Jonthedon26

I agree, and I hope this isn't the direction the game is going in and we are just reading too much into it. I have started playing OOTP Baseball in recent years, and that is a complicated game, but I know I have to put the hours in to learn and understand it, I don't expect them to dumb it down for me.

This was my very first thought when I saw the screenshots, it looks like a mobile phone game.

Once a player turns 18 I tend to give them one season in the under 23 squad for further development and to play against better level of opponent before I loan them out. It might just be anecdotal, but I feel like their development is better this way than just loaning them to a crappy team with poor facilities as soon as they turn 18.

I know that this topic has been covered an awful lot on these forums, but thought I would give my input after actually trying it myself. I have never been a gegenpress guy, always played 442 wing play and focused on getting it wide and crossing, and always set up quite deep defensively, but after getting promoted to the Premier League in my 2nd season with Birmingham City, halfway through the season and hovering just above the relegation zone I thought I would try upping my press game to see what difference it would make. I changed formation to a 433DM and enabled counter, counter press and closing down often. I still have a normal defensive line and on the ball I focus play down the wings still, with standard passing and a slightly higher tempo and low crosses. The transformation was insane! I ended up finishing 8th in my first season, then I have just finished my 2nd season in the Premier League with Birmingham City and came 2nd, winning the league cup in the process. I quite literally never tweak anything either in my tactics based on the opposition, I just click continue through to the match and rotate players when needed. Zero need for the data hub, or opposition scout reports or anything like that. Don't get me wrong it is quite nice to be winning all the time, and it will be fun to play in the Champions League next season, but it seems pretty wild to me that at the click of a few buttons I can go from a struggling, newly promoted team to an almost unstoppable force. I do miss the days of getting it out wide and lumping it in to the big man in the box though! I can see why people claim this tactic is broken, and I don't even use a lot of the instructions that I see others talk about like higher defensive line, keeper roll it out, short passing etc. Hopefully in FM25 they will make some tweaks so it doesn't seem so powerful, or there is a major drawback to playing like this (e.g. loads of injuries, constant fatigue etc). This is also not a dig at the game or anything like that, I am having great fun being the underdogs and getting to the champions league... just wanted to share my experience.

I have also noticed this and determined it must be a bug. I have noticed on my save that if I go to player search and filter by players with less than 6 months remaining on their contract, there always used to be a "Trn" next to the players that had signed pre contracts with new clubs, however, this "Trn" is no longer there, and you can only see when you click into the player profile and see "so and so is joining Team X on XX/XX/XXXX"

For me personally, I have found that scouting a specific position is broken, unless I am doing something completely wrong. But similarly to you, I barely get any results, maybe 1 or 2 if I am lucky. If I scout any position from tactic from a region/nation/competition etc I seem to get plenty of results, but the individual position assignments seem to generate next to nothing.

I will try that, thank you

Whilst clearing out a load of my stuff I came across several old versions of Football Manager that I would really love to play again. These were the old disc versions (I no longer have a disc drive) that included the Steam keys on the back of the manual. I tried to use these Steam keys but it said they are already redeemed, however, they are not on my current Steam account and I have had this account for as long as I can remember. Is there any way I can play these again or am I just left with the glorious memories of them?

Just another case of the game not understanding context I'm afraid

I always assumed that playing position was the the role you have in your current tactic. So if your tactic has ball playing defender then that's playing position, or you can select a different role if you want them to train a different role to the one being used in your tactic.

This is spot on! I have played FM for years and years and years so I know it inside out, I know what I should and shouldn't do and how to deal with certain situations, which I am sure is the same for many experienced FM players. On the other hand, I simply can't get my head around some games that I myself am new to, such as the OOTP baseball series, and Hearts of Iron 4. I am simply terrible at those games and no matter what I have tried I just can't get seem to do well in them and I end up quitting and not playing them.

I can't say that I have experienced this. My first save on every version of FM is Birmingham City, and without fail I always get promoted to the Premier League within 2 seasons, and I have never been relegated back down again. The first season in the Premier League is sometimes difficult and a few times I have come close to getting relegated, but in the more recent versions I seem to do really well first season and massively overachieve. This year I got promoted to the Premier League in my second season, and came 8th in the first season in the Premier League. I would actually really enjoy the challenge of getting relegated again.

I agree with a lot that you said here, especially about being lazy with different kind of features. These days, mainly due to lack of available time and I don't have as much interest in FM as I used to, I will set up my tactic, and if it works well that's it, it stays and I literally so nothing with it for a whole season, maybe even a few seasons, besides adjusting the mentality depending on the level of team I am playing. I never tinker with my tactics anymore, I don't use the data hub for anything, and I genuinely feel they aren't needed to be honest, I am always successful managing my team (Birmingham City) and I never really struggle. Could I get the team to perform even better if I tinkered more and used the data hub more etc... possibly, but I can't see how it could get much better.

Was Kerlon a wonderkid back in the day? He is one that stands out that I haven't seen mentioned yet.

Aaaahhh yeah I forgot about those as I don't use any of them haha. I blame my bad memory on my old age!

Wasn't that supposed to be this year? I can't actually remember any new features this year, I just remember the main selling point of this years iteration was that it was supposed to be the most polished version to date.

I went back to FM09 recently and played as Birmingham City in the championship... it was solid haha. They are my team and I play as them for my first (and sometimes only) save on every FM and despite us being absolutely awful in real life for 10 years, on the newer versions I always get promoted to the premier league within 2 seasons and have yet to ever be relegated or sacked. Again as you pointed out I don't know if that is because the game has become easier, or whether I just know what works and what doesn't on FM these days.

Sorry, my comments were very tongue in cheek... I did say to call me old fashioned haha

Call me old fashioned, and sorry for sticking my nose in, but I would say there are quite a few high scoring games in there. Yes there are several 1-0, 0-0 etc but there are also multiple 3-3 draws and 3-2 games. A third of your games have 4 or more goals in them. There aren't really any crazy examples like the original post, but give me a load of George Graham 1-0's week in week out (sorry for those not old enough to get the 1-0 to the Arsenal reference).

I literally get rid of all staff like loan manager, DoF etc as I find them useless and just a waste of money. They all seem pretty poorly implemented in game from my experience, so to keep my sanity I do it all myself.

I have noticed, for me anyway, that if I scout any position from tactic I tend to get an okay (okay in FM24 terms) amount of scout reports, maybe somewhere between 15-20, but if I pick a specific position from my tactic then I am lucky to get 3 results, even with very broad parameters. It is very very hit and miss.

This is why Ultimate Soccer Manager 98 is elite!

I'm not specifically talking about the state of the games at launch, I am moreso referring to the constant social media posts about what they are doing, updates etc. Whether the game is good or not is another matter completely. **EDIT** Having read through some of the comments since my original post regarding dev communication from Hell Let Loose and Undisputed, maybe I was wrong on the Undisputed front. I don't actually own that game (do own and regularly play HLL) I was just basing the communication side on what I am constantly seeing on X (or Twitter as I will forever know it as). Seems like they post a lot of promises that they don't actually follow through on, which is exactly what I don't want SI to do. So yeah, scrap that, I would rather zero communication than false promises.

Ye it is shockingly bad to be fair. They should take a leaf out of studios for games like Hell Let Loose or Undisputed, they are constantly posting what they are working on, roadmaps, what to expect in upcoming updates etc

From what I have seen on here and through my own experiences, if you play high pressing, high tempo tactics with a high defensive line and high line of engagement it is pretty easy to do well with any standard of team.