How can we improve the network game of FM?

I recently asked Miles on Twitter about improving FMO, i suggested servers which he said would never happen, so not sure there is any way to improve it other then that.

It's the only game i play online that has given me countless headaches, port forwarding/firewall and so on, so compared to online gaming then Football manager is still in the dark ages.

If servers ever did make it into the game i'd be more then happy at paying for a monthly pass to use them, and i'm sure others would too.

Edit : I've just been looking around at gaming servers and found this price list for Day of defeat server.

.............Monthly Quarterly Semiannual Annually

10 Slots £4.50 £12.83 £24.30 £45.90

12 Slots £5.40 £15.39 £29.16 £55.08

14 Slots £6.30 £17.96 £34.02 £64.26

16 Slots £7.20 £20.52 £38.88 £73.44

18 Slots £8.10 £23.09 £43.74 £82.62

20 Slots £9.00 £25.65 £48.60 £91.80

So maybe if SI allowed FM to be played on 3rd party gaming servers it would be a huge step forward, especially for large clans to play a smooth game. And i'm sure established clans wouldn't mind chipping in a few quid to rent a server each month.

Main thing for me would be speed of the game itself. Currently in my opinion it's too slow to process through days. I would like to see the game stopping maybe twice or three times a day for news, transfer bids etc not every 15 minutes game time on some occasions. I know they added the extended processing option but it does nothing to help the speed of the game.

Would also like to see it made easier to have all games played on the same days as currently it's a bit of a minefield as to whether it works or not as everyone has to have the option ticked before the game begins it's far too confusing.

A lot of people have connection issues so would not mind that side of things looked at to make it easier for them.

That is all for now but once people see this thread I am sure they will post their ideas as well.

We've discussed the same thing on our clan Andy, and it would be alot better if the game only stopped 2 or 3 times a day to help with the gamespeed. Specially games with the numbers we've had have been proper headaches in the transfer windows.

For me the port forwarding isn't an issue, I'm all about gamespeed. Reduced lag, gamespeed and different options for online games would be preferable. When I say different options for online game, I'm thinking of having an option to say how many times the game should stop each day. Have a drop down menu and a set ammount to choose from. I would gladly have paid a monthly sum to SI to have dedicated online servers so there's no need for a host, reduced lag and a gamespeed more similar to single player.

I would also like to have a forced holiday function, that would holiday someone after a set time just like the force continue does today, and that it of course could be altered by the host. Also we should be able to kick out a network client if they do not connect to their online profile without having to take the game offline and online again.

There are still a few bugs that need ironing out, for example theres one where if you mutually terminate a players contract, other managers keep getting a recurring "Must Respond" message about it ( even though its nothing to do with them and after the player has left the club anyway ) untill the news item disapears from the news feed ( so about 2-3 months worth of news ) this causes major delays.

Other things that could be done, maybe cut out processing for international fixtures? especially friendlies, or maybe even an option to remove international games altogether?

The Fixture lists need to be better, i was playing an online game, we were 3 games into the premier league season, and already there was one game on a day different to everyone else, despite having "move games for TV" unticked and "use saturday and wednesday matchdays" ticked

Ive lost count of the amount of times ive gone to offer a contract ( which is a "must respond" item ) and when i get into negotiations, the game continues and i have to start negotiations all over again,this could do with sorting out, maybe making it so the game cant be continued whilst in the contract offer screen

Using servers would clear up a load of problems, the prices that taylorsmen quoted work out to less than 5 quid per year per person, which i would be more than happy to pay if it meant a smoother gaming experience.

I would also like to have a forced holiday function, that would holiday someone after a set time just like the force continue does today, and that it of course could be altered by the host. Also we should be able to kick out a network client if they do not connect to their online profile without having to take the game offline and online again.

im fairly certain there already is a force holiday function that the host can select, isnt there? the disconnect thing would be handy though, yeah

The Fixture lists need to be better, i was playing an online game, we were 3 games into the premier league season, and already there was one game on a day different to everyone else, despite having "move games for TV" unticked and "use saturday and wednesday matchdays" ticked

That was because Man City played the Euro Super Cup.

Main thing for me would be speed of the game itself. Currently in my opinion it's too slow to process through days. I would like to see the game stopping maybe twice or three times a day for news, transfer bids etc not every 15 minutes game time on some occasions. I know they added the extended processing option but it does nothing to help the speed of the game.

