[(FM23) Default France Leagues with Complete Coupe de France]

Impressive. I tried to get this working a few years ago but an update ruined the regionalisation for me!

[*Official* Football Manager 2023 Feedback Thread]

Some notes having picked the game back up after a very extensive break from playing and editing.

1. Scout cards are just as useless as the last time I played. I get that it is nice to have some kind of better scouting which relies more on words to be realistic. But my criticism of this still stands. FM is a numbers game - it is a glorious spreadsheet. I am never, ever going to buy a player because a scout says "sign him!!!!!". I am always going to check the player myself. Check his stats, check he will fit the role I want, check he has key attributes I value. So removing the player stats from the scouting card is as dumb a move now as it was when it was first done, and that means I also think the choice made was dumb. Scouting is not advanced enough to handle this. The problem is, there is not enough context in a report. My current report card says "natural in several position". I can see that from the positions he plays. "Displays a fairly determined attitude". What does that mean? Obviously I know what it means. But does he have determination 12? 15? In this case it is 16. I had to go check, because the report is next to useless when talking about visible stats. Where it is useful is hidden attributes. This player can adapt to living in a new country, is interested, is consistent but dreads big matches. Perfect case would be to give me the attributes, highlight key stats if needed, and then give me the actually useful info on hidden attributes as text. I know this will not change back, so at least make it better.

2. The fixture bug I used to get in my editor files from FM22 seems to now be in the actual game itself? This would be the bug where the season is massively front loaded with games, and then nothing happens at the end of the year. I am playing in the MLS currently, and it is the second season for me. Here is a breakdown of the games by month (I will only do league games, since I also progressed to the final of the CONCACAF Champions league which caused many games)

March: 5
April: 6
May: 6
June: 7
July: 3
August: 1
September: 4
October: 2

So the first half of the season, I play 24 of my 34 games. I have 10 competitive games in the final 4 months in the league. This is an absurd thing to be in the game, and it is not like this is unknown, I have reported this as a bug in edited files for a long time. But this means playing every single Wednesday and Sunday in the first months of the season. The AI is not good enough to manage it's squads properly to deal with this. 

Mostly critical feedback. There is good too, but at this stage of the game cycle, I think some constructive criticism is better. 

Edit: One more thing. Do I really need to be asked two questions about VAR in every single press conference if it was used in a game, for the rest of time? 

[The issues I had on FM22 are now appearing but 100x worse on FM23]

On 26/11/2022 at 07:24, Teferi said:

That's not how xG works.

A small number of high xG chances is better than a large number of low xG chances - but that is because winning 10-0 still only gets you 3 points. The latter team would have lower xPts than the former team, but there is no evidence no reason whatsoever that a team would underperform or overperform on goals based on xG distribution.

Your way of thinking is literally the old-school way of "small chances doesn't matter" and "clear-cut chances are good" that have statistically been proven to be inferior at predicting outcomes than xG.

xG is something akin to a probability of scoring a goal. But these are results of independent, unlinked events. Therefore adding the probability and saying when it gets above 1 you should have scored a goal by now makes absolutely no sense from the standpoint of the numbers. It will work because number of shots from a team usually correlates with how well that team is doing in a match. It is almost a surrogate outcome to simplistically model a complex system in a simple way.

As an example, your logic of many small xG is as good as few large xG boils down to something along these lines. If winning the lottery is a million to one and you play 1 million times you will win. That is the expectation value (from where xG gets its x, I guess. But the distribution is very large. It could take 500,000 tries. Or 3 million. Take an example of tossing a coin. You have a 50% chance of getting heads. You expect 2 coin tosses to get a head. However you can flip tails 3 times. The spread of expectation values is smaller. The probability of 5 heads is much lower. 

The point of these examples is that good chances work like coin tosses. You need much fewer of them to "guarantee" a goal (of course it is not really a probability but a model so it does not guarantee). Poor chances work like the lottery (although far less extreme, a D12 or D20 perhaps is better but more people are familiar with the lottery). You need to try more, and the spread of the number of times you have to try is greater.

