USASoundersFan

Unfortunately, I don't really play anymore, haven't in a couple of years. (I don't currently have any games downloaded, and 22 was my most recent purchase.) Regardless, you can always copy all of these files/folders somewhere safe so that you can put them back where they came from if anything doesn't go according to plan. Or place them all somewhere safe in a manner that tells you where they came from. But if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask and I'll answer as best as I can next time I'm here. And I can help explain what I wrote about the 20 game if that helps. (Note that if you're playing a more recent game than 20, some of these steps may be slightly different.)

I know you were. I intentionally brought up the EFL Trophy.

Yeah. Unfortunately. I'm not sure if this is true as those countries being able to realistically win a European competition is a definite positive. But perhaps you're right. And I don't think that lower-league teams wanted top-tier youth sides in the EFL Trophy. I'm not sure if they would want top-tier first sides.

When I first heard about the Conference League, I was intrigued/excited as I thought that it would only include the bottom half of the countries in the coefficient or something like that, but once I heard that teams from the top leagues would take part too, I quickly lost interest (what's the point?) and was amazed that many were shocked that the first final featured fairly big name clubs. They should have had the Europa League change to being only for clubs from the top half of the countries in the coefficient and then have the Conference League for the bottom half countries.

Being told scores of other matches and that I've moved up or down to a new place in the table with no way to turn off those in-game alerts like there used to be. (Unless that was fixed for 23, which I didn't buy, but I don't think it was.) Those alerts really take me out of being immersed in my own match, and I don't see any real life manager ever caring about other scores except possibly on the final day of the season.

That sounds amazing. Maybe not nigh on impossible but much more difficult than it is. I want to be able to take a sixth-tier mid-table team and struggle to ever get promoted, like it generally is in real life.

I really don't like a format in which the schedule is unbalanced. Every team should play every other team in their group an equal number of times. I know that they're aiming to have everyone play roughly equal schedules compared to everyone else as far as the strength of their fixtures lists goes, but there's absolutely no guaranteeing that. I remember when CONCACAF did this type of format for qualifying for their first Nations League, and I thought that was a really stupid format as it was going on. I do like no dropping down to other competitions, but, of course, that could have been implemented with the current system pretty easily.

When I play FM, I want to feel like I'm an actual football manager. Winning easily doesn't cause that. Not disagreeing with you. I just miss when that wasn't SI's focus.

Then have nine-team groups. I don't like that not everybody in the same group plays the same opponents the same number of times. But, whatever, there are other things in football that bother me a lot more than this. And at least the strength of schedule for everybody will be roughly equal.

FM felt much more immersive before these were implemented.

I do not care at all about other matches or an updated league table for the vast majority of the season. I just want to focus on the match that I'm playing, immerse myself in that. So, I agree with you. I do not believe that any real-life managers are receiving updates on other results or an updated league table while managing except for rare instances on final match days and similar circumstances. I think that there was a way to turn this off a few years ago, but, for some reason, that ability was removed. And, honestly, that has a lot to do with why I haven't purchased FM 23 yet and may not.

What caused FM to no longer feel immersive to me was the incorporation of these interactions several editions ago. They're just not realistic in so many ways, and there are so many times when my natural response is not any of the options given to me.

They didn't know how Brexit would go ... okay, fair ... but they're acting like they know how this is going to go, that this suspension will be forever, that there's a 100% chance of that. No variables, no alternate scenarios. Plus, it seemed like those Brexit scenarios were relatively easy to fix with the pre-game editor, if I recall correctly, but this is not. I am fine with them doing what they've done with the game as loaded - no end date to this punishment - but they should not make it so difficult to alter it in the editor.

What's going on with the Club World Cup in FM23? I know that there's just a huge question mark regarding its future in real life. How has FM handled that? Is it still assuming that the expanded format will come into existence, has it returned to its every-year, seven-team format, has it been removed, or? If the expanded, every-four-years version is in it, have the rest issues from FM22 been fixed?

SI should either put out a game that's as realistic as possible or allow users to pick the setting that they want: realistic or fake.