This is still the biggest issue. Transfer windows are slow and boring. Its not too bad out side of them though.

Hi

As a member of Premiership Glory I too would like the game to stop just 1 or times a day to offer all contracts etc. I understand why they tried to sue 15min increments but when there is 15 or so ppl making bids etc the game stopped every 15mins(in game) for each person to offer contracts, some of our transfer windows where taking maybe 12 hours to complete, maybe due to me buying 15 or so per window, but in general if we all were offering contracts at the same tim that its elf may sort the speed out.

Secondly the Holiday mode needs to be sorted out, when ppl cant make sessions their ' assistant' takes control of games. There is a significant difference between when u manage it and your assistant manages it, I would like there to be some happy medium. For instance One team i had had won 8 out of 9 leagues games i missed a session and within 3 games I had been sacked due to poor performances. And yes I had ticked used my tactics etc.....

Thirdly we all leave the server in between games to get to game days quicker due to the fact that most of the news etc can be read just before the actual game, but when u ask for feeder/parent clubs it auto rejects them rather than waits for you to regain control of your profile.

That will do for now

Thanks

Mike

One thing that our game has brought in as a rule this year is a 5 minute match day timer, much like fml's one. If that could be brought in to fmo that would be excellent.

Hello Ov, good to see this being looked at. Here is a thread I started a wee while ago with a few moans groans and ideas about FMO

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/262875-With-FML-gone...-will-FM-Online-get-better

We have 20 managers who play twice a week (Thursday evening and Sunday evening) and the worst part is pre season.. it continues in 15 minute blocks which basically makes us take about 12 hours to get thru pre season. which is very very tiresome. The playing games on the same days does always work for us which is great but the "extended processing times" doesnt appear to do anything. With a few fixes to the processing times and pre season going say two stops a day to answer news would be much much better!

That was because Man City played the Euro Super Cup.

well surely the Super cup should have been scheduled for a day that wouldnt clash with the league fixtures then?

im fairly certain there already is a force holiday function that the host can select, isnt there? the disconnect thing would be handy though, yeah

Yes, there is an option for the host to manually holiday someone if they aren't there, but I'd like it to be something like the forced continue. Say for instance a 5 min timer, and anyone who hasn't continued to game would be holidayed. It could basically just be a tweak to the forced continue, only that it forced no matter if there was a game, a news that had to be responded to etc

Premiership Glory Clans Suggestions

1. Much more assistant manager options including match day instructions - ie -change formation if ur losing / winning / drawing, more indepth transfer instructions.

2. Less time intervals during the day

3. Host option to kick a player connected to the server who is not in charge of a club as this is currently not available.

4. A way to add a digital signature to every tactic which is uploaded to SI so that the game can check members tactics against the uploaded tactics. This could also be done for training and shortlists to prevent managers from playing with downloaded training and tactics.

5. Regen dates should be on random for every season as in multiplayer managers snap up the best youngsters as they know when the regen date is for every nation.

6. Also in multiplayer managers with low balances spend millions on transfers over 48 months. This should not be allowed.

7. Stop the match day info disappearing when playing humans!

8. Dedi servers go without saying

9. A program to auto confgure members with routers.

10. A way to join online games through a masterserver list.

11. - An online Ranking System for all FM Managers that play online so they are compared to eachother according to achievments.

12. - Any other way of speeding up processing time and transfer window in january and close season.

If i think of anymore il add it later.

Belly

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/225404-Suggestion-Versus-mode

This should be considered, if not already.

Thanks.

6. Also in multiplayer managers with low balances spend millions on transfers over 48 months. This should not be allowed.

why not? sometimes when you are a manager with a stingy board ( speaking from personal experience, Wolves board are especally stingy in the first 2-3 seasons ) paying for transfers over 48 months is the only way to even try and compete.

What should be removed from the game is the ability to pay for defenders ( and even midfielders, to an extent ) using a clause thats triggered after a certain amount of goals, one of the managers in the OTF FMO game ( who has since left ) paid for two very good defenders from an AI team paying 10-15 million after 50 goals, which are obviously never going to be paid, and we only found out after a human manager took over one of the teams the players in question had been brought from and had a look through their finances

something that hasn't been mentioned in here yet is better in game chat. Currently the 19 of us that play have to use external means, IRC clients, which are by and large unreliable and painfully bad sometimes. If we could avoid this via an easy in-game chat client we could rule out 8 or 9 people being disconnected and left in the wilderness for half an hour.

