Media overhaul required...

[enigmatic]

On 6/11/2017 at 08:27, Barside said:

You can fail to get a job or even get sacked over a poor media handling rating so the notion of leaving it to your assistant if you do not like the way the feature is implemented is no longer viable for career save players.

This is why I'm fearful for the future of the social media feature & players interactions/happiness as they have been less than optimal on release.

Three version in & player interactions still feel a conversation between a pair of teenage boys (short answers, lacking nuance & too quick to anger) while media interactions just offer more question/answer sets without improvement in creating a believable narrative around events that happen in the gameworld.

SI are to be praised for trying these features but there needs to be a serious rethink in how they are implemented to have the interaction based features provide an interesting gameplay experience

I can't help thinking the best approach for game play would be to junk most of it altogether (and make much of the rest opt-in and less likely to cause weird side effects) and focus on getting the rest right.

I mean, a realistic football management simulation needs to have players demanding transfers which someone with their personality and situation would be likely to want. With the latter part of that sentence actually being quite hard to get right. It probably needs to have you answer the occasional question about whether you expect to win or not, and whether you think $RIVALS will secure promotion before they do it but I'm not sure answering five of the same ten questions every week is actually all that fun, even though I'm sure most managers actually do find them pretty dull. But at least the press conference feature rarely actually screws things up, provided you trudge through it giving answers which aren't obviously going to upset someone and "no comment" your way through the ones you're not sure about. And don't trust your assman to do it, naturally...

On the other hand, I don't think anybody really thinks it adds to realism to have a possibility of a player sulking for a week because you praised the quality of his defensive work and he didn't agree with it  (which you only did because the game wouldn't let you give him generic praise or explicitly thank him for the winning goal). If the concern is that players aren't sulky enough compared with real life ones I'd genuinely rather they sulked for a week over random "personal" events that were nothing to do with your inputs; that would probably be more realistic as well as less obviously a consequence of the forced suboptimal choice of responses SI often presents you with and unrealistic side effects programmed into the answers.

Much of it feels like they tried to be too clever by half, like when you have a team meeting at the beginning of the season where you tell the team you think they can stay up, and a couple of players interpret that as a promise you won't try to sign a replacement in their position within the next 170 days (because someone thought "aha! we must introduce promises to sign new players, and balance the responses which don't involve signing new players by making them have annoying promise side effects too"). Or the lone striker demands you sign another attacker because someone though it might be worth trying despite the generic concept of squad depth used by AI players being even more borked than the AI managers' approach to squad building. Or the agent insists his player wants to be played as a defensive full back, because they thought preferred positions might be a nice "promise" to introduce and neglected to consider that real life examples of players insisting that managers give them a specific (often very restrictive and unsuitable) set of tactical instructions each game as a condition of signing are exceptionally rare, and almost certainly never involve players demanding that managers don't give them any creative freedom. Not only are these features bad, but unlike goalkeeping or transfers, they're also totally unnecessary.

I mean, I can understand SI thinking "we developed a convincing and enormously varies simulation of 90 minute football matches, how hard can it be to model interaction between people we hear spouting nothing but cliches on TV", but it turns out passing Turing tests is actually quite difficult!

I actually think the social media is the best bit despite being completely half-arsed in its implementation because (i) the stupidity of some of the comments in context is actually halfway believable if you've ever had a Twitter account an (ii) it's completely optional, with the fringe benefit of occasionally finding something out rather than forced with unexpected and unrealistic side effects.

[Cuenca Guy]

20 hours ago, enigmatic said:

A lot of words

I saw someone with a save where they had just been promoted and where in the playoff positions but the whole team was sulking because one player thought they hadn't improved enough, and the whole team was backing him. They signed an old man as a backup when/if they finally got rid of the whiner, and that was enough to make him happy. I've been very careful and generally don't make any promises after seeing the disasters of others. That's only in lower leagues though...not sure how important they become when multiple clubs are bidding for a star.

Any tips on media handling? I'm at 47%, probably because I give a non-answer calmly a lot. When he asks me again, I passionately give the same non-answer. Is no comment better? With the first two years in non-League football in England, I haven't even had much media interaction. If I'm bad now, it could cause serious problems when I have press conferences before, after, and during every game.

