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Old 01-02-2015, 12:58 PM   #1
Puckhead
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Any updates soon?

So I already posted about this problem in the latest patch thread, but since I got no answer so far although Sebastian already posted there, I'm gonna open a new thread for this.

While I can understand the idea of not giving an exact release date (as I said a million times), the time that went by between the announcement of the last patch and today is veeeeeeeery long. I don't even remember when you guys made this announcement... So are we going to hear something about your upcoming products soon? I'm really willing to support the next game with my money and even though this "is just a game" (this was discussed several times in other threads), this game is also a paid product which has to make the consumer happy. And when even the "biggest fans" (people who are still coming back to check the forums for updates after a long period of time without big announcements) don't get any infos for their long time interest, I don't know which people you guys want to win to buy the game.

As I already said in the linked post above, this is not meant to undermine the effort of the dev team or anything. I just hope that you're not starting to loose the support of the people who really believe in you and therefore keep coming back to the forums just in the hope to get some infos about the patch or the next FHM 15 very soon (or even to pay and then play those upcoming releases)...

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Old 01-02-2015, 01:12 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by Puckhead View Post
So I already posted about this problem in the latest patch thread, but since I got no answer so far although Sebastian already posted there, I'm gonna open a new thread for this.

While I can understand the idea of not giving an exact release date (as I said a million times), the time that went by between the announcement of the last patch and today is veeeeeeeery long. I don't even remember when you guys made this announcement... So are we going to hear something about your upcoming products soon? I'm really willing to support the next game with my money and even though this "is just a game" (this was discussed several times in other threads), this game is also a paid product which has to make the consumer happy. And when even the "biggest fans" (people who are still coming back to check the forums for updates after a long period of time without big announcements) don't get any infos for their long time interest, I don't know which people you guys want to win to buy the game.

As I already said in the linked post above, this is not meant to undermine the effort of the dev team or anything. I just hope that you're not starting to loose the support of the people who really believe in you and therefore keep coming back to the forums just in the hope to get some infos about the patch or the next FHM 15 very soon (or even to pay and then play those upcoming releases)...
I'm with you on that one. Has any progress been made?
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Old 01-02-2015, 02:10 PM   #3
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I hate to disappoint but the answer will probably be unchanged: "We'll tell you when we're ready." They stand by the fact that making too many promises is the lesson they took from the release of version 1 of the game...
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Old 01-02-2015, 02:23 PM   #4
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I hate to disappoint but the answer will probably be unchanged: "We'll tell you when we're ready." They stand by the fact that making too many promises is the lesson they took from the release of version 1 of the game...
And the result is not talking about upcoming features and the development process at all for so many many weeks? I always thought that exactly this targeted transparency of the behind-the-scenes processes is the main difference when comparing FHM to EA Sports NHL... People are loosing interest soon.
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Old 01-02-2015, 03:23 PM   #5
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It would be lovely to even get a loose timeline, based on conditionals...

"If testing goes well, we hope to have a patch out at the end of January."
"If testing doesn't go well, we hope to have a patch out at the end of February."
"If testing goes horribly wrong and Sebastian gets arrested for going crazy and running naked through the streets of Amsterdam (in January, no less), we hope to have a patch out at the end of February, 2016."

However, I don't hold out much hope. I expect we'll see "It'll be ready when it's ready."
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Old 01-02-2015, 04:08 PM   #6
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And the result is not talking about upcoming features and the development process at all for so many many weeks? I always thought that exactly this targeted transparency of the behind-the-scenes processes is the main difference when comparing FHM to EA Sports NHL... People are loosing interest soon.
You're not going to find me disagreeing with you.
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Old 01-02-2015, 07:02 PM   #7
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Agree with all... including Alpine that their answer will be probably just be the same (sigh)
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Old 01-02-2015, 07:09 PM   #8
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Yeah regular updates would be nice even if it was just like "we're still working on coding the match engine" or something.
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Old 01-02-2015, 07:24 PM   #9
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if you like it or not but we stand to our "new" way of handling infos carefully. We don't want to promise anything, I try to be active here, we post infos as we feel it is save to give them out, see e.g. our Road to release articles.

I will not post any release date as I can't promise anything. What I can say is, that the 2015 version is already played by our testers and we get great feedback in the new features and, maybe even better, on old bugs as well.

And even if it is obvious: everyone involved works every day on the game, even over Christmas, new year and Weekends. In the end, it is fun work.
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Old 01-03-2015, 09:47 AM   #10
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if you like it or not but we stand to our "new" way of handling infos carefully.
Is it such a problem to ask for this when you're a potential (and a past FHM 2014) buyer? I really hope that the community will still be the bread and butter of this game and this company going forward. I don't want to get back here every day just to see that there are still no news about anything and I don't think it's the best way for the future handling it this way, simple as that. See below.

