Quote:
Originally Posted by archibalduk
I completely agree with Lukasberger's sentiments; FHM is still early in its development right now.
FHM had (and still has) private beta testing. The private testing started well in advance of the public beta test. IIRC the public testing was offered because the release date had been put back once or twice.
Yeah, development of EHM ran from about 2003 until January 2007 (so that's roughly 4 years, maybe a little less). I'm absolutely not trying to troll (there's more than enough of that here!), but in actual fact FHM was originally announced in October 2011 and so that's been running for over 2 years now. Although at the time of that announcement, Sebastian already had a working match engine which he had been developing for some years beforehand. So personally I don't see that big of a gulf between the length of time EHM and FHM have been developed. EHM's dev team was roughly the same size as FHM's (EHM had two full time coders; as has FHM). EHM had the benefit of Champ Man's framework and FHM had OOTP's.
I think the gulf appears when you consider the direction each game has taken. EHM concentrated on the core hockey gameplay whereas FHM has spent a lot of time on customisation and a lack of hard-coding. One of EHM's major flaws was the hardcoded rules and league structures (and even some hardcoded team names) whereas FHM's weakness right now is the lack of depth and the awkward UI. Both games currently have AI quirks/bugs.
The huge advantage FHM has over EHM is that it is still in active development. Once the depth and UI issues have been addressed, FHM will be a tremendous game. Once things like the match engine, scouting, hiring staff, contracts, player development, the user interface, etc have been ironed out, we'll have a really great game - add in the fact that we have a very large number of playable leagues, customisable rules/settings and a historic mode. I think that's something to be very positive about. It's just going to take some time to get there. 
I really feel for Sebastian and Malte. They have been working and coding tirelessly for 2+ years on this game now. They have admitted they had their priorities wrong and they seem to have gotten criticised for it on a daily basis since the first release. It's got to be pretty hurtful to see some of the comments some users post about their work. That said, and as much as I love EHM (despite its many flaws/bugs), I still want see people purchasing FHM. Surely the more people that purchase the game, the more money for OOTP to continue developing FHM. If nothing else, purchasing the game is at the very least an investment. |
When you take FULL PRICE for a product and deliver SUBSTANDARD WORK, you will get criticized/
That's life.
I and many others bought this game. I didn't make all kinds of demands about the features I wanted because I understood it was a first-outing.
But FHM fails at so many basic and fundamental levels that I don't see how an FHM 15 is viable.
I gladly bought FHM 14. But I'm going to think twice about FHM 15 -- and I'm as diehard a hockey simmer as they come.
I got banned from your silly message board after Stinson attacked me for saying this:
There is no excuse for releasing a game that is worse than NHL EHM 07.
There have been to many advancements in the world in 7 years to go backwards this far.
If it would have taken another 1-2 years to release a product on par with EHM 07, they should have waited.