Less clicks - the anti-RSI thread

[Ranjith]

18. The continue button is too close to the back and forward arrows in the default skin.

It's too easy to click the continue button accidentally. I'm sure many people would have done this in the past. Not so much a click-saver, but saving on annoyance.

[Ranjith]

19. back and forward history. Similar to how they work on browsers. Mouseover the relavent button and get the last few and next few pages in history.

I think this would need to be assessed to see its usefulness in FM, but may be helpful to have.

[praxiteles]

Allowing more than one scout to scout a player would be pretty useful, I often use a couple of them just to get a second opinion. The 'can be scouted' filter I suggested earlier would also get around the problem.

I never was able to use this. this means there was always some player already scouted. I thought it was plain impossible. "can be scouted" filter can do wonders.

another thing: I would like customizable message types. What I mean is, for example when there is a scout report, the game just continues after timeout. When I have to submit my squad, there is a red dot and the game does not continue no matter what.

Now the thing is, I play FM at work (sheeeshh) so I turn on continue timeout and let time pass itself. When there is nobody around, I open the game and play a few games until somebody comes near me again. If I turn off continue timeout, it takes ages to play. If I turn it on, some messages waiting reply from me just neutrally go away. for example I missed the "fine player x for red card?" message a few times in a row, then I caught it for another player and fined him and he is rightfully angry about being treated worse than his teammate. I would like to define which messages make the continue timeout wait and which messages do not.

[glamdring]

Lookups can be relatively quick. Its not a particularly complex query.

But then again, I don't know the data structure or exactly how long the lookup would take.

It may come back in under a second.

I'm sure you're probably right, but a query that is very quick on a single club may still take an irritating amount of time on however many clubs there are in the game - I guess it just comes down to that time spent vs the time spent having to go back and select another club when the first one you choose is not available.

Personally I've found the problem of clubs being unavailable to be quite rare and would perhaps find it more annoying to wait while the game needlessly queries the availability of tens of thousands of clubs that I've no interest in playing! Either way I'm not too fussed though - that's one for the programmers to consider the time taken.

[Ranjith]

20. An indication that team talks have definitely been given. Sometimes at half time or pre-match you may do other things and forget to give a half time team talk.

Because of this I almost always have to double check the team talk screen to make sure this has been done.

God forbid this is done via an alert. (Alerts have thankfully been reduced in number in FM08).

Perhaps the team talk icon can be shown all the time in pre-match/half time mode, with a tick icon overlaid or something to show that it has been given?

[Amaroq]

Actually, this is one of the few things I think warrants a "Confirm" dialog.

I'm on "Team Talks" screen. I click "Tactics". I make some tactical changes. I click "Confirm".

Either it should

1. Take me to the Team Talks screen, or

2. Pop up a dialog "You haven't yet made a Team Talk. Do you want to leave it on "None"? Yes | No".

[jonahno6]

I would like it if when you get a offer for player, when the news item appears, you can click view offer/reject, I would like if when I clicked reject, a pop up would come up with reasons why I rejected. Would be fb, I realise. Would help with less clicks.

[drawntowardsthewater]

Setting opposition instructions, I'd like to be away to hold down control and choose which players I want to set to "Weaker Foot", this is involving a lot of clicking at the minute. It'd be easier if I could press up and down on the keyboard to cycle through the players.

[crafty bison]

When selecting one's team, if there are more players in the squad than the screen allows (e.g. if you're showing all Reserves and U18s as well) and you scroll down, when you select someone for a position (right-click on their box) it jumps back to the top. Please remove this jump and leave us where we were scrolled.

[manc101]

I dont know if this has been said or not and its a big thread and im not patient enough to read it all.

but

I always make Opposition instructions i make it the same every game i have a specific intrusction for positions regardless of the player that plays in that position, Every game i have to re-do these settings and throughout FM08 if i could save these settings i think i would have atlest another 4-5 hours more time to play, Takes about 20-30 seconds to do each game.

[Ranjith]

Setting opposition instructions, I'd like to be away to hold down control and choose which players I want to set to "Weaker Foot", this is involving a lot of clicking at the minute. It'd be easier if I could press up and down on the keyboard to cycle through the players.

In fact we should be able to see the strengths of left foot/right foot in the tactics screen.

Perhaps it can be a couple more options when selecting the dropdown for players attributes in the tactics screen?

