tacticsdude

It should be clear that tampering with people's comments is entirely out of line. If a comment violates regulation, there has to be a better protocol than quietly editing that person's comment without permission. There's something seriously wrong with the culture of this sub if mods think they have the right to alter people's content directly. It's beyond embarrassing and crossing into legally actionable abuse. I remember now why I stopped participating in this sub years ago. I will go back to discussing FM elsewhere on the internet where the mediocre SI power trip has no grip.

I hate how VAR has taken the fun out of scoring goals. IRL you are watching the game and you can tell if a player looked offside or if there was a foul, so the odds of a decision being reverted in a way that surprises you are slimmer. But in the game we can't really see with clarity what the refs are seeing, so we are entirely at the mercy of the VAR review. So now I can score an equalizer in the 89th minute and I have this nasty feeling that suppresses any joy until the VAR review is complete, and by the time the VAR is done it's too late to celebrate. I hope FM finds a way to make this better somehow, with some way to predict the outcome of VAR more like IRL.

Someone edited my last comment and changed some of my words. There are no mentions of my content being edited by the mods nor an explanation for the edits. Absolutely horrific way to run a forum. I imagine the same jackasses will now delete this comment too.

I play this way using a game editor such as In game editor. I normally try to earn my manager reputation first by playing for big clubs, and after building a trophy cabinet and a high reputation, I collect my earnings and "buy" a club I could afford from having saved my 10m/yr Liverpool salary. Then I might start in the 4th division as the manager of a tiny club. I achieve this by using the editor to remove the current manager (set their contract end date to today), and then I apply for the job in-game, which I get easily because of the reputation. From there, I am the "owner" through In game editor, which I use to circumvent a lot of the roadblocking from the board. I normally need the editor to override the budget decisions by the board, and to increase investment in facilities and allow more staff. Typically the problem is that the board is far more conservative than I intend to be, and they might block club investment even if I'm piling up hundreds of millions in excess cash. Generally, this approach works really well. I seldom struggle to get the board to approve say a stadium expansion. I want to do it from the in-game interface because I want the game to determine the expansion cost and timeline, and close one of the stands during construction and so on. So I might have to save-scum when asking for an expansion so it happens in-game, but it's usually not a problem if I'm already a manager with high reputation, and I've done my part to generate a couple hundred million of excess cash sitting in the bank, and I'm winning a lot and rated "untouchable". Then the board generally does whatever I ask and I only need to use In game editor lightly to make minor corrections. -- I believe the game designers don't want to add any "owner" component to FM. But I think this could be made easier if there was a way to toggle a setting that allows "full control manager style", which enables a few more toggles and sliders in the budget screen, and makes the board more amenable to requests. The game wouldn't have to change much or even use the expression "owner", we just need a version of the game that makes the board try more earnestly to comply with requests instead of constantly seeing itself as a roadblock to the manager. Honestly, when I "own" the club through In game editor, all I really end up doing is setting my own transfer and salary budgets (to increase them because we have tons of money), and increase the staff slots. And of the "hard" changes that I make to the game, probably the most aggressive thing I do is force a faster pace to training facility upgrades. Because the board seems hellbent on spending 3 million per year and stretch these upgrades out a decade, but I want to spend the 30 million now and have all my facilities revamped, and I simply can't stomach the board sabotaging our growth with their bad choices. So, if in-game the board knew to be more amenable to me, all of this could be done in-game if I had sliders for budgets and staff slots, or at least the option to keep asking to increase budgets and slots since we have the money. And an option to tell the board to stop sabotaging our growth and instead invest a decent amount in facility expansions. Then I would barely need the In game editor edits.

