KeiranShikari

SI Project Red Embargoing content creators on showing one of the headline 'features' in their not ads. That's not a great sign.

Only really on the stuff the audience know they aren't happy with. My gut feeling is they've sidestepped stuff they'll be criticising in a few weeks time. Obviously it's an alpha but you know how these ads (but not ads) work. Can't remember which one of them it was but the guy who was covering the fan stuff. He got Wimbledon promoted to league 1 and went to round 3 or 4 in the cup and his social media following doubled. That's clearly......too dynamic but it was glossed over in the video. I might sound overly negative but I'm just saying what I see. I'm also looking forward to the game so yeah.

They don't....directly. They all want access and contact with the studio so they're never going to say anything that will burn bridges. It's also their livelihood so they're naturally not going to downplay it. The fact Zealand and others are feigning excitement about things like that should tell you where they're at. I've noticed that none of them have really spoken about the AI managers which is disappointing. Look at the things they're showing, less the things they're saying. To me it looks like a better rounded version of the last game but there's obviously no major improvements. Just hope it's match engine is balanced.

I wish he used a more middling/poor team to show it off. From the goals he showed it was clearly a side mostly on the front foot which you would expect from that Burnley side.

DrBenjy - We'll need 1 or 2 hundred hours in the game to see if defensive football is viable. Looking forward to Zealand's 'low block was a lie' video in 6 months time.

Was just about to say the social media ad campaign has just gone live. Will watch hoping for stuff related to defensive football but nothing yet from the couple I've already seen.

SI are clearly against that though so there's not point suggesting it. I think my Pokemon holds a lot of water. FM Peerless Paper and FM Superb Sculpture could be the first generation of flat and 3d games. Sign up to the FM blog for a free training potion.

That's another way they could get around to updating the graphics. Just sell a scuffed version for the hardcore 2d player people who can't run it and another version for people that bought a half decent pc or laptop within the last decade. They could do it like Pokemon and have version specific databases so you actually have to buy both to get all of the best wonderkids.

The match engine is what it's always been, okay. Some years it's better than others, most of the time it's decent but it rarely feels like it's taking strides forwards. I just hope 23's is balanced well. The reveal was promising but as always - proof, pudding, eating. The fact they haven't actually shown us much of it has me thinking it won't be a huge step forward - Obviously hope I'm wrong there. On the aesthetics side they clearly care more about animations than the rest of the package (unless they're dribble animations of course).

Indeed. Compared to a lot of video game studios I think SI get off pretty lightly. They probably laugh at the more extreme opinions because they know there's a 99% chance the guy will be buying the game anyway.

As somebody that plays with both, dots until I'm happy with how my team are playing tactically and then 3d after the graphics debate is pretty fascinating. I guess it makes sense from a selfish human point of view that the people that are happy with the graphics engine are the ones that don't use it. I also don't see many people asking for flashy/photorealistic FIFA graphics when asking for upgrades, certainly not something you'd need a 3 grand PC to run (do see that argument quite a bit). Most seem to want something that looks like it was made in this decade. I actually don't think FIFA would look anywhere near as good if you shrank the players down to the realistic scale that FM uses. It's 2022 and we don't have an animation engine which depicts dribble animations and skill moves.

SI should just be open put out a development roadmap. The game is likely going to break sales records despite literally nobody being impressed with the marketing/new features. The more I think about it the more the game as a service idea makes sense.

They have different teams. I'd be surprised i'd people making the graphics engine look like something from the current millennium were also in charge of making the AI squad building more logical. They both feel like multiple year projects though and they've probably got a million more squad planners to introduce first.

Imagine buying a smart watch and then posting about it on social media. lol

I do feel you on the email thing although most of them in my game are scouting related, if what they've said about 23 is correct then the volume of scouting emails will be reduced by a lot. Also far fewer meetings to skip. I believe there is also an option to turn off emails from certain parts of the game. That tied with putting staff in charge of stuff you don't want to manage means you can pretty much tailor it to what you need.

I assumed the environmental graphical stuff got cut back because the actual football part of it began using more processing power.

Aesthetically the stadiums, crowds, pitches and lighting looked better a decade ago. Obviously the animation part of the graphics engine is is miles better. The match engine feels better than it did 3 years ago, not something you're going to see from screenshots.

To be honest if the manager AI thing is anywhere near good as it sounds then it will be the biggest change to game in forever. That and the ability to actually play defensive football consistently.

A multi year work that should have probably started multiple years ago (maybe it has). It does seem to be one of the most requested things this year at least.

I believe SI have put data out there about the low % of users that set up all of their set pieces. Guess that was their way of saying it's not worth fixing. I'd say it's actually the user telling them that it's just not particularly intuitive. It's almost a cliche now but set pieces are a huge part of the modern game and it just seems crazy that this is what we have. International stuff is similar with a low % of players using it. I think if it was fun people would play it. It's less important than set pieces but surely a lot of the stuff needed to make it fun is already in the game.

They do put money and time into some weird places sometimes. If you want to do window dressing at least do it in a place that would improve the user's experience - like the stadium and it's surroundings. Perhaps that goes against an in house rule that the game has to be able to run on the calculator Miles used in 6th form though.

Another year of broken set pieces. Cool. Seemingly no international stuff either which is a bummer. Might as well just remove it from the game in it's current state.

I watched some of a twitch stream from somebody that works on the match engine last night and they guy was clearly pretty stressed with work. Whilst he obviously didn't say anything my impression was that despite the beta being out in a couple of weeks they are still working on it quite heavily now. I'd imagine that's pretty common and hopefully not a sign of something messy being served up.

Can see why they wouldn't break up and drip feed this year's features if this is all we are getting. Whilst it's useful stuff this year it's not exactly as exciting as the data hub, romano stuff, chris wilder ball and youth ratings.

Based on the minimal new features in the video I'm not surprised but normally they're hyping it up a lot more than they have been. Miles Jacobson is usually on Twitter 20 hours a day talking about it in the runup to beta. I think this game is going to be an inbetween release with bigger stuff coming in the next iteration. I just hope some of the bugfixes they're not talking about are significant. Like set pieces.