FM23 Headline Features Revealed

[Federico]

55 minuti fa, Powermonger ha scritto:

I think this is one of the crux of the matters, it is starting to feel more like work than a game and is why I detest the dependency of the Inbox so much.

I get over 200 emails a day to my mailbox at work and it is a tedious process to go through them all and weed out the important emails from the noise, unfortunately FM emulates my day job too well and I feel like I am back to doing a tedious chore again. This is why I would prefer the FM UI to be revamped to be more dashboard focused and less Inbox focused, it needs some streamlining. There should be a central screen used as a launchpad and any information pertaining to an aspect of the game should be found in that particular module. At the moment there just feels like there are competing screens and information with no central focus, except for that blasted Inbox. Even in the current UI, you have the Home screen but for me I barely use it.

Same here. I've been saying already how suffocating the readings of so much stuff in "Football Manager" is. The thing that truly astonish me the most is that the more we ask to reduce iteractions/conversations/interviews/readings in general, the more they add.

[Powermonger]

23 minutes ago, Federico said:

Same here. I've been saying already how suffocating the readings of so much stuff in "Football Manager" is. The thing that truly astonish me the most is that the more we ask to reduce iteractions/conversations/interviews/readings in general, the more they add.

There is a lot of noise in FM these days. I don’t mind stuff being added however there needs to more logic in their placements and some simplification.

I love the new Squad Planner feature however it should be made part of Scouting and not treated like a seperate entity. Squad Planning, Scouting and Transfers should all be under one Recruitment umbrella/menu and organised accordingly representing the flow of information and actions. 

Edited October 15, 2022 by Powermonger

[Double0Seven]

The answer is very easy. No competition. No drive needed to push the game forward. 
 

The redditors agree with us. This franchise is the rare one that dominates the genre it is in and as a result doesnt need to do anything. 

[Rashidi]

33 minutes ago, Federico said:

Same here. I've been saying already how suffocating the readings of so much stuff in "Football Manager" is. The thing that truly astonish me the most is that the more we ask to reduce iteractions/conversations/interviews/readings in general, the more they add.

The only thing I can say about meetings, you can say whatever and do whatever you want and never attend them, you hardly get punished.  And that is the only saving grace for the one feature I have hardly engaged with. At least SI didnt make it mandatory for us to choose the perfect approach all the time. If this game ever turned into min maxing the Meeting Manager I would drop it in a heartbeat.

[LeoFM]

16 minutes ago, Double0Seven said:

The answer is very easy. No competition. No drive needed to push the game forward. 
 

The redditors agree with us. This franchise is the rare one that dominates the genre it is in and as a result doesnt need to do anything. 

I would be very interested in hearing the actual reason for why they ditched the FM10-12 faces completely and went with... whatever FM19-22 is...

I just can't comprehend how they thought it was a good idea. Not only that, but they somehow seem proud of the development of newgen face graphics???

[gunner86]

6 minutes ago, LeoFM said:

I would be very interested in hearing the actual reason for why they ditched the FM10-12 faces completely and went with... whatever FM19-22 is...

I just can't comprehend how they thought it was a good idea. Not only that, but they somehow seem proud of the development of newgen face graphics???

FM18 had a new graphics engine. That’s why everything changed. Not sure why that made it all worse for though.

[Bellyfish]

38 minutes ago, Double0Seven said:

The answer is very easy. No competition. No drive needed to push the game forward. 

This is the sad truth of it all. Why would they rock the boat when they already have a proven, successful business model? Update the database, add a couple of features to increase the bloat and ship it.

What's a shame is that maybe some of these new features are actually good and I'd enjoy them. But I'm so aware of all the existing features that annoy me match day to match day that I can't really justify the purchase to myself.

[CFuller]

As much as people like to look at FM17 with nostalgic eyes, they forget just how horrible the last 2D newgen faces were. And they were truly horrible, perhaps the worst they've ever been - you had 16-year-old kids who looked like middle-aged alcoholics with receding hairlines.

SI moved to 3D faces on FM18, and though they do at least look more human, I was hoping more progress had been made by now. As it is, we still have newgens with only four or five different skin tones. We still have East Asian players who look more like Mexicans. We still have 15-year-old youth players with beards, and 35-year-old staff members who resemble Father Christmas.

I'm not saying SI should go back to the original newgen faces that were around until FM15. I'm also not saying they should use NewGAN, which has major issues of its own in terms of face variety and ethnic diversity. I just would like someone from SI to explain as to why they made the switch from 2D to 3D faces in 2017, and why they still haven't been brought up to scratch after five years. More openness and transparency - that's all I'm asking for.

Of course, bad newgen faces are not a deal breaker for me. I'll just switch them off or keep using NewGAN (for all its faults). But it shouldn't have to be this way.

Edited October 15, 2022 by CFuller

[Atarin]

I didn't buy FM 2022 because I was underwhelmed and it looks like a won't be buying FM 2023 either for the same reason. I'm not especially bothered, FM 21 was awesome, in my opinion, and I could more than happily keep playing that for another year or two. I'll see what they offer up for FM24 before I consider switching. I will say though, that I'm glad they took on my suggestion of adding the puffer jackets back to the manager creator.

[herne79]

1 hour ago, Double0Seven said:

The answer is very easy. No competition. No drive needed to push the game forward. 
 

The redditors agree with us. This franchise is the rare one that dominates the genre it is in and as a result doesnt need to do anything. 

