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*Football Manager 2009 feedback- FIRST IMPRESSIONS THREAD*


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I'm pretty pleased with what's been done here. Love the press conferences, bit bummed about Pompey's transfer budget though.

No matter what I chose, £0? We're struggling financially but not that much. Gaydamak already is in talks about selling the club on mine as well!..

Still, quality as usual. :)

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Well I am quite impressed my PC is only at minimum specs eg 2.0GHz (Dual) with 1GB Ram, (I do have a great graphics card in there) and just finished my first match the only time it go jumpy was when I was running other large programs along side it so I am very happy, as much as everyone is complaining I can't see the problems, it is a step up from the 2D and in Elevated is an excellent perspective I can watch my tactics and I can see the play very well infact it just makes me happy, and I have now decided I will be getting it i was worried when I saw the min specs, but it is definitely running very smoothly. (Of course I have Vanilla) maybe that makes a difference, but I have added graphics already so I dunno we will see as we continue, but I love it so far and the press conference was good loved the "You seem to be avoiding the question stuff"

Downside starting as Arsenal is a serious Injury problem have 4 of the First XI injured at the beginning.

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Few things:

Transfer system has blatently not changed has it?

Why do some premiership clubs get hardly any money? newcastle 4mil - how can you buy decent players with that??

Majority of players stats are the same and some are inacurate

Abonglahor fastest player in the world? anyone else think this?

will be keeping to the 2D as i dont think 3d is up to it yet, Apart from that everythings great really, Need the club badges etc though.

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I want to like the game

Snap.

Absolute fail though. I've played the game for two odd hours, so this is no instant reaction, but more then ever FM feels like playing a spreadsheet. People have all ready complained about the 3d match engine, the lag, the double letters in press conferences, injurys, constant 'access out of bounds', freezes, crashes and such, so I won't go into that.

The big issue for me is the sheer volumn of fluff that adds nothing. The press conferences are fun for about thirty minutes, then they become another time consumer, the same as the media module in FM08. There are only so many questions and only so many answers to them. You end up hitting the 'right answer each time and so on. Scout reports of nothing but with 'interesting facts', speculation and such become alerts and stop the processing to alert you of them. At the bottom of it all though because it's all so repetative and all so disengaging you don't feel immersed. I don't feel like I'm managing fifty odd members of staff with personalities. It instead reminds me of my time working in an office, fighting with a finance program to process purchase orders. I was twenty at the time and getting paid for it, but managed about two weeks. If you're asking me several years down the line if I would pay for the trip down memory lane using a buggy piece of software that keeps crashing, I'll have to say no.

I so wanted FM09 to be great :(

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The game is OK, nothing more than that so far. Played about 10 games, including friendlies. 3D is about as good as I expected, runs well enough for me. The press conferences are already annoying though, whenever I type a letter comes up twice and whenever I press the space bar to continue it skips 2 news stories, so that'll have to be sorted out. Not really sure if i'm enjoying it, would have to say I don't like it as much as 08.

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Not having any problem with over sensitive text entry here - is it linked to windows settings perhaps?

I don't think it can be, i've never had it happen on anything else. If anything my keyboard isn't sensitive enough on most things, i'm forever having to press buttons again after pressing them.

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A lot of injuries, anyone else or just random bad luck on my game?

City bought 6-7 players for £80m the first 14 days, but sadly i guess that could happen IRL in january. Another step to the ruin of football, but thats a different debate for a different place.

A cynic might think more time has been spent on the 3d machine and not so much on the player database. Havent even scratched the surface yet, but the youngsters in the bigger clubs arent impressive. With Man Utd it might reflect reality to a degree sadly, but a player like Rafael surely should be upgraded at least a little from 08. Its not as if SAF would use him for the sake of it.

The press conferences are great, like the more involved ass.man. Im sure ill get used to 3d, but gone to 2d atm untill i get my head around a decent tactic, easier to stop faults that way. Havent played long so will be fun seeing the next 5 months and how it evolves. For a demo it does feel like theres an awful lot of potential in the game, but i have a feeling were gonna have to wait for a patch before creating a career-game.

Btw; raise of hands who thinks Real Madrid puts Marcelo on the transfer list for £4-5m anytime soon.

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I'm getting loads of injuries too, it'll be fixed at some point though i'm sure. My assman is particularly useless, no matter how I play my defence is always too far away from my midfield apparently, even with a DM in there!

