wazzaflow10

For context: Started a save a while back to figure out if scouting was broken. Played for about 3 months in game and compared start and end results. All that is logged in the bug tracker already. Then I thought to myself, if I redo the same 3 months but let an AI manager run the club, would the results 3 months later be the same? I was hoping the bug was some user-induced error and AI would have no issues scouting. Boy was I wrong. When I took control of the club again there was virtually the same players scouted as when I took a snapshot and resigned! So this left me with a question. Does the AI actually scout or do they do something entirely different or is this bugged as well? It seems very bizarre to me that I take control of the team 3 months later and no new reports have been added. On one had it would explain so much as to why when you join a new team there's absolutely nothing in the scouting department. On the other I can't fathom how the AI operates without scouting. Surely it would be easier to identify targets for better transfers if they followed the same list we do of A to F ratings and work their way down the list in positions of need right?

Whats the difference functionally between negotiate and suggest to the AI? Is it more like I'm open to talking but you need to increase your offer where suggest is we're on the phone trying to hammer out the deal sort of interaction? Never really thought there was much difference other than immediacy of reply.

@Zachary Whyte Just wanted to highlight something for you. I know we're deep into the development cycle so I know it's unlikely we're going to get changes based on this feedback. This is more of a sanity check that 1) This focus would fit the criteria you've mentioned before and 2) These results are abnormal to what is expected the game to produce. I ran this scouting focus as a manager for Chelsea with a Your World Start. I took the job in August of 2023 and played normally through December 2023. Over the course of those 3 months my scouts have found a total of 30 new players. 0 are Recommended in the focus but do show up in the Scouting > Players > Scouted Players tab. The starting point (Recruiting Start.html) and last save point (December RF.html) are attached below to show the players that I began with and who I ended up with. I can understand if recruiting was toned down to prevent some user behavior of scooping up every player. I do find it a bit concerning my scouts have not found many if any top level players like Haaland or Salah. I don't expect to have a completed scouting report for every player but it's hard to imagine scouting for Chelsea that there isn't at least a basic report on a good number of players in the Premier League. Certainly I'd expect fewer from the Championship/League One/League Two. A report on a player in those leagues would be analyst/form driven i.e. scouts would only watch if a player was putting in high level performances for an extended period of time and would reasonably be at least gradable by a scout. Thanks. Recruiting Start.htmlDecember RF.html

The fullbacks definitely should take up more of a half space position when the ball is on the opposite side of the pitch. Its hard to decipher if its just a visual thing or if they're really marking a winger that tightly and leave a huge gap in the space there. I tend to do specific player marking and that works reasonably well (usually trying to cover attacking or inverted wingbacks) imo. Terrified to do it with defensive players though for fear that it'll just pull them completely out of position.

Is this not achievable by taking your right and left midfielders and having them mark specifically CML and CMR positions? I know it seems like it should be more intuitive that what you really want is the space between the wingers and central midfield but it should drag them inside a bit more. Admittedly I don't know how well the mark specific positions works.

It seems there's some varying degrees of issues. I've set a scout to find any U18 players in England and had zero results returned. No recommendations, minimal if any players actually scouted in the players scouted tab. Compared to 23 where I got about 30-40 reports in a month from the same focus. None of them were complete but there was some awareness. I wouldn't be opposed to having it take longer to get a complete report and have player attributes masked/ranged for longer. Frankly, I wish scouted wasn't so exact, even for scouts/coaches with JPA/JPP of 20. If you're familiar with OOTP I'd love to see something similar implemented here.

I don't think that's the case. They've said in the bug tracker they're working on fixes. Scouts will still find players you manually set to scout but won't find any based on focuses. You can take a premier league team and scout the league and it'll return nothing. Won't even recommend Halaand to you. That thought did cross my mind though. I'd be fine if scouts chased players who had good reputation/stats but you missed the best overall player. I also think it would work wonders if younger players were more pragmatic about joining your team if you have a number of players at their position already and especially if there were others in their age group.

