Pace is King - How to overachieve by using pace merchants

[lied90]

Index
Original test/post (you are here already)
Test with adjusted attributes to prove it's not the tactic
Test with preset gegenpress
Season 2 test - does it work long term?
Adama Traore - The GOAT

It's the summer transfer window

You analyze your squad, filter out unwanted players, look at scout reports to find the player that perfectly fits your tactic. Defenders so smart that they can predict everything the opposition does, DMs with perfect positioning and passing, creative wide players with lots of flair, strikers who can smell a goal from miles away. Your players have high decision making, they are composed, have excellent technique, the vision of an eagle etc. You have used very tool at your disposal, compared the players, asked scouts, used the squad planner, analyzed every strength and flaw in your team, created a tactic that fits your players so well you can't even believe it yourself. Finally, all your hard work and several hours spent do get ready for the new season is about to bear fruits!

 

How I do it:
Goes to player search
*Filter by pace*
*Buys all the fasted players*
Finished

 

Testing:

I took over Nottingham Forest and removed all their players. I replaced them with players with high acceleration and pace, and added jumping reach on CBs. All players had 100-115 current ability at the start of the season.

We now have the lowest average of every single mental and technical attribute in FM (except long throws). Common sense would imply that we are destined for relegation as our players should simply be no more than championship level players at best

 

Squad comparison:

 

Results:

 

 

 

Edited April 3 by lied90
Edited title

[_mxrky]

Pace is so broken on fm

[lied90]

2 hours ago, _mxrky said:

Pace is so broken on fm

Alternatively, other attributes just doesn't matter enough.

Even in a tactic with high press, high tempo, high lines etc. A bunch of players with the football brain of Ted Lasso should not be able to perform this well, despite their pace.

[Orion_]

Good to see this proved again. Reminds me of an experiment when some guy won Prem with West Ham making all players artificially 1CA/PA and manually selecting their attributes to fit this CA/PA. Those player were also very physical - I even think he played strikerless formation due to strikers consuming a lot of CA for Acc/Pace while for other positions it was not (so he could make players with high physical attributes that were still 1CA).

On the other hand it somehow reflects current football trends where top players are not only good from the technical side of the game but are also exceptional athletes.

[The3points]

I mean it's not really fair is it: Hamilton's driving around on the pitch!

[Black Africa]

13 hours ago, Orion_ said:

Good to see this proved again. Reminds me of an experiment when some guy won Prem with West Ham making all players artificially 1CA/PA and manually selecting their attributes to fit this CA/PA. Those player were also very physical - I even think he played strikerless formation due to strikers consuming a lot of CA for Acc/Pace while for other positions it was not (so he could make players with high physical attributes that were still 1CA).

On the other hand it somehow reflects current football trends where top players are not only good from the technical side of the game but are also exceptional athletes.

 

 

[lied90]

The thread was moved.

I don't agree with it as it's not a challenge or experiment. I just ran a test season to show what I alreaady know, which is hardly an experiment imo.

Filling a squad with pace and acceleration is a strategy. It's ridiculous and unrealistic, but it is a strategy that is only viable because of how this game works.

 

[santy001]

Well its not really a tactic or training guide either is it? You've framed it as getting CL football with a squad CA of 100-115 - which reads like it'd be an open challenge to others to do the same. Or an experiment to see where the line is for the worst headline CA squad you can get to qualify.

Is it a good approach to play what has largely kind of become one of this years meta tactical approaches with a lower reputation team within that competition? Absolutely. Is it really a solid, long term, tactical approach and squad approach on which you can rely. Well you haven't demonstrated that.

[Johnny Ace]

5 minutes ago, lied90 said:

I don't agree with it as it's not a challenge or experiment. I just ran a test season to show what I alreaady know, which is hardly an experiment imo.

It's an experiment @lied90 that's why I moved it, it's got very little to do with tactics so it didn't fit in there 

[lied90]

 

22 minutes ago, santy001 said:

Well its not really a tactic or training guide either is it? You've framed it as getting CL football with a squad CA of 100-115 - which reads like it'd be an open challenge to others to do the same. Or an experiment to see where the line is for the worst headline CA squad you can get to qualify.

Is it a good approach to play what has largely kind of become one of this years meta tactical approaches with a lower reputation team within that competition? Absolutely. Is it really a solid, long term, tactical approach and squad approach on which you can rely. Well you haven't demonstrated that.

I understand the confusion. It's not meant as a challenge, it's meant as a guide, hence the "How to....."

"A section filled with useful hints and tips on how to get the best of out your Football Manager team, be it tactically, with player development or with any other strategic discussion. "
 

I understood this as broad enough to post my topic there.

People go to the tactics forum to learn about the game, how the game works, how tactics work, how attributes work etc. So for me it looked like the right spot to highlight how easy it is to overachieve by only focusing on pace. FM has been like this for a long time now, and a lot of players are unaware.

[DMaster2]

I would've moved it to the bug report section, since it's completly unrealistic.

[lied90]

 

23 minutes ago, DMaster2 said:

I would've moved it to the bug report section, since it's completly unrealistic.

Unrealistic yes, but not a bug.

[lied90]

I got some replies and simulated another season based on that.

