forameuss

You'll be waiting a while, there will be no more updates to 24.

I'd imagine it would given they use the same match engine. Given women's football will likely use a different one, it's probably going to be different.

Which is actually inadvertently the perfect example. They changed the specific transfer value to a range that needs you to scout and derive context from it. With weight, they removed the specific value, and you'll now need to use scouting and view the attributes to get a feel of what sort of build a player is likely to have. Because those attributes have far more of an effect on what's happening than one number that only 1% of people likely knew existed.

Yeah, it's a real mystery. Not like they've already said why they've dropped certain things or anything like that.

On a subscription model, currently you'd probably pay on average 30 quid a year for the game. Some may be cheaper, some more expensive, but let's stick to 30 for example. So if you're pricing it at anything more than £2.50 a month, it's going to feel like a bit of a rip off. I can't see them going at that price point, particularly as they'll be more subject to people letting subscriptions lapse (hiya FML, hiya pal!), so what exactly can they offer if they do come in at a higher price point? I can't understand why people would support a subscription service honestly.

Think that's wishful thinking to be honest. If they bring them in - which I don't believe they ever will - it'll cause untold salt and rage on here/reddit etc, but ultimately, it'll blow over and become the norm. Because that kind of thing is the norm now, unfortunately, and FM is pretty much an outlier in that they've largely stayed away up to now.

Taking the singular that YOU are not interested, fair enough. Desperately trying to tell everyone that noone will be interested...yeah, that's telling.

I see absolutely no reason to expect that the editor would be dropped. The database will change - almost certainly due to the addition of women's football - but that will be only loosely coupled to the game. We might get a redo of the editor app to work on something approaching Unity, but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the same editor just with new fields and a couple of extra tricks that they won't tell anyone about. There's just nothing to suggest that it would be removed, and if it was, given the editor has been present for...what, like over a decade or something? If they were removing it, I imagine they would have said so as part of the funeral dirge that was their two previous announcements. I'm not remotely worried.

The Scottish Championship is easily the best league in the World though, so it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

Ah, in that case then yeah, it's definitely not going to be two different games. Like you say, there'll be a common base to the game that is generic enough to handle both, then it'll branch how it needs. It was certainly something talked about a lot more in the past when it was first announced, people expecting that you'd fire up a whole new executable just to play it. Which was wild.

It's really going to depend on how it feels in practice as to whether it ends up feeling like a "different game". If the ME is noticeably different and actually represents the differences you'll get watching a male match vs female, and if there's a more representative economy, then it probably will end up feeling different. Remains to be seen.

Hey all - apologies for basically radio silence for a good while, but as I mentioned earlier in the thread, my second kid was on the way, so I knew I'd get little time to work on this as the summer came. Although everything is (mostly) alright now, and not to go into much detail, but there were a lot of problems in the week after. 7 weeks removed now and things getting more normal, or at least as normal as it can be with a 7 week old, but ultimately, I'm getting absolutely no time to do...well, anything really. In terms of where the project is, I'm afraid the "old" version - that is, the one that was linked in this thread - is probably just as is at the moment. I know it's limited, and janky, and probably not very good, but I'm so far removed from looking at it that I'm not sure I can answer any questions about it without properly looking into it, and I won't have time for that for a while. However, not all bad news. A while back I was looking at making a version 2 of this to try and cut out all the bits that weren't really working properly and make the tool I really wanted to make in the first place. That kind of fell by the wayside a little, but with FM25 on the horizon, I do intend to revive this in some form, it'll just likely be incredibly slow progress. The good thing is that I can still use a lot of what I had previously for both versions, so hopefully if inspiration takes - and colic disappears - then I can get something in place so that once 25 eventually arrives, I can hit the ground running on that.

Well I guess it's good that I've already mentioned point 1 and alluded to point 3 then, isn't it? I'm purely talking about not believing there's a massive market of people not buying the game but who will now. I even said I could be wrong on it. Main point being that I don't think you can point to many millions watching and think that'll have a direct correlation to people buying FM. I think it's a great change they're making, it makes the product overall stronger, and through a combination of player retention and new players (because there will be some, just not this massive market that people are expecting) it'll be a major positive.

Playing Devil's advocate though, while what you're saying is right, I think it's a different argument. If we're talking solely about whether adding women's football opens up new markets, you've first got to have this group of people who are interested in buying an FM game but will only do so if they add the women's game. I just don't buy that that group exists. I think there's a far larger number of people than some would like to admit that are interested in playing with women's teams in FM, but I'd imagine the vast majority of those already buy the product as fans of football. Could be wrong of course. Fair enough, read you wrong. Sounds like we're on similar lines. I don't think there's these massive new markets untapped, but for me it's more about making the product better on the whole, which this undoubtedly does. That retains existing customers, and I dare say attracts its own "new markets" too.

