[Numeric values are often obfuscated with words and/or strange graphical elements]

Do you know if Basic is better or worse than Poor? Half of these words look like euphemisms to me. Wouldn't make a difference to me if it said "probably not the best" or "could pass on a good day" (pretty much how the youth intake preview looked like at first)

[Numeric values are often obfuscated with words and/or strange graphical elements]

This is a grab-bag of similar issues. I've seen this improve for the youth intake preview feature, so hopefully more progress can be made on the front. I'll try to list them all:

• Facility quality description. They are described as average, below average, adequate, basic, poor, etc. What is "adequate"? What's the point of using words here? I would much rather have a number here (I believe the range under the hood is 1-20). On top of that, academy coaching and youth recruitment seem to use different sets of words.
• Player physical condition. It used to be a percentage, then a few fairly readable graphical elements on top like circular or straight bars, but now it's a strange heart shape (variable width makes it hard to parse visually) which doesn't display a percentage ever. The most reliable information here seems to be "Tired" or "Match fit" when inspecting the full profile. What's the gain here? Is this obfuscation intentional? It adds friction to the basic squad selection process.
• Player morale. There's a word, there's a colour, and there's an arrow which is an interesting choice. The arrow never helps until I can compare it with another player side by side and the word suffers from the usual issue - is "Excellent" better than "Superb" or "Extremely good"? I've never managed to instinctively remember it, instead I just ignore the words. When a player is unhappy I usually know from other sources anyway. Using a different set of words to describe factors contributing to morale (playing time, treatment, contract etc) adds further friction.

These will be the worst for non-native speakers, but I believe native speakers (of all languages, when playing that language in FM) will experience the issue. From my personal experience, having lived in the UK for a long time I still can't intuitively put those adjectives in order, and I can't imagine it being easier in my native language. Perhaps the "range" used to be "very bad/bad/average/good/very good" so it still made sense but expanding it made it blurry.

 

[The Data Hub UX is very frustrating]

The current data hub requires me to either rely on a selection of charts from the staff (not recommended to anyone who ever relied on staff AI) or about five minutes of clicking on everything only to fill the screen with a disorganised list of charts.

What I mean is this:

 

• To get everything I want, I need to go through a three-level menu multiple times for every screen (team, player per position, etc).
• The menu is itself disorganised (Match Momentum, Pass Map, xG are football terms, while Polygon and Scatter graph are data display terms)
• Dropdown lists can easily go out of focus if I move my mouse by accident.
• When I'm done, there is no way to organise all the tiles in a sensible way
• The "ask for" widget is on a dropdown and can't be visibly pinned. I'm not sure if it's going to disappear if I hover outside it or not, and this uncertainty makes me more cautious about moving through UI that already requires a lot of time.

I feel like the intent here was to create "immersion" by having to "ask the data analyst" depending on my need, then presumably wipe the screen every time (?), but that's absolutely not how real people play games, never, ever. I don't want to have a conversation with my UI. I want to look at it and see things, and I want to organise it at the speed of thought. Once I've done it, I want it to remain useful. In a real conversation with a real data analyst, I would tell him "please give me all stats which would help us find the optimal way of progressing the ball". There was no manual work here involved. Then I would tell him "I want this report updated real time from now on".

What I would like here as a player is:

• A more organised UI divided logically into areas of interest - not a blank grid to throw charts at
• Areas prefilled with basic stats and with an option to add more charts - or just give me all of them, whatever
• No 3-tier dropdown lists I have to click through all the way for every chart, just give me a list of tickboxes. FM is notoriously bad at using screen space
• Ideally, I would like to add my own screens with several charts. For example "defensive performance" would be tackling across all positions, goalkeeping stats (basic + advanced), maybe defender passing. Leave this up to me, let me keep it for later.

[[Suggestion] Make the Schedule screen focus on the current events]

Currently in FM2020, when you go to the Schedule screen, it starts at the top. It would make more sense to it to focus on the next or last game played.

[Football Manager 2021 Wishlist]

New features take longer than 6 months to make, you know. Try making a FM 2022 wishlist instead.

[[Discussion] Both transfer and contract negotiation screens should display current/existing/previous numbers at the same time]

For example, here we have a typical contract negotiation screen, I used a staff member cause it was more accessible:

 

First of all - why is the current/previous/existing switch on a dropdown now? It used to be three immediately accessible buttons, it's still like that in transfer offers, someone put effort in to make me click twice as many times in FM2020. Please revert, 90% of my screen is unused there, we don't need to squeeze.

Ideally though, I want to see my previous offer and the existing contract at the same time while I'm negotiating the next offer. There is more than enough space for three columns of numbers here. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that in 99% cases negotiations in FM can be immediately completed by making an offer exactly halfway between yours and theirs. So you have to keep flicking back and forth between those offers, and for your first you'll want to look at their current earnings.

[[Suggestion] Display the international performance report in the actual email.]