On 26/11/2022 at 07:24, Teferi said:

Your way of thinking is literally the old-school way of "small chances doesn't matter" and "clear-cut chances are good" that have statistically been proven to be inferior at predicting outcomes than xG.

This is not what I said, and I hope it is clear from my description above. Small chances are fine. At no point did I say that you should exclusively focus on better xG chances. You should actually try to create as many chances as possible, because xG is not something you can control. But if you are exclusively producing low xG chances you are more likely to struggle (this is the "AH the super keeper was stupid I could not beat him the defence is overpowered for the AI" type rant when the probability is against you). And the fact that you can succeed by focusing on few very good chances is obvious, as it is the "one good chance, goal, I was FM'd meme".  You can make both work. And I'd most like to create a lot of very good chances. When you do this, you usually end up creating a few good ones and a lot of poor ones. And none of this takes into account the other factors in football. For example a goalkeeper fumbling a header into the net. There is no exact correct way.

The other point is that xG being included in FM did not drastically change how you succeed at FM. and in FM having a continuous dribble of very small xG chances has been a sign that your tactic is simply not creating the chances that are more likely to score. And then you struggle because you will have games where the probability is against you. 

[cant win away!!]

That is a seriously aggressive tactic to play away from home, and if you are not a top side it could come back to burn you. You have 5 attack duties here (I think positive and automatic results in attack duty, someone correct me if wrong). The only players who will be deep when you lose the ball after attacking at the two CBs and the BWM. Everyone else is out of position and teams are going to enjoy that. So much space to exploit and a lot of effort for players to get back into position. The right side of your midfield is also, and I'm sorry for being so blunt, but nonsense. Why do you have 2 APs in the same part of the field doing exactly the same thing and fighting for the same space? This makes absolutely no sense and is going to be generally not great home or away. 

How to build a successful tactic for away matches? Why do you think you struggle away compared with playing home? (Hint, it is all about how the AI plays against you). And once you know that, it should be more obvious what you need to do. Tone down the attacking intent, focus on making things a bit more solid. Watch games to see if you need to make any special adjustments. 

[The Formation On Tactics Screen Is Your Defensive Shape; I Have A Problem With This]

I mean what you say is valid, and points out some of the flaws of representing something as complicated as a football match in a game engine. You simply cannot replicate what happens in real life in the game, football is vastly too complicated for that. The tactics are the prime example of this. The game has to try to capture some essence of the way the game is played, and it does it using defined roles which then can be modified. It is easy to understand why they do this, because it probably makes the coding a little easier. And it does a pretty decent job. Typically an FM player will know what they want their player to do, and FM provides archetypes to do this. It means if we want a player who plays like a poacher, we can. Or easily differentiate between a maurading wing back and a defensive wide defender, for example. It is a simplicity thing for usability. I am old enough to remember the sliders, and they were infinitely worse. It was so goddam tedious to play with sliders until you found the magic combination that worked. And often you did not know why. However I know, for example, why having a striker who drops off a defenders (a DLF) will help create space for an IF(A) and CM(A) on opposite sides of him. I can set that up easily in the current system. Previously, it would have been a matter of hoping you found the correct settings by chance. This is not perfect, but I like it. I am of course in favour of having it improved if possible (I think the ME code is holding FM back a little actually).

As to the tactic on screen being your defensive formation, it is an over simplification. There are many ways to modify what plays do defensively as well as offensively. Pressing and man marking are the most obvious ones. This alters your shape significantly compared to what you see. The representation you see on the tactics screen is more a neutral representation. Or think of it as an average representation - what you will see on a heatmap at the end of a game. I regularly play with a formation that attacks like a 424 and defends like a 4141, and is called a 433 by FM. Go figure. Thinking of the tactic you see as a defensive formation is simplified. 

I think the reason why people do this is because it is easier to set up a defensive structure and then use creativity to create attacking movement. Also because attacking movement is more common compared to the relative rigidity of most football defences. So you can more easily understand and translate your desires for attacking by modifying roles and understanding how they interact. However I guess there is little reason why you could not do as you suggest. Setup with an attacking formation and modify it for defence. It would certainly be harder to do based on how the game works, but I guess it could be done. More often you are making both defensive and offensive modificaitons.

