stop before I turn this thread into something it's not, but you get the idea.


Having the USL in would be awesome, but I'd rather focus on getting a fully operational MLS. I'm sick and tired of the reasons why we can't do things for the American database. Yeah, MLS is funky, but SI shouldn't code everything for the English database and everything else be damned. I'm not sure how much time, effort and money would have to go into coding MLS correctly, but it sure as hell isn't whatever they are allocating to it right now. If I drew up a list of the top 10 things wrong with MLS, the response I'd get would be, "Unfortunately, that can't be implemented right now" or something along those lines. I also don't like the excuse of "MLS is best played with human players". Damn right it is, but I don't have the luxury of sitting down with 17 FM loving friends and playing. Not that I'd want to do that anyway.

I just see a lot of problems with the game and not a lot of indication that any of them will be fixed.
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shawn_strat
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I have to agree that all of the problems with MLS in the game also dampen my enthusiasm. Small things like not being able to hire scouts, and not being able to pay proper amounts for staff.
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Aljarov
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shawn_strat
Jan 29 2011, 01:55 PM
I have to agree that all of the problems with MLS in the game also dampen my enthusiasm. Small things like not being able to hire scouts, and not being able to pay proper amounts for staff.

These are fixed in Patch 3 I am assured.
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Aljarov
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Coasterkoa
Jan 28 2011, 08:09 PM
Don't your assistants help you with the creations of players and such for their respective teams? If you're doing everything on your own, you're doing way too much work.

No, we've always done the jan patch update ourselves, have to really, as not enough time after the drafts until the data deadline (trust me when I say having 18 odd assistants trying to work to a single 2 week deadline would never happen).

There's also the issues of noone actually really knowing what most of these college kids are like anyways. It's crap, and i hate it, its actually more data work than for the final release for me, and it's unpaid! Just the way the calendar works against us here (just like on the release).

So, for the most part, we get the people in and only basic attributes, by the time the next release comes round we've had 5 months or so to watch and research, thus they get improved and ratings, wrong positions, etc... all get ironed out. That's the theory anyways.

It would be nice to parcel out the player creation part, given it's largely objective stuff (name, DOB, place of birth, h&w etc...) and Tristan has helped me in years past, but it's all me on this one.

I'm going to change how i do the data going forward in an attempt to make the data more consistent, and also to try and work around the people who have been unreliable.
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shawn_strat
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My biggest hope is that if/when the MLS issues are corrected, that they remain corrected when the next FM is released. If we go through this again next year it proves that FM is not interested in the NA market.
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SaintsCanada
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I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I think the FM community in general should start campaigning immediately after patch 3 for a year off from new features.

In essence. 12.0 should equal 11.4 (with data and rules updates), and further testing to eliminate problems left over (there will definitely be some).

Testing for 12.0 could basically resume within a few weeks of 11.3 being released.

Imagine -- a box-version .0 patch that works near perfectly? Maybe only 1 patch would be necessary after the Jan. transfer window -- more of an update than patch, really.

Meanwhile all new feature ideas could be stored up for FM13, and immediately after FM12.0 is out, they could begin work on FM13 and essentially get onto a yearly schedule that has the original game worth playing.

This would be great for MLS, but also great for EVERYBODY.
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Aljarov
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SaintsCanada
Jan 31 2011, 04:16 AM
I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I think the FM community in general should start campaigning immediately after patch 3 for a year off from new features.

In essence. 12.0 should equal 11.4 (with data and rules updates), and further testing to eliminate problems left over (there will definitely be some).

Testing for 12.0 could basically resume within a few weeks of 11.3 being released.

Imagine -- a box-version .0 patch that works near perfectly? Maybe only 1 patch would be necessary after the Jan. transfer window -- more of an update than patch, really.

Meanwhile all new feature ideas could be stored up for FM13, and immediately after FM12.0 is out, they could begin work on FM13 and essentially get onto a yearly schedule that has the original game worth playing.

This would be great for MLS, but also great for EVERYBODY.

That's what they did for FM10, in theory.

Of cours,e with MLS's constantly changing landscape these ARE new features, every year that require a lot of coding support.

Lok at what we've got for FM2012....reserve teams back, academies (essential now), re-entry draft, roster changes, return of DEV-eque deals, new playoff format to come, chanegs to the supplemental/superdraft (now 3 rounds each), the crazy senior roster rules (19 and 20 can be traded in for allocation money - that one isnt going to happen for starters).

Add this to the the stuff that isn't right yet - that's a lot of things, but specifically for me the allocation and discovery processes are a big priority to get right. Discovery limits alone could help tame the roster turnover.

Anyways, point being, MLS is a huge undertaking every year and the real problem is not that SI isn't interested, it's that sales here are shit. I assure you, they lose a ton of money even having MLS in at the moment, but until people buy it here it's hard to justify putting even more coding support behind it. Of course, no one here wants it until these issues are fixed....it's catch 22.
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Bored
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Coasterkoa
Jan 28 2011, 03:09 PM

1. Players ask for too much money. In previous versions how much a player asks for was heavily tied to what players already at the club were making, which was a decent way of doing things, and now it is not very dependent on that and as a result you see a lot of clubs paying 3 or 4 players extremely high wages and the rest on peanuts. Similarly, when playing my edited US database, you see low rep, low CA players signing second division clubs for a minimum of $60k when in real life these players would probably accept $20k and $60k would only be paid to the star players.


I deal with this by offering players good upfront money typically equal to half their demands so if a player asks for $100,000 I will counter offer with $50000 per year and $50000 upfront. Also players are so enticed by the upfront money that the number of years on the contract is less important to them so you can lock a player down for a while. It generally works and keeps your payroll down and the player wont ask for an new contract unless his reputation increases dramatically so this methods saves cash in the the long run. When resigning one of your own players it works even better because generally you don't need to offer them as much upfront enticement to sign.
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Coasterkoa
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Bored
Feb 1 2011, 07:36 PM
Coasterkoa
Jan 28 2011, 03:09 PM

1. Players ask for too much money. In previous versions how much a player asks for was heavily tied to what players already at the club were making, which was a decent way of doing things, and now it is not very dependent on that and as a result you see a lot of clubs paying 3 or 4 players extremely high wages and the rest on peanuts. Similarly, when playing my edited US database, you see low rep, low CA players signing second division clubs for a minimum of $60k when in real life these players would probably accept $20k and $60k would only be paid to the star players.


I deal with this by offering players good upfront money typically equal to half their demands so if a player asks for $100,000 I will counter offer with $50000 per year and $50000 upfront. Also players are so enticed by the upfront money that the number of years on the contract is less important to them so you can lock a player down for a while. It generally works and keeps your payroll down and the player wont ask for an new contract unless his reputation increases dramatically so this methods saves cash in the the long run. When resigning one of your own players it works even better because generally you don't need to offer them as much upfront enticement to sign.

It's not so much as a problem for the clubs I control but for the AI clubs who have a budget of maybe $500k, and pay 3 players $100k and then fill out the rest with youth players. It makes the US structures I create suck.
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Aljarov
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The DP logic has been improved a lot for Patch 3, btw. Should be much easier and much more realistic now.
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Coasterkoa
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Aljarov
Feb 3 2011, 02:41 PM
The DP logic has been improved a lot for Patch 3, btw. Should be much easier and much more realistic now.

Sounds awesome. I'm really excited for 11.3, so hopefully it will spur some momentum for the North American FM community. Getting the XMLs out (and media add on packs, kits, etc) is a huge thing which should generate some buzz. Also, an online game in a North American league with stories that is cross posted in other forums would be another step to take.
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