Difficulty

[Jack Currie]

Hi all,

I hope this post comes across in good taste as it is designed to.

I have been playing football manager way back since championship manager days when I was just very young.

I feel as though the last few editions of the game have just been getting easier and easier with this years title the easier of them all.

I was managing a team expected to finish in the bottom few positions in League Two yet we went 30+ matches unbeaten and won the league at a canter.

Promoted to League One we are now immediately challenging at the top of the division and some of the signings I have made seem far too good for the level.

It just is really ruining the realistic feel football manager has always had. There is simply no enjoyment in turning the game on knowing no matter what happens I am going to win 4/5 of the matches I play.

I get SI wants to attract new players and would make the game easy for them but as someone who has played for 20+ years it is as if you know that it is too easy for players like me but won’t do anything about it as we will always buy the game.

Either make the game tougher or introduce a proper realism difficulty mode.

 

 

[SaintEtienne]

A long time ago, I bought a guitar. I found it very difficult to play. A few years later, I bought a new guitar. I found it much easier to play. Was that because guitars had been made easier? Or was it because I’d practised and played guitar for hundreds of hours and had got a lot better at it?

I’ve played every FM version since FM19, and back in the day I also played CM2 and CM01/02. I have amassed thousands of hours playing this game over many years of my life. The game play principles of recent FMs don’t vary hugely from version to version, so, yes, I’m very experienced at it and tend to know some good strategic and tactical principles to be successful.

FM is unlike most other games. Most FM players play this game for many years. With many other games, one plays them to completion once. I played Breath of the Wild earlier this year. It was my first Zelda game and I found it pretty tough going early on (I died a lot!). But a few hundred hours later I’d completed it. I bet if I pick it up again next year, and again the year after that, I’ll find it much easier than I did the first time. And I bet that when I start Tears of the Kingdom, my experience of Breath of the Wild will make it easier than if this was my first Zelda game (which is kind of why I’m delaying starting it, so I can “forget” some of what I learned on BotW).

In short: how much of the apparent “easiness” of FM has nothing to do with the game and a lot to do with experienced players who have accumulated, in many cases, thousands of hours of FM gameplay?

[Dagenham_Dave]

Also, with the money in the game now, managing in England has become easier than it's ever been, particularly when you get to the PL.  You also now have teams well down the leagues who can pay wages equivalent to that of many nations top division teams making it far easier to sign foreign talent. 

Although any league in any country CAN be easy if you exploit it enough, I've found that playing the game the 'proper' way in countries outwith England gives a more challenging experience. 

Problem with this of course, is that a very high percentage of FM's user base are English, or want to play in England. 

So, yes, for that reason, in addition to what @SaintEtienne said above, it can feel as though the game has gotten easier over time. But difficulty levels are not the answer in this type of game, as it would be impossible to determine exactly what to make more difficult as different people play the game in so many different ways. 

 

[ds_61_1]

1 hour ago, Jack Currie said:

Either make the game tougher or introduce a proper realism difficulty mode.

 

 

I'm always bemused by this when it comes up. How would you introduce that? Real Difficult, Really Difficult (with added realism), Reallly Real Difficult (we mean it this time).

[herne79]

Rather than saying the game is easy and you'd like a hard mode, it could be very constructive if people detail exactly how they play the game.  eg., how do you set up the game and your manager?  What tactics do you use?  How do you handle transfers, contract negotiations, staff, morale, dynamics, training, youth development?  Do you watch matches?  If you do what highlights do you use and how do you deal with team talks, touchline shouts, opposition instructions and tactical adjustments? etc etc.  This can have 2 benefits:

1) It might give SI further knowledge of how they might be able to make aspects of the game "harder".

2) There are plenty of people in the community who find the game difficult, so providing tips and tricks could help them in their enjoyment.

[numbas2]

I am doing amazingly well since I started my FM24 career and it has been a bit annoying. You don't want to lose but you want to be challenged. I've had some rough patches.

So now I've gone with a wild new tactic to add another dimension, will see how it goes.

But also I've been an FM manager for 25 years so I can't help being an absolute badass manager

[rp1966]

For an 'easy game' in which a lot of players will gravitate towards the top level clubs the number of people with the 'won a domestic league' steam achievement seems pretty low at 38% ...

