Still too easy?

[Jervaj]

15 hours ago, HCFC87 said:

SI need to look at why every team in world football doesn't press all game, and find a way to implement it in FM. In reality using it should leave chasms of space unless your players know what they're doing, and should tire everyone out rapidly. None of these things really happen in FM - and if they do they're more than made up for by the goals you score at the other end.

I took up this style because I liked it, and my team seemed well suited to it relativelly to competitors (good distributed defensive stats across the field) and seen it indeed perform very well. I got to say that you realy feel its impact condition and injury wise. I dont know if its high enough but there is positions were basically players will always get in the red if you play like that all match, even if their fitness was top at match start. I notice that later in matches its normal for condition to be lower on my side, specially if the match is been a tough one

Injuries, Im not sure what is normal but I got someone injured almost semi consistently despite managing condition well with rotations. But as soon as I had matches closes I show my medicalc enter flashing and tactical intensity been flagged as one of the main sources. And I do lower the intesity as the match goes on depending on the situation.

 

This is post patch though. But now at elast it seems like you get some sting from this kind of tactic. The question may be then if it still performs too well even if the team is not built for it.

[CM]

Game is relatively easy when when you have good team cohesion and dressing atmosphere in place than having perfect tactics I believe. They play far more important role in the outcome of games. That is why I found FMT incredibly difficult and got sacked by Leicester in my second season without winning 7-8 games in row while in normal FM after finishing 7th in my first season, I am currently second with one game in hand after 33 games, though got battered by Arsenal 4-1 and Liverpool 5-0. Having good relationship with players, keeping them happy and having good player characters also help so much. 

Regarding injuries, I generally play tweaked gegenpress and use tight mark PI for wide players and their condition becomes yellow in the 60th minute nearly every game. I have Alexander Isak on the left and can't play him over 60-65 minutes. And also wide players are getting more injuries than others, probably beacuse of high intensity tactic. 

[CX1329]

Conversely, if you're on a losing streak and you don't have a great dressing room atmosphere, the game seems impossible! I'm on a losing streak right now and nothing works. I think the social dynamics system is OP and that's why people are finding the game too easy (or too hard, like myself). SI should tone down its importance in a future patch and that should make the difficulty more balanced overall.

[Mars_Blackmon]

3 hours ago, CX1329 said:

Conversely, if you're on a losing streak and you don't have a great dressing room atmosphere, the game seems impossible! I'm on a losing streak right now and nothing works. I think the social dynamics system is OP and that's why people are finding the game too easy (or too hard, like myself). SI should tone down its importance in a future patch and that should make the difficulty more balanced overall.

I would like to see the effects of morale toned down and the effects of team cohesion bumped up. Reward us for keeping players around.

[Dan1884]

7 hours ago, CM said:

Game is relatively easy when when you have good team cohesion and dressing atmosphere in place than having perfect tactics I believe. They play far more important role in the outcome of games. That is why I found FMT incredibly difficult and got sacked by Leicester in my second season without winning 7-8 games in row while in normal FM after finishing 7th in my first season, I am currently second with one game in hand after 33 games, though got battered by Arsenal 4-1 and Liverpool 5-0. Having good relationship with players, keeping them happy and having good player characters also help so much. 

Regarding injuries, I generally play tweaked gegenpress and use tight mark PI for wide players and their condition becomes yellow in the 60th minute nearly every game. I have Alexander Isak on the left and can't play him over 60-65 minutes. And also wide players are getting more injuries than others, probably beacuse of high intensity tactic. 

I agree and have always thought I get quite far because I'm basically spot on regarding man management, morale, dressing room atmosphere etc... but solely doing that shouldn't prop bad players to being good ones. Like I said I'm managing a team with Grimsby's budget and have a decent chance of being in Ligue 1 next season. It just wouldn't happen.

[Polski97]

On 27/12/2020 at 18:31, danielclouston1 said:

4231 Gegenpress beats almost everything, unless the team you are facing is much much higher in quality. I win almost everything with a 4231 Gegenpress I created.

well no as you can tell from the images I use a 4-1-3-2 

again another conscious attempt from me to avoid 4-2-3-1 Gegen. 

