Why Crashes are such a pain.
I had the game crash during a match when I clicked through to see a players attributes at half time.
This meant I lost a 5-1 win over an important rival, and was winning 2-1 in the match that crashed. Restarting from the last saved game is really not enough for many reasons. I, like many people, use the auto weekly save. This means you can lose as much as 6 days of game play. This takes time to replay.
1) when I replayed the 5-1 win game which had gone due to the crash my star player got injured. Not fair I should lose my star player early in the match because of the crash as he didn't get injured in the original game play, and it ended 1-1. So had to restart again. More of my time wasted.
2) when I again replayed the game I won 3-0. Fine. Problem is my star player again got injured and this time long term ligament damage! So lost him during the game again and for the remaining 9 games! This time I used the in game editor to remove his injury. Difference is my striker (not the star player who plays AMC) got a hat trick in the original game which would be a tremendous confidence boost for the player. He didn't score in the 3-0 and in fact only got 6.8! He got 10.0 in the original game. What about the confidence of the team I played. A 3-0 loss would affect them, but not as much as a 5-1 loss, right?
3) other teams in the league also also get replayed which changes the complexion of the table. In this case my main rival, who I am fighting with to win the league against, won when they lost in the original game play so instead of me having a 4 point lead I now only have a 1 point lead. What if they win the league by less than a 4 point margin? What then? Am I supposed to keep restarting from the save until I get my win and their loss? How can I now trust the game engine to "do the right thing"?
4) is it just coincidence my star player got injured in both restarts and they got progressively worse? I get people can cheat at this game and can replay games until they get the result they desire but I don't do that. I suffer the draws that I felt I should've won and the losses that inevitably happen. It seems to me the game knows when you've replayed a match. Confirm or deny, please?
Something needs to done about this because restarting from the last save is simply not good enough. Not only do you have to replay the games which takes time but it changes everything else as well which can have wide impacts across many leagues. What if it's the last game of the season and you need to win to collect the title, and your nearest rival must draw or worse too? You win your match your nearest rival draws or loses. The game crashes. You replay from the last save. You win, but this time your nearest rival wins and you finish second in the table? Or to avoid relegation? Or get into the playoffs? How many times do you have to replay from the save in order to get back what you had already achieved?
You may say "well save after every match in that case". Sure, fine. So what happens now if players get injured during training when they didn't previously, or vice versa? Do I have to restart then too?
Part of the charm of this game is dealing with the issues you are presented with. Having to restart a game destroys that charm and also puts you in a position of feeling cheated because the game engine won't give you the results that happened from the original game play. It's only a game, but it's a game that takes a lot of time.
Maybe you need to create a crash cache that triggers when you click on "continue", so if a crash happens you can at least restart from there instead of the last save and have to replay games you already played and deal with things you already dealt with. The game knows when it crashed as it brought up a dialogue box in game to report the issue before it closed down.
I've played FM since it's earliest days way back in the early 2000s when you only had dialogue to watch. I love this game and how it has evoled over the years, and I am really really impressed with this version. Sure there are some niggly little bugs here and there but on the whole the game is amazing and I really appreciate the time and effot put in developing and testing this game to get a new one out every year, but this issue really needs to be addressed as it can change so many variables in the game on the replay.
I reported this crash to Sega/SI on a support ticket as well as through the in game crash option. I was advised to clear the cache and preferences just in case these were the cause. I have done this. Game is running fine again apart from the issues raised above?
So, SI, what is your response to these points? Can you create a "crash cache" to help guard against these things? It wouldn't need to save the entire game. Maybe just the league you are playing in and the results/player issues for that league alone since the last save?
Thankfully this is the first crash that has happened. The game is remarkably stable considering the amount of content it crunches.
Happy game play everyone! And COYS (not the team I am manager of).