[SaintEtienne]

27 minutes ago, ds_61_1 said:

I'm always bemused by this when it comes up. How would you introduce that? Real Difficult, Really Difficult (with added realism), Reallly Real Difficult (we mean it this time).

Maybe the game should have two modes: Normal mode, and Difficult (Full Realism) mode. The latter doesn't take you to the game itself; it takes you to a template letter to be used to apply to whatever managerial vacancies currently exist in the real world.

[Conardo]

Difficulty as you describe it is in the eye of the beholder. For people like you there is the challenge section

[Ngoc]

save scum not helping to make it "difficult" I guess. They really need to make an autosave-only version and tie the achievement only to that version so that we would see how many bullshitters "is too easy" are real.

(and maybe limit the number of friendly matches you can do as well as bump up injury to 100% (currently at 80%) only for the autosave mode :P)

Edited December 1, 2023 by Ngoc

[Andrew Marines]

15 ore fa, SaintEtienne ha scritto:

A long time ago, I bought a guitar. I found it very difficult to play. A few years later, I bought a new guitar. I found it much easier to play. Was that because guitars had been made easier? Or was it because I’d practised and played guitar for hundreds of hours and had got a lot better at it?

Don't wanna tell you're not right(cause you are at a certain degree) but I disagree.

You can practice IRL football all your life, become a manager, train low level teams, become better with the passing time but with an higher level of teams, there are always new things to learn, mistakes done, etc...

The other managers adapt, learn the same as you. They can **** up one season, learn and the next one get their designed goal.

In FM, this things exist only when you're first playing the game cause you're the one not doing the basic things necessary.

you are level 0, the ai is at level 7.

You start to learn, grind those levels and start doing better things. You are now level 15. And the ai? Well, the AI is at level 7 and will always be.

That's the main problem. And I get the devs, making an AI learn is a really really difficult thing to do.

I get those complaints, i'm the first one to be bored in a long term save. Everything feels always the same but you're smarter so you buy better wonderkids than the ai, craft better tactics, etc...

That's why we invented challenges. Not to improve the ai but to make us re-learn the game again.

It shouldn't be like learning to play the guitar but right now(and probably for a lot of time) will be

Edited December 1, 2023 by Andrew Marines

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Fm will never be a difficult game. It however can still be a very challenging game. 

They are 2 different things. Mostly all management games in the genre are similar. Whether it's a sport or city builder or tycoon. 

Even from version to version the genre doesn't increase difficulty. It's only the challenges that increase depending on what the player wants to do with their game. 

 

[Cometdude]

The recent FM games are no where near as easy as CM with a WiBWoB tactic but, just like CM if you stumble onto (or download) a tactic that exploits the match engine you're going to have an easy time of it. 

[Andrew Marines]

6 minuti fa, Cometdude ha scritto:

a tactic that exploits the match engine you're going to have an easy time of it. 

Only if you're against the AI tho.

An experienced human player could handle it

[Cometdude]

41 minutes ago, Andrew Marines said:

Only if you're against the AI tho.

An experienced human player could handle it

The OP was talking about difficulty settings which would be moot against a human player anyway.

 

Exploiting the match engine still works against humans, the only difference being that both could potentially exploit the it.

 

[Andrew Marines]

31 minuti fa, Cometdude ha scritto:

Exploiting the match engine still works against humans, the only difference being that both could potentially exploit the it.

I've been playing online for 2 years now. Not playing offline anymore. 

Studying the opponent before and making the right adjustments make those tactics quite normal

[FourFiveOne]

I fully agree with @Jack Currie. I also believe that having to pick a difficulty level for each save is not a bad idea and that this would please different types of FM players. FM is too easy as it is today for the hardcore players that know the game inside out.

[Freakiie]

Well as per usual when this topic comes up; how do you implement difficulty in FM? How do you actually make it harder?

[caragreg]

FM is really too easy.

With Toulouse, I won the Champions League in 4 years.

 

 

 

[lied90]

1 minute ago, Freakiie said:

Well as per usual when this topic comes up; how do you implement difficulty in FM? How do you actually make it harder?

Make AI managers use better tactics, improve AI transfers, improve AI morale managment, improve AI fitness managment.

