nb9

I have been massively critical of the development of FM in recent years. I thought last years addition was extremely poor and basically a rerelease of 22. You can read my posts on this forum, it's pretty much just me moaning. I feel like they have wasted time and effort adding features nobody is ever going to use, adding clutter to the game whilst neglecting the core of the game. Which I see as a valid critique. I saw the features for this game and once again I was extremely underwhelmed and expected more of the same. But... this game (so far) is significantly better than previous years & note, all the improvements come to stuff that was already in the game. The match engine is significantly better both in the way it plays and the visual look of it. You can actually see what players are good at and they have an individual quality that is visible, e.g. you can see when a player is a good dribbler, good passer, good tackler, etc etc. The game is extremely quick as well, processing is as fast as ever so bravo for that. There is still a huge amount to fix that's actually in the game - the menus for example are truly a cluttered mess and haven't changed in 10 years, it needs to be addressed hopefully in the next addition and will truly give FM a new game feel, and if SI read this and want to take anything from my post it's that i'll be hugely appreciative if they add absolutely nothing new to the game, just make the stuff already in it better and fix stuff that's been broken for about a decade. This game is a huge step forward which is the first FM I have said that about for a good few years now.

I think the value range addition was one of the most pointless in recent years. It took a very basic concept and just overcomplicated it by adding even more variables & it's never never accurate anyway. One of many parts of the game that has become cluttered & unnessesery IMO.

Pretty sure that is full release, not beta release. Games full release are commonly released at midnight.

I don't think they will ever release it at midnight, it will be during working hours UK ( i know they have released in the evening last few betas but thats still working hours for some!)

I'll always use the default skin for a few weeks but I can't play without faces or logos

Boring hat on but if they were going to release the beta today I don't think they would have organised YouTubers videos today. What would be the point when they would only be uploading more videos in a few hours of release anyway? It's not the logical thing to do from a marketing point of view.

At the top level yeah. But your last sentence just proves my point. The match engine is not balanced & it doesn't encourage playing a way that suits your players strengths nor encourage different systems. The best feature they could do is make the game actually interesting again to find your niche. Instead, everything evolves into gegenpress. It's just boring. Of course you COULD make it work playing anyway, but you could spent 10 seasons perfecting the perfect formation, and then switch to the bog standard meta & outperform your perfected tactic playing a different way considerably. That's wrong.

The beta came out at 6pm last year & 8pm the year before. There is time yet!

This is absolute nonsense. It is objectively more difficult to achieve anything in the game if you are playing defensive systems. You can build clubs over years playing a defensive system buying players tailored to that way of playing, then switch to the standard boring gegenpress attacking style with no effort and get much better results. Over and over again. Go and look in the custom tactics forum just for starters, almost all the most successful tactics play the same way regardless of perssonel. To suggest it's to do with not having the right players is disingenious. The match engine needs to encourage more variety in playstyle, that is a fact.

Is there actually any solid info that the beta is coming immintently, or are we just goofing around?

I don't care about new features or anything. The main thing I want from the game is to add variety in how it can be played. The series has become so stale because there is one way of playing the game successfully & it's attack attack attack with press press press. If you don't enjoy playing like that then it just becomes a frustratingly dull game to play. It's sad to say this but every addition they have released since 2018, the match engine seems to get worse and worse. You just can't make defensive systems viable consistently, if this is corrected in the new game I will be happy, but I have gone into the game thinking this for a good few years now & it hasn't been corrected. Not to mention the endless list of bugs. Stop adding so much clutter to the game & fix the stuff that's already in it. Rant over!

Ok, so I have been experimenting all month with defensive tactics and my conclusion is that it's impossible to get one to work well. The reality is, the more defensive you are in this game the more likely you are to concede goals. I couldn't ever consistently keep clean sheets with a very defensive tactic. I played 6 full seasons as Nacional in the Portugese second division over and over again with varying defensive tactics and then did the last season with an extremely attacking tactic. Can anyone guess which tactic kept the most clean sheets and best defensive record? Yes - it was the Very Attacking one with everybody pressing like rampant up the other end of the pitch - this was by a long way as well. I can post some more detail of my findings if anybody is interested? But it feels like the problem of FM in recent years only having one way of playing to be successful has never been more accurate than with this match engine, which is extremely disapointing considering they weren't the sounds coming out pre-release. Can anyone prove my theory wrong?

