Way to take one for the team.

I guarantee a beer to ANYONE on this board that actually finds themselves in Placerville, CA.

There's got to be 50+ people in the Maximum Football forum now, but only three or so that have reported that they are downloading/buying the game. I get a feeling that a lot of people are waiting for someone else to go first.

"Get Mikey to eat it! He'll eat ANYTHING! Hey Mikey!"

I've eaten at the Denny's there off of 50 on my way to Tahoe a few times. Good ole' Hangtown USA. The only place I've been to where the police cars have the hangman's noose on the side. :D

deal

Let me know you're coming around these parts and I'll be happy to. :)

We had dinner at that Denny's just two nights ago.

I like the "Hangtown" motto, too... but I think it's been a while since they strung anybody up around these parts.

What would be the worst is that he runs away from the game after finding out that the game made less than $200.

Wht is Daivd Wniters day job? Anybody know?

Yikes, is this possible?

Ok....I am eagerly awaiting for someone to post something good or bad and I see nothing. There is only a screenshot of someone's first game and 1 person having problems with the PDS system not working. Other than that, it has been pretty quiet.

With that many people in that forum, I thought at least half of them were buying it at this time. So where is the frickin feedback. And wow, the game is only 100 megabytes. Isn't that odd for a 3D game? Or have I been out of the loop for a while?

poster: Eric in case your read this I tried to register my game, but when asked to choose the game from a list, the game wasnt on it.

Erik:
Yes, sorry about that. We are having a minor issue with setting up the keys in the Members' Club for M-F. Our web guy in Australia should be waking up any time now, so I expect to have it storted out in an hour or two. Try again later tonight or tomorrow morning please.

Regards,

- Erik

Maybe this is why there's no feedback yet?

I think that was about the size of FBPRO. So that seems about right.

I think this might be the first bug report:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1077099

and another:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1077136

If you happen to be in the country, let me know up front and I'll buy you one.

I'm gonna have to place an order directly with the Orville Reddenbacher factory to have enough popcorn available to make it through this.

:D

No, Troy, go for a space cake. You can get a Heineken anywhere...

:D

Erik's reply:

One thing I have learned from this thread, either Cartman owns his own company or he is grossly stealing time from his employer. That is all.

Don't you know they brew their beer differently for each country, to addept to the local cultures? Overhere you'll taste real Heineken!

And Bubba, I would like to thank yoiu for starting the most important thread in FOFC history. ::Sniffle::

Oh, I've been to the brewery in Amsterdam and sampled quite a bit of the local brew. Unfortunately, it was right before going to the Holland Casino which was a couple of blocks away.

Erik's response to that facemask penalty bug is really strange. You'd think they'd code debugging tools that would quickly set up almost any on-field scenario...

more:

I was thinking something similiar but I'm not a programmer, and wasn't sure if such a thing were feasible.

You would think, but you have to remember that they are only a publisher. Therefore, they are only provided with the debugging tools that the programmer provides for them. I have no idea how the game was presented to them.

I'm the defect regression tester for Winter Valley.

That's Larry Bird-esque. :D

It is highly likely that Winters has a tool that can do this. If he didn't code such a tool, it would prove him to be entirely inept as a coder.

Erik said "we" in his message, which implies it means both him and Winters at least...

Dola -

Here we go:

This post from Daivd is scary:

Uhhhhh.....I finally watched this and this has got to me the most disturbing video I have seen. I kept trying to think that it is fake, but I don't think it is. Wow!

On the surface that would be pretty normal I would think... see what happens and go from that. Not too alarming. But, you could have a game play issue that could be a showstopper...

BIG problem with the sim engine: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1077194

That's one of the funniest bug reports I can recall seeing anywhere (imagine the look on the gamer's face when he sees the play lining up in the endzone). It's almost too funny to be true.

If this is real though ... well, I'm thinking that the teleporting players thing is going to be looked back upon as "The Golden Era of Maixmmu Fotoball".

The funny thing about that bug is that he is playing defense and gets called for the face mask penalty. Why does the ball even go backwards to begin with? I thought a facemask penalty was supposed to give the offense a 5 or 15 yeard penalty. If it isn't then....

That's customizability at its finest.

I don't think it went backwards, it went forward ... almost completely through the endzone as I read it.

