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Just another idea, what about a Premier League score predictor game like this. I'm sure one of the mods used to run one of these in the old CM forum, does anyone remember?

A bit like the fantasy football idea, it would be really easy to setup but it would take a fair bit of work to keep it going.

If it is started quickly, it could run as a weekly predictions game that would take us up to the usual release time for FM09.

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Originally posted by dafuge:

Just another idea, what about a Premier League score predictor game like this. I'm sure one of the mods used to run one of these in the old CM forum, does anyone remember?

A bit like the fantasy football idea, it would be really easy to setup but it would take a fair bit of work to keep it going.

If it is started quickly, it could run as a weekly predictions game that would take us up to the usual release time for FM09.

I was thinking about that last night. Great minds think alike icon_smile.gif

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Originally posted by Robert_296:

predictions

Go for it.

A few suggestions:

Use a simple scoring system, correct result = 1 points, correct score = 3 points.

Run it weekly, for example start on a Saturday with the weeks fixtures (make sure to include any midweek games) then take predictions until Friday, post the results, player scores and leaderboard then post the new fixtures the next day on the Saturday. Obviously the days/deadlines are completely up to you, just make sure you choose something you can stick to every week.

Make it a weekly competition and a running competition, that way people can join for the odd week if they want.

Tell everyone which patch you are using, it might help people decide what scores to go for.

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I have a vague idea for an interesting mix of sign-ups and ideas which have been suggested recently. (ObviouslI'd need all the relevant permissions from Birdy and aaberdeenn to start this up, and I won't have time to run this myself (Due to school and exams) however I would be willing to sort out the database then hand it over to someone else to run!

The main idea is a mix of Birdy's sign-up (With his permission of course) and aaberdeenn's idea (Again with permission). I would set up a draft style (like in Birdy's thread) but with only premiership (And perhaps one other league - spain or italy i'm thinking - to keep it different from Birdy's game), then instead of using a simple league table in game to determine success, base the points on perhaps one, two, five or even ten seasons in game, with points for wins and draws, minus points for defeats. Then perhaps points for goals scored by a team (eg 50 goals in 1 season - 10 points or something then 60 goals - 15 points etc), points deducted for conceding more than x amount of goals (perhaps 35-40) in similar amounts to goals scored.

Then run a league table in the thread based on these points. Its a bit complicated and I would like to hear your thoughts. As I have already said, I would be prepared to do some editing, but would not have the time to run it, so if people like the idea someone will have to be willing to take it on.

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I would be happy to help with the fantasy football idea. Even run it, since I have time to spare. icon_smile.gif

Just a quick thing on player values. People seem to think collating them would be a lot of work, but surely FM Genie Scout would have them? I personally couldn't use this, as its not available for mac, but surely it would be an easier way than going through each player of each team. icon_confused.gif

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Originally posted by Robert_296:

I don't mind. I could do it because the predictions isn't really much work but NepentheZ seems like he really wants to do it so he can do it.

icon_biggrin.gif - I don't "really" want to do it. I'd be happy to be a part of something like this, but I was a late comer to the idea/thread, so please, be my guest. You guys have put a lot more thought and effort into this than I have, and it would be unfair of me to steam in here and take it off of you.

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Originally posted by Robert_296:

OK. Saturday/Sunday and the latest patch. I'll use screenshots next time.

Although saying that, the text version makes it much easier for people to c&p their predictions. Both might be a good idea for the fixtures, just a screenshot for the results.

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Originally posted by dafuge:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Robert_296:

OK. Saturday/Sunday and the latest patch. I'll use screenshots next time.

Although saying that, the text version makes it much easier for people to c&p their predictions. Both might be a good idea for the fixtures, just a screenshot for the results. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks. I was thinking of typing it up like in the OTF predictions but I'll do a screenshot of the results

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Just a note on earlier suggestions - seeing as my Hong Kong Challenge has not really been very popular (And now seems to have died out icon_frown.gif), I would be willing to start the suggested Small Club to Big Club From a Big European Nation Challenge if people have got an interest in this idea. (Involving Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Germany and perhaps Greece).

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Originally posted by JoseRR:

Just a note on earlier suggestions - seeing as my Hong Kong Challenge has not really been very popular (And now seems to have died out icon_frown.gif), I would be willing to start the suggested Small Club to Big Club From a Big European Nation Challenge if people have got an interest in this idea. (Involving Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Germany and perhaps Greece).

I think Greece is already included in Gundo's challenge. The leagues that he ruled out of his challenge were France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Scotland (and England of course, but Dafuge has already got that one covered!), so those would be the ones to go with. icon14.gif

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Originally posted by DodgeeD:

I noticed there are now 'small club to big club' challenges for England, small European nations, South America and Scotland - would there be anyone interested in doing a similar challenge for the big European nations i.e. Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Portugal and Holland? (which would only go ahead with permission from dafuge/gundo of course icon_wink.gif)

Originally posted by JoseRR:

Just a note on earlier suggestions - seeing as my Hong Kong Challenge has not really been very popular (And now seems to have died out ), I would be willing to start the suggested Small Club to Big Club From a Big European Nation Challenge if people have got an interest in this idea. (Involving Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Germany and perhaps Greece).

