Well, except I don't know how 'valuable' her time is.

Good point, she isn't doing any good with her posts, just causing more damage to their image. I do understand the frustration though since I'm sure they are getting slammed.

Back off track...I guess we never figured out who/how the view counter was tinkered with on the reference thread. We just got to within a thousand or so views in this thread and the reference thread jumped another 3500.

it's the council of the dark jedi. they are actively working to unbalance the force. Especially JeeberD...his midichloriens are off the scale! *




*where force=board & midicholoriens=posts

The Dark Council should really look into this. The reference thread started around 55,000 when the thread started and each time this thread has gotten close, it jumped up to some ridiculous number. Someone please put a stop to this madness.

The reference thread was gaining like 70 views everytime i refreshed.

i just reloaded the page and the reference thread went from 91,568 to 92,000 and change.

WTF

Well, I just ran a quick test and discovered that anyone immature enough to put in the effort and immature enough to care that much can greatly impact the thread view count.

Dola:

Whoever is doing it went through the trouble of logging out so they can't be discovered. What a dweeb (or dweebs).

That is some rapid fire refreshing or however he/she/they are doing it.

Maybe it's a "Deewb"!! :eek:


/hopes that's not too subtle

hmmm...SkyDog is trying to tell us something...dweeb rhymes with jeeb...:eek::eek:

edit: typo

It would be a shame if a new version of the reference thread were to appear.

That's right dweeb or dweebs. Jeeb or Jeebs?

Well, the good news is that the person or persons responsible certainly are helping our page view count, increasing our leverage with GameSpy to let us keep going wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over the maximum usage every month. (We usually go over in the first week of every month...)

Can't you check the IP of guests viewing the thread?

Sure...but there are 8 of them (at least there were a moment ago). I don't care enough to do that kind of tracking down. Plus, it's not like it would be good policy to suspend someone for doing it.

That would certainly nip the problem.

lol

:D

Well, in terms of the "statistical integrity" of the page view count, I'd say that it is forever compromised. I can't say for sure, but I'm about 99.9% certain that this thread has also been artificially enhanced many times.

i think it's the people from Matrix. by increasing the views on the reference thread they make all the fans of this thread want to keep checking back in to pad the view stats. the more people doing this the more "talk" and chatter is maintained over an otherwise horrible game that should have been forgotten the day after it came out.

I think it would. Constant refereshing=using up bandwidth for other people=mini DoS on the board.

Way to go Erik, the anti-Jennifer:

RE: Erik - 3/20/2006 9:29:53 PM

Erik Rutins Administrator Posts: 7272 Joined: 3/28/2000 From: Vermont, USA Status: online

elmerlee, quote: ORIGINAL: elmerlee Thanks for your intelligent response.And you deserve credit for not just deleting this post.Just a couple more points and I will look forward to BUYING THE GAME. 1.There is no demo for Pure-Sim anymore.True or false. False - you can still get a demo of the 2005 version (one version old) from various sites. There is no demo for the 2005 Gold Edition, which was offered as a free upgrade by Matrix to PureSim 2005 customers. No decision has been made for the future regarding demos or lack of demos for PureSim. quote: 2.I pay no attention what-so-ever to reviewers.The people on the forums know the game better than anyone. My point on that was that I did not expect you or anyone else to buy the game in order to have an opinion on it, but I would advise you to realize that you might be less sure of your conclusions realizing that you have not actually played it. You made some comments as fact based on your assessment of some board comments. For customers who have played the game, these comments fit into the context of their play experience, which has been better for some than others. The upshot is that I didn't expect you'd buy the game unless reviews (in general) about it started becoming predominantly positive. quote: 3.This is the very first game I wanted that I did not buy in the first minutes of release.Why.Because it took 5-7 years to make and I was afraid all those changes would not go smoothly. to be "piss*d" and really sound off.Buy the way - I think demos started something that companies would be better off without. And, unfortunately, we hit some major bumps on release. I've heard a lot of other people saying things like "why don't they just drop it?", which shocks me. If anyone knows Matrix, they know that "dropping" a product is not our modus operandi. Nor is it David's and he has been putting in very long hours together with us supporting this game for our customers and improving it. While I'm more than willing to take my lumps for the release, I think that there is some consistent feedback after release which indicates we are rapidly addressing issues and heading this game in the right direction. Our hope is that customers with doubts have an open mind and will revisit M-F in a month or two and take another look at it in six months, a year, etc. We are firm believers in supporting our customers. Keep tabs on our progress - we don't expect people to buy something they are not sure of, but we hope to erase doubts for the fence-sitters over time. quote: 4.Fix the stats tracking (12 sacks a game etc),the ball starting from the endzone,the lack of variety in kick distances,the inability to complete certain passes,the fumbles & ints,incorrect penalty handling,and a couple minor PDS items and the game will be worth buying. The tracking of stats in general appears to be fixed, but some specific game stats are still out of whack for one type of football or another. That's not exactly a feature unique to M-F though, but we are continually improving on that. The ball in the endzone was fixed with the first update. Kick and return distances have been improved, but adding more variability to both is an improvement (rather than a fix) that we plan on in the future. Note that short returns, medium returns and touchdown returns are all things I've seen in the post-release builds. Pass completions and coverage are areas we are looking to tweak in the third or fourth update, when we get a chance to take another look at the balance of the various parts of the game. Fumbles and INTs should be pretty much fine with the latest beta update. Penalty handling was overhauled and is much better than it was on release, at this point upgrading it further can wait. The PDS is due for some significant improvements as well in either the third or fourth update and David also plans an overhaul of it down the line. Regards, - Erik _____________________________ Erik Rutins Director of Product Development and Business Relations (

