TheArsenal63

Some on here are too invested in the game (as was I at some point before I realised it's going to be constantly tweaked until March anyway so might as well wait). You should realise that this is what the game is, there's enough evidence to show you what is their methodology and approach to updates and what they consider a playable game. Make your purchase decision based on that. Can you tolerate it or live with those flaws? If not, you are most likely wasting your time and energy trying to change how a company operates and approaches it's release/updates. And some others are strangely too invested in controlling how/what people say on here and being a bit hostile to people's feedback if they deem it too negative. That's the mods job to moderate the conversation if it gets too out of hand, if you are not a mod, let people have their say and carry on.

So the crossing issue (player's not crossing direction they are facing and turning back to either cut back or cross with weaker foot) seems to only happen in these scenarios : Player has acres of space (anyone remotely near them makes them turn back, crossing early or taking on the man is gone) There are players in the box to cross to Problem is : Player's don't get into the box quick enough so no one to cross to. ME is too strict with when crossing happens, any players close to the crosser and they decide the cross is not on and turn back. Dribbling is still bad, players turn back and don't take their defenders on. Fullbacks also shoot too often from tight angles, again contributing to the lack of crossing. I'm able to get 75% possession too often as well so possession is still too high. Fix those issues and the ME would be in such a good place. Hope they take a look at it for the march update.

The game is very different than FM22. I had to be more careful with my mentalities in this FM, I don't go above Balanced now unless I am at home and facing a smaller side. If it helps, everything that affects risk in the tactic should be turned down by at least 1 or removed entirely, compared to the FM22 save. The risk of counters is much higher and conceding from them as well. So far all the issues I had, I can overcome with trying to disrupt the oppositions build up and also making sure I keep the ball a bit better when I get it back. My aim is to control the game instead of it turning into a back and forth. Largely those ideas have worked and I have 60% - 70% possession with averages of 2.5xG per game. I use a lot of opposition instructions as well, I mark and press the CBs (not the DC, just RCB and LCB) so they are forced to launch the ball in the air, then I have my CBs on cover with good heading and jumping, anticipation also important. I then make sure that there are enough midfielders coming back so they can challenge for the second balls as well, otherwise the ball will come right back at you. I also mark the WBs in 3 ATB formations so I don't get overloads in attack. Once I have finalized my tactic , I can share it if you want to try it with opposition instructions, having good success with it at the moment and the defensive ideas are working to help my team control games. The game (so far) feels in my control, and my biggest issue with FM23 was there was so many silly things happening that it wasn't worth trying to work around them since they were ME bugs. Right now , if i study the matches, I can come to a good conclusion as to why I am conceding or losing, I have to be more careful than FM22, as long as I feel in control of fixing these problems, I'm fine. There's still bugs btw, crosses don't happen enough and possession is too high but it's not a big enough issue to spoil the fun like the beta release was.

The stutter does happen for me, but it's not frequent enough for it to be a big problem, if they fix it, great but it hasn't ruined the experience for me yet. I've got a 3080 so maybe that helps.

ME is excellent right now, defending feels great, defenders (mostly) are close to enough to challenge for the ball now and it feels like a battle for the second balls as well which is great to see. Center play is great, possession is a bit too good at the moment, I feel like pass accuracy needs to be toned down a bit. This explains why people , including me, are complaining about the chaos factor being toned down too much, it's too "clean" at the moment, needs like 10%-20% more chaos. But make it player specific, so I don't want to see my Huddersfield team being able to play into tight areas this well. Final thing is the most important, right now I see a near complete absence of crossing early or first time, I see far too many cut backs, players with acres of space will just turn back and choose a cut back option. This used to happen a lot in FM22 and it was very annoying, don't get me wrong, crossing does happen but it's rare, far too may cutbacks at the moment. It's almost like the AI does not see options in the box (maybe due to the enhanced defending AI) and so decides to always go for the cut back (even then the cut back is usually not first time or in the direction they are facing, they will turn back AND THEN cut back), there needs to be more crosses across face of goal even if there is low chance of not scoring from them. That's the most glaring issue right now, too many players turning back and then choosing the cut back instead of a cross. Fix this and a bit more chaos which would reduce the possession numbers and honestly this might be the best ME in a long time. Well done the SI team!

Representation of defending is much much better, it feels and plays like every pass is contested with a player not too far from the ball, so there's almost always a challenger when it makes sense for there to be one near. The slight downside though is the dribbling and chaos , which was the great part of this ME has been toned down a bit too much in my opinion. If the beta was 100% chaos, this feels like 40%. It still is miles better than the beta and a much better ME than FM22. The attacking play is also a little bit static, I haven't had time to do all my tweaks but there definitely is a lot to learn here and figure out. It's possible that the way the tactics affect the ME has changed significantly enough that I can try and tweak the attacking phase to get the desired result. I will report back if I have success in creating a more free flowing tactic.

