[Do we need difficulty levels?]

18 minutes ago, Analog said:

Sounds stupidly simple, but it's a game.  You are supposed to be able to be successful with any team.  Why play with San Marino if you can NEVER achieve anything with them, because it's uber realistic?  There's no fun in that, literally just a waste of time.  Who wants to invest hours in their lives into a digital game and get nowhere? 

 

They would be for the “hard mode” only,  it’s a bit like in a game like FallOut where the survival mode has you worrying about food and water, obviously the majority of players want to play a game and not worry about it but for those that do, there is a mode/difficulty level for that.

[Do we need difficulty levels?]

2 hours ago, Federico said:

Maybe avoid downloading exploitable tactics, for those who do that. Stop reloading, don't purchase any RTE and make your own tactic and training session, gegenpressen is forbidden. That's what I do.

The issue is the game is too easy without getting into exploiting things and downloading tactics. I took Eskisehirspor, who are on -10 points at the start of the season to automatic promotion (worst squad in the league) then won. the Turkish Super Lig two seasons after, spending 30 mil + per season ... I can't remember a Turkish club ever spending anything close to £30 million in a season.

 

I get the problems with adding a difficulty levels, especially with the ME, but lots of changes can be made to make the game harder without even getting into the ME,

 

Examples:

- Squad could take much longer to adapt to tactics, so switching tactics multiple times throughout the season should be a risk as it is in real life

- Fitness levels, players attributes and performances could suffer more when they are on lower fitness levels.

- Take away the monthly payments for transfers (this isn't really something real managers deal with, they are given a budget to spend and thats that (and thats if they have control over transfers), the club sort out the financing behind the scenes. But at the moment in FM you can spend insane amounts of money with little to no punishment.

- Further more extensive attribute masking,  signing a players should be a risk unless they have been thoroughly scouted for months, and even then certain aspects should't be know until signed.

- Teams could take longer to gel, making lots of transfers in one window could destabilise the team 

- boards could be a lot more strict, I mean managers early last after 2 years, spending large amounts of money should vastly increase the pressure on you.

 

... just to name a few off the top of my head. Making it harder to assemble a great squad quickly/penalising managers for making massive changed in short time frames would go quite some way.  As for an easy mode, didn't there used to be a streamlined version of FM? Or isn't FM Mobile the streamlined easier version?

 

[Do we need difficulty levels?]

18 hours ago, Impacto said:

I agree a 100% with this comment. Managing big clubs should be harder as it is in real life. So how about we have an option that is called "extreme realism" or "hardcore" that is tickable at start of the game. If you check that box the AI is supercharged and doesn't let you off. Everything is instantly harder and now you have a challenge. Now winning the league would not be "meh, anyone can do it", not it's an achievement. And you can play with your favorite club without getting bored after 3 seasons of winning it all. I really, really love this idea and I am dissapointed more people aren't in favour of it. New players can still enjoy the 'light' version of the game, but hardcore players can really test themselves with such an option. 

This, raise the stakes on all fronts, media, board etc far harsher (I believe the average term of a manager in the Premier League is a little under 2 years), more realistic finances. On the match engine side I see how it gets a bit more difficult , but even things as basic as, in the UCL give the opponents a boost.

Obviously, it's AI, and like an again said above, however hard you make the game there will be exploits. That said, most of us playing the game don't go into it looking to exploit the AI weaknesses, just need it to be a little tougher to make it fun.

[Do we need difficulty levels?]

Surprised so many people are against this idea, seems pretty straight forward to me. In order for FM to be fun for as many people as possible, it needs to be considerably easier than real life. A difficulty level, or think of it as a survival mode in Fallout can be there for the longer-term players who are looking for a harder challenge. I'm at the point now where I've lost interest in starting a new save.

[Is The Game Too Easy?]

18 hours ago, WelshMourinho said:

To bring it back to OP's point, I don't think FM20 is too easy per se, I just think the popular concepts that exist in football right now also just happen to be rather exploitable in this ME. High pressing is probably the most entertaining football to watch (I say this as a general comment, I know everyone has their different tastes). So of course many people are going to use a top heavy high pressing formation, and this year it's going to do well.

I think you hit the nail on the head with this, playing styles of football other than high-press does make the game more challenging. Also, as "Impacto" stated above, the AI rarely maintain the level of consistency which human players do.

