its time for old 90s school opinion about gameplay in FM2012.

[Matej]

Ok, in short i love FM(CM) , i play since 1993 i think( old Amiga days). im telling you this so that you know that im old freak about FM and i know every angles of the game. so lets talk from my perspective and people who think they are very good, best players of this game.
o yes, i dont write much on this forum(but i read a lot), because i think my english is not great. but when i write i really think i must say something.

I dont know what other experienced players dont like in FM, i would like to hear opinion of you who play this game for 20 years. btw, im 32 years old now.

so lets start with what really bugs me.

1. im long career manager( ofc) , so my biggest problem with game ( no, not regens like 5 years ago,hehe) is part of my career when i win premiership or serie a or champ league. after this point, i can guarantee you that i will win that league 19 times of 20. i never tried that in single career, but in every FM i play 3 or 4 more seasons and i win every year. i dont win every champ. league, i think champ league is really hard to win every year and i like that very much.

now thats 2 much winning and i lose interest in FM after month or 2 ( real life) playing. So what can we do in future to make this game better?

well, much better AI, ofc. If i am, for example, Everton and im in best league in the world right now, other clubs would give everything to move me from throne. they would buy even better players they already have. when they play agains me, they would investigate my tactic and players and make some counter tactic, that kills mine.
one other thing can be done. more problems in the club. manager- board, manager - players, random financial problems occour, even maybe manager ( me) have car accident so my assistent manager must take team for lets say 3 months and lose lots of points. you may think its funny, but these things happens in real life. i have few more creative ideas but i would like to hear some of them from you too.

2. lack of new things in FM series. no creativity . i would not talk much about this, there are treads about this, but i agree with people that SI is playing on safe card. i mean, match engine from FM11 is almoust same in FM12. Booring. Si can do whatever they want, i respect them, but 30 pounds for so little changes in gameplay is not nice. sure, give us product every year, but price is 2 high for job you did this year. When you really make something new and creative, i would give you 100 pounds, no problem.

3. level difficulty. now i still cant belive this isnt in game. i know all the regular answers from this forum( first answer is take low league club ofc). this one is for SI q, i dont want to argue with fan boys, please. I belive many of today gamers who play FM have 15 to 25 years on their shoulders. Many of them playin this game for the first time. for me, game is super easy, but i can understand that for new players is somethimes hard. Why are we in the same basket? So you limit me and experienced players, if we want challenge, we must take some club in 3rd or 4th league. Ive dont that for like 20 times in my life. im tired of that. New players can play with all best players in the world and feel good, and we must start in 4th league and when we come to premiership many of the players we love and play this game part because of them are retired.

This is retorical q, but do you really thing managers of Tottenham, Betis, FIora, juve, Man utd , liverpool have easy job? Ofc not. But in this game its really easy job. So what im trying to say is game with major clubs should be much harder, lets say 50% harder.
Its sad when i see some FM players with no or little knowledge beat this game with Man Utd , Liverpool, etc. it makes me sick. i want to say to that person " yes, you can win champ league on easy, but no way with your bad play you can win anything on hard level. "

We dont have same of knowledge of this game, but game is doing 2 little to show us how much we really worth. SI, if there is anyone from you since early 90s, please, for last time, just one year, make this game rock hard. For old Mark Collis, Chris Bart-Williams fans and those who remember.

P.s. i noticed that Indie games with great creativity are bestsellers today. i play them and love them, Maybe SI can make some similiar, smaller game like Football manager, with more creativity, harder then FM just for really experienced players?

[Erimus1876]

Hopefully some of these things will be implemented in next years game. They're long overdue. I would like to see SI switch emphasis to the long term playability of the game instead of adding new features all the time. As you say, the game gets much easier as the seasons go by, mainly due to AI transfer policy and little to non-existant youth development.

