Puresim versus OOTP

[dwinston]

What are the differences between these two games? Thanks

[ChrisJohnson]

The main difference right now is that OOTP has more depth (multi-level minors, waivers, DFA list, pick trading, etc.), but some of this depth doesn't work. What PureSim has it does pretty well. I think the stadium configuration options in PureSim are much better than OOTP. I also like PureSim's on the field interface better than OOTP. Mutli-player options are pretty nice, but lack OOTP depth.

I own both and I'll play both.

[KG Erwin]

One thing Pure Sim DOES have is an opportunity to offer suggestions for game enhancements, and it allows direct contact with the game's developer.

This is a very pro-active community, so any questions or comments you have will be acknowledged by either the developer or an experienced player.

[Steely Glint]

ORIGINAL: dwinston

What are the differences between these two games? Thanks

Let me speak only of the good.

PureSim has a better interface and has a friendly and accessible designer. PureSim is affiliated with Matrix. PureSim has been available as shareware on occasion.

OOTP is deeper, is far more feature-packed, is easier to customize to your own preferences, has a much larger and more dedicated user base, has a large and excellent collection of free user-made add-ons (schedules, roster sets, data bases, photopacks, name files, logos, etc., including Catobase, the awesome database utility that is probably the greatest single add-on ever for a computer sports game).

I own both and play both, and I recommend owning both of them to anyone who likes computer baseball.

[marc420]

Sorry, but OOTP does have an active community and last time I looked the developer participates in it rather actively (when he's not coding!)

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

One thing Pure Sim DOES have is an opportunity to offer suggestions for game enhancements, and it allows direct contact with the game's developer.

This is a very pro-active community, so any questions or comments you have will be acknowledged by either the developer or an experienced player.

[Amaroq]

I would characterise them as 'PureSim is better at the out-of-the-box single-player experience', 'OOTP 6.x is better at customization and multi-player'.

One big difference right now is 'PureSim is available and continuously in development, while OOTP is in the midst of a massive re-write to the Sports Interactive engine.' (OOTP did release '6.5' updates including both bug fixes and new features for this season, but their primary focus has been on getting the SI version ready for Spring of 2006.)

I rather expect that to be a short-term step backward for OOTP, and a long-term step forwards.

[Steely Glint]

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

I would characterise them as 'PureSim is better at the out-of-the-box single-player experience', 'OOTP 6.x is better at customization and multi-player'.

I disagree totally. IMO OOTP shines out of the box, and is better for a single player.

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

One big difference right now is 'PureSim is available and continuously in development, while OOTP is in the midst of a massive re-write to the Sports Interactive engine.'

I often wonder what planet you are on when you post stuff like this. The OOTP 6.5b open beta, featuring numerous fixes and some new stuff, was just released and is currently being tested by the OOTP community. It qualifies in every way as continuous developement. Sure,OOTP 2006 is being developed, but OOTP6 is still very much in continuous developement.

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

but their primary focus has been on getting the SI version ready for Spring of 2006.)

No way! With Markus releasing the unexpected totally 6.5 update and then 6.5a and now 6.5b, that's just not so. To date the focus has been shared.

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

I rather expect that to be a short-term step backward for OOTP, and a long-term step forwards.

You must not know the testers. Watch for OOTP 2006 to be a big step forward, both in the short and the long term.

[athkatla]

ORIGINAL: Steely Glint

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

I would characterise them as 'PureSim is better at the out-of-the-box single-player experience', 'OOTP 6.x is better at customization and multi-player'.

I disagree totally. IMO OOTP shines out of the box, and is better for a single player.

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

One big difference right now is 'PureSim is available and continuously in development, while OOTP is in the midst of a massive re-write to the Sports Interactive engine.'

I often wonder what planet you are on when you post stuff like this. The OOTP 6.5b open beta, featuring numerous fixes and some new stuff, was just released and is currently being tested by the OOTP community. It qualifies in every way as continuous developement. Sure,OOTP 2006 is being developed, but OOTP6 is still very much in continuous developement.

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

but their primary focus has been on getting the SI version ready for Spring of 2006.)

No way! With Markus releasing the unexpected totally 6.5 update and then 6.5a and now 6.5b, that's just not so. To date the focus has been shared.

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

I rather expect that to be a short-term step backward for OOTP, and a long-term step forwards.

You must not know the testers. Watch for OOTP 2006 to be a big step forward, both in the short and the long term.

