theinfamousmielie

So I went against my better judgement and bought this game. And to absolutely nobody's surprise, the issue with staff numbers at the start of the game being utterly wonky (certainly for some clubs) continues, despite me having complained about it for years. Guess I'm in the extreme minority of people that think it's totally insane for a club to have hired 10 coaching staff members, almost all with just-renewed contracts, but actually be unhappy with that and only want there to be 2 ... since pretty much nobody is talking about it and SI don't ever reply to me about it. That is the case with Dorking Wanderers in VNL right now. They won't be the only club. This. Doesn't. Make. Sense. When the game starts, the board needs to be set on whatever staff numbers exist IN REAL LIFE. Unless the club is in an insecure or worse financial position. Forcing players to decimate their backroom staff when they were the ones that in real life hired them is just dumb IMHO. Hey .... maybe Unity can help fix this :P

Can anyone confirm if this is still an issue in the game (specifically, the staff numbers thing, but the surprise "going professional" question remains relevant too although I'd be surprised if anyone has quite had enough playtime to experience this just yet) I'm really not keen on purchasing this year if this is still an ongoing issue.

Really? Nobody has an answer to this? :(

So all these feature drops and quality of life stuff is all wonderful. Good work. But there's one issue I've had in FM for years now. I've reported it several times. And I'm very tempted to not bother with FM24 unless this insanely dumb issue is fixed. Staff number limits are wonky when starting a save. Here's (some of) my previous posts on the matter: https://community.sigames.com/bugtracker/football-manager-2023-bugs-tracker/dynamics-interactions-press-conferences-club-vision-supporter-confidence-staff-appointments-meetings/maximum-staff-numbers-at-start-of-game-too-low-at-some-clubs-have-22-scouts-max-allowed-is-16-have-9-coaches-max-allowed-is-5-r9441/?tab=comments#comment-70958 https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/568484-official-football-manager-2023-early-access-beta-feedback-thread/page/9/#comment-13765534 https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/569294-official-football-manager-2023-feedback-thread/page/4/#comment-13794849 Can someone from SI please confirm whether this issue has been resolved yet? An extra bonus fix for me would be this one: https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/573734-more-warning-when-a-club-might-turn-professional-please/#comment-13948713 I hope that there can be some actual official communication about this. Until I get some information, I'm unlikely to pre-order or purchase this year's edition, despite the positive-appearing improvements elsewhere ... but I _love_ FM so I'm super-hopeful that finally I can be assured there are no longer these issues!

So I know that when you go into certain leagues you're forced into being professional. That's fine, because those are hard-and-fast rules. But I'm currently into my second season with Dorking Wanderers, a semi-pro club in Vanarama National League in the first season. Several times throughout the course of that season I would make board requests to turn professional, and was denied. The most recent time was after winning the FA trophy, making the playoffs (but losing in the first PO match after getting FM'd) and generally having a very healthy financial projection. Now Dorking's stadium does not meet VNL rules, but there's obviously a grace period situation for that first season. However, nothing was done about the stadium until I finished my first season, at which point "NEW STADIUM!" is announced. That's another issue though ... if you know you're gonna need to sort that out, at least announce that earlier. The main problem I've experienced - and I'm sure many others have too - is that my semi-pro club suddenly and mysteriously decided to turn professional a few weeks after I last asked the board to consider being professional. This was at the end of a successful season, and because I'd been routinely denied I had assumed we would stay semi-pro for the next season. This was fine, so I was proactive and signed some new players, renewed some contracts, revamped my staff, and generally put a lot of time and effort into making my financial situation even more positive whilst actually improving the squad and staff. All on Part-time contracts, of course. And then, out of nowhere, it is decided that the club is turning professional. This is great news! Except I've literally just renewed all the player contracts and bought a bunch of players that I was able to. I missed out on some players _possibly_ because I wasn't full-time and couldn't offer them things. Staff members don't want to update to full-time contracts because they've literally just signed their previous contract. It's a mess, and it could have all been avoided if there was a news item from the board saying "we're considering going professional at the end of the season (insert date here)" If the board request maybe said "not now but at the end of the season we can go professional" when I asked then that would have also worked. It just feels like I've wrecked my season somewhat and now have to cope with a 'full time' club with only part time staff in a way that the agency was taken away from me when it really didn't need to be.

