unforgiveable mistake in the new patch!

[ataman5]

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

Do the fans start gobbling whenever you score a goal in Turkey? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

ha ha! how funny you are! well it's time for you to change your old fashioned ****ed up jokes that nobody laughs anymore..

if you wanna contribute,

contribute..

[Miles Jacobson]

Guys - we have a workaround that you can use in the data editor to stop this from happening. Please note that you would need to start a new game to make this work.

It is detailed at http://community.sigames.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9482076743/m/9142029083

To summarise, you need to edit the teams affected (Galatasary & Fenerbache) average ticket price DOWN by £5 using the official editor.

We hope this helps, and that you can continue to enjoy the game

[Doruk]

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

Do the fans start gobbling whenever you score a goal in Turkey? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Does your brain start melting as you begin to type your utterly stupid and useless posts?

The issue shouldn't shouldn'r be of sales of the game in Turkey. I am Turkish, but I live in the US and have been buying an original copy of the game since CM 00/01. I have been an SI customer for a long time and even have FMH 2008 for my PSP. I might be 1 person, but I am sure there are just as many Turks living abriad that buy an original copy of the game. Anyway having a bad DB with errors is one thing, but having the finances messed up is another thing. The Turksh leagues biggest problem for so many years was due to horrible research now it seems the DB has been corrected but we are left with a bitter taste in our watering mouth as we have to deal with this financial bug.

I was looking forward for 802 for many months. Finally Turker Tozer had left his post paving the way for more competent researchers willing to actually due the job. The excietment of finally being able to play the TSL properly had enticed us all. It's a shame that we finally get a proper DB, but have to deal with the financial bug that really ruins all the efforts put into the DB over these last couple of months. We have waited all these years and I guess we can wait until FM 2009, but I would really appreciate it if SI could just do us a favour just this once and allow us to play the TSL properly for the first time before FM 2009 is realeased or else my Worldwide Soccer Manager 2008 will continue collecting dust as it has been since its purchase from day 1. A year of FM will go to waste because of one terrible bug.

[Deza]

As I wrote earlier in this thread I believe that there is a huge market for this game in Turkey. Everybody is crazy about football, really. Every single person has something to say about their own team, players, tactics, manager and so. So this game would be loved by many people. The problem this far has been the prices of the game in Turkey. I live in Sweden and the cheapest price here was 349 kr(swedish kronor, which is about 70 YTL(new turkish lira). And the game in Turkey costs about 70 YTL. So the prices is the same in this two countries. But there are a huge difference in what people earn, their wages.

70 YTL(or 349 kr) is not at al very much in Sweden. But in Turkey it is very much, too much. A price around 40 YTL would make the sales to hit the top. And maybe selling the game by Digital Download would make it cheaper and the sales would increas a lot.

Hope you see my ideas about this thing Miles and I believe SI and our HRs could come up with a good solution to this problem and with FM 2009 the sales can increas a lot in Turkey.

[Doruk]

I tend to notice digital downloads are more expensive actually. I think part of the problem is that people have a really hard time finding an original copy of the game to begin with even if they wanna purchase it. I always see people mention they can find illegal copies of the game everywhere, but can never find an original where they live. Part of this problem has to do with the system in Turkey though oficials hav ebeen getting better at combating the illgeal gaming industry. If the digital download can be reasnably priced based on what people earn in Turkey considering that minimum wage is 400 YTL than this would be great for a lot of people who have trouble finding the original version out in the market.

Also if SI work along with Turksportal to create a full Turkish language option for the gane included with the purchase this would make more people buy the game. As Deza states if marketed rightly and reasonably priced Turkey can become one of SI's biggest markets. The potential is there, but it's up to SI to take advantage of it. People in Turkey literally live and breath football it's like religion. And the thing they love to most is have a say about tactics what managers should or shouldnt do, which players should or shouldnt be bought basically everything they get to do in FM.

[fgu82]

Thanks Miles for the workaround, but I can't understand how lowering the average ticket price helps solve this problem - an explanation maybe?

[Miles Jacobson]

fgu82 - because the code that has caused this problem is error correcting, and has decided that the ticket prices must be too high, so is massively reducing them. By reducing them by £5, that code doesn't kick in, and it'll have similar ticket prices to 8.01

[Doruk]

and what should the prices for seasonal tickets be? I think a more in depth explaination may be needed. WHat teams need this correction etc.

[DamianY2J]

It is this sort of issue that has prevented me from buying any FM 2008. I only bought FM 2007 last month and I'm absolutely loving it. It's the least bugged game since CM01/02 that I've played and I think a reason for that is because I've given it time for patches to be released.

