rp1966 (Inactive)

The cup draw that causes two games in a row against the same team used to be a thing so common it had to be down to biasing the probabilities for narrative reasons (same with drawing a rival) - but it got very, very obvious and prompted a huge amount of comment on here and elsewhere.  Seems to have been removed or very toned down in the last couple of releases, but it didn't stop me getting this delightful set of fixtures in my first season promoted to the EPL with Nottiingham Forest:

Naturally this is a Man City with both Haaland and Mbappé.

Don't seem to be quite as dominant early on.  Ralf Rangnick got sacked really quickly; Diego Simeone couldn't do anything with them, but they got a prem win in 2024/25 under Erik ten Hag. Liverpool and Man City are still the teams to beat as I go into the 2026/27 season.

Far too many approaches for players with non-negotiable lowball offers.  Don't mind that an offer is lowball - that's their prerogative, but opening approaches just shouldn't be non-negotiable.  Apart from the fact that IRL it would be seen as plain rude, it seems to me non-negotiable should only become an option after a couple of rounds of negotiation.

4 hours ago, Merc103 said:

There's a frustrating problem with club visions. Let's use set pieces as an example. If you make the most out of set pieces in your first season, they will ask you to make the most out of set pieces... forever. You're the one that made the team solid at set pieces, they didn't want you to be solid at set pieces when you first joined. Same with being solid defensively, playing entertaining football, etc. No matter how well I do and how much they love me, I just can't negotiate the club vision at all because they made being good at set pieces a high priority, so it's a non-negotiable. It's stupid and unrealistic.

It can be frustrating, but I'm not sure how they could keep things dynamic and have your style influence what the board wants, without the game trying to interpret the way you play. The set pieces one is probably the worse - if it was based on you having 'plays for set pieces' set in your tactics it would be better.  At the moment it seems to be based on scoring a lot of set piece goals, which means its basically at the whim of RNG and nothing to do with your tactical set-up.

Not sure why you'd think it was so weird.  Teams often perform well in a cup when they are having a bad time in the league.

In your case it could well be that in the league you have expectations to make sure you qualify for Europe again, but that your progress in the Champions League was exceeding expectations.  That would mean that the game would model the league games as having much higher pressure.  If you weren't expected to reach the semi-final/final stage in Europe the lack of pressure could have tipped the balance.

To some degree the game probably models momentum in the league and cups separately.

5 hours ago, phd_angel said:

SI launches a new feature: matches with 3 teams.

That's a well reported  bug that's been going on in a couple of forms at least since FM20. In FM20 and FM22 - substitution happens; a bunch of players appear in black kits.  The FM21 variant had the kit not appearing, so you had head, hands and feet running about and the rest of the player was invisible.

It already does.  When you click on a line in the schedule the right hand panel showing your opposition includes their position:

Selected line in schedule

Right hand pane:

The only thing I can think that would mean you don't see this is maybe if you are on a low resolution screen the right hand pane isn't shown.

Maybe you mean so that you don't have to click on each line and can see them all at a glance - best way to do that would be for SI to add it as an option in the 'insert columns' selections. It's not one of the options at the moment.

1 minute ago, FrazT said:

Please dont report this in this thread- report it in the Bug Tracker and it will at least get looked at.

No point for this version. When FM23 hits I'll go back to reporting bugs in the bug tracker.

More playing time interaction nonsense. 

One of my defenders came to me complaining about playing time - it wasn't a problem for me to promise to play him more, I'd just been favouring another pairing and not rotating him in as often as I should have.

Shortly afterwards he went off to play in AFCON for an extended period. However this was obviously not taken into account by the promise interactions system.  He came back from AFCON was injured for one game then as soon as he was fit I played him.

Straight after that game he came to me saying I'd broken the playing time promise.  How  was I meant to play him, he's been missing on international duty for two months or however long AFCON lasts.

1 hour ago, DragonAndLance said:

The solution is so simple; just let players choose to play either before the war started or after (since si wants this so bad).

I don't think it is that simple. FM 22.4:Eternal War has been implemented using a combination of database and coding changes.  If it was database only then selecting earlier databases would be able to give different gameworlds with and without the Russia changes.  Because there's only one set of code, the changes made there affect every database.  It's been argued that a choice should have been offered or the effects should have been time limited, but ultimately SI have made this choice and it is too late in the game cycle to change again.

Even this far through this version's lifespan, still finding weird new bugs ... 

In my manager's job history the game has completely failed to record anything for the 2023/24 season. How can that even be a thing?!

OK - here's a good one for the bizarre manager movement collection:

That's right - Ralph Hasenhuttl left Southampton (left, not sacked) to be a scout for Everton. In the previous season Southampton finished 7th, qualifying for the Europa Conference and Everton finished 8th.