[enigmatic]

Regular press conferences are easier (and duller) than the questions you probably get most of at the moment (transfer rumours etc)

Non answering or neutral answers "I won't be discussing any transfer stories today and I'm happy with my squad", "I don't know him but I respect him as a manager and hope to get to know him more" is probably best for the questions which sound like they might be traps. 

But I always praise my team performances when I'm invited to and use the "even the best players have bad days" or "he'll learn from this" answers when invited to criticise them, and am confident I can sustain runs of form and certain my players won't need any extra motivation. I mean, I think it's possible for these to have negative side effects too, but I haven't seen them...

[Harpoon76]

Press Conference:

Q2 - You've already qualified for the Europa League but could move into contention for the Champions League with a win

Q3 - You can potentially secure a place in the Europa League with a win

Are there two different league tables in use?

[Preveza]

And what annoys me is SI claiming these are 'bugs' I firmly believe its simple. The media/interaction system needs lots of work.

[themadsheep2001]

4 minutes ago, Preveza said:

And what annoys me is SI claiming these are 'bugs' I firmly believe its simple. The media/interaction system needs lots of work.

What you believe and what is said by people who actually are part of the game are completely different, with respect you are not in any position to dispute their words.

[Preveza]

2 minutes ago, themadsheep2001 said:

What you believe and what is said by people who actually are part of the game are completely different, with respect you are not in any position to dispute their words.

Ok, well. There is a whole thread of issues. I will leave it there

[Smurf]

It hasn't really worked since day 1 - and still doesn't work now - it's only gotten worse.

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Harpoon76 said:

Press Conference:

Q2 - You've already qualified for the Europa League but could move into contention for the Champions League with a win

Q3 - You can potentially secure a place in the Europa League with a win

Are there two different league tables in use?

This is a bug as it shouldn't happen within the confines of the current system.

[craigd84]

Nice post Smurf, i agree with those points. I would love a full breakdown of training, like I preferred on the older games how you could set defenders to defensive training attackers to attack ect, whilst you have ROLE training i still feel that the Overall training focus dictates more how a players skills improve.

I mainly use Tactical as it covers the most attributes.

[Guest]

In practical terms, the media side of the game is impossible to get right. SI are making an effort, not a heroic one I'd say, but a respectable one definitely. The result is not very good, but it's not likely to get significantly better.

 

There are going to be tons of pre- and post-match interviews. This means that even if they multiply the amount of possible questions and answers by ten, we will have seen essentially all of them by the end of the second season, at the latest. After that, it's just going to be endless, frustrating repetition of the same asinine stuff.

 

The game is nowhere near clever enough to see, for instance, that glorious interplay between Coutinho and Firmino in your previous match, recognize their nationalities and come up with the question: "That was an astonishing example of footballing samba near the end of the first half. What did you make of it?"

 

But the game IS clever enough to give you the option of replying: "I am not prepared to answer that question." (Which, as far as I can tell, never changes anything and nobody ever cares about.)

 

That's about it.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

On 27/06/2017 at 21:44, enigmatic said:

On the other hand, I don't think anybody really thinks it adds to realism to have a possibility of a player sulking for a week because you praised the quality of his defensive work and he didn't agree with it  (which you only did because the game wouldn't let you give him generic praise or explicitly thank him for the winning goal). If the concern is that players aren't sulky enough compared with real life ones I'd genuinely rather they sulked for a week over random "personal" events that were nothing to do with your inputs; that would probably be more realistic as well as less obviously a consequence of the forced suboptimal choice of responses SI often presents you with and unrealistic side effects programmed into the answers.

It bugs me that players don't seem aware of what is going on around them.

In my United save, I'm top of the table, and Arsenal are doing badly in 11th. Jesse Lingard demands a transfer to Arsenal, I offer him a better contract if he stays, he says no, because mighty mighty Arsenal, are a 'bigger club'. Okay, Jesse, whatever you say.

 

He throws a strop, and I sell him off and replace him with a better player. But here's the thing, I go on to win the league, Arsenal fall out of European places (yeah, that bad) and suddenly, who looks really stupid now? Me or him? Yet, the board bemoan my 'bad sense of business' in the transfer market for selling him, and Lingard suddenly becomes "very interested" in rejoining me. When, well, in January he should have been well aware that "bigger club" Arsenal were up poop creek without a paddle and he would have been better off staying with me, where he was getting games.

