forameuss

Which is just various degrees of hyperbole from someone standing on the outside of the Schrodinger's big black box. A black box that's extremely likely to open again late in 2025 and spit out a game that all the usual people will buy, and the usual content creators will content create for. A communication for the sake of communication isn't going to change whether or not we have a product later in the year, are we really saying that a sizeable number of people are going to go "FM26 looks like an OK product, but I'm not buying it because they didn't tell me they were working on it, when now it's clear they were working on it"?. Anyone saying they're now done with SI and not buying anything of theirs ever again...well, I commend the 3 of you that are going to follow through on that, and watch with amusement as the vast majority end up buying anyway (and probably complaining a few hours/days/weeks later, missing the irony). There's likely going to be churn. There always is, it's to be expected, but I'd happily wager that the sales of FM26 end up at least as good as FM24.

This. People seem to be under the impression that SI come out with a statement and everyone rejoices, joins hands and all is right with the world. Name one communication they've ever done where that happens. This is a product, after all, where the denizens of the subreddit for the series have a weird parasocial hate-hate relationship with the studio head. What will undoubtedly happen - regardless of content or how "well-packaged" it currently is - is that some will feel like it's a great thing, but just as many will either react negatively because it's not up to the imagined high standards they have, or unrealistically by taking what was said and drawing false conclusions from it. Guaranteed. And that's probably the case even if they'd had a "normal" year. If they say nothing until the product reveal, release the usual 6.5 out of 10 product, then the FM25 saga - for most people at least - will be forgotten. If they communicate and don't get it 100% perfect - which they wouldn't - they'd probably end up in a worse position. I don't think it's a particularly controversial stance to take that I'd rather they concentrated on recovering from their own screw-up and release a product that *gasp* maybe makes it to 7.5 or 8 out of 10, rather than having to prepare largely meaningless updates well before release for...what exactly? And don't start with the "developers don't need to do it, marketing does" or whatever, because this far from release, of course the developers will have to put effort into presenting something if it's going to be at all useful.

It's an exploit. The system isn't designed to boost a club at that level to that degree, but through some series of actions they didn't consider, it does anyway. The very definition of an exploit. Which is fine, play the game however you want to, but it's no different to using the old Diablo tactic or whatever, and no real achievement just because it took a while.

People are saying you're "cheating" because you've found a completely unrealistic exploit in the game and you're riding it hard, then presenting it like it's some kind of achievement just because you spent time on it.

So SI don't communicate at all in previous years before a game is announced, have shown no evidence of changing that approach, yet them doing just that is clearly SEGA stopping them doing so? Really? And that's not even mentioning that this "not a normal cycle" is even more of a reason for SI to stay quiet, not to talk more. For every one person that takes whatever they say rationally and in good faith, there will be plenty doing the complete opposite.

Despite the fact that "radio silence" until September is basically what they've done each and every year as far as I can remember?

While they didn't look great, the difference between them and the one presented in that YouTube video was that presumably their mockups were done with a view to "we actually have to implement this at some point", whereas the YouTube video didn't really need to worry about that. You could get hundreds of interfaces that look a lot better than SIs if none of them actually had a need to be implemented at any point.

I said both have bad elements. SI's attempt isn't good, thought that would be clear with the rest of the post rather than selectively quoting the first sentence.

Granted I skipped through the video, but I don't really see the massive improvement that others are. Just seems another flavour of bad and bland from the official. The match view in particular. I'm not convinced there is a solution, to be honest. It's a pretty subjective thing, of course, and some people will look at one skin and think it's perfect and others will see it as awful. Truth is, the big criticism of the interface a lot of the time is linked to one of the biggest "strengths" (not quite the right word, admittedly). The game is complex, it uses a huge amount of data. How do you present that data effectively to everyone? That's not an easy answer, and I imagine why it looks the way it does. SI clearly prefer it this way, and many, many others don't.