[Ranjith]

21. Following on from finding out those clubs who are available for certain dates, is there any way we can preview the expected revenue, and so avoid having to pick teams where expected revenue is too low?

It would save a lot of clicking back and forth.

[sjm]

keyboard shortcuts...

[Fridrihsbergs]

Less repeated "we here you are intersted in a player" news messages. There are way to many especially in transfer windows and most are repeated 10 times on the same player before you either by them or cut all ties with just to shut the newpapers up.

[glamdring]

Speaking of saving things, I quite often forget about changes I wanted to make to my freekick takers or penalty takers or whatever until I get to a match, but changes made to these personel during a match only last for that match and don't get stored with the tactic for future matches which is annoying because I often get to a match and we win a penalty and then only then, when the pleb who missed penalties in his last two games again steps up do I remember that I had intended to remove him from the top of my penalties list!

[glamdring]

Actually, this is one of the few things I think warrants a "Confirm" dialog.

I'm on "Team Talks" screen. I click "Tactics". I make some tactical changes. I click "Confirm".

Either it should

1. Take me to the Team Talks screen, or

2. Pop up a dialog "You haven't yet made a Team Talk. Do you want to leave it on "None"? Yes | No".

I'm not 100% sure I like that one - this is something I don't generally have a problem with so rather than fewer mouse clicks it would be extra mouse clicks for me!

[Amaroq]

Yeah - I can see that, glamdring, but its very annoying to accidentally miss giving a team-talk via that pattern.

Okay, here's another team-talk one:

I'd like an asterisk displayed next to the drop-down for every player who has a non-standard team-talk available.

(e.g., "Pick Up Where You Left Off", "Expect Better", "Prove a Point!" ..)

Currently, I pretty much click on each player's drop-down during each pre-match and half-time team talk to find out if those individual talks are available.

[Gentleman]

Talking about team talks ... I think it's fairly annoying when I ask the manager what kind of team talk he would give, he would give out personal talks as well. Now, I don't mind that, but when I don't agree, I give my team my own team talk.

Which is only given to the people who didn't get the personal talk from the assistant manager. Which, incidentally, is often less than half of the players. Which means that I still have to click every player manually who got a personal team talk from him which I didn't want them to have.

[Amaroq]

Oh God, that totally annoys me!

I want:

a.) The A.M. should, if giving the same individual talk to more than half the players, adjust his *team* talk to that, and give the others the individual talk. E.g., if at the end of a match, he decides to give:

- Team (Disappointed) to 4 players, but

- Pleased to the other 10 as an individual talk ..

He should flop it so that it becomes

- Team (Pleased) to 10 players, and

- Disappointed to the other 4.

b.) I'd like a "Clear" button. Whether its the A.M., or me, who has given a bunch of individual team talks, I'd like to be able to reset everybody to Team (None) with a single click so I can start over.

[Amaroq]

This thread has a couple good ideas regarding affiliates and players-out-on-loan which would reduce mouse clicks in that area, especially for "hands-on" managers.

[DB11]

This often happens to me when negotiating bids. I'll spend a while negotiating a complicated bid with numerous clauses only to accidentally cancel it all, having to start again.

Same for me. So, so annoying!

[buzzing_hornet]

4. When searching for players, you should be able to also allow for those players with those attribute values which are unknown. e.g. you awnt a striker with 15 finishing. If a player has that attribute masked, he won't be excluded from the search results.

5. For certain screens, when clicking back and forward, the scrollbar position is not remembered. Its a bit of an annoyance. e.g. when arranging friendlies and picking from the big list of all teams.

Point 4 is utter nonsense, it'd make a complete mockery of the attribute masking feature, you either use it or you don't, there should be no way to get some form of middle ground.

Point 5 i agree with, there's nothing more annoying than arranging a season's worth of local friendlies for my reserve side going through the list of english teams by letter (A-Z) and after selecting 'Waltham Forest' getting sent back to the top.

I disagree. If you don't know how good a player's finishing is, you shouldn't be able to use a filter on it.

Spot on.

14. When picking a date first for a friendly, only show those clubs who are actually available on that date.

Good shout.

[glamdring]

Point 4 is utter nonsense, it'd make a complete mockery of the attribute masking feature, you either use it or you don't, there should be no way to get some form of middle ground.

