santy001

Figured I'd help share a bit of light on this one as a researcher. Attractiveness refers to the town/city in which a team is based. It is on a national scale from 1-20, where 1 means the worst possible town/city to live in within the country and 20 being the best. For certain player personalities, it could be an influencing factor. Clubs have their cities set as a separate data point away from the stadium. Therefore, a temporary relocation to another stadium should not change this and should not change the attractiveness score to the best of my knowledge.

Concentration is primarily a defensive side of the game attribute. It can be useful therefore in high press systems, a benefit for pressing forwards, defensive wingers etc. However, on the whole its not going to be needed and so the more attacking minded players who have this will be rarer and more specialised as a result.

The club vision section will usually show once negotiations have begun. However, you can have takeovers (even from a high wealth individual) fall through. By design though the tycoon takeover is a very rare. I expect there will be some folk on these forums who have spent years playing FM with many clubs experiencing takeovers who never once got the big money takeover.

Comparing players is always tricky. The most important thing is, what role are you looking to use them in? Gargano is someone who could make a very effective deep lying playmaker, at least in the set-ups I use. However, this requires a player who does the legwork he clearly cannot. In a team I set up, I'd almost be looking to have both of those two together. Dabo putting in the graft and chasing things down, with Gargano offering a short option before beginning to build an attack. If you create space for a player through other means, then their physicals are actually rather redundant. If its a player who needs to create space, then great physical attributes can help with this. You have to figure out what you want baseline for a position & role in your team and then compare to that ideal.

It's rather rare that it actually happens. The rumours in the media circulate a lot and you'll likely see multiple different possible takeover types mentioned.

I can confirm it is possible to score penalties.

Based on this I felt a sarcastic response of "be better" was warranted. I presumed you weren't yourself being serious with this assertion. If you were, then apologies. There isn't too much anyone can really advise if that's your starting position though. That you need help with 'super charged opponents' because it doesn't exist. You can't really put it out there that you expected a plug and play tactic to be robust, if its the wrong solution to the problem the opposition are posing, its going to fail.

It will be down to a mixture of competition + club reputation. There are some deals which are outside of the traditional sponsorship models that certain clubs have however. These may well continue to renew at elevated levels. Perhaps its not really appropriate to consider them sponsorship in that sense, but are just a part of a clubs commercial revenues tied to contracted deals.

Weird theory about players missing/scoring early that I'm unaware of having any basis in reality. It was in reference to the AI. They're having an easy time of steamrolling your team by playing aggressive after the first goal. They're going to keep doing it. At least seemingly until half time. They probably then took their foot off the gas as they were in a comfortable position. It seems like you've realised your own mistake though. You changed formation to a deeper tactic against an opponent likely to push up. You conceded early which then alleviates the pressure on the opposition to get a goal and it becomes difficult to stem the flow.

Be better? Looking at what is available in the screenshot you are in the second leg of a European tie and you had won this. The onus is entirely on the opposition to attack and so they'll play far more aggressively than they may do under normal circumstances. No point defending a loss after all. In most circumstances the majority of teams won't start a game with a very aggressive plan. When they do, if it yields early results they'll continue in that manner and steamroll you. If you notice you're having an easy time of it by doing X, you keep doing X.

I'm not 100% sure if there's variance between leagues, but in the Premier League for example its paid in monthly instalments to the club.

I pay more attention as time goes on and my team becomes more successful. Finding players who can perform short term is needed when making your way up I feel. Meanwhile, once at the top players become a fixture for the long term and bringing as many through at the club as you can is a positive. It's also a good source of funds for any major high value transfers.

