FMExperiment
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Posts posted by FMExperiment
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Calling FM difficult is a joke. It's not too hard at all. I've been playing the iterations for nearly two decades, my friend played it for the first ever time with me. I was Everton and he was Leicester and we finished 4th and 5th respectively. That's 20 years of experience vs none separated by about 3 points. FM is a game with some variance which is probably it's greatest asset since it actually reflects the realism of football quite well. It reflects it so god damn well that people actually think it's scripted which is hilarious. If you watched the United vs Brighton game today you can imagine someone played that game as Brighton on FM they would be coming on to this forum and saying "Dominated game, hit woodwork several time, but just KNEW United would win in the last minute! Stupid scripted moments". But once you play a couple of seasons and the variance has had time to even out you can see how easy it is to overachieve.
Even on a macro level in no way is FM difficult. Your training schedules are sorted, you have preset tactics, you can outplay the AI in the transfer market easily. You can literally search the entire database of football players ingame and ignore scouting completely. In fact picking any top team is essentially playing on "Very Easy setting". It's only when you set your own challenges (like National Vanarama to Div P, Attribute masking, Scouts only or Homegrown only players) that the game is a challenge.
Sure, if you play FM for the first time ever you might get overwhelmed a bit, but it is a strategy game to a degree. Look at games like Civ 6 or Crusader Kings lll and tell me FM is anything close to being difficult to play or learn lol.
Anyways, I personally think FM needs to focus more on it's glaring flaws like an ME engine that is painful to watch, AI making poor transfers, and abusable tactical implementations. I also thinking the player interactions are tedious and match shouts are basically just a meme at this point.
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54 minutes ago, davehanson said:Because it is effecting real-life football. And will effect real-life football next year. Teams will play behind closed doors, not sure for how long, but all the experts are saying around Christmas. The finances of all clubs have been hit hard.
SI/FM tries to replicate real-life football as much as possible, so Covid has to effect the first season, at least, of FM21.
Be that as it may games still function as a kind of escapism and with all the depressing virus killing people **** in real life it's not amiss to think people might not need it in the game. Same reason why I wouldn't want random news updates of other things that happen in real life like plane crashes, cancer etc..
FM could very well just ignore Covid and I for one would be all for that.
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2 hours ago, Prej said:
I always watch full matches. Playing the game this way lets you learn a lot about how it works. You see how your players and tactics look outside of highlights, which in turn helps in developing new tactics, looking for specific player types and so on.
Makes me really wonder why people only watch highlights. It's as if a manager would come out to the bench only when his team is in the penalty area, and then go back to his office.
Cause it's a game mate not real life. If you can win trebles and go from Vanarama to Premier with extended highlights only why would you bother watching 90min games? Not only are they boring and unrealistic, but it's not even needed and means you'll take forever to finish a season.
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The ME hasn't improved enough recently and I think maybe people are starting to get a bit fed up with it. I get a free key for FM every year but then purchase it because I want to support the game... this is the first year I just say enough is enough. I won't play it or buy it with the ME in it's current state. As far as I'm concerned the only thing that will ever get me buying FM again is a heavily improved ME. I just don't understand why the ME has such little focus... do they really think no-one cares? I mean a lot of us still watch in 2D, we just want to see a variety of play/logical decision making. I want to feel like I'm watching a game of football, I don't care about graphics per se. I don't care if it's dots or fully fleshed out footballers. It means nothing to me if the graphics look crisp and the movements are fluid if I get 10 1v1s a game and my inside forwards never square the ball. There is just no immersion for me with the ME in it's current state. God I'm so disappointed this year. I long for the iteration where SI finally advertise and market a vastly improved ME, I'd be so hyped to feel like I'm actually watching football.
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Still 2D for me. Seems like that's the majority preference here? I mean for me personally I play highlights on very fast so 3D makes little sense.
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If a competitor came along that had no social media, no player interaction, no press conferences, no training customization, but a superior match engine I would switch over in a heartbeat. I won't buy FM2020 because the ME doesn't excite me, from the demo I can already tell it's going to be another year of high pressure gegenpress and 40 shots per game matches.
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When you search for the role of HoYD it highlights Working with Youngsters, Judging Current Ability and Judging Potential Ability. Nothing else... so I'm inclined to believe when it comes to improving your youth intake those are the only things that matter. Since he doubles up as a coach then it's not a bad idea to have good all round coaching stats either I guess.
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I'm a United fan and its gonna be funny as hell (and silly) when I load up fm 2020 and we're still a top 4 team lol
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No broken tactics. Going from Vanarama South to Treble winners in less than a decade isn't as fun when you know your high line gegenpress is a game breaker.
