Football Manager Live Preorder Opened (mini rant)

[astrosfan64]

God I can't wait for this game. I'm pretty pumped up and ready to go. I hit the site every day waiting for the preorder to be active.

Well guess what it is active!

FOOTBALL MANAGER LIVE - THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE

I log in with my sega pass and go through the steps and then I get a message that says you can't preorder the game yet, click this link to see why.

I click it and aparently I can't preorder because the beta guys get to do it first for a day or something.

Ok, on to the rant. The beta guys just got to play the game for free for a while. Now, they get first shot at getting the game. It seems SI will only have limited slots for the inital release. I don't get this. If preorder is open, it should be opened to everyone. My cash is as good as theirs.

Second rant, I don't understand why they can't create a gameworld or two for North America where the exterme associations would run during our evening primetime hours. It makes no sense to me why they are doing it this way. I should be used to it, because Sega/SI screws the US on pretty much all of their releases. EHM was terribad and the FM releases aren't much better.

With that being said, I'll preorder as soon as I can. I'll join a server where there is only probably 30 people who will play during my time period since I'm central time. But, oh well.

Glad the game is getting close, I just wish SI wouldn't always seem to be so amature when it comes to releases. I read their explanation of why they have a phased rollout and release, and its pretty much crap.

I mean wow and conan released to 500k to 1million people with very minor issues. Again SI is pretty amature about some things.

Maybe they could put a timezone preference when signing up for the preorder so they can group like timezones together?

Who here plans on getting this. Lets try and all get in the same gameworld.

[scooter]

I have no intention of getting involved with FM Live, but I have to take exception with EHM being "terribad". I love that game and still play it today. And it was actually designed with the North American market in mind as the NHL, AHL, ECHL and Canadian major juniors are the most in-depth parts of the game.

I can understand you being upset at not being able to pre-order, but I think you are painting with a pretty broad brush. And I'm pretty sure the word you are looking for is amateur

[Marc Vaughan]

Ok, on to the rant. The beta guys just got to play the game for free for a while. Now, they get first shot at getting the game. It seems SI will only have limited slots for the inital release. I don't get this. If preorder is open, it should be opened to everyone. My cash is as good as theirs.

Simply put we don't want to go the route that has happened with many MMO games where servers crash and horrible things happen - for that reason we're restricting the number of spots initially to ensure that things (hopefully) run nice and smoothly.

We realise this is unusual but believe its the safest way to run the release and ensure that its as enjoyable as possible for the people playing.

Second rant, I don't understand why they can't create a gameworld or two for North America where the exterme associations would run during our evening primetime hours. It makes no sense to me why they are doing it this way. I should be used to it, because Sega/SI screws the US on pretty much all of their releases. EHM was terribad and the FM releases aren't much better.

Each gameworld will have various FA's within it - these run at different hours so there should be at least one which suits your playing times.

I personally play in the NFA (Nighttime Football Association) - this works out to be early evening for me in Florida generally.

(also bear in mind that post release one of the planned updates is to allow users to create their own FA's - this will obviously allow you to customise one to your hearts content)

[SirFozzie]

Marc: Can you let me know if it's ok for folks in the US to get in? They state in the ToS that it's...

Access to the ‘Football Manager Live’ Service (“the Service”) is intended for users in the United Kingdom and Ireland only and the Service is only available in English

Does that mean we're locked out here in the states?

[Flasch186]

I played in the Beta for a very short period of time and found that the game was definitely not for me.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

Marc: Can you let me know if it's ok for folks in the US to get in? They state in the ToS that it's...

Access to the ‘Football Manager Live’ Service (“the Service”) is intended for users in the United Kingdom and Ireland only and the Service is only available in English

Does that mean we're locked out here in the states?

I'll check (its most likely to do with schedule up/down time so people can't complain if they live in TimBuk2 and the normal server backup time is 5.30pm there - but I can't say 100% for certain).