 

The game is littered with such annoying incidents at times, I would have loved it if the media asked what went on and I could say "He handed in a transfer request, he wanted to join our rivals" and then the fans absolutely turn their back on him and support me for getting rid of him. >_> Instead, I get the blame.

 

Was the same when I had to offload Ashley Young (on megawages) when he handed in his own transfer request for a new challenge. Who gets blamed? Me, for a 'poor piece of business', when the club didn't need to pay his wages and no one within their right minds was going to pick him up at his 120k per week. (He went down to the Championship to join Aston Villa, rejecting every other team that bothered with him.) Eh, the whole thing needs more work in my opinion.

[Guest]

That does highlight a core issue & the reason why I suspect a major overhaul woudl be appreciated by the entire player base, the various interactions system all operate in isolation & the manager is rarely able to call back to previous interactions to explain a recent decision.

This is somewhat understandable because each system was added to the game at different stages in the franchise while also being coded & tested by different team but now that there are so many narrative based systems it's time to stop plugging away with the current systems & develop a single narrative system under one development branch.

[Tony Wright 747]

This really needs to be looked at in detail.  When I took over toulouse half way through the season, with the team in the bottom three, Diop's transfer to Sunderland at the end of the season had already been agreed, and there was nothing i could do about it.  We finished the season in 13th place and in the boards end of season assesment of my management, they said that while they take in consideration our recent success they are concerned that the fans are unhappy that I let Diop one of our best players go and that it was bad business.  These things are really annoying and need to be sorted out

[enigmatic]

Lingard requesting a transfer to a "bigger club" Arsenal sounds like a buggy implementation, pure and simple, unless a lot has happened to Arsenal and Man Utd in between. I slightly understood it when my top-of-the-division-by-miles minnow team had players wanting to join mid-table teams that legitimately had higher reputations and much bigger wage budgets (like Kante to Chelsea IRL) but whilst there are circumstances where Lingard might demand a move to Arsenal, them being a bigger club isn't one of them.

 

Occasionally the media does something that actually really quite impresses me, like when one of my former strikers complemented the form of my current creative midfielder, comparing it with another former midfielder in his era (the current creative midfielder was a direct replacement, had a similar attribute spread and played a similar role similarly effectively).

But to be honest, the things the system inevitably gets wrong would be less annoying if they were optional and had fewer side effects. I don't mind match reports that slate my teams performance against the opponent's "ten men" when they have someone sent off in the 90th minute (a very fixable bug) because I know it has no knock-on effects whatsoever. On the other hand, I'm forced to participate in press conferences that are repetitive even when they're reasonable because skipping them isn't neutral (and SI have even bizarrely concluded that it's realistic to have managers able to be sacked for their assistant's press conference behaviour) 

 

[Preveza]

2 hours ago, Tony Wright 747 said:

This really needs to be looked at in detail.  When I took over toulouse half way through the season, with the team in the bottom three, Diop's transfer to Sunderland at the end of the season had already been agreed, and there was nothing i could do about it.  We finished the season in 13th place and in the boards end of season assesment of my management, they said that while they take in consideration our recent success they are concerned that the fans are unhappy that I let Diop one of our best players go and that it was bad business.  These things are really annoying and need to be sorted out

Exactly this. Attention to detail is required here. Many areas regarding media/interactions need to be overhauled. Even when I take over a new club and I steer them away from relegation, would like to see more happen; more action in the social feed etc.

[Fer Fuchs Ake]

The social media feed could do with some work as well. You could have a player score 4, have a 9.8 rating and one of the comments will be like “I didn't think he was THAT good”. 

Or when you give one of your best players a new contract, you'll get a comment calling it a ‘risk’ or saying he doesn't deserve it.

[craigd84]

I mentioned the 4 goal 9.8 rating ect tweet.. its nuts lol. i suppose it represents real life critics,,, cant please them all

 

[KingCanary]

Urgh another belter. Just taken Rotherham to the Europa League final only to lose narrowly. First question... 

'Rotherham have still not won this competition - you must surely wonder if they ever can?' 

Well it's the first time the club has ever competed in it so I won't be too concerned....