 

My season ended with me leading the league up until the last month where i lost 4 on the bounce... shocker ... then lost in the playoff final 1-0. Back to Seria B fight again which I don't mind. 

[EazyEee]

Main issue with all this is that the game is more popular than it has ever been. So those of us finding the game "easy" are in the tiny minority. There will also be a group of players who find the game too hard as well, which is why a single difficulty level can't cater to everyone and from a business point of view, seeing this iterations popularity, Sigames have set the difficulty just right.

The game should be difficult at every level, whether you choose to manage the likes of Liverpool or LLM, each should pose there own set of challenges. Agree with all above, moral too easy to boost and maintain. 4-2-3-1 gegen OP and building a really strong squad and maintaining doesn't present much of a challenge. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Maccer92]

On 27/12/2020 at 13:31, danielclouston1 said:

4231 Gegenpress beats almost everything, unless the team you are facing is much much higher in quality. I win almost everything with a 4231 Gegenpress I created.

I use 4231 Gegenpress with Schalke and have for a couple seasons. Haven't changed much from the default tactic because I'll admit I'm not the best tactically. I'm certainly not steam rolling the league and haven't even won it. Do you have a picture of your 4231 gegenpress tactic? 

I don't think gegenpress is so over powered this year that I'd call it broken. I've been playing since fm12.

[danielclouston1]

10 hours ago, Maccer92 said:

I use 4231 Gegenpress with Schalke and have for a couple seasons. Haven't changed much from the default tactic because I'll admit I'm not the best tactically. I'm certainly not steam rolling the league and haven't even won it. Do you have a picture of your 4231 gegenpress tactic? 

I don't think gegenpress is so over powered this year that I'd call it broken. I've been playing since fm12.

I'll send you it when I'm next on the game mate 👍

 

It's not a preset one. I created it myself when playing with Pumas but I've used it with various teams (Hearts, Kaiser Cheifs, DL Pro, Lyon, Mexico,  Australia and Nigeria) with the same level of success. 

[Ups81]

Hi FM lovers,

I'm totally disagree with this argument saying "why you are not getting a lower-division club to make your challenge harder?

as in life, also in football there are different types of challenges. why we have to limit ourselves with this low-profile clubs and their way of struggle/defiance to be able to enjoy the game?

 

don't we have the rights to ask a hard game with Man Utd or Juventus or even with Bayern within their standards?

i'm not talking about the first seasons which is relatively harder even with these teams. But as you know, the more we play the more game become easy, repetitive 

Why we can not have huge difficulties to qualify for European cups or start the season with devastating results or have financial difficulties and so on so on even with these high quality clubs

 

This is not something new. That was already my concern when i was playing CM 98 with Barcelona where Sonny Anderson was scoring more than 50 goals/season which was around 15 in RL

Or Ryan Giggs with 60 goals in Umbro uniform on CM95 

 

I have to admit that, in this long journey of the game, lots of progress have been achieved in more than 2 decades in terms of realism but there is still huge rooms to improve.

Because reality or real life based toughness were never the priority of this team of developers.

 

As an example, in the last FM game i played which was 2019 (yes i don't have the last two version ) i was managing Aston Villa. Easily promoted to EPL in my first season and get the 8nd position in my second season which was a nightmare season in real life for the club which avoid the relegation in last day.

 

Anyway if i decide to buy the game and start a new season, i will definitely try all these modes of  @Daveincid's and @Junkhead's which aims to improve the realism 

[GOODNAME]

This is my topic about AI not attacking anogh : 

And this is the QA answer :

" The majority of the QA team were off over the festive period, it was also made clear there would be limited replies on the forums over that time.Thanks for all the pkms, it's exactly what we need. It really isn't as simple as just making the AI managers attack more, this would likely lead to an even more unbalanced match and results. We are investigating the issue but it is something I would rather take time on and get right than rush a fix for. "

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by GOODNAME

[Safe Hands]

Not for me. First version I've bought in years. Started as Sunderland,missed out on playoffs 1st season by 1 point,clung on to my job by begging. At christmas 2nd season same position 1 off playoffs but board have given me a month to save my job. Keeps saying I'm sacked if I lose next game. Just had a good 2-0 away win in 3rd round of fa cup to keep vampires from the door. Have best defence in league, even had a 20 game unbeaten run but problem they are were mostly 0-0 draws. Cant score for toffee. 

