View-only Leagues

Can anyone advise about this setup option?

It isn't particularly well elucidated in the manual. All it basically says is that having leagues on 'view-only' instead of 'playable' will reduce the strain on your computer.

I understand the difference between 'view-only' and 'playable' (basically, the leagues generate stats but you won't be able to interact with them fully or manage a team there) but what I don't get is how much the strain is reduced by having 'view-only'.

At the moment, FM recommends that I start with England, Scotland, Italy, Spain. Does putting leagues on 'view-only' double the amount of countries I can run?

I'm planning my first FM09 game for tomorrow and I'd be grateful for any advice from those who in the know about this!

Can anyone advise about this setup option?

It isn't particularly well elucidated in the manual. All it basically says is that having leagues on 'view-only' instead of 'playable' will reduce the strain on your computer.

I understand the difference between 'view-only' and 'playable' (basically, the leagues generate stats but you won't be able to interact with them fully or manage a team there) but what I don't get is how much the strain is reduced by having 'view-only'.

At the moment, FM recommends that I start with England, Scotland, Italy, Spain. Does putting leagues on 'view-only' double the amount of countries I can run?

I'm planning my first FM09 game for tomorrow and I'd be grateful for any advice from those who in the know about this!

It runs a lot faster, on playable every game from that league is processed through the match engine. On view only they don't get processed through the ME, so it speeds up loading times when matches are being played.

If you want more speed as well try minimum detail.

With that recommendation from the game, I'd change leagues that you don't plan on managing in to minimum detail and/or view only, you'll then be able to load up some more view only leagues. The amount will depend on how much you change the others.

Load up a few different scenarios and time how long it takes to do a year on holiday, you'll soon work out the best set up.

Cheers HonkyDick, that is a really helpful post.

I knew this wouldn’t be the most popular thread simply because it doesn’t take as its subject FM09 activation or when the patch will be ready so thank you for taking the time to reply.

I'm actually just running a few experiments now. Will post up my thoughts in a few minutes.

I have tried to do a bit of testing myself by loading various combinations.

One league playable: A game with all English divisions loaded as playable. Creates a file size of approx. 40MB. This is speedy as can be on my machine and doesn’t take long to setup at all.

View-only experiment: A game with all English divisions loaded as playable plus 18 other view-only countries (top two divisions of each) creates a file size of approx. 65MB. The game itself seems just slightly slower than the one playable league option above. Took slightly longer to load up. More players appear to have been loaded although it should be noted that some teams in the view-only leagues still have grey players. I also have additional international countries that are manageable, noticeably those related to the countries I have loaded on view-only. Moving through a week definitely took a noticeably longer time than the one league playable option above (not painfully so though). More results were coming up on the screen as I progressed through the week.

Four leagues playable experiment: A game with all English divisions loaded, plus top two divisions of Spain, Italy and all divisions of Scotland – all countries playable. This took ages compared to the other two to load up. Processing through a week actually seemed quite reasonable though and not that much different to the view-only one above. The game size was 53MB.

One playable, three view-only: After the above, I decided to run the same leagues but with only English playable and the rest of view-only. Setup was slightly quicker than above, as you would expect, but not that much quicker. File size was 46MB. Processing through a week seemed barely different to just one league playable to me.

One playable, seven view-only: So double the leagues, added the top two four more countries on view-only. This set up in reasonable time, not an incredible amount of difference to above. Twice the amount of leagues gave a file size of 53MB. This is very interesting because this is the same file size as that of the ‘four leagues playable’ experiment. Processing, again, not really noticeably different to above. More results coming through but not slowed down at all.

This is clearly a rather random, badly worked out and subjective experiment but I think the conclusions I am drawing from it are interesting even if all of this has been very garbled.

Having leagues on view-only does reduce the loading times, processing times and file size. It also does add a certain amount players to the game; however this must just be the ‘core’ players from that nation because some teams still have greyed out players. Thus it is a useful option for scouting players in different countries or using feeder teams but don’t expect a lot of extra players in your game. Using view-only, it appears that, roughly speaking, you can basically load twice the amount of countries as you would in playable with the resulting save the same size and the processing occurring at about the same speed.

I should note that I have found that the file sizes are hugely increased when loading players from all countries.

The difference in file size between a large database with no additional players retained, and a large database with all players loaded from England, Scotland, N.Ireland, Ireland, Wales is 15MB. This is to be expected with all of the extra players involved. Loading extra players also has a significant influence on how quickly the game sets itself up.