I can now install 07, patch it with the final release and play a fairly problem-free game. It's perfect.

I plan on buying FM 2008 sometime next year. I don't mind being a year behind everyone else. It just means I don't get as frustrated.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone else on the forums who buys the game straight after release. You guys act as the testers of the game, and allow people like me to buy it 12 months later and have bug-free gaming!

On topic, I will say that Miles says that the issue wasn't posted as "high priority" until after the patch was released, and he actually goes as far as to blame the Turkish tester for failing to stick to guidelines. If I was the Turkish tester, I'd be feeling a bit hard done by and feel like Miles' comments have stitched me up.

Anyway, Miles, I appreciate that this could easily come across as "blind and unconstructive criticism", but if you take one thing from my post, please take this:

You are a member of the senior management team at Sports Interactive, therefore any problem is your responsibility. It is not the Turkish tester's fault - it is yours and people like you as their "boss". Before any patch is released, you should personally (with the other members of the management team) quickly start a new game per nation (so if there's 20 nations in the game, start 20 new games), and check everything looks OK at first glance. Go on holiday for a month, and check again. Go on holiday for a year and check around again. Then quit the game.

This won't take you longer than 1-2 days at the absolute maximum, and you would have noticed so many problems this way. You would have noticed this finance problem. You would have noticed defenders ending the season on 30 goals. You would have noticed the Spanish registration bug.

If you were feeling particularly helpful, you could have even left a game running on holiday for 10 years and then checked around it. You might have noticed Man United going bankrupt. You might have noticed a few other niggly problems.

If your testing game didn't notice them, it would have taken 1-2 days of your schedule (at the most) for you personally to have seen them.

You should check your game before releasing anything. As Managing Director, it's your job!

Whether you then decide to fix problems or not, that's your decision. If you decide it's not important enough to fix, then you can leave it (as long as you post your reasons why in the forum so people don't start moaning too much and posting about it every 5 seconds).

I truly appreciate you coming on here and giving your version of events about things. But I'd appreciate it more if you never posted but spent a little bit of time going through your game.

[andyinuk]

it's fuuny. when SI people don't post, people moan about it. When Miles post, people then moan about him posting instead of working.

[DamianY2J]

lol, I wasn't posting about him not working at 11.15pm on a Sunday night!

I was merely suggesting that when errors exist that he himself could have spotted with a few minutes of starting new games and having a look around, blaming testing teams isn't the best response.

[Miles Jacobson]

DamianY2J - It's getting very frustrating to continue to have words put into my mouth/typing which aren't there. I haven't blamed anyone - I've said what happened, very matter of factly. The patch was already uploaded by the time the issue was reported - no one's fault, it wasn't past deadline, it was past production!

As for your ascertation that it would "take 1-2 days (at the most)" for me to personally check that every single area of the game is working in every single league, in 51 nations, long term (this particular issue is a long term one, not a short term one), checking that over 350,000 players and staff are 100% accurate, I think that maybe we continue with our system of employing full time testers, and getting the massive help from the offsite testers and head researchers, as sometimes things slip through the net with even that massive team.

Andyinuk - Ironically, I'm playing FM2008, whilst working, and typing on this forum. We realised long ago that, whatever we do, someone will complain about it.

[DamianY2J]

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

I cannot tell when the latest issue was added in by the Turkish researcher, as he hasn't followed the date and time guidelines for bug reporting, so there is no date or time of when he posted for me to see. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

The above quote might be you reporting the facts but it sounds like shifting the blame to me, and wasn't totally necessary.

Also, I appreciate the fact that you've replied to me, and I'm sure you have many things to do, but me sitting here at home today, I could very easily start 51 new games (1 per nation), and have a quick look around, then go on holiday for 1 month, and check a few key things again, and then go on holiday for 1 year and check things again.

I obviously wouldn't check every player, but I'd check the changes that were recently made. I'd check to see if Defoe's transfer was added properly, as this was a recent change. I'd check that ticket prices for Turkish teams seemed ok, as this was a recent change. I wouldn't have to check every little detail like you seem to think. Just check the recently added things.

There are screens that list the Finances of every team in a league (such as Safe, Secure, etc) so you can immediately see if there's a major problem 1 year in. If Man United have Poor finances, then it should raise a alert for you.

You can go to a screen that shows Top Goalscorers. If Vidic has 25 goals, perhaps that might raise a query with you.

Just check a few screens that shows a lot of combined information, and a lot of problems that we're complaining about could have been spotted by you personally, let alone the testing team.

