Developer Update Thread (last update: 11/14/2013)

[tran]

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.

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by tran

When you take FULL PRICE for a product...
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.

Since when is $40 dollars, or $30 if you pre-ordered "full price"? Most games I see sell for $50-60.

As to the idea of the game being better than EHM, what does it matter that EHM is old? Unless the team has the source code, which they don't, EHM has no bearing whatsoever on FHM. FHM started from scratch, not from where EHM left off. Plus I really don't think EHM is all that much better anyway. It's a bit more polished but has far less features.

Originally Posted by tran

If it would have taken another 1-2 years to release a product on par with EHM 07, they should have waited.

That's quite unrealistic, how would they pay their bills for another 2 years with no money coming in? That how these kind of games work, you pay a bit for the early version, which is usually unpolished. The money from that goes toward creating a newer, more polished version. Because of that and because this is a niche genre, EVERY game in this genre has the same growing pains, starting off quite buggy, the good ones get better over time. I have no doubt that FHM is one of the good ones. That you don't see that says more about you than it does about FHM.

[Wayne23]

1. I hope to purchase the game once it becomes playable.

2. This game clearly states that it is in beta. I would think anyone purchasing, or contemplating purchase would consider that. Beta is messy and it can take a LONG time, that's part of the deal. I'm involved in the beta for DDS:CB3, and I don't want the frustration of dealing with two games in beta so as I said, I'm waiting.

[pens66]

Originally Posted by Wayne23

2. This game clearly states that it is in beta. I would think anyone purchasing, or contemplating purchase would consider that. Beta is messy and it can take a LONG time, that's part of the deal. I'm involved in the beta for DDS:CB3, and I don't want the frustration of dealing with two games in beta so as I said, I'm waiting.

Actually the official FHM homepage states that you will by "the most complete hockey game ever". You will only learn about the state of the game when you come here onto the forums.

[Wayne23]

How about that! Yep, you're right, didn't realize that. I guess I came to the forums first. They really do need to change that, in all honesty.

[Mickeyb37]

I agree with the lets lay off Malte, Seb and Jeff sentiment. I have said that I think the game they released has left them open to criticism. People should be able to voice those opinions without them being insulted or attacked by those who think the game is great. I think even those that think the game is great would admit there are flaws in the game engine. I think everyone here has bought into the potential of the game and still do but would like to see improvement in the current game as it is.

What I would then challenge the OOTP team to do to end some of the criticism is to be more open. The message about the new 'fun patch' again didn't actually tell the users anything. Tell us what the three or four things that you are working on are. If they don't work out then delay the patch and tell people that.

I know someone that got a PM from a OOTP dev team member today offering to work things out their opinions/differences. This person replied and as I spoke to him just after 8pm tonight he hadn't received a response (poor communication as always). He was also offered a refund. You can't just buy people off when they say something you don't like. Involve them don't alienate them. They are your customers and probable buyers of the next game when it comes out. Take the criticism on board, listen to comments and communicate better.

[speels]

Originally Posted by Mickeyb37

I agree with the lets lay off Malte, Seb and Jeff sentiment. I have said that I think the game they released has left them open to criticism. People should be able to voice those opinions without them being insulted or attacked by those who think the game is great. I think even those that think the game is great would admit there are flaws in the game engine. I think everyone here has bought into the potential of the game and still do but would like to see improvement in the current game as it is.

What I would then challenge the OOTP team to do to end some of the criticism is to be more open. The message about the new 'fun patch' again didn't actually tell the users anything. Tell us what the three or four things that you are working on are. If they don't work out then delay the patch and tell people that.

I know someone that got a PM from a OOTP dev team member today offering to work things out their opinions/differences. This person replied and as I spoke to him just after 8pm tonight he hadn't received a response (poor communication as always). He was also offered a refund. You can't just buy people off when they say something you don't like. Involve them don't alienate them. They are your customers and probable buyers of the next game when it comes out. Take the criticism on board, listen to comments and communicate better.