-- Team B is on Team A's 3 yard line.
-- Team A stuffs the run by Team B but gets hit with a face mask penalty, moving the ball to Team A's "-2 yard line" (i.e. into the end zone).
-- Team B then runs another play, gets stopped without a penalty, but is awarded a TD because the play (sans foul) terminated in Team A's endzone.

Don't tell me they finally released the game.

Okay I am a little confused.

I thought:

-- Team B is on their own 3 yard line (I thought that is why he said opponent's)
-- Team A stuff the run of Team B. but Team A was the team that was penalized with a facemask penalty (He did say, "I got penalized.")
-- Somehow Team B is in the endzone and Team A gets a TD for terminating in the endzone.

At least that is how I read it.


--EDIT--
Actually after reading what he said, "I stop them and get a facemask penalty". I assumed it was his team.

Now, in Daivd's defense, it is entirely possible that this guy just bit off more customizability than he can chew. I find it hard to fault Daivd when some purchaser sets out to discredit him by turning Daivd's own customizability against him.

I think Jon's got this one right. The poster said "opponent 1st and goal on the 3 yd line". If it's 1st and goal, the opponent is on the poster's 3.

This is just painful. I mean, at the least just say you think the game is going to suck. But this is the weakest attempt at 'humor' I have ever had inflicted upon one of my threads, and if it keeps up I may have to delete entirely. Too many Jon Stewart wanna-be's should be finishing off their blunts, eating pizza and watching him instead of trying to emulate. Please.

I thought he was halfway defending Daivd.

Yeah, I should read the line more carefully.

Not in this forum. Too much irony going around, and not enough skilled one's to 'wield' it correctly.

Impressions
 

Hey,

First time poster, long time lurker. Figured I'd register and chime in just to get some impressions into this thread. I don't really know much about football; FOF2004 taught me everything I know. I love text sims and FOF2004 is no different, even if I don't really know the actual sport that well. I can give some basic impressions, but I don't know if I'll be able to handle any in depth football questions that you guys might have.

First Impressions:
The interface is laid out like an EA Sports game in that it feels very hard to get around in the main menus. It's definitely not a spreadsheet game like FOF in the sense that it's not that intuitive sorting and getting stats as easily as in FOF. Columns can be sorted by selecting from a menu which isn't as handy as just clicking on the column you want to sort. From the looks of it, all the important stats are there, they just aren't as easily accessed as they are in FOF

The quick play basically lets you pick two teams, stadium, weather conditions, and you're set. Flip the coin and you're off, playing with a bunch of players who look kinda funny. You can choose plays and the players seem to simply follow the lines on the play diagram that have been laid out for them in the Play Design System. I haven't really played around with it much, but it doesn't feel like the players have that much intelligence behind their movements. A kick return play (there is only 1 in the playbook that came with the game) always ends up with about a 10 yard return every. Single. Time. Not much variation there.

The league setup is very frustrating. It comes with a league preloaded with 4 teams per division and 4 divisions... All the players are fake and all the numbers that the players are rated in appear to be rather similar between players of the same position. Haven't really played around with it much to see how a 95 Pass accuracy differs from my two other QBs that have a 92 and a 89 but all players seem to have rather high ratings considering my third stringer appears he could start.

Speaking of frustrating, the league draft that I did first upon loading the league was over 49 rounds (not sure the exact number cuz I was AFK for most of it) where every team picks tons of players and it takes forever. Kind of weird too, since my team already had a full roster... I set my team on auto and walked away for 25 minutes. I came back to run training camp and didn't really do much except hit the "Run Training Camp" button cuz all I really wanted to do was play a league game. That function took 5 minutes to run. Finally I was able to play a game. I hit the play button from the schedule screen and was told that my roster had too many active players on it. Ok, well yes, of course it would, the auto-draft just put 50 some odd players on my team! I wasn't going to select each individual player, go into their profile and cut them so I put my team on computer control and simmed the first league game for my New York team.

Now simming takes 30-90 seconds as the computer basically plays the game play by play on a box score screen. That was fine. My team won their first league game by 34-10 or so... had over 650 yards total, 480 passing. I changed them back to human control and looked for the button that would sim the rest of the week's games automatically... but it doesn't exist. So I had to sim all 7 other games manually. That doesn't sound like much, but when it takes each game a minute or two to complete, you just spent 5-10 minutes trying to get to your second week. I'm the kinda guy who likes simming 4 or 5 FOF seasons in a night... By this point I'd spent 50 minutes trying to get to play my first league game. I was getting frustrated...

