Maybe Sunderland? I'd say not Newcastle. Starting in the Premier League makes things pretty easy.
I got the itch again so loaded up FM20 again and started an AFC Wimbledon game (after vacationing for a year to start in the 2020). Lost 12-11 on penalties in the playoff semifinal in my first season where the only missed penalty was my best taker the 2nd time around.
Using my Queen's Park 4-4-2, which I'm still obsessed with. It's so beautiful.
Ugh, finally buckled and am back in control of training again for the first time in years.
Uncanny Phil Jones Valley.
Ugh, finally buckled and am back in control of training again for the first time in years.
Definitely worth it! If only to fix the training problems that arise when you have a match added to an existing schedule.
Anyone else remember a series of German FM-style games in the mid-90s called 'On The Ball' ?
Well, it's back, sort of.
I had two of them (an international one and a domestic one), and I seem to remember them having some kind of CK style pop up decisions which were occasionally quite bizarre.
Might be a reasonable alternative for those who don't enjoy the feature creep of recent FMs, but might be a bit bare bones for those who enjoy the 6th tier of the English leagues.
If they come up with a decent game where it doesn't take me a month to play out one season I'll be interested.
something Tifo's video today on ManU's director of football pointed out:
In the modern game, it is completely unrealistic to expect a manager to be able to capably be in charge of First team tactics, training, transfer activity and overseeing the youth system, but FM basically makes it so optimizing those things requires you to do all of them.
I think that's ultimately because players probably want it that way, but more of those systems need to be able to be delegated to staff without the whole thing going tits-up.
(Not being in charge of your club's transfer policy is the kind of thing that'd be super realistic at most big clubs and drive the player base to torches and pitchforks, I think.)
Heh, seems like there is a nineties soccer manager game I never played after all!
It got me thinking though, and it seems like I have zero clue what I DO want from an FM-style game. Of course feature creep is a major issue, especially as I feel obliged to tweak every knob and button available to me - which results in spending 20h per season at a minimum.
But anything below that level of complexity doesn't feel real enough for the armchair coach cracking open a beer (psshhht) inside my brain. Simpler games would not make me feel superior to the actual management at Anderlecht, or provide me the comfort that at least somewhere my fave team is winning titles and not going bankrupt.
I'm just getting old, basically.
It got me thinking though, and it seems like I have zero clue what I DO want from an FM-style game. Of course feature creep is a major issue, especially as I feel obliged to tweak every knob and button available to me - which results in spending 20h per season at a minimum. .
I've been playing a ton of FM over the past year and as much as I enjoy the game, it's very high maintenance. I think there is a good 25% of the game that could be chopped off. The tons of emails, the massive staffs at big clubs, the gobs of press conferences, the micro-interactions with players, in particular, are things that could go or be streamlined.
dejanzie wrote:It got me thinking though, and it seems like I have zero clue what I DO want from an FM-style game. Of course feature creep is a major issue, especially as I feel obliged to tweak every knob and button available to me - which results in spending 20h per season at a minimum. .
I've been playing a ton of FM over the past year and as much as I enjoy the game, it's very high maintenance. I think there is a good 25% of the game that could be chopped off. The tons of emails, the massive staffs at big clubs, the gobs of press conferences, the micro-interactions with players, in particular, are things that could go or be streamlined.
+1.
This is why the best way to play FM is using Vacation Mode between games, though you still have to wade through the pile of emails. And you can't really do it when the transfer windows are open.
I want to take the modern UI that allows me to reach any screen from any screen and go back and lay it over something like FM06.
I liked the game when it let me play through a decade over the course of a couple months, so I would get stories from a developing career and players that appeared and aged, came and went.
Instead of which the game has morphed into a press conference simulator with weirdly unintuitive interpersonal relations and I've really disconnected from it, which makes me sad.
I feel the same, I fell out of love with FM a while ago. It should be held up as the perfect example of feature creep, it's a bloated mess. Admittley, when I did put a lot of hours into it, I did have more time on my hands.
I liked the game when it let me play through a decade over the course of a couple months, so I would get stories from a developing career and players that appeared and aged, came and went.
I remember 20 years ago Sid Meier talking about how they kept tweaking earlier versions of Civilization with a target game duration in mind, something like 10 hours for one game of Civilization. I feel like this sort of design sense is absent from FM. I don't think there is much consideration to how long it takes to play a season, and the added features keep extending it rather than streamlining it. I'd love to see them refine existing features cut out the less fun parts rather than keep adding things that kind of work.
Ils sont les meilleurs
Sie sind die Besten
These are the championsDie Meister
Die Besten
Les grandes équipes
The champions
Finally did it.
And beat the snot out of them too.
Congrats! Is that Champions League or were you invited to European Super League?
Congrats! Is that Champions League or were you invited to European Super League?
Hahaha. It was nice to get over the hump in our 3rd final.
Got knocked out by Real Madrid in the first knockout round the year before sobin the summer I sold a couple of lesser mentality players and promoted from within.
