jayedson

I made a similar point earlier and agree that to dismiss player weight as something purely cosmetic and inconsequential is a little short sighted, as indeed we all play the game differently and with varying levels of micro / macro management. For those playing attributeless saves, weight makes a good proxy for strength, and height a good proxy for jumping reach (I remember reading somewhere height doesn't impact the ME nearly as much as jumping reach). So however inaccurate or random weight may be for x% of players in the db, it's still an element of a player's profile that may or may not be considered by us as players. I've made it clear before unlike some, I enjoy micro managing the squad dynamic / player managent side of the game. It would probably be an issue for current players maybe but for newgens, being able to track fluctuating player weights and act on it by telling a player they need to get in the gym more or adjust their diet, or telling a young striker they need to 'bulk up' would be an interesting area of player interaction that would illicit the usual mix of positive / negative reaction from the player based on their personality and relationship with you as their manager. It's by no means high on my priority list but is just an example of how elements of gameplay could be amplified. In an ideal world, even the social media section could be integrated in a more gamified way, with players gaining social followers getting overconfident and players losing social followers feeling their confidence drop, and us as managers choosing whether to address it or not. How many new features can be added to a football simulation in its current state? Anything like this should at least be considered so removing elements of the game, however trivial or cosmetic they feel at the moment, feels like a backward step from an immersion perspective, and a missed opportunity from a future game mechanic perspective, although anything can obviously be reintroduced. All of this comes down to time and in order for the devs to meet deadlines, these things have had to be dropped in the transition to unity, but international management and shouts in particular better come back with a bang for FM26...

They could have not shown women's weight like a lot of media outlets do but why not just keep men's weight in there (like a lot of media outlets do)? https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/11/athletic-rosters-college-womens-body-image-epidemic/ https://fitisafeministissue.com/2014/02/21/whats-the-difference-why-dont-we-share-the-weights-of-female-athletes/ I was waiting for a new interaction where you could criticise a player for their weight gain, fall out with them, and be forced to apologise to try to remedy the situation (a la Guardiola and Kalvin Philips). https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68341149#:~:text=Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola,fourth-round tie against Liverpool.

I've also been guilty in the past of saying I was a couple of inches bigger than I was...

This is pretty much how I understand the current version of shouts to work. So, with that out of the way, the first thing to understand about Touchline Team Talks is that none of them alter any tactical settings. I've seen articles written before that talk about changing team/player instructions, mentality and so on. This is not the case. Touchline Team Talks affect player morale and body language, not tactical settings. Remember - none of these (or any of the others) alter tactical settings. They appear to be more closely linked to types of pressure your players may be feeling at various stages of a match and quite contextual in relation to this. The above contradicts Miles' recent X posts though: (https://x.com/milesSI/status/1807054524420374847 "In the actual match themselves, they affect instructions - team and/or player." This is where I've been a bit lost on the reasoning for removing shouts. Who is at fault here? Miles? Nic Madden? In a way I'd prefer SI were lying way back when this guidance was contributed to, as the alternative would be Miles is mistaken now or that the inconsistent truth has been sat on for years. Shouts aren't a massive deal by overall game standards but I feel some on the forum are a bit put out by the prioritisation of tasks / feature inclusion / introduction / removal and the justification behind their importance. Should a game take a few steps backwards (international management / touchline shouts / various game modes) for one step forwards (women's football)? This is all separated from the move to unity which is best described as being a 'given'. Or should the base game and its current features be stabilised, albeit in an unsatisfactory but perfectly playable state, before moving onto finalising new features / game modes? I have a huge bias as I speak as a player who uses touchline shouts religiously, enjoys international management as part of journeyman and challenge saves, and who also recently started building saves based on interesting restrictions - one being playing as Arnold Schwarzenegger, taking over an Austrian team in the second tier and trying to reach the pinnacle of European competition while employing a transfer strategy of only recruiting players over x height, over y weight and over z strength (tall, heavy, strong in case it wasn't obvious and yes, full-backs and wide men are hard to come by). All of which will now no longer possible until reintroduced in some form.

