How can we improve the network game of FM?

[dcu223]

My Opinion of the ingame Comms.

I dont think SI should be wasting time on the ingame comms because no matter how much they improve it it will never replace a 3rd party client such as skype.

Clans communicate outside of clan time and members will not load up FM just to do this. I say put the programming time to the main Issue which is processing and screen loading speed and response times and the other issues mentioned above.

Good shout on the manager passwords also. When we had the crash Dump issue with FM10 the only option was for the Host to go into everybodies proflie to clear there news and as a couple had passwords on you can imagine what a pain that was. So this option would be useful.

Another reason for players wanting dedi servers was because they wanted to view there squads outside of clan time which currently requires the host to keep the game up or for the host to transfer the save file. If there was a way solve this issue without introducing dedi servers then that would be a good option.

Also just an option to either allow or disallow shortlisting players who are currently at clubs controlled by humans.

Also give the Host the option to set how the matches should be viewed and at what speed. Our Clan has a rule :

"Match Speed should be on Key Highlights with Maxiumum speed or 1 notch down from Maximum. No Slower than this."

Would be great if the host could set this.

Belly,

[magicmastermind124]

You mentioned about passwords - you can always log in using sportsinteractive on any account.

[cms186]

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.

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.

if they are spending 100s of millions of pounds, they obviously have at least 25 million to play with, so in that case, no its not particually realistic, i would say what someone else suggested, the board should step in if they money you are spending, over time would seiously hurt the clubs finances. The clubs im talking about, like Wolves, where you start of with over 20 million in the bank and only 2-3 million to spend, then 48 month spending ( in the first few seasons ) is fine and probably very realistic.

I also second the assistant submitting your squad registrations when you arent there, there seems to be some bugged code where he will register u-21 players in some positions ( ive noticed it mainly with DMs ) and ignoring first team players who are therefore ineligible for half the season until january, its not a CA based thing, because the first team player is always a lot better than any of the youth players that get registered!

[dcu223]

You mentioned about passwords - you can always log in using sportsinteractive on any account.

Yes you can but doing that for 15 members is somewhat tedious..

[magicmastermind124]

Yes you can but doing that for 15 members is somewhat tedious..

Then how about the host having the option of setting a master password, defaulting to sportsinteractive, you can set it to whatever you want, as having no passwords would give people the opportunity to cheat.

[Higgzy]

We have a trustworthy bunch in our FMO. That majority of us have played together since about 09. However, some have passwords on their SP managers which can be forgotten about when adding a new manager in the FMO.

It's not a major problem, it's just something that would make the job for the host that little bit easier if they have to check up on things.

DCU makes a good point on setting match highlight options for new games too. That's something I overlooked late last night. Our clan rule is no slower than 2 notches from the top and no replays. Sometimes people can forget about this setting so, again, it would save time being able to lock these rules in at the start of a new game.

Another option that would be helpful at the start of a new game is to disable press confrences. Or the ability so that assistants take control of them for every new manager by default. That's another rule we have in our FMO to help with the speed of the game.

[Dig_Dog]

Then how about the host having the option of setting a master password, defaulting to sportsinteractive, you can set it to whatever you want, as having no passwords would give people the opportunity to cheat.

There has to be some element of trust within a clan. I really hated having to type sportsinteractive in over and over on FM10 when we had a crashing bug. I literally typed it 200 times in half an hour and I was wanted to boot all the members who had password protected profiles from the clan. We now have it as a rule of clan now that you cannot have a password. Furthermore, if everyone knows sportsinteractive is the override, then what it the point of having a password anyway?

[dcu223]

Ah another thought has come to mind although i know it has been mentioned before somewhere on here.

Would be great for our Clans top performers to take there Teams and compete in an interclan Tournament of some kind.

We currently have 3 managers with top premiership teams in Man City, Newcastle and Sheff Wed and i would be interested to see how there teams fair against the other clans top sides.

Obviously it would only be fair for sides in the same division to compete and i think it would provide a big boost for the FM Online community bringing the clans closer together.

Belly,

[stabwest]

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.

wtf am Sunderland and have never spent nothing like that barr one season where I did blow £106m but that nearly folded the club am now on my 6th season with the black cats, finishing top 4 CL runner up and winner etc etc with 48,000 staduim and theres no way I could afford that sort of spending.

our current season ive spent £3.6m as I simply would struggle to please the bank manager and Alex would swoop in and get my players on the cheap

[dcu223]

wtf am Sunderland and have never spent nothing like that barr one season where I did blow £106m but that nearly folded the club am now on my 6th season with the black cats, finishing top 4 CL runner up and winner etc etc with 48,000 staduim and theres no way I could afford that sort of spending.

our current season ive spent £3.6m as I simply would struggle to please the bank manager and Alex would swoop in and get my players on the cheap

Lol

The ironic thing is the manager responsible is an accountant..

