Issues with the writing

I feel that I can't hold my peace any longer. Sure, there are several things with this game that are wrong or just stupid, in my opinion. AI managers not having any idea how to develop youth, for example - but that is another story. That is not my concern right now and not the purpose of this thread. There will always be technical flaws and whatnot which will or will not be addressed in future games. That's largely how it is for every game developer and something that I can sympathise with. There are certain things, however, that I cannot understand why they STILL exist. Is it laziness? Madness?

I'm currently playing as Wigan and I have developed a very fluid style of football which has seen my team climb ever upward in the table, against all the odds. Just a few minutes ago I won the Carling Cup against Man Utd, which I found was quite a good achievement and I felt good about it. When the match was over and I returned to the main game I was of course greeted with various congratulatory standard messages. So far so good. Then I received a message from my board. Remember, I am Wigan - predicted last in the Premier League and currently 3rd with 10 or so matches to go. I have just won the Carling Cup for the first time in Wigan's history. What does the board have to say about that? Well, let me spell it out for you, to make it quite clear how incredibly inane it is.

"the Wigan Athletic board have revealed that they always expected the team to win the competition and are pleased that the manager did not let them down. In a further announcement, the board are keen to impress on their manager that celebrations are kept to a minimum in order that the club may focus fully on future challenges"

So let us analyse this text. Remember, someone at SI actually wrote this - seven, eight years ago? This actually seemed like a good idea, to someone, and has been left untouched for so long. First of all, we have a small team board being ludicrously nonchalant about a great triumph. This might be a bug but I still can't understand how the message can be applied to any team in any logical sense, even clubs like Chelsea. They're diminishing every player's performance and furthermore questions MY professionalism in the following instance. That is coming dangerously close to a rightful resignation on my part. Obviously I have a board that is throughly unconcerned with anything that I do and seems to doubt that I can't keep myself or my squad focused. I have just won them a cup, a result of much gelling and maximising the potential of my squad, and they couldn't care less. Quite a letdown. This is not something new. This has co-existed with FM for a very long time now and this is not the first time I've brought it up.

Polishing the match engine and improving various realistic aspects of the game is of course very important, but there are other things that are important as well. The writing, for example. The quoted sentences above are absolutely shocking and the very fact that it remains intact in the game is a scandal. What purpose do these words serve - to anyone? What are they supposed to mean? What am I supposed to gather? Am I supposed to feel challenged, perhaps? I'm not feeling challenged. I have NEVER felt challenged after reading that piece of amateurish garbage. It's trash and it needs to be removed like a tumour from the game. I haven't spent multiple hours of my life, winning games and cups, just to be shot down by some terrible writing. It's hard enough to stay confident in this game without some text completely diminishing what I've accomplished. So, I challenge you SI - remove or alter it, or let it stay the same - like it has for the past eight or so years. It's up to you, of course. It still serves to remind you that this game really has stagnated in some areas and I'm not okay with that. What is it about the writing - that which the gameplay is largely composed of - that makes it so less important or essential than contracts, agents, newgens and all of that?

Am I being silly? Considering all the problems that people have with this game and the previous games, this complaint might seem strange and out of place. But I feel that the quoted words represent a real problem with FM.

Flawed- perhaps

Scandal and a real issue- no

Considering the game is played online (with Steam) and a lot of people are connected to the internet - I'd like to see some sort of "cloud" of news messages - these could be continually updated, refined, added to, moved, altered, rearranged etc.

This would give a huge amount of possible things to appear in the news feeds. I for one would like to see a more "congrulatory" board.

All the news feed comments could draw from the "cloud", text files are relatively small. And if someone is playing without internet connectivity then it would draw on the pre-loaded that came with the game.

@Burgshield

I get your points but personally I've gotten immune to all the nonsense board, players, media and whatnot lets out. I hit space and move on. If it needs an answer I tell them they're being stupid and I'm the boss. That works surprisingly well...

I'd rather see as much work as possible is made on improving the AI. At the end of the day a well (better) functioning AI is what makes games worth playing, imo opinion

@Burgshield

If it needs an answer I tell them they're being stupid and I'm the boss. That works surprisingly well...

That's my view as well. Telling players you're the boss in an assertive way works in 99% of the cases. Quite remarkable if you think about it. You'd expect players to be a little more recalcitrant.

I think I had that message when I won the Carling Cup with West Brom, at the time I saw of it as more of a 'look there's still a significant amount of the season left, don't get carried away' kind of thing, which I thought was pretty sensible, I mean look a Birmingham who won the Carling Cup in 2011 and then for the next two months were awful and ended up being relegated.

In general though I agree with you, a lot of the writing could be improved but, for me improvements to the match engine and AI in general are much more important.

I think this is a fair point to raise. The news messages are the means by which the atmosphere of the football world is supposed to be conveyed and that message definitely seems odd and out of place in many instances

One issue that persistently irritates me are news messages about tournament results. They often emphasize the loser of the match, even showing their emblem, when real news sources outside the loser's local papers would almost certainly emphasize the winner unless the result was a massive upset. No one cares that BATE BORISOV IS OUT OF THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, they are more interested in knowing who won the tie and it would be much more helpful if I didn't have to scan the full message to see that it was, in fact, some minor club called Barcelona.

The words mountain and molehill spring to mind. I agree that it's not ideal but you have gone a bit over the top on quite a minor issue.

I think competition expectations need to looked at, the board seems to overrate cups.