nb9

I have been massively critical of the development of FM in recent years. I thought last years addition was extremely poor and basically a rerelease of 22. You can read my posts on this forum, it's pretty much just me moaning. I feel like they have wasted time and effort adding features nobody is ever going to use, adding clutter to the game whilst neglecting the core of the game. Which I see as a valid critique. I saw the features for this game and once again I was extremely underwhelmed and expected more of the same. But... this game (so far) is significantly better than previous years & note, all the improvements come to stuff that was already in the game. The match engine is significantly better both in the way it plays and the visual look of it. You can actually see what players are good at and they have an individual quality that is visible, e.g. you can see when a player is a good dribbler, good passer, good tackler, etc etc. The game is extremely quick as well, processing is as fast as ever so bravo for that. There is still a huge amount to fix that's actually in the game - the menus for example are truly a cluttered mess and haven't changed in 10 years, it needs to be addressed hopefully in the next addition and will truly give FM a new game feel, and if SI read this and want to take anything from my post it's that i'll be hugely appreciative if they add absolutely nothing new to the game, just make the stuff already in it better and fix stuff that's been broken for about a decade. This game is a huge step forward which is the first FM I have said that about for a good few years now.

I think the value range addition was one of the most pointless in recent years. It took a very basic concept and just overcomplicated it by adding even more variables & it's never never accurate anyway. One of many parts of the game that has become cluttered & unnessesery IMO.

Pretty sure that is full release, not beta release. Games full release are commonly released at midnight.

I don't think they will ever release it at midnight, it will be during working hours UK ( i know they have released in the evening last few betas but thats still working hours for some!)

I'll always use the default skin for a few weeks but I can't play without faces or logos

Boring hat on but if they were going to release the beta today I don't think they would have organised YouTubers videos today. What would be the point when they would only be uploading more videos in a few hours of release anyway? It's not the logical thing to do from a marketing point of view.

At the top level yeah. But your last sentence just proves my point. The match engine is not balanced & it doesn't encourage playing a way that suits your players strengths nor encourage different systems. The best feature they could do is make the game actually interesting again to find your niche. Instead, everything evolves into gegenpress. It's just boring. Of course you COULD make it work playing anyway, but you could spent 10 seasons perfecting the perfect formation, and then switch to the bog standard meta & outperform your perfected tactic playing a different way considerably. That's wrong.

The beta came out at 6pm last year & 8pm the year before. There is time yet!

This is absolute nonsense. It is objectively more difficult to achieve anything in the game if you are playing defensive systems. You can build clubs over years playing a defensive system buying players tailored to that way of playing, then switch to the standard boring gegenpress attacking style with no effort and get much better results. Over and over again. Go and look in the custom tactics forum just for starters, almost all the most successful tactics play the same way regardless of perssonel. To suggest it's to do with not having the right players is disingenious. The match engine needs to encourage more variety in playstyle, that is a fact.

Is there actually any solid info that the beta is coming immintently, or are we just goofing around?

I don't care about new features or anything. The main thing I want from the game is to add variety in how it can be played. The series has become so stale because there is one way of playing the game successfully & it's attack attack attack with press press press. If you don't enjoy playing like that then it just becomes a frustratingly dull game to play. It's sad to say this but every addition they have released since 2018, the match engine seems to get worse and worse. You just can't make defensive systems viable consistently, if this is corrected in the new game I will be happy, but I have gone into the game thinking this for a good few years now & it hasn't been corrected. Not to mention the endless list of bugs. Stop adding so much clutter to the game & fix the stuff that's already in it. Rant over!

Ok, so I have been experimenting all month with defensive tactics and my conclusion is that it's impossible to get one to work well. The reality is, the more defensive you are in this game the more likely you are to concede goals. I couldn't ever consistently keep clean sheets with a very defensive tactic. I played 6 full seasons as Nacional in the Portugese second division over and over again with varying defensive tactics and then did the last season with an extremely attacking tactic. Can anyone guess which tactic kept the most clean sheets and best defensive record? Yes - it was the Very Attacking one with everybody pressing like rampant up the other end of the pitch - this was by a long way as well. I can post some more detail of my findings if anybody is interested? But it feels like the problem of FM in recent years only having one way of playing to be successful has never been more accurate than with this match engine, which is extremely disapointing considering they weren't the sounds coming out pre-release. Can anyone prove my theory wrong?

It would also help if they completely binned the current UI / UX and started from scratch. The whole menu system is cluttered and has real readability / visiblity problems. It needs to be stripped back to the information that's actually required. The term "less is more" is massively needed at SI - the game is getting close to becoming unplayable because of the cluttered menus. I don't know where to find half the stuff I need, and I have played the game for over a decade, I dread to think how a new player would find anything.

Isn't it about time dual club ownership became a thing in the game? You can't even list an owner more than once in the current game. For example, the Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis isn't even listed as an owner at Forest because he's the owner at Olympiacos. That's just the basics, but the way the clubs act should also be a thing. It's a massive part of football ownership now and it's just ignored. As well as affiliate clubs, owners should take over other clubs in other countries and provide a link that way with all the scouting, cheap players, loans, same board etc etc. Obvious it should be very rare but it would be a welcome addition.

I remember a couple of editions ago I had the Spanish 3rd division play-offs, and my entire team went on holiday because the game assumed the season had finished so I had to play grayed out players