Some said that it might just be the tactic and not the high pace. I subtracted all players by -2 pace/acc. To compensate I have +1 to all other highlighted role attributes. So for a wingback or Volante they lost -4 and gained +16 total attributes, roles with fewer highlighted attributes gained less. This gave the players roughly the same CA as before I subtracted pace/acc. It could have been done more accurately I'm sure, but I don't have the patience for it, and didn't get any better suggestions so I had to be creative.

League table:
 

Still a good results considering how bad the players are. Obviously a lot of randomness in a single season, but I think a gap of 32 points is more than can be contributed to randomness. I removed unhappiness and injuries from both tests.

 

I was also suggested to test the same players with a different tactic, so I'll do that also.

 

[lied90]

As requested, tested with the original players, a 424 preset gegenpress. Set pieces routines are also default, which matters a lot in terms of goals scored/conceded.

Edited May 4, 2023 by lied90

[shirajzl]

Pace, Acceleration, Balance and Agility have been the king in FM for years. And I mean as far back as CM/FM split.

Sure, you can be successful with slow players if you know what you're doing, but a sure fire way for massively overachieving is getting fast players, regardless of league, club, tactics, morale management etc.

[lied90]

4 hours ago, shirajzl said:

Sure, you can be successful with slow players if you know what you're doing, but a sure fire way for massively overachieving is getting fast players, regardless of league, club, tactics, morale management etc.

The last part is what I feel like a lot of players are not unaware of, how important it is regardless of almost any context.

[lied90]

By request, the XG tables of each save test:

 

[lied90]

On 03/05/2023 at 10:54, santy001 said:

Absolutely. Is it really a solid, long term, tactical approach and squad approach on which you can rely. Well you haven't demonstrated that.

I've been thinking about this, how should I go about demonstrating it? Keep qualifying for CL over several seasons with the same types of players?

[lied90]

People told me on other platforms that this wouldn't work in the second season, because clubs would adapt and go in a low block so my pacy players would need attributes like vision, passing etc to get trough the low block.

Also been told by several people that this recruitment policy won't work long term.

I decided to test this by continuing the first test save. I will continue as most managers do, by looking to improve the team, but still recruit based on pace.

So, we are Nottingham Forest in season 2. This is what buying horrible players with lots of pace have achieved so far:

- CL football

- Top 4 finish

- Incredibly good finances, as all our players don't demand high wages.

This means we have 80mill to spend and 800k surplus in wages (pounds).

Recruitment:

The thing is, we can't buy faster players because there are only so many Adama Traores in the world.

To keep it simply we will still buy players with the same pace/acceleration, but have agility and balance as secondary stats. Why? Because Agility and balance is important for running fast in different situations.

Most of the players I bought didn't cost very much or demand high wages, and I intentionally didn't buy the best players available. I did buy some young players because of their pace.

After the transfers are done, we have the lowest average in the league, in the following attributes:

Mentals:
Anticipation, concentration, composure, decisions, leadership, positioning, team work, and vision. We are below average/close to bottom at everything else.

Technicals:
Corners, crossing, dribbling, first touch, free kicks, marking, passing, technique. We are close to bottom on everything else, except long throws.

Physicals:
Nothing, we are top in speed. Above average agility, average jumping reach, below average/close to bottom at everything else.

Average CA is now closer to 130. (except GK, but this is about outfield players)

Team:

Results:

 

Going back to the questions I tried to answer.

Can you have a successful long term career in FM by simply searching for fast players and buying them, despite bad mental and technical attributes?

Yes, no doubt about it. We are on the top of the xG table, despite being on holiday mode, and our team is mostly cheap players combined with young players far from their prime. We also destroyed teams like Barcelona in the CL and had a 19 goal difference in a group with Barca, Juve and Sporting.

Do you need players with passing, vision, technique etc when teams start playing more cautious against you?

Clearly not, as I have no such players and still won most games. I assume there is no doubt that teams would try to adapt after the finish we had last season.

Edited May 5, 2023 by lied90

[lied90]

I made another test save to show how incredibly important pace is.

I swapped Man City's front line with four Adama Traore. 

 

The reason I picked Man City is pretty simple. They are favorites to win everything, and I didn't want people to think that it only works because other teams give us lots of space (like some said about the Forest test).

I reduced injury proneness to 1 and consistency to 15, because I'm on holiday and don't want them to get injured, and I want to test Traore's attributes (not his consistency).

Our Traore dominated the average rating table in the league. Not surprisingly. the only other player in top 5 is our second fastest player, Kyle Walker.

Kinda funny how Kevin Traore, our AMC, with the passing ability of a blind Emile Heskey, is doing so well.

Erling Traore averaged a goal per game, with 10 or less in finishing, anticipation, composure, off the ball, and decisions.

[shirajzl]

On 05/05/2023 at 17:41, lied90 said:

People told me on other platforms that this wouldn't work in the second season, because clubs would adapt and go in a low block so my pacy players would need attributes like vision, passing etc to get trough the low block.

Also been told by several people that this recruitment policy won't work long term.

Tbh I'm surprised to read that, I thought it was common knowledge that Pace/Acceleration/Agility/Balance combo has been overpowered in FM since forever.

