How good are we expecting the FM 2025 match engine to look?

[gunner86]

54 minutes ago, Harrymcintyre said:

I’ve a feeling better graphics comes at a cost of adecent match engine. The game will just end up being a stadium building simulation, that’s all people will use it for. 

It shouldn’t. The two are made by different teams, so the match engine shouldn’t see any level of regression.

Shouldn’t and won’t are obviously not the same though of course.

[Platinum]

1 hour ago, Harrymcintyre said:

I’ve a feeling better graphics comes at a cost of adecent match engine. The game will just end up being a stadium building simulation, that’s all people will use it for. 

I highly doubt it, and nothing they've said points towards this. They haven't even mentioned anything about being able to build stadiums 

[SimonHoddle]

6 hours ago, Harrymcintyre said:

I’ve a feeling better graphics comes at a cost of adecent match engine. The game will just end up being a stadium building simulation, that’s all people will use it for. 

Really don’t see why one will come at cost of other. They both need work. 

[Steve1977beyond]

I'm hoping for a pretty big shift to be honest with you. At least on a par with Top Eleven Football Manager but given it's a AAA release, F1 Manager too.

 

As an aside, I'm surprised in the small but vocal element resistent to better graphics who say "you need to cater for people with poor laptops" - excuse me? FM has always been synonymous in being the reason for people upgrading their machines!

[gunner86]

26 minutes ago, Steve1977beyond said:

As an aside, I'm surprised in the small but vocal element resistent to better graphics who say "you need to cater for people with poor laptops" - excuse me? FM has always been synonymous in being the reason for people upgrading their machines!

FM has always catered for a large range of specs. It’s one of the reasons that the move to 64 bit took so long relative to everything else. Every time they raise the minimum specs they’ll know how much of their user base they’re likely to be cutting out. It’s a balancing act between attracting new customers and keeping the old.

I don’t know how many people upgrade their kit specifically to keep up with FM, I know a few people who basically only play FM, and for them, having to buy a new laptop just to play FM would not be something they would do.

Edited September 9, 2023 by gunner86

[angelo994]

13 hours ago, gunner86 said:

FM has always catered for a large range of specs. It’s one of the reasons that the move to 64 bit took so long relative to everything else. Every time they raise the minimum specs they’ll know how much of their user base they’re likely to be cutting out. It’s a balancing act between attracting new customers and keeping the old.

I don’t know how many people upgrade their kit specifically to keep up with FM, I know a few people who basically only play FM, and for them, having to buy a new laptop just to play FM would not be something they would do.

I hate this argument. One of the main advantages of PC gaming is having graphics sliders and options to suit each person’s needs. 

[kevhamster]

On 08/09/2023 at 18:25, russell9 said:

When you play a match in FM, the full final result is already calculated by the match result engine and then all the actions and outcomes are replay by the match animation engine. If you change something during the match the full result will be calculated again started from the minutes you made changes.

 

This is a very simplistic view of what actually occurs, and I'm not actually convince this is technically correct.  Although, even if it is correct, you need to add in the fact that the AI manager will also constantly be making adjustments that affect the outcome as well.

[kevhamster]

14 hours ago, Steve1977beyond said:

I'm hoping for a pretty big shift to be honest with you. At least on a par with Top Eleven Football Manager but given it's a AAA release, F1 Manager too.

 

As an aside, I'm surprised in the small but vocal element resistent to better graphics who say "you need to cater for people with poor laptops" - excuse me? FM has always been synonymous in being the reason for people upgrading their machines!

I didn't even realise Top Eleven had 3D match graphics these days.  I did take a look, and the lighting is nice but I don't think the animation is that great.

My prediction is that we'll see graphics roughly equivalent to FIFA 12.  Which would still be a significant upgrade.

 

[busngabb]

1 hour ago, kevhamster said:

I didn't even realise Top Eleven had 3D match graphics these days.  I did take a look, and the lighting is nice but I don't think the animation is that great.

My prediction is that we'll see graphics roughly equivalent to FIFA 12.  Which would still be a significant upgrade.

