My initial CM4 reactions

[sabotai]

(I think there was another thread like this started, but I couldn't find it...it's late)

Anyway

The interface looks nice. Nice and pretty.

It will take a bit of getting used to. It looks like they took the info that was on 6 or 7 screens and condensed it to 3 or 4. And they also moved something around. But, no biggie.

2D view is cool. Now I get to watch the end of the games. I think I will perm. put it on highlights. If I knew anything about soccer, I'd might watch the whole thing. But that'd be very time consuming...

The grouping the attributes is VERY helpful.

So far, it's a go. I like it.

But there's one big downfall IMO. I used to run CM3 will all leagues turned on. Sure, it took a minute to load and save, and the processing time did take awhile, but I loved seeing how the teams over in Japan and Croatia and Mexico (and etc.). But now, It says I should only run 9 divisions...out of 88. I decided to go ahead and try, but after a LONG time of game creation, I gave up and just picked England. So now I don't get to see who wins int the Japan league or any other league.

It's just something I guess I have to live with. And after seeing that simming games takes a lot longer than it did in CM3, I guess it's a good thing. Before it took like a split second to sim a game, now it takes a full second or so.

Question for Markus if he sees this, what caused the slowdown? Added stats? More detailed AI? Combo of a bunch of things?

And if I want to add more divisions, which is better, CPU speed or RAM? (I have an AMD 1800+ and 256 RAM) I do plan on upgrading RAM soon...

[GoldenEagle]

I am pretty sure its RAM, though you might want to verify.

[McSweeny]

whoa i didn't know markus made CM AND OOTP!!

[3ric]

Hmm... come to think of it, I've never seem them both in the same place... hmmm.

[Richards]

Ok well I've been playing CM4 for awhile now and have some first and second reactions about the game.

First off, I love the CM series. I was introduced first to CM3 here thru my FOF interest and soon became an addict. Like many here became a legit soccer fan because of playing CM3.

I guess instead of reviewing I will make some bullets of likes/dislikes for easier reading.

I love:
**2d mode -- it's very cool
**leagues available -- It's nice to be able to play almost any team anywhere, esp since I like to manage lower league teams. Currently managing Telstar in Dutch D1, just a random LL team I picked back in CM3 days and decided to play them again.
**The new training system -- potential to be a lot more hands on and realistic.
**Skins -- minor feature but nice nonetheless
**Release media stories
**Expanded contract options i.e. first option etc
**Expanded MLS implementation although I haven't played it yet and heard it isn't really working yet.
**The new tactic options -- SI thanks for canning the With Ball/Without Ball -- I'm not a soccer expert by any means, but I agree with the folks that say it never was realistic. The new tactic options, maybe with a few more added, have the potential to be excellent.
**442 actually works now, maybe too well, see below**
**2d highlights
**small things like players injured and physio comes on the field

**Overall depth of simulation -- this is at the core of what I love about CM. There is really nothing comparable. Games like FOF and OOTP are a step in the right direction. Like many here I dream of an american football equivalent to CM4 can you imagine!! It's a truly immersive game world.

Things I hate:
( I wish this list was shorter)
**Huge ground maitenence fees are dragging me into bankruptcy. (being fixed I think) Plus the No-tv money bug makes it worse.
**Too easy to loan quality players at my D1 club, Stilian Petrov from Celtic for example, super player would probably never come to Dutch D1 IRL
**The difference between my 4132 tactic and a close to stock 442 tactic that I soon switched to was tremendous. Even though "on paper" these two tactics are very similar, the 442 tactic turns seems to supercharge my average team. I noticed this after seeing some wierd results in Champions League games, etc, like 6-0 and 5-0. Usually the winning team is playing a 442 with wingers pushing forward. I started playing this tactic and turned my teams fortune around instantly. Is this realistic???!!
**Too hard to loan out promising youngsters (being fixed)
**Leagues/players not in "foreground" leagues don't play, i.e. even though their season should be going on, players have 0 apps and lacking match practice, barring a few friendlies. CM4 used to give these players some generated stats. I'm not looking for super detailed results, it's just like since those teams are not in active league, they exist, but never play games. Annoying.
**Lot's of small features from CM3 missing. Too numerous to mention.
** MATCH ENGINE SEEMS TO BE BROKEN -- I guess this is my biggest issue. First off I'd like to disclaim my comments. This is SI'
s first foray into the 2d simulation of the match. I give them tremendous credit For ATTEMPTING a simlation of this complexity, and as a software developer I can appreciate this. All of the aforementioned bugs can be fixed, but I'm worried that the Match Engine bugs may be more difficult to fix. It seems that in CM3 the match engine quirks were never really addressed, because of the way it was implemented, it wasn't possible to without rewriting the game.

