Just wondering if everyone has their own list of thing's they'd like to see fixed, improved, added, removed, changed or whatever for the next version of the game.
I used to play the Championship Manager series. I have every original (including the useless CM5). I have found that playing Football Manager 2006 bores me. It's either because I am much older now or either because the game just doesn't affect me the same way it did all those years ago. I think the game would go a long way if the following could occur: Much better interaction with the board - The game would be far better if the board (Chairman, director's had a better A.I. I.Q. level - More realistic in other words. The same applies to players. If only they could interact with you better, and not use the same repeated statements. Having the player pictures IMO has cheapened the product. A much better match engine. Does anyone remember the first ever FIFA that was released on the SEGA Megadrive? Well why can't FM 2007 use the same sort of match engine? It would make the game so addictive. I am a Spurs fan and normally play as Spurs. At Spurs, we use the continental approach to managing a football club, i.e. we have a Director of Football. It would be great (if a team has a Director of Football that is) if the Director of Football could assist the manager in finding good youth players that had massive potential. He could also arrange money-making tournaments, hire other coaching staff, etc. The Coaching Staff needs to be improved massively also. For instance, it is obvious that at some football clubs, not all the coaches are rooting for the manager in charge. It would be great is a rebellious coach came along every now and then and spoke to the media about you, telling the papers that 'the manager has lost the dressing room', for example. Agents - I am sure I read that agents would have been involved in FM 2006. Where the hell are they?? Agents should have a superb AI IQ. There is so much more. But I have to go lunch now, so I'll come back later. Regards Jaymes
1. Put the "Supporter's Shield" in MLS. Now, I'm told DC United "won the ." It's blank. 2. Allow me to prioritize matches. DC got its confidence destroyed because I rested the regulars in my last, meaningless, regular season match, and we lost 3-0. 3. In general, the player interaction is a total failure. It would take too long for me to list everything wrong with it, so I think they should make the players robots. 4. I've never understood what it means if a player is at 60% condition during a match, and with the new engine, players lose aLOT more stamina during a match. This should be explained. Also, it's an assumption of the designers that defenders tire out less. Maybe that's true, but in the stats and analysis board, someone pointed out how many goals were scored in 15 minute intervals. Of course, the most were scored the last 15 minutes, but people couldn't figure out the pattern for the other 5 intervals. But here's what happens...goals go up in the 3 1st half intervals, then drop for the 46th-60th minutes, then up 61st-75th. It's CLEAR AND OBVIOUS that either defender get more tired than attackers or fatigue affects defenders more. This isn't reflected in the game. 5. If w/wo screens are dead and buried, please allow me to tell my players what to do. The interface between what I want them to do and how I tell them to do it and getting them to do it is embarassing. The thing that makes the game unfun to play is when I figure out how to counteract my opponent, and my players disobey my instructions to make a retarded play. It would be one thing if they just disobeyed my instructions, and it would be one thing if they just made a retarded play instead of the obvious play. But when the two are combined, it makes me wanna quit the f'ing match. 6. In the latest edition, the match engine is so biased against a 3 man backline it's laughable. I honestly don't think they playtested the game with 3-5-2 tactics. If they did, they couldn't possibly have f'ed it up so badly. I've owned 00-01, 01-02, 03-04, and the latest. The last one is shaping up as the worst of the bunch, by a landslide. The middle two were about equally good, but as a tactics geek, I loved the w/wo ball screens. In general, the tactics in the latest edition would need to be improved to be horrible. And the computer players still are sh** at picking players. How f'ing hard would it be to program in what we all do, namely, care about jumping in the middle and pace out wide? Care about finishing for strikers, crossing for wings, passing for central mids, tackling for central defenders? Remember, the AI rates players on ability, which adds in 10 skills. So to the AI, a striker with 20 tackling and 1 finishing is as good as one with 1 tackling and 20 finishing. In fact, the AI, as I understand it, would prefer 2 finishing and 20 tackling to 20 finishing and 1 tackling. My main, main advice would be to go back to what, from the SI boards, is generally regarded as the best CM ever, 01-02, and build from there. Rip out every change made since then, and build from that best version. Seriously, I feel like I got ripped off, even at $29 US. Maybe I'll feel differently in a few months, but I decided to play as DC United, and I'm playing a 3 man backline, and it just doesn't work. Further, the injury thing is somehow messed up, and I've often, this season (my third) had to play my 3rd GK to fill up my home roster.
