Draft Day Sports: Pro Football 2016 Announced

[PanzersEast]

Funny thing is I did the logo for PFS years ago. 


PE

Nice....hopefully they are paying you royalties:). Do you actually play pfs?  Any thoughts on it?  Seems like this new game will just be pfs in wolverine ui.

Sorry I missed your post, I did back in the day.... however there where still a lot of tweaking needed on the engine and I drifted back to OOTP and FM.  I really never went back to see how far a long it came afterwards.


PE

[Grim.Reaper]

Didn't see this coming so fast....release day is tomorrow!  Got email from them today......

DDS: Pro Football 2016 To Be Released 12/23/15

Although extremely cautious about this one and the publisher....its American Football and no doubt I will pick up tomorrow:)

[Nefaro]

I'll definitely be having it before long.  Unless it has a bug that accidentally opens a portal to hell or brain-wipes you.

I played one of the latest major PFS versions and the game outcomes (aka statistics) were quite believable for three or four years ago.  Better than FOF in my opinion.  It just didn't have as many of the intricacies modeled and, while the actual spreadsheet sorting & such was better, the rest of the interface could be troublesome.  The AI would also put all it's starters on the special teams by default, so you'd be spending extra time sorting that out.  The player rating/values were also a bit confusing, but that's not unusual for football text sims.

PFS just had development time left to go, needing a better and more personable interface and some more depth or extrapolation to some areas added.  I think the developer did a great job on the guts of the sim; the game outcomes/stats, which usually have issues for a long time in sports management series.

Looking forward to see how all the improvments & new UI turn out!  ^-^

[Grim.Reaper]

Personally, I still remember some very odd statistics and choices being made by the game and always thought FOF was more believable...but I guess we'll see soon enough.  Makes me nervous when you hear very little about a game and then receive a release notice the day before it goes live.  Really hoping it turns out good, but I have very low expectations.  As I have mentioned in the past, I think Wolverine has a spotty record of supporting products and being involved with the community and I don't suspect that will change with this game.

But regardless, unless the price is beyond what I am willing to pay, I will pick it up tomorrow and give it a chance....I'll be the test dummy for the GH group and post impressions:)

[Grim.Reaper]

Some good news for people that will be on the fence of purchasing....they announced a demo would be available, that has been pretty typical of their past games as well.

[KyzBP]

Some good news for people that will be on the fence of purchasing....they announced a demo would be available, that has been pretty typical of their past games as well.

That's really good news.  I was about to pull the trigger on a bunch of games in my Steam cart but that's now on hold until I evaluate this.  It would be great if this filled the shoes left empty since Front Page Sports Pro Football 97 & 98 .  Yeah, it's been that long since there was a good football game.

[jamus34]

Some good news for people that will be on the fence of purchasing....they announced a demo would be available, that has been pretty typical of their past games as well.

That's really good news.  I was about to pull the trigger on a bunch of games in my Steam cart but that's now on hold until I evaluate this.  It would be great if this filled the shoes left empty since Front Page Sports Pro Football 97 & 98 .  Yeah, it's been that long since there was a good football game.

Agreed. Funny how Madden still is no where near the level FPS (in siimulation) and NFL 2k series (in physics) were and those game series ended 2 and 1 decade ago respectively.

EA - destroying everything it touches since 1980!

[Grim.Reaper]

Some good news for people that will be on the fence of purchasing....they announced a demo would be available, that has been pretty typical of their past games as well.

That's really good news.  I was about to pull the trigger on a bunch of games in my Steam cart but that's now on hold until I evaluate this.  It would be great if this filled the shoes left empty since Front Page Sports Pro Football 97 & 98 .  Yeah, it's been that long since there was a good football game.

Those are some pretty high expectations:)  Can't argue that would be awesome if it happened, but I really expect the first release to mostly be focused on transferring the PFS game into Wolverine UI.  Plus, I don't believe it is their goal to show the action on the field, besides the 2D circles and squares they have, but maybe someday they will consider it.

In any event, like you I am just excited there might be another American Football game to consider, just hope the developer and publisher do it justice.....they have a good opportunity to beat OOTP Football to the market and also the new version of FOF....they will only have one chance to beat those competitors since once those other new versions come out, tons of people will switch to them because of all the past loyalty.....unless this football game blows them away.