Was going to get this started tomorrow once I'd sorted out all the reset dates.... Guess I'll have to be quicker next time icon_wink.gif

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There have been a couple of sign up ideas I've been mentally kicking around for some time now. I don't quite have time to set one up yet, but I thought I'd post the ideas here to gauge the level of interest/get feedback on how they should be run/check that nobody's run something similar before, so I know whether it's worth me spending any more time on it!

So, my two ideas are relatively similar, and I think there would only really be a niche for one of them - it's just deciding which one. The first is what I call the "It could be you (who's crap!) sign up", and the second is the "Journeyman sign up". Both ideas spring from the same observation - that most games have people sign up as very promising young starlets with high PA, and follow their career as they develop into worldwide superstars. Which is great fun, of course.

But how about introducing an element of chance into the proceedings? In the "It could be you (who's crap!) sign up" I'd use a random number generator to generate a PA for each user between a minimum of, say... 80? and a maximum of 200. I feel like each user's career trajectory would be a little bit less predictable in this game, as while some would end up at top clubs and playing for their country, some would never get out of the lower leagues.

It would be interesting to see if your player was going to be one of the ones that would develop into something special and where their career was going to take them - since no-one would ever know their assigned PA at the start of the game.

I was thinking maybe I could run it as a striker sign up, and after the first couple of seasons I could divide everyone into different "leagues" depending on what level they played at, so you could follow your progress amongst players at a similar level - and therefore even if your player never made it to, for instance, the Premier League, you could still have bragging rights as the best League One striker. I could also include some sort of overall career goals table - so if you never made it above League One but were a really good League One level striker, you could still be higher in that table than a player that made it to the Premier League but was a little out of their depth there.

The idea is a little rough around the edges - for instance, I'm not sure whether to make it just strikers, or whether to make it only in England or include several leagues. And of course, no-one would ever be told their CA and PA as determined at the start of the game, so they will have to follow their player's career to get an idea of how good they really are.

The second idea is quite similar, if a little simpler - basically removing the random element, but instead of having everyone be superstars, have everyone be the sort of players who never make it into the top divisions and spend their careers playing for various clubs in the lower leagues.

Those are the ideas in outline - any comments or suggestions?

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I think the first idea is good, a nice change from the usual striker sign ups. It would be great to have to follow your player never knowing if he's wasted a huge amount of potential or is punching way above his weight. Then at the end you could reveal everyones PA so we can judge how well they did based on their PA

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The more I've thought about the random PA idea the more I like it, just a couple of things I was unsure about when thinking how I'd run it.

What club if any would the players start at?

What would the starting CA be?

Would you let people pick some atrributes and if so how because I can't see someone with PA 80 having too many stats at even 12 let alone 20?

I really like the idea though and if you decide not to do it I might have a go at running it myself if that's ok with you.

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Thanks for the positive feedback, everyone. icon14.gif

Originally posted by Whoopy D:

The more I've thought about the random PA idea the more I like it, just a couple of things I was unsure about when thinking how I'd run it.

What club if any would the players start at?

What would the starting CA be?

Would you let people pick some atrributes and if so how because I can't see someone with PA 80 having too many stats at even 12 let alone 20?

I really like the idea though and if you decide not to do it I might have a go at running it myself if that's ok with you.

Whoopy D - these kinds of questions are the reason I haven't gotten around to starting this sign up yet - I think I would need to maybe do a test game or two to iron out all the kinks!

For instance, I'm not sure whether to just run the English leagues or whether to run quite a few regional "hub" leagues so that people can be whatever nationality they want. But if I want to put people into different "leagues" with each other dependent on the level they are playing at, then this would raise issues of which leagues are on an equal "level" - is Serie C1 on the same level as League 1? What league is there in the game world that is on the same level as the Conference N/S? You see the problem. Maybe I could group leagues by their reputation in the editor - as in, have one "league" for people playing in leagues with reputation 16-20, one for people playing in leagues with reputation 11-15, one for people playing in leagues with reputation 6-10, etc. Or I could just play it in the English leagues since that is what people are generally most familiar with.

As far as the clubs that players would start at - I had a couple of ideas. I think my favourite is to put everyone on free transfers, and see who picks them up. But I'd have to run a couple of test games to make sure that everyone was getting picked up - it would be awful if someone didn't even get signed and retired at 19! But I'd try to engineer the balance of CA/PA so that even the worst players in the sign up were still good enough to have a career at Conference/Conference N/S level. The other difficulty with this option is player nationalities - if I decide to run just the English leagues or just the UK leagues, then people of other nationalities might be less likely to be signed. I'm sure there's a way around it - maybe give everyone who does not already have a UK nationality a UK second nationality, since I believe that would give them more chance of being signed by UK teams - or just make everyone be English! - but it'll take a bit of figuring out.