I've come to terms with SI's decision to remove the feature until they can implement it correctly, I was just really surprised when Miles described how they worked on X - with regards to the shouts resulting in tactical changes which could then have a knock-on effect on morale. I presumed they purely changed player body language as this 'reaction' was almost instant when you make a shout (smiley faces adjusting and text descriptions like 'delighted', 'disinterested', 'confused by' the feedback etc), and I was also wondering what tactical instruction 'encourage' or 'berate' would change as an example, as there is nothing that comes to mind that could be associated with this. I also realise now it's probably dependent on legacy functionality when the shouts were more tactical and less body language-focused, so will take time for them to reconfigure this. My recent comments on the issue are more about how I think they are relevant, useful and also enjoyable to me, and I don't think they can be proven to be redundant as some on here say.

The fact remains, it is part of real football - some managers are very vocal on the sidelines, some very expressive and reactive (clapping, flailing arms, head in hands etc) and some just sit in the dugout motionless for 90 minutes. We as managers in FM should be able to represent ourselves in the same way, regardless of the perceived effect (of which there is by the way, and the evidence you require can be found in countless anthropological studies, it's human nature). Your basis for the redundancy of shouts is founded on the assumption they would always make sense. What if there was a random real life manager who decided to berate his team every time they scored? Or praise them when they conceded? Would that still have the zero impact you imply? No, they would most likely be "confused by the feedback" no? And eventually they'd complain and want to leave to play for a much more sensible manager. Of course that would never happen, but a manager would also never play his star striker in goal and his goalkeeper up front - but FM let's us do this doesn't it? Because it's a managerial choice, it's an option and we're rewarded for making the right, sensible ones. Shouts are in no way as impactful as formation, tactics, squad building etc, but to me they represent an element of real football management, plus an extra opportunity to be a man manager on match day, choosing who to encourage and who to demand more of, based on player personality, current body language and the game situation. The decisions we make in-game should take these nuances into account and be rewarded or punished based on how appropriate or inappropriate our choice was, obviously not as much as a tactical decision on whether to focus down the middle or down the flanks against a 5 man defence, but it should still have some impact on the game or a couple of players in it at least.

Exactly, human beings respond or react (internally) to all forms of communication. If a real life player had 3 alternate realities / career paths with the only difference between them being in one reality their manager encourages from the touchline, in another he berates from the touchline and in the last does nothing, he'd have a different experience in each alternate reality, or at least enough recognisable variation in a career trajectory, less so at elite level but much more so at lower levels of the game. Obviously a manager wouldn't 'always' encourage or berate but I'm illustrating the point that touchline shouts (or physical reaction - clap / head in hands etc) definitely impact players state of mind during a game, however minimally that is. If I played and made a lung bursting run from wing back followed by a shot over the bar, on my way back to my position if I glanced at my manager and he was applauding encouragement, I'd feel a positive reaction. If he was flailing his arms around in a disappointed fashion, I'd probably feel annoyed as I'd felt I impacted the game in a positive way. If they weren't doing anything, I'd wonder why am I bothering. My state of mind would be affected any which way. Also - I like them in the game as they represent an opportunity to bring some gamified logic and strategy to the experience which is what games are. Similar to how if you praise a player for training and if they are extremely professional they can sometimes get annoyed with you? It's because they are professional and know it's expected of them, they don't need praise. Whereas an ambitious or balanced player would respond really well to praise for their training rating. Choosing the right option at the right time is a big part of strategy games, so it's a shame it's being removed but obviously there is work to be done to get it right. I disagree with the view they are pointless and redundant, why should player's body language even be visible if we can't do anything in the game to change it. Team talks sure, and if that's the case, touchline shouts as well as they should follow the same principle of influencing body language, for better or for worse. I'll miss that glow of green faces when I click encourage 20 minutes into a game where we're favourites and haven't scored yet. Yeah it became formulaic but only once you got used to what works when, which is what part of figuring out strategy games is all about.

I agree I've definitely oversimplified a possible fix but only going off how Miles himself described how it currently works. "they can affect body language. And that is shown on screen as happening relatively quickly - but it has no effect on the match engine itself until the ball goes out of play. In the actual match themselves, they affect instructions - team and/or player." I'll leave it to them to fix the feature as they see fit but I'd hope that shouts have zero effect on tactical instruction and instead they merely adjust a player's body language which will subsequently affect how the rest of the game plays out. Tactical changes can always be made alongside to influence the game that way. We may differ in opinion on if shouts are needed but I'm keen for them to be back in the game as soon as possible as one of the well known factors of being a good man manager is knowing who would respond best to the equivalent of an 'arm around the shoulder' or a 'kick up the backside' (dependent on their personality). This concept also transcends to verbal options pitchside and for me, constitutes a vital part of a football manager simulation and a clear and obvious feature where our choice as a manager can either benefit or hinder the chance of our team getting a result. Anyone not fussed about changing a player's body language during a game and preferring to purely adjust tactics can ignore the feature.

