Football Manager 2025

[villa4europe]

5 hours ago, sne said:

The way football is going maybe they could find a new market for this game if the just re-skinned it as a accounting simulation.

I play the touch version which doesn't have FFP, not sure they'll get away with that for much longer, it's a huge part of the game 

Same goes for VAR, feels like they need to incorporate it more or find a better way of demonstrating it 

[Jonesy7211]

As long as they get rid of the media features or massively increase the pool of questions, I'll be happy.

And make human player GKs as effective as CPU GKs.

[villa4europe]

17 hours ago, Jonesy7211 said:

As long as they get rid of the media features or massively increase the pool of questions, I'll be happy.

Yeah the social media comment stuff is utterly pointless as they just cover all bases, the journalist questions don't feel like they actually do anything, could be cool if you getting quizzed on way a player purchase had a real impact on the contract negotiations or him even signing, get an answer wrong and he rejects he move type stuff 

[Villaphan04]

Miles released the Q2 update on Football Manager 25 earlier.

Some of the features not returning from FM 24 to FM 25:

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WHAT’S CHANGING IN FM25?

First, let’s talk about the features and modes that won’t be immediately available in Football Manager 25:

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. 

SOCIAL MEDIA SCREEN AND THE DATA CHALKBOARD

To optimise both the UI and the User Experience (UX), we’ve taken out the bespoke social media screen for FM25. Don’t worry: all the key information from this will still appear in other game areas, and supporters are still an integral part of the game.

With the data used in football continually evolving and developing, we’ve also thought hard about how that is displayed in FM. Most of the existing data metrics and visualisations will still be in FM25 and we’re already working on further visualisations that will be added in future editions of FM. However, the Chalkboard, which was additional individual and team data accessed via player profiles, has been removed. With the introduction of the Data Hub in recent years, which is much better at presenting analytical data to you, the Chalkboard became superfluous and its usage dropped from 10% to below 1%. 

CREATE-A-CLUB

We know that this is our most popular mode away from Career and Network Career mode, with 5% of you using Create-A-Club on the platforms it's available. That said, this percentage has been steadily declining.

We can’t improve the Create-A-Club experience to the level we’re looking for before this year’s launch. So, we’ve decided not to rush it, and will instead bring it back in Football Manager 26 with lots of changes and improvements.

VERSUS MODE

A personal favourite of mine, we know that the people who do play Versus tend to do so multiple times. However, it’s also only been played by 0.5% of our audience. 

We haven’t started the re-design of Versus mode yet. We do still like it, but it may be superseded by something else or return in a completely different form. 

CHALLENGE MODE

Part of our Console, Touch, and Mobile series, Challenge mode is currently scheduled to return completely revamped in either Football Manager 26 or Football Manager 27. 

It was popular when first launched but its use away from Mobile has dropped dramatically over the last few years and is now played by fewer than 0.5% of our audience. 

We’re currently debating how and when Challenge mode will come back to ensure it returns with the best and most immersive experience possible.

FANTASY DRAFT 

This mode will not be playable day one of FM25 but will return much-improved later in the cycle alongside the Main Data Update. Mid-cycle feature releases are something that will become more regular for the series moving forward.
 
When we first envisioned Fantasy Draft mode, we saw its potential as an esport. Over the years, we know that many of you have used the mode in this way – and a few tournaments have been run here and there in various guises.
 
We had already made the decision to remove Fantasy Draft from FM25 day one when we had a very interesting reach out from someone in the esports space, with two decades of experience of organising tournaments and developing events, got in touch with us...
 
We’ve therefore decided to partner with FIFAe, FIFA’s esports division, on an invitational FIFAe World Cup of Football Manager which takes place in Liverpool from August 29th to September 1, 2024. Using Football Manager 2024, 24 players will contest the tournament representing their nation on the biggest stage. Not only a FIFAe World Cup title is on the line – also $100,000 in prize money are up for grabs!

FIFA’s esports activities started in 2004 and developed into a professional sport in recent years – while breaking down boundaries between football and gaming for the sports we all love.
 
Through what is essentially a test run, we’ll be collaborating with FIFAe to explore how we can jointly realise our esports potential. We’ll evaluate this together how the tournament performs and investigate the development of Fantasy Draft and, potentially, the first qualifiers on the Road to the FIFAe World Cup 2025 of Football Manager using the new Fantasy Draft in 2025.
 
