Sir_Liam

I'm very unhappy that features are being removed from the next game, particularly international management, but also the shouts. SI are making 2 huge changes to FM25 with the move to the Unity engine and addition of women's football, have these projects turned out to be far bigger than expected and that's subsequently affected other areas of the game? If so that is really disappointing as I don't think there is a good reason to remove international management from the game, it's been there since the Champ Man days and even though it is an area that is overdue a revamp I don't think that means it should be removed completely. Perhaps if this revamp had happened in the last few years more people would be playing that mode. I play it occasionally but would use it more if it worked better. I respect the fact SI are adding women's football to FM as by Miles's own admission this project is costing a lot of money for little return, which means that in an age of companies making games designed to milk as much money as possible from the customer SI are instead making the game they want to make, even if another direction would be more financially beneficial. It isn't though a feature that interests me. The Unity engine is potentially very exciting, but currently we don't have much information on it, so whilst I am interested to see what this offers I don't have an idea of how this will benefit the game at the moment. In addition to this I really disliked FM24. I've owned every title since it became Football Manager and for every version up until FM23 I've played it up until shortly before the release of the next version. I stopped playing FM24 in January, with the half finished mess of a match engine being the main reason. So my faith in SI was already pretty low before today's announcement and now, speaking as someone who has been very loyal to the series, I don't know if I'll buy FM25. Features I want being removed, a major new feature that doesn't interest me, the massive unknown of a new game engine, all coming off the back of, imo, the worst version of FM that has been released. I just feel that with needing to fix the problems in FM24, moving to the Unity engine and adding women's football, as well as the other changes that come with every release, you've given yourselves too much to do and I fear the game will suffer as a result. I normally sympathise with SI as FM has given me so much joy over the years and I think you've taken a lot of unfair flack at times, but I can't defend you right now, it isn't good enough and a lot of the criticisms in this thread are justified.

I've got save games going back to FM2016 I'd like to try this on, and from 2016 to 2020 I played a similar way, managing in Eastern European leagues of varying strengths, signing a lot of young players and relying on loan fees to make a profit. I stopped doing this as much as SI (rightly imo) made it harder to generate loan fees from 2021 onwards, but I still signed young players and looked to profit from them, and was clever at keeping them at the club over the long term if they became key players, even when there was a lot of interest in them. As I've often played in leagues where player values are very low compared to the larger European leagues (Sweden, Belarus, Serbia) I think the AI manager will sell the best players cheaply and be wasteful when spending money because of the bank balance I've built up. I'll be interested to see if there's any difference in AI behaviour across different games, especially as I have games in Serbia with the same club on FM2017 and FM2020, where the club is one of the best in Europe. Whilst I'm not massively experienced with the in game interview process, I've tended to find it an exercise in making sure you say the right thing rather than what you really think, so I agree they should make changes to that.

I normally do save games where I stay at one club so don't get to see the damage the AI does after I've left. I have thought in the past that I'd like to holiday a few seasons on some of my old save games to see what happens, I think I might do that after reading this.

Congratulations on the league title, it's a great achievement to turn Rangers around after the mess the AI made of the finances.

If you want to know which teams play at high altitude you have to go into the editor and look at the city the stadium is in as unfortunately the game itself gives you no warning. I did make a list from my FM24 save game and the ones to look out for are the 3 mentioned above, Cusco, Garcilaso, and ADT which are all above 10,000 feet. UTC and Melgar are also ones to look out for, but they're not as high up and so the effect isn't as strong.

I've managed Universitario on both FM23 and 24, unfortunately I wasn't successful either time, but I liked managing them and love their huge stadium. In case you've not managed in Peru before FM does simulate the effects of playing at high altitude so away games against teams like Cienciano, Sport Huancayo and especially Binacional are very difficult as your players condition deteriorates much quicker than usual, whereas your opponents won't as they've adjusted to the conditions. Good luck.

I'm disappointed at the removal of shouts as it's a feature I do use, even if it did need improving. I think the important thing with the new UI is improving the creation of custom views, making it easier and less fiddly, and also allowing us to import/export them in bulk. Custom views will also presumably be available much more widely throughout the game with the new engine which is good.

At a guess it's the hidden youth importance attribute which affects how willing the board is to upgrade youth facilities. What I find strange is that it seems easy enough to max out Junior Coaching and Youth Recruitment regardless, but Youth Facilities is treated differently. Surely all 3 should be affected if the board's Youth Importance is low?

Congratulations on the League Cup win, it'll be interesting to see how you do in Europe.

