forameuss

You're totally right. They shouldn't be concentrating on the one feature that would bring something completely different to the series, and would be much better concentrating on *checks notes* the totally not ridiculous or unrealistic dynamic PA idea and "comic-book style animations". It likely wouldn't stop me buying 24, but I'd be far more interested if women's football was present in full. Even more so knowing just how seething certain people are still getting over it.

If you're waiting for a "finished product" then you may as well wind up the series.

There was a workaround. There's a club in Bermuda I believe that only lets you sign players from there. You can copy that club over and change everything you need, and whatever country they're resident in, you can only sign those players. Bit janky, certain things don't work quite as well as they should, but it used to at least enforce a national rule. Not sure there's a way to do it by area.

For me it was always Christmas. Working for a US Investment Bank that obviously had interests around Thanksgiving meant that change freezes often stayed in place from mid November up until early January when you could reliably expect everyone to be back in place, such was the terror that things would go wrong when people weren't around to react to it. It was an absolute ballache.

The development cycle argument gets glossed over, but it would be the main logistical barrier to doing this. You lose three months likely, and that time has to come from somewhere for at least one edition of the game. Do you cut that from development and actually present a product with no changes (because things always change, regardless of how much of a change people believe they are)? Because I guarantee that for every one buyer that would be fine with that, there's a much larger group that wouldn't be. Do you cut it from testing/QA? Good luck with that. Playing with fire if you miss something really key. And that's not going into how shifting the window is going to affect how SI themselves work. That's not something we're going to have a window into. Any issues will be by no means insurmountable, but is it worth a completely disastrous edition just to move that window? Do the first months of release then become a big fight as to how much focus you give to the inevitable issues, or to bringing the database up to scratch? I don't think there's anything wrong with the the way the cycle sits now.

The order of the fixtures in the Premier League is licensed, and thus you have to actually hand over money to the Premier League to be able to use them. The ordering. Of fixtures. In a world where that's the case, there's going to be vanishingly little chance of something as niche* as this ever being allowed. You're then working with old versions of competitions that governing bodies may not really like you bringing up, and now this new raft of players who will probably all ask for some kind of compensation to use their license either individually or through some shadowy FIFPro style organisation. If it's even allowed at all. * by niche, I'm not saying no-one would be interested. The existence and popularity of the custom dbs people make prove that not to be the case. But given the absolutely enormous outlay it would make - both financially and in pure work - it would need to be something that brought in a ton more engagement or new users. I'm not convinced there's many features out there that could do the latter, let alone something that a lot of the community wouldn't really care about.

As others have said, FM24 has probably been in development in some form for a number of years. It probably moved into serious development the moment FM23 stopped being. And of course very liberal use of "probably" there, as no-one really knows that is actually going to say anything. Because until they actually say "Here's FM24", there is no FM24. Nothing more than that. It's said every year.

Now go and write down the list of players that do retire on a relatively normal schedule. Then as an additional exercise, write down the ones that retire earlier than that. I wouldn't be surprised if the latter list is a lot longer than yours.

But people told me that if SI didn't immediately jump on this yesterday then they'd almost certainly be winding up the company and the product by next week? I'm still yet to see any use case put forward that would really add a whole lot to the game as things stand. There's probably core concepts in there that could be adapted and followed up on by SI with a more tailored solution, but then those things were probably already on the table already. An interactive encyclopedia finding a hundred more ways to say the same thing isn't going to bring as much to the game as improving the original thing in the first place.

You mean like they used to before they *checks notes* completely abandoned the genre after getting stomped to death by SI's effort? There's very little chance EA are going in that direction. Why would they when they can continue to strangle the life out of their existing product and shake customers down for money?

That's a very bold statement to make with absolutely zero evidence to back it up. Every player is going to have different motivations and different feelings on self vs team. You can't just say what players want with any kind of certainty.

Is there a particular line in the sand with regards to size of company that turns a terrible idea of giving an indication into something they probably don't know themselves, or is it just random based on how irate someone is?

But...surely...surely you're not expecting people to have some kind of personal accountability and make a personal choice not to buy the game?! Well I never. Next time Miles frogmarches me to my laptop and glares at me until I enter payment details, I'll remind him that this is an option and jolly well go in a huff with him about the whole thing. But I'll still buy of course, because how else would I get to complain bitterly each year about how this whole situation is just the same as the previous year?

It's an absolute cast-iron certainty. Standard operating procedure really, hype something up to a level that is probably completely impossible to reach just so you can rage later when - shock horror - those impossible levels don't get achieved.

