Quote:
Originally Posted by Romagoth
Seems a little strange to me how many are willing to take an inferior online mode over nothing at all. Isn't it worth the wait to get it right?
Maybe it's just me though.  |
I don't want to speak for the rest of our league, but please re-read what I've said here as there's no reason for you to be confused.
No one wants an inferior product and I completely understand the decision, I really do, especially once it was explained. Please, let me reiterate: once it was explained.
I too want the best sim platform possible and I have faith in Sebastian, Markus and everyone else at OOTP, as I love the OOTP product. I want the game to be as fantastic as I know it can be, and with a small company such as OOTP, we acknowledge this can't happen overnight.
But....In my case it's the fact we found out *today*, the day of the pre-order announcement. And we found it via a comment made in the forums. as opposed to any type of official acknowledgement. It would have akin to reading on the forums the day of the release of your favorite hockey sim that *your* favorite team wasn't included. Just yours. Any everyone else on the forums was like, "hey no biggie, get over it dude, it's only 1 team."
We had literally put our league on hold as we waited for the release. We were all pretty excited, guys had changed teams, we were all looking forward to it, people were already researching line combinations! It was a little deflating, to say the least. The online experience adds so much realism to the sim.
As in politics, the best way to handle this would have been full transparency, get out in front of it ASAP, and let the online community know beforehand:
"Dear hockey fans,
Today is a special day for us, as we have just officially announced Franchise Hockey Manager 3 - Officially licensed by the NHL!
Sebastian, Jeff, Malte, Daniela and many supporters from our community have worked very hard to create the most realistic and fun hockey management game available, and I am sure you will agree and enjoy FHM 3 once it is released on October 17.
Unfortunately, we realized in order to fully support our FHM3 core features and the numerous improvements we've made, we wouldn't be able to include online league functionality in the initial release version. This decision was a very hard one for all of us as our online leagues have been a big part of the success of OOTP and FHM2, but we think you will agree the progress made on the FHM3 core features will make the decision worth it. And of course we will try to add the online features via an update at some point, when we feel they are to the quality you all deserve.
If you pre-order now, you will save 25% (the game is $29.99 right now and $39.99 after release) and also get access to the Gold Master Beta version three days prior to the official launch.
Thanks so much for understanding and thank you for continuing to support Franchise Hockey Manager and OOTP."
Boom, done, and we all, while disappointed, would have understood.
Otherwise it seems as though you were kinda hoping people would pre-order before realizing such an important feature wasn't included, whether that was the case or not.