The revised patch seems to have done nothing

[David Winter]

Online leagues require online game play. Which is a development challenge beyond anything else I will be working on. It's also very expensive. That said, I've already stated that the game can not possibly grow without an online game play experience. So yes, it's high on the to do list.

I believe FBPro online leagues were mostly 'email' leagues (that evolved over time depending on the version of the game the league used). The commish would send a player current league files, the player would play their game, and send the output files back to the commish. Maximum-Football can do the same thing.

I'd also like to remind everyone that this is the first version of the game. There needs to be a feature set to start with. Something that is buildable. As the game was intended to be a 3D game allowing multirule play with the ability to design your own plays, that's what I built.

[garysorrell]

There were 2 main types of FBPro leagues.

1.)H2H-Players hooked up via WON or KALI and played head to head(real time)

2.)PPP leagues-Players made plays, gameplans and profiles, sent them to the commish and he simmed the games.

There were leagues where one of the participants would play out the game and send results to the commish. Dont think they were popular though, due to cheating.


And team6 from my above test went 5-5 in season 8 and made the playoff...lost sadly

[David Winter]

Yes, I would imagine there would be a lot of cheating with the email style leagues.

[dreamtheatervt]

ORIGINAL: garysorrell

I don't want to jump to conclusions based on your small sample size and short period of observation, but it looks like parity quickly took foot in your league, as the last two years the best teams were 6-4, and your worst team was 3-7. Year 3 also shows a similar trend, with the worst team being 4-6.

I'm not suggesting you do it, but 18 teams over 15 years would be an interesting experiment, should be enough teams and long enough time to determine if there is an overall trend for teams to hover around the .500 mark.

[garysorrell]

true. I may try that this weekend. I did sim thru 10 seasons, and overall, there was some good movement of teams. The second 5 seasons were similar to the first.

[Marauders]

I would just like to note here that many features have been added to Maximum-Football from its original plan.  Many of these features have been added after being on the wishlist or pushed by the community or beta team.  David has worked very hard to get features in, and he wants to get more features in for future updates and versions of the game.
 
At this point, the game needs a feature lockdown point, and that will come with 1.5.  Some new things will be in 1.5, but head to head online play and the sim system based on the 3D engine will not make it.  There just is not enough resources to get all that done in version 1.x, and I am sure that most of the Maximum-Football community will agree that a clean feature locked build is important.  This will allow some other things like the sim engine to be better tweaked as well.
 
Consider that Front Page Sports Football took a few years to become FBPro, and Madden didn't start with a 3D engine.  It takes time to add features, and it takes community support.  Maximum-Football has come a long way, and I hope it can go much further in the future.

[Marauders]

The voting reflects a desire for the user to be able to, when simming a game, to use the game's "on-field" engine (or 3-D engine, if you want) but without the graphics (a la FBPro). The main reason is to get stats on par with, and completely and directly comparable to, non-simmed games. I don't think you can conclude that most users want to ultimately sim their games. I believe the majority are probably like me - those that want to actually coach their team's games using the "on-field" engine, and sim many or most of the rest of the teams in the league's games, but have generated stats directly comparable. That's why I voted for the new sim engine (and I am sure many did as well).

I agree with this.  Changing the sim engine to a 3D based engine is a high priority with the Maximum-Football community.  As I recall, this was similar to how David had planned the sim engine to work in the first place, but it did not speed things up as quickly as some people would have liked. 
I didn't agree with going to an artificial sim engine at that time, but that is what is in the game now.  It will not be changed to the 3D sim in 1.5, as there is not time to do so, but some tweaks are being considered to make the current sim engine more comparable to the 3D game stats.

Im not criticizing anyone here either. Scott_WAR and elmerlee are absolutely within their rights as purchasers to speak up.

Of course.  Feedback is important.

However, I will admit to being a bit tired of wondering when I can relax and just start playing.
I would really like to see David at some point just say "Thats it, the game is on feature lockdown. New graphics engine, new sim engine, vista fixes...thats it" Then squash whatever bugs are there and start looking toward an expansion/add-on, or a version 2, for whatever direction he wants to take the game in.

That has been a huge topic in the private development board.  Release 1.3 was to be considered as a lock down point feature wise, but community depth charts suggestions and Microsoft complications relating to Vista and DirectX support forced David to make changes that will become Release 1.5.  That is the new target for the lock, and some features that community members are asking for will not make it in.  It is really the trade off that has to be made to have a clean build.

I think gary hit on EXACTLY what is troubling me..... I have started and stopped work on a few things, because future updates that are planned is going to change the game, and I dont want to do a lot of work just to have to start over again next update. So yeah, at some point the game has to finalize and stop adding and changing features.

I hear you.  I have updated formations and plays many times.  I have put a hold on things because small changes have been made that put a player out of alignment or defensive plays have added features.   That is why a lock down is important; we need to be able to just get on with playing the game.

BUT- we must have certain features for online, multiplayer leagues. We need that sim engine, we need H2H play, and possibly we need GM/financials.

Please continue to ask for these as wish list items.  David has been responsive to feedback and input.
 

[garysorrell]

Thanks for the comments Marauders.

Im happy with MaxFB as is, just looking to see all bugs squashed and it running smooth.

I hope all would agree that MaxFB is far more feature rich than any other PC football game, and is that way because of Davids original vision and willingness to listen to users and actually give us what we ask for, when reasonable of course.
If my memory serves me, David originally planned to make a game that allowed us to play games with a variety of rulesets. All the Career mode, quick sim stuff came about because we hounded him relentlessly

That being said, Im easily getting my moneys worth out of Max, and will gladly pay for a ver 2.

Go play an old version of Madden or one of the early FBPros......I had them, they were far from what they became.