I'm not particularly bothered about motion capture, moustaches or 3-D stadiums, the game key concept should be customization, or freedom to play if you prefer, this is what I'm asking for and this is where SI recently failed.
It's clear to me that FM14 was a point of no return for the game, sliders are gone and without them tactical options have been hugely reduced, early impressions from this year game confirm that.
Basically the game is dramatically changing from a "sandbox" football simulator, where everything was allowed, to a puzzle where you're supposed to play the game "properly" following courses charted by SI coders; free will is definitely a thing from the past.
Why?
The word realism has been repeated like an old mantra here, "we did that for realism" this is the answer I often received when moaning about the lack of tactical options in FM 2014, but I'm still not convinced.
The ambiguous chase for realism has nothing to do with limiting customization, is simply the wrong answer to a real problem: bugs and match engine exploits.
If you can't iron out exploits writing a better code then you simply oblige the players (managers) to make some pre-determined choices that won't hurt the match engine, this seems to be SI developers master plan lately.
The whole "new roles" thing goes in that direction.
New roles are a massive joke and mean nothing to me, if I decide to employ a right midfielder on the pitch I should be allowed to set him as I like, without greyed out options in the tactical panel, I could mould him as a defensive winger or as a wide midfielder but my own definition of defensive winger could differ a lot from SI football experts one, FM 2014, and probably FM 2015 will be even worse, gives you very limited chances to do that.
The same thing happens when a single team instruction changes several settings, to make an example if you choose to adopt an attacking mentality, width, defensive line, closing down and passing length will be modified as well, of course you could try to tune your tactic adding other team instructions but probably the final outcome will be in a total mess, mainly cause you have no visual reference that could hep you to know and understand your post shouts global settings.
More control? More realism?
None of the above.
We're losing the ability to play the game as we like, surely a big loss.
![FM24 2025-26 Real Fixture & Results (Start in 2025) [21-9-2025]](https://www.fmscout.com/datas/users/realresult_artv2_257759.png)
Discussion: Customization is Manager's best friend
14 comments have been posted so far.
Could you elaborate a little bit?
Many other things that people want to see can't happen because legal issues. A LOT of them.
Others thing doesn't happen for SIGames philosophies as a studio.
This game gonna be awesome and it's only a fist step of what is coming for the next years.
A quick example, if you ask, via team instructions, your team to play wider then you could notice you're still allowed, via player instructions, to instruct your wide players to play wider. Now, what does that exactly mean? Wider than wide? Without a visual reference (like the sliders or something better could show) I consider this like a very abstract concept.
The same happens with tight marking and other redundant settings.
20 clicks were not needed and often source of confusion but the buttons we have now are by no means an improvement.
I'm curious to see if they sorted issues like these in FM 2015, the screenshots I've seen are not encouraging though.
While I agree that the whole tactical side of the game isn't all too great, I do feel that SI are doing a fantastic job with it so far. Is the tactical change realistic? Of course it is. Managers in real life don't go to their players and say "I want you to play 13 clicks attacking and 11 clicks wide". They tell them "I want you to get forward more often and stay wider". Yes, it is quite limited with what you could do with it right now but it does take time to perfect. Last year was only the first year for the tactical system, so it will only improve in the future. People say SI are slow to change their ways but if you compare their relatively new 3D match engine (out since FM 10, I believe), it is better after 5 years than FIFA's was after 9/10 years, and FIFA was a game made solely on the 3D match engine! While some parts of FM are progressing slowly, it is worth nothing that SI don't have the funds that EA have to make their games. It will take time for SI to make a system which everybody is happy with but they are certainly creating a good one.
Agreed with your words about transitions as well, they should be better implemented in the game, wibble-wobble were not realistic but...
@patres10 - of course SI are trying to widen their audience, nothing wrong with that, but I firmly disagree with what their trying to do: impose their own idea of football and being biased towards certain tactics, shape or roles, a better balance would be highly needed.
From a 1st edition cm/fm player
And that leads to more profit of course...