I disagree in the strongest possible terms, and here's why. Everything you suggest would be cool. But the thing is, they've added a bunch of features that players wanted in order to increase depth and realism, and almost every single one has been a failure. The record is clear. They'll add 5 half-assed features and make the game worse, rather than add 1 feature, get it right, and make the game better. I like your ideas, but I guarantee that what'll happen is they'll add that stuff, but botch it, and the game will be worse.
I agree with a lot of what you have to say dave, there are so many things going on between media interaction, half time talks, morale, team cohesion, tactics, fatigue, etc, that most of the time it's incredibly hard to figure out what exactly is affecting what, and and become frustrating, as the game usually doesn't offer enough feed back to allow you to make a really educated guess, so it becomes a test of nerves with trial and error. The thing about going back to the glory days of 01/02, is that one of the main reasons people think it's the best was it was the heyday of big money transfers and big spending, which is great fun, but unless you're chairman is a shady billionaire, it's not like that anymore. Another one is with the whole w/wo ball screen and the match engine. Without a view of the match all the things that went wrong were hidden, and you could make up what went on, it wasn't that you're retarded player disobeyed your commands, but rather an unstoppable move by the opposting team. It wasn't your lazy midfielder not coming back to cover when he's needed, it was the blinding pace at which the opposition counter attacked which led to the goal. With the move to an actual match a lot of what made the game so personal went away, because all of those stunning goals and brilliant runs, turned out to be defensive errors and defelcted shots... On the other hand, comments like no one tests a 3-5-2, and things like that are just rants, things do get tested, but you're sorely underestimating the complexity of trying to recreate soccer in a computer game. There's not a single game out there, that plays as realistic of soccer; none come even close, surely not Fifa Manager, surely not Championship Manager 5, surely not LMA or anything else. They all have glitzy 3d packages that show you canned highlights that look spectacular by get boring when you watch the same goal for the 50th time, but some people are more worried about the presentation then the actual quality, and that's fine, SI have always tried (not always succeded mind you) to go the opposite route. One of the things that always gets mentioned around at SI with regards to the match, is that to really appreciate it, you have to watch good portions of the match, not just the highlights or extended highlights. If you do take the time and effort to do that, you see a lot of the problems your team is making, where they are getting beaten, where your team is failing to play as you want them, etc. You don't get this from watching 10 mixed high points in a match. The obvious issue is that people aren't going to watch a 90 minute match (or a very significant part of this that would be required...), and it's something we are working on is ways to give you more feed back as to what's going wrong so you can diagnose the issues. At the end of the day it's a game, and if you're not having fun with it, then sometimes it's best to take a little time off, come back and see how it feels. It is funny however, how many people (not directed at anyone in particular) deride the game as being terrible, not fun, yet they still continue to play, and spend their time discussing it, so we must be doing *SOMETHING* a little right, even if it is flawed.
Where in the US can I buy FM2006? I"ve looked everywhere, and nobody sells this game, only ones I find are the cheap Asian versions on Ebay.