[~adma~]

What i've found is that to begin with it was tough.  I'm in my 11th season with Fiorentina currently (still my first save of FM21), i was able to qualify for the Europa league regularly in the first few seasons (without doing anything of note in it) as the board wanted me to do, the toughest season was season 3 where after missing out on the Europa league by 1pt I was days away from being sacked but luckily won the Europa League, after that i started playing a higher defensive line and more closing down and from that stage i never looked back.  I've now won the league 5 years on the bounce (only the Champions League once so far though having won it in my 2nd finals appearance), my main league rivals are still the same motley crew of Inter (mainly) then Juve, AC, Lazio etc but with the exception of Inter, the rest have become significantly weaker since season 4, Roma by season 8 are barely staying up each season (yet don't seem to be in any financial trouble).  Juve have a team of high paid older players (31+) with the younger players being average at best (i've only got maybe 3 Juve players on my shortlist).

The issue is with AI club player purchases.  I've cornered the market on the best (got the last 4 ballon d'or players playing for me) but that's no excuse for what's going on in the rest of the league.  The Premier league clubs offer the most competition (in the champions league) while Barca/Real/PSG are always very tough but in Italy it's got to a point where (except for Inter) every team i play against just play deep, defensive football which i inevitably breakdown.  I beat Lazio 1-8 away from home last season, they finished the game with 11 men on the pitch and still finished 4th in the league while I've put 5 past AC at least four times over the years.

I'm at a point where i'm bored to tears with Italy now and ready to start over, there's no way the rest will make a significant come-back in the next 5 years.  Winning the Champions League again is the only thing keeping me going.  I can only hope that starting over as maybe Crystal Palace i should get a better long term game.

[Viking]

It has been very quiet in this thread since the last patch. What does the "Too Easy"-gang think of the game now? Still too easy? Better? Even easier?

[Junkhead]

6 hours ago, Viking said:

It has been very quiet in this thread since the last patch. What does the "Too Easy"-gang think of the game now? Still too easy? Better? Even easier?

When the Beta came out there was a thread prior to this one along the same lines which I posted frequently in. At that stage I hadn't played enough of the game to say if it was too easy or not, but I was doing well on a save.

I've still not had chance to get particularly deep into a save, however i didn't carry on my beta save and have started a new save on 21.2.  The results I have been achieving have been much poorer than my results on the beta.

Small sample size, different team so difficult comparison, however I am not at all winning every game and having started unemployed, currently have a 25% win rate in the Israeli second division and am likely to end up in a relegation play off in 14th. My team were predicted to finish 11th at the beginning of the season.

 

 

 

[Tyburn]

I don’t understand. If you’re good at something it’s easy. If you’re not, it’s not. Are you normally good at FM? It’s probably too easy. Do you normally struggle, but this year you’re doing better? Then yes. It’s probably too easy. But hey, you’re doing better than normal. I’d be enjoying myself  

Its never been difficult (for some) to get West Brom into the champs league in the first season. Personally I don’t see this years version being any different, from a difficulty point of view, than any other.

[Junkhead]

11 hours ago, Tyburn said:

I don’t understand. If you’re good at something it’s easy. If you’re not, it’s not. Are you normally good at FM? It’s probably too easy. Do you normally struggle, but this year you’re doing better? Then yes. It’s probably too easy. But hey, you’re doing better than normal. I’d be enjoying myself  

Its never been difficult (for some) to get West Brom into the champs league in the first season. Personally I don’t see this years version being any different, from a difficulty point of view, than any other.

Without meaning to open a can of worms again, IMO play style massively influences how "good" someone is at FM.

If I was West Brom I would not get into the Champions League first season. But I wouldn't download tactics, use a tactic I had been using for many versions that I had won leagues with, or download wonderkid lists or sign loads of players whilst abusing things like paying by installments and going way over the wage budget.

I would turn transfers off for first window to keep it realistic, I would scout and draw up a reasonable shortlist based on scout results, look to sign a realistic number of players in January and develop a tactic and training regime myself.

I am fully confident that if I just defaulted to gegenpress and downloaded set pieces I would do better. But I want a challenge so I don't.