Or just don't give any kind of date, and it's ready when it's ready. What happens if on March 14th they accidentally regress something? There is literally no benefit to SI to give any kind of date, only potential damage. And for what? So some hypothetical person out there, who seems never to be happy, gets told a date that the patch likely would have arrived on anyway? Second part is right though. Odd behaviour from most given this is absolutely no different to how every single year goes.

It's not about the update being rushed, it's about each individual component. They could have meticulously prepped 99% of the update, and have it absolutely spotless, but if they let that 1% through in a worse state, that could be the game-breaking part.

You've caught them then clearly. The reason clearly can't be licensing when there are clear cases where some stadiums have some resemblance to their real life counterparts, but not enough to clearly identify them, in a game that is unashamedly around modelling the real football world. If only they had someone who "knew licensing and copyright laws" in the office and things would have been so much different.

Because they've decided on here that they can't have a negative counterpoint, so you can say something absolutely mental, and it'll appear as popular if there's enough people similarly mental as you. Would be better off having no way to upvote posts if there isn't a downvote to balance it out.

You're right, it wasn't that entirely, but people throw out lines about how the model automatically leads to innovation and incentive, when the one time SI have employed it, it didn't. I don't remember them being very generous with the updates (in fact, I seem to remember the ME being largely aligned to retail FM and its upgrade schedule), aside from them pushing the big red reset button when things weren't going well (then the big black death button when things were going really badly). The reasons for it failing were multiple, but ultimately the way they structured the worlds exposed the weakness, and the community gleefully kicked it to death. But in writing this, I've remembered that you can attribute some blame to the model, as it led to droves of people signing up to a new gameworld, then getting bored and letting their subscriptions elapse, leaving each world pretty much empty. I'd argue that had there been a retail model where you bought, say, a year, then that problem would have at least been kicked down the road a little, if not removed. Those same problems will still exist in FM as subscriptions fluctuate.

And the other big negative to note about subscription models is that SI already have history for providing one. FML wasn't the land of milk and honey, and it ultimately collapsed, despite it likely bringing in a pretty decent sum of money. Just putting it out and refusing to see anything other than fanciful positives is just wilfully ignorant. Heart's in the right place, but still not remotely realistic.

It absolutely isn't. Expect nothing, then you can only be impressed. Going in with high expectations almost certainly means it'll never live up to it. I'm not sure it's particularly miserable, it's largely realistic. The thing that amazes me is all this talk of lessons to be learned this time, or how things have somehow gotten worse. This is the same pattern that every single edition of FM (and CM before it) has had. Release a product that's fine for the vast majority but has many issues, a small number glaring, usually to a small number of people. Updates are craved, and when they arrive they will solve some things and leave others completely untouched. People rage. People moan. People threaten never to buy again. Autumn drifts into winter, and here comes FMN+1 and the cycle continues. The product has been a fairly consistent 6.5 out of 10 for almost a decade now. I'm failing to see where the surprise is.

Love the confidence in "it isn't licensing" when we live in a world where you have to pay extra if you want to use the real ordering of fixtures in the Premier League.

You're right, they don't have the pressure of a strict November release. They've now got the pressure of constant releases. It would obviously change things, but I'm not seeing the amazing benefits that people like to pretend there will definitely be. Some pressures disappear, some others replace them. But this is always the sticking point for this kind of stuff for me. People say that if they get all this continuous stream of money and they step off the hamster wheel of a yearly cycle, then things WILL get better, and they WILL get more time, and they WILL be able to release smaller updates. This is based on absolutely nothing but their own desires. Let's face it, SI are going to do whatever it is they believe will net them the greatest profit, balanced against what they feel is the most efficient way to work. Currently, that's the yearly release. There seems to be this belief too that the only reason they do things this way is because they can't be arsed doing it any other way. That they need some kind of incentive. What happens when you all move to a subscription model and updates happen at exactly the pace they always have, because that's just how long it's taking to fully test what they're trying to do? Development isn't just something you can turn the dial up on and get it done in half the time. More money coming in isn't just going to automatically mean you hire another developer and things get done 10% faster. It's not that simple. Yeah, the literal money fountain that is FIFA Ultimate Team has absolutely incentivised EA to make their product better, and not at all to make it demonstrably worse.

They offered an opt-in beta, and people refused to treat it in the spirit was intended, so it was withdrawn as a complete waste of time. A subscription model isn't going to magically change anything. All the things you said they could do under the current model. All it does is add more uncertainty on SIs end.

Now if the view was of the hanging gardens of Babylon, you might have a customer.