 

[Freakiie]

2 minutes ago, lied90 said:

Make AI managers use better tactics, improve AI transfers, improve AI morale managment, improve AI fitness managment.

 

So, the very things SI is working on every version already? Good, looks like SI doesn't have to do anything different then!

[lied90]

6 minutes ago, Freakiie said:

So, the very things SI is working on every version already? Good, looks like SI doesn't have to do anything different then!

Lol no.

I'm sure they could make the game much more difficult if they wanted. I think most people prefer FM to be fairly easy, so why make it difficult.

Edited December 1, 2023 by lied90

[Dagenham_Dave]

10 minutes ago, lied90 said:

Make AI managers use better tactics, improve AI transfers, improve AI morale managment, improve AI fitness managment.

 

So, just improve the overall game then. Oh well, SI better start motoring then, eh? 

Once again for the hard of understanding, difficulty levels WILL NOT WORK in a game such as FM. And apart from anything else, it's difficult enough for SI to cope with the size the game has become already without them utterly wasting resources trying to implement a more difficult mode because people people win every week with exploitative tactics and squad building. 

You want to make the game more difficult? Do it yourself. There's a thousand ways you can make the game a lot harder for yourself. 

[Freakiie]

3 minutes ago, lied90 said:

Lol no.

I'm sure they could make the game much more difficult if they wanted. I think most people prefer FM to be fairly easy, so why make it difficult.

Which is exactly why I asked the question.

And no, better AI is not something that you just write some code for and are done with at the end of the day, that's simply not how things work.

There is a reason why in a game like Civilization the AI only improves until the middle difficulties and afterwards instead of the AI getting better, it just gets cheats. Coding AI is not simple.

[anagain]

11 minutes ago, Freakiie said:

Which is exactly why I asked the question.

And no, better AI is not something that you just write some code for and are done with at the end of the day, that's simply not how things work.

There is a reason why in a game like Civilization the AI only improves until the middle difficulties and afterwards instead of the AI getting better, it just gets cheats. Coding AI is not simple.

Well, you can write better code to improve the AI but it comes at a cost of more processing power. It is true to say it's not easy.

For honesty, I'm not a programmer. I wouldn't know where to start, but I have seen SI talk about it in my near 20 years on this forum. I've seen some great discussions. I wish I could click my fingers and find the threads.

And, yes, this very topic has been discussed many, many, many times.

 

You can make the game a bit tougher by limiting yourself. This method has a name. Lower League Management, or LLaMa. There used to be a sub forum on these very forums.

With Llama you impose rules upon yourself, starting at the very lowest level and doing things as close to the way a real manager might. There's no borrowing tactics, no looking up wonderkids in a guide, no immediately signing the players you know will be good...and other rules. You scout players you want to sign and create your own tactics.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/295270/discussions/0/618463106379912414/

It can still get easy. A human player is always going to be better at the AI with current technologies.

I think SI have been working on improving AI team building though.

[Ngoc]

13 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Fm will never be a difficult game. It however can still be a very challenging game. 

They are 2 different things. Mostly all management games in the genre are similar. Whether it's a sport or city builder or tycoon. 

Even from version to version the genre doesn't increase difficulty. It's only the challenges that increase depending on what the player wants to do with their game. 

 

this guy gets it. it is as difficult as you want it to be (if you know what you are doing). the first time you play it's probably just difficult because you are not familiar with whatever is OP or the trick to confuse/take advantage of AI some of which are realistic tactics some others just exploit game deficiencies.

if you are a veteran and know most of the OP or more important factors/tactics like Pace and acceleration attaching and pressure tactics how to sell players for 2-3 times their value to the Arabian country visible player stats the game gets really easy if you want it to be easy but you don't have to use the op tactic nor to sell **** for 3 times their value to Qatar.

The game is as difficult as you want it to be (or you make it). I only wish for an autosave mode with 100% injury as the default and hidden stats with disabled tool for modifying/viewing hidden stats and no player search only scouts. That would make the game perfect for me.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Ngoc

[Mcfc1894]

FM needs to implement some sort of difficulty option imo to separate the casual games to the hardcore 

[Ngoc]

7 hours ago, anagain said:

Well, you can write better code to improve the AI but it comes at a cost of more processing power. It is true to say it's not easy.

