football knowledge v match engine knowledge?

[Cougar2010]

Just now, westy8chimp said:

well then we are at loggerheads and will never agree. I could win any league with any team on FM16 by playing 5-3-2 wbs because wingbacks were overpowered ... Haidara 53 assists in 36 games in premier league season one with Newcastle. tried other teams... all exactly the same didn't matter what team I was or how weak the squad was ... 532 was a winner. there are thousands of messages to the same effect about FM16 and the overpowered fb/wb. this is a clear case of exploiting ME weakness.

the fact that even for hypothetical situations you will not budge makes you seem unreasonable and short sighted. pointless having a discussion forum if you are going to tell users to disregard anyones view that opposes your own. SI themselves admit there are bugs, bugs impact ME. bugs can be exploited/avoided... ME can be exploited.  

That has nothing to do with scripting though.

For the user you are talking about he was using the term scripting to mean that the AI decides what is going to happen in advance of the match and then creates a scenario to suit it.  Something that simply doesn't happen.

You can use scripting to mean something else if you want but you will cause confusion & frustration by doing so.

 

As for FM16 FBs/WBs were only OP some of the time in certain situations.  I uploaded several pics from leagues I was managing in where there was just one FB in the top 20 for assists and I never had a FB/WB with more than five in any one season despite having some formations that used WB on attack duty.

[westy8chimp]

2 minutes ago, themadsheep2001 said:

But you wouldn't need to know that to succeed. Which was the OPs question. It's then something that gets fixed in a future version, so how does it help in the long run?

You would. Another hypothetical

the coders were drunk when they make the CF role settings and how the ME treats it ... meaning the CF role will never score a goal.

a player may have his prefered position and stats and IRL traits... to be that of a CF.. so you create your formation and build it n the basis that your CF will be your talisman and main goal threat.

5 games into season he still hasn't scored. you observe the matches and waste time wondering if it's the supply or your TIs or maybe you need two upfront etc.

if you know that the ME has a weakness and CF is never going to score... you wouldn't use it.

[themadsheep2001]

6 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

You would. Another hypothetical

the coders were drunk when they make the CF role settings and how the ME treats it ... meaning the CF role will never score a goal.

a player may have his prefered position and stats and IRL traits... to be that of a CF.. so you create your formation and build it n the basis that your CF will be your talisman and main goal threat.

5 games into season he still hasn't scored. you observe the matches and waste time wondering if it's the supply or your TIs or maybe you need two upfront etc.

if you know that the ME has a weakness and CF is never going to score... you wouldn't use it.

Pointless hypothetical. Something like that would almost certainly effect all forwards to some degree, would be seen at completely gamebreaking and it would not be released.

On that note, I'm going use the rest of my day off to see Miki finish as top assister in the league

[westy8chimp]

4 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

That has nothing to do with scripting though.

For the user you are talking about he was using the term scripting to mean that the AI decides what is going to happen in advance of the match and then creates a scenario to suit it.  Something that simply doesn't happen.

You can use scripting to mean something else if you want but you will cause confusion & frustration by doing so.

 

As for FM16 FBs/WBs were only OP some of the time in certain situations.  I uploaded several pics from leagues I was managing in where there was just one FB in the top 20 for assists and I never had a FB/WB with more than five in any one season despite having some formations that used WB on attack duty.

the user said 'how to break the script' ... if he thought it was pre-ordained destiny/fate .. hard coded eventuality... he wouldn't suggest it can be broken. regardless of the word 'script' ... the ME will always have some OP/UP for certain tactics/formations/shouts ... that's the nature of gaming. And real life knowledge will always need to be paired with knowledge of the games mechanisms.

lets take away FM for a sec, because we are all so passionate and it brings out defensive posts, ... Fifa 95 on the megadrive... best way to score a goal -> shoot from roughly 5 yards out where the horizontal line meets the vertical line of the penalty area... goal every time. PES 2005 Adriano/Ibra ... just shoot as soon as you get in opponents half.. goal. Brian Lara cricket 93 ... should you bowl outswingers in the corridor of uncertainty? no ... bowl full toss at leg stump.. wicket. Fifa 2016 Playstation... easier to score a header from 10 yards than a one on one from the centre of the penalty area.

every game has its querks because it is limited 1) by coders imagination 2) software capabilities... etc

[westy8chimp]

Just now, themadsheep2001 said:

Pointless hypothetical. Something like that would almost certainly effect all forwards to some degree, would be seen at completely gamebreaking and it would be released

yes but it needed to be an extreme example to make you open your eyes. now go back to FM16 ... where Bellerin was Ballon d'or expert.. and wbs/fbs consistently had the most assists ... can you see how you might IRL think 41221 or 4231 are strong tactics but in FM16 532 or 4312 narrow etc become the go to? even if you disagree with the mechanics of FM16 ... At a principle level can you begin to see that some ME knowledge, where (IF) a bug exists, can be used to exploit?

