Hey guys – I’m new to the forum and relatively new to football (soccer here in the US). I had followed the game as a casual fan until the 2012 EPL finale and the 2012 Olympics. I started watching a lot of EPL and MLS last year and have been hooked ever since. I don’t own Football Manager yet, but have wanted a PC game for quite a while and from what I read FM is the best.
I was hoping I could get some help on some general questions before I buy.
1. Are there any time contraints in the game itself. What I mean is, can I start being the manager of a team and then not log on and do anything for a few weeks and come back and not be penalized for missing transfers or other transactions?
2. Can you have multiple “games” active at the same time? In other words, be manager of Barcelona and Bayern Munich at the same time?
3. My laptop doesn’t have a very high end graphics card and doesn’t meet the minimum requirements. Can I still use the game? Does the graphics card only impact the 3d Match engine?
4. Finally, I’ve played a lot of statistically based games for other sports and I love games that are statistically accurate. Is this game based upon projecting the upcoming year, based upon the players and their 1 to 20 ratings, or is there some statistical component that I don’t see yet that says that a goalie with a real life save % of 70 % in the 2012-13 season will do the same in FM14?
I appreciate your help.
1. No time contraints. You can go back to old saves as much as possible.
2. If you mean open at the same time, no. If you mean have 2 saves, yes.
3. No idea on this one, but you can probably still use the game.
4. Don't really understand this, but I'll try explaining what I think you meant:
Each player has a bunch of attributes, in Physical, Mental and Technical, if the player's a goalkeeper, goalkeeping. They all range from 1-20, 1 being the lowest and 20 being the highest. The attributes are put in game and are sometimes edited in updates.
Thanks Alex. I think that answered most of my questions. From what I can read the game is more about player skill levels than about recreating past performance. Which is fine. You do bring up a good point about updates. When the game is released with all of the player ratings, are those ratings subsequently changed with FM updates? If so, how often do those updates come out?
I'm a little disappointed about not being able to have two projects going at once. I was hoping I could start out with a League One or Two team in England and maybe an MLS team and bounce back and forth between the two.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. I'm anxious to get started, but I'm also expecting to get overwhelmed. Being so new to this sport I figure I'll experience a huge learning curve. Oh well - "nothing ventured, nothing gained"
Some of the ratings are changed, yes.
You can be both a club and a nation at the same time
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You can manage multiple teams at once in one game but have to create a separate manager for each team.
You don't need a proper graphics card to play fm and most modern laptops bought within the last 3 years will play it fine. I'd recommend an I3 with 4gb RAM as a minimum, but poorer laptops will play it, only slower.
The stats on FM are extremely accurate in my opinion considering the scale of the game, as alexthfc said each skill is rated from 1-20 and the outcome reflects real football quite accurately.
Assuming your laptop will run it, get FM, you won't regret it. Post you laptop specifications and see if there are any other members here who play it with a similar spec laptop.
Thanks guys. Here are my specs as best I can determine from the dxdiag:
Processor: Core i7 2620M 2-Core 2.7ghz
Video: Radeon HD 6470M
RAM: 4 gb
This is an HP Laptop. Does this look like it will work with the new FM14?
More than good enough mate, you won't have any problem running FM14 and 3d matches.
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Thanks Evo! That's good news on my laptop.
Does anyone know if the game comes with English levels down to 9? Just out of curiosity, how many players and teams are included with the game? It has to be a huge number to allow for some many levels of play.
No, England doesn't go all the way to Level 9, it goes to the Blue Square Regional, the 6th tier. There's tons of downloads though that go a lot further.
Thanks to everyone for their help. FM14 has been ordered and I'm anxious to dive in.
Anyone got any hints or tips for someone tackling Football Manager for the first time?
Any online reference on this web site that you could recommend?
Check out the guides section
http://www.fmscout.com/c-guides.html some of the articles are old but almost all of them are still relevant today.
The hints and tips section has loads of useful info for new starters
http://www.fmscout.com/a-football-manager-2013-hints-and-tips.html
Make sure you use the search function on the site and you'll find articles and topics for all kinds of things. Explore the site and you'll pick up loads.
If you start a new game, you may have the option of adding another head coach and thus two separate managers but you can manage two clubs (as well as 2 nations) with one save.
