A realistic approach to difficulty levels

[Richardav]

In parts you do, of course. But many people would like to be at a specific club and still have the choice of having a bigger or smaller challenge at their helm.

football manager is ment to be like real football, so it be nice if a league two manager could make it more easy for him, but its hard for these clubs, just like it is in football manager why manage a lower club and think its going to be easy

[SCIAG]

I think Amaroq's post says it all best. I've always viewed it in the most simplistic of terms - think about the knock-on effects.

Take an example of FM09's so-called "corner bug". IMO it wasn't a bug because to implement it the user had to utilise a particular tactic. The AI could not use this exploit, so it was low priority for SI. However, I did see a couple of posts by SI, explaining that to correct this and prevent weak-willed human managers from using the exploit too it had so many knock-on problems that it wasn't worth fixing ahead of many other bugs. They have since addressed it in FM10, I believe, so clearly it took time, but it WAS eventually fixed.

That's a minor issue. Imagine how much work it would require to have the human user's team play a little bit better than they would on the default level. How on earth would it work? The ME is incapable of distinguishing whether they human user or the AI manager is the one issuing instructions, so that would have to be stripped out for a start. Then how does it calculate the improvement?

"If Human_user = easy level + [winger = crossing 10], then goto Human_user = [winger = crossing 17]"

Or vice versa for the "hard" level.

I'm not arguing against the principle of different levels, just that it isn't quite like a racing game where you can increase or decrease your opponants' ability to pass you or the speed of your car.

SI now provide a much more in-depth editor, so you can make things easier by increasing budgets/bank balances/CA for staff and players/dropping player reps and increasing loyalty and making your club their favourite too, all so they don't want to leave/maybe increase your whole youth team to 195 PA. To make things harder, if Man City fans are sick of big budgets, start off by bankrupting Man City, take away the sugar daddy and be forced to sell your players. Half an hour with the editor and you have your different levels.

I agree with this post, though the AI does still use the corner exploit and it isn't fixed. Goalkeepers still struggle with the ball at corners, and the AI often only sends four players forwards.