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I like the 3D; I'd love it if it wasn't so jolty. You can really appreciate good play - Kuyt finished off a cracking team goal for me.

Injuries are annoying - every pre-season game I've had someone pick up a knock, and now Keane and Alonso are both out for 2-4 weeks.

Not sure about the barrows? Can only go one "block", either backwards, sidewards or fowards, if you know what I mean. For example, I've got someone at LM, and I want to barrow them right to the by-line. But I can't - I can only barrow them one step forward. Bit weird.

Overall though, its good.

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just played my first game with bradford city, pre-season vrs notts forest game finished 1-1

first observations - stoppage time, 1st half 5 mins, 2nd half 7mins?? mental!! maybe jus extreme case or a buG?

joe colbeck was suspended for first 2 league games, he is suspended for pre-season games?? that is not right?

jus like first edition of fm 2008, when watching 'key' highlights, when no action is occuring just watching nothing rather than posession bar like on old FMs

plus for future editions is there any chance of having stadiums in the background instead of just the grass, maybe good addition, dunno what you fink

also michael boulding should be AML/ST rather than AMR/ST, but that is not of major concern, and Joe Colbeck is under rated!! still excited for full release though!

3d is better than i thought it would be!!!

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3D mode will take a while to get used to. I prefer visually seeing how a player missed, but just doesnt seem tso fluid sometimes. A step forward though.

The press conference is quite good, as is the transfer system - put a couple of offers in and its good that the opposing club give proper feedback on how much they want.

Finally it's nice to see AFC Wimbledon have some cash this time around xD should make it more feasible to get back to the prem ;)

the arrows on tactic screen I see are more constrained this time (ie no diagonal forward arrows allowed, no big runs up half the pitch etc). Will have to see how this converts into gameplay.

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the arrows on tactic screen I see are more constrained this time (ie no diagonal forward arrows allowed, no big runs up half the pitch etc). Will have to see how this converts into gameplay.

Just noticed this, an interesting change - anyone got any link to any more information on this or why they decided to change it?

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I've noticed a couple problems so far. First, why do matches take minutes to setup? My computer can't run the 3D but seems to be paying for it anyway. The 2D engine is glitchy in either TV or classic mode even though 08 runs seamlessly. Second, injuries are absolutely ridiculous (AGAIN, is this bug always in the initial release?) I have at least 2 players going down per match, and 1 or 2 more in training per week. They're all long term injuries as well. Some of the press conference answers don't make much sense, but overall that feature looks pretty cool.

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Played the obligatory Man City to start with, my injury list from 2 friendlies and the 2 legs of the UEFA Cup qualifiers :-

Robinho - 8 to 10 months

Ireland - 2 weeks

Petrov - 1 month

Kompany - 1 month

Vassel - 3 months (default injury)

Benjani - 2 months (default injury)

Are you having a laugh?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Other than the same old injury issues, I really like the new skin, feels much more responsive than the last one, although I would like an option to use a darker-blue version of it :D

Match Engine - Good and seems realistic (player movements and so on)

3D - Nothing more than I expected, probably won't be using it until its fully patched, little things are kinda annoying (all of them have been listed already) + each game takes a lot longer when using it :(, will be good for spotting holes in new tactics.

2D - Perfect, bar the odd stickie glitch when running past players

Transfers - Seem's easier to sign people now and easier to sell them.

Tactics - I miss my diagonal arrows, but it seems good :)

Player Stats - A little bit disapointed that not a huge amount had been fixed from the previous addition - torres for example..

Press Statements - Is a nice addition to start with, but I can see it becoming really annoying after a while.

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Started with Weymouth, just played my first friendly.... so these are very early impressions:

3d Match Engine

I like 3d match engine. However, a few times players stood still with the ball a bit to long with acres of space in front of them. Didn't appear too realistic. Even if they were indecisive, you would expect some movement. A little closer camera view would be a nice otion too.

I also noticed what I consider a couple of match engine improvements over FM 2008.

Less of my crosses got blocked by the first defender and put out for a corner than last season.

And my defenders tried to clear the ball or put it into touch instead of mindlessly knocking the ball over the end line and giving the other team a corner.

