Football Manager

[5R7]

1 hour ago, spork said:

 

Hopefully it's not one of these by Chris Simpson Artist

 

 

well, you can create your own team, so you can make em!

[Mike]

I shall be taking over as Alebrijes de Oaxaca Fútbol Club!  The kit is pretty fantastic.

[Mike]

14 hours ago, Jamin said:

Never played a FM game but intrigued to start playing this on gamepass. It looks utterly overwhelming for a newbie. Anyone direct me to a YouTube video or general overview I can scrutinise before jumping in? 

Zealand on YouTube makes good videos.

The ones for older games should still be useful.

I'm not 100% sure how good they’ll be for someone completely new but worth a watch. 

[JamesTW]

Nice shirt, what if you get sacked after 10 games though?

[Mike]

I won’t 🤞

[Mike]

Here we go:

[5R7]

well, this is different...

seems reasonable...

[Fry Crayola]

Good to see the UI still can't handle the size of the things it's expected to be displaying.

[5R7]

it actually looks fine on screen, i dont know why its done that !🤣

[Fry Crayola]

It's a screenshot, it's exactly what you see. It's been that way for years.

[5R7]

...no...its a snip...i would know...i made it...

[Fry Crayola]

Oh, for clarification, I'm talking about the date for the Benfica match, where it can't actually fit the date text into the column. Not that you've snipped off the right hand side.

 

FM's interface is frequently terrible. Look at all that whitespace on the league table screen. You could fit a novel into the team name column.

[Gabe]

I briefly tried FM23 but hated it and remembered why I gave up on the series back in after FM12. I did play a couple of seasons on FM20 when it was given away by Epic, but it was so, so slow and full of pointless fluff (all the social media stuff, press conferences, player interaction in general).

 

I actually reinstalled FM12 last month as I did fancy some management fun and didn't want to dig around for my FM07 disc (which was the last version I put any proper time into) and it wasn't as bad as I remember, but you could still see the way the wind was blowing in terms of bloat (which killed my interest in the series and it's never recovered from that). The UI was terrible back then, too, and has stupid amounts of empty space if you play on any kind of decent resolution and a lack of customisation, needs too many clicks to access key information and is generally very clunky. It's also amusing how little the 3D engine has improved since then too, despite such improvements being a headline feature for a few editions post-FM12. Animations are dreadful, with players skidding on ice and a ball that seems to have its own gravitational pull. And FM12 is bad, too. 

 

The saving grace, compared to newer versions at least, is that is plays much quicker and you can rattle through the seasons at a much more satisfying pace. It's also fun seeing some of the players in that database that you know will come good and snapping some of them up.

 

I do think the lack of any competition in the market harms the series though, with bugs that have been in the game for years never being addressed because, well, they don't need to spend resources on it as everybody still buys it anyway (despite the moaning on the SI forums following each release).

[Dark Soldier]

Everyone should just play Champ Man 01/02 with updates rosters rbf

[SMD]

11 hours ago, Gabe said:

I briefly tried FM23 but hated it and remembered why I gave up on the series back in after FM12. I did play a couple of seasons on FM20 when it was given away by Epic, but it was so, so slow and full of pointless fluff (all the social media stuff, press conferences, player interaction in general).

 

I actually reinstalled FM12 last month as I did fancy some management fun and didn't want to dig around for my FM07 disc (which was the last version I put any proper time into) and it wasn't as bad as I remember, but you could still see the way the wind was blowing in terms of bloat (which killed my interest in the series and it's never recovered from that). The UI was terrible back then, too, and has stupid amounts of empty space if you play on any kind of decent resolution and a lack of customisation, needs too many clicks to access key information and is generally very clunky. It's also amusing how little the 3D engine has improved since then too, despite such improvements being a headline feature for a few editions post-FM12. Animations are dreadful, with players skidding on ice and a ball that seems to have its own gravitational pull. And FM12 is bad, too. 

 

The saving grace, compared to newer versions at least, is that is plays much quicker and you can rattle through the seasons at a much more satisfying pace. It's also fun seeing some of the players in that database that you know will come good and snapping some of them up.

 

I do think the lack of any competition in the market harms the series though, with bugs that have been in the game for years never being addressed because, well, they don't need to spend resources on it as everybody still buys it anyway (despite the moaning on the SI forums following each release).

 

You want to try FM Touch

[Floyd]

I'm thinking about giving this a go. It helps that's it's on game pass so I can get it on PC. I haven't played much of the series since 2011 which was the last time I played multiple seasons and built a great team. Having read a few comments here I'm slightly concerned but it cant have changed that much? I think the last time I played was a few years ago but I cant remember the year. I didn't get through a full season though....

