FM Online - Big Revamp Needed?

Hi there, I just thought a point needed to be made about the state of the online mode. I think that when it works it is fantastic and can be better than single player FM becuase of the interaction with the other managers and transfer negotation etc. its even more real. But I feel that is highly over complicated to set-up and I believe a lot of people experience difficulties. It seems FM Online is not that popular because there is never really more than 5 people viewing the FM Online Forum and basically no posts - this suggests to me people don't bother with it.

My request to SI is that for FM2011 they put in some work into the FM Online mode, give detailed instructions on how how to work it and really sell this mode as the feature it can be.

The reason I post this is due to my own personal experience; a few years ago me and two friends used to play FM2008 online, my friend hosted it and we played 7pm through to sometimes 1am nightly for a few weeks. Me and one of my friends absolutely loved this as we are massive FM fans, but my friend who hosted the game decided he didn't like playing FM anymore and so this online game stopped. We thought this was fine and found a few more friends who wanted to play online and so were ready to start up again, this is where the problems began. Since then over the last few years none of us have been able to set up a network game much to our frustration. Turns out when our original host had his computer installed someone port forwarded his ports for gaming and so he was able to. We have all tried numerous times to do this to our laptops but to no avail, one of my friends even got an IT technician round to sort it out (costing around £50) but this made no difference. It would be great if someone could very simply write out a detailed guide on how my friends or I could host a game on FM10, that would be much appreciated, but my key point here is that surely it should not be this complicated.

My request for FM11 is improvements to FM Online so it is accesible for all (especially us people not clued up on computer networks). Thanks in advance for any feedback, suggestions and support.

Dong21

the online side of FM and by online side i mean setting a game up to host isn`t that hard as there is always posts about this in the FMOnline section of the forum especially in the help thread and as for port forwarding i have helped many people set up there ports to enable them to host fm over the 3 or 4 years as all they have to do is read the help thread or look at www.portforward.com and look for your router and then you should get step by step instructions on how to forward your ports any further problems just send me a message and i`ll do my best to help anyone play FM online

Thanks for the swift reply, when I next get hold of my friend I will tell him to message you as it is him who wants to host I believe, if it is not him then you will hear from me next week. I'd just like to say that I haven't just posted this thread without trying before though, I have spent time on the FM Online forum reading posts and instructions and have been on the portforward website but it has never worked for me. Is it really as simple as chose your router, chose FM2006 and then you are basically done or is there more to it? Another small question, If I portforward my computer will this have any affect on the other computers that use that router or result in any connection issues, as once I set my PS3 up online and this ended up taking internet away from all the computers in the house which caused a big problem in my household so I'm keen to avoid a situation like that!

I would like to see a online mode in fm2011 or any future version where you could take a squad in any of your saves and manage against your buddy and his squad. Instead of making a whole new save online, you would be able to play just one match. This should solve the bickering of who has a better squad in fm with your friends lol.

it shouldnt cause any problems for the other pcs/laptops/games consoles that connect to the the router as when you port forward to host a game like fm it will only be able to host on that pc/laptop you set it up for as each pc/laptop and games console have there own IP address which is what you use to set up port forwarding

for example your pc/laptop you want to host on might have an IP address like 192.168.111.54 and your ps3 might have 192.168.111.55 so the port forwarding when done right wont interfere with the other settings on the router

RDXCougar8173, would you be able to help me out please. i have looked the online forum stuff and followed it through but still it isnt working.