I got smoked 5-1 by Sutton United... so I need to work on my tactics a bit. But then again, what can you expect from a club who only gets 1 pound a year from their kit sponsor (I know, thats one for the database thread)

Transfer/Loans

I was a bit surprised I was able to get Matty Collins from Swansea on loan. They had him transfer listed, but I requested a season long loan with them picking up 100% of his wages. Not sure how realistic that is. Afterall, they were trying to sell him so you would have thought they would want to get at least a portion of his wages off the books. I was also surprised he agreed so quickly (next day) to drop down 2 divisions and play for weymouth.

Press Conferences

I only did the one when I took over at Weymouth, but I thought it was a nice touch....And the questions were pretty good.

So far.. looking good.

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I was so excited, but now im just sort of cold. Lots of injuries, the game freezing and my cpu with it in the middle of the game processing (not match, 4gb of RAM), the 3D doing silly things such as a player with the ball w/o moving for a minute...i dont know, to be honest. I was the first one to hope this would be awesome...

...is this the final release?

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Posted my thoughts on another forum and figured I'd share them here as I know SI are looking for as much feedback as possible :)

Alright, I've played the game now solid for the past few hours, so rather bits and pieces I thought I'd give a full review of it so far.

The core of the game is the same as usual. It's as good as you expect from an FM game, and it still has lots of problems ala an FM game. Media interaction is still as poor, and while press conferences are a fun addition, like MANY features in FM, they just feel so much like "fluff" and barely scratched the surface, and get a bit boring after awhile.

The one main new feature however where I AM impressed, is the feedback from your assistant manager during a match. It doesn't get too in-depth, so doesn't come across as a "trainer" or anything. Like your assistant manager basically points out things that as a manager in real life you would be able to notice, for example that there is a gap between your defensive line and midfield that the opposition may take advantage of, or that one of your players is making a lot of bad passes etc. These are also stats that you could find by looking through the actual stats etc, but it's great to have a screen like this that basically "alerts" you to anything. Major, major thumbs up for this, and I think it's one of the best features to be added to this series. It's one of those things that we've been without for so long, and now it's here you think "How did I exist without this?".

Of course, the main issue is the 3D match engine. There's a ton of posts and issues on the SI boards about this, and that it hampers the 2D engine, and people who were able to play FM 2008 can't even play FM 2009 due to not good enough graphics card or whatever. I don't know the full details of this as it works fine on mine so can't really comment, but it IS a disappointment to see that there is a lot of complaints like that. Of course there is data issues - unfortunately there always is, however SI really need to figure out something about this. I'm not talking about "oh I think player XX should have 15 for finishing instead of 14", I'm talking about things like Nacho Novo only having a 1 for finishing. This was something spotted by many players of the game after just minutes of actually loading up the game. Perhaps providing a datasheet or something on the boards of all players like a few days before datalock would help stop these glaring errors that really can ruin a game.

As for the 3D match engine itself? It has the potential to be phenomenal. Potential is the key word there. There are still a lot of issues that need to be worked out. I think that is to be expected, as even the 2D match engine had quite a few issues after all the patches in FM08. The match doesn't "flow" as well as it should, players stand around often doing nothing, the issue of it flashing "goal" before the ball has even went over the line, to name just a few. I find a ton of shots hitting the woodwork. The "too many injuries" issue is back.

However the 3D engine is definitely a big step in the right direction. I can't even begin to describe the feeling just watching a player in 3D do something in-game that they do in real life. It just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling seeing things like that. There is going to be a lot of growing pains and frustration, but the 3D engine just adds a whole new aspect to FM. Of course what you gain in entertainment value you lose in tactical. There's definitely a balance to be found though, and I think with more experience with the game I'll be able to find that.

The FM series has went through a couple of major transitional phases in its time. For example, from 97/98 to CM 3. Or from 01/02 to CM4. This is another one of those big transitional phases. Even with patches, I doubt this game will run too smoothly, and I don't think we'll really reap the benefits of these changes until the next incarnation. This game needs a lot of polishing. Quite frankly, they is going to be a ton of people who hate this version of the game.

My honest opinion? Don't buy it on release date. Play around with the demo, but that's it. If, when the patches come out the game gets a lot more positive feedback, then look into buying it. But I think this is one that with all the potential issues, especially with the match engine, you'll be able to skip, and get a much more rewarding experience playing the next game in the series.

