Zealand's "FM is broken video"

[WelshMourinho]

5 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

I mean, it's entirely possible that it is both the most complete version and like every other 3D simulation ever, especially previous FMs, it's possible to overachieve with physical players. 

Since most of the people deliberately exploiting the game with attacking tactics and pace merchants actually want it to get them good results and the rest could always just not do that, it's unsurprising it's not top of the list of things to unbalance other parts of the game to fix...

That is a dreadful solution. It's not like the older games where 3 striker formations were OP, you could literally just not use it and it would never be apart of your game.

Pace is one of the attributes in the game and you can't ignore it. Yeah you can avoid stupid stuff like signing a team worth of them like this experiment, but very few people will actually play their game that way so yeah, it probably should be near the top of the list if they want to provide a good matchday experience, like they say they do every single year.

Same with 'attacking tactics', which I'm reading as high pressing. Every top side in the world is utilising these elements, and the fact the game can't differentiate between good players who are suited to the style, and players who are unsuitable to the style, is another negative to it.

[turnip]

Zealand's video was interesting, but from a methodological point of view it's easy to pick a bunch of holes in it. That's not his fault, he doesn't have the time to run a bunch of variations; and it's not his job, which is to make Football Manager content.

As to the 'What's the point of sending the saves to SI?' question - well, they can look at a save to see what's going on in the background, and actually look at the hard data from a match to analyse how it panned out. Unless you're managing every match, or at least watching the Extended Highlights, you don't necessarily know how a match unfolded the way it did, just the result. 

 

Personally, I hope SI do have a look at this and decide if it's an issue or not. (Remember Sheffield United in the 2019/20 season - mediocre players performing consistently well?) And then if there are changes to be made, that everyone demanding SI "fix this now" shows a good level of understanding if fixing this delays FM25 being released 

[cocoadavid]

1 hour ago, NineCloudNine said:

No-one has argued that, you’re making a strawman. 

Bolt didn’t even have 1s in his technical and mental skills. It’s been pointed out many times that 1-20 in FM is 1-20 *for a pro footballer*. A player with ~100 CA (such as those in this experiment) is an extremely good player, even if they are below Premier League standard. Bolt wasn’t even good enough to play semi-pro; his short attempt to be a pro was a publicity stunt for the club, no matter what footballing fantasies he may have possessed.

I know well that 1 - 20 is for footballers (pro and semi-pro footballers, since there are a lot of semi-pro footballers in FM), but since 1 is the minimum value in FM I literally could not give Bolt any lower value if i wanted to translate his skills into FM. I only brought up Bolt as an example because everybody is familiar with his name, but then just replace Bolt's name with any footballer, who is superfast but all his technical and mental skills would be translated to FM as 1, and that's what my point is about. I could have said an actual footballer who is lightning fast from like Hungarian 3rd division or something like that, but since nobody knows him there would be no point in mentioning him. 

[El Payaso]

It's actually odd that this thing gets so much attention on FM 2024 which in my opinion is many way the most balanced FM game based on match events and stats. For example completed dribbling stats are closer to reality than in many previous versions and also in terms of performances for example attacking wide players look much more like a hit or miss than earlier. This is probably the first version where I have seen pacey wingers being ineffective at times. In games like FM 2015-18 a simple pacey winger or attacking wingback could single handedly break the balance of the whole match engine. For example in FM 2015 Adama Traore was simply unstoppable in the hands of a human player. 

So, basically how the overpowered pace and gegenpress work on FM 2024? I'm asking this because I've not seen any evidence on my own saves. 

[enigmatic]

1 hour ago, WelshMourinho said:

That is a dreadful solution. It's not like the older games where 3 striker formations were OP, you could literally just not use it and it would never be apart of your game.

Pace is one of the attributes in the game and you can't ignore it. Yeah you can avoid stupid stuff like signing a team worth of them like this experiment, but very few people will actually play their game that way so yeah, it probably should be near the top of the list if they want to provide a good matchday experience, like they say they do every single year.

Same with 'attacking tactics', which I'm reading as high pressing. Every top side in the world is utilising these elements, and the fact the game can't differentiate between good players who are suited to the style, and players who are unsuitable to the style, is another negative to it.

I mean, it's pretty easy not to sign an entire team with 17 pace, because literally every real life manager in the world manages it: it's actually less common than three strikers or three shadow strikers. Otherwise if you have a handful of players with pace, you're just like every other side in the league: your quick players will be fast without consistent end product but you won't find it quite so easy to get the ball back when you lose it. Or if you want a challenge, you can still win the league without a single player over 14 pace...

Most top sides in the world play with a high press and attacking football, but very few relegation candidate sides do. But yeah, if you play high pressing football with a bunch of athletes, you'll look more like Liverpool than Nottingham Forest Reserves in terms of game impact. Again, there's nothing new here, it's been the case in every FM ever, and it's difficult to imagine a simulation of 90 minute football so perfectly balanced that a bottom of the league side <5% worse in weighted average attributes than most of their rivals trying to play like a side that expects to win the game and still  finishing down the bottom like they're supposed to.

[lied90]

1 hour ago, NineCloudNine said:

This is all in your head. You’re playing alone, against an AI. You can do nor not do exactly what you want. You don’t “need” to build a pacy team unless you want to.

