Re: Synchronated Updates

No matter how much I love the Swos 96-97 version, I really really get bored about the number of good teams we use online/offline. 99% of all players use Brazil, Real Madrid, Italy and maybe a few use Barcelona, Juventus, Newcastle, Ajax.
No matter what team you use, you are limited in your offensive playstyle by the team and not the skills you have. Mostly in the speed / passing / control department, or the worst of them all, the annoying positions and lack hereof making some of your players less useful. All because of a stupid letter, not to mention all the flaws there are in SWOS 96-97 teams. Sometimes it looks like a sloppy update by Sensible Software (player postions wrong or players occuring twice on 2 club teams).

To me these new updates, is a fresh thing as the gameplay is still intact with more good teams than the original. To a change, it would be nice to actually have at least 3 good attackers AND good wingers too. I dont care about the defence
I don t get the thing about the players being too fast. The speed of the gameplay, is IMHO its biggest strenght!

Mate, sounds like you d have tons of fun with the Online Career (whose database is a slightly modified version of 2011 Synchro s update) and its transfer market/players customization features, the only limitation to your creativity would be the club budget but you can increase that overtime by winning.

I ll send you a PM about it later tonight!

Game is faster, big deal, suck it up and adapt your playstyle, it s still within the boundaries of what the developers originally coded.

I m just comparing stats from the old and new databases (the old one clearly being the baseline for a very successful game). My preference is for a balanced game as opposed to a frantic speed based dash as I enjoy a mixture of play too

i would welcome a slower paced overall game speed

, however I accept that I m not the db provider so will bow to Synch preferences given the fantastic work he does ;o) Clearly its a new perspective on it for him and he may choose to take it into account or not, I m just happy to do the analysis.

In saying that I do believe (having seen the massive problems it causes in WoW) that balance becomes alot harder when you re trying to satisfy a PvP *AND* a PvE audience. The amazing job thats been done to make online matches available puts a bit more strain on the player db idd as stated by gjowger:

To me these new updates, is a fresh thing as the gameplay is still intact with more good teams than the original.

I d love to be spankin ma buddies with my beloved Everton but tbh I do believe that no matter how much variety you put in in the top teams competitive players will always choose from only a couple (its been the same in every game I ve ever played, its Brazil/Italy/Spain/Germany/Argentina). So I accept that Everton are shit, that Fellaini is underrated and Rooney will have to come back! I prefer the player db to model reality and United being streets ahead of the pack etc.

If Synch is keen I m happy to try tweak databases for pvp/pve play and provide more than one offering (altho I know he s made more than one 12/13 release already afaics) but I might need some packing/unpacking guidance.

Much warmth and gratitude,
Nyxta

3) Velocity Finishing points have gone up by 74(ish)% and 24(ish)% respectively meaning more goals and keepers being less effective (probably *at least* 15% more, not including other changes).

We should probably take into account here that goalkeeper values and therefore capability will also have risen somewhat.

afaics the price and the attributes are linked so changing the skills automatically changes the price?

Yes, sum of skills = price. There are 50 possible prices which match the skill totals from 0 to 49. Better to compare the skill totals than the price itself, which is arbitrary really.

Sounds harsh, not meant to be, so much respect for you gents for your hard work. I m just hoping to contribute to keeping the game challenging for the right reasons and preserving the 2player balance. I m not precious bout my maths so feel free to bash me as much as ya like if I m wrong!

No, it s all good.

Some things though

- many, many teams in the original DB are made from falsified whole-team templates which all have 3 CBs and at least 3 defensive midfielders. A lot of these players have great tackling (maybe even max even if they are bad players) and nothing else, and at the time no better information on them existed, so that s how it was done. Because of things like this I do not particularly consider the original data sacred or anything. Hence there was always going to be a change there - the new DBs player attributes come from various sources but are actually based on the individual players; there are no crude team templates that mean attacking midfielders also have great tackling.

- The general level of prices has necessarily been elevated slightly just as a result of my own balancing, in order that the players for which we have little/no information are not all totally terrible, just slightly worse than others. Also many poor leagues (San Marino, Taiwan, Australia/New Zealand lower divisions, etc.) have been replaced with, well, better ones. So you are going to get slightly higher prices overall, and this means more skill points across the board.

