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November 10th confirmed release date.
25% off if you already own FM2017 in your Steam library and pre-order before October 9th.
25% off if you already own FM2017 in your Steam library and pre-order before October 9th.
Football Manager 2018
- Thread starter WithMyApologies
- Start date
A mate of mine and I have been talking about Football Manager recently and maybe someone could answer this for us:
Why do they release the next Football Manager in November? Wouldn't they be better off releasing at the end of August/beginning of September just after the transfer window?
Releasing of November makes little sense to me as they'll need to update the database a month or two later with the January transfers...
Why do they release the next Football Manager in November? Wouldn't they be better off releasing at the end of August/beginning of September just after the transfer window?
Releasing of November makes little sense to me as they'll need to update the database a month or two later with the January transfers...
Don't forget the free transfer window too.
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I really don't get the 10th of November Release. It seems to have been pushed back and back over the years and im not sure quite why cause the games been pretty poor the last two years especially. I'd really like more done with the actual interaction with the game. Some different media bits happening or different injurys, its all abit bland really. Theres nothing out of the orderinary that really happens.
I cant see what theyve done to the match engine really either. It seems to have got worse not better. Every year i think I'll give it a go but its so poor I just revert back to 2D engine.
I cant see what theyve done to the match engine really either. It seems to have got worse not better. Every year i think I'll give it a go but its so poor I just revert back to 2D engine.
Associate
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- 10 Jun 2015
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- 322
I think theres been too much involvement with this touch and mobile business that has affected the actual PC main game. Chasing more revenue streams instead of putting all there efforts into the main pc version which they would have done in years gone by when there wasn't tablets and mobiles.
Permabanned
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Yeh the November release date has always grated on me. Start of the season is peak time for wanting to play football manager. By November my team in real life has already ruined their season and my enthusiasm for football has gone lol
Soldato
I'd prefer they released it at the end of the season and just did weekly updates for transfers as then I would get my football fix in the off season.
Saying that I still play CM 01/02 because for me FM has lost its way.
Saying that I still play CM 01/02 because for me FM has lost its way.
this really, lost enthusiasm for the FM series after FM14 tbh
Soldato
I made it as far as FM09
Soldato
If only there was a proper phone version of CM, I had it running on my old Z5 Premium using an emulator but it killed battery power.
Man of Honour
I love the game personally, and although there were a lot of positives in 17 there were the god awful regen graphics that really put me off playing a long save. That said, I am in 2026 at the mo..
Associate
Still on fm12, the newer ones are over complicated and a season takes far to long
Soldato
I'll be buying but like others I find the backward moving release date weird. They could have the match engine built, add the transfers etc and have it out by the start/mid September easy.
I've stopped buying them after 2016.
Its just a time sink. I usually end up investing 200+ hours in what is a spreadsheet manager, when I could have played 4-5 RPGs.
For how basic the game is, there is a huge lack of new good features. I'd love to see the CA/PA system totally reworked so someone not written in the stars to be worldclass could be quite decent for example. I think set PA/CA is just all a bit too basic this day in age. I'd love to be able to pick up a player at 24/25, invest a lot of time into them, they enjoy a very very good season and get an extra +5 CA to their stats.
The whole transfer request system has always been so easy to play too, almost too easy. The new-age complexities with the boards have also not been reflected well enough IMO. I'd love to have Real Madrid strongly suggesting playstyles for me, and when I lose a game a sharp reminder not to play negative football or whatever.
Player interaction is so scripted its beyond horrible now in my opinion. Players don't care if you're the manager who gave them their first debut, they're unaware of any really bad form and how you've stuck by them unless its a goal drought. Making players force moves is still a bit difficult and random. I'd love to see more agent interaction where they will actually work with you, the odd complex transfer like promising a player he can go next year and then having that agent arrange the transfer 6-12months behind like the ronaldo to madrid transfer.
From the graphics side of things, I can't help but feel its just abymsmal and held back by a) lack of funds b) wanting to make this game playable on any crap laptop.
There just SOOO much they could do but don't and everything they are doing at the moment has got terribly stale for me. The magic has kind of gone too with a huge reliance on team talks now. I remember the days when I'd put my faith in an on-fire Carlos Vela who powered me to the title. I haven't had that this year.
