[Football Manager 2021 Official Feedback Thread]

14 minutes ago, JordanMillward_1 said:

You can see their reactions on their individual button on the player list across the bottom of the screen.

Through the little smilies at on the bench? I thought this might be the case, but seeing a player going from :-\ to :-| or :-| to :-)  doesn't seem to have the same impact as seeing 'player is fired up' or 'player is overwhelmed'. It just seems another way where the visual impact of management decision is made more difficult to mentally process.

I would love it if in the next patch, SI introduces the ability to view team meetings and feedback in the original list format rather than the 'in the room'  or 'on the bench' format. There's a reason why lists have persisted in software for presenting information for 30+ years: they are very easy to visually process, especially on a busy background like a picture of an office or a picture of a dressing room.

Imagine if you turned up at an airport, and all the departure gates and times were listed in a big circle depending on their terminal and the map of the airport, rather than just a straight list of

Gate 1 - Atlantic airlines: 1:15pm
Gate 2 - Pacific airlines: 2pm
Gate 3 - European airline: 4pm

And you were in a rush, you know which gate you have but you have to hunt it down on the screen rather than just being given a list. Given airports (this year excepted) process millions of passengers a day, they haven't changed how they present information (in lists on a plain background) for years, it is just much easier to visually process.

The 'bench' format doesn't even make sense for players that are actually on the pitch.........

 

[Football Manager 2021 Official Feedback Thread]

19 hours ago, luka_zg said:

Anybody ever seen VAR check let the goal stand? It's always disallowed.

It was like this in FM2020, every VAR check for a foul was given, and every VAR check for offside was given as offside. In 21 seasons I didn't have a single VAR check that didn't fall this way.

Sometimes the ref would run along to the monitor in the middle of the pitch, just to prolong the tension, but VAR always resulted in the same decision -

VAR is it a penalty? - it's a penalty
VAR is it offside? - it's offside
VAR is it inside or outside the box? - It's outside

The VAR is a token gesture to VAR, it's not realistic. As soon as you see VAR called you know what the result will be.

[Football Manager 2021 Official Feedback Thread]

Has anyone yet worked out how to see how your team have responded to touchline shouts? In FM2020 it was obvious, there match panel display clearly showed the player reaction to the shouts (fired up, overwhelmed etc.), however in FM2021 there appears to be no obvious way to see how your players have responded to your shouts?

[Substituted player stays on pitch - cannot make any more subsitutions]

I had planned a subsitution in a match, just before the opponent scored. What then happened was the substitution was cancelled, but the player stayed on the pitch and was marked as Substituted and I could not take him off, even though he was still on the pitch.

Player in question is Akanbi, you can clearly see he is still on the pitch, despite being marked as substituted. When I select to substitute him, I get a message that max subs are already played........ Whenever I hover over the Akanbi's 'sub icon' it just says he was substituted off on whatever the current minute of the match was, but he remains on the pitch.

As a result of this bug, I was only able to make two substitutions in this match.

No addons or skins, standard latest Steam version of the game.

 

[Same match showing twice in Schedule]

I had this happen with my preseason friendlies, but didn't pay much attention. But now I have the same match showing twice in my schedule for 28th November. Not using any addons on skins. Steam version of the game.

 

[Football Manager 2021 Official Feedback Thread]

I've played Football Manager since the 90s, when it was called Championship Manager. I took 9 years off when they switched to the 3d match engine (my steam catalogue shows I last purchased FM2011 but barely played it).

In March I got a new PC with the XBOX game pass, which lead me to try FM2020 again, and it sucked me right back in. The UI was excellent, the fact you could assign away boring tasks like training to assistant managers was great, and you could just focus on the core gameplay of the earlier editions - transfers, tactics, and matches, and the game engine and 3d match engine were both good.

I sunk over 500 hours since March into FM2020 before I accidently lost my save when rebuilding my PC. So I thought, if I have to to start my save again, I may as well get the latest version: FM2021.

And my heart has sunk. While I appriciated the match engine improvements and graphics improvements, the UI is a complete and utter mess. It's like a new version of MS Office where they have just moved the icons around for no reason at all. Basic things like the next match info now being at the top rather than the bottom left means you can't see it while the game is processing.

The new skin is far too dark and ugly, and the matchday overlays are horrible, it's information overload and it's really hard to find the right part of the screen to look at. I hate that you cannot centre the 'match tablet', even if you turn off the dugout the match tablet is always right-aligned.

The gestures are nonsense. They are just rebranded 'emotions' from FM2020. Just because I want to be assertive doesn't mean I want to point at someone.

The team meetings, while I see what they are trying to do, by spreading the players all over the screen rather than in a simple list in the middle it just makes it much harder to see at a glance what the reactions are. It takes much longer to review all of the reactions, and it does not make the players feel more 'real'.

As I start my careers in the lowest league, the covid stuff doesn't really affect me.

It's a real shame, the actual match engine and match graphics are far superior to FM2020, but every other element of the UI is atrocious, it's just like someone has thrown up information all over the screen with no thought on how the end user will visually process it, and the colour scheme is far too dark. I am desperately waiting for someone to create a light skin.

If I hadn't accidently lost my FM2020 save (season 2041 - 500+ hours in), I would have skipped FM2021 as I really feel with FM2020 they hit the sweet spot with a great UI, great accessibility, ability to tailor the elements you manage to focuse the game on the areas you like, and a good match engine and graphics.

I would have been happy with the exact same UI, none of this gesture nonsense, an updated database, and the updated match engine and match graphics. Nothing else needed to change.

The UI changes and gestures just feel like change for change sake, without thinking of the end user, for the purposes of selling a yearly iteration. If SI can release and 'FM2020' skin for FM2021 that rebranded the gestures (they do the exact same thing as the old 'tone' options), then I would be very happy.

As it is, I'm hugely dissapointed with FM2021 and feel it is a huge step backwards, match engine and match graphics excepted.