Online Games - Getting the best out of network play

[Neil Brock]

All online games require a ‘host’ organiser, with all other players joining as ‘clients’.

Career Games
The classic Football Manager mode brought online.

Career Mode network play takes what makes single player Football Manager so good and opens it up to other managers from around the world.

Fantasy Draft
Take it in turns to draft and build your dream team to compete online against other managers.

Fantasy Draft allows you to create a team from scratch to take part in a league or knock-out tournament against other managers. You can choose to play exclusively against other managers around the world or mix it up a bit with a variety of custom AI managers.

What choices do I have in who joins my online career game?

When first creating an online career game, you can choose who can join your game via the Online Game Preferences. Under ‘Allow users to join your game’ you can choose between the following:

- Anyone
- Friends Only
- No

You also have the option to give your server a distinctive name and set a password, meaning only those you’ve given the password to will be able to join. This is a good way of stopping unwanted managers joining your game unexpectedly.

What online game settings are best when setting up my online career game?

For a career game setup there are a wealth of choices available to the user, allowing them to customise certain aspects of the game. For instance, by disabling friendly matches and forcing the assistant to take press conferences, the game will stop less frequently.

As ‘anti-cheat’ options, the host can also disable importing tactics and shortlists, and also disable humans being able to follow others human managers. This means that other managers won’t be notified when you’ve made a bid on the next big wonderkid!

What are the Processing Options available to me?

As well as the option to disable friendly control and press conferences, hosts can also set situations where the game will automatically process. There’s a variety of areas they can customise which allows the game to process frequently. Especially useful if you’ve got slow managers who are engaging in a bit of gamesmanship!

1. Open Football Manager 2022
2. Click Start A New Game and choose “Online Career”.
3. A pop up will appear – where you can set your processing options (bottom right)
4. Once you select your chosen options, make sure to press Confirm to save your options.

What should I expect for an online career game?

Unlike single player, in an online career mode there are many managers setting up tactics and making transfer bids at the same time. You’ll find that during transfer windows that the game requires you to continue more often as it waits for others to negotiate or handle the financial side.

Here are some of our top tips for a fast-paced exciting career game

Set all matches to Wednesday/Saturday fixtures – By not moving matches for TV it means managers will all be playing matches at the same time, allowing gameweeks to happen together. Can heighten the tension when playing in big matches and means rarely do managers have to sit out waiting for their next game.

1. Open Football Manager 2022
2. Click Start A New Game and choose “Online Career”.
3. A pop up will appear – navigate to Matches section.
4. Click the drop-down arrow on match scheduling options and select ‘Use Saturdays and Wednesdays Matchdays’.
5. Press Confirm to save your changes.

Set up tactics and transfer targets at the start of the game – Like in single player mode, before you press continue for the first time there’s always a fair few things to consider. We recommend everyone in your game organises their tactics and transfer targets, that way you’ve got the main time-consuming areas prepared well in advance of your first game.

Consider disabling the first transfer window – Whilst transfers are a key part of the FM experience, all the teams in game will have up to date squads that started real life football seasons. Not having this first window allows managers to get straight into the action of tactics and playing matches. And if at first you don’t succeed, that’s what the mid-season transfer window is for!

Get a quality Assistant Manager – As much as you want to be there for every single FM online session, sometimes real life gets in the way. For that reason, make sure you’ve got a quality assistant manager in place for when you’re not online. We would recommend if you know you’re going to miss the next session before you exit select your team and tactics, then go to ‘Home’ -> ‘My Profile’ -> ‘Go on Holiday’ and make sure ‘Use Current Match Tactics’ and ‘Use Current Team Selection When Possible’ are ticked before you click ‘Go On Holiday’. That way even if your assistant has his own ideas about how your team should be run, he can’t make too many changes!

How to Start an Online Career Game

1. Open up Football Manager
2. Click Start A New Game and choose “Online Career”
3. Choose your preferences with the pop up menu and then press nations
4. Choose what club/country you will play as.
5. Set the username and password so your friends can join in Game Status.

Game Status

1. You can invite your friends using the ‘Invite Friends’ button on the Game Status screen whilst playing the game. You can access the Game Status screen by clicking FM next to the in-game date and selecting ‘Game Status’.
2. When you reach this screen, click the ‘Invite Friends’ button, and a new pop up will appear listing your friends, simply click the ones you want to invite.
3. You can also sign into your Steam/Epic account to enable cross-play with your friends on other platforms.

How to Start an Online Fantasy Draft Game

1. Open up Football Manager
2. Click Start A New Game and choose “Fantasy Draft”
3. Press either ‘Quick Start’ or ‘Create Draft’
4. Choose between a Group Stage& Knockout, Knockout Cup or League then create the competition!

