fm10, no new features, bugs ironed out.

Firstly, I'm a HUGE fan of FM and have played since CM 99/01 (not as long as some but yeah). All I'm saying is, this year and in FM08, the bugs have been truely devestating for many players. Each patch can even bring about new bugs or intensify ones they have missed.

Here's an idea - For FM10, don't add loads of new features to try and sell a few thousand more copies. Keep FM09, but with a new databse and spend the time ironing out and eradicating bugs and mistakes. That way, when FM10 rolls around, people will have far less to whinge about and you can then add A FEW new features on FM11 that are fully tested.

Or maybe people want more gimmicks and less enjoyable gameplay?

No, you'd just end up getting people whinging about there being nothing new. Let's face it, people will want a whinge no matter what and will find something to have a go about.

I just hope SI release two versions of the game. One with and one without the 3d match engine as that has genuinely slowed downed the game. People with good enough PC's are also having problems with the speed.

Firstly, I'm a HUGE fan of FM and have played since CM 99/01 (not as long as some but yeah). All I'm saying is, this year and in FM08, the bugs have been truely devestating for many players. Each patch can even bring about new bugs or intensify ones they have missed.

Here's an idea - For FM10, don't add loads of new features to try and sell a few thousand more copies. Keep FM09, but with a new databse and spend the time ironing out and eradicating bugs and mistakes. That way, when FM10 rolls around, people will have far less to whinge about and you can then add A FEW new features on FM11 that are fully tested.

Or maybe people want more gimmicks and less enjoyable gameplay?

I don't care what SEGA/S.I. decide to do with FM10 - I won't be buying it.

That said. If they do want my custom back (and that of a lot of others) they need to seriously consider the following:

1. Make the game and the ME in particular much more transparent and easy to read. Do this in conjunction with a tactics module interface overhaul - one that completely does away with sliders or greatly reduces the players need to fiddle with them incessantly. Some wonderful suggestions have already been put forward by WWFAN and others in this area. The key point: DO NOT just make this another piece of window dressing and seriously contemplate whether FM needs to be so complicated and time consuming to be enjoyable and realistic.

2. Drop the DRM or go for something far less invasive and restrictive. Why do we need a serial key & remote activation? I won't go into the misery Steam has brought but that obviously all needs some proper attention: it is worth noting that even yesterday, months after the initial activation problems several people came on the forum again saying they could not activate the product, could not understand the keys, did not evidently find the right information quickly or easily, there was no pre-emption from SEGA regarding possible glut of Christmas activation issues; the telephone system was reported as not accessible etc etc etc etc. The man who came on the forum today asking if its ok if he can play his own copy of the game because he left his CD key somewhere else sums it up: if he had pirated it he wouldn't be going without. He paid for it: the pirates didnt. That is fundamentally wrong.

3. The game needs to be finished before it is released. Not released on time - whatever happens. If S.I. insist on putting out their 'best effort' not 'the finished product' on release day and simply cleaning it up over the next five months then they are going to suffer financially when people stop buying it at full price and simply consider the advent of the final patch to be the real release date - and pick it up from the bargain bin. Marketing and enhancing the desire of the fans to buy early appears to work depressingly well however. A major step forward would be to get the game re-written so that it runs quickly and on a wider selection of hardware again. From what I can tell a huge number of people have laptops not desktops these days .. and that means integrated graphics. Why not buy a few of the popular market solutions and tailor your min/low settings explicitly for integrated GPUS??

4. The game needs to be less punitive throughout. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way the game is played - tactics need to be less important than players at every level except the very top. And even then it needs to be less than it is. Presently it is skewed too far in favour of tactical/statto tweaking and as we have said many times in many threads, football is a game played by 11 men not 1 man and his 11 mindless drones doing his bidding. Quality players win matches!

5. There needs to be an extended public beta program re-instated and to hell with the competition. I believe Paul C has already indicated that he is doing this and they are already looking for additional beta testers. So positive news there ..

6. The game needs to be cosmetically enhanced: the lack of club logos, face packs, decent sound, the glitchy and resource hog 3d all need to be addressed. Licensing is an issue for sure but so is immersion - if you need to rely on fan made content to make the game attractive then you need to make it accessible to the modders. That would begin with opening up .tac formats and the mangled up 3d texture formats you used for stadiums etc so people can get stuck in.