[Grim.Reaper]

Some good news for people that will be on the fence of purchasing....they announced a demo would be available, that has been pretty typical of their past games as well.

That's really good news.  I was about to pull the trigger on a bunch of games in my Steam cart but that's now on hold until I evaluate this.  It would be great if this filled the shoes left empty since Front Page Sports Pro Football 97 & 98 .  Yeah, it's been that long since there was a good football game.

Agreed. Funny how Madden still is no where near the level FPS (in siimulation) and NFL 2k series (in physics) were and those game series ended 2 and 1 decade ago respectively.

EA - destroying everything it touches since 1980!

Although I would love for Madden to be more simulation-like, I think we just have to accept that is not the mission of that game.....their goal is to reach a billion people of casual gameplay versus the much smaller crowd of hardcore sims....would be nice if both could exist, but they are simply going to put their money in the place they can make more money....

Crazy as it seems, the thing I really likely about NFL 2k was the actual halftime show....really felt like a halftime where they went through all the scores and showed actual highlights from the games....that was awesome!

[KyzBP]

I enjoyed PFS but, even though I don't consider myself a graphics whore, I really like to see the plays being played out by little men.  The simulation in PFS was pretty solid.  I have high hopes.  I do own a couple of Wolverine games.  They could support them a little better.  Brooks was really good about supporting PFS so maybe that'll carry over.

The demo will be an instant DL for me today.

[Grim.Reaper]

They could support them a little better.

To be honest, this is my biggest concern.....have not been impressed with Wolverine's support and how they treat games...kind of the same thing happened already to Football.

1)  Usually get little warning of new releases, they seem to appear out of nowhere...almost an afterthought.
2)  Limited support on existing games--seems maybe for a couple weeks after release, a few patches come out....then the company seems to disappear until next year's version comes out
3)  Seems like nagging issues don't seem to get resolved
4)  Very little support on their forums...maybe with this new developer will be different...but take a look at their football forum now.  A major new product that people have always wanted is coming out and its like a ghost town...maybe that changes after release.  If I was the developer/publisher, I would be advertising this all over the place and keeping the excitement level high.
5)  I own a bunch of their other titles and even beta tested a bunch of them....what has always concerned me is they always seem to have a bug/issue with multiple seasons.  You don't notice the issue right away, but at some point after investing a lot of time in a career, the bug pops up and you career is down the drain.  Nothing worse then playing many seasons and then encountering something crushing like this.
6) I really hope they have had a secret army of beta testers for this game.....its been odd that they have mentioned nothing.  In the past, they freely talked about the beta testing so a little concerned on how much testing this thing has had...unless because it might be just a quick port to a new UI, they aren't worried about that.

I guess we will find out today:)  As I mentioned before, I am a sports junky so likely will purchase regardless, I'll at least give them a chance with the first version to see how this all goes down.

[Nefaro]

Judging by the few screenshots they have, it just looks like PFS with the new UI around it.  For this version anyway.

I'm saying that because the middle screenshot from this page 



has that exact same old PFS spreadsheet format & font for the table.  Which looks like an Excel spreadsheet from MS Office on Windows 3.1  Quite possibly worse. :-\

One of the UI upgrades I had been hoping for also involved upgraded spreadsheet tables & fonts to the new UI standard.  Those tiny numbers, and the column headers that don't scroll down when you do, need some serious help.

[Grim.Reaper]

Judging by the few screenshots they have, it just looks like PFS with the new UI around it.  For this version anyway.

I'm saying that because the middle screenshot from this page 



has that exact same old PFS spreadsheet format & font for the table.  Which looks like an Excel spreadsheet from MS Office on Windows 3.1  Quite possibly worse. :-\

One of the UI upgrades I had been hoping for also involved upgraded spreadsheet tables & fonts to the new UI standard.  Those tiny numbers, and the column headers that don't scroll down when you do, need some serious help.

Yep, I really think this will largely be transferring the old UI into the new, although not sure if it will be drastically more usable...I guess we'll see later today if they made any other improvements:)

[Nefaro]

Have you picked it up yet, Grim?

I see it's $34.95

May check out the demo sometime soon.


Their games use limited online activation DRM don't they?  ???

[Grim.Reaper]

I didn't since the release was delayed until late last night....I will hopefully get a chance today, likely will start with demo to make sure just not a UI change:)