The Tr0ll

That was the most maddening part. To have gotten the notification that they finally addressed it and then finding that nothing of the sort actually occurred was pretty much rock bottom in terms of user experience for me smh.

Thank you for your reply @Zachary Whyte. I have two questions and a comment around it. 1) Why did you (that is, the collective SI "you") say that you did fix it upthread, when it was not addressed? That feels dishonest if the response is now "This is far too complex to do correctly". Nothing changed; the schedule generates exactly the same as it did on release day, as far as I can tell. 2) The vagueness of the response here has me concerned that this will not be addressed for next year's iteration of the game either, again. Can you share anything around the timing of a hypothetical fix? Will we have to wait for San Diego to join the league and even up the conference sizes again? That's going to be year-after-next if I'm not mistaken, and that would be really disappointing. Frankly, I know for a fact you can get pretty close with a custom match plan and the existing editor tools, and that's all people are looking for, I think. It's disappointing to have been told that this is impossible to address for two years running in light of that. "Unable to replicate it with 100% accuracy" is one thing, and certainly understandable, but the schedule in its current state is more like denying the DNA that the league is built on. Conference ranking means everything for the cup, so throwing away 7-9 of those match-ups every season is frustrating to say the least. The current state isn't even a good approximation by that measure.

I wanna echo the frustration with the way that MLS has been handled over the past two games. The league schedule has been wrong since 23 at least, too (despite the issue being marked as resolved). I think that qualifies as a more major bug. I have seen SI set high bars for documenting data for changes and fixes in other leagues/confeds, but with CONCACAF in general, it all feels very slapped together and treated as an afterthought. I've said before that I understand that CONCACAF isn't what sells FM, but man, getting the schedule right and being able to see the hardware you've won feel like really basic and frankly, kind of insulting misses. I'd be a lot more upset if I wasn't playing on the Game Pass version this year. I would much rather buy the game outright, but I'm not going to do that when the "best version" of the game doesn't even get me playing teams the correct number of times in a season, and not able to see all the trophies I might win. Just a real bummer from an immersion standpoint, which I think is why most of us are here.

Just checking back in to say that I'm now 100% sure that this issue is not actually resolved. I started four different saves last night just to check, and none of them started with a correct schedule, East or West. Evidence and example save game are in the post above.

Respectfully, I don't believe that it has been resolved, unless I'm doing something wacky on my end. Please advise if that is the case. New vanilla save: Game Pass version (0.9.445.0), 24.3 Database, no editor files active, traditional career. You'll notice that FC Cincinnati's schedule plays every other team in the league once, except for six eastern conference opponents. IIRC, this is unchanged from how it was when FM 24 was released, but even if it is different, it is still incorrect. FC Cincinnati should play every Eastern conference team twice, and the remaining six matches should be against Western Conference opponents. They should only ever play six matches against the West. The competition guide lines from the 2023 season are linked here, screenshot of the relevant portion attached. Save uploaded - MLS Fixture plan check 4.21.fm

Same issue, I've also uploaded a save. Should probably mention that if I flip the contract over to Senior, I can get the contract up to $1.4M (I didn't have the xAM to make it work, but it looked like it would go through if I did). Des Player Problem FC Cincinnati.fm

So, I'm not 100% sure about any of this, but I *think* that since a 7M transfer fee would have to be amortized over the three years of this guys contract at roughly $2.33M/yr, he won't fit into a senior roster spot and you'd have to use a Designated Player spot to sign him. I know that sounds ridiculous since he's only making 120k/yr, but I *think* that's how it works; that is, if he's on a senior team contract, his tx fee plus salary/yr have to come in under max budget charge (which is $680k-ish IIRC). That said, you might be able to buy that contract down with TAM to get it fit inside that range. I don't remember what the max-TAM contract amount is off the top of my head (but if you made me guess, I'd guess that this contract is too rich even with that) Others may very well know better than I do though, and I will tell you from experience that using TAM in FM 23 was pretty much always an unpredictable adventure as far as how the game treats it. I haven't really used it in FM 24 yet, but I might be getting to that point soon in my save. If I do, I'll update you here.

Your first screenshot is broken for me, so I can't really tell what it's saying to you. I will point out that transfer fees do (correctly) hit the cap on top of salary, even though the game doesn't do a great job of pointing this out, so it is possible that this is your issue. Waiver claims obviously don't have that issue, so I suspect that might be what's getting you (though obviously I can't say for sure without seeing the save). Edit to add: I found a way to see the screenshot in question. If it's not the transfer fee, it seems like it might be bugged, as I can't think of any other reason that would put you over the cap.

I mean, come on. This has been wrong all the way through FM 23 (at least) up until now. I posted about it in July of last year. We actually got *fewer* accurate schedules this year vs last year. Again, I know CONCACAF isn't what sells this game, but a proper schedule simply isn't too much to ask of a Football Simulation Game, is it? (Edit: I just realized it was my post that was linked to originally up top, but still, come on)

I don't know if this is the right place either, but this problem has persisted (for all MLS, obviously) since at least last year's iteration and I've reported it previously too. Honestly, its a real bummer.

A) On Game Pass, not Epic B) the issue (editor errors out when its loading the database) persists. The game seems to be playing just fine. ETA: just realized the error message was much different than OP, but yeah, it doesn't work for me, hasn't since release.

No dice for me, unfortunately, but the difference for me is that it never worked to begin with, so I might have a different issue.

Yeah I just tried loading it. Still broken

Oh, you're not wrong, generally speaking. The only reason I don't love it is that MLS Playoff seeding is totally based on ranking within the conference (rather than the whole league), so those conference matches have a lot to say about your cup chances at the end of a season.

I opened your file but I think you're using a different database than 23.4? I got some errors that were not this error, but I do have a little bit of insight just the same after poking around your file. Full disclaimer: I am very new to the editor. Do not assume I know what I am talking about. If it seems wrong, it very well may be. That said: I had a similar issue working on a similar project, and the problem for me (and it looks like for you) was in the match plan. In seasons where the number of teams in the league is odd, the plan of playing two rounds within the division and then X number of cross-conference matches won't work because some teams in the smaller conference (West) will have more than others, and they'll all have less than teams in the east. If you're not too hung up on the realism, you could go the route that SI took, and have every team play every other team in the league once, and then add enough additional division games to get the schedule to 34 (or whatever you're making the total).