Well that brings us to CM4. I don't know how the new match engine is implemented, if it is more modular and able to be modified easily, or if it is so core and complex that addressing these issues will be impossible. I hope and pray that this is not the issue. This game has the POTENTIAL to be in my mind the greatest computer game EVER.

Getting back on track, the match engine seems to have a lot of flaws which are starting to reduce my enjoyment of the game.

**Pace is way too important. Fast strikers and fast wingers with good dribbling are world-beaters. my player orlando smeekes, who has unspectacular stats except 20 dribbling, is a wonderkind for me, getting 9 and 10 ratings every game, scoring loads of goals and assists. Since it seems pace is very important, I have replaced my defenders with good traditional "defence" stats i.e. marking positioning tackling teamwork with younger crappy defenders but have good pace. Works for me. Concede very little.

**Gung-Ho mentality give you all of the benefits but none of the disadvantages. I would think gung-ho would be like a last ditch effort in a late 1 down situation, much like pulling a goalie in hockey, well it scores nicely, but I can leave gung-ho on for a whole half and maybe concede 1 goal with average defenders. NOT GOOD.

** Players do some really stupid things. Can't see wide open pass opportunities right next to them won't pick up a loose ball right next to him, retreat to defence instead, in a 1on1 striker will fire a long shot instead of leaving keeper in the dust and burying it. Many other things players just generally act like headless chickens

**Strikers score way too many goals. Although it is early in the season, I see some strikers on pace for way too many goals.

**Stupid offsides calls, like goals dissallowed on a corner! COMEON!

** The appearance of apparent SuperTactics already. Although I have not tried these or even verified they work, it seems most are based on using the "Gung Ho" instruction.

Now I know some of this seems negative. But I really do like this game. If these things can be fixed, it will be classic. It's just all these things combined are stealing my enjoyment and I've been playing it less and less.

I give Marc Vaughan and co at SI tremendous credit for creating such a complex and realistic simulation. I know it is easy to pan them for the bugs, but there is nothing comparable out there even attempted.

Bottom line, SI has always been great at responding and fixing bugs. I hope the same remains true, and I really hope the match engine issues are not beyond fixing/tweaking. If you haven't bought this yet, I would recommend keeping a close eye on patches and comments after the patches. This game will be fantastic if fixed (It is already good, despite flaws).

In the meantime, I think I will put it away for awhile, and maybe finally buy the newest FOF, or maybe OOTP5, or maybe Puresim, or maybe tournement dreams, oh yeah what about EHM, that will be cool So many great sime, so little time. Probably will just fire up TCY again.

Thanks for listening to my rants, and I hope this long rambling message is relavent to some.

P.S. I know much has been made of the speed issue. Well it runs fast on my system with about 8 leagues with all divisions active in each league. No problems here. Defragging my hard disk speeded up the game even more. I have an AMD Xp1900+ w/512MB generic DDR RAM

[BreizhManu]

great post richards

[Havok]

Excellent reply Richard. You should post that one on the CM boards. But all the fanboy's would probally flame the hell out of ya for posting anything bad about CM!!!!!

Anyway most of the problems you posted i agree need to be fixed aswell. This is my first attempt at the CM series and i do like the game. But until alot of these bugs get fixed it just isnt very realistic. My 2 strikers account for 90% of my goals.

And your right about pace. Being very fast in soccer does help alot. But its not the most important thing. My striker has 18 pace and 7 finishing and he has 15 goals in 7 games this season. Thats like a slightly above average power hitter in OOTP5 hitting 80 homeruns. Thats just not realistic and its kind of a gamestopper for me.

Ill probally wait for the next patch before i start playing again.

[Calis]

Damn Richards, you managed to put in every positive and every negative that I feel about the game also. Nice work.

[Radii]

Originally posted by sabotai

But there's one big downfall IMO. I used to run CM3 will all leagues turned on. Sure, it took a minute to load and save, and the processing time did take awhile, but I loved seeing how the teams over in Japan and Croatia and Mexico (and etc.). But now, It says I should only run 9 divisions...out of 88. I decided to go ahead and try, but after a LONG time of game creation, I gave up and just picked England. So now I don't get to see who wins int the Japan league or any other league.