Here is another example in which there are 8 options to respond but none of them address the issue, and most of them are wrong. The situation is that the player is a CB that is declining with age. Technically, he was borderline good enough for the team at the start of the campaign, but his great experience and concentration made him an asset through the campaign. In the end we won the CL just barely, but now as his physicals keep nosediving, I have to replace him or watch him get trampled by the speedy attackers of the EPL next season. IRL the conversation should be: You have been wonderful and deserve all our respect and the medals we've won together. But you are aware that you are no longer capable of keeping up with the attackers of the likes of City, Madrid, Bayern and so on. In training, our wingers run circles on you. This team is mounting a campaign to defend the CL and the EPL titles, and if I put you in the game we'd just disappoint ourselves. It is time to find you a new club while we can finish on a high note. In FM, I tell him he is going on the transfer list, and below are my options. He says "I can fight my way into the squad". But the issue is that he can't grow faster legs. Back down: "I like the passion" - this doesn't apply. No amount of passion will allow him to catch a 17-pace winger. Convince: "Don't you want to see the world? Meet new cultures? Maybe get a pay raise?" - Also doesn't work. He currently plays for a club he loves, and just won the CL and EPL. He doesn't want to go anywhere and I wouldn't blame him. I also already pay him as much as he is going to earn. Escalate: This is basically the same as "dismiss". I'm going to ignore the argument you tried to make and tell you to leave my office. Threaten: "I wanted to treat you with respect... you are finished" - what kind of bargain-bin manager speaks this way to a team leader that has given everything he had to give? The correct option here is simple and should appear more often in conversation, yet it doesn't even exist in the game. The option is: Your current (or expected) playing ability is not up to the standard of this club. This is a common reason to dispose of a player. And the players should understand it, since they are familiar with their star ratings and often compare themselves to others. This player should be aware that they are being carried by the rest of the team, so hearing that the manager has noticed should not come as a surprise. Ideally, if there's going to be 8 options on the screen, one of them could be more direct to the issue at hand: You are declining as a player and I can no longer rest the weight of our campaign on your shoulders. This is the real issue in this particular scenario, and the player should understand this completely even if it hurts to accept it. To echo what I said before, this engine is not competent enough to have 8 options. Often the options are mostly wrong in general and may not apply at all to the issue at hand. I'd rather see a more abstract system with far fewer options. It would make it less painful, and increase the odds that something at least somewhat aligns with the issue at hand. An abstract version of the options could have been: 1. If you are willing to fight for your place, we can give it a go and reassess later 2. I believe this is for the good of your career 3. The club has decided that you are no longer a good fit for our plans And then that's it. No more theatrics. I'm the manager so if I put him on the transfer list, he is getting sold. I'm the one paying the millions in salaries, it's not up to the player. I don't need to threaten him, convince him, cuddle his tantrums and so on. The final word is: You are going on the transfer list. You have our respect and thanks for everything you've done. We are going to try to find you the best club we can so you can continue your career. Have a nice day. I understand that not every manager is strong and decisive. FM has gone a long distance in trying to create opportunity for a manager to let themselves be intimated or misled into bad choices. But the way this FM engine feels to me is nothing like I manage IRL. The engine goes the distance in offering the options of an incompetent manager, while seemingly forgoing the options of a competent manager. If you are going to assume on one end or the other, err on the side of assuming the manager has some skill for their job. Let's have way less of the childish temper tantrums and crappy dialog choices.

