A few questions

[Darreiro]

Hi! I used to be a Sensible World of Soccer fan, and after reading several very good reviews and comments about NSS, I'm getting quite interested in this game. Please excuse me if I make obvious or silly questions, but since I'm a Mac user I haven't had the chance to play the game (I'm really looking forward to try a demo of NSS4 when it comes out).

I'd be grateful if somebody could please answer a few questions:

1) The coolest thing about SWOS was probably the fast-paced, arcade gameplay. How does NSS gameplay compare to SWOS'?

2) I've read NSS has an editor (which is great news). However, how far can you go? Apart from editing players and teams, can you add new nations, new clubs, new international club cups or tournaments, new leagues, new divisions, edit no. of promoting/relegating teams, include promotion play-offs (even with parallel leagues), ...? (not that I expect all of those, I'm just wondering :))

2b) A couple examples: If you add a new league, would it be considered by the game concerning the inclusion of the league champions in the Champions League (CL)? If you create a CL preliminary round, could you add it to the game's preset CL?

3) I've also read that the game is quite easy to master. However, is it (or will it be) possible to have a "relatively successful" (call it "interesting" if you like) career, without necessarily playing in the top clubs or even in the top divisions?

3b) Another very nice thing about SWOS was how the difficulty level was managed. Once you started to get bored of always winning with a high-level team, all you had to do was pick a worse team and the game turned (very) challenging again, and so on if you start winning again later. Does NSS' difficulty level mainly depend on your skills (I'd say most soccer games are here), on the opposite team skills (SWOS), on the set difficulty level...?

4) On the "Buy Now" page, you have to fill in a player name for your NSS carreer. Does that mean you can only use that only name in your careers, or is it just used to generate the license key?
(I just found the answer (http://www.newstarsoccer.com/newstarforum/showthread.php?t=4878))

4b) Again on the "Buy Now" page, is it really necessary to fill in all your personal information if you're not going to pay by credit card?


So that's it. Thanks advanced, and sorry for any inconvenience :)

[tarik666]

Yeh well i can answer a couple of those questions being experienced at the game.

1. The nss3 game play is pretty quick and can bounce up and down the gorund pretty quickly. I love it and would love it be kept.

3.It is pretty hard to have a sucessfull career without the big clubs cause u cant enter teh champions league and u kinda o have to be in the club to make the natioanls side.
3b. The game depends on skill stats and diffucilty which is wat makes it really fun.

4. U buy one game but u can change the nickname to ur own choice which is the feature i love about the game

so there u are i hope tht has answered some of ur queries

[JJU]

1) The coolest thing about SWOS was probably the fast-paced, arcade gameplay. How does NSS gameplay compare to SWOS'?
If you're talking NSS3, pretty similar as tarik666 already pointed out.

2) I've read NSS has an editor (which is great news). However, how far can you go? Apart from editing players and teams, can you add new nations, new clubs, new international club cups or tournaments, new leagues, new divisions, edit no. of promoting/relegating teams, include promotion play-offs (even with parallel leagues), ...? (not that I expect all of those, I'm just wondering :))
Yes to all. However, I am personally reluctant to see this distributed in the final release, as I think it has the real potential for people to mess up their files.

2b) A couple examples: If you add a new league, would it be considered by the game concerning the inclusion of the league champions in the Champions League (CL)? If you create a CL preliminary round, could you add it to the game's preset CL?
It would depend on whether you set 'promotion' places into the qualifying rounds. But yes, it can be done.

3) I've also read that the game is quite easy to master. However, is it (or will it be) possible to have a "relatively successful" (call it "interesting" if you like) career, without necessarily playing in the top clubs or even in the top divisions?
Again, which game are you talking about? You're posting in the NSS4 forum but I assume you mean NSS3. Yes, it could be easy to master though personally I've yet to stray out of amateur just because I want to play a full career in that mode, and I don't play too often. We're hoping that NSS4 will make the sort of career you outline above possible. There's more on this in the New Star Blog (search for 'potential' once you find the page).

3b) Another very nice thing about SWOS was how the difficulty level was managed. Once you started to get bored of always winning with a high-level team, all you had to do was pick a worse team and the game turned (very) challenging again, and so on if you start winning again later. Does NSS' difficulty level mainly depend on your skills (I'd say most soccer games are here), on the opposite team skills (SWOS), on the set difficulty level...?
The difference here is of course that you play as yourself, just the one player. So obviously your own skills, the skills of your team-mates and opponents, and the difficulty setting all have an impact.

4b) Again on the "Buy Now" page, is it really necessary to fill in all your personal information if you're not going to pay by credit card?
Yup :lol: Please remember this is handled by Plimus, not NSS as such, so we have no control over their requirements.