Massive list of ME changes it seems. Time to dive in and check it out again.

Cool.

That's fair, but I would push back a little on that and present the list of fixes on the touch version as a way to show that some of those fixes are fundamental and potentially game breaking which is why they are fixing it. But I also concede that people can still find enjoyment in the game in the time it takes them to fix the issues, after all it is a subjective experience. So that part is fair.

If you are referring to me, at least quote me so I can reply. Every software team DOES have best practices, there are industry standards for how software teams should work (should being the operatice word here), for example agile methodology. Finally nowhere in my reply do I even say all software teams should work the same, you've created a straw man and are using that as an argument. Doesn't work.

The funny thing is , I almost always enjoy the final version of the ME once they fixed the issues. My main issue is, i shouldn't have to wait a month+ for the game to be in an enjoyable/stable position. Release dates need to be taken more seriously at SI, most games have the core gameplay loop (in this case the ME) down pat on release day. They still patch it but it's usually tweaks. Final thing I would say is, the ME in football manager is akin to walking in other video games. If the ME is broken, it's like if player's couldn't walk or had issues with navigating the game world. It's that important to FM, have a stable one before release and don't have your customer's wait a month+ to be able to enjoy your game.

I work in software development , and your issue is not QA, your issue is having too many changes in a single year and not leaving enough time for QA and fixes before release. Looking from the outside in, it feels like you don't have a stable or acceptable build in time for release because you have major bugs too close to release. I understand also that things you can't forsee delay projects all the time, it happens but the way to make sure it doesn't impact your release window is, next time, to correctly estimate how much work you can actually take on in a year. Feels like you bit more than you can handle and ended up with a whole host of issues right up to deadline. Then, as seems like practice, you guys allow yourselves to be in a situation where you are trying to fix your game post launch. That's not good practice, it can happen sometimes, i get it but it happens too often with this game. Correctly estimating work a year out is also really difficult in software development so I get it, but maybe use the previous years work to understand what you can achieve next year in time for release. That's the key here, it's not okay to release this game in this state, I feel like SI think the game is stable, it most certainly not and the patch you will provide might actually make it playable.

I don't imagine that anything said here really impacts how SI go about their business, it is what it is. What is interesting and a bit concerning this year is that several big streamers have commented frequently on the bad defending. It's a little comical when they try to take it seriously on their stream and the ball keeps going over the defenders head constantly. Most of them are tacticians or like to think of themselves like that, but there's not much they can do fix a known bug. These streamers have big audiences and it's a bad look for SI tbh. That seems like the only thing that might ever have a chance of getting them to change their development, QA and release practices. You can't keep releasing a game broken on launch and thing you can get away with it, eventually (as much as they feel confident it doesn't affect their bottom line) it will catch up with them because they take the patience of FM players for granted. I play so many other games and if those companies pulled any of this, their fan bases are...not the most patient. The worst thing that can happen to any company is not negativity, it's when people stop caring or lose interest.

I don't there will be a patch until sometime in early December. Maybe even mid december.

Interesting...

Highly doubt it, I've still December 7th or 8th. Might be wrong.

The regression in lighting is criminal. That actually looks like sun light in the afternoon, current FM 23 looks like one uniform flat light where everything looks the same. How does your lighting regress so much in 10 years and people are ok with it. If this was any other genre of game, their fan bases would be livid. But FM just trucking along, maybe that's why, maybe not enough people have complained or care about the 3D, it would explain alot.

First , people can't enjoy something they have a problem with, just telling them that does not help. Small number of users reporting issues with the ME has been the exact reason that SI have been able to create quality ME changes year after year. They tell you that themselves and is why this thread as well as the bug tracker exists. If SI was to just look at steam ratings for how good their ME is, do you realise how disastrous that would be for them? The last thing they want is to discourage the small community of people who help them iron out the issues so they can create a quality product. The ME is their biggest selling point, it's the secrete sauce, it's why FIFA Manager gave up even trying to compete, it's the reason they still exist and every time they make it better, it distances themselves from any potential competitors who want to join the market. This is why beta exists, 99.99% of users are not on this forum, they will not report technical issues or even gameplay issues, they don't care enough to so they go and play something else. At some point, maybe months, maybe years , that 99% of users will get fed up with the accumulation of bugs and decline in ME quality and leave. Every game needs a core group of people who report these things because other gamers do not care enough to do it. By discouraging it and telling people not to take it seriously, you would be actively hindering the progress the game has made and it's actually really bad for SI. I've seen many games, especially MMOs since I played alot of them back then, who took the same position you propose. You wanna know what happened? Those users who care so much stopped caring and moved on, then a competitor came along and offered the casual crowd something better and they also moved on. What made the game unique and what differentiated them from other products was watered down because the company failed to understand what their USP was and discouraged loyal fans who understood that it was the wrong direction. It's so common and has happened to companies so many times that I'm surprised you would advocate for people not to take the game so seriously. It's precisely the reason why people keep coming back, you have an invested group of people and usually the death of a game is when that crowd abandons it. The core group of users who care about the game is the canary in the coal mine, if they see a problem and you continue to ignore it, then eventually it will affect the wider user base, it just takes longer (possibly years). Many companies make this mistake and they eventually go out of business or a competitor arrives who does it better because the standards have fallen. That's why I am so surprised at so many people on this thread who are determined to tell people to either shut up or calm down, it's like you want the game you like so much to eventually fail. That's what will happen when you chase or discourage these users away.