Apart from that the key thing is the amount of processes per day, 3 or 4 a day would be perfect as to avoid wasting copius amount of hours every transfer window

Some of those would be great, but I guess some would be hard to solely implement for multiplayer games.

Processing - Longer time intervals is a priority especially during transfer windows. Last day of the window is fair enough, but when it's taking us 6 hours to get through what, 2 weeks(?), then its a bit ridiculous. Like JamboLad said, the "extended processing" which we assumed would solve the problems for FM11 seems to do nothing.

Youth players - People snapping up all the new players is a massive problem, the transfer market gets stupid within about 6 seasons if you have a full league. It's partly a problem with people knowing when players are generated, but I think it's mostly to do with just how easy it is to roughly find out a the potential of a player via scouts.

48 months - ideally it shouldn't be a problem, but I'm not remotely convinced that it really affects any seasons budgets other than the first one, so it's a MASSIVE problem, and it contributes to screwing up the market. It's not fantasy football, some clubs do have small budgets, and it increases the spending power gap between the rich and the rest anyway. To add into this because it's a personal annoyance, previous seasons spending and success should be taken into greater account when setting future budgets.

Said it in the other thread, but would be nice if the host could move a current manager into a job in the same way that you add a new manager into the game.

Must repond/timer - As we are now, if you play with a timer, the game will still continue over some 'must respond' news like contracts, which you might not have time to do with the new agents feature, and all negotiations are reset. Timer shouldn't continue the game when there are must responds still outstanding imo, as it doesn't move the game on far anyway, and anyone in the middle of responding has to start again. It's the same for squad registrations.

Assistant decision making - particularly re squad registration. If a player can't make a session, then obviously their assistant controls it. But we've had assistants leaving 10m+ signings out of the registered 25, and in some cases, registering U21 players who obviously don't need to be registered in their place. Obviously no single player game is going to be holidayed past squad registration, so it's not a problem there, but it is for fmo, and it was the same in fm10.

Probably more stuff.

Elgrrenio

Try Skype - Our 15 members generally have no problem with this.

and CMS186.

I am speaking from Network Experience. Some of our managers take over clubs with 2-3 mil in the bank tops but because of the 48 Months option they can and do go out and spend money on players in a totally unrealistic manner.

Here is what i mean

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

So thats :

Season 1 - 103m

Season 2 - 261m

Season 3 - 121m

Season 4 - 152m

Total in 4 Seasons of 637 Million due to the 48 Months Option. Do you think this is realistic. This is Leeds By the way, Not even a European Superpower.

I mentioned the game been played over servers (3rd party) but after speaking to Miles a few times on Twitter he basically said that this will never happen, not even on 3rd party servers, so that's the end of that idea.

I just don't get why he won't even entertain the idea, surely it makes sense and it's the way forward to all those that only play the game online.

wow, don't think we've had the 48month deals reaching that kind of level dcu.

Said it in the other thread, but would be nice if the host could move a current manager into a job in the same way that you add a new manager into the game.

Totally forgot about this one. When we lost a couple of players and had enough to just fit in the premier league and letting the championship be 100% AI, those in the championship had to retire our managers and create new ones to add to prem teams. Would have been nice to have kept the reputation and favoured personnel etc i'd carved at Coventry before moving to a new team in the prem.

Assistant decision making - particularly re squad registration. If a player can't make a session, then obviously their assistant controls it. But we've had assistants leaving 10m+ signings out of the registered 25, and in some cases, registering U21 players who obviously don't need to be registered in their place. Obviously no single player game is going to be holidayed past squad registration, so it's not a problem there, but it is for fmo, and it was the same in fm10.

This has been ridiculous, i've currently got my biggest signing waiting for any cup matches as my assistant didnt register him to play in the league when I was unavailable for a session, and one particular shining moment was one persons club captain being left out of the 25 man squad

Adrian, you should really have posted Oli's spending at City and also the losses each club had per month. I mean, for a club like Ipswich who I took over after someone (Oli) had ruined them with 48 month deals, were losing between £6m-£10m a month. Not only is it unrealistic, but it totally breaks the economy in the game and ruins any football club that isn't run continuesly by a human manager.