Plenty of time has passed by for this progress to be made - many years actually, as Miles says: Shouts have been in the series for many years and, to be frank, I’ve never been happy with them. On the subject of if shouts are needed, I think so. Alongside tactical acumen, that often-used phrase of being a 'morale manager' is an important one in the game and I think being able to give a player a confidence boost or a verbal kick up the backside or various things in-between from the touchline seems like a useful game feature where us as managers can be rewarded or punished with a sensible or inappropriate choice in-game. It also adds to match day immersion for me. If shouts currently affect both body language and tactical instructions, it doesn't seem like a huge leap to remove their effect on tactical instruction (which they shouldn't do anyway and is a leftover element of previous tactical related shouts) and have them purely affect body language, which they already do. So not redeveloping any game mechanics, but removing one element of it. Obviously I'm oversimplifying what is probably a complex element to fix, otherwise I'm sure it would have been addressed by now. But I'm not 100% happy with the reasoning behind their removal - A “shout” should happen instantly, but they only came into effect after the ball had gone out of play. It also wasn’t clear to players how long the shout lasted for. This can be solved with a simple tooltip no? "Shouts will take effect for 10 minutes after a break in play" (or something equivalent). I think my underlying concern is more around the implication that perhaps a shift in body language isn't having the effect it should on game performance. In terms of mechanics or 'math' - the effect of a shout on body language should be fairly straight-forward and already exists in the game in the form of team-talks, plus in the form of player interactions to affect morale, praising a player for their form for example and seeing a boost in morale. The complex part in the match engine probably comes from how this change in body language should affect the player or team performance and alter the match outcome. If this is the tricky part then team-talks would probably be redundant too, but I appreciate I'm speculating around the game mechanics here. I know they wouldn't make this decision lightly, I guess I'm just disappointed as it's a feature I use and like regardless of potential flaws around timing and duration when they're applied.

Such a shame SI hasn't been able to simplify how shouts affect players and are instead removing them for the foreseeable. There's obviously been a gradual shift from some of the tactical shouts from much earlier versions of the game ("get ball forward", "retain possession" etc) to introducing some morale-based ones and finally to recent years when they are all (seemingly) morale / body language related. Previously, shouts like "get creative" would obviously mean a tactical tweak and I guess could have a knock-on effect on morale as Miles explains. In recent years, they've obviously been using the same game mechanics to try to get similar effects but from purely body-language focused shout options. I could see "fire-up" as maybe temporarily applying an instruction of 'get stuck in' and "calm down" doing the opposite - 'stay on feet'. "Demand more" could do something like temporarily increase tempo, but I can't see what instructions would be affected by "praise", "encourage" or "berate" unless they just simply affect body language and not tactics which is absolutely fine with me. Why not just remove any tactical effects from shouts and have them impact body language only given Miles admits they do affect body language at the moment which are the reactions we see from players in-game. I'm intrigued as to why they can't utilise the same game mechanics as team-talks which I presume have no tactical effect and are there to purely address the body language of players before the game, at half time and after the match. I've always presumed there must be some form of hidden body language-related attribute scale, something like: nervous >>> complacent insecure >>> confident Where -10 would be extremely nervous / insecure and +10 would be extremely complacent / confident on either of these scales for example. If a winger goes into a game with a -8 insecure and -4 nervous in terms of where they are on any given match day, you should be able to affect this through team-talks and shouts of "encouragement" or "no pressure" to give these body language attributes a boost, maybe getting them up a bit to -6 and -2. You can then obviously get it wrong by shouting "demand more" at an already nervous winger, making them even more nervous down the scale. These numbers (along with multiple other factors of course) then influence how likely this winger is to dribble past his man on a given occasion in the match engine, improving or reducing the percentage likelihood of a successful dribble for example. This must be the intention or at least I hope it is but I don't really understand why they're not working well - you can easily map each shout to an element of body language and in the exact same way as team talks, use the combination of player personality, current body language, strength of opposition etc to create the eventual result of 'delighted', 'confused', 'disinterested' etc. Shouts not having an effect until the ball is out of play is a flaw but one I could live with so I'll be sad to see them go, hopefully they come back soon.

