Football Manager 2015

Chris Davies

Chris Davies

Chief PESsimist
Staff
14 May 2003
UK
Tranmere Rovers
No love for this here?

I've been heavily addicted to 2014 on the PS Vita, so wasn't interested in buying this at all. But after I was disappointed with FIFA, and the wait til PES (which could also be poo) being another couple of weeks, I decided to invest.

I'm in love with this game - you really feel like you're talking to the players now. You can comment on so many more things to each individual, and the touchline team talks idea is a great feature as well.

It's still in "beta" stage (although I can't see the final version being that much different) and I'm finding there's a few too many goals, but other than that, the match engine is superb too. Much more fluid - still some wonky animations and balls flying off without contact, but overall it's just gripping, and you can really see where a player's attributes are failing him.

Absolutely delicious game. Can't go back to the Vita version now so I'll have to save up for a Surface Pro for Christmas...
 
I liked this game enormously.
Most immersive football game ever imo.
But since i think 2012 or 2013, it's too difficult imho.

Bought last years' version, but hardly played it.

I played the IPad version quite often, but it's not the same.

Maybe it's me...
 
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gerd said:
I liked this game enormously.
Most immersive football game ever imo.
But since i think 2012 or 2013, it's too difficult imho.

Bought last years' version, but hardly played it.

I played the IPad version quite often, but it's not the same.

Maybe it's me...
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Hello Gerd - long time no speak! How are you doing?

Maybe the demo will be worth a go then. I'm not finding it easy but I am scoring lots of goals. I won a friendly 12-2 which is a first, but I think that's because of the amount of time I dedicated to picking the right formation and player roles for each player.

It's certainly a time killer (I've lost hours and hours of my life to this already and it's only been 3-4 days), but it's very good. Everything seems much more human now, the way you talk to scouts and coaches etc. (even if they do tend to repeat themselves).

There's a "classic" mode now too which makes things simpler if you want to delegate tasks (I don't like missing out on the team talks etc. because they all make a difference).

I just wish there was a "proper" online mode, MMO style. But they're working on a game like that from the sounds of it (after the last one failed)...
 
Chris Davies said:
It's certainly a time killer (I've lost hours and hours of my life to this already and it's only been 3-4 days), but it's very good. Everything seems much more human now, the way you talk to scouts and coaches etc. (even if they do tend to repeat themselves).
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I've not played a Football Manager game since my teens, probably 20 years ago. Your comment about losing hours and hours to it reminds me of why I stopped - I recall spending entire days sitting in front of a computer playing it, so decided I had to stop. But after all this time, I'm feeling tempted back by the sort of challenge it offers.

I quite like FIFA15 (although the latest patch has done something unpleasant to it) but am frustrated by the lack of any real tactical element, particularly the lack of variety in cpu tactics and the fact that custom tactics have zero effect on how the cpu plays. It feels like there's little point putting any effort into your own team's tactics when the cpu always plays the same and it's primary means of adjusting its "tactics" is to give itself a speed boost, ie. same old cpu cheats.

And the PES demo leaves me cold, it feels like a shallow arcade game with none of the grit or physicality of football and I despise the fact that it still so obviously relies on cpu cheats, even in this supposed next generation of the PES engine. Pixel perfect laser passing by the cpu, every cpu player has an identical perfect first touch, zero free-kicks awarded against the cpu even when they scythe you down, stat overrides whenever required....same old bullshit. I can't play more than half a match before losing interest and turning off. It never feels like anything other than playing against a robot/computer.

So I'm thinking that perhaps a tactical battle from the sidelines might keep me entertained for longer. What's your impression in terms of the variety of oppostion from team to team? Like if you were to play a League 2 season, would you really find that each match is different because each cpu team is really a different entity? And then how does the game play out if you're an EPL team playing against a lower league team, and vice versa? Does it feel credible? Can you play long-ball? Does the cpu play long-ball? Do defensive/counter attacking tactics play out credibly? Do substitutions have real effects. Do changes in tactics mid-match have a real effect? I'm acutely aware of the cpu cheats in FIFA and PES and find them intolerable so is there any evidence of such underhand goings on in Football Manager? Like you dominate every match and have tons of shots, hitting the post time and again, miraculous saves, and then the cpu scores it's only chance, but this becomes a recurring theme during the course of a season? Or does it feel like the game plays with integrity and the "luck" is about 50/50?
 
