Missing Features

[bhenry]

First impressions after 1/2 a season.

Missing Features:

Injured Reserve – I have a player that is going to miss seven weeks and I am half way through the season. My only choice is to cut him because there is no injured reserve. I need the injured reserve to be able save players for the next season.

Practice Squad – There should be a practice squad to pull players from when needed. Really good when I don't want to lose a good development player.

Simulated Games – I enjoy watching the games play out in front of me even in text mode. I like watching the score board light up with scores hoping more points show up. I think this game really needs it. There is such a black hole with everything happening behind the scenes.

League News – Need to be able to see league news. Trades, injuries, results (in a quick list), and players of the week.

Labels on most pages - hard to describe where defects are happening because some pages don't have labels.

Anyway these are my first thoughts.

Billy Henry

[Maz]

Billy Henry,
I agree with you that there are missing features. For more information, read my topic under impressions of FB Mogul 2k3. Anyhow, you had some good points that I had not even thought of, and they were good ones to make. Let's keep on Clay about the news items. Want to see a page for all transactions, injury notifications, etc.
Thanks,
Jay

[Sharob]

Injured reserve is a good idea. But in the NFL, if you put a player on IR, then he's not going to be available to you the rest of the season. (I may be wrong on this, so if anyone knows better please correct me.) So owners would have to be alerted to the fact before moving a player to IR. I could see a guy getting upset if he had a star player go down for 6 weeks on opening day, and sticking him on IR - expecting to have him available later in the season, and discovering later that he couldn't use him. Also, how do players on IR impact the salary cap?

The practice squad is an interesting idea, too. But don't other teams (in the NFL) have the option of taking players from your practice squad if they are going to put them on the regular 53 man roster? I know there is a fixed limit of players that can be put on the practice squad (five). And I know I have read in the past about teams acquiring players from another team's practice squad, or team's losing practice squad player(s) to another organization that needs to use them as a regular roster player, or something like that. Can someone clarify?

[bhenry]

Your right about not being able to pull players back from the injured reserve. The important thing about injured reserve is if you have say 3 players out for 6 weeks with 5 weeks to play then by being able to move them to the Injured reserve you can protect them for next season and get 3 new players to put on your roster.

I don't want players that won't be used for the rest of the season taking up roster slots. In real football you need every slot for players that can help you. I'm not so sure about this game. The one thing you will be able to do is try out some young talent and see how their rating improve during the off season.
Young players skills get better each year so if you can throw a couple of extra on your team you can see how they progress then cut them.

Other teams can take players from the practice squad but I think they may have to pay with draft choices. I can't remember.
The big pool of free agents may work the same way but I need to do some research to find out if there is a cost for teams to pull players from the practice squad.

[bhenry]

Feature:
View All players stats:
I need to be able to see all players stats not just the leaders. I'm a big stats person and need to look at all stats for all players together. It takes to long looking at my individual players then comparing them to the Leaders list.

Team Player Reporting tool:
I would love to be able to print off all the players for a team. The best and easiest thing to do would be to run a utility that creates HTML pages for each team listing each player and their stats. There could be an index page that would let you click on each team and print the team data out.

[bhenry]

Add number of players on team:
I never know how many players are on my team.

Need to add the number of current players on the team to the display along with the number of players your allowed.

[Clay Dreslough]

Originally posted by bhenry
Injured Reserve – I have a player that is going to miss seven weeks and I am half way through the season. My only choice is to cut him because there is no injured reserve. I need the injured reserve to be able save players for the next season.

Practice Squad – There should be a practice squad to pull players from when needed. Really good when I don't want to lose a good development player.


I could check again, but off the top of my head the NFL allows a roster during the regular season of 53 players, a practice squad of 5, and then a list of injured reserve which I doubt would rarely have more than 10 players. This is 68 players to which the team has rights.

Instead of complicating things with IRs and Practice Squads, I chose to simply allow up to 80 players on your roster -- this should be more than enough to handle injuries and simulate a practice squad.

I am adding info on many of the dialog boxes showing how many players you have, and what the limit is.

Thanks,

Clay

[Miketay77]

The game needs more league functions. You should be able to ouput all the stats, converting them to text, html or spreadsheet like in BM.

Headlines needs to be in there as well.

[MessiahRp]

After spending a LOT of time playing FBM 2003, and then going and playing the first FBM, and BBM 2002 and 2003 for comparison and reference I have come up with the following needs.

BBM has a few great features that really need a look in FBM.

-Trading Block
When I go to make trades, it's hard to tell what teams would show any interest without this. It's become my saving grace on BBM and is desperately needed to upgrade the ability to trade in FBM.