7. S.I. needs to work on its customer service. I would suggest employing a Customer Service or Community Cordinator tasked with ensuring the forums work smoothly, that people's concerns are addressed courteously and quickly and that a stricter set of forum conduct and posting rules are adhered to. Facilitate a pleasant and constructive environment and ensure everything is in the right place at all times and we might get some of the more intelligent and thoughtful people to return ..

8. The system of user feedback, particularly bug reporting needs to be restored to how it was three or even five years ago. There needs to be a properly monitored and maintained bugs forum, where Q&A reps are explicitly mandated to respond to bug postings and maintain a list of known issues and issues under review. The old system of quick efficient forum management and good customer service + making it known concisely and clearly what was under review by use of stickies etc was abandoned for some reason. It has lead to a massive mess in the bugs forum and many posts going unanswered or answered tersely and without any real apparent sincerity or customer care. This compounds how people feel about S.I. and enhances not detracts from the overall negative image or sense of being exploited/ignored by the developers; which I am sure is not true but they take no obvious and consistent steps to convince people otherwise!

9. Re-structure the forums to allow an area where people can intelligently discuss suggestions and give their feedback that ISNT the general forum. This new forum would be heavily moderated and kept tidy so that S.I. can get quickly to the meat of the current 'debates' and get involved again - rather than sifting through the reams of misplaced technical support requests, laptop threads, moans and rants, repeat issues etc etc etc. prevalent in General.

10. Seriously look at expanding the number of mods on the forums as a whole and/or give the exhisting mods a boss, a written code of conduct and more authority to remove/delete offensive and innapropriate material. Structure your mods to include other time zones than GMT (more than presently) so that coverage is more or less 24/7. A lot of American users come on in the AM and by the time anyone reads their stuff its slid off the front page already as the Europeans get up and fill the place with more random tech support/laptop threads.

I have no idea why I posted this.

Sorry. I was bored and got an espresso machine for Christmas ..

I think SI need to just read the above post over and over until it sinks in. Good post Les Girondins. I need me one of them espresso machines!

personally i wouldnt spend £30 on a data update when i could get one for free off the internet - it just wouldnt make any sense.

The way forward for SI really is to release new versions of the game as they have been, but also to release updates to the previous year such as transfers etc for a small fee (about £5 or so). People would enjoy playing old versions with up to date databases.

personally i wouldnt spend £30 on a data update when i could get one for free off the internet - it just wouldnt make any sense.

Exactly right.

As said before, paying for a game, noticing it's buggy, and then paying again for the SAME GAME without the bugs seems kind of fishy to me. They should iron out the bugs, but we shouldn't have to pay extra for it.

That said, I've noticed that FM only really gets released in jan/feb, after it's last patch. Everything before that is kind of beta.

What kind of bugs are you talking about? :|

Sure there may be some slight irregularities in the match engine, but surely that doesn't make FM09 unplayable. In my eyes, FM09 is far superior to any prior release. People would moan about a perfect game as well.

I played more than 5 seasons so far and I'm really enjoying it. Others played more..

I think there are no more major bugs except ME. I think SI should test FM10 better than FM09 and just fix those funny/stupid bugs with wrong messages, etc. and focus on ME to make it much better next year. I don't really need loads of new features in next version, there are few but they are not so hard to implement.

personally i wouldnt spend £30 on a data update when i could get one for free off the internet - it just wouldnt make any sense.

But this is my point, its not just a data update. Almost all of the bugs could be dealt with over the next year if that was the focus.

For me, all 2010 needs is;

1. A totally revamped match engine. This includes stadia and/or a stadium editor (not in game but one OUTSIDE of the game) so fans can do the dirty work if need be, like skins etc.

2. Easier to use/understand deploy tactics. Will be nice to have world class teams that wont be woeful because of 1 slider placed slightly askew...

3. SOUNDS! Jesus christ, since the earliest of SI's creation sounds always horrible. Sure people out there play this game with sound off, and game minimized and just look at scores. Howver if you want to be a football simulator, you need to know that a crowd can sway games in your favour. It's a tad boring as well, not to be engrosed in a game. We are in a moden age of multi media, lets not make this game all about spreadhseets!