At least SOMEONE over there gets it. That's a very different response from the "buy the game NOW or shut up" that J.W. is spewing forth.

1. What does DoS mean?
2. You're talking about a well-nigh unpoliceable policy. In order to police it, first off someone would have to notice a thread view count increasing, then go and see who is in the thread (and it doesn't really group them well). In a high-traffic thread such as this one, nothing can be done. There are 18 people viewing this thread as of this moment. What would I do...suspend all 18 of 'em? :p

Denial of Service.. ie, they're using up bandwidth when other people are trying to log on and find it slow.

DoS = Denial of Service.

Basically, flooding a server with empty, useless requests, keeping it unnecessarily busy so that actual users can't reach it at all, or at least get slower response times.

I'm guessing GameSpy wouldn't appreciate the constant, pointless refreshes, either... especially if they ever got wind of what was happening.

So, while it's difficult to police, in a case such as this (with literally THOUSANDS of false views occurring), I think it's worth investigating, and taking action on... lest you piss off our hosts, and frustrate our users who have to sit through slower load times as a result of what is basically a silly read-count game.

OK. I see what y'all are saying about traffic and the hosts, but I have no idea how to investigate/police. It happened in the reference thread earlier. There's no log of who views a thread, and when it happened, there were 8 people viewing the thread. If anyone has any ideas as to what I can do abou this, feel free to PM 'em to me.

My suspicion is it's Jim - he doesn't want the MF thread to overtake the FOF thread on the game's own messageboard :D

If there's no log, and no way to see the IP of a current "guest" viewer, then I have no idea how to investigate further. I think if it were to become a chronic problem, it would probably set off an alert for the technicians at GameSpy to investigate, but if it hasn't done so already, it's probably not going to.

Oh, I can see the IP of "guest" viewers, but if there are multiples in the thread, I have no way that I can think of to tell *which* viewer (guest or non-guest) is doing it. Even if there are only two people in a thread, both registered users, I can't think of a way to know which one is doing it.

Heh. I just got a PM. The person confessed and promised not to do it any more. Hopefully we can put this to bed.

Can someone up my post count by 5,000 for being the first person to notice this?

So it was Jeebs, wasn't it?

Yeah... thing is, with that many views, I suspect there may be a second gunman on the grassy knoll...

Or maybe I'm just suffering from acute paranoia. Might be time to get this tinfoil hat refitted.

Hah, no. I do remember someone stating somewhere in this thread that he had made the reference page his homepage in order to get it more hits, but I don't know if that's the same person who confessed to SD...

Will this thread make it to 100 pages?

Well, at least he is being upfront, but I am not quite sure why there is such a delay with something like this. It sounds strange that they have to discuss their refund policy with Digitial River to come to some sort of negotiation. I just thought you could just simply edit the text.

Probably asking how many refunds were given, who was responsible for it and other such fun stuff. I don't see anything bad in it

I see what you are saying, but they could discuss that after they fix those web pages. In other words, why are they leaving the false refund information up to be seen by future buyers?