Having purchased every version of Championship Manager, and now Football Manager 2005, and currently beta testing Football Manager 2006, Sports Interactives award winning games, I wholeheartedly agree with you. These guys do the job properly and more importantly listen to their community and contribute daily to the forum, answering questions and taking on board suggestions for the next version of the game.

Oops, this should have quoted Amaroqs post.[8|]

[Beach23BoyP]

Having purchased every version of Championship Manager, and now Football Manager 2005, and currently beta testing Football Manager 2006, Sports Interactives award winning games, I wholeheartedly agree with you. These guys do the job properly and more importantly listen to their community and contribute daily to the forum, answering questions and taking on board suggestions for the next version of the game.

I manage "Havant and Waterlooville" in the Conference South. With FM2006 Gold Demo I'm having a lot of trouble winning games! I lost all my friendlies and I've split the first two matches of the 2005/2006 Conference South season.

I was much better with FM2005 -- I took Havant & W to almost League One in four seasons! Best sports text sim ever!

[Silverbullet]

I am currently playing the FM Mgr. Gold Demo.
It is very good in managing a team, but not having any idea about the sport of soccer I haven't a clue what is going on.
Loaning out players??
Players being taken from your team to play for "their countries"?
Possible "bug" of injuies up the gazoo?
It is my opinion if you understand the sport of soccer, as well as many Americans understand Baseball and American Football this is probably a very good sport sim.
But as I have already stated I am clueless and cannot enjoy it.

[Amaroq]

I often wonder what planet you are on when you post stuff like this.

The planet of "an insider's perspective" - I'm also a game developer, and in my experience, it isn't possible to be both focused on patch/support for past projects and development on a new projects: on any given day, I'm only productive at one, and there's a lot of 'context switching' time ramping up your thought process when you shift from one to another. Understanding how different 2006 is from 6.0/6.5 - literally written in different languages, plus all of the differences between using the OOTP core engine and the 2006 core engine - I have a very good idea of just how challenging a task Markus is undertaking. So, I expect the initial 2006 release to be very challenging for the developer - and if he's splitting time to provide a 6.5 update for the community, I expect that that is distracting his effort from a challenging project.

He may prove me wrong - but I think there's a danger of 'crushing weight of expectations', burnout, etc, with such a large project: you can get to a point where the bug count is so high that it is daunting, where you feel like you either have to miss a ship date or ship a buggy project, and worse where you can't add people to the project because it'll take them 3-6 months to stop being a drain on your existing engineers and 6-12 months to make your initial investment (training) worthwhile. Eventually, it will launch, and it will launch with bugs in it, because it would cost SI (and Markus) more to fix the bugs (in terms of time and lost sales) than the bugs are worth economically (in terms of lost sales).

If you'd like to read some more on these topics - and not from me - I'd recommend Joel On Software, as its a very good software engineer writing from the engineer's perspective:

Things You Should Never Do, Part I
Human Task Switches Considered Harmful
Good Software Takes Ten Years: Get Used To It
Hard-assed Bug Fixing

Anyways, that's the perspective I have on it, and 'what planet I'm coming from'. [:)] I think the SI/OOTP partnership has exceptional promise for the long term... but that both the 2005 release and 2006 release will suffer for it. Is 6.5 as big a step forward as Markus would have made had he remained 100% focused on it? And for 2006, is he focusing his effort on 'getting all the features which worked in 6.x working again' or 'implementing new features into a working code base'?

[Amaroq]

In response to the CM/FM focus of the thread, I'm currently on the third team of my FM2005 career, fighting for honors in the Championship having started with Lancaster in the Conference North. [:)] I've played the series since CM2, and post in that forum under the same name. Athkatla, do you post in that forum?

Silverbullet - I found my first exposure to it overwhelming, as I lacked the same 'knowledge of soccer', despite having played and managed in youth/rec leagues up through about age 16 in the U.S. The depth of understanding just isn't the same. However, playing a simpler game (one of the competitors) really got me hooked on the concept - I love the promotion/relegation aspect, and there's nothing more satisfying than bringing your team up from the depths of obscurity and turning them into a European power. The forum over at sigames.com is a welcoming place, and willing to help bridge the gaps between 'American' and 'British', which is actually a bit of a limiting factor.

Its worth overcoming the 'this isn't my sport' hurdle because, frankly, it is the best game in the genre, and in general what every other text-based sports management simulation should aspire to be. Ironically, its a bit over ten years in development, as though to prove Joel's point (referenced in one of the links in my last post - links really don't stand out on this forum, at least not the way I'm viewing it!) about the 10-year maturity cycle.

