Chat FMM19 General Discussion

[KennyMiller27]

2 things I'm curious at:

 

1. Has there been an updated changes.txt already?Would be appreciated.

 

2. On my Dulwich Hamlet save(Check it out ) I have England/Spain/Germany/Italy loaded up. Why does it seem like Italian managers all make the move to England and vice-versa?There isn't nearly as much movement to and from Spain and Germany vis-a-vis Italy. Is it a weird quirk from this year or a bug?

[Lillywhite Dean]

53 minutes ago, KennyMiller27 said:

Why does it seem like Italian managers all make the move to England and vice-versa?There isn't nearly as much movement to and from Spain and Germany vis-a-vis Italy. Is it a weird quirk from this year or a bug?

I've raised this as an issue with SI on their official forums. Feel free to do the same.

[Gvicii]

6 hours ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

Contact SI on the official forums and ask them to make the game more difficult or for them to implement a difficulty setting.

FMM is just too easy.

Well this is your opinion against everyone else’s. I personally find the game reasonably tough. This also seems to be the consensus around here. The game is nowhere near the difficulty of the previous versions of this franchise. If you want a tougher version of the game check out FM Touch or try out one of the many challenges here.

Asking for this game to get tougher will just cause SI to lose a lot of the fanbase. I personally have stopped playing the game since 2015 because of how difficult it became. I simply do not have the hours to put into a game that requires you to plan rigorously. Neither do most of the fanbase which is why we resort to this game. This game is intended to be pickup and play. This is why we have the game that we have this year.

This year’s version has a very reasonable level of difficulty. I have not stopped playing this game since I bought it and I don’t see myself do so in the future either. If I want to up the difficulty, I’ll just play with a smaller club. Or try out one of the many challenges on here. However, in doing so, I do not spend hours simply on the planning. I spend the few free hours I have getting a simulated FM experience. Exactly what me and many others here want.

[Alari]

5 hours ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

I've raised this as an issue with SI on their official forums. Feel free to do the same.

Got this under review I believe but additional examples welcome.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Gvicii said:

Well this is your opinion against everyone else’s. I personally find the game reasonably tough. This also seems to be the consensus around here. The game is nowhere near the difficulty of the previous versions of this franchise. If you want a tougher version of the game check out FM Touch or try out one of the many challenges here.

Asking for this game to get tougher will just cause SI to lose a lot of the fanbase. I personally have stopped playing the game since 2015 because of how difficult it became. I simply do not have the hours to put into a game that requires you to plan rigorously. Neither do most of the fanbase which is why we resort to this game. This game is intended to be pickup and play. This is why we have the game that we have this year.

This year’s version has a very reasonable level of difficulty. I have not stopped playing this game since I bought it and I don’t see myself do so in the future either. If I want to up the difficulty, I’ll just play with a smaller club. Or try out one of the many challenges on here. However, in doing so, I do not spend hours simply on the planning. I spend the few free hours I have getting a simulated FM experience. Exactly what me and many others here want.

While I am fine with the current difficulty, I can see why some people might see it as being too easy. I think the solution is to add an option for difficulty. Or even better, a granular difficulty setting. So you could tweak which aspect of the game you want to be harder or easier(e.g. transfer negotiation difficulty, players interaction difficulty, matches difficulty).

[Lillywhite Dean]

3 hours ago, TheServant said:

While I am fine with the current difficulty, I can see why some people might see it as being too easy. I think the solution is to add an option for difficulty. Or even better, a granular difficulty setting. So you could tweak which aspect of the game you want to be harder or easier(e.g. transfer negotiation difficulty, players interaction difficulty, matches difficulty).

I like these ideas. 

I may have made this point already but I do wonder whether the difficulty aspect would improve if fixes/improvements to areas such as player conditioning and poor performance were made. If fatigue, injury and a general lack of match sharpness played a realistic part in managing your squad, you would be forced to rotate and rest players which meant you wouldn't be able to select your strongest team all of the time (I recently had no problem selecting my first XI at a League One side for my entire congested December/January period).

