FM 21 feels scripted

[kenpet]

I'm not talking about conceding goals in the 90th minute or that my team suddenly can't win. It just feels scripted overall.

My team have been fighting for promotion 3 years in a row. 

1st season: The team who promoted did it with only 58 points (we ended 5th with 53 points). Fair enough, we weren't ready for promotion.
2nd season: The team who promoted did it with only 52 points. We ended 3rd with 51 points after losing our last game. Seemed my players didn't even care about securing promotion against a team who had nothing to play for.
3rd season: We had a great season. 19 wins, 7 draws and 4 losses. We got 64 points which normally would be more than enough for promotion. But this time it wasn't enough. We ended 3rd and lost the Play Offs. We could secure promotion on the last day if we won by 2 goals more than the team who was above us on the table. We won 4-0 on our last game, but the other team somehow won their game 6-0 (their biggest win before that game was 3-0).

I also feel whenever we win, the teams around me on the table also wins. And when they lose or draw, I have a strong feeling we won't win our game either. And I'm mostly right.

Last season a team got promotion with only 53 points, but we can't even get promotion with 64 points. Football is so unfair.

Does anyone else feel the same? Maybe I'm just really unlucky. This is the first FM I really feel the game is kinda scripted to make the game feel more exciting. It would be boring to win promotion by 15 points, so I like the excitement to fight 3 other teams for the last promotion spot. So I'm not angry or anything. This is just what I feel about this game.

 

 

[XaW]

It's not. There are several other threads about this, and the devs themselves have answered that the game does not know if a team is managed by a human or an AI.

[XaW]

Look here for more info:

 

[majesticeternity]

It can seem that way, but there are a lot of people out there who reload saves to get a better or different result. If FM was scripted, you wouldn’t be able to do that so easily. 
 

and there are countless stories on these forums that show all the different results that can happen, how much they vary.

[santy001]

The question is always the same. Who benefits from the game being scripted against players?

I can understand why people would go there in a game laced with microtransactions, but most single player games even in those situations don't script the game against you but rather put in enormous grinds. 

It pretty much only tends to be RTS/Grand strategy games where the game is scripted against you, on its harder difficulties, to provide the challenge of the game. 

[Weasek]

Well I for one when I first started playing the game I reloaded some games to learn about the tactics and try some things out.something I haven't done since as I started some proper long term saves but it did help learning&understanding the game.you can certainly get completely different results of the same game.

Edited February 20, 2021 by Weasek

[AurioDK]

15 hours ago, kenpet said:

I'm not talking about conceding goals in the 90th minute or that my team suddenly can't win. It just feels scripted overall.

My team have been fighting for promotion 3 years in a row. 

1st season: The team who promoted did it with only 58 points (we ended 5th with 53 points). Fair enough, we weren't ready for promotion.
2nd season: The team who promoted did it with only 52 points. We ended 3rd with 51 points after losing our last game. Seemed my players didn't even care about securing promotion against a team who had nothing to play for.
3rd season: We had a great season. 19 wins, 7 draws and 4 losses. We got 64 points which normally would be more than enough for promotion. But this time it wasn't enough. We ended 3rd and lost the Play Offs. We could secure promotion on the last day if we won by 2 goals more than the team who was above us on the table. We won 4-0 on our last game, but the other team somehow won their game 6-0 (their biggest win before that game was 3-0).

I also feel whenever we win, the teams around me on the table also wins. And when they lose or draw, I have a strong feeling we won't win our game either. And I'm mostly right.

Last season a team got promotion with only 53 points, but we can't even get promotion with 64 points. Football is so unfair.

Does anyone else feel the same? Maybe I'm just really unlucky. This is the first FM I really feel the game is kinda scripted to make the game feel more exciting. It would be boring to win promotion by 15 points, so I like the excitement to fight 3 other teams for the last promotion spot. So I'm not angry or anything. This is just what I feel about this game.

 

 

 

My last two seasons have seen my direct opponents lose/draw at the exact same date I lost points, that´s 12 matches in total so I do understand your suspicion. I feel it happens until I either just run away from the pursuit or it keeps going til the end of the season. The chance of this happening is smaller than winning in the lottery. SI says no and apart from creating artificial excitement in the league it would very suspicious and a lot of people would complain.