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, KingCanary said:

Urgh another belter. Just taken Rotherham to the Europa League final only to lose narrowly. First question... 

'Rotherham have still not won this competition - you must surely wonder if they ever can?' 

Well it's the first time the club has ever competed in it so I won't be too concerned....

TBH that's just sloppy as it doesn't take much foresight to realise that you should have a few lines of code to ensure that the question is not asked of clubs making their competition debut or those who do not have a history of coming close but not winning it.

It also highlights another core problem with the current approach, each question has to have it's own logic rules which take time to input so even if the the coder thought of this illogical outcome they may have ran out of time to address it before code lock & then without realising it drifts down the job list as other bugs are identified, before you know it that bug appears in 2 or 3 iterations before it gets fixed

I''d like to think that there are more elegant & process efficient ways that SI are able to explore in the future as they really are chasing their tails with this system.

[HUNT3R]

Now if you can report it, you can ensure it is looked at and fixed.

[socceroos]

On 7/3/2017 at 00:30, Fer Fuchs Ake said:

The social media feed could do with some work as well. You could have a player score 4, have a 9.8 rating and one of the comments will be like “I didn't think he was THAT good”. 

Or when you give one of your best players a new contract, you'll get a comment calling it a ‘risk’ or saying he doesn't deserve it.

That annoys me.. 

 

The other is in press conferences "The public want to hear a real answer from you".

[enigmatic]

15 hours ago, Barside said:

TBH that's just sloppy as it doesn't take much foresight to realise that you should have a few lines of code to ensure that the question is not asked of clubs making their competition debut or those who do not have a history of coming close but not winning it.

It also highlights another core problem with the current approach, each question has to have it's own logic rules which take time to input so even if the the coder thought of this illogical outcome they may have ran out of time to address it before code lock & then without realising it drifts down the job list as other bugs are identified, before you know it that bug appears in 2 or 3 iterations before it gets fixed

I''d like to think that there are more elegant & process efficient ways that SI are able to explore in the future as they really are chasing their tails with this system.

Part of the problem is that some of the custom code required to make it believable in all situations is non-obvious: like when the game asks you to comment on a random team that's expected to finish in the bottom half of the table and their miraculous overachievement which might make perfect sense except in circumstances where you're top of the league with a team predicted to be relegated.

("But Claudio, wouldn't you say the true fairytale is Southampton currently being in sixth place and on course for a Europa League place?")

 

i'd genuinely think they'd be better off chucking out a lot of the non-essential media interactions rather than trying to rescue them, so they could focus more on getting the interactions that need to be there working well.

[Fer Fuchs Ake]

6 hours ago, socceroos said:

That annoys me.. 

 

The other is in press conferences "The public want to hear a real answer from you".

I hate that as well. Also, it's annoying when they completely disregard your answers. For example, yesterday I said that I didn't want to discuss individuals when asked about one of their players. They asked me about 3 questions in a row about individual players after that. 

[Preveza]

Poorly coded imo and simply not good enough. An area that needs huge improvements. Having the ai manager asking me the same question 10 times throughout the season as to why I am not giving game time to his loanee. I respond with the same answer 'I feel he isnt good enough etc'

Ai manager responds with 'I respect you have made that judgment'

Comes back a further 10-15 times throughout the loan spell with the same question. I give same answer, he agrees. This is MADNESS.

 

SI need to sort this out. It is mind boggling.

[KingCanary]

17 hours ago, Barside said:

TBH that's just sloppy as it doesn't take much foresight to realise that you should have a few lines of code to ensure that the question is not asked of clubs making their competition debut or those who do not have a history of coming close but not winning it.

It also highlights another core problem with the current approach, each question has to have it's own logic rules which take time to input so even if the the coder thought of this illogical outcome they may have ran out of time to address it before code lock & then without realising it drifts down the job list as other bugs are identified, before you know it that bug appears in 2 or 3 iterations before it gets fixed

I''d like to think that there are more elegant & process efficient ways that SI are able to explore in the future as they really are chasing their tails with this system.

It's a particularly odd one as surely 95% of clubs have never won the Europa League/Uefa Cup during their history, so my inability to win it isn't exactly rare. 

