Piperita

Can you elaborate? Currently I see quite a lot of visible dribblings. My central players are rocking it, constantly cutting past their opposition, holding onto the ball under pressure, and generally having more 1-v-1 situations. I think there are two big (or rather BIG) problems right now: The system can not handle these situations on the flanks. Players are marked too loosely there and thus what counts as "Dribbling" is just a burst of speed past the opposition. It looks back and it lacks the feeling of achievement and wonder if an aggressive winger opens up spaces and runs into empty outer land or suddenly breaks through towards the goal. In the centre there is more "bunching" and it feels like better marking, resulting in more close encounters. And with the strength of Gegenpress, Counters, and high mentalities, the game runs too fast for the good stuff to show most of the time. We get shots or passes or quick dashes first. Since I changed my base formation to be slower in tempo but with an aggressive mentality, DLFa, AMA and IFs have had quite a few nice scenes. They take the risk of a direct duel for space but also take the time to wait for roaming or overlapping teammates. In my opinion there needs to be a massive upgrade on the flanks and for the centre ot should be more normal to see these scenes. Players should get these scenes more often, particularly if they have the right skillset (dribbling, flair, decision) or right amount of daring (flair, low teamwork) for it, and not just in particular setups.

We need Steam to start the game. We need this forum to file bug reports. We need FMFC for news and some features. Do we still need Youtube for some achievements? What's next?

Started the beta with Freiburg to see whether or not I could replicate their overperformance from real life (that turned out not to be an overperformance but a new reality). In an eventful season I managed to win the title thanks to two wins over the big Bayern, a really solid defensive block, as well as good teamwork. It probably also didn't hurt that almost every player was rated "enjoys big matches" and "highly consistent". It was a fun season and the AI really worked that transfer window afterwards. I lost two key players to big offers and got a few new additions in. But the spark was quickly lost due to a combination Qatar and Champion's League creating too much match congestion to be enjoyable and the beta-database just being too different. Mostly in a good way (more higher PA players in lower leagues, more spread in CA) but it was still too much to get it going concurrently to a full save. Plus, I had already finished a lot of future transfers and the values were a lot weirder, which might have weirded out my board ^^ Once the full game started, I started as a dictator manager in the third league as I do every year. This time my eyes fell on Victoria Köln, mainly because they had two very promising talents and because it is a fun region for the youth team and local rivalries. Let's just say that it was absolute bonkers! The main talent, Amyn, still plays for me ten seasons later and is my star player. Thrice I almost lost him. The first time when I just got promoted to the Bundesliga. I had an offer for 25 Million (five times my yearly wages and as much as the stadium expansion) which the board accepted and I fought tooth and nail. I needed this guy, expected more, and will not let them set a precedent: I am the boss! The year after I had access to more talents and I chose to accept a deadline day offer for 60 million which failed as the contract negotiations took too long. The third time was after my first sextuple. Got an absolute immoral offer from England and I could never hope to beat them on wages. Outside of gamey reasons I had to accept. But instead I chose to try my luck with contract negotiations and with some incentives he chose to stay another 5 years and lost any interest in transferring. I stopped a year after though as winning the second sextuple with most players in the starting eleven being under 20 was getting too much and I finally started to realise that an attacking 4231 just has too much power of its own, no tactical brilliance needed. Then real life made me stop a longish time. First too much work, then moving into a new house and finally the big events that made me compulsively check news feeds every few seconds and made me way too familiar with eastern Europe's geography and city names. For half of which I had a bookmark for mentions on Twitter at some times... Recently I got back into the groove. Got an experimental save with Bochum going and fell in love with both AMa and CMa. Got two extraordinary seasons before new ideas struck me Then I really realised what the DLFa not having a hardlocked "Get Further Forward" means. Tried a few more extravagant tactics. A 541 with a full defensive line with support duty. Tactics fully build around the "Switches to Wide Area" and "Makes Long Passes" PPM. A AFa+RMD experiment resulting in something were 90% of goals went to two player. This save I almost deemed good enough to continue. But for my peace of mind I chose not to -- There were too many patterns I was invested in that I knew I'd sooner rather than later would savescum them into perpetuity. Right now I am doing mostly rescue missions. I holiday to the end of January and take over a struggling team to save them from relegation or secure their ticket into Europe. Then I retire and do the same thing again half a year later. Maybe I'll stay a full season after if I was successful and caught a spark but I mostly want to stick to short stories and games inside this save. It is easier to learn new things if I have to use an existing squad to full strength without having the luxury of a preseason or the opportunity to force the time to conform to my idea of football. So far it is going well. I saved Bielefeld in the first season, no thanks to board who decided to sell two key players on my second day. I played a highly compact system and slowly but surely broke away from both Berlins. In the second season I helped Union reach their goal of returning to the Bundesliga. Ironically through a playoff win against Bielefeld. I continued for half a year until I got into trouble with the board. After three major disagreements I quit and went to what I thought would have been my first station: Fürth. That turned out to be too much. I got them a good amount of points but it wasn't enough, especially as this was a year with no stragglers and everyone else got their fair amount of points. Nonetheless, after a few months of rest, I got an offer from my favourite team who were struggling against relegation (too real) despite yearning for Europe (again: too real, give a guy some warning!) and I was chosen to get back into the upper half. The squad was great but bought without a concept behind it (this is getting hurtful -- I want escapism!). Currently I am in a four-way to the last European place and I think I'll give it another year if I manage it. I had to cut ties with a star player and the vice-captain, and the old hierarchy is generally not existent anymore. Reconstruction will be fun! Weirdly enough, that is the most I got into Wolfsburg this year. Started a few saves. Played a few games. Abused the editor a lot. But somehow I never caught a spark. Partly because a lot of concepts were not compatible with the players or worked too well. I got results but not the way I wanted.

