(FM2009) Sports Interactive releases 20 Minute video on FM2009

[DaddyTorgo]

on another note - i find it slightly amusing that the overwhelming response (here at least) so far has been resoundingly positive. There haven't been any "well this is my year to skip it so i won't be buying it" comments - quite the opposite actually.

[MJ4H]

I almost never buy FM. I'm still playing 2006. I will probably buy this one.

[Passacaglia]

This is my skip year too, and I'm still on the fence. I haven't watched the video, but 3D doesn't exactly make me salivate -- I've been fine with 2D.

[Icy]

I have been buying every year it since CM97/98 (wow 10 years already?) so this year won't be different.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

on another note - i find it slightly amusing that the overwhelming response (here at least) so far has been resoundingly positive. There haven't been any "well this is my year to skip it so i won't be buying it" comments - quite the opposite actually.

I never could get into FM the two times I bought it previously (like 2002 or so), so likely won't buy this one either.


Happy now DT?

[Crapshoot]

Yeah, from a cost-benefit analysis, its significantly better than any other games I ever buy - why bitch about it?

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Alan T

I never could get into FM the two times I bought it previously (like 2002 or so), so likely won't buy this one either.


Happy now DT?

Makes note to increase the (already heavy) number of subliminal messages embedded into FOFC ....

(you WILL buy a copy of FM )

[Anthony]

i'm getting it, even though i don't like pro soccer. i don't care - 3D players is awesome. i know it goes against the whole point of text sims, but i don't care - it looks awesome and i'm gonna buy it.

[DaddyTorgo]

HA - it only goes against the point of text sims if it's at the expense of sound fundamentals - if the fundamentals are sound then there's no reason the text sim can't have a 3-d component i don't think.

although i see your point, then it ceases to become a "text" sim and becomes just a "sim" -- maybe that's what we should say now about FM - it's no longer a "text sim" (although to be fair ever since they introduced 2d then you'd have to say it wasn't a text sim), now it's a "management simulation"

[Anthony]

i think that's a more accurate way to describe FM - it's a soccer management simulation. between FM and to some extent OOTP9 it's hard to go back to a game that is primarily spreadsheets or straight stats. i've seen the future of sports sims and it looks good.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Anthony

i think that's a more accurate way to describe FM - it's a soccer management simulation. between FM and to some extent OOTP9 it's hard to go back to a game that is primarily spreadsheets or straight stats. i've seen the future of sports sims and it looks good.

yes yes i agree way too much. It's funny - I'll sit there and play FM in front of my little brother and he'll be like "why don't they have cool graphics like FIFA? This game isn't as cool as FIFA" although he is impressed when I launch into one of my stories about one of my players or something.

Now it'll have the best of both worlds...I can be like "see...look now!"

Shit, might even get him (or pops) playing it.

[lighthousekeeper]

I guess I'm in the minority in not being terribly thrilled. I've recently gotten back into FM08 again, and there are a couple things that ultimately make me lose my interest and stop playing. I seriously doubt SI will address even one of these with FM09 (if ever) listed in descending importance:

1. I absolutely hate it when my star striker who I've had for several seasons retires; and then as soon as he does, he disappears from the game: I can't go back and even click to view his Player Information. It really breaks the immersion for me: why should I care so much about a player when I know in a few seasons I won't even be able to peruse his historical stats. For FM to have so much stuff in it, and exclude something this major just leaves me scratching me head. This is an area where OOTP is light years ahead of FM.

2. Similar to #1, historical stat tracking, even for non-retired players, leaves a lot to be desired. You can see a lot of stats for the current season, but the available stats for previous seasons is greatly reduced.

3. Finding players that are willing to come in on loan is extremely painful. There's a filter called "Let Asst Manager filter out unrealistic targets" that works wonderfully for limiting your queries to only those players that are willing to sign with your club, but there should be a similar filter along the lines of "Let Asst Manager filter out players unwilling to come in on loan". I play with a squad that unfortunately never allows a Parent club, so I need to do a ton of searching for players willing to come in on loan. In my last 6 seasons, I think I've been able to get 1 player in on loan.

4. Scheduling friendlies is so painful. So many clicks involved, and screens always default to what I don't want. It probably takes 10 minutes just to schedule 6 friendlies. I know this sounds nit-picky, but it still really irks me.

5. While the match engine is great overall, there are still times when players do things that at least give the perception of a flawed match engine. Things like players kicking the ball directly out of bounds while no one is around them, while down 0-1 with a couple minutes left. Or DC's (after attacking corners) not moving back to defend, even though the other team has the ball and is racing for my goal. "What are you waiting for!!" I scream. I know players are sometimes stupid and don't do the right thing in real life, but even given that, I still see things sometimes that make me unable to suspend disbelief. My fear is that the 3d display will just make these remaining flaws look all the more obvious and therefore break the believability of the game.

