Football Manager 2015 is currently in beta until Friday, when it will release in full worldwide. Sports Interactive has been collecting fan feedback on its forums, and a new patch addresses some of the largest complaints by those playing the game early.
Beta access is given to any who pre-order the game before launch, an offer that still applies up until the 7th. The beta is the full game with no play time limit, missing only the separate editor and online play that will come at release time. The deal allowed fans to play the title before release, but also provided valuable play testing for the developers. The new patch responds to much of this feedback, and addresses the following key issues the previous beta version had.
Team Happiness
The new system for player happiness was fairly broken in the original beta: players would ask for a wage increase, transfer, or more playing time, and more often than not become unhappy if you didn't grant their request. That's fairly reasonably (even if the resulting unhappiness lasts too long), but the system quickly breaks down when the rest of the squad gets involved. The team will confront you in a group about your private chat with the player (which is unrealistic, particularly when concerning wages) and demand you give him what he wants.
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If you dont back down, a large portion of your squad will be unhappy over someone else's issue for a long time. Thankfully, the patch notes mention a fix that should get teammates less involved, and balance how easy or difficult it is to talk an angry player down.
Defense And Goalkeeping Improvements
This is one that everybody will be happy to see, as the keeping and defense in general have been a bit of a mixed bag in the beta. Strange headed back passes were leading to goals, which has been fixed, and the patch notes claim there will be fewer own goals in general. In addition to "hundreds of other changes" to match AI and more polished animations, the match engine should work much better than before.
Less Crashes, Better Performance
On a more broad scale, the developers have fixed a variety of bugs and crashes that will reduce frustration. A lot of time and effort goes into Football Manager, and a loss of several weeks of progress can be crushing. Specific crashes that were address include an error upon closing the game and a crash when entering a match. Nobody will miss those errors, if the patch does as it claims!
