zachthaknife
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- Jan 23, 2015
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I come to these forums to give my two cents on the current state of the game.
The first Football Manager I played was Football Manager 2010, back in 2009. I have played every iteration since then. Back then I was a fourteen year old kid with not a care in the world. I immediately jumped in without any idea what was going to happen, but I quickly got sucked into what would probably become my favourite PC game. I played on a very outdated laptop, Windows XP, 512 MB of Ram, but the game ran absolutely beautifully. The real thing that hooked me (and many others) into the game was the sheer realism, but moreso, the ability to alter reality and create your destiny. To shape the football world and sit down and look at the monster you have created. Dominating the 2010's with your favorite club? Turning some no name chinese kid you signed on a free transfer into the greatest player in the history of football? Taking Dartford FC from the lowly 7th tier to the heights of Europe? It was all possible in Football Manager.
For the next 4 or so years, Football Manager would become a constant in my adolescent life. Girlfriends would come and go, but football manager was always there. After a long day of school and rugby training, it was great to come home and work on save, and continue on with my greatness. In the real world, I was just an average kid, but here, on my PC, I was a legend, and icon, a god, almost.
And so hours and hours progressed throughout those four years. It was entertaining to see the way in which the game changed and grew but also the way in which I grew as well. It was funny looking back at it, I was talking to my best friend the other day about FM 15 and he said "Bro, remember back in Fourth Form (grade 10/year 10 whatever you call it) when I saw you playing FM on your laptop during break and I asked what was that ****. You told me to give it a try and I hated it, yet still I have more hours than you logged in FM 14!"
But it seemed that adulthood dawned and Football Manager waned in my life. FM 14 was a great game in its own right, but it laid the foundation as to why FM 15 is an absolute pain. Tactics sliders were replaced by shouts. I always felt that this change was unnecessary and for me, it felt like alot of tactical control was taken out of my hands. Instead of selecting exactly how my team was supposed to play, I could only select arbitrary options like "close down much more" or "more direct passing" (how much more is much more?). For me, this led to tactics being much more homogenized, and no matter what tactic I would put in, I always felt like my team was playing the same, and more importantly, that the way my team played was uncomfortably out of my hands.
I only logged a mere 181 hours in Football Manager 2014, but this was due to alot of factors. Gone were the days of all nighters and all weekenders were secondary school work was put on hold to play FM. I now had to balance college work and a job, meaning there was little to no time to really get immersed in a save. I will admit that this is partially my fault, I often felt impatient playing FM14, that the game would move too slow, whereas I would breeze by seasons and season in FM13, just a season earlier. Though the good feels were waning, I did manage to pull together some wonderful saves, bringing Huddersfield to a Europa League Final, turning Fiorentina into a European powerhouse.
For me, FM14 was not the best, but I've always seen that the pattern was that even yeared Football Manager games were always the worse ones. FM 11 and FM 13 were the best versions of the game, and I had high hopes that FM15 would be just as good, even better, with a more streamlined interface and other features being promised.
I bought FM 15 in beta stages and have to say that I am thoroughly disappointed with the game in every aspect. I have logged just under 180 hours now in FM 15, thanks to alot of free time opening up due to the hard work I did last year, but all 180 I have played on FM 15 feels wasted, so I just wanted to elaborate on the aspects that enrage me the most.
The match engine is utterly broken first and foremost, and the patches have only softened it a tad. Every striker in the game is Fernando Torres circa 2011 and every defender is Titus Bramble. Games just feel like an epic comedy of errors, as your brutish defensive midfielders get brushed aside by Santi Cazorla and Adnan Januzaj as if they spent the entire offseason traning with the NFL and WWE. Free kicks are a joke, as whoever is standing over it will just fire into some poor sod's face into the stands, even after you have set up instructions stating how you want your free kicks taken.
Tactics are an absolute joke. I have played with 5 different teams, and no matter how I set them up, they all play in the same homogenized style. I can see no difference being made with the tactics I have implemented. I have tried different styles, direct passing, short passting, structured shape, fluid shape, control, attacking, defensive, counter, close down more, close down less, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER YOU ARE AN ANCHOR MAN. IF THE MAFIA HIRED YOU AS A HITMAN, YOU GO MURDER THAT MAN IN THE STANDS ON YOUR TIME, NOT MINE. DO NOT SHOOT THE BALL IF YOU ARE OUTSIDE THE BOX.