For honesty, I'm not a programmer. I wouldn't know where to start, but I have seen SI talk about it in my near 20 years on this forum. I've seen some great discussions. I wish I could click my fingers and find the threads.

And, yes, this very topic has been discussed many, many, many times.

 

You can make the game a bit tougher by limiting yourself. This method has a name. Lower League Management, or LLaMa. There used to be a sub forum on these very forums.

With Llama you impose rules upon yourself, starting at the very lowest level and doing things as close to the way a real manager might. There's no borrowing tactics, no looking up wonderkids in a guide, no immediately signing the players you know will be good...and other rules. You scout players you want to sign and create your own tactics.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/295270/discussions/0/618463106379912414/

It can still get easy. A human player is always going to be better at the AI with current technologies.

I think SI have been working on improving AI team building though.

I am not sure why they can't just make a hardcore button like that

similar to hardcore in CK3 - FM hardcore button that forces you to play with those specs (and tight achievement to it)

- Autosave / fully hidden or partially hidden stats debatable (I prefer fully hidden for this mode since you can play normal mode if you like to see stats) / starting with lowest coaching qualification & experience / no editor (I don't think you need to start unemployed but you need to start from the lowest series in the country you pick)

Those are all ALREADY in a game they just need to force them together in a simple button (except for autosave which is not implemented and needs some extra thought since people could cheat it by starting a match and turning off the PC if losing to just re-use the latest auto-save. My thought was that the autosave save at the 0:00:01 second of the match  and if you drop off (turn off pc or electricity goes away) you reload and the match is lost in automatic 2-0 so people couldn't cheat it)

Overall I don't think it would be much code needed.

[Freakiie]

23 minutes ago, Ngoc said:

this guy gets it. it is as difficult as you want it to be (if you know what you are doing). the first time you play it's probably just difficult because you are not familiar with whatever is OP or the trick to confuse/take advantage of AI some of which are realistic tactics some others just exploit game deficiencies.

if you are a veteran and know most of the OP or more important factors/tactics like Pace and acceleration attaching and pressure tactics how to sell players for 2-3 times their value to the Arabian country visible player stats the game gets really easy if you want it to be easy but you don't have to use the op tactic nor to sell **** for 3 times their value to Qatar.

The game is as difficult as you want it to be (or you make it). I only wish for an autosave mode with 100% injury as the default and hidden stats with disabled tool for modifying/viewing hidden stats and no player search only scouts. That would make the game perfect for me.

And then laugh as the AI shreds their entire team?

Injuries were one of the things I was thinking off, but then I realized that the AI would almost certainly like it even less than me. Not to mention that it's pretty likely your squad can handle injuries better than the AIs.

Unless it's stuff that really only affects the player, like auto saves, not being able to use external scouting tools, using skins to hide attributes, it's very hard to think of things that the player would not deal with better than the AI.

[Ngoc]

4 minutes ago, Freakiie said:

And then laugh as the AI shreds their entire team?

Injuries were one of the things I was thinking off, but then I realized that the AI would almost certainly like it even less than me. Not to mention that it's pretty likely your squad can handle injuries better than the AIs.

Unless it's stuff that really only affects the player, like auto saves, not being able to use external scouting tools, using skins to hide attributes, it's very hard to think of things that the player would not deal with better than the AI.

they could keep 80% for AI (as it is now I guess and 100% for humans if they want to spice it up and AI can't handle it but truly speaking you can code AI to perfectly handle training with the best result if you want but then AI would laugh at human the hard part is to model an AI that is as stupid as humans, and not scientist human but kids that play a videogame. The real challenge is to make AI stupid enough but not too stupid and unfortunately, the range of human between an intelligent human and a stupid one is a few points so cherry-picking the AI to stand in between that very small range is mastery. It's easy to do a dumber than-human AI or way smarter and precise than human AI (since they make the game and know all the rules) but to make an AI that is right in the range of the player's level is very tricky.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Ngoc

[macca72]

For me there is, and should always be, choice you can make as a player.

You can have DoF handling transfers, not signing players you know to be wonderkids, restricting where you scout, setting yourself harder financial targets, try an implement a new tactical philosophy. The list can go on...

To a degree you can control how "easy" the game is, plus you can always start a new save and do something different.

That's it's greatest strength.