Here is the thing. You purchased the rights to a game; that is to play it, to criticize it, to praise it, but at no time and in the agreement did it say that you would receive updates about what was going on behind the scenes, what was happening with the developers, or anything like that. You did not buy a piece of the company, you simply bought a product that they offered, end of story. I think they have gone above and beyond to satisfy the people that were unhappy with the game. Does the game play? Yes, but maybe not to the way you thought it should. That sucks, but it's always been a buyer's beware market. No one forced anyone to buy this game so you did it of your own volition.

Like I mentioned, I think that by them even offering a refund, they are going above and beyond. If I buy a car for example that doesn't work or do things the way I think t does, do I get to give it back? No, I can sell it to recoup some of the money I put into it, but I have never been given the option of a full refund. So, people will say, it's not the same thing, and I ask you to explain the difference. You bought a product from a company, that's all you did.

[JeffR]

Originally Posted by Mickeyb37

I know someone that got a PM from a OOTP dev team member today offering to work things out their opinions/differences. This person replied and as I spoke to him just after 8pm tonight he hadn't received a response (poor communication as always).

It wasn't me, so I'll assume it's Sebastian, since Malte wouldn't be sending that sort of email. After coming online at 9 this morning (at which point he would've found a long email from me, detailing things in the most recent build that needed investigating and/or changing), he messaged me for some clarification about questions people were asking him in this thread; presumably the person you talked to received one of the PMs he sent after I answered him. Given what he asked about, the contents of the message likely included a request for more information, specifics, and/or saves.

After sending those messages I know he spent a few hours diagnosing problems the testers and I had noted with the newest build; he then told me what he'd found, we discussed the implications of it and what needed to be done in response, and he started on those changes. A little while later, I sent along some numerical changes to development rates that he needed as part of the adjustments, and followed that up with another email requesting a few supplemental changes I hadn't included in the ones I'd sent earlier. That was about 3 PM his time; so he had enough material in front of him to keep him busy coding for several more hours, not to mention the need to work on stuff that isn't in a test build yet. The sooner he gets all of that done, the sooner we can move on with the testing process, and the sooner the patch will be ready, so I hope you'll agree that working on that takes precedence over answering messages in real-time. And he went offline sometime after 10, so I'm not going to be upset with him if he decided, at the end of a long day coding, that he'd deal with his PM's in the morning.

He was also offered a refund. You can't just buy people off when they say something you don't like.

Oh, come on. Now we're bad guys for offering an unhappy customer a full refund?

Involve them don't alienate them. They are your customers and probable buyers of the next game when it comes out. Take the criticism on board, listen to comments and communicate better.

We are. But we're also a small team, and there are a finite number of hours in the day. Every public comment we make generates responses (not just here) that have to be read and possibly responded to, and it became clear months ago that trying to keep up with that was eating up a ridiculous amount of development time that could go into making the game better. That's always going to be our primary concern, and if it occasionally means withholding information because we don't think it makes sense to talk about something at a certain stage of development, then that's what we're going to do.

[tran]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

Since when is $40 dollars, or $30 if you pre-ordered "full price"? Most games I see sell for $50-60.

Go to the front page, check on the price of OOTP. $39.99.

As to the idea of the game being better than EHM, what does it matter that EHM is old? Unless the team has the source code, which they don't, EHM has no bearing whatsoever on FHM. FHM started from scratch, not from where EHM left off. Plus I really don't think EHM is all that much better anyway. It's a bit more polished but has far less features.

Hah. OK.
The only reason anyone has ANY patience whatsoever with this product is because it is the only plausible hockey sim on the market.

If I jumped into the market to build a baseball sim and I built something that couldn't even match what OOTP was doing in 2005, that would product would get laughed off the market.

I don't care what you believe about FHM because so far it looks like you're just here to act as a guard dog for the devs. Have a milkbone

EHM 07 and EHM 05 are better products in almost every way that matters.
Realism. Sortability. Interface. Playability. Immersability. Speed.
And I say this as someone who was not enthralled with EHM's interface.

And slightly more polished? I can't advance my game past Sept. 23. That's not a bug. That's a broken piece of software.

