The Game | The Release | Negative PAs | Summary

Here's my 2 cents...

Feedback - The Game

So far, the game has run perfectly for me.

The only bug I have noticed (assuming it's a bug/mistake!) is that when international results come through, sometimes it states the goals were scored on 37 (+2) mins, or 65 (+2) mins (for example) - nothing major!

There does seem to be an increase in the number of injuries; however, after playing a full season, I don't think the frequency is unrealistic - although it can be quite frustrating! I'm sure if you were to compare the average number of injuries your squad gets to the average number of injuries the same team gets in real life, there won't be much difference. Perhaps rather than there being an "injury bug" in FM09 and the cause of all the complaints is that the frequency of injuries in FM08 was so low (which meant less hassle with substitutions and formations) in comparison to FM09's more realistic reflection.

I am not interested in watching any 3D or 2D matches to be honest - I like to look at other stats during a match so I can't comment on the new features or potential problems. In my opinion, while the development of being able to "watch" your players during the game has advanced, I'd rather SI spent their time developing other aspects of the game. If I wanted to watch/play top quality 3D football games - I'll buy Fifa or Pro Ev! Maybe SI could form a partnership with the creators of Fifa or Pro Ev and incorporate their technology into FM? That would definitely enhance the game - and I'm sure it would shut some people up!

1st Season (with Arsenal) - in case anyone's interested...

Champions League - Winners (Beat Real Madrid 3-1)

English Prem - 2nd Place (3 points behind Man Utd - d'oh!)

FA Cup - Winners (Beat Chelsea 1-0)

League Cup - Played youngsters & lost to Portsmouth in 1st round!

Transfers In: Frey £19m, Toulalan £15m, Higuain £9m, Sakho £8.5m, Saivet £5m

Set QPR as a feeder club and loaned them Saivet, Sakho & Merida - they got promoted & Saivet was their top scorer!

Beginning of 2nd Season - sold Eduardo to Real Madrid for £22.5m and Rosicky to Man City for £16m to fund Benzema (£36m rising to £54m) and Asenjo (£8m).

Feedback - The Release / Authorization

I don't think anyone can deny that it was an absolute shambles!

On SI's part - I don't think they were at fault. (I can't comment at all on Steam as I purchased my copy from Blockbuster.)

Obviously this year they've looked at protecting the game using authorisation codes; the company that issued them are clearly to blame in my opinion as some letters/digits were near enough indistinguishable and it took hours to work out the right code. It should not have been that difficult. If anything, perhaps SI should have tested the company/codes prior to release.

I understand SI wanting to protect the game, but what I don't understand is the way they've gone about it. I read that each code comes with a license that enables you to install the game on up to 5 computers - surely this defeats the whole purpose of trying to protect the game, as one person could buy it and give it to four mates to install on their computers! I was able to install the game on both my desktop and laptop and can play it without the disk; my work just bought 3 copies of the game (for 3 computers), but now surely I could use my disk and use up my remaining license to install the game on their 3 computers, and they could get a refund for the 3 copies they bought?! If that's the case, then SI would lose themselves £90! I'm failing to see how this whole thing is actually benefitting SI - maybe, in hindsight, they'd have been better off keeping things as they were!

My Only Complaint!

My only complaint about FM is the criteria for negative potential abilities.

1. I think it's unrealistic for -10 PAs to go up to 200. Pjanic of Lyon, for example, had a randomly set PA of 198 in the demo. Although he is a good player with lots of potential in real life - he is not going to be that good! I don't recall there ever being a player with a set PA of 198+... and I don't think he'll be better than the 3 best players in the world (in the game and arguably in real life) - Ronaldo, Messi & Kaka. Maybe a solution would be to cap a -10 PA at 190, or to tell the researcher to be bold and take a guess at the player's potential! If you compare him to other similar players, it's not difficult to make a resonable and calculated guess.

2. When you have -9 and -10 players with random unreaslistically high PAs, it sometimes spoils the game - especially when clubs sign them for stupidly high fees.

3. To give another example, Ramsey and Barazite (of Arsenal) both have -9 PAs, but in one game, Ramsey's PA was randomised and set at just 152, and Barazite's PA was randomly set at 179. Again, this is unrealistic! Ramsey is in the Arsenal 1st team, and has scored in the Champions League... Barazite (with respect), is in the reserves and on loan at Derby. From this it's clear that negative PAs are unrealistic! I'd prefer SI to get rid of them altogether, otherwise the criteria should be fine-tuned to avoid unrealistically high and low PAs being set. As it stands, Dos Santos could have a PA of 200 and Ramsey a PA of 150 - surely no one can say that's realistic?! Moan over!

Summary

I've been playing the game for over 10 years and each year the game improves and is more enjoyable to play. Obviously, there is always room for improvement... but I'd say this is their best and most complete relase so far - good job SI!

With regard to the PAs: We can't accurately predict the future. I quite like the way FM gives multiple possibilities. Who knows, IRL Barazite may end up as a late bloomer and become one of the best players in the world, Ramsey might find it difficult to progress past where he is now. You can't put fixed mathematical values on things like that in real life, I think it's only right to have a bit of flexibility

Charlo116 - You got him for free?! In my game you can sign him but have to pay compensation... around £2m up front rising to over £6m... I just decided to pay £5m up front instead!

