Football Manager 2018

Chris Davies said:
Thanks as always - been enjoying the beta, although scorelines in the lower leagues are a bit mental (16 goals in the last TWO games I've played in)... Have you had chance to play it?
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Have not played it as yet, as waiting for full release.

Day 1 patch normally fixes quite a lot of the bugs from BETA and they normally change the match engine considerably over the first 2/3 patches.

Will start playing it tomorrow and try and get some action in over the weekend as Man Utd, as they are my go to team every year to learn the game and try and get some tactical sense.

Once I complete a couple of seasons with Man Utd, I will move onto Exeter and see about moving up the leagues.

I am mainly interested in finding how the squad thing works, in regards to having big dressing room players and how they influence how the squad performs.
I know it exists in football (Everyone apparently getting Tinker Man sacked, and Mourinho at Chelski), but I think that this season it will either have to big an effect or none at all.

Sports Interactive are good at trying to implement new ideas and trying to keep things fresh, but going on past performance they have one year of introducing new features, but then they don't work as intended and the following year they are fixed and seem perfect.

Looking forward to getting to 2026 for a 48 team WC though - Might just do a holiday game till 2026 for the hell of it.
 
bsmaff said:
I am mainly interested in finding how the squad thing works, in regards to having big dressing room players and how they influence how the squad performs.
I know it exists in football (Everyone apparently getting Tinker Man sacked, and Mourinho at Chelski), but I think that this season it will either have to big an effect or none at all.
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At this moment in time there are massive complaints about it, and thus far SI's response has been "it's realistic".

There's lots of tales on the forum (and I've seen similar) of one upset player causing an uprising, with a lot of people saying "if you don't select e.g. 'international footballer' as your playing experience level, you're screwed". Which I've experienced first-hand.

I was playing around in the lower league as a "Sunday League" experience manager, and one player was moaning that he didn't get enough first team play (he wasn't as good as my other right-back). So I told him this, and within three days the entire squad's morale was the lowest possible.

Since starting as Tranmere and choosing "local player" (can't remember the exact wording), it's been sensible... So far...
 
Channel 5 news had a feature on FM 2018 which includes players coming out as gay in the game . .. that's a nice addition.
 
I have now started playing FM, since my Mrs spends every night watching - I'M really disliking this TV show, get me out of here.

But any way not been playing it long, and already my squad is unhappy with me, as the very influential Ashley Young has managed to get the hump as I made a bid for Griezmann.. Ashley took offence to this, as I was looking to replace him in the starting 11 - Yes that's right Ashley Young was apparently going to be in my starting 11, and didn't need replacing.

But any way, the Griezmann deal didn't happen, he is still extremely unhappy and squad harmony is not great and I have already had a team meeting in which the squad didn't like my answers.

It seems the new squad harmony section is going to be a massive ball ache for me, and will more than likely launch my laptop at the wall at some point.

Apart from the massive downfalls of this section, the match day experience is similar, but also feels massively improved over last few years.

The other gripe I have is the amount of staff you now need in the game, I spent 1 hour trying to hire staff and getting all the staff positions filled - It seems FM is going overkill in this section of the game now, there is now way too many positions available on the game and on top of that you need to hire the same positions for u23 and u18's.

I will get into it a lot more over the next two weeks, but so far I have been playing for about 3 hours and not even started the season yet.
 
I enjoyed hiring all the staff because I was looking forward to reaping the benefits of having a brilliant data analyst, pointing out lots of strengths and weaknesses that I could work with.

Instead, it's the same stupid thumbs-up/down crap every week. What annoys me is I constantly see this scenario:

GOOD: Macclesfield regain possession a lot in the centre of midfield.
BAD: Macclesfield lose possession a lot in the centre of midfield.

Useful...

I also feel a bit sick going into every pre-match meeting (which have so far been useless) and every team talk, because the mood is constantly "the players aren't listening".

I had to re-load a save after saying I wasn't happy with the performance in a 1-1 draw where we played terribly and were awarded a dodgy penalty in the last minute. Within 48 hours there was a mutiny. Every player's morale dropped to almost the lowest possible, and if I hadn't quit the game I would have had to have resigned and started again somewhere else.
 
FM has so many stupid game mechanics like that, in FM17 (I guess 18 is the same) the only way I kept control of morale and kept results going was to go to EVERY player's profile every few days and Interact>Praise>Praise conduct... This would never, ever fail to increase that player's morale. Even if they'd played like shit and done nothing of note at all, praising conduct increased morale up a level all the time.

Rather than being mostly a test of football tactics, results seemed to rely more on simply how much you time-consumingly babysitted all your players morale. You are better off constantly giving the most neutral team talks/press conferences you can and then just praising conduct all the time than to ever try giving anyone a kick up the backside.
 
