Has FM Become Too Easy?

[jmlima]

Think the problems are a trifecta. On one hand it's dead easy to find and sign players. At any level. Way, way worse of a problem at the highest levels. In reality, scouting is massively difficult and costly and that's why local clubs resort to local / same division players and don't go searching for players around the country or even the continent. I also think players are wayyyyy overrated. There should be a much more dramatic difference between player levels. Some small leagues have players that are either way too good when compared to reality, or top clubs in europe are drunk and have never heard of them.

On the other hand, tactics and tactical alterations are far too easy to implement. I've never seen the 'learning gap' between you deciding to go from a 4-4-2 kick-and-rush into a 4-2-3-1 tiki-taka be of any significance in the game.

The third, you have far, far too much information at the tips of your fingers. I mean, in FM my local club can field an analyst that provides excruciatingly detailed analysis of everything under the sun. In reality they can barely pay the manager, let alone anyone else.

Disclaimer. Many of the impressions we gather are our own experience with the game, they may not be anyone else's.

 

 

Edited April 12 by jmlima

[vlad_pony]

Fm 24 is  hard atleast for me and i have like atleast 20000 hours played from fm 2005 until now.

The problem is you are limited by the tactical side you just cant make a tactic like you could before with classical tactical creaton. Because in older fms like fm 13 you could make the tactic that suited like a glove for freaking each and every one player in your team to get the most and best out of theyre potential. Guys i bet you if we traveled time and someone made me a head coach of Man UTD or whatever in 2013 when i was still young and my brain worked well i would have made them world beaters with just the systems and tactics i made from my time playing fm. Now the game is so dumbed down in this aspect. I dont say the AI is stupid or whatever prolly its smarter than before but we are just stuck with this boring tactical screen with no flexibility.  YOU NEED TO MAKE TACTIC that squeeze the last bit out of the players you have at your disposal , considering theyre personalities, attributes and playstyle also combining to into a greater team shape.

So my main pojnt is FM is actually harder and easier at the same time. Easier for developer because they prolly know every possibility you can make within the current tactical screen so it limits you in terms of overachieving. You now cant make that little details worth so much like you could in older FMs with sliders. I had Barca tactic 433 i think atleast on par with Guardiolas tactic and it was felt in the game more than it is felt now in this current engine and tactical screen setup. I cant make a simmilar tactic in fm 24 even if i turn my head around like a Owl if you understand what i try to say. We are just very limited with our impact on the results nowadays because of the tactics we can deploy, thats why some of you feel the tactics are "overrated" and player attributes underrated. Because you cant make a great tactic anymore. Me myself i am not bound to play gegenpress to overachieve but i cant overachieve that much as i did in old fms just because i am limited in my creativity by the tac screen with instructions i can deploy. Imagine you are managing Real Madrid in reality you can adjust and tell every player what you want from them to exact specific detail that is why Xabi Alonso is right now doing so much pulling with Leverkusen because in this aspect he is so good.

I always thought FMs as a management and tactical simulator but in the second aspect now, the tactical simulation its worse than it was 10 years ago.

 

[ViG1980]

On 08/04/2024 at 14:33, DP said:

Yes. More systems than the AI can handle and the game world falls over 10 seasons in. 

A quick way to test the theory is to create a great team and then watch what the AI does to it as soon as you leave. Literally every time it falls off a cliff. 

Yep. I won the CL 3 years in a row and the league 4 years in a row. I left. Team finished 2nd, out of the CL in the quarters and won nothing. 

[jcafcwbb]

The one thing that does make this game hard is the pointless goals you concede with no warning. This is down to a poor match engine.

Two secnarios. We are 1-0 up to Tottenham, playing as Man Utd (who are as inconsistent as in real life), we have a goal kick. We take a short one which Son immediately wins and equalises. We fall apart and lose 2-1. There was nothing in the highlights warning me of this situation. We were not getting caught at the back and we were the better side until this goal in the second half.

Against Palace. 1-0 up at HT time We had 10 shots to their 0. They score early in the second half due to a poor back pass from a player under no pressure. We resume dominance. We miss chances and their keeper makes some great saves. We concede a 95th minute penalty to lose.

I know people will talk about my tactics being wrong. But I was dominating in this games and it was freak goals that cost me

 

[El Payaso]

18 hours ago, jmlima said:

Think the problems are a trifecta. On one hand it's dead easy to find and sign players. At any level. Way, way worse of a problem at the highest levels. In reality, scouting is massively difficult and costly and that's why local clubs resort to local / same division players and don't go searching for players around the country or even the continent. I also think players are wayyyyy overrated. There should be a much more dramatic difference between player levels. Some small leagues have players that are either way too good when compared to reality, or top clubs in europe are drunk and have never heard of them.

On the other hand, tactics and tactical alterations are far too easy to implement. I've never seen the 'learning gap' between you deciding to go from a 4-4-2 kick-and-rush into a 4-2-3-1 tiki-taka be of any significance in the game.

The third, you have far, far too much information at the tips of your fingers. I mean, in FM my local club can field an analyst that provides excruciatingly detailed analysis of everything under the sun. In reality they can barely pay the manager, let alone anyone else.