You've got 3 members of the community team there who have amassed around 118,000 posts on these forums between them. That's not including any developers, I checked one developer Edl and he has around 18k posts, Lucas 36k who is on the QA and Accessibility side they're just a few names from the top threads in this section and the FM touch section. SI employ multiple people in the community facing teams. It's never going to be possible to answer every question, to give a detailed response to everything. But for years there's been the option to view posts from SI staff directly: Developer Posts - Sports Interactive Community (sigames.com) Naturally they are human beings so they don't post exclusively about their work, but there is tremendous engagement and interaction from SI across these forums. In addition to this, you do indeed have the moderators posting too. While we don't have unfettered access to developers, there are communication channels open to us to ask additional questions. We signpost things to SI to get a response on at times. Moderators also add information collated from around the forums provided by SI or obtained privately through our own channels and share that with the community too. There isn't too much more the developers can add about tactics in the game beyond what Rashidi provides in his content for example. In part because some things will always be omitted because its not intended for the player to have that level of information on the inner workings of the game. Sharing a bugs list? Well most of the internal information about bugs will likely contain sensitive information. Either from a development perspective, corporate perspective or even data protection perspective. It will also be on an internal system. To reliably sanitise that would be an enormous task. To change the bug logging process to remove those considerations entirely is not viable. There's a very real argument that ignorance is bliss too. Despite being a researcher I actively avoid a lot of other information to make sure I don't know the -10/-9/-8, high PA, high CA players (aside from those I rate of course). Because knowing them ruins the game for me. Some people can't resist the temptation to find it out and it in turn ruins the game for them and they're stuck doing it over & over. Not all bugs are obvious but being given the information on what to look for in what situation to encounter a bug doesn't really add anything positive to the experience. If a bug will ruin the game and make it so you don't want to play, so therefore you need to know in advance, well not all bugs are known and invariably you cannot avoid all bugs. Therefore, playing the game would be the wrong decision if it truly means that much. - - - - - When it comes to how much you're paying to access the game, you realise those are still your decisions to have made. If you value FM at £180 as it is, and are prepared to pay that much to play it, that is still on you. It's enough to have bought the game 4 times at £45. Considering the game has been on sale since then you could have paid far less and had the same FM experience. It has no validity as a criticism though that you've decided to pay a premium for a service that offers FM as part of that service. If you seriously pay that much for those two services... just to play FM then that's mind-blowing to me. As great a value for money as FM is, and even at my own 450 hours played would only be a cost of 40p per hour, it makes no logical sense.

The buy-in for the FM game is not £180. You might feel like you ought to get more for your money, but you have to remember you've made the conscious decision to apparently buy the game at least 4 times. The fact you've done that when you have the issues you've mentioned is rather baffling to me. SI could do the things you've mentioned, and do you know what would be the quickest argument against those? - Why don't you spend more time working on the game rather than having developers creating video content and workshops that overlaps with what the community already creates? - Why don't you spend more time working on the game rather than talking about things that didn't go as intended in the past? - Why don't you spend more time working on the game rather than having developers spend significant chunks of time on community interaction? - Why don't you spend more time working on the game rather than putting together a list of the issues you haven't been able to fix? The time for all these things has to be found from somewhere, and by putting the people best equipped to do each of these on it, it only serves to eat into their time working on the game. When you have a finite number of hours in which to develop a game, you have to put them to good use. The thing most confusing to me is that you find the communication from the company that can frustrate, but find no issues with Neil who is part of the Sports Interactive Community Team and is there to communicate in part on behalf of the company. Whether you intended it or not, it basically reads as a "Yeah you do a good job. But I want someone with a more grand title to speak to." Maybe Neil just needs a bump up to Emperor of the Sports Interactive Community Team?

Obviously the hope would be that everyone does enjoy the game. Yet, it is important to realise that the game won't be for everyone. Over time your feelings towards the game can change so it might be something you enjoyed in the past but don't anymore. Realistically you have to step back and question if this is how you feel as a result of the game and what you expect from it, is it something you wish to continue playing? FM is ultimately a leisure activity. If you're no longer enjoying it for any reason, then walk away and do something else.

Consistency is a measure of how often a player will perform at their ability in its loosest terms. The number corresponds to X games out of Y. Even a player with 20 consistency will not be at their peak every single game however. The extent to which it impacts a player is exacerbated, or mitigated, by other things. Important matches - a positive or negative score in a big game could be a difference maker. Attributes like professionalism is mitigating attribute because the player is more prepared in other aspects typically speaking. Determination & work rate, while potentially lowered in effect by a player hitting a low point in their consistency being naturally high can offset these. In some rare instances though, again it could be a negative because a player may keep trying and mess up more when perhaps a lazier/less determined player would shy a way and just be a passenger rather than an active hinderance. The way you deploy a player tactically can also mitigate or soften the peaks and troughs. If your team offers the DM a simple pass all the time, he just needs to be there to add an extra body/block a passing lane and occupy opposition players then his inconsistency is irrelevant. If this is your position where you turn defence to counter, need that player to take up fantastic spots and ping off inch perfect passes down field, consistency is of paramount importance. There's no hard and fast rule, if you have an incredibly specialised role for a player, and he can only really meet it when he's at his peak then its likely when he's at his peak you'll get fantastic performances yielding much higher ratings than most other players and poor ratings whenever he's not there. Countering this, if you have a fantastic consistent, amazing player but you're only asking him to do the basics he's never going to excel. There's no right or wrong, and best of all, there's never going to be any level of understanding or information you can get about this whereby you can get all the positives lined up and all the negatives eliminated pre-game. If you go conservative with good players you're just wasting them if they're at their peak ability. If you go gung-ho and they're not at their best you're compromising your teams chances.

