Good evening everyone,

After many years of playing the game, I've finally decided to open this thread to share with you a feeling that I know many of us share. To get straight to the point from my point of view, Virtuafoot has suffered a terrible setback in recent years. Under the pretext of seeking a sometimes badly calibrated realism, the game has lost what was its strength.

1. The disappearance of 99NG players: the false argument of realism
   Removing the players from 99NG is anything but a good approach to reality. Remember that this is an online management game, not real life. Look at mobile gaming giants such as FIFA Mobile or eFootball (PES): they offer superstars with scores ranging from 105 to 122. Why do they do this? Because the virtual world needs to make people dream. Players need to see rapid and rewarding progress, otherwise they get bored, lose patience and end up throwing in the towel.

2. The free transfer market and true realism:
   If Aymeric is so desperate to stick to the reality of modern football, why is the free agent system so rigid? In real football, the greatest players in the world end up leaving their club for free at the end of their contract. We've seen it with Kylian Mbappé (from PSG to Real Madrid), Lionel Messi (from Barça to PSG), David Alaba and Robert Lewandowski. If we want to be realistic, it's this kind of dynamic that we need to incorporate into the free agent market, rather than restricting the progress of our squads.

3. Nostalgia for training:
   Personally, I deeply miss the old Virtuafoot, the one from 2012 to 2017. Back then, training had real mathematical and tactical depth. We could train our youngsters by choosing precisely the shape of their progression using exponential, logarithmic or linear curves. It was a delight for managers who wanted to optimise their training centre. Today, everything has been simplified to the extreme.

4. Gone are the match module and the high scores:
   The current match engine has become a source of frustration. We regularly see blatant injustices where middle-class clubs beat the big boys without any tactical logic. What's more, the game has lost its spectacular side. Before, when we played a second-rate team, we could play our football and score up to 30 goals. It was fun, it was rewarding for the attack. Nowadays, everything is levelled down.

5. The neglected features (Avatar and Collective):
   The manager's avatar: Basically, managers spent real money to buy accessories and customise their avatar. It's hard to understand why this part of the site has been abandoned, especially as in terms of pure programming, maintaining or improving these visual elements doesn't require an insurmountable effort to develop a page.
   The Club Sheet Collective: This is a subject close to my heart. I myself insisted and took action with Aymeric to get him to put the collective on the club sheet back into one of the VFForum topics. He reinstated it at the time, but as time went by it was removed again. It's tiring to see features come and go with no consistency.

In conclusion....
When we talk to former employees, the consensus is that managers have become extremely nostalgic. This isn't simply because they're closed-minded, it's because the old versions of the game offered a lot more fun, freedom and logic than the new ones.
What do you think? Do you also feel that the game has moved away from what made it such a success?
We look forward to hearing your feedback (with due respect for the debate, of course).

I agree with you completely.

As far as free players are concerned, I've put forward a proposal on this point, which obviously hasn't been followed up.

Before, there were players available every x amount of time, at all levels. Here, there's absolutely nothing interesting. A completely useless part of the game, except for quickly recruiting a player to make up numbers and releasing him after a match.

The game is clearly less exciting, requires no investment and offers fewer and fewer opportunities to really influence the club's progress.

For my part, I more or less agree with you. There's some good in your arguments I admit, but some of them make me itch a bit.
I've already seen a good number of managers on other vfo posts who agree with you and refute counter-arguments by saying "stop trying to stick to reality". If this counter-argument goes in one direction, I feel entitled to use it in this case. Aymeric can do what he likes with his game, whether it sticks to reality or not doesn't really matter.
Secondly, the debate about the end of ng99 is a false debate. It's simply that the 100 benchmark remains the same, with far fewer equivalent players. And then it became the norm to have ng99 players. How would you like to play against a full 99 team with a full 99 team? Personally, I think that the end of this generation is an excellent thing and gives the tactical version of the game a new dynamism.
As for the training aspect, I agree and it's a debate or a subject that's coming up more and more, especially at the moment with the training aspect being overtaken by store purchases.
There's another argument in favour of your post though, and it's about multiplayer!

As far as training is concerned, even before that it was never complicated, nor was it very deep mathematically.

The big difference is the flexibility that the current system offers compared with before:

You can train and be fairly competitive at the same time, and you don't have to bring out your best youngsters at 17, otherwise you lose a lot (even if the 17-year-old day 1s regain their value).

As for the curves, they didn't do much in themselves. It just forced you to adopt a restrictive approach to training your youngsters.

I totally agree with you and your post makes me really happy.

Fougch: Pour ma part je te rejoins plus ou moins. Il y a du bon dans tes arguments je le concède, mais certains me grattent un peu.
Déjà, j’ai vu bon nombre de managers sur d’autres posts vfo qui sont de ton avis et réfutent les contre arguments en disant “arrêtez de vouloir vous coller à la réalité”. Si ce contre argument va dans un sens, je me sens en droit de l’utiliser dans ce cas de figure. Aymeric fait ce qu’il veut de son jeu, qu’il colle ou non avec la réalité on s’en fiche un peu.
Deuxièmem...

The tactical aspect of the game? I'm having a really hard time with it personally, I get the impression that it's more a matter of chance than anything else, after all, I'm the only one involved.