I've always wondered about this too, so thanks for the thread.

I have a question about view only leagues too.

I have often wondered about the "well known players in your region" player search. I generally only have England, Italy, Spain and Germany (full detail) loaded and wonder if that is restricting the players shown when I do a player search.

If I cut the amount of playable leagues but upped the non-playable leagues to include South America, Africa and say, most of Europe will this improve the amount of players that are presented to me on the player search screen? Or does it just depend on your scouts knowledge?

Always been bamboozled by this one as quite often a rival club will buy a fantastic player that I'd never even seen or heard of despite a thorough search in the player search screen.

A bit off topic, sorry, but i was wondering about loading additional players, how much of a strain would loading players from around 20 or 30 countries with just one playable league and 3 leagues on view only compare to the same setup without loading additional players?

would the processing take longer?

thanks!

edit: didn't see the post above.

I'm not sure about that Golden28.

Certainly, the search screen is influenced by your scouting knowledge.

Adding view-only leagues would increase the amount of players from those countries you have added, but not in a hugely significantly way (from what I have found in my tests).

Well done, interesting experiment too. Maybe you can post your computer specs, so it can serve as a better basis for comparison/ choice what leagues to choose?

I usually only pick 1 or 2 countries as playable these days, because I either start low league and then maybe take over a bigger team, or I take a small nation and a big nation (in football terms, not actual size, even so they often are the same ) and then move up one. But I got lazy on the view-only option.

Guess I will be having most nations on view only and pick one for playing.

either way, thanks again for the effort of starting these leagues

then again I guess you are using a Mac if you can already make these comparisons? Will that somewhat relate to Windows pc specs?

As another quick aside, loading all players from England, which is something I regularly do to get players at non-League clubs, adds 6MB to the file size.

I've always wondered about this too, so thanks for the thread.

I have a question about view only leagues too.

I have often wondered about the "well known players in your region" player search. I generally only have England, Italy, Spain and Germany (full detail) loaded and wonder if that is restricting the players shown when I do a player search.

If I cut the amount of playable leagues but upped the non-playable leagues to include South America, Africa and say, most of Europe will this improve the amount of players that are presented to me on the player search screen? Or does it just depend on your scouts knowledge?

Always been bamboozled by this one as quite often a rival club will buy a fantastic player that I'd never even seen or heard of despite a thorough search in the player search screen.

As far as I'm aware the players available to you in Player Search are based on your scouting knonwledge and the reputation of those players so neither of those should be affected by whether you include other leagues or not, that will only effect who is in the database in the first place...could be wrong though.

As another quick aside, loading all players from England, which is something I regularly do to get players at non-League clubs, adds 6MB to the file size.

Is this a meaningful measure though? Filesizes grow quite considerably as your game progresses so how will that growth of file size be affected by these things? Will the file size remain just 6 MB bigger as it grows compared to not including all English players or will that extra grow as a percentage as the file size grows?

I'm not sure about that Golden28.

Certainly, the search screen is influenced by your scouting knowledge.

Adding view-only leagues would increase the amount of players from those countries you have added, but not in a hugely significantly way (from what I have found in my tests).

Hmmmm. Interesting. Just read you large post aswell. Good stuff mate

I guess it is a meaningful measure in the way that you can compare the amount of data that has to be processed. More processing should result in slower progress (time wise)

Opul, my computer is 1.66 Ghz Dual Core 2 with 3GB RAM.

I think view-only looks like a good option for those that are intending to only manage in one country. It reduces file size, compared to running playable leagues, and means you can include twice the amount of leagues in your FM world (although you can't manage in them obviously). It seems to be a good thing for realism, for scouting players and for selecting feeder clubs. It won't, however, add a huge amount of players on to your file. If you have a penchant for Portuguese players (I do love alliteration ), for instance, you would be better either having the Portuguese leagues as 'playable' or loading all players from Portugal.

Is this a meaningful measure though? Filesizes grow quite considerably as your game progresses so how will that growth of file size be affected by these things? Will the file size remain just 6 MB bigger as it grows compared to not including all English players or will that extra grow as a percentage as the file size grows?

I realise what you are saying. File size will obviously change during the life of a game, getting bigger as you progress. I just thought file sizes at the beginning of a game were a good standard way of measuring the different experiments.

Time is subjective on different machines but file sizes should be the same. I also think file size is one of the main factors in how fast a save game runs.