Recognising fully that this is probably largely intended as troll-bait ... I'm going to bite. Sign of satisfaction is a stretch. FM23 is not all bad. It's not a steaming pile. It's still a good game. But it has some issues - some more glaring than others. And people are sick and tired of reading (and posting) about them without any clear evidence that any of their issues will get addressed before the new year if at all. Sour taste has been left, and people are rightly frustrated and upset.

Yeah, I just saw that response. I've responded in kind with my suggestion. Obviously I don't know the codebase but I'm not asking for total rewrites, I'm asking for a multi-year old bug to be fixed, and I'm even offering a way for how to do it - it shouldn't be anywhere near as hard as suggested and if it is then I think they ought to scrap the codebase and start from scratch because it's clearly worse than the 15 year old monolithic legacy hellscape of a PHP webapp I toil away on for my day-job. And I thought that couldn't be beaten. My reply: https://community.sigames.com/bugtracker/football-manager-2023-bugs-tracker/dynamics-interactions-press-conferences-club-vision-supporter-confidence-staff-appointments-meetings/maximum-staff-numbers-at-start-of-game-too-low-at-some-clubs-have-22-scouts-max-allowed-is-16-have-9-coaches-max-allowed-is-5-r9441/?do=findComment&comment=70958&d=8&tab=comments

@Zachary Whyteforgive me, I don't wish to be rude and this isn't directed at you ... but I call bullpoop. "The whole system will need an entire rework" I can't see how this can be true. Obviously I don't believe you can write 2 lines of code and fix this ... but it's not unreasonable of me to assume that there's a routine that runs periodically that ascertains whether the board is satisfied with the number of staff members for a given "slot" (i.e. coaches, scouts, performance analysts etc) and comes up with a number that it deems as "the maximum number". Yes, no doubt there are lots of factors that goes into what that maximum number ends up being, but I'm not suggesting that these factors be altered. So when this routine is run for the first time in a save for the club (and AI clubs) simply check if the current number of staff is greater than the maximum number of staff. Yes, it is? Then set the maximum number of staff to that number. Not difficult. And then, when this routine is run going forward, a club health check can be performed - is the club's finances spiralling out of control, or is the club stable or even rich? If it's insecure or worse, then by all means become a bit more tight with the staff numbers ... ("The board feel that the coaching staff is too large ...") although please don't just base it on reputation which is never and should never be an indication of a clubs ability to have and pay staff. But you can largely use the same calculations that you're currently using, perhaps with a bit more leniency in terms of the numbers (i.e. don't expect me to have to fire 75% of my staff unless I've literally dragged the club practically into administration) So to summarise: * At game start, set the maximum staff numbers to the current staff numbers in all categories if the current staff numbers are already greater than the initial max. * Tweak the existing logic to make sure that a board that wants you to trim the fat doesn't actually expect you to trim way too much That's it. I struggle to see why this needs "an entire rework" that takes a significant amount of time and resources. We're not asking for a staff system rewrite. You can't seriously tell me that for 4 (or more) years nobody on the dev team has noticed this and thought "this isn't right, we should really fix this..." So I'd like to know - whether it takes significant time and resources or not - is this issue going to be fixed this year, or should I pre-write my complaint post for in advance for FM 24?

I might be wrong here but I think that a good number of people would prefer if SI did the following: Release a game. Call it Football Manager. Do away with the concept of "beta" and treat that period as early-access, so as to remove the expectation that every bug will be fixed by "launch". Charge £49 for it. Then, over the course of 3 years, feel free to not add new features, but fix bugs and improve the match engine over time, take user feedback and use that time to also develop the next game, building on your match engine, but new/reworked features come exclusively in the next game. During those 3 years, you can have invitation-only alpha playtesting with members of the community and let _their_ feedback actually guide development as well. Every year, release a data update. We all know what that is. This update can be paid-for DLC, but at a much reduced price (£12.99 anyone?) Use the time to not half-bake features and experience, and actually by the time the 3 years goes, you will have had enough time to do a good job actually making what your customers feel is a NEW GAME rather than a glorified data update, plus earrings, watches and rings. Then, as I say, 3 years later ... boom ... Football Manager 2 Sure, SEGA and SI might think they'll make less money, but is that really true? I'm not convinced that's the case.