Disclaimer. Many of the impressions we gather are our own experience with the game, they may not be anyone else's.

 

 

This is a well-written message which includes also many of my own thoughts about the difficulty. 

I'm going to once again use my home country Finland as an example as that is the football that I nowadays know most about. In Finland during the last 20 years or so it has been incredibly hard to strengthen even an established club and for example finding strikers that can score goals has been almost impossible to the domestic teams. They often bring someone from abroad but more often than not those signings end up being flops. It is a real rarity that a striker arriving from abroad scores regularly even though we're not even talking about that high level of football. Also it is fairly common that the real quality of the player is only revealed after a couple of months in the club while on FM you have both in scout reports and later on player report almost instantly a good picture of the level of the player. These make it way harder to actually sign players that turn into flops. 

This week I was playing online with a friend of mine who nowadays coaches in the second tier of Finnish football. He had never played FM before and was quite astonished about the tactical side of the game. He took the initial tactical setup and used about 30 seconds with that, proceeded to play games, did incredibly well and at some point was asking me: is this going to be difficult at some and are you at some point supposed to actually create a style of play where you have to put some effort on instructing the players how to play, how to attack and how to defend or is this going to be on autopilot. Then when we had our first fixture against each other and he had to for the first time starting to think things more throughly he was amused when he had no option to tell the team to stop the feeding for my pacey winger who was giving him a lot of trouble. I won that match and he was mainly just saying that in real life he would have plenty of options to instruct the team and tell them exactly what he wants them to do in different scenarios while on FM he felt that there was nothing he could do than just do "something" and hope for the best. In short his opinion was that the tactical side had very little to do with how things work in real life. 

I'm also on the same page with many things. Evem though I wouldn't want sliders to be in the game anymore, the tactical side of the game feels way too much of scratching the surface and setting up a system works too much like we are on auto pilot. In the Finnish online save I used 17 seconds to set up a tactic, never really did anything after that, played with extended highlights and won the domestic triple with a team that was predicted to finish seventh. 

If you compare my gameplay to what it was on 07 or 08, I have definitely become really lazy with different kind of features. In the past I used to use hours tinkering with tactics and training but these have both become so overwhelming and difficult to control that I am usually just auto piloting with them. Would love to use all the features and putting a lot of effort but as the game doesn't force you to do it or give you an option to really be in control and make a big difference using them, I really don't bother anymore. 

Would love it if FM 2025 could change many things in terms of the existing features by making them more in-depth and again possible to make big difference so that players like me would again get interested in using them. And most importantly: give good instructions how to use all the features instead of leaving people guessing and just seeing out what happens. 

[Rodrigogc]

The main issue with tactics to me is that IRL training is deeply connected with tactics, in FM not so much so. Training in FM has only to do with improving attributes, while IRL it is the foundation of the tactics the manager wants to employ. Sometimes it takes years for a manager to implement exactly the tactic he wants, combining training with the right players. In FM you set up a quick tactic, put on the right players and you're set to win. 

[El Payaso]

18 hours ago, Rodrigogc said:

The main issue with tactics to me is that IRL training is deeply connected with tactics, in FM not so much so. Training in FM has only to do with improving attributes, while IRL it is the foundation of the tactics the manager wants to employ. Sometimes it takes years for a manager to implement exactly the tactic he wants, combining training with the right players. In FM you set up a quick tactic, put on the right players and you're set to win. 

This is a good point too. At the moment you can practically change from one totally different system to another that your team has not trained at all without any real negative effects. 

Also training should work like so that you should be able and and forced to concentrate on small details within the tactic while watching how it works in your training pitch when the team is having a match practice. At the moment it's a bit too much like "let's hope" as you don't get any insight of the tactics otherwise than during matches. 

Edited April 14 by El Payaso

[jmlima]

17 hours ago, El Payaso said:

... In the Finnish online save I used 17 seconds to set up a tactic, never really did anything after that, played with extended highlights and won the domestic triple with a team that was predicted to finish seventh. ...

Playing devil's advocate, we also need to remember that obtaining that type of outcome works well for sales. Players prefer to win rather than lose and, if they have an impression that the game is veryyyy complex (ie, by the game having loads of numbers, screens and options) and still obtain a great outcome they will prefer it to the opposite, which is a grinding game where your survival as manager is at sometimes at the whims of a temperamental president / ceo and largely out of your control... Talking from my own experience with video game players, the illusion of difficulty with the reward of a win is preferred to the reality of difficulty and a highly variable sometimes feel-bad outcome. It's a delicate balance SI must thread on that front. The people that post in forums (more so those very vocal) are a tiny, tiny minority of the overall player universe so, if sales are going well, those half-a-dozen guys moaning and bitching in forums will never be heard. Again, companies do a good job these days with a legion of moderators in the big games boards, discords, etc giving a good pretence of listening, much like Frasier Crane's 'I'm listening'. I think the sheer longevity of the game series speaks volumes to the fact that, even if too easy and unrealistic, SI know what they are doing when it comes to delivering a good football management themed game (emphasis on game) that will sell well.