[bestbrother]

I'm not sure you need much knowledge tbh

Coming from a different angle, I play using a default in game tactic.. 4-2-4 wide I believe its called from the drop down menu. Do nothing else with it, don't pick particular set piece takers, don't change mentality etc Nothing at all during the game or for specific games... I use that tactic and that's that. If a player is sent off I don't re-adjust.. I could have 1 centre back or none, I wont change the tactic I just play on.

The only 'tactical' thing I will do is make a sub and that's based on either an injury (obvious) or if a player is playing say a 6.0 or worse.

I run the game in commentary only, so I don't get to see any of the action and at the end of it, some games I'm very successful, others not so.

Could anyone do what I do? Yes quite easily... would they be a master at the game? No, but wheres the fun in that

[Cougar2010]

9 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

the user said 'how to break the script' ... if he thought it was pre-ordained destiny/fate .. hard coded eventuality... he wouldn't suggest it can be broken. regardless of the word 'script' ...

Well he did on numerous occasions and not just on this forum.

He felt the only way to win was to basically break the ME by taking advantage of coding errors.

 

 

9 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

the ME will always have some OP/UP for certain tactics/formations/shouts ... that's the nature of gaming. And real life knowledge will always need to be paired with knowledge of the games mechanisms.

I fully agree that because of the coding there will always be areas of the ME that under & over perform as thats the nature of coding.  However you don't need to be aware of either of those areas if your basic knowledge of football is sound.  If you watch a match you can spot the potential issues and make successful adjustments by just using footballing knowledge.

On a sidenote and playing devils advocate for a second you could also argue that in more advanced terms we as humans are also coded and as such you would presume that in a real life match there are also areas that under & over perform in a similar way.

 

[jayahr]

1 hour ago, themadsheep2001 said:

 

But would certainly disagree with the last, that you must know the ME to succeed,

Writing on a phone while walking so apologies if this doesn't make sense 

This is not what I claim to be the case, but I admit that one part could have been understood in that way. The ME is good enough for real life football knowledge to have a big impact. Yet, it helps to know and understand where the ME doesn't reflect real life as good as in other areas.

 

[westy8chimp]

33 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

I fully agree that because of the coding there will always be areas of the ME that under & over perform as thats the nature of coding.  However you don't need to be aware of either of those areas if your basic knowledge of football is sound.  If you watch a match you can spot the potential issues and make successful adjustments by just using footballing knowledge.

On a sidenote and playing devils advocate for a second you could also argue that in more advanced terms we as humans are also coded and as such you would presume that in a real life match there are also areas that under & over perform in a similar way.

 

Plato reincarnate, this is deep.  

conversely, you could have no football knowledge and observe, trial and error various positions and roles and be successful. Knowledge of football and of the FM ME are both non-essential in terms of ...eventually being successful.

Forewarned is forearmed. If there are ME flaws; whereby a particular strategy, mentality, shape, player or position is underpowered or overpowered, knowing and understanding them would, in my opinion, 100% given an advantage over somebody who doesn't know of them.

[sirgiorgio]

You need to have a basic understanding of the game mechanics in order to take full advantage of your knowledge of football.

Whenever I watch a football match and want to reproduce a particular tactic, position, role, movement... I need to know what works, what could work (if certain conditions are met) and what simply won't work. In other words, I need to translate from a potentially limitless "language" (rl football) to an objectively limited, albeit complex one (FM).

A couple of years ago, there was an ME update where all strikers on support duty (especially DLF) acted like extra midfielders, to the joy of Simeone's fans. That behaviour was "corrected" in the following patch, to the disdain of Simeone's fans, who complained en masse. The answer was: "you can have your strikers act like extra midfielders, just set them as AM C." So it could be done, but, as it happens with every translation, something had to get lost in the process.

People who say "I play with the same tactics since CM2" are clearly ignoring how FM has changed in the last 20 years... People who say "I managed to win the 2018 World Cup with my version of 1934 Catenaccio" are clearly ignoring how football has changed in the last 80 years... Those who spend hours trying to figure out the difference between FB/att and WB/att, or the use of WB/def, those are the heroes of our times

[YKW]

For me I would ask the following:

Can you be inordinately successful due to a great knowledge of football and football tactics?

Can you be inordinately successful due to a great knowledge of that particular version of the ME?