 

23 minutes ago, Bellyfish said:

This is the sad truth of it all. Why would they rock the boat when they already have a proven, successful business model? Update the database, add a couple of features to increase the bloat and ship it.

What's a shame is that maybe some of these new features are actually good and I'd enjoy them. But I'm so aware of all the existing features that annoy me match day to match day that I can't really justify the purchase to myself.

Whilst it is true that competition can indeed drive innovation, it is equally true (and largely ignored) that innovation can also come from within.  Stand still long enough in a market that you effectively rule and you’ll ultimately lose because people will become disenchanted, stop buying and someone else will come in to pick up the pieces.  It’s also pretty disingenuous to the very passionate and hard working people at SI towers who work their socks off every year to produce the best game they can.  Whittling that down to a mere “add a couple of features and ship it” or “it doesn’t need to do anything” is pretty low.

It’s also of note that while there may not be direct competition for FM from other (decent) football management games, there is competition - competition from other games.  FM may be the only viable football management game on the market but there are plenty of other excellent games out there all vying for our hard earned (and limited) cash.  If FM really did fall behind the curve people would stop buying it and go elsewhere for their enjoyment.  FM still needs that visible shelf space amongst all the rest.

Don’t get me wrong - I agree some aspects appear to have gone downhill and there are plenty of issues with the game that have been around for years that haven’t been “fixed”.  I didn’t even buy FM22 because I didn’t see it as much of an upgrade from 21.  But just because we don’t understand SI’s priorities and decisions (which we have no entitlement to know btw) doesn’t make Reddit and this “lack of competition” theory right.

Competition can drive innovation but innovation is never solely driven by competition - at least not if you care about your product, which SI very clearly do.

[Volband]

1 hour ago, Double0Seven said:

The answer is very easy. No competition. No drive needed to push the game forward. 
 

The redditors agree with us. This franchise is the rare one that dominates the genre it is in and as a result doesnt need to do anything. 

When the reddit circlejerk agrees with you it is not necessarily a compliment or reason to be encouraged. You guys bring up some very valid criticism and then immediately make all of them look like a rambling of a child when you type or echo things like "no real improvement or innovation for years". That is objectively not true, and it's impossible to take people seriously who have to resort to such hyperboles. It's going to be funny when in a few weeks this usual whining is finally replaced with people once again talking about the game (whether they play the newest one or a later version). Threads like that reddit thread is just frankly pathetic.

 

I do have to say though that the guy on the last page was extremely spot on about how valid criticism about match and newgen graphics should not be dismissed by "hurr durr that's not why you play a manager game". I personally don't mind the graphics, nor do I think an update to international management should be on SI's top 50 priority list, BUT these are absolutely valid things to be upset about. Especially the graphics part, because it is indeed annoying that SI refuses to even comment on that. I was pretty shocked when I first saw older FM graphics and how better they looked.

[DanBeats90]

Hi all. Obviously new licenses are a big part of the launch this year with the Champions League, etc. I noticed in one of the blogs it says the Belgian leagues are getting fully licensed this year as well which is awesome. Any news on any other new licenses? Not sure if this is relevant at all but I noticed that Brentford and Leicester both have Football Manager advertising quite prominently in their stadiums - a sign that they will be fully licensed this year as well?

[mikelfc8]

Lots of people have varying and different priorities when playing this game. They are all equally valid.

There is much speculation and guesswork about why certain elements are the way they are.

None of that is necessarily rooted in truth.

But it is inevitable when communication becomes, as it has, a bit one-sided.

This forum specifically asks for bug reports and suggestions for the future. It can seem as though they are being reported to a brick wall. I don't believe that is necessarily the case.

Please SI, open the lines of communication a bit more. Especially around glaring issues like set pieces and newgen faces.

A little explanation would go a long way.

Edited October 15, 2022 by mikelfc8

[jimbo22]

Just now, mikelfc8 said:

But it is inevitable when communication becomes, as it has, a bit one-sided.

Over the years SI's communication with its customers has gotten worse to the point that we're just a few weeks away from realease and we've seen next to nothing of the game and heard just a little more than next to nothing about it. I could be completely wrong but that suggests a sense of entitlement. They expect and know that no matter what people will still purchase the game because, what other options do we have. 

[hagedisboy]

All I hope for is AI managers not to be stupid anymore (which I have high hopes for) and newgen faces to look like they did in FM17. Would also be nice to have the Match UI of FM20 and before back, but I guess that's not going to happen. The old UI was way 'cleaner' though.

Also, one thing that would really make the game better for me is a small detail: how career milestones look in someone's profile. Now it looks like this: 

 

While in FM19, it looked like this:

 

The FM19 one looks far better imo, especially the real trophy instead of the yellow one that is used for every single competition in FM22. Also, changing clubs is not really a 'milestone', is it? Would be fantastic if we could see the real trophies again, instead of that yellow one!

[Choi seung won]

My personal opinion is that the game will change when Miles steps down as Director of Football Manager.

Check out Miles' Twitter now.

He proudly has his 3d face as his profile picture.

That's the graphic level of a football manager right now.

[grade]

12 hours ago, Kloppy said:

Would have loved a Japanese League announcement. Few more African leagues also. That along with improvements to the match engine and tactics and instructions and I’d be happy. 

FIFA 23 doesn't have J. League, they lost the license, since J league and EA didn't come to agreement. So there is hope. :P

[Stevicus]

I echo what someone said about meetings. It feels year on year we are getting more and more meetings to replicate how the football works in real life. There's simulation and then there is THIS. 