Finally I got to play my first league game. I hit the play button and went to the game. First thing I realized was that my New York team was not under my control. I had set their control to Human but I still had to select the team before the game to control them. (Much the same way you choose your team in madden before the game by moving your controller to the appropriate slot) As a result, I was controlling the home team Cleveland because I had assumed that choosing "Human Control" from the league menu would auto-select my New York team for me. Quit Game, restart, choose New York, play. Finally!

The game played basically the same as quick play. You pick a play without knowing what the other team has on the field or anything like that; basically, you're in the dark as to what play you choose, especially as the defender. At least in Madden and FOF, you see how many RBs or TEs or WRs are on the field so you can kind of pick an informed defense. Not here though! No such information. No big deal anyways cuz as offence I soon noticed that any runs up the middle were quickly stuffed, but a sweep around to the right always got me about 8-12 yards. Also, the same throw play from the shotgun formation to my primary receiver always got me 20-30 yards except for 2 times when the pass was defended or misthrown. Weird thing was, when I tried to change up the formation for fun, the same receiver was always the one receiving the pass resulting in the one receiver having over 200 yards in the first quarter. I couldn't figure out how to involve my other players even when the QB threw to other areas on the field.. it always seemed that the same guys caught the ball.

Defense was frustrating cuz, like I said before, you have no idea what the other team has on the field. Basically, I stuck to my basic 4-3 on downs 1 and 2 and went to the nickel zone for 3rd down and kept the opponent to 3 points in the 1st half. My lack of football knowledge didn't seem to matter which was kind of nice from a selfish ego kind of perspective.

Ok, so there are a few niggles... I do feel that the players basically follow the lines they are given from the PDS system which means that even if a huge hole opens up, my smashmouth runner is going to follow his same route every single time and ignore the huge hole that would give him 50 or 60 yards down the field. I haven't tested this and this may not be the case, but that's my initial impression. The real fun with this game will be, I believe, making plays and seeing how they turn out. The only problem is that to be fair, you'd prolly have to make a counter play for the AI to use so that you don't rip them open every single time... Just speculation on my part... I don't know for sure

The speed of players is weird too. They start off so damned slow and take forever to pick up speed. The best plays to make in the PDS will prolly take advantage of this fact by having a fast receiver outrun his coverage because he gets a better jump. The animations are ok... serviceable but definitely not average. Some of the tackles are ghost tackles where the Dman takes down a blocker and they both go to the ground and the ball carrier who is within 2 or 3 yards also goes down. Frustrating

So, I got bored halfway through my league game. I was winning 17-3 with over 300 yards passing and 80 yards rushing. I spent almost an hour trying to play a stupid league game and it bored the crud outta me. Madden '06 is way more fun and the plays seem more real. Like I stated before, the PDS system is where the real fun will lie, but not knowing anything much about Football, I don't know how much mileage I will get... It really depends on what fixes Winter and Matrix make and how quickly they get around to it. Also, real rosters and playbooks would really add interest for me, but I don't really wanna waste my time making those up. Someone will add those in the future, no doubt, and I'm looking forward to it.

Final Comments:
I've played FOF2004 steadily since I bought it more than a year ago and I've never deleted NHL EHM from my hard drive since it was released 2 years ago. Maximum Football won't be staying around long for me as it currently stands, but if they fix it up nicely over the next 3 years or so, I might give it another shot. $45 Canadian is kind of steep for this product in its current state but there is definite room for improvement if the will of the developers is there. Right now the career mode is just time consuming and not really worth it for me given the lack of depth and complexity in the default game. PDS and editors work well tho from the 5 seconds I looked at them... at least the game's customizable. Don't get me wrong, it has some potential there, and I don't HATE it like some FOF people simply because it's not FOF. I'm just initially disappointed in that it could have been so much more; it's where Madden was 10 years ago with a snappy playmaking system but I kind of knew that before I bought it. Guess I just needed to blow some money on a new game, you know?

Hope that helps a bit.

Harsh. Though i must admit, unofficial st. patricks day has killed my humor.

OK, I guess I'll be buying the game strictly for the humor then. 200 yards in one quarter for a WR? Impressive stat engine.

Nice post, Kitridge. Thanks.

Shouldn't you be playing Maximum Football? Its finally released! How can you allow yourself to miss out?