Can you try just comparing e.g. Premier League + Serie A + La Liga? Outside of about 7 or 8 major divisions, most of the individual player attributes on original SWOS will have been largely made up and so aren t really comparable. Also some lower divisions in original SWOS are really bad to play because everyone can tackle but no-one has any pace or anything else.

Oh and unpacking/packing is easy if you google command lines for RNC propack. Slightly trickier now windows has not got DOS and you have to use DOSbox I suppose, in terms of navigating to the correct files.

I just always work on/generate (I built my own file SWOS team file generators recently, so have no need for SWOS editors anymore apart from the FIX FOREIGN MARKET function on Pablo Fridlender s) unpacked copies of files, packing them up only to make a release or to use them on Amiga version.

Yep that s a fair shout about the team templates, I didn t realise that alright. I do appreciate the thoroughness of your approach there. Also the adjustments you ve mentioned will indeed skew the data so the omission of El Salv/National/Custom still won t give an accurate comparison so you re right there s not much point in analysing there anymore, good point. My gut feeling is that sh*t teams in the lower divisions still feel a tad too fast but I agree that the original data seems a quite poor. I m mitigating the impact but it means that every purchase I make prioritises speed wayyy above every other attribute however I can certainly live with that in favour of a more representative db ;o)

So to analyse the more meaningful divisions I ve done two data pulls. The first to compare goalkeeper prices and the second to compare outfield players from the PL + Serie A + La Liga.

Goalkeepers: PL + Serie A + La Liga.

Original 96/97 db (120 players):	Value
Total	85,600,000
Avg price per plyr	713,333
Nu 12/13 db (120 players):	Value
Total	121,790,000
Avg price per plyr	1,014,916

I suspect that first team keepers (not including sub keepers) might yield different results again. Can check if needed but twould appear that they are on average 30% better. Not sure if that s a good or bad thing, suggestions welcome! I suppose it depends on the results below.

Outfield Players: PL + Serie A + La Liga.

Original 96/97 db (840 players):	Pass	Vel	Head	Tackl	Cntrl	Spd	Fin
Total	3164	3155	3225	3885	2914	3331	2785
Avg skill pt per plyr	3.77	3.76	3.84	4.63	3.47	3.97	3.32
Nu 12/13 db (840 players):	Pass	Vel	Head	Tackl	Cntrl	Spd	Fin
Total	3708	3058	3462	3150	3880	4680	3060
Avg skill pt per plyr	4.41	3.64	4.12	3.75	4.62	5.57	3.64

So the changes to finishing, heading and velocity balance each other out somewhat in terms of goal scoring and the keeping increases above should mean net fewer goals. The ratio of Tackl to Cntrl has shifted by an average of 2.03 points per ball contest in favour of Cntrl so a reasonable shift toward the player in possession. Finally the speed factor has increased by an average of 1.6 points per player in those three prime divisions. So let me know what you think in terms of how thats affected gameplay, i.e. positively/negatively as I m not playing against the top sides yet (altho United in the cup was unusually horrific but that may be me being rusty ;oP).

Also ta for the packing info. I may have some further questions if thats ok. Does the DOS emulator (i.e. Start - Run - cmd ) not suffice for DOS enough to run RNC?

Regards,
Nyx

...My gut feeling is that sh*t teams in the lower divisions still feel a tad too fast...

Yep i ve been thinking this for a while now, but after 10 years away from the game, i thought maybe i wasn t used to the pace i remembered from the early Swos years. I think i m finding harder to score the number of goals against the 2 leagues directly below the premiership, than before.
Although it s probably more realistic to real life, not the same as my 96/97 memories.
Or maybe i ve lost it!!!

Also ta for the packing info. I may have some further questions if thats ok. Does the DOS emulator (i.e. Start - Run - cmd ) not suffice for DOS enough to run RNC?

Actually cmd works fine. For some reason I thought it no longer existed since Windows Vista and 7. I ve been using dosbox, which is slower.

Hi guys
Can you help me list major players who ve retired at the end of 2012-13? I will need to add them to the classics league.
So far I ve got

David Beckham
Paul Scholes
Phil Neville
Michael Owen
Benni McCarthy
Jamie Carragher
Stiliyan Petrov
Michael Ballack
Fredrik Ljungberg
Mark van Bommel
Roberto Carlos
Andriy Shevchenko
Filippo Inzaghi