theinfamousmielie

October 20, 2023

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

October 19, 2023

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.

October 19, 2023

Really? Nobody has an answer to this? :(

October 13, 2023

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:

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!

March 1, 2023

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.

November 11, 2022

5 hours ago, Os said:

Strangely quiet in here, sign of satisfaction if you ask me.

Congratulations SI on the new edition of FM.

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.

November 8, 2022

1 hour ago, HighFlyingDwarf said:

As someone who very rarely manages big clubs from the off, this one honestly has me speechless, and it's very very alarming to see the response in the bug tracker.

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

November 8, 2022

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.

November 8, 2022

Just now, Just4Downloads said:

International management hasn’t been improved in 15 years! Beat that!

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

November 8, 2022

2 minutes ago, wazup said:

I think the main issue SI are having is a communications issue. Reading this reply and others.

Do any other games provide road maps for their customers?

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.

November 8, 2022

1 minute ago, wazup said:

Ok lets look at the Staff issue with big clubs, they have more staff than allowed when they start the game.

SI are aware of the issue. However, there area number of other issues which Si are aware of.

I imagine a review into the issue comes back, we will have to redesign and build the whole module. which will take x number of developers around x amount of time. However, Resources are limited. A priority list is drawn up. It is marked as low priority. There more important bugs which may not be as visible as this one which are getting worked on.

This isn't a game breaking issue, it is annoying I agree. But SI don't have a magic wand

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.

November 8, 2022

2 minutes ago, Os said:

I'm very happy with this years release.

I have played every version of FM on Full 90 minutes match highlights from start to finish and think I am well positioned to opine on Match Engines.

The Match engine is very nice and entertaining so far this version, Players looking more like their real life counterparts.

Nice movements and passing patterns and really responsive changes from tweaks.

I was hoping the ME wouldn't change too much from the Beta.

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

November 8, 2022

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/

October 24, 2022

On 21/10/2022 at 17:20, diddydaddydoddy said:

There isn't anything in the DB when researching that details how many scouts you can have, so if I identify 23 that's how many I put in the game. Can you log it as a bug please - I agree with your logic on this

Thank you. I've done so. I don't have confidence that it'll be addressed in time for release but you never know

October 21, 2022

Yet another year where the starting staff member numbers at some club exceeds the game's opinion of how many of that type of staff the club should have.

I've complained about this for several years now. It. Doesn't. Make. Sense.

For example Liverpool have 23 scouts but only "space" for 16. This means that I can't actually replace a scout with a different/better one until I've literally fired 7 scouts. I don't want to do that, because I shouldn't have to.

Dear SI, I love the game, but this is basic stuff. When you start a save, especially if the club is financially stable or rich, the max number of staff should never be less than the actual number of real life staff hired by the real life club. After some months, I don't mind if the board then suggests trimming the size or whatever, but if I want to switch out Joe Bloggs with a different scout I shouldn't be stopped from doing so. I shouldn't have to fire 7 scouts in order to replace one and end up with a 20% smaller scouting department.

Every damn year. Please sort this!

December 8, 2021

Posting here as requested by @Kyle Brownfrom my original bug report post. Content is largely copied/pasted from that post and lightly edited for clarity, as per his suggestion.

This has been a problem in FM for many years now, and it doesn't make sense. It never has.

Different clubs start with different numbers of staff already employed. This mirrors real life as close as possible, and so when Liverpool have 20 scouts in the game, that's because they've hired 20 scouts in real life - there might be more, but the point is, the data saved against this real-life club is that when you start the game there are X number of scouts. Or coaches. Or Physios. Whatever.

However, pretty much whenever I pick a team and play, these "real-life" staff numbers are always too much for the board. For example, my Dorking Wanderers save - I start with 5 coaches (including Ass. Manager, GK Coach and Fitness coaches) but the board - who are the ones that would have hired this number of coaches in the first place - now suddenly has decided that the club should only have 2 coaches in total, and so now because there are 5 coaches, if I want to replace one of the coaches with a better one, I can't - I'd have to fire 3 coaches and only then can I replace the one I wanted to replace.

This is so so stupid. I understand the board wanting to minimise the number of staff appointments for a club that is insecure (or worse) financially - but when one starts the game with the majority of clubs then the board should be content with the staff numbers. After all, why did they hire or retain them if they were unhappy with the number? And where is this number that they would be happy with coming from?

Surely, at the start of the game, the board should be content with the staff numbers, whatever they are. An exception can be made here for clubs that are already in administration, or are in trouble financially. This would mirror real life a bit more as the desire to cut down on staff and creating redundancies. In this case, perhaps this could be a part of the club vision/manager expectations - to trim down the size of the backroom staff (and/or playing staff too, perhaps?) - with varying degrees of importance to the board. For a secure club the reduction could be favourable. For a club on the rocks, it can be required.

