[Discussion] Mentality Should Be Removed from the Tactic Creator

[mister.cool40]

[[ Hello everyone. I don't know if this has been proposed before . As I feel SI has been trying to going in a more organic direction this falls in line with that vision.  Also It's only my personal opinion and I could be wrong  and I don't mean SI any disrespect. Hoping to have a good discussion before (or ever) admins lock this thread after reviewing. I am not a native English speaker so I apologise for any potential grammar mistake ]]

For me selection of roles and duties, passing options, tempo, pressing height and intensity etc. in the current tactic creator menu should be enough to dictate what mentality I am playing with. Say, If I am playing a 433 with two overlapping wingbacks, counter press and very high DL and LOE with max pressing intensity; shouldn't it be enough to indicate that my mentality is very attacking? Even IRL if I say any team is doing these things, it would be crystal clear to anyone that this team is playing very high risk football. But in FM, you could put a very defensive mentality with these instructions; which doesn't make any sense. 

Yes you can create a very very very specific type of football with these weird mentality and TI+Roles and Duties combos. But for me this is just abusing the M.E. This is not an organic way to create a tactic and no real manager would ask his team to park the bus with overlapping fullbacks and ultra high DL.

The biggest problem is the current mentality system doesn't go hand in hand with the rest of the tactic creator. There is a lot of vagueness which only confuses the player. In very defensive mentality description it is written that, "unlike the defensive mentality it is not looking to score on the counter attack...".  Now you can play a very defensive mentality and also select the Counter TI in the transition section. What happens when you selcet both? We don't know! Now people could experiment with these two instructions together to see what happens. But I believe the majority of players don't have the patience to do these experiments with all these combos. And more importantly, the majority don't have the EYE to understand what is happening because of which instructions. I have played for nearly 5 years and sadly I am not even close to developing the EYE. Now Imagine playing very defensive would automatically prevent you from selecting counter TI. You would clearly understand what very defensive mentaliy means and how these combine with each other. Similarly the attcking mentality description reads "....by employing a fast tempo and more direct passing....." but you can employ a much shorter passing and much lower tempo in the in possession section while still having the attacking mentality.

Now I am aware that it has been said many times in the forum that mentality description doesn't mean anything and mentality just means Risk. But when you are setting your DL much higher it already means high risk. The passing risk can also be set by TIs or individual PIs. As for positional and forward movement risks, when you are selecting WB(attack) instead of no nonsense full back(defend) it already means high positional risk and more forward runs. The point is, all the risk management can be done by TIs and PIs. So, why is there need for mentality which unnecessarily complicates things? 

Now one thing mentality does usefully is that it can increase or decrease the individual mentality of the whole squad at the same time. Is this convenient ? Surely, yes. In real life too a manager might ask his team to be more attcking or defensive. But surely no real team can switch between 7 different levels of mentality. So, for me, the current mentality system is not at all organic and not a representation of real life coaching. If mentality is removed, the game can be played in an organic way. Scrapping mentality option by just simply puttin it under the hood might just increase the confusion among players and leave them with less options overall. The TIs and roles/duties/PIs might have to be properly augmented to handle the mentality all by themselves. 

Edited July 26, 2021 by mister.cool40

[engamohd]

I like this!

I feel mentality is a bit out dated from the times of the old sliders system. I can imagine that the Team Mentality and Team Fluidity are part of the Match Engine which is being developed incrementally over the years, and is hard to drop,  but in my opinion, I believe the time to evolve and liberate from it has come.

I believe the only real use at the moment for the mentality is risk taking, everything else can be set by the TIs and PIs. If there is a way to decouple mentality effects from the rest of the tactic, this would be a great step forward.

I think this could be achieved by scrapping the mentality completely and replacing it with the following:

1. Improving Passing Risks and Off the Ball Runs Risk TIs and PIs. This would give us the ability to make the team take more risks on and off the ball without the need for any nebulous mentality concepts. I am aware that "More Direct Passing", "Take More Risks", "Pass into Space" and "Get Further Forward" instructions does increase risk taking, but it is coupled with Mentality. Any one of these instructions is interpreted in an Attacking mentality differently than Defensive mentality. Allowing these instructions to function independently within a dedicated spectrum (such as the passing slider or the pressing slider) will give us much more ability to create specific playing styles without using mentality. 

2. Allow all tactics to begin in an absolute clean slate, no default settings based on mentality. Everything is set at the standard middle defaults. Our TIs and PIs will be then interpreted absolutely, not relatively. This would be a more realistic interpretation, and is MUCH easier to anticipate the effects of my instructions. A 2 notch up direct passing instruction should mean the same to any team, not be construed differently in the context of Mentality.

These changes will make implementing style like a deep quick transitioning side (similar to Jose's Real Madrid) more intuitive.

However, I am aware this is very difficult to achieve and probably is not going to be considered seriously. Therefore, a more conservative improvement would be as follows:

1. Limit the effects of mentality to on and off the ball risks only. Things like width, compactness, defensive line, pressing, tempo etc. should NOT be changed by mentality. I may want to play a high risk football and defend in a deep block, doing so by going on an Attacking mentality would have lots of unwanted effects, while Defensive will not see us be sufficiently forward thinking. Removing the rest of the mentality effects (other than risk taking) will allow us to adjust everything from the TC and will make the player anticipate any changes he makes more accurately. Why should I play two attacking duties strikers on a defensive mentality to compensate for lack of risk taking, while I go with a support and attack duties on a more attacking mentality, if I want to achieve the same play from both strikers? I believe everything in the TC (TIs, PIs, Roles and Duties) should be absolute and not relative to mentality.