6. It seems sometimes that team reputation doesn't increase nearly as quickly as it should. This becomes apparent when you raise your squad from the lower levels and even establish yourself in higher leagues for a while, but still lose players to teams in lower leagues. I feel almost like there's a glass celing - maybe it's just my own personal frustration.

7. Can I import my FM08 league that I've invested hundreds of hours in to FM09?

[DaddyTorgo]

Lighthouse - funny you should mention #1 because I was just thinking that on my walk home from the train today. I also assume it's for space reasons, but I wonder if there's a happy-medium that SI could implement - something where say you could "tag" a player to keep his career stats and maybe his "best ever" attributes or something, so you could see how great he was at his prime, and it would only keep THOSE players. Even if it exported them to outside of the game.

I think that'd be really awesome - and it's really funny because I literally was thinking it earlier - how much I hate to see the history dissapear.

7's not possible ever, and I presume never will be - which does suck yes, but then again I look at how much use I got out of each year and I'm okay with it. Particularly because I usually keep the savegame file around so I can look at it when I get nostalgic.

[MrBug708]

Holy Mother of God

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

Lighthouse - funny you should mention #1 because I was just thinking that on my walk home from the train today. I also assume it's for space reasons, but I wonder if there's a happy-medium that SI could implement - something where say you could "tag" a player to keep his career stats and maybe his "best ever" attributes or something, so you could see how great he was at his prime, and it would only keep THOSE players. Even if it exported them to outside of the game.

I agree - or another route could be where the game lets you essentially create a huge html export (an ootp-like almanac) containing stuff that you check off. SO you could check off which teams you want to include in the export. That way - you could track all this information, yet it wouldn't bog down the game's database because it's an export.

[DaddyTorgo]

yeah - I wish i'd thought of the idea before now - oh well - maybe MV will notice and it'll get some notice to be addressed next year...

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

yeah - I wish i'd thought of the idea before now - oh well - maybe MV will notice and it'll get some notice to be addressed next year...

fwiw, I mentioned this years ago to no avail.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

fwiw, I mentioned this years ago to no avail.

oh. poop.

[SirFozzie]

Miles Jacobson did an interview with VideoGamer.net with some interesting factoids dropped. The page says it's for FM Handheld, but it's pretty obvious all the questions are about FM2009, not handheld

FMH 2009 Interview for PSP - VideoGamer.com

[SirFozzie]

And here's the section on how the transfer system is being overhauled:

VideoGamer.com: We're particularly interested in how you've completely rebuilt the transfer system. How will it be different for the player?

MJ: The user will not see much difference. It will be a hell of a lot faster. Quite a few of the features that you'll see in the game will be made possible because we've rewritten what we call the shortlist manager, that controls all the transfers. They'll see a lot more transfers that make sense. They'll see more things like what you've seen this year in the transfer window; there were a lot of season long loans with views to a permanent transfer afterwards, you'll be seeing more of those in there. It's just more flexible, more efficient, and makes it easier moving forward as well as easier this year. You know that system has been in place for many many years, so it was due a shake up.+

[DaddyTorgo]

just mentioned to Foz - if 2009 is as good as it looks right now, it's going to blow up the "odd years are inferior versions of CM/FM" curse

[scooter]

lighthouse,

As far as your wanting to track the history of players, etc. - the game has something like 350,000 players and staff in it. That is way beyond anything that OOTP has, so trying to compare the two is like apples and oranges. To try to store stats for retired players would only slow down and bloat the game to an unplayable state.

I guess I never really have this problem because I play so slowly that I never make it more than a season or two before the next version comes out

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by scooter

lighthouse,

As far as your wanting to track the history of players, etc. - the game has something like 350,000 players and staff in it. That is way beyond anything that OOTP has, so trying to compare the two is like apples and oranges. To try to store stats for retired players would only slow down and bloat the game to an unplayable state.

I guess I never really have this problem because I play so slowly that I never make it more than a season or two before the next version comes out

yes that's the standard defense given. that's why i'm not asking to store a history of all players in the FM database, but at least store a history of the players who have played on my team (what is that, ~100 players), or create an export so I can deal with it outside of FM so it doesn't get bogged down.

besides, i don't think there are actually 350,000 players active in any 1 game, unless you activate every level of every league in the world, which would just be impossible to run. ootp could probably have 350,000 players too if you made leagues in every country.

