How do people play this game so quickly?!

Just looking through the career updates, somebody who started a save a couple of weeks ago is in SEASON THREE!! How is this even possible.

I bought the game on Saturday morning just gone, and spent a couple of hours setting it up (i.e. downloading the logos, faces etc, changing font to suit blah blah blah) and then Saturday afternoon in time for the IRL 3 o'clock kick-offs I got a save underway.

It took the rest of the day and most of Sunday before my players even kicked a ball....

Because first I needed to sort out a tactic (two actually), assess my squad and attempt signings (very difficult process if playing LLM with zero budget), sit through my meeting with the chairman, assistant, staff, players - and attend the press conference. I enjoyed the pre-season friendlies but because I was just starting out I needed to watch in Comprehensive mode to get an idea of what my tactics were doing and what would need tweaking. Finally, on Sunday evening, we had our first league game. I've not played two league games..... and the season, at this rate, will take an extremely long time to complete.

What am I doing wrong? I have a fast computer that runs FM very well. Am I just getting "too involved" in the nitty-gritty? Because I don't even bother with training....

Is there actually any reward for being too pedantic (or too thorough I should say) with tactics, because I'm "over-thinking" it as if its actually real life when in fact it's a computer not real human brains & emotions I'm playing with. And in that regard, is it actually more rewarding to skip through the bulk of it and just sign players, sell players, and hurry through matches in Key highlights mode?

Sorry to ramble on and on. Basically what I mean to ask is... how are people bombing through saves as quickly as they are, and being successful whilst doing it?!

Not sure what takes so much time. I'm 121 hours into the game and I have 2 saves played to 3rd season and 1 save starting on my 4th season.

I browse news items usually, only noticing statistics and important information rather than reading all the text.

I play on comprehensive whenever I struggle and have to adapt my tactics, the rest I play on extended.

Press conferences is something I never read. I either send my assman or simply know which answer im giving based on the first couple of words in each sentence.

I can't believe it takes so much time for some so I guess I'm on the other side of the fence!

I think that kind of answers my question. I'm just too banal!!

I could never scan read it... I read the press conferences using the voice inside my head... so every word gets read and every answer is thought about as if real life.

There's me first problem.....

I can't believe that someone needs two days to asses his squad, set up training and staff etc..two hours or less is more than enough for all that and friendlies. And I can easily go through 3 seasons in couple of weeks if I play regularly. I use key highlights 90% of the time.

I'm not a fan of rushing and I play at my own pace.

To give an idea I play every match on comprehensive highlights and average about three matches an hour once a season is underway, sometimes you might squeeze a fourth in.

Pre/off season can take a while, especially when starting at a club. Not including friendlies I can easily spend 2/3 hours working my way through.

Overall I think you could speed the starting time up a bit and not worry about every individual detail as much but in general nothing wrong with taking your time and enjoying it.

All about playing at your own pace..

I've clocked up almost 200 hours on fm16 so far, not got much further than christmas first season in any of my saves yet.

I'm meticulous with my micro managing it seems..

Because, like Welshace says, everyone plays at their own pace. I always have visions of micromanaging, but get really bored if I'm moving through seasons too slowly. It's partly why I settled so much in Gibraltar too, given the very short seasons.

No-one is doing anything "wrong" by playing quickly or slowly - to each their own.

I have around 350 hours playing time and have completed ten seasons in that time. I currently have forty nations and just under a hundred leagues loaded. One season can take me forty hours plus if I need to rebuild the squad. I can spend hours searching and scouting for the right players.

47 hours played. Only just completed the first season

I thought I was so slow...

It's a fantastic game. It's nice to micro manage.

3 games off completing my first season and logged up 87 hours - love micro managing and all matches are on extended highlights. I'm trying to beat my record of playing over 7 seasons in a year on FM16 lol. Scary thing is I started the save when the Beta came out in October and it feels alot longer Ive played it longer than 87 hours

I get bogged down in press conferences and looking at each individual scout report in detail of each team I'm playing and attempting to exploit them

1 day 15 hours of playtime - March 2017

honestly, it really depends how much you pour into it

I sped through my first season

but progress has really stalled (since it now feels like a stress test on my PC, because the daytime temperature is now 30+C) - I now only play an hour at a time

im halfway through my second season,not quite sure on the totalled amount though :/ But really,just play at your own pace buddy,no point in racing ur way through the game just to keep up with everyone else.Play it the way you like it,thats what matters and enjoy regardless!!!

Loading lots of leagues slows everything down..especially at the end of transfer windows. Success in the various English cups and the bigger leagues means it will take longer to play a season. For a fast season try Iceland.

The most obvious reason you see those people doing more than 3 seasons in short times is because first they give every responsibilities to Assistant manager and they don't watch the matches they use Instant Result.. the only thing they do is buy players, download a tactic and just press quick pick and do instant result.

