I bought from D2D and my story is completely disinteresting. I paid for the game with no problems, I downloaded the game with no problems, and now I'm playing the game with no problems. I havent tried to do anything fancy, like re-install on a new machine, but so far I've had no problems.

So two big thumbs up for D2D from me.

I haven't experienced that yet, but I'll keep trying - seemingly your board will actually *ask* you what kind of feeder club you want: one for merchandising, for first-option on good talent, a place to send your rookies, etc. Also, I think the nation from which the feeder clubs are chosen are influenced by where you send your scouts.

Sure beats loading-reloading 20 times until you get the option you want :)

I requested a parent club in my last season and chose West Ham from the list of options. They offered a number of players on loan that first season, but haven't offered up anything in season two, although I successfully requested a couple players to come.

Keep in mind that 06 was my first version and I skipped 07 (only because I play slow and it took me awhile to figure out the football world) so I might me mentioning some things that were already in 07.

I love the GUI, to me at least, it is soooo easy to get where I want to go. From the original screenies I thought I'd hate the color scheme but that hasn't been the case at all. I have found it very pleasing to the eye. The only thing in it I don't care for is the split news\inbox. I would prefer one box with filters I could control.

Some have criticized the 2d and match engine (long shots, closing down etc), now maybe it's my American ignorance when it comes to football but I haven't seen anything post patch that really jumps out at me as a huge problem. Too me the 2d is so much smoother than 06. I can see situations where through balls can\should be played developing and then see my player try to make the appropriate pass. I play as Cambridge City in the BSS and with 07 have been able to run a short passing, ball control tactic. In 06 for me to be successful it was get the ball and hoof it down the pitch.

Compared to 06 the player interaction is much improved.

Scouting, both assigning and reports, is much better. Getting differing opinions from you coaches and scouts on everyone on your squad and having to decide which scout or coach you trust the most is fun.

Feedback from the board.
Feedback from the fans after every match.
Expectations of the board spelled out, in some detail, at the beginning of the season.

Hell, I singed my best striker and leading scorer to a contract extension at
13,000 pounds per year plus incentives. Now my talented third ST (squad rotation role), making 7,500 per year, thinks he should be getting the same kind of money. If that was in 06 I didn't see it.

I'm loving the game and find it a huge improvement over 06. It's also nice to start a game already having some knowledge about how the football world works. With 06 it was a long slow 3 month process before I felt I had a handle on the game. With 08 I was able to just jump in and play mostly due to the help I received from members of this board, like you FM, two years ago.

Sweed, other than differenciated board confidence and different GUI design, the rest was in the 07 version in some form.

As I mentioned before, I have put the 08 version down (well, shipped it off to Frogman to be exact). A couple of things just drove me nuts with the 08 version, but I remain hopeful they'll be remedied in the next patch.

First, either the match engine or the 2D representation of it are very infuriating. Playing a counter-attacking style with pacey forwards and wings simply led to my players getting behind the defense and pounding shot after shot directly to the opposition keeper. I do not exagerate when I say 90% of my shots were straight at the keeper. It was comical how my players would get into a great goal scoring chance with over half the goal wide open, but still manage to shoot directly where the keeper was, even when he was on the complete opposite side of the goal mouth. At least in 07 there was some variation -- shooting over the bar (more rare in 08), shooting it just wide (very rare in 08), shooting towards the open net but the keeper makes a great reflex save (can't remember ever seeing it in 08), shooting it at the keeper but he can't save it (again not in 08), trying to round the keeper (rare in 07, but never in 08), the keeper parries the shot but not away from danger (every once in a while in 08), or passing it back across the middle trying to find another attacking run (again never seen it in 08). Frankly, there are too many chances being created with some tactics and it seems finishing has been nerfed in order to keep scores down when more attacking chances need to be destroyed by mishandling the ball, great defensive play or tackles, or blocked shots. Watching the 08 matches is like a game of ping-pong with the opposition keeper. Not enjoyable.

The second big problem I had was with the new board confidence features. It appears to me the boards weigh each competition equally, or at least terribly over-value 2nd tier cup competitions. I got fired after taking a BSN team to the promotion playoffs after the media thought we were relagation candidates mainly because the board was unhappy that we got bounced out of all 3 cups early. I can understand wanting FA Cup success because getting to round 3 proper or better in that competition can mean a huge payoff, but the FA Trophy or Sentana Shield? Who cares. When it happened a second time with Worchester City, I was done with 08 in its current form.

