We know that the immersion in a simulated world is what we most like about Football Manager. Not just being able to do things our way in the most realistic way possible when it comes to football managing, but also to feel as though we are real managers of teams from real life.
With this in mind, I'll try to elaborate my idea of a feature (that I've been asking for for years now) as objective as possible to convey what I really mean.
First of all, this is not a Director of Football Manager or Club Owner Manager. And I don't want it to be. I don't want to be able to interfere with stadium details and anything like that in-game, which I feel that SI doesn't want either. It's really fine with me. But I think that we should really feel managing a team from the English 6th tier or a team like Real Madrid. The way it is today, you can't really tell the difference very much.
So, imo, we should see (and LISTEN TO a crowd sound) stadiums like this when we're managing a lower-league team:
To avoid any kind of trouble with what's being shouted by the supporters, SI could use some kind of distorted shouts.
But then we get promoted and we're playing in League 1 or 2 kind of league, so we should see and listen to something like this:
And then we get to the top flight. So it would be something like this:
There's clear difference among these three scenarios. The way it is today, all the stadiums, supporters and background varies between the last two examples (it's either like Real v Barça or a L1/L2 game). And the sound is only like the last one (Real v Barça).
This is a cosmetic feature, I'm aware. I'm also aware that people complain about some new cosmetic features, claiming that they add nothing really new to the game. But unlike some of the cosmetic features that are added every year to it, I think this one would go for the immersion side of the game for real.
But if SI doesn't feel like adding these nuances to the game because of any potential legal restriction of whatever kind, at least they could give us a way to edit sounds via the GAME EDITOR, so the community would be able to create its own mods just like we can do with skins and added leagues. (Maybe this could even work with stadiums, although I don't see how.)
We could have parameters to work with in the editor, like:
IF STADIUM CAPACITY < 5,000, THEN:
plays sound_1.fmf
IF STADIUM CAPACITY > 5,000 and < 15,000, THEN:
plays sound_2.fmf
IF STADIUM CAPACITY > 15,000, THEN:
plays sound_3.fmf
We're just seeing the immersion the UEFA license is doing to the game, from the logos and skins to the Champions League song, which is great. A great new cosmetic feature added that really translates into a more realistic experience. I think that these additions of more different sizes of stadiums coupled with sounds that we would expect from them (just like when we watch a real game) would add so much more.
And, of course, for those who don't like any kind of sounds playing during the game, the option to turn it off would still be there to be used as always.
Well, now THIS is Moneyball. Great work! I'll surely give it a try.