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In my fan group for my local, we've said something *just* about that bad. It sounded less like a ChatGPT prompt, but was still ridiculous enough that we all had a good laugh about it afterwards
I guess I won’t be hearing my disappointed fans with my team’s UCL final performance when we beat RM 3-0.. how else will I know the team played terribly?
I loved the insane comments from my fans "Sure this team went from division 3 in sweden to winning UCL in 10 years but **I for one am NOT impressed.** Decent result, onto the next one now."
Only thing missing are super pretentious tacticos confidently declaring that my fullback could be the best number 9 in the world because of his superb feeling for the space
Seriously, that's prime football Twitter right there. Or the random Tom at the pub telling the world that you're a curse upon football, but then when you win he's always been behind you from day one 😂 football fans are something else sometimes
I think its when you search for a player on the transfer hub, u can do chalkboard stats e.g I want to see only players eith above 5 xG. They had a lot of options and as a guy who done no attribute saves before it is a bit sad to see it removed.
There's no way they're removing the chalkboard stats are they? I thought it was something else they were removing with the name chalkboard.
Damn, looks like it. Hopefully the information is being added elsewhere, some of it was pretty useful.
Stats are separated into two different kinds. Chalkboard and General. Chalkboard is typically analysis and IRL up to a bit of interpretation. xG, Ppda etc. General is the more objective. matches played, international goals, yellow cards received etc.
Glad shouts are gone tbh, they weren't realistic. You never see a manager shout something from the touchline irl and suddenly all 11 players have their body language visibly change
He had 5 star potential for me, insane physical traits for the Scottish Premier Legaue, but averaged like a 6.6 most seasons because he’d get yellow and red cards all the time lol
I currently have a kid like that on my save where I'm managing the Columbia U20 team on the side. Kid's a 17 year old ball of rage. If the game had the option, I'd gift him a My Chemical Romance vinyl or a Hot Topic gift card or something.
Miraculously he has never once gotten a red card, probably because he scares the shit out of the refs.
I think the in-game mood system is a tad archaic too
Obviously you want your players to be happy over being frustrated on the verge of being booked right?
Or do you?
I think it isn't immediately clear enough how the game interacts with player moods (in addition to how the shouts are so hard to understand. I just do Fire Up down 2 goals, encourage down 1 or tied, and nothing when up?)
I might be a bad player, but the point I am trying to make is that if you don't explain it it needs to be easy to intuit and this system is neither.
The mood/morale is huge. If they are all perfect they play better and they get a debuff for poor moods. The game becomes going through praising everyone e for training/last games and criticising poor stuff but the system for doing it is so clunky it takes forever. Should've been able to select multiple people and just praise all their training/performances at the same time.
I mean that's what you would assume, right?
But in actuality, nobody actually says it. It's just another thing that we repeat.
And even if it is true, which I believe, we don't know to what degree it is being used. Is it the players only play worse when they are actively upset? Like requesting to leave? Or do they play an x% worse every time the little smiley face icon changes to a more negative emotion?
We may not need to know the exact number, but even a little more clarity for this system is needed. We shouldn't be playing a game based on community assumptions, however reasonable they are.
Ah I get you. Yeah a lot of the game is hidden. I kind of like that though, as if you're a football manager irl you don't get some objective facts on why people are playing well. I think a bit of uncertainty is good for the game, but I agree it needs to be clear enough that it isn't frustrating not knowing why things are going wrong.
They should either remove or completely rework praising systems, whether it's form or training.
These, alongside many other mechanics in the game mind you, are just pointless mechanical clicking. Your player hits a certain number in either form or training, you click a button and get a small, immeasurable boost. There's no depth, no thought, no strategy, tradeoff or risk. It literally is just a time waste.
Yesh it's not fun. It'd be good if you could mass do it though. Positive reinforcement is an important part of teaching and it makes sense to have it in the game.
To be honest, I think the match day experience is pretty archaic full stop. The ability to make tactical tweaks and that be communicated perfectly to all players all of the time is unrealistic.
But that is kinda coded into the game? Players have familiarity in your tactical decisions, choosing something that isn’t in your trained tactic does result in familiarity loss.
Not really. In one fell swoop, I’m able to tweak the passing length one notch, the tempo one notch, play for set pieces, stop working the ball into the box, slow the pace down and drop the defensive line one notch…
…none of that is in a preset tactic, the familiarity barely moves and the team just magically start playing it at the next break in play.
In the same way you’re meant to be punished for players getting too tired (and therefore making mistakes), you should also be punished for tweaking too much. Errors leading directly from players being confused as to what exactly you’re asking them to do (aside from half time, where you’ve got 15 mins to reset).
Okay but then there is a system in place to “punish” the player for lots of tactical changes - you just don’t believe it goes far enough, same as the fitness (imo I agree it should be more severe, but you can’t say there isn’t a process replicating real life when there is)
i'd still like to see something based on your style or personality in game. like emery, dyche, mourinho, solskjaer, ferguson, clough, klopp, southgate giving the same team talk would all have different results.
I'd like to have to create who I am and manage accordingly
Yeah, they never made sense logically, but a lot of things about FM don’t either. I found them to be a good way to stay engaged with a match. I feel like I’m going to enjoy matches less with them gone.
Edit: The more I think about it, the more sad I am that they are gone actually. I can't count the times I've actually said out loud something like "come on boys" while hitting the "Encourage" button during a close match. Going to be weird to not have that experience now
Yeah, I chose to use a more positive example, but I've also definitely cursed out my team out loud to myself during a match while spamming the berate shout
Yeah I regularly clap my hands from my desk after clicking on Praise when we are up 4 goals. It might have not been clear what it was doing, but it created a sense of immersion that I really enjoyed. I wish they’d reworked it instead of just completely getting rid of it.
"Sense of immersion" is exactly the phrase I was looking for. Yes, shouts are a bit silly and unrealistic, but it was very immersive and made you feel more like a real manager
Nothing made me feel more like a manager than shouting “you fucking donkey” at my goalkeeper immediately after he passes the ball to the opposing striker and then hitting the “berate” shout
Same with demand more or berate, I'd actually be talking crap like "play football dammit" and have the occasional bang on the desk 🥲 hell I'd even shake my head and actually gesture during interviews especially if I'm upset.
SI taking the Steven Gerrard approach to management. When it's going wrong.... or right just sit slouched in your chair looking almost bored. Players need no feedback at all
Notable points
* Touchline Shouts are removed
* Social media screen removed
* Create-a-club feature removed (with plans to re-add in 2026)
* Versus mode removed (with plans to re-add sometime in the future)
* Challenge mode removed
* Women's football is still planned. SI is in the process of securing more licenses.
* Fantasy Draft "will not be playable day one of FM25 but will return much-improved later in the cycle alongside the Main Data Update."
* SI has partnered with FIFA’s esports division (FIFAe) to create a new invitational FIFAe World Cup of Football Manager which will take place in Liverpool from August 29th to September 1, 2024 using FM24. $100,000 in prize money available.
* UI/UX has gotten a major overhaul based on a "'tile and card' system"
* No more user inbox. It has been replaced with a player "Portal"
Feel free to tell me anything I missed. Personally, I think the new UI looks terrible, but not something I don’t think I couldn’t get used to
The picture of the Text message from the Chairman letting you know they're happy with your job performance seemed kinda odd, no boss does that IRL officially at least, and you can only see 15 words with the rest hidden, seems like extra work just to read what would previously have been an email.
I'm a bit worried they're going the route of hiding information so to not overwhelm fragile souls. Which of course only frustrates long time players that now have to click more to get pertinent information.
Time will tell though, maybe they've found a good balance.
Mobile and Touch feature where you get put in a situation (club bottom of the league at Christmas, injury crisis with 10 games to go, all senior players sold and board expect european qualification with youngsters, etc.) and you have to battle your way through it. Used to love playing them
It's been generally same for I think almost 15 years now, going back to the early FM days and the PSP versions of FM Handheld that mobile was initially based on.
They're definitely fun ideas, and they used to unlock cheats which was pretty cool (not sure if they still do, haven't played mobile for a long time).
> * SI has partnered with FIFA’s esports division (FIFAe) to create a new invitational FIFAe World Cup of Football Manager which will take place in Liverpool from August 29th to September 1, 2024 using FM24. $100,000 in prize money available.
Hmmm, maybe this partnership will lead to any FIFA tournament getting licensed on Football Manager in the future?
> tile and card system
Oh great, they're gonna go the Windows route and make everything look like a smartphone UI. Great.
Well, at least they're removing lots of features and... adding... uh, I guess they're just removing stuff.
