Gary, is there any plan of making modding a little easier for your football games? I feel like there is so much potential to enhance things like recruiting, on field simulation, and it feels like the code is fairly locked down. I absolutely love the progress you guys are making, I just think it could be taken to the next level by community modding and/or small paid updates throughout the year.

If you have anything specific you would like to see and how you would like to see it done I will be glad to run it by Brooks and see if it can be done

I played this game and i play FOF and FOF is so far in front for me it's unreal. If i remember just two points i remember were you can't go out of bounds! Cap management is broken, so a QB costs the same to re-sign as any other position, sorry but that is so poor.

I can't speak to your comment on going out of bounds but I do know that the cap management does not work that way. There is a weight given to positions - maybe you played an earlier version or something like that.

Players do run out of bounds in DDS. I've seen it happen many times. I would like to provide some feedback concerning the game's late game play calling logic. I know this is an area that has been worked a lot and I can see the improvements in the recent releases, but I still feel it could be a little better. Things such as fourth down field goal vs going for it decisions and knowing when to use timeouts or when to run out of bounds to stop the clock.

I do find it weird that American management dim games tend to focus on customization of everything instead of just directly simulating what is actually on the modern pro level. All of this extra work about creating historical it fictional scenarios.

That's why they will never be as deep as football manager or as fun/exciting as Motorsport manager.

Those are my now go to games for sports management. I need American pro games like that. If not I can just go to other non sports management/simulation/strategic games.

Are there any American sports sim games even close to football manager or Motorsport manager? If do let me know I would like to check them out.

Ootpb is the biggest or most well known American sports sim it is still not even close to being in those 2 aforementioned games worlds. Football manager is light years beyond ootp. While Motorsport manager is still much much better as a video game experience.

Ootp does a fantastic job of setting up scenarios and spitting out realistic results. But from a video game experience it is severely lacking. But I get the feeling of all American sports sims kind of just want to be result simulators. And not actual management simulation video games.

By all means DM me or post it on our forums - we would love to have your feedback especially with us deep into the code on 2021 now.

IIRC the source code for FPS 98 is in the public domain but no developer has chosen to use it.

I will reiterate that I would contribute to a kickstarter for FOF and TCY 2. I would contribute and still pay full price for the game. My only request would be that Jim does a developer's diary or blog similar to what the folks who made TEW 2020 did.

I hope Jim and the OOTP people understand that businesses hire contractors all the time. And hiring someone from Upwork is not a knock to anyone its just good business practice.

All of the AAA studios have an insane number contractors part of all that crazy California rules about independent contractors. Since their business is game development and they are hiring 100's of game developers as contractors instead of as salary employees.

But my point is yeah take any of the big games, say like Red Dead Redemption 2, and the amount of independent contractors on the project is staggering. We are talking dozens and dozens if not hundreds.

Apoligies if that is the case!

Where at? I have searched the internet several times for the code and the best I ever found was a detailed explanation of how retirement works, which anyone who played could quickly figure out that once you move a player from a #1 position down to a lower position they would retire. As a programmer myself I was always interested in looking at the code. I assumed Sierra still had the rights to it even though they stopped the game in 2000.

Yeah, I looked and don't see it either. This was a few years ago so maybe it got taken down. As for Sierra, I don't think they exist anymore do they?

I think they still do: https://www.sierragames.com/

Interesting!

I am not sure I am understanding your point. It seems to me that you agree with my position. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Oh I'm just stating that when done proper, Kickstarter is often a huge success for game studios. And the game industry as a whole hires a significant amount of independent contractors. Having a good PR firm and good publishers also help. And I am not really sure why it isn't a part of OOTP's strategic future.

Not just with FOF but I would love for a revolutionary next gen OOTPb to be kickstarted even if it meant that version was 2 to 3 years away. At least we would know it was coming and get regular updates on its progress. The up front money should allow for more staff in any configuration they wanted. So the yearly update of the current version shouldn't be effected but could be scaled down.

Without something like Kickstarter I just never see OOTPb ever becoming either as deep as Football Manager or as fun as Motorsport Manager. Not to mentioned as polished as either of those games. And Motorsport Manager is 4 years old!!!!!!!

In 4 years time OOTPb has basically remained exactly the same as a game play experience. It added perfect team and 3D but neither really change the overall game play experience.

Come on be fair, they have managed to hang Jim out to dry in that time period as well. ;)

I agree with you. I think it goes without saying that this could be an issue solved by having a kickstarter to hire someone to do the interface which from my understanding is the only thing that requires work. From there OOTP marketing should take over because I don't think their marketing team does any programming.

For the OOTP staff or Jim himself, I would gladly put up money and still buy the game at full price just for a developer's blog and the game's release.

Hi Gary! You and Brooks have had plenty of feedback from me via PMs here and on the Wolverine forum. Thank you for listening.

It's not just Kickstarter either. A lot of the Indy devs also use patreon in addition to Kickstarter. So there is always a constant flow of information.

I've always completely disagreed with how ootp game info is released to the public. It's like 2 months before launch. While the majority of Indy games either have weekly, bi-weekly or monthly updates in numerous platforms.

