Nikki

I never tried to pin a number to it, but I love my long games. I've gotten into 40s, and any save abandoned before 10 seasons would feel like a huge failure to me, but why that is? I find it difficult to say, but it isn't limited to this (type of) game. I tend to favor games with no end, or with an end/victory conditions that can be turned off. No other franchise has come close in quite how much time I've been able to sink in there, though. Immersion is a key factor for me. The other day I was telling my brother that while I love the music in Skyrim, I will still turn it off because without music it feels more like I'm there. Perhaps when trying to pretend to be living a more interesting life than my own, I'd like that life to last a good long while. That's the best explanation I have.

I.. distinctly remember buying my copy, being weirded out by the new logo/title style, but enjoying the game itself. Was there release/information mischief that I forgot about? ^^

I'm waiting for word on whether the Dutch women's league will be included before I decide on whether to buy the game at all, so that could be considered my biggest want/hope. Beyond that my needs are small. I got 11748 hours on FM2018 on Steam because I decided to stop buying FM until they'd include women's football, so I'm sure that even with changes between games being relatively minor for a franchise with an annual release, there will be plenty of stuff in there that's new/different for me, because I skipped FM19-24. I'd be happy if generated faces look better than they do in FM2018. I can imagine the amount of women's leagues being too low to feel satisfactory, but I can't really pin a number on what amount would work for me, so all I can say is that I hope there are 'enough' without really being able to tell what enough is to me. But if the Dutch league is included, then I'm sure the game will be good for at least a thousand hours on Steam for me.

I wish I could be surprised at this point, but at this point it's a predictable pattern. Worst I've seen was when female avatars were about to be added to F1 games. A small group managed to get every single thread discussing the topic locked by derailing it. That franchise wasn't somehow ruined by including women, and this one won't be either, but there will be a lot of noise until we get there. Frankly, I think its diversity has always been one of FM's strong points. Sure, the biggest leagues will be getting the most attention, but I don't think the amount of people that would be satisfied with only having access to those few leagues is as high as some might have us think.

Didn't vote, because I've not played FM2024, but I've got a few things to say as I've still played hundreds of hours of FM just this year. I wouldn't dare guess the percentage of saves I have that include international management. It may very well be somewhere between 10-50%, though at the same time, the saves that I've spent 90-99% of my playtime on definitely all include international management. Statistics are tricky things that can be bent into different shapes, but I don't think they really matter all that much in this case anyway. There are so many relevant factors. If I decide to try out the Indonesian league as a second save next to my main 60-season save and then give up on it right away because I decide I don't care for it, now my use the Indonesian leagues in my saves goes from 0 to 50% and international management goes from 100 to 50%. They needed to scrap something and chose to justify it the way they did, but either way they were going to scrap something and upset someone. Trying to work the numbers in a different way doesn't prove or accomplish anything. I just hope that they'll really do bring it back better, and not just in the same state that they left it in.

Having waited for years for FM with women's football, I thought buying FM2025 was going to be a certainty, but now with international management out, suddenly this question becomes the deciding one for me. What do I hope, and what do I expect. I want to be able to manage a Dutch team, and without international management that means I want/am hoping for the Dutch league at the very least. Outside of that I'm hoping for a variety of options, not being stuck in the same few leagues. It occurs to me that the decision (that I approve of) to fully integrate women's football, and not make it essentially a different game, could have been an attempt to obfuscate a low amount of women's leagues, but frankly, I can't name a number that I know would satisfy me, so it's just something I'm going to have to see and hopefully try out. Brings me to how I think it's entirely impossible to say what I 'expect'. I've been around since CM2, I've seen CM/FM slowly grow up to what it is now. I thought it was amazing that I could start a save in the Dutch men's league, then start a new save in the Italian men's league, but it's been well over a decade ago that I last considered starting a save with less than 10 active leagues. Women's football is growing, but FM is an established franchise. What is a reasonable starting point? What does SI think would be a reasonable starting point? Can they achieve what they think is a reasonable starting point when they're already having to scratch features (noting that it would be easy to get away with scrapping things that haven't been announced yet). It would be extremely surprising indeed if they didn't include the English, French, Spanish and German leagues at the very least. I believe I remember reading about them securing continental licenses for women's football too. Aside from that I would not dare make any predictions.