 

Meetings with assistant managers to decide tactics, meetings with the recruitment team for them to throw up 40 players that are completely different to every signing you've made previously. Meetings with the medical team that I form you player X is off for three days with a cold. Do you want to send him home like you have done with every other player that has a cold every winter or would you like to break the mould and just keep him training? 

Meetings with the board so they can inform you they don't care if you're scoring mainly from set pieces anymore (is there a single board in the world who care about set pieces?), but now they'd like you to sign players under the age of 25 to sell for profit even though you're one of the richest clubs in the world etc. 

I play on a potato laptop so graphically, I'm not bothered. Or I wasn't at least. Now I think it needs beefing up and noone is asking for FIFA or eFootball graphics, but we would like something that doesn't resemble 90s gaming. I've been through videos of past FIFAs to try and place where FM looks most similar graphically and it's probably all the way back to like FIFA 2000. We're now 23 years beyond that. I can go on the Google play store and download a lot of football management games where the graphics are quite nice. Not just quite nice for a mobile game, 'quite nice' as in better than FM. 

 

 

[Stevicus]

Also I remember when the 40 minute headline reveal came out and that lad was getting excited over being able to use competition patches on the players sleeves, which is honestly the most ridiculous thing to be excited about unless you can actually see them properly. I fear a lot of hard work has gone in to something that can't even properly be appreciated for another few years. 

[Tonton_Zola]

21 hours ago, themadsheep2001 said:

Not really sure about the whole audience argument thing tbh. I'd be fairly certain of SI doing enough market research to know if they are trending right audience wise. Can't say I buy into the idea of forum Joe/Jane blogs knowing more about how to target their varied audience than SI. 

Respectfully, I am not sure we require forensic market segmentation here.

The game’s graphics/in-game visualiser is mystifyingly obsolete and and needs to be improved. 

No further analysis required 

[Tonton_Zola]

Ps - why could a graphics team not just build a prettier “render” on top of the existing engine?

i.e sharper player models, better lighting etc?

 

[KeiranShikari]

4 hours ago, Powermonger said:

I think this is one of the crux of the matters, it is starting to feel more like work than a game and is why I detest the dependency of the Inbox so much.

I get over 200 emails a day to my mailbox at work and it is a tedious process to go through them all and weed out the important emails from the noise, unfortunately FM emulates my day job too well and I feel like I am back to doing a tedious chore again. This is why I would prefer the FM UI to be revamped to be more dashboard focused and less Inbox focused, it needs some streamlining. There should be a central screen used as a launchpad and any information pertaining to an aspect of the game should be found in that particular module. At the moment there just feels like there are competing screens and information with no central focus, except for that blasted Inbox. Even in the current UI, you have the Home screen but for me I barely use it.

I do feel you on the email thing although most of them in my game are scouting related, if what they've said about 23 is correct then the volume of scouting emails will be reduced by a lot. Also far fewer meetings to skip.

I believe there is also an option to turn off emails from certain parts of the game. That tied with putting staff in charge of stuff you don't want to manage means you can pretty much tailor it to what you need.

[el_manayer]

8 hours ago, Smurf said:

Do you know how seriously people take this? 

I do - if you're on twitter at all - the amount of people who post a picture of their new smart watch, Apple Ultra, Pixel, Samsung - it's a massive market and very personal to people. 

If you want complete immersion you want a full representation of you within the game - and if that brings you closer to being more involved within the game - then whats the harm? 

For me - this feature is useless - never liked the idea of custom building an AI version represenation of myself. I've no - ZERO - interest in this feature. 

But others like it. And if it's important to create that perfect avatar for the game - then go for it. 

Who am I to judge?

For you and for 99.99% of people, and if I am wrong, I invite whoever it is to come here and say that you are excited to have a watch in your manager avatar that you can only see before loading the game. That's the thing, even if they did design the watch in a single day, they'd better spend that day's work on doing anything that remotely improves the game. And the other thing that annoys me more is that they announce it like it is actually "exciting". It is not judging, i also like to have a nice avatar, but it should really really really be down on any kind of priority list to add something like that, that you actually don't even see, to a game with so many other graphical needs.

I can only imagine the next features being announced like "Rather excitingly, this year you are able to choose your manager's underwear color!"

[janrzm]

9 hours ago, Smurf said:

Do you know how seriously people take this? 

I do - if you're on twitter at all - the amount of people who post a picture of their new smart watch, Apple Ultra, Pixel, Samsung - it's a massive market and very personal to people. 

With respect. This is a massive reach IMO. You appreciate the difference between the actual purchase of a real smart watch and adding an invisible one to your manager avatar in a computer game?

Edited October 15, 2022 by janrzm

[KeiranShikari]

Imagine buying a smart watch and then posting about it on social media. lol

[Neil Brock]

We read and value a lot of what comes via our community and we know the period just before a new iteration of FM comes out is a time when people are especially passionate about raising their thoughts and feedback.

We’re not oblivious to some of the topics which have come up over recent weeks, months and in some cases years, related to certain ideas and features which could be developed in-game. For some people certain areas would be the very most important for them, for others they’d be little more than a sidenote to their own personal experience.

There are thousands of feature ideas in our internal database and with every release we have an incredibly challenging job of managing our resources in deciding what the main features are and which existing areas get improvements. We have to always balance everyone’s desires and expectations, including our own.