Perhaps the answer is yes to both, I can't dispute people's personal experiences. For me though, the in game tactical system has so little bearing to reality and how tactics are built and coached that having an above average knowledge of football tactics is basically of no use whatsoever. Maybe you are a student of the double pivot - well it doesn't matter because you can't tell your CMs to alternate who goes forward. Perhaps you are an expert in the implementation of a classical 3-5-2 formation - well it doesn't matter because the ME doesn't seem to account for lateral movement and so my back 3 won't shift and become a 4 in the correct way. Maybe you have studied Klopp's high pressing strategy - well it doesn't matter because only one pressing style is in the game, and it can only really be selected on a scale of Less--->More.  I'm not a tactical genius by any stretch, but the advanced strategies that I have become aware of over the years can't really be replicated in the game.

It's clearly of far more value to know that, for FM16 for example, having an attacking RB is a good choice because of the nuances of the ME. Or that having a really tall target man is likely to lead to less headed shots on target, rather than more. Or to have realised that, even when playing a short style of passing with appropriate roles, an Advanced Forward will make the team try to play it long ahead of him more often that your tactical choices would appear to dictate, etc etc.

As a further argument I would say to consider a game like Microsoft Flight Simulator. I'm a novice at the game and a novice at flying a plane for real, so I would get novice results. A pilot who is also a novice to the game would get expert results, because the game accurately simulates what he actually does. When it comes to FM, Guardiola would be no better, and have no innate advantage over someone who had only a basic understanding of football tactics. In terms of Guardiola, it would be like giving a concert hall pianist an 8-key Fisher Price kids keyboard and asking him to compose a better 4 bar melody than a group of kids.

Similarly, if you take a game like Sim City, there is an ongoing relationship between reality and the game. Once you've created your first majorly congested, crime infested city of many abandoned regions, reality now contains things that you didn't notice before. Maybe more general things like how road capacity decreases as it tails off into residential areas, or noticing how residential and commercial areas come together, whereas industrial areas are further away, but with good transport links. Or it could be more subtle things like where a one way road prevents a shortcut that would overload the road. Just as the game helps you learn and put reality into a new context, what you see in reality can be used as a principle in the game. For me that's what it makes it achieve it's job as a simulator.

The sad thing about FM, or at least the part of it that aims to be a simulator, is that this effect is hardly there at all.

For me the main issue is of course that the FM ME is a much more incredible piece of work than the previous simulators I mentioned (among others) that can be created to pre-defined mathematical rules. So my overriding point here is just an observation and discussion point rather than a significant criticism. But I have to strongly support the side of the argument that says that ME knowledge is more important (assuming basic familiarity with football.)

Moving forward, there simply HAS to be some kind of more relevant and realistic tactical and coaching interface or "controller," that can somehow provide the same synergy with reality as in other sims. 

The language is all wrong.

"Overload" isn't "all out attack!" An overload situation happens when a team gets the ball into a situation where their players outnumber the opposition players in that area. Creating overload situations is a tactical objective, and one that is coached to happen in whatever the chosen areas are. You can be playing defensively and still create an overload situation. An overload situation is NOT the result of a combination of individual instructions nor is it the result of placing the players in positions where they outnumber opponents and going from there. It is a tactical element in it's own right, and being able to achieve something similar through some arduous combination of instructions is not satisfying or realistic.

"Triangles" isn't mentioned at all in the game. It should be because they are also a tactical objective that is is coached to happen in chosen situations. If you watch a match of football then maybe you will see it a lot, or maybe you won't see it much, because every team uses the strategy to a different extent. Triangles are NOT the result of a combination of individual instructions nor are they the result of placing the players in triangles and then telling them to play short. Again, even if triangles are attainable, it's still a realistic result through an unrealistic method - so I learn nothing. 

Take the "high press." In game I close down more or less, with a higher or lower line and either prevent short distribution or not. But this really doesn't give enough credit to a strategy that has become more popular at the top level in recent years. Particularly with how Klopp has implemented it, it is not just a unique tactical element that is coached to the players over time, but also a philosophy that goes far beyond just the tactics and into the worlds of intensive training workloads and specialised recovery and dietary plans. As it stands, all teams have equal access to the "high pressing" philosophy with just the addition of three options, which is silly.

You could make similar assessments of footballing concepts like "a solid two banks of four," "the offside trap," "the long ball game," "the quick counter," "set piece specialism," "tiki taka," etc etc. If I successfully achieve tiki taka football, it isn't because that is what I have coached the players to do over time but because I have played the game enough to have found the combination of instructions and players that result in the most tiki-taka like play in the ME. Something needs to change so that I can specifically choose that I want to start to implement tiki taka football, with the end result being that I will more often see my team playing beautiful tiki-taka football which looks like real life. Crucially I also want to experience the journey to this point, i.e my team or specific players struggling to get to grips with the strategy resulting in bad tiki-taka or "almost" tiki taka, with staff advice given to me in the context of the tactical elements I have chosen - "Assman believes that X is not a good fit for your tiki taka tactical style, due to his poor first touch." 