Anyone who has played any of FMs for an extensive period could've seen that easily. It's very interesting, for the lack of a better word, to see people disagree.

[lied90]

34 minutes ago, shirajzl said:

Tbh I'm surprised to read that, I thought it was common knowledge that Pace/Acceleration/Agility/Balance combo has been overpowered in FM since forever.

Anyone who has played any of FMs for an extensive period could've seen that easily. It's very interesting, for the lack of a better word, to see people disagree.

I think a lot of people know that pace is important, they just don't understand how important.

They also don't understand that it is important regardless of player position, player role, formation, playstyle etc. 

What I find frustrating is that people come to these and other forums asking for advice about how to get their team to perform, and sometimes the answer could simply be: "ehm maybe get a striker with higher pace and put him as AF". 

 

[herne79]

Nice click bait title.

If we stop and think about this for a while, what this “experiment” actually shows is that there is more than one way of playing the game - which is something to be applauded not berated.

If all someone wants to do is win and not care about how they do it then this type of strategy (amongst others) is perfectly valid.  If, on the other hand, someone else wants to play the game in a more realistic manner that’s perfectly possible too.  And everything else in between.  How much “fun” do you think it would be if SI railroaded us down a single way of playing the game (ie., realistically)?  How many customers do you think they’d lose?  So sure, SI base the game on “realism” but that doesn’t mean we have to use realism to play the game, as demonstrated above.  This is nothing new.

Of course it’s always been possible to “break” the game (for want of a better word) in this kind of manner by playing so unrealistically but it’s always been equally possible to use other techniques too.

1 hour ago, lied90 said:

I think a lot of people know that pace is important, they just don't understand how important.

They also don't understand that it is important regardless of player position, player role, formation, playstyle etc. 

Again, it depends how you want to play the game.  Pace can be important for sure if that’s your chosen play style or for certain roles.  So can work rate, or determination, or consistency, or strength, or first touch and so on.  It just depends on how someone wants to play the game.  There is more than one way to crack this particular egg.

1 hour ago, lied90 said:

What I find frustrating is that people come to these and other forums asking for advice about how to get their team to perform, and sometimes the answer could simply be: "ehm maybe get a striker with higher pace and put him as AF". 

You may find it frustrating, but this entire forum is dedicated to tactical discussion and help.  It’s not and never has been a “just do this and win” forum.

 

So TL;DR - all you are demonstrating here is one way of playing the game.  There are countless other guides and threads on this forum (and elsewhere) which demonstrate many other ways of playing the game and being successful while doing so.

Edited May 8, 2023 by herne79

[FM1000]

5 hours ago, herne79 said:

Nice click bait title.

If we stop and think about this for a while, what this “experiment” actually shows is that there is more than one way of playing the game - which is something to be applauded not berated.

If all someone wants to do is win and not care about how they do it then this type of strategy (amongst others) is perfectly valid.  If, on the other hand, someone else wants to play the game in a more realistic manner that’s perfectly possible too.  And everything else in between.  How much “fun” do you think it would be if SI railroaded us down a single way of playing the game (ie., realistically)?  How many customers do you think they’d lose?  So sure, SI base the game on “realism” but that doesn’t mean we have to use realism to play the game, as demonstrated above.  This is nothing new.

Of course it’s always been possible to “break” the game (for want of a better word) in this kind of manner by playing so unrealistically but it’s always been equally possible to use other techniques too.

Again, it depends how you want to play the game.  Pace can be important for sure if that’s your chosen play style or for certain roles.  So can work rate, or determination, or consistency, or strength, or first touch and so on.  It just depends on how someone wants to play the game.  There is more than one way to crack this particular egg.

You may find it frustrating, but this entire forum is dedicated to tactical discussion and help.  It’s not and never has been a “just do this and win” forum.

 

So TL;DR - all you are demonstrating here is one way of playing the game.  There are countless other guides and threads on this forum (and elsewhere) which demonstrate many other ways of playing the game and being successful while doing so.

One way of playing the game......

Please stop being blind fanboys, there is a reason why even fast strong players play in the Championship and not in the Premiership if they don't know how to play football.....

There is a reason why Adama Traoré is not better than Cristiano Ronaldo, even though he is faster and stronger.......he is a bench player, went to Barcelona where he was fastest but 0 game time....

Technical and mental attributes do not matter in the ME as much as their attribute weight suggests!

[lied90]

5 hours ago, herne79 said:

Again, it depends how you want to play the game.  Pace can be important for sure if that’s your chosen play style or for certain roles.  So can work rate, or determination, or consistency, or strength, or first touch and so on.  It just depends on how someone wants to play the game.  There is more than one way to crack this particular egg.

Can work rate, determination, strength etc really be important? Like, how do you actually confirm this assumption? I would think work rate would be incredibly important to pull any style with a high press, but it isn't, you can have the lowest work rate in the league and pull it off while also winning game after game. To me a lot of attributes act complimentary, but are not vitally important like pace/acc. I would be happy for it to be proven otherwise as it would make me more romantic about the game. I like to recreate styles and real life tactics, but for me that is more role play than anything.