Some areas are highly flexible and allow us to make sizeable changes in a relatively short time frame. Others have extreme technical limitations which make that much harder, so requires significant development time and long-term planning. Project Mousetrap as Nic Madden discussed in the recent Features video is a prime example of that. In that specific example we had to ask ourselves, would our playerbase prefer gradual improvements with a quickly approaching ceiling or a bigger long-term project which opens up even more possibilities?

Miles and other team members have conducted interviews and appeared on podcasts discussing various topics related to our games and where time allows, we try to be as active as we can both on these forums and across social media via our official channels. If there’s a topic we’re able to talk about in detail we will look to do so. We don’t have a publicly visible roadmap for the game which means we don’t currently discuss features or design choices outside of what we have been able to implement into an available or announced version, but who knows, that may change at some point in the future.

These forums especially are an extremely valuable area to us as part of the community. We’ve had countless people from here contribute to the game. Examples including our volunteer moderator team, the players raising ideas, features and bugs or just people with general feedback posted in threads like this one. We’ve run private tests with people contacted on here, hired researchers to work directly on the game and even had lots of members who became full-time internal designers, producers, developers and QA on FM.

So want to take the opportunity to everyone who has taken the time to raise an opinion or ask a question related to FM. I’m sorry we can’t always engage and answer everything, but we do try to read what’s being said by the community and make sure it’s amplified back into the studio.  

[XaW]

20 hours ago, AllyJoseph said:

They have the perfect sim tbh

No, they don't, and playing a few years into the future makes that very obvious. For me the number one issue in the game is far away from the graphics, and rather into the core of the game. Manager AI in squad building is just not good enough, so when you go 10+ years into a save it becomes easy mode. Now, for me I'd rather they didn't spend a penny on the graphics and rather concentrate on the things OFF the pitch. Such as squad building, AI transfer logic, making Dynamic Youth Rating even more viable, all the things that make the world much more immersive for longer term saves.

And I understand I might go against the grain of a lot of people, at least in this thread where graphics seems to be a key point for a lot of people. But for me personally, if FM23 had been photorealistic amazing graphics but no change to the stuff I mentioned I'd be very disappointed. I'd probably view it for a few matches and put it back on 2D and then sulk about the lack of improving the game outside of the match. If it's not clear yet, I don't care at all about how the match _looks_, that's not to say I don't care about matches, I really want the game to work as a free flowing match and _feel_ like I'm tactically watching a real match.

I was really excited for F1 Manager, but had a look on a few let's plays and some of the logic of the AI drivers there made me just drop the whole thing and go back to Motorsport Manager for my racing manager itch. If F1 Manager was real life every driver who got a blue flag would get a penalty, because I've never seen a driver ignore a blue flag like that! I actually got angry at watching other people play, so that's a hard pass for me!

So for me I'd say that the FM22 ME and graphics could stay just as it is and SI could spend the rest on implementing a more immersive football world where things like the World cup would be as big a thing as it is in real life, making sure the AI is giving the user a battle for signings, that teams are trying to build well balanced squad based on club culture and staff tendencies, that changes from save to save to create a whole new world each time you start a save where things are drastically changed based on happenings in each save. THAT would be my dream for the future of FM.

[jimbo22]

Just now, XaW said:

So for me I'd say that the FM22 ME and graphics could stay just as it is and SI could spend the rest on implementing a more immersive football world where things like the World cup would be as big a thing as it is in real life, making sure the AI is giving the user a battle for signings, that teams are trying to build well balanced squad based on club culture and staff tendencies, that changes from save to save to create a whole new world each time you start a save where things are drastically changed based on happenings in each save. THAT would be my dream for the future of FM.

Surely its two entirely different teams that work on the look of the game and what happens under the hood of it? Every aspect of the game should improve year on year and if people are honest with themselves I dont think that can be said about Football Manager.

[KeiranShikari]

They have different teams. I'd be surprised i'd people making the graphics engine look like something from the current millennium were also in charge of making the AI squad building more logical. 

They both feel like multiple year projects though and they've probably got a million more squad planners to introduce first. 

[Cro-cop]

15 minutes ago, Neil Brock said:

We read and value a lot of what comes via our community and we know the period just before a new iteration of FM comes out is a time when people are especially passionate about raising their thoughts and feedback.

We’re not oblivious to some of the topics which have come up over recent weeks, months and in some cases years, related to certain ideas and features which could be developed in-game. For some people certain areas would be the very most important for them, for others they’d be little more than a sidenote to their own personal experience.

There are thousands of feature ideas in our internal database and with every release we have an incredibly challenging job of managing our resources in deciding what the main features are and which existing areas get improvements. We have to always balance everyone’s desires and expectations, including our own.

Some areas are highly flexible and allow us to make sizeable changes in a relatively short time frame. Others have extreme technical limitations which make that much harder, so requires significant development time and long-term planning. Project Mousetrap as Nic Madden discussed in the recent Features video is a prime example of that. In that specific example we had to ask ourselves, would our playerbase prefer gradual improvements with a quickly approaching ceiling or bigger long-term project which opens up even more possibilities?

Miles and other team members have conducted interviews and appeared on podcasts discussing various topics related to our games and where time allows, we try to be as active as we can both on these forums and across social media via our official channels. If there’s a topic we’re able to talk about in detail we will look to do so. We don’t have a publicly visible roadmap for the game which means we don’t currently discuss features or design choices outside of what we have been able to implement into an available or announced version, but who knows, that may change at some point in the future.

These forums especially are an extremely valuable area to us as part of the community. We’ve had countless people from here contribute to the game. Examples including our volunteer moderator team, the players raising ideas, features and bugs or just people with general feedback posted in threads like this one. We’ve run private tests with people contacted on here, hired researchers to work directly on the game and even had lots of members who became full-time internal designers, producers, developers and QA on FM.