Other terminology like "between the lines," and "the channels," should appear in the game and be defined also. 

Another opportunity to learn would be for training (coaching) to actually give reference to, or even show in 3D, ACTUAL training drills that are used by teams, and have the training schedule of my team visible to me and with specific drills/activities chosen based on their relevance to my tactical elements. Suppose I have chosen to implement a high pressing strategy. Well what are the considerations of coaching and training players this style? Obviously they need to learn the technical skills associated with this, i.e positioning to dictate a passing route and/or to shut down a passing option, and they also need immense physical capacity and mental desire and willingness. So in my training schedule, which may just be autofilled for ease, I would see a realistic schedule for a team learning this style, including the relevant drills and activities. I don't know what they are because the game has never taught me, but for instance you could see more double training sessions, more intensive gym sessions, piggy in the middle, and perhaps even some team building exercises. Each would have a brief explanation of what the drill was, what it improved, and why this was good for the style I had chosen.

It would also tie in with facilities so that some drills and activities were only available at the best clubs. Similarly, I might see more scheduled visits to the masseuse or to the in-house nutritionist, both with an explanation of their scientific role and how this is useful or appropriate for my tactical style.  Maybe I have a cryotherapy chamber, and I get to learn what that actually is and why it is useful.

Injuries also have a lot more room to teach us things. What's the difference between an impact injury and the other kind of injury? What sort of rates of re-occurrence do each lend themselves to, and what sorts of rehabilitations are best or most widely used? How do sports scientists monitor workloads, or what is the role of GPS tracking in football shirts and how are these used to minimise the risk of injuries? Is my club rich enough to do either of these? If I want a high pressing style it would sure be useful.

Then to cap it all off you could have tweets in the social media section by Raymond Verheijen criticising your training techniques.

Whether or not you need to know about real football to do well at the game, I hope that moving forward more effort is put into mirroring real life and making the game more of a serious simulation. FMT should take over the more arcadey and easy to play role.

 

[Svenc]

2 hours ago, westy8chimp said:

Forewarned is forearmed. If there are ME flaws; whereby a particular strategy, mentality, shape, player or position is underpowered or overpowered, knowing and understanding them would, in my opinion, 100% given an advantage over somebody who doesn't know of them.

Yup, and if the AI tactics were coded to fuel into this, everybody would have long stopped playing. Arguably that's what's also partly fueled FM Live's demise. Even if their wouldn't be an actually exploits (and there always are), rumors can do much harm, in particular if you've got that nagging feeling you're paying a monthly fee for being rigged by cheating players. The game attempts to reward real life football logics, but there will be limitations, always, same as it will be somebody's interpretation of football. I don't have qualms with anybody rigging the ME and AI tactical decision making (or lack thereof) to hell and back, except if he would use it online against me or argue you would need to do that to be successful / win a match, even.

This is by and large the same simple things that are tried to be rewarded, and they are based on football, and from my experience, have always always always worked (in parts as not creating/focusing on one chance type lessens the impact of balancing patches, for sure, but also because no successful team in football plays that one-dimensional that it would spam i.e. through balls through the centre to a lone forward exclusively). That would be predictable and opponents would quickly adapt. Unfortunately AI likely will never be able to "see" this, but technically, that's what would of happen in football. You may view the plugging of "wide holes" from FM 2016 as the coding equivalent of you getting figured out (though in doing such, it has brought up another couple curious possibly holes, see my previous link in my previous post). Follow those logics, and you have so far never been hit any by a patch or any iteration.

 If you add to that a superior decision making to AI managers, you can outperform them across the board or at least be onpar pretty easily. [My yardstick for that is how would an AI manager do with the team, and how are you doing with it].

 

edit: Sorry gerry! I thought you were arguing the opposite with your "LOL" remark, as that "LOL" part seemed to suggest to the player he shouldn't at all bother as it was all just windows dressing. As you say, it isn't. It's second by second what's going on, including on and off the ball positioning encouraged by both managers.

[santy001]

Things like this have the chance to become the new myth to get away from the "fixed" myths we've had and debunked for a while. Eventually people realise they get no traction at all with those, so inventing new ones is the way forward.

I've been able to make 4-4-2/4-1-4-1 and 4-4-1-1 work for me in my own games for a good 4/5 years now. I like those those shapes, I like the way I can play using those formations. The truth of the matter is, that as good as we all believe we are tactically, for 99% of us we just aren't. That leads to making a silly amount of mistakes. It's funny the amount of mistakes I make, I realise what they are afterwards and half the time I realise what they are in game but can't think of the best way to change to fix them. It's frustrating, incredibly frustrating but here's the thing.