I also think that player morale could have more of an impact. Players with low morale are still able to perform to a high standard. The impact of players wanting to leave the club has no direct (or has little impact) on their performances for the team. Some players are of course professionals and so will always play well for the shirt even if you block their dream move to X club but many will refuse to play, attend training, or work hard in matches. I haven't seen this happening in FMM.

[Nucleus]

30 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

I like these ideas. 

I may have made this point already but I do wonder whether the difficulty aspect would improve if fixes/improvements to areas such as player conditioning and poor performance were made. If fatigue, injury and a general lack of match sharpness played a realistic part in managing your squad, you would be forced to rotate and rest players which meant you wouldn't be able to select your strongest team all of the time (I recently had no problem selecting my first XI at a League One side for my entire congested December/January period).

I also think that player morale could have more of an impact. Players with low morale are still able to perform to a high standard. The impact of players wanting to leave the club has no direct (or has little impact) on their performances for the team. Some players are of course professionals and so will always play well for the shirt even if you block their dream move to X club but many will refuse to play, attend training, or work hard in matches. I haven't seen this happening in FMM.

The difficulty debate is such a hard thing for them to do in my opinion. On one hand you’ve got us - the experienced FMM player, and on the other you’ve got the casuals who represent what? 90% of their customer base? Looking at the amount of “help” or “I need tactic for Real Madrid” type threads created on here I think that the vast majority of players find the game difficult. 

A hard mode would be a welcome addition in my opinion, but that would come with a fresh bout of bugs, then we’d all winge and moan about that like we are at the moment. I’d much prefer them to fix the game as it is now.

[Dhxn]

On 25/11/2018 at 20:41, Mr Tree said:

done all that. it's 2022 and already little old Brentford are playing in Europe - 6th both seasons since promoting. on the previous version, i got Harrogate Town all the way to Champs League glory - yeah it took a bit longer battling up the leagues, but it was never "tough".

all good, i enjoy it, but it's unrealistically easy.

I just wanna know how you found it easy.....i am stressed beyond words just managing Slough.  Got them to PL and before that, my player ratings were good. Mostly youngsters but majority 4.5 stars. Come PL, MY BEST PLAYER IS ONLY 4 STARS 😭😭😭😭😭 how man.....

[Nucleus]

Just now, Dhxn said:

I just wanna know how you found it easy.....i am stressed beyond words just managing Slough.  Got them to PL and before that, my player ratings were good. Mostly youngsters but majority 4.5 stars. Come PL, MY BEST PLAYER IS ONLY 4 STARS 😭😭😭😭😭 how man.....

The players ability are rated against the league you’re in I believe. So it’s perfectly normal for your five star league one player to only be classed as a 2.5 star premiership player

[Ashez]

This is from 2017 but I can't say my views have changed on this debate 

 

[Nucleus]

5 minutes ago, Ashez said:

This is from 2017 but I can't say my views have changed on this debate 

 

It’s like you read my mind! 😛

[FuddledFox]

I think more difficulty being added to the game would just mean more BS so we would have more sendings off, injuries to important players and the AI teams nicking late goals to win games. So basically stuff that we have little or no control over.

The game is as hard or as easy as you make it. If you go out and find all the top regens that you can see for huge profits or are gaurented to become worldies then its bound to be easy. The same as if you manage teams like PSG, Man City, Barca etc etc then again you have bucket loads of money and its bound to be easy.

If you want the game harder make it harder for yourself by putting restrictions into a save on who you buy or how much you spend or do some of the many challenges we have on here.

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, Nucleus said:

The difficulty debate is such a hard thing for them to do in my opinion. On one hand you’ve got us - the experienced FMM player, and on the other you’ve got the casuals who represent what? 90% of their customer base? Looking at the amount of “help” or “I need tactic for Real Madrid” type threads created on here I think that the vast majority of players find the game difficult. 

