Let take FM to new levels

[Furmanbp]

Hi SI games, Hi game fans,

Playing another instance of game, I have came to conclusion that there is some areas of game which should be addressed to increase fun that come from game.
FM is really lacking on feedback, transparency and dynamism. Let my try to explain.

I will first mention that some of my ideas here may seems as unrealistic in terms of, that you do not really get such information in real world. I agree, but I believe the best fun in game is when we balance between realism and fun in game. If I would like to have realistic football management experience, I would try to become real manager. I want to play a game that is challenging and rewarding, that is where you get real immersion. Therefore the said game have to have clear rules or/and give specific feedback, otherwise result seams somehow random and after particular time, become unengaging. You do not even know if it is you, who earned that reward, or was it just Random Number Generator. Nothing wrong with RNG as general, as game have to have some level of randomness too, to be challenging, but tell us where are they used, and how making particular actions in game we can influence it, so we know that we had earned that reward actually. 

I have finished on 6 points because I do not want to scare potential reader away. I could add couple more points if anyone would like to continue discussion. Each of points can be further elaborated, and maybe, even we could work on formulas for game engine, if anyone is interested in discussion, of potential of any of ideas. 

Technically each of those points, seeing how SI works, would rather need to be addressed separately in each new instance of the game.  

1)
Sometimes in coach report you get massage that player need to add consistency to game, and nowhere is clearly explained how, or if the things I do, do increase consistency. I have read many websites over last year and a half, watched dozen of videos about the topic and they in 99% keep repeating this same thing. So I do those things, like prise or criticize a player after every single, literally every single game, for about 2 years now and I still get this same massage in coach report. Players statistics does increased but "consistency" issue stayed as it was. So I am coming to point where I am not sure anymore if those advices really increase consistency, maybe internet is wrong on that. It would be good if game inform us on how we influence things in game.

Could be easy fix -  while you criticize your player you could have info that this could increase his consistency (or it could be said on coach report, what to do to increase consistency). After some times, whatever dear developers you believe is enough time, plus RNG(so each player is different), we should be informed by one of the coaches that particular player become more consistent. And we could notice that icon changed from bright red to reddish colour.
For example it could be a year, or 30 interactions with player, plus or minus 30% RNG. Or maybe even more that 30% if player have specific personality.

Possibilities to develop that area, and ideas that I describe lower are enormous.

Let make it more dynamic, show us that we actually influence something. 


2)
More transparency on how training work, and why sometimes players get wall of down pointing arrows (not related to being old). So, sometimes we can see an wall of those down pointing arrows, game does not explain what happen. Is player get worse, or maybe it is staff member who was evaluating skills of that player, adjusted evaluation. Game does not inform us of why that happen, so we do not know if we doing something wrong or not. 

More information on what difference it make for coaching staff member to have high "motivating" or "discipline" attribute. For example it would be good to know if I always need to have coach with high discipline, or only it help with players who need discipline. Not all of them need discipline right? Game does not inform us about it. Same for motivation, some people (so I assume to some degree it should be reflected in game) does not need external motivation. Is it actually same in game, or motivation always play high role? It would be good for us to know, so we could better manage our training teams. Another thing is, If I put two coaches, one with high discipline and one with high motivation to coach this same assignment, would those two statistic be summed up? I would assume it supposed to be summed up, but game does not inform us about it.

How about other coaching attributes? For example if I go to "staff page" I can see that my "coaching team attributes" are summed up as a total, but they do not work as a total, right? So wy we got that chart showing us total of all ours staff members, let say, "defending" coach attribute.
Completely unnecessary information, or do I get it wrong? In that case how does star rating work in "training page" in "coaches subpage". Because from that area I assume only coach that is assigned to particular assignment influence that training. 

Maybe it is time to move from stars rating to something more informative? Maybe in future we could see that for example coaches that are together assigned to one coaching assignment have a synergy and increase quality of training, would that not increase depth of game? For example you could hoover over one of coach assignment and see that you need more "discipline" attribute there, but not necessary "attack" attribute, as other coach is already covering it. It could also be a rule of diminishing returns so for example having more coaches in general help, but after hitting, let say total of 20 points in particular attribute, it would be less and less worth to do that, adding cost of having extra staff would eventually balance to not have milion of coaches. Proper mathematical formula would sort it easily. Lets make it more dynamic!

Another thing about coaching is that, if I have assigned one coach to particular training I can get "high workload". So you add another coach to that assignment to lower workload, that is in the game actually. But in game I can add one coach to every single assignment and that coach will lower workload in each assignment, I think that is wrong. One coach should not be able to attend all trainings. Each new assignment should divide his attributes and how much of workload he reduce evenly by amount of assignments.

