rp1966

I'm now in 2030, so a few more seasons of watching the ME for me. Still would have expected at least a couple of DFKs (for or against) in your 3 seasons. Maybe there's something about the way you play that doesn't create/concede that many freekicks.

I find that a bit surprising - I've seen plenty of direct free kick goals managing Sapporo, Kaiserslautern and now at Lazio (both for and against). The most predictable and commonly scored one seems to be just outside the area on the right hand side taken by a right footer - you can tell when it's going to happen as the wall always looks slightly too far left. Ball is pinged into the top right corner and scored 60-70% of the time*. Those really long range shots seem quite rare, but then they are IRL, too. See plenty in the 20-25yd range. * the other outcomes being hitting the corner of post and crossbar, or the GK flying like superman right into the very corner to turn it round the post. EDIT: Just remembered I was watching Loki Doki yesterday and he had a DFK scored against him with a low kick through the wall - now those really are rare!

Happens a lot. I suspect there's some complacency/determination fiddling going on so that they make a reality of the "you're at your most vulnerable after you've scored" footballing cliché. SI do seem to love coding probabilities that reflect clichés.

I think the biggest reason that SI wouldn't allow modding of the match engine is nothing to do with code complexity - it's all about business. The ME is the area of difference that people most care about when comparing versions. Free up that to modding and SI have a greatly reduced ability to tweak the ME and market it as something 'new and improved' for a new edition of the game. Any ME changes would have to be beyond the scope of the modders to have any impact. Then there's also the fact that it would lift the curtain on how the ME works. Remember that after the Korean mods to the JSON file, SI chose to lock it down and remove the ability to edit it.

Whoever designs the response trees for interactions seems to have the objective of upsetting the balance in your team. Every interaction wants to either generate strife or force you into promises (which will likely cause strife down the line). Much like the transfer system I think it is an area SI feel they can game things to help the 'AI'. I'd go further and say that nowadays only the ME is treated as 'simulation' - everything outside that is fair game for manipulation to try to erode the human advantage. I think that's why those elements are so frustrating and out of line with what we see IRL.

The season's all but over and there's nothing to play for. The first team are in training for next season (FM25), but they'll field the reserves for the remaining matches of this season (FM24 data update).

... and the reverse. Seeing a lot of things that look like they should be penalties accompanied by the 'great intervention' commentary and also something totally innocuous will happen and the VAR box pops up to give a penalty. On those ones it doesn't help that you don't get a replay of the actual penalty incident. But it does seem that there's a bit of a mismatch happening between penalty incidents and the animations we see.

The trouble with this complaint is that the ME's main problem is that it creates far too many chances* and that is, given the length of time it's been a problem, a very difficult thing to resolve. So every time there's a groundswell of 'too many goals' complaints all SI do is nerf attacking play and the ME becomes dull and sterile. The FM 24 ME has already taken a step in that direction - the play in the final third is nowhere near and fluid as varied now as during the beta. Another nerf would kill it completely, leaving it like the awful FM20 engine. * not enough breakdowns of play in midfield or on the edge of the area, far too many defenders putting it out for a corner instead of getting control of the ball etc. Basically real games are much more in the midfield than any FM ME which sees too many attacks complete without mistake or interception.

I play on 3D and comprehensive highlights (TV as main camera and vertical scroll for replays). I almost always choose a team that is mid-table in whatever league I want to play in - I like to have a comfortable first season where I can shape the team to my liking without worrying about promotion or relegation. As far as transfers go I always set no transfers in first window and I take a slow evolving approach to recruitment - I'll only bring in 2-3 first-teamers per season unless forced to buy more because of unavoidable sales. Regardless of where I start I generally end up as a journey man as I find it difficult to resist job offers unless I have grown especially attached to my squad at a particular club. For scouting I always use the scouts - no player search or trawling international squads for me.

I would expect the league selection to work as it does now, but instead of selecting England and the leagues within the country you want active, you will now select England (men) or England (women) and the corresponding leagues to be active in your save. But that would obviously sit within one database so you can mix and match countries and leagues as you see fit.

I'd agree with that. Compared to the initial ME (which I acknowledge often generated too many goals) the attacking play doesn't feel as natural and fluid. Variety is down and if you watch games on comprehensive, too many good chances seem to end in unlikely misses or overly effective defensive actions (not quite the super-keeper or teleporting blocking defenders of some older editions, but heading that way) - It just feels a little obviously nerfed. I know that's a very subjective thing based on the feel of play in the match visualiser, but the initial ME didn't have that feeling. I think matchday feel and realistic play-by-play outcomes were sacrificed for more realistic scorelines at the macro/statistical level/

Yes, I would expect the ME to be another evolution of the existing one - whether Unity has some tricks (better distribution between CPU cores?) that will enable them to increase the depth of the calculations I don't know, but there's a huge amount of embedded knowledge in the current engine so I'd expect it to continue. Match graphics should certainly receive a significant boost, though that relies on SI having employed the services of better 3D modellers and animators. UI is where I think we'll see a distinct break from the FM18-24 look and feel. Will also be interesting to see if they take a different approach to newgen/staff faces.