I wouldn't be so sure on that. People like to paint these rosy pictures that those poor developers would definitely create completely philanthropic products with no microtransactions and give it away for pennies purely for the love of the game. I don't doubt people like that do exist, but I'd imagine there's just as many (or, let's face it, more) that are quite happy for those elements to be built into their games, because consumers have shown that they're quite happy to spaff their money up the wall on them, and doing so ultimately lines their pockets. Personally, I don't have much of an issue with them as a thing as long as they don't go rampantly out of control. SI actually dealt with it quite well - chuck some cheat codes into FMC when it was around, let people buy if they wanted, and keep the main game clean of them. SI get a bit of income, and most other players are unaffected. Also don't really care about them using them for things like cosmetics, although there's a fine line between doing that largely harmlessly, and turning it exploitative. EA have obviously gone waaaaaay too far, but although I'll never agree with the principle of it, I can completely understand why they would do it given how their community continually grumbles but eats it up anyway.

Colour me shocked.

Did you have this at this specific time of year for FM24 or 23, or any previous version under the current way the cycle works?

Unfortunately the one I'm trying to add isn't in the original database, so multiple files wouldn't work. And I'm pretty sure it's under the 24.3, but will check that. I vaguely remembered there was a way to force verification, so looked that up and it seems it was an option, but changing the verf tags (the mentioned fix) didn't seem to work

May fit in the advanced rules section, but thought I'd ask here. I downloaded the Level 20 English extension with a view to replacing a club at the bottom tier with a custom one. However, adding that club in and replacing an existing one in the competition they're placed in causes a need to reverify obviously, which fails. On simply renaming the existing club (and no other changes), you need to reverify, and again it fails. Is there some trick to verifying advanced rules given clearly the original file has been verified fine? I could understand if the custom club was causing an issue as maybe the club I replaced is held somewhere, but to just outright fail with no other changes from when it was previously verified...

But they were. That's the point.im not talking about last year, I'm talking about years and years ago. They used to communicate a lot more. They got abuse. Now they don't. And bear in mind, this was at a time where not everyone was terminally online and wouldn't necessarily fire abuse at strangers with impunity. Things are infinitely worse now. I don't doubt that there would be a lot of people whod be receptive to more communication regardless of the content. I also don't doubt that for every one of those, there would be at least one who would just fire abuse back. Which no matter how badly they've screwed the pooch on this, none of them deserve over a video game.

Of course it doesn't look good, but to say the bolded part completely ruins any point you might have. Literally the main reason why they aren't more transparent is because people turned against them when they weren't. That's pretty much the genesis of it. And that's the actual literally, not the one you've put in front of all the stuff you've made up.

Much as I'm sure it's done you good to get that off your chest, I'm going to have to disappoint you. I'm...alright really. I'm happy enough waiting with 24 until whatever comes next arrives. And you may even have had some shred of a point if you hadn't gone in two-footed down the tired old "no criticism" route. There is absolutely loads to criticise over the game, and there has been for pretty much the entirety of those fifteen years you've clearly been counting down. It's been a solid 6.5 out of 10 for as long as I can remember, and that includes a few years where I largely left the game behind. Also seemed to be one of the only ones criticising the tone of their FM24 announcement that pretty much said "Yeah, this game's going to have little effort, it's all about FM25!". Which aged well. SI do a lot of things right. They could do a lot of things a whole lot better. Is grey allowed or do you have to be perma-raging in either direction? Do we want everyone online forum to turn into a big echo chamber where nobody says anything against your opinion, or can we actually disagree with each other? But yeah, rag on the "criticisms" that are borne out of complete fantasy, must be a happy-clapper. Lighten up "bro" xox

It's not about people having a "meltdown" and that manifesting by getting posts deleted. It's the doom posts, fretting, needy pleas and the apparent desperation to jump to invented scenarios about how the game is definitely over because of x, when nothing is even remotely out of the ordinary. People are still going to do it, doubt anything I say is going to make much of a difference, but maybe a handful of people would rather not be miserable. If you're getting massively upset about being told that things are going largely how they've always gone and the most likely thing is that 26 will come out when it usually would have, then that's kind of proving the point.