3)
Potential evaluation, especially with Newgen. If I scout a player that potential is showed to 4 stars, let assume that scout is pretty bad at evaluating potential. Will potential be evaluated in couple of months by my other staff that work with this player? That would be good, to know if such mechanism exist(maybe it does but game does not inform us about it, it should) and it would be good that this staff member inform me about previous wrong information, right? it would be stupid if one of the, let say, coaches who is actively training particular player would not inform me about previous wrong information, even staff with bad "judging player potential" should gave me better feedback after months of working with that player. Yes you do get sometimes that vague information when you hoover over player profile, next to stars rating "player who can still improve" or something like that, but according to who? Which of staff is telling me about it? Was it ever evaluated after spending months in my team? For example if you got newgen with 5 star potential, and that player does not improve at all within 2 years, then any of my staff member (now matter how bad) should be able to tell me that this person have not actually got a potential.

Let make it more dynamic, show us that we actually influence something. 

4)
CA and PA. I think that is very old concept, I think you should completely scratch that off. Create dynamic "potential", that is depended on player personality (so hidden attributes) and coaching staff and facilities and amount of training done, rather than some set abstract value. Inform us better about increasing in attributes, right now you use them in value 1 to 100 (1 to 20 in game interface), but sometimes you do training for months and there is no sign of improvement, and then you got spike, and as a person who play that game, you do not know what influence those increases, they rather look random. Please be more informative on how it work. Again lets make it dynamic rather than  kind of binary as it seems now (spikes still can occur obviously). Sometimes you got a new gen who in 3 years did not increased any of their attributes even a single point (or rather increased one month and then return to previous value month or couple months later). That is ridiculous, I know not everyone can by a professional player, but this is so unrealistic. Those players should stil improve, just much slower, in such speed that after 3 years you would say to yourself: "okay, you are not going to be professional player", but in three years training everyone should have increased in their skills, that is just natural for humans. I guess there will be individuals who will not take training to seriously, those players should obviously not see increase in statistics. But if you see someone who have average rating of training over a year over 7.5 and that person does not increase statistic that is ridiculous. 

Also, if newgen or players does not attend training or matches, their skills should not be growing. But from empiric experiments I can see they do grow. You can set up new league and new team and put everyone on 0 matches and 0 training. If proper hidden attributes are high, those players would still grow, that should not be the case. Let us influence it, make those hidden attributes only influence how fast those players grows, but only if we take proper actions, like having motivating and disciplining coaches, etc. 

Lets get rid of stars in general, and find a better model to rate players than current. It is very misguiding, when you get better player into team, that all others players starts rating goes down. We can come with something more informative than that. 

Let make it more dynamic, show us that we actually influence something. 


5)
Supporters. How does supporter base grow? As right now it is black magic. Inform us better about it. You have added supporter panel in that instance, that panel shows what is "supporter culture". If I am pleasing my supporters then I should expect increase in amount of supporters, right? The higher rating for longer the more supporter come to my matches. Fans watch my games and like it, word get spread, more people come to my matches. And opposite, I play football that fans do not like then I can expect that they will stop being fan after some times, so slow outflow of fans. And that would be amplified by results, but results should not be only factor. I am getting great results with my team, every single year I exceeding expectations and yet supporters growth is very slow, sometimes even negligible. Inform me why? 

And yes I have heard that teams from smaller towns get less supporters etc, as I mentioned at the beginning there have to be a balance between realism and fun. If you are 10 years into future, and you have won 10 times league, it would be stupid to have 2000 supporters in 40 mln country. It is said that 25% of population of Spain is Barcelona sympathiser, but in Barcelona does not live 25% of population (about 3%), so you can have supporters from other cities. Lets make it more dynamic. 

What about "community outreach" training? Let us influence fans a bit. I loose one training a week but might please my supporters and even bad match results will gate pass a bit, or maybe a lot, maybe I will do it three times a week for price of slowing growth of my players? Maybe too many "community outreach" training will have diminished returns.

Make it more dynamic, let me influence somehow supporter culture. Maybe once a year I can add or remove one of their expectations, or change level of importance by one degree. Higher degree give or take away more supporters depending on how good grade is for that particular expectation. 

Let make it more dynamic, show us that we actually influence something.

6)
Money. Why do I earn money in the game? Why others do? Apart from being more expensive to club, same for players? Maybe some usage can be made to money? So unemployed players or staff member would feel more inclined to get job the longer is unemployed? Maybe money could be use to develop coaches attributes, rather than just time, or support developing attributes as an extra to passage of time? Maybe earning particular amount of money would increase life standard of players and staff members. Maybe that could be another depth into the game? Let staff member and players earn money and spend it on something. 

Let make it more dynamic!

Kind Regards,
Furmanbp


 

[Zachary Whyte]

Thank you for the very detailed suggestions. These will be reviewed further by the developers and your ideas could feature in future FM's.