Add in the unrealistic monthly instalments when singing a player and it becomes all to easy to amass a half decent squad and gegen-press your way to victory.

[Is The Game Too Easy?]

True, making it too hard would put casual gamers off. The best solution is to have some sort of hard mode.

[Is The Game Too Easy?]

This sounds like the experience I'm having too, I often start the game with small sides and it always feels like once I put together a decent squad and have good tactics in place 90% of opposition are easy - until I hit a top tier UCL side and even then I pull off a remarkable amount of "upsets" without altering my tactics much at all.

This feeling of the game being easy makes it less enjoyable. 

[Is The Game Too Easy?]

4 hours ago, henryzz said:

This thread seems to be full of people overachieving partly due to the opposition underestimating them. It is often far easier to do well in the first season or 2 after being promoted because you are being underestimated continuously. Attacking tactics will suffer at times due to quality difference but will also often find a lot of space.

Probably is a major factor. There is a clear advantage for positive/attacking high press tactics. IRL few teams can do this successfully also, not every team who is successful presses high, e.g. Inter Milan. Its too easy to hold possession as AI teams early press in the same way or just back off despite having superior squads.

I get there is a delegate balance to make it fun for as many people as possible, but the introduction of some sort of hard mode would make things more interesting for the longer-term players too.

[Will anyone be buying FM21?]

been buying FM yearly since the CM days but after the FM20 mess at launch I'll be waiting to see the demo first. 

[Is The Game Too Easy?]

Firstly, It's too easy to totally revamp a squad and assemble a world beating squad, being able to spread payments over 24 months means you can spend crazy amounts of money as a small team.

Secondly, it's too easy to dominate possession, even as a smaller club with a lesser squad its pretty easy to dominate possession, on top of this, you can press extremely urgently with little consequence. Man United's most recent game vs Sevilla is case and point that you can't maintain an all out pressing assault for the entire 90 minutes. But in FM, players on a low fitness % don't really perform any differently.

Finally, in my experience, once you go on a winning run, its like playing in auto-pilot, my teams (even newly promoted ones) frequently go on 10-12 game unbeaten runs even in the Premier League. I know Sheff United done a crazy run last season but its rare in the Premier League.

For me this FM has been the easiest in a while, to the point where I've stopped playing it. I'd personally like to see a Civilization style difficulty mode to make it more challenging. 

 

 

[Is The Game Too Easy?]

I really hope there is an advanced / expert mode in the future, some sort of difficulty level would make the game more challenging and enjoyable to the more experienced players. I get its a difficult balance though, SI need to make. the game such where going from league 2 to the UCL final is possible to make the game fun.

[FM 2021 Suggestions on finances, media and fans]

On 19/07/2020 at 09:42, leviathan1904 said:

However, public opinion (media, pundits and fans) could influence the board's opinion/decisions and thus have an impact on job security. In this respect, it is quite interesting what Miles Jacobson said on YouTube in April: https://youtu.be/qbDQYuGtywI?t=5410

 

Thanks for sharing, great to here this is being looked into and I agree, its hard to find a balance when introducing these aspects.

On 19/07/2020 at 00:35, janrzm said:

Stop the option to speed transfers over X amount of months - This is how many "real" transfers are structured so in itself its not the issue. But I understand what you are saying it can be too easy and unrealistic at some clubs to over spend. What most likely needs tweaking is a clubs appetite for long term debt. I'm not sure what goes on under the hood but this aspect of the game feels very generic at times and not specific enough to each club. That said, it may be a deliberate action on behalf of SI not to pigeon hole clubs.

Yeah, totally agree in that pretty much every transfer these days is structured in this way - even more so now due to FFP. However, that aspect of the deal should be for the club to manage (e.g. chairman or DoF negotiating stats). Because at the moment, a 15m budget can easily become a 40m budget which makes buying lots of players per transfer season quite easy. On top of being unrealistic for the reasons mentioned in the original post (small sides being able to spend amounts of money which would be impossible in real life - the AI rarely uses its budget in the same way to the extent of taking on lots of long-term debt.

 

On 19/07/2020 at 20:37, Spanner said:

I like the idea of greater player power, more media influence and fans imposing themselves more on the game /post-game reaction. This would make a loss to your local rivals even harder to accept and better mirror real life. Also, I agree that player power has not really been looked into.