[Fox990]

The issue that annoys me the most is the media seem to be fixated on whatever your pre-season expectations were rather than how you're actually doing. In a long term online game with a mate of mine, I'm Blackpool in the Prem. In our first season in the league we were naturally expected to go down, but surprised everyone (including me) by finishing 4th. Despite being - at least - in the top half all season, I was asked in virtually every press conference if I thought we could stay up. When it gets to April, and I'm in 5th, yeah I think I might! All this because the media in the game seem to go by the pre-season "media prediction" of where you will finish and not what's actually happening.

Compare in real life to Leicester's title winning season, where the media kept asking if they could win the league. Ranieri batted it away with the "40 points" stuff but imagine if it had been the other way around. Leicester challenging at the top of the table only to be constantly asked: "so Sunderland (or whoever) won today, are you worried about how that might affect your fight against the drop?"

[Guest]

The social media aspect in the game is actually quite realistic: no matter what the issue, approximately a quarter of all social media commentary is completely idiotic, and very nearly 100% is useless. This is brilliantly depicted in the game, where the social media content is, frankly, rubbish.

 

The real question is: why oh why oh why oh why did they think that adding social media to the game would improve it in the slightest?

[Guest]

I'm with you on that, social media is full of idiots & looking to simulate is probably a step too far. What next, a simulation of the football forum on these boards?

[Guest]

In the game, the problem of social media is made worse by the fact that there are only so many commentary lines. So what you get, after approximately half a season, is endless repetition of the same inanities. In real-life social media, there are at least real people making real comments, which creates variety, but the game doesn't even have that.

[enigmatic]

48 minutes ago, Barside said:

I'm with you on that, social media is full of idiots & looking to simulate is probably a step too far. What next, a simulation of the football forum on these boards?

Now that you mention it, I really want SI to introduce more "this season is rigged", "why do the opposition always score with their only shot on target!!!!" type comments in the social feed...

[Marathon Dress Week]

Media interaction has been bad since its inception. The whole thing needs a massive overhaul, rather than the standard SI solution of 'just add more'.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

On 02/07/2017 at 12:02, enigmatic said:

Lingard requesting a transfer to a "bigger club" Arsenal sounds like a buggy implementation, pure and simple, unless a lot has happened to Arsenal and Man Utd in between.

It was the first season of FM2016, so basically immediately off the bat. The request happened in the January transfer window, it caught me completely off guard given the relative positions of the clubs at the time too. 

[Guest]

@Marathon Dress Week: Do you have any idea of how this overhaul could be done, like, even in theory? The fact is, there will only be a certain amount of set phrases in the database, and the game will offer you a selection of these. You cannot avoid it becoming very repetitive, unless we suddenly witness technological singularity and get conscious AI.

 

The media side in the game is, realistically speaking, an impossible job. It sucks, but I don't see how it could not.

[Marathon Dress Week]

Maybe the option to just turn it off all together should be introduced. You wouldn't suffer from the negative effects of media interaction, but you also wouldn't gain from the positive either. 

I and a huge number of players already leave the AM to do the media work as it is boring and very often utterly illogical. I can hardly ever say what I would realistically say, and the topics chosen for discussion are not the subjects that have any real relevance to what is actually going on.

Ultimately it's up to SI to make it a fun part of the game. If they want to hire me to theorise on the matter then great. There are ongoing issues and bugs that have been present in the game for many years now, despite players repeatedly pointing them out and suggesting how things could be done better. Instead of addressing these things we instead get social media, truly terrible avatars and pointless pre-match cut scenes, all of which are routinely ignored by most. So I'm not going to spend my free time detailing how things could be improved when players' ideas just fall on deaf ears, and instead we get superfluous features no one asked for or wants.

[Guest]

For what it's worth, I agree. I took a break from the game for a few years, and when I came back for FM2017, I was very disappointed: the glaring issues from FM2013 had not been fixed, and much of what was added did not actually improve the game. FM is still the best football management game around (does it really have competition, though?), but I was unimpressed by FM2017 and won't be coming back.

 

Anyway, I still maintain that SI are facing an essentially impossible task with the media side of the game, so I don't blame them for those failings. I can quite understand.

