Football Manager 2014: 9 Issues It Really Should Fix

8. The Press Conferences

Ah yes, the bane of all FM veterans' lives. For the life of me, I can't name a single long-term player who still attends their press conferences, and with good reason. They're just so, so, painfully dull. All you do is take questions on the same old inane b*llocks, responding to questions of how hard you're going to attack, how morale is in the camp, whether you'll start a player in good/bad form. I know how difficult it must be to construct a dynamic conversation system, but as it stands, the whole enterprise of fielding questions is just so painfully artificial that it actively detracts away from the game. To SI's credit, they've tried to make it better by giving you the ability to adopt different tones of voice, but it's like putting duct tape on a cracked wall. It's still full of mind-numbing interactions and a constant rigmarole of repetition that seems more like a scripted call from a phone centre than a room full of braying journalists. As someone who's been part of that mob of interviewers, rest assured, it's nowhere near as easy civilised and robotic. I think they just need to tear it up and start with a whole different system, more in line with the answers-and-consequences model of a text adventure. Sure, you get the occasional batted back answer in the current system, but it's nothing compared to what can happen in a real conference. If they could put that sort of repartee on the forefront, then I think SI just might be able to tempt their most jaded players back into the press suites.