Soccer Gaming Catch-All

onewild wrote:

The pub at the trainstation is meant to be good though (at Stalybridge ) part of the train pub crawl of Stalybridge, Huddsfield and Dewsbury

It is indeed, I used to get the train back to Manchester from there every day. The pub crawl is a good one, we usually got the older train from Victoria and broke the journey up in Marsden for a few scoops before rejoining to Huddersfield.

So after installing the most recent update for FIFA 13 on Xbox, I can no longer play career mode.

Here's the EA thread I started: http://answers.ea.com/t5/FIFA-13/FIF...

Those devious support agents tricked me into restarting my modem (I've been drinking), which disconnected my first chat. I'm now in queue for chat again.

The problem for EA is that I consult on IT management and spend a lot of time in IT support optimization. This means I understand how support works, the escalation paths, etc, etc. If they can't fix this for me, EA will rue the day they had me as a customer.

Alright, y'know, I like PES, I do, but i'm seeing most other people here have FIFA, and XBox has gotten real lonely recently. If I grab a copy, will anyone else be up for a rousing game?

Prederick wrote:

Alright, y'know, I like PES, I do, but i'm seeing most other people here have FIFA, and XBox has gotten real lonely recently. If I grab a copy, will anyone else be up for a rousing game?

I would certainly be, if we can overcome the time difference that is.

Prederick wrote:

Alright, y'know, I like PES, I do, but i'm seeing most other people here have FIFA, and XBox has gotten real lonely recently. If I grab a copy, will anyone else be up for a rousing game?

I would be up for that. Been missing playing anybody in the GWJ community ever since the sad demise of the Madden league.

Dave, have you read that "FM ruined my life" book? I was just reminded of it because one of the authors was on Football Weekly this week.

I've seen it, but never read it. The reviews on Amazon are middling, but I guess it depends what you thought it would be. I'm probably afraid I'll recognise things that I've done or said in it

I've had a bit of a soft spot for Watford, from Jay DeMerit's time there. Having just noticed this morning who their jersey sponsor is, I may have to start a new FM campaign and see whether I can get (and keep) them in the Premier League.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/hXAotAm.jpg)

Picked up Fifa 13 a few weeks back and have put an unmentionable amount of time into the game. Playing Career Mode as a player. I've gotten used to playing a single player while playing NHL12 on my Xbox so, even though it would be fun to play Manager Mode, I really don't like controlling the whole team. Originally started a central defender, but ended up restarting and making a center defensive midfielder. Joined Leeds United, loaned out to Dundee FC, played there for a year, and back to Leeds.

It's quite fun, but I find the player rating system in game to be really finicky. I can't seem to get more than a 6.6/6.7 on good games. Biggest problem seems to be positioning. I understand the little gold chevrons thing, and I'm not running around like a chicken with my head cut off or anything. I play the game in real life, so I kinda understand where I should be on the field. But for some reason the computer seems to think I should be in really odd places and then docks me .1 or .2 or .3 off my player rating if I'm not in exactly the place it thinks I should be. Kinda frustrating. I realize I should just play the game and not worry about player rating, but that stat does affect my pro's (named after myself, natch!) development, so it's hard NOT to worry about it. Any tips? Or is it just a matter of playing enough and figuring out exactly where the comp wants me?

Also, for those that have played as a created player. This year playing with Leeds, I've gotten a few transfer offers from better clubs. But I kinda would like to stay with Leeds and see if the club can become a contender. Does the computer manager recognize something like this and try to lure more high-caliber players? Or will it always be a middling manager and I'd be better served by moving to a stronger club? Right now my player's level is 72+2 (what does that +2 mean?) and most of the other players on my team are about that level as well. Will they get better along with me?

So the Guardian had a kind of neat article today about Football Manager and the Messi anecdote is enough to make it worthy of a read: http://www.theguardian.com/football/...

I've burned out on the game, though I was still playing FM12. When I do skip a year of purchasing the game I usually just vacation a year in-game in the old version and take over an underachieving top-division side. In my last file it happened to be Everton and my first signing was £15 million for a 16 year-old Spanish striker who became the best player I've ever had in the series. The last five seasons of me playing the game was just to get him to a few milestones (1,000 goals for club and country combined, and then 1,000 goals for the club specifically, then just to see out the rest of his career). It got so tedious I actually vacationed the last season before he finally retired.

Nonetheless, the guy joins a French fullback I developed for Leeds in FM09 who was the fulcrum of my side and a Canadian Striker who almost won me the World Cup in FM07 as really memorable players in the series. The Canadian is my favourite though, I can still see the Maradona-esque runs he did in the World Cup Final and the fact it was only in the 2D match engine doesn't diminish them at all in my mind.

I loved that bit about the bloke with the 'touchline ban' who pressed the start button on his match then went out

In my current game, I'm manager of England (after spells at Celtic and PSV, where I was fired for finishing 3rd). Qualifying group containing the Czech Republic and Holland - came top, so happy with that. Now on to the World Cup 2018 !

