DP

Who are you responding to? I liked the mode too - played it often in the spirit of how it was meant to be played, alongside a club team. I don’t suspect that will change in FM26, is my point.

You’re misunderstanding the point. It’s not about playing every minute, there is too much time between matches with nothing to do. International managers are not training with their players outside of friendlies and tournaments.

It will be improved for sure - training, player dynamics, interaction and all things that can freshen it up. But I can assure you - unless all the processing between games is sped up - it will still be designed as a mode alongside your club. You can’t add things that are not there.

Possibly none. But there will never be enough to fill the time that is going to be interesting for the majority of players. Do you know what international managers do in between matches and tournaments? They watch club games. That’s it. And matches can be months and months apart. Fine if that interests you but it won’t be for the majority hence SI build international football in a way that supplements club management.

Okay a lot of dead time, then, sitting around. No matter what SI do with international management, that is always going to be the case. Unless you manage them alongside a club.

I’m not saying you can’t but it was never really designed to be played that way. If you do play as a standalone there is an awful lot of clicking through, not doing much, outside of once every two year tournaments. And if we’re honest, there’s not really a whole lot they can do to plug those gaps.

It should always be quite ‘bare bones’ as it’s a ‘bonus’ mode to be played alongside your club. Was always like this from CM2 where being able to manage the national team was a ‘cheat’. It’s never been designed to be played standalone and it shouldn’t be imo - as whatever is added it’s still not going to be busy enough. It’s absolutely fine as a bonus mode with a club team but a few things need adding and tweaking (training, dynamics etc). It doesn’t need a significant redesign, in my opinion.

There is a third choice to just leave it as it is in 24. It’s perfectly playable, especially for a tournament here and there alongside your club. I’m sure there will be other elements that remain a mess that won’t be taken out. My money is on press conferences. What would the forum rather be removed altogether; international football or press conferences?

Isn’t the game releasing in 2 months? There absolutely has to be stable elements of the game right now otherwise that date is at risk. With a game as complex as this you’d expect it to be in testing at this point.

Well quite. There’s doing transparency well and there’s doing transparency poorly 😅 It was odd to see the negative news in the first release - to do it again is strange. Just chuck in another few screenshots at least to soften the blow.

How can it be ‘pretty special’ though? Whatever they do with it, it cannot be as involved as the club career. I actually like the way it’s implemented now as it allows you to play alongside your club. If they add lots of micromanagement to make this harder, it would actually be a backward step. The focus really should be on tweaking a few things such as training, dynamics and international player interaction - if they add too much other stuff it’ll be too time consuming to do alongside your club. And let’s be honest, there just isn’t enough fun stuff in between tournaments to make it viable as a mode without a club.

I would love to understand SI’s vision for international football. Is it for the player to mange an international side only, true to life? If so, good luck with ensuring there is enough to do outside of the fixtures. I don’t mind the current way it is implemented as it’s light and breezy enough to make sure it doesn’t over burden the player with their club duties. Only a few fixes and tweaks needed really.

Technical explanations are ok though - look at how the latest Crusader Kings 3 dev diary starts 😅 https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-155-the-shattered-empire.1701999/

It won’t be scrapped. They do actually have a business model.

International management has been in the game since I started playing CM2. Anyone remember the ‘cheat’ where you could set your name as the real life manager back then to manage one of the UK nations from the start? Terry Venables 😎 As something that has been in the game for so long - a staple feature even though many didn’t play it - it is a shame it’s not there for FM25.