I know I'm "in" and a lot of the other beta testers are external to the UK and I haven't been told its UK only.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

I played in the Beta for a very short period of time and found that the game was definitely not for me.

Its a very different game to the main FM - not least in that its a 'game' and not a straight simulation ...

(its also constantly evolving and improving ..)

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Its a very different game to the main FM - not least in that its a 'game' and not a straight simulation ...

(its also constantly evolving and improving ..)

absolutely no question that FM Live is an evolution of sorts and perhaps a harbinger of things to come but, for me, I dont have the time dedication needed nor the stubbornness to stick with it. I like my FM to come with turns so Im on pause until I tell it Im not. Hence why I like Civ and not RTS style games.

[samifan24]

Speaking of FM, is SI releasing a new FM this year? Or are they just releasing FM Live this year?

[Marc Vaughan]

Righto couple of answers to questions outstanding ...

Can you play outside of the UK

Yes you can (I've just got this confirmed).

absolutely no question that FM Live is an evolution of sorts and perhaps a harbinger of things to come but, for me, I dont have the time dedication needed nor the stubbornness to stick with it. I like my FM to come with turns so Im on pause until I tell it Im not. Hence why I like Civ and not RTS style games.

You can play FML like a play-by-mail game if you want to, that is place your 'turn' for the day and then pick up the results when you log in the next day (the assistant will automatically use your set tactics etc.).

If you do this select the 'casual' or similar federation which doesn't penalise you for AI play.

Speaking of FM, is SI releasing a new FM this year? Or are they just releasing FM Live this year?

Don't worry FM PC (and FMH PSP) are both coming out this year - FML is a complimentary product imho.

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by scooter

I have no intention of getting involved with FM Live, but I have to take exception with EHM being "terribad". I love that game and still play it today. And it was actually designed with the North American market in mind as the NHL, AHL, ECHL and Canadian major juniors are the most in-depth parts of the game.

I can understand you being upset at not being able to pre-order, but I think you are painting with a pretty broad brush. And I'm pretty sure the word you are looking for is amateur

I love EHM. I mean the release of EHM was terribad. You guys remember softcrap? How long it took to get in our stores. The game itself was great. I play it all the time.

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Simply put we don't want to go the route that has happened with many MMO games where servers crash and horrible things happen - for that reason we're restricting the number of spots initially to ensure that things (hopefully) run nice and smoothly.

We realise this is unusual but believe its the safest way to run the release and ensure that its as enjoyable as possible for the people playing.


Each gameworld will have various FA's within it - these run at different hours so there should be at least one which suits your playing times.

I personally play in the NFA (Nighttime Football Association) - this works out to be early evening for me in Florida generally.

(also bear in mind that post release one of the planned updates is to allow users to create their own FA's - this will obviously allow you to customise one to your hearts content)

I know I read all about how this works. The issue is that the "extreme federations" only run during the UK hours. I would definately want to play in a game that penalized others for AI play. I would want to play games frequently during US Prime hours.

Anyway, thanks for the reponse. Good luck with the game. It doesn't change how I feel about your releases, but at least you tried.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

Don't worry FM PC (and FMH PSP) are both coming out this year - FML is a complimentary product imho.

So umm...when can we start expecting to see trickles of information relating to FM PC?? Note that I'm not asking for a release date, or a beta date or anything, just like - teasers about new features and what-not.

[DaddyTorgo]

wonder if there might be opportunity for 1-2 extreme federations based on US/Canadian time to capture the rabid gamers on this side of the pond...

[Mustang]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

(its also constantly evolving and improving ..)

Bort? Is that you???

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by astrosfan64

I know I read all about how this works. The issue is that the "extreme federations" only run during the UK hours. I would definately want to play in a game that penalized others for AI play. I would want to play games frequently during US Prime hours.

The NFA would probably suit you pretty well then imho - its deadlines are during the early evening US time, but people are frequently on during the day also.

It penalises people for inactivity and has a pretty good schedule (which you an always top up by joining unofficial comps if you want to).