Also its way too easy to get assemble a time of super stars in the space of a few seasons. I feel the biggest best players dont have enough competition from other clubs.
As someone else touched on, I think they're concentrating on other avenues now for release rather than improving the PC version itself.
The press conferences are beyond boring too after 1/4 a season.
For a game which is JUST text, it should be doing a lot better.
Its just a time sink. I usually end up investing 200+ hours in what is a spreadsheet manager, when I could have played 4-5 RPGs.
For how basic the game is, there is a huge lack of new good features. I'd love to see the CA/PA system totally reworked so someone not written in the stars to be worldclass could be quite decent for example. I think set PA/CA is just all a bit too basic this day in age. I'd love to be able to pick up a player at 24/25, invest a lot of time into them, they enjoy a very very good season and get an extra +5 CA to their stats.
The whole transfer request system has always been so easy to play too, almost too easy. The new-age complexities with the boards have also not been reflected well enough IMO. I'd love to have Real Madrid strongly suggesting playstyles for me, and when I lose a game a sharp reminder not to play negative football or whatever.
Player interaction is so scripted its beyond horrible now in my opinion. Players don't care if you're the manager who gave them their first debut, they're unaware of any really bad form and how you've stuck by them unless its a goal drought. Making players force moves is still a bit difficult and random. I'd love to see more agent interaction where they will actually work with you, the odd complex transfer like promising a player he can go next year and then having that agent arrange the transfer 6-12months behind like the ronaldo to madrid transfer.
From the graphics side of things, I can't help but feel its just abymsmal and held back by a) lack of funds b) wanting to make this game playable on any crap laptop.
There just SOOO much they could do but don't and everything they are doing at the moment has got terribly stale for me. The magic has kind of gone too with a huge reliance on team talks now. I remember the days when I'd put my faith in an on-fire Carlos Vela who powered me to the title. I haven't had that this year.
Also its way too easy to get assemble a time of super stars in the space of a few seasons. I feel the biggest best players dont have enough competition from other clubs.
As someone else touched on, I think they're concentrating on other avenues now for release rather than improving the PC version itself.
The press conferences are beyond boring too after 1/4 a season.
For a game which is JUST text, it should be doing a lot better.
Soldato
Point about more flexible PA/CA is a great one. I always get frustrated that a player who comes good IRL is stale in the game.
Player interaction agree as well.
Ultimately though there has to be a limit on how "real life" it becomes or you could get so deep in the nettles you never get anything done.
Player interaction agree as well.
Ultimately though there has to be a limit on how "real life" it becomes or you could get so deep in the nettles you never get anything done.
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Couldn't agree more. Last few years the progress of it has been poor. A huge part of this has to be a lot of their efforts going into other revenue streams. There will end up being pay to win systems involved soon enough i bet.
Soldato
Well its not really a competitive game so if someone wants to pay to win against a computer so they can brag to... themselves? Then they thoroughly deserve to be rinsed of every spare pound they offer
Soldato
I too hate that FM xx is released so late in the year. I think they need a couple of months after the end of the transfer window to finalise the database moves (where has a player moved to, how long is his contract, what's his basic pay and bonuses, does he have a release fee or any other clauses?) This takes time for their researchers to collate and submit to SI. They then have to check it to make sure it is right, for instance a player may have signed a new contract at his current club for £70,000 a week. Someone could easily accidentally enter a salary of £700,000 a week or £7,000 a week.
Once all the database changes are made, which includes managers, coaches, physios, sports scientists as well as players, the game needs to be tested by internal and external testers. I've been lucky enough to be an external beta tester for FM and there is an awful lot of work involved. If a tester spots an issue with the game, be it the match engine, text commentary, person data or other info such as club colours or club nicknames, hated players and clubs etc then they have to show where the error is and someone from SI then needs to investigate and either ask for more evidence or ask other testers if they can re-create the bug. Some issues with the match engine, which is probably the biggest source of bugs/issues for the game and also the hardest to fix might include a tester thinking that penalties are being awarded too easily or too rarely. There can then be debates between the beta testers, SI staff and even the top dogs about the issues and there can then be delays whilst everyone puts the game into holiday mode to then be able to get several seasons of matches played to be able to collate penalty statistics!