Thus, I figure that if you run a few standard experiments, as I have, and find your limit in terms of speed and then record the file size, you can setup the game in lots of different ways and then judge how well it will work by comparing out the file size. Do you follow?

In other words, in my experience, the smaller a save is the faster it runs and, similarly, the larger a save is the slower it runs.

Good work crouchaldinho.

I have found this is the best way to set my games up. I always run a few tests to see what works best, you have to weigh up speed against players lost and/or detail.

As you have noticed you do sacrifice some players but the main players are usually there. You do get a good feel for how fast you can make your game go against loss of players or detail.

I think those view only teams with grey players actually do make transfers and slowly build up their squads and eventually will look like normal teams. They just won't have the same team as they'd start with in playable.

True, but I was just thinking in terms of a few seasons down the line. I've often had games that seem to go at a nice pace when I start them, but then 2-3 seasons in they are really starting to go slow and I regret having included the Ukrainian league that I never even look at or all players from the Czech Republic, Panama and Lebanon!

True, but I was just thinking in terms of a few seasons down the line. I've often had games that seem to go at a nice pace when I start them, but then 2-3 seasons in they are really starting to go slow and I regret having included the Ukrainian league that I never even look at or all players from the Czech Republic, Panama and Lebanon!

Yeah, well that is something that I take into account anyway, now. I used to load up as much as I could and play thinking it was ok but as you say a few years down the track it slows. So now I do my tests and go for what I think will be speedy enough for the future as well, without compromising to much detail or too many leagues.

True, but I was just thinking in terms of a few seasons down the line. I've often had games that seem to go at a nice pace when I start them, but then 2-3 seasons in they are really starting to go slow and I regret having included the Ukrainian league that I never even look at or all players from the Czech Republic, Panama and Lebanon!

Yes, I know what you mean glamdring. This is why I have experimented with 'view-only'.

Obviously, the smaller your file size at the start of a game, the more likely it will run quickly for longer.

I'm not quite sure how much they increase as you go along. However, I can measure some of my older games quickly and, although inaccurate, this might give you something to go on.

My FM07 career must have been (very) approximately 40MB when I started (as I loaded just all English leagues). After approx. 15 years, it ended up as 131MB. So that's more than doubled in size over that period.

One of my FM08 careers must have been about 60-70MB in size when I started out (as I loaded leagues from five countries). After approx. 10 years it was 277MB. It started to get slower after 10 years but was still running well.

What we can tentatively (because of comparing different versions) conclude from that is that, the more leagues you have active, the bigger your file will become over time. This makes sense if you think about it.

A bit off topic, sorry, but i was wondering about loading additional players, how much of a strain would loading players from around 20 or 30 countries with just one playable league and 3 leagues on view only compare to the same setup without loading additional players?

would the processing take longer?

thanks!

edit: didn't see the post above.

I didn't see this post. I must have missed it.

Loading players definitely adds to the file size considerably. I also noticed a difference in setup times.

As for processing though, I'm not sure. I couldn't tell a huge amount of difference between when I had additional players loaded from 5 countries, compared to none additional at all. The none at all was perhaps a little faster but not enough to for me to really sit up and take notice.

The game always recommends very few leagues :| on a Pentium 4 it recommends 4 countries... with a Quad Core it recommended me 6 countries (LOL :|)

And my laptop has a 1.66 Ghz Dual Core Centrino (the recommendation was 6 too..) and runs 10-12 countries with all secondary leagues easily (never wanted to try more..)

Some more conclusions:

- View-only doesn't appear to load any more players than not selecting that nation would. I am finding core players, i.e. the famous players, in most divisions with a high number of grey players.

- Using view-only might not really suit a game managing a lower league club because only well-known players are retained.

- View-only is really only, therefore, beneficial for those interested in the additional statistics, results and league tables, and for feeder clubs.

- View only is still a better alternative to not running any additional leagues as at least some stats are generated, which can be critical if that nation includes one of your feeder/parent teams and when buying players.

- For total immersion and for extra players, playable is the superior option.

I can confirm that including players from lots of different nations has a fairly significant effect on speed. I rarely add more leagues (either view-only or playable), but I usually include players from some 10-15 nations (generally avoiding England because there are so many of them) and the game definitely runs more slowly than on the occasions I have not done that.

