Football Manager 2011

[Dodgyknees]

And I have played 10 games

[AndyClarke]

AC - Can I ask why Villa are deemed to have average youth facilities? Given our track record in this area in recent years wouldn't you say we are better than that?

The way youth faciliites (and youth recruitment) are handled in the game has changed. We had to go through and work out what sort of player the club produces and this dictated the figures, unfortunately the knock on effect is that lots of clubs appear underpowered in this area. This is also a problem for a lot of other teams and SI need to change the way that the information is presented in the game.

[TrentVilla]

Thanks AC.

Don't take it personally as I think the Villa players are rated well but generally speaking I think at this stage SI have a total turkey on their hands with this version, the more I play it the worse I think it is.

[Dodgyknees]

I still get the "injury" after the third sub has been made. :-/ has happened 5 times in the current season.

[Dodgyknees]

Word of warning, set pieces seem to re-set themselves, so if your players aren't doing what you asked, that is why. I realised because every couple of games I would leak the far post goals I had set up to stop. Went to have a look and the set pieces were back as default, so put mine back in place and a few games later the same again and so on.

[TrentVilla]

Anyone else playing on a Mac? I really want to down load facepacks and logo pacs and did it last year ok on a PC but can't figure it out on the Mac.

[Stevo985]

I still get the "injury" after the third sub has been made. :-/ has happened 5 times in the current season.

That's happened for years.

I'd like to give SI the benefit of the doubt and say it's only because we notice the injury when it happens and don't notice when we make 3 subs and don't get an injury.

But I must say, if I ever made 3 subs before 80 minutes ish, I ALWAYS seemed to get an injry after that. Annoying.

[Dodgyknees]

I still get the "injury" after the third sub has been made. :-/ has happened 5 times in the current season.

That's happened for years.

I'd like to give SI the benefit of the doubt and say it's only because we notice the injury when it happens and don't notice when we make 3 subs and don't get an injury.

But I must say, if I ever made 3 subs before 80 minutes ish, I ALWAYS seemed to get an injry after that. Annoying.

Absolutely me too, to the point I now try not to use all three. The last time I subbed a player 78, new injury 79. Funnily he was fit the next day. So serious he came off though...

[TrentVilla]

Another annoying issue...

You offer a player a trial then another club make him a contract offer, so you withdraw the trial offer because you can't alter it and then go to make a contract offer and the player won't talk to you because you withdraw the trial offer.

[AndyClarke]

Another annoying issue...

You offer a player a trial then another club make him a contract offer, so you withdraw the trial offer because you can't alter it and then go to make a contract offer and the player won't talk to you because you withdraw the trial offer.

I had that in a game I started the other day. One of the few times that I have 'cheated' and reloaded an earlier save.

[Demitri_C]

is there a way of getting these bugs amended? you would think they would test the game extensively before releasing it but its been huge amounts of bugs

[AndyClarke]

It has been tested extensively, long before the game was released.

[Demitri_C]

how do all these bugs happen then andy? (this isnt a dig at you by the way )

its seriously has alot of problems and ive owned 2003 aup to this one and this one has had the most

[Mark8691]

I've now started a new game on Fm2010. Feels great to get clubs making offers for my players again and not starting every game wondering whose going to get a red card.

I'll guess i'll take another look at FM2011 when the next patch arrives and see if it appeals.

Dont like dealing with the Agents in this personally. Though i have nothing against it being included, there just trying to add more to the game to make it as realistic as possible. But time is an issue for me and just want to play the games without all these mini auctions.

Would be nice if press interviews was an optional extra too..So boring and pretty pointless when you use the same answers all the time.

[AndyClarke]

how do all these bugs happen then andy? (this isnt a dig at you by the way )

its seriously has alot of problems and ive owned 2003 aup to this one and this one has had the most

Don't worry, I'm as critical of the game as anybody!!

As I said in an earlier post, the impact of the bugs depends on various factors, such as how you personally play the game, whether you get hung up on lines of text being incorrect or if one of the big bugs hits you in an important game etc etc. I can accept that some people will be hit by something major and it will completely ruin the game experience for them and to a degree leave that release tainted.

What I don't agree with is this incessant panning of the game as 'rubbish' or 'unplayable' when in reality that is not the case and it is someone banging a drum and making as much fuss as possible. This only serves to ruin the game for others who are either more tolerant, have not seen certain bugs or are just enjoying the game. It is fair to say that the more bugs you read about, the more you will find yourself. That is not really aimed at people on this forum, if you visit sigames.com you'll see what I mean.

That said, SI (or any manufacturer) should not be excused dishing out a substandard product and hiding behind patches or throwing their hands in the air and saying that the release copy was perfectly playable. On the other hand, the support provided by SI is second to none and tends to only stop when issues are hardware related although they often try to help in some way.