On FM sometimes you can do everything right tactically, and still lose. You can have the right formation, control the game but still lose to wonder goals. Or, you can do everything right tactically and unfortunately your players just aren't right in certain positions.

On the flip side, sometimes on FM you can do everything completely wrong and win for all the wrong reasons, just on the basis of the sheer brilliance of your own players. 

[Tony Wright 747]

43 minutes ago, YKW said:

For me I would ask the following:

Can you be inordinately successful due to a great knowledge of football and football tactics?

Can you be inordinately successful due to a great knowledge of that particular version of the ME?

Perhaps the answer is yes to both, I can't dispute people's personal experiences. For me though, the in game tactical system has so little bearing to reality and how tactics are built and coached that having an above average knowledge of football tactics is basically of no use whatsoever. Maybe you are a student of the double pivot - well it doesn't matter because you can't tell your CMs to alternate who goes forward. Perhaps you are an expert in the implementation of a classical 3-5-2 formation - well it doesn't matter because the ME doesn't seem to account for lateral movement and so my back 3 won't shift and become a 4 in the correct way. Maybe you have studied Klopp's high pressing strategy - well it doesn't matter because only one pressing style is in the game, and it can only really be selected on a scale of Less--->More.  I'm not a tactical genius by any stretch, but the advanced strategies that I have become aware of over the years can't really be replicated in the game.

It's clearly of far more value to know that, for FM16 for example, having an attacking RB is a good choice because of the nuances of the ME. Or that having a really tall target man is likely to lead to less headed shots on target, rather than more. Or to have realised that, even when playing a short style of passing with appropriate roles, an Advanced Forward will make the team try to play it long ahead of him more often that your tactical choices would appear to dictate, etc etc.

As a further argument I would say to consider a game like Microsoft Flight Simulator. I'm a novice at the game and a novice at flying a plane for real, so I would get novice results. A pilot who is also a novice to the game would get expert results, because the game accurately simulates what he actually does. When it comes to FM, Guardiola would be no better, and have no innate advantage over someone who had only a basic understanding of football tactics. In terms of Guardiola, it would be like giving a concert hall pianist an 8-key Fisher Price kids keyboard and asking him to compose a better 4 bar melody than a group of kids.

Similarly, if you take a game like Sim City, there is an ongoing relationship between reality and the game. Once you've created your first majorly congested, crime infested city of many abandoned regions, reality now contains things that you didn't notice before. Maybe more general things like how road capacity decreases as it tails off into residential areas, or noticing how residential and commercial areas come together, whereas industrial areas are further away, but with good transport links. Or it could be more subtle things like where a one way road prevents a shortcut that would overload the road. Just as the game helps you learn and put reality into a new context, what you see in reality can be used as a principle in the game. For me that's what it makes it achieve it's job as a simulator.

The sad thing about FM, or at least the part of it that aims to be a simulator, is that this effect is hardly there at all.

For me the main issue is of course that the FM ME is a much more incredible piece of work than the previous simulators I mentioned (among others) that can be created to pre-defined mathematical rules. So my overriding point here is just an observation and discussion point rather than a significant criticism. But I have to strongly support the side of the argument that says that ME knowledge is more important (assuming basic familiarity with football.)

Moving forward, there simply HAS to be some kind of more relevant and realistic tactical and coaching interface or "controller," that can somehow provide the same synergy with reality as in other sims. 

The language is all wrong.

"Overload" isn't "all out attack!" An overload situation happens when a team gets the ball into a situation where their players outnumber the opposition players in that area. Creating overload situations is a tactical objective, and one that is coached to happen in whatever the chosen areas are. You can be playing defensively and still create an overload situation. An overload situation is NOT the result of a combination of individual instructions nor is it the result of placing the players in positions where they outnumber opponents and going from there. It is a tactical element in it's own right, and being able to achieve something similar through some arduous combination of instructions is not satisfying or realistic.

"Triangles" isn't mentioned at all in the game. It should be because they are also a tactical objective that is is coached to happen in chosen situations. If you watch a match of football then maybe you will see it a lot, or maybe you won't see it much, because every team uses the strategy to a different extent. Triangles are NOT the result of a combination of individual instructions nor are they the result of placing the players in triangles and then telling them to play short. Again, even if triangles are attainable, it's still a realistic result through an unrealistic method - so I learn nothing. 

Take the "high press." In game I close down more or less, with a higher or lower line and either prevent short distribution or not. But this really doesn't give enough credit to a strategy that has become more popular at the top level in recent years. Particularly with how Klopp has implemented it, it is not just a unique tactical element that is coached to the players over time, but also a philosophy that goes far beyond just the tactics and into the worlds of intensive training workloads and specialised recovery and dietary plans. As it stands, all teams have equal access to the "high pressing" philosophy with just the addition of three options, which is silly.