In the meantime; a few suggestions to make your game tougher - have you tried playing lower league manager rules or with an attribute hiding skin. I've found doing so notches the game difficulty up enough to keep me interested. You could also use something like FMRTE to improve your main rivals squads at the end of each season so they constantly give you a challenge and since the AI isn't good enough to improve itself in the right areas.

[Sheffield Sunday]

Ah old CM games... Where you could buy Mike Flynn from Stockport County, and Herman Garivia (a Columbian midfielder if I remember rightly) swap to a 3-5-2 and virtually win everything!

I do believe Michael Owen was just a wee nipper on the game when I started playing!

[grade]

1- I agree, but I think first AI of Team Management should be improved, despite some are saying that it has improved.

2- There was little improvements on this ME, because as PaulC have said, the next improvement to the ME needed more development cycle, so in FM13 we will have some goodies regards of the ME.

3- I supported levels of difficulty that could please a lot of people, but like many said and I see their point, this will make even harder and time comsuming the tune things up. It is already too time consuming for the people at SI as it is, without level of difficulty. What I suggest (i don't know if you do already), is delegating somethings to your ass. manager to make the more challenging. I for one I don't use, Press Conferences and Team Talks( i use team meeting and player interaction if something extreme is necessary) and I also pretty much ignore the Backroom Advice, I only do, what players should be added as penalty kicks, free kicks, Captain or Vice-Captain, that sort of stuff. On the inbox i filter agents offering players and ignore the scout assignments. I use scouts to scout a player to find what kind of stats they have.

I do try to hire the best coach team i can find, but occasionally when I want even more difficult I try to use the coaches that the club has.

I hope I was some help to you.

[Matej]

Sheff S.- 352 was killer, especially in CM2. later was 442 and in last few years I prefer 41212.

Erimus- i respect LLM, but i dont agree with some of their rules. i already play 90 % of their rules, even before i knew there is LLM forum. FMRTE sounds interesting, i might try that. but i think it will take too much time and it sounds like i think for AI, playing against myself sounds strange.

grade- i totally agree with you about team management. what SI improved in that category? do you have some link to that topic? about ME and difficulty, i wish they dont do football manager every year, best writers and best books where not build in a day or year. i wish SI works on this game for 3-4 years, and maybe just release new players every year, for some small money.
I agree, they must have more time for masterpiece, they earned enough money in 20 years, why every year release, we are not blind. i can see whats diffrent and whats not. i needed like 6 hours to locate all. and i can tell you, this FM is not good enough improvement since last one. They could do much more in a year.
About your advices, i agree, i dont use Press Conferences , because they are boring after short time. they didnt put enough lines, especially tricky ones. i dont use Backroom Advice, because their advice are in 80% not good at all. I can ignore scouts and team talk, i use these things. But i dont thing i would have much more challenge if i dont use them. Bigger problem is, like u said, AI of team management. P.s. Ofc, i never search on forums who is good player, never searched killer tactics forums etc. But i dont mind talking with my friends about tactics. Its like real life, dont you think other managers talk between themselfs about tactic and new things? Ofc they do. Its fun.

[grep]

I strongly agree about difficulty levels.

Using difficulty levels is just like changing the background color or change the camera view etc.. just a preference to set in order to let the game suit the gamer preferences.

Of course it must be made in a professional way, instructing the AI to develop an own behaviour depending on situation, hence, pre made scripts like now but applying them in a dynamic way depending on variables, sometimes also randomly.

[Matej]

I remember, 10 to 14 years ago, CM-FM had elements of suprise. i played with 2 my friends and at the end of the season my friends best player retired very early, at age of 24 i think, because of some injury. It was fun and because of that he had worse season then year before. WHy then dont put more stuff like that in FM2012? Like i said more problems with money, players dont wanna go to some countries because they dont like that town or country. SOme players dont wanna play for my club because they think im arrogant manager ? Or i said some very bad things to him and now he wants to go from club? Or i have bounch of players who have drinking or drug problem, so i must sell them, even they are one of my best players.