I love Eric's reply, "Wow, that's a new one indeed. "
Followed by one of the beta testers two posts later saying it happened to him in beta test.

Now I know Eric may not be in charge of beta testing, and may not know all bugs, but is it possible the beta tester came across a major bug like that and never even bothered to report it?

Very nice little overview of a game session. The game sounds worse than even i expected it to be, unfortunately.

Your welcome. If you guys have any questions I'd be more than happy to answer them if I can. Just don't ask me if I can post my WR to the slant on the 4th and 15 in a tie game, cuz I won't know what you mean.

That has a familiar ring to it... hmmm... Tecmo Bowl?!?!?!?

Hey that was a great post, thanks for taking the time.

Sorry, Bubba. This scenario has already been discussed and the option has been taken off of the table:


This thread has grown beyond being just "your" thread anymore.

They haven't released the game.

Whew.

Uhhhh.... Wow.

Looks like the stat issue is still around.

Thank you very much for the honest assessment of the game. You answered a lot of questions that I was wondering about and I didn't have to peg you with them one by one.

And welcome to the board. I was a long time lurker myself and its nice to see some new blood.

While the play editor looks fun, I think I will have to pass on this game since the AI is weak. If you are already getting 300 passing yards in the first half alone, then I am guessing that the game isn't balanced at all.

Thanks again for your impressions. I will see what TroyF is going to say about it as well, but so far it is not looking good. If David continues to seriously develop the product, I will look at this game in its next iteration.

Thanks, Kitridge!

Thanks. I should be the one thanking you guys though. You don't know how much I've learned about FOF, and football in general from just reading the strategy forum. I watched my first season of NFL this year and I have a large debt to FOF for getting me into it and you guys for educating me, albeit somewhat covertly. I would never have won the Super Bowl if it wasn't for you guys.

I also learned a lot about life in general from the main forum.. I mean... Multiple orgasms... wow. That thread opened my eyes.


I just wanna say that the 300 yards passing was from 1 play run about 7 or 8 times without sampling many of the other plays. It was like the secret goals that you'd score in NHL '95 where you'd win 18-0 but if you wanted to play realistically you could and win 4-3. I think the same applies to MF if you want to limit yourself from the easy winning plays, you could and the game would balance itself out... I basically won the game on 2 plays (1 shotgun, 1 sweep around the right). I also found 1 play that was intercepted both times I ran it. I'm sensing a theme. Maybe if the AI had a better playbook? Maybe my team was that much better? I don't really know... I did kind of 'cheat' to get that score, so judging the game solely on that result is a bit unfair. I'll play it some more tomorrow probably and see if I feel any different and let you guys know.

Yeah, I can see that if I actually ever did delete it you'd lose half your life.

Dammit Bubba, buy the game and tell us how great it is!

NOW!

From what Kitridge said it seems that if you modify the rules more towards an NFL Blitz type game you could have some fun with it. Making 30 yard first downs could level the playing field a bit.

Seems Like Madden 2006 coach mode is better than Maximum Football.

at least in Madden 2006 the AI defense adjust if you call the same plays over and over on offense

and on defense you can at least see how many wr, te, etc coming out before you can call your play on defense.

If Madden ever gets the sim stats and improve on franshise mode, it can be a solid game.

You guys that never play coach mode on Madden 2006, should give it a try. Its very fun.

There are others who have more posts in this thread than me. Not many, but at least three at last check.

:D

We have the power of the Dark Jedi guarding this thread.

Neener neener!

Sure sounds like it.

Raises hand.

Guilty!

:)

The game is very customizable. There are default rule sets for the Canadian, indoor and American leagues, and the rules can be changed and combined to switch it all up. Unfortunately, from the in game screens the length of downs isn't customizable... that may be changeable from a file outside the game, but from inside the game, it's not. Give the community a month or two and you'll have tons of uniforms, playbooks, and other tweaks out to improve the gameplay. Add to that a patch or 3 and I might feel better recommending the game to an FOF'er on the basis of the on-field simulation aspect.

Well, based on Kitridge's review I'll hold off buying for now. Sorry to dissappoint.

i dont have confidence that going to happen.

So are you saying that you can only make a combination of Canadian, indoor, and American rules?

Et Tu, Brute?

Ya, the three defaults are Canadian, American and Indoor.

