We had some serious hope that this season would be filled with 30 or so episodes of non-stop SM24 gameplay analysis, but it turns out that it wasn’t meant to be…
We’ve been playing these singular player Soccermanager games for years now, but for some reason we couldn’t get over the tedious nature of both SM23 and SM24’s gameplay. In our opinion, the match engine hasn’t been great ever since SM21. Back then you could see the impact of tactical changes, personnel changes, and even player role changes…
In today’s finale, we’ll be going into a bit more detail as to why we’ve chosen to cut season 11 short…
Alright, so we have to start with the elephant within the room. Ever since SM21, this area of gameplay has truly been a shambles in our opinion since almost every single chance created within a match is exactly the same as the one before, and it is no longer possible to watch a match for 90 minutes (which is the biggest pet peeve of all). Placing the settings at the slowest speed is now unbearable to watch since it is possible to go 20 or even 30 minutes without a single goal mouth action…Maybe this is an attention span thing, but any other settings rather than this one is simply unplayable, and we know that many of you Soccermamagerites cherish this game since it used to allow us to view our matches and properly see how our tactical approach is either working or not, as well having the capacity to visualize match play more realistically…Away from the match engine, there’s also the issue of now being very limited in terms of styles of play that actually work…For the Passing style, only three out of the four actually work. Playing a Short passing style is basically useless…The Attacking style is even worse as there isn’t a single difference that one can see while watching the match since no matter if you’re playing Down Left Flank or Through the Middle, your players perform the same attacking patterns as if you’re playing a Mixed Attacking Style… The only aspect of the tactical set up that actually works all round is the defensive set up you choose to implement. Back in SM21, even choosing an Aggressive tackling style would cause players to look to slide tackle more often compared to when playing a normal tackling style; Time wasting is unfortunately only witnessed if you choose to play the longer format of a match… We feel for possession based Managers since it’s a hopeless task of aiming to play with a slower style of tempo within SM24…The gameplay primarily entails players always taking the ball airborne to get in behind or to cross the ball with barely any link up play taking place on the turf. Working the ball into the box is now unfortunately a waste of time since the opposition will take the ball and simply loft it forward, no matter who you’re playing against (Doesn’t matter if it’s Burnley or Barcelona)…
It truly is a rough ending to what should’ve been a blockbuster season. Our overall takeaway is that every other aspect of SM24 is pretty cool and enticing, but the actual gamplay and match engine are not good enough and simply haven’t been good enough for quite a few installments.
We’ll be heading back to Soccer Manager Worlds Content in Season 12. Make sure you watch this space, cause it’s gonna be EPIC! 🌟
The Soccermanager Experience 