A hard mode would be a welcome addition in my opinion, but that would come with a fresh bout of bugs, then we’d all winge and moan about that like we are at the moment. I’d much prefer them to fix the game as it is now.

By adding difficulty setting, the game can also be made easier & more palatable for the casual players too. That sounds like a win-win solution for casual & experienced players, don't you think? Especially with more granular difficulty setting.

As for bugs problem, new/more features does not equal more bugs. There are many factors that affect it. The QA testing, the methodology, development time, etc. What I am trying to say is we can have new feature yet not adding more bugs, we do not have to choose one over the other.

[Nucleus]

5 minutes ago, TheServant said:

As for bugs problem, new/more features does not equal more bugs. There are many factors that affect it. The QA testing, the methodology, development time, etc. 

It shouldn’t equal more bugs, but unfortunately it does. Look at this year for example. New training feature - bugs. New transfer negotiations - bugs galore. Last years new tactical improvements meant that the bug thread was the most viewed/replied to thread on the entire forum. I get what you’re saying that “it shouldn’t equal more bugs”. Unfortunately this is FMM and new features without a shadow of a doubt bring in new bugs. Hell I’ve even seen a dev admit that!

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Nucleus said:

It shouldn’t equal more bugs, but unfortunately it does. Look at this year for example. New training feature - bugs. New transfer negotiations - bugs galore. Last years new tactical improvements meant that the bug thread was the most viewed/replied to thread on the entire forum. I get what you’re saying that “it shouldn’t equal more bugs”. Unfortunately this is FMM and new features without a shadow of a doubt bring in new bugs. Hell I’ve even seen a dev admit that!

But here's the thing, do we really know for certain those new features are the the only ones that caused all the bugs? What about the QA testing? Have SI Games exhausted that option? What about more development time? Or even hiring more developers? We cannot simply blame new features for more bugs. That's like saying a dish tastes bad because the ingredients for it are not the best around. I mean, that could be one of the factors, but that's not the one & only thing. Maybe it's the chef? Maybe it's the cooking methodology? Maybe it's simply lacking salt? We do not know.

As for a dev admitting that(by the way, who's the dev? Is it one of the devs who have accounts here?), then sure, he's most likely right. But there's no way he believes that new features is the only culprit for more bugs & the only way to cut the bugs is by not adding new features. He surely knows game development enough to know that's not true. & remember, the game that we're playing right now is a final release. Sure, maybe when a new feature added in development cycle, it spawned many bugs. Then it's also SI Games job to fix the bugs, QA test the game, until its final release. It's not like they're developing the game & then released it without any effort to polish it in the beta version.

& now let's say that new features always mean new bugs, does that mean you do not want any new feature for the next FMM?

[Lillywhite Dean]

1 hour ago, Nucleus said:

The difficulty debate is such a hard thing for them to do in my opinion. On one hand you’ve got us - the experienced FMM player, and on the other you’ve got the casuals who represent what? 90% of their customer base? Looking at the amount of “help” or “I need tactic for Real Madrid” type threads created on here I think that the vast majority of players find the game difficult. 

A hard mode would be a welcome addition in my opinion, but that would come with a fresh bout of bugs, then we’d all winge and moan about that like we are at the moment. I’d much prefer them to fix the game as it is now.

But that's it isn't it... we're good at FMM because we're experienced FMM players. A lot of people who struggle with the game just need to take the time to learn how to play it. Once they have done this, they will be experienced enough to achieve the same level of success as we do. I've often responded to posts on the official SI forums from newbie players who are finding the game difficult. I give them a couple of pointers, nothing overly complex, and soon enough they start to see a difference in results. Some players just want to sign lots of expensive players, put them into their starting XI and then expect to see 3-0 victories. Football Manager isn't about that - not even the more casual mobile version of it.

I think FMM is fine game. I think SI have done a fantastic job with it. There isn't anything else out there that comes remotely close to simulating football management on a mobile device in the way FMM does. But the issue I have is that as soon as latest version comes out, I purchase it, play a couple of careers and think to myself "well what else is there left to do?". 