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We don't want to promise anything, I try to be active here, we post infos as we feel it is save to give them out, see e.g. our Road to release articles.

I will not post any release date as I can't promise anything. What I can say is, that the 2015 version is already played by our testers and we get great feedback in the new features and, maybe even better, on old bugs as well.

And even if it is obvious: everyone involved works every day on the game, even over Christmas, new year and Weekends. In the end, it is fun work.
I never requested any exact release dates or anything. Just some more transparency of the development process would be nice. I really loved it to see on what was worked on etc. Exactly this was the main difference between a small business like yours and a very big one like EA Sports that usually tell the customers nothing at all before they throw out some marketing stuff only one month before release when there is no time to work on requests or even bugs that were spotted late in the process. And that's far from ideal; just take a look at what a tire fire the finished game NHL 15 for next gen (XBOX One, PS4) was. The game is awful exactly because no one of the target group outside the developers took a look at it and maybe could direct EA in the right direction with improving game modes/gameplay. They simply didn't care.

I know that you made too many promises in the past, but it would be nice to hear something about the new game with regularity over a longer period of time (even if it's only one bigger post per month).

And as I said, this is not a post to rant about your work. It's meant to be constructive.
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Old 01-03-2015, 02:31 PM   #11
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Is it such a problem to ask for this when you're a potential (and a past FHM 2014) buyer? I really hope that the community will still be the bread and butter of this game and this company going forward. I don't want to get back here every day just to see that there are still no news about anything and I don't think it's the best way for the future handling it this way, simple as that. See below.



I never requested any exact release dates or anything. Just some more transparency of the development process would be nice. I really loved it to see on what was worked on etc. Exactly this was the main difference between a small business like yours and a very big one like EA Sports that usually tell the customers nothing at all before they throw out some marketing stuff only one month before release when there is no time to work on requests or even bugs that were spotted late in the process. And that's far from ideal; just take a look at what a tire fire the finished game NHL 15 for next gen (XBOX One, PS4) was. The game is awful exactly because no one of the target group outside the developers took a look at it and maybe could direct EA in the right direction with improving game modes/gameplay. They simply didn't care.

I know that you made too many promises in the past, but it would be nice to hear something about the new game with regularity over a longer period of time (even if it's only one bigger post per month).

And as I said, this is not a post to rant about your work. It's meant to be constructive.
I totally understand your point and tbh, I would love to write more about the game, development, new feature etc. but in the past a few user went way over the line and posting here (and working on the game) became just a pain. I hope we get to a point someday where it is fun to hang out here but until that point is reached, we keep it save.

That said, we are not working alone on 2015! We have a very dedicated group of researchers/testers that test/play the hell out of the 2015 version for weeks now. So I know for a fact, that e.g. the new GUI/Navigation is much, much better then in 2014.
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Old 01-03-2015, 03:06 PM   #12
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I totally understand your point and tbh, I would love to write more about the game, development, new feature etc. but in the past a few user went way over the line and posting here (and working on the game) became just a pain. I hope we get to a point someday where it is fun to hang out here but until that point is reached, we keep it save.

That said, we are not working alone on 2015! We have a very dedicated group of researchers/testers that test/play the hell out of the 2015 version for weeks now. So I know for a fact, that e.g. the new GUI/Navigation is much, much better then in 2014.
I totally understand your point, but I wish to point something out:

Markus is on version 15 (working on 16) and still gets posters who go over the line. They will never go away. That's easy to cure.

Nobody is asking for promises or dates. Markus stopped giving dates a long time ago, but he never stopped communicating either.

All that's required a simple 5 minute post every 2 weeks along these lines:

We've been busy testing trading and waivers and it's progressing well."

No dates, no promises, just some info for your fans.

We're working on feature X but it still needs more testing.

No dates, no promises, just some info for your fans.

A very brief 2 sentence description of the feature could be added.

A 5 minute post that has no promises or dates, but goes a long long way to keeping a good line of communication open with your fans.


The overbearing posters will be around as long as the internet and forums are. I sure hope you're not waiting for them to go away before you start communicating again.

Thank you and no disrespect meant, I'm a huge supporter of OOTP Developments, have owned every version of OOTP and have FHM1 as well as ready to order 2.
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Old 01-03-2015, 03:23 PM   #13
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I totally understand your point, but I wish to point something out:

Markus is on version 15 (working on 16) and still gets posters who go over the line. They will never go away. That's easy to cure.

Nobody is asking for promises or dates. Markus stopped giving dates a long time ago, but he never stopped communicating either.

All that's required a simple 5 minute post every 2 weeks along these lines:

We've been busy testing trading and waivers and it's progressing well."

No dates, no promises, just some info for your fans.

We're working on feature X but it still needs more testing.

No dates, no promises, just some info for your fans.

A very brief 2 sentence description of the feature could be added.