Perks of the England job

1. Walking into my office on the first day and sacking Gary Neville. Ooo, so sweet.

2. Looking for players at clubs I hate with international appearance clauses, then arranging friendlies to trigger them and consigning them back to international oblivion.

3. Being in the posh seats as City won the Premiership and did the treble, despite there being no players in either side who I was considering for England. Pies were good though.

Think my personal favorite moment from my Championship Manager/Football Manager career is when I was in charge of Ajax and took them to the Champions League final against Liverpool. I had already won the league but at the end of the season I was hit by an injury crisis which meant that I had to put some teenagers from the reserves on my bench.
I was losing 1-0 in the dying moments, so went for it, brought on the 18 year old who had never played a game for Ajax before, then with mins left he scored. Then 3 mins into injury time he banged in the winner!

Never played for the club again but boy was he a legend for those 10 mins of madness.

I think it's a sign of how addicted I am to it (I will own up to having owned every version, even the original red box CM with the made-up players) that I probably haven't won the Premiership since FM07, even with City, and that I've never done the lowest division to European glory that so many people talk about. I'm just not very good at it.

Having said that, I'll still buy FM14. Despite promising that I won't until the day it's released.

Man, the 'Rags to Riches' are the best type! In FM11 I took Thurrock from Blue Square South to the EPL in 6 seasons, without spending a single penny on players (other than signing on fees, agent fees etc). All of this was with a very basic 4-4-2, with only really tweaking the sliders for style of play. A mixture of youngsters and almost-retired-but-still-got-something really works wonders with the lower leagues, and you don't have to worry about being completely out-paced at that level - everyone is rubbish! Seriously, the first couple of signings, the best stat is going to be an 11, maybe a 12 if you're really lucky, and pace/accel of 8 will be tearing down the wings knocking balls in for you striker with heading 5 to 50-pence-head it miles over the bar.

A good tactic for signing players I found requires a bit of manual scouting - but hey, the scouts that you can afford/are willing to work for you are so miserable anyway... Check the International teams U19/U21. Just browse through each country in Europe, order the team list by value. You're looking for players that have none (-) as a value, because they're probably non-contract or unattached. Snap 'em up! Come the end of the season, I then go through each of the EPL/Championship/top-two-levels-from-leagues-in-Europe teams, switch to their transfer history for the year, and look for players they let go - some absolute crackers for the grand price of... nothing!

Of course, the flip side of that is, when you do get up the leagues, it's difficult to actually bring yourself to spend money, knowing how far you've come on next to nothing. Wage limits are the kicker though, so any money you do get for transfers, stick completely into the wage bill, it's much more important. I've had situations where I've bought a player (most notably a 19-year-old Swedish goalkeeper), snapped up on a free. Delight fills the room as I realise, as soon as he appears in my squad list, that he's already got a value of over £1m. ALL my other players are around 50-100k. This is gonna be big. He's not even that good, so I can only presume the game has some high (relatively) potential numbers in there for him - but future stars don't count down here, you need players that do it, now. So, come the winter break, some Championship club offers me £700k as a first offer. Oh man... Rejected. I WANT MOAR MONIES. Second offer is 950k. Negotiate - I want £1.1m, plus 10% of sell on fee. Deal done. FKZJUhI*&YH£R*IHSF!!!!!! I'm rich! we're all rich!

So I went to the pub to celebrate.

In FM13 I started with Stalybridge Celtic, and so far am up to League 1 in straight seasons (from BSN). I've not had as much time put into this years game though, but I'd have to try really hard not to buy fm14. If anyone fancies it, once FM14 hits (barring any major bugs discovered early) we could all pick the same team and see how it goes. Not a serious game at all, just to open the door to this way of playing. It's a lot more fun if you can discuss random freebies that you've found or ways to play rubbish players so that the seem like world beaters. I can understand it's not everyone's cup of tea. I've tried to convert my FM-playing mates for years, and while some just refuse and just want to play fantasy football in the big leagues, the few that have given it a shot have never gone back.

I only play LLM. Blyth Spartans are my team of choice, but they've dropped below the playable leagues in 13.

Damn you, Omnipherous !

So, England's World Cup 2018. I could pick a basic 30-man squad well before the tournament, so I did...not realising that I had to pick the 23 man Finals squad from it. So decent players missed out.

Then we lost 1-0 in the first group game. To Japan. Big thumbs up to Jack Wilshere for getting sent off - well done mate. Then we lost 3-2 to Spain (who were eventual runners up). Then we drew 1-1 with Senegal.

I then had a chat with the FA, and decided to retire. I'd been out of club management for 2 seasons at this point, and had lost track of players, so I'm retiring.