I have now played 4 competitive games on FM and finished the transfer window after about 3/4 hours of play, so this years seems slower than previous FM's.

The main issue though is the game appears to be much easier this season, I know, I am only 4 games in but it just seems easy - My results so far in competitive games.

Man Utd 3 - 0 Real Madrid - Euro Super Cup
Southampton 0 - 2 Man Utd
Man Utd 5 - 1 Liverpool
West Brom 1 - 4 Man Utd

I am not sure if my results will continue in this manner but only time will tell.
 
Glad you're having some luck, I just live in constant fear of my own players...

Something like 20 games into the season I'm 7th (which is a play-off place in the Conference National). The last three games, we've been 1-0/2-0/3-0 up at half time and ended up drawing, which is making me tear my hair out.

Tons of injuries too - BUT at least this year you have the analysts telling you the likelihood of a player getting injured, so you almost know it's coming.

However, it seems to be "very high" permanently - unless I reduce training down to practically nothing other than medium team training with no individual training. I'm guessing it's not like that in the Premier League?
 
I'm a total noob to this series but would like to get into it. I've read a lot of comments online saying how 2012 was the last great version. I'm wondering if I should get that and download an updated database or just start with this latest version. Any advice? Thanks.
 
I can't really remember 2012 TBH, FM kind of blends into one.

They make changes every year, but can't remember specific versions.

I would buy either last seasons, or this years.. This seasons so far seems quite easy and the players being unhappy alot of the time, takes the fun away a little.
 
Finished my first season with Man Utd.

Thought I did pretty well, and FM this season does appear to be easier than previous versions.

Premiership - Won - Finished on 97 points and lost 3 games.
Champions League - Won - Beat Real Madrid 2-0 in final.
FA Cup - Won - Beat Chelsea in Final
League Cup - Lost in Final - Lost to Arsenal
European Super Cup - Won - Beat Real Madrid

Final Premiership Table:-

premtable.png
 
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I've given up on this game for a couple of years now, it's too difficult for me. Is it the game or is it me? I guess it's me.
Can't be arsed to micromanage all those separate factors like player morale.

Bsmaaf, i'm not one to give you lessons in FM, far from that. But if you think the game is too easy, why not play with another team than Man U ?
 
gerd said:
I've given up on this game for a couple of years now, it's too difficult for me. Is it the game or is it me? I guess it's me.
Can't be arsed to micromanage all those separate factors like player morale.

Bsmaaf, i'm not one to give you lessons in FM, far from that. But if you think the game is too easy, why not play with another team than Man U ?
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If you read any of my previous posts, I always start a game as Man Utd as they give an idea as to what tactics work and what don't.

They are not world beaters far from it, but with the right additions can fight for all the major competitions, I find they are the right team to use for a "test run" (Man City would be a walk in the park), after that I always start as Exeter.

Since I have now played a season and tested multiple formations in different circumstances, I will now start a save with Exeter.

I find lower league management can be more fun, the game is much more challenging as you have to change the team/players as fitness levels are lower and you play a lot more games.
I get really excited when going into FA Cup games, 2nd, 3rd round games at home to bigger teams, really make me 2nd guess/think about formation and the right players to give me the best chance.
Champions League games on FM don't even get a remote of excitement until the quarters or semi's - Oh I am home to Besiktas, exciting...
Or maybe I just find the game more exciting and enjoyable as I support the team I am playing as.
 
gerd said:
I've given up on this game for a couple of years now, it's too difficult for me. Is it the game or is it me? I guess it's me.
Can't be arsed to micromanage all those separate factors like player morale.
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You could try the slightly stripped down mobile version.
 
Thanks Lexypoo and yes Bsmaff, now that you mentioned it, i remember. I'm very sorry.
May seem a patronising post, but i meant well...succes with Exeter!
 
bsmaff said:
If you read any of my previous posts, I always start a game as Man Utd as they give an idea as to what tactics work and what don't.

They are not world beaters far from it, but with the right additions can fight for all the major competitions, I find they are the right team to use for a "test run" (Man City would be a walk in the park), after that I always start as Exeter.

Since I have now played a season and tested multiple formations in different circumstances, I will now start a save with Exeter.

I find lower league management can be more fun, the game is much more challenging as you have to change the team/players as fitness levels are lower and you play a lot more games.
I get really excited when going into FA Cup games, 2nd, 3rd round games at home to bigger teams, really make me 2nd guess/think about formation and the right players to give me the best chance.
Champions League games on FM don't even get a remote of excitement until the quarters or semi's - Oh I am home to Besiktas, exciting...
Or maybe I just find the game more exciting and enjoyable as I support the team I am playing as.
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The Champions League is very exciting when you are the Besiktas of the world. It's just playing in the big 5 leagues, one gets comfortable, and often you end up pulling through by half-assing a game. When you are in the lower leagues or a smaller country, you care more about every game.
 