Saying that you can not use things that are OP, like gegenpress and pacy players, is not a valid argument for a lot of us. When you know that you can easily win everything by using methods that would never work in real football, it breaks the immersion that you are playing a realistic football sim. That's enough to ruin the experience of the game. You and others can argue that it shouldn't, but it's futile because it already has.

It's not really a problem for SI when only people who read forums like these know about it. Almost nobody reads this forum after all, relative to how many play FM. I imagine it might become more of a problem when youtubers like Zealand make videos about it.

[CAE82]

Maybe someone good with the editor can do a bulk edit of all players pace and compress the values a little. As long as it remains relative, then scaling it down a little may dull the effect a little.

[NineCloudNine]

1 hour ago, fat mole said:

Always thought pace was overpowered due to something else, the relative lack of fast players in lower leagues vs top flight compared to how common that is in real life.

There's obviously more top class speed merchants in the upper echelons of football but not to the degree that is presented in FM. It's as though SI know how powerful pace is within the game so give players who are better mentally and technically an extra boost with added pace as that makes a big difference in the match engine. Physicals are actually where lower league players match up relatively well compared to better players, perhaps not for the whole game (stamina) and there's other reasons why PL players will beat them to the ball (anticipation, positioning).

There's 147 Premier League players with 15+ pace, 5 in the Vanarama National in a new save I just created. That's just unrealistic. In a sprint race involving all players in both leagues there's no way there'd only be 5 from that division in the top 150 finishers. They'd come out worse than their PL rivals, but it wouldn't be by anywhere near that much.

There's also only 16 Vanarama National central midfielders (natural position) out of 164 with a faster top speed than Christian Eriksen (11 pace). 12 are faster by 1 point and 4 by 2 points. There are more than 9.75% of players in that position who have a better top speed than him in that league IRL.  He'd completely outplay them in other areas of course.

There's 10 Vanrama central defenders out of 162 faster than Harry Maguire in game, all of them by 1 point. I don't think that's remotely true either compared to the real world.

This is a very interesting point. Pace and acceleration are very much genetics-driven and while you might expect top flight players to be fitter and therefore more likely to reach their potential, there are for sure super fast players in all leagues.

As these attributes are set by volunteer researchers, I assume they are operating within guidelines that limit outlier scores relative to the player’s level (whether that is their team, their league or their CA).

[NineCloudNine]

34 minutes ago, lied90 said:

Saying that you can not use things that are OP, like gegenpress and pacy players, is not a valid argument for a lot of us. When you know that you can easily win everything by using methods that would never work in real football, it breaks the immersion that you are playing a realistic football sim. That's enough to ruin the experience of the game. You and others can argue that it shouldn't, but it's futile because it already has.

 

You are here literally describing something that is all in your head. You are playing a game, all alone at your own PC. It’s entirely your choice what tactics to use, who to manage and who to buy.

Given the number of oddities, quirks, compromises, simplifications and limitations in FM, describing a particular tactical style or attribute profile as game-breaking is absurd. I mean, every conversation in FM consists of clicking one of a limited selection of boxes. I don’t know about you but that isn’t how I converse in real life!

[lied90]

34 minutes ago, NineCloudNine said:

You are here literally describing something that is all in your head. You are playing a game, all alone at your own PC.

Ofc it's all in my head. It's my subjective experience of what makes the game fun or not, how can it not be in my head. I rarely play solo FM but that's besides the point.

35 minutes ago, NineCloudNine said:

It’s entirely your choice what tactics to use, who to manage and who to buy.

 

Ok, but I want to play gegenpress because that's what I like irl, but I don't want it to be broken.

[El Payaso]

1 hour ago, lied90 said:

Ok, but I want to play gegenpress because that's what I like irl, but I don't want it to be broken.

I agree on this. It's a valid style of play and also fairly common nowadays. 

FM should never be a game where you have to start listing tens of things you cannot do if you don't want to be exploiting the game. It should be a simulation that can respond to the demand and offer balance on most circumstances. 

Obviously if you intentionally start to do some unrealistic crazy stuff, this is likely to result in unrealistic scenarios but having a game where you have to put a lot of effort to limit your gameplay is the wrong way to go. 

[Lord Rowell]

I'm not convinced this is a particularly significant issue.
If one team, or individual, has a small number of characteristics that are far in excess of the opponent, they're going to have a disproportionate effect on the outcome.

Say you have two teams IRL. One womens, one mens. Assume the women's team are better technically, mentally, and tacticaly. The men would still win due to their physical power i.e. pace and strength.
To a lesser degree, I suspect this is what's happened in this simulation.
It would be interesting to do this with other attributes in the same way though e.g. decisions & composure, workrate & stamina, and so on, to see if there were any similar effects.

Edited June 16 by Lord Rowell
typo

[DP]

Pace with the ball and pace without the ball is also a thing that’s not being discussed.

I’d expect more conference players to be faster over 100 yards than the database currently shows but I wouldn’t expect many to be faster with the ball at their feet compared to PL players  

Does FM even differentiate between pace with and without the ball? I’m not sure. 

Edited June 16 by DP

[DarJ]

11 hours ago, NineCloudNine said:

Pace is a killer attribute in football. The havoc caused by Vinicius or Mbappe, or the speedy guy on the wing in your park team, make that obvious. A whole team of speedsters would be devastating, even if they did lack badly in other areas.

