BrightLad5

Exactly, but my message isn't directed at the SI Staff in this forum. Its directed at SI as a company overall and the decision makers in the backroom. The communication of the decision making process and plans is very archaic when compared to other big gaming studios.

This is part of the issue. SI cant pull competitors out of thin air admittedly, but the lack of competitors has quite clearly lead to complacency. SI know people will buy their game whatever state its in because there is still nothing else that comes close to it on the market. And how about this for listening to feedback from the community: Improve communication! Stop directing everyone to these forums. Improve social media content to include regular updates on that is happening behind the scenes. For example when patches are expected, patch notes for previous updates, current issues SI are working on for the next patch, an acknowledgment of bugs etc. FM socials provide nothing meaningful to the community or the game at the moment. Oh and whilst we're on that topic, improve marketing in general PLEASE! Genuinely feel like we are living in the early 2000's with the way this studio seems to be run and the decisions it is taking at times. I really don't want to keep moaning on these forums, but there seems to be a lot of talk and not a lot of action in address some of the most simplest and basic issues like just improving communications.

That last bit doesn't surprise me... very 'on brand' for SI to leave something sitting in the game for 14 years that needs fixing.

Youth Academy only, in England, with a tier 6 team that is newly promoted from (unplayable) tier 7... thats the toughest widely played challenge you can do IMO... Can reduce the difficulty by being in another country with less tiers or managing a professional team in League 1 or 2 maybe, but even then it is very very hard. I am likely getting the sack in my first season in tier 6 England

There are community Databases with additional leagues. Does this mean SI shouldn't look to add future leagues in the next iteration? There is literally a 1 minute fix that makes every team, league, cup and award in the game "licensed" so does that mean they shouldn't bother with things like the European License headline feature this year, or other license stuff in the future? SI make this game, and I'm sure they'd agree that they are responsible for making improvements to it whether that be UI, DB, Licensing or actual new in-game user features. The problem isn't with the UI directly... although there are issues with it. The problem, as with most of the other points made in this thread isn't directly aimed at FM23 as a game, it is aimed at the way there is a lack of innovation and a seeming lack of marketing sense with a 42 min feature vid and, what was it, 1 or 2 blogs? This isn't 2005. A settling for a substandard new game when compared to FM22. A reliance on the hardcore "lifers" that will buy it every year and, maybe most annoyingly, justifying it all by using the excuse of "best value for money game/you get what you pay for" Anyway I've spent enough time in this thread over the last few days days Hopefully SI take some of the criticism they have received this launch on board, and maybe even change up how they do things in the future. On the face of it, from a customer viewpoint, the company seems to be slightly old fashioned. Not up to speed with how modern day game devs run. At times, quite literally they use a "this is how its always been done" mentality (re: change log not being released, for example) I really hope people in positions of even tiny influence at SI don't feel afraid to speak out about processes and practices as this wouldn't be good for the the future. We all love this game series and only want it to be the best it can be! Maybe a shake up is needed... Happy gaming all!

Haha, no not a new thing. I had it happen to me on a previous iteration of the game

I am, but could maybe do more tweaks to individuals in games. I tempted to go on the front foot more. Our defense is bad and GK lets everything roll past him, but going forward most players are good for this level. Maybe I should just try the old fashioned "just score more than them" method and hope I get lucky?!

Maybe I just need to get the tactic cohesion up a bit more. All players are training in their playing roles so it is rising but some aren't quite all the way yet. I'll try adding the team bonding before the matches for the next few weeks and hope that has a boost! Thanks! I feel a lot has come down to bad luck. Lots of late goals, missed a penalty early on in a game things like that. I've played several of the teams at the bottom of the table already though so i fear that tougher teams will negate any rise in moral/tactical familiarity but you never know. One win will change everything, but only having 1 win from 11 played so far this season isnt great

SI do allow modding by the sheer fact of how easy it is, coupled with having a forum dedicated to skinning. even having the player and club IDs visible in game to allow modding if we desire. They also never stop or discourage people modding with graphics or name changes. The later only being discouraged from forum discussion due to legal reasons I believe. They cant be seen to promote things like that. Yeah some issues like this are out of SIs hands. Man Utd cant go after any users of their logo. I can use Man Utd's name and logo on my save and they cant do anything. if I was distributing a pack with their logo in, they could try to stop it.

Having difficult in season 1! About 10 games in and sat in the relegation zone about 4 points adrift Trying my best to do moral manager and praise conduct as much as possible, as well as praising and critcising training, last match, form... everything possible really. Even had a couple of success team meetings to get the boys moral up, but with each bad result it keeps slipping down to poor. I'm playing a tactic that I think is to the players strengths. it is a 4-3-3 DM wide, positive mentality with pretty basic match instructions but I'm conceding so much! Scoring isn't a problem but we cant keep a cleansheet! Training is slowly starting to produce some results, the players are no longer getting sub 6.0 training ratings each week and some are starting to get over 7.0 which is a positive. Is there any tips anyone might have that can get me out of this slump? A big issue I feel is seeing out games

It's great that the game can be community modded. In many cases community modding is what makes the game a success, look at games like DayZ which were derived initially from a community mod for ARMA before becoming its own game. On the flip side a game like PUBG has been very limited on allowing the community to mod it, which is wildly considered to be one of the main reasons for it plateauing over the last couple of years. So I too am thankful to be able to mod FM, but lets not pretend that SI allowing us to mod the game isn't also a huge benefit to SI directly. They kind of NEED to give us that option when you consider the lack of licensing in many top leagues alone, before even looking at the other graphical side of things. Not updating the UI in years is a bit slack. Its a new game at the end of the day.

Definitely try the demo. As XaW says, one persons issue may not be an issue for you. Just for the record, I would probably still rate this game high. If you had no prior knowledge of any other FM title, and reviewed it as a stand along game... its good, really good. The majourity of the negativity has been about the pretty big match engine defending bugs which always exist in Beta in some shape of form. The negativity, from my PoV has mainly come from: 1) No patch notes from beta to Full 2) Match Engine not getting patched from Beta to Full 3) The "new" features are minimal at best 4) Outside of the Match, the game looks is almost identical to FM22 5) No graphical update in decade of annual releases 6) SI being extremely defensive/secretive and hiding behind the "value for money" excuse for lack of innovation in FM23 None of these reasons (apart from graphics maybe) are directly criticising FM23 as a stand alone game. The negativity for me is more of an accumulation of the above, and other issues, which are more directly related to and aimed at SI as a company as opposed to FM23 as a game.

If I recall, even going back to the CM days, there was a dark and light version? Been a long time. I remember when they just made a suitable font difference and went from quite a big thin font to a more bolder smaller font... even that was nice. I do strongly agree that a freshen up of the default skin is in need. I hope their justification for not updating the skin (or providing alt variations) in 3 years isn't: "there's modders out there that make skins so why should we bother to provide multiple or new skins?" If that is the case, then that is a mentality problem at SI which is a lot bigger of an issue than just being 'new skin' related... Im sure this isn't the reason though

Has there been any communication on when the ME, and specifically defenders, will be fixed?

My mistake, my original comment should have read that I heard they don't appear on the new Squad Planner, didn't mean to say Depth. Not sure if this has been patched now from beta to Full and Triallist now do appear on the Squad Planner?