Pelicanstuff - you make a very fair point! That may well happen... I still think the range of negative PAs could be shortened, maybe from 30 to 20... that way they'd be more accurate and the issue would stop bugging me!!

I think using Ramsey and Barazite as an example for my point above was a bad one... just checked out Barazite on YouTube...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JbNssx5SCxo&feature=related

He's definitely got potential!

If you cap PA at 190 or whatever, the only thing you've changed is the maximum PA and the range of possible values it can take. So now 190 is the new 200. So then you need to reduce the maximum to 180... which is the new 200 all over again.

You have to have a maximum somewhere, all the maximum does is determine what kind of granularity you have. 1-10 would be much of a muchness, with too little variation; 1-1,000,000,000 would be excessive, with the difference between two adjacent values too trivial to bother. But there has to be some arbitrary maximum somewhere!

What I once argued in favour of was more of an overlap between PA ranges, so that a PA of -10 means, say, 150 - 200; a PA of -9 means, say, 130 - 180. This would make knowing which players are destined to be superstars at the start of the game less easy to predict and throw up far more surprises.

I think using Ramsey and Barazite as an example for my point above was a bad one... just checked out Barazite on YouTube...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JbNssx5SCxo&feature=related

He's definitely got potential!

You could make ME look world class on youtube. Needless to say, I'm not.

I think using Ramsey and Barazite as an example for my point above was a bad one... just checked out Barazite on YouTube...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=JbNssx5SCxo&feature=related

He's definitely got potential!

Looks like he needs to train his left quite a lot, very one-footed in the vid

If you cap PA at 190 or whatever, the only thing you've changed is the maximum PA and the range of possible values it can take. So now 190 is the new 200. So then you need to reduce the maximum to 180... which is the new 200 all over again.

You have to have a maximum somewhere, all the maximum does is determine what kind of granularity you have. 1-10 would be much of a muchness, with too little variation; 1-1,000,000,000 would be excessive, with the difference between two adjacent values too trivial to bother. But there has to be some arbitrary maximum somewhere!

What I once argued in favour of was more of an overlap between PA ranges, so that a PA of -10 means, say, 150 - 200; a PA of -9 means, say, 130 - 180. This would make knowing which players are destined to be superstars at the start of the game less easy to predict and throw up far more surprises.

Not sure I get your first point; surely lowering the maximum PA in each range by 10 would make them more resonable?

-10 = 170-190 instead of 170-200

-9 = 150-170 instead of 150-180

This would avoid the extremes of have two players with -9 PAs (for example), one of whom gets a randomly set PA of 150 and the other gets 180.

Maybe I think about this too much! Was just annoying in one of my Arsenal games when I wanted to sign Grenier and Tafer from Lyon and discovered Grenier's PA was near 150 and Tafer's was around 175.

I rate players in stars according to their PA...

200 - 5 stars

190 - 4.5

180 - 4

170 - 3.5

160 - 3

and so on...

I'd like to think they both have potential to be 3.5 star players... Grenier has been compared to Kaka and Tafer to Benzema...

http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,11670_3427822,00.html

http://www.uefa.com/competitions/under17/news/kind=1/newsid=694504.html

http://lyon.theoffside.com/team-news/kiddie-update-yannis-tafer-shines.html

Anyway...

I do like your idea of an overlap between the PA ranges though

As I understood it, you were suggesting capping negative PA at 190. (quote: "Maybe a solution would be to cap a -10 PA at 190")

Either that means that no players will get assigned more than 190 PA (which is maybe what you want), rendering a PA system from 0-200 useless, as it's now 0-190. Or it means that the whole ability system needs to be scaled to a 0-190 system, in which case zero remains the same, 100 becomes 95, and 200 becomes 190.

The whole point of a maximum is that it's the theoretical best that can ever be attained; i.e. 0= the worst ever to make it as a footballer; maximum is the best anyone can ever be. The value of the maximum is arbitrary (whether 10 or 200 doesn't matter), all that matters is the amount of intermediary values possible.

i.e. what you're suggesting is:

maximum = maximum - 10

Try solving that equation

Maybe what you really mean is that players with phenomenal ability sometimes seem to be just that little bit too good; better even than Pele or Maradonna, and that player's need to have their attributes tempered down a little?

Either that means that no players will get assigned more than 190 PA (which is maybe what you want), rendering a PA system from 0-200 useless, as it's now 0-190. Or it means that the whole ability system needs to be scaled to a 0-190 system, in which case zero remains the same, 100 becomes 95, and 200 becomes 190.

Yes, both!

Maybe what you really mean is that players with phenomenal ability sometimes seem to be just that little bit too good; better even than Pele or Maradonna, and that player's need to have their attributes tempered down a little?

Pretty much!

It's something that bugs me each release as there's always a good few players who don't have set PA's when I think it would be easy to make a calculated estimate ... so when you start a new game their PA may vary quite drasticallay - making them too good or not good enough.

Anyway... like I said, it's something that bugs me, but it probably doesn't concern everyone... nothing that can't be amended using the editor! Problem is... you give a few players with negative PA's set PA's, then you look at other players with set PA's who you think should have their PA's increased/decreased (Bosingwa for example - how can he have a PA of 162?! Should be 182!) then you end up spending more time on the bloody editor than the game!