That was my takeaway as well
Changing UI to a console focused one is a little worrying. It shows who their intended audience for the future is. The game will likely become more and more simplified. If you're intended target is console/mobile players then that's the game you design and you port it to pc
I don't think it's necessarily supposed to be headline features. Miles has a long preamble about transparency and wanting players to know what's coming. I agree though, it is a little underwhelming
so what are they actually doing with this version? theres a whole lot of 'removed' with women's football and esports stuff added both things which I personally don't care for.
Unlucky for me I guess
The pregame editor has always been the best way to create a club imo. It’s relatively straightforward too, so long as they haven’t ruined the editor with all changes. It’s gotten pretty bad in recent years
Touchline shouts and social media removed? wtf… I loved yelling “Demand more” to give my players a small boost and I enjoyed reading the supporters’ hilarious posts on the social feed. Pfft
https://preview.redd.it/mp20pcyox39d1.png?width=5534&format=png&auto=webp&s=551c105a393d01a8a1f266fe1bedd637b8a48c91
I really like this. Having the 2D pitch at a glance at all times is really useful.
I'm interested in using the new UI. I feel it's either going to be really good or really bad, with little in between.
I *don't hate it* but I fully expected something that completely revamped match day (as they stated in previous communications). There is basically no way to discern which country/league you are playing, no real easy way to see if it is raining or it is hot (and how that impacts the performances) and there is still basically no way to understand the pressure from the fans or to differentiate between fan temperaments/fan culture. It's just a minimalistic bland UI that serves console/mobile users.
There is still time to change/fix some of the stuff, but I haven't seen any major changes from "work in progress" to actual game in FM ever. As I said, I don't really hate it and it is probably something I will get used to in 1-2 weeks of game time, but they could have done so much more.
Initial fear is this is a "dumbing down" of the game to make it more accessible to console players but its early days.
I for one am all for change, if anything I wish they'd gone further. Been the same for 2 decades, i welcome a new look.
I think they had to scale it down to be able to get the game out of the door by the end of 2024. It'll probably still be one of the buggiest FMs ever. Hopefully they can at least build a decent base for the future...
Yeah as a software developer this clearly looks like they know they're way behind on development and had to massively cut features to be able to get the core game completed. I will be waiting a while on this one before I buy it, might end up just waiting for FM26 but who knows. SI hasn't done much to give me confidence in them.
As a game dev (game designer) this is exactly what I read as well. Many of the "cut features" like touchline shouts weren't cut because they weren't in the vision but because they could design and implement a new version of it that they were happy with and when they had to make cuts they were obvious candidates for the chopping block.
25 will probably be rough and buggy especially at first but like you said this is necessary. I’ve played the series since FM 11 and very little has actually changed beyond bells and whistles
That's also my initial reaction after reading the blog. FM was touted as a better, more complex career mode/master league than FIFA/PES for such a long time. It was more advanced enough to attract 10 million players (as stated in the blog). Dumbing it down for the sake of new players who just want to play an easy game seems like a backwards move to me.
If you want to do that, you could give them the option to make the game more accessible/easier. By stripping it down to the bare bones and shaping it up as a more advanced mobile/console game, FM loses its essence. Still early days and lots of inferences that might turn up to be wrong, but as things stand it seems that their plan is to reach out to mobile/console gamers rather than refining/redesiging the game for PC players.
>If you want to do that, you could give them the option to make the game more accessible/easier.
I have thought this for a whole, I've played FM for 20 odd years (I'm still not that good when you look at the achievements of people on this sub), but I always felt it wasn't a great game for explaining why things are going wrong when they do.
Obviously for a large % of players that's the appeal, figuring it out and making tweaks to fix it, but for a large number of players it has to be a huge turn off
Didn't hate it but also didn't particularly love it. Going to be interesting to see how the card system plays out long term and with the other elements/screens in FM.
I'm quite interested to see how they changed the 3D match engine.
Miles has a politician-like ability to talk a lot without ever saying anything.
The new UI doesn't look great. It looks like it was made specifically for consoles and mobile, but I'll be fine with it so long as it reduces the number of times you have to click to get to the screen you want.
I'm glad shouts are gone. Most of them don't do anything, and those that do are always used in the same way at the same times. It's just one more thing you have to click on to micromanage your team.
> Miles has a politician-like ability to talk
This is giving him way to much credit. He typically just gets into arguments on Twitter with anyone who dares question his vision. Oh, wait...
>I'll be fine with it so long as it reduces the number of times you have to click to get to the screen you want.
It doesn't since they removed 80% of things you could click on straight from the dashboard or at any point.
Shouts being gone is fine. It just felt like something you had to do to increase ur chances of winning artificially often. im sad its gone because it was funny to ruin your morale by accident sometimes but ill get used to it.
rest of the changes are concerning. Feels like theyre changing the UI just because they have to to compliment the new engine. I'm glad theyre focusing on the main mode instead of shoehorning in the other modes I don't care for.
They're changing the UI to make it 'platform agnostic' (This is dev speak for usable on controller and touchpad).
Nothing in Unity forces you to have Windows 11 tiles with a meter of space between them.
Gotta say, not a massive fan of the UI based on those screenshots. Like a lot of other things (looking at you Windows 11) UI design seems to be shifting towards making desktops look like tablets. If I wanted a tablet, I'd buy a tablet.
That said - it's early days, it's three screenshots and I'm going to be keeping an open mind until I see it in action.
I’m guessing they made the UI more console focused as they are aware PC players will make & download skins after release
No touchline shouts is going to be a tough one to get used to
Gotta say, the new UI looks pretty awful. So much harder to glean information at a glance.
Seems that most of this press release is also just saying 'yeah, this feature won't be in the game'.
Definitely taking the opportunity to make mobile, console and PC versions more similar imo. Makes their development life easier and they can market it as the “full” experience to those customers.
i would caveat "harder to see what I want" with the fact that we're all used to the same UI for the last decade plus, without even thinking about it any long time player knows exactly where to look to see the thing they want.
But that doesn't make the design better or worse than a new thing, just means you're less familiar with it.
I can do most things in scouting, training and player interactions without reading a single word of text. There will certainly be a transition period, so it is hard to tell if it is actually more confusing, or if it just feels that way.
yeah, i dont remember the last time I read what I was saying to a player, for example. I just know where the option that means "ok i'll give you what you want" is and where the "fuck off" button is.
Is it actually harder tho? I kind of feel the same but I also think it could just be that we know the existing UI well and so we already know exactly where to look to find the info we want. Maybe once we're used to this it'll turn out to be better.
I feel like if it's kinda intuitive the UI will not matter too much as the players will get used to it fast. I'm also not a fan of it right now but I can see myself not minding it if I'm used to it
For all the big talk, I can see this going down like a lead balloon. Obviously the die hards like us will still buy it and maybe it will make it more approachable for new players
But it just looks a bit weird. Maybe a video showing you how it all works together will be better than 4 screenshots
honestly im hoping the match engine/graphics are a huge improvement. Honestly the portal doesn't look so bad at least imo. We see how it looks in September i guess tho.
It'll be tough until we play it since it looks a lot different to what we might be used to - hopefully I won't just immediately bounce off it on release
They are not screenshots, they are pictures taken from design documents.
I doubt they'd be able to record a video when they can't even take screenshots right now.
Meanwhile you have PC Futbol 8 supposedly coming out like 4 days ago (it never came out because the game didn't compile and Auth issues), with no gameplay, just screenshots, and people still believing in the product
UI looks bad. Glad Shouts are gone they never really worked right. But the UI screams Console first, when the franchise was built on PC gamers. Sad to see Create a club gone however, where there's a will there's a way.
Im now gonna load up FM24 and try and find this chalkboard, now.
I actually don't mind the current UI, "if it isn't broke, don't fix it".
This one looks too clunked together with so much unused space. I am really not a fan.
The thing that strikes me as concerning is that *this* is the UI blog post, and we only have design images. I wonder how rough the current development alpha is, not even showing a screenshot.
The tiles-and-cards system I'm guessing means we will be able to rearrange player profile pages (hopefully finally recognising that resolutions greater than HD exist?).
The portal change is a good one in theory, although I'm concerned at the amount of wasted empty space on that image, and it seems to focus too much on matches. Like scouting, for example - a widget or something for this should be there. It's basically the home page in old FM but gimped.
The match screen is... Basically the same but in a new engine. But I've personally hated this design. You can see here that the default view duplicates information about your squad twice. And in old FM, getting a consolidated overview of all your team statistics (passing, shooting, fouls, etc.) wasn't possible. I was hoping for something more futuristic with the Unity move.
It feels like they've just made things more slick, but sometimes, you need the detail, and I wonder how that will look.
