Discussion: Should FM have difficulty levels?

Recently I have decided that I should introduce a new theme to this site; discussion posts about Football Manager and the community. This is my debutee and looks a something you may have thought about before.

So, first up is a pondering question – Should FM have difficulty levels? This is a question that has been querying me recently as to whether it should.

My View

Football Manager is a hard game for many of us, and the thought of difficulty levels may soften the blow when you buy the game and realise your crap. The thing is there are two different types of people I believe this move would benefit – the ones who seek trophies and a chance to win without using the ‘add manager’ button, and people who want to be ‘cool’ and make it all a bit harder for them (LLM hardcore..woah, erm, yeah!). I think most people have done a bit on cheating before – I certainly have, whole games on my part have previously been done without any knowledge of tactics, training etc. and I have won due to my many cheating talents – but despite all the satisfaction of winning endless awards and cups it takes away much of the excitement from the game. But people hate to lose so they do bend the rules a bit; but a option of let’s say easy would please people like this because it would show them they can win trophies the fair way and also have fun in the process (even if the games is a piss of piss). In the great words of Spike (hmm…) ‘I miss the days when FM was a game’ – I’m sure many do.

And then there’s the FM geeks, the devote worshipers who now are bored with the trophies and head for the unknown world (to me anyway) of LLM in England, or somewhere like tundra of the lower leagues of Slovakia or whatever…anyway, I’m sure these people would jump at the chance to make there game a little harder and boost there over-inflated FM egos a bit more.

I can’t think of many cons for this; to me it seems like a stroke of genius. I’m sure it has been done before, and I know it is in FIFA Manager 2007, but undoubtable that game is poor. But as a simple option before you choose your leagues when starting a game it would be great – I mean why not? Are there any other management games with this feature (I’d like to know)? The only major problem I can see affecting some is that it takes away the realism of being a real manager: real managers don’t choose a difficulty option. Well, get over it, your not a real manager, your playing a football game I say to them. So my opinion is that a difficulty system would work – maybe ranked easy-medium-hard – well in this game.

Your Views

I know this site is not amazingly popular so the few of you that do dwindle yourselves over here do not leave comments, but please do voice your opinion, it’s a discussion (sort of) and all. Do you think the game is easy enough as it is? Should gamers have the chance to up the challenge or lower it? If you don’t want to comment email me or at least contemplate my idea. So yeah..