Possible Dafuge and Gundo rule changes - FM2009

[Irish Researcher]

In eager anticipation of a new season of dafuge and gundo challenges I would like to propose a small alteration to the rules, which either author can approve or distance themselves from!

Rule Change:

On starting a new game/challenge - players are permitted to select the 'load all players' option - and in turn can load all players from that particular country.

e.g. for the dafuge challenge, the player can load all players from England instead of having to inherit a greyed out team - we all strive for as much reality as possible and this will certainly help!

From a Northern Ireland perspective, as the NI researcher it does annoy me that the lower league clubs aren't loaded unless specifically requested by the player - wouldn't you guys like to see some real names of Knockbreda, Mosside and Killyleagh players?!

Cheers and hope you take my thoughts on board,

T.A.F.K.A. niresearch

[PaulHartman71]

i'd also like something to do with feeder clubs introduced, as having Premiership sides reserves/U18's is not only unrealistic, but a massive assist for anyone competing.

[Irish Researcher]

Yes I would second that proposal too!

Players competing in the the non-league structures (blue square prem, north or south) of the dafuge challenge cannot have a top tier or second tier club selected as a feeder club i.e. Premier Division or Championship clubs.

[Sazchu]

i think it has been disgussed that you can(or should) retain all players in the continental challenges(gundo, dafuge, rancer....) in FM09 for the added realistic thingie also so that the work that researchers have done is not wasted.

[rlipscombe]

i agree that it's a good idea. the researchers do a great job in providing accurate information on a club, especially at lower league level and it's a shame that they don't get the recognition they deserve.

i for one would like to see it added. IMO it adds to the challenge a little too.

[dafuge]

I've already mentioned this as a rule change in my challenge, loading English players to make sure we have full squads has already been added as a rule.

Parent clubs is still something under debate, I'd appreciate a few more opinions in my thread from people who will be playing the challenge for FM09.

[PaulHartman71]

I did think that an idea in your thread was quite good though dafuge, that if you had a parent club you could only have one 2 divisions higher than you? I thought that was quite good tbh

[bermybhoy]

I did think that an idea in your thread was quite good though dafuge, that if you had a parent club you could only have one 2 divisions higher than you? I thought that was quite good tbh

Personally I'd get rid of the parent clubs altogether to maintain an even playing field, but if they're allowed I think this is the best bet as well.

For Gundo's challenge, is there a specific reason that you can only load one nation? Would it be useful to be able to load a few of them, with a rule that you can move on to another country (starting at the bottom of course) only when a) you've completed it, or b) have concluded you'll never complete it in that country (after say 15-20 seasons).

To me this would make sense as it allows continuity in the same game world and allows you to move to a bigger country if you've selected one of those that from 08 appear to be impossible. As raised elsewhere the static league reputations which are the main source of this problem in 08, are still present in 09.

[MachinegunHead]

Personally I'd get rid of the parent clubs altogether to maintain an even playing field, but if they're allowed I think this is the best bet as well.

For Gundo's challenge, is there a specific reason that you can only load one nation? Would it be useful to be able to load a few of them, with a rule that you can move on to another country (starting at the bottom of course) only when a) you've completed it, or b) have concluded you'll never complete it in that country (after say 15-20 seasons).

To me this would make sense as it allows continuity in the same game world and allows you to move to a bigger country if you've selected one of those that from 08 appear to be impossible. As raised elsewhere the static league reputations which are the main source of this problem in 08, are still present in 09.

I think that it has to be left at one league loaded just to maintain some consistency between challenges, and to give no advantage to people with supercomputers who can load all leagues at the same time, and hence have a bigger pool of players to pick from. The static league reputations make completing Gundo's Challenge a more amazing feat anyway

[McTavish]

While I only dipped into Dafuge's challenge and didn't attempt Gundo's, I did play Isseemonster's South American Challenge which followed the same format.

I chose to play in Uruguay and I technically broke the rules by loading all the players from that nation - it seemed like a sensible idea for all the reasons mentioned above, but it seemed to cause some rather unusual behaviour from the AI.

At the start of the game there were significantly more unattached players, not just Uruguayans but other South American nationalities too. After a season or two it affected the balance of some clubs. More than a few signed vast amounts of random players, squads of 80+ etc, which caused spiralling wage bills, clubs going into receivership etc. It made signing decent players surprisingly hard because higher profile AI clubs were buying players they didn't need. After 10 seasons or so it balanced out, I suppose because a lot of players retired and the game put less newgens bak in, until it reached some predetermined ratio between number of players in the database and number of playable teams, perhaps.

