Chooxen

This is a case of an exception not disproving the rule. Many managers continually shout from the sidelines, that's not really debatable.

I don't think there's any indication that people don't use shouts. I guarantee you 90%+ players use a shout when the game isn't going their way. And I don't buy for one second that SI don't have the resources required to fix a system as simple as shouts (not that it's incredibly broken to begin with). SI is a company with 285 permanent employees (not including researchers) and are owned by SEGA. This isn't a two-bit operation. There are multiple systems that are fairly simple and have required work for years. They're prioritising UI and graphical overhauls that aren't required whilst other parts of the game remain borderly dysfunctional.

Come off it, you've seen the screenshots. Big boxes of info rather than spreadsheets, a layout that is suited to a mobile/touchscreen rather than a point-and-click high-res screen. The writing's on the wall, what more evidence do you need? Stop simping for game devs that bite their thumb at you.

Speaking also as someone who has coached in sports (not football), we were in constant communication with the players on pitch. You might want to focus on specific individuals or clarify position or when a team should execute a tactic, etc. General shouts of encouragement and reminders to stay focused are also very helpful over a long game where attention wanes and complacency sets in. I honestly don't think the system was so broken that it warranted removal. It is already fairly clear that shouts don't occur until the ball goes out of play and the game often prompts you to change your mind when a highlight occurs, so that you don't berate a team that just scored. It seems to work well even if it's not an ideal system.

In which case, they have made a mistake. The PC version is a more involving game and this is what its players are looking for. We need to see information displayed in a concise and customisable way that minimises clicking and scrolling. Presenting information in big boxes rather than spreadsheets is one of the most frustrating changes I could imagine making for a game like this. What is useful for developers - having one match engine across platforms - is not useful for players. Potentially a huge misstep here, especially if it can't be customised or modded around.

I think there's three main concerns here. First, the UI is big and blocky and unwieldy. It does look like it's made to align with the UI of the mobile version, which is a mistake. On a PC, we need to have the information presented as concisely as possible to avoid lots of scrolling and clicking. Presenting information in big boxes rather than spreadsheets is not useful to us. We need a UI that is - above anything else - concise, navigable and customisable. Second, women's football being included in the same database as the men's game is liable to be a nuisance. If not separated out from the men's game, you're going to find yourself clicking on results, players, competitions etc that are not relevant because you can never sign any of the players nor compete against any of the teams. To all intents and purposes, it's like including cricket teams in the same database. If loaded together, they need to be separated out in a way that requires you, at a bare minimum, to switch between men's and women's games. Third, the removal of features simply because a) they are underutilised or b) because they do not function well suggests a race to the bottom in terms of functionality. Why not simply improve these systems? How difficult is it really to fix the player shout system to make it function in a clearer way? Why remove these features but not other features that are more commonly complained about, such as player interactions or press conferences? It suggests to me that it's all but inevitable that any system that is currently broken will be removed rather than fixed. Other changes such as to the graphics and match engine we haven't seen enough yet to judge, but I think there's plenty in this announcement to cause concern about the direction of the game.

Oh that's crazy. You'd think they could work in fairly harmless off-the-ball fouls without controversy but I guess they have their reasons.

I could be missing something here but I realised today that in years of playing this game, I don't think I've ever seen an off-the-ball foul in the match engine. Anyone else noticed a lack of off-the-ball fouls or alternatively their occurence?

Yeah I can echo that my finances seem to be broadly good, unless it was a response to the mid-season financial slump. There was no notification of this happening either, it seems to just have occurred at some point overnight across multiple staff roles.

In 3 seasons playing as Man Utd, I was only able to sign one player under 18 from abroad, who was himself only a few weeks away from being 18. I think in the English league system it may actually be hardcoded that you can't sign any. I'd like to know if anyone's actually managed it.

Hey, I wondered if anyone else had encountered this. I'm coming to renew my staff wages and have found that my max staff wage for pretty much every staff role has decreased significantly, so much so that there's many members of staff whose contracts I cannot renew. Has anyone else had this happen or is this a bug?

If they were, we wouldn't have leagues awash with foreign-born players. There's a tinge of the political in the work permit rules I daresay. No, I've never seen that film.

Weighing on this, it's clearly a design decision the developers have deliberately made. It's obviously a workaround design to prevent you from buying up all the 5-star regens when they're 15. Its effect is that it ruins the fun of scouting young foreign players. It is also unrealistic. The premise that a 17-year-old player from an unknown team in South America has zero interest in moving to Man Utd is clearly unrealistic. The idea that 'Brexit' or work permit rules such as int caps or league quality would prevent Man Utd from signing a hot prospect from South America is clearly preposterous. If this were the case, we wouldn't have U-21 squads across the top flight rammed full of players from every corner of the globe. It's a broad-brush solution to a feature of real-life football that is perceived as an 'exploit' in the context of the game. Its lazy implementation ruins both realism and fun. If you want to create obstacles to signing up all the regens in order to balance the game a bit, the obstacles need to be both more realistic and more surmountable. Maybe 1 in 10 South American youths will actually sign a pre-contract with you. Maybe they're all homesick so will require higher wages. Make navigating these obstacles part of the game. Put a little effort into it.