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I'm currently playing through a season in the Conference with Chester. When you start you're asked to select your previous playing experience and qualifications - it makes a recommendation based on the club you choose (i.e. if you're going to manage in the Premier League, it suggests you don't say you have no qualifications and were a Sunday League player)... But you can tweak this for a quick and easy boost to how well (or not) your players listen to you and/or train when you train them (you're automatically set as a coach but you can disable yourself if you feel you're of no use to anybody).

I mention this because I chose the realistic/recommended setting, and I do think it makes a big difference. The players are listening to me but don't believe in me, yet. Which, in turn, affects results.

Each player's comments and body language give the game away pre-match, mid-match and post-match, and you can see where bigger players might not care what you're saying, and where the youth players are hanging on your every word because you gave them a chance.

winston said:
What's your impression in terms of the variety of oppostion from team to team? Like if you were to play a League 2 season, would you really find that each match is different because each cpu team is really a different entity?
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At the moment there's too many goals at a lower league level (which SI have admitted and said there's a launch-day patch that will fix this), but it's also an insight into how much the tactics matter, because you're punished severely for getting it wrong.

I gave individual instructions to each player on the tactics screen to bring out their best qualities, and I've got a front three who are working beautifully together, but because I'm trying to teach them to play a short passing game and work the ball into the box rather than humping it, I'm giving the ball away too often because they're just not good enough yet. I'm trying to get them to run before they can walk, because I'm impatient.

Every tactic has a "comfortability" rating if you like, and after 10 games they're still only half-comfortable with playing a sensible short-passing game. But if I switch to a long-ball tactic then they're much more comfortable with it and the results become closer. I want to try to move them away from that, but I simply don't have the players, and I can't "force" it because they're just not good enough.

Team-to-team, I'm seeing certain opposition players causing nightmares for my defenders who struggle with marking (bit like every defender in FIFA then), and different styles of passing occasionally. Not *huge* differences, but certainly some teams are clearly more used to playing good passing games, and other teams do just lump the ball forward (and again, it's more the key players that stand out, and you can tell players to double-up etc. and snuff them out but only if the rest of their team won't be good enough to take advantage of the gap).

You certainly see the difference if you play as, or buy, a team of good passers for example. But even then, if you buy them, you need to get them used to each other before they just start playing like Barcelona.

winston said:
And then how does the game play out if you're an EPL team playing against a lower league team, nd vice versa? Does it feel credible? Can you play long-ball?
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There seems to be a pretty big motivation factor in those games. In a different game as Tranmere, I held Everton to 1-1 until the 80th minute by playing a long-ball game, before it fell to pieces and finished 3-1. They certainly feel totally different from league games, and occasionally I've thought "why don't we play like this in the league", but then I don't think it's unrealistic. See Shrewsbury v Chelsea etc...

winston said:
Does the cpu play long-ball?
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Yes, not often but usually at certain points of the game where a team gets desperate (rather than from the start). Or, alternatively, when you're playing non-league opposition. They love lumping it up-front.

winston said:
Do defensive/counter attacking tactics play out credibly? Do substitutions have real effects. Do changes in tactics mid-match have a real effect?
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I'd say the tactics play out credibly except for the overload of goals at the moment. They've made the gap bigger between top-level players and Conference players, but it's a bit broken at the moment, especially with the goalkeepers (which again they've admitted, which is the most important bit - imagine the FIFA Facebook page posting "yeah there's a couple of things that are broken").

Changes in tactics have an effect as long as you're not undone by the morale. For example, losing a league game 3-0, I switched to a defensive tactic I'd set up (you can store a bank of several, like FIFA's teamsheets function) to try and limit the damage. I could see that as much as we were tighter positionally, the morale had gone, so in that situation you HAVE to just go "there's nothing I can do to bring this one back". Which I think is realistic. Sometimes your hands are tied, especially as a manager.