To echo the thoughts of many on this thread.  I think it is a poor decision on SI's part not to have a time limit on Russia's exclusion from competitions. The football authorities may have declared their actions as indefinite, but we all know that in reality that just means until the political situation changes, which in the timescale of a long FM save it will.

However, given that the changes also affect older databases it indicates that this has not been implemented purely through database changes and coding changes have been developed in the main program.  I can appreciate that given how static the FM gameworld is in terms of rule and league changes it was probably a significant amount of work to implement the exclusion of Russia and would have delayed things significantly to also implement a mechanism for re-inclusion.

For FM22, I can accept it has to be that way.  For FM23, however, assuming actions are still being taken against Russia, the game needs to have a way to re-instate Russia after 5-10 seasons.

The unlikely managerial swaps continue - we've all seen the regular Klopp to Man City; Guardiola to Liverpool swaps that happen.  This time it's a 2023/24 swap with Guardiola to Chelsea and Tuchel to Man City.

Can't help but feel SI need to look at their algorithm as it pertains to the highest profile managers.  They should be very unlikely to swap within the same league and shouldn't be so desperate to get a new appointment that these kind of swaps happen.

In the case above Guardiola left at the end of his contract at City - 3 weeks later they had appointed Tuchel (that's probably reasonable) - 14 days later Guardiola takes the Chelsea job - that doesn't seem reasonable.

Perhaps there needs to be a 'cooling off period' applied to high reputation managers so that they sit out a few months after leaving a job because of end of contract or sacking - might be a bit of a gamey fix, but could stop some of the unlikely high frequency job swapping that happens.

An update on this.  Some really weird stuff going on with lighting.  That Weymouth game was 26/11/2022 at 15:00, so long shadows from low winter sun coming from the back of the stadium.

Took a look at another Weymouth home game later in the season - 01/04/2023 at 15:00. Lighting, higher sun, shorter shadows. Lighting from the left. So either Weymouth's ground is on a turntable and they've rotated it 90 degrees since the winter game or SI are just using a few fixed lighting rigs rather than a proper calendar/geo-aware sun/sky rig.

Also noticed the same thing as you in regards to lighting direction being the same for all matches. Just seems to vary by time of year. Will keep an eye on it as I progress through my next season as once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Just want to be sure people aren't confusing the match engine with match visualisation.  The match engine is the thing that calculates how the game plays out - it is the most important thing in determining the game outcome.  The graphical side of things is the visulisation of the results of the match engine and gives you your highlights generated from the information in the pkm file.  Match visualisation is cosmetic and some may consider it unimportant - personally I don't, I think the visuals should be made as good as they can be (you spend a lot of time looking at them, especially if you use comprehensive highlights as I do).  The match engine, however, is the absolute core of FM and cannot ever be said to be unimportant.

Just now, themadsheep2001 said:

Chance conversion isn't as high as people think it is. Chelsea are the best shot converters in the league, at 11.1%. There are only 3 teams 10% in the league and the league average is 8%. 

It's not really about the rate of shot conversion - that may well be statistically right. For me it's about how the ME is representing things and how good quality a chance looks in relation to how often it is scored.  In that regard FM21 was much better at matching the quality of a chance to the likelihood of it being scored.  Far too often FM22 is delivering unlikely outcomes on very clear looking chances (especially excessive woodworks for near open net tap-ins).

1 hour ago, flauta kicma said:

Hello.

For me, this is the most unbalanced FM in ages.

Huge issues...

- youth recruitment - you just don't get any players through it, it is with every save, with every club, really it is so important to sort it out, 

- awful ratio of shots on goal and goals - after new patch it is really annoying, you have like 30+ shots on goal every match and score maybe one goal. I know it is only game and it is hard to make it real, I know that sometimes players should close their eyes on some of issues, but this can be really annoying

- many penalty shots missed

 

Youth recruitment - Agree. Something unbalanced here.  There's an issue around old players hanging around too long and blocking youth getting into the first team, but also it seems youth players aren't developing in the U18s/U23s to a sufficient level for you to start bringing them into the first team without micro-managing youth training.  I've got one every now and again, but even at lower levels of the football pyramid I'm not getting many worthwhile youth players coming through. Nomally youth at lower levels look relatively better due to the relative weakness of first teamers.

Goals - Someone will be along shortly with an XG table.  Compared to FM21 the alignment between quality of chance and chance conversion seems well off. In FM21 it felt right.  I have a theory that SI have some bitter old defender as an advisor who spent his whole career getting ripped apart by good attackers in a succession of relegation teams and every time they listen to him they nerf goal scoring in one way or another.

