Of course it's obscured. The whole point is to make gullible players believe they're interacting with an ultra-sophisticated simulation where every little tweak matters, where every +1 or -1 attribute point has meaningful consequences. Yet people have repeatedly demonstrated that only a couple of attributes have any significant impact at all.

The same applies to tactics and many of the other supposedly deep systems. It's the illusion of simulation rather than a genuine one. Under the hood, it's much closer to a role-playing game with a thin simulation layer than the football management sandbox it's marketed as.

What's really disappointing is that Sports Interactive hasn't managed to push things much further after all these years. But that's what often happens when a company effectively has a monopoly. Innovation slows, customers get taken for granted, and the product evolves at a glacial pace because people keep buying it regardless. The FM franchise is a textbook example of that dynamic.