Maybe it's time to try the arcane world of LLM....I'm thinking that the nearest dump of a club to me is Stockport County (and I have been there), so maybe time to take them out of tier 6.

davet010 wrote:

lost track of players

That's the best bit! if you don't know the players, then you have to actually judge them on their stats, not their names, that's the bit I like best... maybe I need a Football Scout (TM) game....

Having said that, starting a brand new FM13 game this close to FM14? might not be the best idea, unless you plan on skipping/delaying fm14 until later on.

Ack! Just have to hope someone comes out with the "level 8" league mods sooner rather than later. I can't imagine it'll be that different, technically, than fm13, so hopefully they 'just' need to update their player database additions.

I've also had fun doing a journeyman career - My rules were that I wouldn't stay at a club for more than 3 seasons, regardless of how well it went. I also can't have any attachment to the team, or any influence over who I get employed by. So, start unemployed. Holiday the game through until October, and the first managerial casualties have taken place, and see what's on offer. Sometimes it takes until around December before you get something. One of my most memorable games of this type (FM09, I think) I did this, and was offered a job at Aachen, German second division. They were bottom at christmas when I took over. Saved from relegation in the first season, just (on the second last game I climbed up one spot). Shipped out the slacking players that summer, brought in my own AssMan, scouts and took the league by storm the following season, was hailed as a hero for turning round the clubs performance and fortunes. Finished around mid-table in the top league amongst the big boys. Following season, around November, I was offered a job in Italy, by massively underperforming Cagliari. They'd been relegated in the first season, to Serie B, had a squad full of aging has-beens and were languishing in the bottom half of the league, with a massive overspend on wages and next to no morale. Being a journeyman, I jumped at the chance to change the league and country I was in.

What followed was remarkable and I've never since repeated anything like my climb to glory, but suffice to say, at the end of my 3 seasons max at the club, I was in the final of the Champions league and had just bought my most expensive player ever in any FM. Lukaku for £40m. I won it, too.

Man, I was gonna hold off on fm14 for a little while after release, but I think I've just convinced myself that I owe it to my FM-History to by this game, and buy it at release.

I can always squeeze in a Snackpot game before it comes out - it'll be a couple of months yet. More pertinently, there may be a data update for FM13 once the window shuts.

Wait, I thought they were done with 13? 3rd patch is usually the final one, and the 'transfer patch', just after the winter transfer window, and we're up to 13.3.3, so they've had a few bug fixes after patch 3.

I've not played in quite a while, especially not creating a new game with the latest DB, so I thought all the updates they were going to include would have been in there by now..

I just thought there might be a data update after the summer window, but perhaps not.

Unless it's one of the fan-made updates, I don't think so, sadly

I don't remember there ever being data update after summer window. That would heavily impinge on their business model, after all - one of main selling points is that you get updated and revamped database with every new edition. (Which is also a problem with fan database patches - even if you edit in all transfers, player will still have old stats. I remember trying one of these patches after season when both Grafite and Dżeko had such a great season for WOlfsburg and finding both of them had stats in range of David N'Gog.)

Oh well, if it's Stockport I'm managing, I doubt that the data update is going to help them

PES is coming out in less than a month (around September 20th), Eurogamer had a really glowing preview recently and gameplay looks quite nice: they've switched to Konami's FOX Engine so it's pretty much a new game. I'll check it out this year.

I still always felt more comfortable in Fifa, for some reason...

I almost jumped for joy when I found Fifa 14 for PC on Nuuvem.com.br for £15 preorder, but sadly the purchase is region locked, unlike most things I've bought from there.

Fifa 13 started of very enjoyable, I really got into the 'Be a Pro' or whatever the Fifa equivalent is.... but then it's massive inadequacies becamse more and more of a problem, and it put me off the game completely.

UCRC wrote:

PES is coming out in less than a month (around September 20th), Eurogamer had a really glowing preview recently and gameplay looks quite nice: they've switched to Konami's FOX Engine so it's pretty much a new game. I'll check it out this year.

I enjoyed PES more than FIFA, the only thing I found frustrating was the lack of licenses. Too many players had fake names, making me wonder who I really was sending my cross to in the middle.

As for FM, I will probably even preorder 14 here soon. I put way to many hours into the game to pretend I won't get the newest available. And I am really looking forward to seeing some stat bumps in players and seeing how far I can take Everton this time around.

Can someone let me know when they announce updates for player career mode for Fifa 14? I really enjoy playing as one guy on a squad but thought the Fifa 13 version was somewhat weak.

Agreed. I enjoyed it to begin with, but before long the issues became very clear and it put me off. The Be a Pro mode in NHL is really well done in comparison. Hopefully Fifa 14 expands/refines on the 13 version, but I haven't seen any information regarding it yet.

So, after recounting my tales of joy above, I promptly stuck another 5 or 6 hours into fm13 over the weekend.

PES and FIFA demos out. I am consistently shocked at how little I feel like FIFA feels like soccer these days.