You could make similar assessments of footballing concepts like "a solid two banks of four," "the offside trap," "the long ball game," "the quick counter," "set piece specialism," "tiki taka," etc etc. If I successfully achieve tiki taka football, it isn't because that is what I have coached the players to do over time but because I have played the game enough to have found the combination of instructions and players that result in the most tiki-taka like play in the ME. Something needs to change so that I can specifically choose that I want to start to implement tiki taka football, with the end result being that I will more often see my team playing beautiful tiki-taka football which looks like real life. Crucially I also want to experience the journey to this point, i.e my team or specific players struggling to get to grips with the strategy resulting in bad tiki-taka or "almost" tiki taka, with staff advice given to me in the context of the tactical elements I have chosen - "Assman believes that X is not a good fit for your tiki taka tactical style, due to his poor first touch." 

Other terminology like "between the lines," and "the channels," should appear in the game and be defined also. 

Another opportunity to learn would be for training (coaching) to actually give reference to, or even show in 3D, ACTUAL training drills that are used by teams, and have the training schedule of my team visible to me and with specific drills/activities chosen based on their relevance to my tactical elements. Suppose I have chosen to implement a high pressing strategy. Well what are the considerations of coaching and training players this style? Obviously they need to learn the technical skills associated with this, i.e positioning to dictate a passing route and/or to shut down a passing option, and they also need immense physical capacity and mental desire and willingness. So in my training schedule, which may just be autofilled for ease, I would see a realistic schedule for a team learning this style, including the relevant drills and activities. I don't know what they are because the game has never taught me, but for instance you could see more double training sessions, more intensive gym sessions, piggy in the middle, and perhaps even some team building exercises. Each would have a brief explanation of what the drill was, what it improved, and why this was good for the style I had chosen.

It would also tie in with facilities so that some drills and activities were only available at the best clubs. Similarly, I might see more scheduled visits to the masseuse or to the in-house nutritionist, both with an explanation of their scientific role and how this is useful or appropriate for my tactical style.  Maybe I have a cryotherapy chamber, and I get to learn what that actually is and why it is useful.

Injuries also have a lot more room to teach us things. What's the difference between an impact injury and the other kind of injury? What sort of rates of re-occurrence do each lend themselves to, and what sorts of rehabilitations are best or most widely used? How do sports scientists monitor workloads, or what is the role of GPS tracking in football shirts and how are these used to minimise the risk of injuries? Is my club rich enough to do either of these? If I want a high pressing style it would sure be useful.

Then to cap it all off you could have tweets in the social media section by Raymond Verheijen criticising your training techniques.

Whether or not you need to know about real football to do well at the game, I hope that moving forward more effort is put into mirroring real life and making the game more of a serious simulation. FMT should take over the more arcadey and easy to play role.

 

Excellant post.  I hope this is the kind of game SI are working towards

[frustratedfreak]

Of course the game is scripted, you HAVE to say its not because you have to stick to the same story you have been telling for years.

A game programmer explained how easy it is to script and just watching a few games will prove it.

[Svenc]

3 minutes ago, frustratedfreak said:

Of course the game is scripted, you HAVE to say its not because you have to stick to the same story you have been telling for years.

A game programmer explained how easy it is to script and just watching a few games will prove it.

Scripted for you to lose matches, I guess. Because you are to good, right.
 

[Welshace]

1 minute ago, frustratedfreak said:

Of course the game is scripted, you HAVE to say its not because you have to stick to the same story you have been telling for years.

A game programmer explained how easy it is to script and just watching a few games will prove it.

Computer scientist and programmer here and yet I have no involvement in creating this game...

You must be confused about what they mean by scripting...

Scripting is implied to mean everything is set to happen despite any input from the user... this is clearly not the case..not sure how anyone could think otherwise tbh..

[frustratedfreak]

Just now, Svenc said:

Scripted in which sense. Scripted for you to lose matches, I guess. Because you are to good, right.
 

No, because the game is poor and the AI weak. If it wasn't scripted I could win any league with even the poorest club by about 40 points first season. The game has to have a certain measure of "supposed" difficulty and as such matches have to be scripted to appear as such.

[Cougar2010]

7 minutes ago, frustratedfreak said:

Of course the game is scripted, you HAVE to say its not because you have to stick to the same story you have been telling for years.

A game programmer explained how easy it is to script and just watching a few games will prove it.

As Welsh has said above I don't know how anyone can play the game/watch a match and then believe its scripted.

Its a myth thats so easily debunked its ridiculous that its still out there.

[frustratedfreak]

4 minutes ago, Welshace said:

Computer scientist and programmer here and yet I have no involvement in creating this game...