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I never do anything special in the title run in (I don't see what more can be done). You just do what you always do, keep morale high, give good team talks, and tell your players to get creative every 15mins ingame. I mean what else is there to do? There's no direct mechanism for removing pressure, there's only your players "Pressure" attribute which you can't change (and shouldn't really matter much).
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26 minutes ago, AlexJames said:
I didn't compare anything to real life? Are you referring to my mention of Harry Kane? I was talking in the context of my FM save, where he has just won player of the season for the PL. I was saying I don't think he'll be getting released by Spurs in my save, whereas this seems to happen frequently in the lower leagues I play in (English League Two and Scottish League Two). I can't imagine a scenario where a team in Scottish League Two would release a player who has just won player of the season, and that same player sits on a free transfer for months without any interest from other clubs. This is why my initial supposition is that for whatever reason certain players are capable of outperforming their attributes on a consistent basis.
As for whether I think professional footballers are capable of smashing a worldie in with their wrong foot "every now and again" - sure, perhaps - but this isn't every now and again in FM. I think the concept of footedness isn't particularly well implemented in FM, as I consistently see this during the game - players in fact often favouring their wrong foot to shoot/ execute a perfect cross/ long ball.
I watch a lot of real life football, and the amount of times players in the best leagues in the world pass up passing/ shooting opportunities because the ball is on their wrong foot is surprising - and these are the best players on the world. I've also watched a lot of lower league football in England as well, and the standard is... mixed, to say the least.
So when a journeyman winger for Elgin City in FM is able to regularly ping 50 yard balls and top corner howitzers with their wrong foot during a game, I become suspicious.
Oh I misread the Kane bit then. I wish I had something to say about wrong footedness but I play the game on 2D on fastest settings
I'll take your word on it though, the 40 yard balls on a sixpence do seem to happen a bit too much as well
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7 hours ago, santy001 said:
There's a fair bit of misinformation there @FMExperiment
- Player development: The game now has different ways in which this will work and you could play the first scenario a thousand times and end up with different outcomes. However, a largely almost developed player being dropped down to 20 can give a predisposition towards development because they've got high positive attributes that influence development.
- Young players: Training facilities play a larger part <18 and once 18 and over then game time at a relevant level starts to come into the mix. The star ratings staff come out with are also only ever a guess by in-game staff and are relative to the squad you've got and the level you're at in football. There's massive potential for mistakes and therefore its hardly a definitive system.
I've found it's very difficult to improve stats meaningfully once a player hits mid 20s unless there is a significant gap between his CA and PA. I've played games with the editor on to check CA/PAs quite often this iteration. I'm not quite sure what you mean about the first example though, sure gametime/injuries can effect things, but the purpose was to say all things being equal, a younger player develops more than an older player. Pogba won't ever improve in FM19 at the age of 25, I can run more tests but I've ran them so much I'm honestly a bit bored of it lol. Pogba with the same attributes improves at 20 because he is younger, I'm just not sure what the misinformation is here?
I respect your point about young players and I have noticed young players do get nice attribute increases from training only, however I was just saying if you leave a 15 year old in your U18 academy then it's not going to be as effective as throwing him straight into the first team. I wasn't really saying training is useless (at least it wasn't my intention to do so), I was more saying if you have a 15 year old player with very high PA you will never get him to hit that PA unless you start playing him ASAP in the first team. I also find this logical since people shouldn't be able to max out PA easily, it should require a great effort/investment. Like I said the window for maxing out CA largely exists from 15-21 with perhaps 21-24 to fill out that final 15-20CA, if your player is 21 with 150CA and 200PA he will never hit 200PA unless he has miracle hidden mentals and even then I doubt it. I will bet money on that if you want
So if you have a 15 year old with 200PA can you afford to leave him in the U18s from 15-18 even if training plays a large part? I can get a 30CA increase at 15-16 if I play him in the first team, I've never seen that from facilities/youth games only. So I was just advising if you have a player at 15-16 with 5 star potential and you want to max his PA I see no other way to do so other than put him in the first team and start giving him games. If you rely on training for the first 3 years he will surely still be a good player, but never max CA.
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8 hours ago, WojciechZed said:
Some interesting feedback from the last two poster, thanks.
FMExperiment, just to pick up on something you wrote.I have had quite a few players in their low to mid 20s, with a PA at least one star higher than their CA. Do you think this just happened to be those players I had in my team, and it isn't normally that common?
Sure might do that as I have just completed a season.
I think it's very common to see because to get a player to fulfill his PA you need to start playing him from a young age. I'd wager having a player max out his CA to match his PA is actually quite rare.
