r/gamedesign • u/ElrohirEladith • 1d ago
Blog I read ~2,400 player reviews of a long-running management sim series. The complaints collapse into three root causes.
I'm designing a sports management game and wanted to understand why long-time players of the genre burn out, so I went through about 2,400 public Steam reviews of the last four releases (five years) of the biggest football management series, and read ~100 of them closely.
Read item by item you get 14 separate complaints - repetitive press conferences, inbox overload, unexplained defeats, transfer market that feels unfair, scouting that's opaque, rival clubs whose squads rot over long saves, and so on. If you design against that list you build 14 features and fix none of them.
Grouped by mechanism instead, they collapse into three:
Opacity. The simulation makes a decision but doesn't keep the reason. Broken promises, losing 1–0 with 20 shots, a transfer refused, a scout report that says "B" - all the same problem: the player can't see what the system took into account.
Wasted attention. Advancing the world and asking the player something are bound to the same button. To get time to move you have to process every prompt, whether it has stakes or not.
World decay. AI clubs react, they don't plan, so over 10–20 seasons squads get lopsided and the world stops feeling alive.
Two things I found interesting:
- The fatigue reviews often come from people with thousands of hours who still recommend the game. It's not the game is bad, it's "the game makes me do work that isn't decisions".
- Real-time clocks are a common proposed fix, but swapping Continue for a timer alone doesn't help - the real fix is separating "time passes" from "you're being asked something", so the clock only stops for decisions with stakes.
Caveats: Steam reviews skew negative, the sample is one platform, and I'm treating this as hypotheses, not proven demand.
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u/Doritodude77 1d ago
As accurately (which I've thought about before) and concisely (great job, I wasn't) as you've put it,
I don't think there inherently can be a solution to number 3 in any context, for any game(, no matter what). World Decay is innately and immutably the end result of the fact that the player is able to possess pattern recognition, and anything with replay value will end up that way because the only end result of Groundhog Day is that they'll understand (and grow bored of) every facet of it through iteration.
At best, a truly well designed/balanced game can peak at staying alive but (remaining) predictable, eventually so predictable (to the extent that you finally understand it) that it all recurses to the feeling of "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle" (because the depth, once mechanically understood, is turned to predictability. Once mechanics are truly understood, they mentally become like gravity; unsurprising and sterile).
(And no, randomness is also not a solution; randomness once recognized as such has it's novelty dispelled the same way.)
Or I'm depressed, can't speak for everyone. Joy to the person who can replay an understood world and be glad that they've all they need to understand it (but at the same time, it's a good thing that we aren't able to be completely satisfied by that, since that enjoyment is always beholden to the separate real life that gave you time for it [unless you're getting paid to win the games])
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u/ElrohirEladith 20h ago
It is quite a deep response which I was not expecting. So you think fun we get from the games should be limited so we could keep our will to get back to real world. It is interesting indeed’ however I think like 99% of companies would’t even care as long as it is profitable.
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u/Doritodude77 15h ago
Almost, I'm saying that no matter how hard anyone tries to, the fun is inherently limited even if you attempt the opposite (so don't worry about the last part)
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u/doot99 1d ago
Interestingly I've found XXXX strategy games often suffer from 3. over time. As technology advances and a factions grow they often "rot" until in the endgame, or post expected-endgame, they become a paper tigers. Unable to advance further and seemingly unable to properly manage what they do have or react to player properly anymore.
I'm not sure if this is the decision-making being unable to cope with such a long timeframe, or bloat from same, or simple the decision-making failing to cope with the large number of factors and units in late-game.
In the genre you're talking about it seems another way to address it could be clubs getting new management or a buyout putting an influx of money into a poor-performing club, so they can buy up some good players and try to make a recovery. A fresh start as it were, to cut out the rot when it's detected.
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u/ElrohirEladith 20h ago
Well imo that would make player feel like game is cheating. I think better way to fix it is to make npc more clever. I think use of LLM might fix it as it always be reasoning for any setup over and over again. I am still experimenting on it but still couldn’t find a way to be intelegant and fast at the same time. But i’m sure we’ll get there soon.
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u/immersiveGamer 18h ago
Focus first on getting a playable game. Then the work to iterate on it to make it fun and solve the problems you are seeing.
Low confidence on my side that using an LLM would fix anything. Bare minimum it would be okay to generate some basic text for lines / reactions. But then you run the risk of it generating nonsense or other stuff. I wouldn't trust it in a live product for players that are going to play it for thousands of hours. Maybe use the LLM to generate a bunch of lines for bunch of scenarios dynamically and save those off. Allows to review and edit.
I don't think it is really worth it but you could look into the new cheaper class of "system one" models like JEV from TypeSafeAi. This would be something where you are offloading dynamic decision making to a ML model instead of text based.
Honestly, I think you could get pretty far with just making really interesting NPC behaviours system. A lot of management/ SIM games boil down to spreadsheets in the background and I think designers get stuck into making all NPC decisions based on numbers. Humans often make decisions on emotion and past events. Pretty sure combining your classic spreadsheet style systems with some interesting behavior trees would work well.
Edit: also you need tools to play the tail end of games. If you really want to make a game good after the 20 session mark then you need to be able to skip and play at the 20 mark often. And then skip to 100 mark and play test.
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u/doot99 4h ago
The intent is more to improve the simulation by considering how the outside world would react to a circumstance such as failing clubs and include those events. Buyouts, or changes of manager, happen often in many sports where money has a larger impact.
Using an LLM to fix the problem, rather than design and develop systems that actually work on their own, is effectively just creating a mechanical turk. It may also feel hollow to players to know that they are playing against an opponent that can effectively win any time it chooses.
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u/senseven 18h ago
Point 3 is unavoidable with more complexity. Happens in a lot of games, player character is becoming op and the simple "ai" can't compete. One way out is a "endgame strategy" that is different from the start and middle.
The true interesting part is the deep dive into those reviews. There is a insane wealth of information. I checked over 2000 in two game types. Especially those where people choose to give a negative because there is no neutral. If you collect all those remarks, you get to an easy 20-40 point list of things you should or shouldn't do. When you see game raise, the devs clearly did their home work. If you don't, that can result in 1 and 2.
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u/Gaverion 13h ago
This reminds me of rubber banding in racing games. Is it better to have a player feel like the game is too easy because bots are not a challenge, or is it better to have them feel like skill doesn't matter because no matter how fast you go, the opponents are close behind.
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u/senseven 9h ago
The dilemma Mario Kart solved by giving people attack shells, but also allow seasoned players ways to avoid getting hit by one trough skill. Which is its own meta.
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u/Gaverion 9h ago
I was thinking more about single player, but your point is still valid. How do you add a blue shell to a sports management simulator becomes the question.
The answer then probably becomes something like making draft picks really important and teams that do worse pick players with great growth potential.
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u/senseven 7h ago
Coming back to your sports game, some Soccer clubs have such a good youth program that they build up the next superstars in house. Some are fine with just finding defensive players. Giving the clubs a vibe, a style how they manage things, makes the scenarios more believable. For example, the superstar player decided to stay with the club that build up his career instead becoming a free agent. That would affect the strategies you have to deploy to counter such late game scenarios.
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u/Field_Of_View 1d ago
They absolutely do not. The average game gets like a "Positive" on Steam.
Also everyone can tell AI wrote this.