For context: I've been playing this game since 2008. An assortments of versions throughout the years including 2008, 11, 13, 17, 19 and now 23. Over the last 15 years I have logged thousands of hours. I find this game super easy, I have no problems winning. Also for context, I an a US tech business consultant IRL. I have been trained in management by high tier institutes. I've been in C-suite decision rooms for 2 decades and have been privileged to work with great business managers. --- From a perspective of proper management principles, the player interactions system in this game is a broken mess. I will allow that there's probably some cultural shock because I'm from the US and I've been trained in office comm / MBA style of management. But management principles are about human connection and getting results, so there can't be that much of a technical difference between what we do in US business management and what a club like Liverpool does in their backroom. Take the example in this screenshot as a start. The situation is that this player is being removed from the Euro competition roster, because we are an up-and-coming team fresh from the second division, and I had to revamp the club to make us competitive. So this player got displaced by incoming talent, and due to Euro squad limits he is not on the roster. What should happen IRL is that I would discuss with this player to explain that, as a Euro competition side, we simply need to raise our standard of play. I like the guy and I have immense respect for what he did to help us advance, but he is not a Euro-level player. This would not be news to him, he knows I got him on a free transfer and he knows his salary and place in the world. But even before we have this conversation, proper management happens well before today, when I set expectations for the season by letting the team know that we are not a "relegation battle" team but instead I'm going to pursue a top half finish and to try to get into Euro spots. So this player would have known long ago that he was going to get replaced, and then he would have seen his replacements come in. And I would have assured him all along that he is no longer seen as of sufficient quality to play here. So by the time we get to him not being registered for the Euro cup, he would not be surprised at all. Now, in the game, he is upset (which should not happen IRL if I was allowed to manage this transition properly), but the interaction screen gave me no option to tell him that he is not of sufficient quality. The closest I could get was the option that we were bound by Euro registration limits. But obviously that is not the same, because it doesn't address the real issue and it also sounds like I have done poor team planning. Then he argues that he is as valuable as some of the players I chose. IRL the correct response would be to clarify to the player that he is not as valuable as others, which is the reason he is out and not the others. Then we could talk about how he still has a place in domestic competition, and his position at the club will be reviewed at the end of the season, and he is welcome to decide on his own career at any moment and I will accept his choices and help him if he decides to move away. But in the game my options are: 1. back down like a moron, 2. Apologize and promise to do better (again like a moron), 3. Dismiss the concerns (also like a moron). None of these options are management as I understand it. Every one of these choices is wrong. Specifically: 1. Backing down is not required when doing proper management. A manager should be working from a plan, have made proper decisions, have communicated them effectively and early, set expectations, and influenced everyone to agree. All well ahead of conflict. Manager that do their job properly never find themselves in a position to "back down". 2. Apologizing would only apply if I screwed up, like I forgot to send in the registration form for the Euro tournament. Obviously that's not what happened here. I made a deliberate choice to keep this player out due to limits, but also because he is a fringe player now and he barely has a place at the club. 3. Managers don't dismiss people. The job is to preempt, handle, solve, influence, motivate, and get everyone on the same page. Telling people to jog off is not a thing in proper management. --- I picked this example as one that shows how everything about this interaction is wrong. It is essentially impossible to manage this correctly, as no correct choices were given. And that's the essence of how broken this player interaction system is. It tries to be excessively clever by prediction all conversations paths, yet it makes a mess of trying to be too specific with the issues, while not having nearly enough management foundations behind the interactions. But the largest problem is that the way all of these interactions have been implemented is that they work like what the player thinks the interactions feel like on their side. I imagine that to the player, talking to "the boss" feels like one-off exchanges that could go well or poorly almost at random. That's what this system feels like in the game. But that's nothing like what management is to a proper manager. I know ahead of the discussion how it's going to go, and exactly what I'm going to say and why, and I also anticipate how the worker feels about the issue and so on. I also have been setting the stage well ahead, to guide the person into the correct thinking, giving them the correct expectations. For the manager, the day of interaction should feel very different, with every outcome positive, and clearly aligned with the plan and goals. And the person should leave feeling heard, and having gleaned useful information on what's going on. Team Talks While on this topic, I'll bring up that the team talks are an unmitigated disaster in this game - truly