 

I wouldn't mind that too much, provided the AI didn't spam skill moves and hit the griddy every time they score.

[alian62]

7 hours ago, kevhamster said:

I didn't even realise Top Eleven had 3D match graphics these days.  I did take a look, and the lighting is nice but I don't think the animation is that great.

My prediction is that we'll see graphics roughly equivalent to FIFA 12.  Which would still be a significant upgrade.

 

I would expect it to be more like this . This is a game made with Unity software . Not so much the animations but how the game and players might look

 

 

Edited September 10, 2023 by alian62

[gunner86]

8 hours ago, angelo994 said:

I hate this argument. One of the main advantages of PC gaming is having graphics sliders and options to suit each person’s needs. 

I don’t disagree. And FM25 I would expect to have the biggest jump in minimum specs since they stopped supporting 32bit entirely. These things need to happen for the progress of the game.

[Platinum]

Yep thats why graphics sliders exist. However the CPU and RAM requirements need to upgrade. There are SO many new features that could be added or existing features that could be improved if they did this. 

The game currently caters to machines built in 2009, you cant improve a game to modern standards when you are doing that, and you will find it difficult to attract a new generation of players. With those requirements the SI team have done very well. Players playing on an Xbox Series X but are seeing a game that supports 2009 hardware will be a hard sell

Edited September 10, 2023 by Platinum

[XaW]

10 hours ago, kevhamster said:

This is a very simplistic view of what actually occurs, and I'm not actually convince this is technically correct.  Although, even if it is correct, you need to add in the fact that the AI manager will also constantly be making adjustments that affect the outcome as well.

It is technically correct, but the actual outcome can change based on either manager's changes. IE when the match starts, FM know what will happen IF NOTHING IS CHANGED BY EITHER THE HUMAN OR THE AI MANAGER. Note, the AI manager does NOT know. Only the game as a whole, and this is done to know what highlight to select or not for showing the human manager. As soon as either manager make any change to their tactic, substitute, shout, THE REST OF THE GAME IS RECALCULATED, and the game now knows the new end result and shows highlights based on it.

This is how SI have said the match works, and while it's made more simple for us, and there are many more detailed things to say there, this is about how it's done.

If any of you have heard about the "match divergence" that can happen in multiplayer games? That means there has been a recalculation done, but one of the users have not had this worked for them. So two players can see the same start of the match, but at some point it should have been recalculated for both, but it only happened for one of them. That's when you get those "Hey, what happened, I won that game 3-2", "No, it was always 2-2 after half time, no goals was scored" discussions and reports in the bug tracker. It's rare, but it can happen.

If I've misunderstood something, I'll be happy to be corrected, but I'm pretty sure this is a simpled down version of it.

[Tony Wright 747]

3 hours ago, alian62 said:

I would expect it to be more like this . This is a game made with Unity software . Not so much the animations but how the game and players might look

 

 

I think SI could surpass any of these games if they have a mind to

[busngabb]

5 hours ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

I think SI could surpass any of these games if they have a mind to

Definitely, there is very little difference between that game and the current graphics, it's just to a different scale so you can actually see what's happening.

[Steve1977beyond]

On 09/09/2023 at 10:13, gunner86 said:

FM has always catered for a large range of specs. It’s one of the reasons that the move to 64 bit took so long relative to everything else. Every time they raise the minimum specs they’ll know how much of their user base they’re likely to be cutting out. It’s a balancing act between attracting new customers and keeping the old.

I don’t know how many people upgrade their kit specifically to keep up with FM, I know a few people who basically only play FM, and for them, having to buy a new laptop just to play FM would not be something they would do.

In the late 90's and early 00's, FM or CM as it was back then always had huge leaps in terms of development with each release. Back then this place was awash with people wanting to upgrade their PC's for the new FM. It became a running joke on the forum and in IRC chats #champ-man and #champman which were extremely popular at the time.