You must be confused about what they mean by scripting...

Scripting is implied to mean everything is set to happen despite any input from the user... this is clearly not the case..not sure how anyone could think otherwise tbh..

Fair enough, "scripting" may be the wrong word, but you know exactly what I mean.

[frustratedfreak]

1 minute ago, Cougar2010 said:

As Welsh has said above I don't know how anyone can play the game/watch a match and then believe its scripted.

Its a myth thats so easily debunked its ridiculous that its still out there.

It cannot be debunked it can only be denied, the myth is that the game is 100% fair and that the ME cannot distinguish between the AI and the Human user.

[Svenc]

19 minutes ago, frustratedfreak said:

No, because the game is poor and the AI weak. If it wasn't scripted I could win any league with even the poorest club by about 40 points first season. The game has to have a certain measure of "supposed" difficulty and as such matches have to be scripted to appear as such.

There is no way to do that, maybe the diablo tacticz truly of old could do as they made poor players turn into Thomas Muller for would arrive into the box unmarked multiple times due to huge bugs / Marking issues with old versions. You could have been completely outplayed in each match and still have chances on each spell of possession. There is still downloads exploiting defensive issues, but you'd be a first one here for many seasons to be able to do that.

Secondly, it's never been a game about purely tactics. Better dribblers etc. evidently complete a higher amount of runs which is also reflected in the stats, pulling defenders over the shop all alone. Better defenders miss less key tackles, and so on. So facing Chelsea away with Hazard at all is always going to be a challenge as long as the squads are still competitive. There is a caveat here, as it is possible to make sides underperform, the best of them, as else it would all be a bit pointless. Top teams managed by AI sides do so also, in particular Guardiola as of late, which is /used to be connected to his formation arguably, and him frequently isolating his attacking players off of it. I've never been happy with that, as I would like that added competition, but that's what it is. It's still a harder game than it was on FM 2012ish, as AI midfields often were a walkin', and their tactics comparably poor (easy to outperform them straight out of the bat). And you've still got several AI sides on any competition that have a total shot conversion ratio of 5% or less too as per their team reports, which as per the game, has always been tactical as tactics determine movement and the average types of shots long-term. It's not hard to level or better the averages. I would prefer it if that were improved, in particular the few elite, too, though. However, I also understand the game can't possibly just be made for a few "hardcore".

 

[westy8chimp]

4 minutes ago, Welshace said:

Computer scientist and programmer here and yet I have no involvement in creating this game...

You must be confused about what they mean by scripting...

Scripting is implied to mean everything is set to happen despite any input from the user... this is clearly not the case..not sure how anyone could think otherwise tbh..

that user is using the term to mean 'fixed/written in stone' but im also a programmer... albeit for ERP systems not football games and scripting can mean a multitude of things. In basic terms ... running thousands of lines of code is scripting... using a form of program language. As I was using the term in earlier posts. I would usually infer the latter meaning when discussing an ME limitations (but maybe that's my bias based on my day to day).

what I would say to this kind of rubbish about things being 'scripted' (as in a play is scripted)... you can disprove this extremely easily. Play a match ... quit without saving ... replay the same match. It will not be identical. therefore it is not scripted.

why isn't it identical... is it pot luck...?

it isn't identical because the variables are % based, as well as factoring in fixed values from attributes, ppms etc  ... so a player with 20 in passing 20 in vision in a team using short passing may go into a calculation with 95% chance of a successful pass ... if you consider the ME makes hundreds of these decisions per minute ... a game can swing many ways.

am I contradicting my earlier posts where I believe ME can be exploited? No... because in each case I said there was 'posibility' to give myself more 'chance' of a successful outcome. Thus you can work out and play to the higher %s ... If there are some calculations we perceive to be incorrect (in alignment with our beliefs of real life outcomes) ... can we avoid/exploit the ME yes...

[Welshace]

7 minutes ago, frustratedfreak said:

Fair enough, "scripting" may be the wrong word, but you know exactly what I mean.

In this case, I genuinely don't i'm afraid and I don't mean to make that sound as flippant as it may do.

[frustratedfreak]

1 minute ago, Welshace said:

In this case, I genuinely don't i'm afraid and I don't mean to make that sound as flippant as it may do.

In this instance i'll describe my last 3 away games.

I've had a total of 69 shots, 22 long shots, 8 woodwork hits, 8 ccc's and 9 half chances.

The AI have had a total of 26 shots, 12 long shots, 2 woodwork hits, 2 ccc's and 4 half chances.

I lost 1 and drew 2, meanwhile Man Utd are knocking 6 goals past their opponents whilst creating only a single half chance(no ccc's). We are "supposedly" fighting it out at the top of the table, I might win the league I might not, but if I do or not will not be decided on the pitch, but on whether I will be "allowed" to by the game or not.