In saying that, I'll be buying it on release day, with one of the main reasons being to support SI in moving forward with a 3D engine, which was a very big risk. I already know going in that the managerial experience won't be as fun as previous versions, but I'm willing to accept that mainly because despite the aforementioned issues, the 3D engine just has so many positives and makes it a joy watching matches.

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The 3D is quite nice. Ball in the air seems a little bit light though.

Everyone keeps moaning about the players stopping, but there are hardly any teams that play relentless fast-tempo football IRL, it is realistic for the players to take some time to decide what to do. Maybe people have got too used to the unrealistically fast pace of PES.

First touch seems a bit too good on all players. Collision detection is not quite there yet (especially when players look like they're not actually hitting the ball)

I would like an option of a slightly more zoomed in view (not for managing, but for watching other matches).

Most other stuff seems pretty good, a couple of tiny glitches but there you go, it's a release and no releases are glitch-free these days.

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After a bit of playing....in no significant order.

-Hot prospects are significantly more expensive (no more free + 10% lol).

-I have actually been able to sell/loan some of my reserve players which I don't want.

-My players actually cut the ball back when at the endline instead of kicking it out for a goal kick!

-The AI will actually play resever/fringe players in friendlies instead of their best lineup.

-The 3d match engine seems to have trouble showing tackles, and some other animations, but is still a very nice improvement and I will probably always use it.

-The AI no longer seems to repeatedly make enquiries on the same player... instead they make one enquiry, ignore whatever you say, and make repeated bids below your asking price :)

- The middle of the slider indicator seems to be slightly off, its always to the right of dead center.

- Widgets on the 3d match window need to be scaleable. It might not be a big deal in full screen mode, but in windowed mode they take up far too much space. Id love to be able to make them smaller and use the scroll bar more.

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You see being a Uni student, laptops are easier because you can take them to lectures so the utility value is better for me. While you can upgrade a PC, I really thought - despite the 3D aspect - that the one I paid for - £370 - would be more than an adequate.

To be fair its been mentioned in other threads and im assuming its an official stance that SI dont support Laptops for this reason. The graphics are always a weak point and they vary a huge amount between makes. With PC's the specifics are important you can get a semi decent laptop for £370 but theres a ton that are pretty crappy at that price.

Personally im loving the new 3D cant understand the complaints about the image quality. Ive always thought of it asa tactical representation not an arcadey style Fifa thing. Wouldnt want Fifa or a PES it just wouldnt feel right to me. No lgging, runs smoothly and does exactly what i wanted couldnt be happier.

For those that are crashing. I know this probably sounds stupid but did you restart your machines after installing? Its rarely needed these days but its actually a standard procedure that you always restart after installing any software. I had a few crashes restarted and not had one since.

Injuries. Tons of them and all long term.

Transfers same as others doesnt seem to have changed.

New Media stuff seems good not sure how it'll feel for a whole season though.

So far so good. Cant wait for the first patch.:p

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Skin is clean and easy to follow.

3 injuries all long term in one pre-season friendly. All players were 93%+ condition before the game and I'm playing a low tempo tactic with normal tackling.

In all my games the assistant says there is a gap between defense and midfield, and a gap between midfield and attack, no matter what tactics I change (including running arrows)

Matchday GUI is unreliable, I have switched to 2D classic with split screen but the memory of what you are displaying in each panel gets messed up each time there is a highlight.

"game setting up" at first highlight is awful.

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One of my scouts is in Mexico. He hasn't been able to find any players, but he did tell me that "The Mexico national team plays it's matches at Estadio Azteca, Mexico City - a stadium with a capacity of 104000".

It's like he's just sent me a postcard - "No players, but here's a picture of me in front of the national stadium!"

Get back to work, Fawthrop you lazy swine! I'm not paying you to go on holiday!

Easily the post of the day.

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Sigh...I'm sucked in once again: at 1.30am CET I said: "Ok, let's start a new game again and mess around a bit".

...Now it's 4.42am :D

Damn you, SI ;)

So far, so very good, IMO, beside injuries.

Like I said in a previous post, we just have to be patient about 3D. No way this first implementation will completely satisfy us, just like the first implementation of 2D was barely average in CM4.

Can't wait to spend countless hours on this version!

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Haven't played a match yet, but I'm already noticed the UI being laggy and the tactical sliders being oversensitive (compared to all the previous FMs) and it's getting annoying. My computer meets the specs, so I'm presuming it's just a matter of the code needing some optimization. Hope so anyway.

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