[gunner86]

31 minutes ago, Steve1977beyond said:

In the late 90's and early 00's, FM or CM as it was back then always had huge leaps in terms of development with each release. Back then this place was awash with people wanting to upgrade their PC's for the new FM. It became a running joke on the forum and in IRC chats #champ-man and #champman which were extremely popular at the time.

I’ve been a member since 2009, and been playing since Championship Manager 2 with 1996/7 league updates which came with a Free Italian version from the season before, so I do know what you mean. I remember such life changing additions as squad numbers, and the ability to sign pre-contract agreements. I had to upgrade my PC to be able to use the 3D when that launched. And while that remains true for a percentage of us, I think that number is much smaller than it was, certainly in my ever decreasing FM circle. The gaming and FM user worlds have changed a lot since then.

I do think what they’re doing is good, and it will come at a cost for some - some users will no longer be able to keep playing the new games without significant investment, and SI will lose some customers as a result. The hope is that that cost comes with a vastly improved product for those of us that carry on, as well as bringing in new customers for them.

[Steve1977beyond]

amen brother, absolutely agree. What I find ironic from my own POV is I'm all for making the tactics area simplified a little, taking out things which are massively contradictory, i.e. short passing, possession game but then advanced forward is able to be selected.

However back in the day I had no qualms with an almost infinite number of variations with the sliders lol

[kevhamster]

12 hours ago, alian62 said:

I would expect it to be more like this . This is a game made with Unity software . Not so much the animations but how the game and players might look

 

 

I hope SI do better than that.  I honestly think that looks worse than FM does currently in so many respects.

[Steve1977beyond]

it does look rather... well i can't say what i want to say cause I'll get banned!

Edited September 10, 2023 by Steve1977beyond

[Wolf_pd]

That looks worse than what the current FM engine does and you would expect the current level as the absolute baseline. So yes, SI will do better than that.

2 hours ago, Steve1977beyond said:

it does look rather... well i can't say what i want to say cause I'll get banned!

At least you avoided swear words

[alian62]

4 hours ago, Wolf_pd said:

That looks worse than what the current FM engine does and you would expect the current level as the absolute baseline. So yes, SI will do better than that.

At least you avoided swear words

As I said this isn't a finished product and as I said SI will make it a lot better but it gives an insight to what it might be like. 

[kevhamster]

6 hours ago, alian62 said:

As I said this isn't a finished product and as I said SI will make it a lot better but it gives an insight to what it might be like. 

I would expect it to be a lot better than that.  Just because this was created in Unity is not an indicator of how FM will look.  There have been games created in Unity with drastically different looks from each other.  Examples: Phasmophobia, Cities Skylines, Cuphead, Crossy Road, Rust, Among Us, Ori and the Blind Forest, Subnautica.

[forameuss]

And also worth noting that "Unity" isn't really a marker for anything outside of the development team.  It's like SI coming out and telling everyone that they got a new fleet of top-of-the-line development PCs, and people pondering what that would mean for the product.  All that would be - and Unity too - is a different tool to produce the product.  That tool can produce the most bland and vapid of asset flips that are the product of an afternoon of cynical "work", or it could produce the sort of products already mentioned like Cities Skylines or Subnautica.  The presence of Unity alone really means nothing at this stage until we see what they're actually pulling out of it.

[DarJ]

It has been interesting reading this thread and seeing how people always point to the fact that older fifa games are better graphically than FM and although that’s correct. I recently started playing FIFA and I’m bad at it but even without talking about the game play, the graphics is the only good thing about it. The UI is horrible, you have to go through 3 different pages to see all the attributes of your players for example and the number of leagues you can play in basically doesn’t exist not to talk about the fact that you can’t even do instalments when trying to buy and sell a player.

I’m not saying that FM shouldn’t improve graphically because it’s better than other sport games in other areas. I’m just saying that we should be careful when trying to compare FM with other games like FIFA 

[koen.westerveldd]

I hope they expand the list of leagues and countries to play with. Graphics doesn't bother me much, but I get the frustrations mentioned in earlier comments. I hope they can solve the stadium issue as our friend with Genoa described. The home ground has to look nice, and that was just an abomination of a stadium . 