Disclaimer: I am not saying everyone who does well or overachieves does all of these things. But based solely on things that lots of people have said over numerous threads of this nature over a number of months now, LOTS of people who have said it is too easy do at least some of these things or have slightly unrealistic expectations as to how difficult the game should be, IMO. There was, for example, someone playing exclusively as Liverpool and smashing the league. If you're playing as points wise the best club in the last 30 years AND improving their squad you are likely to find it easy. Let alone if you are using potentially overpowered tactics either by design or by accident.

[Tyburn]

Exactly. The game CAN be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it.

I think what quite a few people struggle with is willpower. It takes a lot to deliberately make the game more of a challenge. Which is why I am increasingly more interested in modding and skinning the game in a way that ‘forces’ me to play a certain way. Because even with best intentions, and strong will, it is still very difficult to play the game as I’d ultimately wish.

[laurentius82]

Yes, a thousand times yes, the game is still too easy. The AI is too defensive,  and won't even try to win matches when 1 or 2-0 down with 10 min to go. The AI can't build or maintain their squads, so that by the time my non-league side reaches the premier league after 5 back-to-back promotions, it's met by aging, overpaid, and unbalanced big teams. And I won't accept having to cripple myself artificially to make it more challenging as an answer. 

[Tyburn]

34 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

Yes, a thousand times yes, the game is still too easy. The AI is too defensive,  and won't even try to win matches when 1 or 2-0 down with 10 min to go. The AI can't build or maintain their squads, so that by the time my non-league side reaches the premier league after 5 back-to-back promotions, it's met by aging, overpaid, and unbalanced big teams. And I won't accept having to cripple myself artificially to make it more challenging as an answer. 

But what do you do to make it easier for yourself? Wonderkid lists? Over powered tactics? Player searching to find ‘exactly’ what you’re after?

Its not just about deliberately stunting your progression, it’s also, I think, about not exploiting the system. 

[Junkhead]

39 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

Yes, a thousand times yes, the game is still too easy. The AI is too defensive,  and won't even try to win matches when 1 or 2-0 down with 10 min to go. The AI can't build or maintain their squads, so that by the time my non-league side reaches the premier league after 5 back-to-back promotions, it's met by aging, overpaid, and unbalanced big teams. And I won't accept having to cripple myself artificially to make it more challenging as an answer. 

So better AI is the answer.

Agreed.

We got to this exact point about 8 weeks ago on a similar thread that ended up being closed and replaced with this one.

If you notice individual instances of things that you don't think work properly, this making things too easy (such as AI squad building), I would encourage you to post in the bugs forums. It's the only way things will improve.

However I think personally that unrealistic issues will have been there throughout if you've just had five back to back promotions from non league to premier league.

[Junkhead]

1 minute ago, Tyburn said:

But what do you do to make it easier for yourself? Wonderkid lists? Over powered tactics? Player searching to find ‘exactly’ what you’re after?

Its not just about deliberately stunting your progression, it’s also, I think, about not exploiting the system. 

I'm gonna put this thread down again because this became a constant circular argument some weeks ago. But for what it's worth you are a billion percent right.

For me, downloading tactics, wonderkid lists and generally playing unrealistically and then saying things should be more difficult is up there with the silliest things I've ever heard.

It's like playing a console game with a walkthrough open and then complaining it was too easy.

[laurentius82]

I want 

1 minute ago, Tyburn said:

But what do you do to make it easier for yourself? Wonderkid lists? Over powered tactics? Player searching to find ‘exactly’ what you’re after?

Its not just about deliberately stunting your progression, it’s also, I think, about not exploiting the system. 

I want to be able to use to the tools provided the game. For example, I do use player search from time to time even though it's not very useful in lower leagues when you can't afford the packages. But even at a higher levels, I don't think player search is what makes the game easy, just using scouts (as I mainly do) provides good players over time too. Regarding tactics, I really don't want to have to pity the AI and avoid tactics that work well, that would completely eliminate the whole point of the game for me. So I do try to tinker my tactics to be the best they can, I'm trying to win, not to lose after all. That said, I don't exploit any obvious bugs in the engine, such as the corner- and throw-in exploits that have been seen during recent years. And no wonderkid lists of course, they aren't much use when starting in non-league anyway. 