A 5 minute post that has no promises or dates, but goes a long long way to keeping a good line of communication open with your fans.


The overbearing posters will be around as long as the internet and forums are. I sure hope you're not waiting for them to go away before you start communicating again.

Thank you and no disrespect meant, I'm a huge supporter of OOTP Developments, have owned every version of OOTP and have FHM1 as well as ready to order 2.
Well put, thank you. I fully agree with everything you said.
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Old 01-03-2015, 06:12 PM   #14
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Yeah, it would be nice to know what's going on with the game in brief updates, without any sort of promises and such involved.

If other users are making that difficult by being negative without offering constructive criticism, I feel like they should just be removed from the forums. These are your forums for your product, and it's a shame that a couple of crybabies ruin a part of the developer-consumer relationship for the rest of us.
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Old 01-04-2015, 01:00 AM   #15
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I agree with you guys. It would be nice to see some updates more frequently.
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Old 01-04-2015, 06:18 AM   #16
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*Sigh*

It's funny that the exact same thing pops up again and again. Once again, a user requests updates more regularly. Once again, it gets shot down.

The new way of handling information is to withhold everything and to hell with trying to keep fans/consumers involved. Surely that's not good business sense.

They've said before that putting 'worked on coding for X feature' would be dull as anything,but they really need to have a look at how Squad handle it.

Look at this:

Ted (Ted): It’s been another incredibly busy week. Unfortunately this week doesn’t have much in the way of interesting events to talk about, it’s been mostly full of the more routine, but very necessary, tasks involved with this stage of testing. There’s been a lot of collating of feedback, running builds, answering tester inquires in IRC, checking up on resolved issues, the list goes on! I guess this dev note is more to let you know that I’m still working away here and have most of my marbles! Hoping you all thoroughly enjoy 0.90 when it drops, everyone is working incredibly hard on it here.

Squad have 10 people each write an individual paragraph and collate them into a blog post. Some aren't even that interesting, but they do it to keep fans informed.

Say for instance we got a post that said:
Work still continuing on match engine and off to testers tomorrow. GUI work next week

It would show fans that you respect their patience by informing them of progress while not actually tying yourself into spilling anything you don't want to.
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Old 01-04-2015, 09:41 AM   #17
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Just some random things:

1. It took Markus years to learn the patience, it is a topic we talk a lot about. As you wrote, Markus is on version 15, we are at version 1. Another thing we have to learn over time.

2. We are not 10 people coding/working on the game, we are basically 2 people coding the game. And only one person at least tries to post regularly. I know I can still improve in this area but looking back the last few months I think I made progress in this area, posting very regularly (almost every day) here.

3. For actual game updates: yes, it is a fine line. I would love to post much more about it but (and you are of course entitled to have another opinion) I/we are very careful at the moment. That will change in the future as I start to learn to ignore certain user, something Markus is teaching me on a daily basis.
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Old 01-04-2015, 10:12 AM   #18
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And Markus would never tell about the features in OOTP 16 before the time. I think the announcement of 3D in OOTP 15 was a shock to many players.
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Old 01-04-2015, 10:20 AM   #19
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Just some random things:

1. It took Markus years to learn the patience, it is a topic we talk a lot about. As you wrote, Markus is on version 15, we are at version 1. Another thing we have to learn over time.

2. We are not 10 people coding/working on the game, we are basically 2 people coding the game. And only one person at least tries to post regularly. I know I can still improve in this area but looking back the last few months I think I made progress in this area, posting very regularly (almost every day) here.

3. For actual game updates: yes, it is a fine line. I would love to post much more about it but (and you are of course entitled to have another opinion) I/we are very careful at the moment. That will change in the future as I start to learn to ignore certain user, something Markus is teaching me on a daily basis.
1. Sorry Seb.. that's kind of a cop out. That's a lesson that can and should be learned very quickly when you're in a position of leadership. Its not like you're bringing zero understanding of that after dealing with iOOTP. The excuse of "Markus wasn't quite as patient with the community in release #1 either" isn't a valid one.

2. I'll give you that. With two people coding you guys surely have your hands full but you also talked about all of these game testers and researchers that you have. I am sure as part of their participation in this project they had to sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement. Maybe pick one that you trust and loosen the reins on them just a bit and let them write about their experiences with play testing and what they see coming from the game. It would appease A LOT of people here I think.
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Old 01-04-2015, 10:59 AM   #20
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2. I'll give you that. With two people coding you guys surely have your hands full but you also talked about all of these game testers and researchers that you have. I am sure as part of their participation in this project they had to sign some sort of non-disclosure agreement. Maybe pick one that you trust and loosen the reins on them just a bit and let them write about their experiences with play testing and what they see coming from the game. It would appease A LOT of people here I think.
Yep. And what's about Brad? I thought that he's the PR guy. Wouldn't it be possible for him to take a look at the game and post some things for the community?
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