It's not called FM 2006 but it's the same game with a US english translation. http://www.shopsega.com/servlet/Con...sPage&SiteID=sega&productID=38931800&Env=BASE
1. 3 man backlines were tough to make work in 03-04, but it was possible. So far in the new version, you really can't make it work. And by that I mean, in 03-04, when I gave up a goal, it wasn't because my players acted retarded. They just got beat, or the other team made a good play. In this version, it usually is. I would guess that 2/3 of the goals I concede in the run of play happen because one of my players acted retarded. So they made some change in the match engine that made the game worse. 2. You can say they tested it, but if you remember back to 00-01 and 01-02, the big complaint was that the 4-4-2 didn't work. They got it right in 03-04, but there's such a British bias, and the 4-4-2 is the British tactic, that I stand my comment. They couldn't possibly have adequately playtested 3 man backlines. Go ahead and play a vanilla 3-5-2, and see how you concede goals. You won't admit it here, but you'll know I'm right. If I could name one problem with the current game is that the AI gets to make a tactical switch, and I can't prepare my players for it. IRL, I can tell my LDC that if the strikers switch, he needs to switch the RDC. In WWSM, if the opp. switches, it leads to a great chance as my RDC and LDC run sideways to get their marks. IRL, I can prepare my team that if the opp. goes 4-2-4, the wingbacks need to drop all the way back, and we need to get the ball to the midfield. In WWSM, the opp. gets several free minutes. Now, IRL, I really wouldn't even have to tell my players; the response is obvious, something a coach of a team of 14 year olds would expect his team to figure out. But in WWSM, it might as well be astral physics. There's not a shred of doubt in my mind that the designers made the game harder by making the human playerbots very, very stupid. Just to add on, one of the worst things about the game is that if, for example, I'm facing a team play a narrow tactic, it's impossible to get my players to do what they should be able to figure out without me telling them, namely, exploit the acres of space out wide. That's the superiority of the w/wo ball screens right there. Back then, you could exploit holes in the opp. defense. Now, you can't, because your players won't make the obvious play even if that's what you've told them to do. I HATE HATE HATE cheat tactics, which I define as unrealistic tactics that exploit flaws in the match engine. But I'm already figuring out that the engine encourages cheat tactics in a way that the 3 previous editions I've owned does not. And that's the problem right there. I'm NOT playing the game anywhere near as often as before. I used to itch to get a chance to play. Now, I've gone without playing for 5-7 days 3 times already, and I've only had the game 2 1/2 months. I'm considering starting over, or just leaving DCU ASAP, just to start afresh with a team and play a 4 man backline. But the main thing is, the SI team needs to re-think it's philosophy. It used to add 1-3 features at a time and get them right. Now, it adds 5-6 and f's 'em up. THAT'S why people like previous editions better.
I think there should be a sort of "View Tactical Summary" which would explain per half, what is/isn't working for the team tactically, and probably show, using the match engine what type of moves are/were successful and who's struggling and why? (not just Player Ratings) Other than that, I think getting the League Rules perfect and robust especially the registration issues and Non-EU rules where they exist. Also, Deeper club structure. I.E. More than three levels for clubs that go deeper than First Team, Reserve/B team, U-20, C-team, whatever. Probably just a lower 4th level would be necessary. Some clubs probably need a 5th level but 4 for right now.
Just to pile on...halftime team talks is a perfect example of the flawed approach of the SI team. People clamored for them, and it made me laugh, because I'm of the belief that professional athletes don't respond very well to external psychological motivation. Plus, my experience with other aspects of team management taught me that the SI team couldn't recreate even a game-worthy approximation of human psychology. It wasn't hindsight when I wrote it was stupid feature to add, and that they'd f' it up if they did add it. But they put it in. My first season, if my team played great, I guessed my players weren't retarded, and they knew they played well, so why lie to 'em? But we kept coughing up leads. The SI forums suggest you always tell the team "not to get complacent," while praising 2-3 of your best performers. Sure enough, DC United could suddenly hang onto a lead like a normal team. But how good is a feature if there's a trick to it? The trick is to always say the same thing. So the feature is pointless; once you figure out that you always tell the players not to get complacent, it's about as exciting as the canned highlights you deride in other soccer sims.
Well the problem is people aren't going to spend $50 for 2 game logic/AI updates and new rosters. Adding new things is for advertising, especially w/ EA tying FIFA Manager to FIFA 200X its a selling point SI doesn't have. Emulating real football is difficult because if you look at Nowak's 3-5-2 or any normal 3-5-2. There's not a lot of reason for it to work without strong midfield pressure and hard-working wingers/wing backs. FM/WWSM does not have the exclusivity that the Madden NFL series has..essentially roster updates and other useless things and no competition.
There needs to be a feature where you can take a tour of Japan/China, etc to earn revenue ala Real Madrid. They also need to allow you to set ticket prices.
The manager doesn't set ticket prices. But the lucrative tours need to be featured in more prominently. You can take a tour, but its never expressed how much money was made from each Friendly. I think after each Friendly match and European match there should be a Revenue report.