[kevhamster]

1 hour ago, DarJ said:

It has been interesting reading this thread and seeing how people always point to the fact that older fifa games are better graphically than FM and although that’s correct. I recently started playing FIFA and I’m bad at it but even without talking about the game play, the graphics is the only good thing about it. The UI is horrible, you have to go through 3 different pages to see all the attributes of your players for example and the number of leagues you can play in basically doesn’t exist not to talk about the fact that you can’t even do instalments when trying to buy and sell a player.

I’m not saying that FM shouldn’t improve graphically because it’s better than other sport games in other areas. I’m just saying that we should be careful when trying to compare FM with other games like FIFA 

I think the graphics are the only thing where we'd like to see FM close to what FIFA has been doing.

[gunner86]

1 hour ago, kevhamster said:

I think the graphics are the only thing where we'd like to see FM close to what FIFA has been doing.

I wouldn’t mind some of their licensing too

[kevhamster]

9 minutes ago, gunner86 said:

I wouldn’t mind some of their licensing too

Good point lol

[Tony Wright 747]

8 hours ago, forameuss said:

And also worth noting that "Unity" isn't really a marker for anything outside of the development team.  It's like SI coming out and telling everyone that they got a new fleet of top-of-the-line development PCs, and people pondering what that would mean for the product.  All that would be - and Unity too - is a different tool to produce the product.  That tool can produce the most bland and vapid of asset flips that are the product of an afternoon of cynical "work", or it could produce the sort of products already mentioned like Cities Skylines or Subnautica.  The presence of Unity alone really means nothing at this stage until we see what they're actually pulling out of it.

Absolutely, but Unity offers a raft of opportunities.  If SI can get somewhere near City Skylines 2 that would be amazing

[silentwars]

A good sound pack would be a welcome addition. If you could have unique fan chants for certain clubs, maybe fans chanting you out if you're not doing well. Would help with game immersion and wouldn't be that difficult to have. Not expecting it though. 

[MBarbaric]

3 ore fa, Tony Wright 747 ha scritto:

Absolutely, but Unity offers a raft of opportunities.  If SI can get somewhere near City Skylines 2 that would be amazing

can't wait to see the thousands complaining it looks cartoonish   

[Tony Wright 747]

19 minutes ago, MBarbaric said:

can't wait to see the thousands complaining it looks cartoonish   

I certainly hope it doesn't look cartoonish.  The Unity engine was originally sheduled for FM22, so lockdown aside, the developers have had a couple of extra years to come up with something special.

[kingjericho]

If the new ME looked like PES 3 it would be a massive improvements and that's saying a lot about the current graphics

[autohoratio]

Partially on the FM25 topic, as it will use the Unity engine: (mods - if this is too off topic feel free to split this post off as a new thread)

What will this mean for SI?
I think this is a downright terrible decision from Unity. Privacy-invading tracking of installations/downloads, charging the dev multiple times if you install the game on multiple PCs (or have an issue that requires you to uninstall and reinstall!)

Edited September 12, 2023 by autohoratio

[Tony Wright 747]

4 hours ago, autohoratio said:

Partially on the FM25 topic, as it will use the Unity engine: (mods - if this is too off topic feel free to split this post off as a new thread)

What will this mean for SI?
I think this is a downright terrible decision from Unity. Privacy-invading tracking of installations/downloads, charging the dev multiple times if you install the game on multiple PCs (or have an issue that requires you to uninstall and reinstall!)

Interesting, I wonder if this means that we won't be able toplay FM25 off line

[FourFiveOne]

39 minutes ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

Interesting, I wonder if this means that we won't be able toplay FM25 off line

Interesting indeed. I need to be able to play offline as the only internet i have at home is mobile data. I dont need, thus dont have home internet for anything as i check emails and stuff on my phone. Not being able to play offline would mean i'd have to connect to the mobile hotspot on my phone... 