5 hours ago, herne79 said:

You may find it frustrating, but this entire forum is dedicated to tactical discussion and help.  It’s not and never has been a “just do this and win” forum.

To put it simply, I think people should be given answers to the question they ask. If they want to recreate a Bielsa style tactic and need advice then deep dive into it, if they are desperate for a win and not having fun because of losing constantly, tell them how to win. This is not specific for this forum btw.

 

[lied90]

14 minutes ago, FM1000 said:

There is a reason why Adama Traoré is not better than Cristiano Ronaldo, even though he is faster and stronger.......he is a bench player, went to Barcelona where he was fastest but 0 game time....

I think this is a good point also. Adama Traore should be a useful player in FM, but he should not be able to win the golden boot as a striker, or get the most assists from open play in the premier league as an attacking midfielder (which is what he did in my simulation).

Yes FM can never be a perfect simulation and different play-styles should be viable etc etc but common this is too much.

Edited May 8, 2023 by lied90

[herne79]

1 hour ago, lied90 said:

I think this is a good point also. Adama Traore should be a useful player in FM, but he should not be able to win the golden boot as a striker, or get the most assists from open play in the premier league as an attacking midfielder (which is what he did in my simulation).

Yes FM can never be a perfect simulation and different play-styles should be viable etc etc but common this is too much.

Again you’re missing the point 😊.  You’re right, Adama shouldn’t be able to win the golden boot if you play in a realistic manner.  By way of example AI controlled teams attempt to play the game based on realism - when was the last time we saw AI controlled Adama win the golden boot?  Play as you outline above, which is completely unrealistic, and of course he can win the golden boot.

And that’s one of the major plus points of FM - we are free to choose how we want to play.  So Pace (to follow the example) is only overpowered if that’s how you choose to play.  As said above, there are lots of guides pinned to the top of the Tactic forum which very ably demonstrate lots of other ways of playing which don’t involve Pace.

Of course if you are 100% sure that only Pace matters and no other attributes do, upload your game saves and data to SI and let them verify things.  

1 hour ago, FM1000 said:

Please stop being blind fanboys,

I stopped reading at this point.  If you think I’m some sort of fanboy () you should try reading more.

[lied90]

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

Again you’re missing the point 😊.  You’re right, Adama shouldn’t be able to win the golden boot if you play in a realistic manner.  By way of example AI controlled teams attempt to play the game based on realism - when was the last time we saw AI controlled Adama win the golden boot?  Play as you outline above, which is completely unrealistic, and of course he can win the golden boot.

Apart from having 4 Adama Traore in the team, how is the way play unrealistic? Would I be playing in a realistic way if I played with a normal Man City team and only had one Adama Traore? If he still wins the golden boot in a normal team, do I have a point then?

 

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

And that’s one of the major plus points of FM - we are free to choose how we want to play.  So Pace (to follow the example) is only overpowered if that’s how you choose to play.  As said above, there are lots of guides pinned to the top of the Tactic forum which very ably demonstrate lots of other ways of playing which don’t involve Pace.

No matter how you want to play pace is a factor, is not something you can ignore just because you build a team differently. You will be affected by having lots of, or little of it compared to the opponent regardless of how you play. Also they are guides, so it's rather vague. Do any of them state that pace is not important? Because if so I would like to look at it.

 

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

Of course if you are 100% sure that only Pace matters and no other attributes do, upload your game saves and data to SI and let them verify things.

Other attributes matter, the title is hyperbole. It just matters a lot less than pace. I'm under no illusion that SI don't know this, I don't think it's a bug.

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

when was the last time we saw AI controlled Adama win the golden boot?  

They don't play him as a striker so he never will (also Haaland exists). With higher consistency he probably could if he was played as striker by the AI. In the few saves where Wolves play him consistently he does really well.

From the original test with Forest:

[azymin]

@herne79 I disagree with your points. 

Yes, you can play FM in different ways. However, in a video game one of the fundamental concepts is balance. If a game is not balanced and is full of exploits it becomes less fun to play. 

When you play a game you have more fun when you win. I don't think that's debatable, at least in the context of a managerial sim or a sports game. If there's a clear way to an easier win, players will have to consciously stay away from using it to make the game feel more fair. It's not as much fun to win if a game is not fair. A balance problem becomes largely equivalent to a cheat, if you follow my train of thought. It juts takes away from the fun of playing. You'll have to consciously limit yourself and live with losses when you can potentially win by using this exploit. I don't think that's fun.

On a separate note, it's up to a developer to make a balanced game, not up to the consumer to limit themselves in how we play a game because of balance issues.

I think your point would be valid if we were talking about winning with a hard working brave aggressive gegenpressing team vs a technical tiki-taka team, but that's not what this thread shows. 

 

[lied90]

57 minutes ago, azymin said:

When you play a game you have more fun when you win. I don't think that's debatable, at least in the context of a managerial sim or a sports game. If there's a clear way to an easier win, players will have to consciously stay away from using it to make the game feel more fair. It's not as much fun to win if a game is not fair. A balance problem becomes largely equivalent to a cheat, if you follow my train of thought. It juts takes away from the fun of playing. You'll have to consciously limit yourself and live with losses when you can potentially win by using this exploit. I don't think that's fun.