In the gameworld I'm in it also runs a pyramid system* for U21 & U18's as well which suits what I'm looking for.

*Ie. promotion and relegation

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

So umm...when can we start expecting to see trickles of information relating to FM PC?? Note that I'm not asking for a release date, or a beta date or anything, just like - teasers about new features and what-not.

I'm a developer not a PR chap and so am not 100% certain of the schedule for such things ... but I'd expect that they'll release things a little later than usual just to avoid distracting from FML's forthcoming release (from a common sense perspective you don't want to distract people from your own products by promoting two at once).

[sachmo71]

k, on to the rant. The beta guys just got to play the game for free for a while. Now, they get first shot at getting the game. It seems SI will only have limited slots for the inital release. I don't get this. If preorder is open, it should be opened to everyone. My cash is as good as theirs.

They also gave the game company their valuable time for free. A small perk is to allow them to order it before everyone else, and also test the subscribe process. I don't have a problem with this in the least.

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

The NFA would probably suit you pretty well then imho - its deadlines are during the early evening US time, but people are frequently on during the day also.

It penalises people for inactivity and has a pretty good schedule (which you an always top up by joining unofficial comps if you want to).

In the gameworld I'm in it also runs a pyramid system* for U21 & U18's as well which suits what I'm looking for.

*Ie. promotion and relegation

This does sound good. Thanks Marc

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by sachmo71

They also gave the game company their valuable time for free. A small perk is to allow them to order it before everyone else, and also test the subscribe process. I don't have a problem with this in the least.

LOL

If they were actually beta testing I would agree with that. But, all they really got to do was play the game for free.

As anyone who is a QC or QA person can tell you its not fun. A paid professional does lots of things that aren't fun, this is why they are paid.

The free beta testers aren't required to write bug reports every day. The free testers aren't required to do certain things. They play a game for free and if they feel like it they can report a bug.

I would of happily done it and so would of ton of other people.

[astrosfan64]

LOL their pre-order site has been down all day. I guess it is a good idea they roll this out slowly.

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

wonder if there might be opportunity for 1-2 extreme federations based on US/Canadian time to capture the rabid gamers on this side of the pond...

Marc:

I agree with this. Would it be to much to make one server for North America? I don't understand why they won't consider this. MMO's do this all of the time.

[Marc Vaughan]

In the gameworld I'm in it also runs a pyramid system* for U21 & U18's as well which suits what I'm looking for.

One of the reasons I like this is that it means that even if your first team isn't the greatest you can get a lot of pleasure from knowing that your kids one day might be because you're top of the U18 Premiership ..

I started by fielding kids in all my sides so my 'Colts' were very much a slow burning team .... little painful at first with regards to my first team results, but 10 seasons into my beta gameworld I'm bouncing comfortably inside the top 50 and thats only playing casually*.

*I login most days for 15-20 minutes on average - there are hardcore players who seem to live in FML, but how you play is up to you and its possible to do well without being obsessed.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by astrosfan64

If they were actually beta testing I would agree with that. But, all they really got to do was play the game for free.

Which is still a valuable tool for the developers, because in a QA/QC environment you're running set test plans to make sure core features work, but you're probably not being given nearly enough time(espicially in a MMO/online style game) to just be creative and play the game and try to break it. The early testers get to put up with the game in a half finished state, try to find as many exploits/bugs/broken features as possible(whether they intend to or not, in every game I've beta'd it just sort of happens even if youre trying to ignore testing and just play). They are subject to server resets/rollbacks with no notice and all kinds of things that would cause many gamers to quit.

And for that they get early entry, sounds fair to me!

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by astrosfan64

Marc:

I agree with this. Would it be to much to make one server for North America? I don't understand why they won't consider this. MMO's do this all of the time.

The infrastructure is based in the UK and designed to be as flexible as possible - the initial roll out is likely to be centered with the majority of players being UK or European because (1) Its a limited release, (2) Thats where the PR is centered, (3) All the servers are based in Europe.