I think that the game is getting more and more advanced/complicated and from my computer science background I can understand that some bugs could be especially tricky to find and then even harder to fix without causing other issues. As the game gets more complicated it takes more people to make the game and therefore I imagine it can get harder to track where a bug has come from and who has to fix it. I believe the SI team is quite small compared to other game studios and so there's a limited sized team to track bugs and keep on top of things.
Look at this link (http://www.sigames.com/careers) and see that SI currently have 8 vacancies listed. There's quite a spread of jobs there and I bet that isn't even the half of it. Imagine having to co-ordinate a group of staff on this game or even the whole project.
The final delay is once the game is ready and SI are happy for it to be released it then has to be sent off to be manufactured onto disc for release. This is called going gold. For SI to have enough copies of FM for release date they need to make sure that the factories have enough time to create all the discs and cases etc for the game. It can't be done in just a few days. I reckon a couple of weeks at the very least, if not more. Then SI/SEGA have to get the copies distributed across the UK, Europe, Americas etc so that people can buy the game on release date. So the need to wait for the summer transfer window to shut, the alpha/beta testing, going gold/manufacturing and distributing the game means that you can add several months from the end of the transfer window to the earliest possible release date. The summer transfer window shuts on August 31st. So the earliest SI can start to work on the transfer part of the game is September 1st. Add two months to that and you're looking at the end of October/beginning of November before they can release it. SI/SEGA also need the game to be out well before the Christmas shopping season so that the game can be marketed and, hopefully, get good reviews, so that parents might buy it for their kids instead of Championship Manager, if its still going?!
I would have thought that with SI releasing FM through Steam as well as through the traditional discs they will end up making Steam/digital downloads the only way to buy the game in the future. It would cut out the need to have the game go gold and give factories time to print the discs. I don't know how long before release of a game that Steam require it to be available to them but I can't see why it'd be anything like the timescales involved in producing discs and cases and then distributing them. There's also the fact that before FM was available through Steam SI knew that not only was FM always high on the biggest seller lists but also on the most pirated games list. If say 8 people play FM off one disc but SI only get money from one customer then they are losing income to help finance the next FM. By releasing FM through Steam piracy is a lot lower, if not almost zero so SI benefit from knowing that if someone is playing FM they must have paid for it.
With respect to mentions about the release date being so close to the January transfer window, SI are a small company and need to release FM before the end of the calendar year to get money coming in. We also don't see the January transfer/patch until the end of February/beginning of March whilst the data is checked and tested. The January transfer patch is very important as this is where club researchers can make database changes to new players who joined the club in the summer. In the case of Lukaku moving from Everton to Manchester United, the data that SI will use for him in FM18 on release will be the data the Everton researcher decided on. The Manchester United researcher won't be able to put their changes to Lukaku's data until the January transfer patch. The researcher also needs to decide whether to change a player's CA/PA. If Lukaku has a good season up until January and scores lot of goals then the United researcher will need to decide whether or not to alter the data to allow the game to reflect Lukaku's real life exploits in game. Is his finishing better? Has he improved his composure? Is playing in a team with better players going to affect his work rate? Has he reacted better to the coaches at Old Trafford than at Goodison and lost a bit of weight that makes him a bit more lean and quicker? This what a researcher for each club has to think about for the January patch and I can tell you that for certain clubs the researchers get a lot of stick from forum posters saying that player X is better at heading than that and is much faster than that. The researcher often asks for evidence/data to prove this otherwise shut up!
I've done a bit of research on the release dates of all FMs since FM05 (the first for Sports Interactive when they split from Eidos) to see if there's a trend.
FM05 - 6th November 2004
FM06 - 21st October 2005 (Was meant to be 4th November 2005)
FM07 - 20th October 2006
FM08 - 18th October 2007 (Was meant to be 19th October 2007
FM09 - 14th November 2008
FM10 - 30th October 2009
FM11 - 5th November 2010
FM12 - 21st October 2011
FM13 - 2nd November 2012
FM14 - 31st October 2013
FM15 - 7th November 2014
FM16 - 13th November 2015
FM17 - 4th November 2016
FM18 - 10th November 2017
I hope this helps explain the gap between the season starting/the transfer window shutting and the game being released.
