Football Manager Series



Great news!

Yes, modders found a way to add skins to FM26, but they needed updating with every patch SI delivered (and you could only install one at a time). Now, they'll just work.
 
kamy100 said:
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This is the first time I've seen a preview streamer not win their game, and even then, it was a draw and he won on penalties...

I'm really worried about how easy it looks to win your games. I'm also sort of worried that, if nobody makes a numberless skin like Mustermann's for FM24, it'll also be too easy to find and sign all the best players and fly up the leagues in a silly fashion.

But I'm still hopeful.
 
I asked Mustermann - who I've mentioned before - if he might start skinning again now that FM27 seems to officially support it.

His skin for FM24 turned player profiles etc. into realistic scout reports that made team-building feel like real-life, and I'm really struggling to find other FMs realistic now. I loved it so much that I don't know whether to just go back to 24 (even though it had started to feel stale and predictable).

This is what it looked like:

attributes5100dd13fb087618.png

moneyball-stats04103530b2011448.png


You used a "team DNA" circle to select five things you deemed essential for your tactics - e.g. passing, first-touch, decision-making, teamwork, work rate - and once you'd scouted a player, you could see if they would fit your mould or not (bottom-right of first screenshot).

Then you'd use the stats circle to judge whether their career stats show a player who would be an upgrade from your current setup (second screenshot).

Compare all of this to just looking at e.g. "passing 17" and it makes the default game experience seem silly, in my opinion.

Unfortunately, it's extremely unlikely...



I have my fingers crossed that a skinner somewhere can design something similar - or (I hate to say it, but I'm desperate) that maybe AI can help - but it feels a bit hopeless right now.

(If you haven't experienced the above, I really really really recommend trying it - it increases difficulty too, and makes everything feel so much harder-earnt.)

EDIT: He's confirmed that you can "fake" an attributeless skin by making the attribute font colour and background colour identical, but the experience is still lacking all of his extra touches, and attributes appear on other screens throughout the game. :(

 
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Chris Davies said:
I asked Mustermann - who I've mentioned before - if he might start skinning again now that FM27 seems to officially support it.

His skin for FM24 turned player profiles etc. into realistic scout reports that made team-building feel like real-life, and I'm really struggling to find other FMs realistic now. I loved it so much that I don't know whether to just go back to 24 (even though it had started to feel stale and predictable).

This is what it looked like:

attributes5100dd13fb087618.png

moneyball-stats04103530b2011448.png


You used a "team DNA" circle to select five things you deemed essential for your tactics - e.g. passing, first-touch, decision-making, teamwork, work rate - and once you'd scouted a player, you could see if they would fit your mould or not (bottom-right of first screenshot).

Then you'd use the stats circle to judge whether their career stats show a player who would be an upgrade from your current setup (second screenshot).

Compare all of this to just looking at e.g. "passing 17" and it makes the default game experience seem silly, in my opinion.

Unfortunately, it's extremely unlikely...



I have my fingers crossed that a skinner somewhere can design something similar - or (I hate to say it, but I'm desperate) that maybe AI can help - but it feels a bit hopeless right now.

(If you haven't experienced the above, I really really really recommend trying it - it increases difficulty too, and makes everything feel so much harder-earnt.)

EDIT: He's confirmed that you can "fake" an attributeless skin by making the attribute font colour and background colour identical, but the experience is still lacking all of his extra touches, and attributes appear on other screens throughout the game. :(

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I used to use this skin, made me buy more obscure players than when using an attribute skin, I don't think I can return to attributes being shown by numbers
 
I need a fm24 style skin for this, I never played fm26 but why does everything seem so difficult to find?

Also the bar used to work much better from the LHS than the top
 
I think for anyone who spent a reasonable amount of time on 26 this is a breath of fresh air, to come straight from 24 will still take a bit of work but it's so much better in terms of content compared to last year
 
Looking through Reddit, the majority of opinions seem to be:
  • If you're coming from 24 or before, you'll hate it; while the UI has improved, it is still objectively worse. I've seen countless posts about it, but some that stick in my mind:

    When you receive an offer for a player (perhaps multiple offers), there are "accept" and "reject" buttons but no "negotiate" button,

    When you use the search bar, if you want to refine or change the terms, you have to go back a screen cos the search bar disappears,

    You can't see where the holes in your staff are and then find someone for that role, you have to keep going back-and-forth,

    ...and there's so much wasted space everywhere, and changing layouts is only really an option if you have a 2K/4K screen.

  • If you're coming from 26, you'll love it - because that was the series' lowpoint functionally, and even the slightest UI improvements would seem like gold.

In other news, I found out some really interesting stuff about the match engine thanks to this video (though there's a modder in the comments who points out there is a difference between the full and "quick" match engine) - and from EdL's posts on the SI forums (a senior dev), most interestingly this:

The match has not been re-written from the ground up (this would probably take another 10+ years to get right!) and the core simulation is independent from Unity and can be run without it; where the integration comes is the visualisations and animations etc.
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FM24's match engine was ported wholesale to FM26; the changes to tactics etc. mean we can now "send" more variables into it, but the match engine is broadly the same (with tweaks of course, and there will be further tweaks each year). As simple as it may be, I'm relieved it's not simpler.

