NineCloudNine

“Every time”?

Ignore your Assistant. Pretty much #1 piece of advice to give any new player! I let them do opposition instructions and set general training, that’s it. I praise MotM performances. I’m not sure what difference it is supposed to make which option you choose so I praise strikers for scoring goals and midfielders for creating chances. I do criticise after a sustained run of poor form (via right click on player name->interaction). I usually do the arm round shoulder, ‘we all believe in you’ bit. Not had a bad reaction to that yet, but a less professional or more temperamental player might do. If so, I just learned that this is a player I need to replace. It’s easy to over-think this stuff. Simplest approach is probably to pick a character for your manager and stick to that.

Thanks! I look forward to playing the new version when it’s ready.

The update was announced as a data update with some bug/exploit fixes. No mention of any match engine changes. That doesn’t necessarily mean the ME was “untouched” but if anything was changed it wasn’t deemed worthy of noting by SI. So it’s hard to know what people are seeing when they claim it has become “boring” since the update.

The word “exploit” is being used in different ways here. In normal language it means “take advantage of”, which can be completely legitimate like “exploiting” the space behind your aggressive WBs. In gaming language it means finding a way to circumvent or overcome game dynamics in a way not intended or anticipated. This isn’t the same as a bug, which is a programming error. AI managers definitely “exploit” tactical weaknesses but do not discover or use “exploits”. The grey area arises when some normal game dynamics are so much more powerful than others that their use by either player or AI confers an unreasonable advantage over other systems. I think that’s what posters are getting at when suggesting that the use of gegenpress by AI managers is so powerful that normal “it’s your tactics” advice to players doesn’t always apply, or at least can be insufficient.

It's more likely that the ME got it right but the ancient graphics engine got it wrong. Was there commentary or any press conference questions about it? Borderline decisions usually get noted by one or the other. If not, what you've seen is a graphics glitch. Or, just write it off as the sort of mistake every manager has to deal with sometimes IRL.

It's weird, but sorta makes sense - you did well and they are pleased, but you're not the best in the country so you failed the objective. Could do with some tidying up for sure - one of 351 little things (I've counted!) in the game which kinda work but could do with some polishing.

It’s great to hear you’ve got there in the end!

The update seems to have broken the UEFA Cup, which has reverted to the Europa League when this file is active. Champions Cup and Cup-Winners Cup seem still to work. I actually started an edit to this file which amended the histories. My plan was to award Champions Cup wins to the highest placed team in that year’s Champions League and UEFA Cup wins to the highest placed non-Champions. The former I think worked well as an alternative history, but the latter was a little too artificial.

I would also like to see IFB-S and Lib-A added. I really enjoy positional play so the more options the better.

“Most games”, “far too often”, “two times in a row”, “ridiculous amount of times”. I’m reading that as … it happened about 30 seconds before you decided to rage post about it. It’s easy to check - go through a whole season and count the number of times you conceded “straight away” after scoring. How many?

The three defender roles exist only to trigger positional changes, there is no other reason to use them. The others - as @whatsupdoc says - are just sensible adjustments by players to the movement of other players on their team. There’s plenty of things to gripe about in FM24 but positional play is not, IMO, one of them.

Like I said, the HB was always intended to drop deep, and did, but the CBs didn’t move wider; now they do. You could also always put a FB on defend and tell them to sit narrow, like an IFB, but the other CBs would not adjust their positions; now they do.

What is different in FM24 is not so much what players with specific roles do, but how others around them react. For example the Half Back - one of my favourite roles - was always intended to stay deep in possession, but in FM24 the CBs move wide to allow the HB to drop between them to make a back three, allowing FB/WBs to push forward. Sergio Busquets was doing this a decade ago so the idea isn’t new, but its execution in FM is. Another example is when a CB Libero steps into DM in possession, the actual DM will move to one side to make a double DM pivot. This didn’t used to happen either. Other interactions are more complex as certain combinations of roles can have knock-on effects as players move in relation to each other and move between strata. How well players do these things does (or at least should) depend on their attributes, which is why roles that trigger positional changes all require intelligence attributes like Decisions, Movement and Positioning. I think the general consensus is that such attributes are not as potent in the ME as they should be, making positional play (which should require elite players) easier for weaker teams to pull off.

This is because in FM he wants a million a week whereas IRL he's going to be paid in-line with Madrid's top earners and get a 130m signing-on fee. I've never tried that singing structure in FM so no idea if it will work. The "don't have financial power" thing is specifically linked to your remaining wage budget, which players you want to sign apparently know about through some form of telepathy. If you use the IGE to add a million or two to your weekly wage budget you'll be able to pay Mbappe what he wants - any subsequent problems with registration are on you !

Nice work!

The editor files all need to be verified/saved with the new database. Regular database edits should be fine just being loaded into the editor with the new database and re-saved, but league/country/rule changes need to be verified and may not work until the author has updated them.

This does feel like something that could be much more aggressively addressed by SI. Development of young players for sale is fundamental to many clubs’ survival. I always play with the South American talent factories - Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay - in full detail and heavily scouted. Clubs there IRL actively push good young players into the first teams. This doesn’t happen in FM. Their kids don’t develop, they don’t get game time and they aren’t actively recruited by AI teams from richer leagues. On the face of it this doesn’t seem like it should be hard to fix. Club, national, board and manager preferences/tendencies all exist which should guide this behaviour, but seem not to. In one save I undid Endrick’s future transfer to Real Madrid. He was largely a bench-warmer for Palmeiras, he barely improved in 2 years and no European club tried to buy him. Luis Guilherme didn’t play a single minute for Palmeiras’ first team in this time. My guess is that this is simply not something most casual FM players care about and thus is not an SI priority.

FYI The supporter demands are part of the club’s database entry and don’t change unless edited, but the board ones are part of the database profile of the club boss and can therefore change if the club ownership changes (or a new boss elected).

I would personally drop your CMs to the DM strata. You'll be more defensively solid and - IMO -it's a more accurate reflection of how 2 CM midfields work IRL. I'm also a little sceptical about using Step Up More with a Low Block since this means when your defenders get it wrong the opposition are likely through on - and close to - your goal.

One thing I've not seen mentioned among the complaints: this is an enormous data update. In fact the changes are SO huge that it's made me wonder if something went wrong with the initial database! Yet even with all this work there are some egregious errors. There is still very little consistency in how player histories and achievements are included and formatted. Many players' entries - and not by any means obscure ones - contain errors that a simple Google search would correct. And when the Spanish national team goalkeeper has all zeros (random) for his character attributes, something has gone awry. I greatly admire the dedication and effort of the research teams but I sometimes wonder if the sheer scale of the task is overwhelming. This stuff really matters to me. Given that it's unlikely to change, my #1 feature request for FM25 is to be able to edit playing histories and acheievements with the IGE as well as the PGE. Yes, I'm that much of a nerd !

It’s interesting how often people use what the graphics highlight shows as evidence of weaknesses in the match engine. They aren’t the same thing. Player sprites do weird stuff and the selection of “highlights” can be eccentric, but then I go into the data centre and see that my players are doing pretty much what I asked of them. I wonder also if the positive reaction to positional play is partly because we can see it happen right before our eyes, whereas pressing and defensive actions are poorly depicted by the graphics engine, even if they obviously are happening.

Is that a combination of hearsay and heresy? (sorry, couldn’t resist…I’ll get my coat…)

Aggression, bravery etc etc

I think this heavily depends on the number of active (not just view-only) leagues you have active. The more you have, the better the AI squad building is. I suspect that the AI is programmed to do certain things and can only do them right with the correct player pool to fish in. Without that, their algorithm does weird stuff.