Hope that helps, and welcome to the forum :)

[Darreiro]

1. The nss3 game play is pretty quick and can bounce up and down the gorund pretty quickly. I love it and would love it be kept.Awesome! I love that kind of gameplay (I hope the "essence" will remain in NSS4!)


Yes to all. However, I am personally reluctant to see this distributed in the final release, as I think it has the real potential for people to mess up their files.Well, that's great news (honestly, those are waaay more options than I expected). I understand a misuse of the editor may cause problems, but I guess most people will simply trust the already done, well-checked updates from NSGFan (http://nsgfan.exofire.net/) rather than doing their own (and if they need something "special", hopefully they'll be careful enough!)


It would depend on whether you set 'promotion' places into the qualifying rounds. But yes, it can be done.This game has got the best editor EVER.


3.It is pretty hard to have a sucessfull career without the big clubs cause u cant enter teh champions league and u kinda o have to be in the club to make the natioanls side.
Again, which game are you talking about? You're posting in the NSS4 forum but I assume you mean NSS3. Yes, it could be easy to master though personally I've yet to stray out of amateur just because I want to play a full career in that mode, and I don't play too often. We're hoping that NSS4 will make the sort of career you outline above possible. There's more on this in the New Star Blog (search for 'potential' once you find the page).Well, I guess I meant "the NSS series", I'm definitely not playing NSS3 (I don't think Si plans porting it to Mac, if he's already planning a NSS4 release for Mac). Basically, my question was: "the game won't let me win everything with the worst team ever, will it?" (and I'm glad to know it's in the works :))


3b. The game depends on skill stats and diffucilty which is wat makes it really fun.
The difference here is of course that you play as yourself, just the one player. So obviously your own skills, the skills of your team-mates and opponents, and the difficulty setting all have an impact.I understand (and I realize my question was quite silly). I just meant that the more challenging a game is, the more fun it is (being obvious again here).


Yup Please remember this is handled by Plimus, not NSS as such, so we have no control over their requirements.Sorry, my bad, I should have noticed. I'll detail them my cat's consumption habits too, just in case they're interested :P


so there u are i hope tht has answered some of ur queriesIt did. Thanks a lot!


Hope that helps, and welcome to the forum :)It absolutely helped. Thank you very much for everything (you all have a really cool forum here ;)).

[statto]

The problem with the editor for NSS4 is that it is too powerful, Si has done a quite good job so far but if there's just the slightest thing off everything can go haywire so the skill level for using it is quite high, thankfully we have JJU to maintain the database for the time being. But if you want to make a new league, that shouldn't be too difficult.

[Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate]

A light bulb just went off in my head, I imagine it would be possible to create reserve leagues (a major task, I know) that effectively don't go anywhere.

Now, here's the light bulb, if such a thing was possible then "all" that would be required would be an inter-club link that makes transfers between the two clubs "free", so effectively a player could be "dumped" in the reserves league/team or "promoted" to the first team.

Much too late to be included now, but I thought a nifty idea.

[JKMarsters]

Maybe when the game is released (if the editor is the same as the one now) u could add Reseve teams as "B Squads" so they could play for First and Reserve team and create a separate division...
Just speculating cos I don't know if the editor will have changes or not :P

[statto]

A light bulb just went off in my head, I imagine it would be possible to create reserve leagues (a major task, I know) that effectively don't go anywhere.

Now, here's the light bulb, if such a thing was possible then "all" that would be required would be an inter-club link that makes transfers between the two clubs "free", so effectively a player could be "dumped" in the reserves league/team or "promoted" to the first team.

Much too late to be included now, but I thought a nifty idea.

The thing is, I don't know if Si has programmed movement between "B" teams (IE Real Madrid and Real Madrid B in the Segunda B, Dynamo Kyiv and Dynamo Kyiv 2) - but if he has, you would easily be able to create reserve leagues with no purpose or meaning and that don't go anywhere, such is the power of the editor.

[Darreiro]

The problem with the editor for NSS4 is that it is too powerful, Si has done a quite good job so far but if there's just the slightest thing off everything can go haywire so the skill level for using it is quite high, thankfully we have JJU to maintain the database for the time being. But if you want to make a new league, that shouldn't be too difficult.
Well, it sure might be "unnecessarily powerful" for most people, but still, I'm among the minority who would enjoy a lot an editor with so many features (unless I'm too busy, definitely I am an editing monkey :D). Basically I was thinking of adding missing leagues, as long as I can find all the necessary information. Suggestion: what about displaying a "Basic editor" or an "Advanced editor" when clicking a certain option, just like Windows' calculator?