[Martin White]

Ive never been able to take part in a network game dispite lots of attempts, its a shame it isnt an easy thing to do as it would certainly fill a void I have left from no longer having FML.

I miss the interaction with real managers the game tries to create its own banter and rivarly but theres nothing like the real thing.

[Andy H]

Why can't you play online? Do you have a router? Have you checked out the help thread for advice?

Playing FM Online is pretty easy but you need to know a bit about the equipment you are using.

[magicmastermind124]

I must say that although it is easy to play online a lot of people do not find it straight forward. (Just look at the number of people who open threads about how to play the game online, or that they cannot connect to the host.) However I cannot see how this could be improved - it is almost a requirement of every PC game that requires a host to forward their ports to allow others to connect.

[taylorsmen]

^^ that's one of my biggest peeves with FMO, all the hassle what comes with the port forwarding can be a nightmare, the help thread shows that. And in 7 years of me playing online games FM is the only game that has connection issues, Miles said recently(on Twitter) 'disconnects will be down to people's net connections though' but i don't (or rarely) get disconnected from other online games bar FM, it really does need sorting imo.

[Andy H]

What other PC online games do you play taylorsmen?

FM is huge in terms of data being sent back and forth between the hosts computers and those in the game so it can be tougher on net connections than other online games I would imagine.

[taylorsmen]

Quite a few actually, i'll list the ones i play most often.

Battlefield2 & bad company2

Day of defeat-source

Counter strike-source

Fifa11 (albeit not much now)

Very rare i get disconnected in any of the above games, and i kinda agree that FM is sending a lot of data, but so is some of the games above BF2/BC2 and i don't have any disconnection issues with them games like i do with FM, i'm not having a whinge btw, just hoping that it get's improved in the future.

[Andy H]

I understand how frustrating it can be, try playing CM on a 56k modem connection back in the day, now that was torture

[David Bentley]

After the closure of FML I would like to get into playing FM11 networked but the one thing putting me off is game speed between turns. This seems to be the biggest complaint above and if speed was improved I would most likely be a convert to the online game.

[dcu223]

Belly - Premiership Glory Clan

Another idea has come to mind while were playing Clan - We leave the games in between matches to speed up processing but the host has to ask if managers have a match on a given Saturday or Wednesday. Therefore a screen which shows if any of the human managers has a match on a given date would be helpful.

[magicmastermind124]

What other PC online games do you play taylorsmen?

FM is huge in terms of data being sent back and forth between the hosts computers and those in the game so it can be tougher on net connections than other online games I would imagine.

The reason it uses more bandwidth is because it is a network game that wasn't designed for the internet - it was designed for LAN. The network game needs a rewrite to take into consideration that a lot of people play online these days.

I've itemised several points which I believe need addressing, from reading the thread and after a good time to think about it:

There should be a search function to find servers online by demand: Right now it's reserved to invitation only, and I think this would benefit the game. People who might by chance navigate to the Join Network Game section will be surprised by the new feature, and might actually join an online game.

The game files should be pushed to the other clients: Let the clients download the game files in its entirety, then push all the updates to them when they occur. If any changes they make alter the files, let their client send this to the host and then pushed to all the other clients from the host. You don't have to stop them from playing the game, just that when they need access to an area that they haven't fully downloaded that it may take longer to load up as the information is downloaded. Or use a P2P-type system to share the files around quickly with all the other clients and the host. That way you are utilising more than one connection to increase the speed of the game. I'd recommend that there should be a syncing icon on the FM skin whenever the game is not 100% in sync with the hosts version. Think about the large network games you could have, probably more than a leagues worth of people (~20) without encountering issues!

Subscriptions need to be changed for network play: When bidding for a player privately, the message is broadcast to all the players with a subscription to that club or manager. This can be detrimental to network play - the worst case scenario is that another manager could pip you to the signing of that hard-sought player you took hours to find. (Keep news leaks, though, they add to the realism.)

Allow the host the option of setting up rules: These should be visible on the server settings prior to other clients connecting to your server. Also enable the game to enforce these rules (e.g.) Minimum game speed, Forced holiday disconnection idle time, 30 minute idle time between certain times (so that the game cannot progress past the time and date) to allow players to work on their tactics, training and other parts of the game etc).

Integrate 3rd party voice chat options such as Teamspeak/Ventrilo: Not actually into the game but enable the settings to set this up into network play and allow the clients to connect to the voice chat server by clicking on a voice chat icon in the game.

