santy001

This aspect can be mitigated through game setup. It's tricky but if there are too many clubs at the level below the top clubs then they tend to bid lower. Go too far the other way and the big clubs can bid a lot for players, clearly more than they're worth.

Genuine nonsense. Staff were recruited to work on that side specifically. Job listings on the SI site for that some years back were probably in part the reason it was announced as early as it was, because you can't be hiring staff for head research roles and such with that knowledge as a requirement without giving it away.

Some people have said they are seeing way too many goals from throw-ins, personally I'm not and I've been chasing down some of those posts to try and see routines that are resulting in more goals. As it would be very useful to have in my pocket when it comes to network saves, but I haven't had any joy in reliably finding anything that produces throw-in goals. I came to the conclusion that its quite likely therefore there are some weaknesses in set-ups players favour with throw-ins, rather than it being a widespread issue like some corner routines in the past.

It refers to the mental traits, and professionalism is one of them as XaW mentions. These days its a bit more complicated though and a handful of other attributes are tying in like ambition, determination and even attributes like loyalty. A more loyal player will work harder for you in training and developing for example. These attributes can be indicated on a coach report for your player, so if it was bright green and has dimmed a little then you can tell that attribute has likely decreased. Or if previously it was absent but now it's an orange marker against them you can infer the same.

The link below is the appropriate section to get things reviewed by SI. Historical databases are pretty much impossible because of the licensing requirements. Not exactly realistic to negotiate rights with thousands/tens of thousands of individual rights holders. In the case of players who have passed you need to find out if they put in place any of the legal frameworks which meant a license would still be required to use their likeness or if it is effectively free to use. Football Manager Feature Requests - Sports Interactive Community (sports-interactive.com)

Certain things can obviously be shared, like ball physics. While I know there was mention quite a while back the motion capture for the players needed to be re-done it makes sense that there will be adjustments to the match engine for the women's football and while hitting the right balance will be a challenge some aspects will come down to modifiers. There will be a lot of things in the ME where a coefficient is applied to something and having coefficients gives more precise control rather than having to change the underlying math/calculations. So maybe for the men's game something is set at 84% and for the women's it will be 78%, in the men's one thing is 50% and the women's it will be at 63% etc.

Games as a service has been everyone's desire since WoW had 12 million active subscriptions at like $8 a month. GTA online is probably the current top dog in that field but you can't just produce it on demand. Look at the last 20 years failed MMO's and then games like Concord recently, Kill the Justice League, Anthem. Even studios who've proven they can create games that succeed like Rockstar failed miserably to do it again with RDR2 and the online mode it had. The fear of not being able to do it with GTA 6 is one of the reasons I think (paired with the absurd money GTA 5 is still bringing in) that we haven't yet seen the sequel and there was little impetus to get it out before now. Crusader Kings 2 did a decent take on a game as a subscription where you could get the game and all DLC playable for a monthly fee, but that was around the time CK3 came out. Sega were incredibly NFT focused a little while back when that was all the rage, but Ubisoft beat everyone to the punch and proved just how utterly dreadful an idea for gaming that was. Sometimes I imagine you just have to sit back and wait for something new and shiny to take the interest of the companies who are at the top of the pyramid at distributor/publisher level. That and they need to keep in mind that the last couple of years have shown that an awful lot of people in senior roles at those companies have completely misjudged the gaming landscape.

To follow on from @talhak in terms of the switch to Unity. FM is currently on an in-house system to the best of my knowledge. Bethesda has the Creation Engine for their internal games, CDProjektRed had the RED engine which they're now retiring. Blizzard has their own internal engine for WoW etc. A lot of long standing companies had their own engine because around 20 years ago the industry was in a different place, smaller teams with more intimate knowledge of their engine (since the people creating it are still there) and they'd build their own engines alongside the development of games. Unity is one of those that has become sort of an industry norm, people are trained on it and are familiar. Same with Unreal engine. A lot of companies have hit the point where maintaining their internal engines and making the generation leaps forward that we're seeing from off the shelf solutions aren't particularly viable alongside skilling up a workforce to use their own internal engine. Especially when development teams are growing into the hundreds, you can have a fantastic onboarding process but if you've got to get 50+ people through it, then it simply takes time. For studios working on the likes of a Red Dead Redemption or GTA the long development cycle probably lends itself quite well to that, you can add on an extra year to train staff on in-house systems. But as seen with games like Cyberpunk, it can still have problems even across longer development cycles. You can hire people ready to work on Unity/Unreal etc right now. With an in-house system you need to identify which skills transfer best and simply provide time to get familiar with the quirks of your system. Studios could in theory with in house systems reach a point where the total number of staff familiar with and able to work with an internal system diminishes to a level not particularly viable. How many of us work at companies where there's some piece of software that is used but only a tiny number of people know the intricacies of it because of its age and so few people can pass on that knowledge?