Everyone involved is keen on generating first learnings and to build a solid groundwork for potential future events. Regardless of the outcomes of the first test event, we’ll be bringing Fantasy Draft back bigger and better.

In the meantime, enjoy FIFAe’s announcement of this year’s invitational including Arsène Wenger. Do you want to compete yourself? Sign up on FIFA.GG to get notified about local competitions.

Some of the changes to the game interface

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A NEW UI FOR A NEW ERA

Now, on to a major new change you’ll experience on day one of FM25…

I spoke earlier about how the UI will be very different. While we know how vital it is to get this right, what is equally important is the UX. 

With the new UI, our team have built powerful design and technical foundations that can be easily scaled and improved in the future. This means that every future addition will strengthen the UX without compromising consistency in our UI.

We’ve spent years researching these changes, learning how different types of people play our games: from first time players through to our most experienced.

With these insights, we needed to find a way to make all the key information available at the right times while not overwhelming our players. And we know that’s a tough balance. 

The same is true of crafting a design that’s platform agnostic, enabling ease of play whether you’ve got a mouse and keyboard, a controller, or even a touch screen. 

In tackling this challenge, we worked very closely with the engineers at Unity to adapt their engine to give us the flexibility and dynamics we need from a UI perspective. We’ll be talking about this journey in more detail at the forthcoming Unite event in September, covering more of the technical details of how we worked together to make the FM25 UI a reality. 

Of course, we’ll share most of that with you shortly after the conference, but, for now, we wanted to give you a first taste of the upcoming changes.

INTRODUCING TILES AND CARDS

FM25’s new UI/UX is driven by what we have called a “tile and card” system.

A “tile” is a panel of information with multiple different states, from small amounts of information to larger “cards” which contain more material. 

Our Design team wanted to create something that would help to build a sense of exploration for every player to reveal the depth and detail of Football Manager.

In this system, the tiles are a way of building curiosity by providing a snapshot of information, while clicking through into cards rewards your interest with further detail.

Tiles come in multiple different sizes that we call ‘states’ – this is so that we can use the information appropriately in various different screens and scenarios. 

Below is an example of one tile, Player Form, in these different states. For those who find the description above overly technical, this visual gives important context. 

 

And then, in the screenshot below you can see what happens when you click on the form tile - it opens up a “card” with more information.

 

This design reduces the volume of screens in-game, making navigation easier without compromising on detail. Less walls of text is a good thing, right? (he says 2,000 + words in ) 

GOODBYE INBOX, HELLO PORTAL

Another facet of our UI work has been studying the constant evolution in the way people interact, communicate, and consume information. Historically the screen that people spend the most time on in FM has been the Inbox – essentially, your in-game email. For a while, this has felt quite old school given that modern football managers spend way more time on their phones than laptops. 

So, welcome to what we now call your “Portal”. 

The Portal will be a richer window to the wider footballing universe. It’ll give you far better tools to develop your story through the Agenda and Messages sections, but also deliver you more insight into what’s happening elsewhere via News and Matches. 

 

Finally, I want to share one more screen that shows off the potential of the new tile and card system. This is the new screen that you’ll see between your match highlights – more information on how it all works will follow during our gameplay rollout in September. 

 

We know these changes represent a big shift from past editions of Football Manager. We’ve been making games for a long time and know from previous experience, research, and wider industry cooperation, that UI changes can take time to get used to. But, we’ve done our homework and could not be more confident that the direction we’re heading in is the right one. 

Development Update: Football Manager 25 | Football Manager 2024

[Farlz]

Everything they've removed is no great loss really. It seems as if they're scaling it down just to make sure they get it out on time.

I'm an idiot so I'll buy it straight away but I'm 99% certain that FM25 will just be a big shambles. 

[tomav84]

portal looks good to be fair

[Villaphan04]

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REVISING OUR TIMELINES

We previously stated that we would be confirming FM25’s release date at the beginning of September (with pre-orders starting at the same time), closely followed by our gameplay rollout period. 

Firstly, we've had to shift the official announcement of FM25 to the end of September. The gameplay focus period will follow soon thereafter. Our target launch date has moved accordingly and is now scheduled for late November, rather than our usual early November slot.