The game is tested and many weeks and months are spent doing this, you cannot start throwing accusations around at the testers because there is only so much that can be done. As a very high level overview, imagine that it was decided that there are too many successful tackles in the match engine. The coders tinker with that and the knock on effect is too many goals, so they change something else and that leads to too many cards.................on and on we go. Add to that the fact that the consumers outweigh the testers by a huge factor, therefore within a few days of release the amount of game hours played will almost certainly (and comfortably) exceed the amount of testing hours that have been run, inevitably leading to several new things being discovered. In fixing those new issues, other issues may be created and so off we go again on a never ending testing cycle.

I think it is obvious that in any industry a completion date has to be set and that if you've got time to fix 5 things but have 10 problems you'll make sure you prioritise the most important fixes and get them sorted. I doubt the games industry is any different in this regard.

I'm not a coder, so I have no idea how difficult it is to change the way a game works, I have no idea how difficult it is to identify which part of the code is causing a specific issue and how to deal with all of that without creating a huge hole elsewhere. I suspect that not many of the people who complain so loudly have much idea either. This game is stable, it at least works correctly in the most part (think CM5 onwards, where teams had 175 throw ins per game etc) but there are issues which do ruin the game for some and are perhaps inexcusable but for the £25 you will pay, I'm 100% sure that you will get your moneys worth.

[TrentVilla]

Some fair points there AC as I would expect, especially in your first paragraph.

As for the panning of the game, I think it is fair to say the more you read about the more you notice but then if there wasn't so many they wouldn't be there to notice so easily in the first place and there seems to be quite a few in this version.

I don't have the knowledge of SI games or the details of FM like you do but I do spend a lot of my time planning, designing and specing web programs (that others build) which I then test so I know how hard it is and how hard it is to test them. I also understand the pressure of commercial deadlines with these things.

I would though say I personally would be very unhappy should I put out a product to paying customers with so many faults in it even if those faults aren't as bad as some claim. You are right its not unplayable but that to me at least isn't really the point, you pay for something you expect it to be right and this version isn't right its commendable that SI do something about it with the patches but its not great that it happens in the first place.

You are totally right in that the testing can never replicate the usage of even the first day of release but surely a lot of these issues could and should have been picked up when the playable demo was released? That is after all effectively a large scale DETA version. I started spotting some of the bugs almost instantly not granted I'm used to spotting these sort of things so perhaps I notice them quicker but I'm no professional in this field I'm self taught.

In terms of code again a fair point, what I would say though is most of the issues aren't within the game engine such as the contract one I mentioned on the last page which I was interested to see you have also noticed.

You are right for the £25 I've paid I will get good value from it but I couldn't recommend someone buy it as given the choice again I probably wouldn't bother especially after the problems I encountered last year with the validation.

None of this is intended as a dig obviously, its more a discussion. Some of my earlier comments were I admit born of frustration having been so looking forward to this game its just been a bit of a let down I guess.

[AndyClarke]

I used the match engine as an example because it was the easiest way to point out where fixing one error creates another, it is the same for every facet of the game from contract negotiation to training.

Your last paragraph sums it up quite well I think, the game is different for everybody, most of us have some fond memories of playing over the years and a new game (particularly with each of us a year older and a year wiser) is always a let down because each of us would have implemented things differently etc etc. This is where most of the issues I have to deal with come in, somebody has seen player X on sky in August and decides that they will sign them, when the game is released and they find he is 'only' a -8 then they hit the roof because the research team have not met their (more than likely incorrect) expectations.

[TrentVilla]

Oddly mate I actually rarely if ever have issue with the ratings of players, I find it remarkable how accurate that aspect of the game is (Spurs aside at times )

I've played the game since its earliest origins it just seems to me the more complexed it ties to get the more problems it encounters.

Despite all this I still spent 3 hours on Sunday locating various kit, face and logo packs and figuring out how to use torrents and how to convert rar files into a format that can be used on a mac.

Sad but true.

[AVFC-Prideofbrum]

Oddly mate I actually rarely if ever have issue with the ratings of players, I find it remarkable how accurate that aspect of the game is (Spurs aside at times )

I've played the game since its earliest origins it just seems to me the more complexed it ties to get the more problems it encounters.

Despite all this I still spent 3 hours on Sunday locating various kit, face and logo packs and figuring out how to use torrents and how to convert rar files into a format that can be used on a mac.

Sad but true.

Good old FM, Always brings you back.

[AndyClarke]

It is true, but I suppose inevitable that the more factors they throw in, the more will go wrong!

Most of the complaints regarding the data come from kids who don't watch a lot of football live. Or at least that is how I read it, sometimes you get people thinking that the best way to fix an overrated player is to overrate another one to compensate!