[Gabe]

34 minutes ago, Floyd said:

I'm thinking about giving this a go. It helps that's it's on game pass so I can get it on PC. I haven't played much of the series since 2011 which was the last time I played multiple seasons and built a great team. Having read a few comments here I'm slightly concerned but it cant have changed that much? I think the last time I played was a few years ago but I cant remember the year. I didn't get through a full season though....

It kind of has and it hasn't.

 

The 3D match engine still looks terrible. The game completely doesn't respect your time, at all, with so much bloat to deal with and it takes ages to get through a season even with a PC even if the game rates the processing speed as 4.5 stars. There's a massive problem with long-term saves unless you pretty much load a large number of leagues in full detail (if you only ever play a few seasons at a time, then that isn't so much a concern.) To really get the best of the tactical side of things, you really need to spend time understanding positional play, player attributes and formations/player roles. You can pick a team with loads of money and buy your way to victory, of course.

 

On the plus side, if you have a real interest in football then there really is nothing like it. Unearthing wonderkids, seeing your youth product make it to the first team, winning trophies etc really is as good as it's ever been.

 

As I say above, I went back to FM12 and it's a much more streamlined experience. There is still lots of depth, but not so much bloat and it's more enjoyable to have an hour here or there and bang through the in-game months, rather than the glacial progress I had on FM23. I should try FM Touch as @SMD suggests (though I don't know how much fluff it reduces/eliminates), we'll see.

 

As it's on Game Pass then you may as well give it a try, you'll be introduced quite quickly to a lot of the newer stuff around player interactions & the media and get a feel for the tactical side of it after a few matches.

[5R7]

On 28/12/2022 at 22:02, Fry Crayola said:

Oh, for clarification, I'm talking about the date for the Benfica match, where it can't actually fit the date text into the column. Not that you've snipped off the right hand side.

 

FM's interface is frequently terrible. Look at all that whitespace on the league table screen. You could fit a novel into the team name column.

but...you can adjust the size of the colum...i just hadnt. So it can fit...if you make it

 

as to the "bloat" yeah, i just dont bother with any of that crap!  the "social media" nah, the press conference, nah.  Bollox to that crap! I have a single training setup i use,m that i brought from two previous versions!

[Fry Crayola]

10 minutes ago, 5R7 said:

but...you can adjust the size of the colum...i just hadnt. So it can fit...if you make it

 

You can - sometimes. Yet the default isn't big enough to fit all dates, hardly the most unpredictable of things to manage. That's sloppy. And it's one of a number of sloppy UI elements in the game. 

 

I only gripe because I enjoy the thing. But by fuck it could use an overhaul on two fronts - the speed of the thing as Gabe notes being the other major drawback.

[spork]

I love the idea of a stripped down version that’s a bit quicker to get through but i always feel like I’m missing out on something even I’ve tried to start up a game in FM Touch.

[Gabe]

3 hours ago, spork said:

I love the idea of a stripped down version that’s a bit quicker to get through but i always feel like I’m missing out on something even I’ve tried to start up a game in FM Touch.

What are the main things it removes/automates?

[spork]

12 minutes ago, Gabe said:

What are the main things it removes/automates?

I know it gets rid of most of the press conferences, social media and all that jazz. I think it removes player interactions, training and most staff roles. You also only get one reserve/youth team. 
 

There is probably loads more that it leaves out but they are the main bits i can remember.

[George Clooney]

There’s a FM Twitter account (nocontextFM I think) who occasionally tweets his play throughs as well as putting up lists of challenges to make the game interesting.  I think his last big playthrough was playing with Ibiza, though I forget what the challenge he was trying was.  That was for the last game, for this one he has taken on the challenge of winning the league in every European country with a team that’s never won it.

 

He started with the countries alphabetically, so went to Austria and picked Wolfsberger AC.  However, the Austrian league is, well, odd.  There are 12 teams in the top flight, and they do it in 2 stages.  The first is “normal” and each team plays each other twice, so 22 games in total.  Then, the league splits in 2, with a championship group and a relegation group, 6 teams each of the top and bottom teams at the end of 22 games, who then all play each other twice, so another 10 games, 32 in total.  However, once the league splits into 2 groups, your point carry over from the first half of the season is itself halved, meaning your games in the first part are worth less than in the second half.

 

I think it took him eight seasons in the end to do it, with him coming runner up in all but his first season.  The last about 4 looked devastating in that he had great form in the first part then slipped up at the end.  At least 3, he lost on the last day or so of the season, and in one, due to how the points work, he would have won by about 5 points if they’d have been given as normal, as he had his unbeaten run at the start but that counted as less points than at the end of the season when he had a slump in form.  You could see him getting more and more anxious at the end of each season when the competing teams seemed to always catch up, and at some points I’m genuinely not sure how he didn’t quit.

