Football Manager 2017 Release Date and Pre Purchase Details Announced

[talhak]

+Pros: The ceremony before the match has been waiting for long time, hopefully there will be after match ceremonies too.  As @Preveza commented, hopefully that will be combined with great sound that reminds us the real match atmosphere.

-Cons: 

• Hope we will still be able to watch the match in 3D as we do in FM16, the 3D view in the first teaser video looks too close like an action game as FM means "watching the game like from TV" for me. If it will be that close, the players' faces should be unique & properly look similar to IRL. So hopefully this is just a new & alternative 3D view, we will still have the director view as before.
• Too much green (especially in the player/staff profiles)
• Not a fan of background picture in the skin

[Powermonger]

What's 3D? 2D match engine all the way here

[phnompenhandy]

Love the "Algerian" kid on Bolton's books!

[pukfm]

So this years FM its mainly about a new skin, new layout and different colours on the screen ?

Much of it looks the same. 

[ChelseaSince86]

4 hours ago, talhak said:

+Pros: The ceremony before the match has been waiting for long time, hopefully there will be after match ceremonies too.  As @Preveza commented, hopefully that will be combined with great sound that reminds us the real match atmosphere.

-Cons: 

• Hope we will still be able to watch the match in 3D as we do in FM16, the 3D view in the first teaser video looks too close like an action game as FM means "watching the game like from TV" for me. If it will be that close, the players' faces should be unique & properly look similar to IRL. So hopefully this is just a new & alternative 3D view, we will still have the director view as before.
• Too much green (especially in the player/staff profiles)
• Not a fan of background picture in the skin

I thought that the minute i seen the Heurelho Gomes picture,  far too much green

[talhak]

5 hours ago, talhak said:

+Pros: The ceremony before the match has been waiting for long time, hopefully there will be after match ceremonies too.  As @Preveza commented, hopefully that will be combined with great sound that reminds us the real match atmosphere.

-Cons: 

• Hope we will still be able to watch the match in 3D as we do in FM16, the 3D view in the first teaser video looks too close like an action game as FM means "watching the game like from TV" for me. If it will be that close, the players' faces should be unique & properly look similar to IRL. So hopefully this is just a new & alternative 3D view, we will still have the director view as before.
• Too much green (especially in the player/staff profiles)
• Not a fan of background picture in the skin

This is what exactly I wonder: Will we still be able to watch the game in 3D with the usual "director" cam as it has been always?

Please can someone who knows the answer reply my question?

Thanks.

 

[Maaka]

14 minutes ago, talhak said:

This is what exactly I wonder: Will we still be able to watch the game in 3D with the usual "director" cam as it has been always?

Please can someone who knows the answer reply my question?

Thanks.

I doubt if you'll get an answer now, I'm guessing you'll have to wait until further features are revealed, officially.
Still, I'd think (and hope) that director cam would be available.

[talhak]

49 minutes ago, Maaka said:

I doubt if you'll get an answer now, I'm guessing you'll have to wait until further features are revealed, officially.
Still, I'd think (and hope) that director cam would be available.

the new cam would be nice for replays but not for live highlights to see what's going on with a wide look. As I said the new view looks like an action game.

[pukfm]

All of you whos complaining about the cam !!  FM17 has got a new skin, new layout and different colours on the screen - therefor go and pre-order now !!

[Lord Rowell]

I think SI in this video of the ME are just promoting the improved visual aspects of the ME here, I wouldn't read too much into which view is being shown. I'm sure we'll have the same options before and who knows maybe some new ones?

As for the rest of the video, it is just a teaser at the end of the days. Looks like SI have done a lot of work improving the way in which information is presented, which is a good thing, especially I think for those new to the FM series.

It remains to be seen whether there will be any significant new features or whether changes are incremental. To be fair, I think its impossible for SI to do sea-change every year, step-change is more likely the norm and that's fine.

[Guest]

On 14/09/2016 at 23:34, pukfm said:

There is only 1½ month to FM17 release, but we have STILL NO info about FM17 yet !   Still no info about new features! 

If i'm not wrong, every year we get info about the new FM, about 2-3 months before release  How hard can it be to give us just SOME information? 

If I have to pre-order, I need to know how the new FM is gonna be.

How many of you have pre-ordered the game and why? 