People really, really need to calm down. This is getting to parasocial relationship levels for some people, seeming so desperate to invent disaster scenarios for something that should just be a harmless bit of entertainment, for...what exactly? SI are literally doing no different to what they've done for years and years and years. The last we heard from them, the line was, exactly, "we have made the difficult decision to cancel Football Manager 25 and shift our focus to the next release". They also intimated that 25 probably could've come out, as it was close to where they wanted it to be, but not close enough that they felt it was fair to release it. So we know they were close to a product, and that they're working on the next one. Now they've gone silent, which should be a surprise to no-one given that the usual behaviour is to release update 3, then work on the next silently until they officially announce. I get disappointment at that strategy, but to wail about how it's clearly indicative of 26 not being a thing, or FM being dead...again, just why? In the usual timeframe, FM26 will be announced, and then in November time, it'll be released. I'm almost certain of that. Feel free to bookmark that, and if I'm wrong (which could well happen) I'll fire off a charity donation to the choice of whoever shouts the loudest. When it does release, I probably will too so as not to be a dick. Until then, so many things better to do with your time than worry about things that are going exactly how they've always gone, on a video game. Given this new title's genre seems to be more in the "mobile bully that turns you upside down and shakes you until the coins fall out", I can see exactly why SI would want two of these games. I'd imagine they'd want as many that can be independently profitable as they can. It would make little sense to can the clear market leader that has put bigger developers out of the game entirely and has proven that it can sell units regardless of overall quality and improvements, just to bring in a mobile game presumably chock full of micro-transactions. FM has already had distinct mobile variants with light microtransactions in them, what's so different about this? Also, it may end up being a good thing to have both from SI's perspective, as there's clearly little appetite for them to put proper microtransactions into the main body of the game. The way things are blowing, if Sega can get their jollies from doing it in this new title, less need for SI to do similar.

Just to reiterate, if there's any problems with the existing version, I'm not exactly surprised, and there very well might not be a solution to what you're seeing. But version 2 is part of the way there, and in the few weeks before Death Stranding 2 takes up most of my free time, I'm looking to polish it up a bit more. I need to think about how I'd package it, but if anyone would like to get their hands on it with a view to using a version that is probably going to have its issues at this stage, then it would be useful. Earlier version was chucked out too early and probably could've done with someone taking a look around earlier, so hopefully can avoid it with this one. So if you'd like to test some stuff out and see if it helps you out with your work, and don't mind it breaking every now and then, once I work out how best to package it I can pass it over. I won't be giving it out to absolutely everyone though, as it won't be ready for that. If that's not cool with people, fair enough, I'll work to get it closer and have a more general release later on, although no idea when that would be.

And at some point (which was clearly following the release of 24) you have to stop doing that. The suggestion seemed to be that you just simultaneously develop continuously just in case Unity goes wrong. Given they couldn't get 25 ready while solely focusing on it...yeah. they clearly reached a point where they were relatively sure that they could release a Unity powered FM25 at the usual time, so focus went to that. They were wrong on that. They were absolutely right in trying though. If you want an FM25 based on the old engine, you've got it. FM24.

...which they did. They advertised for Unity developers way back. And, like I said, you don't need to be a Unity expert as long as you have strong fundamentals. Half of the roles I've gone for have been in languages I'd never used before.

So a "good ran company" should essentially stagnate in fear of the unknown? Even when it's a product that usually gets criticised for never changing between versions? Seriously?

What does not communicating it have to do with it? Are you imagining that without communicating it, they could get to some point where they just chuck Unity and release a product on the old engine? Were you expecting them to be working simultaneously on two engines just in case something went wrong with the new? And not just that, but working on them both essentially up until the end of 2024 which seems to be when things looked untenable for Unity? They did the right thing in trying to move to Unity. There were problems along the line, and we've no idea what they were or whose "fault" they were. They made the brave - but again, ultimately right - decision to cancel rather than release an absolute turd. They're now presumably hard at work making sure they have a product to release in Autumn, lest the studio collapse. Any "conjecture" arising in the middle is bordering on needy and parasocial at this point.

So they're just supposed to sit on the same, ageing engine forever because it would be "difficult" to switch? I mean, there's no way they could hire in experience, or, you know, learn it.