At the risk of being told that I need to come out of a basement, has anyone purchased the new Football Manager? I’d be interested to see what scores & ratings that our Wycombe squad scores on there and if they have acknowledged our Training & Academy improvements.
I was considering it, but the feedback so far has been awful on their forums. They’ve had an extra year to get it right and released what sounds like an incredibly poor UI with very few genuine gameplay improvements.
I’ve seen a few youtube videos on it and have been tempted. I know its only the Beta Access at the moment so may will work out some of the issues that they have encountered. I really hope this gets sorted but it’ll be a wait and see.
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I used to play LMA when it existed. I remember taking wycombe to the premiership and redeveloping Adams park.
Havent played it yet but I downloaded it earlier today, so will let you know once I give it a try
Thanks @Erroll_Sims
Feedback is always awful on forums, par for the course. People moan that it’s completely different from the last one. Yeah, that’s they point - they delayed it an entire year because it was so different.
I’ve played it for a few hours now, and it needs you to go in with an open mind and be prepared to learn. I think in a while when the features are more apparent, and you understand how to use it, then it’ll be a really fun game.
I’ll edit this as I didnt’ say much about the actual game. The gameplay looks great, players look like they make decisions you’d see in the pro game. It’s slicker and quicker.
Fink is working brilliantly as a target forward for me.
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Ive got it and it is very interesting to play with
Some of the options are a bit weirdly placed for example individual training
However, It plays so smoothly on my shittank of a Computer, so much better than FM24.
But Im so pissed off with how many people are quitting on this game because of simply not getting used to the system. There will be a learning curve but overall its not all that different, just placements have changed
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When you play as Wycombe, do you get any money in the budgets? Have they upgraded our training facilities rating etc?
I havent really fully looked at the comparisons but might need to do that
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I think I’m just going to wait until it’s fully released and they’ve ironed out some of the teething issues.
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Played for an hour or so this evening as WWFC.
The players behaviours are more realistic than previous versions, Lowry either scores blinders or misses by a mile & makes poor decisions when to pass; Fink keeps getting offside, Fred either goes past his man or more often turns & plays it back etc.
Yes the interface is different, some options currently are hard to find but I will get used to it, the added match play realism has sold it for me.
Remember that a lot of those reviews will be from kids & kidults who really really do not like change & throw their toys out regularly.
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and jumping
There’s going to be a lot of entitled neckbeards that are going to complain because they are still upset FM25 was cancelled, like it was the most important thing to exist in the entire world.
As Miles Jacobson said in a recent video he had two choices on that: disappoint and let people down by releasing a substandard game, or disappoint and let people down by not releasing it.
If anyone has also followed the release of another game with a fanatical following (Cities Skylines 2) that choose option 1, releasing a substandard game would have been close to a death sentence so cancelling FM25 was probably the best bad option. Anyway…
In said interview he also mentioned that those hardcore gamers are going to have to put 20+ hours into playing to get used to the new UI and are probably going to hate it at first.
They have built up muscle memory about where everything is/was and not only are they going to have to figure where everything is now, they are going to have to forget everything else and it will take time.
Gave an analogy about driving a car in the UK for 30 years and then driving in America. It’s basically the same thing - you’re driving - but being in the wrong side of the car and road is going to feel really weird for a while. Until suddenly it doesn’t.
So there’s going to be push back on that.
They also have a couple of other bug bears - lack of international football on release and the incel morons that will complain about women’s football being in the game.
Lack of skin/mod support on release is also going to piss a lot of people off as well. But my understand is the Unity Engine is very good for modding so the future should be bright in that (accurate in game stadiums made by mod-ers was mooted by a popular streamer).
For me, I’m going into the game with a very open mind. FM24 was the end of a 20 year cycle of learning, adapting and incremental improving.
Fm26 should be seen as the start of the same thing. It’s not going to be full feature rich with everything ready. I’m expecting it to be (basically) fm24 with new AI, better graphics and a change to tactics with in & out of possession options. The rest will improve in bigger jumps over the next 5 to 10 years.
I don’t think those that play games understand how big a job “just” changing the engine and UI really is. That’s going to be a problem for many, until they are use to it
Edit: Thinking about it and linking it to WWFC….
FM26 is a bit like the new ownership at WWFC. It’s the same thing, but everything around it has changed massively.
Some people will like it.
Some people will hate it just because it’s different.
Some people will say they like the idea of it but spend ages bitching about every little change they implement.
Some people will wish it was like it was 3 years ago.
Some will wish (and never forgive) they hadn’t removed a feature that had been there for 20 years just because it doesn’t fit with the new world order.
Change hurts. It’s never always all good. It’s rarely always all bad.
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Oh, also from watching a video of Zealands Alpha game play stream - there was a specific camera view he was using during match play that game me massive FIFA ‘94 view vibes.
Classic isometric. Just needed a big yellow star under the player with the ball.
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As someone who has run software dev teams I agree that a total rebuild using “new” tech is a huge undertaking. Even the simplest changes to a complex system can introduce unexpected bugs, so the fact they have delivered something that is playable is a testament to the skill of their whole team.
Do I like the default skin especially the colour choices, not particularly; but there will be modded skins before long,
Am I happy that certain features are in different places or feel less intuitive, no, but its a learning curve.
Are the lower league stadiums generic & unlike the real thing, well they always were so nothing has changed there. The Unity engine is a modders paradise, so maybe someone will produce a realistic stadium pack including Adams Park fairly soon.
Do I think the overall feel of the game, its overall mechanics & visuals are an improvement - most certainly so.
Overall I like what I have seen so far.
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As I’m sure you have probably also experienced - when a new design of system is ready for launch, that absolutely does not mean it is perfect, will stay perfect from launch and will never need to be touched in the future.
There’s a disconnect there between user and developer that always causes issues. User expects perfection from day 0, developer expects it to work well enough but there’s huge growth for the future.
I’m pretty sure that’s why they are called developer and not something like “finisher”.
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These days where we work in a much more agile way, our alpha release is also known as the minimum viable product; in other words that level of development that allows the client to get their key requirements met. We then iteratively develop releases on relatively short time scales to deliver more functionality, UI/UX enhancements etc.
In the games world this leads to a public beta release which is what we are all playing with now, its not the final release version, but it is close & allows the devs & testers to receive real world experiences back from a vast team of players/testers (this is effectively User Acceptance Testing); at the end of this phase their will be a patch to fix stuff ready for the full launch of the product.
You are right that the users/players want it to be perfect without any real issues, whilst the devs/testers know there will always be stuff that they haven’t coded as well as they could or tested as much as they should, but they have the opportunity to progressively fix/tweak the product as time goes on.
Then after 12 months or so they move onto developing the next product or release…
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As a product manager (although not in gaming, I work in a far more boring and less UI driven niche) I definitely agree with everything you both say. These types of relaunches are incredibly difficult, and the user base is one that is fairly set in their ways.
The modding community will probably save the franchise now they can use the new tools available.
I know they work on an agile basis, as most do now, but for this franchise I’m not sure it’s necessary. The formula and development schedule should be extremely predictable without sudden changes of direction.
The problem for football manager games is that it’s basically just a database, an engine and a UI.
If you fuck up any part of the 3, the game is ruined. And the UI should really be the easiest part to get right - especially after 15+ years of running a monopoly in the vertical.
Many of the granular user gripes go over my head because despite playing for decades, I don’t get involved in much of the micro management. I’ve never set player training, and in fact go by star rating rather than stats when scouting most of the time through a combination of seeking realism and being quite lazy.
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