 

You get exactly what you've recently asked for & all you can do is chip in with sarcasm, unbelievable!

1 hour ago, pukfm said:

All of you whos complaining about the cam !!  FM17 has got a new skin, new layout and different colours on the screen - therefor go and pre-order now !!

[Thermaltake]

Heat maps are well useful. Good addition.

[Miles Jacobson]

2 hours ago, talhak said:

This is what exactly I wonder: Will we still be able to watch the game in 3D with the usual "director" cam as it has been always?

Please can someone who knows the answer reply my question?

Thanks.

All the "old" camera angles will still be there.

[DP]

I don't think the game really needs many new features now. It's got to the point where most major things needed in a manager game are there - as you'd expect after years of development.

I'm just looking for things to be improved upon. In particular AI squad building, which should be getting better every year anyway as it'll never be perfect, and the match engine. The ME is the holy grail to me. Getting an actual game of football as good as you can is where I want to see most of the improvements. 

[talhak]

22 minutes ago, Miles Jacobson said:

All the "old" camera angles will still be there.

Thanks Miles for making it clear. Of course I will benefit from the new 3D angle but as I always think FM should have an own & unique 3D view, different from the arcade games. That makes FM unique, and lets us to feel like a football manager instead of an arcade game player. We should clearly see what's going on the match (the players' movements, reactions, awareness's, decisions from a wide angle, how does the team counter attack, diagonal runs, etc) instead of players' faces, hairs, tattoos, the way they run, the way they shoot, etc. The director angle is perfect to watch the live highlights in order to monitor what is going on; so I asked. Surely the new angle will do work for replays.

Thanks again, much appreciated.

Have a nice week.

Cheers.

[CFuller]

Here are some of my observations from the teaser trailer:

• The 3D match engine looks rather easier on the eye and slightly more realistic. I've noticed steady improvements year on year since FM11, and this looks like another step in the right direction. So far, so promising.
• The UI looks very similar to FM15/16, but I think it's actually a good thing that SI haven't radically overhauled it. I seem to remember back in the CM3 era that the UI hardly changed for four releases in a row, but nobody was really complaining then, so why are they complaining now?
• One new 'feature' I really like is the Team Report overview screen. It looks like it could be very helpful for experienced managers and rookies alike, and I for one will certainly look to pick up any pointers from it. The improvement to the Scouting Report gets another thumbs-up from me. 
• I'll be interested to see what the Chief Data Analyst does, and if he can really be a useful addition to your backroom. I suspect that there may be other new roles to be introduced later on. (Personal Assistant is not a role, per se, as far as I am concerned.)
• Newgen faces appear to have changed again. I thought FM16's newgen faces were an improvement on previous years, but I'll be happy to see a bit more variety... as long as there are fewer 15-year-olds with Bobby Charlton hair. 

I find it difficult to understand why some people are moaning about "oh, there are no new features" or "it just looks the same as FM16". What did you expect from a short TEASER video? SI aren't going to reveal all, or even a significant amount, of their new additions for FM17 until they are ready to do so.

Admittedly, although I am willing to wait for news of additional features, I am a little worried that SI don't plan to reveal much more until mid-October. It seems that I'll have to consider taking advantage of its pre-order discount offer before I'm confident that it'll be worth it. (Of course, I'm not obliged to pre-order the game.)

Then again, I feel personally that SI consistently improve on FM season after season, and so there's a very good chance now that I will take up their offer. Loyalty is a two-way street.

[matt_forest]

I do wonder what kind of new features some people expect when the next FM is announced. Are we suddenly going to be introduced to the new game as FPM or Football Player Manager 17 ? When football itself only changes slightly from season to season (through rule changes for example) how cna you expect an evolution when moving from FM16 to FM17. For me the game could look identical in almost every area if SI had decided to invest their time in improving or developing the opposition managers AI and the match engine.

[pukfm]

2 hours ago, Barside said:

You get exactly what you've recently asked for & all you can do is chip in with sarcasm, unbelievable!

 

Hahaha, sarcasm ? Why do you think that?

[Powermonger]

2 hours ago, DP said:

I don't think the game really needs many new features now. It's got to the point where most major things needed in a manager game are there - as you'd expect after years of development.

I'm just looking for things to be improved upon. In particular AI squad building, which should be getting better every year anyway as it'll never be perfect, and the match engine. The ME is the holy grail to me. Getting an actual game of football as good as you can is where I want to see most of the improvements. 

