Bugs and Game Design Flaws

This is a long post, but I believe I have made it readable.

I am really enjoying this game. Let me stress that straight away. I have been playing it ever since it started coming out on the PSP a few years ago. I got this version as a Christmas gift (requested) and have been enjoying an LLM career.

However... While I cannot speak for the PC version, there have always been bugs on the PSP format, some continuing year to year, and this year seems particularly bad. Why can SI not sort out these problems?

I never normally mind about small faults such as these, as I am sure that they will be ironed out by the next year. But some of these bugs have, I am reasonably sure, been around since the original Football Manager Handheld, released in 2005.

For example:

During contract negotiations, you can give a player as large a signing on fee and/or goal/assist bonus as you like at effectively no cost (allowing you to reduce his weekly wage). These bonuses are not reflected in any way in your transfer kitty or wage structure. This has always been the case, as far as I can remember, in every PSP version of FM. I always give the largest bonuses I can in order to attract the best players possible while keeping my wage budget in check. This should not be possible without consequence.

While this is more of a design flaw than a bug per-se, one genuine bug that I have experienced with (I think) every PSP FM is that my PSP sometimes just resets with no warning. I am sure this has not happened with any other PSP game.

Other design flaws include scouts giving more detailed info about players from other clubs than your coaches give you about your own players (loyalty, determination, nerves under pressure, good at taking corners, free-kicks, penalties etc.). Staying on scouts, why is it that a UK & Ireland search turns up nothing, but when I look for myself using the Player Search feature, I find loads of suitable players? And as for coaches, why are they not able to tell you who the best set-piece takers in your squad are? They can rate any players "Decision Making Ability" out of twenty, but can't tell you which foot they are stronger with?

Going back breifly to the Player Search feature - the "Interested" criterion. There are many players you CAN attract to your club that are filtered out by this. Surely the point of such a criterion 'tick box' is to save you the trouble of going through transfer and contract negotiations for every player within your price range in order to find gems? Unfortunately, this is what you have to do. Scouts should be doing this for you, by the way.

I have persisted with the game, and feel I have been rewarded, but 2009 is - without a doubt in my mind - the buggiest PSP FM yet.

New bugs I have experienced in 2009:

As a BSP manager, I have been very active in the transfer market, and by the end of the January transfer window in my first season I have an almost completely new squad. However, one of my transfers, which will be completed at the end of the season (2nd May), seems to have malfunctioned in some way. I have received an e-mail (subject: "Lewes set to buy Fisher") on the morning of every game-day since terms were agreed with the player (months ago), notifying me that "The transfer of Oxford's Alex Fisher to Lewes is set to be completed. The transfer will go through on the 2nd May 2009.".

EVERY DAY.

This is more annoying than game-ending, but it is a sign that SI are not only NOT fixing persistant old bugs, but seem to be creating new ones, as I have never experienced this particular problem with any of the previous games.

I have expressed my dislike for the greyed out reserve players in another thread (they are too good) but I have also noticed a bug concerning them. When your squad size is low, you get a few of these players temporarily promoted from the reserves - fair enough. However, I noticed that if you go into the tactics screen, view your opponents tactics, and then go back to your squad screen, the greyed out players have been REPLACED with other, NEW grayed out players. Makes it difficult/impossible to select one and then look at his opposite number to see if you want him to man-mark etc.

The problems with the 2D match engine have been addressed by others in previous threads, so I won't go into that here, suffice to say that it seems to expose problems with the text-based match engine. Oh dear. The wonderful engine that has been the driving force of the series for almost 2 decades now. I thought this had been "perfected"?

I have made enquires for players, been told that his club will accept an offer in the reigon of x thousand pounds. I offer x+2 thousand pounds ('cause I'm a nice guy). Rejected. Ok(!)

I read in the news section that Wes Brown is annoyed that Sir Alex has seemingly forgotten about him (2 appearances all season), and then by the evening of that same game-day, he is relieved to be back in the first team, and will strive to keep his place (no game has taken place).

I also read in the news section that the Sevilla manager, talking about the title race, expects to be there or there abouts, despite being 17 or so points behind Barcalona with more than half the season gone. Yeah right.

I am told that one of my players (Jari Litmanen playing for Lewes - another bug?!) took part in an international friendly, but when I look at his History page, it has not recorded his performance.

In a seperate game (which I lost due to the 'automatic reset' I mentioned above), two of my league matches were postponed due to international call ups, even though neither me nor either of my league opponents had any international players.

Other bugs I have not experienced myself but read about including "Manager's name disappearing".

This is all I can think of just now, but I am interested to hear your thoughts. I will add more later if I can think of any. I will stress again that I am enjoying the game immensely, but I have been growing frustrated for 3 years or so at the problems with the game and they seem to be getting worse rather than better.

Over to you.

you should have put this in the bugs thread

I looked in there. I could be mistaken, but it seems only for PC users.

Other people have talked about problems with the 2D Match engine, "Manager's name disapperaing" etc. in this forum with no problems.

no theres a thread called bugs etc on the main forum page

link

http://www.community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=78181