[Tyburn]

The point is that there are ways to naturally make the game more challenging for yourself, without necessarily handicapping yourself deliberately.

Use a skin that turns off numerical attributes, for instance. The game can be modded. You can create your own game, to make it more challenging.

I’ve been modding Skyrim for years for instance. The goal is to get rid of all the tools that aid the player. I have used 100’s (and written a few myself) of mods that make the game more challenging. It’s a blast.

FM is the same principle.

The difficulty level of a game will never please everyone. I’m just grateful that a game like FM has the tools available to be able to tailor it to our liking. Give or take.

[Junkhead]

5 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

I want 

I want to be able to use to the tools provided the game. For example, I do use player search from time to time even though it's not very useful in lower leagues when you can't afford the packages. But even at a higher levels, I don't think player search is what makes the game easy, just using scouts (as I mainly do) provides good players over time too. Regarding tactics, I really don't want to have to pity the AI and avoid tactics that work well, that would completely eliminate the whole point of the game for me. So I do try to tinker my tactics to be the best they can, I'm trying to win, not to lose after all. That said, I don't exploit any obvious bugs in the engine, such as the corner- and throw-in exploits that have been seen during recent years. And no wonderkid lists of course, they aren't much use when starting in non-league anyway. 

As I said, if you are only signing realistic targets and not exploiting the engine or transfers in some way yet achieving 5 straight promotions from non-league to Premier league then Premier League squad building AI is the tip of quite a large iceberg, IMO. Doing that should be nigh on impossible.

The fact that it happens regularly as per some users on this forum indicates to me that things may indeed be too easy.

These people - and you - might just be amazing at the game though. I've been playing realistically for 25 years and never done that. Or even come close.

[laurentius82]

 

24 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

I'm gonna put this thread down again because this became a constant circular argument some weeks ago. But for what it's worth you are a billion percent right.

For me, downloading tactics, wonderkid lists and generally playing unrealistically and then saying things should be more difficult is up there with the silliest things I've ever heard.

It's like playing a console game with a walkthrough open and then complaining it was too easy.

Yes I agree this same discussion is had multiple times each year, and it goes nowhere and nothing changes, so it's rather pointless. My main point is that yes, it's silly to complain about the game being easy if you're playing with Liverpool, downloading super-tactics and buying all the wonderkids, but that even if you do none of those things and start at the very bottom of the footballing ladder using only the tools provided in-game, the game is still way too easy. The only way to make it hard is to artificially cripple yourself by imposing limitations on transfers (only allowed to buy players named Steve, or only Welsh players born on Thursdays), and/or by deliberately using bad tactics.  

[Tyburn]

1 minute ago, laurentius82 said:

 

Yes I agree this same discussion is had multiple times each year, and it goes nowhere and nothing changes, so it's rather pointless. My main point is that yes, it's silly to complain about the game being easy if you're playing with Liverpool, downloading super-tactics and buying all the wonderkids, but that even if you do none of those things and start at the very bottom of the footballing ladder using only the tools provided in-game, the game is still way too easy. The only way to make it hard is to artificially cripple yourself by imposing limitations on transfers (only allowed to buy players named Steve, or only Welsh players born on Thursdays), and/or by deliberately using bad tactics.  

Or by actually modding the game.

[DavyDepuydt1]

For me I think the game is easy to win domestic leagues (a few presets of gegenpress & vertical tiki taka let you achieve that without any modification).

But it's those 2 or 3 difficult away games in the later stages of the Champions League that are difficult, where even the "super-tactics" fail, because they aren't tailored for CL knockout, they are aggressive to give you the most points over a season with a single tactic.

The domestic leagues are forgiving for those few away games that you might lose because it's all about the total points scores... but the champions league knockout phase isn't so forgiving.... so for me it's:

• domestic league -> very easy, even with presets...
• Champions league knockout phase-> Really difficult if you're not a tactical genius, in the latter stages of the tournament, to not go out because of horrible away game performance

Edited January 15, 2021 by DavyDepuydt1

[laurentius82]

5 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

As I said, if you are only signing realistic targets and not exploiting the engine or transfers in some way yet achieving 5 straight promotions from non-league to Premier league then Premier League squad building AI is the tip of quite a large iceberg, IMO. Doing that should be nigh on impossible.

