3. More Forgiving Interviews In An Online Game
Sports InteractiveWe live in the internet age, and to FM's credit, it's managed to keep up. Failed experiment with FM Live notwithstanding, it's now easier than ever to crank up a game with absent friends, whether they be in the next room or another country. Clearly, this is a brilliant thing while having everyone play off the same laptop is a retro, archaic thrill, opening up the world's greatest glorified spreadsheet to easier multiplayer games is awesome. However, it's exactly the same as the single-player game, and therein lies the rub. Being sacked is like an FM rite of passage you never forget your first time, and it's embarrassing to boot. Whether you've disrupted your team's harmonies by signing in a boatload of Lithuanians, absent-mindedly let your Director of Football sell your star players for peanuts or simply been unable to find your side's best formation, everyone comes a cropper eventually. So, sure as you'll receive your marching orders playing alone, you'll also be unceremoniously booted in multiplayer too. While this leads to about two hours of banter over how the hell your friend's formerly promotion-chasing side could only pick up one point from 21, this soon dies out when you realise that he's unable to find a new post for months. More often than not, this leads to your game playing host to a complete passenger, as he waits out for a job that isn't Stenhousemuir or in the Belgian Third Division. Needless to say, it's frustrating, and many a promising game has been ruined simply because your friend's being booted from interviews at every turn. It's even more frustrating if you're playing in the lower divisions, where it's likely you could never pick up another position again. Granted a request to dumb the game down might sound like anathema to some. But still, it's a warranted complaint. If they just made the interview process and job pick-up rate a smidge easier for multiplayer, it certainly would save a lot of treasured campaigns going down the swanny because your sacked friend threw his toys out the pram.