Join Online Game on FM22

1. When you first launch FM22, you will arrive on the landing page of the game, with several options including ‘Start A New Game’, ‘Load Game’ and ‘Join Online Game’.
2. Select ‘Join Online Game’ and once you are on this screen, simply select the lobby you want to join and enter the password, if required.
3. You can also restrict the lobbies shown to just your friends by changing ‘Created By’ and choosing your friend. Another way of reducing the lobbies shown is to search for the name of the lobby in ‘Server name’.

How to Join an Online Fantasy Draft Game

1. When you first launch FM22, you will arrive on the landing page of the game, with several options including ‘Start A New Game’, ‘Load Game’ and ‘Join Online Game’.
2. Select ‘Start A New Game-> Fantasy Draft’
3. Click 'Join Draft' and choose the correct lobby
4. You can also restrict the lobbies shown to just your friends by changing ‘Created By’ and choosing your friend. Another way of reducing the lobbies shown is to search for the name of the lobby in ‘Server name’.

[Aidan O]

It only allows one of my friends to join my online career at a time. how do i fix this?

[vara]

15 hours ago, Aidan O said:

It only allows one of my friends to join my online career at a time. how do i fix this?

is your preference set to 'friends' or  'anyone' can join?

best using 'anyone' and setting a password

drop me a DM if you want help testing. i host a save with 8 others and never had any issue with them connecting.

[Wallace89]

Me and my friend are trying to start a game together,

but when he tries to join, it starts making connecting but then the connecting is lost what can i do about that..

[adam.phillips2004]

Everytime my mate tries to join my server it says "joining online game" then says "unable to connect to server" anyone know what the problem 

[Andy H]

On 08/11/2022 at 21:03, adam.phillips2004 said:

Everytime my mate tries to join my server it says "joining online game" then says "unable to connect to server" anyone know what the problem 

Perhaps your firewall is blocking any incoming connections. 

[MigasAlpas]

For an online gme, I liked some years ago create a homegrown player idea with a friend of mine in the B team and me in the first team, but now we can't do it because when someone picks the B team, he cant manage like a normal manager and in the team reponsibilities I can't add him to be a manager for the B team, but he created the manager on the B team, just another person from the coaches team assume the manager in games of the B team. Do you plan to resolve this? I missed those kinds of saves.

[ezekiel.benedict]

Me and two of my friends were trying to play an online career game but we kept getting Disconnection errors, like about 15 times over the 2 hours we were trying to play. Each time would have to reconnect but then it would go ok for a while and then happen again. I have not been able to find out much about this so I guess it could be a problem with our network but is there any information available about how to look into this somewhere? Apologies if this is not the right place to post but could not find much else about the problem we are having. Thanks for your time.

[vara]

7 hours ago, ezekiel.benedict said:

Me and two of my friends were trying to play an online career game but we kept getting Disconnection errors, like about 15 times over the 2 hours we were trying to play. Each time would have to reconnect but then it would go ok for a while and then happen again. I have not been able to find out much about this so I guess it could be a problem with our network but is there any information available about how to look into this somewhere? Apologies if this is not the right place to post but could not find much else about the problem we are having. Thanks for your time.

host will need a stable and reasonable connection, most notably the upload speed. it is most likely a network issue as the hosts game settings are transferred to all the players for the save.

i'd suggest you and your friends compare internet speeds and whoever as the best upload be the host.

[PoPolinho]

On 14/11/2022 at 02:04, ezekiel.benedict said:

Me and two of my friends were trying to play an online career game but we kept getting Disconnection errors, like about 15 times over the 2 hours we were trying to play. Each time would have to reconnect but then it would go ok for a while and then happen again. I have not been able to find out much about this so I guess it could be a problem with our network but is there any information available about how to look into this somewhere? Apologies if this is not the right place to post but could not find much else about the problem we are having. Thanks for your time.

I have the same issue, we tried with both starting and the same issue, the one who joins get disconnected every few minutes, when testing internet connection upstream and latency are always fine. I think it's more an issue with Epic/Sigames as you start the game through the servers of Epic and then go P2P if I read it right. In FM22 we never had an issue, the only difference is that I started the online carreer through epic client and now we both use steam.

I launched a ticket to let them check the logs of both sides.

Edited November 15, 2022 by PoPolinho

[W]

is there any chance if i have FM 23 and wanna join Online cup that hosted in FM 22

[89disciples]

cant find frinds online game and apparently has been an issue for years.. sort it out, you're stealing peoples money

[aidendenk]

My brother and I are looking to start an online career. However, when trying, he receives a network connection error. I have seen many post about the firewall or restarting but his firewall is turned off and restarting didnt work. He plays on a mac, not sure if that causes anything. Also, its before the computer knows the mac is connecting to a windows so its not a cross-plat issue. Please help!!!

[Mizza94]

I am trying to create an online game with my friend. It just says joining game then kicks out to home screen.  Both have tried making saves, same issue. We have disabled firewall, is there any other way to fix this?