 

Edited December 1, 2023 by macca72

[Freakiie]

34 minutes ago, Ngoc said:

they could keep 80% for AI (as it is now I guess and 100% for humans if they want to spice it up and AI can't handle it but truly speaking you can code AI to perfectly handle training with the best result if you want but then AI would laugh at human the hard part is to model an AI that is as stupid as humans, and not scientist human but kids that play a videogame. The real challenge is to make AI stupid enough but not too stupid and unfortunately, the range of human between an intelligent human and a stupid one is a few points so cherry-picking the AI to stand in between that very small range is mastery. It's easy to do a dumber than-human AI or way smarter and precise than human AI (since they make the game and know all the rules) but to make an AI that is right in the range of the player's level is very tricky.

SI is strongly against making the game differentiate between the player and the AI, so that seems very unlikely. And also another major roadblock for any potential difficulty level settings. So, if there was a setting for 100% injuries it would always affect the game world as a whole and not just the player.

[Ngoc]

I doubt is difficult for them to make AI be smarter about injury it's reasonable to worry that since under the hood is a mathematical formula AI could theoretically be perfect at balancing it and have the lowest possible/statistical injury every single time. I think they are generous about how stupid AI is so they go overboard on the "moron AI" but even if their goal is to keep it always consistent and fair with all % equal between AI and Human i am sure they can tweak ai with patches so I think if they really want they can bump it up at 100% and slowly refine AI over time.

[anagain]

2 hours ago, Ngoc said:

I am not sure why they can't just make a hardcore button like that

similar to hardcore in CK3 - FM hardcore button that forces you to play with those specs (and tight achievement to it)

- Autosave / fully hidden or partially hidden stats debatable (I prefer fully hidden for this mode since you can play normal mode if you like to see stats) / starting with lowest coaching qualification & experience / no editor (I don't think you need to start unemployed but you need to start from the lowest series in the country you pick)

Those are all ALREADY in a game they just need to force them together in a simple button (except for autosave which is not implemented and needs some extra thought since people could cheat it by starting a match and turning off the PC if losing to just re-use the latest auto-save. My thought was that the autosave save at the 0:00:01 second of the match  and if you drop off (turn off pc or electricity goes away) you reload and the match is lost in automatic 2-0 so people couldn't cheat it)

Overall I don't think it would be much code needed.

I suppose there might be some instance when forcing rules on a player can cause them not to be able to workaround a bug.

Forcing these rules can only take willpower, and not really strong willpower at that.

I have used LLM rules for most of the time I have played this game. I do often start higher up the pyramid though. There have also been times when I've used player search briefly because finding a player you need just doesn't happen. I will also assume that, as a fan of a club, or football in general, I know players at clubs that the game doesn't think I do.

In a single player game, if you cheat then the only person you cheat is yourself. The LLM rules are there as a guideline. They don't always make the game harder. You'll still steamroll eventually.

Why use developer time to code in a forced set of rules when it just takes a little willpower to impose restrictions on yourself?

[Dagenham_Dave]

3 hours ago, Mcfc1894 said:

FM needs to implement some sort of difficulty option imo to separate the casual games to the hardcore 

It really doesn't. 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Remember difficulty does not equal challenge. A lot of what people are describing is game challenge and not difficulty. 

Anything closely related to in house rules is challenge not difficulty. 

There is nothing you can do to make the actual game harder. Example I started in Andorra 1 spot above the infamous San Marino and in 2030 I already made a ucl final. I got destroyed but made it. 

The challenge is can get league to top 5 then 3 then 1. But given enough real life time it's possible. However it's very challenging but it doesn't do anything at all to the difficulty level of the game. 

In house rules effect the challenge time because it usually requires more real life time and more micromanaging. It's making the real life intangibles harder for 1 reason or another but the difficulty of the base game stays constant no matter what rules you apply to yourself. 

Some games have different difficulty levels which give Ai bonus and gives humans negative modifiers. 

Fm I guess it could be financial penalities for human and bonus for ai. It could be stamina and endurance buffs/debuffs. It could even be attribute buffs/debuffs. 

Games have to fudge it to increase the so called difficulty level cause it can't be a better Ai cause hardware and time plus money. 

If you are a long term player you probably continually come back to Fm cause of a challenge if you are putting hundreds of hours in to. 