I'm not sure I agree with your figure of 90% of their fan base being the causal gamer. I think FMM has a large following of experienced players who started off playing the old Championship Manager / early Football Manager games but now don't have the time to invest in the PC version. I do agree that it must be a difficult balance for SI to achieve. I'm not a developer so I'm careful about making outlandish requests but a difficulty option, if at all possible, would be a win-win in my eyes.

Edited November 29, 2018 by Lillywhite Dean

[Nucleus]

3 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

A lot of people who struggle with the game just need to take the time to learn how to play it. 

That’s the point! It’s a pick up and play game, they don’t want to spend hours and hours testing and testing things that work and don’t work. If SI takes it to the next level and rams the difficulty level up then they wouldn’t bother buying it. The majority of casuals want to take over your Uniteds, Liverpools, or Real Madrids and win the league/champions league etc. Which they can do with very little effort. Which is fine in my opinion! As it’s been mentioned many a time, you can easily make the game more difficult on yourself by applying certain restrictions, I do and I enjoy the game despite its many flaws.

[Ashez]

1 minute ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

But that's it isn't it... we're good at FMM because we're experienced FMM players. A lot of people who struggle with the game just need to take the time to learn how to play it. Once they have done this, they will be experienced enough to achieve the same level of success as we do. I've often responded to posts on the official SI forums from newbie players who are finding the game difficult. I give them a couple of pointers, nothing overly complex, and soon enough they start to see a difference in results. Some players just want to sign lots of expensive players, put them into their starting XI and then expect to see 3-0 victories. Football Manager isn't about that - not even the more casual mobile version of it.

I think FMM is fine game. I think SI have done a fantastic job with it. There isn't anything else out there that comes remotely close to simulating football management on a mobile device in the FMM does. But the issue I have is that as soon as latest version comes out, I purchase it, play a couple of careers and think to myself "well what else is there left to do?". 

I'm not sure I agree with your figure of 90% of their fan base being the causal gamer. I think FMM has a large following of experienced players who started off playing the old Championship Manager / early Football Manager games but now don't have the time to invest in the PC version. I do agree that it must be a difficult balance for SI to achieve. I'm not a developer so I'm careful about making outlandish requests but a difficulty option, if at all possible, would be a win-win in my eyes.

Go on then, how'd you implement a difficulty slider? What would it impact? How'd you make it not just less goals/super keepers? Does the game show enough information for that style? How'd you make sure it just doesn't come across as cheap BS?

Let's not forget we didn't get set piece options as the devs thought it would confuse players. The role system is in place to stop people getting confused. 

Like it or not FMM is a casual mobile game and not everyone looks for the depth the niche hard-core fans do

Personally the difficulty is the least concerning issue with the game, as like others have said it's easy to implement your own difficulty and by doing it this way you don't isolate the casuals. 

[Lillywhite Dean]

58 minutes ago, Nucleus said:

That’s the point! It’s a pick up and play game, they don’t want to spend hours and hours testing and testing things that work and don’t work. If SI takes it to the next level and rams the difficulty level up then they wouldn’t bother buying it. The majority of casuals want to take over your Uniteds, Liverpools, or Real Madrids and win the league/champions league etc. Which they can do with very little effort. Which is fine in my opinion! As it’s been mentioned many a time, you can easily make the game more difficult on yourself by applying certain restrictions, I do and I enjoy the game despite its many flaws.

You're exaggerating there. You don't need to spend hours and hours to test and learn things in FMM. It can also still be a 'pick up and play' game but one that requires you to learn certain aspects of it if you want to achieve Pep Guardiola style success. These aren't mutually exclusive concepts. 

And I'm also fine with those people who just want to play a game where they take over a team like Barcelona or Liverpool to win the league and Champions League without too much effort. Realistically, in the real world, this would be highly likely so FMM should also reflect that. What I'm talking about is taking a team from the Vanarama South League to the Champions League final in six seasons, or taking over a relegation threatened side and winning the league in one season. Those things should be harder to achieve.