I don't see why this would be the case at all. It is just a boolean thing - at the moment (as far as I know) any player whose attribute is masked automatically gets filtered out of a search on that attribute. Having an option that does the opposite and leaves every player in the filter who has that attribute masked sounds fine to me - all it is saying is that these players might fit your filter or might not, but that they aren't being rules out automatically. Obviously that only really makes sense when you are doing a filter on a number of attributes together rather than just a single attribute.

[Ranjith]

22. Scouting assignments. When selecting a scouting assignment, having the option to mask out those countries/regions which are:

1. already being scouted currently

2. perhaps have already been scouted in the recent past by a scout of yours.

3. not within budget

[sWo97]

A more Carpal Tunnel friendly game would be nice.

Don't know if it's been suggested but:

-a holiday option to "Sim to the next decision"

[Stuart Warren]

I think this is definitely one area of the game we've been improving on over the years with additions such as being able to accept and reject transfer bids as they come in.

If there are more examples then we'd definitely like to hear about them

this was a great addition (especially for online play), but imo the news items could do with providing more information.

they quite often just say "<team> have made an offer of up to £Xm for <player>" which isn't enough information to just accept the bid - you have to go into the offer screen to get the full details of the offer. just an extra sentance or two explaining the make-up of the bid would mean you can confidently make a decision without having to use the extra screens. just something simple like "they will pay £Xm up front, a further £Xm over 12 months and 25% of any future transfer". likewise with loan offers, the feature would be far more helpful if the news item detailed the wage contribution, loan length and any clauses so you can make a decision from that news item alone.

[jakobx]

Fix the right click that is broken since fm07. Its annoying having to left click first before right clicking on another option to display the pop up menu.

Second thing..multiple selects. Dont hide the available options just because one of the 300 players we select doesnt have that option available. Give us all the available options and just gray out those players that cant use the selected option.

[Amaroq]

A more Carpal Tunnel friendly game would be nice.

Don't know if it's been suggested but:

-a holiday option to "Sim to the next decision"

I think that ought to be the default behavior for "Continue", honestly. When I press Continue, I mean, "I've done everything I want to do right now, so please proceed until something changes which materially impacts my decision matrix."

So, I'd like to see it sim until:

1. Next match day in a competition I'm in.

2. Transfer bid accepted / rejected

3. Contract offer accepted / rejected

4. Transfer bid received / renegotiated

5. A.I. team offers contract to a player on my squad or shortlist

6. A.I. team makes a bid for a player on my shortlist

7. Player in my squad injured

8. Player in my squad returns from injury

9. Player or staff in my squad announces retirement

10. AI team offers contract to one of my staff.

11. Start of transfer window

12. Monthly board meeting (confidence update)

13. Squad number submission or any other red-dot required-response e-mail.

14. International match day, crucial matches like F.A. Cup Final, etc.

15. AI team accepts / rejects / makes offer of friendly match.

16. Minimum amount of time passed. (Time varies according to state of season, so longest breaks during meaningless offseason time, shortest breaks in final weeks of transfer window, mid-length breaks during open transfer window and/or regular season.)

This is one where I feel like CM01/02 and FM'05 had the balance much better than FM'08 does.

[Gentleman]

1. Next match day in a competition I'm in.

2. Transfer bid accepted / rejected

3. Contract offer accepted / rejected

4. Transfer bid received / renegotiated

5. A.I. team offers contract to a player on my squad or shortlist

6. A.I. team makes a bid for a player on my shortlist

7. Player in my squad injured

8. Player in my squad returns from injury

9. Player or staff in my squad announces retirement

10. AI team offers contract to one of my staff.

11. Start of transfer window

12. Monthly board meeting (confidence update)

13. Squad number submission or any other red-dot required-response e-mail.

14. International match day, crucial matches like F.A. Cup Final, etc.

15. AI team accepts / rejects / makes offer of friendly match.

16. Minimum amount of time passed. (Time varies according to state of season, so longest breaks during meaningless offseason time, shortest breaks in final weeks of transfer window, mid-length breaks during open transfer window and/or regular season.)

Actually, that is already what happens most of the time here. Especially since I have millions of people on my shortlist, since I like to have choice whenever the transfer window opens ;-) I never go for a particular person, I always have a list of x number of players capable of playing that position. Which usually means I have millions of them on my shortlist.

So it already works for me that way ;-) Though I have to admit I might be the only one who plays this way ...