[Glenn Wakeford]

6 hours ago, Marathon Dress Week said:

There are ongoing issues and bugs that have been present in the game for many years now, despite players repeatedly pointing them out and suggesting how things could be done better. Instead of addressing these things we instead get social media, truly terrible avatars and pointless pre-match cut scenes, all of which are routinely ignored by most.

Two issues here:

1. Since asking for these examples to be posted with a save game in the bugs forum, no-one has posted anything. As we have said before, we can't fix bugs if we don't have a working example of one.

2. The team is split on a modular basis. Things like avatars and match cut-scenes are done by the relevant modular team. Not doing those things would not mean that media gets more time, it would mean they work on something else in their area of the game, so in the case of match cut scenes, they'd work on other match presentation stuff.

There also seems to be a confusion between media and interaction in this thread. I've seen a number of interaction complaints lobbed in here to slate the media aspect of the game when they are quite separate - and any issues you have with the interaction system should also be logged in the bugs forum.

[Guest]

@Glenn Wakeford: There are glaring issues in the game that are not bugs but more like conceptual problems, so there aren't really any save games you could send anywhere to demonstrate these. I'll give you two quick examples.

 

1) Each and every goalkeeper in the game has a "Tendency To Punch" stat, which, in theory, is great. But if you actually watch some matches and pay attention to corner kicks and crosses, you will notice that no goalkeeper in the game ever punches the ball. Every once in a while a goalkeeper will parry a strike, but this is different from punching. Goalies just don't come out for crosses or corners to punch them out. I played the game for three seasons and never once saw it happen. I have heard from others that they have seen it, and while I have not seen a pkm to prove this, I am willing to believe them. However, it is so rare that it might as well not exist. In real life, you are exceedingly unlikely to see a single match where it doesn't happen.

 

2) Players on the pitch have absolutely no idea about each others' relative size. This is a very serious problem, essentially a game-breaker for me. Suppose my Liverpool team employs Philippe Coutinho in the AMC position. He's a relatively small guy, so it would be a good idea to pass the ball to him along the ground, especially if he comes up against big defenders. However, there is no way to tell your players to keep the ball on the deck. And when my Coutinho is indeed playing against a Terry-sized defender, my players will not realize this, which means that they will feed him high balls, each and every one of which will be claimed by the Terry-sized defender. Coutinho will get rubbish ratings, my attempted attacks will be thwarted and I will be looking at my idiotic players, and fuming at their inability to a) see what's actually happening and b) learn from it. (Incidentally, this phenomenon is the reason why I have never had any problems demolishing Barcelona in the game. They are a small team, and that's all I need. It's simply sad to watch them feed high balls to Messi and Neymar, and those poor guys trying to win them.)

 

Comments, please?

[Guest]

Just now, xzar_monty said:

@Glenn Wakeford: There are glaring issues in the game that are not bugs but more like conceptual problems, so there aren't really any save games you could send anywhere to demonstrate these. I'll give you two quick examples.

 

1) Each and every goalkeeper in the game has a "Tendency To Punch" stat, which, in theory, is great. But if you actually watch some matches and pay attention to corner kicks and crosses, you will notice that no goalkeeper in the game ever punches the ball. Every once in a while a goalkeeper will parry a strike, but this is different from punching. Goalies just don't come out for crosses or corners to punch them out. I played the game for three seasons and never once saw it happen. I have heard from others that they have seen it, and while I have not seen a pkm to prove this, I am willing to believe them. However, it is so rare that it might as well not exist. In real life, you are exceedingly unlikely to see a single match where it doesn't happen.

 

2) Players on the pitch have absolutely no idea about each others' relative size. This is a very serious problem, essentially a game-breaker for me. Suppose my Liverpool team employs Philippe Coutinho in the AMC position. He's a relatively small guy, so it would be a good idea to pass the ball to him along the ground, especially if he comes up against big defenders. However, there is no way to tell your players to keep the ball on the deck. And when my Coutinho is indeed playing against a Terry-sized defender, my players will not realize this, which means that they will feed him high balls, each and every one of which will be claimed by the Terry-sized defender. Coutinho will get rubbish ratings, my attempted attacks will be thwarted and I will be looking at my idiotic players fuming at their inability to a) see what's actually happening and b) learn from it. (Incidentally, this phenomenon is the reason why I have never had any problems demolishing Barcelona in the game. They are a small team, and that's all I need. It's simply sad to watch them feed high balls to Messi and Neymar, and those poor guys trying to win them.)