I can relate to this, it's what have made me play almost only large online saves because it's the only way of being challenged without purposely limiting myself.

[FM1000]

I think thread should be moved to the bugs subforum, this is a big issue in the ME. 

Its not an experiment to use fast player simply because they perform better, its a bug, not a feature.

[herne79]

3 hours ago, azymin said:

@herne79 I disagree with your points. 

Yes, you can play FM in different ways. However, in a video game one of the fundamental concepts is balance. If a game is not balanced and is full of exploits it becomes less fun to play. 

When you play a game you have more fun when you win. I don't think that's debatable, at least in the context of a managerial sim or a sports game. If there's a clear way to an easier win, players will have to consciously stay away from using it to make the game feel more fair. It's not as much fun to win if a game is not fair. A balance problem becomes largely equivalent to a cheat, if you follow my train of thought. It juts takes away from the fun of playing. You'll have to consciously limit yourself and live with losses when you can potentially win by using this exploit. I don't think that's fun.

On a separate note, it's up to a developer to make a balanced game, not up to the consumer to limit themselves in how we play a game because of balance issues.

I think your point would be valid if we were talking about winning with a hard working brave aggressive gegenpressing team vs a technical tiki-taka team, but that's not what this thread shows. 

 

Interesting you mention balance when there's nothing balanced about this experiment.

It takes an overly aggressive, unrealistic, top heavy formation and pitches it against teams that are trying to play in a realistic manner.  That's not "balance".  Heavily edited players that focus on Pace are then layered on top - players which now have no semblance of "balance" about their attributes.  The entire game is based on balance - this experiment is based on imbalance.

Look, I'm not saying Pace can't be strong - it absolutely can be.  But the OP is choosing to play in this manner.  That's not the game being broken or unbalanced, that's the user choosing to play the game in a certain manner.  I could equally show you West Ham winning the Premier League season one without any edited players or transfers.  What does that tell you about Pace when the team doesn't have any super pacey players?

The game has plenty of problems - a complete lack of context in the ME for starters (seriously, gegenpress in non-league football?) - but trying to draw conclusions based on such unbalanced experiments is a minefield.  In such instances it's always far better to not draw conclusions and instead just present the data to SI and say "erm SI this looks odd, can you please review to make sure nothing untoward is going on here".

[lied90]

51 minutes ago, herne79 said:

It takes an overly aggressive, unrealistic, top heavy formation and pitches it against teams that are trying to play in a realistic manner.  That's not "balance".  Heavily edited players that focus on Pace are then layered on top - players which now have no semblance of "balance" about their attributes.  The entire game is based on balance - this experiment is based on imbalance

You are going of the rails here. I didn't edit any players for the original post or s2 post. Nothing unrealistic about high press on balanced imo (even some presets press higher), and about the formation I can change it 4231, 442, 433 or whatever. I can also lower the defensive line, still works.

[lied90]

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

I could equally show you West Ham winning the Premier League season one without any edited players or transfers.  What does that tell you about Pace when the team doesn't have any super pacey players?

Feel free to contribute in any way that you don't need pace to win. Would be hard with West Ham unless Zouma is at the front post banging 30+ headed goals.

[azymin]

3 hours ago, herne79 said:

Interesting you mention balance when there's nothing balanced about this experiment.

It takes an overly aggressive, unrealistic, top heavy formation and pitches it against teams that are trying to play in a realistic manner.  That's not "balance".  Heavily edited players that focus on Pace are then layered on top - players which now have no semblance of "balance" about their attributes.  The entire game is based on balance - this experiment is based on imbalance.

I don't really understand what you mean here. How is his Forest save unrealistic? He also used real players. 

[herne79]

8 hours ago, lied90 said:

I didn't edit any players for the original post or s2 post

5 hours ago, azymin said:

He also used real players.

On 02/05/2023 at 09:41, lied90 said:

I took over Nottingham Forest and removed all their players. I replaced them with players with high acceleration and pace, and added jumping reach on CBs

From the OP, that’s editing both the club and players.  More…

On 04/05/2023 at 07:56, lied90 said:

I subtracted all players by -2 pace/acc. To compensate I have +1 to all other highlighted role attributes

On 07/05/2023 at 07:52, lied90 said:

I swapped Man City's front line with four Adama Traore.

Anyway, in response to these other points:

8 hours ago, lied90 said:

Nothing unrealistic about high press on balanced imo

If that’s all you had done then I’d agree.  2 strikers with attack duty along with 2 attack duty wide players, an aggressive 2 man midfield says otherwise.

5 hours ago, azymin said:

How is his Forest save unrealistic?

Transferring out all players to replace them with League One/Two quality players overloaded with Pace and then asking them to play in a heavy gegenpress style is realistic?

 

I’m really not trying to antagonise here.  I’m just trying to point out that when you take something unrealistic - be that transferring poor quality players into a Premier League side; editing players; using a tactical system which a club such as Forest wouldn’t use - and input all of that into a system based on realism and balance, results seen do not necessarily equate to a problem with the game.  You cannot discount that your own unbalanced / unrealistic actions are having an impact, especially when playing against AI managers who are trying to play in a balanced and realistic fashion.  It gives you an unfair advantage over them.