It would also help if they completely binned the current UI / UX and started from scratch. The whole menu system is cluttered and has real readability / visiblity problems. It needs to be stripped back to the information that's actually required. The term "less is more" is massively needed at SI - the game is getting close to becoming unplayable because of the cluttered menus. I don't know where to find half the stuff I need, and I have played the game for over a decade, I dread to think how a new player would find anything.

Isn't it about time dual club ownership became a thing in the game? You can't even list an owner more than once in the current game. For example, the Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis isn't even listed as an owner at Forest because he's the owner at Olympiacos. That's just the basics, but the way the clubs act should also be a thing. It's a massive part of football ownership now and it's just ignored. As well as affiliate clubs, owners should take over other clubs in other countries and provide a link that way with all the scouting, cheap players, loans, same board etc etc. Obvious it should be very rare but it would be a welcome addition.

I remember a couple of editions ago I had the Spanish 3rd division play-offs, and my entire team went on holiday because the game assumed the season had finished so I had to play grayed out players

FM should be hiring you my friend. You have done a great job. Imagine what your creative ideas could do with a team behind you at SI. This is how the base skin should feel. Not the cluttered mess we are currently served up with.

Glad I am not the only one then. I also read that it's much better, so it was really annoying when I got my hand on the game and found it borderline impossible for me to make a defensive tactic work. I share your frustrations. I was hoping the main thing to come from this game was them making it so the only way to play this game wasn't Gegenpress attack attack attack.

You have to decide for yourself what "cheating" is because it's a single player game, it doesn't really matter and one person's cheating is just how others play the game. Some people will use custom databases with sugar daddys, some will use things like genie scout to scout players, some will use custom tactics. At the end of the day it's finding the limit for you to: A) Enjoy the game B) Not feel like you are cheating yourself And presuming because of this post you probably think you are cheating yourself?

Has anybody managed to get a defensive / solid tactic to actually work on this FM? I have managed it on many previous versions. I won the league by scoring less goals than games played I was that solid defensively on FM20. But having zero luck on this game, any defensive style just seems to be utterly useless & you HAVE to attack attack attack to have any sort of joy. Anybody got any evidence to prove me wrong? Example, I got this to work on previous versions and had decent success:

You are right but it's also little things that chip away at the playerbase for years and years that are just neglected. Nothing sums up the menality at SI than the Squad view screen re-arrangment, it's just bone-idle that it hasn't been fixed for probably about a decade now. There are hundreds of other stuff like that which have just added up over the years - and with no notable improvements to the game the attention has really turned to them. Stop taking the mickey SI.

It probably sums up the game though doesn't it? That people can even watch a video and not tell the different between a version from 2 years ago - and the same problems that the video talks about persist. I hope the reaction to this years FM is a massive wakeup call to SI. They are getting lazy and seem to be devoid of creativity which made the game so great in the first place. Next years addition needs a huge amount of quality of life features and a fresh feel because it's clear they have taken advantage of loyal buyers in this years release. If they keep making the same mistakes they will lose that loyalty.

Does the game feel really RNG this year compared to previous years to anybody else? I went into a 2 leg qualifier, won the first leg 4-0, and ended up losing the second leg 6-0 playing the exact same formation & players a week later. I am just finding this years game so difficult to get any kind of rhythm going at all.

That's next years headline feature sorted then - I joke of course. But it's probably close to being true.

This bug sums up the culture at SI doesn't it? This should have been fixed a decade ago. They need a revamp from top to bottom. Breath some life into this great game - it still is a great game, but is getting neglected by either poor or neglectful management.

The story in general isn't it mate? I think the negativity that surrounds FM is a build up of stuff like this that just simply should be fixed and just comes across as neglect that they are not. There is a hundred other examples of stuff like this. For me the worst one is the player/squad/player search tabs, anything with columns is impossible to rearrange. Would this be difficult to fix? Yet it's been impossible to rearrange anything for every edition of FM. All that stuff grinds away at the playerbase whilst getting more complicated features nobody really needs as a main feature this year. It's all very frustrating. I have been saying for 4 editions of FM now that all I want is a UI / Menu overhaul with graphical improvements, and this edition seems to be really putting pressure on SI to put that front of the queue as the discontent is growing. I have done work in UI/UX and if I presented the FM UI to them, they would laugh in my face and rightly so. It is completely cluttered to the point where they could get rid of half the stuff in the UI.