The newly introduced tactical roles do not work at all. Inverted Full Back and Roaming Player do not do anything. I tested this out with heat maps over some matches. The full back in question actually stayed wider when given the Inverted Full Back role as opposed to the normal FB(automatic) role. The roaming playmaker literally just sat around inside the midfield circle like a cying baby.
Transfers are overinflated, and clubs show a distinct bias to player managed clubs. Throughout saves I have seen ai clubs sell the same players for peanuts that I had to shell out gajillions for. Scouting, though fancier now, is pants on head retarded. Why do I have to scout a player 35 times before I know whether or not he is ****? I can understand maybe once or twice, but when you're trying to get transfers in before the season starts, it is unacceptable that 15+ judge of PA scouts are telling me "some doubts, may be worth tracking the player" and giving me a half done scout report. The quality of regens created also seems poor in general, and usually clubs will ask way too much for them (come on Genk, 21 million for a 16 year old, right back with 3.5 star potential? What are you smoking and may I please have some.) and they also seem very reluctant to train any other way that the default way.
Player Interaction and Press Conferences are also laughably bad this season. I am probably a small part of the player base that actually liked press conferences, and I thought the tunnel press conferences and post match press conferences were poorly executed. Why not make it so that you can ask questions that if you give the right response you would be able to boost player morale, much like a team talk? I don't want to hear the same question about injuries, the opposing goalkeeper or why I decided to change my formation for this game. Players will get devastated about the smallest things, without any understanding at all. You cannot come storming into the manager's office demanding more playing time 3 games into the season when you have made 1 start and 2 sub apperances, and then when I tell you to calm down, you decide to give my squad cancer.
This has been the worst iteration of football manager I have played, and trust me, I have given it a chance, but I just cannot anymore. I wish redemption would come with the new patch in February or even FM16, but it's starting to look like my playing days are over
The first Football Manager I played was Football Manager 2010, back in 2009. I have played every iteration since then. Back then I was a fourteen year old kid with not a care in the world. I immediately jumped in without any idea what was going to happen, but I quickly got sucked into what would probably become my favourite PC game. I played on a very outdated laptop, Windows XP, 512 MB of Ram, but the game ran absolutely beautifully. The real thing that hooked me (and many others) into the game was the sheer realism, but moreso, the ability to alter reality and create your destiny. To shape the football world and sit down and look at the monster you have created. Dominating the 2010's with your favorite club? Turning some no name chinese kid you signed on a free transfer into the greatest player in the history of football? Taking Dartford FC from the lowly 7th tier to the heights of Europe? It was all possible in Football Manager.
For the next 4 or so years, Football Manager would become a constant in my adolescent life. Girlfriends would come and go, but football manager was always there. After a long day of school and rugby training, it was great to come home and work on save, and continue on with my greatness. In the real world, I was just an average kid, but here, on my PC, I was a legend, and icon, a god, almost.
And so hours and hours progressed throughout those four years. It was entertaining to see the way in which the game changed and grew but also the way in which I grew as well. It was funny looking back at it, I was talking to my best friend the other day about FM 15 and he said "Bro, remember back in Fourth Form (grade 10/year 10 whatever you call it) when I saw you playing FM on your laptop during break and I asked what was that ****. You told me to give it a try and I hated it, yet still I have more hours than you logged in FM 14!"
But it seemed that adulthood dawned and Football Manager waned in my life. FM 14 was a great game in its own right, but it laid the foundation as to why FM 15 is an absolute pain. Tactics sliders were replaced by shouts. I always felt that this change was unnecessary and for me, it felt like alot of tactical control was taken out of my hands. Instead of selecting exactly how my team was supposed to play, I could only select arbitrary options like "close down much more" or "more direct passing" (how much more is much more?). For me, this led to tactics being much more homogenized, and no matter what tactic I would put in, I always felt like my team was playing the same, and more importantly, that the way my team played was uncomfortably out of my hands.