unplayable. For the same reason as before except amplified by an order of magnitude. Because IRL, team expectations are set daily, throughout the campaign, in the way we talk, the feedback, the instructions we give. So for instance, if the media thinks we are a relegation side because we just go promoted, and I think we are a top-half side because I'm going to invest aggressively to get 10 quality players, I can't just keep that to myself and have everyone confused and mystified. The way this happens IRL, it begins at last season end when I congratulate the team for winning the second division, and tell them that the club will work very hard to reinforce the team and we have the resources to spend, so that relegation won't even be in the conversation next season. Then throughout the summer break, they see big signings coming in, and they see me sell many of our bottom players. Then we have the team talk and I say the work at the club is going great and I'm happy with the reinforcements, and there are more to come. I think we can fight for a top half finish, but let's get the season started and see what comes. Then by the middle of the season when we are hovering around the 7th spot in the league, I'll tell them that we are all very proud of their hard work, and I will seek to reinforce the team a bit more so we can try to fight to keep a Euro spot. Notice that the way this is managed IRL has no challenges in it. The players understand what the club is doing, and they have expectations months in advance. But in the game, if I attempt anything like what I've said here I'm just going to have a room full of angry toddlers in the team talk screen. To recap With all of this in mind, the way to "play" the FM game player interactions as of now is to just say what I think the players want to hear, and try to dismiss people as much as I can. Preferably avoid all interactions at all, and hope I can manage disgruntled people without talking to them. All of this is directly the opposite of what actual management is like IRL. Real managers seek to communicate early and often, and engage in interaction at any sign of discomfort or deviation from the plan. And perhaps the most important part of the job is to influence people towards the plan so they are in agreement and motivated at all times. If a player has become upset, management already failed, but even then the process of solving the needs of the players should still be positive and lead to shared positive outcomes. FM player interactions is a broken system primarily because it doesn't work like management. In many ways it's the opposite of proper management, with waiting for things to fall apart before engaging, and then having deep assortment of interactions options that are wrong, and very few or often none that are correct. There's a saying in football that the best defenders seldom have to do a flashy tackle. This is because their understanding, awareness and positioning allows them to contain things effortlessly, thus never needing a flashy challenge. The FM player interactions are to management like the rookie CB that has to do desperate slide tackles several times per game because he doesn't yet know how to defend properly. Tons of flashy challenges because the proper principles are not being applied. How to solve Honestly, the current system has been walked down the wrong path for so long, I don't see it getting better. It's been the terrible since at least '17 (which was truly a terrible version for so many reasons, the match engine is the worst I've used). Perhaps you could hire proper managers as consultants and have them attempt a revamp applying management principles. The building blocks of the system are not bad, the idea of having team talks and the dialog that shows promises and such, in essence that's not the problem. The issue is that all of this is way too deep to be applied so poorly. If it's going to be this deep and often, then it needs to nail the flow of management and the correct options, yet the current system is far from it. Sadly due to lack of confidence, my recommendation would be to drive the system backwards closer to what '11 had. A more abstract and simplified system that comes up less often. That system worked a lot better because it only had a 2 or 3 options of things to say, and they had been abstracted, so it made better sense to try to pick the closest correct answer in principle and hope for the best. It's still not proper management, but it was a lot less broken. Back in '11 I didn't dread player interactions, and I certainly didn't have to save scum to get past the terrible dialog options. Another alternative is to allow me to turn this entire system off. If FM has gone down this bad path for so long that it now feels committed to this system of management interactions, at least let me have a settings option to just remove this system from my game experience. Let the players be upset in the dynamics screen, and provide me an in-game path to satisfy them in time with other game events, without ever having to use the interactions screen. Like as it stands today when a player wants a new contract, I can ignore the chat screen and just give him a new contract, then he is happy. Or if I don't give him a contract, he can be irritated but he'll understand the club doesn't agree on his opinion of his valuation. Then he'll either accept the club's valuation, or become more unhappy, and then I'll have to either give him a new contract or sell him. And none of this requires an interactions dialog. So the interactions system can be completely turned off if you make sure that all game events that relate to players have in-game solutions that don't require talking to them or making any promises. As it stands now, team talks are terrible, and most player interactions are insufferable. For me as a user, a system this broken would be better off not existing.