Zoolok42

Well we are all just discussing, based on what we know and what we see, and our previous life experiences It's kinda the point of this thread and the forums. We could be wrong, we could be right, there are no bonus points either way, just a bunch of people giving their 2 cents about what might be happening. As for actually buying the game, if I do buy them these days, it's only on discounts after several major patches, and that applies to all games, not just FM. So that would be my practical advice to everyone here.

It's not guessing, it's a reasonable assumption that not showing anything so close to a final date means you have nothing to show me. It applies to all life situations, not just software development. If you think they are withholding information on purpose so they release it all in a flurry of ads and promotions a week before release, fine. That could be the case, but I would not bet on it. To get back to the 'assumption' part, I am not assuming the game is 'bad' as in badly designed. I am assuming it's not technically finished and especially not polished, but the features are technically 'there'.

Based on the marketing campaign, there is nothing to campaign about, which is - I think - the issue people have. So far the biggest addition is women's football (which is really great, though from the game perspective, it means playing the game as usual but with a different database, at least that is my impression), and a shift to a new graphics engine, which they have been talking about for a long time now, but haven't showed anything about it. You really would expect them to be showcasing it left and right, considering how huge a change it is, and yet we have seen zero of it so far, which implies things aren't going well.

Considering they are promoting women's football on Elon Musk's (closed for public) platform, it's no surprise that the roadmap contains neither roads nor maps Jokes aside, they should be spending these final weeks purely testing (meaning they should have a release build ready to be screenshot and marketed), which is how large software projects are handled if things are going well... Which they never are. Been there, done that. Looks like we will be getting their best effort and then probably several major patches to put out the fires. Hope I'm wrong, though, but a few weeks before a major release you usually have things to demo to the client, if things are going according to plan.

LOL at #4. I already skipped two in a row, then got the current one for free from Epic, and reminded myself what a chore it is to play, with seventy billion pointless interruptions between matches. I most definitely am not preordering nor buying FM25, unless the demo convinces me otherwise somehow, and I honestly advise everyone to do the same. Nothing they said about FM25 so far seems like it's worth it over any older edition.

Judging by how tight they are with time, maybe release it as an early access, if possible, to manage expectations about the quality and the features, and then release the full thing in 6 months or so?

I understand what you mean, but I wasn't clear enough again You can accidentally set up a tactic that is great, but because of an exploit that you are not aware of. However, I also think you can set up a tactic and then have your striker not score goals because of a hidden issue with the match engine that, again, you are not aware exists. I used the word "exploit" for that, as well, but I guess "bug" would be a better term. What I see happen in FM a lot is tactics stopping to be effective after a patch, which is usually attributed to the tactic working because it used an "exploit" in the previous version of the game. What we never do is check if a tactic that didn't work in the past, now suddenly works, because of the changes in the match engine, or at least I can't remember many such cases off the top of my head. I started playing this game way back in the Championship Manager era, and these things have remained the same (in all honesty, they are a little bit worse with all the added features in the game since those days - I really miss the simple with and without ball instructions). We still do need a glossary, but we specifically need a glossary of what the team (or the one man in charge) means when they describe things in the game. Often you will get a good tactic if you understand what they mean when they say things like "press more often", instead of using your own definition and intuition. That said, the last two versions (this one and the previous), I only played the demos. The difference between the versions has become miniscule, and there are so many added boilerplate features that the game has become a chore to play. I am also older, so it's harder to not notice and be annoyed by some things

Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. The point I tried to make is that "it's your tactics" is not a valid argument in a game that has tactical exploits because AI can't handle it. The thing is, issues with tactics go both ways, so someone can setup a perfectly valid tactic and then fail in the game because the "exploit" is working against them in this case, if you know what I mean? It's not always the case, but I don't think anyone can guarantee that it can be completely disregarded either.

How do you know it's not your tactics, meaning how do you know you aren't really using an exploit by accident, instead of having a working tactic? I am not pointing fingers, but I was always curious about these "it's your tactics" arguments in a game that is known to have tactical exploits against AI.

It's not an abomination. As an employee, you want to get the best terms you think each possible future employer can offer you, when all factors are taken into consideration. Why is it an abomination?

I am pretty sure that all the pointless sarcasm and cynicism (and the overall terrible human communication and interaction in the game) all come from one person in SI who thinks that is how people communicate.

FM is already a subscription in everything but the name, it has been that for years. You pay 60 euros per year (or whatever) for 12 months of patches and 1-2 database updates. Patches are bugfixes with a minor new feature every now and then. I am not sure how this isn't already seen as a subscription model, because they sell basically the same game every year. You would have to go a few years in the past to notice any major differences between FM 24 and an older FM. An opposite example would be Civilization, for instance, because the differences between Civilization 4, 5, and 6 are enormous, it's a totally different game, on the same topic, and they come out every 5-6 years, not every year at the same time, like FM does. Essentially, every game that comes out every year at the same time with minor differences is a subscription game, regardless of how they want to call it.