I think there is a lot more things they can do, especially around data visualisation and I love the fact SI are adding more and more icons and graphical elements to the game to make information more pleasing to the eye.

From what I have seen so far, I am happy SI are continuing on with the enhancements to the UI and information presentation, taking FM16 to the next step, I'm eager to see what else is in store for FM17.

I do agree that the ME needs some attention, but it always will, and I would like the tactics to be worked on in terms of tactical instructions and set up.

[Methos]

3 hours ago, matt_forest said:

I do wonder what kind of new features some people expect when the next FM is announced. Are we suddenly going to be introduced to the new game as FPM or Football Player Manager 17 ? When football itself only changes slightly from season to season (through rule changes for example) how cna you expect an evolution when moving from FM16 to FM17. For me the game could look identical in almost every area if SI had decided to invest their time in improving or developing the opposition managers AI and the match engine.

One long long long long awaited feature, is some thorough analysis and design put on transforming single player FM to multiplayer FM and then eventually MMO FM.

EDIT: 

To put that thought into further perspective a 3 full year analysis of a team of 30 experts from different areas, popular MMOs, popular RTS games, popular strategy games, popular MOBA games etc, real life veteran footballers, analysing aggressively the game and the market, would end up with a product that would break ALL records in video games. World of Warcraft's and League of Legend's success will be peanuts compared to what a well thought massive football game would be. If WoW  has 10 million sales per expansion, FM could have 100 million. Football background and brand is unparalleled and without limits or competition compared to a fantasy world. 

[rooneyviet]

Let's guess. What's the blurred tab is:

[Afro_Stud]

1 hour ago, rooneyviet said:

Let's guess. What's the blurred tab is:

The subscriptions tab is missing and that text looks like 'Subscriptions' blurred.

[phnompenhandy]

1 hour ago, Afro_Stud said:

The subscriptions tab is missing and that text looks like 'Subscriptions' blurred.

Oh, how underwhelming 

[Spedding]

But then why blur it

[fabioke]

19 hours ago, DP said:

If they've sorted the crossing issue I'll be a very happy man ?

I feel the same way. Hoping that we receive a feature reveal before the loyalty offer expires.

[Keyzer Soze]

10 hours ago, matt_forest said:

I do wonder what kind of new features some people expect when the next FM is announced. Are we suddenly going to be introduced to the new game as FPM or Football Player Manager 17 ? When football itself only changes slightly from season to season (through rule changes for example) how cna you expect an evolution when moving from FM16 to FM17. For me the game could look identical in almost every area if SI had decided to invest their time in improving or developing the opposition managers AI and the match engine.

I agree with this.

the game have reach to a level that pretty much simulate all the aspect of the football world. Until a couple years backs there were real features that the game didn't have, for example agents, directors of football, press conferences, and so on.

now, it's hard for me to try to point out any major feature that it isn't already in the game.

so, I'm not that surprise that this year, and the next year, "new" feature are improvements on "old" features.

perhaps, once in a while we could get some bigger overhaul in the training system, or in tactic board, but again it would probably more a cosmetic change and not so much a concept change, simply because training will still be training and tactics will still be tactics.

 

anyway, I'm a bit disappointed with the amount of information that was reveled. A very short video. I was expecting more information at this point.

one question, I remember in the past SI releasing some Vblogs with Miles introducing the game. Will something like that will happen this year?

 

[aditya]

36 minutes ago, Keyzer Soze said:

anyway, I'm a bit disappointed with the amount of information that was reveled. A very short video. I was expecting more information at this point.

one question, I remember in the past SI releasing some Vblogs with Miles introducing the game. Will something like that will happen this year?

3

Exactly my thought when the trailer was released

For a game with such strong, loyal and critical community, I expected better from SI. I think even a minor feature announced every week, months before the release is enough to keep the community satisfied. 

But apart from that, the game looks improved. but whats with the trailer?... Come on!

It doesnt feel like like the "best football manager experience". more like a antivirus software ad.

[forameuss]

I think this needs emphasised again.  IT'S A TEASER TRAILER.  A tease of new features.

They're hardly going to put a 30 minute deep dive of everything up in this situation.  It's supposed to raise interest in the product by showing off just enough.  

