I will try to gather some of the questions and answers here. I won't be including all (I think I already included too many), as there's a varying degree of quality and such. I'll post a link to the AMA at the bottom.
For those who don't know, AMA = Ask Me Anything
https://www.reddit.com/r/footballma..._miles_jacobson_director_of_football_manager/
For those who don't know, AMA = Ask Me Anything
Q: A lot of people are complaining about injuries. Could you maybe state for the record that there is no injury bug in the game?
A: I have done that hundreds of times. And provide links to physioroom and a good article in the independent from last year. At some point I'll get round to writing a MirrorFootball column about it. But even then, it'll get ignored. That said, there IS an injury bug in the FM16 beta. Injuries in that are 70% of the real life numbers....
Q: Can you quickly explain me how the scouting system in SI works and how your partnership with Prozone is working?
A: We have 1,300 scouts around the world in 51 countries & regions. And 60 odd head researchers. Then a team at the studio who are responsible for the area, and all the checks and balances that are needed to be done - it's a big operation! Our partnership with Prozone is working well. Lots of good feedback. We don't want to know which clubs using our data though via them because of confidentiality agreements, but we know people are
Q: 1) Are there any plans to implement external youth academies? Like a European club having an academy in Brazil or something like that? 2) Would you consider to implement the streamlining options of FM Touch to the full simulation mode as gameplay options to help those players who want an experience in between the two of them? 3) Many people considered multiple set-piece routines to be an essential and pretty straightforward addition that FM needed and some of its competition have had for a very long time. Is there any particular reason that it took so long to deliver? Was it far behind on the pipeline for some reason or were there technical issues like overall processing power of computers?
A: 1) they are already there. It's why some clubs get players coming through their youth ranks from other nations. 2) FM Touch is available as a mode on the PC game already. 3) It wasn't a priority for us until we had the AI underneath to really make them work.
Q: Your favourite save you've played personally?
A: I was very sad to put down by FM15 Watford save in 2028. But had to move across to do my work on 16!
Q: Will we ever see a time where match officials make clearly the wrong decision in regards to things like offside? As a follow up, if there's one thing that you could wave a magic wand and get into the game and working perfectly, what would it be?
A: That can already happen - we try and make it rare though as rage quitting inducing features don't tend to go down too well. As for Q2 - free licenses from every league in the world.
Q: how many younger managers have confessed to being inspired by your game?
A: Managers, coaches, analysts, data companies - lots of all of them. A lot of 'ballers play it too - we have over 1,000 who beta test the game, from international superstars through to non league'ers.
Q: Why do the stadiums have rust on the roofs? I've never seen rust on a stadium roof
A: How many stadium roofs have you been on? Metal gets rusty....
Q: 1) One thing that has always annoyed me and I find a little unrealistic is to do with morale. Say I am a newly promoted team just up from the Championship. Say in one any given month I have to play Chelsea(2nd), United(3rd) and Everton(5th) away and I have Liverpool(7th) and Arsenal(1st) at home. So looking at the coming month I would hope I would be able to get 6 points. If I could get a win playing Everton and Liverpool I would be happy with that. Usually though I would get say a win playing Liverpool and get beaten easily in the others. Then my morale is shot to ****.
2) The second questions is I'm wondering if you ever look at other management games to see what you can improve on? I know you don't really have any competition in the way of football management games. Recently though I have started playing OOTP 16 which is the baseball equivalent of what you have here but you can also just play as a GM and make more big decisions and not worry with the day to day training and tactics. They had a few things I have seen in just the few hours I've played that I find really interesting and would love if you had something similar implemented into FM in the future.
A: Woah! That's a wall of text! 1) in real life, players have egos. They want to beat the best. The idea of them losing hurts. It doesn't matter who you play against, it hurts if you don't do well. We spend a lot of time talking to people in the game and all will say the same - if you get humped by a team, it doesn't matter how good they are, it hurts. 2) The dev team at OOTP used to be part of us, so obviously I admire them greatly and do play OOTP every now and again. Important games from one FM to another isn't going to happen though for both technical and legal reasons.
Q: Are there any features you've tried to put into FM and simply haven't been able to get working?
A: Yes. But that doesn't mean we won't get them working in the future, so I'm not going to say what they are!
Q: I wanted to know if the FM Touch mode uses the same match engine / AI etc as the full game, or if that too is a slimmed down version?
A: The match engines in Touch and FM are the same.
Q: why did you guys go for the "create manager avatar" feature this year?
A: Because having managers on the touchline was one of the most requested features in our forums ever since we went 3d with the match engine. And you can't have that without a way to create your manager
Q: I've always wondered, has there been a feature you'd love to have (or anyone at SI) in FM but can't have for technical, legal or logistical reasons? And/Or is there a feature now in FM that you've wanted in for a long time?
A: Technical - one of our programmers has a yellow and red card for feature meetings that gets brought out a lot for things that will use too much memory. So loads haven't gone into the game because of that. Legal also force our hand sometimes.
Q: Have you ever considered offering FM as a cloud service with a monthly subscription? You could then offer continuous upgrades and real-time data updates so the game is always relevant, and it would be more accessible to users with lower-spec PCs.
A: Real time data updates aren't as good an idea as they sound for a game like ours - the majority of people who play the game long term have 2 career games. One at launch, one after the data update. They don't want to start new games every few days. As for subscription gaming - we tried that with Football Manager Live. And there wasn't a market for it. We're also experimenting currently with Football Manager Online in Korea and then, next year, China.
Q: Do you think you've hit somewhat of a glass ceiling in regards to playable leagues? The oft-requested one is the J-League, which is obviously impossible to get right now due to licensing agreements, but in terms of other leagues and countries being implemented only Gibraltar has been added in the past few years. What is the reasoning behind the likes of the bigger African leagues for example not being added?