As I was saying, I could, very very easily, load 51 new games, check a few screens, spot a lot of reported problems quickly, and then quit the game, and start a new one. My PC isn't the fastest but I could easily do this in 1 day. No problem at all.

So, while I appreciate you are a busy man, and you have a testing team, and there are obviously a few problems that can't be spotted quickly - you could have spotted a few of the more annoying ones if you'd "proof-read" your product.

[chopper99]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by DamianY2J:

It is this sort of issue that has prevented me from buying any FM 2008. I only bought FM 2007 last month and I'm absolutely loving it. It's the least bugged game since CM01/02 that I've played and I think a reason for that is because I've given it time for patches to be released.

I can now install 07, patch it with the final release and play a fairly problem-free game. It's perfect.

I plan on buying FM 2008 sometime next year. I don't mind being a year behind everyone else. It just means I don't get as frustrated.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone else on the forums who buys the game straight after release. You guys act as the testers of the game, and allow people like me to buy it 12 months later and have bug-free gaming!

On topic, I will say that Miles says that the issue wasn't posted as "high priority" until after the patch was released, and he actually goes as far as to blame the Turkish tester for failing to stick to guidelines. If I was the Turkish tester, I'd be feeling a bit hard done by and feel like Miles' comments have stitched me up.

Anyway, Miles, I appreciate that this could easily come across as "blind and unconstructive criticism", but if you take one thing from my post, please take this:

You are a member of the senior management team at Sports Interactive, therefore any problem is your responsibility. It is not the Turkish tester's fault - it is yours and people like you as their "boss". Before any patch is released, you should personally (with the other members of the management team) quickly start a new game per nation (so if there's 20 nations in the game, start 20 new games), and check everything looks OK at first glance. Go on holiday for a month, and check again. Go on holiday for a year and check around again. Then quit the game.

This won't take you longer than 1-2 days at the absolute maximum, and you would have noticed so many problems this way. You would have noticed this finance problem. You would have noticed defenders ending the season on 30 goals. You would have noticed the Spanish registration bug.

If you were feeling particularly helpful, you could have even left a game running on holiday for 10 years and then checked around it. You might have noticed Man United going bankrupt. You might have noticed a few other niggly problems.

If your testing game didn't notice them, it would have taken 1-2 days of your schedule (at the most) for you personally to have seen them.

You should check your game before releasing anything. As Managing Director, it's your job!

Whether you then decide to fix problems or not, that's your decision. If you decide it's not important enough to fix, then you can leave it (as long as you post your reasons why in the forum so people don't start moaning too much and posting about it every 5 seconds).

I truly appreciate you coming on here and giving your version of events about things. But I'd appreciate it more if you never posted but spent a little bit of time going through your game. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm sorry but what a load of rubbish this all is. For a start you've said yourself that you haven't even played FM08. So with that in mind why are you even commenting at all on the state of it.

If you knew anything about the games industry, or any software industry for that matter, you wouldn't have the rediculous idea that the managing director of a company would be responsible, or have the time, to test the game thoroughly before release.

I'd just like to point out the following to all the people who always claim the game hasn't been tested 'thoroughly' enough:

To test the game 100% thouroughly would take a reasonable sized testing team at least 10 years. Let me clarify:

Even playing for a full 8 hour day a tester would get through one season at most with one team in one league. That's without stopping to actually enter bugs or any of the other tasks that are involved in testing. There are over 100 different teams just in the English leagues so to thoroughly test just the English leagues with all clubs would take one tester a bare minimum of 800 hours, or 100 working days.

So if the testing team consisted of 10 people it would take them an absolute minimum of 10 days JUST to play one season with each team from JUST the English leagues.

In reality there are over 5,000 playable teams in the game. So, with 10 people, that's a bare minimum of 500 days just to play 1 season with every team. And this does not include the fact that every time the code changes you need to re-test everything you tested before to make sure any bugs found have been fixed and any fixes have not had any adverse effects on other parts of the game.

Add to that the need to play many seasons to test the game properly and the need to spend a lot of time looking at every little aspect of the game, meaning what might take us a few minutes to do will take a tester a few hours, and you're probably going to treble the time it would take a tester to complete a season. So to go somewhere towards completely testing the game the minimum you would need to do would be to play many seasons, say at least 10, with every team. So taking everything we've just mentioned into account it will probably take a tester more like 3 days to complete a season, so 30 days to do 10 seasons. Do that with all 5000+ teams and you're looking at 150,000 days, or 410 years. So even 10 testers will need 40 years to do this. And you need to do this every time the code changes to achieve full test coverage.