Perhaps as the season progresses, the board can then assess the benefits of the numbers of staff you have in the role and doesn't necessarily lower the limit, but perhaps adjust the expectations for manager performance accordingly so that if you're going to want to keep that larger-than-desired backroom staff, you'd better have the success to back it up. Perhaps a manager with a higher reputation or job security can benefit from more "leeway" from the board on this, as can success for the club.

I suggest the above fully aware that it may not be the best solution - I'm not 100% sure what is - but I know for certain that it freakin' sucks having to gut your entire coaching setup just to improve one guy... it seems wrong.

You can see this in action with Dorking Wanderers, or Liverpool, or I assume numerous other clubs.

Happy to hear thoughts on this!

June 5, 2021

On 24/05/2021 at 00:55, UKFA said:

If the graphics engine is inextricably intertwined with the match engine in some spaghetti then no offense, but that's bad coding, you should know that as a software developer. There's no reason SI can't do what FIFA or PES do, they don't even make their own graphics engine they just use pre-existing ones, in FIFAs case Frostbite wasn't really designed for FIFA and that's part of the reason for it being clunky. They already do motion capture, that can be applied to any graphics engine using the existing data. It's not something magical and special that EA do, they just have a higher budget to hire more devs and get the latest shiniest motion capture tools. And they also have access to a decent graphics engine, but now so do SI via Epic

Nah I have no interest in FIFA, I was simply making a suggestion for the devs for consideration, they can take it or leave it as they please. It's probably not gonna happen, although I appreciate you saying they can't do it cuz they are now more likely to take the challenge just to prove you wrong

I don't have any real knowledge on the architecture of Football Manager itself, and I wasn't suggesting that the match engine and the rest of the game are programmed poorly in the sense that they're linked together with piles of spaghetti-code.

What I am suggesting with my relatively limited knowledge of game engines and game development is that Football Manager has been built upon years of work that they've iterated over and improved but ultimately is part of the same set of packages with the same set of dependencies under the hood - for example when there is no match going on there's no rendering going on, and you can access the interface itself mid-match, sometimes with the match carrying on in the background. I haven't got any information about what threads what runs on but I'm going to make the dangerous assumption that while the match might be run in a separate thread it's still part of the code application, written in the same language with the same libraries and dependencies available. The code for this is likely good quality code, but the presumption that one can just update the graphics engine to (for example) Unreal 4 or 5, and have the rest of the game just running "on top" is probably extremely unlikely. FIFA's UI's are in-engine. PES's UI is in-engine. I don't believe one could make the non-3D bits of FM in those engines without rewriting large parts of the game - decision logic (the match engine itself), database processing and other 'background' bits aside which are engine-agnostic would not need much of a rewrite, or would be a fairly simple port if it did.

Wouldn't mind heading some technical details from SI about this, I'm happy to be wrong about all this but AFAIK it's just not gonna happen for the reasons mentioned above. I am a software developer but as I said I don't have much experience with game development so I'm no authority on the matter

And hey, if I am wrong and they end up accepting the challenge and presenting FM-quality matches with FIFA-quality graphics/presentation, then I will happily eat my words, hehehe.

May 22, 2021

I don't disagree that improved match graphics and player movements would be nice, but you're the one that suggested using Unreal Engine 5. That would require a full game rewrite - from the ground up. Which will take years, and is not realistically going to happen.

I wouldn't mind seeing SI leveraging the Metahumans thing for regen faces though, lol.

May 20, 2021

Lol.

FM isn't two separate executables - one for the "manager" view and one for the "match" view. The entire game would need a full rewrite in a new engine - not gonna happen.

Not to mention the amount of work that goes into FIFA to make motion capture smooth and animations blend well and look "realistic" (as comical as FIFA can be sometimes) - you're kinda asking for something that just isn't possible for SI. Hell, it's barely possible for EA!

What you really want is a revamped FIFA Career mode that isn't rubbish. But FM is an actual simulation, and without years upon years of development without distraction - it's not gonna happen.

Also I think you'll find that it's a minority of people that want spangly match graphics in FM. What we want is a flawless match engine that behaves and responds realistically. Which is also not gonna happen :P

Source: I'm a software developer.

January 6, 2020

1 hour ago, diddydaddydoddy said:

On a separate note to all, I will soon be concluding the first draft of Liverpool winter data amends - so let me know of any changes that you'd like to be considered. Could you post it in here please...

All the LFC players +5 in every stat even those with >15

January 6, 2020

10 minutes ago, diddydaddydoddy said:

Why is Liverpool's staff a complete mess? I have produced the same people with the same first and secondary roles that Liverpool have in real life to the best knowledge available. If you believe these are incorrect, then can I suggest you post your suggested amendments, whilst adhering to the first post in the thread please, in the following forum...