Its nice to see you finally in here Ov, at least someone official who has come in and is now asking, FML pretty much killed a lot of activity for us.

However, there are good things to come out of FML (even if i didnt play it myself apart from the Beta) and there have been plenty of suggestions to stuff in the above.

In FM11 we have finally seen some option for the Host that we been crying out for since the CM days and this should also where we need to continue too, the stuff has pretty much been mentioned above and plenty of times in the past too, the Host needs to have a lot of control, esp. in terms of being able to remove other players from the game if they time out.

Number one factor for any FMO Clan is the speed of the game, as much as we all love the game, we love it to process faster, we know there is more data going in and out in these versions than there was to the old CM but still I think improvements can be made in this area.

Now I dont know how FML processed everything but Transfer Windows are the biggest pain, once the season starts rolling, it really starts running well, so maybe it can be set that transfers can only be made between a certain time period in game for clubs or of course just the intervals be further apart, with 10 people needing to click continue and the day only moving in 15 min. intervals takes a long time, even if a 1min timer has been set, which of course then due to various connections etc can cause some people to not even get 10 seconds of this interval.

A sort of assistant host option would certainly go a long way too, at least in all the Clan games ive been involved with, when the host, even when it was myself, was on holiday and not in game, there was no one there sort force any continues / holidays and that would certainly assist too. (We of course have other means of doing this via for example Team Viewer).

A lot of the ideas posted have been more game improvements than actually an improvement to the FMO experience id say, I did have a list somewhere which I have in the past given to a few SI Staff members about what has been said needs improving from various threads we´ve had in the past. I will try and find it and send it your way.

Those two points are the ones which come straight to mind, there are some more but I need to find my list for that!

Various issues as listed above with assistant managers etc and the in-game interaction isnt really there ie. a decent Chat facility, with linkage to youtube or twitter, im sure some better integration can be done here too as at the moment external methods are being used. Using Skype and a headset has been a favourable one, esp. in the EUC Clan.

With FML gone I think the other thing people are looking for is a similar "Quick Game" option as a normal FMO game currently just takes too long (processing wise) obviously, something that would come in with something like dedicated servers which we wont see in this genre due to costs. But FML was your pick up and go and to feed this sort of addiction a kind of challenge mode is required, at least a, x team vs y team, my tactic versus yours, my fav team versus your fav team. Be this just a simplified version where no transfers exist and can be done over a season, with or against others.

I'm glad SI are finally listening to the hardcore online players. This really is a brilliant game, with some major frustrations, which just a few minor tweaks could completely erradicate.

Speed is the main thing. The only thing you can do to keep the game moving at a reasonable speed is for the host to take the game “offline” and effectively playing it as a single player until the next match day. I know some have suggested one or two stops per day, but I would go further, can you not have one or two stops per week? Surely all the relevant news can be bunched up, akin to how it used to be in the early days of Champo? The host should not have to go to preferences and take the game offline to speed it up, perhaps some way of the game itself temporarily disconnecting or partially disconnecting all of the other players when processing to speed things up?

Transfers – I don’t agree with “sorting out” the transfer system as posted above. People mismanage clubs financially anyway in real life. Why not try to make sure that the attribute showing how good a human manager is at financial control and the factor leading to sacking is more effective. A cheat here is to whack all of your budget into wages. The financial control element to the manager profile and board confidence only looks at whether or not you are within your wage budget. One manager can be working miracles but be just outside a meagre wage budget, and so be suffering as a result, whilst someone else could have a -£50m balance but get favourable ratings (I've seen 100% on manager profiles) and praise off the board due to being inside the wage budget.

Manager Holidays, on big clans people may miss an extended period, and more needs to be done to give the absent manager greater control so that an incompetent assistant manager cannot lead him to the sack. For example, in the season we have just finished, a manager left his club in the play-offs after 15 or so games, but the assistant led the club to the verge of relegation only staying up on the last day. Clearly the player was a talented overachiever having some luck, and maybe he’d have faced the same problem, but I’ve seen numerous such examples of the assistant having polar opposite results (both better and worse) to that of the absent manager. Another idea is what about the ability for the host to postpone games, i.e. so the game thinks there is a frozen pitch scenario, so that an absent manager does not miss an important game and it’s rescheduled for a few weeks time?