Or something like chairman love 3-4 players in my team and if they dont play like 70 % of the games, he would not be happy with me... some stuff like that.

Game is really good, they just need to put spice up things, because its not all statistic and math in football. Give us harder game using your or ours imagination.

[RobBrad]

Ah old CM games... Where you could buy Mike Flynn from Stockport County, and Herman Garivia (a Columbian midfielder if I remember rightly) swap to a 3-5-2 and virtually win everything!

I do believe Michael Owen was just a wee nipper on the game when I started playing!

I love this post, purely because you've mentioned Mike Flynn who was my childhood hero. And I'm a Stockport fan

[grep]

I remember, 10 to 14 years ago, CM-FM had elements of suprise. i played with 2 my friends and at the end of the season my friends best player retired very early, at age of 24 i think, because of some injury. It was fun and because of that he had worse season then year before. WHy then dont put more stuff like that in FM2012? Like i said more problems with money, players dont wanna go to some countries because they dont like that town or country. SOme players dont wanna play for my club because they think im arrogant manager ? Or i said some very bad things to him and now he wants to go from club? Or i have bounch of players who have drinking or drug problem, so i must sell them, even they are one of my best players.

Or something like chairman love 3-4 players in my team and if they dont play like 70 % of the games, he would not be happy with me... some stuff like that.

Game is really good, they just need to put spice up things, because its not all statistic and math in football. Give us harder game using your or ours imagination.

Nice ideas but I would like to see not only bad events

[daylight]

Well your 1st point seems to be the case for every CM/FM I have played,I remember taking the mighty Altrincham up to the Premiership in CM97/98 and once we won the league I remember we went on to win everything for about 8 seasons until I got bored and resigned.

It would be nice to have some sort of difficulty slider but posters have asked for it for years with no joy,I would imagine if it was at all possible it would be here by now,maybe it would just take to much coding for it to work properly.

[Matej]

grep - Hehehe. Sure, but right now im thinking how to make game harder, especially if you are manager of bigger club. Thats why are bad events. Good events could be something like Russian owner of your club is really trilled that you won Champ. League. THats why he bought gifts to whole team ( moral up). For manager you get like some personal gift from your owner of the club, like famous expensive picture that can be in achievements menu. " for those who won champ league under eccentric owner of the club. Nice idea and very hard to achieve.

[Matej]

I belive they can make difficiulty levels, every good game have diff levels. from rpg games to simulation games. Is it easy? Prob not. this is not one man game. they earn so much money and they have so much programmers. They can even loan some programmers from some other countries, for smaller money, to take a shot and try make difficulty levels. it can be done, im sure. Im talking about easy and hardcode mode.. on easy, AI not so smart, not buyin so good players, and somethimes play with some not so good formation. On Hard diff, AI knows all the tricks. Always best players play when its important game, they search and scout just like we do. They talk with your best player , wont to buy him, promise him all golds in the world. If you dont want to sell him, he make things like TEvez did when he didnt want to play as substitute. THey can make lots of improvements.

[grep]

grep - Hehehe. Sure, but right now im thinking how to make game harder, especially if you are manager of bigger club. Thats why are bad events. Good events could be something like Russian owner of your club is really trilled that you won Champ. League. THats why he bought gifts to whole team ( moral up). For manager you get like some personal gift from your owner of the club, like famous expensive picture that can be in achievements menu. " for those who won champ league under eccentric owner of the club. Nice idea and very hard to achieve.

I agree. Your inputs IMO deserve attention from SI, I hope few ounces of them will be added even if SI fears to brake the balance if adding them within the next patches and they also do not want to burn these good ideas to keep them for future versions I fear.

I would add, a tiny percentage of possibility to spawn a Maradona every 10 seasons or so, just a 1-3% on 10 seasons maybe would be appropriate.

[theboydonegood]

Mark Collis - i remember him, wasnt he at cambridge?? Along with francis orosco or someone?

