Longtime listener, first-time caller

[Young Drachma]

I know none of this will be revelatory to anybody, but I just have to express it because tweeting it won't matter since nobody really plays text sims.

I bought the newest version of FOF 7 whatever to support Jim and also because I've been around forever even though I barely play football text anymore these days.

So the other day someone was talking FOF and I was like "oh I should fire that up..." and all I wanted to do was:

- Sim 20 seasons
- Put teams in small cities around America
- Take over a team and pour over some history.

I don't really know enough about football tactics to gameplan in FOF the way I do in say, NCAA Football where I have an actual offensive and defensive scheme, because the visuals work better for me and it's just more enjoyable to work the stuff out over the years and then play it.

Still, I love pouring over stats and numbers and stuff.

But G-d, it's like FOF wants to PUNISH the user for anything you want to. The clickfest is one thing -- welcome to Hollywood, textsimmer -- but goodness, there's no way to really sim fast, take over a team and enjoy it. I have to COMMIT to sitting at my desktop (my laptop these days is a mac) and get up to advance the game forward if I want to generate a lot of history.

It's just...a lot of work for not as much payoff. So yeah, I can stop playing or whatever. I just feel like no game that's made on this scale should want to punish you for playing even remotely outside of the scope of the way the game was envisioned.

It's such a frustrating user experience (let's not even talk about the UI. I accept that for what it is...) that it makes me want to give up and not bother. I mean, I just sim those seasons over a few days because I don't want to commit lots of time to click, click, click, click, click. I like that the season sims instantly on my machine. That's great.

It's just...why can't get we get:

- a real fast-sim utility
- a chance to start the game with no team
- a way to edit players and really be able to use the game as a sandbox.

FOF is at its best for solo players anyway, I know there are tons of online leagues blah blah blah and that's what's kept it alive all these years, but the sandbox elements are what appeals to me about it and the limitations the game STILL has after all of these years.

I did do a search and apparently some of the FOFerati are anti-editors because I assume of competitive reasons. Okay, whatever.

I just felt like if I'm a die-hard, longtime text simmer who'll be a ride or die for the genre and especially FOF because of my relationship with this forum, then I'm not sure how we're expecting the game really keep reaching new audiences in a broader way. I

I mean, there has to be a way to balance the needs of the ZOMG MULTIPLAYER crowd with the folks who just wanna spitball seasons.

Maybe not. Gonna go advance another season now.

:lol:

[wustin]

Well the selling point of this game (and most text sims) is the ability to micromanage. I'm not sure if there is a huge market for those who want to be able to sim really fast but it's probably not worth the effort.

[Young Drachma]

Well the selling point of this game (and most text sims) is the ability to micromanage. I'm not sure if there is a huge market for those who want to be able to sim really fast but it's probably not worth the effort.

<iframe src="//giphy.com/embed/OUzJPYHSblGKI" width="480" height="270" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="http://giphy.com/gifs/reactiongifs-OUzJPYHSblGKI">via GIPHY</a></p>

[Ben E Lou]

Well the selling point of this game (and most text sims) is the ability to micromanage. I'm not sure if there is a huge market for those who want to be able to sim really fast but it's probably not worth the effort.Um.....no, on multiple levels. The long-time FOF audience has been here since the game didn't have many of the micromanagement options available today. The core of FOF has always been the GM/long-term aspects. It has been noted repeatedly here that even now, very few people use the most micromanaging feature of all--calling your own plays. Lots of people simply Rex game plans and even depth charts, preferring to focus on drafting and free agency.

And as far as the specific fast-sim feature that DC mentions here, it comes up from multiple users *every* time there's a new release and the feature set is announced without it. OOTP has fast sim. The new DDS football game has fast sim. Both Football and Baseball Mogul have fast sim. It's a text-sim industry standard to have this feature. Period. I'm not someone like DC who likes to just "look at stats," but I basically *never* start an OOTP SP career without fast-simming 20ish seasons first, so that every player in the universe has a full history and all originally-created players are gone. It's the only way to play with a mature, fully fictional universe.