Transfer windows – I do not know the answer here. Transfer windows are long and frustrating. I frequently host and so find myself needed to be at my computer to click continue, to shout at slow players to speed up and to force others. Yet five hours of “play” can go past without me actually doing anything. I think having the game stop much less (two or three times a week I suggested above) would solve this, but this is perhaps something your programmers need to consider. Also what about the news items, this is obviously something that slows the game down. Is there not a way to have less news on the online game. Do we really need constant updates on scouts every month? Surely if you want the update you can go and look at the particular scout when you have nothing better to do. I never wait for the update, I’m always seeing where the scout is up to. There are far too many news items and most are irrelevant, I’m sure if you cut more out the game would speed up.

I love the game, played it since the very first one (champo), and find each version gets better. But the things that make it better make it slower. What everyone who plays online is concerned about is speed. Find a way to speed the game up, even if it means losing features for the online version.

Steve, host of Prem Glory Clan

Manager Holidays, on big clans people may miss an extended period, and more needs to be done to give the absent manager greater control so that an incompetent assistant manager cannot lead him to the sack. For example, in the season we have just finished, a manager left his club in the play-offs after 15 or so games, but the assistant led the club to the verge of relegation only staying up on the last day. Clearly the player was a talented overachiever having some luck, and maybe he’d have faced the same problem, but I’ve seen numerous such examples of the assistant having polar opposite results (both better and worse) to that of the absent manager. Another idea is what about the ability for the host to postpone games, i.e. so the game thinks there is a frozen pitch scenario, so that an absent manager does not miss an important game and it’s rescheduled for a few weeks time?

I think the manager having a better grasp or more options when going on holiday is a better solution to the problem instead of some kind of rescheduling. If I were to miss a session now it would be around 5 games, thats a lot of rescheduling to do. Not to mention it putting other human managers out of a game because you're not there. Also factoring in the frustration of 18 players having to sit and wait whilst one person plays a rescheduled game (usually leading to a lot of peer pressure and the manager eventually holidaying the game anyway ).

Ov, i'm sure the OTF lads who play wouldn't mind you cutting in on a session and seeing for yourself how things play out, though i'm guessing you're a very busy man.

Think most of the things have been said which have been problems for the OTF FMO we play - ridiculous clauses for defenders, speed etc.

General processing would be another thing I'd add which I don't think has been covered, it can take me upto 30 seconds to switch screens which is quite frankly ridiculous, although the norm is around 15 (judging by the timer anyway) and it also takes me a few clicks here and there to actually take control of my manager which is annoying.

But fix these issues, maybe get a decent server, and the online for this would be fantastic.

Oh and as for the 48 months, the spending is ridiculous and the board needs to be more aware to put their foot down and say something, like "we're already paying off a hundred million over 48 months, no more." You get the point.

Ov could you please tell us if there are going to be any changes for FM12 or is this all for the future (FM13...)?

Thanks.

A lot of things, for example the Transfer stuff, is as much as a game issue as it is a clan issue, you need to define your rules to what is allowed and what isnt, for example, having a rule about transfers, loans etc.

A lof of online play is about having an agreement and trust between everyone who is playing the game really, thats part and parcel of the online game, if someone is using a downloaded tactic or not, thats not something SI can police for you, its something you have to do yourself as a host for example, but then, you can just leave them with the download, everyone gets their own enjoyment out of the game, some love to scout for hours in the game finding the next, others prefer to use a Shortlist from someone or somewhere else.

Plenty of the big clans have got rules in place to sort stuff out, if anyone wants help, just need to ask around really!

I would definitely be putting in rules regarding this 48 month installment thing, it's not realistic at all for clubs to be spending the amount of money and as a rule of a clan game would not allow out in any shape or form.

To add to the above aswell and the comments in regards speed aswell, obviously this is also down to the connections that people have in what capacity the bandwith allows and the ones connecting allow too with how fast some of the response is in game and something SI cant control, but I cant comment on the testing envi. but there is a vast difference between playing LAN and WAN of course. Dedicated servers would be fab of course but cost factors do not make it a viable solution so we can really forget about that idea, but improvements with the amount of processed data is where we need to look at more, how much can a node process itself and how much needs updating with the host etc is an area that can be looked into more for online gameplay.