 

Comments, please?

It's unfair to ask Glenn to comment on ME issues as that's not an area of the game he works on (iirc he used to many years ago) & tbh they have nothing to do with the topic of discussion in this thread.

[Guest]

It would be unfair if that information was expected to be generally known.  I agree it's off-topic.

 

It is, however, quite interesting that these subjects have been brought up years ago, already. And the response from SI is a great silence. I do not expect them to comment upon every discussion, of course, but I do find this curious.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Glenn Wakeford said:

There also seems to be a confusion between media and interaction in this thread. I've seen a number of interaction complaints lobbed in here to slate the media aspect of the game when they are quite separate - and any issues you have with the interaction system should also be logged in the bugs forum.

I don't think it's unexpected that people view all the various interactions in the game as a singular area & as I mentioned earlier I tend towards the theory that in the near future that should also be the case at SI Towers with media & interactions being developed as a single module on the basis that a single integrated vision would be of greater benefit to producing a more satisfying system than having interactions spread across different teams on the basis that they are board, media, player happiness, non-player or transfer interactions.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

3 hours ago, Glenn Wakeford said:

1. Since asking for these examples to be posted with a save game in the bugs forum, no-one has posted anything. As we have said before, we can't fix bugs if we don't have a working example of one.

I hate doing this, because I never have a save available at ideal points to send in. And really, I've written off a lot of the stuff as things to be dealt with so I can get on with a game. Not that it is helpful to you, I know.

 

I've another thing I want to raise, related to media and expectations. In my United file, third season; We've unexpectedly won games we shouldn't be winning. The season has gone so smoothly for me, that we're able to win the league in March, which is frankly ridiculous, but I'm proud all the same! I'm now facing questions from the media related to:

 

"How will you cope with the pressure for tomorrow's game" (when a win will secure top 4, and again when a win will secure the league.) 

 

Afterwards if a defeat occurs it's "You must be disappointed about losing the biggest game of the season."

 

I understand the logic behind the questions, I don't understand the value of importance they place on it. We're in March, about to 'win' the league, that says we're pushing a 20 point lead. Pressure? What pressure? The knock on effect is the players go all wobbly-knee's, despite trying to take the pressure off elsewhere (team talks etc), we're talking winning the league with some 7 games in hand, and we don't even necessarily have to win any of them if results go my way elsewhere, which is likely. Why the 'pressure-cooker' situation from the media here? And from the players? I feel like, the only person in the game who is treating things somewhat blase, is me, yet I can't really communicate that to the players or the press. I can't say, well you know, we're 7 games in the lead pretty much, we could lose them all and still win, what's the pressure about? I'm more concerned with the Champions League Quarter Finals vs Barcelona which is 0-1 at the moment, that's pressure. The league? No.

 

If I lose 6 games on the bounce and suddenly we're about to slip up, oh boy, then the media can have me bang to rights and we can have our pressure-cooker scenario. But as it stands, the media should probably be hyping us up as incredible, they should probably say we're walking the league and there's serious concerns that the rest of the teams in the league are falling behind. Or that we're so good, we've ruined the spectacle of the season, and they'd rather we'd get hammered next season to spice things up.

 

That's what I'd like to see, as opposed to this somewhat frustrating query surrounding pressure, which I inevitably have to flat-bat back at the reporters, and once we get over the 'hurdle' we get on with things like normal! (I might be overstating the importance, but that's my perspective of how things unfold.)

 

To add on, I threw the second XI, or 'youth team' in to that pressure-cooker, 'win the league' game, an away match, that they went on to lose 0-1. I didn't care, I was resting people with my eyes firmly on the aforementioned Barcelona game. Sure, I got pulled up on playing a weakened team (good), and again 'biggest match of the season' (No). Eh, I'm not so convinced. 

 

Aside from that, I echo the same complaints as everyone else really, the media parts are dreary, boring stuff. "Who's the weakest player" - Don't care. "Do you think you have a chance of winning?" - Probably. "How will this affect the boys?" They'll live. It's fine initially, but as the seasons go by, the same questions popping up sound a bit dull. I got all excited earlier because I saw the media ask me about my youth policy, due to debuting a lot of young players. Now I'm bored again because they're asking this every other week, and my answer is the same every other week, I have no room to elaborate or change things. If this was a monthly thing it might not be a massive issue.