Edited November 29, 2018 by Lillywhite Dean

[Lillywhite Dean]

38 minutes ago, Ashez said:

Go on then, how'd you implement a difficulty slider? What would it impact? How'd you make it not just less goals/super keepers? Does the game show enough information for that style? How'd you make sure it just doesn't come across as cheap BS?

I don't know. I'm not a developer. If I were, I'd implement a difficulty setting.

[Ashez]

2 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

I don't know. I'm not a developer. If I were, I'd implement a difficulty setting.

Yeah that's fair enough but surely you at least have an idea or thoughts on how a difficulty setting would work? I'm asking purely because I don't see how one could work without being cheap. 

[Guest]

Let's ask the SI Games' staff, @Sebastian Szlenkier @Alari @Luke W. Is it really an outlandish suggestion to add difficulty setting? Is difficulty setting something unrealistic to implement? Because apparently some users think it's a bad suggestion & shouldn't be encouraged.

[Lillywhite Dean]

13 minutes ago, Ashez said:

Yeah that's fair enough but surely you at least have an idea or thoughts on how a difficulty setting would work? I'm asking purely because I don't see how one could work without being cheap. 

I think SI tried to solve this by introducing the managerial reputations. The idea being that if you start off as a manager with Continental or World Class reputation, your game will be easier to play compared to starting off as a Local/Unknown or Regional Manager. I think the theory is great but I don't think it quite works in reality.  So what I would do is either improve on this feature or I would fix/enhance existing aspects of the game so that it would present more of a challenge i.e. player conditioning, which forces you to rotate and rest players, or low morale having more of an impact on playing performance.

With regards to implementation a traditional difficulty setting (Easy, Medium, Hard), I guess the game would be more extreme in the way that it reacts based on the difficultly level you select i.e. on Hard setting, the board will be quicker to sack you, your best players are more likely to want to leave for other clubs, transfers fees are higher etc.

Edited November 29, 2018 by Lillywhite Dean

[Nucleus]

You’d all probably bitch it’s too hard if they changed it anyway

[Ashez]

3 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

your career your game will be easier to play than if you started off as a Local/Unknown or Regional Manage

Agreed that could potentially be more impactful. 

3 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

player conditioning,

This is a pick up and play game so you'd need to be careful this doesn't become overwhelming or damage the stamina stat. Easily implemented by yourself though by using low stamina players. 

5 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

low morale

I've noticed this has a decent impact this year tbh. 

6 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

Hard setting, the board will be quicker to sack you,

That's the current reputation system, maybe it could be ramped up but those examples are a thing as the DLC challenge shows in the extreme.

7 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

transfers fees are higher e

That has nothing to do with difficult but self restraint imo. You always pick who you sign and what you pay so I strongly disagree that the game should influence this outside of how it already does. 

See none of these suggested changes change gameplay, that's basically my point as the game is the matches, everything else links to them so that's where the difficulty needs to come from and I personally don't see a way to do it that stays in touch of what the game is. Anything outside of the match engine we can influence by how we play the game. 

Finding building super teams too easy? Give everyone reasonable release vlauses, finding regens OP? Just don't use them. Finding you use the same players save to save? Show some restraint and look for new players. Spending too much cash? Simply limit yourself? Finding tactics OP? Make your own or build one with a theme or an idea in mind. Players recovering too quick? Use low stamina or poor coaches facilities. Like anything outside of matches can be played as an easy mode or a hard mode with some thought and crestivity, that's why the challenge forums exist. 

