Football Manager 26 Beta Off to Rocky Start: The Early Takeaways

“This is a new game, it’s not a continuation of FM24”

Miles Jacobson, FM.Zweierkette and Jonukas, Oct 20th.

The Reception

To say the FM26 BETA has received mixed reactions would be an understatement. In fact, the response has been largely negative.

A large portion of criticism seems to be centred around the new UI. Players have accused FM26 of pandering too heavily towards console users. Creating a clunky UI with a large and non-granular user journey and experience.

Another big problem seems to be general bugs and loading speed. Where these sorts of issues are often to be expected from games in the BETA stage, it appears that even by BETA standards that are way more than usual.

This makes it increasingly important to check that your PC is able to run FM26, as the specs and new graphical improvements will likely place an even larger strain on CPUs.

They have also added more playable leagues, and are naturally expanding their background database each year. Further adding to admin required at a data level.

Many users have taken to reddit to let their feelings be heard. We’ve done our best to seperate the feedback into different categories, so users are able to assess for themsleves. Here’s what the community has had to say:

The Good

• Player Roles – Users seem to enjoy the new player roles features. Particularly the In Possesion (IP) and Out of Possesion features. These allow a much more granualr experiencing when it comes to in-game tactics.
• Graphic Improvements – The Matchday Graphics are at least a thing of beauty.

The Bad

• Removal of hover feature – The removal of the hover feature to gain a quick glance at stats has added more admin into the game.
• Calendar – The separation into 3 calendars has also added tons more admin into players games.
• UI has added on 4 or 5 extra clicks to locate correct pages in an effort to simplify the initial user interface.
• Tactics screen makes viewing different specifications alongside each other tricky. Requires entering into multiple different pages.
• Go on vaction feature not very clear.
• Hard to pre select substitues before game
• Intensity feature not functioning properly. No correlation to on-field action.
• Can’t click through various highlights anymore
• No way to compare staff to league average
• Relevant training stats no longer pop up once hovered.
• Can’t change attribute colours
• Can’t click players in game to see their names
• Back button often loads way too far back. No continuity.

The Ugly

• Sorting by position feature in tactics doesn’t work.
• Drag and Drop Feature not functioning properly for tactics.
• Players wearing training kits on field instead of actual kits.
• Quit button doesn’t Auto-Save
• Mass reports of game being super laggy
• Regularly crashes.
• Can’t support Ultrawide Resolutions
• FPS capped at 60??

Final Thoughts on the FM 26 Beta

With 640 Unique bugs already on the tracker, its safe to say the BETA has not hit the ground running. Jacobson recently appeared on the FM.Zweierkette and Jonukas YouTube channel and urged users to be patient and give themselves time to adjust to the new UI. 

However, the community seems to have other ideas, with one user responding to Miles’ quote by saying:

“Miles was coping hard with his thoughts on people getting used to this UI. It is strictly bad. Has nothing to do with how long you have played the game. It is so click intensive. What a mess this is. Skin support is this games hope right now.”

One thing is for sure, FM26 have a lot of work to do to turn round the community opinions, and with just over a week until official release, it would seem they have their work cut out.

 

 

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