Looking to Fm to provide real difficulty is futile. Games like this usually just don't do difficulty. At most it's some sort of buff/debuffs system for human/ai. Some tycoon games have that but not all of them. 

I would suggest trying to find a challenge that gets you excited and try to accomplish it. 

As far as challenges go Si could implement a much better achievement process to track certain popular challenges. 

If you can't find a challenge in fm I would look around at other games take a 1-2 year break from fm. 

If I ever over take England for #1 in league rankings I probably would take a 2 year break myself. 

[Ngoc]

2 hours ago, anagain said:

I suppose there might be some instance when forcing rules on a player can cause them not to be able to workaround a bug.

Forcing these rules can only take willpower, and not really strong willpower at that.

I have used LLM rules for most of the time I have played this game. I do often start higher up the pyramid though. There have also been times when I've used player search briefly because finding a player you need just doesn't happen. I will also assume that, as a fan of a club, or football in general, I know players at clubs that the game doesn't think I do.

In a single player game, if you cheat then the only person you cheat is yourself. The LLM rules are there as a guideline. They don't always make the game harder. You'll still steamroll eventually.

Why use developer time to code in a forced set of rules when it just takes a little willpower to impose restrictions on yourself?

rules are not forcing a game is the game itself

In soccer you play with the feet you can't touch the ball with the hand (except gk) it's a rule is not forcing people to do something is how the game exist you can not just use guideline please don't touch the ball with the hand if it happens happens...

people lately are very confused about freedom they think is absolute and everything that limits freedom is bad but is not limiting freedom is what makes the society a society and is good

every single game has rules and rules are good and you have to follow them and they are imposed on you so I really don't understand this fear of rule 

[whatsupdoc]

On 01/12/2023 at 00:51, Jack Currie said:

Hi all,

I hope this post comes across in good taste as it is designed to.

I have been playing football manager way back since championship manager days when I was just very young.

I feel as though the last few editions of the game have just been getting easier and easier with this years title the easier of them all.

I was managing a team expected to finish in the bottom few positions in League Two yet we went 30+ matches unbeaten and won the league at a canter.

Promoted to League One we are now immediately challenging at the top of the division and some of the signings I have made seem far too good for the level.

It just is really ruining the realistic feel football manager has always had. There is simply no enjoyment in turning the game on knowing no matter what happens I am going to win 4/5 of the matches I play.

I get SI wants to attract new players and would make the game easy for them but as someone who has played for 20+ years it is as if you know that it is too easy for players like me but won’t do anything about it as we will always buy the game.

Either make the game tougher or introduce a proper realism difficulty mode.

 

 

+1.

With any pressing tactic the game practically plays itself. 

Attributes don't matter enough and the players seem overly hard coded to behave in a certain way. Someone with 1 for work rate, stamina etc can be an effective pressing player. 

[Poison]

On 30/11/2023 at 17:53, rp1966 said:

For an 'easy game' in which a lot of players will gravitate towards the top level clubs the number of people with the 'won a domestic league' steam achievement seems pretty low at 38% ...

I've noticed that too, promotion from a league sits at about 20 percent, so most people don't seem to manage all that well.

[endlessxcircle]

6 hours ago, Mcfc1894 said:

FM needs to implement some sort of difficulty option imo to separate the casual games to the hardcore 

There'd be more to gain from having a true "manager mode". 

By selecting such a mode it would literally force the player into being exactly that, a football manager. This would mean no control over things like signing your own scouts, coaches, directors, not being able to manage and adjust budgets, scouting is handled by the club, player recruitment involvement is reduced to where you give a shortlist of positions/players who you'd like and the rest is left to those in the specific jobs designed to handle these tasks, etc. 

Basically, you strip the game right back so the focus is on nothing but pure management and resembling more of what it's like in real life. Which, if SI really want to force the franchise down the realism pathway, makes complete sense. 

While this can sort of be done to a degree through delegation already, there's still elements where user control still has the power to tip the scale into the users favour more heavily. 

[Dagenham_Dave]

7 hours ago, endlessxcircle said:

There'd be more to gain from having a true "manager mode". 

