Fr0ufrou

I very much like the FM series because it's unique and it's the only game in this niche, I also love football but seriously this game has no respect for us or our time. It's like a big brother that gives you the second controller and promises you are doing something. Most of the systems in the game straight up do not work, we all think they do so we are having fun nonetheless but we are just roleplaying. We are imagining playing our great link up attacker as a false 9 works well and is some Pep genius while he would in fact score as many assists in any other attacking role. He would overall perfom better, both as a creator and a scorer as an advanced forward with the "take more risks" instruction. We might think it does, because it makes sense and it should, but the truth is it doesn't. There are litteral millions of FM-Arena simulated matches that point to this same exact conclusion every new game and every patch. Most of the attributes are broken. Every year, someone over there tests the attributes and finds out half of them are useless in this game engine's iteration. Who could have guessed tackling and marking are useless attributes for central defenders? No I'm not pulling your leg this is the actual state of the game, test it for yourself and see. Training is a scam. After watching evidence based football manager's training videos, I felt really defeated. All this time spent planning training for the month amounted to nothing, it was all a useless joke. In fact it was often even worse than doing nothing at all: I was replacing general training with specialized training which is straight up worse in every way. It was all some busywork to make me feel like I was in control. It did nothing for player progression and it didn't have any influence on the matches. This kind of gamedesign is really cruel, it's akin to candy crush saga and it's really a slap in the face. When someone on these forums pointed the Devs to the EBFM video "does match preparation raise your chance of winning?" (the answer was no of course). I remember reading the feedback would go upwards, they would investigate and do something about it. Well they did, they simply removed the system in this year's iteration. Oopsie, it was never there, this system was broken but the rest of the game works, promise. Most roles are completely dumb and are just a strictly inferior version of some other role (check FM arena and test **** for yourself). When it comes to tactics, most of the instructions barely do anything while a few of them do everything. Very high line and press have been broken for half a decade now and it's pretty much the only thing that actually matters if you want to win. Formations are an afterthought, just set your mentality to attack, your high line, 6 or 7 of players on an attack role and enjoy your 5-2 win. There is this elitist mentality that some of us are better at the game than the people who just "download a tactic". Well that's just really ironic because in their own way the people downloading tactics were right all along. Tinkering with support roles based on real life football is indeed a waste of time. Of course it's fun, and thats the important thing, but we are just roleplaying and making our own fun. The game itself does nothing for you. Staff is useless, loan managers, technical directors, data scientists ("wow he is very good at analyzing data, that must be super helpful for a data scientist!") even coach star ratings barely amount to anything. It's all mindless excel busywork, a fantasy about making your numbers go up. The simulation itself might be even more shallow than cookie clicker. Here's what some of you are going to tell me: "Don't use the broken stuff, make your own fun, play the game in a way that's fun for you etc.". Well yeah, I kind of tried that, I could maybe roleplay a smaller side with a defensive tactic and fight to avoid relegation. That might be fun until I face Liverpool or United playing attacking gegenpress. This is a sports game, the goal is to win, why would anyone purposely avoid using a good strategy in order to have fun? First do not use high line, then don't use attacking mentality, then don't use Attack Wingbacks (yes fullbacks are very much a scam by the way), then don't use low crosses. Congratulations, you are now losing games, you are getting the real manager experience, come back next year to buy our next 60$ database upgrade. The worst part is that this **** has been broken for years and that SI, on top of not fixing it are just adding more busywork on top. Player agents are still as shallow but you have to go through an additional useless dialogue now. They added Club Vision so that your board can enforce the same stupid arbitrary requirements every time you play (preferred: make the most of set-pieces) ". Now I know some of you are hardcore FM fans that are going to deny that the stats provided by FM-Arena users and the Evidence based Football Manager youtube channel are true. "These people don't know how to do proper data science and their evidence is flawed :nerdface-emoji:". Well yes, those are amateurs that play the game like you and me, not actual data-scientists. They poured hundreds of hours in testing the game, if you were intellectually honest and actually watched their evidence and methdology, you would realize they are most definitely right about the stuff they find out, it's all so painfully obvious. The reason the game never truly explains its mechanics is that they do not work. Every single piece of evidence points to that. I don't get that some of you hardcore fans are defending it over and over again. There is this ridiculous fan culture here and on reddit defending the game tooth and nail. Just stop silencing us, help us call out the ******** and give actual feedback. Help us make the game better instead of defending every bad practice. Football Manager could be a great game but it is not, help us complain and get the devs working on the right stuff. I am not trying to ruin your fun, playing FM can be incredibly fun, even in its poor state. It's a great roleplaying tool in a big sandbox simulated world which is the best kind of game. But the reason the game is good is ourselves, we are creating our own fun. The game itself is just helping. And it could definitely help a lot better than it currently does.