Midway through my first season in CM and old problems are popping-up.
First, my CM squad file is corrupted and I'll need to start over now because, foolish me, I thought for sure this problem would've been history what with the massive (apparent) improvement CM is overall, so I didn't backup my saves. The fact that this year once again this mode-killing bug is still present is simply unacceptable. I was really enjoying that CM career too.
Second, the advertised big new additions of morale and form have so far proven disappointing for me, form being the most disappointing of the two. I played half a season and never was form a factor whatsoever. The form of all my players never varied much from a half-filled bar, so there was never a reason to take form into consideration when choosing my squad.
And I never had the opportunity to evaluate whether form actually mattered in matches because, again, my players never had either good or bad form. None of them. Ever. I assume this is connected to the match player ratings and that they rarely are actually poor or great - I'll score two goals in a match and still not break a 7 for example. Think what you will about the randomness of form in PES but at least it matters.
Morale has had a greater impact, although only with players who weren't happy with there playing time. I never had players with positive morale. The majority of my squad were half-filled bars while a handful were in the red because I wasn't playing them or I had listed them on the transfer list but they didn't leave. I gave one player who had poor morale a series of starts and yet his morale did not increase. Whether or not morale actually influenced anything in matches, I was unable to tell.
Then, like morale and form, and true to previous years, once again injuries were almost completely absent from my experience. In half a season I had one 7-day training injury and that's it - not a single injury occurred during a match. What is the point, I ask you, of advertising how great the new Impact Engine will be in finally providing realistic injuries when not a single one occurs??!! And I should note that while Injury Frequency began at the default settings, as the season wore on I moved the slider up to 65 with absolutely no change.
So, once again, most of the key features that are meant to promote squad rotation and a realistic squad management experience do not seem to have been implemented well. The only reason I've actually needed to rotate players has been because of fitness, and that only because of cup matches adding extra games per week; once I was out of the cup, fitness was not much of an issue.
As you can tell, feeling pretty let down by CM at the moment.