FM Live Quick Start Guide

YOU'RE IN

Congratulations! You’ve purchased the game and are dying to dive in and play it. So…How do you do that? Well, then the quick start guide is for you! The guide doesn't go into as much detail as the next section of this manual, but it does outline the essentials, setting you up well for your first experience of FML.

Throughout this guide you will find links to the Thematic Guide, which explains every area of the game fully. If you want to know more about anything, just follow the links.

Now you have the game, the very first thing to do is install by following the instructions received from Sega. Once you have done this load up the game, select 'Sign In' (your sign in details match those of your 'Sega Pass') from the opening game screen and you are ready to begin!

A WORLD IN YOUR EYES

FML is a living entity played in real time (GMT). It is based around gameworlds of a maximum of 1000 users, competing and co-operating in equal measure.

Every manager has a team, YOU pick your own players and YOU create your team. Every team is completely unique and can be customised in a variety of ways, from team and stadium names to kit colours and number of squads.

Communication is a key feature of FML, and managers can communicate in private chat or in a variety of chat rooms. The system works just like standard online chat interfaces.

Every season lasts for one month of real time. A week of pre-season is followed by three weeks of competitive games. Players sign contracts lasting one or two months of real time, and they age by a year every month too.

The game revolves around time and play style based Football Associations (FAs) and every manager should join one. These provide managers with a regular seasonal income and a set of fixtures - every manager in an FA gets entered into a league and cup competition at the start of each season.

Finally, every team has it's own set of finances, and money is made and lost on a daily basis in a variety of ways.

COMMUNICATION

One of the most important features in Football Manager Live is the chatrooms. The role of chat and communication in the game is to help gameworlds function as living entities in which communities can build and people can make contacts and friends.

There are 4 public rooms; The Lobby (for general chat), The Market Place (to advertise your players for sale and publicise competitions you've set up), Help (if you have any problems), and Tactics (where you can ask for advice on tactics). You will also be automatically entered into a chat room dedicated to your Football Association where you can chat with other people with the same playing habits as you.

Chatrooms and gameworlds in general are overseen by moderators, chosen by SI from ordinary users. Their role is to organise gameworlds and make sure users respect the game rules.

When you’ve logged into the game for the first time, there are two things that you’ll notice. Firstly, you’ll see a message that will outline some basic rules and regulations of the gameworld that you’ll be competing in. Give these a read through as you’ll need to know what they are.

Secondly, your eyes will be drawn to the big red flashing button near the top of your screen that says Setup Assistant. If you follow this to completion then within a short space of time you will have already completed the majority of the steps crucial to setting up your team. The contents are as follows:

1) Welcome Guide – Give this a thorough read through before you start - it gives you lots of great information about how the game works.

2) Customize Your Club – This will show you how to give your team an identity. You can change your team colours, set your stadium name and specify your pitch dimensions. Don’t worry about getting these perfect straight away, you can always come back and change them later.

3) Select Starting Skills – We’ll talk more about skills later on in this guide. Your starting skills will give you an initial boost in a particular skill set. You can only choose your starting skills once, so think hard before you commit.

4) Auto Select Squad – This tool will help you select your first squad, depending on what parameters you set. THIS IS OPTIONAL. If you click cancel at this point you can manually select your team from Football Manager Live’s huge database of players. If you do choose this option, you can still remove players that it chooses up until the time when you confirm your starting squad.

5) Confirm Squad - Once you have 16 or more players in your team you can confirm your squad. This will give your players contracts allow you to play your first match.

6) Find Opponent to Play - This will introduce you to the Opponent Finder which will arrange your first match against another online manager.

7) Join an FA - This will launch the FA Finder, which will help you find the right FA for you. FA's are at the core of your experience, so use it well.

YOUR FIRST TEAM

Every team starts with a transfer budget of £500,000 and a daily wages budget of £100,000. With this money you must buy a minimum of 16 players to confirm your initial squad and be able to start playing matches. You will have alot of players to choose from, but some will be locked until you learn the right scouting skills. Once you are happy with your squad you can confirm it via the setup assistant. This will mean you are no longer able to remove players from your team and all players will be signed on one month contracts. You cannot sell any of your initial squad players during the first 7 days. Correspondingly, it will be 7 days from the launch of a Gameworld until the transfer market 'opens'.

HOW TO SELECT

There are two different ways you can select your original squad:

• Auto select via the ingame wizard

• Manual selection

Auto select, available via the setup assistant, works by asking you a number of questions about how much of your budget you want to spend, how many players you want and how they split by position. Auto select is the preferred method of squad selection for managers who want to start playing matches quickly and don't mind which individuals they have in their squad.