FM will likely never come close to the complexity of real world tactics. Which I agree is a shame. The way tactics work at the moment is a reasonable way to give users a good deal of control and is quite intuitive after the steep learning curve.

[*Official* Football Manager 2023 Feedback Thread]

If I am quite honest it is difficult to see a huge number of changes in FM23 compared to FM22. It seems well polished and runs well. Very light on new features, feels like a roster update with a few small things added on. Not a criticism of the quality, which is excellent, but the similarity.

Scout reports are still god awful though. The decision to not show attributes in a game that is entirely determined by attributes is still complete and utter nonsense. The scout reports are not detailed enough to make an informed decision. They are so generic, and players get a huge scouting boost based on their transfer value, for example. Which does not matter if the player has garbage attributes. The thing is, nobody is going to be using a scout report alone to decide to buy a player in FM. It can be used as a way to visually filter players and have them suggested without looking. But everyone is going to go check the attributes of that player. Because that is what FM is based upon. If the devs want people to use scout reports and scouting more, they should make it better and more useful, not hide info so you cannot see it. It was a big gripe in FM22 and it is identical here. At least make the panel editable so we can decide what information we want to see. It is an absolute chore to scout.

[[Solved] Pre-Game Editor]

Or you can search for Football manager 2023 editor in the steam search function if it is not showing up in your library

[The issues I had on FM22 are now appearing but 100x worse on FM23]

8 hours ago, Dance Seth Dance said:

This was 1 game before the end of the season, and it ended up -15.05. Obviously you're thinking "well it must be your players tactics", yet this is commonplace across all my saves, all my teams, all my tactics. Just finished my second season and with a totally new team and tactic, I've once again underperformed xg and am second worse in the table in that regard. 

It is absolutely something you are doing tactically. In fact I can predict what your XG graph will look like from these numbers. You have a steady stream of very small xG increases, like small steps, rather than big jumps. This represents creating a lot of very poor chances. So the xG will add up, but the chance of scoring each individual chance is low, so you always end up underachieving. It is always better to create fewer, higher quality chances. If you are seeing large chunks of xG increase and getting this, your players are not performing well. So the chances you create are not suited to them (lots of headers for players bad at heading, lots of 1v1s for players with terrible composure, etc). 

8 hours ago, Dance Seth Dance said:

2. Always conceding more than the xg. It's insane how many times I've had to watch my team ship 3 goals to 1xg this game. There is nothing more infuriating than watching your team go through on goal just to smash it wide, then see them run down the other end and score a screamer from outside the box. This season, 52.9xga, actually conceded? 64. You think I have a bad goalkeeper/defence then? 

This suggests you are giving up a lot of high xG chances to the opposition. No chance has an xG of 1, but if you keep giving up big chances, you are going to concede a lot of goals. Again, this points to something tactical in the way you defend. If I were to guess, taking these two points together. You are playing too high and too aggressive, and not leaving enough cover and keep getting hit by quick attacks by the opposition before you can get players back in position properly. Too many players forward limits their space, making it hard for you to create chances. While you gift the opposition tonnes of space. Just a guess, mind, only you can tell us what is happening. Look at the xG graph next time for some matches, and even post some of them so we can have a look. I'd be amazed if I guessed wrong here. 

8 hours ago, Dance Seth Dance said:

3. Goalkeepers are utterly pointless and do nothing. A good 4 star experienced keeper is no better than a 2 star newgen. Every now and then I think of putting a lot into my GK because I WANT to actually stop conceding horrible training ground goals all the time. So this season I signed Gazzaniga in Dutch second division, he's 4 stars. He's second in key players. He then has a save percentage of 70. Expected 85. He's so far down on saved goals prevented that he can't make the top 20, my keeper last season also could not make the top 20. My keepers in all saves typically rarely make the top 20. I genuinely do not get good goalkeepers. I'm actually gonna wait for the editor and do a test, giving 20 stats all around to a GK and put him in my team. I bet even with that he will still stand out and perform like a top keeper. Every save where my first team goalkeeper flops, I just put in a youth player who's 2 stars, and their save %s are usually around the same, if not better. So what is the point in having "good" goalkeepers, you may as well just get the cheapest as they have no impact it's pure coin flip.