We all love a new stadium as FM managers, especially when bringing a small club up through the leagues and to elite football. After plans for new stadiums are announced (the blueprints are a nice visual touch) and the anticipation of the build being completed, it's a bit of an anti-climax when you get the boring news item - 'the x board have proudly announced the completion of the club's move to x stadium. During a brief ceremony at the new ground, a spokesperson......' How about we 'see' this brief ceremony? The stadium is already now built into the code so could use a combination of already existing pre-match shots of the ground and perhaps a tweaked version of a trophy lift but instead of a trophy, it's the manager going up to shake the chairman's hand. Although I guess this may all be redeveloped on the unity engine. I'd love it as it's one of my favourite achievements in FM - to get a new stadium built for my club! (by the way - feel free to leave out a random member of the board doing a cartwheel - we can probably do without that)

Thanks @Michael Sant - for what it's worth, it feels like a bug as I have new signings Cataldi and Joelsson only here a couple of months and they're influential already as you can see. Schlager also stuck below 17/18 yr old youth players. He's very experienced, high reputation (compared to squad), an international and my vice captain, I would have normally seen him rise much quicker at least to influential / highly influential but he's rock bottom.

Me again! Sorry but things have progressed with a further issue identified. Moving through my game and getting to 16th September and suddenly now my team leader is happy with the squad depth (perhaps he wanted to see the new signing in training for a few weeks! ) However, I have 5 squad members who still 'support' their team-mate and agree with the lack of sufficient quality squad depth - they should probably drop this at the same time the original player does right? Screenshot shows Lushaku with the promise against his name but now no issues with management, but other players still 'supporting' their team-mate.

Ah, thanks @Russell Hammant I guess I've been used to the 'promise failed' then player asking what am I going to do about it, to prompt another interaction, but that's fine, I realise that isn't always the case now. Shame the promise wasn't met though, I think I improved the depth greatly!

Thanks @Zachary Whyte - sorry just to add, continuing a couple of days to 2nd Sep and I get the below message about promise failed, but there is no option to speak to the player in the bottom right as there normally should be...can't bring up the topic for discussion via the player discussion menu either.

Hey @Zachary Whyte - even with latest update (24.2.0), I have had the issue of goalkeeper squad depth come up, so I addressed it buying a very decent back-up goalkeeper. Unfortunately it hasn't appeased the squad as it should have done, now the primary player with the complaint is pleased improvements will be made at end of season (mid season transfer window just closed) as opposed to having the promise fulfilled. My goalkeepers prior to latest purchase were 3.5/3.5, 2/2 and 1/2.5 stars so fair enough they thought the back-up wasn't good enough. My new purchase is a 3/3 star player - so now my number 1 is a 'leading' player for my league and new back-up is a 'good' player for this league. With another additional back-up making three decent keepers in the squad I feel this should have been enough to fulfil the promise. Otherwise I am stuck with morale issues for half a season. Have uploaded save just prior to confirming new quality back-up goalkeeper - [goalkeeper_confirmation.fm]

Not very high priority at all but I just had to have an outfield player in goal for 83 mins of a game. Was thinking it would be a nice visual touch if they had their outfield kit on (shorts and socks) with just a goalkeeper shirt on - as this is usually what ends up happening IRL. Also watching the ME, it didn't appear that they played or were animated that differently to a regular GK so would be good if there could be a bit more chaos thrown in - fumbled catches, dropped balls etc. The opposing team also didn't appear to change tactic - would be good if they started launching balls into the box more, in my example the opposing team even carried on with their short corners, they didn't seem to want to take advantage of an outfield player in goal.

I fully agree and mentioned similar in the feedback thread. At the very minimum, there needs to be an adjustment to the nationalities and current wage of suggested players, then some additional logic and parameters you can give the DoF to work with would be really helpful. An example of where the DoF transfer target suggestions are virtually useless are in leagues with strict rules on number of foreign players allowed etc. In my current save in the J2 League, I am only allowed 4 foreign players in each matchday squad. I have 6 foreign players in my squad so goes without saying I don't need anymore, I need to target domestic japanese players really. Out of interest I asked my DoF for tranfer suggestions in every single position under every category (transfer, loan, end of contract and free transfer). Out of 129 suggestions, given my current DoF has spent his entire playing and coaching career in Japan, how many of these suggestions do you think were Japanese? 13.