So lets use the example of playing 20 seasons with 1 team from every league and say for arguments sake that it takes a tester just one working day rather than 3 to complete a season (as highly unlikely as this is). I'm not sure how many playable leagues there are in the game, there 7 in England alone so I'm guessing there are at least 100 in FM. So to play 20 seasons with each team would take 2000 days. With 5 working days in a week that's 400 weeks for 1 tester, or 40 weeks for a 10 man test team. That's getting close to a year and again doesn't take into account any regression testing once the code changes.

All testing is risk based (and this goes for things like government IT systems as well as games) and it's a known fact that exhaustive testing is impossible. And the less linear the software, the greater the number of different possibilities that can occur and the harder it is to test thoroughly.

[fgu82]

Is there anyone who tried the workaround suggested by Miles? Does it work? I am already into a game after a little cheat to fix the issue, but would love to see if that method is effective or not.

[DamianY2J]

Chopper99, I know that testing is a difficult job.

But, if you get 51 testers in a room, and tell them to be 1 team in each nation. Tell them to play the game like a normal user would.

In 1 day, they would have spotted a lot of problems that affected people. Things like the "1v1 bug" which a lot was made of. That would have been spotted pretty quickly.

It didn't take long for people on here to report those problems.

I think the problem lies in the fact that everyone on here appreciates that testing is a complex job, and not everything can be picked up. But, when a normal user plays the game and spots a lot of faults within his first few days playing, I think he's justified to think that the testers should have also seen them.

When patches get released, they should test the effects of these changes.

I think this is descending into a rant now, and sounds like I'm just moaning, but I hope everyone releases it's just because I want so much for the FM games to be as close to perfect as possible. I love the games, and just want them to be better.

I'll end on the point that if I was one of the testers for Turkey, or the person testing Defoe's transfer, I'd feel a little disappointed with myself.

[DamianY2J]

And yes, my post above is a very simplified version of events, and obviously, complex problems will exist that will take more than 1 day to spot and solve.

But the thing that annoys people more than anything is when obvious things are overlooked and these shouldn't be hard to spot.

That's the point.

We accept, understand and will tolerate complex bugs existing because we could see that maybe it'd be tough for testers to have spotted them. But the simple and obvious things. That's the most frustrating for us.

[Dutch Master Bergkamp]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by mattyspurs76:

who cares??? i mean, who plays the turkish leagues? i sure as hell dont! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You sir are an absolute idiot.

Just because you don't play the Turkish league does not mean others don't. And yes, it would ruin their enjoyment.

Stop being a selfish prat who can't look beyond English league.

[msteuk]

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

Some people on this thread have estimated about thousands, then tens of thousands of people in Turkey who are affected by this, and that figure is way off the mark. There may well be that many people in Turkey playing the game, but genuine sales there are tiny, making up about 0.1% of global sales. That doesn't mean bugs in that league are any less important, or that we won't try and fix them, but to suggest that we sell thousands there is not accurate in the slightest. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Erm, isn't that exactly what you're implying?

[Serdar]

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

Guys - we have a workaround that you can use in the data editor to stop this from happening. Please note that you would need to start a new game to make this work.

It is detailed at http://community.sigames.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9482076743/m/9142029083

To summarise, you need to edit the teams affected (Galatasary & Fenerbache) average ticket price DOWN by £5 using the official editor.

We hope this helps, and that you can continue to enjoy the game </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Can you please eloborate this. If possible mention the exact bottom-top limit of ticket prices which would trigger codes overwrite algorithm. I'm a lead game programmer myself working in Finland over 5 years (we dont produce anything to compete with SI) and I can easily see reasons behind such verification code to hide human errors in data editing. But then again this process is not very transparent for others and therefore in this particular incident has to be explained better in case SI expects us(people who already paid) to fix the issue.

I know Turkish researh team will make their own database release soon and if they know exactly how to deal with this, then they can go and apply the best fix for all the affected teams. So far Galatasaray and Fenerbahce has been mentioned but I suspect there may be couuple of more being affected.

I know what it takes to test a game, and when it comes to a game like FM; without any strict game flow and massive level of data it is impossible to test everything in couple of days like some suggested. But this does not change the fact that people who pay for the box wants to play the game right away and it is their right to do it. This may not represent much value for you but I'm member of a small FM club here, we were around 25 active player at 2005 and it was all looking promising after FM introduced 2D match engine but in 2007 we lost half of our friends and this year we are below ten who bought the game. The only reason is the bugs which come with the boxed version. My friends refuse to a buy a game which almost officially suggests players to wait until patch. Every PC game has patches but none of them are as critical as FM patches. I suggest you to widen your Beta test group, I assume most of them are free voluenteers so it is financially feasible. Ask for me; I have bought FM on release date for all the last 4 versions, started to play 2006 only after first patch, 2007 only after second patch and I was planning to start 2008 now after second patch but after reading this Turkish bug I'm not sure anymore. I believe SI wont make 803, very light chances maybe a revised version of 802 but I guess we need some more serious bugs like David Beckham bug of last year so SI can dare to do it. I'm sorry but I wont pre-order FM next year, I wont buy again until I'm convinced it is stable. I make my living by deveoping games and I like to spend money on games but everyone has their limit of patience I know you cant make everyone happy, and some will always complain but this does not mean you can stop supporting paid customers so easily.