2. Update the description of mentality to EXACTLY describe what mentality is affecting.

3. Update the PIs and TIs related to risk taking so that it indicates the level of risk taking. At the moment, we do not know the frequency of forward runs, or is the player playing risky or not. 

4. Place some distinction between Direct Passing, Tempo, Pass into Space and Take More Risks PI. All these instructions affect passing in someway, but it is not intuitively clear what each of them do.

I happy to elaborate further and would really love to see the ME take a giant leap forward.

Edited July 29, 2021 by engamohd

[Erratic Aspie]

On 29/07/2021 at 12:41, engamohd said:

I like this!

I feel mentality is a bit out dated from the times of the old sliders system. I can imagine that the Team Mentality and Team Fluidity are part of the Match Engine which is being developed incrementally over the years, and is hard to drop,  but in my opinion, I believe the time to evolve and liberate from it has come.

I believe the only real use at the moment for the mentality is risk taking, everything else can be set by the TIs and PIs. If there is a way to decouple mentality effects from the rest of the tactic, this would be a great step forward.

I think this could be achieved by scrapping the mentality completely and replacing it with the following:

1. Improving Passing Risks and Off the Ball Runs Risk TIs and PIs. This would give us the ability to make the team take more risks on and off the ball without the need for any nebulous mentality concepts. I am aware that "More Direct Passing", "Take More Risks", "Pass into Space" and "Get Further Forward" instructions does increase risk taking, but it is coupled with Mentality. Any one of these instructions is interpreted in an Attacking mentality differently than Defensive mentality. Allowing these instructions to function independently within a dedicated spectrum (such as the passing slider or the pressing slider) will give us much more ability to create specific playing styles without using mentality. 

2. Allow all tactics to begin in an absolute clean slate, no default settings based on mentality. Everything is set at the standard middle defaults. Our TIs and PIs will be then interpreted absolutely, not relatively. This would be a more realistic interpretation, and is MUCH easier to anticipate the effects of my instructions. A 2 notch up direct passing instruction should mean the same to any team, not be construed differently in the context of Mentality.

These changes will make implementing style like a deep quick transitioning side (similar to Jose's Real Madrid) more intuitive.

However, I am aware this is very difficult to achieve and probably is not going to be considered seriously. Therefore, a more conservative improvement would be as follows:

1. Limit the effects of mentality to on and off the ball risks only. Things like width, compactness, defensive line, pressing, tempo etc. should NOT be changed by mentality. I may want to play a high risk football and defend in a deep block, doing so by going on an Attacking mentality would have lots of unwanted effects, while Defensive will not see us be sufficiently forward thinking. Removing the rest of the mentality effects (other than risk taking) will allow us to adjust everything from the TC and will make the player anticipate any changes he makes more accurately. Why should I play two attacking duties strikers on a defensive mentality to compensate for lack of risk taking, while I go with a support and attack duties on a more attacking mentality, if I want to achieve the same play from both strikers? I believe everything in the TC (TIs, PIs, Roles and Duties) should be absolute and not relative to mentality.

2. Update the description of mentality to EXACTLY describe what mentality is affecting.

3. Update the PIs and TIs related to risk taking so that it indicates the level of risk taking. At the moment, we do not know the frequency of forward runs, or is the player playing risky or not. 

4. Place some distinction between Direct Passing, Tempo, Pass into Space and Take More Risks PI. All these instructions affect passing in someway, but it is not intuitively clear what each of them do.

I happy to elaborate further and would really love to see the ME take a giant leap forward.

I am very happy to see a thread where this kind of stuff is being discussed.  Completely agree that mentality is a relic of the old system,  and ought to be replaced as soon as possible by better refinement and specification of exactly what the relevant TIs and PIs do (while I understand and sympathize with the conservative demand and think it would be a considerable improvement on the status quo),  I think we really need to get rid of it completely (or at least making a solely descriptive term with no actual effect).  Creating an absolute scale is vital.   I also think it is crucial to,  as you make clear, specify what many of the passing and creative freedom TI and PIs do.  I am in the process of writing a suggestion/series of suggestions to SI about some of these,  because it seems to me that something like Pass into Space, (this is just one example I note in the post I intend to make)  which has a superficially clear meaning,  is in fact substantively ambiguous (in my view, between passing in front of a player,  making an increased number of through balls,  or passing to players whom are in space,  rather than marked-or indeed,  none of these, or some combination of the three).  The game,  if nothing else,  needs to be more specific about what the instruction does (obviously,  I appreciate that in the context of any given set of tactical instructions,  the instruction will manifest differently).  It also may need to add the team instruction,  for example,  to look to play through balls,  or to look to pass to unmarked players,  if this is not contained within the present instruction.  I think you can say the same kind of things about team instructions like passing directness,  tempo,  creative freedom,  focus play ...,  etc. 

[Kyle Brown]

We have a review of mentality scheduled already, so I've attached your thread to the investigation. Thank you.