Improving FM's long term game

Having played 3 long term games (10+ seasons) on this years FM, I have realised how robotic and monotonous things become. This is by no means a dig at S.I but simply a few suggestions I feel could really add a bit more interest after a decade or so of in-game time.

1. Player details - I feel more personal Player Biographies are needed, at the moment we have a simple sentence of their reputation and breif outline of clubs they have played for and what they have achieved. This is all well and good but doesn't distinguish one player from another in the way we would in real life. For instance, we will take Cesc Fabregas and Steven Gerrard. Two central midfielders that, if viewed on football manager with random names and no knowledge of their history, both players would appear very similar. In real life however, we know that they are somewhat different types of players. For instance I would say, Gerrard is a hugely influential midfielder who is has a knack for scoring important goals in spectacular fashion. I would describe Cesc as, A leader by example, Fabregas has the priceless ability to turn a game on it's head by finding the perfect pass to set up he's team mates. I am confident saying both those statements as I have witnessed both players doing as stated on regular occasions. I feel it would be particularly useful when entering the era of Newgens, the game could take a newgens history (after a few seasons) and create a similar description which could change during he's career. For instance, a newgen striker comes through Gillignham's youth team with a high finishing and positioning stat. After a few seasons, you would imagine the player will start scoring a fair few goals in the youth team possibly getting into the first team and getting interest from premiership clubs. This could lead to a description such as, A. Regen is highly rated amongst the gillingham staff due to he's natural eye for goal, he's impressive goal return this season has alerted some of the Premiership's elite, Arsenal, Man City and Liverpool are all rumoured to be weighing up bids for the England Under 19 international. I feel this would add that little bit more personality to the player as they will each have a "story". This information could then be used in news stories to expand on the personalities.
   
2. Transfer Sagas - Not one transfer window passes now days without a headline news transfer saga! C. Ronaldo, Fabregas, Tevez, Modric, there is allways a big news transfer story that builds up over a number of weeks, months, or even years in the case of Fabregas. I feel the game should expand on this, as many of the times at the moment if a club comes in for one of your players they clearly rate, they will have a bid rejected and then move on without a second look whilst another club shows interest and so on. I think AI managers should persist in the way that Pep has with Fabregas, Talking to the press about the player regularly, multiple offers to try and find an agreed price, players claiming they will not play for the club again ala Gallas and Tevez. Obviously these should be in moderation as it would be quite annoying to have one of Europe's Elite chasing each of your leading men for long periods of time but one big story every transfer window would be realistic. This allows new news stories in a similar way the UK press do. contradicting stories from different newspapers, has he - hasn't he signings. It also allows expansion to my first idea, for instance adding to fabregas' description, Barcelona have been pursuing the spaniard for the past 2 seasons but Arsenal's manger has been reluctant to budge on he's high asking price...
   
3. Youth Player's Early Information - An idea I have seen discussed before but I feel Newgens should be partially created at a younger age in order to give you a glimpse of some of the hottest prospects you'r club has coming through. In real life managers have knowledge of the players raising through the youth teams and can prepare accordingly. For instance, at Ipswich, Connor Wickham was highly thought of and had clear potential at an early age. The manager would have known about this and made sure to bring him in to the first team when he turned 16. I would like you'r assistant or head of youth development (new staff role?) to show you maybe 1 or 2 bright stars if the club has any in the same way you have staff meetings. These players would be created at the age of 12 but have no options rather than just view them and an assistant report, they can then be pointed out to you and made a true newgen with all the usual options at the usual date they would enter the game. I feel this would make it more appealing the play on, as if I saw a striker with huge potential that would be coming in the U18s in 4 years I would be determined to get to that date and train him. you could maybe even give the young players a tutor from your team in order to shape them to your liking.
   

I apologise if it is a bit heavy going to read through but I could not manage to compress what I wanted to say. Let me know what you thing [/font][/color]

I too quite like looking at player biog's and career histories, if only because I'm a stat nerd. In fact one thing that irritates me slightly is when a player's birthplace is 'unknown'! How can I show irrational bias towards players from certain places or build a mental image of people if they seem to have awoken from a deep sleep and forgotten who they are? A minor gripe obviously because the game simulates personalities quite well, but as with any 'constructive moan' there could always be more.

In my opinion what the game could use and currently doesn't seem to cater for is 'random events'. How often does anything happen to rock the boat of a club/league? It seems like clubs never go into admin, rarely do stadiums get vacated, players don't often go mad (e.g. van Hooijdonk going AWOL) or do extreme things to get banned for long periods (e.g. Cantona kicks, failed drug tests, prison sentences etc). I do remember a game on FM(CM)00/01 when a news item popped up saying that Robbie Fowler had been banned for 12 months for pushing a referee - this sort of thing helps spice the game up. Every day you can pick up a newspaper or go online and read about stuff like that happening and I think it could be factored into FM. If power-gamers moan that it happens to them then tough, real-life managers have to deal with it all the time.

I think part of the issue with players going mad is the licensing of the player names and club names, and the fact that most of the players may not want to be associated with the kind of activities that would lead to these kind of bans.

in the early CM versions of the game there was some kind of a line you could enter in a certain file which would cause players to do crazy things at times, i think it was called "ARSE"...

I think part of the issue with players going mad is the licensing of the player names and club names, and the fact that most of the players may not want to be associated with the kind of activities that would lead to these kind of bans.

Understandable and I almost included that point in my post, but surely if the 'events' occur randomly (i.e. are not hard-wired into the game to happen to specific players) and the usual disclaimer is in place it should be ok to do?

Long term issue for me would be that a lot of clubs lose their national identity once money flows through the club.

Take Serie A in 2021 in my game, the average number of Italians in the established 10 Serie teams is just 5.6, compared to 13.4 at the start. Napoli have gone from 18 Italian players around their first team squad to just 3, Lazio from 17 to just 4. Too many clubs are selling their 17/18 year olds and they're not coming back to Italy.

Not a game breaker by any means, but the sense of realism is lost the further you advance.

The biggest long-term issue is:

AI ****-poor squad-building and talent development skills

You'll have Top Clubs forking out obscene money for 29-31yo players who will become huge liabilities in a matter of a couple of seasons.

That, or they'll just waste valuable money on 19yo players whose PA is very high (and theoretically attainable) but whose current stats are low, uneven and possibly "broken" beyond repair.

Basically while AI has the God-like skill to "see" a player's Potential Ability, it lacks the skill to put such figure into perspective...

Human players can see a mediocre youngster and think "meh, he's 19 already and barely average, and look at his awful mental traits... not worth it"

AI will instead think "wow, he's 175 PA, I want him!"

That way you'll one day found out your main rivals have scooped up a couple of amazing newgens for peanuts, but you'll also see their squad filled with aging stars (still making >150k p/w) and with totally inadequate youngsters. All with a remarkable disregard for tactical or technical balance... Lumbering target men will be found in passing-oriented teams, a couple of DMs in teams playing a DM-less formation, wingers in wingless teams etc etc.

Also, AI clubs will make the most outlandish managerial appointments, thus exacerbating the aforementioned issues...

Once the gameworld gets more and more newgen-oriented, AI clubs will go south very quickly, especially at a mid/bottom table level... Top Clubs will got by thanks to some good academy products and thanks to the "every 10 Jeffers we'll get a Fabregas" law of large numbers.

But average clubs will just collapse like a house of cards because the managers won't be able to tell actual potential from "potential potential"...