It showed what looked like a far smoother visual representation of the game, so that's a good thing.  Apart from that a bit of tightening up of news items, and a hint towards the way news items are received being changed a little in focus (forwarded mails etc).  Nothing inherently bad in there, and I'm sure more meat will be put on the bones later.

[grade]

I will reserve my opinion of the new features, when they are fully announced.

But a 30 seconds teaser is not enough to satisfy me. I still prefer how it was released a few years ago, when they announced a feature a day. For good or bad, at least made the community engaging with each other. But, oh well, they decided to do this way this year.

[Sheep]

 

6 hours ago, rooneyviet said:

Let's guess. What's the blurred tab is:

I think it will be Social Media. A place where you could look at what people are saying about you, your club, your players or maybe even player tweets.

Something akin to the fake social media that NBA 2k and Madden games use.

[forameuss]

7 minutes ago, Sheep said:

 

I think it will be Social Media. A place where you could look at what people are saying about you, your club, your players or maybe even player tweets.

Something akin to the fake social media that NBA 2k and Madden games use.

I hope not.  Given the hackneyed implementation of the media, extrapolating that to social media things is going to be incredibly cringey.

[Keyzer Soze]

6 hours ago, forameuss said:

I think this needs emphasised again.  IT'S A TEASER TRAILER.  A tease of new features.

They're hardly going to put a 30 minute deep dive of everything up in this situation.  It's supposed to raise interest in the product by showing off just enough.  

It showed what looked like a far smoother visual representation of the game, so that's a good thing.  Apart from that a bit of tightening up of news items, and a hint towards the way news items are received being changed a little in focus (forwarded mails etc).  Nothing inherently bad in there, and I'm sure more meat will be put on the bones later.

Yeah, but even for a teaser, it's a poor one.

It could work for people, like me, that play the game for 15 years. I watch the that trailer, and i'll will see every detail, compare with the previous versions, and so one.

But for new players i think it fails. They watch the trailer and i doubt that will be "Whowwww, i wanna play this ...NOW!!!".

I know that FM is not a graphical game. The thing that sells the game is not the fantastic graphics like others games, but despite that the first teaser should have a bigger impact, 

 

[noikeee]

7 hours ago, Methos said:

One long long long long awaited feature, is some thorough analysis and design put on transforming single player FM to multiplayer FM and then eventually MMO FM.

EDIT: 

To put that thought into further perspective a 3 full year analysis of a team of 30 experts from different areas, popular MMOs, popular RTS games, popular strategy games, popular MOBA games etc, real life veteran footballers, analysing aggressively the game and the market, would end up with a product that would break ALL records in video games. World of Warcraft's and League of Legend's success will be peanuts compared to what a well thought massive football game would be. If WoW  has 10 million sales per expansion, FM could have 100 million. Football background and brand is unparalleled and without limits or competition compared to a fantasy world. 

They tried it a few years back and it was a disaster.

Also they'd be nuts to replace regular FM with that, instead of making it an additional product. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of players wouldn't want regular FM to disappear.

1 hour ago, Keyzer Soze said:

I agree with this.

the game have reach to a level that pretty much simulate all the aspect of the football world. Until a couple years backs there were real fixtures that the game didn't have, for example agents, directors of football, press conferences, and so on.

now, it's had for me to try to point out any major fixture that it isn't already in the game.

so, I'm not that surprise that this year, and the next year, "new" fixture are improvements on "old" fixtures.

It's "features" not "fixtures" , but I agree 100%. I don't want even more BS in the game, it's already an extremely intricate simulation of all things football management. At some point more things stops being an improvement and starts becoming a nuisance. Yes there's FM Classic or Touch or whatever it's called now, but the full game is good as it is, don't ruin it by further overcomplicating it just to sell new "features".

SI are in a crap position now, if they do this and focus on improving the existing features, people will complain (as they always do) "it's just a new skin with slightly different colors!".

[forameuss]

6 hours ago, Keyzer Soze said:

Yeah, but even for a teaser, it's a poor one.

It could work for people, like me, that play the game for 15 years. I watch the that trailer, and i'll will see every detail, compare with the previous versions, and so one.

But for new players i think it fails. They watch the trailer and i doubt that will be "Whowwww, i wanna play this ...NOW!!!".

