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Do you have feedback for the recent blog post, then share it here.
Developer's New Year's address (blogindlæg)
Developer's New Year's address (blogindlæg)
Feedback: Developer's New Year's address
Posted in Developer's corner
Thank you for the update, it is appreciated, but if I may, please can I make a suggestion. Many players are unhappy with the development priorities and would really like the opportunity to formally contribute to your enhancement priorities. Please can I propose a 2-3 stage solution.
1. Allow players to propose their priorities for game enhancement. This can be done by inviting responses but if that is too over-whelming to process for the time you have, then you can send out a list of say 15 things and ask players to respond by ranking their importance or choosing their top 3. Various methodologies can be employed to make this a very simple process for you to use and analyse.
2. Once the results are in, then it should be very easy for you to see what the top issues are from the players. You can either use these to drive your development programme (see 3), or then send the top say 5 out again to the player community and ask them to rank them in terms of importance, allowing you to have a clear mandate for development, starting from priority #1 and working down. This will help you to avoid the trap of spending time on what YOU think is easy rather than on what WE think is important. (Your statement today that you are sure it is right to prioritise EASY developments over IMPORTANT ones is actually quite troubling). Again, there are market research tools to gather such responses which make this a lot less burdensome than you may fear.
3. Implement the players' priorities. I am very confident that if you do this it will give you a much better buy-in from your customers which can only help with retention. If there are good technical or logistical reasons for you not subsequently accepting the players' top priorities, then you can explain to us why this is the case, which again would be seen as positive rather than the silence we have had to endure for too long.
Thank you very much, Rolf.
1. Allow players to propose their priorities for game enhancement. This can be done by inviting responses but if that is too over-whelming to process for the time you have, then you can send out a list of say 15 things and ask players to respond by ranking their importance or choosing their top 3. Various methodologies can be employed to make this a very simple process for you to use and analyse.
2. Once the results are in, then it should be very easy for you to see what the top issues are from the players. You can either use these to drive your development programme (see 3), or then send the top say 5 out again to the player community and ask them to rank them in terms of importance, allowing you to have a clear mandate for development, starting from priority #1 and working down. This will help you to avoid the trap of spending time on what YOU think is easy rather than on what WE think is important. (Your statement today that you are sure it is right to prioritise EASY developments over IMPORTANT ones is actually quite troubling). Again, there are market research tools to gather such responses which make this a lot less burdensome than you may fear.
3. Implement the players' priorities. I am very confident that if you do this it will give you a much better buy-in from your customers which can only help with retention. If there are good technical or logistical reasons for you not subsequently accepting the players' top priorities, then you can explain to us why this is the case, which again would be seen as positive rather than the silence we have had to endure for too long.
Thank you very much, Rolf.
Liking the development ideas with sponsors and employees I nearly always forget to do weekly sponsors and this brings more realism as companies approach other parties in regard to sponsor ship,
With the staff's approaching clubs will they only do that if you put an advert out for the job?
With the staff's approaching clubs will they only do that if you put an advert out for the job?
Hard to argue with some of the points raised here. I think we all understand that you have limited resources, most of us are very understanding of that, we also know you can't please everyone with new features, but I do agree that a quick survey asking for our feedback would please us as well as helping you at the same time, the ideas and development is 99% talking to a brick wall, engaging with your existing player base would benefit you, I see no way it wouldn'tNewcastle U FC wrote:Thank you for the update, it is appreciated, but if I may, please can I make a suggestion. Many players are unhappy with the development priorities and would really like the opportunity to formally contribute to your enhancement priorities. Please can I propose a 2-3 stage solution.
1. Allow players to propose their priorities for game enhancement. This can be done by inviting responses but if that is too over-whelming to process for the time you have, then you can send out a list of say 15 things and ask players to respond by ranking their importance or choosing their top 3. Various methodologies can be employed to make this a very simple process for you to use and analyse.
