According to the rankings we stand an outside shot at promotion, however a mid table finish is more likely knowing our luck.
Offline control
You’ll be well aware that if you’re not able to log-on to fulfil a fixture, the match is played under a very basic “AI” control.
In reality, this stand-in AI “manager” does almost nothing for you - simply ensuring that if a player is injured or very tired, he is substituted and performing no other tactical changes in response to the general ebb and flow of the match.
This leads to two particular problems in FML:
1) You feel as if you are at a disadvantage especially if your opponent wins the Playing Rights”and gets to play the match. While for the more intense FAs this might be desirable (ie an advantage for the human participant) for some of our more casual FAs this means a manager can become detached from his team as it plays out a series of matches in his absence without even making some basic changes as the match unfolds.
2) Going in the opposite direction, the hardcore manager, if beaten by an AI team whose manager “does almost nothing” (which although statistically less likely than losing to a human, still happens frequently) feels particularly aggrieved and this forms the basis for many forum complaints. That is, a manager feels that despite logging on and participating actively in their GW, it is unfair to be beaten by a team whose manager appears not to care about his matches.
To aid offline control we’ll be introducing what we’re currently calling match plans. Match plans aim to provide a system where users can specify what actions they would like to take as a match unfolds, depending on key events in the match (goals, time passing, possession %s etc).
This should keep the less hands-on manager connected with his team and an element of control when away from the game. It is also hoped that users who come up against a well-executed match plan will be more forgiving of defeat than they are currently.
Bigger better competitions
Currently in FML, with FAs we’ve taken the approach that means that a user joining the GW is never more than 2/3/4 ‘promotions’ from the top division.
This is achieved via spreading the users amongst a dozen or so FAs of less than 100 teams in each and a shallow ‘pyramid’ style of promotion/relegation meaning, in-general, more teams go down from the division above than go up from the division below.
We’ve seen how these FAs can develop a strong sense of community however for the new users joining they miss an opportunity whereby a new team can gain satisfaction through climbing up through many divisions towards the top.
The result can be a situation where there is too limited a scope for a team to rise up and FAs and their divisions can become stagnant.
In addition, the whole concept of being ‘2/3/4′ promotions from the top division is a false and often unattainable goal for the majority of users - there can only be a few winners.
So by allowing many more divisions/levels we can allow more users to experience success and progress in the game.
Further, by combining this approach with the inclusion of fairly low standard AI teams in the FA (these will occupy the lower ends of the FA pyramid), we give even more users the chance to make some headway.
New screenshots
There are two brand new screenshots available on our Football Manager Live account on Twitter
More features to come
As I mentioned on Wednesday in the first blog this isn’t it! There are plenty more features in development that we will be revealing over the coming weeks and months. Keep an eye out on the forums and website for more info soon.
AI teams and Missions
In many respects, AI is a bit of a dirty word inside the inner circles of FML. Some managers hate playing matches against the oppositions AI team others seem to do better than against their human counterparts. With our final day of blogs (tomorrow) we’ll announce a new feature that will directly address some of the offline play components that are the cause of such frustration.
It might therefore be seen as a little odd that we’re now looking to go an extra step and introduce AI (or bot) teams to the game and have a full on PvE / NPC enviroment. We believe these teams have a place in all your hearts and we’ll try to explain how.
As it stands today any new manager joining a gameworld is from the moment they confirm their squad open to play against fellow human managers. This can often not be a problem at all (especially to managers well prepared both in their squad selection and tactical makeup). However, for many virgin managers they are seen as fresh meat by others in the gameworld who almost fight it out amongst themselves to take them on and get ‘first blood’.
Our first goal with this new system is to provide managers opponents to practice against before playing against real teams. This we hope will eliminate ‘newbie shame’ i.e. the worry amongst new users that their team is going to get battered and that the other users are going to ridicule them.
We also see this as a great opportunity for try out new formations and players before using them for real against other teams.
These AI teams will provide a consistent benchmark against which to test your team. We all know how difficult it can be sometimes to gauge exactly how much you are improving at the game as your opponents are developing at the same time. Therefore if you play a team, then 2 weeks later play them again and fare worse then it may be that you are getting better at the game but the other side is getting better too, only at a faster rate.
By having AI teams who have a character but never change in quality it is far easier to evaluate whether you are getting better at the game. The same AI teams will be present across all worlds.
To try and blend the AI teams into the game we’ve devised a missions based approach. Missions will eventually provide a great way of bringing users together towards a common goal (we’re not sure if they’ll be ready for the Autumn or Winter releases right now but they are at an advanced stage and our beta team will give us feedback shortly)
Our vision is to create goals that are beyond what the manager and their team currently have, but should be achievable in the short-term. So for a new user during their initial login period we would use this as a handholding exercise to gently introduce them into the game. E.g. play a 1 star AI team, play a 2 star AI team and only open them up to human players once they’ve completed these first missions.
Longer term for the more established managers we could develop missions to allow users to ‘gang up’ to take on a quest. A simple example would be 5 teams grouping together and taking on 5 AI teams, if they win 4 out of the 5 matches then they complete the mission.