I know that FM is not a graphical game. The thing that sells the game is not the fantastic graphics like others games, but despite that the first teaser should have a bigger impact, 

Will any of those hypothetical new players in your example ever be particularly impressed with any FM trailer going by that logic?  You're intimating that they have no idea what the game offers, and hint that they'll probably be impressed by flashy graphics.  Like you say, the game's never been about that, so what are they supposed to do?

None of that changes though that this is a teaser trailer.  Effectively irrelevant at this stage.  The game releases in a little under two months.  I doubt there's any sort of trailer they could have put out that would have elicited the reaction you talk about in new players, short of flat out lies.  In the next weeks and months they'll release features that might attract new players.  But whether they released tomorrow or the day before the beta, it doesn't really matter, does it?  Getting all Helen Lovejoy about it is a bit excessive.

[Sheep]

37 minutes ago, forameuss said:

I hope not.  Given the hackneyed implementation of the media, extrapolating that to social media things is going to be incredibly cringey.

Social Media is an increasing importance in modern football so I can see why it could be implemented into FM. I understand your concerns with it though, I'm hoping media and player interaction will be improved upon in the 2017 version and social media could be a step towards that. It could also be an unnecessary complexity, hopefully not.

I have faith in SI. People give them too much crap when they don't understand how deep and complex something like football manager is. It's very difficult to accurately simulate anything in software form let alone make a game of it.

[forameuss]

4 minutes ago, Sheep said:

Social Media is an increasing importance in modern football so I can see why it could be implemented into FM. I understand your concerns with it though, I'm hoping media and player interaction will be improved upon in the 2017 version and social media could be a step towards that. It could also be an unnecessary complexity, hopefully not.

I have faith in SI. People give them too much crap when they don't understand how deep and complex something like football manager is. It's very difficult to accurately simulate anything in software form let alone make a game of it.

Oh, don't worry, I know it's increasing in importance.  It's the way things are going, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's where it goes.

But simulating the kind of things that go on in social media is going to be incredibly difficult.  There's already hundreds (thousands?) of media items, but still you get a lot of repetition.  Are you just going to get nufcmad on twitter saying "up the magpies" 4 million times on this page?  The way I could see it working is if it's displayed at a much, much higher level.  Similar to the board confidence, but the same thing from a fan's perspective.  As soon as it goes down to a granular level it'll be cringey and terrible.

[DivineOne]

So will we get more information about the game before the end of the loyalty action?

[Methos]

1 hour ago, noikeee said:

They tried it a few years back and it was a disaster.

 

 

Only because they didn't analyse it enough. In football terms, FML had bags of potential. 

Regardless, on FM terms, FMO could be greatly greatly greatly enhanced. Will it be FM17? FM18? never?

But don't say there is nothing left to add/do. That's plain wrong.

[noikeee]

7 minutes ago, Methos said:

Only because they didn't analyse it enough. In football terms, FML had bags of potential. 

Regardless, on FM terms, FMO could be greatly greatly greatly enhanced. Will it be FM17? FM18? never?

But don't say there is nothing left to add/do. That's plain wrong.

I agree there's a lot to explore in the online part of the game, but I'm struggling to think of any truly major feature that would improve the single-player game, without adding unnecessary chores or being a revamp/improvement of existing features.

Maybe being a youth team manager. Maybe.

[treble_yell_:-)]

The 3d engine looks to have had a fair overhaul ( or the trailer just had really flattering lighting) and the animation improvements ate immediately apparent.

New skin is cool but ideally I'd love it if they just made a skin editor and let the community have at it ( ie an officially supported skinning tool).

 

Otherwise assuming the usual improvements to the AI side ( and discounting the inevitable ME quirks) things are initially looking promising.

[YKW]

9 hours ago, rooneyviet said:

Let's guess. What's the blurred tab is:

 

I think what could have something to do with this is the fact that some inbox items are marked with "FW:"

It looks like news about the club in the general media gets "forwarded" to you, for example the Pre-season Team watch about Watford. Messages from your staff, the board etc all come directly to you.

Given that the subscriptions tab is AWOL, it makes sense that this mechanism of being "forwarded" news is part of whatever change has happened in this area. Some questions I would ask would be:

1. Could inbox items ever be marked with other labels, like "Re:" or "CC:" for example?

2. Is the identity of the person who has forwarded me the messages of any relevance at all? For instance, it is just my personal assistant? Or perhaps there is a Press Officer in the game (there is a Chief Analyst so maybe there are other staff roles too.)