If you keep forcing your keeper to face extremely good chances for the opposition, they are going to do badly. Unless the keeper is making errors leading to goals directly, he is only as good as the defence you stick in front of him. Relying on a keeper to make save after save after save of really good chances is a terrible defensive strategy. The aim of your defence is to make the keeper do as little as possible, and those things he has to do be as easy for him as possible. The keeper is a last resort, not the main part of the defence. This couples directly to point 2. 

If you want to fix this, you need to be willing to take a look at the way your team is set up, and to admit that you can improve your approach to the game.

[Are you using the squad planner?]

I do not see the point of it at all. I mean I do not have any need for something to organise my depth charts. I know who I rank where anyway, and the squad is not so big. It does not make it easier to check which players have expiring contracts, and to be honest I am always keeping that in mind as part of the squad planning anyway. It would be nice if there was a way to sort players into ranks of "offer contract with 24, 18 and 12 months", for example. The experience matrix is kinda nice to see the distribution of players in your squad. Otherwise it is just a new presentation of information that was already available elsewhere.

I will not be using it because I do not need it. I have always played the game keeping attention on when I need to offer contracts and building the squad with future in mind. This new thing is not really useful to me in that respect. I know my players, know who plays in what role, etc. 

[*Official* Football Manager 2023 Early Access Beta Feedback Thread]

7 hours ago, gunnerfan said:

“Wokeness” comes to FM. Sigh.

Pathetic comment. Grow up.

[[WIP] Africa Extended.]

11 hours ago, dino88 said:

hi these are 100% accurate? i've never played in africa so just curious so i dont need to cross check.

 

I do not claim 100% accuracy, because some info can be quite hard to find. And rosters in particular can be tricky. The league systems are as accurate as I can find info for, including changes in format when it is clear they have or will happen. Some cups may not be entirely accurate in terms of when teams enter, as often I had to build from the most reasonable stage I could fill (quite a few have regional rounds which I cannot replicate without adding a lot of teams). As are all the team details I have changed (stadiums, kits etc).

The Egypt file in particular is very accurate as I collaborated with someone who knows the league system in great detail, although I would advise against the third division as there is a lot of tidying up of teams to be done there. 

So in conclusion, they are as accurate as I can make them. But if you do find anything that is inaccurate I would be more than happy to hear about it. 

[[WIP] Africa Extended.]

All files are now updated for the new patch. 

Plus I have released a few more nations. I am in a little rush this morning so I do not have the time to write the details, but I will edit this post at some point to give the details of what is in each league.

Enjoy!

[[WIP] Africa Extended.]

Updates are incoming, sorry for the delay.

[Dont delete RUSSIA From the Game]

6 hours ago, Druid DR said:

I'd hope politics is left out of FM altogether.  Its a slippery slope.  Thousands of civilians have died in Yemen over the past 7 years thanks to Saudi Arabia bombings, is Saudi to be removed from the game too?  Like I said, its a slippery slope.  Where do game devs draw their moral line?

Bringing world politics into a football video game is a bad move.  Of course if SI are subject to FIFA or UK govt. directives, then that's a different story, its not their call and they're obliged to do what's asked.

Saudi Arabia do not have playable leagues in the game to start with, so it is a mute point.

Obviously FM must be updated to match reality. If Russia is kicked from international competitions and European club competitions, this should be reflected by the game. That is not a political statement, but a replication of reality. Similar to including Brexit in the game was not a political statement but a matching of reality (different severity level, but the last political thing)

Beyond that, they could remove Russia and Belarus as playable leagues (not sure anyone would particularly miss the latter, we could replace it with Egypt and all be happier). I have no particular feelings about this. If SI want to make a statement like this, it is fine. The editor exists, and you can add leagues back. Nobody really loses in this case.

As for politics in sport and sports video games, we already have it. Sportswashing is a thing, and has been for a long time. As long as statements remain general and are just a statement against Russia as a nation, and its leaders and their actions, then this should be encouraged, even. Why should we have to tolerate such things anyway? 