I think that both of us don't feel that the data that exists is a mess - you've done a fine job - but that the game is behaving in a contradictory fashion to the data that exists.

I'm pretty sure it was clear in our comments above that we're talking about the weirdness of Liverpool starting with 22 scouts and 6 data analysts, yet the in-game board feels that it's too much. Why is it too much? That's how it is in reality, and they are European champions and league runners up as of the start of the season. I'm not sure why the game feels that 16 scouts and 4 analysts is the "correct" amount, forcing the player to massively decimate the scouting team just to replace already-hired scouts.

January 6, 2020

37 minutes ago, EnigMattic1 said:

I'm not sure how, but after terminating 3 scouts, I thought I'd push my luck and ask for more. The board upped the cap to 24!!

I'm actually pretty set for coaches. I even got the board to let me have more. I have the best in the league for almost everything training wise.

I've also got Kuyt as u18 manager, Bergkamp as his assistant. The legend Stig Inge Bjornabye as u23 manager and its looking like Litmanen as his assistant.

Holy crap, so I just asked for more scouts and coaches and now i can get 4 more scouts (from 16 to 20) and 2 more coaches. Also nabbed an extra physio slot. I figured since I'm still just started they wouldn't accept especially after asking me to drop the team size.... so thank you for mentioning your success ... very helpful!

So the question then is ... why the hell did I have to sack a whole bunch of staff at the beginning eh? Bizarre game logic.

January 5, 2020

3 hours ago, EnigMattic1 said:

So secondary jobs don't count towards the cap? I never knew that. Does having 2 jobs mean they are less effective in the primary role though?

No they don't. Try it for yourself - keep Krawietz (a data analyst as a secondary job) but fire all your other data analysts. You'll see that "one out of four" analyst spots are taken if you look at the numbers, but when you're actually hovering over the empty 'vacant staff' icons you'll still find that there are 4 data analyst spots available.

Also, I wasn't sure about the effectiveness thing, but I did an experiment and it does. Try it for yourself, put Krawietz as Possession Tactical coach, he's 3 stars for me. Then offer him a ludicrous contract that you obviously wouldn't in real life but so that he'll immediately accept, but remove the secondary role. When he accepts it, check his training ability ... it goes up to 4 stars for me. So I guess I've learnt something too I guess it makes sense, I just never thought about it like that!! It's good that there's a tradeoff for having the staff member not counting towards your 'cap' in that case.

January 5, 2020

3 hours ago, EnigMattic1 said:

Exactly. If it is common knowledge that Liverpool have that many scouts, why cap it at 16 ingame?

Obviously, you only need one manager at each level but, as you said, you should be able to build the best backroom you can.

My other problem, especially with Liverpool, is secondary jobs. Example, data analysts. As half the staff double up as a data analyst, I can't bring more in because I'm over the 'cap'.

I tried to get Minamino but he failed the work permit. That's annoying, especially when you can get him for 7.75m.

The secondary job here isn't the issue - secondary jobs don't count towards the cap. LFC effectively have 7 dedicated analysts (excluding chief analyst) with a cap of 4. All of the analysts are mediocre at best, although it is hard to find amazing analysts for some reason. i fired all 7 and replaced them with better analysts with at least one 17+ rated in each of the 3 analyst skills.

January 5, 2020

The scouting department size issue baffles me too. Surely if it's like that in real life, what makes the game arbitrarily decide that it's too big. Maybe by 1 or two, then okay ... but I had to get rid of 6 scouts just to be able to get rid of 1 and replace him with another.

I wrote an issue up here on the beta release feedback thread, they said they will investigate but nothing was changed, much to my disappointment.

One of the big issues I have with the game in general is the hard limits on staff numbers (where sensible, of course ... don't allow hiring of more than 1 u18s manager for example). I should be able to assemble whatever size of backroom staff I want, and if I go ridiculously too far the board can voice their dissatisfaction and have it affect their rating of me, but don't stop me from building the best backroom I possible can. I'm sure there is a way that it can be balanced in the game in the same way as we have transfer budgets but they can be adjusted.

Needless to say, I fired most of the scouts (anyone JA/JP of 15/15 or less) and all of the data analysts and replaced them with a far better team but yeah, to now have 7 less scouts than I had at the start really, really sucks.

Also, Minamino is distressingly average in FM, I was so impressed with him in the CL games against LFC, and I was over the moon when they signed him. But even if I wanted to sign him in the game, he wouldn't get a work permit unless I paid £18m ... so I wonder how that's worked out positively for him (and LFC) in the real world

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