How good are we expecting the FM 2025 match engine to look?

[Rashidi]

Personally speaking, the move to Unity might give SI the chance to give users:

a. Modular User Interface, more customisation options for the skin, I have a sneaky feeling there will be a relearning curve for a lot of us.

b. More realistic graphics and collision physics.  At present we only see a graphical illustration of maybe two players who look like colliding. This could conceivably give us more realistic corner routines with players pushing each other and falling to ground which hardly happens now.

c. Better AI interaction models between manager/player manager/board and manager/press.

d Unity is very good at world building, so I definitely expect a more dynamic economic model in the game where clubs can suddenly find themselves with more money or in some cases administration mode forcing them into negative territory, where they need to manage finances more aggressively.

e. With Unity, I expect to see more varied squad building, some clubs turning into youth factories others become magnets for high rep players. 
 

F. Tactically I expect a completely different UI with new options, plus better representation of the impact of a managers choices at least hypothetically. How they translate into the game depend on the type of players you have.  A good real world example is Manchester United. In the game they seem to play well all the time, in the real world they can go from brilliant to muppets in a matter of days.

maybe I am too optimistic.

[Sloak]

My main hope is a big step up in clarity. I don’t care about graphics really, I play in 2d most of the time as I find 3D has too much going on, but that’s mainly due to the aforementioned lack of clarity.

There has been, is, and will continue to be confusion about what attributes actually do what until the end of time (I have 10k+ hours and just recently learned strength is factored into headers) because SI gives poor resources to explain them, but also because they don’t really manifest in game scenarios.

I’ll give an example from my current save. I have 3 young midfielders that I’m working into the squad. They have similar Anticipation, Composure, Concentration, and Decisions, but their passing attributes vary significantly. One of them has very low vision but good passing and technique, one has low technique but good passing and vision, and the third is decent at all 3. If you total up the 3 attributes for them, they’re neck and neck, but they get to that total in very different ways.

They preform somewhat how you’d expect (low vision but high passing leading to good possession but low creation, etc.) from a statistical point of view, but they don’t at all play how they should. I want to see the low Vision player be more of a ball rotator, rather than just less successful on the same passes. 

The same is true for every attribute group. The technical but uncomposed forward, the wing with great balance but poor agility, and the defender that isn’t great at marking but has elite positioning all fail to actually give the impression any of that is happening. They play like every other player in that position and role, modified by PPI’s to a small degree, but again PPI’s impact is mainly statistical from my POV.

As it is now, If you simmed Chelsea’s season and then went back and rewatched it, you’d probably get an idea of who the best players are, but your understanding of what actually makes them great would be very small without knowing the attributes on the back end. I really like guys with unique skill sets, like 150+ PA poachers, or the true total football regens that end up with 12-13+ in most attributes, but they don’t differentiate themselves on the pitch. If I take that Poacher and ask him to do a little more as an AF, he doesn’t look like a Poacher being asked to do more, he just looks like a bad forward.

FM’s graphics will be perfect in my mind at the point that I can watch a season and form opinions on players in the same way I do IRL. The best dribbler on the pitch should let me know he’s the best by visually being the best, not just by succeeding at a higher rate.

TLDR: If you ask the best dribbler in the prem to dribble by an average defender 100 times, and then ask an average dribbler to do the same, there will be a difference in how it looks as well as the rate of success. FM has the statistical side down, but has basically nothing for the visual side, which I’d like to see changed.