In this way there is a way in the game for every user to win (with the AI teams losing) and a sense of interest in the other users’ matches - if the group have won 3 of their first 4 matches for example, then all the other users will be watching the final game, spurring that user on.
Tokens
How many of you long term managers are looking for more things to do? Allow me to introduce our non monetary tokens system…which I must stress early on that we’ll ensure that things you can buy with them should not affect the actual game in any way.
Tokens will not be transferable for skills, cash, players, stadiums but they will be used to purchase some really cosmetic and light elements. Already in the background of our 1.3 beta code we’ve got a system for earning tokens and this is just to give us an idea as to how many people will accumulate which in turn will help us set the prices. We always want to make sure that there are those items which you can get quickly and others which involve lots of saving.
Here is a snippet of some of our plans – we’d love to hear some of your ideas so we’ll be keeping an eye out on the forums.
How you can earn tokens
• Playing matches – Every time your side steps out onto the field of play you get rewarded.
• Unofficial prize money for comps – Bye bye real money and hello to tokens for entering and winning unofficial competitions
• Missions - Earn tokens for completing missions
• Birthday - It’s your birthday … collect tokens!
• Achievements – The more you unlock and the harder they are to obtain the more tokens you can earn.
How you can spend tokens
• Custom smilies - for the lobby
• Kit designs - Unlock a new range of kits
• Pitch Designs – Change the design of your pitch. Diamonds, crop circles or maybe even embossing your team badge onto your pitch.
• Fee to send comp mailing list - Pay tokens to send mailing list messages
It’s taken a lot longer than we would have liked however we’re now in a position to lay out in a little bit of detail the road ahead for Football Manager Live (FML).
Thanks to lots of meetings, forum threads and office chatter we’ve mapped out the next 10 months development work with the clear aim of addressing any outstanding game issues as well as adding a sprinkling of new features. However, we can’t and won’t lay out everything that we’re planning today as we’re wary of promising something and it either slipping down the pecking order or not making it at all in this timespan.
We’re aiming to break out these changes in 3 major updates with the first scheduled to arrive in the Autumn.
The stuff we’ll talk about over the next few days is not everything. There are other things that we’ll announce at a later date and we’ll also continue to work on ideas put forward in the forums (as well as stuff we discuss internally from time to time).
Match Engine
To those not in the know, FML has been running an older version of the SI match engine since it was launched in November 2008. This means that we’re using the match engine (with some specific FML enhancements) that was released with the final patch of Football Manager 2008.
It has taken us a long time to get ourselves in a position whereby we’re the match engine in FML is in sync with the FM team and I’m pleased to confirm that it’s now the case and has been for around six weeks in our beta worlds.
There are a number of reasons why we didn’t just jump in last year and take the latest engine. The first one was simply timing and our desire to make sure the November launch was rock solid and one extra way of ensuring this happened was by having a slightly older and more mature match engine. There were so many new changes in FM09 and its move to 3D that it was just too risky.
The second reason which in a way is a result of the above is the time and development required to get the two games in sync was substantial and there were a number of unknowns that we could not factor in properly.
Early reports from our beta testers are favourable and you’ll be able to see for yourself in our first major update (1.3). Your world will only upgrade to it once you get to the end of the season. For some of you this might mean an agonising few weeks wait once you’ve got the new version.
As a final point on the match side of things …. 3D…..which very much part of our plans! We’ve opened up internal discussions with the FM team and although it’s not something that you can expect to see in the short term it is something we’d like to deliver towards the end of this development cycle.
Due to the fact that FML doesn’t require much in the way of PC / Mac processing power we are looking to make it an optional download which will only present itself if you have the required machine specification. Matches will be able to be played 2D vs 2D, 2D vs 3D and of course 3D vs 3D. We’ll have more on this later in the year.
Youth Academies
This one is probably up there with the hot forum requests and we are pleased to confirm that it’ll be making it’s way to the game during the winter.
At the moment, new regen players are generated daily to ensure the gameworlds are balanced. A number of you have some complex filtering in operation and lots of time available to scour the new additions and alongside the scouting skills you can hedge your bets when it comes to trying to sign the better players.
We all know and realise that this kind of system does not lend itself well for the casual player who has no real chance of getting good new players for cheap.
Although we have some much more detailed plans for the academy side of the game, initially we’ll be allowing you to create a basic youth setup for your club.
The basic idea will be that every club will have the option to have youth players automatically arrive into their squad on a limited-duration contract to be given the once over, and should they decide to keep the player, will be able to sign them on their basic wage demand. What remains to be nailed down is how exactly scouting skills and Judging Potential (JP) come into the equation, and how/if having a youth academy requires a certain level of financial investment.
Key to the design will be to ensure that a user joining a GW late is able, right from day one, to compete in the youth market without being outbid for anyone of note by the resident JP experts.
For those of you not interested in an academy you will still be able to search for youth talent on the open market and there will still be a good % of the available young players available.