Your options are:

Field - Canadian/American/Indoor
Downs - 3/4
Players - 8/11
Allow Fair Catch - Yes/No
End Line Goal Posts - Yes/No
Unlimited Motion - Yes/No
Live Field Goals - Yes/No
Use Rouge - Yes/No
2 Point Converts - Yes/No
Ball - Canadian/American/Indoor/Amatuer
Ref Call/Rules - Tough/Normal/Loose - Canadian/American/Indoor
Overtime - Sdn Death/None/3/5/7/10/15
Kick off From - Goal Line/5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40/45/50
PAT From - 2/3/5/10/15/20
2 Point From - 1/2/3/5/7/10

Touchdown 1-10
PAT 1-5
Field Goal 1-5
Safety 1-3

Play Clock - None/5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40/45
Minute Warning - 1/2/3
Quarter - 3/5/7/10/12/15/20

There may be more editable outside the game, I wouldn't know that information though.

One more thing that bugs me... I can't pick plays with my mouse, and the enter key won't work.. to select I use the arrow keys and the space bar... it's certainly different.

Thanks for the info Kitridge

Kitridge,

from what you can tell, are the American settings reflecting Pro or College? There are quite a few differences in the field and rules between the two.

I would have to guess they were pro rules.. To be honest, I wouldn't know the difference between the pro and college rules if I was looking straight at them. From everything I've read over at the matrix forums, I'd have to say they were the pro rules

Cool, thanks. The biggest difference in the field is that in college the hashmarks are a lot closer to the sidelines, where in the pros they are closer to the center of the field. As for rules, they are minor, but significant. For example, in college, a receiver only has to get one foot in bounds for a catch to count, in the pros both feet have to come down. Another big difference is that in college, once a player's knee hits the turf, the play is over. In the pros, you aren't down until you are contacted.

Those would be the most obvious tip offs as to whether it was modeled after the pro or college game.

Ha! Better start nailing Lou Dobbs while your at it, he's talking the same language (and not the racist crap that the Davos crowd want to smear its critics with!)

They had a release today but Main web Page not even announcing it.
Great way to market the game.
http://www.maximum-football.com/

Also your chance to chat to Daivd Winters :) March 17. Then you can really tell him how you feel. :)

http://www.matrixgames.com/news/news...id=301&nid=200

You can't play with 5 downs? But that ruins the game!! No purchase from me now, no sir.

After the review by Kitridge,he answered all my questions. Forget it. :)

Ummmm jbmagic, that was for March 17th 2005.

wow.. There real good in cleaning up there web page and updating it :)

I guess I'm skeptical that the problems that Kitridge found can remedied through the use of custom playbooks unless the gamer has some heavy control over what plays the opposition calls, and even then it might not be enough. It simply sounds like the game simulation engine isn't up to task yet.

From what he wrote, it sounds like the same offensive plays are getting the same amount of yards on almost every play: kick off returns net ten yards, a pass from a particular formation gets 20-30 yards most plays, and a sweep right nearly always nets 8-12 yards.

What is causing this problem is a key question. For example, maybe the defense was calling the same play all the time? That would pit the same offensive play against the same defensive play and therefore give the same result, with little variation? This would be bad: 1) because the defense was calling the same play despite getting burned consistently; and 2) because there is too little variation in play results when two plays match up.

Another possibility is that the defense was varying its calls, but it just didn't matter what they called. In which case it simply doesn't make a big difference what the defense calls, and defense is for the most part superfluous in the game. Not sure what to make of that, but “encouraging” is not an adjective that comes to mind.

Both of these cases show some serious weaknesses in the game engine.

To me, the game clearly is targeted at the players that liked FPS Football. I am in their target audience. However, I think FPS Football was popular because it had a decent career mode and a respectable in-game simulation engine. You can customize your plays all you want, but if the on-field game engine and AI aren't up to par, I don't see much appeal to the game...

Lots of question marks for me at this point, but so far I’ve heard nothing to dispel my belief that the game needs more work.

A few comments...
 

Kitridge,

I read your comments and thought I should post here to see if I could help clarify a few things. I'm not going to be a regular here by any stretch, but one post shouldn't cause too much trouble...


At least for me, I've seen variation in this, though around 10 yards is definitely the most common result.


You should have just been able to change to the current schedule from the initial league view, pick a team and play a game. It comes with a season already set up. You only need to go through the whole draft / training camp process if you want to do a whole new season and it does ask you to confirm that.