Here's the problem, when a player hits 21/22 he just doesn't improve much at all, maybe 5-10CA a season, and that gets less and less until you hit about 24/25 and then you just won't ever see improvements.
So what does the mean when you buy players? Well if he is over 21 forget his potential ability, you're not likely to ever see much increase. Case in point here, I ran 3 seasons with Paul Pogba.
First run - Pogba is 25, has 174CA and 185PA, these are his default stats. At the end of the season his CA was still 174.
Second run - I change his age to 20, his CA at the end of the season was 184CA!
Third run - I keep his age at 25, but change his PA to 200, he finishes the season with 182CA.
So you see, the older a player is the less he improves. If the gap is big enough between his CA and PA he can still keep improving sure, but in the end if he isn't close to maxing his CA by like 21/22 he will typically always fall 10-15 points short of his PA.
So you either buy players in two ways, you buy them over the age of 21 for their current ability alone with the intention of being content with a slight increase in attributes, or you buy them at 16/17 with lots of potential and the idea of maxing out their CA. The older you buy a player, the closer you want him to his CA. I'll buy 19 year olds sure, but if there's still a large gap between their CA and PA I won't bother, he'll never fulfill it, it's already "too late". He might become a very good player, but he'll never max out his CA.
And when you do buy a young player, the best way to increase their CA is to play them instantly. Loaning out is decent, but you can only loan from 17, and you only have a window of the next 4 years to really max out that players CA, so can you afford to rely on loans? Not really. Loaning is good for those 3 star PAs who you wanna improve and sell for some tidy profit, but the 4/5 star PAs, get them in your first team squad asap. Get them in there at 15, play them in cups, subs when winning, starting in easier games etc.
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I think the game is more immersive and challenging with it on, but I still play with it off
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Protip - Don't use the polygon, it sucks
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You can't compare this game to real life mate. There's no attributes in real life. In FM if a player with low attributes over-performs you would be mistaken in keeping him in your team or not finding a player with better attributes. If you want to be sentimental or roleplay then keep the player, however if the AI buys/releases players based on attributes not performances, then it's playing the game properly.
I also don't think there's anything wrong with players having a run of form and performing well due to high morale or a position that just suits them very well or even just plain old luck. However maybe you are right that certain stats should have a more concrete impact (like a 4 pace striker should never outrun a 16 pace defender for example). But I think a professional player with "Right foot only" and low long range shots can still bang a worldie in with his left every now and again, let's be honest do you think there is a single footballer in the world who can't use his left foot to smash one in every now and again? A professional with low long range shots is still a professional, 1 doesn't mean Barry from the pub playing Sunday League, 1 means a 1 on a professional scale.
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4 hours ago, WojciechZed said:
Players have a star rating out of 5 for how good they are and how good they could potentially be.
Ah yeah those ones. It's quite confusing sometimes cause the star system is used in different ways and can mean different things. But yeah this star system is just an assessment of the CA/PA of a player relative to your team and the staffs judging CA/PA attributes.
Higher star rating doesn't always mean better but usually the higher the star rating the higher the players CA, thus higher the attributes. However the distribution of attributes matters, because you might not know this but certain attributes are weighted against CA in different ways. For example, for a striker, 1 pace = 1 CA point. So 20 pace uses 20 CA points, however mentals like Determination/Leadership/Flair don't increase CA at all, and 1 point of Work Rate/Decisions/Concentration might only be worth 0.5 or less CA points. and hidden mentals do not effect CA at all! So a player with 20 consistency can have the same CA as a player with 1. So you see there is a lot of room for a player to have much stronger attributes in certain areas even if he overall has less CA.
Anyways my point is, star ratings are not as reliable as assessing attributes yourself. However, if a player with overall lower attributes is performing better then this is most likely just variance, stick the better player back in, he will perform better in the long run (unless of course, he has terrible hidden mentals).
Also to address what you said about "Taking a few months for attributes and stars to rise based on performance", unfortunately FM doesn't work this way. Attributes dictate performance, not the other way round. Attributes will rise due to training/first team experience, although morale effects training and performances effect morale so maybe indirectly playing well can effect attributes but... not really. If a player is under 20 years old you might see 20 CA point increase a season if he is a playing regular football (30 CA points would be considered amazing), after 20/21 you'll be fortunate to see +10CA a season unless the gulf between his current CA/PA is very large. Typically speaking, players over 21 won't improve that much unless they have a big gap between CA and PA. If your player only has a 1.5 star PA, then I don't think there's any chance he will ever be a good player. He is just overperforming due to variance most likely.