Firstly, I'm a HUGE fan of FM and have played since CM 99/01 (not as long as some but yeah). All I'm saying is, this year and in FM08, the bugs have been truely devestating for many players. Each patch can even bring about new bugs or intensify ones they have missed.

Here's an idea - For FM10, don't add loads of new features to try and sell a few thousand more copies. Keep FM09, but with a new databse and spend the time ironing out and eradicating bugs and mistakes. That way, when FM10 rolls around, people will have far less to whinge about and you can then add A FEW new features on FM11 that are fully tested.

Or maybe people want more gimmicks and less enjoyable gameplay?

we can only dream about that!

Yes please. Fix the damn game before you try and cram more pointless and half-assed features into it.

personally i wouldnt spend £30 on a data update when i could get one for free off the internet - it just wouldnt make any sense.

Well, at the moment all you're doing this year is spending £30 on a very tiny data update with new features that don't work properly and actually make the game worse.

So you're spending £30 on a slightly updated but poorer version of what you bought last year. Been that way since 07.

From a marketing/sales point of view, it'd be awful though, which is why it will never happen.

Personally, I think it'd be great though. I'm having serious thoughts about not buying any future releases, after selling FM08 due to its rubbishness after 2 months and now not playing FM09 due to its rubbishness after 1 month.

I agree, iron out all the crap that makes this game a hassle and make it a better, enjoyable, and smoother game to play.

Vote with your wallets, but it makes no commercial sense for SI to do this at all.

i always thought keeping old and loyal customers is more important than gaining new ones. a 12 old kid who bought this game for the first time, he'll never want to play it again after loosing 3 matches. and that's not hard to happen. or they're playing FIFA and PES anyway. who's more important customer then? don't get me wrong i'm all for improvements.

FM is supposed to be a serious game but i'm seriously thinking about quiting FM09 just becouse most of features don't work like they should and buggy ME. and i've been buying this game since day one.

after i played the demo, there was no way I was buying FM09 myself. I let someone else waste their money

I won't be buying FM10 if the demo isn't in perfect working order either.

after i played the demo, there was no way I was buying FM09 myself. I let someone else waste their money

I won't be buying FM10 if the demo isn't in perfect working order either.

i guess you won't be buying it then.

Firstly, I'm a HUGE fan of FM and have played since CM 99/01

Awfully long season that, wasn't it?

If you're only here to speculate about the future and having a whinge at SI, why waste your time at all? How do you KNOW the FM10 demo will be bad, as you insinuate in your reply to Wakers?

If you're only here to speculate about the future and having a whinge at SI, why waste your time at all? How do you KNOW the FM10 demo will be bad, as you insinuate in your reply to Wakers?

i can almost guaranty you that 10.0 will be bad and 10.1 also. it's the same every year to be honest. maybe it won't be if they'd do what OP said.

Then you're probably wasting your time on the forums.

i think i would be wasting my time if i was saying the game is perfect also.

Nah i wouldn't agree... But I am FOR the idea of having new features taking a step back and improves the quality. Then the following edition then look back at the previous edition then make a decision

I dunno about anyone else but am gonna try cm09 in april! they havent rushed 09 and tried to get it out before xmas there really testing it and makin it the best possible and its out for april!

What's the use of that though? Releasing a game meant for that season just one month before it ends.

ad rather have that then a bug ridden game thats not enjoyable till after 3 patches well into the new year

Then just buy the game in February and patch up to the last patch?

jeez some ppl are so blinded die hard fm fans, they dont deserve my money for the product imo....

gettin like liverpool fans this board ha

No one's asking you to remain on the boards if you feel that way.

yer i know that, but if we all asslicked si then the game would never improve!

personnally i just turn the sounds off and put iTunes on. cant you just do that?

If you're only here to speculate about the future and having a whinge at SI, why waste your time at all? How do you KNOW the FM10 demo will be bad, as you insinuate in your reply to Wakers?

Did i insinuate that? No. Not at all sure where you got that idea from.

Do you only want people who think the game is brilliant to post on these forums or what?

Do you want the game to turn into CM5? they banned everyone who complained about the game, look where that got them

Personally, I don't see a point in releasing the game until its finished. I don't care how late in the season it is, but its a bit pointless when you keep having to start career games every time a patch is out.