As Ajax you're more likely to be facing teams in the league who are going to be more restrained and sit back. You likely have a tactic that works very well in such a situation based on what you've explained. In the Champions League you're going to be coming up against sides who are more on a level with your side, or consider themselves to be the better team and will have much more of an attacking mindset. The Tactics and Training section can probably provide more answers if you share how you're currently playing. Tactics, Training & Strategies Discussion - Sports Interactive Community (sports-interactive.com)

Probably not, but the person I do my network saves mentioned it so it's a possibility. I do believe the knock on effects it will have on the game, expanding the ME to accommodate this will in turn have benefits further down the line as well as prompting a look at some things which perhaps have remained unchecked in many years (player weights being an example) because it had just kind of worked the way it was beforehand. Women's football and the impact on the ME were not the reason for the delay. Rather switching the game as a whole over to Unity is the reason. In my mind it seems quite logical to think that perhaps women's football will have been one of the furthest along aspects for FM25 given it has only ever been in development during the time the studio planned to switch to Unity.

Probably best to go looking around in this area of the forum @BillyM19. Good Player & Team Guide - Sports Interactive Community (sports-interactive.com) Milinkovic-Savic used to be my go to, but the move to Saudi means he's pretty much priced out of that now.

There's a reason why Touch didn't continue on the PC, it was something SI were open about at the time. It had a declining player count after the initial introduction. I'm someone who played it for its greater speed as it made sense for network games but honestly on FM24 there isn't much difference in the time it takes to do stuff compared to the last version of Touch on PC. Others have mentioned the Console version exists on PC via gamepass and the Touch version is still out there on Switch if you have one. I feel realistically we'd only need responsibilities in the game to have an export/save file system like tactics/training etc you can just do once and import on the next save game creation away from the streamlined experience.

If you can convince yourself of things like this being facts, surely you can just also convince yourself that it's a fact international management is in FM25. It seems you would be happier that way too, so just let yourself believe one more "fact" that makes you happy.

The game has been streamlined and become more efficient in so many areas I think people have failed to realise the last few years. Saving/Loading - way faster than a few years ago. Processing this year has been a phenomenal improvement. Holidaying through international breaks used to be the point during play where I could go to make a hot drink, come back and still have a couple of minutes before the game was done. Now it's staggeringly fast in comparison and I'm usually several minutes late back to the point processing finished. Delegating press to staff isn't a danger anymore, it has been a few years since I've had an incident where staff have gone off the rails and done something negative in an interview. Maybe that's just anecdotal good fortune but I haven't done a press conference in FM23 or FM24 and had zero ill-consequences. I've only had to get more involved with things like training and the like because getting 100-104 points a season hasn't been enough in my network game to win the title so trying to eke out a couple more points through that area made sense. There were times with different aspects it definitely felt like you were, more likely than not, going to get negative consequences if you trusted your staff. These days with most elements in my experience it's middle of the road or better than you'll do yourself unless you're putting some serious focus on it. Further improvements will always be welcome in those areas, but they really do seem to be optional to engage with in my experience. A lot of things like the press, training, they have the ability to add some depth if that is what you're after. The more mundane day to day elements of being a manager that will appeal to some players.

What happens if only 5% of the playerbase signs the petition? Steam, as big as it is, isn't the only place through which you can acquire Football Manager. Maybe it's higher on Steam, lower on PC Gamepass and then on one platform it's some weird cult like International only group of players and overall it comes out to around the 5% mark. The reason why I'm comfortable taking the stats at face value, SI didn't have to include it. As a studio decision something had to give and they made a decision. The rest is just to help people understand some of the contributing factors.