Spectacularly missing the point, well done. I could rhyme off plenty of things in FM I don't really care about either, yet still don't feel the need to constantly bring up how uninterested I am in them. But then I don't have an ulterior motive behind that disinterest, I guess. For me, I don't buy the new markets argument quite as much. I think there probably are women and girls out there who are into football, and who will perhaps be enticed to play FM that wouldn't previously have, but I imagine there's already a lot of them buying and playing as football fans. But I've also never bought this segmentation of audiences. There seems to be this belief amongst some (not directed at you in case it comes across that way, just generally) that women's football is for women, and that's the only audience it could possibly have. It also misses the most obvious point about the mode that it adds a hell of a lot to the game regardless of whether you're a fan of women's football or not. I've never attended a women's game, and only caught bits of them broadcast. May well get more into them in future if my daughter gets as into football as my son has. But I'm a lot more interested in them in an FM sense because it adds a different aspect to the game. It's not only different leagues with different structures involving different players, it's also (hopefully) a completely different feel to the matches themselves. I have no idea why anyone would oppose the game having more to do, or why you could argue that the game wouldn't be stronger with it included. Well, with certain people, I've got a pretty good idea why unfortunately. Interesting you're painting EA's actions as negative too. For a company that's entirely morally bankrupt and openly despises their playerbase, their handling of adding women into FUT was pretty brave and has made the mode better. And a year on, after the many, many hissy fits some people had, it seems like most people are quite happy with the way they're involved.

I could rhyme off hundreds of things that people like that I'm not remotely interested in. I've never once felt compelled to constantly bring up just how not interested I am in any of them, sometimes unprompted. Because, if they do it right, it pretty much is, You can't just plug female players into the match engine as it exists and expect it to model a game of women's football realistically. Doing it properly will, for all intents and purposes, mean a different game.

Personally I think it's disgusting that SI haven't looked at the statistics of how many people are managing women's teams in FM. Them not existing isn't a good enough excuse.

Again, one is tied very tightly to their choice of engine. One sits completely outwith the game itself and only touches the database, which isn't really coupled tightly to their choice of engine. It's a pretty logical assumption to make, but if it really bothers you bookmark this and come back if the editor isn't present. But by all means, get a list of things and I'm sure SI will be along in a minute to painstakingly go over which things are or are not going to be in the game. Because knowing right now is of the utmost importance (at least) 2 months prior to the release of the product. The editor is a bit of a mess, but given they're clearly struggling to get the main product ready, I'd imagine overhauling something that isn't really coupled to Unity isn't going to be high on their priority list. It likely never will be.

Or maybe, just maybe, we could safely assume that there will be nothing changed with the editor given it's been present in pretty much every version as far as I can remember, and the database is likely to be largely untouched by an engine change.

Yeah, totally not anything to do with the match engine they've spent decades on or anything, absolutely all down to a network that could be replicated if a company really, really wanted to. Seriously, the work the researchers do is a very important part, but it's entirely voluntary. If a competitor with deep pockets really wanted to build that network, it would be relatively easy to get a researcher to provide their data to them instead by offering better incentives. Obviously the database isn't just about that, but it's not some complicated technical task. The match engine alone is a near insurmountable task for any competitor to get near. It's ludicrous to suggest otherwise.

I'm not sure it's luck to be fair. They killed every competitor that stepped up.

How is the game code looking right now? Only ask because clearly if you're coming out with something like that, you must be pretty close to the whole development process. Or just mental. To be honest, I think in a general sense, SI would probably be better communicating less given what's happened here. If they'd communicated on their usual schedule of only really coming out when they had the product to actually release, I imagine there'd be far less salt. Who knows, there might even actually be a shred of positivity in the announcement, rather than just "here's all the negative". Granted it's a bit more complex this time around given it's delayed

Is there? Depending on how much has been ripped up, that might not have been possible. In fact, I'd be very surprised given the choice to remove it that that was ever an option.

While I agree with the overall point, I don't really agree with the detail. Personally, none of the things you mention really bother me. And emphasis on "personally", because it's all subjective, and I'm well aware it bothers others. But if you fix every one of those points above, you're just putting cosmetic things over a game that remains incredibly sterile. The gameworld would still seem lifeless if all fans wore a different shirt. As a line, I've always said that the game suffers from a startling lack of context. Things just...happen. Completely in isolation, sometimes with a single news item that it's very easy to gloss over given how template they all are. And once they do happen, that's pretty much it, there's often no real knock-on effects on future events, and any time there is, it's half-baked. While I don't agree with the decision in isolation, people are acting like they've cast it off purely because relatively few people play it. It was clear from the language they used that they came to a point where international management was a mess. At that point, they've got basically two choices - sink a lot of time into the module to get it to the level they want, or abandon it. That's not a snap decision, so you weigh up the pros and cons. Is it worth potentially delaying the game further just to get the function in when that function isn't really used by the seemingly vast majority of the player-base? Probably not, so they made the decision, and clearly fully intend for it to return. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Had they decided to forge ahead and be adamant that international management remained in, but the game was delayed until 2025, they'd have had far more fallout. It's a rubbish decision to have to make, but it is the right decision.

Women's football was announced a long, long time ago, it doesn't really come under these two specific updates, which have been almost entirely negative. Premier League licence you could perhaps argue, but again, that was delivered separately too. Almost like that's exactly what they've said will happen. They're not silently shuffling away things to use them as marketing tools later, they've been very open and said that it's being dropped now and will return in 26 when it's in a state they're happy with. To be "fair" though, this has been a weak point for the game in perpetuity. Using it as a stick to beat 25 with particularly misses that you could have made the same argument going back years. It's an incredibly sterile environment and relies on the player to "fill in the blanks" so to speak, to breathe life into the save.