Brother Ben

Reminds me of the 3 step rule on the old SI LLM forum. 1. Choose a team. Play the same team until you've won everything you can, regardless of how long it takes, or until you're sacked. Then start a new game. 2. Choose a team. Play until your reputation attracts the interest of ever increasingly bigger teams; change clubs as and when you're offered jobs until you're in charge at Real Madrid, Juventus, Man Utd or a World Cup winning manager with San Marino. 3. Choose a team. Do crap. Get sacked. Wait for another team. Do crap. Get sacked. Wait for….ad infinitum.',

My grandad won't be happy, he loves his Athlon 64

To be fair I wasn't implying they were taking/not taking notice of anything. I'm just saying based on my experience there are as many "the game is too easy" posts as there are that its hard. You make some fair points though, I bought FM23 and FM24 on release day and have yet to play either as i'm unable to drag myself away from my FM22 save.

I imagine quite a few will still be playing FM21 Touch considering its the last PC version

If they made it a lot harder this forum would be inundated with people saying the game was cheating them and that it was scripted. We have seen it time and time again on here and that's with the current level of difficulty. It wouldn't be my cup of tea necessarily as I'm pretty crap at the game but imagine if you could replace the current default tactics that the AI managers use with these so called "game breaking tactics". I dare say that would ramp up the difficulty. I'm pretty sure this is an option on CM0102 and I distinctly remember back then that it was a challenge to even make it to Christmas without getting sacked

What kind of heresy is this?

The issue with managers buying players is that when CM/FM was first conceived managers did indeed have pretty much full involvement in signings. At least in the UK. It's now become such a fundamental part of the game experience that its an acceptable compromise in terms of realism. To say as has been mentioned in this thread that it would purely be down to a DOF is nonsense. It's becoming the trend but my guess is that really experienced managers do have a huge say in signings. They just aren't involved in the contract side of it anymore. I know it wouldn't happen because its one of the major attractions of the franchise but when you apply for a job at a club I think you should be told what level of control you will get over transfers. Maybe you can even negotiate it at the interview stage. You could then as your career progresses earn the right to be more involved in signings. Things like choosing shirt colours a manager would never be involved in. If there are clashes then its up to SI to fix the game to make sure it doesn't happen imo.

Yeah there's loads I'd like to see gone, not least hiring/firing the director of football.

I think the answer would be that its not something a manager would decide

To be fair at that level he could well be more like a personal assistant putting out cones

Yeah it's clearly a bug. Needs reporting

I just want the experience to be more immersive. Other than that i'm fine with the incremental updates. I've very low expectations for the new graphics engine at least for FM25. Like most things it'll likely need a few editions to get spot on. Will be overjoyed to be proved wrong though of course.

I always think of FM as an RPG so the best version of the game for me is where my save has the best story or drama.

Loved all of that. The massive font, the drama, the accusations of cheating. A proper roller-coaster.

This is not true. Whilst it is true that the impact of playable leagues is higher, adding extra players will add processing time. I mean you could HAVE LITERALLY tested this quickly yourself.