How do you play FM? Give some advice on how to improve the "FM-experience"

[Brutality]

Hello everyone,

I'm asking you this, because I absolutely love FM.. Id most certainly call myself addicted at times.. but then again my motivation levels drop rapidly as soon as things get a bit frustrating.. you all know what I'm talking about. Now for example I reached a point at my current fm16 save where things got silly.. I bought Pogba for 160m, not because I really needed him, but because I though 'why not?'.

I've been only playing since 14 and actually.. I never had a 'real' safe with any other team than Schalke, because thats my team and it's pretty damn entertaining to bring them up as high as it gets. At times I feel the game is a little bit too easy though. Spent obscene amounts of hours on my fm14 schalke save.. my fm15 save wasn't as enjoyable as i didnt really feel 'it'.. now Im enjoying my fm16 schalke save a lot. You can clearly tell the game is strongly adapted to the premier league, since I would get the most outragous budgets every season, which enables me to go for the best talents every year getting me to a point where I can dominate as much as I want. I noticed this about my behaviour: instead of adapting an intelligent approach with my tactics and club politics Im just patient until I reach that point where my talents (Meyer, Goretzka, Sane, Avdijaj, etc.) mature and then switch to crazy attacking tactics to bomb opposition sites back into oblivion.

So I've been starting to question my methods lately.. I've spent roughly 1000 ingame hours on all my fm saves combined and I never really played it any different. I would take the Schalke seat and just play every game, patiently ingame coaching every game to success. Kind of feels like I didnt even get to the depths of the game.

First of all I feel like it takes a very long time.. Playing every game and ingame coaching every game and setting view mode to extended means playing through an entire season takes forever.. even if Im playing the game non stop at times, a season will take me days of repetitiveness. Do you do the same thing? Or do you use the instant simulate button to rush through the season?

What's the most joyfull thing to do to go by with the seasons? Which view modes are you using? Is it more enjoyable to rush through the seasons or take a very slow approach? I've seen some people taking it up to multiple decades of ingame time.. is that more entertaining than going by in a slow paced manner?

Also how do you deal with the reaccuring frustrations of the game? I've cought myself being a little cheat at times, when fm is being just a little bit too much of a bitch.. like for example whenever I would get obscenely high defeats during a long win streak.. sometimes i would restart the game to continue the streak (I would do that for example if a ****** team would not stop banging them in with like 4-5 goals before HT). My cheating was a bit worse at my beginnings, but I still catch myself doing it every once in a while (did it like 3 or 4 times in fm16), but obviously I want to stop that.. need to find a way to deal with the craziness that fm can sometimes impose though.

Also: Is bringing a small team up really worth it? I once tried putting my hands on a 3rd tier side but I got frustrated quite quickly.. the financial problems and the massive limitations can be quite annoying. tbf I would feel more comfortable now as a more experienced fm player, but I still kind of cant bring myself to give it a try with a low tier team.

I feel like I want to become a better fm player in general though. Is there like a way to read up on things? For example I would like to read about tactics, management styles, etc. Read about people who would bring tinpot clubs to champions league glory or countries like san marino to world cup wins.. Would love to be able to achieve the same thing. Is there like a guide I can read or watch a tutorial or something?

Any suggestions to make my fm addiction a bit more enjoyable than it already is?

[Tony Wright 747]

Hello everyone,

I'm asking you this, because I absolutely love FM.. Id most certainly call myself addicted at times.. but then again my motivation levels drop rapidly as soon as things get a bit frustrating.. you all know what I'm talking about. Now for example I reached a point at my current fm16 save where things got silly.. I bought Pogba for 160m, not because I really needed him, but because I though 'why not?'.