If it degrades into the point where there is talk about removing Russian players or the like, this is too far. A line must be drawn between Russia the political entity and Russian people. There has been too much xenophobia regarding Russians already with some of the talk (example, lets kick Mazepin from F1 purely for being Russian. This sort of thing is nonsense). We all should remember this. Strongly criticising Russia is not the same as hating Russians. 

 

[Advanced rules, multiple countries.]

14 hours ago, EnigMattic1 said:

Is it possible to have advanced rules active for 2 different countries? For example, if I have U-Sports active for Canada in a file and wanted to add NCAA for the US, can I do both on the same file or does it have to be 2 separate files? 

The way I deal with multiple leagues from countries which are in the same edit is to split the files into league specific changes, and non league specific changes. 

So in your example I would have 3 files.

1. All player/staff changes and any change that is universal to both leagues

2. A file for the Canadian league system, which contains the rules plus all team changes relevant to Canada (stadiums, kits, making sure teams are in the right leagues, etc).

3. A file like number 2, but for the USA league system, with the relevant changes for USA.

This was how I arranged my Africa files when I updated players en masse and then released leagues that worked with the player updates. It is most effective for ensuring compatibility, you want to avoid having the same changes in multiple files if possible.

You can in principle have multiple nations in a single file, but it adds its own complications. You can only verify the first nation in the file, and there are issues with the game not properly recognising nations when you start a game. I did this, and it works, but you have to do a lot of testing yourself to make sure everything is okay.

[Pre-game editor]

It is not quite clear to me what your problem is. Here is the steps for getting an editor file into the game, and you can tell me which part is not working properly for you, and we can troubleshoot.

1. Create the changes you want in the pre game editor

2. Save the changes in the pre game editor as, for example, MyChanges.fmf

3. S Click Start a new game.

4. Top right it says "Database". Click here.

5. A new panel will appear. It has a drop down menu for database (ignore it, at the time of writing there is only one FM22 database until the winter update releases)

6. Below there is something that says "Editor Data Files". Here you should see a list of all the files you made in the pregame editor. In our example, we would make sure that one called "MyChanges" has a tick in the box to the left of the game. Then click confirm.

7. Advanced setup, and set up the game as you want with leagues etc.

8. Check your edits are in the game.

 

Does this process work? And if not at which stage does it stop working?

[[WIP] Africa Extended.]

8 hours ago, kingjericho said:

Amazing work <3

It's a shame SI haven't put much effort into adding more African leagues into the official release. Licenses should be fairly cheap compared to other leagues and it's definitely something that would interest many people that do journeyman careers and share their stories on the forum.

I entirely agree with you, and I am hoping that can change. This whole project started out when I wanted to make some leagues in Africa for a save, and I saw the entire DB was in disarray. The DB itself has been improved incredibly, the guys doing the research there do a great job. Africa, however, does not seem to be a priority for SI. I'm not going to go on about it here, because I'd rather not derail my thread with this discussion (so let's not start a discussion). 

For now I will do what I can to bring Africa to life for the FM community. 

[Request: How to guides]

This sounds like a worthwhile thing to be doing. I will definitely be interesting in trying to do a few things like that some time later this year, when I get the chance. Mainly since I am not as active with the editor as I used to be, and it would be a shame to see the knowledge I have gained get lost. 

[[WIP] Africa Extended.]

New Nations Released

Angola

Girabola
Taça de Angola
SuperTaça de Angola
Updated the weather for every city to try to reflect reality better. Feedback on this welcome, if you notice anything, first time I tried it.
Managers, kits, stadiums etc added for teams likely to become playable.

Cameroon.

Elite One, including format change for next season
Elite Two (View only) including format changes for next season.
Cameroon Cup
Super Cup
Managers, kits, stadiums etc added for teams likely to become playable

 Côte d'Ivoire

Ligue 1, including format changed for next year.
Ligue 2 (view only). If anyone knows how the groups are determined, let me know. Does not seem to be regional.
Coupe de Côte d'Ivoire de football
Super Cup
Managers, kits, stadiums etc. added for teams likely to be playable. 

Links added to the first post. Enjoy.

[Preset tactics.]