The thing about system stats is that it can not capture the full realities of the userbase. For example, I am one of the people playing on a potato on minimal settings. My hardware probably is below the requirements. But it still runs fast enough for me and I don't care about the look of the matches. I want to see if the movements work, what kind of goals I score, and not be bored by the exact same animations over and over. For that my old system is good enough (with only the low resolution hurting) and so I use it out of convenience. It just is the most transportable! My (also old but expensive enough to still be usable) gaming laptop is heavy, connected to way too many cables, and uses external cooling. I can not that easily use it to play in bed or the living room or while my job is stalled compiling. The same is even more true for my desktop computer. With my dozens of custom views and at least three concurrently running saves, it also is a hassle to play on multiple systems as I constantly have to export/import and between HD/Full HD/QHD not everything works on all three. If the minimum requirements changed, I could easily continue playing on my heavier systems and would consider upgrading somewhere down the line to regain the old convenience. But as long as it works fast enough (the league setup says 4 1/2 stars with three leagues and no background activity, 3 1/2 with a browser open) why change to the heavier systems right now? In the books I am a "Potato player we might lose" but in reality I am a player who just uses the system most suited to the current requirements.

I hope this is just to push FMFC or for other "business reasons" and not because Twitter turned out to be a toxic cesspool.

FM22 continued a trend: Each year I lose about 200 hours of playing time but add at least five more seasons finished. Part of it is me getting better with the game and knowing how to quickly set my views and "read" the players available. Part is that darn Qatar-Cup making me too wary to start "short" saves to experiment. But a lot of it is a more streamlined experience. The game runs fast and the Data Hub is a gods-end for finding strengths and weaknesses. The tiered Youth-Intake also gives a quick overview. I get less interviews before reaching the very top and once I have a mutual understanding with my team, they are quite reasonable. A bit too much in my opinion -- A double sextuple winner should not play for 50k...a year! The biggest change however was removing "Get Further Forwards" from the DLFa. It is so much more fun to use now. As for the ME, there were a few welcome additions. The high focus on movement that can compensate for bad technicals has elevated quite a lot of players up to their real life strengths. I love seeing headed goals from smol players that feel earned and not gifted by bad defenses. I love seeing deep runs and players having more than one dimension. My 20 JR Targetman hitting most of his goals per foot was something unexpected but felt so right and made the TMs more competitive with the DLFx, even in more possession-based formations. And of course my two Wa with 16 and 6 crossing, respectively, playing so differently according to their strengths. What I didn't like however, is that 4231 and Gegenpress are still by far the "easiest" formations to get working. With some squad planning and a good youth setup, there still is little exhaustion. Almost any formation with Gegenpress presets any most aggressive 4231 formations almost always overperform for me. Which hurts because there are quite a few concepts I had this year I was quite proud of that barely overperform the classical cheese. WCB are interesting but weirdly enough, now that they are here, this is the year I used a thre-at-the-back system the least. Except for my weird 541-hyperfluid experiment which I only used for a season and needed much better players for, I barely touched it. Maybe next year... My biggest complaint as a whole is something the headline features for FM23 already tackled: Players starting negotiations with hardlocked demands I can never accept and then getting angry if it falls through. I don't know how much time I wasted because after long negotiations with clubs the player would insist on release clauses that are way below his market value. Hopefully the new workflow will eliminate these unwelcome surprises! I was also disappointed with squad management of AI managers. Top teams collect talents but continue to play their old guard without phasing the new faces in. Even worse with national teams were world class players slowly go through the many youth teams however much better they are than the first team. Probably the only reason I got into international management was to get my five Spanish guys a fair chance. Finally, with more aggressive teams on the transfer market, I wished there were more decisive options to say "no". Agents and players constantly tell me to go away if I insulted them with bad offers. Let me do the same to clubs that repeatedly fail to make an attractive offer.