Now, here's the light bulb, if such a thing was possible then "all" that would be required would be an inter-club link that makes transfers between the two clubs "free", so effectively a player could be "dumped" in the reserves league/team or "promoted" to the first team.
I think it's a little more complicated (at least in Spain, the only case I know well). In real life (maybe there's no need to go so far) players who start in the "A team" can never be dumped in the "B team", but also, if a "B player" plays 5 or more matches in the "A team", he can't be dumped in the "B team" again that season.

What's exactly the point in adding reserve leagues? Belonging to a big club but still being able to play matches? If so, I think that maybe it'd be easier to ask your team to go on loan (if a feature like that is implemented) to a less competitive team (even in the following division), that's what most teams do with their "rising stars", until they're ready to be part of the "A squad" (they're usually sent to teams in the same country, to keep track of their progress easily). The exception (in Spain): they usually leave them in their "B team" if it plays in the "Liga BBVA" (formerly known as "Segunda División"), not lower... Examples: Real Madrid last season, Sevilla this season...

[Fry Crayola]

With regards to the challenge, there are impositions you can place on yourself that make it a much harder game.

Being a lazy sod myself, I typically spend my first season training, so when I make my debut I'll already quite capable. It is possible, to an extent, to never train, instead attempting to build up your attributes through your on-pitch performances and your seasonal bonuses. It requires will power, but it may prove an excellent challenge.

[Darreiro]

With regards to the challenge, there are impositions you can place on yourself that make it a much harder game.

Being a lazy sod myself, I typically spend my first season training, so when I make my debut I'll already quite capable. It is possible, to an extent, to never train, instead attempting to build up your attributes through your on-pitch performances and your seasonal bonuses. It requires will power, but it may prove an excellent challenge.
Sounds pretty interesting... :think:

I guess I'll just have to wait to get my hands on the game and try different levels till I find my "preferred one", but it's a really good idea. Something like that could be done with teams: if you want to avoid all the elite clubs, just refuse all of their offers (hopefully there will always be other clubs willing to hire you).

[statto]

Well, it sure might be "unnecessarily powerful" for most people, but still, I'm among the minority who would enjoy a lot an editor with so many features (unless I'm too busy, definitely I am an editing monkey :D). Basically I was thinking of adding missing leagues, as long as I can find all the necessary information. Suggestion: what about displaying a "Basic editor" or an "Advanced editor" when clicking a certain option, just like Windows' calculator?


Well say you wanted to add the Tercera Division (don't have easy accents on this computer :redface:). You'd have to add four divisions, a promotion/relegation division which sorts teams somewhat regionally (perhaps multiple ones for best effect), a playoff bracket defining every single round, and you'd have to test it so that you don't screw up a single date with the promotions/relegations. Impossible? No, not at all. But it is difficult, even for someone who knows what is going on, and it will require a lot of patience to test and make sure it works correctly.

if someone just decides to edit something very, very slightly in one of the divisions without knowing what they're doing, poof, that whole league is screwed up, and you probably want to play in that league anyways (that's why you're editing it, right?) so you get frustrated and have to redownload the data files or just stop playing the game entirely. Competitions are the thing that are killer, players and clubs not as much.

[Darreiro]

Well say you wanted to add the Tercera Division (don't have easy accents on this computer :redface:). You'd have to add four divisions, a promotion/relegation division which sorts teams somewhat regionally (perhaps multiple ones for best effect), a playoff bracket defining every single round, and you'd have to test it so that you don't screw up a single date with the promotions/relegations. Impossible? No, not at all. But it is difficult, even for someone who knows what is going on, and it will require a lot of patience to test and make sure it works correctly.
The truth is that I think would actually enjoy that. Of course, no way that I would do all the work in one week, and obviously I wouldn't do everything "from scratch", I'd first "study" a similar case (maybe English Conference, I guess?) and, once I understood it well, I'd try to do the same with the Spanish. Then the testing (may I ask: is it possible to ask your manager not to play?), and then "the release". Honestly, I don't think I'd bother if you couldn't "share" your work with "the community" (at least, not something that big, that's 80 teams to create), but the work itself, I insist: not being "under pressure" or something like that, it is fun (well, I like it). (mini off-topic: that geographical sorting is quite intriguing, is that even possible on NSS?)


if someone just decides to edit something very, very slightly in one of the divisions without knowing what they're doing, poof, that whole league is screwed up, and you probably want to play in that league anyways (that's why you're editing it, right?) so you get frustrated and have to redownload the data files or just stop playing the game entirely. Competitions are the thing that are killer, players and clubs not as much.
That's my point. If people are aware that editing competitions is that risky, most will simply trust NSGFan's or NSSUnplugged's updates (and maybe do a little editing on players and clubs by themselves), or at least be careful (backups, etc). But I'm not afraid of editing competitions (at least, not yet :P)

[JKMarsters]

(I'm robbin' Darreiro's space xD but just this question)

Statto do u know:

With the current editor (Portuguese league is just example bu I'd like to add it to play with Massamá and Odivelas :P)

Portuguese II Divisão (3rd level) is divided in 4 divisions: II Division A, II Division B and so on... At the end of the season there is a Play-Off and the final 2 teams get promoted.
Liga de Honra (2nd level) has 16 clubs and 2 of them are relegated.