As such its possible that out of the first batch of worlds there'd be a full population for a North American world.

If all goes well then I'm sure that such things will be considered in the future - in the short term personally what I want is for all our users to have fun and enjoy themselves in a stable environement ... I've seen a lot of MMO's come and go fairly quickly and I'd love FML to be around in 10 years time bigger and better than ever, for that to happen it needs to start in the way it wants to continue.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by astrosfan64

LOL

If they were actually beta testing I would agree with that. But, all they really got to do was play the game for free.

For an MMO that is being a 'beta tester' - we needed 'normal' usage patterns to work out likely stress levels in the servers etc.

Also bear in mind that as beta testers they endured various pains such as randomly evolving match engines, changes of game direction (from a design perspective), crashes and other things which final users will avoid.

They have also given us valuable feedback about what they liked and disliked in the game and without them the game wouldn't be as good as it is.

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

The infrastructure is based in the UK and designed to be as flexible as possible - the initial roll out is likely to be centered with the majority of players being UK or European because (1) Its a limited release, (2) Thats where the PR is centered, (3) All the servers are based in Europe.

As such its possible that out of the first batch of worlds there'd be a full population for a North American world.

If all goes well then I'm sure that such things will be considered in the future - in the short term personally what I want is for all our users to have fun and enjoy themselves in a stable environement ... I've seen a lot of MMO's come and go fairly quickly and I'd love FML to be around in 10 years time bigger and better than ever, for that to happen it needs to start in the way it wants to continue.

I'm excited about the game. I hope it all works out well for you guys. Most of my frustration is from not being able to play it. I think that is a good thing

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by Marc Vaughan

For an MMO that is being a 'beta tester' - we needed 'normal' usage patterns to work out likely stress levels in the servers etc.

Also bear in mind that as beta testers they endured various pains such as randomly evolving match engines, changes of game direction (from a design perspective), crashes and other things which final users will avoid.

I know Marc. If I was you guys. I would of just let the beta testers preorder first and not setup your site the way you did. It was simply a let down to your customers who did not get into the beta.

The site says preorder is live. You have a link to why we should preorder right away. Then we go and try and do it, and the link basically says "nnaaaaaa we were just kidding". Just a frustrating experience.

I've never had this many problems trying to give a company my money!

[Marc Vaughan]

I know Marc. If I was you guys. I would of just let the beta testers preorder first and not setup your site the way you did. It was simply a let down to your customers who did not get into the beta.
The site says preorder is live. You have a link to why we should preorder right away. Then we go and try and do it, and the link basically says "nnaaaaaa we were just kidding". Just a frustrating experience.

I can understand that and apolgise for any frustration it may have caused.

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by astrosfan64

LOL their pre-order site has been down all day. I guess it is a good idea they roll this out slowly.

as I said in the thread on the other forum, I just signed up on a new beta gameworld that started playing for real this past Monday, and as far as I know, all gameworld have been down since yesterday before 7 am eastern.

I do share a bit of the "frustration" about not having any of the extreme association playing on North American time. Marc, I know about the different assocations and I've myself signed up for the Moonlight association which has play times of 1am to 7am in gametime (8pm to 2 am eastern) but I've often stayed logged on for 2-3 hours in an evening and only saw the same two opponents online.

One other silly little thing. In my world, the Spink gameworld, the Spink Cup which is supposed to be the whole world cup, has play time set from 10:00 to 22:00 which is just silly if you take the whole planet globally. I mean, this means 5am to 5pm eastern. I'll never be able to log in during those times. Maybe I'll need some teaching as to how the AI hours work too...

Finally, we'll have to all get together and figure out in which gameworld we'll all sign up. I did receive the email about pre-ordering (and the sweet rebate code in there) but I'm holding off signing up until I know about where some FOFCers will sign up. An FOFC association (or simply a recurring competition) would be absolutely sweet!