I totally ignore the recommended number of leagues though - on my laptop it recommends only England and only down to League 2! What is an acceptable speed varies hugely from player to player though. If you are the kind of player who likes to play 25 seasons and get through each one in a few days, watching games in commentary only mode, then speed is going to be absolutely key, but if you play at a leisurely pace anyway, watching games in full match mode at 20-25 minutes each and taking time to tweak tactics a lot, search for players, look through divisional and player statistics and only generally play 2 or 3 matches in an evening then the game processing time between games is only a small proportion of that so you aren't going to be too bothered if it takes 10-15 minutes to process through one week between matches (assuming no player interuptions for player searching etc).

I tend to be one of the latter so speed is not so big an issue, but I still don't want my game to go so slowly that over 50% of the time is spent processing and less than half spent on me actually playing.

Some more conclusions:

- View-only doesn't appear to load any more players than not selecting that nation would. I am finding core players, i.e. the famous players, in most divisions with a high number of grey players.

- Using view-only might not really suit a game managing a lower league club because only well-known players are retained.

- View-only is really only, therefore, beneficial for those interested in the additional statistics, results and league tables, and for feeder clubs.

- View only is still a better alternative to not running any additional leagues as at least some stats are generated, which can be critical if that nation includes one of your feeder/parent teams and when buying players.

- For total immersion and for extra players, playable is the superior option.

Now you're getting the hang of it, I mainly use view only for the feeder clubs and just to see another league churning along somewhere.

Like I load up the big leagues in playable, for example England, then have the welsh and Irish leagues in view only so I can see that my feeder clubs are actually doing something and any player that is sent there gets some stats.

If the game is still not fast enough I may change 1 or 2 of the playable leagues to view only, of course in order of least importance to my game.

Glamdring, I was going to post something similar after running a quick test with loading players. Definitely has an effect on speed.

I usually load all England due to wanting non-League sides to have players but I wonder if there is another way to retain players in non-League sides. I have heard that some people make a EDT file for this. This might be better than loading all English players.

HonkyDick, you are right. I think I will experiment with running one or two big European leagues in full for the extra players and then have a few view-only leagues for potential feeder clubs.

Hmm.. I have a question.

Is it possible to manage (later on in my career) to apply for jobs in a "view only" league??

Glamdring, I was going to post something similar after running a quick test with loading players. Definitely has an effect on speed.

I usually load all England due to wanting non-League sides to have players but I wonder if there is another way to retain players in non-League sides. I have heard that some people make a EDT file for this. This might be better than loading all English players.

Yeah, if I am managing in the conference I sometimes load all English players, but not if I'm managing higher up or in another country. Not sure how you could do it with an edt file though. As far as I'm aware they only allow you to retain players from named clubs or countries (or specific players). Obviously if you had the time (or some script to do it) you could create one with all non-league English clubs named, but you might as well just include all English players in that case because it amounts to roughly the same thing since very few English players play abroad (except in the other home nations)

Hmm.. I have a question.

Is it possible to manage (later on in my career) to apply for jobs in a "view only" league??

No. That is part of how they manage to be so much faster.

No. That is part of how they manage to be so much faster.

Ok... Then I wont be using "view only leagues", I think ... I usely play about 10 playable leagues...

view only still have like league tables? cant remember if it did when i used it in 08

Another couple of random tests coming up.

102 leagues from 51 countries (default selections), all playable:

Took years to get setup. Perhaps even decades. I could have reread the entire oeuvre of James Joyce and then listened to an entire Gustav Mahler symphony cycle. Well, maybe not that long, but still. A long time. There is no way I’m ever going to try all leagues. Goodness knows how long that would take.

Saving the game, to start with, took an age. Processing was, quite frankly, too slow for me. It still seemed to go ok but took a lot longer to get through a week due to the extra results being processed. Not disastrously slow but would require some extra patience, for sure. Playing this game would result in a lot of hanging about for me. File size was 200MB.

Now going to try the same but with all but England on view-only.

102 leagues from 51 countries (defaults selections), only England playable, the rest view-only:

A lot quicker in loading up but not incredibly so. I could probably have read one Joyce novel and listened one Mahler symphony this time. Maybe A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Symphony No. 1 two of their shorter works respectively. Actually, it was quicker than that. Not bad at all considering.

Processing decent speed, slower than most of the settings I have tried, but vastly superior to above. Size of file only 75MB.

Got loads of great national teams that are manageable: Tonga, Samoa, Cook Islands, Fiji – just a few of the highlights.

So, I can conclude from this that view-only can add more players from countries that are not usually considered ‘core’ or important enough to load their famous players.