That's a dealbreaker.

That's quite unrealistic, how would they pay their bills for another 2 years with no money coming in?

That's for them to figure out.

That how these kind of games work, you pay a bit for the early version, which is usually unpolished. The money from that goes toward creating a newer, more polished version.

That's nonsense.
EHM only went to three commercial versions before it folded. I bought 05 and 07 and I got my money's worth.

Because of that and because this is a niche genre, EVERY game in this genre has the same growing pains, starting off quite buggy, the good ones get better over time. I have no doubt that FHM is one of the good ones. That you don't see that says more about you than it does about FHM.

What a lark.
Software needs to work. Games need to be fun.
It's that simple. You're making excuses.

[omjo]

Tran I look forward to buying your hockey simulator game. Oh, wait....

Folks need to chill out a bit. Yes we know the game isn't perfect but it's being worked on day in and day out to get to that level. It's not like the development team are just sitting on big recliners smoking cigars in front of a fireplace all day. They're working on fixing the issues in the game.

It's as if every game to ever come out has been perfect from day one. Guess what? FM14 just received a new patch yesterday. That brings them to 3 patches. Crazy, isn't it?

[Duranium]

Originally Posted by tran

EHM 07 and EHM 05 are better products in almost every way that matters.
Realism. Sortability. Interface. Playability. Immersability. Speed.
And I say this as someone who was not enthralled with EHM's interface.

.....EHM 05 was a piece of garbage to say it in your words....

And slightly more polished? I can't advance my game past Sept. 23. That's not a bug. That's a broken piece of software.

That's a dealbreaker.

...everyone else gets past Sept. 23 - of course it´s the software

....the umpteenth time - yes the game is somwhat unpolished - yes, one of the devs talked to us - if that´s still not enough, for god´s sake, keep on playing EHM until FHM fits your standards....

[pens66]

Originally Posted by omjo

It's as if every game to ever come out has been perfect from day one. Guess what? FM14 just received a new patch yesterday. That brings them to 3 patches. Crazy, isn't it?

Now it's getting comical. You look like... let's just say you don't look good with statements like that.
90% of FM14 players don't even realize the changes they made with these three patches. It's a totally different animal.

As for this back and forth between "good" guys and the "bad" guys... ah, nevermind, I'm just glad I finally read something from Jeff and Sebbi with a little more substance than posts in the last month or so. I hope it is a first step...

[Alessandro]

Originally Posted by lukasberger

That's quite unrealistic, how would they pay their bills for another 2 years with no money coming in?

Lukasberger, I respect you and you know that, but this phrase
I mean, customers are customers, not welfare organizations. Otherwise it would be cool to me to just code a few lines and expect others to pay the bills for me...

[Alessandro]

Originally Posted by omjo

It's as if every game to ever come out has been perfect from day one. Guess what? FM14 just received a new patch yesterday. That brings them to 3 patches. Crazy, isn't it?

I don't want to criticize the devs, of course, but one just has to say that this way of working by gaming companies which started from some years ago is truly ridicolous and I don't really get it. FHM is young and new titles kind of need some time, but giants like FM/GTA and other gaming companies, I don't get why in the world they get this kind of free pass with not delivering working stuff. If my work sucks I don't get paid. I don't get why buyers of mainstream games don't boycot buggy games because everytime to play FM one needs to wait for February and March. I do not play FM for a lot of years for this reason and I refuse to do that.

[Penfold75]

Firstly I have a couple of points I wish to make.

1) At no point did I ask for a refund of my purchase of FHM2014. As I said in my reply to the PM I got from Seb I don't actually want a refund. I like many other people bought into the potential of the game. I bought quite early in the beta process and was excited to see a new Hockey Management game. I still am excited by the prospect of what this game can become.

2) I was disappointed that something I disclosed in confidence in a conversation was posted by by another forum user and I have already spoken to him about this.