ProbablyProbably that they have to provide 24 hour notice for all changes to the web page?

;)

It has to be a contract situation. Otherwise it's beyond Mickey Mouse.

I bet this delays the patch by at least 6 months.

Sounds like the statement's gone gold.

Wow...Erik is trying to douse every fire he can:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1092942
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1092997

Why do I have a feeling that 3rd party utilities may break the game?

Wow...this just in...out of the mouth of Winter himself (sorry I havn't yet figured out the cool cut n paste thing you all do with Matrix posts


edit: for format and to add this

So Winter is basically admitting that people are paying 40-50 dollars to Beta test his game? He's saying that the game that he released and even the patches he is releasing are beta-builds??

WOW. just WOW.

Oh, that's rich.

okay...actually i just noticed that thread is for a beta release of the next patch that shaggyra is testing. but still...gave me a good laugh before i figured that out

Well that's what makes this whole process funny. Beta builds are the ones you are supposed to test out before they become official. The official patches are supposed to fix things, not introduce more problems for testing. I was so confused as I was reading that thread because he wants to make a new public beta forum to fix the errors created by his beta builds?

at this point he ought to just call a spade a spade and say that the game itself is in public beta and kiss his customer's asses for paying for the privelege of beta testing it.

They may not necessarily be false. I would imagine DR are running it through legal to check compliance with EU regulations, and regulations within the country Matrix has a depot. I can't remember where (I suspect UK) but a long while ago they said they were setting up a warehousing/mailing office over there which may change the complexion of what they can or can't do.

If there is an EU or UK law requiring refunds, and the sales qualify as contracts made in that jurisdiction (which is where the warehouse may come into it) then they may have to offer refunds. Add to that the wrinkle that this isn't really a sale, but a license, and those might take the form of a whole new set of regulations, and it's not surprising that it might take expert advice to sort it out.

Good point. That was probably what SirFozzie was saying to me but I wasn't getting it. It would make a lot of sense not to change it at this current time if that were the case.

I think PC games over here can do what Matrix seem to be trying to do and simply stick two fingers up at anyone asking for a refund.

I bought CM5 when it came out, expecting something less substantial than FM, but something that was reasonable. It was the most putrid game I have ever had the misfortune of playing.

But they issued a statement saying that they were working to improve the game, and no refunds would be given. Luckily I managed to swap it for something else at Game (which FWIW I also never played, but that was only because out of principal I wanted to get shot of CM5 without paying any more cash, so took my chances - at least the games I swapped it for were playable)

Unless things have changed in the meantime, it is likely possible for them to sit back and laugh hysterically at anyone asking for their money back.

Damn....well it doesn't really matter if you are playing with an odd or even numbered leagues. The scheduling is atrocious. I'm sorry, but there were no beta testers (at least competent ones). Unless, of course, scheduling is not supposed to be a feature.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1093216

Ant: It is said that you had to explain this to this guy. He has consistently amazed me at how he has his Daivd colered glasses on...

RE: Schedule problems w/ 12 team league - 3/21/2006 9:58:13 AM
Antmeister71 Matrix Trooper Posts: 30 Joined: 3/1/2006 Status: offline	quote: ORIGINAL: Magnum357 What do you mean Marauders? Shaggy, are you complaining that its not producing a balanced schedule? Well the problem is that a team should be playing half their games at home. That doesn't seem to be the case. On top of that, you should at least play each divisional opponent at least once (it should probably be twice with the longer schedule in this case). Scheduling is something that is fundamental to any football game. (in reply to Magnum357)
Report | Post #: 4

It's pretty sad when one of the "Good" things you have to list about a game is that the 2nd half kickoff worked correctly. :D

We take what we can get. ;)

I'd buy this in a heartbeat..:P

Hmmm, better make this $59.99 for digital download and $69.99 for the CD...

CASHCOW!

Maximum Football makes Baseball Mogul look like Game of the year. :)

I still CAN'T BELIEVE THEY RELEASED THIS GAME!

Does no one at Matrix who tested it know what football is supposed to play like? Or even know the basic rules or functionality that one should expect out of a football game? It's unbelievably amusing to watch the fixes that come out on a weekly basis. "Well, the player teleportation bug is gone... and players can now recover fumbles!"