Despite not part of the main issuue I also would like add a bit regarding the low sales figures in Turkey and I'm sure similar numbers are coming from some other Eastern Europe and Asian countries. Piracy is a reality in these countries due to poor welfare and there is nothing game industry particularly can do about it. Droping prices will definetely increase sales numbers but I belive total revenue wont grow up so much, majority will always prefer cheaper pirate versions even if it is just %50 low priced. It is easy to make conclusions regarding this from a western point of view but if majority in these countries are living with low standarts all their lives due to low pays, then you can not expect them to care about copyrights of products coming from wealthier countries.

More about particaular case of Turkey, without any exaggeration I can easily say there are over 50000 active FM players in Turkey, on the other hand I'm absoultely not suprised if FM is not sold more than couple of thousands legitimate copies from retailer stores. But still I'm sure that low number already puts FM in the top 5 of PC game sales in Turkey. But on the other hand; there are many Turks(one of the biggest if not the #1 immmigrant population in Europe) living out of Turkey, and they have much better income compared to ones left back home. They do buy legitimate copies of this game and they are counted for Turkey in your charts. In addition there are some FM players in Turkey who buy their copies from online stores which are located out of Turkey. Suprisingly after christmas when FM prices drop in Europe, ordering FM from online store to Turkey from UK is still cheaper than buying it from a retailer in Turkey including all costs. As a summary; if you want to make a healthy sales conclusion regarding the effect of different Nations; I'm afraid your stand alone distribution chart wont be enough. I believe if and when FM online gets massive recognition, you may get some interesting figures regarding this. Anyways this being said; I dont claim SI ignores Turkish any other league for this matter, maybe it is considered during taks prioritization.

thanks for reading.

[fgu82]

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

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

Guys - we have a workaround that you can use in the data editor to stop this from happening. Please note that you would need to start a new game to make this work.

It is detailed at http://community.sigames.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9482076743/m/9142029083

To summarise, you need to edit the teams affected (Galatasary & Fenerbache) average ticket price DOWN by £5 using the official editor.

We hope this helps, and that you can continue to enjoy the game </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Can you please eloborate this. If possible mention the exact bottom-top limit of ticket prices which would trigger codes overwrite algorithm. I'm a lead game programmer myself working in Finland over 5 years (we dont produce anything to compete with SI) and I can easily see reasons behind such verification code to hide human errors in data editing. But then again this process is not very transparent for others and therefore in this particular incident has to be explained better in case SI expects us(people who already paid) to fix the issue.

I know Turkish researh team will make their own database release soon and if they know exactly how to deal with this, then they can go and apply the best fix for all the affected teams. So far Galatasaray and Fenerbahce has been mentioned but I suspect there may be couuple of more being affected.

I know what it takes to test a game, and when it comes to a game like FM; without any strict game flow and massive level of data it is impossible to test everything in couple of days like some suggested. But this does not change the fact that people who pay for the box wants to play the game right away and it is their right to do it. This may not represent much value for you but I'm member of a small FM club here, we were around 25 active player at 2005 and it was all looking promising after FM introduced 2D match engine but in 2007 we lost half of our friends and this year we are below ten who bought the game. The only reason is the bugs which come with the boxed version. My friends refuse to a buy a game which almost officially suggests players to wait until patch. Every PC game has patches but none of them are as critical as FM patches. I suggest you to widen your Beta test group, I assume most of them are free voluenteers so it is financially feasible. Ask for me; I have bought FM on release date for all the last 4 versions, started to play 2006 only after first patch, 2007 only after second patch and I was planning to start 2008 now after second patch but after reading this Turkish bug I'm not sure anymore. I believe SI wont make 803, very light chances maybe a revised version of 802 but I guess we need some more serious bugs like David Beckham bug of last year so SI can dare to do it. I'm sorry but I wont pre-order FM next year, I wont buy again until I'm convinced it is stable. I make my living by deveoping games and I like to spend money on games but everyone has their limit of patience I know you cant make everyone happy, and some will always complain but this does not mean you can stop supporting paid customers so easily.