So yes, Pace is important.  It can be so important that we can achieve results as demonstrated above, I’m not denying that.  But to draw such conclusions as Pace is essentially the only thing that matters is very wide of the mark.  If we want Pace to be that important it can be.  But equally if we want other factors to be important then they can be also.  This is why I keep saying that these are choices we are free to make in game.  In this experiment you are choosing to play with Pace and thus getting these results.  In other articles that I’ve written I’ve chosen to play with no Team Instructions and use just the Touchline shout system and seen similar results.  Elsewhere I’ve demonstrated how to use tiki taka.  Or how to use the defensive mentality effectively to produce great attacking play.  But that doesn’t mean I think shouts, tiki taka or the defensive mentality are somehow broken or overpowered, nor did I draw such conclusions - it’s simply how I chose to play in those particular circumstances.

So yes, Pace can be overpowered or broken, but only if that’s how we choose to play.

[lied90]

54 minutes ago, herne79 said:

From the OP, that’s editing both the club and players.

Keep the arguments of each test seperate. Most of it is just follow ups to request and you have to include the context to avoid straw man arguments. You are all over the place atm and it's not very constructive.

When I transfer league one/championship lvl players to a prem club and play very ambitious I expect the team to get relegated and outplayed by better teams, because that is what would happen in real life. I think this is a fair expectation for a simulation game, and I'm clearly not alone here.

 

I also find it out right ridiculous to say that Forest would never play this way and therefore the test isn't valid? Are you saying that a newly promoted side should only play a certain way or else we can't expect the game to function properly? Sounds like an awfull way to make a simulation game. What about Bielsas Leeds side when they got promoted, they played way more aggressive than I did in the test.

 

Links or other resources to disprove the importance of pace are welcome. I'm not gonna look trough your post history and guess what you refer to.

[shirajzl]

This argument of "if your input is unrealistic, don't expect realistic results" has been repeated ad nauseam on these forums and it's completely false and, honestly, nonsensical.

It's a video game. A video game needs to balanced in a way that it can handle all possible user inputs, i.e. ways of playing. That's the whole freaking point of balanced game mechanics.

Otherwise, every game developer would say "here's a game we made, but please play it this specific way we envisaged, otherwise it will fall apart".

[DarJ]

I made a similar point to what @lied90 I can have defenders with 20 for anticipation, positioning, concentration. decision etc but if their pace isn't comparable to that of the striker they are going against, the striker always seems to have the advantage which is far from realistic and the example I used was Chiellini and Bonucci during the euros; as slow as they are with the high line the team was playing the only time I saw one of them caught off guard was the famous incident between Saka and Chiellini.

2 hours ago, herne79 said:

using a tactical system which a club such as Forest wouldn’t use

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. Are we supposed to use a specific tactical system for a specific team? 

[azymin]

4 hours ago, herne79 said:

From the OP, that’s editing both the club and players.  More…

Anyway, in response to these other points:

If that’s all you had done then I’d agree.  2 strikers with attack duty along with 2 attack duty wide players, an aggressive 2 man midfield says otherwise.

Transferring out all players to replace them with League One/Two quality players overloaded with Pace and then asking them to play in a heavy gegenpress style is realistic?

 

I’m really not trying to antagonise here.  I’m just trying to point out that when you take something unrealistic - be that transferring poor quality players into a Premier League side; editing players; using a tactical system which a club such as Forest wouldn’t use - and input all of that into a system based on realism and balance, results seen do not necessarily equate to a problem with the game.  You cannot discount that your own unbalanced / unrealistic actions are having an impact, especially when playing against AI managers who are trying to play in a balanced and realistic fashion.  It gives you an unfair advantage over them.

So yes, Pace is important.  It can be so important that we can achieve results as demonstrated above, I’m not denying that.  But to draw such conclusions as Pace is essentially the only thing that matters is very wide of the mark.  If we want Pace to be that important it can be.  But equally if we want other factors to be important then they can be also.  This is why I keep saying that these are choices we are free to make in game.  In this experiment you are choosing to play with Pace and thus getting these results.  In other articles that I’ve written I’ve chosen to play with no Team Instructions and use just the Touchline shout system and seen similar results.  Elsewhere I’ve demonstrated how to use tiki taka.  Or how to use the defensive mentality effectively to produce great attacking play.  But that doesn’t mean I think shouts, tiki taka or the defensive mentality are somehow broken or overpowered, nor did I draw such conclusions - it’s simply how I chose to play in those particular circumstances.

So yes, Pace can be overpowered or broken, but only if that’s how we choose to play.

I think the point you're making here is that you have to play a certain way to maintain "realism" and "balance" in FM. You have to play in a way that would reflect how a club/coach/owner would behave in real life. Is that an accurate description of what you've been saying?

FM is a video game, it's not real life. For a video game, the 2 lines above prove that the game is not balanced. That's the whole point of a video game - you can try to play whichever way you want, realistic or not, but the game can handle it because it's well-balanced. 