Which league and which team combo was that? I've never seen a 650 yard offense in the games I've simmed, though I tend to focus on the US league and rules.


How long did this go on? The AI tracks your tendencies and should adjust if you keep using the same plays. It tracks this by team, so if you are playing the same team it should adjust to your play calling and force some changes to be made. I've had the best results when mixing play-calling rather than running the same one over and over. I've also had success running up the middle, though it needs to be mixed up with passing to get a better chance at a weak defense.


I haven't seen that either, my passes are spread out between receivers. However, if you were using the same play all the time and it was set to have the QB always pass to the same receiver, that would explain it.


In my experience, it depends. They'll follow the route in the backfield, but once across the line of scrimmage, they'll change directions and make moves based on their stat "rolls".


Tackling through a block does need its own animation, I agree, but we didn't have time to fit that in. It's something we should have time for after dealing with initial post-release bug fixes.


We'll be watching closely and responding quickly.


Sorry you didn't have as much fun with it as you'd hoped. I hope you give it a few more chances and see how things work out as more playbooks are posted and we continue to tweak and fix post-release. Thanks for your feedback.

Regards,

- Erik

Damn.

Now even Erik Rutins is chiming into the thread with comedy gold.

Controls...
 

Did you select the Mouse as your controller before starting your game? You have to click and drag it to replace the keyboard for the side you are going to control. Otherwise, you end up with the keyboard, which is what you are describing - arrow keys and the space bar and number keys.

Regards,

- Erik

Options
 

From the Game Menu, try the Utility Set, then League -> League Tools -> Edit League and pick any of the default ones to see all the options, pretty much.

Regards,

- Erik

More Problems posted at matrixforums.

I may have another entry for purchases that you regret. I had a momentary loss of reason and some sort of hope to revive the Football Pro love that I once had.

I have already seen enough to have no desire to fire it back up again. There needs to be a lot of patches out to make this even close to fun.

The annoyances run the gambut frmo minor irritations to deal breaking ones such as lousy AI.


- Not a deal breaker but player animation is like rock'em socke'em robots. I can live with that if other things get straightened up. It's funny watching all your players walking back to the huddle like they have a broom stick shoved up their butts. Oh, and the teams must consist of porn stars if you believe that size of your feet analogy.

- Deal breaker is the play calling interface. There is no obvious way to get back to the first screen once you have selected regular/punt/field goal formation sets. I had to wait out the delay of game after hitting the space bar prematurely in a punt situation and then trying a bunch of keys and nothing took me back to the first set of selections. It's very annoying scrolling through the available plays and formations as there is no indication that I saw if you have another page in either direction. There is no logical grouping of your plays once you select a formation. (this is most likely just a problem with the default playbook to be fair).

- Semi deal beraker but can be fised with a patch, or maybe an option I didn't notice, the camera angles don't help yuo really see what is happening and the speed of things seem to quick where it seems like there is an opening then the defender is on the ball carrier like some sort of warp. I loved the speed of Football Pro and the camera angles that you could set up so you could actually feel like you were seeing the play develop and get an idea of how your players are reacting to the play (immersion factor).

- Deal breaker, the overall interface just seems odd. You have to edit plays and other things outside of the game itself.

- Deal breaker, the price. This is in no way, shape or form worth 40 dollars. I feel like I was voluntarily raped on this one. If we hadn't just got our tax money back and I had a couple of dollars set as expendable, there is no way that I would have bought it (damn that tax money ;) ). In it's current form, 20 dollars is probably too much.

- Deal breaker, it's just not fun. I really wanted to like it but it felt like work just trying to get myself to think that I did, but I haven't been able to convince myself.


Plusses:
- It does have a lot of options to be able to play Canadian, Arena, American or somewhere in between. Of course, this is only a plus if the game were fun to play.

- It wasn't made by Derrek Smart.

I guess I come from a time in the past where full-size games when over sized buttons were standard, because I had de javu when I opened MaxFB. It set me back initially but the more I have looked at it, the game has a lot of depth. What it doesn't have is the polish of a finalized open the box and play the Steelers vs. Seahawks all day long. It reminds me of FBPro 99 in that the aspects of the game (play selection, play books, and league structure/career mode) are not fleshed out. What it doesn't seem to have is FBPro 99's broken in game.

The verdict is still out on the AI.

So is it Canadian football or Arena football where the players wear makeup?