2. Once the results are in, then it should be very easy for you to see what the top issues are from the players. You can either use these to drive your development programme (see 3), or then send the top say 5 out again to the player community and ask them to rank them in terms of importance, allowing you to have a clear mandate for development, starting from priority #1 and working down. This will help you to avoid the trap of spending time on what YOU think is easy rather than on what WE think is important. (Your statement today that you are sure it is right to prioritise EASY developments over IMPORTANT ones is actually quite troubling). Again, there are market research tools to gather such responses which make this a lot less burdensome than you may fear.
3. Implement the players' priorities. I am very confident that if you do this it will give you a much better buy-in from your customers which can only help with retention. If there are good technical or logistical reasons for you not subsequently accepting the players' top priorities, then you can explain to us why this is the case, which again would be seen as positive rather than the silence we have had to endure for too long.
Thank you very much, Rolf.
The major issue in what you prioritised in my eyes was VM Pro, it seemed a monumental waste of time from where i'm sitting, if that helps you out financially fine (doubt it makes that much of a difference if any as I can count on 2 hands how many managers i've seen actually have it), but I see literally no need to spend a few quid a month extra as there is practically no benefit, being able to change your kits and stadium colour are features I agree should exist but to make it apart of a higher tier payment system is almost insulting to the long term players who have waited for features like this to me implemented.
Whilst I agree with the point made in the blog new players aren't sticking around and something does need to be done to retain some of these new players, current players that have been here for years and are seen regularly in the forums etc are fading away too (myself included until yesterday)
Talking as a serving 10 year Virtual Manager, I obviously like to see improvements that are going to make the game more interesting and competitive. The problem involved with paying a subscription in this particular financial climate would mean some of the younger players and those unfortunate existing players who are out of work, could become unhappy very quickly if they see paying virtual managers becoming elite managers "Because they are paying for the position". The game must give everyone the opportunity to get better and aspire to become a premier (top) division side.
Let's see tweaks in player performance where a small percentage of versatile players that can play very well in various positions without it affecting his abilities.
We need to see some good players being affordable to the lower divisions to enable the teams to improve.
My ramblings are probably very much like the English lower division teams arguments against the premiership sides of today, where the big money teams get wealthier and the small clubs fight to stay afloat. Most of all changes must be seen to be for all not just the few.
Let's see tweaks in player performance where a small percentage of versatile players that can play very well in various positions without it affecting his abilities.
We need to see some good players being affordable to the lower divisions to enable the teams to improve.
My ramblings are probably very much like the English lower division teams arguments against the premiership sides of today, where the big money teams get wealthier and the small clubs fight to stay afloat. Most of all changes must be seen to be for all not just the few.
Thank you for your very detailed feedback, I will make sure to pass it along to the developers, so they get a chance to reflect on it.Newcastle U FC wrote:Thank you for the update, it is appreciated, but if I may, please can I make a suggestion. Many players are unhappy with the development priorities and would really like the opportunity to formally contribute to your enhancement priorities. Please can I propose a 2-3 stage solution.
1. Allow players to propose their priorities for game enhancement. This can be done by inviting responses but if that is too over-whelming to process for the time you have, then you can send out a list of say 15 things and ask players to respond by ranking their importance or choosing their top 3. Various methodologies can be employed to make this a very simple process for you to use and analyse.
2. Once the results are in, then it should be very easy for you to see what the top issues are from the players. You can either use these to drive your development programme (see 3), or then send the top say 5 out again to the player community and ask them to rank them in terms of importance, allowing you to have a clear mandate for development, starting from priority #1 and working down. This will help you to avoid the trap of spending time on what YOU think is easy rather than on what WE think is important. (Your statement today that you are sure it is right to prioritise EASY developments over IMPORTANT ones is actually quite troubling). Again, there are market research tools to gather such responses which make this a lot less burdensome than you may fear.
