The transfer market has pretty much killed my interest in FM24

[mlpowell]

I haven't really done any long saves before now, usually 1-3 seasons trying out different leagues and styles. Got locked in at Benfica with a fun roster and tactic, I'm now in 2033. We're the the most reputable club in the world, ridiculously rich, three Champion's League wins in the last 5 seasons, etc.. My transfer offers have only gotten worse.

21 year old Irish winger (167 CA/174 PA, I checked after getting tired of these offers) comes back from a very successful loan at Tottenham - he's not going to displace my #1 so I go in and set his asking price at 81mn (not transfer listed or offered out, just agreed with his agent). Already way too low for his ability but he's a 'squad player' and I don't want to loan him out again and deal with this again next summer.  Loan to buy offers of less than 40mn - half his market value and maybe a quarter of what comparable players sell for. The most they can be negotiated up to is the high 50s. 

Or my starting winger - PSG sold old Mbappe to Saudi Arabia for 189mn, came for my starting ST/IF (asking price set with his agent at 211mn) - 70mn non-negotiable and that includes a bunch of add-ons. 

And then the offers roll in for the rest of my 18-23 year old squad players with high potential, less than half their market value. 

I quit and I haven't had an urge to reopen it - I don't need the money from selling them at good prices but it's the principle of not strengthening my Champion's League competitors with bargains. I'd sooner use the editor to ship them all to a struggling club for free

Edited April 28 by mlpowell
roll not role

[eXistenZ]

I dont know if its a deliberate design choice (probably not, as they struggle to design an AI that recognizes value X is higher than value y), but the longevity has been sucked out of FM in the recent years. It seems to be cathered to short 3-4y careers where you can do wanky tactic stuff and then jump on a new save/proect (which is a popular YT format).

The incompetence of the AI to build a long term squad (as shown in this topic:

 Combined with the AI being basicly a wet sandwich on the transfermarket completly kills any long saves. In FM23 I did a 15y VNS to Prem. In total I got like 5 transfer offers initiated by the AI (and yes, I had sufficient leagues active). Even championship topscorers never got an offer and I ended have to sell for like 10% of their value. Most of the times you cant even negotiate as its immediately locked in...

And then offcours the board gets pissed at how little you get...

I honestly doubt a new match engine is gonna fix any of this.

[mlpowell]

With a very large database (145k players at start IIRC, first two divisions of most of Europe, all the way down for the top 6 plus extras plus a number of view only) there is a decent amount of transfer business happening... between AI clubs. Seeing players worse than mine being transferred for more than my offers is probably half the reason I sort of rage-quit.

[Mobius]

AI transfer is just awful as you say. Really makes it hard to immerse yourself in saves.

I don't know if it's allowed to link them directly here, but there are some active topics on the FM Reddit at the moment about AI transfer and some of the comments give some insight into the issues if you are curious! 

[Costav]

12 hours ago, mlpowell said:

I haven't really done any long saves before now, usually 1-3 seasons trying out different leagues and styles. Got locked in at Benfica with a fun roster and tactic, I'm now in 2033. We're the the most reputable club in the world, ridiculously rich, three Champion's League wins in the last 5 seasons, etc.. My transfer offers have only gotten worse.

21 year old Irish winger (167 CA/174 PA, I checked after getting tired of these offers) comes back from a very successful loan at Tottenham - he's not going to displace my #1 so I go in and set his asking price at 81mn (not transfer listed or offered out, just agreed with his agent). Already way too low for his ability but he's a 'squad player' and I don't want to loan him out again and deal with this again next summer.  Loan to buy offers of less than 40mn - half his market value and maybe a quarter of what comparable players sell for. The most they can be negotiated up to is the high 50s. 

Or my starting winger - PSG sold old Mbappe to Saudi Arabia for 189mn, came for my starting ST/IF (asking price set with his agent at 211mn) - 70mn non-negotiable and that includes a bunch of add-ons. 

And then the offers roll in for the rest of my 18-23 year old squad players with high potential, less than half their market value. 

I quit and I haven't had an urge to reopen it - I don't need the money from selling them at good prices but it's the principle of not strengthening my Champion's League competitors with bargains. I'd sooner use the editor to ship them all to a struggling club for free

The market value depends on several things, not only the CA/PA of the player.

For example, when you win a trophy (i.e. your reputation increases), market value of your players go sky rocket. This is not determined by a change in their ability, but just by the fact that your (and the players one) reputation is higher. This may be the case for your players as well. You won several trophies in a row, so your 21 old irish winger (who has almost achieved his PA, as you mentioned) increased his market value. However, other clubs may estimates that it's not worth to put so much money to buy him, so they try to reach a better deal.

AI has some issue, but in this case at the end of the day everybody is trying to maximize their outcome, so don't blame AI for doing something that also human managers would have done. 

[mlpowell]

Yeah, it depends on several things, generally going in my favor - reputation (player and club), contract length (multiple years), player age and ability.

Value skyrocketing is not my experience at all - offers barely increase with reputation and hit a hard ceiling well below market value (market value as in actual sales of comparable players, not just the value tag) for AI clubs. If value skyrocketed... I wouldn't be getting offers of half the asking price and one quarter of the market price for similar players. If 'other clubs estimated that he's not worth so much' that doesn't explain how worse players sell for more (whether comparing sales from your league to elsewhere or being brought in by the offering clubs). The entire market would be depressed if it was a question of AI shopping for value, which is again not my experience - older and less capable players transferred between AI clubs go for more, there's no shortage of transfer action.

"so don't blame AI for doing something that also human managers would have done" - human managers don't, though. Even in terms of the real world - Liverpool didn't offer $25mn for Darwin to Benfica, Chelsea's initial offers for Enzo Fernandez didn't trigger his release clause but were still over 100mn pounds. The real transfer market is pretty rational (if obscene) with clubs knowing the value of players to their current teams, when Liverpool and Chelsea were bidding for Caicedo it's not like one valued him at 50mn and one at 110mn and neither one thought they could get Brighton to sell him for 20mn.

The generous interpretation of the transfer market is that it's designed to level the playing field between human players and AI, the worst case is that it's just poorly designed. 

Edited April 29 by mlpowell

[Costav]

33 minutes ago, mlpowell said:

"so don't blame AI for doing something that also human managers would have done"

First of all I would like to apologize about using this expression, it was not directly aimed at you but reading it now it sounds like a direct attack.

Then...

34 minutes ago, mlpowell said:

Value skyrocketing is not my experience at all - offers barely increase with reputation and hit a hard ceiling well below market value (market value as in actual sales of comparable players, not just the value tag) for AI clubs. If value skyrocketed... I wouldn't be getting offers of half the asking price and one quarter of the market price for similar players.

I experienced it several times, especially after winning trophies. Not only in my favor, also in opposite terms (I wanted a player from another team, they won something, the price went unbearable for my finances). 

The thing is that, as i read several times on this forum, AI bases its judgment like Human players (expected PA, scouting, etc...). The fact that is AI doesn't mean that they know the exact CA or PA value of a player. However, they may have decided that it was not worth to offer as much as you wanted for the player.

40 minutes ago, mlpowell said:

The entire market would be depressed if it was a question of AI shopping for value, which is again not my experience - older and less capable players transferred between AI clubs go for more, there's no shortage of transfer action

That is, in principle, not reasonable, but you need to think about the new structure of AI transfer selection this year. SI stated that AI is paying more attention on performance and "momentum" when trying to sign a player. Now I cannot say if your players for which PSG made an offer had a good performance over the season or how this exactly has an impact on AI transfer decision making, however this could be part of the process why solder and less capable players transferred between AI clubs go for more.

What I am trying to say is that even in real life you have cases when a club tries to get the best agreement. Arsenal first offer for Caicedo was 60M, half of the release clause (https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11670/12798879/arsenal-transfer-news-gunners-70m-bid-for-moises-caicedo-rejected-by-brighton) which means that eve IRL you have situations where the initial offer is around 50/60% of the asked price (in this case, release clause).

Moreover, I don't know how PSG finances are on 2033. They may have financial issues (or they are not rich as now IRL). In this case, it's more than acceptable that they try to start from a lower bid. A part from Premier League clubs (who spend a lot and very badly), most of the clubs cannot go to a very rich club (as you are) and saying "i'll pay whatever you want for one of your players".

[mlpowell]

1 hour ago, Costav said:

First of all I would like to apologize about using this expression, it was not directly aimed at you but reading it now it sounds like a direct attack.

Then...

I experienced it several times, especially after winning trophies. Not only in my favor, also in opposite terms (I wanted a player from another team, they won something, the price went unbearable for my finances). 

The thing is that, as i read several times on this forum, AI bases its judgment like Human players (expected PA, scouting, etc...). The fact that is AI doesn't mean that they know the exact CA or PA value of a player. However, they may have decided that it was not worth to offer as much as you wanted for the player.

That is, in principle, not reasonable, but you need to think about the new structure of AI transfer selection this year. SI stated that AI is paying more attention on performance and "momentum" when trying to sign a player. Now I cannot say if your players for which PSG made an offer had a good performance over the season or how this exactly has an impact on AI transfer decision making, however this could be part of the process why solder and less capable players transferred between AI clubs go for more.

This isn't one player, though - these are just specific recent examples. In another save it was a 21 year old striker at Anderlecht with consecutive World Golden Balls/Ballon d'Ors and a Champion's League win, it's an entire range of players in different positions over time with offers from all the major clubs.

The transfer market is predictable - never have I had a club offer anything close to replacement value for a player compared to what can be bought on the market OR close to what the offering club would have to pay a comparable AI club for a player. The former makes some sense for smaller selling clubs (sell 'em up the ladder - Anderlecht to Dortmund to Liverpool), of course, but it's illogical for the AI to think it can buy star players from the richest and most reputable clubs for less than replacement cost.

Taking the 21yo striker there - let's say replacement cost (if it existed) is 220mn. If the AI still thinks I'm a smaller team (at that point I was top 3 in reputation, so almost all offers were from 'lesser' clubs), what's a reasonable offer where they're getting value? 150? No offers were made above 80mn. I wouldn't think it was too dumb if they were offering 150 but offers too low to even buy a Champion's League quality starter?

Even with those selling clubs, the offers are often still too low compared to real life fees that have happened - you can test this by starting a save in Benfica and trying to renew Antonio Silva, he won't agree unless you cut his real life release clause by 33% because of how Portugal is coded. Or getting a couple of years deeper with some money earned, with Fiorentina I triggered Florian Wirtz's 126mn release clause when he was 22 or 23 - the next summer offers started rolling in for 80-90mn and he threw a fit that I didn't sell him. Does it seem logical for clubs to offer 75% of last year's transfer fee to a rich club that won Serie A and reached the CL semis with that player? Is it logical for the player to be mad that I won't sell him for 75% of what he knows I paid after one season? 

You'll see it mentioned often in FM threads - someone's won three straight Champion's Leagues with Fulham but players still demand to leave for 'a big club' that's been in the relegation zone for a decade. Whatever influence club reputation has, it seems to wash out to mostly irrelevant.

As to the original two players in question - the returning loanee won young player of the year and another award with Tottenham and was returning to a club that won the Champion's League. My starting winger won the Ballon d'Or and World Footballer of the Year and the Champion's League. They're both 'in demand' - it's simply a case of the AI not valuing players from human run teams the same as those from AI teams. Nor are finances an issue - PSG literally just sold aged Mbappe for 189mn to Saudi Arabia.

Caicedo didn't have a release clause. 60mn pounds is about 2/3 of what Chelsea was going to pay before Liverpool jumped in, which is better than what AI clubs offer - and it was Brighton selling, not a Champion's League winner/domestic league dynasty.

Wirtz is a good real life question, actually - his release clause is supposedly north of 130mn Euros. After Bayer's first Bundesliga title and maybe a Europa win, are clubs going to be spamming Bayer's inbox with non-negotiable 50mn Euro offers? Is he going to expect to be sold for that? I think the answer to both of those is "lol no." Bidding will start at 100mn or more.

Edited April 29 by mlpowell

[Brodie21]

16 hours ago, mlpowell said:

With a very large database (145k players at start IIRC, first two divisions of most of Europe, all the way down for the top 6 plus extras plus a number of view only) there is a decent amount of transfer business happening... between AI clubs. Seeing players worse than mine being transferred for more than my offers is probably half the reason I sort of rage-quit.

A little off topic but sort of linked, it really annoys me when I offer a player X amount of wages, yet he wants more & a star player role. I cancel the deal, someone else comes in - no better than my club, & gets him for far less of a wage & a squad player role. That has happened to be too many times to mention.

[afailed10]

Em 28/04/2024 em 20:02, eXistenZ disse:

I dont know if its a deliberate design choice (probably not, as they struggle to design an AI that recognizes value X is higher than value y), but the longevity has been sucked out of FM in the recent years. It seems to be cathered to short 3-4y careers where you can do wanky tactic stuff and then jump on a new save/proect (which is a popular YT format).

The incompetence of the AI to build a long term squad (as shown in this topic:

 Combined with the AI being basicly a wet sandwich on the transfermarket completly kills any long saves. In FM23 I did a 15y VNS to Prem. In total I got like 5 transfer offers initiated by the AI (and yes, I had sufficient leagues active). Even championship topscorers never got an offer and I ended have to sell for like 10% of their value. Most of the times you cant even negotiate as its immediately locked in...

And then offcours the board gets pissed at how little you get...

I honestly doubt a new match engine is gonna fix any of this.

In your opinion which was the last FM to work well in long term saves? I only play long saves, youth develoment or start unemployed with no badges or experience, so I haven't bought the last couple FMs.

[eXistenZ]

3 hours ago, afailed10 said:

In your opinion which was the last FM to work well in long term saves? I only play long saves, youth develoment or start unemployed with no badges or experience, so I haven't bought the last couple FMs.

I skip every other game so im probably not the most accurate on this particular question, But I felt FM21 did a good job at this. Partly this probably came from youth players growing really strongly(too strong probably), so the AI played them more. This ment they didnt fell off a cliff once you're cycled through most real life players and they have been replaced by regens.

But to put it in numbers, i have 600h more in FM21 than FM23, and my longest career in FM21 was 33% longer than the longest in FM23. It feels like once you're past a certain point, the AI will just stop making your life difficult. In my FM21 Vanarama to prem, it took quite a battle with (mostly) man city to win my first title, in in the years after that, it was always close. In FM23 I became PL champion much easier, almost in an undefeated season, and actually won the FA+league cup and the europa league in the same season. the AI had just given up. My last FM23 career was with groningen, knocked out 4 straight domestic trebles untill the season I reached the CL final (getting crappy transfer offers delayed it soo much).

 

Likewise I only play long saves as well. Starting Vanarama north/south, french 2nd/3rd division, etc... But long saves arent fun anymore it feels. partly because you have these transfer shenanigans and the terrible AI squad building that just sucks all the realism out of it

[jozza800]

On 29/04/2024 at 12:43, Brodie21 said:

A little off topic but sort of linked, it really annoys me when I offer a player X amount of wages, yet he wants more & a star player role. I cancel the deal, someone else comes in - no better than my club, & gets him for far less of a wage & a squad player role. That has happened to be too many times to mention.

This has been in the game for as long as it's been Football Manager. 