Things that effect game play:

- watching match in extended, commenterary, key

- scouting players, clubs, staff

- delegating tasks to assistant or doing it on your own

- taking time personalizing your manager appereance

I get paid to play the game at work. I found a job where I like to work on my own without supervision. and yes most of my time at work is that i play the game. In other words i get paid to play the game lol. This is the new world order the way the want it. Can you complain. lol the world is going to the dogs slowly.

What am I doing wrong?

Are you enjoying the game the way you're playing? Then nothing.

( I'm pretty much the same as you and have a life outside FM )

I get paid to play the game at work. I found a job where I like to work on my own without supervision. and yes most of my time at work is that i play the game. In other words i get paid to play the game lol. This is the new world order the way the want it. Can you complain. lol the world is going to the dogs slowly.

Good for you. I hope your job doesn't actually entail doing anything important.

People are info different things in FM that's one of the reasons it's such a great game.

I micromanage alot.. Currently four games into my first save, played around 20 hours. Really enjoyeable!

Other people are into youth development and tend to speed up things on the way to get there. Same with people who likes to search newgens etc etc..

One thing a have a decent speed in is the inbox. Used to ultraspeed on older textversions of FM/CM so have learned to scan words very fast..

I've played around 14.5 hours and I'm 17 games into my 1st season.

Depending on the version of FM I average about 24 hours of game time to do a full season. A season takes a bit longer if I move clubs as it can take a couple of hours to setup scouting, tactics, training and assess the squad, but after that I might revisit training every six months to change individual training focus, set my assistant to do all the media and fairly quickly fly through the seasons. I'm far more interested in the next match, next youngster, next transfer then bothering too much about what went wrong with my tactics/selection in the last match.

110ish hours played and I'm just starting my 5th season (only got one save on the go). The majority of my play time must come from trawling the transfer market all year long - my scouts certainly earn their wage!

I get paid to play the game at work. I found a job where I like to work on my own without supervision. and yes most of my time at work is that i play the game. In other words i get paid to play the game lol. This is the new world order the way the want it. Can you complain. lol the world is going to the dogs slowly.

Is that you, Mr Obama?

Some good replies in here, thanks!

I micromanage alot.. Currently four games into my first save, played around 20 hours. Really enjoyeable!

I'm similar to you then... 17 hours played and 4 league games in, so actually not quite as slow as you... feel better now

Is that you, Mr Obama?

LOL!

For me it depends what mood I'm in. Sometimes I'll be in the mood to go really in depth with my save and it could take me 5 hours to play a month. Other days I'll just want to rattle off 5 games in an hour. I go back and forth a lot during the course of a save.

1 day 15 hours of playtime - March 2017

honestly, it really depends how much you pour into it

I sped through my first season

but progress has really stalled (since it now feels like a stress test on my PC, because the daytime temperature is now 30+C) - I now only play an hour at a time

Sounds like you need to invest in some improved cpu cooling.

28 hours in and I'm not even into the January transfer window of the first season.

I don't know enough about tactics and what to look for, so 2d and 3d matches are a waste of time for me. Nice to watch sometimes but I mostly just stick with Only Commentary. So, each match will take only 4-5 minutes. I love the squad build/development/scouting aspect of the game. I typically find a tactic I like, stick with it for every match and then build a squad around that.

3 games off completing my first season and logged up 87 hours - love micro managing and all matches are on extended highlights. I'm trying to beat my record of playing over 7 seasons in a year on FM16 lol. Scary thing is I started the save when the Beta came out in October and it feels alot longer Ive played it longer than 87 hours

I get bogged down in press conferences and looking at each individual scout report in detail of each team I'm playing and attempting to exploit them

This is off-topic, but anyway how exactly do you exploit the opposition using the scout reports? I can't do much with the info they give me, I feel it's not enough information to do anything.

6 hours played and I haven't even picked a team yet.

Are you enjoying the game the way you're playing? Then nothing.

This is very true.

I've played 107 (though I did fall asleep for 4 hours whilst the game was on last night!) hours of FM16 and I'm just about coming to the end of my second season in Northern Ireland (in March 2017).

I just don't feel like rushing. I would like to get more seasons in, but I couldn't play matches any quicker than I do. I just like to get as involved as possible. I even go so far as to read about clubs and look up their grounds on Google maps etc too.

I'm with DizzyPenguin on this one. I actually quite enjoy the start of a new career/season, seeing what backroom staff to keep, which squad players to offload and positions to recruit as well as balancing the books and geting rid of deadwood. I know people belt through the game but I prefer to really immerse myself in some of the detail.

Takes me around a week (real time) to complete a season in FM. Just going back and forth to it when I have some spare time, getting a month or two played in the evenings.

I'd like to play an FM Touch game, but there's far too much I would miss about the full fat game. Plus, I wouldn't be able to help myself pressing the instant result button. And then getting annoyed at a defeat that I should've watched to perhaps prevent.