Either way, in my experience the added realism you get from loading extra players is more than offset by the way the AI teams respond. Maybe this has been fixed in FM09 but I'd recommend checking into it before changing any rules. Just my 2 cents.

[Lower Leagues Rule]

I love starting fresh with no players as it starts, but yes I think that this rule change of load all players actually adds a bit to the game, as it means to start with you most likely cannot just sign the best 22 regens for your level and use them to make yourself unbeatable.

[Walcott\'s Wonderkids]

I'm not a regular competitor in this challenge, despite my various starts over the years so maybe I'm not the greatest person to offer an opinion on this matter, but for what it's worth:

1. The issue with Parent clubs does mean that rubbish teams can end up with one or two players who can effectively win them promotion by themselves. In my opinion, I would introduce a rule that you can only have a feeder club if they are only up to 2 divisions above you:

ie: In BSN/S you can only have a parent club up to League 2 status.

In BSP you can only have a parent club up to League 1 status.

In League 2 and above you can have a parent club of Championship status. etc

I reckon this best reflects real life circumstances. Obviously if you struggle as a club but your parent club rockets up the divisions then you should still be allowed to keep them even if the league difference is more than 2 divisions.

2. As regards to 'retain all players', I've always wondered why it wasn't compulsory to have that ticked. It makes it a more difficult challenge as you have to get rid of deadwood first. If the issue is with regards to people running the game on min specs, if you're loading all the divisions in England with all of their associated players, ticking retain all english players will surely only add a very small % of extra players to the database.

Therefore I would vote for it to be compulsory for you to tick all players when loading a dafuge or gundo challenge game.

[ssestig]

i agree totally with ww

[DodgeeD]

Hmmm, interesting discussion.

I can't really comment on the feeder clubs as I've only taken on Gundo's challenge and I was never able to get the board to agree to a parent club there!

As for loading all players, it could make it more difficult as WW said, to sort out the squad and play with limited finances to improve the squad. Does anyone know if that would affect the staff too? I found that attracting decent staff to the club was often more difficult than players!

[Gundo]

Some good ideas mentioned here guy and gals, alot of which I'd been mulling over in my own head for several weeks now.

As for Gundo's FM09 Challenge then...

I have no problem implementing the load all players from your particular chosen nation. It will certainly add to the realism and keep gamers more interested early on by having more real players.

Parent clubs have been a constant debate in my challenge and in dafuge's. You do tend to get an unrealistic amount of high quality players on-loan from your parent clubs relevant to your current division. I would be inclined to ban the use of users being allowed parent clubs full stop, although others my argue against this? More feedback/opinion would be helpful on this possible guideline change...

In terms of the current layout for the challenge, the guidelines will stay pretty much as they are unless anything else comes to light late on.

I must also add that I'm not overly disappointed with the static reputations thing, as others have said it will keep the difficulty fairly high. If they where to change the way the league reputations work in future FM's I'd want it to work well and not just introduced on whim, In my opinion it would take some time to get right anyway, so definitely something for a future version.

And lastly, I'm thinking of re-naming Gundo's challenge to 'Gundo's FM09 European Adventure Challenge', or rather shortening it.

More constructive chat welcome.

[ssestig]

why not limit how many loanees that the squad contains/loanees for the season?

[michaeltmurrayuk]

I'm not a regular competitor in this challenge' date=' despite my various starts over the years so maybe I'm not the greatest person to offer an opinion on this matter, but for what it's worth:

2. As regards to 'retain all players', I've always wondered why it wasn't compulsory to have that ticked. It makes it a more difficult challenge as you have to get rid of deadwood first. If the issue is with regards to people running the game on min specs, if you're loading all the divisions in England with all of their associated players, ticking retain all english players will surely only add a very small % of extra players to the database.

Therefore I would vote for it to be compulsory for you to tick all players when loading a dafuge or gundo challenge game. [/quote']

Loading all english players on fm08 added an extra 6,000 players and 2,000 staff to the game - which is over 50% more players on each database size.

[basic_flaw]

I've only started the 2008 challenge recnetly, but I'm going to go for the '09 one. With regards to parent clubs trying to put a rule on it is going to be impossible. In '08 I'm Tiverton. They automatically have Argyle as feeder club. And I got a few under-18 loans through that agreement. Now they were better than my average squad player. Why would I sign them if they weren't?! Now in real life Argyle send under 18's to Tiverton (I'm an Argyle fan). So to ban feeder clubs would be to ban reality in a sense. The main problem in '08 is that Argyle's youth players were disproportionately good (imo). But in my eyes that's no different to me being able to sign Hadji. I guess I have 2 main points from this ramble.