Just as a counter to this, you are 100% in your right to bang on about the same things 1000 times in this thread. The more the merrier, I enjoy reading other people's posts and I welcome their thoughts. This is what the feedback thread is about. Don't let people make you hesitant to post here just because of a fear of being told off. I'm sure the developers and mods welcome all posts and comments as long as they are respectable. SI have said countless times that the feedback and bug reporting is invaluable to them, so keep em' coming folks.

The best feedback I could give to the ME team for future iterations of FM is this, the game at present does not do a good job of differentiating between top level creators (usually in midfield but not limited to) to someone in league 2 for example. More individuality is needed, the ME seems to play the same everywhere, one template, the players don't have enough influence from a midfielder point of view. I can see and feel when I buy a better strikers for the most part, when I buy a faster player or dribbler with flair , better defenders (this one makes a huge impact, especially players who can defend the cross) and to some extent even fullbacks (although this is still debatable). But the level of play between creative players with high technical abilities in midfield, vision , passing and decision making, is not enough compared to really poor players in say, league 2. There's a lack of individual influence on the overall match from players with those traits. I see players from league 2 pass the ball, create, trap the ball and make great decisions even though their stats are awful. I understand that it is probably relative to their league, but it's still not great in my opinion. I see Ozil level passes and intelligence from players who should not (or at least not on a consistent basis) be able to do it, it makes you having to buy better midfield talent, a little bit meaningless unless you are better more defensively. I see teams in real life have a transformation when they buy 1 midfielder who can play out of the press, whereas in the current ME, i can stick a guy who I know is not as good and he won't have any issues. It makes buying big talents a little meaningless, I should feel and see the effect of creative players or players who can control matches. More individuality is needed for the ME to go on to the next phase of it's transformation, to get the player excited when making a transfer and seeing it on the pitch when it affects your build up and creativity.

Just my two cents before I log off until the next update. The bugs for this version of the ME are....not small, there's some extremely bad defending, lots of people have reported it and other issues. I appreciate the communication from Jack and Co, it;s better to know than not to and it hasn't been historically so good here. So i appreciate that, but I have to also say, to release this game with those major issues, that's really not on man. You guys need to have better development cycles, it always seems like (even with the confirmed wider alpha testers) that fixing core issues are left for an update post launch. Maybe you push too many changes in your cycle, or too few developers on the ME, or maybe the QA time is not enough, but surely at some point the ME released at launch should be (minus any minor updates) the one that fans get to play all year? Balancing updates are fine, but these are structural issues, entire play styles don't work, defenders go on a walk on counters (clips of this everywhere). I don't think anything I say here really matters to SI but wanted to just write it up in case. You are possibly the only single player (mostly , I know multiplayer exists) game in my library where I have to stop playing until an update post launch since the core experience is highly flawed at release. That's my bit anyway, hope the december update fixes most of the big issues and I can get back to playing it.

I might be , but I could have sworn FM20, possibly 19 and 21. I'd have to look back, but there was solid 2 versions where there was major issues with the ME that wasn't resolve until march. It was more of surprise than the norm when we got an ME update before march to fix the major issues reported in the bug tracker It's fine now anyway since Jack has confirmed there will be one before Christmas.

That's all I wanted to know, thanks for letting us know. I'll come back when those updates are in.

I haven't made anything up (why would I, that's such an odd thing to accuse me of), from memory (and I've been playing this game for a while), there's usually an update on release for the ME, then any major bugs get addressed in march. I might be misremembering but this happened on FM20. I'm pretty sure your last ME update has always been along with the winter update. And on some versions (depending on severity) it's always been march.

I meant strictly ME since that's the meat and potatoes of Football manager?