No Front Office Football from OOTP

[Nature Boy]

Originally Posted by philthepat

Jim has updated his blog... interesting reading, you can feel his despair just reading it

http://www.solecismic.com/frontierblog/author/admin/

Honestly after reading this I can't believe you came on the board with the attitude you have Markus. You are full of it. Wasted years of the mans working life and now he has no idea what direction he is taking. It flat out stinks. Deflection and denial. Maybe you should of been a politician.

Feel free to ban me, I won't be back anyhow.

[thefatcat]

Jim's just said FOF may be dead and he may have to start from scratch, hopefully he can continue. You truly are a piece of work Marcus. The whole FOF community knows what you are and there are a lot of us. OOTP and especially you are going to get a shed load of bad press from us now. Feel free to ban me.

[thefatcat]

I quote Jim today, how good to you feel Marcus?



Will that happen? I don’t know. I am taking the time right now to evaluate Solecismic Software. Does growth make sense? Is it feasible to continue work within this new framework or would I need to start over? Do I leave the business entirely and get a “real” job. Everything is on the table right now and I honestly don’t know what the future holds.

[TanzKommandant]

Not a surprising decision at all given the low character exhibited by Markus time and again. Most people recognize him for what he is and yet we put up with it because his baseball simulation is somewhat the only show in town. Is being the only show in town reason enough to continue putting up with lackluster development, support, and features year after year? That's a decision each will need to make on their own.

Look though at how petulant the man acts in this thread alone. Why should the owner of the company be bickering with people in an online forum? Calling them out about not knowing the whole story and telling them their opinions are less than valid. Correcting them on how to spell his name? How childish.

Simply make your announcement and move on. You stated that a thread would be opened for people to vent. Allowing them to vent in peace would be the mature approach, but that's not this man's M.O. His extreme arrogance and ego won't allow any level of criticism to reach his feet without lashing out or threatening a ban on those who dare speak out against him. I'm sure the office environment of OOTP studios is a joy to be a part of each working day.

[kcroyalgm]

Epic fail for the OOTP brand.
Given years of broken promises and excuses, the announcement is not surprising.
It's a sad day for all parties, but OOTP is totally responsible for the failure and deserves no credit for anything except the failure.

[Sam_15]

Very disappointed. I won't say anything against the character of Markus or anyone at OOTP devs, but man, this is just leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I've been a loyal OOTP customer for years now. It's possibly my favorite game. I fell in love with its depth, its ease of use; it's perfect for a baseball-loving nerd like me.

But football is my biggest passion. And when OOTP announced they were making a football game back in 2015, I was over the moon. Obviously some things happened between then and now that nobody could have predicted, or had any control over. But this partnership with Jim, specifically, should have been perfect.

I can't undersell how disappointed I am with the direction this place is going. Perfect Team just reeks of the pay-to-win BS that has destroyed Madden for the last 5-10 years. Madden used to be a game that improved each year, but now with Madden Ultimate Team they make so much money they no longer care about making a good game and just serve the same crap on a platter each year and charge $60 for it. I fear similar things with PT; I'm sure it makes OOTPD a lot of money, and I understand this is a business, but it's not at all why I fell in love with OOTPD, and the increased focus on it is beginning to discourage me from buying installments in the future. From Jim's statement, it really seems like PT can't be characterized as an "insignificant" factor in this divorce, which worsens the situation for me.

I've been waiting for a good text football sim for a very, very long time and it looks like I'm gonna have to keep waiting. Maybe I'll never get it. I've tried FOF8, but the interface is so miserable I just couldn't enjoy it. I've tried others. None are good in my opinion. Maybe OOTP has spoiled me. It sure isn't now, but maybe it has.

This is all sort of a ramble and I'm sorry for that, but I really, really have become disillusioned by all of this in more ways than one. Stuff like this just makes me want to stop supporting this company and I never once thought I would say that about OOTP.

[dave1927p]

Really have to admit, this news is so disappointing and quite surprising. It hurts so much more that it took this long for OOTP to realize they just didn’t have the resources to properly support Jim.

From the date it was announced, it was a dream fit in my mind. All FOF8 needed was OOTPs interface to takeover the market - there was already a solid foundation with a lot of features. I agree it feels like perfect team has been prioritized instead of this now and that’s driven by pay to win $$$. At the same time some people really do enjoy perfect team I’ve been told.