[Ranjith]

A minor one. When select "move to..." option on an older player is there any need for showing U-18s? I've accidentally put players there in the past, albeit rarely. I always move them back almost immediately to reserves/first team squad. But would be nice if the option wasn't there in the first place.

[Scotty Walds]

Older players can play for the Under 18s in friendlies, and also as over-age players in some leagues (like Italy)

[Ranjith]

Older players can play for the Under 18s in friendlies, and also as over-age players in some leagues (like Italy)

Point taken. Thanks.

[01everton]

why dont u use the short cut keys instead more often. For example when you want to continue press the space bar. When you want to view the news screen press F4 etc. All of these shortcut keys can be found in the preferences folder i think but dont quote me on that.

[Ranjith]

why dont u use the short cut keys instead more often. For example when you want to continue press the space bar. When you want to view the news screen press F4 etc. All of these shortcut keys can be found in the preferences folder i think but dont quote me on that.

You're right, and I do use a couple of the shortcuts.

However, this is more about those screens which need more info amongst other things. There is too much back and forth and have to drill through to many screens to get the info you require.

[sWo97]

why dont u use the short cut keys instead more often. For example when you want to continue press the space bar. When you want to view the news screen press F4 etc. All of these shortcut keys can be found in the preferences folder i think but dont quote me on that.

Honestly, I've never been a keyboard champion in any computer game online or off so it's a learning/memory thing for me.

I've always been click crazy. I've learned to relax and press the spacebar more but it's a mental thing where if i'm ready to go then i can't relax my right arm. Enter: all the inbox green dot items i have to key through. My train of thought is lost and upon entering a match and i may be a bit lackadaisical from all the nonsense.

I'd just have 2 inboxes.

1 for match/squad affecting things and the other for world news even if it's about my players. The latter does not interrupt the "continue"

[Smac]

IMO, lots of very good suggestions in this thread. I do hope you guys at SI will consider all these posts when addressing the click-fest element in the design of future features. Reducing the load for 'old features' is good, but when Team Talks and Opp Instructions are added there is another change in the balance of clickage.

Actually I could do without TT or OI (Team Talks, Opposition Instructions) at all, simply because they are so formulaic and repetitive. Either one might be passable, but both formulaic and repetitive is a nuisance and a chore.

The keyboard shortcuts are quite good this year, and I heartily recommend using them. I reassigned my most common ones to "ASDF QWERTY and ZXCV" and can pace through some things fairly well because of that. One nuisance with this is the 'News' screen currently, which requires a click on the 'outside' or 'frame' in order to register the next keyboard shortcut. Quite freaking annoying.

But the shortcuts could be vastly extended to allow thorough pacing through news items and player search. Big fat buttons with the shortcut key highlighted inside, or a mouse-over tooltip that lets the player know: "Hey dude, you can tab through this and check off various things with the arrow keys and return key. Thought you should know" would be fine.

The multi-select this year is good too. Suggestions above are really needed though!

Hunting through lists and checking out players is great fun. There's a bit of nerdly accountancy about the whole franchise. But this doesn't have to mean painful click-festing and inconsistent screen UI, does it? So again, I really really hope you'll aspire to something even higher in the next iteration!

Rule: If a feature requires similar click-through on every match day, said feature must either be highly unpredictable/complex and important (IE setting up tactics against a particularly tough rival), or the clicks must be removable via some 'set and forget' option. I'm not sitting down with Joe Cole, or even Mr. Numpty Head from BSPremiere every match and saying: "Now look Joe, I know I told you last week, and the week before, and the week before that, but this week I'm telling you again: "Show him onto his weaker foot". "And do it 'For the Fans'!".

I mean, WTH?

[leterpowes]

My main gripe with this sort of thing, and sorry if it has already been mentioned, is that we are currently unable to offer more than one player at a time on loan to other clubs. I understand why you can't for full transfers (although this could be done at say exisiting asking price/transfer value) but I can't see too much of a problem with implementing this feature for loans.

[Ranjith]

22. Once a club has used up its allowed player loan allowance, they should cancel their other loan bids. This would then reduce the amount of last-minute cancellations.

23. When bidding for a player on loan, you could have in a news item other player loans you are going for and the amount of allowed loans remaining.