When it comes to adding difficulty to the engine itself the difficulty comes from knowledge, like I said in the article above the engine changes little year to year due to what it is so every year we go in with a head start and an understanding which makes it easier. Yet think about coming into this mess of menus and none explained features as a new player and I bet it's an absolute nightmare. The difficulty is always going to be the ease of goals and limiting that will make the game cheap or simply boring if every match is 1-0 or 0-0. The tactical battle stuff is half fact and half myth imo as the information isn't out there for in depth battles as the stats are piss poor and we see highlights, sure you can react but not in a deep way. Even if you could I'd argue that's against the entire point of the game which is pick up and play, that's basically the subtitle to the series. Is the game goal heavy? Sure it is but that's in scored and conceded and imo it's what makes FMM so fun and moreish. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Nucleus said:

You’d all probably bitch it’s too hard if they changed it anyway

Adding difficulty setting is not the same as making FMM more difficult.

[Lillywhite Dean]

1 hour ago, Ashez said:

This is a pick up and play game so you'd need to be careful this doesn't become overwhelming or damage the stamina stat. Easily implemented by yourself though by using low stamina players. 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. But FMM being a 'pick up and play game' should have little bearing on how player conditioning works. I recently played 11 matches in 36 days. My first XI were match fit for every single one of those games. That's a match every three days. That's unrealistic.

1 hour ago, Ashez said:

I've noticed this has a decent impact this year tbh. 

I haven't noticed this myself but hopefully I will. A lot of my judgement on FMM is based on FMM17 and FMM18. I want to keep an open mind on FMM19, at least until I've played a few more seasons (I'm currently on my 4th season). 

1 hour ago, Ashez said:

That has nothing to do with difficult but self restraint imo. You always pick who you sign and what you pay so I strongly disagree that the game should influence this outside of how it already does. 

The examples I used to describe a potential 'Hard' setting were just examples. My suggestion of higher transfer fees was an example of how the game could be more challenging if the players you wanted to sign had higher transfer fees (which means improving the squad through player acquisition would be more difficult for the player). But you could just scrap that idea and instead introduce smaller transfer budgets.

I think there is a difference between making the game more difficult i.e. where the AI on a match day will be harder to beat, and making the game more challenging i.e. all the things that you do in the lead up to a match are more difficult to achieve. 

P.S. I don't buy into this implementing your own difficulties to the game. I play FMM because I want a realistic football management simulation.  Imposing your own difficulties such as only selecting players with low stamina, or imposing cheap release clauses, makes the game unrealistic because what kind of manager would actually do that. I have read some of the challenges that have been posted on this site and the challenges such as the Sir Alex Ferguson challenge, or the AC Milan Dutch challenge, seem like a great idea. But imposing my own set of restrictions in order to make the game more difficult just doesn't seem right. What next? Play games with your striker in goal and your GK up front?

Edited November 29, 2018 by Lillywhite Dean

[FuddledFox]

6 minutes ago, Lillywhite Dean said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this. But FMM being a 'pick up and play game' should have little bearing on how player conditioning works. I recently played 11 matches in 36 days. My first XI were match fit for every single one of those games. That's a match every three days. That's unrealistic.

 I haven't experienced anything like that myself. Fighting on 3 fronts and towards the end of the season I was changing my XI every game to get a fit team out on the pitch. I don't over work them in training although my tactic is very intense which may have a bearing.

[Nucleus]

2 minutes ago, Foxy said:

 I haven't experienced anything like that myself. Fighting on 3 fronts and towards the end of the season I was changing my XI every game to get a fit team out on the pitch. I don't over work them in training although my tactic is very intense which may have a bearing.

First six months of the season I can use pretty much the same XI, but once January comes around it’s a case of using my first XI for two matches then my second string side for the third match. That’s plenty of rotation imo

[Lillywhite Dean]

10 minutes ago, Foxy said:

 I haven't experienced anything like that myself. Fighting on 3 fronts and towards the end of the season I was changing my XI every game to get a fit team out on the pitch. I don't over work them in training although my tactic is very intense which may have a bearing.

Using an intense tactic will definitely have a bearing on player conditioning. If you use any or all of the following tactics: high defensive line, all over closing down, fast tempo, then that will obviously drain your players more quickly when compared to a tactic that doesn't employ those strategies.

Out of interest, who were you managing? And are you on iOS or Android?