[Cringer]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

on another note - i find it slightly amusing that the overwhelming response (here at least) so far has been resoundingly positive. There haven't been any "well this is my year to skip it so i won't be buying it" comments - quite the opposite actually.

This should be a year for me to skip it, but 3D and press conferences really makes that hard. My only problem is finding when and where to squeeze in the purchase. This has already gone down as my biggest game buying year since my high school days probably. That isn't saying much since I didn't buy a ton of games being in a truck all the time, but I still feel odd and a bit guilty buying games. I already want to get a couple 360 games still this fall/winter (having bought two for myself and one for my daughter this year) and if an FOF product comes out I will want that (having already bought OOTP this year). I still will probably pick this up though. Heck, just thinking about this has me wanting to play last years version now.

[Anthony]

unless FOF was completely overhauled in terms of UI and some heavily increased graphical element (which are all very unlikely) i would/will skip that one. the only reason i purchased FOF2K7 was cuz my MP league upgraded to it.

[Toddzilla]

Why can't there be a custom league creator?

/obligatory

[molson]

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

1. I absolutely hate it when my star striker who I've had for several seasons retires; and then as soon as he does, he disappears from the game: I can't go back and even click to view his Player Information. It really breaks the immersion for me: why should I care so much about a player when I know in a few seasons I won't even be able to peruse his historical stats. For FM to have so much stuff in it, and exclude something this major just leaves me scratching me head. This is an area where OOTP is light years ahead of FM.

As someone's who has never played FM (waiting for a time where I become unemployed or something), that's a pretty shocking ommission.

The storage explanation sounds like something we would hear back in the FOF1 or original Baseball Mogul days. I realize there's more players here but there's a ton of ways to do this on a lesser scale and they have nothing?

[Pumpy Tudors]

Every year, I end up buying this game, but I don't really get into it until the second patch for it comes out sometime around February. I had pretty much decided that I was going to just wait until patch #2 before buying this time, but now I'm not sure if I can wait.

[path12]

I've bought every year since 2000 but am on the fence right now, for some reason 2008 seemed like a small step back from 2007 for me, it seemed that things happened more randomly (morale changes, inconsistent tactics, streaks) than in the past.

I don't much care about 3D, but the increased asst mgr interaction and press conferences are tempting......plus I'm very interested to hear about the new transfer system.

In the end I'm sure I'll pick it up -- but I think I'm going to wait and see how the new systems get tweaked/patched before I do.

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

Footballmanager.net has a link to order through English retailer PLAY, for 29.99 pounds, with 4-6 day shipping to the US for another 4.95 pounds. Call it $56-60.

I'm not sure it takes debit cards, it didn't allow it to go through for me.

FWIW I went to Play and couldn't find a US shipping option. However Game has the same price, 29.99 pounds and does ship to the US.

http://www.game.co.uk/PC/Sport/Footb...ball%20manager

With the game being $40 from Amazon I may go ahead and bite the bullet and get the official FM from the UK.

I've never ordered anything that wasn't paid in dollars before and Game only takes British Pounds. So, if I use VISA do they do the currency conversion and the game shows on my monthly bill in US dollars? Are there any delays with importing the game other than normal shipping time (customs etc?)? Their sight also says something about VAT taxes? Is this something to worry about with a US address?

Thanks for any help.

[TazFTW]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

Every year, I end up buying this game, but I don't really get into it until the second patch for it comes out sometime around February. I had pretty much decided that I was going to just wait until patch #2 before buying this time, but now I'm not sure if I can wait.

Same here but I'll still wait for the patches before purchasing 2009. With the words "rebuilt transfer system" I think I'll be waiting until patch #3.

[Toddzilla]

Just to reiterate a point made a thousand times in past FM threads, nearly everyone in the US who has made the effort to purchase FM has been pleased and nearly everyone in the US who has purchased WWSM had been let down. WWSM has always been the red-headed step child to FM and nothing SI has ever done or said indicates otherwise.

Do yourself a favor and buy FM.

[lighthousekeeper]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Just to reiterate a point made a thousand times in past FM threads, nearly everyone in the US who has made the effort to purchase FM has been pleased and nearly everyone in the US who has purchased WWSM had been let down. WWSM has always been the red-headed step child to FM and nothing SI has ever done or said indicates otherwise.

Do yourself a favor and buy FM.

i had purchased fm until last year when i got wwsm, and i had absolutely no problems with it.

[MJ4H]

Sorry, but what exactly is the difference? I've had both versions in the past.