1.) You can't have a half-way house. You either use 'em or ban 'em.

and 2.) The main problem wasn't unrealistic players signing for you. It was realistic signings of players unrealistically good.

[rlipscombe]

Some good ideas mentioned here guy and gals, alot of which I'd been mulling over in my own head for several weeks now.

.................

And lastly, I'm thinking of re-naming Gundo's challenge to 'Gundo's FM09 European Adventure Challenge', or rather shortening it.

More constructive chat welcome.

i would like to say with regards to the name change, i'd like to say on behalf of JoseRR that changing the name to your suggestion may cause confusion for some with the small club from big euro nation challenge. I think that there needs to be some distinction between the two in terms of title. as to what it is, i don't know.....

[ssestig]

how about gundo's euro09?

[gaijin]

When managing in Sweden, I got AIK as my parent team and was able to get players on loan who were decent Premier Division players and not the run of the mill sort you get playing three divisions below. As a result, I coasted to two successive championships and promotions. It seemed really unbalanced as none of the other teams seemed to go down this route. In the end, I think I dropped about 8 points in 40 odd games in my two seasons in the bottom two divisions.

However, the opposite is the case in somewhere like Northern Ireland, where the standard of loans from the Premier League is not that much of a difference from the bog standard players you can already acquire at that level.

In my next game, I’m thinking of taking on Switzerland or the Czech Republic. In cases like that, the loan system is not so much of a huge advantage for teams, its simply a necessity to survive and the de rigueur for that part of the world for teams with small rep and money.

I think the whole point of the challenge, is to create an equal sort of playing field. True, guys in Norn Iron are going to have it much tougher and easier in certain situations than somebody managing in Switzerland or Belgium, but to restrict the loan system would kind of make things more harder depending on what league you are in…

I think in some leagues, you simply have to use the loan system and its probably not that much of an advantage depending on how the leagues are structured. At the end of the day, I think the decision should ultimately rest with the manager of the team depending on how he or she sees the situation regarding the loan system in the country they are playing in.

[Gilbster]

As someone that started Dafuge's challenge last year and then had a decent shot at Gundo's challenge, I feel that parent clubs should be allowed. When I eventually got a club in Dafuge's let me have a parent club, and i had my fair share of boards that didnt see the point even in the BSS/N, although it made the first few seasons a bit easier, by the time in England you get loan restrictions, it gets a lot harder and perhaps having that slight bit of luck by getting the good parent club may make people stick at it for the first few seasons.

If we are now making people load the players from the the country we are playing in, then it will as stated elsewhere in this thread already be a bit harder for players to start with. Personally I will try to pick a club that has a few people in it as possible, because I love building from scratch.

If anything I think one of the issues that may need to be looked at for this year, was the really good islander regens that came through each year, that could be signed for free, and then sold for a decent price, and in the case of some of them, played for the club for years and were carrying the team, much the way some peoples parent club signees were at the start.

Its late so that may not have made much sense, but basically I am not positive restricting parent club usage in the challenges is the best idea, but perhaps a reccomendation but not a hard rule.

[Quackje]

I've always been against having parent clubs and so I never ask for them, I hate having players on loan at my club too but sometimes that is required. I do however really like to have a feeder team in the league below to loan out possibly talents to easily

Importantly for this sort of challenge, I think its important that we kick off with all the options at the start, the club for top europe but not england type challenge never took off basically because of when it was launched I think. Interesting the pretty late coming Asian one seemed to get a lot of support. Maybe if we try to make sure there is: England, Top Europe, Bottom Europe, Asia, Americas, Stick the south african league into Asia I guess (would work better if there were more african leagues)

[rancer890]

I've always been against having parent clubs and so I never ask for them, I hate having players on loan at my club too but sometimes that is required. I do however really like to have a feeder team in the league below to loan out possibly talents to easily

Importantly for this sort of challenge, I think its important that we kick off with all the options at the start, the club for top europe but not england type challenge never took off basically because of when it was launched I think. Interesting the pretty late coming Asian one seemed to get a lot of support. Maybe if we try to make sure there is: England, Top Europe, Bottom Europe, Asia, Americas, Stick the south african league into Asia I guess (would work better if there were more african leagues)

The same few people kept posting in my thread, hence the number of posts and views it got.

And Razer82 has already decided to launch the FM09 South American Challenge.

I'm not sure if I can include South Africa into my challenge. They can't win the Asian Champions League after all.

In my challenge, parent clubs don't make a big difference tbh. The users playing my challenge didn't rely on parent clubs. I only loaned players the first couple years and then stuck with my own players.

[McTavish]

Loading all english players on fm08 added an extra 6,000 players and 2,000 staff to the game - which is over 50% more players on each database size.