So want to take the opportunity to everyone who has taken the time to raise an opinion or ask a question related to FM. I’m sorry we can’t always engage and answer everything, but we do try to read what’s being said by the community and make sure it’s amplified back into the studio.  

Neil, can someone explain why is match graphics worse today than it was 6 years ago? Nobody can deny progress being made in ME. But to have graphics that is, in my opinion, much worse than it was in 2017 is ridiculous.

[janrzm]

8 minutes ago, XaW said:

So for me I'd say that the FM22 ME and graphics could stay just as it is and SI could spend the rest on implementing a more immersive football world where things like the World cup would be as big a thing as it is in real life, making sure the AI is giving the user a battle for signings, that teams are trying to build well balanced squad based on club culture and staff tendencies, that changes from save to save to create a whole new world each time you start a save where things are drastically changed based on happenings in each save. THAT would be my dream for the future of FM.

Can I ask how you are able to separate 3D match appearance from other gameplay in terms of your immersion? For me and I'm sure many others they are of equal importance. If, as it was, a decision was made some time ago to include a 3D match environment then it needs to be as good (realistic) as the rest of the gameplay. Indeed for some time they were heading in the right direction as evidenced in some of the posts above. We aren't achieving that at the moment and an acknowledgement of that from SI would go a long way to appeasing a lot of people in this regard. 

Edited October 15, 2022 by janrzm

[Atarin]

I think there has to be a level of mutual respect. Developers need to understand that a yearly game cycle (these games aren't cheap) is going to put that extra focus on unique and significant developments to the game. Incremental and superficial change is always going to make it seem like a cash grab. But fans of the game also have to face the reality that the developers can only achieve so much in the allotted time between games and that ultimately you, as the player, are under no obligation to buy the game. Miles doesn't put a gun to your head and force you to hand over your cash. Personally, I'll be giving this one a miss, like the last one, as I don't think there has been a significant enough development to justify spending the money and upgrading. I don't hold it against SI though. I hope they don't hold it against me.

[KeiranShikari]

SI should just be open put out a development roadmap.

The game is likely going to break sales records despite literally nobody being impressed with the marketing/new features.

The more I think about it the more the game as a service idea makes sense. 

Edited October 15, 2022 by KeiranShikari

[BuzzR]

58 minutes ago, Neil Brock said:

We’re not oblivious to some of the topics which have come up over recent weeks, months and in some cases years, related to certain ideas and features which could be developed in-game.

Unfortunately this is not helpful for us in any meaningful way.

If there is no feedback in any form, if there is no time-line presented for fixing issues that are raised for years - then the general feeling will be of talking to a wall : set pieces, 3D graphics regression, international management, AI squad building, AI tactics, transfers, scouting issues, dynamic youth etc.  We are talking about this for years, as you said - and all we get back is a generic response from a moderator.

For now this is the general situation: you know we are complaining,  we know you know and that's it. 

[XaW]

53 minutes ago, jimbo22 said:

Surely its two entirely different teams that work on the look of the game and what happens under the hood of it? Every aspect of the game should improve year on year and if people are honest with themselves I dont think that can be said about Football Manager.

Of course there are different teams so I don't get my wish at any note. And I do think things are improving in the graphical part, but not in a directly visual, at least not to the stadiums etc. The new animations (especially for goalkeepers) that has come in is a big step up, but it's not really flashy. So the improvements are there as well, even if I don't really care much about it.

50 minutes ago, janrzm said:

Can I ask how you are able to separate 3D match appearance from other gameplay in terms of your immersion? For me and I'm sure many others they are of equal importance. If, as it was, a decision was made some time ago to include a 3D match environment then it needs to be as good (realistic) as the rest of the gameplay. Indeed for some time they were heading in the right direction as evidenced in some of the posts above. We aren't achieving that at the moment and an acknowledgement of that from SI would go a long way to appeasing a lot of people in this regard. 

Because I play in 2D. I don't care about the 3D match. Sure if could and probably should be better, but for my part I don't care about that part of the game.

[2feet]

1 hour ago, Neil Brock said:

Miles and other team members have conducted interviews and appeared on podcasts discussing various topics related to our games and where time allows, we try to be as active as we can both on these forums and across social media via our official channels

I think what fans on the forums want is clear written text information about what the status is of the common issues that fans raise.

A live list of issues that are known, being worked on, or that wont be worked on due to specific reasons.

A kind of FAQ for people who want this or that change.

This might alleviate some of the anxiety people have about changes, which only increases when no response is forthcoming when they post.

It would also address the problem that some issues may already have been addressed in the past, but are now lost in the depths of old threads, so new posters don't realise.

Edited October 15, 2022 by 2feet

[janrzm]

33 minutes ago, XaW said:

Because I play in 2D. I don't care about the 3D match. Sure if could and probably should be better, but for my part I don't care about that part of the game.

So do I, mostly. I guess It doesn't make it right that we choose to ignore it because its not good enough or as good as we'd like though? After all SI opted to implement the 3D match environment and we pay for that when we buy the game. On a personal level I think it's fine to be not bothered about a particular aspect of the game and elect not to use it but, I always have in mind that what's not important to me will certainly be important to someone else. Hence why I won't bag a feature or dismiss it on the basis that I personally don't use or need it.