-The League
I think another nice addition (although not in BBM either) would be the ability to add teams and change the divisional formats. Say you picked 230 as the year to start in and you wanted to add another 12 teams from all over the World to compete... Couldn't do it as it is currently. Divisional alignments are set to 4 and teams are set to 32. Having this ability at the least would give you the chance to add Los Angeles should they ever score an Expansion franchise.

-Team History & Stadium Money
The problem with FBM is after a year you can't see how you were drawing ticket wise or what money was made or lost to gauge how you should set prices for the future. I was trying to determine if Ticket Prices were too high by checking a two year pattern, watching for declines. That only worked because I had to write the tickets sold down on paper. Plus it shows your management skills and keeps track of playoff appearances and records.

I also like in BBM that you can make enough money with smart spending, product pricing, and talent evaluation that if you do well you can purchase your own stadium. Another fun way to do it would be have the stadium option as it is on BBM... Now in the listings of stadiums have the year they were constructed... even if you are changing the stadium's actual name to avoid conflict with NFL Properties. Then when you want to build a stadium, you go to the Build Stadium screen and choose what kind you want and see what the finances would be in terms of cost. Your team can start to push for a new stadium as soon as it gets half of the money and you can enter the amount over the 50% of costs your team is willing to contribute. If you're not contributing 100% of the cost you click on send to local officials... Now depending on age of stadium and amount the local government would have to chip in you set it up that when the next November came around, you get a popup screen that tells you if your Stadium Referendum passed or failed and what the vote count and percentage was. If you were turned down, you may submit a better deal to the local officials and try again for the next November. What do you think about that?

-Stats
Preseason stats would be helpful. In BBM I actually use those to determine who "wins" a job. Maybe I'm in the minority but that's how sports really work anyways. Also if you haven't noticed this, there is a serious problem with rookie stats. Going into their first season it states they already played some games and have accumulated some stats. The actual season stats then are added creating a massive padding in stats that includes as much as 3/4ths of a season that player never played (Sr. year stats?). And I went to editor to try to fix it manually on some of the players and all it does is create more glitches (AKA puts stats for the year "OUT OF RANGE").

-Minor Leagues
I think people thought a practice squad would be a good idea but I propose that each team have the ability to send 5 players to NFL Europe with the ability to recall them at any time.

The fact is if you draft a guy beyond the second round they will not be starting unless your team is meant to suck all year long. Those bottom feeder guys really never develop and their ratings never go up when they don't even see playing time as a regular in the backup rotation. For example if you have 6 guards, the two starters and maybe 3 backups might see some time. That leaves one guy out and he'll never get any better. The NFL Europe idea gives players a chance to develop with playing time.

-Base ratings off performance...
This is a big issue I have with the game. Emmitt Smith was rating a 93 in rushing, and very high everywhere else. I took the Bears. I bring him in and he runs for a thousand yards but just barely and averages 2.9 yards per carry in the process. Horrendous. Skip Hicks on the other hand, is rated a 77 and rushes for 680 yards on just over 140 carries or so... his average per carry is 5.2 for the year. The next year rolls around and Emmitt is 93 and Hicks is now a 76. There needs to be a better ratings system in place for the teams.

-Different look.
FBM 2003 looks exactly like the first FBM but with the divisions switched to be the way they are represented now in the NFL. BBM in 2002 started to get really better once they changed the entire graphical outlook of the game to make it look new and fresh. FBM badly needs a makeover.

-Signing Free Agents
"_____ (Insert Team) is currently negotiating a ___(insert years and contract amount) contract with _____ (insert player)"
In BBM 2003 in the FA screen there is a little note on the bottom that tells you what the competing offer is... that makes the game feel a little more real when it comes to signing players, but you should up that a notch. Make the team make offers to that player and when you go to sign him you have to better that offer to obtain the player. It makes sense to me if say the Steelers were offering $3 million for 2 years to a player, that if I wanted him I would have to put a better offer on the table. Makes the signing process a little more fun and competitive with the simulated GMs.

-Add a Pro Bowl
In BBM I check the All Star game to see what one of my players made the team... same thing goes here. After the season you should get to check to see who made it and how they did.

-Headlines & Awards
This is one of the most fun features on BBM because you wait all year to see who the awards are and the headlines of the "Daily Mogul" offer nice recaps of the games. Awards that should be mentioned.... NFL MVP, Rookie of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year, Offensive Player of the year (not sure if they are the same as NFL MVP), Special Teams MVP and when the games are played add a Super Bowl MVP and a Pro Bowl MVP... and have these awards stay on the highlight screen of the player and count towards their goal of the Hall of Fame.

-Retirements
Retirements need to be announced better and you should always get a popup letting you know when that player leaves the game for good.


Now here's some things I encountered issues with, even with the first FBM...