Poor bastard. If he weren't charging money and invited a lot of this upon himself with misleading statements and misplaced bravado, I'd feel sorry for the guy.
There are a slew of game-breaking bugs and his only question is whether the game in question was CPU v. CPU or with a human. But the question of fans rendering properly warrants two sentences and a question.

That's how you get a sloppy game where the beer tent is the only thing that works. No sense of priorities.

Now they can recover fumbles, yeah but to their defense they used to have that whole "tuck rule" nailed to a T. ;)

And come on, teleporting players. We obviously don't have the foresight to understand just how progressive thisis, teleporting players will be BIG in about 25 years. Bravo to them for looking to the future. :D

Oh, this also goes for the bi-racial players. Gene pools will have mixed together enough over the next couple generations that humans will begin displaying traits of all races in a very specific manner like white arms and black legs (I guess the "big" question will be if the dividing line is above or below the waist). ;)

Fixed

This is what stands out to me in that quote:

It was a fucking 40 dollar purchase. I didn;t pay 40 damn dollars tro be a freaking beta tester. WHEN YOU CHARGE 40 DOLLARS FOR A GAME, YOU BETTER AS HELL DELIVER 40 DOLLARS WORTH OF A GAME.

They have pissed me off beyond belief and I am going to piush the refund issue hard now so they better be ready. If I have to bring up the words class action, than so freaking be it. Fucking dirt bags!!!!!


(I appologize for the language but that quote has pushed me over the edge. I am currently on site supporting the install of a product for my company and I would love to see the fallout if we tried some this approach to support, we would be out of business before your could blink and that is what should happen to this clown. I should have read more of what he had to say and his attitude before I purchased the game instead of just thinking that he may have been taking too much for taking so long to release.)

I haven't read this thread in a few weeks, but I get the impression that you purchased the game and are now upset about how it's working? Did you miss the first 3000 posts?

It's really amazing how many people are surprised that this game has big problems.

Yeah, I think people now are just buying the game so they can rip Daivd & MF..

I could be wrong, but I think Daivd is just letting users test out the patches prior to releasing them as finished. That's what he's referring to as beta. His post is just asking them to post beta related issues in a different part of the forum than release releated issues. At this point, the more people who are willingly able to test beta patches the better as far as I see it.

Of course, having said that, given the apparent release state, you could make a good argument that the actual release was beta stage or worse.

Well, that's what their Media Relations person specifically asked they do.

yep, except you forgot to mention that you need to get the CD version in order to have a right to bitch... Not the cheapo $39.99 download version but the full $49.99 CD version. Thank you very much...

FM

Ok, it's been a while, but I've been inspired to create another song. This one is to the tune of Softcell's Tainted Love:

Sometimes I feel I've got to
Run a play I've got to
Punt away
From the pain that you drive into the heart of me
The code we share
Seems to go nowhere
And I've lost my fight
I can't toss a sweep and no refund is in sight

CHORUS:
Once I ran or threw (I ran)
Now I'll fumble and score a rouge or two
This tainted code you've given
I give you all a fanboy could give you
Confirm my fears and that's not merely all
Oh...tainted code
Tainted code

Now I know I've got to
Run a play I've got to
Try a chargeback each day
You don't really want any more from me
To make things right
You need someone to show you the light
And you think the code is A-OK
But I'm sorry I don't see it that way

CHORUS
Once I ran or threw (I ran)
Now I'll fumble and score a rouge or two
This tainted code you've given
I give you all a fanboy could give you
Confirmed my fears and that's not merely all
Oh...tainted code
Tainted code

Don't patronize please
I cannot stand the way you tease
With your beta patch and condensending tone
Now I'm going to contact Visa and get a credit, so...
Tainted code, tainted code
Tainted code, tainted code
Compile baby, tainted code
Compile baby, tainted code
Tainted code
Tainted code
Tainted code

Hopefully Antmeister71 can sing it for all of us. :)

Gameplay improvements such as....

This.

LOL, someone forgot to start the clock.

Calgary is going to be in trouble if the playoff tie breaker comes down to points against. Then again in this game the tiebreaker might be how many drinks your center can chug in the beer tent.

That score doesn't really mean anything. You have the option to customize the score at any point. With a couple of clicks the score changes to:

Calgary 19
Oakland 18

Having this ability to change the score to the user's desired outcome makes the game unique.