I never really use the presets at all, and I do not particularly like them either. They give a false impression of the game and tactic building, for two reasons.

1. They are usually full of team instructions than can look somewhat overwhelming and players can think they need to always make tactics look complicated.

2. None of the choices are explained to a user. They are given as a finished product.

Taken together you get the mystification process of tactic building. The myth that you need many instructions is propagated. A player can get no feel for what each one is actually doing to their tactic because you get a complex interaction between instructions. And quite frankly it makes them awful starting points to build something yourself, because they are already so complex making changes is hard to fathom. This then links back to the choices not being explained. The game with presets is essentially telling you that this is how to play this brand of football (let's assume we are talking about a new user not at all experienced in FM and tactics). That is how people will often take it anyway. But none of the reasoning is explained behind the choices, anywhere (unless it is in the manual and I missed it, but I doubt it). No reasons why this role, duty, pair of roles, team instructions. It is like the old "give a man a fish..." adage. You are being given a finished tactic, but not being told how to make it yourself. 

I'm not saying it is a bad thing to have, mind, because at least people who have no interest or expertise in tactics can just pick something and play. But having the option there to also explain would be nice. I often thought about taking each of the presets, boiling it down to its core concepts, improving it and posting the results here, but I honestly do not have the time these days for such an undertaking. I throw the idea out to others who may!

[FM22 is beginning to feel like it's scripted]

It really depends what you mean by scripted. Of course it is scripted in the sense that it is a computer program, so it calculates a result based on inputs. However it is not scripted in the sense that this code will decide the user must lose this game because they won too many.

Sometimes you have to look beyond tactics for why you lose a football game. 

- Are your players complacent? Low on moral? Or something of this ilk
- Have you piled pressure on them in a press conference? 
- Is it an important game that automatically carries pressure (can quality for europe, win the league, avoid relegation, etc).
- How tired are your players?
- Are some of your players out of form? Particularly important for the players in key positions in your team. My team plays crap when my CM(A) plays crap, for example, so I have to monitor how he plays and will drop him for an player who is playing better if needed. Knowing your tactic like this is vital actually, but not much talked about because it is quite intangeable.
- Is the AI particularly motivated for some reason? They want revenge. Have a new manager they want to impress. Have been fired up by the manager and it worked? This is more difficult to spot, but in the same way you can motivate your team to an exceptional performance, so can the AI.

The main thing is sometimes you just have to take the loss on the chin. Sometimes there is nothing you did wrong tactically. Sometimes you get unlucky. Come up against an opposition who play out of their skins against you. Concede fluky goals. There is no point beating yourself up about losing one game. If you are constantly seeing the same thing over and over again, then yes you should probably be somewhat more concerned and spend time to work out what you are doing wrong.

[[WIP] Africa Extended.]

Update for you guys.

Sorry for the long delay in getting things out. I'm currently moving house so my spare time is currently occupied mostly with this. I have a couple of leagues that are pretty much ready to go, will try to find the time to post them this weekend.

Also do not hesitate to contact me if you find any errors, or you know the leagues well and find an error. I'm always happy to make things better.

[Editor Data Files - how do i verify a data file on the editor?]

20 hours ago, Barca_Boy said:

I try to add FM22 WINTER UPDATE - REAL TIME TRANSFERS and I still don't get it because I dont use editor at all. Can somebody tell me what exactly I need to do from the the beginning. Load database, add… Click here and there etc.

You are trying to use this file when you start a new game? Or what exactly are you trying to do?

[Why do my leagues only occur every other year? (Advanced rules)]

Happy to help =)

[Chance Conversion]

Does your xG graph look like a long slow increase with many, many low quality chances (as in they increase the xG by less than 0.1)? This means you are creating a lot of chances, but few of them are very good chances that should end in a goal. The GK probably gets high ratings because of the way it is marked. I assume a keeper making 25 saves in a game is getting a high rating irrespective of the xG of the shots. That is not something you should focus on.

What you should look at is the xG graph from your last games. Even post them here so we can have a look. If you are seeing lots of poor xG shots, spend the time to look what there are and how they come about. Also look at the large xG chances, see how they come about. Try to then tweek the tactic to make more of the later than the former.