As a referee myself, I always have a special views on the referees, ingame Situations including the referees, etc, and I believe referees and how they are displayed in the game need a big overhaul and update. I know they aren't that important to the game, but I feel like it would be a nice upgrade and QoL change.
First problem is the match engine and the situations it creates, which are not fitting the reality. I dont have any Data to prove that, but I feel like 90% of the sending offs are straight reds, and they are all for hard tackles in midfield. Last season out of 43 sending-offs in the Bundesliga only 20, so a little under 50% have been straight reds, and a lot of them were giving for DOGSO offenses, a thing that I have only seen once in 600 hours of playing fm23. Also those straight reds in midfield for reckless tackles are quite often only given after VAR intervention, while they are almost always directly given in FM. And while we discuss about Handball penalties every single week, they are not existent in the game, because even if there is a rare Handball in the game, the match continues with an indirect freekick, and thats just wrong.
Next thing is positioning on the field, but I just hope that this will get fixed with the new engine in FM25, especially the linesmen are often at very weird places.
At the end of the season you get an email that some referees did well or badly, and got assigned to new groups, but I have no clue what that really does. Most of the times its just 4 referees that had a bad season and none with a good one, and I dont htink these groups they are assigned to have an impact on anything. I would love to see referees actually getting promoted or demoted after a good/bad season, that would bring a lot more variability to the matchday to me if you are like 10 years into a save and a 3rd division referee has made its way up to the domestic League and gets to referee an important League game of your team.
A thing that really bothers me is that a lot of Champions League/European games, even very important matches, are being held without a real referee. I would guess this is because SI doesn't have more licenses for real UEFA Top referees, but maybe you could solve that problem if you give first division referees the possibility to get promoted to FIFA/UEFA referee. Obviously I have no idea whether thats possible with licenses and stuff, but seeing that empty field on a Champions League match day really annoyes me.
A bigger thing would be making referees more interactive and really include them in the game. It would be amazing if they would publicly back their decision or admit they made a mistake if I criticise them on a press conference, or even better if I could interact with them while a match is running, for example critizising them and receive a yellow card for that, throw a bottle on the bench out of frustration and get send off and my assistant manager would have to take over for the rest of the game and the next one, and I get fined for that by my board, or some positive things like thanking them and saying they did a good job after the game.
Obviously there are many more things that I have in mind regarding that topic, but those are the most important ones that I think would really make a small difference for everyone playing the game. If you need more ideas or anything, hit me up. Thanks for making an awesome game that I enjoyed for thousends of hours now and that made Covid way easier to handle <3
This is kinda 2 Problems in 1, related to Schalkes finances. First problem is the wrong financial situation in the game. If you start a game, Schalke has a Overall Balance of -116 Mio € and a 183 Mio € bank loan. While Schalke is in fact highly in debt, its basically only the 180 Mio Debt, as you can see very transparently here (https://schalke04.de/ir-anleihen/anleihen/), divided in more than one bank loan. Adding a negative balance of over 116 Mio € more doesnt make any sense and doesnt reflect Schalkes actual financial Situation and makes a Net Debt from 294 Mio € instead of the real ~ 180 Mio. This causes Schalke to go into administration in almost every savegame. Now to the second problem. When I started my Schalke Save I managed to get around getting into administration because my financial staff started to refinance. My transfer budget got frozen, debt started rising up to 330 Mio, they refinanced some more times and those 330 Mio debt are now just... gone. My finances are ok, my balance is around 0, and my net debt is around 3 Mio €. There are no consequences like point deduction or anything, All the financial problems just dont exist anymore. I really hope you can fix this, because I am really looking forward in a save where I have to stabilize Schalkes finances over the next years, but going into administration or the debt just suddenly disappearing are both things that really destroy this challenge. Thank you for making an otherwise incredible game that I absolutely love