Profiled, I don't know if you'll read this after I whined like a bitch, but here goes. As I understand it (and as it looks watching matches), the mentality governs the spacing between your players. For example, in a 4-4-2, if you want to equally divide defending and attacking for your two central mids, put 'em on the same mentality. If you want one to attack mostly and one to defend mostly, if you want one to be Paul Scholes and the other to be Roy Keane, the best way is to split their mentalities. Forward runs is insufficient. OK, so you set up your tactic. I like having one striker being pretty attacking, while the other is normal. That spacing seems to help the link play from midfield to attack. The problem is, the spacing gets all f'ed up if I change team mentality in response to the score. Let's say you're playing a 4-4-2, and your team mentality as normal, your wide players and one striker on team, one striker 4 clicks up attacking, one MC 3 clicks up attacking, and one MC 3 clicks down defending. You like your spacing. But say the team is trying to kill off a game, and your drop your mentality 3 clicks below normal. Now, all your spacing is f'ed up. The gap between your two strikers is too large, you lose interplay. The relationship between your central and wide mids is screwed up. The complicated fix would be to allow me to set player mentality relative to team mentality, or to set it as an absolute. For example, I could set my "lead the line" striker as attacking, no matter what the rest of the team was doing, or I could set him as 3 clicks more attacking than team. My option. That would be best, if complicated. The easier and still valid fix would be for ALL mentalities to be relative to team mentality. Individual mentality would govern the team's shape, the spacing between players, while the team mentality would govern where the team sets up that shape. I'd looooove to be able to set some (most?) of my players' mentalities relative to the team. That'd be much easier than tweaking everyone when chasing a game or killing off a game. And IMO more realistic, too. IRL, when chasing a game, you don't have to tell every single player to get upfield. You tell the team to do it.
I get what Dave is saying. Essentially, in training is how you get the team to play the way you WANT them to play. Then during the match you are making adjustments to counter what the other team is doing. The micromanaging of each player seems a bit ridiculous. If he's a Defender, he should ALREADY know he must defend. So NORMAL mentality for a defender should already be defensive.
A couple of other things. 1. In MLS, it's impossible for me to offer one of my players for two of the AI's. I'm managing DC United, and Jaime was underrated. He wasn't good in 2005, Freddy was, so I wanted to trade Jaime for a 5th defender (remember, I'm running a 3 man backline, so I'm not looking for high quality) and either a 3rd leftsided mid or a 4th striker. IOW, I want to fill two deep depth holes on my roster with players better than I'll get in the draft. I'm looking for guys who won't even be used as subs unless someone is injured, the 20th and 21st guys on the roster. A fair trade. It can't be done. It wasn't even possible to trade Jaime for a 5th defender and a draft choice. 2. I want to be able to set my reserves' formation without managing the match. They play a 4-4-2.
Not exactly. Suppose you're in a 4-4-2. As the game is now, if you set your DCs to, say, 5 clicks defensive, unless you do something with one of your central mids, there will be too much spacing between your DCs and your MCs. And that works both on offense and defense. On offense, the DCs will have to make long passes to get the ball to the MCs, and on defense, there will be lots of room for opp. mids to run into and exploit. The obvious answer is to set one MC 3-5 clicks defensive. But then, at the end of the game, the score is gonna dictate a change. Do you want to click every player not on "team" mentality? I don't. As an experiment, play a 4-4-2, and make all the players on your left side as attacking as possible, and all the players on your right side as defending as possible. You'll see something like this. ------S------------ ------------------- -----------S------- ------------------- ML---MC----------- ------------------- -----------MC---MR ------------------- DL---DC----------- ------------------- -----------DC---DR --------GK-------- There are 20 notches in the defedning-attacking continuum, right? Normal is 10? I want the option to make my left striker +5, which means he's 5 more attacking than the team, while my right striker is team. That would be like when Donovan plays striker with McBride, with McBride as the left striker and Landon as the right striker. Or Pires or Bergkamp as the right striker and Henry as the leftt striker. If I'm nursing a lead, I move the team from 10 to 5, and that changes Landon to 5 and McBride to 10. If I'm down one, I move the team from 10 to 15, and that makes Landon 15 and McBride 20. Meanwhile, my GK stays at slightly attacking. Since I play a 3-5-2, I'm vulnerable defensively on the wings, so I preset that at about 8. As the game is now, I've preset one striker to about +5, the other at "team." But what if the team is +5? That eliminates the spacing between my two strikers, unless I go in and change the striker. But you end up having to change a bunch of players. It'd be easier the way I'm suggesting, and more realistic too. Do you tell Donovan to go this far up the field, or do you tell him to link between the midfield and McBride? The latter, of course. And when the team is up one, what does Arena do? He tells his players to play deeper, to keep the play in front of them. And McBride knows that means him, too, not just the players set to "team."