Beyond that, if we assess FM from a collective viewpoint we could look at every aspect of the game and then find any number of people that aren't bothered about a particular facet. On that basis we could then put forward a case that there is no need to develop anything because somewhere there are people that aren't bothered about all the elements.

The graphics in the game aren't as good as they should/could be and the sooner there's an open and honest conversation about that between the customers and SI the better for all concerned. 

Edited October 15, 2022 by janrzm

[KeiranShikari]

As somebody that plays with both, dots until I'm happy with how my team are playing tactically and then 3d after the graphics debate is pretty fascinating. I guess it makes sense from a selfish human point of view that the people that are happy with the graphics engine are the ones that don't use it. 

I also don't see many people asking for flashy/photorealistic FIFA graphics when asking for upgrades, certainly not something you'd need a 3 grand PC to run (do see that argument quite a bit).  Most seem to want something that looks like it was made in this decade. I actually don't think FIFA would look anywhere near as good if you shrank the players down to the realistic scale that FM uses.

It's 2022 and we don't have an animation engine which depicts dribble animations and skill moves. 

Edited October 15, 2022 by KeiranShikari

[dresden]

6 hours ago, Federico said:

Same here. I've been saying already how suffocating the readings of so much stuff in "Football Manager" is. The thing that truly astonish me the most is that the more we ask to reduce iteractions/conversations/interviews/readings in general, the more they add.

I agree so much with this that I've reset my login to post (been playing & reading for years but never really posting here).

It's not just one feature or another, but it's been a consistent general trend last few years: more meetings, almost none of them any fun at all. If SI say that X feature is too hard / costly and can't happen for a while, alright, that's one thing - but it's another thing to see resources & strategy actively go into beefing up FM as a soul-crushing work simulator.

Each year I've become more and more used to simply ignoring various features, many of them new, to retain/improve my playing experience. No press conferences ever. No tunnel interviews ever. Skip reading 90% of the emails in the inbox. And make no mistake, this isn't coming from the typically "casual" segment of the player base - people like me are people who've played FM for a long time and often spend a lot of time learning the ins and outs of the game, people who aren't wanting FM Lite or whatever it's called. It's got nothing to do with 'streamlining' or 'making it easier to understand', it's about the fact that these meetings and emails usually don't add anything useful or fun. I'm fine with playing a difficult and complex RPG, for example, but not if it wants me to file tax forms to sell my loot.

[LeoFM]

Pass completion in FM22 vs IRL, something that NEEDS to be fixed for FM23 IMO. I think there was a screenshot previously that indicated there might be something done about this so I'm hopeful.

Edited October 15, 2022 by LeoFM

[janrzm]

3 minutes ago, dresden said:

I agree so much with this that I've reset my login to post (been playing & reading for years but never really posting here).

It's not just one feature or another, but it's been a consistent general trend last few years: more meetings, almost none of them any fun at all. If SI say that X feature is too hard / costly and can't happen for a while, alright, that's one thing - but it's another thing to see resources & strategy actively go into beefing up FM as a soul-crushing work simulator.

Each year I've become more and more used to simply ignoring various features, many of them new, to retain/improve my playing experience. No press conferences ever. No tunnel interviews ever. Skip reading 90% of the emails in the inbox. And make no mistake, this isn't coming from the typically "casual" segment of the player base - people like me are people who've played FM for a long time and often spend a lot of time learning the ins and outs of the game, people who aren't wanting FM Lite or whatever it's called. It's got nothing to do with 'streamlining' or 'making it easier to understand', it's about the fact that these meetings and emails usually don't add anything useful or fun. I'm fine with playing a difficult and complex RPG, for example, but not if it wants me to file tax forms to sell my loot.

When you managed to avoid that tedious meeting at work then got home to relax on FM and..........😂

[grade]

3 hours ago, Neil Brock said:

We read and value a lot of what comes via our community and we know the period just before a new iteration of FM comes out is a time when people are especially passionate about raising their thoughts and feedback.

We’re not oblivious to some of the topics which have come up over recent weeks, months and in some cases years, related to certain ideas and features which could be developed in-game. For some people certain areas would be the very most important for them, for others they’d be little more than a sidenote to their own personal experience.

There are thousands of feature ideas in our internal database and with every release we have an incredibly challenging job of managing our resources in deciding what the main features are and which existing areas get improvements. We have to always balance everyone’s desires and expectations, including our own.

Some areas are highly flexible and allow us to make sizeable changes in a relatively short time frame. Others have extreme technical limitations which make that much harder, so requires significant development time and long-term planning. Project Mousetrap as Nic Madden discussed in the recent Features video is a prime example of that. In that specific example we had to ask ourselves, would our playerbase prefer gradual improvements with a quickly approaching ceiling or bigger long-term project which opens up even more possibilities?

Miles and other team members have conducted interviews and appeared on podcasts discussing various topics related to our games and where time allows, we try to be as active as we can both on these forums and across social media via our official channels. If there’s a topic we’re able to talk about in detail we will look to do so. We don’t have a publicly visible roadmap for the game which means we don’t currently discuss features or design choices outside of what we have been able to implement into an available or announced version, but who knows, that may change at some point in the future.

These forums especially are an extremely valuable area to us as part of the community. We’ve had countless people from here contribute to the game. Examples including our volunteer moderator team, the players raising ideas, features and bugs or just people with general feedback posted in threads like this one. We’ve run private tests with people contacted on here, hired researchers to work directly on the game and even had lots of members who became full-time internal designers, producers, developers and QA on FM.