[MalcPow]

DC, I love you man, but it is reasonably possible, certainly relative to the scale of some of your undertakings, to get 20 seasons of history and go from there. I've run through multiple years at a time and once you know what needs to be clicked I think I pace in the under two minutes per season range. (The bulk of that is watching the staff and amateur drafts, and clicking the Have Staff Finish button for the Staff Draft still has a 25% chuckle rate for me.) Now hey, that's 30-40 minutes of mindless clicking to get to your start point, and there's nothing particularly fun about paying that price. It isn't so absurdly high when compared with the amount of time I personally spend with a career. I may do it for my next one just to have the base of records to take a look at.

I tend to step back and look at the broader stat stuff every few seasons in normal play. It's just cool. I still see the game as a GM sim that does a pretty good job of capturing franchise-level strategy, but the broader universe that grows up around that is a fun thing to check in on from time to time. I think it holds up well through both of those lenses, my team and the macro universe, even if digging too closely into the behavior of an individual AI team over time can break the spell occasionally. That's a tough challenge for all gaming AI and not really what you're talking about here, but I bring it up mostly because I think a real strength of the game is that its universe doesn't become some bizarre and foreign place when you get 20 seasons in.

There's no ability to sim without a team. You'd have to pick the team you want on the front end. You can move all the teams wherever you'd like (or to quite a few different places) by clicking the Edit City Affiliations link in the Game Options module before starting a career. And I suppose you could edit the cities themselves in the link right below it if you were looking to do something with a more obscure set of potential spots. I'm offering this stuff on the chance it's actually helpful since you haven't played much of the game lately. I would find it really tedious to go change all the cities and build an alternate universe, but I've also been completely sucked into some of your dynasties with far more involved tapestries of customization. It's at least possible here.

I think the game is most easily approached as a GM sim, and it seems to be evolving toward a coach/GM sim in a way that largely acknowledges the overlap between the two roles in a sport where scheme/strategy and personnel are so tightly related. I think Jim's attention to detail and eye for the big picture will keep the game sound at the macro universe level as well, but I think it has an active audience that enjoys its more franchise-centric pacing. For me personally, fast sim would be a cool add. More customization honestly falls in a similar spot. Those features haven't done much to motivate me toward buying those other games, so I guess that lends some clarity to my personal tastes. Just love me some clicking I guess.

Anyway, there's some kind of ground for a customized approach that still gets the benefits of FOF's strengths, even if it's always likely to skew toward stability over flexibility. And if I ever sim 20 seasons just to build some history, I'll send you the file. :)

[Young Drachma]

Some of that was helpful, MP.

I tinkered more back in the day with the game and since the UI is virtually unchanged, I am able to do what needs to be. So I did change my city affiliations (to put everybody in an obscure place) and do precisely what I said I was going to do. Currently in 2024 and still simming ahead. I'm good there.

Just felt the need to relay a veteran casual FOF players experience from the perspective of someone who like...actually spends most of his days giving critical feedback for UI design & strategy, because that's the only way it was coming to me.

Don't expect the game to change for a casual or intend this to be one of those OOTP rants where doofuses ask for players on Mars or something.

[chrisjohns726]

good post

[aston217]

I thought the absence of fast sim in FOF is more an outcome of the interface than a conscious design choice, but maybe I am wrong...

Re: SP vs MP, let's not fight about it, but I feel Jim caters equally to both. There are things we deal with in MP that make me think wow, the MP experience isn't really being considered (We need to have a separate Ex1/Ex2? Really?).

IMO, FOF is better as a more macro-level game, but it's gotten pretty far along in micro. It's telling GMs, "Here's several thousand players. Know enough about the game and you can pick out the right ones." Or, "Here's 850 draft prospects. Learn the patterns and figure out which 600-700 to discard." Presenting these puzzles has drawn in many a veteran player, but also kept it obtuse for many others...and it seems ambivalent about whether this is what it wants.

I can't think of another game where players are asked to guess and wonder to this extent about how all these game mechanics actually work. Either that's not a central question, or the answers are provided. Maybe instead of trying, hopelessly, to safeguard the keys, it should open the doors and not be about solving those puzzles to begin with. But, as is fair to point out, that might be a long road ...

I like the appeal to a sandbox mentality. I think that'd be good for the game.