 

Also, I've always found it odd that managers would chat crap to me, but apparently get on quite well with me behind the scenes. What a bunch of masochists!

[Marathon Dress Week]

On 07/07/2017 at 16:55, Glenn Wakeford said:

Two issues here:

1. Since asking for these examples to be posted with a save game in the bugs forum, no-one has posted anything. As we have said before, we can't fix bugs if we don't have a working example of one.

2. The team is split on a modular basis. Things like avatars and match cut-scenes are done by the relevant modular team. Not doing those things would not mean that media gets more time, it would mean they work on something else in their area of the game, so in the case of match cut scenes, they'd work on other match presentation stuff.

There also seems to be a confusion between media and interaction in this thread. I've seen a number of interaction complaints lobbed in here to slate the media aspect of the game when they are quite separate - and any issues you have with the interaction system should also be logged in the bugs forum.

1. Point in case: For years I have come across a bug where half my players were unavailable for the CL final as they had all been called up for international duty on the same date. People have been reporting this issue since at least 2013, yet it is still in the game. Exactly how many bug report need filing before such problems actually get addressed?  I dont know if it has finally been fixed in FM17 as I havent got that far, but as something that SI has been made aware of for years now I'd expect action.

2. Maybe the best approach would be to reduce the size of the modules tasked with things like avatars and match cut-scenes and put the resources saved into modules that require more attention and serve a more useful function?

 

[HUNT3R]

5 hours ago, Marathon Dress Week said:

1. Point in case: For years I have come across a bug where half my players were unavailable for the CL final as they had all been called up for international duty on the same date. People have been reporting this issue since at least 2013, yet it is still in the game. Exactly how many bug report need filing before such problems actually get addressed?  I dont know if it has finally been fixed in FM17 as I havent got that far, but as something that SI has been made aware of for years now I'd expect action.

That's an FMM link, so doesn't apply here.

[Harpoon76]

On 07/07/2017 at 16:55, Glenn Wakeford said:

Two issues here:

1. Since asking for these examples to be posted with a save game in the bugs forum, no-one has posted anything. As we have said before, we can't fix bugs if we don't have a working example of one.

2. The team is split on a modular basis. Things like avatars and match cut-scenes are done by the relevant modular team. Not doing those things would not mean that media gets more time, it would mean they work on something else in their area of the game, so in the case of match cut scenes, they'd work on other match presentation stuff.

There also seems to be a confusion between media and interaction in this thread. I've seen a number of interaction complaints lobbed in here to slate the media aspect of the game when they are quite separate - and any issues you have with the interaction system should also be logged in the bugs forum.

Given it's generally accepted there won't be any more proper patches / bugfixes for 17.3, at what point are we playing the game we've paid for and at what point are we debugging it?  If I spend my time reporting bugs with screenshots / videos and the relevant files now, I'm not going to see anything for efforts unless I pay for FM18...

[Marathon Dress Week]

8 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

That's an FMM link, so doesn't apply here.

It applies here because the exact same bug in present the full game too!

That makes it even worse.

[HUNT3R]

Just now, Marathon Dress Week said:

It applies here because the exact same bug in present the full game too!

That makes it even worse.

They're separate games, so it doesn't. I haven't seen any bug report mentioning it for FM17 itself, so it seems to be fine now. Can't remember, but I think certain edited databases made it much more likely to surface. Anyway, it doesn't appear to be in FM17 at all.

[Marathon Dress Week]

23 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

They're separate games, so it doesn't. I haven't seen any bug report mentioning it for FM17 itself, so it seems to be fine now. Can't remember, but I think certain edited databases made it much more likely to surface. Anyway, it doesn't appear to be in FM17 at all.

I don't really care whether they are separate games, that's just obfuscating  the point. The fact remains that the bug was present in several versions of FM across a number of years and was seemingly only finally addressed in this version. That remains to be seen!

Your memory does a disservice however, as I had the issue numerous times without ever having edited the database in any way.

[HUNT3R]

I did say "much more likely".

[Marathon Dress Week]

Well that's all right then.