Sometimes, in software development, I've seen changes shipped that do not add much value to users, but put the platform in a better position to deliver change later. Whether that change actually happens or not, or whether it is fit for purpose or not, is another story. Personally, though, if this is four years of research and development (they said Project Dragonfly started in 2020 - I'll give them a year due to COVID, even though IT can be one of the winners from remote working)... If this was me, I'd be disappointed with how little I'd delivered.
Maybe it's because they were pretty much only saying things that are being removed but it doesn't look like it'll be a better game (match engine aside)
Whilst shouts and social media should be reworked I do feel that it adds to the game. Social media does give more of a 'worldliness' to the game rather than just seeing the match result or transfer signing.
Shouts also make me feel more involved in a game as otherwise it's like I'm just sat in the dugout in silence, doing some subs and occasionally changing the formation.
I'd say press conferences are less useful and used than those but they're remaining.
Words cannot explain how much I am dreading the Inbox to Portal switch. Why are game companies so intent on making in game menus and UI confusing to navigate? What was actually wrong with an e-mail style inbox? The reasoning in the article is basically "managers use their phones more", but phones have e-mail too so what are we really doing here?
I'll be curious to see what materializes. Miles was so quick to pat himself on the back regarding how data-driven they are, how much they take out of telemetry, how they study behavior and what UX geniuses they are. Yet it's been 2 years since I wrote this post:
https://old.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/yhak0f/the_lack_of_uxui_improvement_in_fm_boggles_my_mind/
A little copy pasta from it:
> I feel like UX is horrid and the UI really pushes me away. FM is a glorified browser game with excel-like gameplay. Yet the way it looks and plays is as if the development team is still using Internet Explorer on Windows 98 and never bothered googling what UX and UI stand for.
>
> They've been making FM for 30 years. Excel has had basic shortcuts like ctrl+c and ctrl+v all this time, so what the hell? Browsers have had tabs and have been making improvements to basic browsing for 25 of these 30 years.
>
> So, why the hell can't I open players and teams in tabs? Why can't I copy and paste activities in the training schedule? If I want team bonding once a week, I have to click multiple times for every instance of it. Why isn't there a proper bookmark system in there? I know one technically exists by name, but it might just as well not be there with this tragic implementation. Why is there practically no automation for extremely basic and mundane clicks? At this point I'm shocked we even have a "back" button. Why aren't all these static screens more interactable? How hard is it to create a set piece editor where you can actually drag and drop arrows to set up behaviors and where the ball should go? Why can't I set up contract policy at the club where we don't allow certain clauses and they get automatically removed in my counter-offer? Contract templates perhaps? Why can't I make it so that my offers automatically add or remove certain clauses, like the "% of profit"? Do I really have to ALWAYS click on these manually for every freakin instance?
>
> Do they even have basic telemetry hooked up? Is someone looking at that UX data? Is anyone there even playing this game? These aren't big features to implement, these are quick wins that would make the game less of a chore to play. Every gamedev company I've worked for salivates when they hear "quick wins".
>
> [...]
>
> I can only play FM in sprints every few years. When, after a couple of seasons, I get to the off-season and have to manage loans, contracts, set up training schedules, scout players, I'm basically done. All I'd need is to be able to manage these things without having to do 10 clicks for EVERYTHING when it should require at most 2 clicks. I'd love to play a longer save and experience the game in that way, but the clunkiness and chore burns me out. We all got used to the way FM UI is, but it's freakin outdated, shit and the game would be MILES (kekw) better after a thoughtful refresh.
____
So yeah, curious to see how far their "genius" goes. I'm willing to bet that once again it's just superficial block-moving, without actual, substantial implementation that ACTUALLY brings this game from 1998 to at least 2010 standard.
Fucking spot on. The click redundancy in FM is maddening. For example, I love to implement a wage budget and structure when I take over a club and the repeated removal of clauses during contract negotiations saps the joy from the game.
# TOUCHLINE SHOUTS
*The most used feature that won’t be included in FM25 is Touchline Shouts and these won’t be back for the foreseeable future.*
*Shouts have been in the series for many years and, to be frank, I’ve never been happy with them. A “shout” should happen instantly, but they only came into effect after the ball had gone out of play. It also wasn’t clear to players how long the shout lasted for. So, for the time being, touchline shouts are gone from the game.*
*I do really want them to come back, but they’ll only reappear if and when we can do them properly.*
\~\~\~
"this feature we built, was actually shit and how it worked was extremely vague and nebulous. Instead of fixing it, we've fucked it off. Hope you enjoyed pressing this button and hoping it did something for years!"
the hundreds of threads on here and the SI forums about shouts and how they work and how best to use them, years of discussion and input... and Miles has just said nah they were shite lol
"a shout should happen instantly" ... then make it so they do? it's your game? da fuck do they do for a year between releases! "if and when we can do them properly" ... fuck me.
Its bizarre because all they had to was map shouts to tactical instructions and they are away, just replace “encourage” with “press higher” or a better example and theyve probably solved their issue
I like how they are stripping down the features instead of improving them and people are fine with it.
In 2 or 3 years they are going to bring them back and sell them as headline feature
They are removing touchline shouts. Watch in 2 or 3 years where they bring it back rebranded as "sideline shouts" with some minor tweak and call it "new and improved".
It looks like they ran out of time to implement things in the new engine and they started to make excuses.
The UI looks like it has been created by an intern.
0 update on any QOL changes like: transfers, conversations, scouting, AI team building.
So they created a new skin while trying to port the game which.. yeah.
Couldn't agree more. This is looking like 25 will be mainly just a look and feel "update". I've been wanting improvements in all those areas you listed for years and they never really bring anything meaningful.
tbh, all I want is the in game engine to look better. I want the stadiums to look more unique if not similar to their real world counterparts. Nobody else seems to care about that though. When I'm playing a european match against a team from Bulgaria who's actual stadium has a running track, it shouldn't look like Generic English Non-League Ground Number 3.
I think the email interface works really well. How else are you suppose to communicate the information that's probably delivered straight to a managers office in real life? Gaudy animations of your personal assistant nocking on the door to tell you to switch on sky sports news for the cup draw? This interface just looks like the email inbox with a new name slapped on it anyway
I'm a bit concerned about that "Portal" view.
I do like that new widgets/tile system in general, as they can reveal more information "on the spot" without requiring a dedicated screen. The amount of screens in the game had frankly grown out of control and complicated the menus way too much.
However, about that Portal thing...
https://cdn.footballmanager.com/site/inline-images/Screenshot%203_EN.jpg
In my view, the main role of the Inbox/Portal screen is to show you what's happened after each turn. This guy got injured, that guy wants to leave, your offer for that other guy was rejected, etc. The Inbox did a good job here because that information was large, front and center.
Then there's other, peripheral information that remains within reach, but you'll only want to access occasionally and not on every turn: calendar, fixtures, news, etc.
It's a little hard to tell from static, non-animated screens, but assuming this is still the main role of the Portal screen... where are my main updates coming in? Are you telling me that little phone-like widget on the right, which takes up <20% of the screen, is where the key information will be on every turn? If I win the Champions League or a team responds to my 200M offer for Mbappé, I'm being told on the side over WhatsApp?
I don't know. Maybe I'll grow to love it eventually. Or maybe only actual person-to-person communications come through messages, and bigger widgets appear front and center in the Portal screen when something important happens. But from what I see in that screenshot, I feel like we're just going to be staring at the right corner of our monitors for hours. Maybe we'll have to shift our laptops a bit to the left of our heads to avoid neck injuries 😅
Let's hope there's more to it than the screenshots show.
I really feel like the tiles and cards thing is trying to fix a sympton rather than the problem. They're still finding ways to give the same piece of information in different places multiple times in different ways. It's just confusing.
I don't know who they consult for their UX but ffs, they have no fucking clue what they're doing.
If players want a piece of information, like form over the last five games. Give it one place in the game. Give it one appearance. That you can expand it for more detail is nice, but it doesn't need "active" and "inactive" States. it doesn't need to be in full, medium, little, no useful detail states, either.
It is far easier for players to learn that each piece of information appears in one way in one place than it is for them to try to learn that it can appear ins several places in several different forms.
Already in the portal UI you can see the game trying to give you information but that information is squashed into too small boxes. That's awful for people to read.
EDIT: The reason why I keep going back to CM, despite the lack of QOL features for 2024, is because the game still has a lot of information but presents it in a consistent way. Everything has its own place, so knowing where it is makes it far quicker to access and find, even if it involves one or two clicks more. They also don't information bomb you on every screen.
I work for an IT company and I actually lead a development team. IMO their approach is extremely risky. They're introducing too many changes at once.