I think this screen could use the same template as the Loan Report, which displays data right in the inbox.

[[Suggestion] Loading bar tips - move them somewhere we can actually read them]

You know, these tips?

The reality is that if you have time to read them, your machine is probably too slow for the game. Instead, there could be a "tip of the day" box that opens every time you load the save, or a "tip of the week" (in-game week) for those people who never even turn their machine off. It's annoying that there is a lot of useful knowledge that someone put time into writing down and we can't really access it.

[[Suggestion] Roaming defensive mids]

I think the BWM does that, at least while defending.

[Mid-game tactical instructions over voice/headset]

I think it would be too hard - it would have to handle all possible names of all newgens in the database, in all languages. So a huge database plus a massive testing effort for the studio. I mean, half of the UK can't even pronounce "jalapeno" correctly.

[[Suggestion] Player development rework idea]

10 hours ago, sammayel666 said:

Isn't this just PA by another name?

Sorry, I haven't explained that well enough, edited the original post now.

And sure, there has to be some mathematical ceiling to how good a player can be, but now it's separate from their personality and IMO unrealistic. You have youngsters with perfect personalities capping off at 140 at the age of 21 (Trent Alexander-Arnold in earlier versions, for example) because RNG says so, nothing you can do about it. Similarly you will have people with 190 PA capping off at 110 and there is nothing you can do about that either, because you can't coach their personality. On the other hand youngsters with high PA and good personalities are almost guaranteed to reach that ceiling and the only thing that can stop them is a complete lack of play time.

The whole point of what I'm proposing is to make player development less predetermined and more something that you can/should put effort into.

[[Suggestion] Remove the "General rehab" individual training option]

Head Physio, seven Physios, Head of Sports Science, four Sports Scientists and they have to be told to put a guy on rehab after 3 months off? This isn't fun, interesting, or realistic, only artificial busywork, especially since I can set training intensity to change automatically depending on their condition. The game should just automatically suspend all individual training until the player fully recovers.

[[Suggestion] Player development rework idea]

The current development system, if I understand it correctly, goes generally like this:

1. A player is spawned with a Current Ability, Potential Ability, and a bunch of mental attributes that affect their development speed
2. At set intervals the change to the Current Ability is calculated. It depends on their playing time, league level, presumably happiness, training, training quality, mental attributes and age.
3. Points are added to Current Ability and distributed proportionally in some form across their specific attributes, presumably depending on their natural position, or just starting distribution of attributes.
4. Current Ability can never exceed Potential Ability.

I don't like two things about this:

1. The distribution of attributes is pretty much determined at youth intake, ensuring roughly the same mental and technical profile throughout the player's career, unless he starts at very low CA and has enough PA space to steer away.
2. CA is capped by PA, which leads to some players peaking very early despite having very strong personalities.

What I think would be a better direction:

1. Remove PA. Potentially introduce a new "Talent" hidden attribute that would affect development speed similarly to Determination, Professionalism and Ambition currently.
2. To balance that out, make player development less predictable, more malleable, and less limited by age. Right now I can open Genie Scout, look at a player with a decent personality and say "yep, you're going to gain 10 CA a year and you have to peak by 25, therefore you'll never reach your potential". This is just completely unrealistic and also leads to players hoarding wonderkinds and creating loan farms, since the most important thing is playing time. Some ideas here:
   1. Raise the "peak" age for technical and mental attribute progression. There are lots of examples of players changing their game after 25. In FM they can only get better by 1-5% (but significantly worse after a bad injury, with no chance at coming back). 25 might be the physical peak (there are still exceptions - see Diego Forlan) but if professionals in other fields develop way past 30, why can't footballers drastically improve their positioning sense after 25? It's just nonsense.
   2. Make individual training more impactful. Getting rid of the PA cap would help. If I have a guy doing extra finishing training for a year, I expect him to get better at it by more than 5% (perhaps affected by personality - Cristiano Ronaldo doing extra free-kick training was definitely more effective at it than Ravel Morrison doing hypothetical extra free-kick training). That's just how training works.
   3. Make player interaction affect their personality, not just happiness. Praising players after good performances and criticising them after bad ones should give their consistency a boost. Ignoring it should let it remain low. Similarly, harsh disciplinary action should affect their professionalism. This would change pretty much a third of the game from pointlessly risky to engaging and important. Currently, speaking to players is like talking to the police in the US - at best you come out even, at worst you get punished. With it affecting young players' personalities, it would be possibly very rewarding.
   4. Give better descriptions of players' personalities in their profiles to facilitate the above. How am I supposed to make decisions based on "Fairly sporting"? How do I know who to put in which mentoring group? Should I listen to my assistant (definitely not)? Use some informative human words here.
   5. Make important events affect players' personality, same as injuries temporarily limit bravery. Severely injuring another player could limit the offender's dirtiness (or not). Winning 3 CL finals in a row shouldn't keep the "big games" attribute at 7. No, I don't care if it goes from 7 to 9, this guy is a bloody world-beater now, make it 15. This sometimes happens in the current game - I've seen one or two instances of an "off-field event" changing someone's determination. I've seen it once or twice in three years. That's bad. You might not read about it in the sports press every week, but those things do happen all the time (and more often than people moaning about new contracts, which seems to be the primary form of human interaction in the game).
   6. Make player friendships with each other and the manager affect their personality.
   7. Make the base rate of personality improvement faster if they're around more experienced/stable players. It's really just how growing up works, I'm sure I have become more professional and consistent at my job than just by 4% since I was 15.
   8. Etc, etc...