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On 27/09/2019 at 15:44, 超级足球狂热迷 said:
To give a real suggestion, the focus is to improve the quality of the picture, change the proportion of players and venues, why so many unreasonable shots, is because too much space leads to too many shooting opportunities in the game, in order not to appear table tennis score.
Force out the golden finger's rescue and shoot into the goalkeeper's body.
Many players want to play the game well, but many pictures feel unreal.
Where are you from buddy? I know FM has a following in Asia but it would be nice to here more insights from your community.
You are right in your assessment of the ME. Depending on your tactic, you can regularly see combined 40 shots a game... so when I see "It was easier to score than miss" 5x a game I start to feel like the ME is trying to compensate for something.
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17 hours ago, WojciechZed said:
I generally am confused with how attributes work sometimes. They certainly don't seem to correspond with star ratings.
What star ratings? The star ratings on your "Team depth" screen are staff opinions of CA/PA.
Star ratings on your tactics screen are how well suited a player is for a role depending on how his attributes correspond with the selected role.
17 hours ago, WojciechZed said:Well of course, but when you have a guy with a long shot attribute of 4, scoring long range beauties, while others with 2 digit numbers don't, it makes you wonder how much sense the attributes make.
It can be something to do with "scaling" like someone else said, so perhaps 20 long shots isn't twice as good as 10 long shots. Who knows. Also things like converting a long shot usually includes other attributes like technique/first touch. Then you add in hidden mentals that contribute to a player overall performance, the opposition you're playing against, a healthy dose of variance which has to exist... well of course FM isn't as linear as "This guy has 18 long shots so he will 100% score more long shots than the guy with 4".
What you can say is that, all things being equal, the player with the better relevant stats will be more likely to score long shots.
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It's just variance. On the whole, the better the attributes the better the performances. If you're sentimental you can keep playing him, but you're better off putting the better player back in.
Also as someone else said, he could have great hidden mentals.
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Youth Recruitment, Youth Facilities and Junior Coaching all contribute to the quality of the players who come through. I don't know the exact impacts of each (some might effect CA or PA).
Tweaking training how so? Better facilities means better attribute improvement.
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One thing I love about FM is you can play it however you want. Some people want hyper-realism so they go LLM and never use the player search. To me though, often the obsession with realism can detract from the fun because no matter what you do it'll never be realistic.
Take for example tactics, is it considered unrealistic to employ tactics you know are very strong? Should a "realistic challenge" be to just use basic formations and avoid anything overpowered?
To me it's not about making the game realistic, but making it harder or easier. Limitations make the game harder and I'm down with that, but I don't do things for the sake of realism.
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On 05/09/2019 at 07:12, sporadicsmiles said:
The obvious thing to say is that you need to defend better. If a team is scoring with every single shot or chance they get, you are doing something wrong (in that particular match at least). And if you are conceding 80% of goals from deep crosses, why are you not making changes to stop that? I definitely do not concede most of my goals in this way (my team concedes mostly to set pieces and to counters) so it is not something inherent to FM, it is something inherent to how you are playing.
It is quite impossible to comment on this without seeing the incidents. Even the best players will miss some 1 on 1 chances. It depends how the goalkeeper closes down, composure of the player, the angle of the shot, the players preferred foot and a bunch of things. If you think it is a bug, report it as such on the bug forum. Nobody wants to stop progress, and it is what that forum is for.
I guess your players switched off, or the Arsenal players were motivated by conceding. This happens in real life, as you point out. If it happens a lot to you, you need to look at your players and their personality. It is annoying, but it happens. I am sure you have done the same in the past.
It is certainly harder to break down a defensive side, you have to use different tactics. In essence you have to create your own space and exploit it, rather than exploiting space given to you. The better the players you play against, the harder this is. This is true of real life football too. How many sides can successfully park the bus and hold out against superior opposition? Enough that park the bus tactics are hated and derided in real life. When I am being defensive I am happy to let the AI have the ball, and defend the penalty area. They can take as many shots from outside as they like, since I have a packed the penalty area the chance of scoring is very low. Ditto with crosses, I will have more people in the box than them, so I fancy my chances to defend. What I try to stop is players having space in my box, or being able to pass to someone else in the box. It is just good tactical decisions by the AI when a man down defending a 3 goal lead. It is frustrating, but you just need to learn how to break down more defensive sides by creating overloads and having runners moving into the space these overloads can create.