A: Glass ceiling - yes. African leagues - cost/benefit analysis. It's why we now have the competition editor - and a thriving Steam workshop community.
Q: what is your biggest feature that you feel hasn't quite worked out the way you wish it did when it was first thought off.
A: 3d - was originally planned for FM07, and didn't arrive til FM09.
Q: I love the 3D manager creator, such a cool idea. Is there any plans to allow modded hair styles or are what we have all we get for 16?
A: What we have for 16 is what we have for 16. Long term, you'll have to wait and see
Q: Why do you think football manager is so popular and addictive?
What advice do you have for people to be good at the game and how to not completely suck at the game?
A: It's not addictive - it's compelling. A very big difference! The game is made to allow people to escape from their normal lives into an alternative reality where they are a football manager. That's it's appeal. To be good at the game - player roles are very important. As is scouting.
Q: Are there any plans, or have stadium improvements ever been discussed as regards the 3D engine?
A: We have a long term plan for all facets of the 3d engine. Stadiums will be part of that.
Q: What goes into determining a youngersters potential? Like how do you decide if they have -8/-9 potential etc?
A: We have scouts watching those players regularly. They decide in the same way as a scout working for a football club would do.
Q: The star punctuation given for a player actual/potential skill is based on comparison with the players currently on your squad; which means that a 5 star player is just way better than any player you currently have in your team but might be a 1.5 star player vs the rest of the world. Wouldnt it be nice to have a absolute measure of a player skill instead of a relative one? What are your reasons of not having this??
A: Because we believe that the system we have in game is better from a scale perspective. If you were managing in some countries, all players would be 1 star so you wouldn't know who was better or worse under your suggested system.
Q: are you guys considering introducing difficulty levels, or perhaps changing the AI?
A: There are already loads of difficulty levels in the game just by starting at different clubs or countries leagues. You want it hard, start in Conference South. Or Brazil. The rules in Brazil are bonkers.
Q: Can you share a bit about the process for getting all the writing for the news items, press conferences, biographies, etc. into the game? What is the team like who does that, review process, localization, etc. It often gets overlooked but that's a TON of copy!
A: The main text is written by 1 person full time, and 1 part-time (his other role here is in QA), but much of the text is written by coders, then changed afterwards. The localisation process is huge. We have our own bespoke system, and dozens of people working on translating into more than 20 languages. QA localisation is done by our researchers, translators and SEGA QA specialists.
Q: What is your and sports interactives plans for the future regarding the game i know you can't go into specific details but just wondering
A: Lots of evolution & a little bit of revolution each year. We have enough ideas currently for at least the next 3 versions of the PC game. And a thousand or so ideas I haven't looked at yet. And a few hundred of my own I haven't logged yet.
Q: I don't know if this is even possible, but have you thought about making the older CM versions, preferably 00/01 and 01/02 available for sale on Steam?
A: No interest in doing that - for a start, we don't own the brand, and the people who do don't own the code. But more importantly, we already release games like Football Manager Mobile and Football Manager Touch who want a more old skool experience.
Q: Why is it after an international break do the press always treat it like we haven't had a game in two weeks and the players might be rusty etc when most of my squad have been away on internationals. If anything they tend to be tired.
A: Because the press don't tend to factor that in to real life - most club reporters don't cover international games, so don't think about it when asking those questions.
Q: Are you looking to secure more licenses with clubs (like you have with Watford) in the future.
A: We are always on the hunt for licenses - but only when they make financial & commercial sense.
Q: Did it pain you to shave off your beard?
A: Yes, because the razor got caught in it! Very painful
Q: What is your favourite new feature in this Football Manager?
A: that's like asking my who my favourite nephew is - I love them all.
Q: What is the most annoying thing that you're constantly asked about?
A: 2 things. 1) Injuries by people who don't realise that players do get injured in real life and it's not at all unusual for teams to have 8+ players out at any one time. 2) People whose teams dominate matches and they lose. This happens in real life in roughly 1/3rd of matches every week.
Q: Is there a risk of bias towards different tactical styles in fm16? and how do you avoid this happening?
It hadn't happened as much in previous versions, but I know that a lot of us found that FM15 seemed to be more bias towards short passing possession based football.
A: There are no deliberate biases in there - and if we see that they are, we look to tweak things for patches.
Q: How are the stars calculated.. They seem to fluctuate a lot
A: The fluctuate due to your club doing better or worse. The scouting ratings fluctuate for players at other clubs for both that reason, and because scouts don't always get it right. They also change due to the amount of times a player is seen, as you don't get the full picture the first time you see a player.
Q: How much work goes into trying to get the simulation of matches to be as realistic as possible? I'll elaborate a little bit here, recently I was playing and during a match it suddenly occurred to me that the players in the game can occasionally make decisions that are decidedly odd, such as ignoring the ball rolling by them, or not chasing a loose ball when they should be.
My second question is about man management. Is there any chance you can make the players less likely to be amnesiacs? For example in FM14 I had a couple of defenders over the course of my save that went up to 2026 that I ended up having to sell because they just could not stop getting booked/sent off/banned. If I'd give them a warning they'd accept it and move on, but if I fined them they'd immediately complain and act like it was some surprise and then end up with much lower morale.
A: 1) If you watch real life games, you'll see players doing the same thing. If every player played perfectly each match, or tracked back when they should, or always put the right tackle in, every game would end up 0-0. I actually had an argument with someone on the match team about goalkeeping mistakes on Saturday morning. Then saw Gomes make a howler live at the Leicester v Watford game. It happens. 2) How would you feel about your boss fining you 2 weeks wages for doing something that comes naturally to you?
https://www.reddit.com/r/footballma..._miles_jacobson_director_of_football_manager/