One comment here.. I'm running slightly more(VERY slightly) than the recommended divisions... maybe 1 or 2 more for me, and I noticed that the game took forever to initialize. I thought it had hung/crashed so I just went and watched TV for awhile and kept an eye on the screen, it took a ton longer than I ever remember it taking in CM3.

After it all finally got initialized though, the game flies. Simming and saving both appear exponentially faster. So you might want to give it a try running all the leagues you want, go out and get dinner while it initializes and then run it for a bit and see if the execution time is acceptable while you're playing... it may not be. If I start another carreer in my CM4 game, I know I'll put on a lot more leagues because it's running so fast for me right now.

[sabotai]

"whoa i didn't know markus made CM AND OOTP!!"

It was late, shut up! There's too many damn developers the M names. Mac, Marc, Markus...too damn many. For now on they will be known as Parrot, Vince and German Shephard, respectively.

Richards, great post. Thanks for the reply.

Radii, I'll try that. I turn on a bunch of leagues, go watch TV or do something else for awhile, and see how fast it sims. Thanks.

[HornedFrog Purple]

I have to admit, I am a tad dissappointed with this release for some of the reason mentioned above and a couple of others:

1. Can't for the life of me sell a player. I took over a bottom division Mexican team. The board told me to rebuild. Well that is a little difficult when I can't sell the garbage I have now. Even when I put their value at $0. And these are guys worth 200-400K not total garbage.

2. I bought a couple of players. In the deal I made with the other team, I worked out monthly installments for 6 months. Well I am still paying into my 2nd season... 5 months after the deal should have been finished.

3. No print to file or printing period.

4. The form table is messed up. No biggie though.

5. I am not totally sure what exactly my player's morale is. The tactics screen says one thing and the player card says another.

6. Strikers dominate the offense as indicated above.

Comparable to CM3 or 99/00 or 00/01, I would give CM4 a B in initial release. I am dissappointed in that I have been accustomed to an A product out of the gates. Don't take this the wrong way, it isn't on the scale of Tournament Dreams but it nonetheless how I feel about it.

And I am still having a blast playing it, I can't wait until its fixed up.

[Calis]

Originally posted by HornedFrog Purple
5. I am not totally sure what exactly my player's morale is. The tactics screen says one thing and the player card says another.

Just an fyi, I swear I read somewhere that the player card IS correct, the tactics screen is jacked up. Still an issue, but just so you know.

Not 100% sure though.

[Tekneek]

It tells me not to run more than 18 divisions. So, I put all of them on, with just England on Full Detail (I can take jobs everywhere else, and the league I am in will go to Full Detail). It *does* take a while, but it is not thrashing to the hard drive which reveals it is all processing time. This is on a 1.67 gHz Athlon, so CM4 is a hog. If I had a P4 it might run faster, or that is what I get from the documentation.

I have a hard time limiting my leagues. I'd rather it be slow and get the whole world than fake. I may run a career every now and then with only one nation on, but I don't prefer that.

[Bee]

Originally posted by HornedFrog Purple

1. Can't for the life of me sell a player. I took over a bottom division Mexican team. The board told me to rebuild. Well that is a little difficult when I can't sell the garbage I have now. Even when I put their value at $0. And these are guys worth 200-400K not total garbage.

I actually like this change in the game. You no longer can just dump salaries by selling players off cheap when they aren't really worth their salary. I have been able to sell my good players (even the ones not listed as "wanted") by offering them for less than their values to clubs recommended by my asst manager. But the overpaid guys and old guys are just about impossible to get rid of without paying to cut them loose. JMO, but my experience has been the is more "intelligent" in this regard and doesn't just make judgements based on the listed values.

[HornedFrog Purple]

Thanks Calis, that is what I have been going by is the player card and not the tactical screen.

Bee that would be acceptable if the player refused to take a wage cut or something after negotiation with the other club. What I am referring to is initial interest from anybody. Just like if you were looking over the transfer wire and noticed a player listed and looked at him and made an opening offer no matter what his "indicated value" is. You could make the argument that the CPU scout of the team sees him as worthless, but even in the last CM the equivalent of a conference side or non-league team would usually indicate some interest. Just because they are older does not make them totally useless unless the new AI algorhythms have made it so.