Regardless of what is done to the players and database, the results of Forest above should not happen in a well-balanced game. You can expect a team full of 5-star players to dominate and a team full of 1-star players to lose. Generally speaking that will happen in FM. It's balanced in that way. It is not balanced to handle an overload in specific attributes. Not all attributes are equally important. As posted above, a mentally heavy player will perform worse than a pace heavy player. The game is just not balanced to handle pace overload. If it were, the teams would be playing with a low block and be able to handle pacey players. 

I guess I can see how you'd need to look deeper into how exactly teams played against Forest, and if Forest is scoring strictly on counter-attacks, but the counter to that would be that Forest is full of 2nd and 3rd tier players, so no amount of tactical know-how would compensate for that in real life. 

If FM is a representation of real life in which AI managers stay close to reality then in real life that Forest team would have conceived 130 goals and had 5 points by the end of the season. That's not what happens above.

I mean the game is just not balanced. Whether it's individual attributes or how well AI handles different things it's just not balanced. I don't know how you can really make an argument to the contrary. 

[herne79]

I’ll try one final time, perhaps I’m not explaining clearly enough.

Saying things such as “Pace is king, mental and technicals don’t matter”; “Pace is so broken”; “other attributes don’t just matter enough”; “regardless of almost every other context” to quote just a few selections from above is demonstrably wrong and misleading.  I say “demonstrably” because, again, there are plenty of articles and guides on this forum which show otherwise.  Lots pinned in the Tactical Guides at the top of the Tactics forum for example and not a single one mentions Pace.

Saying that Pace can be rather than is very important is fine, no issue with that.  So sure, if you want to overachieve using Pace then crack on, it’s perfectly possible as demonstrated above.  But equally if you want to overachieve using methods and strategies other than Pace we can do that as well.  That’s where choice comes into play.  We are free to choose to play the game how we wish. If Pace is indeed so broken we wouldn’t have that choice: we’d have to focus on Pace to overachieve.  Yet we don’t have to.  Personally speaking I’ve never focussed on Pace and yet I consistently overachieve.  Some of the ways in which I do so I’ve written about and are pinned at the top of the Tactics forum.  Pretty much the only time I ever consider Pace is for my central defenders and then only when I play with a high block / defensive line.

So yes, Pace can indeed be important but, equally, it doesn’t have to be.

Anyway, my suggestion - edit the silly click bait title so that it just says “How to overachieve using Pace” and remove all the nonsense that somehow implies that Pace is the only way to go and other attributes just don’t matter, because those kind of statements are demonstrably untrue.

Of course if you all still think I’m talking nonsense and your evidence is cast iron then - again - give your data to SI and let them review it 👍.

[kalokalitokalo]

To put a bit of fire in your discussion: https://fm-arena.com/table/18-attribute-testing/

[azymin]

3 hours ago, herne79 said:

I’ll try one final time, perhaps I’m not explaining clearly enough.

Saying things such as “Pace is king, mental and technicals don’t matter”; “Pace is so broken”; “other attributes don’t just matter enough”; “regardless of almost every other context” to quote just a few selections from above is demonstrably wrong and misleading.  I say “demonstrably” because, again, there are plenty of articles and guides on this forum which show otherwise.  Lots pinned in the Tactical Guides at the top of the Tactics forum for example and not a single one mentions Pace.

Saying that Pace can be rather than is very important is fine, no issue with that.  So sure, if you want to overachieve using Pace then crack on, it’s perfectly possible as demonstrated above.  But equally if you want to overachieve using methods and strategies other than Pace we can do that as well.  That’s where choice comes into play.  We are free to choose to play the game how we wish. If Pace is indeed so broken we wouldn’t have that choice: we’d have to focus on Pace to overachieve.  Yet we don’t have to.  Personally speaking I’ve never focussed on Pace and yet I consistently overachieve.  Some of the ways in which I do so I’ve written about and are pinned at the top of the Tactics forum.  Pretty much the only time I ever consider Pace is for my central defenders and then only when I play with a high block / defensive line.

So yes, Pace can indeed be important but, equally, it doesn’t have to be.

Anyway, my suggestion - edit the silly click bait title so that it just says “How to overachieve using Pace” and remove all the nonsense that somehow implies that Pace is the only way to go and other attributes just don’t matter, because those kind of statements are demonstrably untrue.

Of course if you all still think I’m talking nonsense and your evidence is cast iron then - again - give your data to SI and let them review it 👍.

If this is a reply to my last comment, then you're not actually replying to what I wrote. 

You're misrepresenting the argument. We're talking about game balance, not discussing whether you can win in other ways. Nobody said that there are no other ways to overachieve. 

I just don't think you're really reading what we're trying to convey here. 

Separately - do you really think you can put together a team of 2nd and 3rd tier players based on other attributes, set a tactic and holiday into 4th place in EPL (that's what was done with Forest above)?

Edited May 9, 2023 by azymin

[azymin]

19 minutes ago, kalokalitokalo said:

To put a bit of fire in your discussion: https://fm-arena.com/table/18-attribute-testing/

It looks like the post you link supports argument about pace and acceleration having much higher importance than a lot of the other attributes?

[lied90]

4 hours ago, herne79 said:

Anyway, my suggestion - edit the silly click bait title so that it just says “How to overachieve using Pace” and remove all the nonsense that somehow implies that Pace is the only way to go and other attributes just don’t matter, because those kind of statements are demonstrably untrue.