You can never get going until Feb/March. They might as well just release a data update for the old version and release the game, when its actually finished, instead of waiting to see which of the bugs people complain about the most before deciding to fix them.

Just baffles me how the testing seems to be so lacklustre every year now. nothing will change until that is revamped and more blatently obvious bugs are spotted before release. Some of the things that are missed are beyond me. You notice these things after 2 mins of watching the 2D in your first friendly and yet it passes under the noses of however many testers!

I totally agree with point 1 of Les Girondins post. The tactics section does need to be much more user friendly.

Just baffles me how the testing seems to be so lacklustre every year now. nothing will change until that is revamped and more blatently obvious bugs are spotted before release. Some of the things that are missed are beyond me. You notice these things after 2 mins of watching the 2D in your first friendly and yet it passes under the noses of however many testers!

Apparently it doesn't, as testers have said they saw nearly all the things that people have complained about, its just that only the critical-level bugs are fixed in time for release.

Its this whole thing of releasing the game to a deadline and then banking on people to buy it regardless, and then try and gradually fix things with patches.

Which isn't at all on and is pretty disgraceful. Personally, I blame Miles for that.

Then we come back to the point of why not just delay it for say 1 month and fix most of the problems. I mean, no one is perfect so they'll never fix everything because the game is just that big. im sorry to say the releases are becoming more shoddy each year.

At the end of the day, they'd keep more fans and save a hell of a lot of stick on these boards all for the sake of just a few weeks extra testing. Seems a reasonable exchange to me!

I mean, no one is perfect so they'll never fix everything because the game is just that big. im sorry to say the releases are becoming more shoddy each year

I disagree with this. I think that both on FM08 and FM07 this board has been more filled with different types of major bugs than it has this year. Most of the "complaining threads" (don't get me wrong, those are needed) are mostly about the same 4-5 issues.

just so many bugs...dont know if its down to the 3d engine, or whatever, but its just bug ridden...i think after playing this game most Fm fans would just be happy to see the game run without the bugs...i'm not saying its too hard, unrealistic, but just that its not enjoyable...so much emphasis is put on team talks, half time talks etc. and then sometimes you dont get to access the screen and inevitably lose the match...thats just one example of many and the 3d match engine doesnt even add anything anyway...it might have been something that fans wanted, and all credit to SI for listening to a majority, but the 3d crap needs to go to free up some space so it doesn't have so many flaws to the gameplay

Apparently it doesn't, as testers have said they saw nearly all the things that people have complained about, its just that only the critical-level bugs are fixed in time for release.

Its this whole thing of releasing the game to a deadline and then banking on people to buy it regardless, and then try and gradually fix things with patches.

Which isn't at all on and is pretty disgraceful. Personally, I blame Miles for that.

Agree with this post ^^^

I don't care what SEGA/S.I. decide to do with FM10 - I won't be buying it.

That said. If they do want my custom back (and that of a lot of others) they need to seriously consider the following:

1. Make the game and the ME in particular much more transparent and easy to read. Do this in conjunction with a tactics module interface overhaul - one that completely does away with sliders or greatly reduces the players need to fiddle with them incessantly. Some wonderful suggestions have already been put forward by WWFAN and others in this area. The key point: DO NOT just make this another piece of window dressing and seriously contemplate whether FM needs to be so complicated and time consuming to be enjoyable and realistic.

2. Drop the DRM or go for something far less invasive and restrictive. Why do we need a serial key & remote activation? I won't go into the misery Steam has brought but that obviously all needs some proper attention: it is worth noting that even yesterday, months after the initial activation problems several people came on the forum again saying they could not activate the product, could not understand the keys, did not evidently find the right information quickly or easily, there was no pre-emption from SEGA regarding possible glut of Christmas activation issues; the telephone system was reported as not accessible etc etc etc etc. The man who came on the forum today asking if its ok if he can play his own copy of the game because he left his CD key somewhere else sums it up: if he had pirated it he wouldn't be going without. He paid for it: the pirates didnt. That is fundamentally wrong.

