Player Instruction Sliders

[Russianbear]

I've been wondering how the majority of players are using this feature. Since the introduction of the tactics creator I used to simply create tactics using the mentality and strategy umbrella choices in the team instructions and then fine tuning both the various style settings and choosing player roles. I didn't touch the player instructions at all.

I've been playing a long career save with Arsenal and the results last season have been good, fairly consistent and maybe even a little flattering.

In my current season I decided to really dive into player instructions, fine tuning just about everything to suit the player and strategy I wanted.

This was of course way more time consuming, because every match I had to consider my starting line-up, my opposition and my tactics and change my player instructions accordingly.

The surprising thing was that I only really achieved similar results to what I had in my previous season when I was less hands-on. In fact, I probably struggled a bit more with consistency this season that I did before. But I think more importantly, I didn't actually feel more "in control" of my tactics.

So I guess I'm wondering whether it's really worth my time, working so hard under the hood, when I can just slap on versatile and highly adaptable pre-built tactics and get the same, if not better, results.

Anybody want to share their own views? I'd like a little consensus on this.

*my current save has been played solely with the latest patch.

[Steve Odom]

the more you look into small aspects of the game, the more you lose grips on the bigger issues. If you're allways finetuning your tactics, you might have been less 'hands on' with your players. If you're looking into your own tactics at depth, you might have forgotten about simple things as the space the opposition leaves you.

If you want my advice, do what you like to do in game. There's no need for you to finetune everything, just the things you are comfortable with. This is especially the case if everything was already going well for you.

There's always been the discussion: "What is best?", implying that there is a certain answer to this that everyone should support. I believe it should be "What is best for me?". So there's no need for a consensus, only for insights by other managers.

[Russianbear]

Good answer, and you're right. That has been my feeling. Do what works best. I guess I just wanted to get an idea of what others are doing with their tactics.

Thanks for the reply.

[Steve Odom]

What I do is something I 've learned from SFraser, set up a philosophy, set up some instructions for players and use shouts in game. It works for me, though my low level of competition makes it somewhat easy to create space. Some might use a lot more shouts ingmae, I tend to keep my tactics quite basic.

[Fabian Jonsson]

the more you look into small aspects of the game, the more you lose grips on the bigger issues. If you're allways finetuning your tactics, you might have been less 'hands on' with your players. If you're looking into your own tactics at depth, you might have forgotten about simple things as the space the opposition leaves you.

This!

I so often struggle with this. When I'm messing around too much and try to get them to play exactly how I envision in exactly every situation, it's really easy for me to miss out on huge glaring issues that have risen up during the course of the game. It's of course a matter of experience but also a matter of concentration and split vision.

The best advice I can give (although I don't always follow it myself) is to iron out all the big issues with your tactics first. When your tactics work really well against most opponents, make sure that you really understand why the tactics work as well as they do. Then, and only then, should you start fine-tuning things to get that extra percent out of your players. That way you don't mess someting important up.

[jim morrow]

You just need to learn the game little by little....players instructions are also interesting when you need to restrain your players due to their weakness or to maximise the strength of your player.

So you need to learn how ME used all the indiv. instructions and how it affects your strategy and which attributes are linked to....

To do that, read a maximum of documentation in this forum and find Tactical Theorem Framework 2009 and 2010 who are useful to understand the tactic part of FM.