They were hyping the match engine like it was totally different. But it just looks like polished FM 2017. Not that it matters that much in a manager game, but why they hyped it so much to begin with? The player models do look great though.
 
I have been warned by my website hosts that my data allowance has exceeded my allowed amount of traffic.

"I am contacting your regarding the web-hosting for the above domain. It has come to our attention that last week your website saw over 600GB of data transferred.

The following files alone are using nearly 600GB of bandwidth:

Hits: Size: Total: Filename:
2 8.7G 17.4G backgrounds.zip
33 9.2G 303.6G faces_v10.02.rar
2 1.8G 3.6G google_stadiums.zip
50 5.2G 260G metallic_logos_fm2018_v1.rar
Total: 584.6G

We need to request that these files and any others that are using a lot of bandwidth are removed from the server as the bandwidth usage is outside of the allowed 25GB per calendar month as detailed on our Acceptable Use Policy."

Unfortunately due to this warning, I will now be unable to host and provide updates for Football Manager for the time being, until I find an alternative way to allow everyone to download and access the files.
 
bsmaff said:
Unfortunately due to this warning, I will now be unable to host and provide updates for Football Manager for the time being, until I find an alternative way to allow everyone to download and access the files.
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Gosh darn it. Just when I've started to really get back into the game again!

Ah well - thanks for all the hosting you've given to us @bsmaff, really grateful for all of it.

Having a blast at the minute - I'm actually starting to understand what's going on thanks to the heat-maps I'm getting after every game, and the scout reports on the upcoming opposition.

Lots of problems (possibly more than ever) - players are constantly whinging about not being in the first team, and the pre-match briefings have turned out to be utterly pointless games of "find the thing they respond to happily and then run", just like team-talks.

I also cannot get the team to stop hitting long balls forward to the lone striker - I can set every player to hit short passes, I can set the tactics to "retain possession", I can set the "work ball into box" instruction, and yet they will still repeatedly give possession away by hitting a 60-yard pass to no-one.

But I think it's my favourite FM so far purely because of the fact that the data is presented in a much more "human" fashion, and you can turn the tides of games by spotting the patterns they hinted at before the game.
 
Chris Davies said:
the pre-match briefings have turned out to be utterly pointless games of "find the thing they respond to happily and then run", just like team-talks.
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This is what has really turned me off FM the last couple of years or so. Half time is almost like guess the right thing to say and you'll win the game, get it wrong and you'll lose it. It seems to have way too much weight on how the game plays out. The game that did it for me I was 0-4 down at half time, picked the right thing to say, all the players were fired up and I ended up drawing 4-4. It just seemed so "gamey". I wish they'd take it out or tone it way down and let the tactical side of things decide how the game will pan out.

What's the point in all the tactical options particularly as in your example, you set all the tactics to keep the ball and work it into the box and they still hoof it up the pitch. Meanwhile say the right or wrong thing at half time and it has a huge effect on the game, regardless of what the other team might be like.

You can watch the game, think I need to exploit this or shore up there, change it at half time then say the wrong thing and it's a total waste of time.
 
mattmid said:
You can watch the game, think I need to exploit this or shore up there, change it at half time then say the wrong thing and it's a total waste of time.
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Yeah I can't argue with you there, you're right. I say the same things pre-game, half-time and post-game ("good luck", then "keep going", then "you played well"/"you played badly") because if I ever say anything else - particularly the dreaded "why can't you play like that every week" (seriously, why does that even exist as an option) - then the morale tanks.

That's more dangerous than ever now because of the "dynamics" feature... If the morale does drop, you get players asking to go pretty much immediately. It's so sensitive. Apparently it's not just Premier League footballers who act like spoilt kids, but Conference National footballers too (can't see it myself)...

That being said, I happily ignore all that nonsense to experience the rest of the game. It's a bit mad that it is the way it is, but at least you can designate etc.!
 
Chris Davies said:
That being said, I happily ignore all that nonsense to experience the rest of the game. It's a bit mad that it is the way it is, but at least you can designate etc.!
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Yeah, it's a shame because it's so good in so many ways. Although without designating things it can become a full time job in itself, only without the nice pay off when it goes wrong!
 
With the help of Chris I am now managed to find an alternative way of sharing the files and hopefully not get any warnings.

So on Friday, I will be sharing the files again.

I am only waiting for Friday as there should be a complete January transfer file available.
 
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