Three Simple Proposals for FM 2012

1. Player Testimonials

We're all had players at clubs that become part of the furniture. It would be a nice way to honour them and send them off properly by offering them a testimonial at the end of their retirement season. They would keep the gate receipts so it wouldn't be a money-spinner, but a bunch of old players could come out of retirement for one more game, and people listed as "favoured personnel" would turn up and play. Might be fun, and definitely realistic. Shouldn't be a hard one to implement either!

2. More "Guff" on Matchday

I'm sure this is something SI are already working on, but I'd love to see a bit more of the cosmetic guff happening on the pitch. Goal celebrations where the player leaps into the crowd and gets mobbed, 20-player punch ups, managers and other people on the touchline screaming and shouting, cameramen etc. You know, clutter. It may not matter to some people but it's stuff like that which gives you more of a connection to the players and the game engine and makes it seem more like watching a real match. Also it would be hilarious to see players ripping off their shirts and diving into the crowd before getting booked. Most of this isn't going to require huge amount of coding and research since they're just animations or static graphics.

3. A "Match of the Day" style condensed highlight reel

The best action from the weekends games. At the end of the weekend of regular fixtures, or on a Thursday evening, the game generates a highlights package of great goals and moments from games. If you're an obsessive nerd (ahem) you can see what the other teams are up to without having to watch through and entire "key highlights" replay of a match. This way, you can just watch all the goals. Just a thought.

Like you said on point 2, i would like to have more difference between competitions, like in Italy or Argentina when someone scores the crowd would rush up to the fence, incomparison to england where a player would go to the growd,cause being closer to pitch, and gets mobbed.

Think that would be a nice touch, so not every league seems the same.

Dont even watch in 3d atm but it would be nice for ppl who do, and im sure someday i will go to it myself.

I've wanted different things for different countries for ages too. For one thing, in Spain they make that "EEEEEHHHH" noise when someone goes close to scoring instead of the "OOOHHH" noise they do in Britain, and goals aren't created with a "YYYYEEESSSS" but a "AAAWWWWWW" sort of sound. Uhhh, hope that doesn't sound too weird, hope you know what I mean anyway.

Also in South America, the ticker-tape opening to the game would be good to add atmosphere.

I know a lot of people will argue that these things don't add anything, but I disagree. The little touches like this are a good way of adding to the overall flavour of the game. FM is so complex now that I think the only way to realistically go is to add more of this kind of stuff for a change instead of continually changing the media interaction or training, neither of which ever change that much, and neither of which really adds that much to the game.

Three great ideas

I like these, they may be little things but they would make a big difference, if implemented well

Testimonials would be hard- you'd need to store a lot of extra data about retired players. I do like all your ideas though.

I really like the idea for number 1

Some really good ideas here.

I'd also like to see something, similar to the MOTD idea (or even tacked on the end), which just includes a bit more punditry really. Who are the up and coming stars of other teams? Who's generating a lot of media buzz? Which players are really playing at the top of their game and maybe might be moving on soon? Who's on the verge of being dropped after a terrible few matches? You don't find these out easily, it's just not that accessible.

It's easy enough to change, just a few lines tacked on the end of the weekly roundup "The best action was at .... with Player X continuing his great form, the fans are buzzing but if he keeps this up, the big boys could come knocking before long.." something like that.

3 is already in there - you can view a highlight of all the goals scored on each round of results.

The option is in the bottom right of the news item about that round.

I like all 3 ideas.

I think the problem that still exists that SI have tried to overcome but still haven't succeeded, is a general feel like you're in your game world. Like the summer is all about transfer rumours and that part is not well represented in the game. Yeh, there are rumours but you don't get the sense of excitement that you do in real life. The other issue is that the news doesn't make a big enough deal of elite players so once you start to lose the real players you don't get a sense of who is considered the best in the world unless you simply do a player search sorted by value.

Testimonials would be hard- you'd need to store a lot of extra data about retired players. I do like all your ideas though.

They could write this old data to a file that never gets loaded into memory until the testimonial, and storing text files is cheap nowadays with compression. And of course they should purge players who are, unfortunately, dead...

Ï like these ideas. And as I also have mentioned before, I would like some more fuss when you win something. Now it is all forgotten. Would be nice to see your team lift the trophy, maybe have a trophy room, and if you have won the champions league, have en open top bus celebration.

The amount of times I've seen testimonials mentioned now is quite incredible. They seem to be on almost every wishlist going.

I like all three ideas though. Would be great to see them in the next version.

Ï like these ideas. And as I also have mentioned before, I would like some more fuss when you win something. Now it is all forgotten. Would be nice to see your team lift the trophy, maybe have a trophy room, and if you have won the champions league, have en open top bus celebration.

I agree a bigger deal needs to be made about these things.

I like idea 2 & 3 but I think that testimonials are far less common these days and quite often the money is given to charity. I know that pepole will say that this is going further down the FIFA manager route but I don't agree. FIFA manager has a lot of irrelevence to what a manager does i.e. stadium rebuilding and merchandising.

The "Guff" you mention and the comments of others subsequent to this I think is important. There does need to be a certain type of atmosphere in stadiums destinguishing one league from another. I also think that the crowd representation needs to be shown more accurately especially where away fans are positioned in stadiums. Also taking into account bigger ticket allocations for FA Cup games. I still see empty seats in stadiums which are supposed to have sold out!!