[athkatla]

ORIGINAL: Amaroq
Athkatla, do you post in that forum?

Yes I do, but of late I have mainly been posting in the Beta Testers forum, which isn't available for other users. I was on the beta test team for FM2005 and am currently testing FM2006, though it's gone gold, so these current bugs will be for the first patch no doubt. I post as Mariners on the SI games forums, that's the nickname of the team I support in real life, Grimsby Town, who are unfortunately in League 2, though we did beat Premiership team Tottenham Hotspur in the Carling Cup, and are due to play Newcastle United in the next round.

BTW you're gonna like FM2006, if you buy it, it's a big improvement on FM2005 without straying away from the basics of that version.

[Amaroq]

Excellent! Nice to meet you. I'm a York City fan, myself, by virtue of having played them in CM01/02, and have been following them IRL the past several years. So I've faced Grimsby Town quite a few times in CM/FM matches. [:)] I'll definitely be buying, but am not in the 'have to rush out and get it on day of release' crowd; I'll be waiting for the U.S. release.

In MLB, there's a Seattle Mariners, who you might enjoy playing for similarity of nickname.

[Beach23BoyP]

ORIGINAL: Silverbullet
It is my opinion if you understand the sport of soccer, as well as many Americans understand Baseball and American Football this is probably a very good sport sim.
But as I have already stated I am clueless and cannot enjoy it.

About three years ago I started watching the Fox Soccer Channel (then called Fox Sports World) and after watching about 5 or 6 English Premier matches I started to understand it. Also, I now watch the recap shows and I read English football websites quite a bit. I've learn a lot -- and Soccer (no, Football) grows on me more and more each day. In fact, while the Astros were playing for almost 6 hours Sunday I watched Tiger and parts of two socccer games!

[athkatla]

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

Excellent! Nice to meet you. I'm a York City fan, myself, by virtue of having played them in CM01/02, and have been following them IRL the past several years. So I've faced Grimsby Town quite a few times in CM/FM matches. [:)] I'll definitely be buying, but am not in the 'have to rush out and get it on day of release' crowd; I'll be waiting for the U.S. release.

In MLB, there's a Seattle Mariners, who you might enjoy playing for similarity of nickname.

Indeed, York is actually less than an hours drive from where I live and before they were relegated from the Football League Grimsby played them quite a few times in what we call over here, a 'Derby' match. That describes a game played between 2 teams who are geographically close to each other.

[athkatla]

ORIGINAL: athkatla

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

Excellent! Nice to meet you. I'm a York City fan, myself, by virtue of having played them in CM01/02, and have been following them IRL the past several years. So I've faced Grimsby Town quite a few times in CM/FM matches. [:)] I'll definitely be buying, but am not in the 'have to rush out and get it on day of release' crowd; I'll be waiting for the U.S. release.

In MLB, there's a Seattle Mariners, who you might enjoy playing for similarity of nickname.

Indeed, York is actually less than an hours drive from where I live and before they were relegated from the Football League Grimsby played them quite a few times in what we call over here, a 'Derby' match. That describes a game played between 2 teams who are geographically close to each other.

One of my yahoo account names is marinerfan_uk, and many times I was asked by people from the US if I was a Seattle fan. [:)]

[Steely Glint]

ORIGINAL: Amaroq

The planet of "an insider's perspective" - I'm also a game developer, and in my experience, it isn't possible to be both focused on patch/support for past projects and development on a new projects: on any given day, I'm only productive at one, and there's a lot of 'context switching' time ramping up your thought process when you shift from one to another.

I work on much larger IT projects, and it is not only possible but common to be "both focused on patch/support for past projects and development on a new projects (sic)"

And in the future please spare us all the condescension. A lot of gamers are also programmers, and game developers are just (yawn) yet another subset of programmers.

[Erik Rutins]

Folks, I often regret seeing "this vs. that" threads because they usually lead to friction between fans. Let's keep the tone civil or I'll have to lock this up.

Regards,

- Erik

[puresimmer]

Steely and Amoraq,

You guys are both some of the best contributors to the PureSim forums and community. You are also both great guys. I'm positive you'd be buddies if you lived in the same town.

So lets all hug... Ok that feels better

Seriously if you look at Amoraq's contribution to this forum and the old PureSim boards I know you'll see he is a million miles from condescending! I actually feel like I should be paying him he's so helpful to folks.

Also, Steely I really value your feedback from the OOTP side of things. I think OOTP is a great game, and I respect the heck out of Markus. There is room for both games on everyone's hard drive.