3. Implement the players' priorities. I am very confident that if you do this it will give you a much better buy-in from your customers which can only help with retention. If there are good technical or logistical reasons for you not subsequently accepting the players' top priorities, then you can explain to us why this is the case, which again would be seen as positive rather than the silence we have had to endure for too long.
Thank you very much, Rolf.
I am personally conflicted by such a method of doing it, since it requires that players write more than just a single sentence or word - we cannot use "sponsorsystem" for much, in terms of what to work on.
We would need a description to what is wrong and what might make it better. I do fear that not many would do it to a degree where it is helpful - but on the other hand, if they do, it would be a great way of seeing different approaches for things.
I'll pass it along.
Thanks very much.
You can easily make it non-free text entry by giving a series of options for people to select from. Happy to advise further (being in market research), but I would suggest a panel to put together the 'long list'. Rolf.
You can easily make it non-free text entry by giving a series of options for people to select from. Happy to advise further (being in market research), but I would suggest a panel to put together the 'long list'. Rolf.
"After that there are lots of other improvements we can tackle, such as to the match viewer, tactics editor and match simulation." >> This! Otherwise you're not investing in the core of a football manager but on the ecosystem.
However important the other tweaks/chages might be, to me and probably a majority of players that want to compete it seems pointless to play a game where the results are decided based on unknown factors. Match viewer is one of the much needed improvents to be able to see the tactics you setup and the players you use are making an impact on the results, hence in the end on the VIFA ranking and titles.
Without this a lot of managers disregard the tactical aspect or just quit. There are historical posts where i tried to get details on match viewer and engine and all older managers told me to disregard the match viewer which is not an accurate way the match was played, which is crazy.
However important the other tweaks/chages might be, to me and probably a majority of players that want to compete it seems pointless to play a game where the results are decided based on unknown factors. Match viewer is one of the much needed improvents to be able to see the tactics you setup and the players you use are making an impact on the results, hence in the end on the VIFA ranking and titles.
Without this a lot of managers disregard the tactical aspect or just quit. There are historical posts where i tried to get details on match viewer and engine and all older managers told me to disregard the match viewer which is not an accurate way the match was played, which is crazy.
It is welcomed to see some updates coming, after coming back to the game not so long ago and seeing not a lot of changes (other than VM PRO, which I pay for but for the life of me can't see why.
A point that has already been raised is the concern for the devs just choosing 'easy' options to update, rather than ones which may be more beneficial to them and the player base. Given that the devs have said they lose new sign-ups rather alarmingly fast, that screams to me that the current player base is ever more important to keep this game afloat and to start thriving. To not even consult the player base with something as simple as a list of 10-15 ideas and they vote for their top 3, I find to be in quite poor taste from the Dev team.
On the point of Staff updates, I think I've made my thoughts quite clear on how out of date and quite frankly ridiculous the current system is, so it's a positive step in my opinion.
Although I would like to give a couple of suggestions on how I would personally update the system.
1. We know a trainers main stats are Youth, Outfield and Keeper. So why even bother having the other stats? Its just a waste of time and data space. (Same principal for Scouts with their main Attributes.
2. The Devs have said there is a 1.3million staff database, of which the vast majority will never be hired, I would personally set an auto delete of any staff who don't get hired when they retire from their club if they don't have the desired stats of over 15 out of 20. This eliminates a LOT of worthless staff and not to mention it would surely help the data system.
3. I think when a player is retiring from his club, the club would be able to see his staff stats. At this point the potential staff would not have a specialty IE trainer or scout. This would be up to the manager to decide based on where his stats show he is best.
