Manager Career Mode Changes and Patches
After more than five months and eight Title Updates, the community is still awaiting the release of a number of Manager Career mode patches for immersion, playability, or game-breaking issues. While the following enumeration is non-conclusive, the listing includes both recent and long-standing problems found throughout Manager Career mode.
1. New Stadiums: Kenilworth Road (Luton Town), Voith-Arena (Heidenheim), and Stadion am Böllenfalltor (Darmstadt). All have been listed since last July for inclusion in EA FC 24, and are still missing.
2. Transfer Negotiations: The patch applied in Title Update 6 did not resolve both generic and real managers that appear with invisible torsos. This phenomena still occurs in one out of every four transfer negotiations.
3. Pre-Match Introductions and EUFA Champions League Into Songs: These topics have been posted in great numbers in this forum, therefore no rehashing in this post.
4. Scouted Youths: After more than a decade, players scouted in Eastern European, South American, and African countries have the same sur name pool. Again, dozens of posts about this issue, however, no resolution. Additionally, the broken PlayStyle feature has not been addressed.
5. Board Objectives: While many in the community have been asking for a 'disable manager sacking' option in the main game settings, we would appreciate the developers coming up with new Board Objectives, revising outdated ones, and thoroughly testing them for functionality. Objectives for reaching the round of sixteen of the FA cup with a League 2 or bottom table League 1 team is disproportionate for the quality of most squads. Increasing the experience level of the squad to 28, and now in EA FC 24 to 29, is counterintuitive to real-life club management; generally will search out youthful players to avoid replacing the position every three or four years. Beginning a career mode with a secondary tier club (EFL 2, La Liga Hypermotion, etc.) and expected to finish the season with between 12.5 and 25.5 million pounds of profit (mathematically impossible with the removal of Hometown Youth players from FIFA 23 and older renditions of the game). Secondary tier clubs with a requirement to score a goal or go undefeated in 25 home matches; again impossible, because there are only twenty clubs in the league, i.e. nineteen home matches (preseason and cup matches do not count towards the total). All requirements for clean sheets in home or away matches are not tabulated by the game; the first or second clean sheet is counted, but never future matches. Selling youth scouted players for an amount over the course of two or three seasons; same problem, only registers one or two sales, then stops, and additionally, if the requirement is not reached in the first season, a twenty point deduction in the manager rating occurs.
6. Retiring Players: There needs to be an option to release retiring players, even though the demand for contract renewal has been slightly reduced, since the release of the Beta version. Retiring players can never be traded or sold, and for someone wanting to start a new career mode save with the propensity of especially La Liga clubs to retain players into their mid-30s, often requires twenty to thirty career mode restarts to avoid any retiring players from the outset of the career.
7. Generic Stadiums: No new stadiums have been added, and due to the increased text font, stadium naming has been reduced from twenty-five to fifteen characters.
8. Transfer and Loan Submission Requests: While I do appreciate the remediation of some transfer requests by players with rotation or important squad roles in Title Update 7, there are still occurrences where players submit requests, then never remove them after receiving significant playing time, or beyond the current season of the career. I have seen two instances since the update where a player removes the request, however, this should apply to most players, and there is no option when a player submits the request for a wage dispute.
9. Pitch Dimming: Although has been reported to great extent, will include in this list. Personally, have only seen the event occur randomly on Xbox Series X.
10. Union Berlin Stadium: When using co-op camara angles for the Stadion An der Alten Försterei, lighting structures appear along the entire closest sideline during matches. This phenomena occurs in a few other stadiums. Essentially, a large number of recently (within the past four years) add stadiums have issues, including The City Ground, Borussia-Park, Craven Cottage (new stand), and others.
11. Gameplay Ambience: This is a personal matter for me, although many other users have complained in the past. The large obtrusive waving flags (Liverpool, Chelsea, many Bundesliga clubs, etc.), and the annoying confetti on the pitch (Bundesliga and Argentinian League), need a setting configuration to disable.
12. Face Scan Portraits: Realizing that actual face scans, especially new players requires extensive travel and setup to conduct, at least put a generic 2D face portrait in the squad, instead of the blank. A generic portrait similar to scouted youth players could be implemented, until the real face scan is complete.
13. Create-A-Club: Allow users to select the same color for both the primary and secondary selections for kits, and implement new and additional goalkeeper kits and add generic kit sponsors.
14. Pre-Match Kit Selection: Permit users to interchange jerseys, shorts, and socks in before matches, similar to what has been in Madden for more than a decade. Many clubs, at least in the Premier League, alter the shorts or socks with the standard home or away kits. Again personal preference, but am increasingly tired of white shorts with dark jerseys, or vice versa, especially when noticing all the changes in real matches. Also, most clubs in any league use from between two and four different goalkeeper kits, dependent on the chosen match kit for the other ten players.
If anyone else in the community is interested, they can add more to this listing. There are probably twenty to thirty more items that were omitted for now, just a start for the development team to finally patch or implement into the game. As the release of UFL (free to play, Beta version available April or May 2024) and FIFA 25 (delayed release date until December 2024) becomes nearer, more Manager and Player career mode changes need to be addressed, otherwise, when options become available, loyal EA FC users will look to other choices.