Chris Bart Williams was an early CM beast

[cruyff14]

. For old Mark Collis, Chris Bart-Williams fans and those who remember.

If I remember Mark Collis was a cheat player in the game along with another called Ferer Orosco (Something like that) you bought them from Cambridge United and they were in fact two of the game programmers

[Matej]

Cruyff14 - yes, Mark Collis was on cm 93 or 94, Cambridge 100%. he was brilliant. i dont remember Orosco.

Sperlz- you said great things. ofc if we come to some league club we shouldnt know players. actually, one thing cross my mind from fifa 12 if you play that game. their scouts say that young players are from 40 to lets say 60 rating. ( they have rating from 1 to 99). more they scout them, more you get to know how player actually looks.
What i want to say is: when i come to new club, i want that range of ratings is much larger. if its from 1 to 20( in this case it would be better that is from 1 to 99, but ok, fm can change that in future) i would like see striker with heading from 13 to lets say 18. after half year that range can get smaller( because im in the club, have better picture) from 15 to 17. After maybe a year, i can say that i really know that player and i could see all his ratings correctly.

I never used trials, but like u said, "If the attributes were hidden then trials would become much more meaningful ".
if they ever make game like this, they will give us so much more reallity and fun. i would really feel like i know those players and that club. SOmethimes, people look for real life simulation, but in wrong way. This way is much better, but more important, gameplay thrill would go up!
Troika was famous for maybe best rpg games ever. yes, they had lots of bugs. But they tried something good and new. I was never angry at them. Their games changed gaming industry and way of thinking. I want SI to start breathing again and make some really creative things in football simulation.

[Thorne]

Been playing the game as long as OP and I agree with everything he wrote.
The game is too easy but thats understandable. If it was hard for us seasoned players imagine how hard it would be for beginners? And All SI/SEGA want to do is sell as many copies as they can, really. (That's why this year they spent so much time figuring out how to stop piracy)
That's why this game needs a difficulty setting. Not easy/medium/hard but CASUAL and PRO. (Casual being the way it is now, obviously.) But that's probably very hard to do since it's hard to keep the game bug free of one virtual world, yet alone two... I think it's too big of a project just to appeal the "experienced" part of their fanbase but hopefully I'm wrong.

[Matej]

"And All SI/SEGA want to do is sell as many copies as they can, really. (That's why this year they spent so much time figuring out how to stop piracy)" -

Copies = money. if they didnt earn enough money in 20 years, then they are big spenders. really big. i dont know how much SI earned for FM11, but must be lots of money. Best fan base, no real competition for years ( i think thats not good). There are no other manager games that are close to FM. So noone can tell that they cant take risk and make masterpiece. if you always play safe, whata boring life you living. Its not all in money and power, there is 3rd thing. and thats little gambling, courage to achive something great.

P.s. they made big thing with CM2 and FM. but in last 4-5 years they are pretty boring with new stuff.

[Robert the Spud]

Are there actually any programmers around who could shed light on whether difficulty levels are even viable? It seems doubtful, because you cannot just improve the AI over one difficulty level. RPG's such as Final Fantasy don't have difficulty settings, and with MGS it's just a case of more or less ammo, more enemies, lower health etc...that sort of thing. FM world is a different ball game.

However, I think most experience players would love to see a bigger challenge. Most people say 'LLM' or a poor team, but this is not so much a challenge because it is when, not if you become successful. At LLM level you are advancing as the AI teams are rapidly declining. So you get to the top and the competition is atrocious. I don't imagine difficulty settings are even viable though.

[Lankylars]

I personally am against difficulty levels for this reason: I want realism. I don't want, when beginning a new game, to have to ponder which setting will allow me to play the most accurate representation of the leagues. I think the way for SI to make the game more difficult is to keep working on the AI ability to generate solid, balanced teams and to pick great newgens going forward, improving the long term saves.