By selecting such a mode it would literally force the player into being exactly that, a football manager. This would mean no control over things like signing your own scouts, coaches, directors, not being able to manage and adjust budgets, scouting is handled by the club, player recruitment involvement is reduced to where you give a shortlist of positions/players who you'd like and the rest is left to those in the specific jobs designed to handle these tasks, etc. 

Basically, you strip the game right back so the focus is on nothing but pure management and resembling more of what it's like in real life. Which, if SI really want to force the franchise down the realism pathway, makes complete sense. 

While this can sort of be done to a degree through delegation already, there's still elements where user control still has the power to tip the scale into the users favour more heavily. 

The Youtuber LoadFM does a 'Head Coach' series every year, where he plays the game exactly in the manner you've mentioned above. He only has control over the players themselves, be it interactions, training, team selection etc, everything else is left to his staff. So it's very much possible without SI spending time and resources to arbitrarily set such a mode in the game. 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Dagenham_Dave

[latrell]

if you want the game more difficult you can hide all player attributes there is a mod for this. and just work of the data and match performances as you go along, but difficulty settings sounds like a horrible idea imo.

[RandomGuy.]

I dont think AI available for a game like this is even close to being human level, so people wanting that would be far better going out and trying to make human friends to play with than moaning on here that something that doesnt exist isnt in the game.

[anagain]

10 hours ago, Ngoc said:

rules are not forcing a game is the game itself

In soccer you play with the feet you can't touch the ball with the hand (except gk) it's a rule is not forcing people to do something is how the game exist you can not just use guideline please don't touch the ball with the hand if it happens happens...

people lately are very confused about freedom they think is absolute and everything that limits freedom is bad but is not limiting freedom is what makes the society a society and is good

every single game has rules and rules are good and you have to follow them and they are imposed on you so I really don't understand this fear of rule 

That's all very abstract, but I'm not scared of rules. I just don't see the point in taking time out of development to develop a set of rules for 'realistic management' when people can, and have, imposed those rules on themselves for 2 decades plus.

Rules I impose on myself, in case that wasn't clear.

To make FM more challenging is going to take AI, and it's maybe just possible that AI is probably just not at that level. Do SI improve the AI through the code, at the expense of increasing processing power, or just try to improve over time, as systems get more powerful?

Likely, it's a similar question to the one about improved graphics in FM. Could SI alienate a huge percentage of the FM audience by introducing better graphics that need better systems to run them, or do they wait for a time when graphics can be better without vastly upping the system requirments, as they seem to be doing in FM25?

 

One last thing. There are other ways to get more challenge, that I've seen mentioned. Don't create elaborate tactics because it's doubtful the AI will do super crazy stuff that a player can. I tend to stick with base tactics and tweak positions. Don't stay at clubs for years upon years. You will have a better squad than the AI managers around you. We all find that when you switch clubs you have to improve a lot due to AI squad building.

I think it is getting better but I don't think we can expect Skynet overnight.

[Ngoc]

Because it would make the game better for many people with little hour of coding since most of it already exist and would better one of the bigger complain about the game that is too easy without changing it with big hard to code change like redoing ai or setting up bonus/malus to ai or human is the quickest and most reasonable way to fix one of the biggest complain about the game that’s why and the fact you don’t see it just make me understand you are not very open minded to how other people play the game and expect everybody to play your way and since your way is fine now all is fine and devs shouldn’t waste time in address one of the biggest complain people has

 

from the bit on forcing rule I knew you weren’t the most understanding type. And wanting to fix a problem is always a good thing especially when the fix is not “redesign the game” but using all that is already in game set up a path for the veteran ultimately they bought the game for many years they should be worth a little bit of devs time for an easy fix none I listen except autosave is not “not in game” already  just need to be rules as rule make the game 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Ngoc

[SaintEtienne]

46 minutes ago, Ngoc said:

Because it would make the game better for many people with little hour of coding since most of it already exist and would better one of the bigger complain about the game that is too easy without changing it with big hard to code change like redoing ai or setting up bonus/malus to ai or human is the quickest and most reasonable way to fix one of the biggest complain about the game that’s why and the fact you don’t see it just make me understand you are not very open minded to how other people play the game and expect everybody to play your way and since your way is fine now all is fine and devs shouldn’t waste time in address one of the biggest complain people has