Same thing applies to substitutes. I've seen them make a difference and I've seen them make a negative difference (my keeper was having a nightmare, I lost my head and replaced him at half time, and that was a mistake).

winston said:
I'm acutely aware of the cpu cheats in FIFA and PES and find them intolerable so is there any evidence of such underhand goings on in Football Manager? Like you dominate every match and have tons of shots, hitting the post time and again, miraculous saves, and then the cpu scores it's only chance, but this becomes a recurring theme during the course of a season? Or does it feel like the game plays with integrity and the "luck" is about 50/50?
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This is the most contentious area I think...

There are countless amounts of people who will report games where they've had 12 shots to the opposition's 1 and lost 1-0, three or four games in a row.

I don't agree with the argument at all. I've had plenty of games like that but I can see that it's been bad luck and not "cheating", because it's happened the other way around too, and/or the shots have been crap shots from miles out and/or scrappy moments of play. The stats aren't the whole story.

With everything being governed by the CPU for both sides I don't see any element of cheating whatsoever. I think in FIFA and PES it's to make up for a lack of processing power to do certain things organically. So it goes "I know I'm supposed to stop you in this situation because of my stats and you didn't dribble away quick enough, and you set the difficulty to 'superstar' so I need to beat you to that ball, but I'm not intelligent enough to predict and position myself where I need to be, so I'm going to suck you towards me and your legs are going to turn to lead, sorry about that".

In Football Manager there's no need for that because there's no human controller of players it has to outwit. So in my eyes, everything always plays out fairly.

The one thing you do see is the ball flying off without the animation matching up to it sometimes, and you have to go into it with a good imagination because there's so much number-crunching going on (the game overheats every platform I've tried it on) that the match engine is secondary to the simulation. If you watched it as little 2D radar dots, you wouldn't notice anything wrong, but in 3D you see those little things. But you don't think "that wouldn't happen", you just realise the animation isn't there for the way he kicked that ball, at that specific angle or with that specific timing.

So in a word, no, I don't think it cheats, and it's very satisfying masterminding a win if you're the kind of player who can be arsed actually delving through the opposition report and comparing their players to yours.

It's the kind of game that you can play two ways - you can either give your life to it and reap the benefits, or you can play the "classic" mode and do ten seasons in a couple of months but without ever looking into too much detail. I played it like the latter on the Vita, but can't go back to it now because it's so much more satisfying when you delve into the depths of it.

It's not even the satisfaction of winning - it's the satisfaction of seeing that, for example, that slow opposition midfielder you told your fast, niggly player to keep closing down is having no luck, and that dribbling opposition winger you told your players about is having his legs nearly broken every time he gets a touch, which is calming him down.
 
Thanks for the detailed reply. It sounds incredibly deep. I'd forgotten/not realised just how deep, given I've confined myself to PES/FIFA for the past 15 years and their respective lack of depth. I think you're right about FIFA/PES cpu cheats being more about lack of processing power and the cpu having to manipulate situations to achieve the required outcomes, but even 15 years on, there's no sign of them reducing it at all. It's like it's accepted that that's just how these games work, no matter the increases in processing power over the years. I'm tired of the main emotions when I play these 2 games being frustration and anger so it would be great to have a football game which offers a genuinely even-handed tussle without any signs of the cpu being given a helping hand or my players being obviously handicapped and instead seeing the action unfold based objectively on the stats and instructions.

It also sounds like there's a lot of scope to adopt a wide range of approaches and tactical styles to the game, from trying to scrap your way through a season to patiently nurturing players and playing styles. I can imagine the satisfaction of seeing those player-specific match-day instructions you describe actually play out on the pitch and also longer term strategies gradually bearing fruit over the months.
 
drekkard said:
I looked for a demo but there isn't any, right? Only the beta if you preorder the game. Am I right?
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I pre-ordered through Amazon and downloaded the beta. I guess I can play it for a few days and then if I don't like it, can cancel my pre-order before I get charged.