I agree with this. I don't have any issue with pacy players causing problems for my team however, what I don't like is when I have a team with very good positioning, anticipation, concentration and decent pace getting beat almost all the time. 

Italy won the Euros with Chiellini and Bonucci abd the only time I remember either of them getting beat was Saka on Chiellini. 

[Andrew Marines]

3 ore fa, Lord Rowell ha scritto:

I'm not convinced this is a particularly significant issue.
If one team, or individual, has a small number of characteristics that are far in excess of the opponent, they're going to have a disproportionate effect on the outcome.

Say you have two teams IRL. One womens, one mens. Assume the women's team are better technically, mentally, and tacticaly. The men would still win due to their physical power i.e. pace and strength.
To a lesser degree, I suspect this is what's happened in this simulation.
It would be interesting to do this with other attributes in the same way though e.g. decisions & composure, workrate & stamina, and so on, to see if there were any similar effects.

What you're saying is true if the match is women vs men.

But the season simulated is premier league teams(so a mixture of pacey, technical, smart, hybrid players) vs bunch of pacey players not at premier league level.

Edited June 16 by Andrew Marines

[Haiku]

I am surprised by people who outright reject or need proof regarding an arcadey, easy to beat AI that is full of exploits. This has been the case for years, not just in the last version. Hopefully they turn it around with FM25 onwards.

Edited June 16 by Haiku

[Yellowbucket58]

While I do agree pace/acceleration are extremely important in the ME, it’s only really necessary on wide players. Central positions are more than fine without elite pace.

This does not mean Pace/Acceleration is properly balanced but success can be easily had with players not considered meta.

[kiwityke1983]

17 hours ago, fat mole said:

Always thought pace was overpowered due to something else, the relative lack of fast players in lower leagues vs top flight compared to how common that is in real life.

There's obviously more top class speed merchants in the upper echelons of football but not to the degree that is presented in FM. It's as though SI know how powerful pace is within the game so give players who are better mentally and technically an extra boost with added pace as that makes a big difference in the match engine. Physicals are actually where lower league players match up relatively well compared to better players, perhaps not for the whole game (stamina) and there's other reasons why PL players will beat them to the ball (anticipation, positioning).

There's 147 Premier League players with 15+ pace, 5 in the Vanarama National in a new save I just created. That's just unrealistic. In a sprint race involving all players in both leagues there's no way there'd only be 5 from that division in the top 150 finishers. They'd come out worse than their PL rivals, but it wouldn't be by anywhere near that much.

There's also only 16 Vanarama National central midfielders (natural position) out of 164 with a faster top speed than Christian Eriksen (11 pace). 12 are faster by 1 point and 4 by 2 points. There are more than 9.75% of players in that position who have a better top speed than him in that league IRL.  He'd completely outplay them in other areas of course.

There's 10 Vanrama central defenders out of 162 faster than Harry Maguire in game, all of them by 1 point. I don't think that's remotely true either compared to the real world.

I actually think the lack of physical stats at lower levels is IMO a bigger issue than the headline one this entire thread is about.

Physical stats at lower levels are absolutely massive IRL, speed merchants with poor technicals and or huge physical specimens with similarly awful technical ability abound and yet in FM they are incredibly rare.

[lied90]

1 hour ago, kiwityke1983 said:

I actually think the lack of physical stats at lower levels is IMO a bigger issue than the headline one this entire thread is about.

Physical stats at lower levels are absolutely massive IRL, speed merchants with poor technicals and or huge physical specimens with similarly awful technical ability abound and yet in FM they are incredibly rare.

My local club had a player, Dag Alexander Olsen, who went from tier 3 in Norway to Spurs and then Valencia when he was 17. In an interview he said that he was the fastest player at both clubs, no contest. Just straight from tier 3 in Norway and faster than everyone. He never made it as a pro and said he really struggled when it came to the technical side of things.

So yeah, lots of strong and fast players at lower levels who can beat PL players in a sprint.

[Haiku]

9 hours ago, lied90 said:

My local club had a player, Dag Alexander Olsen, who went from tier 3 in Norway to Spurs and then Valencia when he was 17. In an interview he said that he was the fastest player at both clubs, no contest. Just straight from tier 3 in Norway and faster than everyone. He never made it as a pro and said he really struggled when it came to the technical side of things.

So yeah, lots of strong and fast players at lower levels who can beat PL players in a sprint.

Usain Bolt, the fastest man on earth, couldn't cut it in the Australian league. The A-League compares to the Vanarama National in terms of football quality. I mean speed means nothing if you lack any meaningful technical ability.

[santy001]

I used to firmly think Usain Bolt would be in the 20 acceleration/20 pace bracket for quite a long time. During one of the threads though it was highlighted (from one of the SI team if memory serves me correctly) that despite that speed being there off the ball and in uncontested sprints Bolt couldn't actually deploy his speed in a meaningful manner in a footballing sense. His ability to read the game and even identify when he could accurately look to try and get up to speed was pretty much non-existent. While he should still be fast that lack of understanding to utilise the speed probably would've meant he wasn't given the 20/20 in game. 

Perhaps it could've been given with incredibly low off the ball and decision making (probably 1's to compensate) but it was an interesting point that even in such a case as Usain Bolt it wasn't a foregone conclusion.

