So I noticed the weirdest "bug" or coincidence in my game.

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

I'm playing FM19, fourth tier English football.

I am trying save scumming to figure out what different tactics do, forcing myself to beat every opponent before I could move on. I thought this would be helpful in understanding tactics, learning what worked, but I instead stumbled across a whole other conspiracy theory.

See, what I always do before save scumming is literally saving right before the "start match" button to save time. Sometimes, because I'm dumb, I forget to change up my tactics and instinctively click the button, starting the game right after a fresh load.

Now, this causes me to play multiple matches where I've changed nothing, so you would expect the result to be roughly the same. No.

I've realised that each time I save scum, the game is DRAMATICALLY different. At first, I thought it was my minor tweaks at the start and during the game, but later, I tried letting the game run with absolutely zero inputs. Just go in, same people, same positions, same opponent. Boom. The results are crazy.

So, usually, the first game I play, the result is a dull 1-0, 2-0, with me losing.

But for whatever reason, the save scummed second game is always a thriller. 4-4, 5-5, 4-1, 4-2, you know, numbers I've never attained. And these consistently happen whenever I save scum and decide to do nothing, AND only the second game (no patterns from the third onwards).

This seems highly improbable and yet at the same time, after doing this for about ten games, I thought to myself — f*** me, this is a mother of a coincidence.

So, to sum up with a more general question — how big is luck in this game? I feel like I'm absolutely powerless after witnessing all these wack matches where I sit on my ass and wait. I just need to get the dice roll right, and it just so happens the second game is always my rabbit's foot.

Edited March 19, 2020 by LetsNotScoreAnyGoalsCosThatsHowWeCanWin

[Mitchutd]

7 hours ago, LetsNotScoreAnyGoalsCosThatsHowWeCanWin said:

So, to sum up with a more general question — how big is luck in this game? I feel like I'm absolutely powerless after witnessing all these wack matches where I sit on my ass and wait. I just need to get the dice roll right, and it just so happens the second game is always my rabbit's foot.

As much as in real life. Sometimes things just don't go your way, and others everything just aligns and you get a big score. Look at the Premier League, only one team has ever gone undefeated.. but there's been some amazing teams who just on their day lost to teams who were below them.

Using your dice analogy. If your teams are evenly matched... both role a die... you're more likely to get an even game... and the rare result of 6-1. But more likely there will be one goal in it either way.

As your team improves relative to your opponent, you may have 2d6 versus 1d6.... this means your scores vary from 12-1 to 2-6.... so the chances of losing lessen but are still there. But even if your team is so much better... 4 dices v 1 die in this one... the 1 die team can ONLY win if the first 4 dices roll 4 or 5... BUT there is a small chance. 2/24.... 1/12... so while it's near impossible for the team to win... if the stars align and all the luck goes this way... there's a chance.

TLDR; Long weird analogy short, Luck will always play a part, but improve your team relative to your opponents and may the odds be ever be in your favour.

[LetsNotScoreGoals]

9 hours ago, Mitchutd said:

As much as in real life. Sometimes things just don't go your way, and others everything just aligns and you get a big score. Look at the Premier League, only one team has ever gone undefeated.. but there's been some amazing teams who just on their day lost to teams who were below them.

Using your dice analogy. If your teams are evenly matched... both role a die... you're more likely to get an even game... and the rare result of 6-1. But more likely there will be one goal in it either way.

As your team improves relative to your opponent, you may have 2d6 versus 1d6.... this means your scores vary from 12-1 to 2-6.... so the chances of losing lessen but are still there. But even if your team is so much better... 4 dices v 1 die in this one... the 1 die team can ONLY win if the first 4 dices roll 4 or 5... BUT there is a small chance. 2/24.... 1/12... so while it's near impossible for the team to win... if the stars align and all the luck goes this way... there's a chance.

TLDR; Long weird analogy short, Luck will always play a part, but improve your team relative to your opponents and may the odds be ever be in your favour.

I get the odds thing, but yeah it sucks when you have 2d6 and your player decides to be a ****** and gets a red card or gets injured twenty minutes in and no matter how great your plans were it all falls apart from there.

I do home it is as fair a die as possible and it's not "rigged" to automatically roll the dice against you if you were doing too well, or just to spice things up

[Spurs08]

2 hours ago, LetsNotScoreAnyGoalsCosThatsHowWeCanWin said:

I get the odds thing, but yeah it sucks when you have 2d6 and your player decides to be a ****** and gets a red card or gets injured twenty minutes in and no matter how great your plans were it all falls apart from there.

I do home it is as fair a die as possible and it's not "rigged" to automatically roll the dice against you if you were doing too well, or just to spice things up

It definitely is fair. People achieve stupidly unrealistic things on this game - it's not impossible to take a crap non-league outfit with nothing going for them straight up to the Prem in consecutive seasons, and eventually to make them the best team in the world. It's perfectly possible to do far 'too well'

[XaW]

58 minutes ago, Spurs08 said:

It definitely is fair. People achieve stupidly unrealistic things on this game - it's not impossible to take a crap non-league outfit with nothing going for them straight up to the Prem in consecutive seasons, and eventually to make them the best team in the world. It's perfectly possible to do far 'too well'

Yeah, in last years version I won both CL and PL with Kettering without buying any player at all, ONLY getting players through my youth intake since the start of the game. FM20 is a bit harder, since I haven't been able to do it here yet, but working on an Icelandic CL trophy with youth only now... 

[Piperita]

I did the experiment last year. Played every single (league) game a whole lot until I saw some patterns emerging (sometimes 50 times per game, all in all over a hundred hours just repeating games) 

There are always some weird results happening and games where the dice fell particularly (un)lucky. I guess some bigger part are the hidden stats of the players (consistency/big game/pressure) and on a somewhat lesser note the general mentals.

Sometimes players just have an off day where nothing works. Sometimes these players drag mentally weaker teammates down because this weak point crashes the entire setup and everything collapses. Sometimes a losing team scores a lucky shot from the midfield and suddenly fortunes make a 180. Sometimes injuries or cards derail the current run. 

These are factors that are hard to calculate, especially if the players are left on their own to handle these issues. The players are down and by being down they open up even more windows to be punished from.

Real pattern only come from repetition, repetion, repetition.

I can say my Pauli team completely obliterated Leipzig by playing an excellent counter against the better team. I did have the right tactics but only because Leipzig was overconfident, I had selected a special team and took good care to ground my boys. When I reran the match, I was on average competitive, yes, but a far cry from the glorious victory I was celebrating before. And when I magically tampered with my teams big game focus, my strikers missed their shots and my defenders were getting more nervous, resulting in quite a few tragic results. 

Meanwhile my Hoffenheim side was completely dominating Bayern in another save. In the 23 games I played I should have win 17 of those with all the good chances I had and all the domination of the entire pitch. But in those matches I conceded 27 goals from my goalkeeper losing his cool and passing to the opposition, holding the ball to long or not properly controlling passes to him. 

Easy to say the tactic worked but my players were not fit, right? Nope, so much buildup went through my keeper that errors were bound to happen with him as the weak point. When I played the season itself with a godlike keeper, he was a bit better but still had uncharactristic moments of derp. When I ordered him to play it safer, this system had other weak areas. 

But every once in a while everything worked and I won very convincingly 5-0 and it felt amazing. Yet the weak areas cost me plenty of matches that could have gone this way because the opposition enforced mistakes. And some games little happened because only my offense derped or too much happened because the defense was off and the strikers worked, resulting jn these frustrating matches where I score 4 from the game from beautiful combinations but a penalty, two own goals and a mistake cost me the win.