Had my first games last night. It certainly is absorbing and time-consuming. I tried to get a match up and running quickly, so playing as a League 2 side, my first match was a pre-season friendly against a non-league side. I quickly bashed together a team and basic tactics, not really knowing what I was doing....and got my ass handed to me on a plate - 5-2 down after an hour but a couple of subs and tactical changes brought it back to 5-4 at the end.

So I quit and restarted and this time I spent a lot of time getting to know what to do, being careful about training, formation, tactics, player roles, etc and this time won the same pre-season match 4-0. It was great to see the time and effort I put in have such a dramatic effect on how the match played out, going from being a shambles in the first match to completely controlling it this time round. The oppostion's main threat was coming down the right flank but I was able to made a minor tactical change and issue instructions whcih snuffed out that threat in the second half.

Next match was another pre-season friendly, this time against a Championship side and so I focussed in training on defensive tactics. However, we lost an early goal and were then completely overwhelmed, could barely get a touch of the ball and were 4-0 down in 30 minutes. But again I made tactical changes and issued some instructions and we gradually started to get a foot-hold in the game, retain a bit of possession and create a few chances. The opposition were clearly still better and created numerous additional chances but we kept it down to 5-1.

So, like Chris said, perhaps too many goals (although it sounds like that will be addressed) but definitely a rewarding game. It's a really interesting challenge but I can see it taking up huge amounts of time. But I think I'll stick with the purchase and just play it out gradually over the months ahead.
 
Pretty disheartened by the Eurogamer review, and they're one of the only review sites I trust. He's managed to write a review without actually discussing half the game's features (as a few of the commenters underneath have said).

I'm utterly sucked into it at the moment, I think being able to interact with people in so many more ways is superb.

My only issue is the amount of lower league goals, which a new patch was supposed to fix, and hasn't for me...
 
Chris Davies said:
Pretty disheartened by the Eurogamer review, and they're one of the only review sites I trust. He's managed to write a review without actually discussing half the game's features (as a few of the commenters underneath have said).

I'm utterly sucked into it at the moment, I think being able to interact with people in so many more ways is superb.

My only issue is the amount of lower league goals, which a new patch was supposed to fix, and hasn't for me...
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Maybe that's because your playing as Tranmere...
 
Every football manager fan, past or present should see the film "An Alternative Reality The Football Manager Documentary" a solid 8/10
 
Really, really want this but, similar to Winston, I was hooked on 2013 and 2014 in a bad way. I was playing it all the time in work (office job), neglecting projects, e-mails, support issues. Then I'd go home and wait for my family to go to bed before then playing it 'til 1 or 2am in the week and 4am Friday and Saturday "night".

Loved it and I'm sure the latest version is better again.

I miss the regens I had, miss trying to fix problems with my team, miss the top reputation I had where I could effectively have my pick of any available job but none of it was sustainable for me to continue to have a career/wife/family/life.

Everything I've accidentally read about the latest version (as I'm actively avoiding the temptation) sounds like it'll be even better but also even more absorbing.

In the meantime, I cling to the small features in FIFA's Career Mode as a way of getting my FM fix (I even sign the same "wonderkids" for the same clubs)..
Hope
 
Review said:
Every football manager fan, past or present should see the film "An Alternative Reality The Football Manager Documentary" a solid 8/10
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pboreham said:
Yea looks really good. Hoping it will pop up on Netflix soon.
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Its a brilliant watch.

Very funny because you can relate so much to what they are talking about and pretty informative on how the game is made and has progressed throughout the years.
 
Coopz said:
Its a brilliant watch.

Very funny because you can relate so much to what they are talking about and pretty informative on how the game is made and has progressed throughout the years.
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Always makes me laugh when I see or read anything about Champ Man/FM players and they always talk about "giving imaginary press conferences in your head".

Always thought I was the only one!? :)

One of the best things about playing FM is creating your own narrative in your own world as the season goes on. Like justifying decisions, 'talking' to players etc.
 
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