I've been only playing since 14 and actually.. I never had a 'real' safe with any other team than Schalke, because thats my team and it's pretty damn entertaining to bring them up as high as it gets. At times I feel the game is a little bit too easy though. Spent obscene amounts of hours on my fm14 schalke save.. my fm15 save wasn't as enjoyable as i didnt really feel 'it'.. now Im enjoying my fm16 schalke save a lot. You can clearly tell the game is strongly adapted to the premier league, since I would get the most outragous budgets every season, which enables me to go for the best talents every year getting me to a point where I can dominate as much as I want. I noticed this about my behaviour: instead of adapting an intelligent approach with my tactics and club politics Im just patient until I reach that point where my talents (Meyer, Goretzka, Sane, Avdijaj, etc.) mature and then switch to crazy attacking tactics to bomb opposition sites back into oblivion.

So I've been starting to question my methods lately.. I've spent roughly 1000 ingame hours on all my fm saves combined and I never really played it any different. I would take the Schalke seat and just play every game, patiently ingame coaching every game to success. Kind of feels like I didnt even get to the depths of the game.

First of all I feel like it takes a very long time.. Playing every game and ingame coaching every game and setting view mode to extended means playing through an entire season takes forever.. even if Im playing the game non stop at times, a season will take me days of repetitiveness. Do you do the same thing? Or do you use the instant simulate button to rush through the season?

What's the most joyfull thing to do to go by with the seasons? Which view modes are you using? Is it more enjoyable to rush through the seasons or take a very slow approach? I've seen some people taking it up to multiple decades of ingame time.. is that more entertaining than going by in a slow paced manner?

Also how do you deal with the reaccuring frustrations of the game? I've cought myself being a little cheat at times, when fm is being just a little bit too much of a bitch.. like for example whenever I would get obscenely high defeats during a long win streak.. sometimes i would restart the game to continue the streak (I would do that for example if a ****** team would not stop banging them in with like 4-5 goals before HT). My cheating was a bit worse at my beginnings, but I still catch myself doing it every once in a while (did it like 3 or 4 times in fm16), but obviously I want to stop that.. need to find a way to deal with the craziness that fm can sometimes impose though.

Also: Is bringing a small team up really worth it? I once tried putting my hands on a 3rd tier side but I got frustrated quite quickly.. the financial problems and the massive limitations can be quite annoying. tbf I would feel more comfortable now as a more experienced fm player, but I still kind of cant bring myself to give it a try with a low tier team.

I feel like I want to become a better fm player in general though. Is there like a way to read up on things? For example I would like to read about tactics, management styles, etc. Read about people who would bring tinpot clubs to champions league glory or countries like san marino to world cup wins.. Would love to be able to achieve the same thing. Is there like a guide I can read or watch a tutorial or something?

Any suggestions to make my fm addiction a bit more enjoyable than it already is?

I have been playing football management games since the days before PCs and it and it was cards and dice (I know I am old) and when I was working I suppose I was more of a casual player in as much as I often didn't have the time to play it as I would like. I promised myself that when I retired I would live out my fantasy of being a football manager and play it more like real life. Now that has happened I play the game virtually in real time, I watch the full game from an ariel camera or prozone, then watch it again from a different camera angle, then watch it once more in 2D, I then analyse shots, tackles, set pieces etc. This gives me a good idea of what went right and what went wrong and also inflluences my training for the week. I then study the next opposition (scout reports game highlights etc.) and plan for the next match with formations, player roles etc. and then the whole thing starts again. I would imagine that not many players play the game with this intensity and I certainly couldn't if I had a full time job or a young family etc. Every one plays this game differently and that is what makes this game so great because you can and that is one of the reasons that it is very difficult to write a guide to the game, every one plays it in their own way. A lot of people like to take a team from the lowest league to the champions league, but I always feel that this is somewhat unrealistic, has this ever happened in real life. AS far as guides go, there is the in game tutor of course and some guides on the internet but I think the last fully comprehensive guide that was written was for FM12. Trial and error is probibly the best way to learn anyway

[Brutality]

Damn yeah thats mad. It goes without saying that this is certainly not how I am able to play the game, but have my respects for being such a patient person.

Any other opinions?