[NineCloudNine]

4 hours ago, santy001 said:

I used to firmly think Usain Bolt would be in the 20 acceleration/20 pace bracket for quite a long time. During one of the threads though it was highlighted (from one of the SI team if memory serves me correctly) that despite that speed being there off the ball and in uncontested sprints Bolt couldn't actually deploy his speed in a meaningful manner in a footballing sense. His ability to read the game and even identify when he could accurately look to try and get up to speed was pretty much non-existent. While he should still be fast that lack of understanding to utilise the speed probably would've meant he wasn't given the 20/20 in game. 

Perhaps it could've been given with incredibly low off the ball and decision making (probably 1's to compensate) but it was an interesting point that even in such a case as Usain Bolt it wasn't a foregone conclusion.

This suggests that these attributes are not simply reflections of raw speed but rather reflect speed on the ball. This would explain the analysis by @fat mole showing how lower league players have significantly lower pace/acc than top players.

However, that isn’t what the in-game attribute descriptions say. It is, as @DP says, an interesting part of the discussion here.

[silentwars]

On 15/06/2024 at 18:03, eXistenZ said:

No proper competition is a death sentence for the quality of a series.

I do wonder how quickly some of the recurring issues would be sorted if there was a direct competitor. 

[forameuss]

26 minutes ago, silentwars said:

I do wonder how quickly some of the recurring issues would be sorted if there was a direct competitor. 

Probably about as quick as they do now.

[silentwars]

10 minutes ago, forameuss said:

Probably about as quick as they do now.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Number of in game features that could be improved but seem to be constantly overlooked in order to add new features, which nearly always end up being pointless - IMO of course. 

[Brother Ben]

3 minutes ago, silentwars said:

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Number of in game features that could be improved but seem to be constantly overlooked in order to add new features, which nearly always end up being pointless - IMO of course. 

For better or worse, features sell games

[forameuss]

6 minutes ago, silentwars said:

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Number of in game features that could be improved but seem to be constantly overlooked in order to add new features, which nearly always end up being pointless - IMO of course. 

It's far more likely to lead to more serious issues than it is to create some utopian football game.  

[project000]

On 16/06/2024 at 16:32, NineCloudNine said:

You are here literally describing something that is all in your head. You are playing a game, all alone at your own PC. It’s entirely your choice what tactics to use, who to manage and who to buy.

Given the number of oddities, quirks, compromises, simplifications and limitations in FM, describing a particular tactical style or attribute profile as game-breaking is absurd. I mean, every conversation in FM consists of clicking one of a limited selection of boxes. I don’t know about you but that isn’t how I converse in real life!

The game is a Football Management simulation. Miles himself talked about Fifa and called it NOT REAL FOOTBALL (and rightly so).

FM isn't real football, if we use Miles' words.

 

You wouldn't allow me to fly whilst playing a walking sim. I couldn't go to the moon on codemasters driving games. Then why I can use 2 attributes and win everything? You not using this knowledge to win easily is a moot and nonsensical point. We should NOT be allowed to win easily on the vanilla game. You might like to get taken the **** of, but I think a fair bunch of us don't like that.

 

Also, when the AI plays gegenpress, and you don't, do you think you are going to win in any way? No you won't, and you will never get the chance to unless you change and match your style.

[project000]

On 16/06/2024 at 19:12, Lord Rowell said:

I'm not convinced this is a particularly significant issue.
If one team, or individual, has a small number of characteristics that are far in excess of the opponent, they're going to have a disproportionate effect on the outcome.

Say you have two teams IRL. One womens, one mens. Assume the women's team are better technically, mentally, and tacticaly. The men would still win due to their physical power i.e. pace and strength.
To a lesser degree, I suspect this is what's happened in this simulation.
It would be interesting to do this with other attributes in the same way though e.g. decisions & composure, workrate & stamina, and so on, to see if there were any similar effects.

 

That's impossible to prove. Even when the USWNT lost against the Dallas' kids, the kids have more technical abilities and have more stamina. If this game was as real as Miles' suggest, Pace shouldn't be as important as technical ability and the understanding of the game.

In real life, speed alone means absolutely nothing on its own. Doku proved that, and plenty of players did before him. running pointlessly will make you a bad footballers, no matter how much speed and stamina you have.

[santy001]

4 hours ago, NineCloudNine said:

This suggests that these attributes are not simply reflections of raw speed but rather reflect speed on the ball.

Not on the ball as such but rather a player deploying their speed to get past their opponent with/without the ball. With the right reading of the game Bolt could've been the kind of player that made an arcing run between lines that no defender could stop. While he never looked slow as such there wasn't any situation where he really beat anyone outright for pace. If I remember rightly I was more impressed by how smartly Bolt was able to utilise his strength to shrug off defenders rather than beat them for speed. 

Dribbling, technique, first touch, balance, agility also have a part to play in determining on the ball speed somewhat passively by the nature of those skills. 

When it comes to the experiment Zealand has run, I've not given it the time of day to watch the video, too many of his past endeavours in this area have been horribly wide of the mark. But presuming it was an assortment of real players from the game who are below 120 CA, realistically you can make 100-110 CA players work in the PL with the right attribute spread (as Stoke researcher I've had to set up a number of players who are high CA and ineffective compared to lower CA players. It's practically the permanent state of my research over the last 7 years). It isn't at all a surprise it works well as an underdog countering team. But in a 60 game campaign with late stage CL football expected and opponents who sit deep and negate that pace, what happens then? No one seems to have touched on whether this is a universal route to success or just something which presents a mild curiosity. 