Whilst auto select will get you up and running faster, many managers prefer to select players that possess the right attributes for the style of football they want to play and as such like the control manual select provides. To do this you need to close the team set up wizard and either search for players by typing in their name in the box in the top right of your screen, or search players using filters under the World -> All Players tab at the top middle of your screen. You can then right click on players and select Add to Provisional Squad.

Tip: Try and keep your wages low initially as any profit gained from your daily income will allow you to save up for the best players later on.

DECISION TIME

One of the most important things to choose early on is your association. There are a number of different associations to choose from, depending on how often you want to play and at what time of day. Most FAs vary from Casual (do not need to play alot of games live) to Xtreme (need to play A LOT of games live). The Association Finder will help you find the perfect one for you. You can join an FA via its profile page as well as via the FA Finder. To see a full list of the FAs you can choose from go to the 'World' -> 'Football Associations' page.

It’s not compulsory to join an association. However, every Association is awarded media money at the start of a season which it distributes to members via the form of FA competition money, so if you don't join, you'll miss out on a structured set of matches, and a fair bit of income too.

The first season starts one week after a gameworld opens so you’ve got a little time to make your choice. You can also change Associations as much as you like until the day before a season starts, when FA entry is locked. In the first season all managers are in 'qualifier' leagues that decide their tier in the second season. Most FAs have no more than a couple of tiers though, so don't worry if your first season isn't vintage!

There is also a Super FA, UFFA (visible by the drop-down 'World' tab). You can enter the Gameworld Cup every season, and if you do well in your FA, will also gain a place in one of the elite competitions UFFA hosts.

WORLD FULL OF MATCHES

You can challenge almost any online user to a match in FML and there are several formats within which you may wish to do so.

Friendly Matches can be played at any time you like. Find anyone else available and online, and challenge them by going to their profile, selecting the 'Match' button and clicking 'Challenge to Friendly'. You then choose whether you want to play home or away and the game will send a request to the other manager. The Opponent Finder can also be run to find you games. You can input details such as the reputation of the team you want to play and whether you want to play home or away. Then it will search for any teams that match those details for you to play. Friendly games are great for a bit of no-strings match practice.

Official Competition Matches are the Football Association matches for your league and its cups. These are scheduled at the start of each season, and you will have most of the season to play them, up until a resolution date. A list of online opponents will appear when rival managers are signed in and you can challenge them via that menu in order to play your match(es).

Friendly Competition Matches are also scheduled, but draw from competitions that can be created by anyone for themselves and others to play in. The creator can specify how many people they want in it, its format, and an entry fee and prize stratifications. You can make your own competition by going to the World tab, clicking Competitions and then Create Competition in the bottom right of the screen. On the Competitions -> Not Started page you will see a list of competitions that other people have made. You can join these competitions by going to a competition's homepage and clicking on join.

AI Rights games also occur against an opponent's AI from time to time. When a competition is created, the organiser will set a date by which the games must be played - commonly known as the AI date. Over the course of a competition you can earn AI rights to a match. AI rights are determined on a few things such as who has been on most in the competitions playtimes, or whether you have challenged the other person and they have rejected or ignored it. When a game reaches an AI date it will appear in red on the opponents menu and the person who has AI rights will have 24 hours to play the other team's AI manager before the game is auto-resolved.

KEY TIP: Be sure to play a few friendly games early on, as you need to play 10 to be ranked. Having a ranking will help you to begin receiving an increased daily income.

DEVELOPING YOUR CLUB

In FML, instead of hiring staff to help you with your overall team management, you train skills that confer a variety of benefits. To this end, you can learn different skills that determine what sort of manager you want to be. There are five different areas you can specialise in.

• Coaching – Learning these skills will give training boosts to your players.

• Physio – Learning these skills will reduce the time your players are injured.

• Scouting – Learning these skills help you find players that you could not see before.

• Management – Learning these skills help you with your finances.

• Tactics – Learning these skills unlock the tactics features so you can get your team playing exactly as you want.

• There are also Learning skills you can do, which reduce the amount of time it takes to learn the above categories.

To learn a skill, all you have to do is drag it from the relevant skills list into the middle box. The skill will then begin to be learnt. Within each skill tree there are a number of themed skills that you can learn which bestow you with increasing benefits as you learn higher levels. Some skills have prerequisites that you must complete before you can them, such as learning Scouting level 5 before you can learn Judging Potential.