FM

[astrosfan64]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

as I said in the thread on the other forum, I just signed up on a new beta gameworld that started playing for real this past Monday, and as far as I know, all gameworld have been down since yesterday before 7 am eastern.

I do share a bit of the "frustration" about not having any of the extreme association playing on North American time. Marc, I know about the different assocations and I've myself signed up for the Moonlight association which has play times of 1am to 7am in gametime (8pm to 2 am eastern) but I've often stayed logged on for 2-3 hours in an evening and only saw the same two opponents online.

One other silly little thing. In my world, the Spink gameworld, the Spink Cup which is supposed to be the whole world cup, has play time set from 10:00 to 22:00 which is just silly if you take the whole planet globally. I mean, this means 5am to 5pm eastern. I'll never be able to log in during those times. Maybe I'll need some teaching as to how the AI hours work too...

Finally, we'll have to all get together and figure out in which gameworld we'll all sign up. I did receive the email about pre-ordering (and the sweet rebate code in there) but I'm holding off signing up until I know about where some FOFCers will sign up. An FOFC association (or simply a recurring competition) would be absolutely sweet!

FM

FM

I'll preorder as soon as the site lets me. Tell me the playworld to sign up with. I'll be right there with you. We can at least play each other every night. I think this is going to be an excellent product, I'm just worried about the lack of people to play with....

[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by astrosfan64

FM

I'll preorder as soon as the site lets me. Tell me the playworld to sign up with. I'll be right there with you. We can at least play each other every night. I think this is going to be an excellent product, I'm just worried about the lack of people to play with....

lol!

To be quite fair with the game, I've never run out of opponent. There's a very nifty "look for opponent" button that you can click in which you ask the game to match you with somebody else based on some criterias you give like reputation, rankings and such.

That button shows you how many people are online with whom you have fixtures planned in competition. You can challenge them right there.

I've played what, maybe 20 games so far, of those, maybe 6-8 were of official competitions and the rest were friendlies (that still count toward your world ranking) only 2 or 3 time out of those 12-14 friendlies where I asked for an opponent did I have to wait for more than 3 minutes for the button to change color and tell me a match had been made. Usually, it matches me automatically.

The nice thing is with competition fixtures, you don't have to play them sequentially. You can whoever is on your fixture list whenever they are online, even if that fixture is really down the line. For that reason, in one evening you can often play back to back league matches with the same guy, since your teams will play each other twice in a season anyway...

FM

[FrogMan]

dola, and yeah, even though I can preorder right now, before any non betatester, I'll be holding off a little to make sure some of my FOFC friends can get into the same gameworld as me... Wouldn't want to sign up right now and end up with the gameworld being filled before any non tester can sign up...

FM

[FrogMan]

double dola,

A question for Marc V: do you know how many people will be allowed per gameworld in the full version of the game versus in the beta gameworld?

Just trying to see if there'll be significantly more players in the real gameworld than there are in the beta worlds...

FM

[Ryan S]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

double dola,

A question for Marc V: do you know how many people will be allowed per gameworld in the full version of the game versus in the beta gameworld?

Just trying to see if there'll be significantly more players in the real gameworld than there are in the beta worlds...

FM

A few months ago my gameworld had almost 1100 members, but it is back down to around 600 at the moment.

I imagine that game worlds will be capped at around 1000.

[Marc Vaughan]

Originally Posted by FrogMan

double dola,

A question for Marc V: do you know how many people will be allowed per gameworld in the full version of the game versus in the beta gameworld?

Just trying to see if there'll be significantly more players in the real gameworld than there are in the beta worlds...

FM

To be honest I'm not entirely certain - FML isn't a project I'm personally working upon (although I do contribute moans and feedback frequently ) .. I'd expect that the load will be similar to the heavier beta worlds in operation.

(although personally I like the idea of eventually having a MUCH heavier load in a ficticious game world - ie. one without real players, but that sort of thing will undoubtably come later on once FML is established, along with dedicated servers for different continents, ability for a group of people to establish their own personal gameworld if they want to etc.)