It's well worth remembering as well that no AI team is likely to assemble players in this manner, and organically no human player would either. It's far more likely the average FM player would buy a high CA, poorly distributed player over a low CA highly optimised player. 

[Lord Rowell]

I have watched the video.
I would just gently suggest that watching the video, and watching / reading anything before comment, is pretty important, especially in our age of disinformation, clickbait and fake-news. People should know better.
Its actually not Zealand's experiment, its from someone else. Zealand then tried to replicate it.
Zealand has replicated similar tests in the past, and debunked them so I think he's getting some unfair comment here on start point, and methodology.

FWIW I have my own views on the wider issue, that actually even with the results I don't think the ME / FM is broken at all, I put my own thoughts earlier in the thread. In short, even IRL, you give one team (or a person in an individual sport) one or two excessive advantages, it'll overpower everything else.

 

Edited June 18 by Lord Rowell

[warlock]

6 hours ago, project000 said:

Also, when the AI plays gegenpress, and you don't, do you think you are going to win in any way? No you won't, and you will never get the chance to unless you change and match your style

This might be the most inaccurate statement on the forum (and that's a pretty high bar).

[JordanMilly]

8 hours ago, silentwars said:

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. Number of in game features that could be improved but seem to be constantly overlooked in order to add new features, which nearly always end up being pointless - IMO of course. 

About as quickly as they were fixed in FIFA when directly competing with Pro Evo - if capacity allowed them to between fixing literal game-breaking issues (like crashes and save corruption) and developing the next year's game.

[Andrew Marines]

7 ore fa, project000 ha scritto:

Also, when the AI plays gegenpress, and you don't, do you think you are going to win in any way? No you won't, and you will never get the chance to unless you change and match your style.

I agree with you about quite everything, except this.

An average FM player knows how to beat a common 4231 gegenpress and that's why playing FM online is probably the best thing(like it's a different game).

I'm honestly more scared of AI when they play a Common 442.

[wazzaflow10]

On 15/06/2024 at 17:46, perpetua said:

Having played this game for far too long, the results in the video aren't really all that surprising to me.

It's a low CA team, playing against stronger opponents.
The stronger opponents under AI control are more likely to come out with a more attacking setup as a result.
This gives the pacy, low CA team exactly the scenario that they need to succeed, a team that leaves a lot of space to exploit and lots of opportunities to play 1v1 against slower players.

If the AI manager would look at the type of team they are facing (ie. a bunch of very pacy but unskilled players) instead of CA when devising the strategy, it would opt for a different strategy. 
At the very least that's what I would do.

So this is a joint test of not only attributes but also the AI's ability to nullify the very real threat of pace by deploying tactics designed to do just that.

A more salient test would be to play human vs. human against this pacy team and discover the conditions under which the pacy team thrives or suffers in order to pinpoint the underlying issue.  Play a more risky, more high tempo game against the pacier team and you're playing to their hand.  Play a more cautious style that forces them to use their weak skills more frequently and you're playing to their weakness.  The real question is, does the AI manager know to do that?

Excellent points all around. Well said.

SI face a real challenge threading the needle between the CPU "figures" out your tactics the moment you set them up and the current state. It'd be nice to see lower level managers struggle to make necessary changes or take much longer while the Pep's/Klopp's/Ancelotti's of the world are fairly adaptable without breaking their core principles. It'd make moving up the pyramid and managing a top team a real challenge.

[perpetua]

18 hours ago, santy001 said:

It's well worth remembering as well that no AI team is likely to assemble players in this manner, and organically no human player would either. It's far more likely the average FM player would buy a high CA, poorly distributed player over a low CA highly optimised player. 

As others have alluded to in the thread, there is a lack of fast players in lower levels.  We could flip this observation around and suggest there is a lack of slow players in higher levels.  By extension, this means higher level players are not as mentally/technically strong as they perhaps should be while the lack of fast players in lower levels means there is sometimes too much technical/mental ability in lower levels.  So the database itself separates higher and lower level players by speed.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33261014/

Del Coso et. al. (2020) showed that teams' running speed did not impact final position in the Spanish League.  What did impact final position, however, is the frequency of these runs (Baskaya et. al. 2023).  So stamina and work rate impact performance but not necessarily maximum pace.

When we look at Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 we see (https://www.bundesliga.com/en/bundesliga/stats/players/top-speed, https://www.bundesliga.com/en/2bundesliga/stats/players/top-speed):
Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 36.41 km/h
Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga 2: 36.58 km/h

10th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 35.96 km/h
10th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga 2: 35.93 km/h

25th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 35.28 km/h
25th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga 2: 35.30 km/h

50th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 34.75 km/h
50th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga2: 34.71 km/h

75th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 34.38 km/h
75th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga2: 34.24 km/h

100th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 34.08 km/h
100th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga2: 33.96 km/h

150th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 33.56 km/h
150th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga2: 33.51 km/h

200th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 33.15 km/h
200th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga2: 33.03 km/h

250th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 32.78 km/h
250th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga2: 32.65 km/h

300th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga: 32.33 km/h
300th Fastest Player observed in Bundesliga2: 32.20 km/h

So there doesn't appear to be an important difference in speed between the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2.  Is there a difference between Bundesliga 2 and lower divisions?  It would be advisable to make comparisons between the top levels of many nations to get a better handle on this.  I conjecture that it's not player/nation level but rather nation sports culture that impacts top speed.