That is fair, but international management is a whole other game mode. I'm talking about one single (and frankly fairly simple to fix) issue

I don't care about what other games do or don't do. I know all games have bugs, all games have issues with comms - SI isn't unique here. I can tell you what the main issue is - a yearly release cycle with publisher pressure and a mandate to ensure that there is at least enough features in play to justify a new full-price release. This need trumps any other, and as such resource gets allocated accordingly. I understand business, and I don't have expectations of perfection. But after 4 years of the same issue persisting (or even more, it's just when I started logging it) I'd expect some movement. And as a vaguely technical person myself, I don't quite see where the problem lies (certainly not with my specific issue of the staff numbers) and while I know that making a code change would have several cycles of feedback and review and such, a minor revision in logic when the game determines what the 'max' number of staff should be at the beginning of a save is NOT a full module rewrite nor should it be unaddressed for 4 years - leaving it as such whilst continuing to add features that don't really add value just leaves a very sour taste in my opinion.

Yeah, for sure. Adding watches and rings are definitely worthy of developer resource! And those extra animations, phwoar ... without them the game just wouldn't be playable. (Yes I know that's an art department thing really) I'm not saying that every issue is on the same level, but while _you_ may not think of it as game-breaking... it kinda is, because it can DRAMATICALLY affect the efficacy of your ability to grow your players etc. It's not only big clubs. Dorking Wanderers in VNL have 9 "coaches" ... out of 4 allowed this year. This makes it impossible to replace them without gutting it even more. So it's not a "big deal" but at the same time it really is. Just like many other issues. If you don't have enough resource, then hire more people. Hell, put the price of the game up to £39. I don't mind. But fix the issues - or at least be more transparent about what level they're on and if there's likely to be a fix.

Ever seen your opponents forward surge through your central defenders whilst they just stand there watching him?

Yet another year (4th year running of me reporting it) where a fundamental and basic issue of staff numbers has been reported and not fixed. Why does a club have more staff than they're allowed at the start of the game. That's the staff, it's not made up. So the club hired these people (especially those on contracts!) and yet somehow it doesn't fit into their expected numbers. I'm a programmer, but it doesn't take a programmer to understand this. if (startOfGame === true) { if (numberOfCoaches > allowedCoaches) { allowedCoaches = numberOfCoaches } } Obviously there's a bit more to it than that, I'm not naive ... but come on, really? 4 game versions _since I've reported it_ and it's still not addressed? What is the point in these "betas" if you're not going to fix the issues that are brought up in them? This really messes up the starts of a save, every year. So frustrating. Could someone tell me if this is ever going to be fixed and if so, when? This way, I can stop buying the game in hopes that my support means it's more likely that actual improvement will occur! (And yes, I did post this on the bug tracker - it's a "known issue" ... thanks ... https://community.sigames.com/bugtracker/football-manager-2023-bugs-tracker/dynamics-interactions-press-conferences-club-vision-supporter-confidence-staff-appointments-meetings/maximum-staff-numbers-at-start-of-game-too-low-at-some-clubs-have-22-scouts-max-allowed-is-16-have-9-coaches-max-allowed-is-5-r9441/

So I guess not worthy of getting fixed. Giving the managers earrings, watches and rings is prime importance, but fixing a YEARS OLD ISSUE - naaah. Seriously considering a refund at this point. I've attached my Liverpool staff numbers from a fresh save. And for the hell of it, here's my screenshots from FM20 and FM21 (forgot to save my one from FM22) saves with Dorking which exist as attachments in the forum because of how long ago i posted about this bug.