[wearesporting]

All a difficulty level would have to do is increase or reduce player attributes. If long term AI team building cannot be fixed then at least give the option to make the players they do have better than they actually are. Not ideal but better than nothing.

I personally am against difficulty levels for this reason: I want realism. I don't want, when beginning a new game, to have to ponder which setting will allow me to play the most accurate representation of the leagues. I think the way for SI to make the game more difficult is to keep working on the AI ability to generate solid, balanced teams and to pick great newgens going forward, improving the long term saves.

Years people have been asking for that, but it seems impossible as I'm sure they've tried. All you need is a normal difficulty and let anyone who wants a fantasy game have a lower level and those who need more of a challenge a higher one along the lines of what I've written above.

[Lankylars]

All a difficulty level would have to do is increase or reduce player attributes. If long term AI team building cannot be fixed then at least give the option to make the players they do have better than they actually are. Not ideal but better than nothing.

I personally am against difficulty levels for this reason: I want realism. I don't want, when beginning a new game, to have to ponder which setting will allow me to play the most accurate representation of the leagues. I think the way for SI to make the game more difficult is to keep working on the AI ability to generate solid, balanced teams and to pick great newgens going forward, improving the long term saves.

Years people have been asking for that, but it seems impossible as I'm sure they've tried. All you need is a normal difficulty and let anyone who wants a fantasy game have a lower level and those who need more of a challenge a higher one along the lines of what I've written above.

Do you mean that by selecting a higher difficulty level, the game would simply hide some player attributes across all players, across only your team, or that the game would actually adjust your entire team's skill level downward?

[Matej]

There are 100 ways to make game harder, SI just dont want to do that. I dont know why. I can write right now at least 30 ways to make game harder.

[Elohir]

Ah old CM games... Where you could buy Mike Flynn from Stockport County, and Herman Garivia (a Columbian midfielder if I remember rightly) swap to a 3-5-2 and virtually win everything!

I do believe Michael Owen was just a wee nipper on the game when I started playing!

I had Robbie Fowler/Stan Collymore & Ronaldo up front.

I destroyed worlds.

[Matej]

uuuu, Stan The Man was great!!!

[welshace]

agreed... a difficulty slider shouldnt be that hard to impliment as frankly the game is essentially a game of databases, spreadsheets and complex equations/maths/formula's.. all you'd need to do is adjust the equations/formula's to make it more difficult surely?

efan ekoku , joey beauchamp and nii lamptey ftw btw.. and good ol chris Bart williams of course..

[Stampler]

Nigel Clough and Ray Wilkins! Got them for free in CM1 and they rocked the EPL!

[FM Addick]

In CM2, I got Palace promoted first season and then won the Top Division every season from 1996/97 to 2025. One season, I won all 38 games.

Never managed that in the FM series.

[wearesporting]

Do you mean that by selecting a higher difficulty level, the game would simply hide some player attributes across all players, across only your team, or that the game would actually adjust your entire team's skill level downward?

Either your player's attributes all end up 1 lower than they are showing or the team you are facing has their attributes higher than they are showing. Should fit in with the match engine since it's still just working through the player attributes to give results to each ingame action.

[kccircle]

There should be a section within the game for challenges too

Example
1) Team X are 2 points clear with 5 to play - go on and win the league
2) Team Y are 6 points from safety with 10 games to play - go on and avoid relegation

and so on.....

[sebj]

Agree with Erimus1876; using FMRTE to bolster your main rivals is a good way to circumvent the flaws in the AI. Not ideal obviously but it provides a remedy to saves where you win league after league unchallenged and the game loses purpose. I tend to bump up the stats of rivals' best players or introduce some unknown element into the game like a couple of wonderkids or a new sugardaddy for a medium-strength team in the same division.

[ism-scfc]

I love this post, purely because you've mentioned Mike Flynn who was my childhood hero. And I'm a Stockport fan

Same here mate!

Flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyynnnnnnnyyyyy!