bababooey

Here's how I would approach that situation, FWIW 1. Dropping the mentality drops risk. You don't want to take a lot of risk when you're out-matched because you will likely get destroyed. You may get lucky, but why depend on luck? 2. Indeed a lower mentality does = careful passing and retaining the ball being prioritized heavily. Much more so than direct, penetrative play. 3. However, if a team is attack the hell out of you the last thing you want to do IMO is give them an easy way out by just hoofing it long to one of your attackers. That can be easily defended. I can't count how many times I've banged my head against the desk because my central defender freaks out and punts it long to a striker who is marked by an incredibly high defensive line from a better team. Instead, what you wanna do IMO is find a way to give more support to whoever is starting the transition. That way you can keep hold of the damn ball long enough so that you can create an actual chance / exploit space more effectively. There's nothing wrong with playing long balls, or "direct" football, but I think asking the team to try more risky passes (like through balls) while under heavy pressure could be a mistake. UNLESS, unless you are evenly matched with your opponent. Then all bets are off. But if you're the weaker team I think you need to first mitigate risk and find a way to gain some sort of a foothold in the match.

Hi Guys, Haven't posted in a long time hope everyone's doing well. I've been playing FM since '11 or '12 and one thing I've never really been able to grasp was the way you can use team mentality to influence matches. More specifically, to use it proactively. As pointed out numerous times before, mentality is basically a measure of risk. But, it also sets a baseline for many settings like how far the defensive line gets pushed, how fast/slow your team moves the ball around, etc. My mistake has always been trying to create a "style" of play that is heavily based on whichever mentality setting fit the bill. This resulted in a lot of "grind it out" type of seasons, even with big clubs / excellent players. It would not be uncommon for me to win the Bundesliga with Dortmund, for example, while having scored maybe 50 or 55 goals. And it's not a surprise considering that most of my tactics are created around the "counter" mentality, or sometimes defensive. I recently started a new save as a long term project with Wolves. And for whatever reason I just stopped trying to be a slave to the name of the chosen mentality. I'm now using mentality like a throttle. Increasing it when we need to take more risk and dominate, and decreasing it when we need to cool things down. And you know what? It's working brilliantly. I just wish I had done this sooner, but I am incredibly stubborn. Do you guys play this way too? Or do you mostly just set a mentality and stick with it? Just curious!

My wish is for the UI to be consistent and working. I don't understand how SI can just leave a major portion of their product broken.

Just wanted to mention that after the winter update the tactics pitch is all jacked up now. Analysis doesn't work. I can't "quick pick" and player roles/duties suitability doesn't show up anymore. Come on guys. This is silly.

Cheers KUBI. This thread isn't aimed at any of the Mods here, you guys obviously can't do anything about these kinds of issues.

I'm a big fan of the FM series. However FMT 18 is basically a huge step backwards, reminding me of FMT/C 16 For reference: please see this post of mine on FM 16: So here's my thing. When you pay money for something, you expect that it is a finished product, unless specified otherwise. Games typically require patches and updates, that's fine. But nothing ever really gets fixed. Or, the things that do get fixed, eventually get messed up again. FM Touch 2017 for instance was quite good. A few flaws, sure, but.. nothing that would prompt me to write a post on here. FMT18 has more issues than a version from two years ago. Just look at the threads here and in the bugs forum. How is that acceptable? The UI is an absolute joke. I don't know if SI farms this out to another firm or whatever, or if it's done in-house but... whoever is doing the UI needs to either retire, or find another line of work. It's shockingly bad. One of the most infuriating things about FMT is the complete lack of synergy between the various screens we use. Adding to that, the amount of wasted space and clashing colors is laughable. FMT "dark" is a joke. But it's the least harsh on my eyes. Views still don't stick. This has been an issue for... years now? The new analysis portion of the tactics screen is bugged to hell. Instead of the proper functioning screen we get in the full version of FM 18, in FMT we're greeted with a pitch filled with bright red squares. The fix? You need to pull up the "filters" tab, and select (then de-select) "hide players on loan." And I only found that through trial and error. The game has put a huge emphasis on players being suited for certain roles and duties right? Well guess what? The mechanism used to display that is broken too! The little circles showing suitability still aren't fixed. It's February 4th 2018. The game was released in November '17. How is it even possible something so integral to the game isn't fixed? Of course the tactics screen is a mess (still), but what about in game? Don't get me started. Widgets are clunky and simply don't work well. Often times it's impossible to re-size them properly, and it's difficult to find any comfortable views. Removing the favored 2D-classic camera was a huge mistake too (and the FM community backlash has proven that). Do these issues prevent someone from playing the game? Of course not. But these ARE legitimate problems that remind me of 2016's release. That's never good when you're finding problems similar to two years prior. I genuinely believe SI have not released a proper game here. It feels rushed. It feels incomplete. And quite frankly, it's a huge letdown as a massive fan of the series in general. I do not have as much time for the full version as I'd like, and it's WAY too slow to be enjoyable anymore. The touch version re-ignited my interest in this series, but it has somehow gotten worse despite getting much better last year. SI, you need to do something or you will lose this customer, and many others. The sheer amount of bugs, glitches and UI issues = an unfinished product.

February 4th and this hasn't been fixed yet. #notafinishedproduct

That's a fair point. I would imagine the winner would be whoever has a view for the game that most closely represents SI's view. And of course it would beg the question: What's more important to Football Manager? Features like "pre-match tactical briefing / medical center / players coming out as gay / etc." OR even more resources devoted towards making the UI and Match Engine as strong as reasonably possible. I'm sure that's a question that cannot be answered. At least not here anyway.

I understand from a business standpoint. I work in sales, I get it. I probably should have explained myself better. I'm just trying to say I feel bad that you guys have to come into a lot of these threads and swat down stupid opinions and comments. That's all.

Genuinely feel bad for the moderators here because I think you guys have to defend the game and SI endlessly. Feel free to delete this post, I didn't intend to open a giant can of worms. I'm just genuinely interested in hearing what people think about this. I'm not interested in debates over when a company should listen to feedback or etc.

I get where the moderators are coming from, I really do. I don't think the point of the post was to LITERALLY ask that SI release the game differently. The idea was for me to get to read others' opinions on this. Really not anything controversial there! Especially since I'm a paying customer.

Of course I'm a small fish in a large ocean, I'm not naive. I'm just curious to hear other people's thoughts. Nothing more than that. I've happily purchased FM each year since 2011, and will continue to do so going forward despite my feelings on this year's release (so far. Updates may help!)

Saying: "we hear this each year" doesn't make it less valid of a point. If anything, if your customers are consistently providing a type of feedback, wouldn't you want to at least look into it?

Horrible still. Example: Man City spent an absolute boatload of money on players this summer. Particularly at fullback. Started a few test saves in FM18, in EACH of them City bought Alex Sandro for an insane amount of money. 1st, why would Juventus sell? And 2nd, wouldn't City prioritize a defensive mid or center back? They just spent a RECORD fee on Kyle Walker, and now they're going to spend (potentially even more) on Alex Sandro to play LB ? Come on now.

Forgive me if this has been discussed before but. Does anyone else think that FM shouldn't be released annually anymore? Genuinely feeling like FM18 is a huge disappointment (see my review in the feedback thread) So I've heard rumblings that EA Sports is strongly considering ditching the year-to-year annual release model for its titles like Madden, NHL, and FIFA. Should SI consider that approach given the difficulty they seem to have with fixing issues? Particularly those within the core elements of the game? I'm basing my premise on the the following: As I understand it, the match engine is basically a zillion lines of code. As such, when you change one thing, it has a knock on effect of changing other things. Therefore, fixing problems tends to create more problems / it becomes very complicated. This explanation might be really crappy, but I'm no genius and this is how I understood what I've read. Obviously the match engine is the CORE of the game and its overall experience, outside of the UI / database. However, many of the new features we are presented with each year don't have any impact on the match engine at all. Again, this goes back to the point about it being extremely difficult to actually change the match engine. It's a lot easier for SI to come up with a medical center, or a pre-match tactical briefing than it is to stop players from punting crosses into the stands repeatedly (see the thread on "he certainly didn't mean that) for an example. I've also heard that an entirely new engine is ultimately what is required to move the game forward. If that's the case, then isn't it just putting lipstick on a pig to release this game annually in its current state? I mean, would anyone actually buy the new version of FM each year if they knew ahead of time that they'd still be frustrated by the same ongoing issues within the match engine? Is part of the buying experience with this game the feeling that PERHAPS, just maybe this time it will be different? If SI offered an "update" that was basically: UI refresh, squads/database + other small details and sold it for .. let's say $10 USD, I would buy that in a heartbeat. You could tell me that the ME would remain the same, that's it's being worked on for a future release, and in the meantime, I can stick to the FM17 ME (or whichever they feel is most stable) and pay the 10 dollars for the "update." I'd be over the moon with that. 1. because it shows that there's value in updating the game, not just blowing it up and starting new and 2. because it would mean that the match engine improvements are that much more significant going forward.