Despite not part of the main issuue I also would like add a bit regarding the low sales figures in Turkey and I'm sure similar numbers are coming from some other Eastern Europe and Asian countries. Piracy is a reality in these countries due to poor welfare and there is nothing game industry particularly can do about it. Droping prices will definetely increase sales numbers but I belive total revenue wont grow up so much, majority will always prefer cheaper pirate versions even if it is just %50 low priced. It is easy to make conclusions regarding this from a western point of view but if majority in these countries are living with low standarts all their lives due to low pays, then you can not expect them to care about copyrights of products coming from wealthier countries.

More about particaular case of Turkey, without any exaggeration I can easily say there are over 50000 active FM players in Turkey, on the other hand I'm absoultely not suprised if FM is not sold more than couple of thousands legitimate copies from retailer stores. But still I'm sure that low number already puts FM in the top 5 of PC game sales in Turkey. But on the other hand; there are many Turks(one of the biggest if not the #1 immmigrant population in Europe) living out of Turkey, and they have much better income compared to ones left back home. They do buy legitimate copies of this game and they are counted for Turkey in your charts. In addition there are some FM players in Turkey who buy their copies from online stores which are located out of Turkey. Suprisingly after christmas when FM prices drop in Europe, ordering FM from online store to Turkey from UK is still cheaper than buying it from a retailer in Turkey including all costs. As a summary; if you want to make a healthy sales conclusion regarding the effect of different Nations; I'm afraid your stand alone distribution chart wont be enough. I believe if and when FM online gets massive recognition, you may get some interesting figures regarding this. Anyways this being said; I dont claim SI ignores Turkish any other league for this matter, maybe it is considered during taks prioritization.

thanks for reading. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Top class post!

[Mike7077]

Just wanted to see if anyone could clear this up. If you don't load the Turkish leagues, will Galatasaray and Fenerbahce be okay?

[DamianY2J]

I'm a little fed up of the excuse of "every PC has bugs" to be honest.

FM 2008 has had several bugs that made a part of the game unplayable. I'm thinking of the Spanish registration bug and this Turkish finances bug as two examples. For people starting a game in one of those two countries, the game becomes unplayable.

I have never heard of a mainstream game having bugs that make the game unplayable.

I won't mention console games because I'm assuming they're easier to debug, but look at any other PC game in the top 20 Chart. Now, please tell me how many of those games have bugs that render a part of it unplayable.

I know people will moan at me for using the word unplayable but I'll make it simple - if the game does not work in the way it is designed to, and the bugs affect major aspects of the game such as finances or players which means you cannot manage the team properly, then it becomes unplayable (or at the very least, pointlessly playable).

I'd genuinely be interested to find out, as so many people say "they are bugs in every PC game". Please list for me the bugs that render a part of the game unplayable in any other PC game in the top 20 Chart.

[Mike7077]

Incidentally, has anyone noticed that in the locked thread regarding the workarounds for the three known issues, Miles apologises for any convenience caused?

[Miles Jacobson]

Serdar - if you read the post at the link I gave, it has been explained fully.

[Miles Jacobson]

Mike7077 - thanks for pointing out that typo. Will go and change it now. As for your other point, I haven't seen any ill effects from not having the Turkish league running.

DamainY2J - I've already responded to your posts, as has someone else. I won't be commenting to you further, as you have ignored what both of the people who replied to you have said. The other things have been discussed many times, and answered many times.

msteuk - no, it's there to ensure that there are no implications towards that direction.

[Serdar]

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

Serdar - if you read the post at the link I gave, it has been explained fully. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Another member in that topic has revelaled his test results with the given solution and according to him; it does not help sufficiently.

quoting from perpetua:

------ first message ---------------------

Riz: I just did a test by converting the ticket price values to the values they were on the 8.0.1 data.

Fenerbahce:

Gate receipts 24.63M YTL (should be around 14 million YTL)

Season tickets: 9.11M YTL (should be around 47.8 million YTL)

Merchandising 9.96m YTL (should be around 17M YTL)

Fenerbahce are still losing 30 million YTL. Despite the drastic and unrealistic increase in gate receipts and the total increase in stadium income via tickets after adjusting ticket prices, expenditures also rose in the form of taxes, match day expenses, ground maintenance and other expenditures.

Galatasaray:

Gate receipts: 8.19M YTL (Should be around 13 million YTL)

Season Tickets: 2.79M YTL (Should be around 3 million YTL - so this is good)

Merchandising: 2.91M YTL (should be around 10 million YTL)

Galatasaray are still losing 20 million YTL.