[NineCloudNine]

On 29/04/2024 at 12:43, Brodie21 said:

A little off topic but sort of linked, it really annoys me when I offer a player X amount of wages, yet he wants more & a star player role. I cancel the deal, someone else comes in - no better than my club, & gets him for far less of a wage & a squad player role. That has happened to be too many times to mention.

Although it might seem the club is "no better" than yours in current achievement/position terms, in fact it will likely have a higher reputation which is why the player is willing to alter his demands. Reputation is far too blunt a tool in FM and has been so - as @jozza800 implies - for ever.

[numbas2]

It's been covered elsewhere, but I also only tend to play 20+ year careers. One or two per FM. After 10 seasons the difference in quality compared to the initial save game start date is huge. Mainly due to AI not developing youngsters. I really struggle to understand how or why there isn't a mechanism to tweak (artificially, for the benefit of the whole game economy/player quality) AI players progressions IF the algorithm is too complex to enable them to do this themselves. I'm in 2039 at the moment and there's only one great AI squad on the game, and I'm running 57 playable leagues with 228k players across 42 nations. I am so disappointed that with my new CPU allowing me to bump up league and player count significantly, that it hasn't helped at all really with the game balance in the future. It's so sad!

Edited April 30 by numbas2

[afailed10]

46 minutos atrás, numbas2 disse:

It's been covered elsewhere, but I also only tend to play 20+ year careers. One or two per FM. After 10 seasons the difference in quality compared to the initial save game start date is huge. Mainly due to AI not developing youngsters. I really struggle to understand how or why there isn't a mechanism to tweak (artificially, for the benefit of the whole game economy/player quality) AI players progressions IF the algorithm is too complex to enable them to do this themselves. I'm in 2039 at the moment and there's only one great AI squad on the game, and I'm running 57 playable leagues with 228k players across 42 nations. I am so disappointed that with my new CPU allowing me to bump up league and player count significantly, that it hasn't helped at all really with the game balance in the future. It's so sad!

Have you tried Davinci's mods? I haven't but he has a good reputation. I'm just a bit weary of investing the time needed to prepare a new save only to find a deficient AI a few years ahead.

Oh man I used to have so much fun doing Youth Challenges in FM17 and 18...

[Brodie21]

4 hours ago, NineCloudNine said:

Although it might seem the club is "no better" than yours in current achievement/position terms, in fact it will likely have a higher reputation which is why the player is willing to alter his demands. Reputation is far too blunt a tool in FM and has been so - as @jozza800 implies - for ever.

Understand what you're saying but honestly, this has happened multiple times at a club with the same / worse reputation than mine. (I play LLM). Trust me, this is a real floor

[Brodie21]

5 hours ago, jozza800 said:

This has been in the game for as long as it's been Football Manager. 

And a very annoying floor in the game

[eXistenZ]

16 hours ago, afailed10 said:

Have you tried Davinci's mods? I haven't but he has a good reputation. I'm just a bit weary of investing the time needed to prepare a new save only to find a deficient AI a few years ahead.

Oh man I used to have so much fun doing Youth Challenges in FM17 and 18...

Ive heard about it, but I dont find a lot of information about it aside from the page on fmscout. Seems like there are no real reviews of it, or even playthroughs of it.

[StatboySpurs]

1 hour ago, eXistenZ said:

Ive heard about it, but I dont find a lot of information about it aside from the page on fmscout. Seems like there are no real reviews of it, or even playthroughs of it.

I've used it for the past several years and found that it has improved things. Nothing will ever be perfect, because it's just a game afterall, but he extensively tests some years out into the future. And then he actually provides that future save file for his Patreon members to test. So I know he puts a lot of work into it.

[NineCloudNine]

On 01/05/2024 at 13:27, eXistenZ said:

Ive heard about it, but I dont find a lot of information about it aside from the page on fmscout. Seems like there are no real reviews of it, or even playthroughs of it.

There’s a big thread in the Editor Downloads section here, with links. It’s a lot of different files and you don’t have to use them all. I’ve never had any problems.