It would be interesting to let the host put some restrictions on, I've not fully thought this through yet but hings like make transfers over 36 months not possible... things like this... anyone care to expand on my terrible spur of the moment bump this up idea.

also Id be keen to hear if there will be any immediate improvements in FM12?

Don't think the game needs to implement it just a rule within a clan asking that no manager does any transfer over 48,36,24 months and any manager doing so will be booted out the clan.

I have not played FM11 properly online but from the screenies above with the amount of ridiculous spending from teams it ruins the game for me.

There is no difference in spending online of offline.

Another thing that could be toned down is the amount of news from obscure international sackings, mainly the ones that you cannot take control of like Swaziland etc, just had a scenario where i was told about all these sackings.

Swaziland

Benin

Guinea

Cape Verde

All teams that can't be controlled, so pointless news.

They would be if you loaded all or enough players from that countries.

They would be if you loaded all or enough players from that countries.

Ov - I've been playing for many years with my brother and mate in network mode and the thing we would love implemented more than anything would be -

The ability to standardise league kick off times over the playable leagues (even better would be the ability to standardise the league seasons but that might be asking too much )

For example, we may have 10 leagues loaded across the world and start in the Premiership but would love to be able to manage in say the top leagues in England, Spain & Italy.

However, despite ticking the option not to move games for TV, we would potentially be left with one player playing his game on Sat 3pm, one on Sun afternon and one on Sunday night if we ended up in different leagues.

This would make the game completely unplayable as it would take us 3 times as long to play a season.

This potentially could be overcome if the weekend fixtures were treated the same as the European games midweek (when you click the dont move games for tv) by having the option to say play all weekend fixtures at 3pm on a Saturday and all midweek games at 7.45pm on a Wednesday.

We tried playing with the editor in FM10 (which is the version we are still playing) but this proved to be too cumbersome and actually caused crash dump errors.

Our issue might not seem as big as some of the clans who seem to tend to stick to one league or one nation but if the above could be implemented, for us it would take FM to another level !!!

Plus alot of the previous points about speed issues in the transfer windows and reducing the times per day or week you need to go through your news are spot on.

Cheers,

Del

Ov - I've been playing for many years with my brother and mate in network mode and the thing we would love implemented more than anything would be -

The ability to standardise league kick off times over the playable leagues (even better would be the ability to standardise the league seasons but that might be asking too much )

For example, we may have 10 leagues loaded across the world and start in the Premiership but would love to be able to manage in say the top leagues in England, Spain & Italy.

However, despite ticking the option not to move games for TV, we would potentially be left with one player playing his game on Sat 3pm, one on Sun afternon and one on Sunday night if we ended up in different leagues.

This would make the game completely unplayable as it would take us 3 times as long to play a season.

This potentially could be overcome if the weekend fixtures were treated the same as the European games midweek (when you click the dont move games for tv) by having the option to say play all weekend fixtures at 3pm on a Saturday and all midweek games at 7.45pm on a Wednesday.

We tried playing with the editor in FM10 (which is the version we are still playing) but this proved to be too cumbersome and actually caused crash dump errors.

Our issue might not seem as big as some of the clans who seem to tend to stick to one league or one nation but if the above could be implemented, for us it would take FM to another level !!!

Plus alot of the previous points about speed issues in the transfer windows and reducing the times per day or week you need to go through your news are spot on.

Cheers,

Del

If you tick the 2nd option which is 'Use wednesday/saturday as gameday" or something like that, that will be sorted out. We've only had issues when a new host (me) has been given the game (and forgot to tick the option, but blatantly pointed at the game instead) when the new season is being made.

If you tick the 2nd option which is 'Use wednesday/saturday as gameday" or something like that, that will be sorted out. We've only had issues when a new host (me) has been given the game (and forgot to tick the option, but blatantly pointed at the game instead) when the new season is being made.

Thanks Alvaan - I'm all embarrassed now !!!

My apologies to Oz and everyone else ....... i suppose thats what you get when you are still playing the old version (FM10) - in my defence, its due to the great network game we have going + 2 baby breaks

Thanks Alvaan but i've had a quick look and cant find this option - is this new for FM11 (we are still playing FM10) or am i just being thick

FM11 only.

I've mentioned a few times in the past that was FM needs just like many games on Steam is a dedicated server option. I don't know how hard it would be to scrap the skin and put the game in a small shell which would allow the user to start a new game and set up the preferences. But that's all that is needed IMO. At present you can't run FM on 3rd party servers e.g. Amazon EC2 as they need a graphics setup.