I only logged a mere 181 hours in Football Manager 2014, but this was due to alot of factors. Gone were the days of all nighters and all weekenders were secondary school work was put on hold to play FM. I now had to balance college work and a job, meaning there was little to no time to really get immersed in a save. I will admit that this is partially my fault, I often felt impatient playing FM14, that the game would move too slow, whereas I would breeze by seasons and season in FM13, just a season earlier. Though the good feels were waning, I did manage to pull together some wonderful saves, bringing Huddersfield to a Europa League Final, turning Fiorentina into a European powerhouse.
For me, FM14 was not the best, but I've always seen that the pattern was that even yeared Football Manager games were always the worse ones. FM 11 and FM 13 were the best versions of the game, and I had high hopes that FM15 would be just as good, even better, with a more streamlined interface and other features being promised.
I bought FM 15 in beta stages and have to say that I am thoroughly disappointed with the game in every aspect. I have logged just under 180 hours now in FM 15, thanks to alot of free time opening up due to the hard work I did last year, but all 180 I have played on FM 15 feels wasted, so I just wanted to elaborate on the aspects that enrage me the most.
The match engine is utterly broken first and foremost, and the patches have only softened it a tad. Every striker in the game is Fernando Torres circa 2011 and every defender is Titus Bramble. Games just feel like an epic comedy of errors, as your brutish defensive midfielders get brushed aside by Santi Cazorla and Adnan Januzaj as if they spent the entire offseason traning with the NFL and WWE. Free kicks are a joke, as whoever is standing over it will just fire into some poor sod's face into the stands, even after you have set up instructions stating how you want your free kicks taken.
Tactics are an absolute joke. I have played with 5 different teams, and no matter how I set them up, they all play in the same homogenized style. I can see no difference being made with the tactics I have implemented. I have tried different styles, direct passing, short passting, structured shape, fluid shape, control, attacking, defensive, counter, close down more, close down less, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER YOU ARE AN ANCHOR MAN. IF THE MAFIA HIRED YOU AS A HITMAN, YOU GO MURDER THAT MAN IN THE STANDS ON YOUR TIME, NOT MINE. DO NOT SHOOT THE BALL IF YOU ARE OUTSIDE THE BOX.
The newly introduced tactical roles do not work at all. Inverted Full Back and Roaming Player do not do anything. I tested this out with heat maps over some matches. The full back in question actually stayed wider when given the Inverted Full Back role as opposed to the normal FB(automatic) role. The roaming playmaker literally just sat around inside the midfield circle like a cying baby.
Transfers are overinflated, and clubs show a distinct bias to player managed clubs. Throughout saves I have seen ai clubs sell the same players for peanuts that I had to shell out gajillions for. Scouting, though fancier now, is pants on head retarded. Why do I have to scout a player 35 times before I know whether or not he is ****? I can understand maybe once or twice, but when you're trying to get transfers in before the season starts, it is unacceptable that 15+ judge of PA scouts are telling me "some doubts, may be worth tracking the player" and giving me a half done scout report. The quality of regens created also seems poor in general, and usually clubs will ask way too much for them (come on Genk, 21 million for a 16 year old, right back with 3.5 star potential? What are you smoking and may I please have some.) and they also seem very reluctant to train any other way that the default way.
Player Interaction and Press Conferences are also laughably bad this season. I am probably a small part of the player base that actually liked press conferences, and I thought the tunnel press conferences and post match press conferences were poorly executed. Why not make it so that you can ask questions that if you give the right response you would be able to boost player morale, much like a team talk? I don't want to hear the same question about injuries, the opposing goalkeeper or why I decided to change my formation for this game. Players will get devastated about the smallest things, without any understanding at all. You cannot come storming into the manager's office demanding more playing time 3 games into the season when you have made 1 start and 2 sub apperances, and then when I tell you to calm down, you decide to give my squad cancer.
This has been the worst iteration of football manager I have played, and trust me, I have given it a chance, but I just cannot anymore. I wish redemption would come with the new patch in February or even FM16, but it's starting to look like my playing days are over
