Mentality & Its Relation With General Tactics

[Blancos]

Finally, I play FM again after more than a decade hiatus because I don't have any PC/laptop anymore. Thank you SI & Netflix for making it happened for me 🥳🥰.

I have a lot of questions. But since this is my first post about FMM24, I'll make it simple:

I think I can grasp about what Mentality is. But I don't really sure I understand how it relates to other aspects of tactics. I mean, in this case I attached, I'm on Control. Now, what will happen when I tweak it towards Attacking/Overload?

Will my on-pitch width gets to Wide (even though the Width slider doesn't move)?

Will my players get to expressive in creativity?

Will my team's passing styles get to long/direct passings?

 

I think it's a very important knowledge. Because not knowing how the correlation works, we might make things worse by over-compensating (changing the Mentality to Overload, AND setting the tactics to Wide - Expressive - Direct pass - Direct GK Distributions - and so on), which will not helping our performance on the pitch.

[Marc Vaughan]

Mentality determines the teams 'overall' behavior style - 

Contain - Basically park the bus, stay back and defensively cohesive even when you have the ball don't commit people forward. This is a team expecting to lose and trying to limit the damage or grind out a draw.

Defensive - Not quite 'Contain,' but your primary interest is keeping the match tight and perhaps grabbing a goal from a set-piece should the opportunity arise.

Counter - Stay back and spring on the break when possible. Works best with fast attackers where they can get up the pitch quickly.

Balanced - Fairly normal style, balance between attacking and defensive play. 

Control - Keep the ball and pass it around until the opposition are pulled out of shape and you craft a chance. Can be a high risk style because it encourages players to pass the ball between themselves and play the ball backward to recycle chances more than some other styles.

Attacking - Get forward whenever possible, take more risks pushing up the pitch, winning 4-3 is still a win

Overload - We're 2-0 with ten minutes to go and have nothing to lose, 3-0 gives the same amount of points as 2-0

Each of these obviously combine with the other settings and some might suit particular settings more than others, i.e. if you're playing contain then short-passing is more likely to leave you losing the ball in your own half, while a long boot up pitch to a target forward might get you a lucky half chance once in a while etc.

[Blancos]

11 hours ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Mentality determines the teams 'overall' behavior style 

I understood that, but "OVERALL behavior" itself is what makes it very abstract. Because in my thinking, all setting slider in Tactics basically also determines how we want the team to "behave". What I'm curious and asking is: does applying any change on the behavior X (mentality slider), affects the behavior Y (current tactic settings)?

 

11 hours ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Each of these obviously combine with the other settings and some might suit particular settings more than others, i.e. if you're playing contain then short-passing is more likely to leave you losing the ball in your own half, while a long boot up pitch to a target forward might get you a lucky half chance once in a while etc.

Ok... So what you mean is that changing Mentality doesn't change our current tactical settings at all. Do I get your point right?

Let's talk hypothetically so I can come into the right conclusion... I currently set low "Tempo" in "Control" mentality. If I happen to change the mentality to "Overload" but leave the "Tempo" on low, you're meant to say that my team will swarm forward but still doing it in slow manner, not fast?

[Marc Vaughan]

7 hours ago, Blancos said:

Let's talk hypothetically so I can come into the right conclusion... I currently set low "Tempo" in "Control" mentality. If I happen to change the mentality to "Overload" but leave the "Tempo" on low, you're meant to say that my team will swarm forward but still doing it in slow manner, not fast?

Overload with slow tempo will mean the inter-team passing will be slower, tempo indicates the speed with which passes are made - high tempo means that they move the ball quickly between players and will lead to more one-touch passes. In real-terms when combined with overload this is likely to lead to players trying to do more by themselves because they won't offload the ball as quickly, but still want to get forward and attack (so it'll encourage running with the ball to some extent).

So low tempo, counter attack and long ball would likely lead to players looking for a willing runner up front and punting the ball to them so they can attempt to get through on goal, the low tempo would mean the player looking for a pass would be somewhat patient waiting for the movement before attempting the pass, whereas a high tempo would mean they'd punt the ball to an 'area' more often rather than a man unless they have exceptional decisions, passing and creativity.

PS - I do realize I'm talking a little in terms of generalities, that is simply because the match engine is incredibly complex and doesn't indicate if 'x' then do 'y' ... it changes biases and encourages certain actions, but takes into account a host of other factors. player personalities, opposition players, whats happened in the match previously, the abilities of players etc. ... my general comment is to try and think of things as you would a real football match and convert the sliders etc. in your head to how you'd talk to a team if you were a manager, ie, Guys we're rushing things too much and losing the ball take more time to pick the right pass (change fast tempo to slow), look for Joe on the wing, he's quick and can take on their slower wide players with each (pass to left, counter attack and direct passing) etc.

[Blancos]

1 hour ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Overload with slow tempo will mean the inter-team passing will be slower, tempo indicates the speed with which passes are made - high tempo means that they move the ball quickly between players and will lead to more one-touch passes.

That's what I meant. I finally got that, only after years of playing in the past 🤣. Btw, since we're in the subject, maybe you guys should consider to change the term into something more clearer in the future, since "Tempo" term is easily misinterpreted as "how quick the team moves when attacking or defending", and not "how fast the ball when the team circulates it around". A term like "Passing Speed", maybe? Therefore we can use "Tempo" term to represent what it commonly means, "the speed of the game" (should we rush things, or take it slow). Just an input to avoid further misinterpretation 😁.

 

1 hour ago, Marc Vaughan said:

So low tempo, counter attack and long ball would likely lead to players looking for a willing runner up front and punting the ball to them so they can attempt to get through on goal, the low tempo would mean the player looking for a pass would be somewhat patient waiting for the movement before attempting the pass, whereas a high tempo would mean they'd punt the ball to an 'area' more often rather than a man unless they have exceptional decisions, passing and creativity.

I think I got the rough idea from your point. So yeah, changing Mentality doesn't change the tactic I've set before into lesser or more level (e.g: what was slow before, is still slow after Mentality change). I'll re-read your explanations and take them in later. Thanks a lot, keep up the good work! 👍

Edited November 26, 2023 by Blancos

[Marc Vaughan]

On 26/11/2023 at 10:01, Blancos said:

That's what I meant. I finally got that, only after years of playing in the past 🤣. Btw, since we're in the subject, maybe you guys should consider to change the term into something more clearer in the future, since "Tempo" term is easily misinterpreted as "how quick the team moves when attacking or defending", and not "how fast the ball when the team circulates it around". A term like "Passing Speed", maybe? Therefore we can use "Tempo" term to represent what it commonly means, "the speed of the game" (should we rush things, or take it slow). Just an input to avoid further misinterpretation 😁.

Thanks - this sort of feedback is actually really really useful as having worked on the game longer than I care to remember its easy to presume people just 'understand' some things ..