With the FM21 release date fast approaching (and the beta even faster), I wanted to write down my hopes and expectation for the new game. This has been a strange and difficult year to say the least, and I know I’m not alone in feeling that FM20 was bright spot. Hopefully FM21 can continue with that trend.
Interacting with the New Features
On the surface, the headline features are a little underwhelming. I doubt that improvements to “Match Day” and “End of Season” would make it as headline features in prior years. Having said that, you can hardly blame SI for a slightly smaller game this year given everything that’s happened with the pandemic.
Of the features they have teased, the most exciting to me is the complete overhaul of the interactions system.
The old press and interaction system in FM was not bad exactly, but it was clearly underdeveloped. After playing for a while, it was very easy to figure out the optimal way to respond to every question or player talk. And even when you did respond optimally, most of the time it didn’t seem to matter. I see many FM players just delegate as much of this as possible to their assistant (aka turning the feature off), and it’s hard to blame them. Personally, I always liked talking with the press/players, but frankly that was for the immersion and RPG aspect, not for gameplay reasons.
With that in mind, I’m pretty optimistic about the update to interactions. They’ve clearly added a lot to it, and I doubt players will want to turn it off as fast. It also seems like SI have tried hard to make it as realistic as possible (as realistic as “talking” to computer-generated people can be). As immersion into the world of the save was my primary reason for using this feature in the past, I’m happy for the emphasis on it this year.
My one fear for the new system is that it becomes as rote and optimizable as in the past, just with a fancier UI. At least I hope I can congratulate my players on their first international cap.
Immersion and Escape
As I mentioned earlier, this has been a mostly terrible year for the world. The pandemic has disrupted world football so much, and it’s clear that this year’s edition FM is a little slimmer than it likely would have been. That being said, I can detect an overall theme of improvements in FM21. If the theme of FM20 was long-term saves, I believe the theme of FM21 is immersion. In addition to the aforementioned interactions overhaul, there’s also the addition of recruitment meetings and the updates to the 3D match engine UI to bring it more in line with the TV viewing experience.
There’s also small things like removing the percentages from fitness and match sharpness. That’s one of those small things you don’t think about until they change it, but once they do it makes perfect sense.
If there was ever a year where we’d all want to escape into the world of Football Manager this is it, so I applaud SI for making so many improvements in this area. It is true that certain effect of the pandemic have been included in the game (primarily on the financial side), but I’m glad they chose to leave out most of the real-world problems we’ve all been dealing with. Seeing all the empty stadiums week after week, I think we’d all like to a little time in a sports world without COVID.
Beta Save Reveal
At long last, we come to which team I’ll be playing in this year’s beta. That team is… New England Revolution!
I’ll be helming my hometown and favorite club, the New England Revolution. One of MLS’s founding teams, the Revs have struggled in recent years, including a mediocre 8th place finish in this year’s Eastern Conference. I’m hoping that I can improve on that going forward.
There will be an introductory post coming once the beta is out, but beyond my personal allegiance to the club, here’s why I chose the Revs:
- MLS is a fully licensed league — I like to play the beta without any add-ons to familiarize myself with the new features before any customization.
- The crazy MLS rules — The MLS has a lot of unique features that make it different from a save in Europe. These include a salary cap, geographic conferences, a draft, no promotion/relegation, and playoffs. All of these factors can make your head spin with the complexity, but the overall effect is to make it difficult to sustain dominance over a long-period of time. For that reason, I thought the MLS was the perfect place to play for a season or two until the full game (and the accompanying bug fixes and updates) is released.
- The Revs have a new reserve team — Playing their first season in 2020, New England Revolution II are a brand new reserve team founded to give minutes to young and fringe players. I’d really like to give this feature a try, especially with the reserve team improvements introduced in FM20.
I’m really excited for FM21, and I can’t wait to get started. What are your plans for FM21? Feel free to get in touch with me on Twitter at @FMBowser.
