Golob

The ME is much better and much worse vs FM23 at the same time. Much better: Optically much more natural players’ behavior, good diversity of moves, deflections, really interesting shots etc. Great job in improving the visual part! Much worse: ME outcomes make very little sense. We are simply passengers in this poorly balanced game. I started the season as Stuttgard with 8 straight wins, scoring lots of goals (at least two in each match) because the AI in ME cannot cope with high intensity/press tactics. I was like what the hell? It is obviously broken. Then the game thought the same … and apparently some scripted modifiers kicked in to balance the outcomes. My team absolutely forgot how to play, lost four matches in a row (against mid-table teams, including 2 home), scoring 2 goals in total. This is a joke after 8 wins with more than twenty goals. Simply cannot play the game that cannot generate realistic outcomes. And cannot go back to FM23 because I am already spoiled with the much better visual part of FM24. I wish I never bought FM24 and simply went on with FM23.

So many caring people…lol ”viewers may be misled by potentially erroneous and inaccurate information”, “we’re trying to help people like you to get accurate information”, “you checking (potentially) bad data is going to give you a bad result”…lol Thanks, but I do not need your help, fine on my own. I prefer getting more information from various sources and making my own conclusions. Luckily people like you are unable to shut the guy up.

EBFM, hope you continue with your videos. I find them very insightful. And please do not listen to people who try to shut you up and are afraid of doubts in peoples’ minds, because this is how the freedom of opinion and speech is killed. I prefer to get as much info as possible and form my opinion myself. Keep up your work!

It is amazing how many people make such naive statements. As if SI would not care about ensuring plausible outcomes distribution. It is so obvious that if a team overachieves for a prolonged period (human player or AI), certain modifiers kick in to limit this and avoid nonsence outcomes of the season. They call it complacency effect, other teams approaching differently, whatever. And, btw, playing more cautiously may make for the other team scoring harder, but it should not increase the probability of the cautious team to win. Otherwise everyone would play cautiosly as this would be a superior tactic. So, mid-season slump does exist for a very simple reason. The human player is much smarter and can overachieve in the begining of the season, but then this has to be limited. Though some players are so good at gaming the system that they manage to drag winning periods much longer. I am talking about FM23, because FM24 is still poorly balanced in comparison to FM23, so everything can happen there.

Possibly I missed this information, but could someone from SI or chat members clarify if another patch is planned before Christmas?… so that I could plan a new save. Thanks. Currently playing FM23, also have FM24, but I think it is one patch away from becoming a better version (assuming the patch will be an overall improvement).

I think I did not make some statements you replied to. I naver said it is programmed to lose. I always talk about probabilities of outcomes, not scripted outcomes. Also I never said human and AI are not treated equally. Actually I said the opposite - I think they are treated equally. That is probably fine that modifiers preventing a team from continious winning that would produce unrealistic distribution of outcomes are hidden behind complacency or something else, but this is very unclear and results in players frustration. I usually also play PDX strategy games, and they are much more transparent about game mechanics. You win or lose fully knowing why. So I probably just need to adjust to this “black box ME” thing

Yes, I read that post. How does it contradict to what I am saying? He mentions that there is a super long list of factors to affect outcomes. I guess it also includes the “accumulated” outcomes. Especially taking into account the phrase ”But all the above has to sit into the constraints of trying to produce an accurate representation of football. “ Though it may mean many things. As I said, nothing wrong with affecting probabilities of results with appropriate factors. It is just the need/use of some of them (related to reasonable outcomes) better to be minimized/unnoticable to avoid players frustration. At the same time, I think SI did a great job in creating the current ME and the game overall. We are just talking about potential improvements here.

I think you are mixing up scripting with modifiers. Two different things. For me scripting means pre-determined results, and I think/hope this is not in the game. Modifiers are another thing that affects probabilities of outcomes, and it is only reasonable that they do exist in the game.

Seeing Tottenham get relegated has nothing to do with built-in modifiers for ensuring reasonable distribution of outcomes that I am pretty sure exist. Otherwise it would be a very poor game design. I think the problem is that the game is not so good at modelling events progression and game statistics that would make the need to use those modifiers really minimal or mostly unnoticable. Moreover the balance between realism and fun for many players is apparently frustrating, which is probably another reason to introduce difficulty/realism levels.

I mostly agree with what you say, but I think the frustration with the game mostly comes from things that you do not mention here. The ME is probably enforcing reasonable distribution of season outcomes, which I can understand. Otherwise we would be able to see one team winning, say, 90% of matches (or even 100%, why not?). However the game mechanics are not able to prevent situations when a team totally and consistently dominates in terms of abilities and match statistics (apart from results). And this is usually the player’s team due to a human being smarter than AI (though I believe in ME treating all teams equally). This is when the frustration comes because the game becomes a fight vs built-in modifiers (for reasonable outcomes), not so much vs the opposition abilities/tactics. And this often hits mid-season when “normalizing” outcomes presumably kicks in.

The game already has two built-in mechanics for potential difficulty level setting: 1) Home / Away match 2) Traits in managerial style setup I guess these two might be used for creating some difficulty level slider, using modifiers that affect the first one and amplifying effects of the second one.

Some feedback from a newcomer here. I usually play PDX strategy games and, as a F1 fan, Motorsport Manager (unfortunately the recent F1 Manager is a disaster). FM23 is my first football manager game, and I initially found it really fun… until I became better at it after around 300 hours. I think SI made a great game overall. Lots of interesting aspects to manage and very engaging. Obviously after so many years of development the game is quite comprehensive. I guess it was also lots of work to bring the ME to the current level. However I think there is a big problem with FM23 (no idea how it is in previous versions). The player can do impossible IRL things, win seasons with weaker teams, quickly promote, in short, beat AI, which is great and what we want starting the game, though at a reasonable pace as we also want some challenge. But somehow SI made things that lead to player being superior to AI mostly hidden, while frustrating things exposed. AI is apparently worse with tactics, transfers, development, rotations, match handling etc, which is probably the main reason the player wins. This all results in player’s team domination on the field, much better match stats (not so much with score), high places. However, to rebalance outcomes, I think the ME has certain modifiers, which makes sense. Otherwise matches with the score like 12:1 or winning the season with winning almost all matches would be often seen. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that rebalancing is just against human player. It makes it feel as if it is against human just because the player usually dominates. I still believe the ME treats either team equally. And I think SI had to exaggerate with rebalancing, because AI simply cannot get even close to how the player can optimize team management and handle matches. Modifiers/rebalancing probably also help when two AI teams of very different strength play against each other. This results in rather frustrating experience, when you are still doing well in the season overall, but too often watch illogical matches, when AI has 50-100 % score ratio (to shots on target) several matches in a row, goal on first shot way too often etc. And the better you manage the team, the more frustrating the matches are. SI usually explains it with AI becoming more defensive as it recognizes the strength of your team, but this is probably just a part of the truth, as this would not explain AI becoming much more successful (in comparison to chances) in attack too. This is just my impression, though I surely cannot know how the ME works. A few other things that hopefully will be fixed: Woodworks. I guess no need to explain the issue here. Shots over gates. Feels like SI could not visualize missing gates on sides more often or slightly above the gates or make goalkeepers to cope with low shots. So we have to watch lots of shots way above the gates. Often very passive defenders. Exaggerated boosts to teams via shouts/morale or mentality changes. Newgens growth and their playing time in AI teams.

Sas23. Great skin