The one tactical adjustment I made was to have my players get stuck in in the knockout matches. I seemed to be giving up fewer attacking breaks but I only watch "key" highlights so who knows.
Almost got Jääskeläinen'd in the first leg of the semis. A draw in the 2nd leg of the semis was the only CL match we didn't win this season. (My 2nd XI lost 4 in the league so alas, no Invincibles)
Nice! Congrats again!
What skin is that, btw? Or is that Touch by any chance?
Nice! Congrats again!
What skin is that, btw? Or is that Touch by any chance?
I think it's just the included FM light skin, plus with the zoom cranked up to 125%
If I remember to check next time I lose up and it's something different I'll let you know.
I'm still making progress in my main FM21 save. Up to my sixth season and fourth club on a European Journeyman. Stumbled onto a great situation with St. Gallen in Switzerland that led to being offered the job at AS Monaco, but the exercise conditions I have on club movement led me to taking a job at Saint Entienne in League 1 instead.
Arrived at Saint Entienne a day before our wonderkid striker headed off to Dortmund for 40 million, leaving us with a 55 million pound spend in the summer transfer window. We'll see how all these new players work out. Initial signs are that we probably wasted 15 million, but may have a couple of good signings in there.
Playing as St. Albans because I fell off the wagon again when FM21 landed on Gamepass.
My board : "We think you're doing well, but your football is too boring."
Me : Furiously builds an asymmetrical all-out attack 4-1-2-1-2...
My board : "We think you're doing well, but you're conceding too many goals."
Godzilla Blitz wrote:dejanzie wrote:It got me thinking though, and it seems like I have zero clue what I DO want from an FM-style game. Of course feature creep is a major issue, especially as I feel obliged to tweak every knob and button available to me - which results in spending 20h per season at a minimum. .
I've been playing a ton of FM over the past year and as much as I enjoy the game, it's very high maintenance. I think there is a good 25% of the game that could be chopped off. The tons of emails, the massive staffs at big clubs, the gobs of press conferences, the micro-interactions with players, in particular, are things that could go or be streamlined.
+1.
This is why the best way to play FM is using Vacation Mode between games, though you still have to wade through the pile of emails. And you can't really do it when the transfer windows are open.
A bit off topic and I may have mentioned it here before.. But I had a blast playing Football: tactics & glory.
Fun little X-com meets Civ II in a football-sim. Beer & pretzels game - but while playing it I thought over and over... FM should have taken this road some while ago...
Roke wrote:Godzilla Blitz wrote:dejanzie wrote:It got me thinking though, and it seems like I have zero clue what I DO want from an FM-style game. Of course feature creep is a major issue, especially as I feel obliged to tweak every knob and button available to me - which results in spending 20h per season at a minimum. .
I've been playing a ton of FM over the past year and as much as I enjoy the game, it's very high maintenance. I think there is a good 25% of the game that could be chopped off. The tons of emails, the massive staffs at big clubs, the gobs of press conferences, the micro-interactions with players, in particular, are things that could go or be streamlined.
+1.
This is why the best way to play FM is using Vacation Mode between games, though you still have to wade through the pile of emails. And you can't really do it when the transfer windows are open.
A bit off topic and I may have mentioned it here before.. But I had a blast playing Football: tactics & glory.
Fun little X-com meets Civ II in a football-sim. Beer & pretzels game - but while playing it I thought over and over... FM should have taken this road some while ago...
I really enjoyed the game for like 5 hours or so, but I couldn't get over the grind at one point. I got into a loop where my players weren't good enough to compete after promotion, but weren't improving fast enough because I wasn't winning.
I get bored fairly quickly with games to be fair, and I don't regret buying it at all.
This vacation time is getting out of hand.
Started a true LLM game recently, and I know that it's all being abstracted a bit, but I just cannot escape that broadly, goalies feel far more realistic at the lowest levels, than the top-level save machines do.
In season two in my St. Albans game and for some reason I got moved from the Vanarama South to the Vanarama North, because Hertfordshire is in the north now, apparently.
Anyway, things have been going well and we're top at the turn of the year and no one is more confused by that than... our own fans?
IIRC, clubs can be moved sideways if the geographical split between the number of N and S teams changes - usually due to which teams get relegated into that tier.
Must be a fairly odd year in your game though - friends of mine live in Herts and they'd be mortified to learn they now lived in 'The North'.
New FM drops in under a month, and it looks like they're going to be making some interesting match engine tweaks.
Personally, I just want players to start cutting back more often instead of taking shots from awful angles and for good GKs to stop being OP.
Also, I'm dicking around in a game with the latest transfers, and PSG won the League 1 title in March with a 26-3-0 record and a 100/13 goal scored/conceded difference.
.......and then got bounced out of the CL in the first knockout round by Olympiacos.
Another look at some new features in FM22.
.
Fun Q, how many of these own goals would cause A.) You to quit and restart the game B.) Angry gamers to start expletive-and-death-threat-laden threads on SIGames.
(I'd argue all of them.)
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