9 of the 10 regens in my starting XI have at least fairly consistent performer. The other has no positive or negative indicator, suggesting its somewhere around 10. 3 of them have consistent performer, so are better than the fairly consistent performers. It's not super common but isn't rare either.

Attempt to avoid relegation means they realise its a distinct possibility you will go down. The best route is to try and find a hidden gem who is interested & affordable. Keeping yourself in touching distance until the January window and the reputation boost this brings also helps attracting players. However, there's nothing wrong with using this year to feel things out and build a better squad to get promoted and go again.

Knowing what division you're in, what team you are would likely help. Seeing a picture of your finances screen would be a benefit too. At a guess, certain leagues/competitions may have a rule like this in place.

The in-game editor that you can purchase through steam for FM works once the save has been started, if you've allowed its use in the pre-game options. Discussing third party editors on the forums isn't something that's allowed on the forums. It falls into a category of very much use at your own peril. If you have a reasonably decent PC there is no reason not to host the game yourself if cheating is a concern.

The official in-game editor works. I haven't had it for a number of years now but I will always start a network game with it allowed just in case there is some issue that impacts one of us that the editor can resolve. Only ever needed to use it once and that was to bump up facilities after the option to request improvements had endured across 15 or so years. The official in-game editor toggles an option to yes if it has been used on Game Status. If its a genuine concern you have going into a network game, I would recommend instead trying to find someone you trust - or even hosting the game yourself.

You have to remember with set pieces, unpredictability can yield tremendous results. Yes in theory a 20 technique, 20 free kick taking player should score more. But being able to hit it well, but perhaps not exactly as well as you wanted may well result in more goals. A simple example would be aiming for the top right corner of the goal, a "better" free kick taker could get the ball quite reliably within a couple of foot in that area. It's the best spot to go for with that players footedness, on that side, it negates the wall in a more meaningful manner etc etc. A "worse" player could still have the ability to get it up, over the wall and back down again but instead of it going to the top right corner its more left of centre. A keeper is off footed/less prepared and it results in a goal. You always have to remember, the gap between 1-20 isn't that great. The "struck it too well" is very much a thing in football, if you strike a ball exactly as you intended as is generally best for that position its more predictable.

Well being a researcher I can definitely attest to learning more about the game does impart some regrets. Although I have to mention learning about CA & PA is not at all an issue - I'd go as far to say as focusing on the CA & PA as though they're all that important probably means there's some substantial gaps in understanding. Focusing on player CA's & PA's and taking the time to uncover them in some way, or spoil that for yourself (whether it be through the pre-game editor, in-game editor, third party sites listing players, or the good player section) then delving into those is something you should always think twice about. Once you know what's under the hood for a player you can't meaningfully remove that. That wonderkid you find and felt obscure might be really well known amongst the community, but if you came across them by virtue of events in your game, it looks a little ropey but the scouting network you assembled recommend them then its still a perfectly valid played experience. If the second that guys scout report came in you knew he was X CA and Y PA it removes an element. It isn't wrong, it just removes a playing experience. For me the regret is that I know how to make a 115CA player who can be a bit part Premier League squad filler. I know how to make a 140 CA championship flop (sometimes players come out a little unexpected and that just further the learning experience). It means when it does come to assessing players in game I can process them ridiculously fast and I can identify players who will over-perform in a niche role that will in turn bring in great profits.

Hidden a couple of posts. If anyone is in a spot where they don't want to offer their feedback on options... Just don't. No need to take it anywhere else.

Where did you purchase from? Typically you'd need to check with the retailer directly.