Hmm.. I have a question.

Is it possible to manage (later on in my career) to apply for jobs in a "view only" league??

No, unfortunately not.

I have just found that a good alternative to loading all players from specific countries is to make a DDT file and retain players from specific clubs. Takes up less space and can boost the database considerably.

The way I understand it is that view only still sims the league, plays matches etc, but it doesn't load all the players from that league (that's why you get the high profile players and a load of greys). Playable loads all the players for that league too. The players require far more processing time than just simming the league etc so it's much slower. There are also 2 types of match engine, the full detail one, and the quick one which are indepedant of whether the league is view only or playable. The full detail engine is always used for any competitions in which you are active. You can choose which engine is used for the other leagues in the detail settings screen (I think that's what it's called), which should be in preferences.

Can anyone tell me if retaining players from clubs in view-only leagues using a DDT file would actually be counter-productive?

For instance, if I put the top two divisions of Italy on view-only and then made a DDT file to just keep players at clubs in Serie A, would I save some of the 'strain' and processing time?

Indeed, perhaps it would make more sense to just load the league as playable? Although I would have thought it would make some difference in terms of processing time.

Any help appreciated.

i normally create a ddt file for all the top divisions in europe

Interesting kroshot. Do you normally load those leagues on view-only?

Does retaining players at clubs like this have an effect on future regens? Will these retained players be regenerated in the future?

If, for instance, I retain players at all of the Spanish clubs, will they get replaced and will I get lots of Spanish regens?

So many questions!

At the moment I am running 42 leagues on full and it is going well so far.

If you retain players, you do get regens for them if they retire etc. I asked this before and someone from SI said it was true. Think it was Duffy.

Cheers for that Jonfun1980.

42 leagues on full. Wow! My dual core 1.66 with 3GB Ram wouldn't cope with that at all.

I'm finding FM09 slower going than FM08. At least it seems that way to me.

I have been experimenting with my setup as I think it is important to get it just right before starting a long-term game. I am only intending to manage one club in England, so I thought it would be a waste of resources to load other countries. However, I want some realism in the game and so I have made a DDT file to load the following: non-league step 3 and step 4 clubs, European Champions League sides (last 32), UEFA Cup sides (who have made the group stage), all clubs in the top two divisions of Spain and Italy.

I am intending to run all English divisions playable, with the following on view-only: top two leagues from Italy, top two from Spain, all Scottish leagues and top two from Belgium (as I have heard that this is helpful for work permit feeder clubs).

I'm wondering if I am really saving that much strain by running them on view-only with all the players loaded for the top flight clubs anyway.

At the moment it takes me 15 mins to do a month during the transfer window, put it on holiday for tests.

When you say 'during the transfer window' do you mean at the start of the game, i.e. July to August?

At the moment I am running 42 leagues on full and it is going well so far.

If you retain players, you do get regens for them if they retire etc. I asked this before and someone from SI said it was true. Think it was Duffy.

whats your machine specs?

Yes July-August always runs slower and January.

quadcore 6600 3.2 ghz, 8gb ram.

Want to swap computers Jonfun1980!

i`m thinking of running england all leagues,and top leagues from scotland,italy,germany,france,holland,portugal,spain,russia,turkey,greece,russia some of them as playable some as view only that is 16 leagues from 12 countries got a 3ghz dual core processor 2gb ram should run fast enough.played english leagues only on fm08 got to 11 seasons with birmingham and started to get bored so thought id put a few europesn leagues in this time

Sounds pretty good to me Kroshot. Your computer is superior to mine. I'm recommended only 4 countries when I click the recommend button.

I'm going for the setup I suggested in my post above, which seems to run quite well when I have tried a holiday experiment.

I think going to make some more DDTs to retain players at top European leagues, e.g. Italy, France, Spain, Germany. Also retain all players from Scottish clubs and retain players from some Champions League and UEFA Cup clubs. Then retain all players from clubs at step 3 and step 4 in England.

I will run all leagues in England playable, all Scotland view-only, and top two of Italy, France, Belgium view-only.

I'm going to have a one club career in England, hopefully, so I am happy to have the others on view-only just to have some stats for those players. I've not experimented with DDTs before but seems like a good idea and it will be good having the extra players in the game too to make sure I have plenty of good regens in the future.

i normally only ever play as birmingham in a long term game just thought it would be fun to have the chancce to manage madrid,barcelona,or milan if given the chance