When I just went to the SI boards, one of the patches said it was fixing the ability to sell top-level players so there are preliminary indications that something is amiss.

By the way, the monthly payment thing works in the other direction too. In another game, I sold a player on 6 month payments and am still getting paid 3 months afterwards, so I guess that is a cheat as well.

[Bee]

Originally posted by HornedFrog Purple

Bee that would be acceptable if the player refused to take a wage cut or something after negotiation with the other club. What I am referring to is initial interest from anybody. Just like if you were looking over the transfer wire and noticed a player listed and looked at him and made an opening offer no matter what his "indicated value" is. You could make the argument that the CPU scout of the team sees him as worthless, but even in the last CM the equivalent of a conference side or non-league team would usually indicate some interest. Just because they are older does not make them totally useless unless the new AI algorhythms have made it so.

Sorry, I didn't really explain myself very well. I agree that it needs tweaked, but I like the "basic" concept behind it. I think the concept that they seem to have incorporated is much more challenging and realistic than previous versions, but I totally agree it still needs work to get it functioning properly.

[Marc Vaughan]

"It's just something I guess I have to live with. And after seeing that simming games takes a lot longer than it did in CM3, I guess it's a good thing. Before it took like a split second to sim a game, now it takes a full second or so.
Question for Markus if he sees this, what caused the slowdown? Added stats? More detailed AI? Combo of a bunch of things?"
Basically CM4 runs a fully fledged real-world physics model for the match engine running at 1/8th second time-slices (compared to 12 second time-slices for CM3's model).

This takes up a lot of CPU processing unfortunately, but does give extra realism and the funky 2D display

If you find the lack of speed annoying, to keep things nippy I'd suggest installing patch #1 (which has extra optimisations) and also putting your leagues into 'non-full detail'. This will mean that the 'full' match engine is only used in matches which can affect your team (ie. competitions you're involved in and big-name matches or internationals).

This speeds the game up a lot (around 200-300% on most systems).

"And if I want to add more divisions, which is better, CPU speed or RAM? (I have an AMD 1800+ and 256 RAM) I do plan on upgrading RAM soon..."
This depends on the nature of the problem, if your system is constantly accessing the hard-disk (ie. is using virtual memory) then RAM will definitely help, if not then raw CPU speed is your best bet.

Finally I know there are some issues with the game, however I do believe its stable and playable in its retail version.

We will however obviously continue to support, improve and patch the game until we're 100% happy with its reliability and realism (as usual).

We have released one patch already and another two are scheduled for release (the second one will be out later this week to address a couple of potential show-stopper bugs in a couple of the lesser used leagues, the third one will be out towards the end of this month and hopefully fix the majority of remaining issues).

Thank you very much for the feedback,

Marc

[Marc Vaughan]

"It's just something I guess I have to live with. And after seeing that simming games takes a lot longer than it did in CM3, I guess it's a good thing. Before it took like a split second to sim a game, now it takes a full second or so.
Question for Markus if he sees this, what caused the slowdown? Added stats? More detailed AI? Combo of a bunch of things?"
Basically CM4 runs a fully fledged real-world physics model for the match engine running at 1/8th second time-slices (compared to 12 second time-slices for CM3's model).

This takes up a lot of CPU processing unfortunately, but does give extra realism and the funky 2D display

If you find the lack of speed annoying, to keep things nippy I'd suggest installing patch #1 (which has extra optimisations) and also putting your leagues into 'non-full detail'. This will mean that the 'full' match engine is only used in matches which can affect your team (ie. competitions you're involved in and big-name matches or internationals).

This speeds the game up a lot (around 200-300% on most systems).

"And if I want to add more divisions, which is better, CPU speed or RAM? (I have an AMD 1800+ and 256 RAM) I do plan on upgrading RAM soon..."
This depends on the nature of the problem, if your system is constantly accessing the hard-disk (ie. is using virtual memory) then RAM will definitely help, if not then raw CPU speed is your best bet.

Finally I know there are some issues with the game, however I do believe its stable and playable in its retail version.

We will however obviously continue to support, improve and patch the game until we're 100% happy with its reliability and realism (as usual).

We have released one patch already and another two are scheduled for release (the second one will be out later this week to address a couple of potential show-stopper bugs in a couple of the lesser used leagues, the third one will be out towards the end of this month and hopefully fix the majority of remaining issues).