It is/was the entire point for me. I decided in 2019 that I wouldn't be buying another FM until it contained women's football, and it's absolutely going to be the main focus on my next FM save. Though now that international management has been scrapped, it does depend on whether they add at least the Dutch women's league. I do mean to manage all over, but if I don't get to play either the Dutch national team or the Dutch league, then there's a good chance that I'll wait for FM2026.

I'm still on FM2018, where I've long ago stopped making promises of any kind and make it a priority to try and get rid of any vague philosophies if I can, because the lack of specific requirements mean they might as well be entirely random. Have seen the topic pop up regularly too. Definitely not just you two. Poor design.

It's not some random unrelated event that gets tacked on. It's part of the compensation for the player. They're not going to come to you as part of your payment to them, they will financially benefit from you coming to them.

I've not participated in spreading said conclusion before, since I was always going to wait for women's football, making the current discussion about FM24 largely irrelevant to me, and I don't want to convince anyone how to spend their money in the first place, but I want to respond because I really can't understand how people can read that announcement and not reach the conclusions you mention. The problem is one of specifics. The article mentions a lot of those. For FM25. For FM24 it sticks to speaking in slogans. A love letter, a host of improvements, new features. time to finesse said features. The only specific thing mentioned was the save transfer. Does this matter? It doesn't always.. but it's meaningless. I've not been at these forums for probably over ten years, but I'm sure they used similar language for FM23, which they're now admitting wasn't what they wanted to deliver. It's just all PR-talk without substance. Does that mean it will not be worth buying? No. Is it a reasonable cause for concern? I think so, yes. If they have nothing to say about the game except vague PR-speak and mention of save transfers, I would expect standard fare at best, just more of the same. Now as someone who didn't miss a single title between CM2 and FM2012, I know that "standard fare" doesn't necessarily mean a negative, especially if FM23 was received less than spectacularly, and as you say, there's still plenty of time for more specific announcements, but this isn't some new phenomenon. I've been disappointed by enough different developers to learn to filter out PR-speak, and when doing that here, there's not much left. They might as well have replaced the FM24 section with "please buy it again yo, oh and there will be save transfer". Can you understand how that leads people to the conclusion that it will not be worth buying?

I am guessing that refers to "Alongside this, we also started looking at different business models, platforms, working practices, and Games as a Service, and if and how we might tie these things together." from the blog. This sort of puzzled me, because it's sort of casually mentioned and then ignored in the rest of the blog, leaving a lot open to interpretation and speculation.

I have been known to sign dead weight just because their names amused me. Currently that's Bigger Matondo and Sunday Monday. I have also been told that I'm easily amused..

Well the blog said FM24 would be "the last of its kind" and "the closing of this chapter of our history", so that might sound like the end of the series as a whole to someone who just skimmed it and didn't bother reading more carefully before drawing conclusions.

I'd be inclined to think that custom databases wouldn't be any issue, since FM saves essentially are the databases being used, so the relevant data should all be there regardless of what the starting point was. Except that sounds so obvious to me that I'm now wondering why no dev jumped in to point that out, with so many people asking about it, so maybe I'm missing something?

While I'm a little disappointed that it means waiting another year for women's football, it does sound like the FM25 release is going to be a great moment to jump back in. I would not have expected to get this excited about a blog telling me to wait another year, but here we are. Can't wait.

That sounds unfortunate. Do you have a link for me or a place to look for this interview? I've been unable to find anything recent.

FM18 was the last I got before deciding that the next FM I'd buy would have to include women's football. I'm still enjoying my FM18-save, 11k hours in, but I'm really hoping this will be the year.