Agree with all of that except for one piece (the one you don't play with in youth only saves) is scouting needs to be fixed. Otherwise I've enjoyed this version much more than the previous two.

Just wanted to say nice job pulling that apart.

But that last tactic isn't doing any pressing by virtue of you selecting much less pressing. You've basically told them to never challenge man on the ball with those instructions. So it's not even a Mourinho or Simeone. There's plenty of variations of those in the tactics forums though if you wanted to play that way.

I'm really enjoying all this attention to reading my post history. I'm not defending anything nor being dismissive. Far from it. I want people to log bugs if they find them. I've logged a fair share of bugs I've found since release. Some just rant endlessly about "game's broken" in the general discussion based on some website's findings that no one seems to understand how they got their result. Why are people so adamant this one particular site has some how solved the entire match engine? Its apparently okay to defend that endlessly despite developers and testers telling them otherwise? Could SI be lying about everything? I guess but I don't see the benefit to that really. I'm not talking about the marketing angle but the actual developers that answer questions here. I understand if people feel like the game didn't live up to its expectations. But at its core if we're talking about statistical testing. There's been very little actual testing and more I simulated a season or two and it confirmed my suspicions. If someone came on here with a well thought out test and conclusions then I'd adapt my thinking. But we've been a little short of that on here. Its a fine line to say I've personally had success with players who are fast and tall and strong while using a high pressing tactic vs a claim that this is the only way to play the game and its completely broken. Because I myself have had success doing different tactics as have others.

Yeah way to take something completely out of context. Nicely done. You work for The Sun?

They can be all of those things why not? It might be 5% of their tasks. But they do run their own tests and provide something for others to consume. We can call them whatever you want honestly. It was the first thing that came to mind since ultimately what we talk about is what they produce. I'm fine to just chalk it up as a poor choice of words by me. I really don't have any skin in the game other than its getting a little tiresome from the barrage of posts on here being related to something someone found on that site and when asked to either open a bug ticket or information about what they did its just met with resistance of varying degrees. Its just weird to me we're suppose to take their word as gospel but when people with insider knowledge of how the game works come on and correct or provide context and they still persist with it, it just strikes me as odd.

They are if they're producing something, it doesn't have to be a youtube channel. They don't have to directly encourage anyone but it would be kind of foolish to think people wont take their data elsewhere or use it somewhere else. Which is why they should take the time to fully explain in detail what they are doing so that someone outside their group can actually understand the how and why. If they had full documentation it would be easy for some of us to refute or verify. It's also easier to keep people in the dark so that you don't expose flaws in your testing. Really all we can say about their work is under this specific set of circumstances xyz occurs. And people start extrapolating that to things it probably shouldn't be extrapolated to. And before you know it a bunch of misinformation gets spread about the game. Don't get me wrong. The game definitely has some flaws with certain things and I'd love to see them get fixed but its impossible (for me) to support suggestions when we don't know how the results were achieved. If they've gone through the trouble of setting up an entire system to programmatically test the game why not use it to improve it or show SI here's shortcomings we found? I'm sure they'd love the help and manpower to do things their time doesn't allow.

Its not how testing works. You post your findings with a solid objective testable hypothesis and a conclusion from testing. You get questioned about the method and results and probably asked to provide the data and parameters so that the test can be repeated outside your set up - and it might not just be from me. You might even have to repeat or modify certain test items to verify its not just a fluke or artefact of something unaccounted for. If you can answer those questions sufficiently then we can talk about right and wrong. This is pretty much how any legitimate statistical finding is verified so if you don't want to subject yourself to it that's fine given you have a "real" job. So lets just start with a simple testable hypothesis shall we? What is it you're trying to prove so badly?