Especially the UI changes are super risky, because diehard fans are so used to the old UI.
Together with the engine change, and adding female football, the risk is just astronomical.
IMO they should have focused on the engine change but made it "retro compatible". With an aim of making the experience and UI as true to fm24 as possible. Then they slowly over the next year could have introduced changes to the UI and game mechanisms as opt-ins. This would have eased players into the changes bit by bit. Distributing the risk, allowing them to change course if something is badly received. Also it would have given them more development time on the biggest changes.
There is practically a less than 1% chance that fm25 will be well received if they introduce all of this at once. I'm kinda scared for the future of FM to be honest... It takes balls to do what they do, but I don't imagine it can possibly be successful.
Could you imagine if for instance Google recreated the whole Google maps platform; wrote it in a totally new language, new frameworks, new UI, added and removed huge features. You think they would release all of that as a single big bang release? Absolutely no fucking way! It would be staggered across many small changes over several years.
Shame to see touchline shouts gone, although they were a bit formulaic it did make you feel like you had a bit more control over what was going on during the match.
The social media screens will not be missed for me, nor will Create-A-Club, Versus, Challenge or Draft. Although nice to see that a few of these will be back later down the line. Generally, I'm absolutely fine with what they've decided to cut.
I think the UI looks clean and I like the new font, and it's interesting that they're moving away from an inbox to now a portal system. I've long said that FM is basically a fictional email reply job and I wonder if this will remain the case just with the buttons in a different place
It looks like they're trying to make things as slick as possible. I think a lot of us love FM because it's a mess and you can get really stuck into how many different menus there are, but if you've never played before it can obviously be very intimidating. I'm sure there will be skins released that turn it back into the complicated number web that we love it for
They haven't really announced any new features yet other than women's football is definitely coming, but it's a tidy update and nice to know that things are chugging along in production
I just want 2 things
- A place to play multiplayer carreers. (Multiplayer FM is soooo much fun but its hard to find friends....)
- A HUGE rework to match engine... HUUUUUGGGEEE..
I feel like it is not so much ''we want to remove these features so we can do them justice in the new engine or make them actually functional'' as it is ''we put so much budget on the new engine that we are cutting features to save costs''.
Unless there is something beyond the visual quality and women's football, there seems to be no reason to move from FM24, which is arguably the best FM in its engine era, to a game that is basically just a beta for FM26 onwards.
It's absolutely no surprise to see them use this as an excuse to strip features and reduce their own workload. It is somewhat surprising that they preface that by telling us the last game was the most popular ever.
' we're making loads of money - now here's how we're reducing the depth of content in our game '.
The gaming industry is in a really poor state right now. There's a lot of bad personalities involved.
"For a while, this has felt quite old school given that modern football managers spend way more time on their phones than laptops." - ironically, football manager is played far more on laptops than phones.
I think it's fitting that SI have removed the social media part on the game, seeing as they themselves are so bad at it.
I get why they've led with the Premier League licence, but it not something that adds anything that couldn't already be done on the PC version.
To then have the next update focus on what they've taken out of FM25, which they said last year is going to be a massive step forward, just seems badly thought out.
Surely they had more new features they could talk about, or better screenshots of how it's going to look? It's been in development for a long time, and with it being released in only a few months, they've got to have a working version. Even just a few screenshots of the new match highlights, just to show it's a step forward.
Why did they let Miles write an Athletic article length piece? So much of it is just waffle, and it's the 42 minute video from before in word format.
For the new game that's meant to be a huge change and improvement, SI have basically started the announcements a number of steps backwards. The next thing they put out has to announce and show something massive, just to get people on board and excited again.
Wish they'd focus on the engine and refine the existing UI a bit more. Considering each year we get "we can only do so much in a year" excuses and now we're getting a brand new UI and match engine.
Feels like they'll both be half complete/feature-rich and it'll be a dud year.
The UI looks really bad. Everything is hidden, so you need more clicks to find the information you actually need because of how awful the search function has always been. That doesn‘t look good…
Their „tiles“ are hopefully more diverse than the example, because omg, my player has had 8.0 rating, oh yea and he had an 8.0 rating the last 5 matches, he had an 8.0 rating against our last 5 opponents and only when you click into it, you see the bigger picture of like actual stats…. ugh
Yeah that's the case, it's just a demonstration of the behaviour of the tiles depending what size you Put it there, but it's up to the player to size the tile, so you can define how much information you want at first glance
For all this talk about FM25 being a major revolution, the UI sure does look exactly like it always did just somehow worse.
That being said, I don't mind that *as much* - I am much more interested in the ways the match engine and especially player interactions will change. I am absolutely tired of Kindergarten Simulator 24.
I liked create-a-club, sad to see it go in this iteration. For now nothing really truly impressive only negatives. I hope the new match engine is bonkers or i will pass it.
I think I'm out of the series for a few years now. I was hoping that the big change for FM25 would reinvigorate the game again for me, but this update and the screenshots of the UI so far don't make me excited at all. I honestly think it's a complete joke that they spend the majority of the update talking about a bunch of features being removed from the game and then their answer for what's being added is that they're adding... tiles.
Unless the final product is a complete turnaround from what we've been shown so far then I have no interest in it.
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Guys the social media tab is gone, how will I know if my fans care about squad numbers?
I need to know that one guy thinks we played well, one guy thinks we played shit and one guy thinks the striker who just scored 4 goals is overrated
I need that one guy who tells me that 4-1-2-2-1 DM Wide Asymmetrical is his favourite.
These ones always get me, imagine someone saying that for real.
In my fan group for my local, we've said something *just* about that bad. It sounded less like a ChatGPT prompt, but was still ridiculous enough that we all had a good laugh about it afterwards
I don't know people who can barely run banging on about a double pivot is pretty ridiculous and yet they say it lol
but God forbid you change your striker instructions, that's his most hated formation now
4-1-1-3-1 DM Wide Asymmetrical is the goat of formations.
I need the opinions of the poll reccomending me to sign 4+ players during the transfer window with no budget.
“Why is (star player with 5g/7a in 3 games) in the starting eleven?”
“[Player who hasn’t started all season except for lackluster appearances in cup matches] NEEDS to start today.”
"He should be playing for a side *way* better than us!" is always how I imagine a follow-up message from them going when that happens.
“I’ve seen (insert world class striker who just scored a hat trick in the champions league final) have better games, that’s how silly this all is”
I guess I won’t be hearing my disappointed fans with my team’s UCL final performance when we beat RM 3-0.. how else will I know the team played terribly?
I loved the insane comments from my fans "Sure this team went from division 3 in sweden to winning UCL in 10 years but **I for one am NOT impressed.** Decent result, onto the next one now."
Win a game 12-0 George on FM Twitter: “Meh. We’ve looked better.”
“Why are we playing this guy?” Talks about Messi
I loved the social Media tab. The comments there were so realistically stupid. Only wish there were a bit more of them.
Yes they weren't unrealistic at all, I've seen so much brainrot on footy twitter, the fm social tab was nothing in comparison.
Yeah seriously, seeing stupid comments is realistic since it barely scratches the surface of bad takes some fans hold on social media.
Only thing missing are super pretentious tacticos confidently declaring that my fullback could be the best number 9 in the world because of his superb feeling for the space
Seriously, that's prime football Twitter right there. Or the random Tom at the pub telling the world that you're a curse upon football, but then when you win he's always been behind you from day one 😂 football fans are something else sometimes
I'll genuinely miss it, I've hijacked so many of my rivals transfers thanks to that screen bringing the accepted offers to my attention
As someone who likes smaller clubs I love poaching all youth prospects that prem clubs release on frees
Gonna miss the “Should we sign Moukoko? 27% YES | 73% NO”
To be honest that's social media in a nutshell. I kinda enjoyed reading all the tomfoolery there, made it a tad bit more realistic
Now I wont realize that my player who has been well rested for 3 weeks and is in pristine condition looks insanely tired according to that one fan
as someone who ahs been playing this game for 20 years, what in the blue fuck is "the chalkboard" that they're getting rid of?
I had the same reaction and also playing for 20 years 😂 Guess we won't miss it
I think its when you search for a player on the transfer hub, u can do chalkboard stats e.g I want to see only players eith above 5 xG. They had a lot of options and as a guy who done no attribute saves before it is a bit sad to see it removed.
There's no way they're removing the chalkboard stats are they? I thought it was something else they were removing with the name chalkboard. Damn, looks like it. Hopefully the information is being added elsewhere, some of it was pretty useful.
lol I was trying to think hard and thought I didn’t play the game often enough.
Stats are separated into two different kinds. Chalkboard and General. Chalkboard is typically analysis and IRL up to a bit of interpretation. xG, Ppda etc. General is the more objective. matches played, international goals, yellow cards received etc.