Its as simple as that.

[frustratedfreak]

Oh and I thought that there was some kind of "collision detector" (wrong wording?) but I constantly witness players "ghosting" through other players.

[puffascruffowitz]

With precisely zero knowledge of the ME if you start your tactic as bare bones and then pay attention to the full games and match analysis you will be successful. The people who complain seem to want to plug in a 4-2-3-1 at a PL team and randomly assign 8 TI's to how they "think" they should play, then think they should win the league going away.

[westy8chimp]

hmmm ... I was top of the league with derby season 1 and lost my last 3 games to come second.

how late are you into the season? I put mine down to the fact I handled the team meeting poorly (more so that my players responded negatively to my perfectly reasonable choice of the 4 options of things to say... ). and have now vowed not to hold a team meeting when given the opportunity. (which I vowed before and forgot..)

I also discard the conspiracy based on the number of times I do win the league. it was no trouble in my arsenal or spurs Beta.

can you find a common denominator in your theory under what circumstance you believe they would or would not allow it? i.e. if it was the games choice... it would have to be coded in ... so you should be able to say "every time these criteria are met... this happens"

 

[Svenc]

22 minutes ago, frustratedfreak said:

In this instance i'll describe my last 3 away games.

I've had a total of 69 shots, 22 long shots, 8 woodwork hits, 8 ccc's and 9 half chances.

The AI have had a total of 26 shots, 12 long shots, 2 woodwork hits, 2 ccc's and 4 half chances.

I lost 1 and drew 2, meanwhile Man Utd are knocking 6 goals past their opponents whilst creating only a single half chance(no ccc's). We are "supposedly" fighting it out at the top of the table, I might win the league I might not, but if I do or not will not be decided on the pitch, but on whether I will be "allowed" to by the game or not.

Its as simple as that.

Placing a couple quids that this is your matches.

 

 

These are mine, and yes, I'm Leicester.

Still we might agree that's only a couple matches. So looking at the overall picture, that was an overall shot conversion over months of 17% (team reports), way more than any AI (certainly the worst, which are always at like 5% of their total shots). You're likely looking for some confirmation of something here that you won't find. Not out of defending of the game. But because you'll find players here that better AI teams regularly. I know and I want them improved (which is a criticism). In fact, if this is a re-occuring theme rather than but a couple matches, I'm predicting you are stumbling over what you perceive would be "artifically" difficulty. Which is the simple ploys of defensive AI teams  sitting men behind the ball.  Additionally, you claim how things where so obvious from watching and quote CCCs and half chances. If you ever did, you would know that these stats are little reliable (which I find bad also). A breakdown of which shots were from open play or which from set pieces, in other words did a side actually stretch an oppnoent much, would arguably be much more reliable.

[frustratedfreak]

2 minutes ago, westy8chimp said:

hmmm ... I was top of the league with derby season 1 and lost my last 3 games to come second.

how late are you into the season? I put mine down to the fact I handled the team meeting poorly (more so that my players responded negatively to my perfectly reasonable choice of the 4 options of things to say... ). and have now vowed not to hold a team meeting when given the opportunity. (which I vowed before and forgot..)

I also discard the conspiracy based on the number of times I do win the league. it was no trouble in my arsenal or spurs Beta.

can you find a common denominator in your theory under what circumstance you believe they would or would not allow it? i.e. if it was the games choice... it would have to be coded in ... so you should be able to say "every time these criteria are met... this happens"

 

Are you referring to me?

If so, all the game is doing is trying to remain competitive, that means that you will win/lose certain competitions just so that the appearance of competitiveness is kept.

How far will it go to keep this up? Well a few FM's ago I was top of the table with one game to go and needed only one point in my final game to clinch the title. With the score tied at 1-1 and with the last kick of the game my keeper(who had the ball in his hands) inexplicably turned to face his own goal and kicked the ball into his own net.

Now you won't see that kind of thing anymore in FM, its still there but its now hidden slightly better than it was.

That's FM and that's what it does.

[themadsheep2001]

2 minutes ago, frustratedfreak said:

Are you referring to me?

If so, all the game is doing is trying to remain competitive, that means that you will win/lose certain competitions just so that the appearance of competitiveness is kept.

How far will it go to keep this up? Well a few FM's ago I was top of the table with one game to go and needed only one point in my final game to clinch the title. With the score tied at 1-1 and with the last kick of the game my keeper(who had the ball in his hands) inexplicably turned to face his own goal and kicked the ball into his own net.

Now you won't see that kind of thing anymore in FM, its still there but its now hidden slightly better than it was.

That's FM and that's what it does.

It's never done this ever. Closing this thread as it's descending into the exact nonsense we've talked about