Although I would really like the hidden button to be Social Media, I can't see how it could be implemented into the game in a way that made it the second most important tab on the inbox screen.

My guess would be that the blurred text could be "Press Office" or some equivalent, which would be used to control exactly what news from around the world you receive as a "FW." The existing subscriptions screen is probably in there.

[MangerdWanlar]

I loved FM Live!

And I also play a lot FM online (online cups and leagues on gocland.com) but the development of Versus mode is way behind the other parts! I hope it will change in FM17!!!

eg. You can set a password to protect your team (and more important in online game, your TACTIC!) but versus mode DOES NOT ASK your password when you want to take controll of your team! What ever you set, anyone can access your team and your TACTIC! Password proctection worked in FM15 but does not in FM16.

You could set your saved tactics with one click in FM15 (after patch). In FM16 it took a lot of clicks, then a bit fewer after the patch.

Versus in FM16 was a huge back step! I hope in FM17 it will develop again (at least to FM15 level...)

 

I don't know SI why doesn't develop this feature, as this could be the best part of the game to play it multiplayer without playing whole seasons

[Silver Twilight Sparkle]

Interesting camera angle in the trailer. Puts you closer to the action and will be cool to see during replays. Maybe now that they are making closer camera angles we can even have a manager camera. Let's just hope the camera angles switch automatically to the side of the field the ball is in and we don't have to do it every time.

[Dagenham_Dave]

Probably never happening, but the only real new feature UI/Graphic wise I'd like to see would be a stadium editor, then the people who are good at modding these things could get to work and remodel the vanilla stadiums, which in FM16 took a step even further back from reality. I know SI don't have the licenses, but they could at least get the basic design of a lot of the stadiums closer. They managed it in older games, particularly lower league stadiums. 

[ommerson]

I Agree with Dave here. Especially lower leauge stadiums are very unrealistic in FM.

Spectators standing behind the advertisement boarding with maybe one half-pitch-length stand, that's what real lower league grounds look like.

Only in England clubs below 3rd level have stadiums with pitch lenght and roofed stands on all sides.  If I manage in Swedish 4th tier I want to see a Swedish 4th tier like ground, not a League 1 stadium.

I hope this years version has some improvements along that line.

[Wells]

Funny how some people are thinking about stadium editor which doesn't make any sense.

I'd probably want them to improve or add other new aspects than stadium editor which includes AI squad building, better interactions with the players, improved transfer/contract negotiations to name few..

[MangerdWanlar]

Who cares about the stadium? If you want realistic stadium play FIFA/PES és complian about the graphics.

FM is not about graphics! (I enjoyed very much when only commentary was available. We were shouting at the flashing colours )

Stadium would be the last thing to develop in this game, cherry on the cake. But the cake is half-baked

[ommerson]

That depends on what feature of the game you're looking at. All the things you name are the things most people obviously want to see improved/added. They improve the game as a whole. But looking at the cosmetic side of the game, of lesser importance maybe (the icing), the feel of lower league management is not what it could be if the stadiums your amateur team plays in don't look like lower league grounds at all. A stadium editor, which from a laymans view shouldn't be that hard to build (as there probably are fixed blocks by which the current stadiums are made out of, the only thing that an editor needs is excess to these blocks and the possibility to combine them), can make that extra feel of a life-like stadium, corresponding to the level you play at (er even a look-a-like copy of the real thing) happen. Let enthousiastic modders build stadium packs just like you let them build kit-packs and skins, no licencing problems what so ever. They just need the tools.

I think the game is pretty well balanced overall (although a lot can be improve/added like you say), but that icing on the cake is just a bit off IMO. It's personal taste, but I would enjoy more realistic stadiums as I only play lower league. An editor seems an easy addition. 

[Pingdinho]

I see no problem with icing a cake well if you plan to spend hundreds of hours looking at it.

[forameuss]

2 minutes ago, Pingdinho said:

I see no problem with icing a cake well if you plan to spend hundreds of hours looking at it.

But you probably won't spend hundreds of hours looking at it if you know it's raw inside.  Or you will.   You won't eat it though.

This metaphor got away from me.