You can only learn one skill at a time, and the time taken to learn skills ranges from 20 minutes to over 30 days, increasing with each skill level. When your chosen skill finishes you must manually select your next skill. You receive a boost to your learning skill for 50% of the time since you last finished learning a skill if you forget or are not online to set a new skill to learn, which alot of managers find helpful.

MONEY IN FML

Finances are one of the most important aspects of the game to master. If your finances are poor you’ll find it difficult to improve your team, but with sensible management, you should be able to turn a stable profit. As with anything to do with money, your finances are split into two sections: the amount coming in and the amount going out.

Earning Money: You get a daily income between £100k and £300k which is determined by your team’s reputation. This can then be supplemented by the sales of players, prize money from unofficial competitions, and media money in official FAs.

Spending Money: Your major expenses will be on player wages and transfer fees. If you are spending over £250k on wages daily you will also be taxed at £1 for every £1 spent over the limit. For example, if your wage bill was £275k, you would be taxed an extra £25k in excess wage tax. Entry fees into competitions will also eat into your profits - so don't pay to join if you don't think you'll get your money back, unless you're entering for fun rather than profit.

Making a Profit: It sounds simple, but to make a profit you must have more money coming in than going out. Making a profit will give you the flexibility to hang onto your players and sign others too. An easy way to make sure you turn a profit is to refer to the 'Past Transactions' section of your finances screen and ensure that your daily income exceeds what you are paying out in wages.

Projected Income: On the finances page you’ll also see a section for projected income. This figure predicts what your balance will be in 28 days time based on estimated levels of income and expenditure.

There is also a variety of other useful financial information available on the main finance screen, including a recommended transfer budget, and a finance calculator that helps you work out how much you can spend on wages and acquistion/signing fees for players.

SQUAD BUILDING

FML has an innovative transfer system, allowing four core ways of acquiring players for your team - these are explained below.

Every player in FML has an Acquisition Fee. This is a set amount determined by the game that is the initial cost of purchasing a player. Don’t confuse this with the Market Value which is a value that gives an idea of how much similar players have been sold for in your gameworld. There is a free market in FML however, so the true value of a player is determined by whatever price is agreed by the buyer and seller. These values are merely guidelines.

Free Agent Wage Auctions: When a player is a free agent, you can bid for him based on his wage demand. After the first bid is made on a player, there is a 24 hour period to give other managers a chance to bid on him. When that time has passed, the highest bidder will sign the player and will pay his Acquisition Fee to the gameworld. N.B. In this case the highest bidder will pay £1 more wages than the second highest bidder, similar to an eBay auction.

End of Contract Wage Auctions: Every manager has 5 “locks” they can use to ensure that the contracts of their 5 key players are auto-renewed. Every other player will enter a 24 hour end of contract wage auction similar to that of a free agent when their contracts expire. If a player's current owner is not the highest bidder, the club that is will pay the Acquisition fee to his previous team. I a players owner does win, he only has to pay the second highest bid plus £1. N.B. If you are bidding for a player at another club, you will pay the exact amount that you bid, so beware of putting down huge maximum offers thinking that you would only pay £1 more than the next highest bidder.

Transfer Auctions: These are very similar to the style of transactions you would find on eBay. A manager can choose to put their player up for auction, specifying how long they want the auction to go on for, the starting bid, and an instant buy if they want one. Other managers can bid throughout the auction and the highest bidder will get the player.

Private Transfers: This is pretty self-explanatory. Make an offer for a player at another club; if the other manager accepts, the player’s yours. Bids can also be negotiated.

KEY TIP: You can't retract wage or transfer auction bids for players once made, so be careful what you bid!

ABBREVIATIONS

FML revolves around communication, and like any form of language, it has spawned some terms of its own. So you're never confused, here's a definitive list!

AEFA All Evening Football Association

AF Acquisition Fee

AFA Afternoon Football Association

AFAIK As far as I know

Ag Goals Against (in league table)

Av Rat Average Rating

C/Pts Current Points

CWA Casual Weekday Association

DFK Direct Free Kick

DND Do Not Disturb

EEFA Early Evening Football Association

FA Football Association

FK Free Kick

FML Football Manager Live

For Goals For (in league table)

FR Friendly

GD Goal Difference

GG Good Game

GL Good Luck

GW Gameworld

HC Help Centre

IFK Indirect Free Kick

IIRC If I remember correctly

INJ Injured

Int International

M8 Mate/Friend

MFA Morning Football Association

MLFA Moonlight Footbal Association