This and maybe a few extra options to enable the server to enforce the rules that clans have set up (it would make things easier) and I would be happy. Right now I can't play network mode despite loving it - my friends deem it far too slow than the single player experience. Sort it out!

Goldy has already stated that the cost for dedi servers does not make it a viable solution so we can look at other options.Other Famous Online Games such as COD have ditched there Online games dedicated server aproach to Peer to Peer so we need to look at other things.

There was another option i thought of however not sure how practicale it is from a programming point. The longer a game goes the slower it gets because of the vast data that it retains season after season. If there was a way to remove this from the game every 2-3 seasons and upload it to another hosting site or program it may solve this issue.

Is this an option?

Goldy has already stated that the cost for dedi servers does not make it a viable solution so we can look at other options.Other Famous Online Games such as COD have ditched there Online games dedicated server aproach to Peer to Peer so we need to look at other things.

When I say Dedicated Servers I mean the ability to run a server via your own means. I'm not expecting SI to run them. The costing is not an issue if you run it well. If SI hosted a server it would be an official server, a dedicated server to me would be where I install FM on Amazon EC2 or elsewhere. It would be an option that is available for people who feel they need it.

The way I see FM works right now is the host has the save game and the clients that are connected simply download the data they need on the screen. My upload speed is at max 40kBps - yet the amount of information that is being requested amounts to a minimum of 1MB per minute per client. One person connected might be viable but it is still too slow. It's as though their screens hang.

I did a speed test on Amazon EC2 and the Upload speed was 10Mbps. That's the 1MBps that the client downloads per minute via my ADSL connection. However at present this isn't possible for me as FM doesn't work, there needs to be a server option that has no graphics that allows companies to charge customers to utilise the extra speed and capacity. Cost is no issue to some people who want the best experience!

EDIT: Failing that, force the clients to download the save game first then when the host's game updates they are required to download the update. When the client makes an action that is sent to the host and then to the other clients. A meter could be added detailing the amount of information being downloaded and uploaded each second with a max meter showing the maximum capacity, and also an update meter which has the amount of information required for the client to be fully updated with the host.

Why can't SI do a deal with a server company like http://www.clanplanet.co.uk/ and let us rent servers from them ? if it's possible to play other online games on servers then it's possible to play FM that way surely ?

This might sound daft but if the above was possible then why don't SI make 2 versions of the game, a standard version at normal cost where you play online the standard way we're doing now, and a server version at say £5 more, that way SI make some extra income from the latter, and we get the option to rent a server for clan games.

There is no difference in spending online of offline.

I'm well aware of that thanks although it has a much bigger impact during online games that solo player games, I think it should be done away with all together or at least limited.

I'm well aware of that thanks although it has a much bigger impact during online games that solo player games, I think it should be done away with all together or at least limited.

The option for taking these things away would be beneficial. Like being unable to bid for players from human teams - it would be great to have a setting where this could be turned on or off.

I also find that when another human places a bid for a player, as long as you are subscribed to that team you get the news bulletin. This needs to be done away with on MP games. Let the other teams find out by their own means instead of a news item coming up.

That can be sorted by having a rule within your clan to not bid on or human teams players unless they agree to it.

We had this rule when the EFB clan was up and running and worked out fine as everyone knew where they stood and stuck to the rule.

I also find that when another human places a bid for a player, as long as you are subscribed to that team you get the news bulletin. This needs to be done away with on MP games. Let the other teams find out by their own means instead of a news item coming up.

This is a great point and one that can have a huge impact on network games - its akin to cheating

There is nothing worse than finding a hidden gem, only for it to turn into an auction when the fact that you have put in a bid becomes public knowledge. I feel this should be kept hidden UNLESS the other human manager has said player on his own shortlist.

If you are unfortunate to be the smaller of the human teams, it means you are constantly losing players to bigger name (human controlled) teams - when the player might have been happy to sign for you if you were the only bidder (i hope that makes sense)

If this was a option (that could at least be switched on or off) it would make it much more worthwhile spending your time examining scout reports/sending more scouts out

Or perhaps you can just exclude transfer information when subscribed to human teams

That can be sorted by having a rule within your clan to not bid on or human teams players unless they agree to it.

