SI - My Personal Dissapointment

In this forum i feel free enough to express myself about everything based on football manager and generally football. Well, this year SI and Football Manager 2011 crossed my personal limits! We usually spend hours,energy and topics praising SI but no-one has ever stated the bad part!

Requirements: This year FM requires a system of Dual-Core 1,6GHz with an average graphics card and a RAM between 1,5-2GB! PCs may be cheap nowdays and people tend to buy imba ones, however we're talking about a game which is barely 3D! Due to my 2GB RAM drive, i have to close all applications (anti-virus etc.) and FM captures 1,5-1,9GB whenever it lanches! As a result, in case i open even Mozilla, after about 2 weeks of continue the game collapses! Come on guys, we're not talking about Assassin's Creed, GTA, NFS or such demanding games!!

Bugs/Errors: At the time the FM Demo was released we got several bugs and errors during the gameplay! It was expected that SI would encounter these problems and give out a "healthy" product for its thousand fans.. On the other hand the game was worst; Errors in the startup, errors in certain days, errors in youtube uploads, crashes in database which make the game unplayable! I visit the teqhnical & issues section of SI every day and what makes me angry is that instead of an apology that the game sold is certainly not ready, i see people begging for some help and one "dude" answering some of the questions, ignoring others (including me).. At last Football Manager is not a human right guys, we are clients and they must serve us!!

Patches: Whenever we wait a patch like a messiah to come up, when it does there are new errors! I waited 11,2 patch to fix my problems and now i cannot load my saved games! This is ridiculous, i feel like they don't care at all, that they push me request my money back..

Other facts: In my opinion, Football Manager should be a very multiplayer game! Imagine a game where all players gather in a server and play together! Imagine how exciting it would be! There are games linking successfully millions of people worldwide and at the same time i hardly play a network game with my neighbour.. Every year i expect SI to make network mode better, without freaky lagg and less complicated and i don't find any remarkable progress! (except for the log-in time)

Generally i can't hide my dissapointment men.. For every gamer this inconvenience is unacceptable! I love FM and i just can't tolerate this behaviour and underachievement.. I wish we can hope for better days! -_-

You have really good points there Seph.

Wow, that looks like a big pile of game-drama. if all these issues bothering your game, then the game seriously needs looking at - this is ridiculously bugged. I'm glad my Mac version is pretty stable, after patch 11.1.0 as well, though i only have issues implementing my own graphics and uploading higher quality than 720p.

# Seph : I visit the teqhnical & issues section of SI every day and what makes me angry is that instead of an apology that the game sold is certainly not ready, i see people begging for some help and one "dude" answering some of the questions, ignoring others (including me).. At last Football Manager is not a human right guys, we are clients and they must serve us!!

This i've noticed it too and it pisses me off as well - it's either just bad management of issue resolvement from the developer. it tends to look as arrogance, but it could mean budget assignment as well. if not reacted at, it may well be noted and resolved in a consecutive patch.
Thing stil is, that people cannot enjoy a great game in potential, which they've still paid good money for.

Other facts: In my opinion, Football Manager should be a very multiplayer game! Imagine a game where all players gather in a server and play together! Imagine how exciting it would be! There are games linking successfully millions of people worldwide and at the same time i hardly play a network game with my neighbour.. Every year i expect SI to make network mode better, without freaky lagg and less complicated and i don't find any remarkable progress! (except for the log-in time)

I so agree with this! The 3D match graphics and running paths look so poor as well... But given time, i bet they'll steer it that way eventually.
Maybe we want things faster as they can deliver?

Good call Seph

"But given time, i bet they'll steer it that way eventually.
Maybe we want things faster as they can deliver?"

Maybe man, but when i see my sister playing Sims online, free RPG clients built in a day, even online application games in my iPhone with no lagg, i doubt they focus on that direction..
In fact, i wonder why Single player mode is intersting while we can all connect and challenge with each other?

# Seph : "But given time, i bet they'll steer it that way eventually.
Maybe we want things faster as they can deliver?"

Maybe man, but when i see my sister playing Sims online, free RPG clients built in a day, even online application games in my iPhone with no lagg, i doubt they focus on that direction..
In fact, i wonder why Single player mode is intersting while we can all connect and challenge with each other?

I suppose but isn't there fm live if you want that sort of multiplyer hub, I have been on fm live in a few trials to hep SI test the gameworlds, and I enjoyed it. Its the perfect wheeling and dealing, and very addictive.

I believe FM Live is a good idea with decent potential, but otherwise failed. It has been available for the past 2 years and it features less than 100k subscribers. Do you know how many copies FM2010 alone sold? There are certain things SI is doing wrong about it, and not only this.

People might be scared to talk about it, but someone has to set the line straight. I don't really care how SI would react to a series of actual critique, something different from the raving reviews they're used to receive every year. But I know a few unhappy players and community devs who would speak of their frustration in public if they had the chance. I'll be giving everyone that chance on a new section later on.

Seph has some valid points there, and I'm sure we can think of more. SI has no real competition out there and by receiving a few bug reports on their official forums isn't going to change their approach. We can put some pressure to them through a more specific column, by pointing out what we don't like and what would really improve FM as a game and as a community in the future.