I just scored a fluke goal on an indirect free kick with no one else touching it. I thought that that wouldnt be allowed, am I wrong?

...I hate the fact that I took over a new team and they were knocked out of their cup competition before I even got there yet the board is disappointed in me due to there poor performance there....I wasnt even here then, so cut me some F'n slack!

D2D worked great for me too. I've bought quite a few games from them with no issues.

I was finally able to get WWSM to generate a preview email that has all the codes needed purportedly to unlock the game. However, the application doesn't permit copy-and-paste, nor is there are right-click menu. So I took a screenshot ans sent it off to Boonty.

This morning their response was "you need to cut and paste this into an email in order for us to generate your key".

:rolleyes:

So it's D2D for me, since I'm not waiting until Monday or Tuesday for another round of Boonty tech-support hell.

that's fucked up. They can go fuck themselves. A screenshot ought be better than "cut n paste"

It's funny when two people have the same game and have wildly different views. I have had your second issue and it's infuriating to me. I've been playing as Arsenal and had a year where I won the CL, EPL and FA cup. And the board was only "satisfied" The only reason they could have been that is because of my performence in the LC. That's simply ridiculous. After that year, they should be freakin thrilled with me until I show them I can't coach or have a series of bad losses.

But the first thing with the shot attempts in 2D? I'm just not getting it. When I have a problem, it almost always involves my guys NOT hitting the target. They miss wide, high, left, right, etc. Yeah, sometimes they kick it straight at em, but not as a rule. In the last game I played, West Ham had 2 guys ejected. I put up 38 shots. Only 15 of those shots were on target. (I scored 5) Of the 23 I shot off target, they were all over the place.

I don't doubt you've seen what you did, but I didn't experience that aspect of it either pre or post patch.

So stupid that I got fired after raising the team UP in the table since joining them, wasn't their coach when they got knocked out of the cup competitions and have been there about 3 months gametime....Marc, you got some splainin' to do. Lots of wasted gametime for that to happen.

How can I join a team after they fire a coach because the board is disappointed if theyre only going to be pissed at me the minute I walk through the door?

DOLA:

Weird. So I pick up another LL team in Italy and the Board says that they recognize that I wasn't the coach during the team's failures in cup competition. I mustve hit the sweet spot on the calendar for the last board not to see the same thing.

If you've got a save game before the sacking please forward it to me and we'll look into it asap.

A question for Marc when you get a chance. Does the board overview of your performance take into account team injuries? I've got two of my main player out on inj and the board is slightly disappointed with my performance (mid-table instead of top half).

IRL boards (and to a large extent fans) are notoriously lacking in gentleness in taking into account injuries which might be beyond a managers control.

For instance when Micheal Owen was injured for large parts of Newcastles season last year the board (and fans) still expected great things from the team.

Of course I dont :( but it was in Italy Sirie C/1

Im at a better team now that appreciates my fantastic services.

Thats a shame and I'm glad your new club appreciated you more :D

(on a more serious note one of the on-going challenges creating FM is that we don't script any of the game or AI and as such its amazingly fluid in gameplay - this means that you can get some great and 'natural' knock on effects (for instance - a players moaning might cause him to under-perform, leading to the manager in question listing him, causing the fans to question the manager, the manager to be sacked and the player who caused all the problems initially to announce he's now happy ;) ) but it also means where things might seem odd are hard to track down without an instance in question to interrogate in a debugger, incidentally quite often these 'oddities' are actually sensible and the deficiency is that the game doesn't explain its reasoning well enough ... something we're continually trying to improve.)

/End of Drivelly post which went on far longer than I really wanted

I haven't seen anything as extreme as this luckily, but my monthly update from the board tells me every month about how happy they are with one of my new signings despite the fact that it was the previous manager who signed him. So I guess it works both ways. You can be blamed for the previous guy's mistakes, but you can get credit too.

The weightings of the individual tournaments needs some work too. I started this game as manager of England to see if I could do better than McClaren (I could), England won the Euro Championships and qualified for the World Cup easily, but every month I'd get a "less than satisfied" message from the FA as I'd only made the QF of the Confederations Cup instead of the semi as the FA had hoped.

