Lots of suggestions for CREATIVE improvements to the game

[2feet]

A number of suggestions for the guys at FM HQ (created in a huff after the latest FM23 headline announcement admittedly):

 

*** Make repetitive tasks more enjoyable please.

EG praising players for training in one big batch, not each one separately, making selection of training blocks less tricky to select.

 

*** Improve press conferences

Yes press conferences are a fact of a managers life and are repetitive, but they need fixing because they are ruining the fun. I played for five seasons but had to stop because the press conferences were 'doing my head in'! They could actually be a really fun part of the game. You would have faces for the press, not just these inhuman names. I want to see the press people present represented in the background picture. The response buttons you press should be rearranged so they are much easier to click. There could be a timer activated so the longer you wait to press a reply, the more agitated the press become waiting for your answer. Have some random comedy relief questions in there, a journalist from Tibet is visiting and wants to know for his newspaper whether the players have ever climbed any mountains? Everything in press conferences is so text text text, where are the faces, the reactions, the drama? The click of the cameras? Have some funny joke responses. All the response options sound the same, give us some variety of responses... I don't relate to most of those responses and would like to have more upbeat Klopp like answers to select, rather than sound so mundane like Pep Guardiola!

 

*** Improve the User Interface EG. the big wide column on the far right that cant be shrunk, the way its tricky to select training blocks, the way too many lists of things don't fit on a page and need to be scrolled down, such as the new Experience Matrix where the rows of players are too thick so all players can't fit on the page ruining the main purpose of providing a complete overview, Scouting reports also dont fit everything on one page again ruining the overview concept, etc, etc. This is both a gameplay and a technical issue, because navigating is a kind of gameplay. Look at how easy the big websites (eg. Trainline.com, chess.com) make it to navigate their interface, it's smooth and intuitive and is enjoyable. Their websites kind of anticipate what you want to do and the buttons all fall into place for you, all the information you need is malleable and fluid and arranged just how you want it.

 

*** Improve explanations EG there are explanations for player roles but not for staff roles. With the new scouting setup, what are the important attributes? The game highlights for the scouting role attributes: Scout Ability, Scout Potential, Adaptability. And that's all? Determination means nothing for a scout? For Chief Scouts, do Staff Management or Data Analysis attributes matter? He's a chief scout so he's managing other scouts isn't he?  You would think so, but then again maybe he isn't.... I don't know! The game doesn't highlight exactly what these roles do or whether other non-highlighted attributes do actually matter. Categorise attributes: Important, Useful, Irrelevant. Users are left in the dark on these kinds of things way too much.

 

*** Improve the speed to Advance to Next Day, or improve how easy it is to stop the computer processing tasks here that you don't really want it to spend time on.

 

*** It feels like someone needs to go through the game and do a common sense check on the users experience, and identify repetitive issues that annoy or blind spots where users are left to guess.

Map the experience of playing the game, and note the repetitive stuff and how it could be improved. Theres too much tedium and it feels like Job that doesn’t pay you any money Simulator ’23 too often, rather than you know, a game that's fun to play. And areas where the player is left to guess because there are no explanations, e.g. staff roles (see above).

 

*** Just understand in a fundamental way what it is that makes people enjoy taking part as fans of football culture. The narratives, the characters, the players personalities, the opinions, the fantasies of what fans dream of for their club, etc. The story-telling aspect of the game is really weak, yet this is a massive part of what fans enjoy about football (that’s why the football pages of newspapers and websites and social media are so popular.) 

 

***  A miniature tv screen pops up when you score a goal, showing the managers reaction on the side line. This could pop up for a few seconds (picture-in-picture) after a goal is scored to show the manager celebrating. Or after a near miss to show the managers reaction. Or after a Shout is selected, to show the manager yelling out instructions. If you yell an instruction and then soon after your team scores, then the players/staff all mob the manager on the sidelines and we see it in the pop up tv screen! If the instruction from the manager is one that results in a poor reaction, we see the manager yelling the instruction and then his players looking depressed by it.

Stuff like would make the game more rewarding and involving.

 

*** Why not have some cut scenes, at dramatic key moments of the season?

EG You're inside the dressing room before the crunch game, players are banging on lockers to get hyped up, etc You are in the midst of the scene as the manager,  giving your team talk. Cut to kick off! 