Thanks for taking your time and giving some Input. I definitely made some obvious mistakes the first time I loaded up the game that you pointed out in your posts.


My first game I detailed above was New York Vs. Cleveland with American Rules. I just played another to half time, same teams, except this time I was coaching Cleveland. All kickoffs looked strikingly similar. all went 8-11 yards. I bet this could be fixed by implementing a better kickoff play through the PDS. That's what I want to try next when I get some time to see if the repeatability of the game is merely symptomatic of the plays the game is running with the default playbooks.


First time playing, I didn't know how to get to the first league game to play it, so I went to the first button that I saw that looked like it might lead to the start of the season. Unfortunately, that button was the 'Draft' button. My mistake, a very frustrating and time consuming one. Took me a while longer to actually find where the schedule area was once I'd done the draft and training camp.


That was the default league, first game of the season, American rules, New York Vs Boston:

BOS NY

1st Downs 13 28
Rushing 68 157
Passing 237 489
Penalties 4/20 6/30
Net Yards 285 616
Total Plays 50 89
Rushing
Attp/Yds 23/68 46/157
Avg Gain 3.0 3.4

Passing
Comp/Att 16/27 31/43
Yards 237 489
Avg Gain 14.8 15.8
Int 1 0
Sacks 0 0

Kicking
Punts 5/226 3/104
Field Goals 0 of 0 0 of 1

Time Of Pos 23:11 36:49


Individual

Passing:
BOS -- HONGISTO 16-27, 237 yds, 2 TDs, 1 INTs.
NY -- EFTHIMIOU 31-43, 489 yds, 4 TDs, 0 INTs.

Receiving:
BOS -- ROSARIO 5-75 1 TDs, GRABLER 2-26 0 TDs,
DIPERNA 9-136 1 TDs,
NY -- SIPPIAL 13-173 1 TDs, STOLTZ 1-20 0 TDs,
HEATH 7-123 1 TDs, ECKENFELS 10-173 2 TDs,

Rushing:
BOS -- HONGISTO 5-16 0 TDs, NEUDECK 18-52 0 TDs,
NY -- EFTHIMIOU 7-27 0 TDs, STOLTZ 36-123 1 TDs,
VEBBER 3-7 0 TDs,

In both games (New York Vs. Cleveland, US default rules, me as NY in 1st game, me as CLE in 2nd game, both games played until halftime), the play from the Shotgun2 Menu, HR X Flag, fun and gun playbook, had me winning by a ton. My second game I just played, I was up 76-0 at halftime with 587 yards passing, 9 touchdowns, all to the same receiver on the same play the entire half. The problem appears to be the secondary which gets a slow start and is burned by the receiver most of the time for 20-40 yards. If they start in motion with the ball snap, they can sometimes cause an incomplete, but even them it's not very well defended. Half the time the secondary comes in too far or just stands there a second too long and by then my receiver is wide open. Again, something that could be fixed by playing with the PDS when I get some time perhaps.

Looking at the PDS editor, there is no primary target for that play, but in both games, the same receiver was targeted each time. When I was NY, it was Eckenfels on the right. As CLE, it was Bheils (or something like that) on the left.

They just have to get across that line, but they miss some good holes before that directional change routine kicks in after the line of scrimmage... again... maybe something in PDS that I can look into... dunno, haven't really looked at it yet.

I think my expectations were too high, but I do believe that given time, some patches and some community mods, that this game can be more than it is now and I am looking forward to seeing how the game evolves over time. Right now it's just a bit too frustrating to keep at for more than a quarter or two but I hope that will change. Thanks again for your response.

LOL, I was wondering about that when I copied it... that is the way it's spelled in the game and editor... is it supposed to be 'rogue'? I know more about NFL than the CFL and that isn't saying much :P

Those options don't allow the editing of the downline to 30 yards from scrimmage though that the original post was inquiring about. Is there a way to do that by editing data files outside of the game? (Just curious, since it's been brought up... no biggie either way)

Okay, this thread bothered me for some reason:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1077570

Apparently they are aware of a lot of bugs and included a readme.txt file that has a list of these bugs. What bothers me is that they supposedly gotten to a point where it had "gone gold". While it seems that the game has very little system issues, there are a lot of gameplay issues that still puzzle me. I think the known issue list should be on the overview page for this game, so that people can determine if they want to pluck down $40. I would have been pissed if I purchased a game and kept getting responses that these are known issues.