 

He then went to another league, forget which but it was small, and his manager rep started dropping, so he’s abandoned doing it alphabetically and is going a bit more for “bigger” clubs to an extent to save his rep rather than tank it and risk not getting jobs for viable teams later on.  You can feel the relief of being out of that Austrian league and not having to deal with that points system though!

[Fry Crayola]

The best way might be to build his way up from the least reputable leagues like Wales, or down from one of the big leagues, so he's always moving to a league slightly better or worse.

[Gabe]

3 hours ago, George Clooney said:

There’s a FM Twitter account (nocontextFM I think) who occasionally tweets his play throughs as well as putting up lists of challenges to make the game interesting.  I think his last big playthrough was playing with Ibiza, though I forget what the challenge he was trying was.  That was for the last game, for this one he has taken on the challenge of winning the league in every European country with a team that’s never won it.

 

He started with the countries alphabetically, so went to Austria and picked Wolfsberger AC.  However, the Austrian league is, well, odd.  There are 12 teams in the top flight, and they do it in 2 stages.  The first is “normal” and each team plays each other twice, so 22 games in total.  Then, the league splits in 2, with a championship group and a relegation group, 6 teams each of the top and bottom teams at the end of 22 games, who then all play each other twice, so another 10 games, 32 in total.  However, once the league splits into 2 groups, your point carry over from the first half of the season is itself halved, meaning your games in the first part are worth less than in the second half.

 

I think it took him eight seasons in the end to do it, with him coming runner up in all but his first season.  The last about 4 looked devastating in that he had great form in the first part then slipped up at the end.  At least 3, he lost on the last day or so of the season, and in one, due to how the points work, he would have won by about 5 points if they’d have been given as normal, as he had his unbeaten run at the start but that counted as less points than at the end of the season when he had a slump in form.  You could see him getting more and more anxious at the end of each season when the competing teams seemed to always catch up, and at some points I’m genuinely not sure how he didn’t quit.

 

He then went to another league, forget which but it was small, and his manager rep started dropping, so he’s abandoned doing it alphabetically and is going a bit more for “bigger” clubs to an extent to save his rep rather than tank it and risk not getting jobs for viable teams later on.  You can feel the relief of being out of that Austrian league and not having to deal with that points system though!

I think he (or certainly somebody) posted in the SI forums on one of those attempts on a previous version but, understandably, they gave up without getting close to completing it. I can imagine the fun stops long before the end of such an endeavor!

[George Clooney]

His current progress is he was hired by Udinese, got them to second in his first full season, now seems to have slipped to mid table mediocrity.

 

In more boring news from my current scummy Man City (scummy as in Im playing a team with huge resources and an already really good team as its easy) - I've just won the league with like 8 matches left to go.  I'm already looking to the next transfer window now to see what I need, and apparently I have a budget of £250 million as I've also won the Carabo cup, and I'm in the semis of the Champions league and the final of the FA cup, so on course for a trophy heavy season.  Harland has scored 70+ goals already, including a hat trick against PSG in the second leg, where we came back from being 4-2 down after the first leg in France to winning 8-7 on aggregate after a 5-2 victory at the Ethiad.  Not only that, at one point we were down 1-3 in the second leg, and with 20 mins to go, we were still going to be out at 3-3, then Harland decided "no" and scored 3, one in injury time.  I've got some players in already, looking at youth prospects to replace certain slots.  I bought in Rodrygo from Real for £25 mill and a player swap (Ake) and Scalvini as a defender from Atlanta.  The former as he can play a few positions and will help with cover, plus Im not sure how many more seasons DeBruyne has left in him, so while I have a lot of decent options for AM overall, as well as also being able to play striker - Alvarez is good in a pinch but not great and at the moment thats all I have.  Without looking I think Scalvini can play DM too, which is a slot that I'm good for now, but having decent cover and replacements will be good - theres Kalvin Phillips but hes not great.  I also bought a right back, which I dont remember doing and the board are unhappy about.  Not surprised, hes not good and tbh the full backs could do with some proper strengthening, especially as Walker is constantly complaining he needs a rest.  So I think this season I want to look at the midfield for a replacement for Gungodan, and the full backs, maybe a couple more squad/rotation players as well, though I have some players on loan that maybe I could keep on this season for that purpose.

[5R7]

Saclvini as a DM , dont be mad!?!  hes "potentially" one of the best CB's!

[Goldenballs]

Has anyone played much of the 2023 switch version, is it worth the £35?