football manager 14

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Does anyone on here play football manager? I've just started playing for the first time and it's pretty addictive.

[JimmyMcAdocious]

Been playing since Championship Manager used to be the best. Early 2000's, at least? Normally play about every 3 years. It's addicting as hell. I spend a few hundred hours on 2013. Extremely polished game with the same terrific formula.

For those like me who will occasionally go on Madden or 2K, make roster changes, and sim... It's that sort of appeal, except far more comprehensive and the overall soccer stuff is interesting. Being able to move up or get relegated in leagues, country cups, worldwide cups, can coach national teams, and the u-something develop leagues. Then the importance of money, scouting, training, trying to keep high potential or great young players at lower clubs. It's interesting.

I normally choose a team in a low level league in some random country like Sweden. Try to get to the top, get a better job, and so on. But of course you never want to leave your team because you end up building it up well enough to compete nationally or even worldwide. And if you leave, a lot of the time it can sustain to an extent with the cpu running, so that's pretty cool.

I like how it takes a while to build up your prestige as well. So if you start low, you can't jump to Barcelona (or whatever is considered the top club) after one successful season. Some clubs won't even look at you if you are the wrong nationality, regardless of how much success you have. Normally takes me 3-5 seasons (if I'm successful) just get a good job. 1-3 at the good job to get offered a great job IF it's open. Some jobs never open because the coach at it is like in his 30s when the game starts and he doesn't leave or retire.

And I don't know much about soccer. So when those created players start to take over after 10-15+ seasons in, I don't notice a difference. For all I know, those are real players. That's one thing that always annoys me in football and basketball games. I recognize every player. When the created ones come on, it quickly loses the appeal for me. I can never play more than 2 seasons in 2K and 3-5 in Madden. I don't want to play with a guy named Walter Smith with LeBron's stats. Does. Not. Make. Sense. Ignorance helps the longevity in this game, imo.

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Yeah I've become hooked. I started with Bristol rovers in sky bet league 2 in England. Was predicted for relegation, came out strong early in the season dipped in the middle and had to alter my tactics then went on astreak and finished 6th with a shot at promotion via play offs. Managed to beat a much better Cheltenham side in the final and snuck through to league 1! Was tense at the end of the year, I would have just been happy with a play off spot and every one of the last 5 games counted as there was one point difference between 6th and 7th place and 8th. Surprisingly after losing all the pre season games against actual league 1 teams I've won my first 4 games in league 1 but I'm expecting to bubble to burst soon and ill drop. Not sure if ill avoid relegation this year which is what the club wants.

I agree with the comparison to other games, I used to play alot of nba2k association mode, in football it helps being a world game too because I find it more believable that there's great unkown players popping up

[bisk]

Couple versions ago, when my PC still could handle lots of leagues, I'd often start unemployed and work my way to the top. Get a job in the Russian 2nd league or whatever and work your way up to the elite clubs through several clubs and countries was fun.

Now that my PC is severely outdated, I just usually do a BSS/BSN team and work them up to the PL and CL or start with a team in a country that barely gets any CL teams in and try to do some damage to Europe with those.

Did skip this year's version though, but will probably get 15.