Although he explained it in a way that makes people sound like sore losers, I think Jak's comment was accurate. Football Manager is a much different type of title compared to most video games and tends to have a user base that values being "immersed" in their experience.

FM caters to this extremely well because of its depth, but it's a single player game that allows the ability for someone to put it down for weeks - when they get back to their saved game, it's exactly as you left it and easy to get up to speed.

FM Live, on the other hand, has so many ever-changing variables due to the MMO element that it is VERY difficult to "catch up" with the happenings in your game world if you've been away for a certain period. It's obviously possible to do well regardless... but it leaves typical FM users in a sense of "I have no idea what's going on" which is a contrary trait to the reason they've been playing Football Manager for years.

Great podcast & very strong discussion of a complicated issue: "casual" managers. I especially found value in your comments about "middle class" teams and their importance to the gameworld economy & FAs. Also, the idea of a more fluid gameworld calendar with user- or mod-created FAs on variable schedules for different audiences is something to strongly consider.

The only part of 1.3 that is dependent on in/out of season is the ME upgrade. The rest of the update would take effect immediately but any ME update only takes effect in pre season.

great episode guys

big BIG disappointment regarding the delay of the update. Our season ends on 28th of september in nicholson, so will we have to wait 21 days to get to 1.3?

As for the lower ranked managers, something could be done to the achievements system to solve this issue. Instead of getting the news of the completion of an achvmts. abrubtly and randomly, a list of uncompleted achvmts. could help managers aim for them (like scoring 4 goals in a single match etc). A small reward for getting them like tokens or skill points would be nice.

Can we get and rss link for the globe sphere guys? :)  cheers

Community Leaf? I assume that's a spelling mistake :-P

Havent listned yet but it shows the ever increasing respect the site and podcast are getting when the Community Leaf is listening to your podcast on his way to work, or as soon as he gets in 8-)

Hi guys, Bertie here. Another great podcast as usual!

Just to retort one thing that Jak quoted me on. In reference to the cancellation surveys, what I actually said was that people leaving that they felt they didn't have enough time to "compete", not just not enough time to play.

I think the distinction there is huge, as it means that what we are aiming for is almost exactly what Jak said - making the game more enjoyable for the users at lower levels in the gameworld. Making people feel like they can "compete" at whatever standard they are playing at.