Costav

Good thing to start with but please stop here if you're really enjoying playing FM. As stated in another discussion, the learning curve is brutal for new players, but once you understand how to master it is very easy to start winning and get slightly bored by the fact that, with a bit of patience, you very rarely underperform. That's why some of us started "personal challenges", in order to keep the game interesting and difficult. The more you watch youtubers the less you have space to test your own style, even passing through failures and bad results! At the end of the day you need to see it as a journey, there is not an objective to "beat the game" in FM. I remember (I read an article about it but never saw the video) that during covid some youtubers tested how to "hack" fifa (or PES/eFootball, call it as you wish). To me this is kind of breaking the fun of videogames, and watching too many youtubers' videos on FM sounds (in a smaller scale) a bit the same to me.

TBF, after the patch those two are mainly subjective. I saw a lot of complains about bad interactions, too much pressure on the manager, etc... but I never experienced something very bad or unlogic. Same thing for gegenpress: it's most probably the most powerful playing style, but you can definitely do well adopting other styles or variations on the theme... At the end of the day there are little things that were not cared enough and are worse than FM23, but ME objectively improved and the game, overall, is better than FM23 or 22.

Isn't it kind of normal? I mean, also IRL you have a lot of young players very promising that don't fulfil the expectations, has always been like this and will be always like this. The difference is that, most of the time, the Human manager make them reach their potential, while iRL you may make mistakes that bloc their growth.

Ok, maybe it's a very poor choice of word, I agree with it. Or maybe they should have codified the answers allowing for more diversity, although we should always remember that coding potential is in any case limited and there is balance to maintain between magnitude of the possibilities (i.e. diversification) and spec requirement to make the game smooth enough. What I mean is that some of the (neverending) complains are there just because some people want the thing perfectly at the nano millimeters as they have it in mind, and not trying to understand that, at the end of the day, it's better to (i) understand how the thing we don't like could be interpret from a different point of view, and (ii) accept that this is just a game and although we perceive it as the representation of the reality, reality will be aaaalways more complex than the game.

This is based also on club reputation (which is not only the historical success of the team but is based on level facilities and other hidden attributes too). If you have been just promoted, or they have been just relegated, Caprari could have perceived Troyes as a more valuable team for his career. Even IRL, some players decide to go to a lower league with the possibility of winning and having a great season instead of playing for a club that can be relegated (and the media prediction for Palermo shows that you can be involved in the relegation battle). Sometimes it happens, and I guess the game is structured in a way to take into account those situations.

I think that a very good idea, besides all the potential improvement on the tactical side of the game (i.e. a more realistic learning curve when a new tactic is trained, no OP tactics etc...) is to allow the possibility of choosing the player to press just as it is with the player to mark. Now, in the individual instruction panel for each player selected in the lineup, you can only define who to mark. This today has become unrealistic (or just a limited solution) because you want to trigger the pressing only when the ball arrives in selected zones or to specific opponents. To give the ability to your players to know who to press and then, in case the opponent doesn't have the ball anymore, to regain position will be a great improvement in the defensive/tactical side of the game!

One question: when you want to buy other players, do you usually make offers matching (or increasing) the transfer value or do you try to gain the best possible deal for you (even starting from a lower point to reach an agreement in the middle)?

I am pretty sure that every game since FM10 or similar had this issue as well. Basically if you set up a tactic (let's say 4411) and then you suddenly move the AM to the DM role, it will be listed in the original order, although you changed its position. It's kind of irritating, but I guess is a similar issue as the column width...last in the list of priorities...

I completely agree with this definition of the game. Once you know what is important to manage then your life as a manager becomes very easy. Additionally, sometimes I have the feeling that personality, tactics, and all those qualities that are supposed to be hidden (or at least not to have a direct identification of how they work) are useless. THE example is tactical knowledge for new players: in half a season can have a team with 100% tactical knowledge and, although this should be related to a lot of parameters (role, the interaction of roles within the line-up etc...) I've always found it easy to insert a new player and make it perform better (or as well as) players already in the team. In addition, in most countries if you have a series of negative matches you may start to be questioned by the board, players feel more pressure, and you may have problems with a part of the team, while in FM you may have two months of losses and, if you are still in the range to achieve the objectives the board assigned to you, you don't have to worry about. That is another big limitation of the game. Lack of pressure based on results and/or on the quality of your "football proposal". P.s. The only thing that helped me in the last years to regain interest and motivation in the only video game I play is to hide player attributes and rely only on reports and the octagon of quality. It, at least, allows you to make some mistakes in the market sessions and increases your "ability to fail" if you make errors in buying players, mainly because I feel that the scouting system for IA is different from the one used by human-manager. (you know tons of players you want to buy and make offers at the same time, while IA only buys one player per time, but the topic is too wide to be discussed in a single comment).

As far as I know it's still there. I used it yesterday.

No, I am sorry, I probably misunderstood your post or got confused with other remarks about the calendar. I was not referring to the back to back matches, but to the amount of difficult games in a row. Atalanta had this year Milan, Inter, Bologna (which is a competitor for the UCL) and Juve in a row. Roma had something similar in December/January. Regarding the back to back matches, this is a well-know method of calculation for calendars. It is the simplest method you can adopt (among the complex ones) and it has been used within other games too (I remember PES doing the same). Basically different teams have the same (or almost the same) order of matches. As XaW explained, you can change it in the editor.

See Rome, Atalanta and Napoli calendar in serie A this year....

IRL kits (at a lowest levels) are selected based on which kit the away team brings, i.e. the completely opposite from the what somebody would imagine. This is because home teams have (usually) their storage facility at the pitch (or stadium), so they can easily change their kit, while is unrealistic for away teams to bring all kits they have. At the professional and semi-professional level the logistic is much more "easier" to manage and more organize, they know in advance home/away kits for every team and they can bring more kits whenever it needs. However, kit decision is always managed by the teams AND by the referees, because there are several standards to comply with (for example, in European competitions they have chromatic standards within the same kit too) and kits needs to be adapted also to the kit of the referees.

Why exactly? Just assume some of them may recognize it but some other don't. Example: Philippe Mexes, season 2010. One of the best player in Rome. He did want to earn more, but he did not want to leave. The club offers up to its wage cup. He did not accept and, at the end of the season, he decides to leave. In negotiation, this happens.

In which year are you? It seems to me that rdf was in the first or the second year. There can be several reasons why Sporting has a higher wage cap. You can do comparisons only "Ceteris paribus", or in very similar situations.