[Suggestion] Tactic Creator Improvements

[pheelf]

There are a number of areas in which I feel this area of the game can be improved. I don't know whether any of my proposals have been highlighted before but I'll list them all in bullet point form anyway.

- A generic role that is fully customizable needs to be added to the AMR & AML positions perhaps called the wide attacking midfielder. I feel it's required to get the best out of either footed players who play in those positions while offering an alternative to the prescribed movement of either running wide or cutting inside with the ball. What if you want to have a player that does both over the course of a game? What if you want a player that doesn't stay wide or sit narrower all the time?

- The Move Into Channels instruction needs to be removed from the majority of the striker roles. As it stands the only roles without this instruction are the Poacher, Pressing Forward (Support), Target Man and F9 which makes it very difficult to have a two-man strike partnership where both are creative type players (a DLF(S) and AF(A) for example). Making the Deep Lying Forward (Support) have this tendency goes against the whole purpose of playing the role. While his job is to operate in the horizontal channels like an attacking midfielder when off the ball his job isn't to run wide into the vertical channels. Perhaps the two different channels can be split into two different instructions which would help in defining the roles more clearly. The instructions should be kept entirely optional with the exception of some roles which are expected to have that sort of movement.

For e.g. Move Into Horizontal Channels could be hard-coded for the DLF(S) and F9(S) which would make the roles more transparent and clear without the need for long-winded descriptions.

Move Into Vertical Channels could be hard-coded for the Advanced Forward although even then one could argue that an Advanced Forward doesn't always look to run into those channels.

Both Move Into Vertical Channels and Move Into Horizontal Channels could be hardcoded for roles which are expected to roam a lot such as the Trequartista and Complete Forward. 

- A drop deeper instruction option needs to be added to all midfielder and striker roles with the support or defend duty to go along with the Get Further Forward instruction which is hardcoded for all attack duty roles. At the moment the only way to get a player to drop deep when off the ball is to pick certain specialized roles such as the F9 or HB or have a player with the PPM of Comes Deep To Get The Ball. What if you want a central midfielder (defend) to drop deep to collect the ball from your defenders in order to Play Out of Defence?

- Things need to be made more transparent and the effect of making changes needs to be made more explicit. For example, the impact of changing mentality should be shown more clearly in terms of the impact it has on individual mentalities, team instructions and player instructions. A start has been made with showing where PPMs conflict with player instructions but it needs to be done more. All of this 'under the hood' stuff needs to be phased out as it becomes impossible for the player to keep track of precisely what they are telling their players to do. 

- An isometric pitch view in the tactics creator and a gradual transition towards a 3D representation. A picture is worth a thousand words and that is what should be the aim of this area of the game. By providing a good visual representation the player can then be confident in knowing exactly how they have set their team up to play before a ball is kicked. As it stands you have to watch matches in the ME which isn't ideal. How do you determine genuine tactical issues by doing this? It's possible but difficult which it really shouldn't be.

- The UI needs to be made more efficient and it shouldn't take as many clicks to navigate as it currently does.

For e.g. clicking on a position should bring up a panel where you can alter the player instructions.      

- The impact of using certain team instructions on other team instructions needs to be made clear.

For e.g. Giving the instruction Shorter Passing has an impact on width but this is hardly visible or that selecting Look For Overlap decreases the mentality of the advanced wide players. There need to be clearer indications of situations in which team instructions are conflicting also.

- Eventually, there has to be a split for the formations during different phases of the game. Moves have been made towards this with the splitting of team instructions and this would be the next logical step.

- All the bars in the game need to have graduated marks or better still colour code them and have a tooltip when you hover over them which gives a number for where it is on the scale. 

- The language needs to be made more user-friendly as it can be rather obscure and difficult to understand especially when you don't have a good point of reference for where you are starting.

For e.g. rather than having the tempo defined as it is, it could be changed to the following:

Much Lower Tempo - Slow

Lower Tempo - Patient

Standard Tempo - Normal

Higher Tempo - Elevated

Much Higher Tempo - Fast

In that way, there could be no confusion for situations where a player decides to play the attacking mentality and adds a higher tempo TI. As it stands the player can only guess as to what that means, does that mean having a tempo like that given by the very attacking mentality or is higher or lower? This clears away a lot of the ambiguity, fast is fast regardless of how you interpret it. This can be applied to all the different aspects of the game such as width, defensive line and passing.

- Get rid of any representation of shape in the game if it no longer serves any purpose.

- Bring back the ability to have players swap positions.

- Give the ability to have a number of set-piece routines which the team can cycle through during a game without having to manually go into the set-piece creator every time to change it.

- Having a captain indicator on the formation would be a nice touch.

I have more ideas but I think that will suffice for now.

Best Regards

Edited May 29, 2019 by pheelf

[Hovis Dexter]

Excellent post. Just two very minor comments: All the players, apart from the back four can still swap positions. As a work around I add an asterisk to my captain's short name and two asterisks to the vice captain's name.

[pheelf]

42 minutes ago, Hovis Dexter said:

Excellent post. Just two very minor comments: All the players, apart from the back four can still swap positions. As a work around I add an asterisk to my captain's short name and two asterisks to the vice captain's name.

Thanks for the comment. You're right, I thought the option to swap positions had been taken out but it seems to just have been moved. I see now that you have to click the player tab and then click on a position in the formation in order to access it then select a position from the dropdown menu at the bottom.

In my view, it is that very thing which makes the UI so unneccesarily clunky to use. Why can't I just click a player in the formation from the overview screen and access everything about that position and player? Something which could be done in the way I suggest would take only 3 clicks (Player in the formation -> Swap Positions Tab -> Position you want to swap) instead takes 4 clicks (Player tab -> Player in the formation -> Swap Positions Tab -> Position you want to swap) for no particular reason.

There's also a lot of wasted space in the UI which could be utilized better with some other aspects moved to another page. For e.g., Why is the recent matches analysis positives and negatives on the overview screen? Why does there need to be 'Change' written under each set of instructions?

Why does there need to be a repeat of the same information on the overview page? The formation shows the position, roles and duties of the players along with the role suitability. Why is that information then repeated again on the player selection panel on the right? The columns providing this information can be removed but you still can't reduce the size of the panel as it takes up a minimum of 50% of the space regardless.

I think I'll try what you suggested as a workaround for the captain issue.

Cheers

[Kyle Brown]

Reviewed so locked.