As an example, I want to shout to 'encourage' my players as we are drawing 1-1 but we are mid-highlight. If the highlight results in a goal for us, I now know that the shout would occur after the goal, so 2-1 up and would confuse / frustrate the players. In the instances when this is going to happen, I think I manage to get around it by going into the tactics screen as the goal is being score, then clicking 'cancel' - when returning to the match this seems to cancel the shout too so there is a workaround but it is not clear or intuitive. Maybe in the shout box, there could be a small 'x' with a tooltip saying 'cancel shout' so this could be pressed if a goal was scored in the highlight, prior to the scheduled shout having its effect.

Did a quick search and quite surprised I didn't find anyone mentioning this but maybe I missed it, apologies if so. Anyway - I've always thought after a penalty, you get a replay of the penalty being taken / scored but you don't get a replay of the penalty incident. I think this is pretty important and should be in the replay options as standard.

Not a bug and not a feature request as such and has probably been brought up a few times before but would be good if the DoF transfer suggestions could be a bit smarter. I have a maximum advised wage of 13k per week according to my budget but asking my DoF for CB suggestions, I am given a range of options, most of which earn much much more than that (highest suggestion was on 73k per week). His DoF stats are 12/12/12 (JPA/JPP/Negotiating) just out of interest, but even an incredibly poor DoF shouldn't suggest players way out of reach financially, they should maybe just offer weaker players than a really top DoF would. In the past I've also had to abandon it as an option where I've already reached squad quota of non-EU or non-domestic players but all DoF suggestions are non-EU / non-domestic so cannot be pursued. The logic behind the suggestions just needs to take squad rules and wage budget into account more than it currently does (or offer more criteria - so ask the DoF for domestic transfer suggestions).

It's clear issues are affecting some more than others. League rules bugs aside (which need to be sorted asap), it seems to be high scoring / high conversion rates, AI squad building / rotation / use of subs and player unhappiness / dynamics being the big hitters that everyone is waiting for to be fixed in this upcoming patch. If all games in your league are high scoring (seems to be the case as opposed to just managed teams) then it kinda evens itself out so some players can look past that. AI squad building / rotation / use of subs may not be that noticeable unless people are looking for it so again some players could look past this. With regards to dynamics issues (which once they arrive, no-one can get away from!) - I have a theory (based on absolutely nothing at all apart from my own save as a caveat) that manager reputation / team performance could be a factor. For the 'story' element of my beta save, I made my manager a real life former international player so set up the manager profile as such. From the start the players have looked up to me given the higher reputation and continued overachievement at the club means atmosphere and managerial support has remained in the green. I also always focus on team cohesion where I can in my training schedules to get this as high as possible. I also always keep a tight squad (23-25 players max) to keep most happy in terms of playing time. In press conferences I often get the question "you've used the least amount of players of everyone in the league so far - why is that?". I had a couple of minor grumbles about squad depth at GK and CB (I noticed them in the happiness screen before any players came to me and I was able to promote youth prospects to the first team which resolved this). I also experienced a bug where a player was worried a new signing was going to replace him, I reassured him he wasn't and the next day he said 'promise' was broken as he hadn't received the same playing time. I thought it was going to be the start of something but a new promise was made and the player was eventually satisfied. Aside from these, in 5 seasons I haven't experienced any of the other extreme dynamics issues people have talked about. Maybe if I had set myself to lower rep / no coaching badges etc (I do like a journeyman every now and again) - I would have experienced this well-known spiral into the dynamics management nightmare which can be infuriating and at the moment is exposing outright bugs in the game mechanics. Perhaps the factor of manager reputation is too extreme in terms of exposing player unhappiness? So where players have a higher rep than the manager they are kicking off about absolutely everything from playing time to contracts to squad depth etc etc? It's just a theory based on my own save and some of the varied feedback I'm seeing in this forum. So my advice to anyone at either end of this argument who wants a more well-rounded view of the game would be: - If you started your current save with a high reputation, try another with virtually no reputation at a bigger club and see how well you can manage your players - If you started your current save with very little reputation, try another with higher manager rep at a smaller club and see if you can get by without the dynamics issues You may then get an idea of why the game is unplayable for some, and perfectly playable for others, in terms of the dynamics issues at least. The rest is subjective and about how much the player can look past with regards to high scoring games and AI squad management, but we all want SI to address these problems to result in a more well-rounded, sensible and realistic game. Fingers crossed it's coming.