If you motion captured (instead of just create a CGI scene), you would only need to motion capture a few scenes for a season: Before a crunch game, After the game if you win, When you are under pressure for being sacked, when you have won the title or achieved champions league spots or achieved a season objective. Then you could have a handful of actual players from your squad in the scene, doing things according to their personalities, making the game seem like a world that is alive and reacting to what you are doing as a manager.

 

*** Make players personalities come out more, by allowing them to do things of their own accord, that demonstrate their character.

EG 1) One of them says something dumb on social media, and now you have the task of managing the fall out for the next month and trying to recover his confidence. You talk to them them and have options: persuade him to delete the social media message, encourage him to do work for charity, etc. At the end, if you succeed, his personality improves.

EG 2) One of your players gets injured playing beach football during the off-season. Now you can Talk about injury and persuade him to be more professional. He agrees and his professionalism attribute increases.

EG 3) One of your players decides to build a school for his home town back in his country. Now the club have increased their popularity in that country and the player has increased his social hierarchy status / popularity in the squad.

 

Just create some incidents where players do something in character, that matches their personalty. So in the above examples, 1) the dumb press conference statement would be by a player with high media controversy Or maybe he has a jovial personality? 2) Would be made by a player with low professionalism. 3) Would be made by a player with high professionalism.

 

These are just examples off the top of my head. You could make up hundreds of these things. In this way, your players personalities could be shaped by the things they get up to, not just by sticking them in a mentoring group for six months and the forgetting about it, which is so boring.

If you have a few of these little side-story events pop up during a season, about things your players have been getting up to, and how they have caused a problem, and then how you can potentially fix it through interactive conversations, you can give the user opportunities to improve various hidden attributes of their players. They are like mini-side tasks which can ultimately help a player improve his personality or hidden attributes if successfully managed and completed. The user can gain a little bit of an advantage by participating in these little side story tasks and end up boosting some of their players hidden attributes.

The plot of the side-story has twists and turns and if the manager successfully navigates it over the course of the mini story, resulting in the problem resolving, then the outcome is an improvement to a hidden attribute such consistency, or to controversy, etc. The hidden attribute that ends up being boosted is related to the theme of the side story.  Surely thats much more fun and interactive than just clicking: 'Add Player to Mentoring Group A'? And it relates to how real life managers do it, the best ones improve their players personalities by helping them. Side stories could find a use for attributes that players or staff have that they would not normally use in their roles. EG your scout spends a lot of time in a country scouting and then starts to develop the language of that country if he has high determination.

 

You need to draw a little bit on the Nintendo philosophy of story telling and character, to help bring out the stories and the fun, the users would love it.

Improving interactions with players, making the game more entertaining, not just an accountants version of football which is what it currently feels like. It's great that the technical side of the game has been achieved, and thats the core of it, but I think the studio now needs to complement that side with the other side, i.e. the cultural side of the game.

 

The only time I seem to have any meaningful interaction with a player is when I'm negotiating their contract or game-time. Having side-stories would improve that.

 

But when you see footage of real managers with their players on a training ground or in a press conference or during a game, there’s so much interaction going on, their personalities and behaviours are on display. 

 

So I'd say allow players to show more personality and get upto things of their own accord, in order to nurture more of a connection with the user playing the game, and create a sense of a living breathing squad of players.

 

I develop a connection with my players in my imagination when I play the game, but the game doesn’t seem to recognise this or develop it, leaving me disillusioned. Instead the players are treated just like units, to be deployed on the field like robots. And thats not real football.

 

Klopp said it best after Liverpool completed a classic comeback against Tuchel’s Dortmund a few years ago. He said something like how Tuchel was too logical and Klopp warned him not to forget about the emotional side of the game. This is what FM needs to build on, the emotions, the player's characters, etc.

 

It sounds like you have lots and lots of technical people in the studio, but perhaps you could do with some more story-telling creatives in there?

 

Best of luck

Edited October 5, 2022 by 2feet
time of the month

[Zachary Whyte]

Thank you for the very detailed feedback. We will review your suggestions and consider them for future FM releases.