Quote:
Originally Posted by Syd Thrift
I would much rather have a game that allows me to play it the way I want to play it. This hurts online leagues as well, because anybody with fewer than 32 owners has to let the computer take over some of the teams, which defeats much of the purpose of online leagues. And it's basically worthless for any of us who want to recreate football history.
I know what the next argument's going to be: you can't customize Worldwide Soccer Manager either and it's by far the best text-based sim out there. Well, that's true, but I'd still say there's a good deal of "customization" in that you have so many teams and leagues to choose from that you can still play your own game, more or less. If you want to play the current MLS and nothing else, you can do that. If you want to do an English league where you start with a lower-level team and try to push them into the Premiere League, you can do that too. If you're not into those particular sizes and shapes, you've got different ones from Italy, Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, Mexico, and so on and so forth. About the only thing you can't really do is play the game in God Mode and that's why I don't play it, but that's a relatively small thing.
FOF gives you nothing about that. I can't even make a league that started after the 1988 strike unless I want to pretend that the league magically expanded into 32 teams overnight. Want to try an alternate universe where the USFL stays? You're SOL unless you want to pretend that the NFL sucked it up and expanded into 32 teams. Forget about the WLAF or the current WFL or especially the old-skool WFL of the 70s. Forget about running an ultra-competitive 1960s NFL/AFL league either - even a 32 team one - because the game doesn't even come with a schedule editor and thus you're going to have to go in yourself if you want to remove any interleague games. Really, in essence you can forget about any non-32 team league because "32 teams works for football". I am *so* glad that OOTP and for that matter Puresim and Gary Gorski's new basketball game and, heck, even Baseball Mogul - jeez, even non-career sims like Strat-o-Matic and APBA and Diamond Mind Baseball - aren't so arrogant as to assume that all any of their fans would ever want to do is play a recreation of the 2006 season.
It amazes me that FOF 2001 was actually a better game in this regard, since you started with fewer teams and could expand to more if you wanted to. I don't think I've ever seen a game like this actually take a step backward. FOF *badly* needs another text-based football sim out there so that people can compare and contrast and either move to the new game or push Jim Gindin to improve the old one.
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There's no argument from me, FOF works as advertised and *I* could care less about anything else but real life 2007 style football. You are not the only one who would like league customization, but obviously it's not on Jim's important list of features and not who he wants to target for now.
The game itself has excellent AI, a bevy of stats and the ability to call your own plays if you so choose - if not, you can rattle off season after season with ease, it's SIMPLE and I love it. No drop downs and clutter, just a simple straightfoward design. If he ever gets 2D into his game, I'll be in Front Page Sports heaven.
Which brings me to ootp and why I still like the simplicity of 6.5 no matter how good 2007 is. I've considered checking out Baseball Mogul and Puresim again or just playing 6.51 because I just like the ease and layout of the game. I want to fire up a current MLB copy league with real players and ootp is just getting too customizable and confusing for my tastes - in fact, this is probably the last version of ootp I buy.
Could just be me getting older and lazier too.
We do bitch and moan about FOF too and most over there compliment games such as ootp, EHM, and DDS Baseketball... say what you will, but it's FAR from a near sighted forum.