Anecdotally, what also appears to impact top speed is player position.  Central midfielders and central defenders tend to be the slowest players, followed by strikers and central attacking midfielders; and wingers and full backs being the fastest players on average.  This is well documented in academic articles on the topic.

Since in database research we tend to award higher speed to higher level players and lower speed to lower level players, when the match engine is balanced to provide realistic results conditional on database attributes, the correlation between player speed and team quality is what ends up getting reflected.  Certainly the match engine has improved over the years and anecdotally the effect of speed isn't as prominent as it used to be.  However this database practice hinders the development of the ME and the manager AI to deal with scenarios such as those in the video in my opinion. 

At the end of the day, the match engine has to provide realistic results out of the box.  But its development is limited by the data it uses and can't just take the position that the ME is correct but the data is flawed.

It's also worth mentioning that technical attributes represent the mean/average of a distribution.  So someone with a finishing of 10 attempting the same shot 100 times will score a goal 20 times on average (numbers made up for illustration), while someone with a finishing of 11 attempting the same shot will score more than 20 times or someone with 9 will score fewer than 20 times.  Same with decisions.  Someone with a 10 will make the correct decision 70 times out of 100, someone with 11 will make the correct decision more often.  Same with work rate.

On the other hand Pace is defined as the highest running speed of a player.  Not an average like other attributes but a maximum.  So I don't believe we should treat (most) physical attributes as being dependent on playing level but rather base it on player physiology and nation culture with less emphasis on playing level.  

The impediment to this is the fact that we are often too timid when awarding mental and technical attributes for top players.  For example a central defender in his late 30s with more than 700 top level and international matches getting 15 for decisions and positioning but 13 for pace trickles down to a a central defender in his mid 20s getting 13 for decisions and 15 for pace and the lower CA player in the same position getting 12 and 14 or 11 and 13.

This makes players too similar to each other while strengths and weaknesses aren't reflected in the 1-20 scale.  So the AI manager or the ME doesn't have to be developed to deal with scenarios which are not like this.  So not seeing the AI assemble such squads or assuming that humans would not build such squads (as you put it) is a weakness.

On the other hand, the players/researchers are used to a certain way attributes have been rated for years and a change to this is always going to be painful for all involved  Attempt to fix the issue highlighted in the video only and realism of results in the game will likely to suffer.  Don't fix the issue highlighted in the video and you have (at best a short term) exploit.  No easy answers.

Edited June 19 by perpetua

[Delicate Dave]

It's a game and the are so many ways it gives that away. At the moment my save Accrington are on this Disney ride where each season we start well winning perhaps the first 5-10 games, I scored 37 goals in the first ten games last season. But sure enough, then it hits and they lose & lose & lose even to the worst teams, 1-4 at home, 1-3 playing ten men for 80 mins, down the table they drop. Nothing can stop this it seems, the players are happy but slowly start complaining. You put them all on the transfer list and then things improve slightly, but no one wants to buy any of your players and you go on holiday for the last half of the season and your staff sorts the results out for you to start the next season and away you go again.

I've played FM for years and seen this with other clubs. Of course, FM is broken, it's the buggiest software I've ever used and I go right back to Windows 2.11 :-) but that doesn't mean it's not the best football manager game on the market. I just wish they would fix the little things so easy to fix. And I'm guessing nothing will be done on that in the new version because all we'll get is flashy graphics of video-quality goal celebrations.

Edited June 19 by Delicate Dave

[saihtam]

19 hours ago, santy001 said:

It's well worth remembering as well that no AI team is likely to assemble players in this manner, and organically no human player would either. It's far more likely the average FM player would buy a high CA, poorly distributed player over a low CA highly optimised player. 

So well optimized player is high AC and Pace? I mean it does sound bad if you think about it. I understand the view that using OP stats and we can give leavay that he is using it everywhere and can counter opponents well.

We can see the point where opponent will push them more and you can exploit the counter. But my biggest issue is that opponents are not scoring... He did not show much of the scores and how many goals he conceived, but some screenshots he showed should not be real. Spurs and Chelsea scoring only 1 goal against this kind of team? I think his top scorer in one season was with 9 goals. This means he did not need much keep that GD near -5 as seen. Why are not top teams unable to score? Half the PL team attackers should find easy to score against them.

[santy001]

5 hours ago, saihtam said:

So well optimized player is high AC and Pace?

No. High acceleration and pace are compensatory though. If you have a weakness in other areas of your game but can get from point A to B quickly it can offset the impacts of poor positioning, poor reading of the game etc. 

A well optimised player varies from position to position, but mental attributes and hidden attributes scoring strongly will typically lead to a more optimised player which can be achieved at lower CA's. 

[Spallo]

Am 19.6.2024 um 10:22 schrieb perpetua:

This makes players too similar to each other while strengths and weaknesses aren't reflected in the 1-20 scale. 