So want to take the opportunity to everyone who has taken the time to raise an opinion or ask a question related to FM. I’m sorry we can’t always engage and answer everything, but we do try to read what’s being said by the community and make sure it’s amplified back into the studio.  

To be fair, after reading this... it that they're unequivocally and completely guarantee my concerns about FM in general. SI is comfortable with the success of the game and the speed development of the game of these years (specially of recent years). Sure that is their prerogative, plan or Master plan or whatever you wish to call it. They are also very comfortable with the amount of communication with this community they have. Again, their views...

One I cannot simply agree with and i  will not bother everyone with the details, since I explained myself, quite often. If you do change your ways and communicate more with your official community, is a welcome change, but if its not... things will only get worse, as people will loose interest in coming here. If wasn't for especial part of this community, moderators, and users who take piece of their time to help answer and explain question and doubts of other users, a thing that should be your job, these forums would be dead... Dead as door nail. While you state that you closely read these forums and make sure it's amplified into the studio, let me take that with a grain of salt. The true heart and soul of these forums are people like Rashidi, krlenjushka, Lucas, Nine-iron and michaeltmurrayuk and plenty of others, who's name my mind can recall right now (sorry).

To finalize... again, I thank you to take the time to post here, but don't take me wrong when I say I will take with grain of salt. Things in my view, aren't ok, they are far from ok, I for one fed up with these political correct answers... there is severe lack of communication with this community, Not okay with overall development of the game, which I believe can be far better then it is today. and if you don't see that, i start to doubt how much of this community your colleagues do actually read or even listen to you, Neil.

Again Neil, highly respect you, but I starting not believing this corporate response.

Once more, feel free to disagree with me :P

 

[Neil Brock]

1 hour ago, 2feet said:

I think what fans on the forums want is clear written text information about what the status is of the common issues that fans raise.

A live list of issues that are known, being worked on, or that wont be worked on due to specific reasons.

A kind of FAQ for people who want this or that change.

This might alleviate some of the anxiety people have about changes, which only increases when no response is forthcoming when they post.

It would also address the problem that some issues may already have been addressed in the past, but are now lost in the depths of old threads, so new posters don't realise.

We've already tried to create a clearer system via our Bug Tracker where our team reviews and depending on their findings, gives a status all raised issues. You can even filter by these to see if the issue is one that's known, whether it's under review, resolved or considered 'not a bug' and we've provided info as to why. 

Appreciate what you're asking for is something larger than that and focused more on general game improvements than necessarily bug fixes, but it is a step towards trying to be more transparent. Any issue marked as under review will be logged in our internal system.

I know there's options to take this further, again by a public roadmap or giving more specific info such as date of expected fix etc, but as anyone who has worked in software development knows, setting exact dates or making promises can often lead to disappointment. It also would be a big shift to how we've done things previously.

When we say we're developing its not just the game. There's been a huge amount of change and development at the studio itself in the last few years, we've grown and again as Miles mentioned in the headline feature vid, our approach to design has changed substantially. 

There's lots of different approaches we could take in the future and it's something, both at the highest levels and the studio as a whole, we will continue to review. 

[Piperita]

23 minutes ago, LeoFM said:

[image deleted by quoter]

Pass completion in FM22 vs IRL, something that NEEDS to be fixed for FM23 IMO. I think there was a screenshot previously that indicated there might be something done about this so I'm hopeful.

For me the pass completion itself isn't the problem. Higher up the pitch or for risky playmakers/aggressive wingers it is absolutely fine. I think the base reason is general number inflation. Players run a lot more in game (I am at about 20 kilometres more per game than the most running intensive teams in the BL). They usually have a lot more touches (the amount of 100+ per game is insane!). They play more passes (naturally with more possession). But the amount of shots/chances is comparable to real life. Thus a player still has about the same amount of "risky" passes forwards but if they fail, they have a lot more "safe" passes added to keep their passing success amazingly high.

If the amount of needless "safety passes" were reduced and the general amount of touches/chance were more akin to real life, the completion rates would look better. Right now there is too little general risk and more "padding" in gameplay. If we focus purely on the passing percentages per safe/medium safe/risky pass, it should look about right but the composition between the pass types is biased towards more safe options. Especially because the worse teams in the league play extra safe and with no risk and essentially just wait until quality beats them whereas in real life they more often than not take extra risks to make quick transitions forwards (good ol' hoofball!).

[roykela]

Communication. Communication. Communication.
That's the most important thing. It does not help how much or little developers read when they won't communicate their thoughts.

Abuse is far from ok, but sticking the head in the sand won't make it any better. It'll just make it worse. 
This side of the product is customer service. Customer service will always be a mixed bag. Hiding from it won't solve a thing.
Regardless of what i or others would like in the game or not, proper communication is the best way to go. Abuse will still happen, regardless of what you do. That's where moderators come in.

I see now and then that it's mentioned "we've asked ourselves..." but have you actually asked the players?
Of course you have to ask yourselves. It's your game. But communicating by asking the players what they would like as well could help you out massively in which direction to take the game.
And by asking i don't mean forum discussions, twitter posts, facebook posts etc.
I mean surveys. Possibly like the many i have received about FMFC, which i still don't understand the point with, but that's for another discussion.

There are lots of different approaches you could take, indeed, but it seems like the approaches chosen are always the ones in the "Least visible" category, most of the time.

Edited October 15, 2022 by roykela

[janrzm]

6 minutes ago, Neil Brock said:

I know there's options to take this further, again by a public roadmap or giving more specific info such as date of expected fix etc, but as anyone who has worked in software development knows, setting exact dates or making promises can often lead to disappointment. It also would be a big shift to how we've done things previously.