I think these changes would improve the game a ton. Now player development is basically making sure they've got a good club to be loaned to for 4 years with enough play time, and bringing them back when they are guaranteed to peak even if they stay on the bench at my club. It's a waiting game, after 20 seasons I kinda want an instant result button because the journey is less interesting than the destination, and the destination is known. I think the systems to make the above happen are already in the game, they're just not pronounced enough. Would be nice to see some improvement here instead of "oh hey boss, I was thinking about making more money but the fact that you clicked on this button makes me feel like I don't want more money anymore, thanks fellow human"

[[Suggestion] Colour-coding/tagging messages in the inbox by category]

Yeah I thought there is probably a skin like that when I noticed the tag on the side. How is it called?

[[Suggestion] Colour-coding/tagging messages in the inbox by category]

This is fairly self-explanatory. Hands up whoever never missed an important message in the sea of random news? One time, I missed a message about my player leaving - another club just paid his release clause so it didn't require a reply and I just noticed a week later that he's gone. Had to reload back to the start of the transfer window and give him a new contract.

I'm sure everyone can come up with a bunch of ideas on how to improve the inbox - after all, we all have email accounts - but here's a little mockup, with messages colour-coded:

Hilariously enough, this feature is almost done already - messages are colour-coded and categorised, only display the tag in the opposite corner, once they're opened. It's so pointless it's almost funny.

This tag icon could be reused along with its colour in the list view - as long as it's noticeable.

Another nice feature would be to be able to select messages which always prevent me from continuing the game until I've read them and clicked "accept" - sort of like an immediate-response scenario, except without a choice. Good examples would include a board takeover notification, a player having their release clause paid, a player leaving on free transfer, and other dramatic developments you normally don't have an input on but might want to react immediately to.

[Less writing and more numbers and graphics where important/numeric information is given]

This is less of a concrete feature and more of a "can someone take a good look at this".

Some information is better presented in the form of numbers, especially if you're supposed to compare them. It is a big issue both at the start at the game (harder to figure it out) and later on (repetitive text, mentally exhausting), because it makes information way harder to parse and for non-native English speakers (like myself) it can just be unclear what it means. This is the best example:

• Is "plenty of promise" worse or better than "caught the eye"?
• Is "not up to scratch" worse or better than "of poor quality"?
• I hope "top prospect" is a world-class player (speaking of which, is "world-class" better than "elite" or "leading Premier Division player"?) but maybe "caught the eye" is better?
• How is "do not look like great prospects" quantifiable?
• Actually, why do I need to know how bad are the bad ones in comparison to each other?
• Are these sorted by quality?
• If they are sorted by quality, why do I need to know about one random guy's hometown?

Now, I still need to read ~10 lines of text to get some information out of it, and that information is unreliable (by design) anyway. Too much mental work and I would rather just wait for the intake day. It would be nicer to have some sort of UI layout for this. I think a formation screen with some 0-5 star ratings and additional info on quantity would be the easiest to look at.

I understand that the game needs flavour text to feel "alive", but at the end of the day it's about effectively consuming information and making decisions. After 20 hours, stuff like this becomes noise and just tires the reader. I've seen this approach change in some screens, like club vision/expectation - that screen has less text and more bars, and that's great! Let's have more please. It would be nice to see a stronger readability effort in the coming releases.

[[Tactics] Fluidity calculated only based on position role, not personalised role]

When you change position roles in the tactics screen, it impacts the team's fluidity. However when you switch personalised roles it has zero impact.

This results in the overall tactical freedom not matching the roles you have selected for your current line-up, and therefore the tactical familiarity going down.

I have seen this behaviour at least since FM 2017 now.

 

Steps to reproduce:

1. Set up a new tactic, best from a template.

2. Fill all positions in the tactic.

3. Change roles for positions, NOT personalised and watch the fluidity change. Remember/write down which roles you set.

4. Set up a new identical tactic.

5. Fill all positions in the tactic.

6. Change roles for positions, this time personalised. Use the same roles as before, just personalised for each player.

Expected: Fluidity should change.

Observed: Fluidity remains the same as it was for the preset tactic.

Screenshot comparison below, the entire team has personalised roles on the left, no personalised roles on the right (I made them all Support to maximise fluidity):