We had this rule when the EFB clan was up and running and worked out fine as everyone knew where they stood and stuck to the rule.

I know it can and it's great if everyone follows it but you can easily find that someone breaks the rule accidentally or not so accidentally. Having the option to turn these settings on or off would be beneficial.

That can be sorted by having a rule within your clan to not bid on or human teams players unless they agree to it.

We had this rule when the EFB clan was up and running and worked out fine as everyone knew where they stood and stuck to the rule.

We have the same rule in Premiership Glory and it works fine.

I don't think that there's a lot that I can add to what has already been mentioned, especially as every clan is run differently, but I'll give it a shot.

New Game Options

I'll start with new game options for online play. There are obviously a couple of options brought in for new network games brought in this year that were needed and long overdue - Sat/Wed only games and extended processing - however I'd like to see more customizable options for new games. Off the top of my head, when you start a new game, it'd be something like the following:

A choice to choose between a single player game, which would use current options, and a network game, which would open up a list of extra options.

The extra options would be a way of controlling various rules within the game such as:

Setting the max number on months to be used in transfer deals

Selecting what clauses can or can not be used in transfer deals

Setting the timer limit - I would like to see more freedom to the times that can be set! Current 30s can be too short where 1m can be too long. I would like the option to specifically set a time, be it 45 seconds, 50 seconds, etc. Maybe the ability to set the in-window timer and the out-window timer if possible for those running one league. A small feature that would go a long way being the host saving me from having to go in to the preferences to alter it detracting from my enjoyment of playing the game.

A time-out function - Anyone that is idle for 'x' mins is automatically removed from the game or set on holiday. Again, just making the life of host that bit easier.

An option to allow, or not allow, passwords[/i]

Select the number of stops, per day, for regular days and transfer deadline days

Now I know the first 2 could come down to trusting the people you're playing online with, but if they were implemented it would mean we wouldn't run the risk of people abusing it and it would mean the I, as the host, don't have to check people's deals to make sure they're staying within the guidelines of that particular FMO.

The final one I highly expect to be impossible to implement but it would be a nice feature to limit us to 4, 5 or 6 stops per day and say 10 stops on a deadline day.

Host Options

The ability to kick 'network clients' from the game for sitting there and causing problems. It really is ridiculous that we can't kick someone who hasn't taken control of their team or has gone on holiday with the "disconnect from manager" option ticked and are just sat there doing nothing away fromt he PC.

Other

I have absolutely no idea if this would be possible to implement in some way, and my guess is that it isn't, but I would love there to be an option that could stop people connecting to the game during processes and matches. We have a rule in our FMO which prohibits people from joining the game while it's processing or we're in games as we had a lot of problems in FM08, FM09 and FM10 with the game crashing when connecting during these times. We found that limiting people from connecting at these times limited the crashes we were getting. FM11 has been a lot more stable than previous years but if there was a way of capping the game off to new users during processes/matches that'd be fantastic.

That sort of leads me on to another point which is about people that drop connection for whatever reason during processes and/or matches. It happens from time to time that someone will lose connection to the game and during regular play it's fine and there are no issues. However if they drop during matches then when we go to process when the matches are finished the game will hang. And hang. And hang. And it happens if they drop during normal processing too. It can usually be kicked back in to life by disconnecting myself from the internet but even this can take some time till it completes the process from time to time. And recently we let it do it's thing and it took approx 25 minutes to right itself.

Now, again, I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done here to fix this or speed it up but would be greatly appreciated if it could.

My final point is on the in-game chat that was mentioned above. As it stands currently, it sucks. A large reason as to why it sucks is because it's out of the way and very basic. Even if you want to PM someone you have to send them a 'manager message' which is a little bit lame. It would be nice to see real-time private messages in the chat, and for the chat itself to be noticable from any screen. For example - it could be put on the opposite side of the screen to the breadcrumbs. It would appear on all screens and could highlight a different colour when a new post is made or flash when there is a PM waiting. Another placement option is under the current search feature on the main title bar. Of course all this would depend on what the new skin looks like but I'm sure you guys could figure that out. It doesn't have to be anything over the top and in your face but it simply needs to be noticable.

That's all I can think of for now. Not too bad for near 3am!

PS - I'm not sure how testing currently works but maybe selecting a clan or two to help with testing the online side of things might help?