What's making me want to move on to FM27 is almost exclusively the fact that lower league players can't use tactics designed for superstars any more (with the new "tactical effectiveness" stuff). That seems like a genuine, and very much needed, upgrade. But it's one of few real selling points IMO.

So, I will move over at some point in the next few weeks, but I still just feel so sad about the state of the UI (which is 99% of the game). Thankfully, skinning should be easier, though I'm not sure if it can go deep enough yet to allow modders to place links to other screens etc. where they're desperately needed...
 
I'm going to wait and see what the community can do, the UI is game breaking for me, and loads of little things about it annoy me like:

Can't see all the information of what a role does as they've now put the key attributes under the text
During negotiations the lock button is no longer a lock button its a drop down to choose non negotiable
Every menu seems more difficult to find the info you want, i spent ages trying to recruit staff. Because staff is now under club, and staff recruitment is under recruitment

Hopefully someone works some magic with AI on Fm24 because at this rate i wont be switching anytime soon
 
So far the only released mod is the Real Name fix.

I have uploaded this to the OneDrive and when other things are released will include these.
 
So given the game 45 minutes today.

The UI is massively improved, still a long way to go as looks completely trash but at the actual menus and interactions now make a lot more sense.

The match engine though - The highlights..
They can't be serious..
The animation looks like something from Football Manager on the spectrum the movement of the players how they kick and pass the ball, the goalkeepers saving the ball by diving forward - This has really made me laugh and not in a good way.
It is really painful to watch - The sounds are really bad too and my god does it need a MOD or 99 to fix the constant drumming.
But hey least the fans wear the shirts of the teams now.

So far surely I can't be the only person who finds this game hilariously bad.
 
bsmaff said:
The match engine though - The highlights..
They can't be serious..
The animation looks like something from Football Manager on the spectrum the movement of the players how they kick and pass the ball, the goalkeepers saving the ball by diving forward - This has really made me laugh and not in a good way.
It is really painful to watch - The sounds are really bad too and my god does it need a MOD or 99 to fix the constant drumming.
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The blessing and the curse of living in the modern age is that, if you don't like something, you can probably find a mod for it - such as this match render mod (which I've posted further up the page):



...or you could even play in 2D. Far from ideal, but, at the end of the day, we played the likes of CM 01/02 with its text engine and CM 03/04 with its 2D engine and had an absolute blast.

It's no excuse for the developers putting out a game that looks like (if we're being honest) a PlayStation 2 product, but you can't change what they do; you can only use mods to "fix" it.

My biggest worry from the footage I've seen is how pinbally some of the passing moves look (which isn't a rendering issue, but a match engine issue), which doesn't stand out as something moddable. But I'm hoping it's not as common as the clips I've seen have made it look.
 
bsmaff said:
The animation looks like something from Football Manager on the spectrum the movement of the players how they kick and pass the ball, the goalkeepers saving the ball by diving forward - This has really made me laugh and not in a good way.
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No idea what you're talking abo-



...okay, that's hilarious.
 
After downloading the preview and continuing a previous save... I can't help but entirely agree with this. Well worth a read, but more importantly, how the hell do we get SI to see this?

I am pleading with my players not to shoot from outside the box, and using instructions like "work ball into the box" - but it makes no difference (same as 26). But even worse, the side-effect of "work ball into the box" is that, countless times, a player will receive the ball in the box in a perfect shooting position ... then pass away from goal.

There's enough similar complaints for this to be a match engine issue and not a tactical one. It's really not a lot of fun.

 
I've played a full season with Blackburn Rovers now, and my feelings are a little mixed.

The UI is definitely better than FM26. There have been some improvements, and while it's still a long way from where I'd like it to be, I do think they've taken some positive steps in the right direction. I'm also hopeful that making skins easier to create will help improve the overall experience.

On the football side, I finished 4th with Rovers and managed to get promoted through the play-offs. If I'm being honest, it felt a little too easy. I made absolutely no transfers and played a fairly basic 4-2-3-1 throughout the season.

Now, it could be argued that keeping things simple was actually the right approach, particularly given the quality of the squad. Anything more complicated would probably have brought tactical familiarity and effectiveness into the equation, and I don't think my players would have been particularly capable of adapting to anything too adventurous.

That said, I still found it relatively easy to secure a top-four finish, which really shouldn't be happening with a Blackburn squad that is, quite frankly, poor and seriously lacking in depth.

The match engine is probably my biggest concern. There are some good elements to it, but the behaviour of players is incredibly inconsistent at times. I lost count of the number of times Sam Morsy, a very defensive-minded midfielder, decided he was prime Steven Gerrard and started scoring from outside the box. Equally, some of my very limited players were knocking the ball around like prime Barcelona. It's entertaining in its own way, but it doesn't always feel particularly realistic. There's definitely more work needed here.

Overall, I do think this is an improvement on FM26. That's not necessarily the highest bar to clear, as I found FM26 so fundamentally flawed that it was, for me, pretty much unplayable.

This is better, and there are things to like, but it's still very much a work in progress. I really hope SI continue to listen to the feedback, because there is the foundation of something good here. They just need to keep building on it.
 
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I think I’ll wait until FM28... or buy it if it shows up at a reasonable price on Steam (😶‍🌫️)

Meanwhile, I keep playing 24...
 
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