And while I'm complaining about international management, I'll add this. When England won the European Championships, the tournament "dream team" starting 11 was 10 English players and a single Italian player. Probably would have been 11 England players, but my 11th guy got injured so I'd split that position between 2 players.

And another thing, right in the middle of the Euro Championships my assistant manager retired with immediate affect, so I had to do the team talks myself. Then 2 years later at the World Cup finals, my new assistant manager retired too. Coaching staff shouldn't retire mid-tournament.

The game is definitely eating up a lot of my time, but it's still a patch or two away from being problem free.

Marc, never apologize for your posts being drivel or too long. I enjoy reading them and getting a little more insight into the depth of FM. Reading posts like this, by both users(mostly here at fofc) and SI staff, is what finally got me past the game being "boring soccer" and give it a chance. And as we well know once you enter the world of FM there is no escape;)

One of the things my fans are disappointed in is the backup goalkeeper that came on loan from my parent team.....not much I can do about that one.

For whatever reason my team has lost three straight after going unbeaten for our first 26 games in the league, we're still dominating the opposition but just can't get a break I guess. Now there's gonna be a title race after what looked to be smooth sailing a few weeks ago.

I've still never been able to have an undefeated league campaign in any of the CM/FM games. The closest I came was 30 wins, 3 draws and 1 loss in the penultimate game with Feyenoord on either FM05 or FM06, by far the best season I've ever had. Those games were a bit easier than FM07 and FM08 though.

Final irony...

Boonty has relented and finally agreed to giving me a refund...

...so I have to send a *letter* to their offices in France in order to be considered.

:rolleyes:

LOL.......you should print out Marc Vaughn's post about the company being jacked up and attach it to your refund request. :)

I was promoted to the German 3rd division. I won my first 11 games in the new league, but I finally got a draw and my team's confidence absolutely plummeted. Pretty frustrating as I now have 13 wins, 5 draws and 6 losses. I thought I was going to breeze right through the 3rd division, but now I'm in 6th place. Ah well, I only upped the expectations to top-half finish, so I should still be fine (I hope).

Aaaahhhhh! I honestly don't know how realistic this is, but I just lost 4 players (Scholes, Rooney, Nani, and Giggs) in my Man U game to long-term injuries in one game! I had to finish the game (30 min) with 9 men! I don't know how often this actually happens in real life (I would expect very rarely), but it really sucks!

I remember getting nailed hard with striker injuries as I was mounting a promotion challenge.

Pulled it out, though :)

I still need to advance that game, too.... course I also still have about three posts to write for my CK dynasty

anybody else disappointed in this game. i stopped playing after a month. i liked the improvement in the game engine, the variety of goals scored, and ever so slight expansion of tatics but my main problem with the game remains, it's far far far too tedious

ummmm nope!!! :eek:

This is the first version that hasn't felt tedious to me at all, honestly.

v2006 was tedious to me but then it was my first version and I knew nothing about football going in.

With the new gui I can get where I want quickly and can have my team picked and tactics tweaked in around 5 minutes.

Tedious? No. It's more like I'm really surprised at how quickly I can now do things.

If you find the game a tad slow and not 'fun' to play and have a PSP then might I push you in the direction of Football Manager Handheld 2008 .....

(there's no escape ;) )

The only thing that is tedious is all of the screens that you need to get through to get to the actual match but if anything, the game moves faster and has less tasks to cycle through

The only part I find a little tedious is when I start a career and have to start looking through 50 million players trying to upgrade my squad. Once I get past that I am good.

Has anyone else noticed that the ML and FL positions are swapped on the roster during matches? I wonder if its that way by design or a bug.

look down the thread a page or two. You probably just have them set to swap...

Oh gawd, dont get me started on the mental effects that had on me before someone pointed that out!!

The dreaded SWAP!!

Has anybody noticed any positive impact of setting players to swap? I've got two wingers who can play left or right wing (although they're both "accomplished" at their non-first choice wing, not "natural"), so is there any advantage in having them swap wings?