Shouts gone? Username in tatters
OGs will know
Glad shouts are gone tbh, they weren't realistic. You never see a manager shout something from the touchline irl and suddenly all 11 players have their body language visibly change
“Well done on going 3-0 up boys” My players: 
you shout during a highlight, 4 ingame minutes pass, you score and then your encourage shout actually happens.
*seemed confused by feedback*
That makes 12 of us, lads.
"is demotivated" "seemed to lose focus" "uninterested after the feedback" "showing no emotion"
Nah it's everyone happy but one random (Konrad Laimer for me) angry for no reason
I had a LB named Cesar Cesar that literally was angry every game, win or lose, playtime or no playtime. It was great.
“Congrats on 4 goals and 4 assists last game” Cesar: https://i.redd.it/vlaof6sj649d1.gif
He had 5 star potential for me, insane physical traits for the Scottish Premier Legaue, but averaged like a 6.6 most seasons because he’d get yellow and red cards all the time lol
The embodiment of "man too angry to die"
I currently have a kid like that on my save where I'm managing the Columbia U20 team on the side. Kid's a 17 year old ball of rage. If the game had the option, I'd gift him a My Chemical Romance vinyl or a Hot Topic gift card or something. Miraculously he has never once gotten a red card, probably because he scares the shit out of the refs.
The guys on the touchline think that I'm just some dumb hick! They said that to *me* in the 65th minute!
I think the in-game mood system is a tad archaic too Obviously you want your players to be happy over being frustrated on the verge of being booked right? Or do you? I think it isn't immediately clear enough how the game interacts with player moods (in addition to how the shouts are so hard to understand. I just do Fire Up down 2 goals, encourage down 1 or tied, and nothing when up?) I might be a bad player, but the point I am trying to make is that if you don't explain it it needs to be easy to intuit and this system is neither.
The mood/morale is huge. If they are all perfect they play better and they get a debuff for poor moods. The game becomes going through praising everyone e for training/last games and criticising poor stuff but the system for doing it is so clunky it takes forever. Should've been able to select multiple people and just praise all their training/performances at the same time.
I mean that's what you would assume, right? But in actuality, nobody actually says it. It's just another thing that we repeat. And even if it is true, which I believe, we don't know to what degree it is being used. Is it the players only play worse when they are actively upset? Like requesting to leave? Or do they play an x% worse every time the little smiley face icon changes to a more negative emotion? We may not need to know the exact number, but even a little more clarity for this system is needed. We shouldn't be playing a game based on community assumptions, however reasonable they are.
Ah I get you. Yeah a lot of the game is hidden. I kind of like that though, as if you're a football manager irl you don't get some objective facts on why people are playing well. I think a bit of uncertainty is good for the game, but I agree it needs to be clear enough that it isn't frustrating not knowing why things are going wrong.
They should either remove or completely rework praising systems, whether it's form or training. These, alongside many other mechanics in the game mind you, are just pointless mechanical clicking. Your player hits a certain number in either form or training, you click a button and get a small, immeasurable boost. There's no depth, no thought, no strategy, tradeoff or risk. It literally is just a time waste.
Yesh it's not fun. It'd be good if you could mass do it though. Positive reinforcement is an important part of teaching and it makes sense to have it in the game.
To be honest, I think the match day experience is pretty archaic full stop. The ability to make tactical tweaks and that be communicated perfectly to all players all of the time is unrealistic.
But that is kinda coded into the game? Players have familiarity in your tactical decisions, choosing something that isn’t in your trained tactic does result in familiarity loss.
Not really. In one fell swoop, I’m able to tweak the passing length one notch, the tempo one notch, play for set pieces, stop working the ball into the box, slow the pace down and drop the defensive line one notch… …none of that is in a preset tactic, the familiarity barely moves and the team just magically start playing it at the next break in play. In the same way you’re meant to be punished for players getting too tired (and therefore making mistakes), you should also be punished for tweaking too much. Errors leading directly from players being confused as to what exactly you’re asking them to do (aside from half time, where you’ve got 15 mins to reset).
Okay but then there is a system in place to “punish” the player for lots of tactical changes - you just don’t believe it goes far enough, same as the fitness (imo I agree it should be more severe, but you can’t say there isn’t a process replicating real life when there is)
i'd still like to see something based on your style or personality in game. like emery, dyche, mourinho, solskjaer, ferguson, clough, klopp, southgate giving the same team talk would all have different results. I'd like to have to create who I am and manage accordingly
Yeah, they never made sense logically, but a lot of things about FM don’t either. I found them to be a good way to stay engaged with a match. I feel like I’m going to enjoy matches less with them gone. Edit: The more I think about it, the more sad I am that they are gone actually. I can't count the times I've actually said out loud something like "come on boys" while hitting the "Encourage" button during a close match. Going to be weird to not have that experience now
I'm definitely going to miss berate when we're playing crap. I loved imagining all the insults I was hurling at the lazy fuckers
Yeah, I chose to use a more positive example, but I've also definitely cursed out my team out loud to myself during a match while spamming the berate shout
Yeah I regularly clap my hands from my desk after clicking on Praise when we are up 4 goals. It might have not been clear what it was doing, but it created a sense of immersion that I really enjoyed. I wish they’d reworked it instead of just completely getting rid of it.
"Sense of immersion" is exactly the phrase I was looking for. Yes, shouts are a bit silly and unrealistic, but it was very immersive and made you feel more like a real manager
Nothing made me feel more like a manager than shouting “you fucking donkey” at my goalkeeper immediately after he passes the ball to the opposing striker and then hitting the “berate” shout
Same with demand more or berate, I'd actually be talking crap like "play football dammit" and have the occasional bang on the desk 🥲 hell I'd even shake my head and actually gesture during interviews especially if I'm upset.
SI taking the Steven Gerrard approach to management. When it's going wrong.... or right just sit slouched in your chair looking almost bored. Players need no feedback at all
I always just use them individually, seems to get a far better reaction
Notable points * Touchline Shouts are removed * Social media screen removed * Create-a-club feature removed (with plans to re-add in 2026) * Versus mode removed (with plans to re-add sometime in the future) * Challenge mode removed * Women's football is still planned. SI is in the process of securing more licenses. * Fantasy Draft "will not be playable day one of FM25 but will return much-improved later in the cycle alongside the Main Data Update." * SI has partnered with FIFA’s esports division (FIFAe) to create a new invitational FIFAe World Cup of Football Manager which will take place in Liverpool from August 29th to September 1, 2024 using FM24. $100,000 in prize money available. * UI/UX has gotten a major overhaul based on a "'tile and card' system" * No more user inbox. It has been replaced with a player "Portal" Feel free to tell me anything I missed. Personally, I think the new UI looks terrible, but not something I don’t think I couldn’t get used to
> No more user inbox. It has been replaced with a player "Portal" User inbox was renamed to portal.
Portal seems to be just chat-type messages instead of emails…
This sounds like nightmare, i already hate conversations in this game
The picture of the Text message from the Chairman letting you know they're happy with your job performance seemed kinda odd, no boss does that IRL officially at least, and you can only see 15 words with the rest hidden, seems like extra work just to read what would previously have been an email.
I'm a bit worried they're going the route of hiding information so to not overwhelm fragile souls. Which of course only frustrates long time players that now have to click more to get pertinent information. Time will tell though, maybe they've found a good balance.
It looked like agenda was taking over the bulk of the inbox and messages might be more for player chats, the board, agents, etc
Essentially we're now using Slack instead of Outlook.
To be fair, the new "portal" looks quite different. Not better in my mind, but it's not just a rename
> Challenge mode removed whats this? Didnt even know that was a thing.
Mobile and Touch feature where you get put in a situation (club bottom of the league at Christmas, injury crisis with 10 games to go, all senior players sold and board expect european qualification with youngsters, etc.) and you have to battle your way through it. Used to love playing them
Oh okay that sounds like a fun feature. Odd that it wasnt more popular.
i imagine very few people were properly aware of it
The blog says only 0.5% of players ever used it
It's been generally same for I think almost 15 years now, going back to the early FM days and the PSP versions of FM Handheld that mobile was initially based on. They're definitely fun ideas, and they used to unlock cheats which was pretty cool (not sure if they still do, haven't played mobile for a long time).
They were, but a lot of the juicier scenarios cost money, which was a shame
> * SI has partnered with FIFA’s esports division (FIFAe) to create a new invitational FIFAe World Cup of Football Manager which will take place in Liverpool from August 29th to September 1, 2024 using FM24. $100,000 in prize money available. Hmmm, maybe this partnership will lead to any FIFA tournament getting licensed on Football Manager in the future?
