HighFlyingDwarf

He backheeled it.

I've been playing with set pieces. On defending corners there seems to be no option to cover the short ball. Seems like a glaring omission, or perhaps I'm missing something?

I don't think there's any match engine which has been completely invulnerable from match engine exploitation, but the overall package of FM12 was still considerably stronger for what it was at the time in my view. I may never agree with anybody on the squad planner. It's been shown that most people who want something like this either continue using pen and paper or just preferred squad depth. Manually calibrating the team instead of having it automated for you as squad depth did is inherently a downgrade. Squad depth was not originally in FM23 and got re-added I believe, which speaks volumes to this.

Ready to put some more verbose thoughts down now that I've had two evenings or so playing. I've gotten through a full season playing at the bottom of the Northern Irish league and I need a break from coming up runner up in the cups. I would give FM24 a solid 8 or 9 out of 10 compared to a 6 for FM23. The advertised feature set has been delivered pretty much spot on and this feels like the game FM23 should have been and more. Some major lessons have been learnt, but there are still some flaws and things that should really have been addressed. I would caveat this by saying that people should be on the lookout for fixes to the broken development trend for newgens when up against existing players. This has been broken for a few seasons and needs more of a long term detailed analysis by smarter people than I. If this is indeed fixed this year then that is a major plus for SI. I know that this is not an easy thing to resolve, but it's important. Positives FM23's match engine had an up and down life. I got the impression some changes during the middle of its lifecycle destabilised it somewhat but it got back to being solid, I don't know what the change log was for it though. FM24's main improvements come about as a result of both the positional flexibility and the general movement of the players being far more realistic and fluid. Adding this onto the changes to ball physics and the set piece changes and I think SI have got this very right this year. The performance of the game is significantly better, even when migrating an FM23 save game that was basically on its last legs performance wise by the time I finished playing FM23. This feels like an incredible job. I have not dabbled much with the new tactical options or set piece menus themselves, but the set piece menu especially feels far better designed than squad planner was at introduction last year. More generally the UI is better this year and the way higlighting of items in the sidebar makes the GUI feel more generally responsive. With regards to set pieces themselves, set piece coaches are a small but useful addition with a nice touch being that the preferences of these coaches actually seems to have a direct effect on how your team approaches set pieces themselves if you don't want to manage them. This is a really nice touch for those struggling with teething over the new system and/or are just lazy or want to focus on other things. Importing from an old version is a groundbreaking addition and works as well as I was hoping for. There are some minor downsides, but these tie into limitations more generally of the database being set in stone after start of a game and doesn't specifically relate to this feature. I will explain these later. Dynamics no longer takes a cyanide pill when you sign a bunch of players, which was a desperately needed fix after FM23's problems with this and especially important at lower league levels. I would actually say Dynamics has become one of the cores of the game in a sense and a very good feature, so much so that it's pretty much unchanged here and still gets an uptick from me. More licenses is a plus. The J League is a long sought after addition and gets Asia to nearly the level of Europe in terms of major football playing countries in that region alongside Australia and some of the other big names. Negatives SI, I cannot stress this enough. Squad planner is NOT a replacement for the Squad depth screen. I spend more time squad building than managing games. I can assure you that these two features have two completely different functionalities no matter how much anybody tries to convince themselves that the squad planner is effective for depth management. The people this feature is intended for are not users of squad depth, it's people who use a pencil and paper to write their squads out. Many of the notes I make in my comment linked above are still relevant here. Squad depth is an important additive element to the planner which simply requires refinement to bring it in line with how the rest of the Squad Planner looks. Removing it is a bad idea, especially when the squad planner interface remains inadequate to replace the Squad depth page itself. Anything that has been boring/moribund for the longest time is likely to still frustrate you. Press conferences for example. Players still feel obnoxiously needy with their complaints and such for nonsense issues. I have not had much interaction with targets so far, but this feels like more of a nice to have than anything that is obligatory, similar to promises. No idea on international management but this is probably unchanged. Sad. Manager customisation is improved, but it is still pointless, and also incredibly obnoxious to make certain simple changes. I fear the day when SI start adding cosmetic manager features and start charging for them if the interactivity with this feature remains in such a bad state. Additionally, as noted by another post in this thread, forgetting that over three quarters of the UK wears glasses or contact lenses but citing these as an accessory when splitting out "ability aids" as its own section of the creator is one of the more bizarre own goals I've seen in FM's history (sincerely, someone who wears prescription glasses). I am praying that an official version of AI generated faces becomes part of the game to replace the current system in 25. Faces feel better this year, but they simply cannot compete with alternatives that are now being generated for use in the game and would be as significant a change as the original faces were when they first started being generated in 2008. Even with unity models and improved graphics this would still be a hugely important addition. My fear is that SI's move towards being conservative in relation to copyright/licensing issues and stuff like that will ward off any use of AI. Fingers crossed though. Training has been a bugbear of mine over recent years since the current system has been put in place and it is basically unchanged in terms of interactions with the schedule despite the changes which have rendered FM23 schedules obsolete (screams in frustration). Whilst I've come to bear using the new scheduler, it remains unwieldy and time consuming to replace weeks of training on a month by month basis and I sincerely hope that options to define default weekly schedules will someday be added in to reduce the needless micro management that is currently required. The TransferRoom partnership is actually a bit of an insult to TransferRoom at this point in time, since as far as I can tell it basically functions as the old system did. I don't see what relevance or necessity changing the name had other than adding a partnership where it wasn't neccessary (For me, the partnership with STATS/OPTA comes to mind with this, although we did get all that data hub stuff which is nice to look at but not really essential.). Additionally, even people who know what faxes are did not realistically believe that this was how people are communicating in football management in FM23. Specificity was unneeded, the abstraction meant it could have been anything. Phoning around, emailing, even transfer room itself etc. I haven't had a significant amount of involvement with this system because I'm not playing on the top tier, but this feels like a big missed opportunity because there is more that could have been done in terms of creating an exciting feature with this to more accurately reflect the realities of real time interaction involved with Transfer Room. I note that the feature announcement for this mentions more is coming in future, and I hope it does if not now but in FM25. Similarly, intermediaries are an interesting idea in a pinch, and I haven't fully utilised these yet, but they feel awfully similar to what player agents typically did in versions prior. They may be particularly useful down the line once I get to managing bigger clubs, so take this negative with a lower case. Supporters confidence feels like a missed opportunity to do something inspired by what FM Live did with the supporter profiles. I am genuinely curious as to whether or not SI intend to add named supporters groups and make supporter composition actually impact expectations, but this doesn't feel like the case currently, and there's still something obnoxious about winning everything and still having people complain because they didn't like a certain style (Maybe harkens back to George Graham and boring Arsenal? No Gooners complain about the trophies won though). Last and least, telling people to describe this as an early access and not a beta when there's a note in the bottom left saying it's a beta version makes my bones weary and screams legalese or executive meddling or some nonsense. Let people call it what they like...please. - In summary, this one is a good one. This is not on the same level as FM12 when that game reached maturity, but as the last of an era, I think the feature set proposed was good and has been delivered upon without insulting peoples intelligences like FM23's scarcity of ideas did (UEFA licensing aside in that regard). Unless there's something glaringly obvious I have missed which is a big issue, I think people can be safe in the knowledge that FM24 is a clear step up from both 22 and 23 and worth a buy.

