stopazricky

can someone clarify this? Thanks

Is the 4-4-2 bug still in the game, where the midfield will push up in an extremely unrealistic way, making the formation line up as a literal 4-0-6? It was prominent in the early days of FM24 and before starting a save where I plan to make massive use of 4-4-2 I'd love to know whether this bug is still present or not

I want to play a defensive and counter-attacking tactic with low lines, restricting space and patiently waiting for opponent's mistakes to get the ball and go for a counter. A few pages back I was advised that the optimal Mentality to achieve this is Attacking, as this will make my players take more risks and play quicker and more vertical passes and runs (which means they'll try to counter more often). However, I was worried that a Mentality that is theoretically "offensive" could make my team less effective defensive (whereas defensive solidity is the number one priority). Is Mentality really just "Risk", and can I play defensive football with an Attacking Mentality?

I believe your aversion to accept EBFM's findings is at least partially caused by what you perceive as antagonism on his side - you feel like you and your tests are trying to help SI, whereas he and his tests are attacks towards the developers. That's something that rubs you the wrong way and makes you unwilling to accept that his tests are actually reasonably accurate (more on that later). But the thing is - have you watched the guy's content? He's incredibly humble, he does not clickbait, he never said anything mean about SI and in fact for the most part he always tries to find reasonable explanations for the weird stuff he comes across. His video wasn't called "CONDITION IN FM24 IS BROKEN". Hell, he's even boring to watch! He doesn't look like a guy that lives by "Sensationalize first then rationalize", quoting Rashidi. Now, onto the matter of the discussion: is the test setup scientifically valid? Well, none of you convinced me otherwise. See, you listed 50 different things that could alter the results of the matches, and you are correct in doing so. But precisely because they were kept in control (by zeroing them or maxing them), you either have to accept that: A) They could have affected the test results in an UNEVEN way; or B) They aren't relevant to the test. See, let's take Morale. Maybe it was maxed out, maybe it was half the way, but are you really suggesting that Condition consumption is influenced by that? And not only that, but that its effect is uneven - meaning that aggressively pressing consumes just as much Condition as rarerly pressing, but only when your players are happy? How about complacency (something else that was in @herne79's list of stuff EBFM supposedly glossed over): are you guys suggesting that being complacent because you've been winning a lot lately affects how well your players breathe? How can complacency be the explanation as to why a Gegenpress tactic didn't wear the players out any more than a patient one? Yes, there are hundreds more factors, but they are obviously irrelevant. Another example: Altitude? Well, it does in fact affect breathing in real life, but he definitely did not test this stuff in Mexico City. So, does the expected and reasonable effect on Condition of a Gegenpress tactic completely fade away as soon as you're 300 metres above sea levels? Just saying "it's more complex than that" is not a valid explanation of why EBFM is wrong.

None of those that heavily criticized EBFM's methodology and tests bothered to explain what's actually wrong with his experimental setup, though.

(As per @Jack Joyce suggestion, I'll be cautious and I'll avoid using the term "proof" regarding EBFM work) Evidence Based Football Manager just released a video that seems to suggest that higher Tempo, Mentality and (most of all) Trigger Press does not consume more Condition, which might be the reason why Gegenpress is viable at all levels of the football pyramid and is always the optimal choice, therefore being OP. I embedded the Youtube video down below (it's already timestamped, but watch from the beginning if you want to know more about his work methodology). While EBFM's work might not be perfect, this is confirmation of something that anyone playing FM has been suspecting all along, so I'm not surprised. There's really only two doubts in my mind: 1) Does SI know that the Match Engine works like this? 2) If so, is it intended? While it can be argued that some relatively important aspects haven't been considered for the test (mainly LoE), these conclusions are just completely in line with most players' gut feeling about it. I respect SI's work very much, FM is possibly one of the most complex games out there. I just want to understand whether or not they agree that this is an aspect of the ME worth improving (because if they don't agree, they'll obviously never work on it).

Let's say I want to set up a defensive tactic that restricts spaces, seeks to soak up pressure from the opponents and then attack quickly on the counter. Generally speaking, which of the following is going to help me achieve that? 1 Cautious/Defensive Mentality + High/Very High Tempo 2 Attacking Mentality + Low/Very low defensive line?

Your number 8 is clearly marked tight by your opponent's number 17. Thank goodness your centre-back doesn't pass the ball to him!

Thanks for the reply. I'll accept the point that "proof" might be excessive. I'll bring you one more example: here (FM23), and here (FM22), data is provided which seems to suggest that most training sessions achieve slightly different things from what they say they do, and some of them achieve completely different things. Some of his tests also concluded that Penalty training never achieves anything at all, and most famously, he didn't seem to be able to detect any effect on game results when testing Match Preparation sessions in FM23. These instances can lead us players to doubt about every single aspect of the game, because it shows that in-game descriptions cannot be taken at face value, and because some mechanics, when tested in a seemingly convincing controlled manner, don't seem to do much.

I'm going to go as far as quoting @Jack Joyce into this conversation. A growing portion of players feels more and more like virtually all the mechanics of the games are placebo. Through the work of Evidence Based Football Manager, this is being put to test in a scientific manner and increasingly proven to be true. I would love to hear official feedback from SI about it. Not necessarily here, not necessarily now, but I believe they simply can't afford to ignore this - from a moral perspective, not monetary, of course. If there's ONE thing I wish we'll get with Unity-based FM is precisely this - the game actually behaving the way it's supposed to, and the way it says it does. A glaring example is training penalties, which... should improve penalties. How quickly? How much? At what age? I don't know, but it should do something, something at all.

Listen, one of the main reasons I bought the game was because I was excited that the man management on the AI part was going to be better, as it always bothered me to some extent. This improvement was a headline feature. And then the game releases, and the AI makes next to ZERO subs? First of all, how did that slip through alpha testing? It takes two hours tops to notice it. Secondly... how can we even accept such thing? It's like wanting a gaming monitor with 2K resolution, finding one being explicitly advertised as a 2K monitor, and then buying it only to find out that it's 720p, and the manufacturer's reply to criticism about it is "whoops, sorry, we'll be adding the missing pixels in the next few months though, don't worry". This is beyond unacceptable. To a degree, I can understand issues such as excessive goalscoring, I do accept that things can go wrong when making such a complex game. But being told two months ago that the AI was going to make much better use of their substitutions, and when the game releases, the AI makes absolutely no use of their subs whatsoever? Come on...

So does this mean that the Inverted Fullback in a back four will also tuck inside to form a back three when a Wide Centerback overlaps? Or is the Wide Centerback never available for CB's in a back four? Because on paper, nothing should stop a CB to overlap and both fullbacks to stay back to form a back three with the more conservative of the two CB's

This sounds great! I have a question though: will player targets affect their mentality and tactical decisions? For example, if a player has a target for scoring a certain number of goals, will that make him shoot more often? Because if that's the case, that is HUGE - for example, you could set targets for one of your midfielders to score 10+ league goals in order to increase the frequency with which they'll run late into the box, while a the same time setting a clean sheet target for another midfielder to encourage that player to play more cautiously instead.

We know that, with an engine change coming down the line, it would make zero sense for them to, say, do a complete revamp of set pieces in their old proprietary engine, knowing that it will be painful to port over in FM25. They will make the most polished version ever, but they won't add much because the last thing they want is to artificially increase the workload required to transition into Unity

I did the math and yes, you are right. Sorry for not fact-checking the video (or rather, my understanding of it) before posting