Revamp the manager chat: It's totally outdated and involves going into a separate screen so you can't play the game! If you're going to keep it in at least allow private chats with popup windows or group chats in a popup window which can be used on any in-game screen. (But it's not a feature I assume many actually use to a great extent.)

Enable a Real-Time option for the game: Set the processing in the background and allow the server settings the ability of a real-time counter. E.g. After 10 seconds the game will progress one in game hour during the day and 4 hours during the night. That way you have steady progress when there aren't any must respond to items that any clients need to answer.

Send an alert to anyone with a must respond to item in their inbox: Self explanatory, but perhaps force the to answer that before navigating to other screens (or have that as an Enabled/Disabled setting).

[taylorsmen]

There should be a search function to find servers online by demand: Right now it's reserved to invitation only, and I think this would benefit the game. People who might by chance navigate to the Join Network Game section will be surprised by the new feature, and might actually join an online game.

When you say servers, do you mean a dedicated server ? if you did then Miles has said that this will never happen, even though i 100% agree and want this myself, i just can't see it happening any time soon unfortunately.

[taylorsmen]

Another thing no ones mentioned so far is team shouts in human v human games, for example, it's HT and your looking through the Analysis to work out where your going wrong/looking for chances to exploit your opponent, i decide that in the second half i'm going to apply 3 shouts, the only thing is when you apply one shout it makes 'Tactical changes' too quickly sometimes (almost instantly when there is no highlights) and when you need to apply several shouts the games constantly making 'Tactical changes' , it's ok in offline saves because you can hit the pause button to apply all 3 shouts then continue, but obviously in network games that's a no no.

So what i suggest is when choosing your shouts you have a 'Confirm' button to apply all shouts at once.

[magicmastermind124]

When you say servers, do you mean a dedicated server ? if you did then Miles has said that this will never happen, even though i 100% agree and want this myself, i just can't see it happening any time soon unfortunately.

Not dedicated servers. I've already asked him about that on twitter recently and in the past, and I know he is dead set against it. I mean the games being run as a server by other people.

So for example people could do a search to find a game with a minimum of 5 people and a maximum of 10 with a playable league available, lets say the Premier League. Then they search for any that are available, and the list will update and they can then join a game they want.

EDIT: I also think by sharing the game file ala P2P style that it would be much better than dedicated hosting, as after much thought it would be more cost effective to the users playing, the host of the game and should be easier for SI to implement.

[elgreenio]

here's one I encountered last week, though apparently a few knew about it beforehand. At half time in a human vs human match, any changes you make will be reset if the other manager does anything after you, so in order for your HT tactical changes to actually take effect you have to wait out the other manager then get going with your changes.

[dcu223]

Another idea

When another human manager is viewing your match it would be nice to show there name somewhere on the match highlights screen so you know what other human managers are watching.

[elgreenio]

we tend to ban other users watching matches not involving them as it slows the game, maybe this could be added as a tick box for the host at the start of the game

[dcu223]

we tend to ban other users watching matches not involving them as it slows the game, maybe this could be added as a tick box for the host at the start of the game

I think thats a shame, When one of our guys gets in a final or playoffs we all pile in for support, Great Fun and drama on comms and it has no effect on speed apart from a few seconds while they connect..

[Higgzy]

Something that I've been talking about to someone in our FMO tonight is passwords. Half the people in our FMO know the over-ride for passwords so anyone that does have one is a bit redundant. Would be nice for the host to set the over-ride password for those clans that use them. Just a thought.

[derrickr]

How about limiting formations slightly, so no one can play with the dodgy 3 central strikers up front (or any other attempts to cheat the match engine?)

I dont know how easy it would be to create perhaps the host can decide - it would help maintain a level playing field.

(or try to eradicate them in general for FM12 ??)

[CaptainPlanet]

Dedicated servers should get some serious consideration in my opinion. It's a major part of PC gaming these days, people know how they work and fits in with community.

How about an FM-Light version or option within the game that's similar to handheld with reduced functionality and database size?

[FMtillidie]

easier to set up

[taylorsmen]

Dedicated servers should get some serious consideration in my opinion. It's a major part of PC gaming these days, people know how they work and fits in with community.

I've mentioned this many of times to Miles on twitter, but he just won't entertain the idea of servers, he said he's done lots of research and there isn't enough interest, i beg to differ, but the boss says no, so it aint looking good server wise

[stabwest]

i would have to agree with Miles there ain't much interest unless its FREE.

FMO is darn easy to set up, I can't understand why people struggle so much with it.

[CaptainPlanet]

i would have to agree with Miles there ain't much interest unless its FREE.

FMO is darn easy to set up, I can't understand why people struggle so much with it.