[Outrospective]

On 20/02/2021 at 21:25, XaW said:

Look here for more info:

Neil's response actually sheds some light on several things I didn't understand. I recently created a topic about feeling of the game being pre-determined scenarios which didn't got many responses, but the sole user answering me had a lot of good points. Nei's response nearly confirms most of the assumptions made in that thread.

23 hours ago, santy001 said:

The question is always the same. Who benefits from the game being scripted against players?

I can understand why people would go there in a game laced with microtransactions, but most single player games even in those situations don't script the game against you but rather put in enormous grinds. 

It pretty much only tends to be RTS/Grand strategy games where the game is scripted against you, on its harder difficulties, to provide the challenge of the game. 

Actually, you almost answered your question yourself. The scripted game can be benefical for developers as it creates another hook for the player who obviously likes to win. I wouldn't believe if any FM player say that he had never had a feeling, that "one more match until I win", leading him to play an hour more. Also, always winning is boring, so by losing the player will retain their interest to the game.

I don't say that works that way, I merely hint on the possible perspective on the matter.

 

Although I have a feeling, that sometimes the game chooses a certain club in the beginning of the season, whuch will be your main rival in its course. This club will extremely rarely lose points, it will be nearly unbeatable in head to head matches, it will create the competition in course of the whole game. Although I should admit I've yet to see this in FM21, but it was painfully obvious in FM20 in my journeyman save which led me to Celtic. First season I easily win the SPL with 20 points gap from the 2nd place. The 2nd season Gers win the SPL with one point gap from me, and the 3rd place comes with like 30 points below. 3rd season, Gers are one point below me, and the 3rd place is 30 points below once again, the 4th and 5th seasons Hibernian and hearts are finishing 2nd with 3 points gap respectively and Gers come 3rd with 20 points gap from the 2nd place.

If that's not the game boosting one team to add some pressure to otherwise boring competition which essentially is SPL when you play for Celtic, I don't know.

[Finners]

IF FIFA Ultimate Team (which, lets be honest, is where all this paranoia is spilling over from) has scripting then it's purpose is to cynically stall your progress in order to get you to make further microtransactions to buy more packs to get more coins to buy better players.

As soon as you buy Football Manager, SIG have your money. From that point on they make nothing more out of you until next year when you buy it again. What possible incentive is there to make a game that frustrates you and holds you back?

[zindrinho]

The game isn't scripted, it's just people not learning from their mistakes.

If you keep letting in late equalizers, and you keep doing/not doing the same thing to stop it game after game, no wonder it feels scripted or pre-determined.

[Britrock]

The confirmation bias in this thread is pretty strong. Just because something unlikely happened to you doesn't mean the game is scripted. Unlikely is not impossible, and therefore is actually possible and could happen to you, me or anyone playing the game at any time. 

[Daveincid]

First of all, the game isn't scripted, but it allows the user, depending on the choosen settings, to make it easier or harder.

1. Usually the AI learns how you play, so if you use the same tactic over several years, it will loose power. 

2. A single game can change so much! Loosing a cup-game vs a underdog: morale is down and you will have problems the upcoming games. Same for the AI-Team. On the other side, a unexpected win can boost morale and you are able to start a win-series, same to the AI.

3. Look at my save with Basel: My team was quite overconfident (arrogant) after the Game vs Mura...boom I lost one of the most important games of the season against Glimt. The upcoming games was painfull to manage and the results where bad. After that i started my winning-series Some games where so close with goals in additional time for a late 1:0 victory, so I was pretty lucky! I have seen the same behaviour for AI-Teams. I really don't feel there is anything scripted at all. 

 

4. An important point I always tell people when it comes to overachievment, especially in the Champions League: If you don't set the competition to full detail, and load the other leagues of your opponent, this team will be much less powerful against you, so you are able to make it easier to be successfull  

Cheers

Daveincid

[RedJonnyBoy]

This game isn't scripted, but if it was, it feels like it's scripted to favour the human player. All you need is realise quickly what tactic works best for your team and its almost impossible not to have success.

I've just started a new save with Brentford and managed to go all season losing only 3 games with minimal signings. 

You should look at stats at the end of the season. Seemingly every season I play with whatever team I manage, I end up scoring more than my xG and AI teams score less than their xG when they play me. I can't be the only person this happens to.

Reading this back, it sounds like I'm blowing my own trumpet so to speak but honestly this year's game feels like the easiest one in a very long time.