It's been mentioned plenty of times before. It's a really awful UI design decision. I would expect that people have reported it as being a bug in the past, but I'm not sure SI consider it one - as I say, it appears to just be a stupid design decision that they've double-downed on. I think you'll find some skins have a 'tablet' that stays solid colours regardless of ball position. Not that anything in FM24 matters any more as it's the end of the line for this game engine.

Last year (FM23) someone making that argument threw a save file at the forum from immediately before a match. The player in question had replayed the match tens of times and always lost. He challenged anyone to get a win. A few people downloaded the file and had a go, and although no-one managed the win, a couple of those who downloaded got a draw. Better tacticians may well have got a win, but the point is that even a match that seems to have a result set in stone probably hasn't unless there is a serious mismatch in the team's abilities or negatives from morale, pressure, complacency, tiredness, home advantage etc outweigh what can be done via tactical changes, timely substitutions etc.

Not really, as with subscription if you stop paying the subscription you lose access to the game. Annual releases are different as you can always stop and then continue to play any version you own until your hardware/OS no longer supports it.

Only if the question is "how do we decimate the FM playerbase?" - DLC is no more an answer than subscription. EDIT - Just to expand on this - for DLCs you have the question of what would FM players actually buy as DLC , and secondly how would they feel if FM25 came out as a skeleton game with lots of functionality stripped out to be sold back as DLC - because that's how the DLC model works. As for subscription - people payting a monthly or annual fee are going expect something for that money - that means regular releases of sufficient scope and quality for them to feel a subscription is worthwhile (that's ignoring people's strong aversion to software subscription models in general). SI's problem is, and has been for a very long time, quality control. No change in business model will overcome that - it needs an honest analysis of working methods and why so many bugs are coming through every release and, more worryingly, getting carried over from release to release. Hopefully this is something that has been addressed in the FM25 build methodology, because if not I'm expecting a very poor launch - and being someone who was very hyped for Cities:Skylines II, only to find it's a very buggy, half-baked game - I really don't want that for FM25 as well (though I'm not optimistic - even MVP seems to be an aspirational level for new games releases these days). As far as bug fixes are concerned FM24 is probably dead now - they'll probably fix something that crashes the game and pick off some low-hanging fruit, but SI will now be focussed on FM25. FM24 is something they'll want to move on from with minimal further resource commitment.

You can check that in the team -> analyst report screen. I bet it's more spread out than you think. Human perception bias is a horrible curse ... Goals for: Goals against

I play on comprehensive. One of the reasons for the lack of play building through midfield that I'm seeing could be the very high tendency of forwards to be offside whenever a through ball is attempted from central midfield. Seems that play is far less likely to break down when the ball goes via the wings.

Role >>>>> Attributes. Been that way ever since roles were introduced. Basically the game is mostly role-Lego. Players don't matter nearly as much as they ought to. Add it to the catalogue of things everyone wants to see improved in FM25 (like that's really going to happen). The thing is for all it's faults FM is still a compelling and enjoyable game. Sometimes you just need to suspend disbelief a little and avoid doing things like this that expose the game's shortcomings.

Data Hub -> Team -> Analyst Report (your team needs to have analysts to see any data). There's then 3 sections on the left hand side that act like buttons (even though they look like info panels) - one for formations; one for scoring (the one you want) and one for conceding.

One or two ... I rarely find my players are running at the goalkeeper with no opposition as I play with work ball into box and generally I'm pressing the opposition back, so there's always defenders around when the shots are taken.

If the game was really that scripted save-scumming would be ineffective as the outcomes would already have been decided. Start of game - pkm generated by the ME holding details for full match 45 mins - neither you or AI make a half-time change so match visualiser continues to show original pkm 60 mins - you make a sub. New pkm generated for minutes 60 to 90 65 mins - AI makes tactical change and substitutions. New pkm generated for minutes 65-90 70 mins - You make a tactical change to counter the AI. New pkm generated for minutes 70 -90. It's possible that relative team strength, morale, complacency and match pressure can make a general result almost inevitable, but that's not the same as scripting the outcomes.

Great name ... took me a moment.

For me there's definitely too many shots hitting the woodwork. DFK goals happen, but they are much rarer IRL than people think - I think I see enough in game to be realistic. Long distance shots, I don't have a problem with - I've got one midfield player who literally only ever scores long rangers - 5 or 6 a season and I concede my fair share, too. As for being more robotic - I not sure that's how I'd describe it, but I think when they reduced the number of goals, the changes they made did seem to reduce variety in the play noticeably. The moves that happen in my tactic seem to be more predictable and repetitive than the ME during the beta. I still think it's better than FM23, but I feel we lost more than just the super-high scorelines.

As far as not seeing saves, that might be related to what's being chosen for the key highlights package. Try playing a few games on comprehensive to get a better feel for what the match engine is really doing - I see plenty of saves. Ratings is a whole other issue - goalkeepers only tend to get good ratings when they make lots of saves, so in my games where I generally dominate possession and most saves are by the opposition keeper, I generally see a good rating for their keeper and a mediocre one for mine. But then sometimes my keeper will have a good rating and I'll have no idea why. Like I say, keeper ratings can be weird.