Thank you for your research an insight, but here you are clearly way over your head it seems. When you talk about scale it has absolutly nothing to do with numbers you assign to this scale - the numbers are the range, which defines (in this case) the even distance between the chosen points, BUT not the distance between (in this case) 0 to 20. So no matter what numbers you choose, you have to define that distance at first. In here lies maybe the crux of this whole thread.

To the topic - I also dont see that much of a problem with it - physicals are king for a long time now in FM and this does reflect some areas of real life football, but (severely) neglect others. The distributuon from higher to lower leagues does suggest or is (for me at least) an indication, that SI does know this, as some other users have pointed out. And I dont rly think its easily fixable if at all. But the real question is - what do we players make of this? And for some the answer is the reason of this thread 

Edited June 20 by Spallo

[santy001]

15 minutes ago, Spallo said:

Thank you for your research an insight, but here you are clearly way over your head it seems.

Jesus christ that's a staggering opening sentence to read in a post quoting one of FM's longest serving head researchers. I've been at it for like 12 years now in terms of research and still enjoy getting to read some of the detailed stuff Perpetua puts out (not all of it is available publicly). I just needed to put my surprise out there though at such a comment. 

[perpetua]

1 hour ago, Spallo said:

Thank you for your research an insight, but here you are clearly way over your head it seems. When you talk about scale it has absolutly nothing to do with numbers you assign to this scale - the numbers are the range, which defines (in this case) the even distance between the chosen points, BUT not the distance between (in this case) 0 to 20. So no matter what numbers you choose, you have to define that distance at first. In here lies maybe the crux of this whole thread.

I guess it's a matter of choice of what kind of a game is desired. 

Reduce the distance between attribute levels and you have everyone travel at approximately the same maximum speed, thus quickly making speed less relevant.

Then how do you deal with lower speed differences, leading to fewer attacks/shots on goal, leading to less scoring in the game?

Make passes more accurate, make crosses more accurate, make shots on goal more accurate.  Will this be done by increasing distance or by shifting the mean?

If you shift the mean, what happens to lower leagues?  If you increase the distance, won't strikers end up scoring too many goals compared to real life?  And how will defending end up looking?

No easy answers.

Edited June 20 by perpetua

[Spallo]

I clearly was not using the right words hear. Despite my relatively good english its not my native language 

I was merely pointing out, that the scientific term (which was I refering to) scale has nothing to do with numbers by definition. The meaning/conclusion of perpetuas post I did not question. The opposite in fact, because I do agree with the above. So as a nitpicker I just quabbled about the term rather then the argument - sry about that.

Though the problem is, that its not the range (the right term for this) which is applied to the scale - i.e. 1 to 20. The Problem is indeed the distance between the endpoints of the scale. And I completely agree, like I said above, that a solution would be difficult if not maybe impossible, because of what perpetua has laid out. 

And some time ago I read somewhere in the forums (but dont know if this is true), that the lvl of attributes is more granular than 1 to 20 but the game is not showing that. So when we have the infamous perpetua (even if I am oblivious to that fact) here, can he confirm or debunk this please? 

So again sry - I just try to get a distraction from my work 

[perpetua]

6 minutes ago, Spallo said:

And some time ago I read somewhere in the forums (but dont know if this is true), that the lvl of attributes is more granular than 1 to 20 but the game is not showing that. So when we have the infamous perpetua (even if I am oblivious to that fact) here, can he confirm or debunk this please? 

The reason I used scale is because I try to think of each attribute as a questionnaire with a likert scale.  But your point is well taken.

To the best of my knowledge level of attributes are more granular than 1-20 once the game starts, so attributes researchers award are basically starting points.  The player attribute progress screen displays this in a little more detail as player attribute graphs start to slightly go up or down over time without the attribute necessarily changing in on the player profile screen.  I don't know which of these the match engine uses.

[Spallo]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb perpetua:

The player attribute progress screen displays this in a little more detail as player attribute graphs start to slightly go up or down over time without the attribute necessarily changing in on the player profile screen.  I don't know which of these the match engine uses.

Of course - I did not think of that, despite being in this screen quite a lot  So the game is showing, that attributes are in fact more granular. And I think it is absolutly plausible, that the ME is using these values, because why you would want two different ones? I think the 1 to 20 range is a mere visual thing for us players and the game is using the "real" value. Which obviously changes absolutly nothing about the problem of scale 

[NineCloudNine]

33 minutes ago, Spallo said:

So the game is showing, that attributes are in fact more granular. And I think it is absolutly plausible, that the ME is using these values, because why you would want two different ones? I think the 1 to 20 range is a mere visual thing for us players and the game is using the "real" value.

I have read many times on these forums - to the point where I thought it accepted and well-known - that the actual attribute scores are 1-200 and the 1-20 is a simplified display of this.

[Lord Rowell]

1 hour ago, Spallo said:

Of course - I did not think of that, despite being in this screen quite a lot  So the game is showing, that attributes are in fact more granular. And I think it is absolutly plausible, that the ME is using these values, because why you would want two different ones? I think the 1 to 20 range is a mere visual thing for us players and the game is using the "real" value. Which obviously changes absolutly nothing about the problem of scale 

 

41 minutes ago, NineCloudNine said:

I have read many times on these forums - to the point where I thought it accepted and well-known - that the actual attribute scores are 1-200 and the 1-20 is a simplified display of this.