[postal postie]

EASIER WAY TO FIND IF PLAYER DOESN'T LIKE TRAINING

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=42233

at the moment the only way to find out if some of my players find their training too hard is to go to the training page and select the first player from the list of my training schedule, check if he's happy with his training. click the back button, select the next player, repeat repeat repeat.

i have about 50 players and at the begining of the game i know about 7 of them will not like my training so i want to put them on light training. pennant is one of hte lazy ones.

very time consuming and a manager should not need to micromanage his players training needs.

since the coaches can send a message each month to say whether a player is training well or not i think the message should be expanded to show which players are unhappy with their training.

e.g

miller has come back with his training report:

training well:

aurelio (stamina)

training poorly:

carragher (attacking)

unhappy with training:

pennant(training too heavy)

bellamy(feels he's doing too much goalkeeping work)

this will allow you to then click on the players that are unhappy to see what the matter is. training too hard? bellamy doesn't like doing so much goalkeeper training?

bently doesn't want to retrain to be a left sided player?

it all shows here.

go on. say you'll do it

[Ranjith]

^24

25. On the contract offer screen, when a player is not initially interested and then you improve the squad role and then the player is then willing to talk turkey then this happens:

You can click on the text link of the bonuses asked for in the details at the top of the contract screen but can't do the same for "yearly wage rise". This should be fixed.

Also:

Instead of even having to click these text links in this scenario how about if the values selected in the contract change automatically according to the squad role? This should only happen if the previous squad role selected was one where the player was not interested in talking terms. (I hope that is understood.)

[SmurfDude]

I do hope that in FM09 it will remember which widgets we have open and where they are placed

[ptr]

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but one thing that really gets my goat is getting players 'match fit' in pre season. Currently I have to go to each player's profile to see his fitness status (e.g. needs match practice, in superb condition etc). Why is this not on the 'selection' view of your squad?!!

... or have I missed something that is already in the game?

[indierich09]

This may not be the place to suggest this, but could a filter be included for when you're applying for jobs while on holiday?

So many times I've gone on holiday indefinitely and selected 'apply for higher reputation jobs' only to be called back because some Italian third division team who I've never heard of wants to hire me. Then, after turning the job down and going back on holiday - they offer me the job again!

It would be great if you could put a filter in for this such as 'only apply for jobs in top leagues' or 'only apply for barclay's premiership jobs' etc.

I think this would be a simple thing to do and it would make my jobhunting (and my holidays!) a lot less stressful - My manager just wants to sit on a virtual beach, sipping virtual ice cold beers and not be bothered by some no-mark club every two minutes!

[rinso]

another one to add to the list

[Amaroq]

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but one thing that really gets my goat is getting players 'match fit' in pre season. Currently I have to go to each player's profile to see his fitness status (e.g. needs match practice, in superb condition etc). Why is this not on the 'selection' view of your squad?!!

That's a great point.

[postal postie]

That's a great point.

Apologies if this has been mentioned already, but one thing that really gets my goat is getting players 'match fit' in pre season. Currently I have to go to each player's profile to see his fitness status (e.g. needs match practice, in superb condition etc). Why is this not on the 'selection' view of your squad?!!

... or have I missed something that is already in the game?

good idea. but do we believe it should be added to the selection view of the squad? would there be enough space and would it be used enough through out the whole season?

maybe.

i would like this but for it to be part of the coach report. which i think comes out every month?. along with my idea about showing info about who doesn't like their training. as well as what the report shows anyway (who's training well, who isn't)

[Amaroq]

good idea. but do we believe it should be added to the selection view of the squad? would there be enough space and would it be used enough through out the whole season?

maybe.

I remember it used to have a "UNF" status for players who were not match fit. I don't think it needs to be very wide, but I think we could fit a "fitness status" box into it, maybe a color-coded box just wider than 3 characters:

Green:

SUP - In Superb Condition

FUL - Fully Fit

FIT - Match Fit

Yellow:

LMF - Lacking Match Fitness

TIR - Tired

Red:

UNF - Severely Lacking Match Fitness

EXH - Exhausted? (I don't remember the text for this, actually)

[Rickooko]

Left Mouse Button = Confirm

Right Mouse Button = Cancel / Previous Screen

This setting saves me a lot of time in other PC games, hopes FM can use this system as well.

[Scotty Walds]

The right-mouse button is used for enough already. Imagine you just miss right-clicking a player, and go back a screen?

[jazbo]

I know this sounds crap but I now have RSI and one of the things I used to spend most time on a PC doing was CM/FM. I agree, there is to much clicking and confirming needed to achieve basic gameplay.