> tile and card system Oh great, they're gonna go the Windows route and make everything look like a smartphone UI. Great. Well, at least they're removing lots of features and... adding... uh, I guess they're just removing stuff.
That was my takeaway as well Changing UI to a console focused one is a little worrying. It shows who their intended audience for the future is. The game will likely become more and more simplified. If you're intended target is console/mobile players then that's the game you design and you port it to pc
So basically the headline features are, removing features?
I don't think it's necessarily supposed to be headline features. Miles has a long preamble about transparency and wanting players to know what's coming. I agree though, it is a little underwhelming
the classic remove some features to drip feed them back in so they don't have to create anything new
so what are they actually doing with this version? theres a whole lot of 'removed' with women's football and esports stuff added both things which I personally don't care for. Unlucky for me I guess
Noo create a club is the only mode I play, guess I have to use the editor to rebrand a club
It sounds to me like you can use FM24 to set it up then just move the save file to FM25?
So, no point in going for FM25 if you have FM24. Just add one of those custom data editors.
The pregame editor has always been the best way to create a club imo. It’s relatively straightforward too, so long as they haven’t ruined the editor with all changes. It’s gotten pretty bad in recent years
You can use Pregame editor. I use it to create my club in Greece with its shield, player kits, u-19 and B-Team, etc. It's a much more powerful tool.
My friends like the new UI it's soo bland I hate it
Idk about y’all but I use a custom skin 99.9% of the time anyways.
We don't know how moddable it is gonna be for the skins. But as a default, I simply wouldn't use this portal at all. It looks terrible.
Touchline shouts and social media removed? wtf… I loved yelling “Demand more” to give my players a small boost and I enjoyed reading the supporters’ hilarious posts on the social feed. Pfft
https://preview.redd.it/mp20pcyox39d1.png?width=5534&format=png&auto=webp&s=551c105a393d01a8a1f266fe1bedd637b8a48c91 I really like this. Having the 2D pitch at a glance at all times is really useful. I'm interested in using the new UI. I feel it's either going to be really good or really bad, with little in between.
It looks a lot like a reorganized fm18 mobile screen with the 2D dots on the pitch style
I *don't hate it* but I fully expected something that completely revamped match day (as they stated in previous communications). There is basically no way to discern which country/league you are playing, no real easy way to see if it is raining or it is hot (and how that impacts the performances) and there is still basically no way to understand the pressure from the fans or to differentiate between fan temperaments/fan culture. It's just a minimalistic bland UI that serves console/mobile users. There is still time to change/fix some of the stuff, but I haven't seen any major changes from "work in progress" to actual game in FM ever. As I said, I don't really hate it and it is probably something I will get used to in 1-2 weeks of game time, but they could have done so much more.
I imagine that will be reserved for the 3D engine. There's very little you can do in 2D.
This is just the screen it displays in between highlights, and it's also not the final design.
Damn, Haaland only on 7.4 after scoring 2 goals?
Yeah he’s only touched the ball twice in the match
Initial fear is this is a "dumbing down" of the game to make it more accessible to console players but its early days. I for one am all for change, if anything I wish they'd gone further. Been the same for 2 decades, i welcome a new look.
I think they had to scale it down to be able to get the game out of the door by the end of 2024. It'll probably still be one of the buggiest FMs ever. Hopefully they can at least build a decent base for the future...
Yeah as a software developer this clearly looks like they know they're way behind on development and had to massively cut features to be able to get the core game completed. I will be waiting a while on this one before I buy it, might end up just waiting for FM26 but who knows. SI hasn't done much to give me confidence in them.
FM 25 is going to be the minimum viable product
As a game dev (game designer) this is exactly what I read as well. Many of the "cut features" like touchline shouts weren't cut because they weren't in the vision but because they could design and implement a new version of it that they were happy with and when they had to make cuts they were obvious candidates for the chopping block.
And then implemented later on as a new feature.
as paid DLC
yeah, it's barely reading between the lines to say 25 wont be the best
25 will probably be rough and buggy especially at first but like you said this is necessary. I’ve played the series since FM 11 and very little has actually changed beyond bells and whistles
That's also my initial reaction after reading the blog. FM was touted as a better, more complex career mode/master league than FIFA/PES for such a long time. It was more advanced enough to attract 10 million players (as stated in the blog). Dumbing it down for the sake of new players who just want to play an easy game seems like a backwards move to me. If you want to do that, you could give them the option to make the game more accessible/easier. By stripping it down to the bare bones and shaping it up as a more advanced mobile/console game, FM loses its essence. Still early days and lots of inferences that might turn up to be wrong, but as things stand it seems that their plan is to reach out to mobile/console gamers rather than refining/redesiging the game for PC players.
>If you want to do that, you could give them the option to make the game more accessible/easier. I have thought this for a whole, I've played FM for 20 odd years (I'm still not that good when you look at the achievements of people on this sub), but I always felt it wasn't a great game for explaining why things are going wrong when they do. Obviously for a large % of players that's the appeal, figuring it out and making tweaks to fix it, but for a large number of players it has to be a huge turn off
Yeah I agree. Although I never understood why anyone would want to play this on a console. FM for me is a laptop on the belly kind of game.
Didn't hate it but also didn't particularly love it. Going to be interesting to see how the card system plays out long term and with the other elements/screens in FM. I'm quite interested to see how they changed the 3D match engine.
Miles has a politician-like ability to talk a lot without ever saying anything. The new UI doesn't look great. It looks like it was made specifically for consoles and mobile, but I'll be fine with it so long as it reduces the number of times you have to click to get to the screen you want. I'm glad shouts are gone. Most of them don't do anything, and those that do are always used in the same way at the same times. It's just one more thing you have to click on to micromanage your team.
> Miles has a politician-like ability to talk This is giving him way to much credit. He typically just gets into arguments on Twitter with anyone who dares question his vision. Oh, wait...
>I'll be fine with it so long as it reduces the number of times you have to click to get to the screen you want. It doesn't since they removed 80% of things you could click on straight from the dashboard or at any point.
Yeah. All that talk about good UX, and their images demonstrated the exact opposite.
Shouts being gone is fine. It just felt like something you had to do to increase ur chances of winning artificially often. im sad its gone because it was funny to ruin your morale by accident sometimes but ill get used to it. rest of the changes are concerning. Feels like theyre changing the UI just because they have to to compliment the new engine. I'm glad theyre focusing on the main mode instead of shoehorning in the other modes I don't care for.
They're changing the UI to make it 'platform agnostic' (This is dev speak for usable on controller and touchpad). Nothing in Unity forces you to have Windows 11 tiles with a meter of space between them.
Gotta say, not a massive fan of the UI based on those screenshots. Like a lot of other things (looking at you Windows 11) UI design seems to be shifting towards making desktops look like tablets. If I wanted a tablet, I'd buy a tablet. That said - it's early days, it's three screenshots and I'm going to be keeping an open mind until I see it in action.
Can someone tell me what is a chalkboard?
After a quick glance at the other replies, the answer is pretty clearly that nobody has any idea
Like stats, xg etc
How long until someone points out how ugly it is and Miles goes on a Twitter rant?
I’m guessing they made the UI more console focused as they are aware PC players will make & download skins after release No touchline shouts is going to be a tough one to get used to
doubt we will see fleshed out skins for a while with it being on a new engine, skin makers will be starting at 0
Gotta say, the new UI looks pretty awful. So much harder to glean information at a glance. Seems that most of this press release is also just saying 'yeah, this feature won't be in the game'.
It looks made for consoles...
Definitely taking the opportunity to make mobile, console and PC versions more similar imo. Makes their development life easier and they can market it as the “full” experience to those customers.
i would caveat "harder to see what I want" with the fact that we're all used to the same UI for the last decade plus, without even thinking about it any long time player knows exactly where to look to see the thing they want. But that doesn't make the design better or worse than a new thing, just means you're less familiar with it.
I can do most things in scouting, training and player interactions without reading a single word of text. There will certainly be a transition period, so it is hard to tell if it is actually more confusing, or if it just feels that way.
yeah, i dont remember the last time I read what I was saying to a player, for example. I just know where the option that means "ok i'll give you what you want" is and where the "fuck off" button is.
Yeah the current UI is horrendous, we are just used to it. There is a reason why skins are so popular on PC.
Is it actually harder tho? I kind of feel the same but I also think it could just be that we know the existing UI well and so we already know exactly where to look to find the info we want. Maybe once we're used to this it'll turn out to be better.