Couldn't agree more.  Just mentioned prem squad building as one example. By the way,  what do you mean by "realistic targets", "playing realistically"? I also agree that the transfer system (especially loans) is so exploitable is part of the problem.  Especially in FM20 and FM21 it has been way too easy to beat other (even bigger) teams to key signings, they somehow "prefer" the human manager over AI.  However, the solution to this shouldn't be for me to not trying to sign good players, but instead SI fixing / unbiasing the system. 

8 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

The fact that it happens regularly as per some users on this forum indicates to me that things may indeed be too easy.

These people - and you - might just be amazing at the game though. I've been playing realistically for 25 years and never done that. Or even come close.

I'm certainly not amazing in the game, like you I have played it since CM days so I'm pretty familiar with it but I've never really had the time or patience to be really in-depth analytical about it. That's why I'd think my experience is very common. 

[4football]

11 minutes ago, DavyDepuydt1 said:

For me I think the game is easy to win domestic leagues (a few presets of gegenpress & vertical tiki taka let you achieve that without any modification).

But it's those 2 or 3 difficult away games in the later stages of the Champions League that are difficult, where even the "super-tactics" fail, because they aren't tailored for that, they are aggressive to give you the most points over a season with a single tactic.
The domestic leagues are forgiving for those few away games that you might lose because it's all about the total points scores... but the champions league knockout phase isn't so forgiving.... so for me it's:

• domestic league -> very easy, even with presets...
• Champions league knockout phase-> Really difficult if you're not a tactical genius, in the latter stages of the tournament, to not go out because of horrible away game performance

Huge plus for away games

even made a topic some time ago but there was no response from SI

 

[Mars_Blackmon]

2 hours ago, Tyburn said:

But what do you do to make it easier for yourself? Wonderkid lists? Over powered tactics? Player searching to find ‘exactly’ what you’re after?

Its not just about deliberately stunting your progression, it’s also, I think, about not exploiting the system. 

You literally don’t have to do anything of those things to be successful because of the problems the guy listed makes it already easy.

 

Headline feature for FM22 would probably be “smarter AI” because of these threads. If not, then Shame on SI...

[Mars_Blackmon]

23 hours ago, Viking said:

It has been very quiet in this thread since the last patch. What does the "Too Easy"-gang think of the game now? Still too easy? Better? Even easier?

Because it’s beast if a dead horse especially since all of the related bug threads have minimal feedback from devs despite providing them with everything.

[Tyburn]

1 minute ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

You literally don’t have to do anything of those things to be successful because of the problems the guy listed makes it already easy.

 

Headline feature for FM22 would probably be “smarter AI” because of these threads. If not, then Shame on SI...

And has been mentioned, you simply cannot rise 5 divisions, back to back, without at least some kind of exploit. Game mechanic or otherwise.

But as has been already been said, the topic is in danger of moving around in a circle, so I’m also out, for now.

It’s also in danger of just being a moan fest. Which doesn’t interest me.

[Junkhead]

1 hour ago, laurentius82 said:

Couldn't agree more.  Just mentioned prem squad building as one example. By the way,  what do you mean by "realistic targets", "playing realistically"? I also agree that the transfer system (especially loans) is so exploitable is part of the problem.  Especially in FM20 and FM21 it has been way too easy to beat other (even bigger) teams to key signings, they somehow "prefer" the human manager over AI.  However, the solution to this shouldn't be for me to not trying to sign good players, but instead SI fixing / unbiasing the system. 

I'm certainly not amazing in the game, like you I have played it since CM days so I'm pretty familiar with it but I've never really had the time or patience to be really in-depth analytical about it. That's why I'd think my experience is very common. 

By playing realistically, I mean if I felt signing a certain player on loan was unrealistic, I wouldn't use the exploit and wouldn't sign them. And if I felt it was unrealistic to the point of buggy, I would report it as a bug. For example, there was a thread here not long ago of someone playing in  the third tier in Italy who had signed a load of youth players from PSG on loan. Rightly, he felt this was unrealistic. He had still done it though. Because if he hadn't, he would have seen it as limiting himself.  That's just one example. Another is that when starting unemployed  on FM21, lots of users are being offered the Wigan job despite having no badges. I assume this is because of Wigan's financial situation. I wouldn't take that job, but there are people who have taken it and then complained that it's unrealistic. I don't get it.