I wont do that, it's intentionally hyperbolic to get the point across. I made it to inform people how overpowered pace is compared to other attributes and how much you can overachieve with it. Then people had some critical remarks and had me test other things, so I did that to the best of my ability.

I'm not gonna be convinced that pace is not as important as I think unless people have their own test that suggest that I might be wrong, anything that's not testable and repeatable is just talk to me and not of much value. So again, if you have anything to prove us wrong then please come forward with what you have. Something specific not just statements.

Edited May 9, 2023 by lied90

[lied90]

1 hour ago, kalokalitokalo said:

To put a bit of fire in your discussion: https://fm-arena.com/table/18-attribute-testing/

It's not nuanced enough for a lot of people. They would have to test it with different play-styles and by subtracting attributes only for certain positions etc for it to be convincing enough. I still think it's very valuable information, like how unimportant team work is, despite the description suggesting it should be important for ANY tactic.

[XaW]

On 08/05/2023 at 16:13, FM1000 said:

Please stop being blind fanboys

This the only warning I'll give, calling others fanboys are against the forum rules, and I will take action if you do it again. Discuss and disagree about the topic, but cut this out.

[herne79]

1 hour ago, azymin said:

We're talking about game balance,

I know.  And what you and everyone else who is agreeing with the OP and this experiment don’t understand is that it’s the experiment which is causing the imbalance.  In this context the game isn’t unbalanced, the inputs are unbalanced.

You are choosing to use these inputs which is causing the disruption (the imbalance).  If you choose not to use such inputs and play the game as normal as Forest (to continue the example) you can still overachieve (or not) using different strategies.

The whole point of this thread is to try to demonstrate that Pace is king/overpowered/unbalanced/whatever you want to call it.  It isn’t.  It is if you choose to use it as such but that’s what causes the imbalance.  If the game was so unbalanced that Pace were indeed “king” the paciest sides would always win.  They don’t.  They can if we mess around with them but that’s our inputs, not the game.

2 minutes ago, lied90 said:

I made it to inform people how overpowered pace is can be compared to other attributes

Corrected that for you.

3 minutes ago, lied90 said:

So again, if you have anything to prove us wrong then please come forward with what you have. Something specific not just statements.

I’m confused by this.  Just play the game without messing around with it and you’ll see the paciest sides don’t always win.  Do you not see that when you play the game without altering it?  Would you like to see screen shots of my West Ham save where I won the league first season without altering my player’s Pace?  Or any just read any of the guides I keep mentioning in the Tactics forum which don’t discuss Pace?

Pace is important for sure.  All attributes are important, some perhaps more so than others.  There have been other experiments such as this (for example with altering Determination or Jumping Reach and height) where the conclusions were erroneously drawn that those attributes don’t matter.  They were quickly and easily debunked.  So for sure Pace is an important attribute but your inputs here are causing the issue, not the game.  You are playing the game in an unintended manner which unsurprisingly then results in the outputs you are seeing.  But you and others here won’t believe that, you’re convinced there’s an issue with the game.  So, for the last time, give your data to SI and let them check to see if the game is as unbalanced as you believe.

Anyway, I’ll leave this now as it’s just going round in circles.  Give your data to SI 👍.

[lied90]

24 minutes ago, herne79 said:

I’m confused by this.  Just play the game without messing around with it and you’ll see the paciest sides don’t always win.  Do you not see that when you play the game without altering it?  Would you like to see screen shots of my West Ham save where I won the league first season without altering my player’s Pace?  Or any just read any of the guides I keep mentioning in the Tactics forum which don’t discuss Pace?

I'm asking for something less anecdotal and more empirical.

[XaW]

38 minutes ago, lied90 said:

I'm asking for something less anecdotal and more empirical.

Fine, let's do this:

• The experiment is flawed because it fails to control enough variables.
• You have run it once as far as I know. You are not even scratching the surface to know where on the curve that run happened. What is your standard deviation for example?
• Your entire experiment is flawed as your hypothesis is prime for confirmation bias. You haven't even given much thought in how to disprove your own hypothesis, as far as I can tell. Just a random test where you seemingly randomly changed some attributes.
• As far as I can tell, you haven't uploaded your save for anyone to look at to confirm your findings.
• You've used something that looks very much like an exploit tactic (I think I've seen it or a very like one in knap's thread).
• Once again, VARIABLES, and here is one example of what I mean:
  • How did the goals happen? What if most are scored from corners because you use a corner exploit? Would that still mean Pace is important?
• You are failing to acknowledge that different attributes might might be more important in different setups .So to "Prove" anything, you'd have to have a representative sample of different tactical setups and run each setup for a number of times for each attribute and thus create a standard deviation and evaluate from there. It would be very time consuming to do it, but if you did that then I would accept your claim, but not before. Until then you have a hypothesis, or a theory at best and not backed up by the same empirical evidence you ask for.

And I don't mean to say you are wrong, you could be right for all I know, but I really despise claims like "proof" or "truth" or the like for simple tests that does not do the actual legwork required to prove anything. This is not on you alone, I've seen enough of these types of hyperbolic and exaggerated claims be hyped up around lately to be rather annoyed at it, so take it for what it is.