[Tony Wright 747]

46 minutes ago, FourFiveOne said:

Interesting indeed. I need to be able to play offline as the only internet i have at home is mobile data. I dont need, thus dont have home internet for anything as i check emails and stuff on my phone. Not being able to play offline would mean i'd have to connect to the mobile hotspot on my phone... 

I also need to play off line.  If I can't play FM25 off line I doubt I will buy

[Dotsworthy]

6 hours ago, autohoratio said:

What will this mean for SI?

I think this is a downright terrible decision from Unity. Privacy-invading tracking of installations/downloads, charging the dev multiple times if you install the game on multiple PCs (or have an issue that requires you to uninstall and reinstall!)

There is no way Unity are going to go through with this, unless they like tanking their business.

[Dagenham_Dave]

If FM ever becomes online only, that's me done with the franchise. 

[asapas]

Either way, it's really IMPORTANT that there will be a 2-D engine!!! It's a trademark of FM we loved, and the best way, at least for me, to fully comprehend what is going on the pitch, and if you want, to be able to ''imagine'' what a little cirlce is doing on the pitch., Whether it is a flamboyant pass, show dribbling etc

Let's hope they release more versions of 2-D and/or update it for FM 2025.  It is amazing and they are very correct not to neglect it, and consequently us players. I am very happy on this matter for SI

[Federico]

1 ora fa, asapas ha scritto:

Either way, it's really IMPORTANT that there will be a 2-D engine!!!

Sorry, no, it's not. At all. I'm fond to 2D engine too but in 2025 after 20+ years maybe it's time to move on.

[Dagenham_Dave]

Yes, I think the 2D engine could be gone by FM25 - Hopefully they can find a way to keep it as I use it a lot myself, but the numbers don't lie, there's not enough people using it to justify the expense of keeping it if it becomes a barrier for the next iteration of the game. 

[Zapoleon]

20 minutes ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

Yes, I think the 2D engine could be gone by FM25 - Hopefully they can find a way to keep it as I use it a lot myself, but the numbers don't lie, there's not enough people using it to justify the expense of keeping it if it becomes a barrier for the next iteration of the game. 

They have confirmed they are keeping 2d. I think even in the past they have gone as far to say even that they will never get rid of it. 

I could see there becoming a point in years to come where if the new 3d is a big improvement and gets better each year, then more and more people will finally take the leap towards 3d.

But I can't see them rocking the boat and getting rid of it for a long time yet. 

 

 

 

[Zachary Whyte]

2 hours ago, asapas said:

Either way, it's really IMPORTANT that there will be a 2-D engine!!! It's a trademark of FM we loved, and the best way, at least for me, to fully comprehend what is going on the pitch, and if you want, to be able to ''imagine'' what a little cirlce is doing on the pitch., Whether it is a flamboyant pass, show dribbling etc

Let's hope they release more versions of 2-D and/or update it for FM 2025.  It is amazing and they are very correct not to neglect it, and consequently us players. I am very happy on this matter for SI

Yes, FM25 will have a 2D Mode. 

[ImDaWeasel]

Interesting to see what happens now with using unity as the engine....

[Federico]

Il 10/9/2023 in 08:28 , alian62 ha scritto:

I would expect it to be more like this . This is a game made with Unity software . Not so much the animations but how the game and players might look

 

 

Woa. I hope it's not going to look like that honestly...

[Kruj]

I'm curious of what we can expect of the new engine. Everyone is talking about the match engine and graphics here, but I'm personally waiting for better multicore support for years now, so that it's possible to run all countries on full detail and still have a quick simulation. It's one topic that had been requested a lot here in the community, to enhance the performance with many countries activated. I hope there will be a massive improvement concerning this in FM25!

Edited September 16, 2023 by Kruj

[Novem9]

Just realistic faces for newgens please... 

[Novem9]

В 15.09.2023 в 15:29, Federico сказал:

Sorry, no, it's not. At all. I'm fond to 2D engine too but in 2025 after 20+ years maybe it's time to move on.

What does 2D have to do with years, if it is convenient and visual?