An example : In my current save, my board will not let me hire an outright  scout. This means I have no scouting limits set - where it would usually tell me where I could scout, it says "the board will not allow scouts to be hired" or something like that.  I have hired a coach with scout as a secondary role. I believe this to be realistic as it is not costing anymore than if he was just a coach, and bizarrely I do have a scouting budget set. Now I have hired him, due to a bug, he can scout anywhere in the world. I'm in the Israeli second division and this is therefore unrealistic. I've posted it in the bugs forum and it's under review/been logged etc. In the meantime, I am using self discipline and only scouting players based in Israel at this stage. I am under zero illusions though that some users would use this advantage and then talk about how easy things are because they "refuse to arbitrarily stunt or limit themselves".

On the flip side, if I was gliding through the leagues with 5 straight promotions and little effort, I would summise, as you have, that there was a problem somewhere along the line that allowed me to do that, try and work out where that was, and I would post about that in the bugs forum. Particularly if it was happening every save.

Because it doesn't happen to other people. I have a 25% win rate on my current save and may be relegated. I'm also far better away from home. 

[Junkhead]

48 minutes ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

You literally don’t have to do anything of those things to be successful because of the problems the guy listed makes it already easy.

 

Headline feature for FM22 would probably be “smarter AI” because of these threads. If not, then Shame on SI...

Why doesn't that happen to me then?

[Mars_Blackmon]

 

45 minutes ago, Tyburn said:

And has been mentioned, you simply cannot rise 5 divisions, back to back, without at least some kind of exploit. Game mechanic or otherwise.

But as has been already been said, the topic is in danger of moving around in a circle, so I’m also out, for now.

It’s also in danger of just being a moan fest. Which doesn’t interest me.

I’ve personally done it in FM20 & 21...

[Mars_Blackmon]

3 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

Why doesn't that happen to me then?

You said yourself that you don’t have a good sample size and haven’t dived deep into a save yet...

[Junkhead]

2 minutes ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

You said yourself that you don’t have a good sample size and haven’t dived deep into a save yet...

Not on this version. But I've been playing since the original Championship Manager, and LLM rules since 2004 and literally never achieved 2 back to back promotions, let alone 5.

[Tyburn]

8 minutes ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

 

I’ve personally done it in FM20 & 21...

Yep, me too. At least on fm20 anyway. I abused the loan market. I paid for 80% of my players, amazing kids I already knew about, using back payments (ludicrous pack payments). 

But I don’t suppose you did any of that ...

[laurentius82]

1 hour ago, Tyburn said:

And has been mentioned, you simply cannot rise 5 divisions, back to back, without at least some kind of exploit. Game mechanic or otherwise.

This is just untrue unfortunately, unless you define "exploit" to mean any normal usage of the features of the game. 

[Tyburn]

3 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

This is just untrue unfortunately, unless you define "exploit" to mean any normal usage of the features of the game. 

See my post above. Loans for players that in reality just wouldn’t be possible (exploiting the game mechanics). Back payments on players (ludicrous back payments that wouldn’t be possible ordinarily - exploiting a game mechanic).

Yes it’s part of the game. Yes they’re mechanics that probably need looking at. But in doing these things you are exploiting the mechanics. And making the game easier.

[laurentius82]

28 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

By playing realistically, I mean if I felt signing a certain player on loan was unrealistic, I wouldn't use the exploit and wouldn't sign them. And if I felt it was unrealistic to the point of buggy, I would report it as a bug. For example, there was a thread here not long ago of someone playing in  the third tier in Italy who had signed a load of youth players from PSG on loan. Rightly, he felt this was unrealistic. He had still done it though. Because if he hadn't, he would have seen it as limiting himself.  That's just one example. Another is that when starting unemployed  on FM21, lots of users are being offered the Wigan job despite having no badges. I assume this is because of Wigan's financial situation. I wouldn't take that job, but there are people who have taken it and then complained that it's unrealistic. I don't get it.