It's not "scripted" in a sense that there is nothing you can do about it, but it also isn't the case that everything is decided in real time. However, since you can replay the same match without touching anything, and you will get different outcomes, it also means that there is a random element to it, a random seed that is used in calculations. On the other hand, a "script" is also the word to use in a different meaning - every time something happens, it does look like it's not natural, but instead the game picks a pre-determined script to execute in that moment (out of a selection of thousands)? More like a "scenario" than a script, and I think this is visible after you play a lot of matches that some virtually identical pieces of play start repeating. But does the game decide in advance that you will win or lose and nothing you do can change it? No, in that sense I do not believe it is "scripted", it does respond to user input. You are essentially fighting against that random seed, but who is to say that's not how life works in general?

He is Excellent Tired Fresh, clear as day. It fits in perfectly with their mental issues they all seem to be having this year as well

I actually played the previous editions on Nintendo Switch the most, so you are completely right. This time I got a refund though, I'll get Diablo 4 instead, and I'll see what FM25 will bring.

I would not be surprised if they add that as a feature down the line, I honestly think they've lost the plot a little bit. I get it that being a football manager means having meetings and emails, but that will never be fun to "play", especially not when it's presented as an accounting spreadsheet with predefined sentences that don't always mean what you think they mean. But I get it that younger audiences haven't yet had the pleasure of attending a meeting in their life, so it's interesting to them (at first, at least, I honestly think it gets very tiring very quickly to have identical meetings with clickable sentences to everyone), which is why I say I'm probably not the target demographic any more. And then the actual match is skipped almost completely and/or watched in high speed because it just takes too long to watch 10 football matches a day, which means the majority of the gameplay is spent in clicking ugly menus and doing anything but actually managing a match. So, as I said, I honestly think they are losing the plot a little bit, administrative tasks have become the centerpiece of the game.

I skipped the last year's edition, as the one before (FM 22) didn't give me all that much fun as it used to, so I thought to give FM24 a shot, and after three hours, it's the same game as FM22 - Infinite clicks to do infinite chores in convoluted menus that look like Windows 95. Being a football manager is boring, if it is to be judged by this game, although I can also accept that, in my middle-age part of life, I am no longer the target audience. It's just so boring and repetitive to "play" this chore of a game, and it's not simple enough to pick it up for 20 minutes and then do something else, you really have to invest yourself and your time into infinite menus to get to the match, that you skip most of in the end, anyway. I guess this isn't for me any more, which is something I never thought I would say, since my first one was CM3. Bonus points for manager having face paint, I am sure that was the bit that was separating FM from greatness

I'd say that the best proof that the match engine is doing football right is the fact that everyone has their own opinion on it

Yeah, and also, if the match engine really has millions of lines of code, then it's pretty much unmaintainable at this point, and it's no wonder it takes ages for them for the simplest tweaks.

That really doesn't look all that much better, especially not like a 10 years worth of work and improvement.

Holy .... That second one is hilarious

Oh, I've learned how to use it in the game, but what I'm trying to say is it's basically an opinion of someone who made the game? If that makes sense? I know how to use it to my advantage, but I don't understand how they come up with values they do. This goes for a lot of things in the game, like mentality, or "be more expressive" instruction, off the top of my head.

Not entirely related to your comment, but I've always wondered what those two bars at the top right mean and where are they coming from. Like, what does it mean when the Intensity bar is 50% full? And where does the judgment on how "intense" a tactic is come from? Same for Familiarity, I understand these are real-life items, but I don't understand how they are presented in the game and how the in-game values of them map to values in real-life. And who is doing the mapping? The assistant manager? It feels like a lot of things in FM come from basically one person's understanding of football, and if you don't match with that understanding, you're in for a bad time.

Yup, you can't sign them until they can qualify for a work permit. You can sign them, I think, but can't actually play them. Before Brexit, the way around it is to loan them to a club that can grant them applicable citizenship quickly enough (~3 years), so that they get a UK work permit easier, but I'm not sure you can even do that now.

We don't have clients like this, though our market is grown-ups. I'm guessing everyone calling the game "unplayable" is at mid-20s at most. We also write completely different software, mostly for financial institutions, so we have the luxury of having an exact rule-set we have to follow so our code either works or doesn't, there is no room for interpretation, like there is with football simulators (and, as I've said, football in real life). So yes, if our clients say that the button doesn't work, it's easy to check and they don't tell me the software is "unusable". Here, it has to do a lot with your own personal interpretation of football, so you'll never be entirely happy.