Their is Kickstarter, patreon, steam early access all of these platforms encourage constant updating to the fan base.

I guess it's cause ootp caters more towards the "non gamer" but that's also why it'll never be as big as football manager or motorsport manager. Those games attract gamers because they are top notch games. Not solely because they are sports fan or specific sports fans.

Just check YouTube and twitch for ootpb. It's DEAD! They get no videos from content creator. Quill18 is doing a motorsport play through and it gets like 50k viewers for a 4 year old game. When the game was new it would get 200-500k views.

I'm not sure if you add up all the ootp vids if they would get 50k combined.

Modern games are moved to the public from YouTubers and twitch users. Ootp doesn't attract any.

I much preferred FOF to Draft Day Sports football but i must admit that in the short period i played DDS Gary and especially Brooks where really helpful answering questions etc. 10 out 10 for customer support!

Same here. They’re quite devoted to good communication with users.

I just don't understand why communication has been so poor from OOTP. It's honestly always felt a bit abrasive from everyone who's not Jim, when they do rarely respond. Just so defensive and adversarial.

The Wolverine team does do a much better job, although I wish they would do a bit better on the football side of giving proactive updates and insights into iterations and feedback. It feels very user-led.

I don't think OOTP communication issues have anything to do with FOF I just think that is how they operate their business.

They have their podcasts and their twitch streams to show game play. But they never ever communicate anything about future releases. OOTPb comes out every year and we don't get a hint about anything until 2 months before release.

I mean big AAA games that come out on a yearly cycle still release info at least 6 to 8 months ahead of time. Just at least new features, or a wishlist or some kind of idea.

I honestly think OOTP is just accustomed to operating for what it believes is it's attended audience. And its audience is certainly not your normal PC gamers. Most people that have OOTPb on the forum it's their only game. That is why there is such resentment towards Steam. They don't understand in PC gaming Steam is king. You have Steam users ho are the opposite where they don't buy games if they aren't on the Steam store. Not to mention Epic. Secondary audiecen is sports fans and daily fantasy gamblers a la Perfect Team and point packs $$$.

If OOTP's core audience were PC gamers they be throwing a fit with the lack of information that gets released each year before OOTPb is released. I know myself being a PC gamer when I come to OOTP is feels completely foreign I don't know any other Indy dev studio that communicates this way.

Again just look the lack of content creators playing OOTPb online. Without that the game can never jump to the next level of development in the modern gaming world.

Ask Paradox how goes Imperator: Rome. Absolutely no one streams this on any service Youtube, Twitch, Mixer and so its daily Steam players are lower then Paradox games that are 10+ years old.Victoria 2 has more steam daily players. It also still gets streamers. While Rome is dead.

Maybe OOTP thinks Perfect Team can conquer the mobile platform. There are certainly enough daily fantasy gamblers to get onboard but they typically aren't your PC users. But if its on the mobile like all their other fantasy and gambling apps then OOTP has a chance to get in big with that crowd.

Sitting here thinking and although the communication is weak I got to wondering about a possible release schedule. The baseball game comes out annually somewhat aligned with spring training, give or take. I am not sure if FHM has a consistent annual release or not. Maybe there is an underlying plan that FOF, like Madden, would be released in a similar fashion annually around the NFL pre-season. Seems that it could facilitate the use of "resources" having a somewhat fixed release schedule to bounce them between releases.

Just thinking!

It's now June. I would think marketing, and Jim, would let us know if they were shooting for a 2020 release. At least, I would hope so.

The project, IMHO, has 'gone cold'. There is no will on the part of OOTP management to really finish this in anything near a timely manner. I doubt that we'll ever see OOTP release this game. Maybe Jim can get somebody else to do a GUI. Thank goodness we have FOF8.

Very disappointed in Markus and his group.

Yeah, I feel like we've speculated about a release timeline every single year and been disappointed every single year. Feels like a fool's errand at this point.

If only we could get Sports Interactive in for an american football sim. I've been picking up Football Manager 2020 a lot recently and deep management plus on-field play is just so wonderful, and something lacking in current football sims. Draft Day gives it a go, but I can just never get into circles moving around a football field (although I love that they've put the effort in).

Until we hear something definitive from Jim and/or Markus that this project is scrapped, I assume it's still in the works. Of course, if we don't see any movement in the next two or three years, I'd start getting concerned.

The game from what I understand just needs a new interface. I do not think it takes 2-3 years to do an interface.

ps its been about 2.5 years since the original announcement.

First, the company would have to care about the game enough to create a user interface. There's no evidence OOTP does.

Yes. There's really been no evidence that OOTP is really committed to an investment of resources.

This is exactly what I was talking about a while ago, Jim, when I encouraged you to come on periodically to just let people know how everything is going.

People don't even need details (though those are great when you have them). Just the fact that you're coming on and saying, "Yup. Everything is still chugging along!" is enough.

The OOTP community has had so much discouraging football news that even the status quo is encouraging to us

To be fair, there might be a lot of back end code that needs updating or adding to in order to be able to work with the new interface.

Go back to an earlier post by Jim, he implies that the coding is all but done.

Yep.