How do I make so that the last 2 placed teams from Liga de Honra go fill the Divisions of the clubs that got promoted?
Ex: The promoted clubs are from II division B and D. Then 1 club from Liga de Honra goes to B and the other to D...

[JJU]

On what criteria are the 3rd level divisions based? Are they geopgrahical or totally random? As things stand at present, I don't think the editor has the facility to do what you describe.

[JKMarsters]

Not Geographicaly... Just filling in the blanks... The relegated teams go fill the divisions from the promoted clubs... nuthin more... Obviously I don't have a clue o how to do it...

[statto]

In theory, you would relegate the teams into a new competition or "regional pool" with all the other teams that didn't get promoted, sort by north and south (northern 14 teams to Group A, second 14 to Group B, third 14 to Group C, fourth 14 to Group D), but I don't know if you can do that yet. Si?

[Fry Crayola]

I think it was mentioned that the headache of geographical sorting was done, at least to a good enough extent to do "simple" competitions of this type - the Conference Regional could be done, because it's a North/South split, but the Bosnian second level would be out of the question because you can't quite tell if a team's in the Federation or in the Republic of Srpska.

Portugal's second division isn't regional anyway, as JK says. For example, União de Madeira, from Funchal in the Madeira Islands, play in Group A, whereas Marítimo B from the same city play in Group B. If the country was regionalised, it would make sense to ensure that all the teams from a collection of islands off the coast of Africa were in the same group.

[Fry Crayola]

Well say you wanted to add the Tercera Division (don't have easy accents on this computer :redface:). You'd have to add four divisions

18, in fact. The Tercera sits below the Segunda B, which is the one with four divisions.

You've got to love these crazy naming systems pretty much every country comes up with for their league divisions.

[statto]

It's like saying the English Division Three, what the hell are you talking about anymore? ;)

I'm pretty sure NSS4 can do better than just "simple" regional splits if you use multiple pools. For instance, Level 7 of the English Pyramid, you do a north-south split, take the top 1/3 and put them in the north, then promote all the south teams to an east-west split to get the other two regional leagues at that level. We have all the lats and longs put in.

[Fry Crayola]

Multiple pools would definitely work. I should know, I use them myself. The problems can stem whenever some regions aren't so clear. For example, here's a map of Bosnia:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Bosniadivisions1.PNG

As you can see, it's not so straightforward to split the teams up into Sprska and Federation accordingly. However, doing so is the easy bit (you could do it if the game had knowledge of the regions, and you had a function that determined if a point resided inside a polygon). It gets slightly tougher in that the marked "BD" on the map lies in both territories and the teams would drop to whatever division reflected their ethnic background.

The hard bit is then deciding what to do with those divisions. If two Federation sides get relegated, you'd have to relegate more teams from the Prva Liga, or promote fewer, and they sound simple before throwing up massive headaches when you try to keep the whole code clean.

Mind you, I'm getting into difficult territory anyhow, as structures like this are rather rare. Portugal, to get back onto topic somewhat, does have a similar problem in the Third Division, as there is a separate Azores league to the rest of the country. A simple regionalisation system would probably result some mainland Portugal sides playing in this division. The Spanish Segunda B is similar in that the four groups are roughly ordered into North-West, North-East, South-West and South-East, but teams from the Canaries play in the North-West group around Galicia and including Madrid, presumably for easy travel.

Damn these countries and their outlying islands!

[statto]

Well I think there's a point in programming where you just have to throw up your hands and yell, dammit, we've represented this the best way we can and if someone wants to determine between Bosnian ethnic groups, do it yourself! The fact of the matter is regional groups do indeed vary year by year most places and you shouldn't need a GIS to run NSS4, so it's gonna have to be multiple regional groups.

[Fry Crayola]

Aye. There's something I'm going to decide to call the Hierarchy of Realism. Right at the top sits the point where you get everything right, and I reckon that's unattainable. As you go down through the list, you've got poorer and poorer approximations until at the very bottom sits "don't even bother putting it in". And nobody likes it when it's not in.

Small errors never really matter in the grand scheme of things. Every league in NSS3 having a three-up, three down system never stopped it being great, and by all accounts NSS4 is going to improve on that. I look forward to it.