I have been disappointed and unhappy with certain things about how the development of the game has gone. I was disappointed with the released version to which I commended Seb for making an apology on the forum previously. I do think there are issues with communication from the team and they make valid points for their reasons why I just don't agree with them. That opinion comes from working as a developer (in a small team) who works closely with his users and lets them know what I am working on regularly. If things don't go well I communicate that to them and delay the release of what I am working on until it does work. They accept that because of the level of communication we have. There are glaring issues with some functions in the game and I think it would just be nice to know now and again these things are being worked on and addressed. I just think taking 5-10 mins a week or a fortnight to give a little update would help.

I have used EHM as a point of reference as it is the only other hockey game I have played. There are things in EHM that work better than FHM in its current state. However, EHM was flawed and if I loved it so much I would still be playing it and not looking to a game that I believe in time would be streets ahead of it.

I appreciate you have all worked hard on the game as I know the time and effort it takes to create a piece of software. I know from experience it can be disheartening to hear criticism when you are working hard. I don't think I have been the worst or most aggressive person who has criticised certain aspects of the game but I will for now take a break from posting.

If I have upset or offended anyone then I apologise and wish you all the best. I will have my PayPal login on standby for FHM2015

[MillerTime89]

How do I apply mods to FHM 14 on a mac? This seems to be the only thread with activity....

[MillerTime89]

10char

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by Penfold75

Firstly I have a couple of points I wish to make.

1) At no point did I ask for a refund of my purchase of FHM2014. As I said in my reply to the PM I got from Seb I don't actually want a refund. I like many other people bought into the potential of the game. I bought quite early in the beta process and was excited to see a new Hockey Management game. I still am excited by the prospect of what this game can become.

2) I was disappointed that something I disclosed in confidence in a conversation was posted by by another forum user and I have already spoken to him about this.

I have been disappointed and unhappy with certain things about how the development of the game has gone. I was disappointed with the released version to which I commended Seb for making an apology on the forum previously. I do think there are issues with communication from the team and they make valid points for their reasons why I just don't agree with them. That opinion comes from working as a developer (in a small team) who works closely with his users and lets them know what I am working on regularly. If things don't go well I communicate that to them and delay the release of what I am working on until it does work. They accept that because of the level of communication we have. There are glaring issues with some functions in the game and I think it would just be nice to know now and again these things are being worked on and addressed. I just think taking 5-10 mins a week or a fortnight to give a little update would help.

I have used EHM as a point of reference as it is the only other hockey game I have played. There are things in EHM that work better than FHM in its current state. However, EHM was flawed and if I loved it so much I would still be playing it and not looking to a game that I believe in time would be streets ahead of it.

I appreciate you have all worked hard on the game as I know the time and effort it takes to create a piece of software. I know from experience it can be disheartening to hear criticism when you are working hard. I don't think I have been the worst or most aggressive person who has criticised certain aspects of the game but I will for now take a break from posting.

If I have upset or offended anyone then I apologise and wish you all the best. I will have my PayPal login on standby for FHM2015

It's important for me to make clear that he indeed did not ask for any refund (I offered it myself) and declined to take the one I offered. His PM answer to me was really constructive and in no way upset or offended me!

[Sebastian Palkowski]

Originally Posted by MillerTime89

How do I apply mods to FHM 14 on a mac? This seems to be the only thread with activity....

The same way as with Windows, only the path to the files is different. What exactly do you want to change?

[Lukas Berger]

Originally Posted by Alessandro

Lukasberger, I respect you and you know that, but this phrase
I mean, customers are customers, not welfare organizations. Otherwise it would be cool to me to just code a few lines and expect others to pay the bills for me...

I'd agree with you that that part of my post was was poorly phrased and rather silly as stated. The point I was trying to make was not that this is some sort of welfare, of course it's not

What I was trying to say is simply that the financial model used by most game developers depends on making new versions of a game yearly, or at worst bi-yearly in order to keep money coming in. So, as many others have pointed out, buying an early copy of a game, any game, is often as much or more an investment in the game/company's future as it is simply a purchase of a game.

It's generally the case that the first versions of most new games are rougher and less polished, as is the case with FHM. But buying that version allows the company to have the financial situation to put their time and money into creating newer, better versions of the game in the future.

That's really all I meant