An example : In my current save, my board will not let me hire an outright  scout. This means I have no scouting limits set - where it would usually tell me where I could scout, it says "the board will not allow scouts to be hired" or something like that.  I have hired a coach with scout as a secondary role. I believe this to be realistic as it is not costing anymore than if he was just a coach, and bizarrely I do have a scouting budget set. Now I have hired him, due to a bug, he can scout anywhere in the world. I'm in the Israeli second division and this is therefore unrealistic. I've posted it in the bugs forum and it's under review/been logged etc. In the meantime, I am using self discipline and only scouting players based in Israel at this stage. I am under zero illusions though that some users would use this advantage and then talk about how easy things are because they "refuse to arbitrarily stunt or limit themselves".

On the flip side, if I was gliding through the leagues with 5 straight promotions and little effort, I would summise, as you have, that there was a problem somewhere along the line that allowed me to do that, try and work out where that was, and I would post about that in the bugs forum. Particularly if it was happening every save.

Because it doesn't happen to other people. I have a 25% win rate on my current save and may be relegated. I'm also far better away from home. 

I fully agree that these kinds of things are unrealistic and contribute to making the game easy. For me however, the moment I start deliberately avoiding certain transfers or tactics because they're unrealistic, immersion breaks and there's no point in playing anymore.  That's why  SI would need to address these matters. But I'm not holding my breath, it's been the same for years. 

[Mars_Blackmon]

35 minutes ago, Tyburn said:

Yep, me too. At least on fm20 anyway. I abused the loan market. I paid for 80% of my players, amazing kids I already knew about, using back payments (ludicrous pack payments). 

But I don’t suppose you did any of that ...

I only play DOF mode...

[Mars_Blackmon]

17 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

I fully agree that these kinds of things are unrealistic and contribute to making the game easy. For me however, the moment I start deliberately avoiding certain transfers or tactics because they're unrealistic, immersion breaks and there's no point in playing anymore.  That's why  SI would need to address these matters. But I'm not holding my breath, it's been the same for years. 

Pretty much this. Currently any attacking based tactic that have a high press intensity will give you a better chance at scoring tons of goals and winning more games than not, unfortunately the downside of playing such tactic (especially with lower tier players) isn’t replicated well in the game.

 

Even though I do not buy or loan my own players, avoiding features in the game in hopes of not exploiting it is equivalent to only playing a defensive tactic in hopes of not exploiting the game by out scoring teams...

[Tyburn]

I actually feel ashamed of myself. For ever bothering with this ...

Good luck all.

[Junkhead]

55 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

I fully agree that these kinds of things are unrealistic and contribute to making the game easy. For me however, the moment I start deliberately avoiding certain transfers or tactics because they're unrealistic, immersion breaks and there's no point in playing anymore.  That's why  SI would need to address these matters. But I'm not holding my breath, it's been the same for years. 

Agreed it would be better if things by default were more realistic to add to the challenge. This is where the argument became circular before. 

I would suggest as you find unrealistic things, you report them. 

[Mcfc1894]

6 hours ago, 4football said:

Huge plus for away games

even made a topic some time ago but there was no response from SI

 

At the end of season I looked at Home and away table compared to real life and there wasn't much difference the problem isn't that big especially in this patch 

Edited January 15, 2021 by Mcfc1894
.

[Mcfc1894]

Think the moral boost in the regular is still to high so it's too easy to go on a great run of form or the complete opposite terrible run of form I feel like there is no Inbetween especially on my game save

[laurentius82]

7 hours ago, laurentius82 said:

 The only way to make it hard is to artificially cripple yourself by imposing limitations on transfers (only allowed to buy players named Steve...

Said this as a tongue-in-cheek reductio ad absurdum, but started thinking it might actually be fun. So I created the club Steve F.C., located, of course, in Stevenage, England. We are only allowed to sign Steves. Should be a challenge. =) Might extend to Stevens if necessary, let's see.

[duesouth]

3 hours ago, Mcfc1894 said:

Think the moral boost in the regular is still to high so it's too easy to go on a great run of form or the complete opposite terrible run of form I feel like there is no Inbetween especially on my game save

I'd very much agree with this.  If you look at form tables, this kind of thing doesn't happen much - but in FM, for a human manager at least, it seems to happen all the time.