Thank you very much for the feedback,

Marc

[moriarty]

My turn to thread jack.

I thought one of the new features was to be able to set your star player's international status (i.e. request he only play a half or whatever). Anyone know how this works?

So far I've never been 'asked', and I cannot figure out if I have control over this or not. Maybe this feature only works for Friendlies perhaps??

[Bee]

Basically CM4 runs a fully fledged real-world physics model for the match engine running at 1/8th second time-slices (compared to 12 second time-slices for CM3's model).

I wonder if this contributes to the problem of high scoring?

[HornedFrog Purple]

Thanks Marc I am sure you have seen all of the listed tweaks/fixes ad nauseum over at your boards. (how do you navigate through all those posts?)

By the way for anyone on the fence, this is a totally different CM, it's not CM 3.5 or anything like that, it's completely redone. I have a feeling when things get worked out it will be a 12/10. It's a blast for me to play already.

It is definitely very stable and playable, I hope I was not giving the impression it wasn't. I guess I have been spoiled a little bit from previous releases, but this has the makings of a masterpiece.

[moriarty]

Ugh. I try and threadjack and Marc sneaks in right above me.

But if someone should happen to see my question above ...

PS - screen dump would be sweet. I wonder if this would work on all screens. Saw in separate thread Marc said scoring was being looked at for EP3. (getting excited again)

edited for spelling

[GrantDawg]

What is the word on the MLS buggs?

[Havok]

I would also like an Injury setting. Like high/medium/low

I swear right now i get hit with a ton of small to mild injuries. I dont know alot about soccer. But in 4 years of High school soccer i never missed a game. I even tore a ligament in my ankle and still played every game. And my team as a whole we almost never had guys miss games for injurys.

Hell even football teams in the nfl have less guys missing games then in CM4 it seems. And they beat the crap out of eachother each week. Maybe im just unlucky. But everygame in 2 seasons i've had at least one guy injuried. Usually its 2-3.

Its always nice to be able to customize your game like the OOTP series.

[Tekneek]

So far I have not seen injury issues that I would consider abnormal compared to the real world. Perhaps I am just lucky.

[Richards]

Originally posted by Havok
I would also like an Injury setting. Like high/medium/low

I swear right now i get hit with a ton of small to mild injuries. I dont know alot about soccer. But in 4 years of High school soccer i never missed a game. I even tore a ligament in my ankle and still played every game. And my team as a whole we almost never had guys miss games for injurys.

Its always nice to be able to customize your game like the OOTP series.

Hey Havok, just a suggestion not sure if it will work, check your training. I make sure I have a weight training session in each player and have few injuries.

I don't know if that correlates. Under weight training reducing injuries is listed as one of the benefits. After reading some of the "cracked training" threads at SI forum, I was thinking training might be more simplistic than this, but now there is evidence it is more complex than first thought, and training sessions affect each other.

I am hoping Marc V's hints and tips document I've heard will be released soon will have some training "hints."

Getting back to your injury problem, it seems some people have been getting loads of injuries but some (including me) haven't. This is what leads me to guess it might not be a bug but rather a training or other issue that could be fixed.

Good luck. If you already are doing weight training, well it was just a guess.

Richards

[Richards]

Originally posted by moriarty
My turn to thread jack.

I thought one of the new features was to be able to set your star player's international status (i.e. request he only play a half or whatever). Anyone know how this works?

So far I've never been 'asked', and I cannot figure out if I have control over this or not. Maybe this feature only works for Friendlies perhaps??

I thought I remember someone saying in a thread at SI Forum that this feature had dissapeared. Can't remember, trying to keep up w/thousands of threads is daunting. A person could be full time employed by SI trying to keep up with the forum and have plenty of overtime.

[Richards]

Since the speed of the game seems to come up a lot, maybe I'll expand on my experience.

Marc V's recommendation of the EP1 patch works well. After installing this patch, the games runs very well for me. I would venture to say better than CM3 even with more divisions selected.

I have an AMD XP1900, but also played on a Duron 1300 and it's acceptable there too. 512 MB RAM on both.

As far as what is more important CPUvsRAM, well database size would be a factor I would imagine. I have large database and at 512MB really get very little if any disk writes during play. Anyone have any observations at 256MB?

Bottom line, I have 8 leagues selected on Large DB with and the game is very smooth. Could probably add many more leagues no problem

I would trade that speed for some fake generated stats for players in non-selected teams/leagues.