This is so early I still have the endings of four different links to "Never gonna Give You Up" memorised. I too am currently favoring the 20th. Two weeks plus X are the usual and I have a good feeling about Thursdays.

GIMME! This might be a massive help in improving my "Season Review" view and my dependency on LibreOffice's Calc to get the data I actually need. I fear there is still a "per 90 minute" version missing like with xG, "CCCs created" and "Key Passes made" but that is still a massive improvement. Qualitative data really helps in gauging which players over-/underperform or have just the right mix in attributes. Generation pre-Youtube here. I just like reading more than videos. Usually more information density and consumation in my own tempo.

What I like Squad Planner. Adding custom rankings and future years to the old Squad Depth screen is a great additions for players like me. I tend to disagree with how the AI sees some players or tend to PPM some players to be utterly unusable in secondary roles. Now I can rank or exclude them to my liking. And see how Youth prospects develop compared to my expectations. Agents! My main gripe about FM22 is how often players start contract negotiations with non-negotiable release clauses. Now I can filter those out without having to negotiate weeks with their old clubs or (hopefully) without breaking squad happiness. Recruitment focus. It looks more streamlined. Maybe just because the devs don't play on potatoes but who knows? Here's just to hope the scouts are more intelligent in who they recommend. In 22 the new Recruitment Meetings way too often showed me players that were at most "Regular Starters" but demand quadruple the wages of my Star Players. The games seems to make another good jump regarding defensive play. A few new options available to us and the scenes shown looked promising for the most part. Considering the last years had considerable updates post-beta, I hope they find the "right" tweaks! What I have hopes for Supporter Confidence. They are right. Fans are important to the life of a manager and so far they had been neglected. The attributes they spoke about are already in the editor, so time to make something with them! I hope they actually use them and not make them merely an updates social media page with some fluff text and interview questions. Make them relevant and find the right balance between "Creating new stories", "Creating new hardships/some relief", "Forming Club Identity" and "Adapting to the Circumstances. What I'm okay with Licenses. Nice to have, especially for console players/players playing without any mods. Timeline. Looks a bit small for a headline but good for AAR What I miss/hope for in minor updates SET PIECES. The old system is so very lacking, it almost hurts at times. Especially that the routines can so easily break if you change your S11 or have to sub. Interviews/Press conferences. Not only get they boring after a while and I get away with hitting the same panel repeatedly in 98% of the cases, the conferences and their results often don't take into account the nation they take part in. Getting repeatedly asked about low possession (nobody cares and it is a valid method in the German metagame -- there even is an article about how low-possession teams are thriving), getting touchline bans for slightest criticism (There was much worse said in RL and afaik there was no such thing in the past), about whether or not to recall players (news flash: I literally can't!), inane questions about other teams or their players even when not playing them, and so on. Add relationships and opinions that hardly matter and it is just a taxing module. But at least my 3rd league team can no lose against Bayern due to a questionable penalty in the 118th minute without having to answer at least three questions about how bad we played and that we should have won that... More "Granularity" in expectations. I see this especially in cup-tournaments. The board demands to reach a certain level but fail is fail, whatever the opposition and however close I came. "Reach Quarter Final" is a realistic demand. I AM among the eight best teams in the nation. But if I play the second and third round against the best and second best team in the nation, respectively, it is no shame to fail that milestone -- We played with honor and the massive amounts of ticket sales make up for the lost price money between the stages. Long Shot wish Custom stat views. We already have so many stats that are recorded. Why not give us players the option to create a few custom ones that are derived from them? There are a few ones that lack a "per 90 minutes" version (like CCC, Key passrs, mistakes leading to goals) and a few others I'd like to calculate (amount of fouls per card; different ratios between passes, possession and dribblings; CCC/Key passes, Key passes/passes...). Let us decide what additional info we need from the absolute stats. Re. International management