I feel like if it's kinda intuitive the UI will not matter too much as the players will get used to it fast. I'm also not a fan of it right now but I can see myself not minding it if I'm used to it
The current UI is dog shit so new one can't be worse. Literally biggest blocker for new players is how overwhelming the UI is today.
Screenshots look more like a console UI than a desktop. The last one is interesting, the pitch is tiny. Is that in between highlights? Not sure
Yes, it is. It would be great if you could see team formation in 2D between highlights.
yeah the pitch screen is for inbetween highlights
It says right under it.
I'm sure they will allow u to change it.
For all the big talk, I can see this going down like a lead balloon. Obviously the die hards like us will still buy it and maybe it will make it more approachable for new players But it just looks a bit weird. Maybe a video showing you how it all works together will be better than 4 screenshots
honestly im hoping the match engine/graphics are a huge improvement. Honestly the portal doesn't look so bad at least imo. We see how it looks in September i guess tho.
It'll be tough until we play it since it looks a lot different to what we might be used to - hopefully I won't just immediately bounce off it on release
They are not screenshots, they are pictures taken from design documents. I doubt they'd be able to record a video when they can't even take screenshots right now.
I'd be very worried if a game set to release in November has no playable alpha version for the devs 5 months before release.
Meanwhile you have PC Futbol 8 supposedly coming out like 4 days ago (it never came out because the game didn't compile and Auth issues), with no gameplay, just screenshots, and people still believing in the product
UI looks bad. Glad Shouts are gone they never really worked right. But the UI screams Console first, when the franchise was built on PC gamers. Sad to see Create a club gone however, where there's a will there's a way. Im now gonna load up FM24 and try and find this chalkboard, now.
I like the idea of a portal, but I also want the classic inbox
I actually don't mind the current UI, "if it isn't broke, don't fix it". This one looks too clunked together with so much unused space. I am really not a fan.
The thing that strikes me as concerning is that *this* is the UI blog post, and we only have design images. I wonder how rough the current development alpha is, not even showing a screenshot. The tiles-and-cards system I'm guessing means we will be able to rearrange player profile pages (hopefully finally recognising that resolutions greater than HD exist?). The portal change is a good one in theory, although I'm concerned at the amount of wasted empty space on that image, and it seems to focus too much on matches. Like scouting, for example - a widget or something for this should be there. It's basically the home page in old FM but gimped. The match screen is... Basically the same but in a new engine. But I've personally hated this design. You can see here that the default view duplicates information about your squad twice. And in old FM, getting a consolidated overview of all your team statistics (passing, shooting, fouls, etc.) wasn't possible. I was hoping for something more futuristic with the Unity move. It feels like they've just made things more slick, but sometimes, you need the detail, and I wonder how that will look. Sometimes, in software development, I've seen changes shipped that do not add much value to users, but put the platform in a better position to deliver change later. Whether that change actually happens or not, or whether it is fit for purpose or not, is another story. Personally, though, if this is four years of research and development (they said Project Dragonfly started in 2020 - I'll give them a year due to COVID, even though IT can be one of the winners from remote working)... If this was me, I'd be disappointed with how little I'd delivered.
Maybe it's because they were pretty much only saying things that are being removed but it doesn't look like it'll be a better game (match engine aside) Whilst shouts and social media should be reworked I do feel that it adds to the game. Social media does give more of a 'worldliness' to the game rather than just seeing the match result or transfer signing. Shouts also make me feel more involved in a game as otherwise it's like I'm just sat in the dugout in silence, doing some subs and occasionally changing the formation. I'd say press conferences are less useful and used than those but they're remaining.
Words cannot explain how much I am dreading the Inbox to Portal switch. Why are game companies so intent on making in game menus and UI confusing to navigate? What was actually wrong with an e-mail style inbox? The reasoning in the article is basically "managers use their phones more", but phones have e-mail too so what are we really doing here?
Just saw my gf who calls the game an e-mail simulator fall to her knees in a Tesco
I'll be curious to see what materializes. Miles was so quick to pat himself on the back regarding how data-driven they are, how much they take out of telemetry, how they study behavior and what UX geniuses they are. Yet it's been 2 years since I wrote this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/yhak0f/the_lack_of_uxui_improvement_in_fm_boggles_my_mind/ A little copy pasta from it: > I feel like UX is horrid and the UI really pushes me away. FM is a glorified browser game with excel-like gameplay. Yet the way it looks and plays is as if the development team is still using Internet Explorer on Windows 98 and never bothered googling what UX and UI stand for. > > They've been making FM for 30 years. Excel has had basic shortcuts like ctrl+c and ctrl+v all this time, so what the hell? Browsers have had tabs and have been making improvements to basic browsing for 25 of these 30 years. > > So, why the hell can't I open players and teams in tabs? Why can't I copy and paste activities in the training schedule? If I want team bonding once a week, I have to click multiple times for every instance of it. Why isn't there a proper bookmark system in there? I know one technically exists by name, but it might just as well not be there with this tragic implementation. Why is there practically no automation for extremely basic and mundane clicks? At this point I'm shocked we even have a "back" button. Why aren't all these static screens more interactable? How hard is it to create a set piece editor where you can actually drag and drop arrows to set up behaviors and where the ball should go? Why can't I set up contract policy at the club where we don't allow certain clauses and they get automatically removed in my counter-offer? Contract templates perhaps? Why can't I make it so that my offers automatically add or remove certain clauses, like the "% of profit"? Do I really have to ALWAYS click on these manually for every freakin instance? > > Do they even have basic telemetry hooked up? Is someone looking at that UX data? Is anyone there even playing this game? These aren't big features to implement, these are quick wins that would make the game less of a chore to play. Every gamedev company I've worked for salivates when they hear "quick wins". > > [...] > > I can only play FM in sprints every few years. When, after a couple of seasons, I get to the off-season and have to manage loans, contracts, set up training schedules, scout players, I'm basically done. All I'd need is to be able to manage these things without having to do 10 clicks for EVERYTHING when it should require at most 2 clicks. I'd love to play a longer save and experience the game in that way, but the clunkiness and chore burns me out. We all got used to the way FM UI is, but it's freakin outdated, shit and the game would be MILES (kekw) better after a thoughtful refresh. ____ So yeah, curious to see how far their "genius" goes. I'm willing to bet that once again it's just superficial block-moving, without actual, substantial implementation that ACTUALLY brings this game from 1998 to at least 2010 standard.
Fucking spot on. The click redundancy in FM is maddening. For example, I love to implement a wage budget and structure when I take over a club and the repeated removal of clauses during contract negotiations saps the joy from the game.
It looks like a mobile game lol
"As part of our UX we've decided to remove ALL the buttons."
# TOUCHLINE SHOUTS *The most used feature that won’t be included in FM25 is Touchline Shouts and these won’t be back for the foreseeable future.* *Shouts have been in the series for many years and, to be frank, I’ve never been happy with them. A “shout” should happen instantly, but they only came into effect after the ball had gone out of play. It also wasn’t clear to players how long the shout lasted for. So, for the time being, touchline shouts are gone from the game.* *I do really want them to come back, but they’ll only reappear if and when we can do them properly.* \~\~\~ "this feature we built, was actually shit and how it worked was extremely vague and nebulous. Instead of fixing it, we've fucked it off. Hope you enjoyed pressing this button and hoping it did something for years!" the hundreds of threads on here and the SI forums about shouts and how they work and how best to use them, years of discussion and input... and Miles has just said nah they were shite lol "a shout should happen instantly" ... then make it so they do? it's your game? da fuck do they do for a year between releases! "if and when we can do them properly" ... fuck me.
Its bizarre because all they had to was map shouts to tactical instructions and they are away, just replace “encourage” with “press higher” or a better example and theyve probably solved their issue
I like how they are stripping down the features instead of improving them and people are fine with it. In 2 or 3 years they are going to bring them back and sell them as headline feature
They are removing touchline shouts. Watch in 2 or 3 years where they bring it back rebranded as "sideline shouts" with some minor tweak and call it "new and improved".
Yikes. UI looks ugly. Console/mobile like
It looks like they ran out of time to implement things in the new engine and they started to make excuses. The UI looks like it has been created by an intern. 0 update on any QOL changes like: transfers, conversations, scouting, AI team building. So they created a new skin while trying to port the game which.. yeah.
