14 DAY TRIAL // Football Manager 2014 has been out for one month and the development team at Sports Interactive is now delivering the first major hotfix for the video game, which is designed to eliminate some of the problems associated with the experience, while also generally improving the performance of the title.
In order to get the hotfix, gamers need to quit their game, then close down Steam and restart the service, which will force it to automatically download the changes and apply them.
Football Manager 2015 should then feature improved performance for goalkeepers and faster reaction times when stopping shots and dealing with rebounds.
At the same time, offside should be better signaled and there are no more incorrectly awarded own goals.
Wingers are also better at defending and the Artificial Intelligence is improved when it has to deal with substitutions.
Sports Interactive is also improving speed on saves and eliminating some crashes, with the full list of changes available for all to read at the bottom of this article.
The developers are also asking gamers who are still having problems with Football Manager 2015 after applying the hotfix to report them on the official forums in order for them to be fixed in a future update.
Traditionally, Sports Interactive has been quick to react to the biggest problems its fan base reported, but company leader Miles Jacobson says that the fix was delayed for a week because the changes caused some further bugs.
Football Manager 2015 and the shift towards the role-playing game aspect
The new edition of the long-running series, at the moment without a rival in its genre, delivers improvements linked to transfers and scouting and introduces more roles for players in the tactical screen.
Sports Interactive has also added more role-playing elements to Football Manager 2015, allowing gamers to interact a lot with their players and rivals in order to extract better performances from them or to limit their options for a match.
After more than three full seasons with Liverpool in the game, it will be interesting to see how the various changes introduced in the new hotfix will affect the flow of the game and whether the improved goalkeepers mean that most matches now end with smaller scores.
Football Manager 2015 will certainly get another big update in February of next year in order for Sports Interactive to introduce the changes that take place in the real world during the transfer window.