Got my Derby County team into third place despite being expected to fight relegation when a dreaded run of v Chelsea, v Liverpool, v Arsenal, at Man Utd comes up. Lose a close game 1-0 to Chelsea, play well but outclassed by Liverpool 3-1, lose 2-0 to Arsenal to a pair of early goals, and it's only Man Utd left try and grab anything from the tough run. Derby play well all game, 0-0 with 3 minutes to go when Man Utd score a goal that's round about 2 miles offside. Obviously it's Old Trafford with 3 minutes to go, so the ref allows it to stand. All my little circles run over to the linesman to complain, then after the game the press agrees we got robbed. So that's realistic.

Follow that up with a loss at West Ham and it's 5 league defeats in a row and down to 10th in the table.

soccer needs instant replay.

Marc:

Is the MLS in that version? I have a PSP and I've been thinking about picking this up. What features are removed in the PSP version? Can you still play the bottom feeder leagues in England?

it can cock up the opposing defenders quite nicely. I'm a fan of doing it with my strikers sometimes...to create a bit more...chaos for man-marking defenders

That's not the problem I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the roster is sorted. Outside the match enginethe players positions are listed like this:

GK, DR, DL, DC, DC, MR, ML, MC, MC, FC, FC.

If you look at the roster during a match in either the players ratings screen or the screen to make tactical changes they are listed this way:

GK, DR, DL, DC, DC, MR, FC, MC, MC, FC, ML.

They are playing in the correct postions on the pitch so it appears to be just an asthetic issue. It has never been this way in any other version that I've played and I'm wondering if the change is intentional or not.

I'm afraid we haven't been able to put the MLS into the game yet (feel free to nudge SEGA America about the game - its not distributed stateside yet to my knowledge) ....

The lowest league simulated in England is the Conference, not quite as far down as the PC game goes - but for a handheld its pretty deep and it'll definitely help you while away any boring hours you might be stuck out and about (waiting for the car to be serviced, pick the kids up from school, wife to finish shopping, whatever :D).

oh right. i have noticed that as well. be curious to know what the reasoning for that is. might it be something with certain tactics only, or is it across the board? MV?

I've noticied it when I create a different tactic from my current tactic by dragging players around on the Position screen. If seems to keep the order that they were in, even if what used to be a FC is now a DMC. It appears to be only an aestetic issue in my game as well, though, so really not a priority at all.

I've also been wondering if anyone, especially Mark V, has an opinion on database size and retaining countries.

I have been looking at some of the posts on the SI board but they mostly talk about FM07. Since the "huge" database went away in FM07, the debate was whether retaining countries unbalanced the nationality of regens and therefore gameplay balance. Since there is also no "huge" database in FM08 I'm guessing that the issue is the same.

In my game I like to start in one of the lower English leagues and work my way up. So my main concern is to make sure there are enough players to populate these lower leages. That being said, I don't want to do something that will unbalance international competitions when I make it that far.

The setup that I have been using looks like this:

England, Scotland, Spain, and Italy: All divisions
Germany: Div 1,2, and 3
Argentina, Brazil, France, Greece, Holland, Ireland, Portugal: Div 1 and 2
Wales, USA: Div 1

I also retain England, Scotland, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Holland.

I haven't noticed any huge issues using this but I'm curious what setups the rest of you are using that may work better.

what kind of PC are you running that setup on? Is there any crawl at any time and how far have you gone into your career?

I'm always afraid that I'll pick too many leagues and will regret doing so 5, 7 or 10 seasons in the future...

FM

i'm the same way. thinking ahead so i like to keep it smaller...really just the main european leagues (italy, spain, england, holland, (not even germany anymore), brazil and argentina

I'm running a P4 3.4ghz with 2gig of RAM. I'm sure that the game doesn't run as fast as it can but I haven't been bothered with the processing speed. The only place where I really notice it slowing down is in the pre-season timeframe, when alot of moves are being made. I tend to only make it about eight to ten seasons before the next version arrives, so as long as I make sure to clean out the saved matches every season there isn't any noticeable slowdown.

For reference, could you explain how this is done?

In past versions there has been a cleaning program you can use (not sure if there is one for FM08 yet) or you can do it manually. Run FM08 and load your game, minimize the game, open The %temp% file, and delete all of the .pkm files you find. The .pkm files are the files where saved matches are saved. I usually clean these out once a year during the off season.