[path12]

I've done WWSM in 06 and 08. The 08 one has been just fine for me.

[Eaglesfan27]

Oh my is right! I skipped the game last year, but the 3D engine makes this a must buy for me.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

Sorry, but what exactly is the difference? I've had both versions in the past.

Something to do with certain mods I think. I don't think that some fan created player editors work with WWSM, or something like that.

Doesn't matter to me since I never use them. The only I've done is add league graphics, and that works fine. I usually buy the WWSM version and never have had any problems with it.

[MJ4H]

Oh, yeah I don't mess with that stuff.

[cougarfreak]

I'll have to wait to see the specs to see if my laptop is up to snuff, but the game looks fantastic.

[samifan24]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

Just to reiterate a point made a thousand times in past FM threads, nearly everyone in the US who has made the effort to purchase FM has been pleased and nearly everyone in the US who has purchased WWSM had been let down. WWSM has always been the red-headed step child to FM and nothing SI has ever done or said indicates otherwise.

Do yourself a favor and buy FM.

I thought they were exactly the same game but with different titles? I've purchased both FM and WWSM in the past and haven't seen any discernible difference.

[Pumpy Tudors]

Patches always come out for FM first. That's really the big perk. There was one year (I think WWSM 06) that was an absolute nightmare for WWSM. The digital download copy took for-ev-er to finally come out. It was driving me batty. That didn't seem to happen the past couple of years, but I've still been wary. Not wary enough to stop me from getting WWSM anyway, but wary nonetheless.

[samifan24]

I noticed on Amazon that WWSM 2009 is listed as Windows XP or Vista only. Does anyone know if FM 2009 will ship on the Windows / Mac dual disc, as previous versions of both games have done?

[Sweed]

Originally Posted by Pumpy Tudors

Patches always come out for FM first. That's really the big perk. There was one year (I think WWSM 06) that was an absolute nightmare for WWSM. The digital download copy took for-ev-er to finally come out. It was driving me batty. That didn't seem to happen the past couple of years, but I've still been wary. Not wary enough to stop me from getting WWSM anyway, but wary nonetheless.

Yeah, 06 was a bit of a nightmare too for the disk version of WWSM. Not unusual for the patch to come 3 or 4 days after FM IIRC.

But last year (I have the digital download version of WWSM 2008) the patches did come out on the same day. The big difference though was FM would have up a ton of mirrors within an hour of release while you had to hunt to find one for WWSM.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Something to do with certain mods I think. I don't think that some fan created player editors work with WWSM, or something like that.

Doesn't matter to me since I never use them. The only I've done is add league graphics, and that works fine. I usually buy the WWSM version and never have had any problems with it.

What you normally find is that a very few unofficial look for the FM installation directory using something unique to FM (rather than WWSM) and this can be 'got around' by renaming files to whatever they are called in FM.

(that being said I'm not wholly up to date on whether this is still an issue at all or not - but in the past thats generally been the cause)

[cougarfreak]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

What you normally find is that a very few unofficial look for the FM installation directory using something unique to FM (rather than WWSM) and this can be 'got around' by renaming files to whatever they are called in FM.

(that being said I'm not wholly up to date on whether this is still an issue at all or not - but in the past thats generally been the cause)

Any idea on minimum specs yet?

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by cougarfreak

Any idea on minimum specs yet?

Should work on the same system last years ran on - obviously the 3d quality/availability will depend on your graphics system setup but the 2d remains available for systems which can't cope with it particularly well.

[Sweed]

Went ahead and preordered WWSM 2009 as Amazon has changed their price from $39 down to $29.

Amazon.com: Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009: Video Games

Just can't justify $25-30 more to get FM when they are the same game though with some possible limitations with mods and finding patch mirrors. May still cancel when the digital download is announced depending on what company\companies they use. It's what I did last year and playing without the disk is a nice feature.

[Sweed]

doal

Marc V, I posted this on the SI site but haven't gotten a reply and am afraid it may not be seen as quickly as things fall from the front page there. Perhaps you have an answer?

Last year you guys did a great job of getting out the WWSM patches on the same day as the FM patches. For those of us in the US can we expect the same this year if we support SI\SEGA by purchasing WWSM?

Thanks.

[DaddyTorgo]

nice price from amazon. might have to get my ass on that.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Sweed

doal

Marc V, I posted this on the SI site but haven't gotten a reply and am afraid it may not be seen as quickly as things fall from the front page there. Perhaps you have an answer?

Thanks.

It was probably you I saw this post from on there - I've enquired about this but not heard back at present - so simply put I'm afraid I don't know (just a humble developer me, sorry).