 

from the bit on forcing rule I knew you weren’t the most understanding type. And wanting to fix a problem is always a good thing especially when the fix is not “redesign the game” but using all that is already in game set up a path for the veteran ultimately they bought the game for many years they should be worth a little bit of devs time for an easy fix none I listen except autosave is not “not in game” already  just need to be rules as rule make the game 

You say it’s a “problem”, but it’s not. All your “rules” can easily be applied in the game as it is, so why is there a need for a special button for them? It’s almost as if you fear (based on experience?) that you lack the willpower to follow your own rules…

Rather than creating buttons and modes to accommodate the countless ways in which players play the game, maybe SI are better sticking to what they already do really well: creating a vast football universe for players to interact and engage with. And then leave it to us, the players, to use our imagination and creativity to enjoy that universe, applying whatever “rules” (backed up by willpower) suit us.

[Dreambuilder]

I consider myself an experienced player and I’m having a good challenging time barely leading Vanarama with York City. How easy the game is of course also depends on what team you pick.

[Pafnus]

Fm can t be a easy game.. because matc engine is same for ai and player. but as players we know talented player and sign them. 

 

İ watch twitch every players buy same players. İ see barghi in every team. So fm is not easy, you expoloit it

[anagain]

4 hours ago, Ngoc said:

Because it would make the game better for many people with little hour of coding since most of it already exist and would better one of the bigger complain about the game that is too easy without changing it with big hard to code change like redoing ai or setting up bonus/malus to ai or human is the quickest and most reasonable way to fix one of the biggest complain about the game that’s why and the fact you don’t see it just make me understand you are not very open minded to how other people play the game and expect everybody to play your way and since your way is fine now all is fine and devs shouldn’t waste time in address one of the biggest complain people has

 

from the bit on forcing rule I knew you weren’t the most understanding type. And wanting to fix a problem is always a good thing especially when the fix is not “redesign the game” but using all that is already in game set up a path for the veteran ultimately they bought the game for many years they should be worth a little bit of devs time for an easy fix none I listen except autosave is not “not in game” already  just need to be rules as rule make the game 

Don't question my open-mindedness because I don't think introducing a ruleset that people already follow is a good use of developer time.

Some might question your open-mindedness that you refuse to accept that people are capable of imposing rules upon themselves.

[rristola]

First, I prefer a simulation. I am not an experienced player. Now I haven't played for a while.

Second, I think that some kind of a difficulty setup would be great. It might get more players to play FM. (And for SI more money to make FM even better.)

Third. This difficulty question isn't just yes/no issue. IMO. I'll try to explain.

 

Of course, there are things that player can do himself. Like to do ONLY managing. Signing other personnel, scouting,... for other staff to do.

 

I prefer using mods when possible, and thank you to all skillful modders! You can hide attributes with skins, and who could forget 'Increase Realism Megapack by Daveincid'.

And this is how we could get more realism into FM - I think that SI won't/can't study all statistics what happens in football country by country, league by league (injuries, transfers, reputation, wealth,,,), but with mods these things can be adjusted.

 

And then, things that SI should change.

- You all know situations, where SI announces that 'there's something wrong...', like what happened with GK injuries. Flaws like that.

- At least I think, that if there is a tactic or a set piece or a team that is too powerful, it should be asked if that could happen IRL. If not, then there is something wrong with the probability numbers. There should be at least some kind of countermeasures for every tactic. Winning all corners with headers...?

  This is the main work for SI.

 

Then one last thing. This can't(?) happen IRL.

I usually start my career in lower leagues. Maybe one scout. I should find a few new players, so I like to use try-outs.

- There is a limit, that you can INVITE only 30 players into try-outs. But, after pushing the 'Continue' button you can invite the next 30.... That should be changed into a limit for players in your squad - either all combined or try-outs.

- After these try-outs come into your squad, too much info is 'already known'. Without any training session your coaches and scouts can give you pretty good report on that player. How...?

  That info gathering should take a while. And the worse skill attributes your coaches have, the longer it should take, and the less approximate numbers they should be able to give.    (In my games lower leagues coaches have skill attributes usually 6-7, not more than 10.)

 

So, IMO there are things that could be done to make FM better. And a bit more difficult. Flaws should be corrected. Goal - a simulation. If you can be the best there - good for you.