What jumps out at me here is that it has taken more than two weeks for people to notice this. I don't blame them for not seeing it, but I think it highlights what I think we'll see as the patching of this game goes forward. Right now people are just trying to get the game to play one or two games correctly. Once that happens, they'll move on to things like seasons and such. Once that happens, they'll start messing with careers and online leagues.

As each of these stages is reached, there will be an entire new set of previously undiscovered bugs awaiting. I would also bet that these yet unexplored aspects of the game are in a fairly bad state. When the stock game generates rosters full of all-pros at every position, something has got to be completely off with the career mode.

Somewhere in the next couple of months, things will reach a turning point. Either the dedicated fans and the effort put forth by Erik and David will bring the game to a solid state and purchases will increase, or someone will give up and pull the life support on this baby.

The chances of the former happening before the latter are like the odds of a 16 seed making the sweet 16 in the NCAA basketball tourney.

So, it's a professional wrestling sim?

I'm actually surprised the game can handle 4-digit scores. I guess that's something.

Well it can handle $49.99 fine :)

;) Great selling point for realism sake.

As poorly as things have gone for them with the game, I do give them credit for their effort at fixing things since release. They have taken the approach that they will do whatever it takes to fix the game, and they have been backing that up with action. I'm not sure that I'd say they are making great progress yet toward the goal of fixing everything and they clearly have a long way to go, but they are making an effort so far and I give that to them.

Wow. jbmagic's even hitting them out of the park in this thread! :p

You know, I have mixed feelings over this. On one hand, I commend Matrix and even David for sticking up for the game and coming out with patches faster than I thought they would.

On the other hand, Matrix supposedly beta tested this game and there are so many glaring issues that I wonder who in the hell was on the beta team. Since Erik played it himself, I don't understand how a number of issues went past him. That still boggles my mind.

Plus, they are going about fixing the game incorretly (in my opinion). They come out with an official patch and then people report errors on it. If there are new errors introduced by the patch, that is a beta patch, not an official one. But now they compounded the situation by introducing new beta patches in which David wants to create a new forum for them. So let me get this straight, you want to give the ability to report errors for both official patches and beta patches in seperate forums. Okay, I guess I am being anal.

Agreed, that was quite funny and I was surprised that came from jb. Good work sir. :D

I think this also speaks to the style of play of many of the users. The ten guys that seem to be so happy about this game don't seem to care about accurate stats, realistic results, etc. They like that they can make custom uniforms, stadiums and the like.

I stayed out of this thread until I saw the game was out, I never had the spare couple hours to read it. Plus, prelease talk by people who have no actual time with the game isn't worth it's weight in salt. As I mentioned after I bought it upon release, I was hoping it could be another FB Pro type of experience. I was obviously wrong.

My friend, Gary, actually lives close to you. He never reads this board (despite my best attempts to get him to do so.) He also was looking for a FB Pro experience (despite my warnings to him that this probably wasn't going to be it) because he remembers how much fun we had with that 9-10 years ago. Obviously, he was very disappointed as well (and still hasn't gotten a response to his request for a refund.)

Darn, just when I thought I was up to date... 2 more pages. Stop posting already! :rolleyes:

BTW, I noticed the reference thread has over 97K views? Damn, did I like travel through time and miss something? Damn, that's a lot of views!!

Scheduling, game time, down and distance, that's the stuff THOSE text sim people do.

Its all about the graphics.
It's about one mans heroic attempt to single handedly create a late 1990's era graphical football game engine.

I am saying that only slightly tongue in cheek.
If he did build this from scratch, as it appears, it must have take an enormous amount of effort and determination to bring any game, no matter how bad, to release.

Read back a few pages....Skydog explains what happened with the reference thread.

Oh yeah duh!! Antmeister told me yesterday... I forgot.

I just did a JBMagic.

Credit where credit is due. Well played!

Sometimes the best lines come from the posters you would never suspect. :)

How many other developers are looking at this release and wondering if they should be involved with Matrix? It looks like Erik would be a good guy to work with and Matrix is not hanging Daivd out to dry but does this release put Matrix in the position of having to reprove themselves to other small developers as well as consumers?

Ok, I have to give Erik props and I owe him an apology for my speculation, but it looks like he has rectified the refund situation:


This should be good news for those that were seeking that refund (EagleFan and Gary). Kudos to Erik.

Cut. Bait. Run.

Good new indeed.