Another option might be to place them randomly at teams in the bottom divisions of whatever leagues I run, and take it from there. I like the idea of the AI deciding where they should go though - but this idea would take a lot of the hassle out of it.

As far as starting CA goes, there are a couple of options - I could just give everyone the same starting CA - say, 55 or something. Some players would obviously then reach their peak a lot faster than others. The other option is to have CA as a function of the PA - so everyone's got plenty of room to grow - for instance, CA could be 1/3 of PA. I think I like the first option best, because people would be at a similar level to start with, so it would be difficult to tell who was going to be good and who wasn't for the first few seasons, when some people started to reach their peak while others still had a long way to go.

With regards to picking attributes - my understanding is that if you give a player attributes in the editor that are way to high for their CA/PA, the game will just adjust them down. For instance, I could put a player with CA 55 and PA 80 into the database with Finishing 20, and when I opened up the game they would probably just have Finishing 12 - however, I think the attributes I set to 20 would still be higher than the attributes which had been set lower or left on random. So that's probably the way to go - let people pick attributes that in an ideal world would be 20, and then we can see if they ever reach that!

Thanks for the offer of running it, but I'm sure I will do it pretty soon - got a bit of spare time on my hands at the moment, so it's really just a case of working out how best to get it all set up. Any further input would be gratefully received though - and I'll make sure to save you a place in the sign up if you like! icon14.gif

If anyone else has any ideas/feedback on how they think this would work best, I'd be glad to hear it. icon14.gif

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I like the idea of the AI deciding where they should go though

I agree with that but there is that risk of some people retiring young.

As far as starting CA goes, there are a couple of options - I could just give everyone the same starting CA - say, 55 or something. Some players would obviously then reach their peak a lot faster than others. The other option is to have CA as a function of the PA - so everyone's got plenty of room to grow - for instance, CA could be 1/3 of PA. I think I like the first option best, because people would be at a similar level to start with, so it would be difficult to tell who was going to be good and who wasn't for the first few seasons, when some people started to reach their peak while others still had a long way to go.

Those are the same two ways I thought about using and like you I decided starting everyone on the same CA was the way to go. It would help add to the element of not knowing "My player is developing fast, does he have a high potential or is he almost at his peak?"

Thanks for the offer of running it, but I'm sure I will do it pretty soon - got a bit of spare time on my hands at the moment, so it's really just a case of working out how best to get it all set up. Any further input would be gratefully received though - and I'll make sure to save you a place in the sign up if you like!

Wasn't so much an offer to run it more making sure it got done if you decided not to because I think it's a really good idea and I'd definitely like a place reserved icon_wink.gif

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I've done a little bit of testing now and it looks like people will need to be assigned to teams to ensure they don't drop out of the database when they are unattached. I also think it would be more fun to allow people to play in plenty of leagues rather than limit them to the English leagues - and I think I've devised a way to divide them up into player leagues depending on the level they play at. So, I think I'm going to offer people the opportunity to choose a team within the lower reputation leagues I will be running, or allow a team to be randomly chosen for them. This also gives the fun opportunity, if somebody wanted to, to be an English player, but to start a career in, for instance, Argentina, and see where that took them.

I've also decided that the CA will definitely be the same for everyone, and I might set the minimum PA at somewhere in the region of 90-100 - that means that the worst players should be good enough to play for a team in the bottom division of the leagues that I am running, and would obviously be far too good for some leagues, such as the Conference or Scottish Third Division - but shouldn't really get too much higher than League One level at best.

I'll also just have to put in a blanket statement that if your player is a bit crap and doesn't get that many games... well, that's part of the fun of this particular sign up!

Anyway - with that all in mind, I'll probably start this sometime tomorrow. Any further feedback from anybody is gratefully received. icon14.gif

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Is the predictions league going to be in-game results or results in real life,

I was thinking about doing a Premiership predictions league for the real premiership. I know there is one similair on the off topic forum but this forum is much more exciting icon_cool.gif

What does everyone think?

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Originally posted by ridleys:

Is the predictions league going to be in-game results or results in real life,

I was thinking about doing a Premiership predictions league for the real premiership. I know there is one similair on the off topic forum but this forum is much more exciting icon_cool.gif

What does everyone think?

You could possibly run it on a small scale basis in the off topic thread if you really wanted to and provided that there were people willing to take part.

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Had a good idea. (Even if I do say so myself icon_wink.gif)

How about a thread like "What challenge should I join?".

This would be for people who want to start a challenge, but don't know which one to choose (of course). In here people can say something like:

I want to manage LLM, but not in England

or something; and other users can then post ideas to what challenge would be best for them.

What do you think?

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Got this idea just now while looking to join a challenge.

How about a thread like "What challenge should I join?".

This would be for people who want to start a challenge, but don't know which one to choose (of course). In here people can say something like:

I want to manage LLM, but not in England

or something; and other users can then post ideas to what challenge would be best for them.

What do you think?

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