My impression is that this is because FM24 only adds the features of the new game but uses a version of the old database. This is why you can't add new leagues too. Below screenshot is from FM24 game status.

You have probably spotted this already but I saw this on reddit @Jack Joyce: https://v.redd.it/e5h3gu5hr7vb1 I did burst out laughing at it. In all seriousness though, I wonder if this is contributing to some of the increase in long range goals that some people have noticed.

Yes. A few too many long rangers going in for my tastes.

Try fully closing and reopening Steam + restarting your computer.

I don't think this conversation will end well. I think adding intergender as a third option is fine, but SI moved away from gendered terminology and pronouns for precisely this reason I think in most of where they're used in the game. SI have always seemed quite progressive in most of the stuff they've done. Gender or sex doesn't have any impact on you in game. Playing video games and simulations are an escape after all, since most people playing this game aren't football managers.

Hell is other people? @autohoratio

The player movement feels much more realistic and fluid in the match engine. Very good stuff so far.

May have been added last year? I only ever had the one I think. It definitely hasn't always been like that though.

Intra Squad friendlies are now treated separately from normal friendlies and you can manage both sides including selecting the specific squads. Interesting...

UI is incredibly responsive. A real plus point here in first impressions. Using FM23's UI feels laboured by comparison.

Squad depth gone again. Sacrilege.

Perfect. My favourite skin. Thanks @TCSSkin

Sucks that this is expected behaviour. Oh well.

Loaded my FM23 game. Everything looks as it was in FM23 from a data standpoint, which is perfect. I see all my old regens ported over (and the graphics on the faces whilst not perfect are improved) One disappointing thing is that I can't seem to add Japan as a playable league. Other than that, it all seems fine so far.

Just opened the game for the first time. First negative. Manager customisation is still unnecessarily complicated for doing simple things. It so obtuse for something which really doesn't even matter. I need a degree to figure out how to add and remove rings (hint: perhaps a single button to both add and remove the item would be a major improvement here). This is the same as last season (although it was worse across the board before and seems marginally improved for some things and not for others). On a positive note though, there is a remove all accessories button, which is probably what everybody is going to use. I would suggest that this should be the default though. I am confused by "Ability Aids" being a separate section. My guess is that it's insensitive to consider it an accessory, but I also find the wording a bit peculiar given I have close family members who probably wouldn't consider their deafness an ability. I understand this is splitting hairs at this point though. I did a google search for "ability aids" and it doesn't even seem like a particularly common term. Just very weird. Lapel badges are a nice touch. Immediately added the Kick it Out badge. All this stuff is rather irrelevant anyways. Graphics are what we expect from last game before the engine change.

My in game character is coming up to 80 years old in 2073. In order to avoid this I'm retiring and running it as a journeyman save (my son I guess?)

No? The documents files remain even with the game uninstalled.

Finishing up my final season then it's all ready to go.

a very taxing predicament

THEY DID A THING THEY DID A THING

Is it out yet?