Change in ticket prices appears not to have made any significant change in this team's finances at all despite reverting back to the 8.0.1 levels.

So I guess we can categorically say that dropping the ticket prices to levels they were on the 8.0.1 database doesn't resolve the issue at all.

-----second message---------

Riz: Did a further test by only reducing the average ticket price (the prior one also adjusted the season ticket price to the 8.0.1 levels) bu 5 GBP.

Fenerbahce:

Gate receipts: 16.83M YTL

Season tickets: 9.86M YTL

Merchandising: 9.21M YTL

Team still lost 31 million YTL (not including transfers)

Galatasaray:

Gate receipts: 12.37M YTL

Season tickets: 3.15M YTL

Merchandising: 2.87M YTL

Overall, losses drop to 12M YTL. The gate receipts and season tickets are sensible however.

I think he is one of the head researchers in Turkey so he probably knows what he is doing. Assuming that he is correct these teams still lose a lot of money as default and eventually they can not challange ever for any major trophy in long run. Did you or any other SI internal testers tried if this fix really works for a full career game?

[msteuk]

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

msteuk - no, it's there to ensure that there are no implications towards that direction. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm not sure why you would mention how few people buy the game in Turkey if you weren't implying that it provided a partial excuse to a mistake in the Turkish leagues.

[Miles Jacobson]

msteuk - if you read the full thread, you would know why. Someone has claimed in an earlier post that he thought that between 15,000 & 20,000 people bought the game in Turkey. I was responding to that, saying that it wasn't true, and followed up that that didn't matter anyway.

[Yasko75]

Just a question, does the solution we get in the 8.02 - 3 known issues and workarounds thread work as intended? And what about Besiktas, do we also have to make change to its ticke price in order to have its finances work?

[Doruk]

Hey Yasko its me waq No problems with Besiktas.

By the way Serdar that other member who has tested the new suggestions out is the Turkish Head Researcher

[Yasko75]

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

Hey Yasko its me waq No problems with Besiktas.

By the way Serdar that other member who has tested the new suggestions out is the Turkish Head Researcher </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanx man , than it actually might be worth playing with 8.02 and see Fener&Gala crush and burn...

See you in xtratime...

[fgu82]

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

msteuk - if you read the full thread, you would know why. Someone has claimed in an earlier post that he thought that between 15,000 & 20,000 people bought the game in Turkey. I was responding to that, saying that it wasn't true, and followed up that that didn't matter anyway. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I was the one to make that claim - turns out to be wrong, however when you take into account the app. 3M Turkish immigrant community in Europe (and the fact that it's easier to find the game in retailers throughout Europe + those people are in better financial conditions when compared to Turks living in Turkey), I still think this particular mistake affects that many people. The key point to understand is unlike England, where many players choose to play with lower league clubs that they support in real life, when it comes to us, we usually choose Fenerbahce, Galatasaray or Besiktas as 90% of the Turks worldwide support either one of those three.

Still waiting feedback regarding the effectiveness of the workaround suggested by Miles?

[Daniel Marques]

Dear Miles,

In the Portuguese League I find a couple of things that would be good to get it fixed:

- When cliking in the Player Hugo Almeida, the games exit by itself;

- Player Grimi, is loaned to Sporting CLub of Portugal not to Sporting Gijon;

- When on the team menu, when going down the scroll, and you change a position, then istead of staying like that, he goes back up, it is anoying.

- For me the information that was in key player in the end of the game is to much and repetitive.

For now it is the mistakes I found.

Is there going to be another release of a new patch?

Daniel Marques

[Reggae Boyz]

http://www.fmupdates.co.uk/2008/turkish-finance-fix/#more-71

[Miles Jacobson]

Daniel Marques - if you think you've found a bug, please post it in the bugs forum (each one in a seperate thread). Almeida is perfectly clickable on my game, for the record.

[Chas (Psyatika)]

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

- When cliking in the Player Hugo Almeida, the games exit by itself; </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I just clicked on him without a problem. Maybe it's your tactics?

[bleventozturk]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Chas (Psyatika):

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

- When cliking in the Player Hugo Almeida, the games exit by itself; </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I just clicked on him without a problem. Maybe it's your tactics? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

What do you mean "maybe"? It's got to be his tactics!

[fgu82]

"Re-calculates the ticket price to a lower level", because the brilliant(!) code thinks that much of a price is too high for Turkey.

It is proven with official statistics that the average match day ticket price of Fenerbahce is the second in Europe (yes, higher than Chelsea, ManU, Barca, Real)after Arsenal who are trying to increase their stadium revenue as much as possible after the recent move. Fact, ok?

