DMC-12

No, but then I didn't think they'd be naïve enough to post a big announcement 2 months before the game launches that says absolutely nothing either.

But he wouldn't be the centre of attention if he put it on the announcement earlier. This way he gets to see all the replies saying 'love the game Miles, looks amazing!!!' and 'can't wait to buy it, best version of FM ever!!!'.

It feels like this is getting towards CM4 levels of disaster. I feel sorry for the people actually developing the game at SI. They've been let down massively by the announcements up until now, and those terrible screenshots released today.

So? Just because that's been the case in the past doesn't mean it should be the case now. FM24 was continuity FM23 because they were moving to Unity and upgrading the graphics. The new match engine and graphics have been a massive talking point for the past year, and are one of the key areas of this game - it should be a headline feature, with screenshots and footage leading every announcement.

Are they? We've not seen any evidence of that yet, and aren't likely to for a while!

So it's an announcement that there's going to be an announcement. My expectations were low, but fair play on managing to be even more underwhelming.

Its 2024 and I'm still being caught out by that.

Thats how it should be for all games, especially nowadays when they're all digital and there's no scarcity. It was different when there were only so many physical copies of a game available in the shops, but that's just not the case now. Its just sensible to wait and see.

I actually think that number would have been higher in FM. Possibly not with women's club sides, but certainly with the international teams and I could see managing a women's side at the World Cup or Euros being popular. Unfortunately, they've removed international management, meaning the popular part of the women's game (and it could be argued the more well known part of the women's game) is locked off. Its massively short sighted, especially as there's a Euros coming up next summer.

That was my take too. Its like the council changing a bus route so that no one can use it, then using the lack of people using it as a way to justify getting rid of it. SI could have updated international management at any point (and missed a huge opportunity with the 2022 World Cup which was right after the game launched), but they chose not to, leaving it a bit of a mess that lots of people didn't play because so many aspects of it didn't work. Miles uses that lack of playtime as the reason for removing it, ignoring that they forced the lack of interest in the first place.

Just another thought - a huge part of women's football is the international matches. Taking away the opportunity for people to manage those sides is pretty concerning. A lot of people don't know about the club teams and who is good, or have any interest in the clubs teams, but the international teams are well known and popular and the women's game seems more biased towards that aspect.

I'm calling it now - FM26 will be the CM03/04 of this generation of the game. CM4 was good, but had loads of issues and bugs at launch that stayed with it for the whole cycle. The 2d engine was a step forward, but it felt like it could have been more (especially following from CM 01/02 which was the peak of that generation). 03/04 fixed all of that, added some more features in and was the game CM4 wanted to be at launch.

It was nothing to do with attention spans, it was just a 42 minute update that could have been condensed into 5. They spent 5 (FIVE) minutes alone talking about sleeve patches on the players changing depending on the league they were in. Thats the definition of something that could have been an email rather than a meeting.

Why change the habit of a lifetime? Remember the 42 minute video? I'm sure he's great in the background, but I'd keep him as far away from announcements and updates as possible. Unless he's suddenly learned how to take feedback properly now?

Its not a great update. More things being removed from the game, and Miles cancelling everything doesn't suggest its all going well in the background. International management isn't going to be a headline feature for FM26, as its been part of the game since the Championship Manager days. It hasn't worked properly in years (which is probably why the percentage of players doing it is so low, rather than due to a lack of interest), but its been in the game. I'm getting CM4 vibes from FM25 now. A huge step forwards that ultimately didn't work until the next annual release.

I'm looking forward to the next update, mainly as I don't think it can be less underwhelming than the last one. Hopefully there'll be more information what's in the game, rather than what's been taken out, and some proper images of what it looks like (the examples shown last time weren't great and it would have been better to show nothing than those ones!). The next update might actually be better as a video, to show how the new game plays (even in an early state). Just not a 42 minute long one!

Its awful, and its designed purely to benefit the top 5 leagues to ensure their sides remain in the Champions League as long as possible. And my making the same changes to the Europa League and the Conference League, it means that winners from outside of those top 5 leagues are now highly unlikely. Which is what Uefa wants.

That one really annoys me as well (why highlight a position the player can barely do, rather than the position they play in?), but I assumed it was a skin issue since I'm not using the default. It just seems a very irritating bug!

Sorry, I meant the last 'big' update back at the start of December (I think!). It did make changes to the match engine and sorted some of the defensive issues.

I'm actually looking forward to seeing the patch notes and what exactly has been fixed with the update. I think I've been lucky in that I've not hit many game ruining bugs, but there's definitely still issues. I think for me, the last update fixed a lot of the match engine problems I was having from the initial release so I was a little blind to some of the newer issues - now that I've had time, I'm really starting to notice them again. One annoying thing is that I'm really enjoying the save I'm on, but I know that any update won't fix some of the competition issues or other issues I might hit without starting a new game. The long delay between updates (and the lack of any communication around them) spoils long term games, as I'm now faced with giving up on the save I'm enjoying (but that has some problems) and having to start a new one, just to get the full experience of a game I bought in November. I'm sure there'll be parts of this update which could have been released long ago (the parts fixing UI issues, competition rules etc - basically anything that isn't the match engine!), so the question is why does it need to all be wrapped up into only two updates per game cycle? What is stopping SI from releasing minor updates as they fix things? It may also help the communication problems, as at the very least it would show that they are working on the game, and that they are picking up on the bugs being reported.

The whole launch of this game from the start has put pressure on themselves, and they've just added to it with the lack of updates for the game. I know they care about it, and I know they're working on improving it, but the lack of any sort of communication is just frustrating and gives the opposite impression. FM23 should provide a lot of lessons learned to SI ahead of FM24.

Dialogue during press conferences/tunnel interviews/conversations can't be modded can it? After a season, its all the same text every time (and the same text as previous games...) and I've just found that I skip every one of them as its boring to see the same things over and over. From what I've noticed, the press conferences seem to have no impact on anything, but thats a separate discussion/issue so I don't think I'm negatively impacting my game by ignoring this section. I seem to remember on a much older version that additional commentary lines could be added to the game (I think it involved editing a text file!), however it did add a bit of freshness to matches as it wasn't the same phrases repeated every couple of games. Couldn't the same be done for all the questions and dialogue options? Changing the text wouldn't change what happened as a result of the answer but it would at least add a bit more immersion back into that area and make it a little more realistic rather than a constant Groundhog Day before every game. I definitely feel like I'm skipping much more of the content in this version compared to others, either as it hasn't added anything (manager accessories, Squad Planner, the Champions League music....) or I've seen it all before. It just seems a shame that I'm not using a lot of the game that a lot of hard work has been put into.