Hey Neil, evening! Morning here.

Is a roadmap necessarily a timeline? and does a roadmap necessarily need to be all inclusive. I for one would really appreciate a bit more insight into what's being planned in terms of the improvement/development of existing facets of the game. I would not expect to be given any insight into future new developments or any kind of timescales to be honest.

I feel a lot of frustration/misunderstanding could be avoided with some fairly rudimentary information. 

Cheers. 

[SkaldfraNorden]

Guys, you do realise that all of those reported bugs and years' old feature requests are just a bunch of open JIRA tickets in a forgotten folder? (I presume it's JIRA, by the bug tracker thingy)

edit: Or maybe even worse, in an "on hold" folder

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by SkaldfraNorden

[Neil Brock]

2 minutes ago, janrzm said:

Hey Neil, evening! Morning here.

Is a roadmap necessarily a timeline? and does a roadmap necessarily need to be all inclusive. I for one would really appreciate a bit more insight into what's being planned in terms of the improvement/development of existing facets of the game. I would not expect to be given any insight into future new developments or any kind of timescales to be honest.

I feel a lot of frustration/misunderstanding could be avoided with some fairly rudimentary information. 

Cheers. 

Roadmaps are used differently across all industries, but in gaming they often (but not exclusively) tend to cover a combination of improvements and additions to games. 

Here's an example of Epic Games roadmap as an example - https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap

[dino88]

3 hours ago, Neil Brock said:

We read and value a lot of what comes via our community and we know the period just before a new iteration of FM comes out is a time when people are especially passionate about raising their thoughts and feedback.

We’re not oblivious to some of the topics which have come up over recent weeks, months and in some cases years, related to certain ideas and features which could be developed in-game. For some people certain areas would be the very most important for them, for others they’d be little more than a sidenote to their own personal experience.

There are thousands of feature ideas in our internal database and with every release we have an incredibly challenging job of managing our resources in deciding what the main features are and which existing areas get improvements. We have to always balance everyone’s desires and expectations, including our own.

Some areas are highly flexible and allow us to make sizeable changes in a relatively short time frame. Others have extreme technical limitations which make that much harder, so requires significant development time and long-term planning. Project Mousetrap as Nic Madden discussed in the recent Features video is a prime example of that. In that specific example we had to ask ourselves, would our playerbase prefer gradual improvements with a quickly approaching ceiling or a bigger long-term project which opens up even more possibilities?

Miles and other team members have conducted interviews and appeared on podcasts discussing various topics related to our games and where time allows, we try to be as active as we can both on these forums and across social media via our official channels. If there’s a topic we’re able to talk about in detail we will look to do so. We don’t have a publicly visible roadmap for the game which means we don’t currently discuss features or design choices outside of what we have been able to implement into an available or announced version, but who knows, that may change at some point in the future.

These forums especially are an extremely valuable area to us as part of the community. We’ve had countless people from here contribute to the game. Examples including our volunteer moderator team, the players raising ideas, features and bugs or just people with general feedback posted in threads like this one. We’ve run private tests with people contacted on here, hired researchers to work directly on the game and even had lots of members who became full-time internal designers, producers, developers and QA on FM.

So want to take the opportunity to everyone who has taken the time to raise an opinion or ask a question related to FM. I’m sorry we can’t always engage and answer everything, but we do try to read what’s being said by the community and make sure it’s amplified back into the studio.  

Politely telling us to f*** off? 

[2feet]

12 minutes ago, Neil Brock said:

We've already tried to create a clearer system via our Bug Tracker where our team reviews and depending on their findings, gives a status all raised issues. You can even filter by these to see if the issue is one that's known, whether it's under review, resolved or considered 'not a bug' and we've provided info as to why. 

Appreciate what you're asking for is something larger than that and focused more on general game improvements than necessarily bug fixes, but it is a step towards trying to be more transparent. Any issue marked as under review will be logged in our internal system.

I know there's options to take this further, again by a public roadmap or giving more specific info such as date of expected fix etc, but as anyone who has worked in software development knows, setting exact dates or making promises can often lead to disappointment. It also would be a big shift to how we've done things previously.

When we say we're developing its not just the game. There's been a huge amount of change and development at the studio itself in the last few years, we've grown and again as Miles mentioned in the headline feature vid, our approach to design has changed substantially. 

There's lots of different approaches we could take in the future and it's something, both at the highest levels and the studio as a whole, we will continue to review. 

Yes, that's all fine, but what I mean is an edited FAQ, with only the main issues.

Because the bug tracker is full of minor stuff. But people want to see the big issues addressed.

And just state everything is subject to change.

EG

1)

Set Pieces Creator

Issues: We are aware of issues here with regard to X Y Z. Due to this and that, this is a complicated job that will take time to implement into the game without unbalancing it.

Status: In development 

Estimated date for implementation: FM 25 to FM 27

2)

Graphics

Issues: Crowd has limited animation.

Status: There are no current plans to change the crowd. This is due to X Y Z related to the structure of our new graphics engine.

 

FAQ last updated June 2022.

Next Update due: November 2022

 

And so on.

You could ask the mods what are the issues that people keep raising so you have some awareness of what the hot topics on the forums are?

If you did something along these lines, I think it might help a lot. It means empowering comments and feedback more, and many companies are opposed to this, but I think it could be beneficial to the game if it was adopted.