The FM25 development cycle has been challenging for the whole team. We knew that moving the entire game to the Unity engine was going to be a complex endeavour. As we’ve gotten deeper into the process and gained learnings, it’s fair to say it’s been trickier than we originally anticipated. The entire dev team has been challenged in a myriad of new ways and are doing an incredible job in the process. I’m excited to eventually share our hard work with you but we need a little more time before we can do that. 

As I outlined in June’s blog, we’ve consistently held ourselves accountable to the same three core questions:

• Would we do it in the same way if we had our time again?
• Would we have done this at all?
• Do we have the time required to do this to the highest possible standard, in our first cycle of a new era?

The challenges we’ve encountered in the development process over the last couple of months have led us to make another difficult decision around game content: international management will not be a playable mode in FM25, FM25 Console or FM25 Touch. 

Coming off the back of a summer of tournament football and with this week even being an international break, we’ve looked really hard at international management in FM and determined that what we were planning to deliver wouldn’t reach our initial quality threshold. 

We also considered the available game data. Only 5.6% of all FM24 PC saves have used the mode, which we feel validates our view that we need to do much, much better with the experience. That number is even smaller on Console. 

So, rather than delay FM25 even further, we’ve paused work on that area of the game and allocated those resources to other key areas. It will continue to exist in FM25, FM25 Console and FM25 Touch as part of the wider simulation of world football, it just won’t be playable. 

However, international management will remain playable in FM25 Mobile as that’s on a different development track and codebase. For all other versions, international management will return in a much more feature-rich way to FM26, FM26 Console and FM26 Touch in what will be an exciting year for international football with the World Cup expanding to 48 teams. To be clear, this will return as part of the base game and not as any form of additional downloadable content. 

While difficult, these decisions are made for the good of the game and the majority of our players. We are determined to ensure that FM25, the first game in a new engine, is as good as it can be in the time we have. By pushing back FM25’s release date, we’ve given ourselves a few extra weeks of development time to try to deliver the best experience that we can for this first in the new era of Football Manager releases. 

In recent weeks, I have also taken steps to free up more of my time to focus solely on development and supporting the wider team. One of our core studio values is Consider the Bigger Picture, and what’s most important right now is focusing on FM25. I mentioned in June that I’d be speaking at the Unite conference in Barcelona as part of the keynote. While we will still have an FM presence there, I will not be making the trip because I need to concentrate all my efforts on directing FM25. It’s for this reason that I will also not be attending Tokyo Game Show, an event I loved last year and really helped make our first-ever release in Japan a big success.

I’ve also cancelled a trip to America which I was really looking forward to but the game, and you as the players of our games, are the bigger picture.  

AN UPDATE TO PLAYER PROFILES

When we begin our gameplay rollout, one of the areas I’m really looking forward to sharing is our work on Women’s Football. 

As you know, it’s been a long-term project for us and one of the biggest things we've done in recent times outside of the move to Unity. Throughout the process, we’ve been laser-focused on introducing Women’s Football to FM in the most authentic way possible. We've applied that thinking to everything we've done, as we generally do with all areas of design and development. From a gameplay perspective, being able to move seamlessly between managing men’s and women’s clubs and vice-versa in one world, one ecosystem was the number one priority - but that’s forced us to consider how various game world aspects are currently portrayed.

As such, we can now share a change we’ve made to all FM25 player profiles: a player’s weight will no longer be visible. 

Through the creation of our Women's Football database, we discovered that while the weight of male athletes can change a bit month to month, women’s body types are very different from men’s and their weight fluctuates a lot more, often weekly. 

This perspective encouraged us to review the wider game, much like we have with all other areas, and we’ve ultimately decided to no longer show weight for any players in FM25. A very basic measurement will still be included under the hood, but it won’t be visible on the front end anymore.

TESTING UPDATE

We also announced in June that we would be welcoming FMFC members within a reasonable travel vicinity to come to our campus in London and help with playtesting the new UI/UX of FM25. We received an enormous response to that, and I want to thank everyone who has volunteered and given us their availability. The playtesting will still be going ahead but as a result of the above milestones moving, the start date is shifting slightly. FMFC members who have applied will be contacted shortly with further date options as we begin to finalise the process.