Yes, its effectively 1-200 in terms of individual data points. Each attribute is ranged from .0 to .9.
@Spalloon the player profile screen, menu bar, when you go to "development" and look at player progress, you'll be able to see that in decimals e.g. 15.1, 15.2 etc.

@NineCloudNinethere are many little nuggets of info like these that people don't know. Even as an experienced player, I still learn new things

Edited June 20 by Lord Rowell

[wazzaflow10]

3 hours ago, perpetua said:

I guess it's a matter of choice of what kind of a game is desired. 

Reduce the distance between attribute levels and you have everyone travel at approximately the same maximum speed, thus quickly making speed less relevant.

Then how do you deal with lower speed differences, leading to fewer attacks/shots on goal, leading to less scoring in the game?

Make passes more accurate, make crosses more accurate, make shots on goal more accurate.  Will this be done by increasing distance or by shifting the mean?

If you shift the mean, what happens to lower leagues?  If you increase the distance, won't strikers end up scoring too many goals compared to real life?  And how will defending end up looking?

No easy answers.

There seems to be at the user level not enough separation between attributes to really show that the world class players are truly head and shoulders above your average top division players.

To the user the difference between a 19 and 20 is only one "point" (or 10 using the 1-200 scale) but is that how the match engine interprets that? In other words is each step in attribute interpreted as a linear increase - such that  for each tenth of a point in pace is an increase in running speed of .01 km/h? 

Using the research about pace from above, the difference between the fastest player and the 10th fastest player in the Bundesliga is .45 km/h. On average that's .05 km/h per rank. When we get to the bottom end of the scale the difference between the the 250th and 300th fastest player is also .45. However there's 50 players between those two ranks which means its on average a .009 increase per rank.

Does the game reflect that the difference in pace per rank .05 km/h between the top player (Alphonso Davis) and the 10th ranked player (Jeremie Frimpong) is larger than the difference per rank .45 km/h between Frimpong and Kilian Fischer?

If Davis is assigned a pace of 20 and Frimpong is assigned a pace of 19 is the gap between 20 and 19 reflective of this difference?

Perhaps it is better to show this phenomenon graphically:

Also note the decreasing at an increasing rate at the bottom end of the scale - slow players should be getting slower relative to the next jump in attribute. In other words someone assigned a pace of 1 there should be a huge difference between them and someone with a pace of 2. 

In my opinion all attributes should be reflective of this sort model.

[Spallo]

vor 24 Minuten schrieb wazzaflow10:

There seems to be at the user level not enough separation between attributes to really show that the world class players are truly head and shoulders above your average top division players.

To the user the difference between a 19 and 20 is only one "point" (or 10 using the 1-200 scale) but is that how the match engine interprets that? In other words is each step in attribute interpreted as a linear increase - such that  for each tenth of a point in pace is an increase in running speed of .01 km/h? 

Using the research about pace from above, the difference between the fastest player and the 10th fastest player in the Bundesliga is .45 km/h. On average that's .05 km/h per rank. When we get to the bottom end of the scale the difference between the the 250th and 300th fastest player is also .45. However there's 50 players between those two ranks which means its on average a .009 increase per rank.

Does the game reflect that the difference in pace per rank .05 km/h between the top player (Alphonso Davis) and the 10th ranked player (Jeremie Frimpong) is larger than the difference per rank .45 km/h between Frimpong and Kilian Fischer?

If Davis is assigned a pace of 20 and Frimpong is assigned a pace of 19 is the gap between 20 and 19 reflective of this difference?

Perhaps it is better to show this phenomenon graphically:

Also note the decreasing at an increasing rate at the bottom end of the scale - slow players should be getting slower relative to the next jump in attribute. In other words someone assigned a pace of 1 there should be a huge difference between them and someone with a pace of 2. 

In my opinion all attributes should be reflective of this sort model.

Yeah well - we dont know if the ranges are of linear increase. But it would surprise me if they were´nt honestly. I also think that most of the users will exactly interpret the values as such and I even think that the whole discussion about it stems in part from this.

But I think it is not to be desired that apart from maybe physicals and some other attributes should be non-linear. After all it is still a game and this would make it more arbitrary or more untransparent if you will, as it already is. Of course you can argue that the ranges of absolutly no value would be linear in reality, but I dont think that would make for good game-design. Or it is completely the opoosite and it is already like this and thats why we have the problems  

I am fine that it probably will always be a mystery 

[wazzaflow10]

2 minutes ago, Spallo said:

But I think it is not to be desired that apart from maybe physicals and some other attributes should be non-linear.

The separation of the top few to the squishy middle to the bottom few pretty much exists in all facets of life. That's why its easy to name a few of the best in anything but hard to rank once you get past the first 5 to 10 or so.

 

44 minutes ago, Spallo said:

After all it is still a game and this would make it more arbitrary or more untransparent if you will, as it already is.

the game is meant to be a simulation of real life. Assigning values according to real life wouldn't be arbitrary. SI doesn't have to give the exact formula for it to be transparent. The general concept that attributes follow a similar pattern to the graph when being interpreted by the match engine is sufficient .

Functionally too, players aren't defined by one attribute, so its not like you'll break Mbappe by giving him a 19 instead of 20 in pace while keeping all else equal. Its that there should be a clear separation between world class abilities compared to players that exists even just below that tier.