It's not easy, not in the slightest as far as Joe Bloggs is concerned.

The average FM player has trouble turning on a PC to begin with (Any amount of time in general discussion will teach you how low the tech skills are of a large part of the player base)

[alvaan]

It IS easy, but the FMO scene is incredibly slow. If dedicated servers would help speed up the game, and it was a decent price, I would have paid a monthly subscription easy.

[CaptainPlanet]

It's not easy when ports and finding IP addresses are involved. That instantly reduces the target audience.

Games like Civ and Transport Tycoon have a bustling online community, ok it's not huge like FPS online gaming, but it's there. Surely FMO should be an example of that?

[alvaan]

Opening ports and finding your IP is not hard. Anyone with access to the internet should be able to quickly find a guide on how to do this. Should it be necessary? Maybe not. Would it be alot faster if we were able to use dedicated servers? Absolutely!

[elliott1873]

How faster would dedicated servers really be? An extra second each load time? Which means nothing when it's a game like FM that doesn't require quick thinking.

I'd like FM to make a ding noise or flash orange at the bottom of my screen every time it has loaded a new day and the game isn't what I'm focused on. Too often I'll be reading a forum or even playing another game and not realise my friend has continued.

[CaptainPlanet]

The game needs to run as smoothly online as it does when you're playing on your own. Anything less than that will result in constant negativity.

[magicmastermind124]

How faster would dedicated servers really be? An extra second each load time? Which means nothing when it's a game like FM that doesn't require quick thinking.

I'd like FM to make a ding noise or flash orange at the bottom of my screen every time it has loaded a new day and the game isn't what I'm focused on. Too often I'll be reading a forum or even playing another game and not realise my friend has continued.

Have you played FM online when you are not hosting at all? If so you will know how ridiculously slow it is, unless you have a decent upload speed.

[elliott1873]

Yes I have and am right now. Yes it's a pain but it's something you can deal with like I have. It'd be nice if they sped up how long it takes when clicking things mind you.

edited out since it contains server lol. 14 days, 19 hours and 44 minutes played so far

[dcu223]

Opening ports and finding your IP is not hard. Anyone with access to the internet should be able to quickly find a guide on how to do this. Should it be necessary? Maybe not. Would it be alot faster if we were able to use dedicated servers? Absolutely!

Sorry to disagree kim but its not. I can see how it would be easy for a manager of an ISP company like yourself but alot of FM players are Football Fans in the main and have little experience in how to operate a PC in comparison.

I have used PC's constantly for about 15 years. I use it at work and consider myself rather competent. I have also sold and built them. However i struggled when i upgraded my modem to a router. Routers differ, The language and section names can differ so locating the correct section and then knowing what to do is just not clear.

I can see how players struggle. Why is it when i play other online games like, TT , CIV, COD , BF , RVS , PCM, FL, F1 i click on multiplayer and it just works without even going into my router settings.

[dcu223]

A few Suggestions i thought of.

Our Host sometimes wants to allow some players in and keep some out without having to change the password. An option for this would be good.

Also Our Host has to go out due to work commitments. Therefore an option to transfer the host,s powers to another member connected to the game would also be useful.

[Ceirdiff]

The ability to save and load a game. When I'm playing my brother I don't want to have to keep my computer on all the time, and especially as I run Linux most of the time I can't really host too well for long periods of time.

[CaptainPlanet]

Um, you can save and load...

[Ceirdiff]

Really? The option is greyed out for me >.>

[stabwest]

A few Suggestions i thought of.

Our Host sometimes wants to allow some players in and keep some out without having to change the password. An option for this would be good.

Also Our Host has to go out due to work commitments. Therefore an option to transfer the host,s powers to another member connected to the game would also be useful.

use team viewer.

[stabwest]

use team viewer.

I should add I use TV on my phone to control my PC while am at work.

[dcu223]

Ok - Another Suggestion here

Were trying to see how we can get through summer transfer window quicker than the current 8 hours.

I suggested the following :

1. take offline to freeby date 9th june - stop for 10 mins - then take offline till budget day - stop for 10 min - then take offline till midday july 1st - stop 10 mins - then take game offline between the sat and wed stopping for 10 mins each time until gameday - what are the issues with this approach?

Main problem we have was that the contracts offered by there assistants while the game was offline were mostly rejected hence why they felt that they needed to be in game for there bids to go through.

Maybe if we could introduce more in depth manager holiday options which allowed a human manager to specify what contract to offer and how much it could be improved upon should it get declined. Same with Transfer bids.

This would mean we could take the game offline during the window and speed it up no end.

[stabwest]

The average FM player has trouble turning on a PC to begin with

haha i know a few of them