Edited April 14 by jmlima

[vlad_pony]

1 hour ago, jmlima said:

Playing devil's advocate, we also need to remember that obtaining that type of outcome works well for sales. Players prefer to win rather than lose and, if they have an impression that the game is veryyyy complex (ie, by the game having loads of numbers, screens and options) and still obtain a great outcome they will prefer it to the opposite, which is a grinding game where your survival as manager is at sometimes at the whims of a temperamental president / ceo and largely out of your control... Talking from my own experience with video game players, the illusion of difficulty with the reward of a win is preferred to the reality of difficulty and a highly variable sometimes feel-bad outcome. It's a delicate balance SI must thread on that front. The people that post in forums (more so those very vocal) are a tiny, tiny minority of the overall player universe so, if sales are going well, those half-a-dozen guys moaning and bitching in forums will never be heard. Again, companies do a good job these days with a legion of moderators in the big games boards, discords, etc giving a good pretence of listening, much like Frasier Crane's 'I'm listening'. I think the sheer longevity of the game series speaks volumes to the fact that, even if too easy and unrealistic, SI know what they are doing when it comes to delivering a good football management themed game (emphasis on game) that will sell well.

Yeah from my point of view you are right to some extent but you forgetting 1 big thing. We are all addicted to football not only this game . So even if SI make this game hard and complex i still believe many people would buy it just because it represent football so well. In the sense that you are engaged in a footballing activity even if its only on your pc. I used to be somewhat average player i had my good sides but my big bad side was i was nervous in front of bigger crowd so even if i performed in training my performance in matches was often strange because of feeling nervous. But this game and old FIFA , until like 2010 version taught me so much about football and tactical side that i was even able to implement it into my standard "sunday league" semipro matches. I just want to say if the game is good no matter how complicated it is or how difficult it is on paper if its good people will buy it...and this one has the advantage that its based on a real life game of football which we all love.

[Jonthedon26]

On 13/04/2024 at 17:27, El Payaso said:

This is a well-written message which includes also many of my own thoughts about the difficulty. 

I'm going to once again use my home country Finland as an example as that is the football that I nowadays know most about. In Finland during the last 20 years or so it has been incredibly hard to strengthen even an established club and for example finding strikers that can score goals has been almost impossible to the domestic teams. They often bring someone from abroad but more often than not those signings end up being flops. It is a real rarity that a striker arriving from abroad scores regularly even though we're not even talking about that high level of football. Also it is fairly common that the real quality of the player is only revealed after a couple of months in the club while on FM you have both in scout reports and later on player report almost instantly a good picture of the level of the player. These make it way harder to actually sign players that turn into flops. 

This week I was playing online with a friend of mine who nowadays coaches in the second tier of Finnish football. He had never played FM before and was quite astonished about the tactical side of the game. He took the initial tactical setup and used about 30 seconds with that, proceeded to play games, did incredibly well and at some point was asking me: is this going to be difficult at some and are you at some point supposed to actually create a style of play where you have to put some effort on instructing the players how to play, how to attack and how to defend or is this going to be on autopilot. Then when we had our first fixture against each other and he had to for the first time starting to think things more throughly he was amused when he had no option to tell the team to stop the feeding for my pacey winger who was giving him a lot of trouble. I won that match and he was mainly just saying that in real life he would have plenty of options to instruct the team and tell them exactly what he wants them to do in different scenarios while on FM he felt that there was nothing he could do than just do "something" and hope for the best. In short his opinion was that the tactical side had very little to do with how things work in real life. 

I'm also on the same page with many things. Evem though I wouldn't want sliders to be in the game anymore, the tactical side of the game feels way too much of scratching the surface and setting up a system works too much like we are on auto pilot. In the Finnish online save I used 17 seconds to set up a tactic, never really did anything after that, played with extended highlights and won the domestic triple with a team that was predicted to finish seventh. 

If you compare my gameplay to what it was on 07 or 08, I have definitely become really lazy with different kind of features. In the past I used to use hours tinkering with tactics and training but these have both become so overwhelming and difficult to control that I am usually just auto piloting with them. Would love to use all the features and putting a lot of effort but as the game doesn't force you to do it or give you an option to really be in control and make a big difference using them, I really don't bother anymore. 

Would love it if FM 2025 could change many things in terms of the existing features by making them more in-depth and again possible to make big difference so that players like me would again get interested in using them. And most importantly: give good instructions how to use all the features instead of leaving people guessing and just seeing out what happens. 

I agree with a lot that you said here, especially about being lazy with different kind of features. These days, mainly due to lack of available time and I don't have as much interest in FM as I used to, I will set up my tactic, and if it works well that's it, it stays and I literally so nothing with it for a whole season, maybe even a few seasons, besides adjusting the mentality depending on the level of team I am playing. I never tinker with my tactics anymore, I don't use the data hub for anything, and I genuinely feel they aren't needed to be honest, I am always successful managing my team (Birmingham City) and I never really struggle. Could I get the team to perform even better if I tinkered more and used the data hub more etc... possibly, but I can't see how it could get much better.