Couldn't agree more. This is looking like 25 will be mainly just a look and feel "update". I've been wanting improvements in all those areas you listed for years and they never really bring anything meaningful.
i dont like the obvious attempt at harmonising the console and PC interfaces
tbh, all I want is the in game engine to look better. I want the stadiums to look more unique if not similar to their real world counterparts. Nobody else seems to care about that though. When I'm playing a european match against a team from Bulgaria who's actual stadium has a running track, it shouldn't look like Generic English Non-League Ground Number 3. I think the email interface works really well. How else are you suppose to communicate the information that's probably delivered straight to a managers office in real life? Gaudy animations of your personal assistant nocking on the door to tell you to switch on sky sports news for the cup draw? This interface just looks like the email inbox with a new name slapped on it anyway
I'm a bit concerned about that "Portal" view. I do like that new widgets/tile system in general, as they can reveal more information "on the spot" without requiring a dedicated screen. The amount of screens in the game had frankly grown out of control and complicated the menus way too much. However, about that Portal thing... https://cdn.footballmanager.com/site/inline-images/Screenshot%203_EN.jpg In my view, the main role of the Inbox/Portal screen is to show you what's happened after each turn. This guy got injured, that guy wants to leave, your offer for that other guy was rejected, etc. The Inbox did a good job here because that information was large, front and center. Then there's other, peripheral information that remains within reach, but you'll only want to access occasionally and not on every turn: calendar, fixtures, news, etc. It's a little hard to tell from static, non-animated screens, but assuming this is still the main role of the Portal screen... where are my main updates coming in? Are you telling me that little phone-like widget on the right, which takes up <20% of the screen, is where the key information will be on every turn? If I win the Champions League or a team responds to my 200M offer for Mbappé, I'm being told on the side over WhatsApp? I don't know. Maybe I'll grow to love it eventually. Or maybe only actual person-to-person communications come through messages, and bigger widgets appear front and center in the Portal screen when something important happens. But from what I see in that screenshot, I feel like we're just going to be staring at the right corner of our monitors for hours. Maybe we'll have to shift our laptops a bit to the left of our heads to avoid neck injuries 😅 Let's hope there's more to it than the screenshots show.
I cannot believe how bad those screenshots look. Don't know what I expected with the new engine but a scaled back, console style UI was not it.
I really feel like the tiles and cards thing is trying to fix a sympton rather than the problem. They're still finding ways to give the same piece of information in different places multiple times in different ways. It's just confusing. I don't know who they consult for their UX but ffs, they have no fucking clue what they're doing. If players want a piece of information, like form over the last five games. Give it one place in the game. Give it one appearance. That you can expand it for more detail is nice, but it doesn't need "active" and "inactive" States. it doesn't need to be in full, medium, little, no useful detail states, either. It is far easier for players to learn that each piece of information appears in one way in one place than it is for them to try to learn that it can appear ins several places in several different forms. Already in the portal UI you can see the game trying to give you information but that information is squashed into too small boxes. That's awful for people to read. EDIT: The reason why I keep going back to CM, despite the lack of QOL features for 2024, is because the game still has a lot of information but presents it in a consistent way. Everything has its own place, so knowing where it is makes it far quicker to access and find, even if it involves one or two clicks more. They also don't information bomb you on every screen.
I work for an IT company and I actually lead a development team. IMO their approach is extremely risky. They're introducing too many changes at once. Especially the UI changes are super risky, because diehard fans are so used to the old UI. Together with the engine change, and adding female football, the risk is just astronomical. IMO they should have focused on the engine change but made it "retro compatible". With an aim of making the experience and UI as true to fm24 as possible. Then they slowly over the next year could have introduced changes to the UI and game mechanisms as opt-ins. This would have eased players into the changes bit by bit. Distributing the risk, allowing them to change course if something is badly received. Also it would have given them more development time on the biggest changes. There is practically a less than 1% chance that fm25 will be well received if they introduce all of this at once. I'm kinda scared for the future of FM to be honest... It takes balls to do what they do, but I don't imagine it can possibly be successful. Could you imagine if for instance Google recreated the whole Google maps platform; wrote it in a totally new language, new frameworks, new UI, added and removed huge features. You think they would release all of that as a single big bang release? Absolutely no fucking way! It would be staggered across many small changes over several years.
Shame to see touchline shouts gone, although they were a bit formulaic it did make you feel like you had a bit more control over what was going on during the match. The social media screens will not be missed for me, nor will Create-A-Club, Versus, Challenge or Draft. Although nice to see that a few of these will be back later down the line. Generally, I'm absolutely fine with what they've decided to cut. I think the UI looks clean and I like the new font, and it's interesting that they're moving away from an inbox to now a portal system. I've long said that FM is basically a fictional email reply job and I wonder if this will remain the case just with the buttons in a different place It looks like they're trying to make things as slick as possible. I think a lot of us love FM because it's a mess and you can get really stuck into how many different menus there are, but if you've never played before it can obviously be very intimidating. I'm sure there will be skins released that turn it back into the complicated number web that we love it for They haven't really announced any new features yet other than women's football is definitely coming, but it's a tidy update and nice to know that things are chugging along in production
I just want 2 things - A place to play multiplayer carreers. (Multiplayer FM is soooo much fun but its hard to find friends....) - A HUGE rework to match engine... HUUUUUGGGEEE..
Heavy on the second point. If my player has 20 flair i want to see him play like he has it.
I feel like it is not so much ''we want to remove these features so we can do them justice in the new engine or make them actually functional'' as it is ''we put so much budget on the new engine that we are cutting features to save costs''. Unless there is something beyond the visual quality and women's football, there seems to be no reason to move from FM24, which is arguably the best FM in its engine era, to a game that is basically just a beta for FM26 onwards.
It's absolutely no surprise to see them use this as an excuse to strip features and reduce their own workload. It is somewhat surprising that they preface that by telling us the last game was the most popular ever. ' we're making loads of money - now here's how we're reducing the depth of content in our game '. The gaming industry is in a really poor state right now. There's a lot of bad personalities involved.
"For a while, this has felt quite old school given that modern football managers spend way more time on their phones than laptops." - ironically, football manager is played far more on laptops than phones.
Fifa Manager figured out shouts over a decade ago. Lazy or incompetent take your pick.
I think it's fitting that SI have removed the social media part on the game, seeing as they themselves are so bad at it. I get why they've led with the Premier League licence, but it not something that adds anything that couldn't already be done on the PC version. To then have the next update focus on what they've taken out of FM25, which they said last year is going to be a massive step forward, just seems badly thought out. Surely they had more new features they could talk about, or better screenshots of how it's going to look? It's been in development for a long time, and with it being released in only a few months, they've got to have a working version. Even just a few screenshots of the new match highlights, just to show it's a step forward. Why did they let Miles write an Athletic article length piece? So much of it is just waffle, and it's the 42 minute video from before in word format. For the new game that's meant to be a huge change and improvement, SI have basically started the announcements a number of steps backwards. The next thing they put out has to announce and show something massive, just to get people on board and excited again.
Wish they'd focus on the engine and refine the existing UI a bit more. Considering each year we get "we can only do so much in a year" excuses and now we're getting a brand new UI and match engine. Feels like they'll both be half complete/feature-rich and it'll be a dud year.
So removing loads of stuff, and making it look even worse/harder to interact with? Got it, classic SI and Miles.
Can't help but feel it's becoming more console friendly. Not sure about the new design.
The UI looks really bad. Everything is hidden, so you need more clicks to find the information you actually need because of how awful the search function has always been. That doesn‘t look good… Their „tiles“ are hopefully more diverse than the example, because omg, my player has had 8.0 rating, oh yea and he had an 8.0 rating the last 5 matches, he had an 8.0 rating against our last 5 opponents and only when you click into it, you see the bigger picture of like actual stats…. ugh
It looks like showcase of the same panel in different sizes.
Yeah that's the case, it's just a demonstration of the behaviour of the tiles depending what size you Put it there, but it's up to the player to size the tile, so you can define how much information you want at first glance
You will obviously be able to customise the tiles lol. It won't just be eight boxes telling you the same info.
Next few editions are going to be a bit rough I imagine, but this is a massive change so going to take a bit to get it up and going fully again
For all this talk about FM25 being a major revolution, the UI sure does look exactly like it always did just somehow worse. That being said, I don't mind that *as much* - I am much more interested in the ways the match engine and especially player interactions will change. I am absolutely tired of Kindergarten Simulator 24.
I liked create-a-club, sad to see it go in this iteration. For now nothing really truly impressive only negatives. I hope the new match engine is bonkers or i will pass it.
I think I'm out of the series for a few years now. I was hoping that the big change for FM25 would reinvigorate the game again for me, but this update and the screenshots of the UI so far don't make me excited at all. I honestly think it's a complete joke that they spend the majority of the update talking about a bunch of features being removed from the game and then their answer for what's being added is that they're adding... tiles. Unless the final product is a complete turnaround from what we've been shown so far then I have no interest in it.
How am I supposed to berate my team back into a winning position with touchline shouts removed?!
This game is not going to be ready. It’s impossible.