My issue with it isn't simply that player interest ought to be higher, but as far as I'm aware these are imaginary obstacles. In relatively recent versions of the game, you could agree a contract when a player was 16 to bring them to the UK when they turned 18. No real reason that couldn't be how these signings work now as far as I can tell. Also, I don't really believe the work permit rules are as strict as all that. Knowing dear old Blighty as I do, there's no way football clubs are being prevented from signing as many 18-year-olds from Timbuktu as they like regardless of their wage, caps or league quality. Our immigration laws are not that strict, there's no way we're preventing top-flight clubs from bringing young footballers here on temporary visas. It seems like a hangover from FM19, where the game included best and worst-case scenarios of what Brexit might look like in practice. Let's get it in line with reality, there is absolutely no way these rules function like this in practice.

I just told my striker I thought his form was good after a big hattrick at the weekend. He was upset and told me we had different ideas of what good form was. Told him, okay, let's just leave it there. No. He can't let this go quietly. He's furious. Who coded this? It's not a one-off, it happens like maybe 1 in 5 times I congratulate an in-form player for being in-form. They get offended and there's no option that assuages them. What band of bizarre schizophrenics have I employed here?

I don't suppose there's any way to accomplish that with in-game editor, it's got to be a pre-game change?

I'm having some issues signing foreign youngsters to the Premier League. It seems as though 3-star 16-year-olds playing for anonymous clubs in South America have no interest in joining a top English side. I can't even get them to negotiate contracts. I'm reading between the lines here, but is the issue work permits? If so, am I just to assume that I basically can't even begin the process of signing any young players from foreign leagues? If this is the case, is this realistic? I feel like that's not how work permits actually function post-Brexit. You can't tell me if that Man City want to sign a 17-year-old from Timbuktu FC they're getting told the player isn't interested or the work permit can't be arranged.

The bit where they demand a proper answer always annoys me. When have you ever heard a journo speak like that to a manager? Imagine them pulling it with Ange...

I'm glad it's not only me experiencing it then. I've had it as well where I fulfil my promise to start my squad player more often and 2 weeks later he's bitching me out again. I just feel that players who are clearly second or third string ought to accept better that they are being rotated. Even if they're not happy, is it realistic that they're constantly banging on their manager's door making threats? I have like maxed out mental attributes, can't imagine what it must be like for coach managers.

Thanks for the advice on this one, I'll look to play more attention to agreed vs actual playing time. I feel like some players are just always irritated regardless of this though. Are there hidden personality traits that might impact this? I have one fringe player in particular that plays all the time and flips the lid if he misses 2 games.

I've been having some real issues appeasing players with regards to game time in this version of the game. I always like to keep a big squad and rotate most positions most games for players. When you play twice a week and have two players in one position, it just makes sense to do this. However, I'm having real problems keeping the squad happy. They are constantly whinging about game time and will go to the press about it almost immediately. I have two players threatening to leave at the end of their contract and this is something I very rarely experienced in previous iterations of the game. Is there something I'm doing wrong here? It's not just my top guys, I've got players marked down as 'fringe' and 'squad' players that seem to want to start every game.

Alright, that's fair enough. I suppose my feedback would be this, then. If what I'm experiencing is a result of the AI responding more intelligently to what I am doing, I would prefer it responded less intelligently. The fun part of the game for me is really building the team, that's why I play the game. I'm not actually a football manager and I don't have the skillset to actually manage a football team. In previous iterations, I could just plug in the top-rated tactic on fmscout and literally just alter mentality up and down depending on how good the other team were. Few shouts, few subs, occasional tweak of instructions, and that seemed to be good enough. That's how I want to play, so if you can just revert back to whatever you were doing circa FM21 I'd be very grateful.

Not a real FM buff, just buy it and play it, but felt I needed to give some feedback on this year. For the first time, the match engine feels really random. Like, my team cannot put together a good run, there is absolutely no knowing how any given game will do. I can put out my best squad against a side a division below and lose 3-0. I can put out my reserves against the league leaders and win 3-0. It really does feel that random, I feel like I have less control about what happens on pitch than ever. I've done some Googling and it says that AI opponents are now more reactive to the way you play, but I don't see that, at least not in what they're actually doing in terms of tactics and instructions. I have to ask as well, cos I don't know, but does the AI 'cheat'? Like, I feel like my team have a LOT of shots on target but score very few, I've got top quality strikers missing umpteen one-on-ones then the opposition score from their first corner of the game. Maybe that's on me somehow, it does feel a bit rigged against you at times, like the engine is compensating for you creating too many chances by reducing your chances of scoring. Is there any truth in that or am I just putting two and two together and getting four?

It's not just the dialogue sounding childish at times, the whole dialogue system is quite poor. Often the options I'm presented with are insufficient. If the team perform badly, there's always a question where my only answers are to admit it's all my fault. Like, I can't deflect or throw the players or refs under the bus like managers do every day. AI reactions are often bizarre as well. Like you say well done today to a player and they act like you've just slapped their mother. You apologise and they get angrier. Interactions do not resemble those of rational human beings. In general, I have my assistant do as much of this stuff as possible, even if it means losing some kind of morale advantage. It's just too labourious, random and repetitive to bother with.