Penalties - this I'm not seeing. My experience has been that most penalties seem to be scored 

Probably depends what year you're in - up to the 2030 WC it's pretty straightforward as you'll know most of the players already (especially now that old players don't decline much).  So up to 2030. pretty lightweight commitment to manage England alongside your club. Beyond that it'll be more time-consuming as you'll need to get to know a bunch of newgens well enough to build a decent squad (or just trust your assistant)

But it's quite fun to compete in one cycle of WC and Euros.

And a World Cup win looks nice in your manager biography 

There is some variety - this was Weymouth's ground in a recent match.  Evening; long shadow lighting - coming from the far side of the pitch rather than the left.

You'd expect all your 3pm kick-off at home to have same lighting direction (but different light intensity and shadow length at different times of the season) - should vary in the away games, though, depending on orientation of the various stadiums.

The database contains latitude and longitude information; I'm not sure it has stadium orientation. This needs to be added, but while that data is collated it should be randomised so that shadows fall in different directions.

Lighting should be coming from a sun/sky rig that is longitude/latitude, time of year aware (like the one in City Skylines) so that light intensity and direction are right for the country and match date/time - not sure that's how its being done, but it's not the 1990s, so it should be.

Not the subject of your post, but night lighting is a mess too - next time you play a night game look at the shadows from the players compared to where the lights in the stadium actually are.

The place to do this would be under the page for the stadium. At the moment it just shows a big green rectangle showing the dimensions and playing surface details for the pitch.  This could be shifted into the big empty space on the right of the screen and scaled down, leaving the big area filling the bulk of the screen for a 3D stadium viewer that allowed you to rotate and zoom and look around your stadium.

9 minutes ago, XaW said:

Would the Barcelona board (or fans for that matter) approve of a Sean Dyche tactic?

No, but surely it's different if you've brought the club through the leagues.  Normally the club vision aligns to your style if you stay at a club long term.  Seems odd to suddenly get a board imposed style change if you're an established successful manager at the club.

Maybe RNG has just gone a bit mad in my game, but if not then someone has let the Burnley researcher over-reach somewhat.

First season; winter update; no first transfer window:

Also a bit odd is the situation at Man Utd.  They sacked Rangnick before Xmas and are still using a caretaker manager (Nick Cox) - waiting to see if a real manager comes in in the summer or whether the caretaker manager bug has hit.

54 minutes ago, Toshevbgg said:

Biggest problem right now is not the ME

Its the long term saves

- Big teams go bankrupt they dont have money to buy players

- They do not develope youngsers all teams basically use Salah etc untill they reach 40  . Liverpool Starting eleven is the same 6 years into the game  even thou everybody is 34+

-New regens cant reach their potential since they develope too slow and no AI teams plays them

- national teams are full of 30 year old plus players

-There are like 3/4 star players below 25 right now .

  Hide contents

I just spent 3 hours mass editing youngsters in all top clubs to give them a boost.  Barcelona had not a single player above 160 potential below 26 years old. Their B and youth teams were absolute garbage . IN total below 22 yeras old there were just 3/4 players in the world above 150 ability . 

To make matters worst absolute all top teams are bankrupt the only team that has any money for transfers in Man City  and nobody has any first teamers below 22 years old 

Situation in Brazil under 20 and England/ Spain was abysmal. I mean France was full of players 115 ability 120 potential ..

With heavy editing the save will be fun since I put 1/2 super talents in each of the top clubs and gave each top team 250 millions extra balance 

I suggest if you struggle with the same issues just edit urself. Go to all UNDER 20 teams every other team and make high ability youngsters otherwise the game wont be fun 

Liverpool starting 11 in 2028 September is 

Allison Upamecano Trent  Van Djike (james Justin 60 mllion they bought from everton)

Jordan Henderson/Fabian/Zaytsev
Mbappe/Salah

Adeyemi 

Subs Gomez, Angelino,Fabinho,Lewandowski, Dodo , Rafael Leao , 

Highest ability player in REAl madrid was actually 36 years old Neymar who was 170/195 

 

Noticed this issue when I tried to rebuild England after I won the World Cup with a team that was mostly an older version of the current IRL team.  A next generation of players just didn't exist - I think Bellingham was probably the youngest viable player in the 2030 squad and there weren't players in their early 20s who could be brought in to replace the 30 somethings that were going to be too old at the next WC that I wanted to drop out of the team.

The changes to stop older players declining so fast, while welcome, seem to be a little too far-reaching (too many old players; still too good) and have had large knock-on consequences for squad-building (especially at top clubs who seem to recruit by high CA and high rep) and results in younger players getting blocked from first team development opportunities for long enough that they never reach a level where they get considered for the first team until enough of the old men retire (assuming that the team doesn't just recruit another bunch of high CA, high rep 30 somethings to replace them)

Things seem to get pretty bad around 2030.  Whether it rebalances after a fiurther 10-20 years I don't know as I started a new save when the winter update released.