At Man United I dealt with Luke Shaw very strictly and had him in the reserves etc… while trying to sell him.
Out of the blue, Greenwood had a problem with how I treated him but there was no obvious connection there and his performance levels (Greenwood’s) did not drop so it was all a bit strange really.

DoF and Defending comments are open to debate.
I personally love to have control over who is my DoF but I see your point about the chairman/owner normally bringing in such people.

Yeah, just adding a little more meaning to those big games in the UCL or vs a rival due to the fan & media reaction would add a lot to the game. Also situations like players falling out with fans (e.g. Granit Xhaka - until recently) could add an interesting dynamic. 

As for the DoF, its a strange one because there real-life real would make FM a bit boring as at many clubs they handle the transfers and if the manager is fortunate he will get a say on the shortlisted players. I think its more about making a distinction between managing larger clubs vs smaller ones, so when managing Real Madrid there can be a lot more interference from board, Dof, Fans, Media & more player power dynamics vs managing Real Oviedo.  

It would make managing the larger sides more interesting by adding more challenges. Where as managing smaller sides will feel more free.

[FM 2021 Suggestions on finances, media and fans]

Hi all, long-term FM player here since the CM days. Been playing FM20 a bit more than usual due to the pandemic and have come up with a couple suggestions for upcoming game in order to make the game more true to life and more challenging too, especially while managing the larger sides.

 

Stop the option to speed transfers over X amount of months: The option to spread the cost of transfers across 48 months means you can easily spend crazy sums of money with very little risk,  at the end of the day if you can sign top talent the chances your team won't be successful are low. More to the point though, it's highly unrealistic and isn't a decision for a manager to make, especially at a large side. 

To give an example, while managing Eskisehirspor (Turkish League) I was able to spend £20mil-£30mil to sign players which in turn got me into the UCL, however, there is no way in hell that a Turkish club can spend anywhere near this figure in real life. Same goes in La Liga, I got promoted with Deportivo and am able to spend crazy money by spreading it over many months.

The makes the game unrealistic and also much easier as you can literally switch out your squad with ease. Managers should be given a set transfer budget, then its up to the club to structure the finances but if a X players costs 10m then 10m is taken out of the budget, whether its spread over 48 months or not.

Another point is, the AI never seems to exploit this in the same way.

 

Player Power (especially at larger clubs): One of the more frustrating sides of FM is how easy it is when managing the big sides (Barcelona Real Madrid etc), if we look at managers at large clubs they usually don't last long and have problems with influential players. The higher profile the player, the more power they should have, now I'm not sure how this can be implemented in FM without making it tedious but managing the likes of Messi and Sergio Ramos should't be easy. This would add a challenge to working with high profile players as there is in real life and make managing the larger sides more challenging.

 

Media Pressure: This one is a bit tough as I find the current press-conferences etc to be tedious so I understand the challenges here but, in modern day football the media scrutiny on the manager is one of the most challenging aspects of the job. If you sign a player for big money there should be instant questions on why the players was signed, how they perform, if they aren't playing then why not etc. There should be more scrutiny on tactics and result, and more to the point, being on the wrong side of the media should affect players more greatly and add pressure on your job. And the opposite to, playing the media game well should result in being more influential with players, more attractive when signing players and a safer job too.

 

Fan Pressure: Fan pressure is something you hardly feel in FM whereas in real life it is the biggest pressure factor on a manager. Fans should have more impact if they disapprove of a transfer, or tactics, be able to put pressure on specific players etc. This could also be varied towards which club and set of fans, for example in Turkey or Italy fan influence on the club can be greater than in the Premier League. Adding in these dynamics can make the game more challenging, especially while managing the larger sides and make the game more life-like too.

 

Director Of Football: The DoF should not be appointed by the manager and should be an added challenge when managing a side with a DoF. They should have input on transfers & tactics.

 

Defending: Finally, match-engine wise - My main gripe is that defending appears to be that it's far easier to set up a side to gene-press for 90 minutes and attack then it is to defend (when it should be the opposite). It also seems quite difficult to set up a side to counter attack while defending deep without conceding a load of goals. (This may just be based on my playing style.)

 

In all, I feel there needs to be a differentiation between managing a large side vs a smaller side, there should be added challenge when managing the likes of Liverpool, and Man United with more fan pressure, media pressure, player power, input for a Director of Football etc.