Now, why did SI ignore this? And by SI, I mean the Turkish research team. They had to make sure that the average ticket price between big Turkish clubs and the rest must be miles apart. Unfair? Yes! Unreal? NO! Yet, some stupid coding fixes real life to SI reality!

Miles suggested a workaround for this situation but feedback shows that it doesn't work! Any other suggestions rather than using FMM, which is what I am doing right now? - and believe me I don't like it!

[Guest mmrnmhrm]

Well, this is a mess, to be sure; and the percentage of sales made in Turkey should have absolutely nothing to do with it being priority number 1, as it seems pretty much every thorn was ironed by the final patch.

The thing is, Turks are quite well spread out around the world; I am myself a Turkish guy, have always been an avid, if not fanatical FM player my whole life, and I've been living in US for years now and almost always play with Galatasaray. Therefore the contribution to the sales of FM by Turks, not necessarily only those in Turkey, are rather high, higher than 0.1% for sure..

Yet, this is not the real problem, problem is, the issue remains unsolved still; and there is no word from SI, at least telling the disheartened players that they are working on some solution. Obviously, lowering the ticket prices by 5 quids weren't enough, with both clubs losing outrageous amounts of money according to the fine job by Serdar. And, if I'm not mistaken, the TV income for the Turkish league, the major source of income for many clubs, still hasn't been fixed; so is the frustrating U20 problem.

Miles, in short, I can't shake the feeling that the attention paid to the level of detail and realism for the Turkish leagues aren't quite on par with others. I should assume that the beta testing for 8.0.2 wasn't purely for couple leagues but for all of them; and if anyone tested the Turkish leagues and compared the data to the previous versions of the game, which a beta tester should do, then I cannot see how a glaring error like this could not be noticed..

Hopefully you guys are working on some sort of a fix as I write this, and will re-establish the good faith you've been building all these years.

[Serdar]

I just realised that SI actually did a new release of 802 and according to Miles it has answers to this issue. can someone with plenty of time try it out and let us know. On my behalf; thanks to SI for at least giving it another shot. I believe many appreciate these efforts.

[Riz Remes]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by fgu82:

It is proven with official statistics that the average match day ticket price of Fenerbahce is the second in Europe (yes, higher than Chelsea, ManU, Barca, Real)after Arsenal who are trying to increase their stadium revenue as much as possible after the recent move. Fact, ok?

Now, why did SI ignore this? And by SI, I mean the Turkish research team. They had to make sure that the average ticket price between big Turkish clubs and the rest must be miles apart. Unfair? Yes! Unreal? NO! Yet, some stupid coding fixes real life to SI reality!

</div></BLOCKQUOTE>

The issue behind the ticket prices has been explained a few times already, but here we go once more. If you look at the other thread about the turkish issue and the experiment from which the partial workaround was suggested, you'll see that between 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 the average ticket prices in the database for the problematic two teams changed quite a lot. This meant the new values no longer fit within the window expected by the code, even though the earlier ones did fit in well. Which in turn meant that the game reverted to using a lower ticket price it calculated itself.

After this issue was noticed and we got the heads up on it, the problem was located and the relevant code updated to match the code with the new ticket price levels set in the database. However, since this happened just after the original 8.0.2 was released, these adjustments could only be included in the revised version of the patch.

So, the issue was not ignored and no matter how much everyone loves conspiracy theories, we are not trying to bend the figures from the database to fit any other reality than the real life the database is trying to model. With the latest build, all turkish ticket prices (as well as season tickets) should be exactly the same in the game as they are set in the DB.

Hope this clarifies it again

[fgu82]

Thanks SI, well done! I am really enjoying playing version 8.0.2 and now that I can pick my favourite team, it's going to be even better.

Sorry for the name of the thread, it will appear on top after this post . But I think you guys responded very well and did your best. Thanks again!

[aliatam]

So where can we download the good patch for the Turkish league? is it 8.0.2?

[aliatam]

I am asking this because I am using 8.2 patch and my team's finance is still in RED just after couple of weeks..

Could you please tell me what I must do to fix this problem? Re-download patch 8.0.2 again? If yes, please give me the correct link for the patch that fixes the turkish league finance problems..Thanks

[Suzie MUFC]

It was fixed a few days after the first patch was released. You'll need to redownload the 8.0.2 patch (it's been automatically replaced) and you might have to start a new game to get the best results.

[aliatam]

Thanks for the help.. I am downloading it right now.

[aliatam]

Is there any chance to confirm that the Patch 8.0.2 I downloaded is the right one?

Or it can be a Patch 8.0.2 that is downloadable from any mirror/site?