That's what I was talking about. For the first few seasons this caused some seriously flawed AI behaviour in FM08, which for me affected the realism of the save and my overall enjoyment of it. As to whether it made the challenge easier or more difficult, that's debatable - yes there are more players available but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's any easier to sign the good ones. Unless the Fm09 database contains significantly more data from non-league teams than the FM08 one, all but the most reputable selectable teams (e.g AFC Wimbledon) will still consist of nearly all greyed out players so I doubt it will have much effect on those of us who prefer starting from scratch. I'd vote to make "retain all players" from a nation optional until it's been proven that the AI responds normally with such a large database.

W.r.t. parent clubs, it's clearly not balanced to to be loaning 120+ CA players in the conference, but as someone mentioned earlier it's much more reasonable to be loaning ~100 CA players in the Swiss second division etc. So for Dafuge's challenge I'd agree with those that posted earlier; no parent clubs more than 2 divisions higher up. For Gundo's it's a little bit more difficult to create a level playing field, but considering that the challenge will be inherently more difficult in some leagues than others I don't think restrictions on parent clubs will make a huge amount of difference either way.

[Razer82]

And Razer82 has already decided to launch the FM09 South American Challenge.

Indeed I will be, but I'm unsure as to weather or not to include any additional rules regarding parent clubs and retention of players.

Personally I think that Parent clubs are now a part of the game and if you can get high quality players to come on loan to you in the BSP or lower then why not. I agree that it's not always realistic, but why not take advantage of it as we won't be able to adjust the behaviour of the other teams within the league to match and we could end up with people complaining that they weren't able to get promoted becuase of teams around them having a number of premiership players on loan.

With regards to retaining players, I think that it should be an option that people can use if they want to, so will probably put it into my challenge.

[daemonic]

My thoughts are in the Dafuge thread.

Link....More Linkage.....yet another Link

[Quackje]

I'm not sure if I can include South Africa into my challenge. They can't win the Asian Champions League after all.

What I meant was that a thread with just South Africa in would be a bit small since its just one league and not so massivly (over {in my opinion})played as the English league. So I was thinking where it would be best to slot it into

[rancer890]

What I meant was that a thread with just South Africa in would be a bit small since its just one league and not so massivly (over {in my opinion})played as the English league. So I was thinking where it would be best to slot it into

I'll have to change the name to rancer890's small club to big club Asian/African challenge.

Do you know the league reset date for the South African league?

[basic_flaw]

I don't intend to play it but couldn't you just edit the South African league into the Asian Champions League? Or would that be messing with reality too much?!

[Quackje]

I was not implying to edit the league into playing in a different competition at all, these challenges are not for messing around with the editor like that. The whole point of it would be winning the african champions league its just in order to try and keep that challenge active and fresh it might be better to allow it to be in one of the other threads.

I just ran it through on 08, South Africa resets on 13th or 14th July, it skipped over those two dates.

[rancer890]

I was not implying to edit the league into playing in a different competition at all, these challenges are not for messing around with the editor like that. The whole point of it would be winning the african champions league its just in order to try and keep that challenge active and fresh it might be better to allow it to be in one of the other threads.

I just ran it through on 08, South Africa resets on 13th or 14th July, it skipped over those two dates.

Let me think it over. I need approval from most of the regulars in my thread first.

[Quackje]

It was just a suggestion to try and make it so every league has that style of challenge in a pretty active thread.

[kccircle]

Also, I have a preference for screenshots to be 'onscreen' rather than having to click a link. I understand some prefer to tie the link into their story and I appreciate that.

Is there a general preference for screenies to be onscreen or not?

[Razer82]

Also, I have a preference for screenshots to be 'onscreen' rather than having to click a link. I understand some prefer to tie the link into their story and I appreciate that.

Is there a general preference for screenies to be onscreen or not?

I would think that having links is better as too many pictures to load on one page means it takes ages to load before you can read it properly.

[daemonic]

Have to agree with Razer, I only click into a few links anyway and some people have 20+ images included in an update.

[Dons]

Regarding parent clubs. As Jimbo said in another thread, its a game feature (and rl freature) For me, to keep parent clubs should be part of the game. 2 long term loans and 8 short team loans in a season, will ofc make some impact, if you have a PRM club as parent, but, it does seem harder in 09 to get players from PRM to play in low divisions, and especially the better players. At best you will get some fairly good or better than average players.

To play with all players loaded does indeed give further challenge. You can choose to kick your current squad and try to reassemble it (and go into the red with atleast -300k) Having under 1000 attendance, will at best take you to end season with -150k (assuming you can keep the wage budget)

To sum it up - givs parent clubs