I nearly always do one club saves where I try to take a lower league team in a country to the top, and I'm also one that generally finds it difficult to leave clubs. On FM2021 I did do a journeyman save though which put me in a situation where I did have to decide to leave clubs. That meant moving away from a focus of retaining my job no matter what and only thinking about the club, and instead doing what I could to grow my manager's reputation and make me more attractive to club's further up the food chain. For example at one club the chairman told me that my performance hadn't been good enough (I wasn't in danger of the sack though). I disagreed and subsequently resigned in protest, whereas in a one club save I would have smoothed things over. I also found that once I'd got into the habit of leaving clubs it got easier. I also got the DoF to do the transfers which made things harder and also brought in another reason to leave a club if I felt the DoF wasn't able to bring in the right players or move on ones I didn't want. I will admit that I did allow myself to step in if the DoF was doing something particularly crazy though and I did do the odd signing myself. Finally I started in a league so bad (Somalia) that you'd never ever want to stay there too long. That meant that it wasn't a difficult decision to leave my first club. That set the ball rolling in terms of getting in the mindset of leaving clubs. My only other advice is don't do international management, atleast until you have a world class reputation. On FM2021 it artificially boosted your reputation to the point that it made it too easy to get better jobs. I'm not sure if that's still the case though as I haven't done international management since.

Congratulations on staying up. As a long time reader but first time poster on this thread I've enjoyed the journey and the progress your team has made. I enjoy the posts showing the progress of your players at the end of each season too.

Currently in game we can set a reminder on notes to occur on a certain date. I think this feature could be improved by adding in the ability to set reminders for when certain events occur. I'm specifically thinking about notes relating to an AI manager. I might note down that a particular tactic worked against this manager in the past and want a reminder of that note to appear before I next face that manager's team. This could also be used for notes about opposition players, and I'm sure there'd be other circumstances it'd be useful.

This has been an issue in the game for years and has affected a number of my save games. Last year I started in the Swedish 4th tier, with a non modded database and had the same difficulties hiring staff. This issue doesn't seem to affect staff who are already employed by other clubs though with them happily taking a lot less money in wages than free agent staff. I will often eventually find someone whose wages I can get just within the budget after a bit of negotiating but I have found it impossible to fill a role before.

Currently Football Manager doesn't even acknowledge when you're playing a game at high altitude in countries like Peru, even though the effects of high altitude are simulated in the game. I'd like to see this mentioned in pre-game new articles, and coaching staff provide advice about training and tactics to deal with it.

I went back to FM2023 a few weeks ago and I won't be returning to FM2024 as I don't think the match engine is very good. Primarily there's too many set piece goals, particularly from short throw ins with goals from crosses after a throw in being particularly frustrating. There's also too many goals from corners, and it's fair to say that I benefitted at times from that too with my centre back having a very prolific season on one of the 3 brief save games I attempted. I also found that stronger teams were particularly dependent on set pieces with me conceding 4 goals from corners in 2 games against a Brazilian team in the Copa Libertadores. I also feel far too many highlights start from set pieces, and it means that it's harder to pick up patterns of play when watching on extended highlights. Ultimately a match where I lost 3-0 conceding 2 from indirect free kicks and 1 from a direct free kick was the final straw. I do though like the set piece creator, it's a great idea and works well in terms of setting up my set pieces. It was probably a key reason I stuck with FM24 as long as I did. The other main frustration is how overpowered Gegenpress styles are, and how weak a lower block counter attacking style is. On FM2023 I played 3 quite different systems that I was able to get working effectively in a realistic way. On FM2024 after struggles without using Gegenpress on my first save game I started again at River Plate in Argentina and whilst I know they're a good side I played Gegenpress and won my first 20 league games, with my team only ending the run once I had to rotate the squad when the Libertadores started. It felt easy. In my 3rd save game I started in Peru where regular games at high altitude mean aggressive pressing isn't possible all the time, and my squad wasn't suited to it either. It was such a struggle trying to put together even a semi-effective tactic that didn't involve Gegenpressing though and I feel like the game forces you down the Gegenpressing path, whereas I've always liked to play a variety of styles. I also feel like the "positional play" feature is incomplete. For example these positional rotations seem to only involve roles whose base position is deeper such as an inverted wing back or segundo volante. Other roles such as inside forward or deep lying forward should surely have these rotations where appropriate. I also feel like I have a lack of control over my players as they sometimes move into unexpected positions even when there's no obvious teammate to rotate with. For example my AMC in a diamond midfield kept positioning himself to the right no matter what role I gave him when I wanted him to be central and float to both side where appropriate. I also saw an inverted wing back with a defend duty go charging forward when my team had a cautious mentality for no obvious reason. I think in future games you need to be much clearer about the positions players will take up in your selected tactic as you can no longer rely on the description of the role being enough. Finally the match engine feels too unpredictable, which ties in with the lack of control I feel at times. I played one team and battered them in the first meeting, only to get battered myself in the 2nd meeting just a few weeks later. No 2 games are the same but the complete change in the way the match played out didn't feel realistic. The final game of that save game saw me 3-0 down after 6 minutes and 4-0 down after 20 minutes against the best team in the league. I made some changes to my tactic at half time which involved opposition instructions of tight marking, always closing down and hard tackling all wide players, never tight marking or closing down all central players and setting my pressing trap to trap inside whilst playing a 4-4-2. It ended 4-3 and I was very close to getting an equaliser. I should never have been able to get back into the game doing that and stopped playing that save game afterwards. I'm not one to complain too much about FM games. There's always things that annoy me of course but they tend to be minor. Only once before have I returned to a previous version and that version was FM2008, and although I did later return to it I felt the match engine was never good enough in that game. I'm getting similar vibes with FM2024, although this time I won't be returning.