This was the tactic I used to get the AMa running. Early on I was already considering scrapping this concept as the AMa stopped performing after some really good test games. Merely two assists in 12 games. Nothing worked as expected. But his replacement, an 18 year old talent that, according to my AssMan merely was ready for football two leagues further down managed a goal and an assist in his roughly 100 minutes of playtime and once I started him, it went upwards fast. This young guy who should have never started a game ended the season with 8 goals and 15 assists. Calculated upwards to thetime he would have had as a starting player fom the start, it would have been an 11/21. Not bad for such an inexperienced player who exploded due to his playing time and high ratings and now is one of my most valuable players. My original starter was a speedster (17/17) with otherwise average stats. My youngster only had average speed but great OtB-movement (15) and good creativity (16 passing, 14 flair, 13 vision), making him appear at the right places and contributing lots of intelligent and precise passes in the final third. His other attributes were well below average but where he is good, he is *really* good and that counts here

I was feeling lucky and tried something new: A CMa in a 4231. After one season with a lower midclass team I can say that I love this role, its impact, and general performance. It had similar absolute stats to the attacking players further up the pitch (19 goals, 11 assists) and did a surprising amount of defensive work on top. Plus, it is a veritable multi-threat. Pressure from deep, offensive runs, late arrivals, deep runs into the box, natural one-two movements, horizontal short passes in the box, killer balls into the box. It does it all, making it hard to completely shut these players down. And if they are somehow taken out, the four guys further forwards usually pick up the slack :)

Only a theory: It could have something to do with South Korea having its season in one calendar year whereas Mexiko has a summer-to-summer-season. It could be that you didn't sign at the end of your season but at the end of Ulsan's season. I'd try to holiday until January/February where the South Korean season starts. The closer to the first match, the better. If you are in South Korea, load the save anew and you know you'll eventually end up at your desired post. If you are still in Mexiko, the game is not prepared for switches between calendar modes and that should be reported for the next games.

Had to abandon my last save. While the RMD+AFa combination was quite nice and the diagonals to their flank were effective enough, the AMC quickly became a sore weak point. I always got around 10 okay games out of him. Average ratings but good pre-assists and a great focal point. But afterwards he tended to drift too strongly to the "wrong" side, creating a massive hole on the pitch and infringing on other players' spaces. Maybe it is one of those things were "instincts" are great but my *cough* tactical brilliance messed things up. But on the flipside, I finally figured something out: --The AMa acts exactly how I want the AMs to act, especially if we have a naturally creative player taking up that role. Comes deep enough to link midfield and attack but also comes into the box. Sometimes late to receive cutbacks, sometimes early to link up with supportive strikers or deeper playmakers. Scores a fair amount of assists and even more pre-assists and enough goals to make an impact. --The SS acts exactly how I want the AMa to act. Runs toward the goal but also plays risky passes from deep or short clinical passes inside the box to better positioned teammates. --To get a player to act like the SS I want to have, I usually take the role and give it even more aggressive PPM and PI. Beating the Offside Trap is a good starting point. It may be superstition and coincidence but I also like "Tries First Time Shots". And players with low Teamwork. The PI to shoot more often also helps but for that I also usually try to give the player the "Get into Opposition Area"-PPM as well; otherwise there are a few too many long shots. I also think the AMC roles, particularly those more "neutral" ones are way more finicky than they were in the last years were. I have had successes with really good well-rounded players but for players that are not the top of the crop, specialists are the way to go. Particularly with really high Flair and a focus on creativity. Those tend to produce the most results and also match ratings. Dribblers with okay finishing AND creativity also do quite well. But pure finishers are dependant on results and average players with high speeds have four to five extremely good games (especially against outclassed opponents) but way too often stay invisible.

I just bought it. I feared I'd have to wait for Christmas as my laptop is getting old but the minimum specs gave me new hope. It appears to have the same requirements as FM22 and that runs pretty well so maybe I can even get some early playtime in. While we know little, the semi-permanence of 5 subs and having that cursed Qatar-Cup early are already something quite big. I am both dreading and anticipating it as I tend to start way too many saves I abandon after a season or two and this year the schedule will be a mess! Hopefully a positive one (at least in RL it looks managable) that gives me a nice natural breakpoint and neither congestion nor unnaturally frequent free weeks. Otherwise this might be the year I actually manage to stick to a file.