This should be my last development update until we start focusing more on what’s in FM25. We have lots of good stuff to show you that we’re excited about but I want to re-iterate that FM25 is the first instalment in a new era for the game, one that will give us a lot more possibilities than we had with the previous chapter.

FM25 is just the starting point for what is a very exciting, long-term project.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers, 

Miles

https://www.footballmanager.com/news/development-update-football-manager-25-0

[villarule123]

Sounds like they should just cancel this year's version and focus on next year's game. But this is the gaming industry, so they'll release a buggy game with less features and take our money. 

[Farlz]

 Basically one big beta test for FM26 for which they’ll actually know what they’re doing then. 

[Jonesy7211]

I love managing club and country, mostly to get someone ahead of Kane as England's top scorer. Also gets me to the top of the hall of fame more quickly.

I don't see how removing weight is a good thing either. It directly affects so many physical stats and traits. Unless it never meant anything in the game to begin with.

I might wait until after Christmas before getting this one, see what other people say about it.

[Avfc96]

I wouldn't expect it to be released before Christmas. 

Not that bothered by it really, currently into a near 20 year long save and enjoying it more than any FM save I've done in a long long time and happy to play it for a long while yet.

[Andy_10]

15 hours ago, Jonesy7211 said:

I love managing club and country, mostly to get someone ahead of Kane as England's top scorer. Also gets me to the top of the hall of fame more quickly.

I don't see how removing weight is a good thing either. It directly affects so many physical stats and traits. Unless it never meant anything in the game to begin with.

I might wait until after Christmas before getting this one, see what other people say about it.

Sounds like @Farlz has the right idea. I will stick with the one I already have & wait until next year when they have ironed out all of the bugs from this new one. 

[Andy_10]

Edit-wrong thread

Edited September 5 by Andy_10
Wrong thread

[Hobsons Choice]

I don't really have as much of a problem with the issues that FM 25 has been having, compared to, say, EA Sports. The development time frame is tough, no doubt, and protecting the budget likely also so. 

But I really get the sense that, and I think it comes across in the last update, that these are decent folks trying to make the best game possible. Switching engine was never going to be easy, but it's ambitious.

Notably absent from FM has been microtransactions. I think if you look at the implementation of microtransactions you can really see who the greedy developers are.

When you look at how little has changed in EA Sports/Fifa over the last 10 years, and how they have deliberately paid only lip service to offline players so they can gouge away with Ultimate Team, SI seem infinitely more respectful of their customer base, and for that I'm gonna support them.

This superficial microtransaction BS is a fad. It will fall apart because that's what always happens when you mug off your customers. If SI play it right, when that happens they'll still be standing when others crumble.

Edit. Also worth pointing out that SI has a staff of 245 or so, and EA has 13,500 employees. So yeah, more leeway given.

Edited September 8 by Hobsons Choice

[hogso]

Reliable (as much as these things can be anyway) twitter leaker Billbil kun suggests the release date for FM25 will be 26/11/24. Late for an FM, but not as late as some were thinking. I suppose it could still slip though, and those thinking it would be in the new year could well be proven correct.

[villa4europe]

5 hours ago, hogso said:

Reliable (as much as these things can be anyway) twitter leaker Billbil kun suggests the release date for FM25 will be 26/11/24. Late for an FM, but not as late as some were thinking. I suppose it could still slip though, and those thinking it would be in the new year could well be proven correct.

The touch version might have been that late last year anyway, was about 3/4 weeks after the full game 

Thing is if it slips any later you're in to the Jan transfer window, I'm normally balls deep in to my 3rd save come Jan so it doesn't bother me, if I haven't got a proper settled save on the go then it will 

[T-Dog]

I don't think I've missed a year of FM since it first came out, but I'm getting a horrible feeling about this next one...

[Avfc96]

39 minutes ago, T-Dog said:

I don't think I've missed a year of FM since it first came out, but I'm getting a horrible feeling about this next one...

Same, I'll be sticking with FM24 I think. 

Just get the feeling that if they're announcing things are going to be cut just to make the game workable, they'll cut a load more before the game is released as there is clearly a massive struggle to be able to get the game released even with a delayed released date.