3. The game needs to be finished before it is released. Not released on time - whatever happens. If S.I. insist on putting out their 'best effort' not 'the finished product' on release day and simply cleaning it up over the next five months then they are going to suffer financially when people stop buying it at full price and simply consider the advent of the final patch to be the real release date - and pick it up from the bargain bin. Marketing and enhancing the desire of the fans to buy early appears to work depressingly well however. A major step forward would be to get the game re-written so that it runs quickly and on a wider selection of hardware again. From what I can tell a huge number of people have laptops not desktops these days .. and that means integrated graphics. Why not buy a few of the popular market solutions and tailor your min/low settings explicitly for integrated GPUS??

4. The game needs to be less punitive throughout. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way the game is played - tactics need to be less important than players at every level except the very top. And even then it needs to be less than it is. Presently it is skewed too far in favour of tactical/statto tweaking and as we have said many times in many threads, football is a game played by 11 men not 1 man and his 11 mindless drones doing his bidding. Quality players win matches!

5. There needs to be an extended public beta program re-instated and to hell with the competition. I believe Paul C has already indicated that he is doing this and they are already looking for additional beta testers. So positive news there ..

6. The game needs to be cosmetically enhanced: the lack of club logos, face packs, decent sound, the glitchy and resource hog 3d all need to be addressed. Licensing is an issue for sure but so is immersion - if you need to rely on fan made content to make the game attractive then you need to make it accessible to the modders. That would begin with opening up .tac formats and the mangled up 3d texture formats you used for stadiums etc so people can get stuck in.

7. S.I. needs to work on its customer service. I would suggest employing a Customer Service or Community Cordinator tasked with ensuring the forums work smoothly, that people's concerns are addressed courteously and quickly and that a stricter set of forum conduct and posting rules are adhered to. Facilitate a pleasant and constructive environment and ensure everything is in the right place at all times and we might get some of the more intelligent and thoughtful people to return ..

8. The system of user feedback, particularly bug reporting needs to be restored to how it was three or even five years ago. There needs to be a properly monitored and maintained bugs forum, where Q&A reps are explicitly mandated to respond to bug postings and maintain a list of known issues and issues under review. The old system of quick efficient forum management and good customer service + making it known concisely and clearly what was under review by use of stickies etc was abandoned for some reason. It has lead to a massive mess in the bugs forum and many posts going unanswered or answered tersely and without any real apparent sincerity or customer care. This compounds how people feel about S.I. and enhances not detracts from the overall negative image or sense of being exploited/ignored by the developers; which I am sure is not true but they take no obvious and consistent steps to convince people otherwise!

9. Re-structure the forums to allow an area where people can intelligently discuss suggestions and give their feedback that ISNT the general forum. This new forum would be heavily moderated and kept tidy so that S.I. can get quickly to the meat of the current 'debates' and get involved again - rather than sifting through the reams of misplaced technical support requests, laptop threads, moans and rants, repeat issues etc etc etc. prevalent in General.

10. Seriously look at expanding the number of mods on the forums as a whole and/or give the exhisting mods a boss, a written code of conduct and more authority to remove/delete offensive and innapropriate material. Structure your mods to include other time zones than GMT (more than presently) so that coverage is more or less 24/7. A lot of American users come on in the AM and by the time anyone reads their stuff its slid off the front page already as the Europeans get up and fill the place with more random tech support/laptop threads.

I have no idea why I posted this.

Sorry. I was bored and got an espresso machine for Christmas ..

Then you wont be buying the game again........... Great post though

i'd rather they missed out FM10 altogether and made FM11 a completely bug-free game.

A respectable company shouldn't be releasing unfinished products just cos they can "fix" it later if most their customers aren't happy. Full stop.

By the way - fantastic post Les Girondins.

Dunno if this has been said, but a bulk loan offer would be real nice... really hate going through everyone and offering them on loan individually.

Just spent 12 hours today playing it on a network game.

There are very few bugs in FM09 and it is by far the best of the series.

The OP was spot-on... keep FM09 and just POLISH it instead of trying to add comparatively superfluous features.

FM09 is the best so far IMO. All the people that think they should iron out the bugs and not release a 2010 version are kidding themselves!

Now, Im only going to say this once but ITS SEGA PEOPLE NEED TO BLAME FOR THESE ISSUES! SEGA want SI to get a copy each each year and Im sure SI would love to take a year out and get the game perfect, such is their's, and Miles', love of the game!

P.S, Not bothered if Im called a fanboy or similar!