FOF Is A Fun Game

[Room413]

I'm not sure if I ever posted here before or not, but I just want to chime in with a few comments. Yesterday I completed my first season as head coach of the Lions, we finished 7-9 after a 2-0 start. This is using fictional players, and, I kid you not, Seattle and Denver made it to the title game. The Seahawks scored twice in the final five minutes for a 31-28 win. This is using the older version, I may get the new version at some point.

I have played another very popular football simulation for close to a decade now but have pretty much abandoned it. I will not make any disparaging comments about it, its creator, or its players. But where earlier versions allowed for creation of fictional players, as well as aging them and random retirements, those features are long gone. It's still a fun game for replaying historical contests, which is all I use it for these days. But for fictional leagues, there is way too much work involved to set up and maintain them. The fun factor gets weighed down by having to manually change hundreds of names, ages, and such. I had more enjoyment from this first FOF season than anything I've done with the other game in a long time.

But this game rocks at fictional leagues. I mean, you get date of birth, place of birth, and college attended for every single player. That makes it so much more "real" for me.

Do I miss having replay review? A little, but not as much as I expected to. I love the details of the game logs and box scores. Is the HTML output of my version a little outdated? Sure, it is, but it works for me.

Speaking of the HTML output, can those be uploaded and used for web sites?

In closing, I just want to congratulate and thank Jim for giving us a fun game.

[garion333]

Which other game? I'm curious as a decade is a long, long time.

[Room413]

Action football. It's a nice game with great customer support but there are issues that haven't been resolved for a long time. The removal of fictional player creation and random retirements upset a lot of players, myself included. And there's long been some other minor but still unresolved issues, as well.

[garion333]

Why a text sim would ever remove fictional leagues/players is beyond me, unless it's to drive sales of the latest version with updated rosters, but that still sounds like a bad practice.

It's like the video game publishers who don't do mod support because it harps on their sales, but then games with mod support go on to sell much more for many more years. If you create and foster a community, they'll give back to you.

Edit: Also, keep in mind FOF is more of a GM manager than games like Action.

[LingeringRegime]

It is indeed a fun game.

I bought this game early this week and it is an absolute joy.

I am using a fictional base as well, and I have already spent a lot of time pouring over all the numbers.

Glad to be a part of this community.

[Room413]

Regarding Action football as opposed to Front Office Football, I know the latter is more of a GM simulation but I'm fine with that. It's fun to just watch my team's games play out from the sideline. And, yes, right or wrong, the removal of fictional players in Action was seen by many as a move to increase sales of season files. I still use Action now and then but my main focus is on FOF now.

[lastcat3]

Originally Posted by garion333

Why a text sim would ever remove fictional leagues/players is beyond me, unless it's to drive sales of the latest version with updated rosters, but that still sounds like a bad practice.

It's like the video game publishers who don't do mod support because it harps on their sales, but then games with mod support go on to sell much more for many more years. If you create and foster a community, they'll give back to you.

Edit: Also, keep in mind FOF is more of a GM manager than games like Action.

Stratomatic doesn't have any fictional leagues at all and it is really every bit as good as FOF is. (If you like playing with real teams you will probably prefer Strat and if you prefer creating your own league you will probably prefer FOF)

[garion333]

Originally Posted by lastcat3

Stratomatic doesn't have any fictional leagues at all and it is really every bit as good as FOF is. (If you like playing with real teams you will probably prefer Strat and if you prefer creating your own league you will probably prefer FOF)

I'm saying that removing fictional leagues is silly, not making a value judgment between fictional and RL. Also, I would say Stratomatic caters to a more historical-minded player, much in the way OOTP has that segment of the population.