-CPU Adding/Dropping players on you
I hate this. If I want to run near the minimum players I should have the right. If I cut it close to the cap, but didn't sign anyone to go over the cap, I again should decide who I cut should my team start to get in serious debt and los money. The CPU has often cut my STARTERS and STARS on me because of this. I took the Bengals and stayed low on my Tackles and Guards because I was close to the cap. I was not losing money mind you, but I wanted to keep just 2 backup Guards and Tackles. The game cuts COREY DILLON and signs two washed up $1,500,000 OL in his place. That pissed me off. Dillon of course was snatched up by another team. This happens quite often. Players should have COMPLETE control of their teams. I hate having to weed through the players the CPU added for me without my permission and cutting them. Am I the GM or not? If you have to cut payroll because of team debts, make a prompt that tells the player they must make a cut and not let them proceed until they actually pare enough contracts to make the next week's payroll. The idea of the CPU dropping or adding players takes the "You're the GM" aspect of the game away and basically isn't that what Mogul is supposed to be anyways?

-Text problems
In the 2003 Beta I noticed a ton of Text problems. When you go to sign or resign a player, there's no picture in the box and all of the words are way out of place, including the name which you can't find anywhere.

I can't think of anything else at the moment. Guys tell me what you think of my ideas.

E-mail me at messiahrp@new.rr.com

Thanks,
Robert Poole, Jr.

[MessiahRp]

Also like in BBM... you should be able to change your coaching styles... like choose to be more run orientated or pass orientated (maybe choose offensive styles like West Coast, etc.)... and choose your defensive styles as well (3-4, 4-3, etc.) and have a slider on how often you sub....

That would make the game cater to each idividual player's style as well.

Rp

[MessiahRp]

Well two things. I meant the year 2030... :)

Anyways for the Referendum idea... the final vote should be based off three factors. Age of Existing stadium, money contributed, and... FAN LOYALTY, I forgot to mention that because it makes that Fan loyalty rating even more important to the game.

I like this idea... It's not realistic that a team shells out the money for a new stadium these days and even though there can be opposition to new stadiums like in SF and SD, there are ones that do pass (like Green Bay, Denver, Arizona, and I believe Chicago and Detroit just dealt with these)... It shouldn't be easy to obtain a stadium because it isn't in real life but the right combination of things should be enough to win the voters over and it gives players a fun new option to throw in the mix of the game.

[CpnHowdy]

When I played and I ended up going below the minium # of players (53 I think) the computer would fill them in with free agents and sometimes draft picks (if i didn't feel like doing the draft that year) that were really high dollar! Playing with the Browns I had Kurt Warner as my backup quarterback to Couch and I know I didn't sign him! Also I like how it uses the number system as opposed to the letter system when rating players, I wish this would be added to baseball mogul since it would make it more clear the difference between good players and the great players. Oh and one more thing is I don't like how every fan in every city is devoted! I know for a fact Cleveland is devoted since they fought to save their team, but I would disagree with some of the other cities.

CpnHowdy

[Miketay77]

Nice ideas Messiah. I agree that FM needs a huge makeover. The game is plain ugly.

Many of the good BM features should be implimented for FM. Altho I don't want just a clone. I'd like Clay and company to add some new features.

The whole comp signing and releasing players is horrendous. It's one of the reasons I sold my old FM after a month.

One more note to Clay. Don't rush this baby. If it has to come out in late Sept in order to be a quality product, then do it. Your reputation is at stake.

[CpnHowdy]

Originally posted by Miketay77
One more note to Clay. Don't rush this baby. If it has to come out in late Sept in order to be a quality product, then do it. Your reputation is at stake.

I couldn't agree more, as it stands now I really can't see how this could make it before the start of the football season. Thats why if it even took till the middle of October that would be fine with me. Its just like console sports games whenever a company tries to rush their product to meet the beginning of whatever sports season its for, it ussually comes out like ****. Although the next beta could fix a lot of problems and have more features which would shut my pie hole real quick :)

CpnHowdy

[bhenry]

Just a reminder.

Don't forget these MISSING FEATURES.

[bobm08054]

My ideas(some may have enn said already)
1. You should be able to make offers to FA's in a competing with other managers market knid of like in MAdden games. Like u can put a 5 year 10 mil contract bid on a guy adn in the FA time poeriod they can match that offer.
2. Restricted and unrestricted FA's
3. Guys should choose wherther they want to test out FA market and nit let team make an offer or let team amke an offer
4. No trade clause(if they accept oit then value of contract should go down and if they dont then contract stays same)
5. Rewards for winning Super Bowl like in real life a team gets cash if they win
6. CPU trade offers(i know not much trades happen in FB but some do)
7. On top of that Preseason trade offers
8. this was someone else's suggestion but i agree that theer should be preseason stats and on the schedule there sould be preseason games listed like hall of fame game and american bowl game