4. Lets say for instance a player retires and you choose to hire him as a Trainer, and his stats are 15 Youth, 15 Outfield and 12 Keeper. I feel you could implement a system to send your staff away to improve those stats. For this Instance we shall call it 'Getting his Coaching badges'. When you click this you can choose a specific or multiple areas to get your staff to improve in, for this we shall say Youth and Outfield. Based on the numbers we have already said (both 15) We could say it when you choose to send the staff away for their badges those improve once per game day(24 hours) but they will not double up. so you couldn't send this staff mentioned away for 5 days and expect him to be 20 in both. Basically if you need to get both to 20 it would be the total number of days to improve 1 per day to get to them ( in this case 10 days in total). Obviously this would entail a cost to the club also, which you could put at something like 50000 a day. (example). Based on the staff i've mentioned it would take 500k to make him into a 20/20 youth and outfield trainer. Which to some may seem alot, but to others it may be seen as a good investment.
5. To coincide with what the Devs seem to want to do where clubs get offered staff every day, this could be done if a team decides not to hire their recent retiree. Giving everyone a good chance to hire a potentially good Staff, and not having to trawl through 100s if not 1000s of pages of worthless piles of garbage in the current system.
Apologies for this long winded response, if anyone has any questions on what I've suggested just give me a message or post in here and i'll be happy to elaborate.
A point that has already been raised is the concern for the devs just choosing 'easy' options to update, rather than ones which may be more beneficial to them and the player base. Given that the devs have said they lose new sign-ups rather alarmingly fast, that screams to me that the current player base is ever more important to keep this game afloat and to start thriving. To not even consult the player base with something as simple as a list of 10-15 ideas and they vote for their top 3, I find to be in quite poor taste from the Dev team.
On the point of Staff updates, I think I've made my thoughts quite clear on how out of date and quite frankly ridiculous the current system is, so it's a positive step in my opinion.
Although I would like to give a couple of suggestions on how I would personally update the system.
1. We know a trainers main stats are Youth, Outfield and Keeper. So why even bother having the other stats? Its just a waste of time and data space. (Same principal for Scouts with their main Attributes.
2. The Devs have said there is a 1.3million staff database, of which the vast majority will never be hired, I would personally set an auto delete of any staff who don't get hired when they retire from their club if they don't have the desired stats of over 15 out of 20. This eliminates a LOT of worthless staff and not to mention it would surely help the data system.
3. I think when a player is retiring from his club, the club would be able to see his staff stats. At this point the potential staff would not have a specialty IE trainer or scout. This would be up to the manager to decide based on where his stats show he is best.
4. Lets say for instance a player retires and you choose to hire him as a Trainer, and his stats are 15 Youth, 15 Outfield and 12 Keeper. I feel you could implement a system to send your staff away to improve those stats. For this Instance we shall call it 'Getting his Coaching badges'. When you click this you can choose a specific or multiple areas to get your staff to improve in, for this we shall say Youth and Outfield. Based on the numbers we have already said (both 15) We could say it when you choose to send the staff away for their badges those improve once per game day(24 hours) but they will not double up. so you couldn't send this staff mentioned away for 5 days and expect him to be 20 in both. Basically if you need to get both to 20 it would be the total number of days to improve 1 per day to get to them ( in this case 10 days in total). Obviously this would entail a cost to the club also, which you could put at something like 50000 a day. (example). Based on the staff i've mentioned it would take 500k to make him into a 20/20 youth and outfield trainer. Which to some may seem alot, but to others it may be seen as a good investment.
5. To coincide with what the Devs seem to want to do where clubs get offered staff every day, this could be done if a team decides not to hire their recent retiree. Giving everyone a good chance to hire a potentially good Staff, and not having to trawl through 100s if not 1000s of pages of worthless piles of garbage in the current system.
Apologies for this long winded response, if anyone has any questions on what I've suggested just give me a message or post in here and i'll be happy to elaborate.
I don't really have any proper feedback but I just thought I'd say that it all sounds very sensible, well done!
I'm hoping that it's still quite tricky to find good coaches; no pain, no gain!
But then, I suppose it is really quite painful...
Anyway, cheers, well done and good luck.
I'm hoping that it's still quite tricky to find good coaches; no pain, no gain!
But then, I suppose it is really quite painful...
Anyway, cheers, well done and good luck.