OOTP clearly didn’t have half the amount of passion for Football as Jim did so guess it would never work out anyways. Better to break our hearts now rather than later....

Thank you for giving us an area to rant - that’s something EA Sports would never do. I can’t blame OOTP for focusing on what made them and that’s baseball. I just wish they never announced this game than made us wait this long before breaking our hearts.

Jim, maybe it might be worth exploring a kickstarter in order to hire someone with a GUI skillset?

[cmats]

This was the perfect marriage of the greatest baseball sim franchise and best football sim developer that anyone could of dreamed for so of course this "divorce" is hard for all of us "children" to accept.

Markus continue to produce the worlds greatest Baseball sim and Jim I hope you continue FOF, good luck to everyone involved.

[KJDelaney]

Jim G seems to be the Haley's Comet of developers.

You know what, good. It was probably a lot of work to turn an excel spreadsheet into a game. Keep churning out OOTP and FHM. I’ll still buy.

If you want football and basketball, head to Draft Day Sports. Solecismic was cutting edge 15 years ago.

[mickey7]

Hate to be this guy---but I told all of you this was the outcome LONG, LONG ago !!!!! This game NEVER had a real commitment from the company not even when it was BTS !!!! Almost all of you berated me constantly for NOT having faith in OOTP-----but I have purchased every OOTP since the first one, Bought ITP as well, bought the boxing game twice, FHM 4 and FHM6 and ALWAYS knew there would never be an American football game from this company !!!!

[nickwatic]

Originally Posted by jbergey22

Quit wasting your damn resources on Perfect Team. It doesnt need resources. Its an arcade version of OOTP. Throw some new cards out a few times a year and its good. Or even better, make it into a facebook app and really become rich and hire people to just focus on that crap.

Since perfect team came out the main product has taken a back seat. It is annoying.

Now instead of having a new football game to play. We get this....

Why do you think PT needs "resources" I don't see how its such a big deal other than server side stuff.

[nickwatic]

Originally Posted by thefatcat

Jim's just said FOF may be dead and he may have to start from scratch, hopefully he can continue. You truly are a piece of work Marcus. The whole FOF community knows what you are and there are a lot of us. OOTP and especially you are going to get a shed load of bad press from us now. Feel free to ban me.

Where did Jim say this. Can't find it in the blog post

[philthepat]

Originally Posted by nickwatic

Where did Jim say this. Can't find it in the blog post

Right at the end of his blog update...

Will that happen? I don’t know. I am taking the time right now to evaluate Solecismic Software. Does growth make sense? Is it feasible to continue work within this new framework or would I need to start over? Do I leave the business entirely and get a “real” job. Everything is on the table right now and I honestly don’t know what the future holds.

[dave1927p]

Originally Posted by philthepat

Right at the end of his blog update...

wow. Sad sad day. 2020 sucks.

[ashantewarrier]

Originally Posted by dave1927p

wow. Sad sad day. 2020 sucks.

Word.

The is very disappointing news indeed. With the popularity of football right now, this game could have been a homerun (pardon the pun) for OOTP.

[One Post Wonder]

Wow, so FOF was thrown aside because Perfect Team took priority? I had no idea that was the deal.

I think I can comfortably say that Perfect Team has been terrible for people who are into General Manager games. PT has probably killed one good franchise completely and at the very least stagnated a great franchise on top of that. I hope the short term profits were good.

In case you get any ideas, keep your Perfect Team and your growth plans away from Football Manager, Markus! That's the one game I have left!

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by One Post Wonder

Wow, so FOF was thrown aside because Perfect Team took priority? I had no idea that was the deal.

It was not. All our existing products, which are generating revenue already, grew to a point that we could no longer allocate resources into the project (which was still far from what our customers expect) without hurting the quality of our available products. We are a small team, which is maxed out considering its current company structure. And we have no time to change this structure right now (which would require hiring more staff exclusively for other projects).

To quote Jim:

Markus and Andreas remain friends. We are not ending this out of anger or because we’re not making progress. It simply doesn’t make sense for OOTP to have a new football product right now and they have to seize the opportunity they have now, without distraction. They are letting me use what we’ve created without restriction, and that is because all of us in this business root for and try and support each other.

I am closing this thread now. Everything that needed to be said has been said.