Yes, but you also forget Dave that you can decide how far up the Backline plays. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think that the "Mentality" should be context sensitive. A Midfielder set to defensive should be inclined to protect the back four, and other settings adjusted accordingly. Now mind you I did not say Defensive Midfielder. Meaning that, this midfielder has to do a lot of work playing hard defense and still commuting forward but somewhat cautiously. The Defensive Midfielder if set to the most defensive setting should almost become an extra Centre back.
OK, it seems like you're changing the subject a bit. You want an "F" playing as a striker to naturally be more withdrawn than an "S" playing striker, and an "FL" playing ML to naturally be more attacking than a DML playing ML. I dunno. It makes sense, but it adds a complication. I'm agnostic on your suggestion. Usually, the DML will have better defensive attributes, so you won't be asking him to be making as many forward runs as an FL, who will have better attacking attributes. profiled, one MLS-specific thing...the players in the draft need to be better. I'm drafting late, but I do see the attributes of ALL the players. None of them look like they're gonna step in and be Clint Dempsey as a rookie or even Bobby Boswell as a rookie. No Chris Rolfes so far. (Robbie Fowler was in the Jan 2007 draft tho. That was funny.) Now, you can't have the players' attributes be that good before the draft. My suggestion would be to have the game designers put 3 or so players in the draft every year who have a big gap between CA and PA, and set them to close most of that gap within a month of training. What will really be happening is that the players affected will just be showing that they're able to adapt to the pro game extraordinarily well. Alternatively, all players enter the combine as totally fogged, and you can pick, say, 5 players per team per game (after the first game) to scout. Each scouted player has, say, 8 attributes revealed, while each unscouted player has 4. At the same time, you can scout colleges and Bradenton, which would reveal some attributes before the draft. That way, you could have higher quality draftees but not make it easy to spot them. OK, reverse the order of the above two paragraphs. It'll make more sense that way.
I thought the thread was about what I'd like to see in FM 2007. I'd like to see more intuitive control over the player preparation and how the team performs under your aegis. Telling a striker to be more defensive or lower clicks down the slider, so he can link midfield to attack is ridiculous. A withdrawn strikers is not MORE defensive than a target man. He should be able to be told either through Personal options or through the Positional tactics screen to drop deep and link play.
I don't know why people are saying the 3-5-2 doesn't work, because I've been using it with great success. I'm playing two separate games -- one with Boston United and one with Chelsea, and my 3-5-2 formation is working quite well. In fact, with Boston United my team's goal was to avoid relegation and I'm sitting in the top half of the table.
Change the training and tactics how they used to be. The game has become to "friendly". I used to love spending hours tweaking my training schdules and tactics but now a couple of minutes and it's done.
- If they're going to include team talks, it should be improved. Maybe I'm just not good at it, but it feels really random to me, like you have no idea what's going to happen when you praise/criticize. - The injuries are unreal. I understand that it is realistic to have a lot of injuries on your club from time to time, but every game I play, I lose tons of players to injury. My latest game I'm down to the reserve squad basically, and my 4th string keeper. That's too much in my opinion.
I think I'm getting the hang of these. First of all, the key is to forget all common sense and everything you know about how human beings actually react. Done? OK. Your default when leading a match should be "don't get complacent." Same for winning a match. Encourage players with low moral. Chastise poor players unless they have low moral. Be pleased or delighted with 2-4 high performers.