On a note that is probably going to annoy you, if you are seeing the same things happen over and over again, why are you not doing things to change it? Being entirely inflexible and then blaming the game is not going to help you win more games. I cannot comment much on 1v1s because I do not have an issue with it really, but at the same time I score goals from a variety of different sources. But take long shots from the edge of the area. The ones that go in typically have a midfielder who gets the ball with a lot of space around him and time to either drive forward a bit, or compose for the shot. These are extremely dangerous situations in real life too. And it is entirely preventable. Do not give players a bunch of time on the edge of your area to pick and choose their place to shot. If a player is rushed or lacks a lot of space, their long shots will be worse. Defend the area in front of your penalty area, and long shots conversion will be low. I have a defensive counter tactic I use where I actually invite long shots. It works because I do not give players time to set themselves, and have a bunch of defenders in the way to make blocks. Same goes for conceding goals from deep crosses all the time. This probably means you have a high defensive line and not a lot of defensive cover - and probably attacking fullbacks. Just dropping your defensive line a notch would probably help a lot with this. Less space for the attacking players to attack, and so more chance your goalkeeper will deal with crosses.
I guess my point here is that if you keep doing exactly the same thing all the time, you are of course going to see the same things all the time. Both good and bad. Your job as a manager is to maximize the good and minimize the bad. Failing to do this does not mean the game is at fault, it means the user is not maximizing their play. I do not say there are no issues with the ME (I was in fact quite vocal about the lack of attacking movement when FM19 was first released). However, many things are down to the user and can be changed.
Ah there's so much to address here but I'm not completely against a lot of your points. There are many things I can do tactically better, I'm not a nuanced tactical player, just an ME abuser. But at least I don't set piece abuse
But for sure, 1v1s are underpowered. Would you call it a bug? I don't know. I consider it a band aid. I get/give 3-4 1v1s a game, I swear the conversion rate is ridiculously low and I think it's because if they were harder than scorelines would get silly. Maybe I could upload a few games at one point and see if you agree. How often do you see a player square the ball or round the keeper? When I see a player miss a 1v1 I don't automatically think broken ME, but when I see a player never round the keeper, never square it in the most obvious of times... then I think broken ME.
But really I should have made this topic independent of the result, because the loss was just a catalyst and I shouldn't have focused on it. It goes both ways, the AI needs about 3-4 1v1s to convert one. If I'm the stronger team I'll win the vast majority of games with 10 men without changing anything (except for moving 1 of my strikers to fill in the gap, anything else is suicide).
The things that happen over and over again are a ridiculous amount of 1v1 chances, a lot of goals coming from deep crosses, and 10 men disadvantages not accurately simulated.
Also as I've said it's not really about winning/losing (overachieving isn't a challenge when the ME has exploitable flaws), but rather I'm just a bit disappointed in several areas of the ME. I've played 100s of hours of FM this iteration and it's just a bit funny to see that because I use a certain tactic that I know I'm going to typically always get a lot of 1v1s and not score them, and if I concede it's from a deep cross to the back post. Of course I could change the tactic (the high line) to fix that, but the result would be the tactic not being as strong.. so yeah I'll keep the high line because it wins me games, and then I'll just accept that when I concede it'll usually be from a counter attack swinging a cross to the backpost.. because this is a game, not real life. I don't expect the ME to be real life... just y'know... better...
To take it one step further... how are set piece exploits still in the game after a whole year?! Just another part of the ME I feel is neglected.
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2 hours ago, grasu said:
IMO, this is a problem in FM in general. It's very easy to overachieve, both for the player and the AI, but once you get to a certain level and need to proceed further the game suddenly becomes far harder.
Case and point: you can take AFC Telford to the PL because the AI is dumb as bricks and you can easily outmaneuver them in the transfer market. You can buy god-like players for the lower leagues, nurture them to become superstars and sell them for a lot of money to go up the ranks. However, once you reach the PL and face some real competition (Arsenal, Chelsea, MC - teams that buy the world in FM) you get crushed.
I kind of think the whole game is quite easy (unless you go out of your way to make it hard). The lower leagues are easier in the sense that good loans and one star player can carry you. The PL takes a bit longer to win but I think of it as "3 divisions". The bottom half, the top half, and the top 5. With a 50+ million transfer budget each season it doesn't take too long to win each "division" and build a world class team IMO. For me the hardest league is the Championship because you have to beat several PL quality teams and they can often be league runaways amassing up to 90 points for 3rd place.
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I'll take your word on it though, the 40 yard balls on a sixpence do seem to happen a bit too much as well
Can we please have an option to turn off the "Opaqueness" of the touchline tablet?
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Seriously it's so bloody annoying. I click the touchline tablet cause I want to quickly look at the stats. It makes no sense to turn it opaque and barely readable just cause a highlight triggers. I'm not an invalid, if I thought I would miss something I would just minimize it again.
Arghhhhh