They are to a degree if it can be easily copied and spread without providing sufficient information on how the results are achieved or ways to repeat a test outside of their system. The problem here is there appears to be a few people who go to fm-arena then come here to complain about the game and dominate conversations using fm-arena as proof when they don't have a lick of an idea of how anything was produced. There's a lot of content creators who post here and explain things they've done elsewhere. I don't know why it would be so difficult to either chime in to explain so we have a source of truth from them. Or at least be willing to be more transparent about what it is they are doing to produce results. If someone wants to post something from there on here that's fine but they should be able/willing to back it up when asked questions. If they don't know the answer they can't be defensive about it and go "just trust me bro". Its not how statistical testing works.

And you're so willing to share because you know those test will hold up to a light breeze. I'll wait for the sun to burn out for you to produce valid test results. Like i said before

Here's the issue though, you're just completely sitting back not putting any pressure on anyone. Putting defensive mentality with low block with much lower defensive line and less often pressing is basically sitting on top of your keeper and never trying to escape. We're well past anti-football at this point so playing that for 90 minutes for numerous games is of course going to result in poor performance. It doesn't really serve as evidence that "everything is broken". Its what you would expect playing that way and if your expectations were to bravely fight against relegation you'd be doing a pretty decent job being in 18th.

I think we've talked about it before but it would be a very nice feature if they let you see the tactic in some sort of interactive practice session if you wanted. Could probably be part of the training sessions for tactical cohesion. Ok lads we're going to work on parking the bus in the last 10 minutes of the game. The session shows you in common patterns of play and you can craft your tactic based on those results. Completely skip-able if you don't want to see it or view it as working out the engine.

No just waiting for you to share your conclusions with actual data like asked. You're telling me things that you haven't tested.

If its not the right place to ask then its not really the right place to post this stuff either. Especially if people don't understand how it works beyond "website says its true". I'm not saying you have to have a mathematical degree to post a statistical test but it can't be a free for all spreading information. The poster has to take some responsibility for answering questions about it for it to be taken seriously and not torn apart by people who have experience running experiments. I'm not saying their findings are wrong or don't work in the game but given the amount of posts on the forums of "games broken" or "GGPress is OP"and "no other tactics work" because of sites like these aren't helping anyone. If there was a genuine interest in making FM a better game the tests should have clear, transparent parameters with a hypothesis and a conclusion. Then we can have a discussion about the validity of the test and offer suggestions on new procedures to determine if its an eternally valid result. As a case for external validity applying here. And I don't expect you to answer, just food for thought questions about how else to test the system. We know that an extremely high intensity press works under perfect conditions with perfect morale and perfect fitness. Great we have a result that suggests there might be a tactic that performs better than others but its also in unrealistic conditions. No team is going to go through a whole season with those conditions. Does a team that has an extremely high intense press maintain that form for a whole season when some fixed parameters are relaxed or placed in different conditions? If a team is decimated by injuries due to high intensity pressing for a whole season, we can't conclude that it's the best tactic. It might be the best one match tactic if you can pull it off but it might not work either. There's many, many questions a lot of us would have if the tests were more open. I don't think its malicious or devious on their part. However its hard to take them as a serious claim if questions can't be answered here. I think we're all in agreement the game has some weaker points we'd all like to be fixed. I'm not against trying to show SI what those weaker points are or have discussions about it but we can't take these tests as facts (where's Rafa Benitez when you need him) without much more transparancy imo.

I struggle with points #6 and #8 here for validity. for #6 If every team has the same set of players there's bound to be one tactic that takes advantage of the distribution of attributes over another. It might so happen that the player profiles tend to fit systems that press much more. Within a trial you'd want to keep them equal but there should be some between trial variation that implements some change in attributes that perhaps highlight other areas of the game. I can appreciate they keep the distribution around what is found in the game rather than making everyone 1's and 20's but there should be some variation within what is possible to remove any sort of bias that may exist based on attribute distribution. For #8 How are these tactics determined? Random selection? Other high performers? Out of the box presets? Is each tactic represented equally on every test?

Are you really that good when you take a tactic from a forum that breaks the match engine on purpose and plug it into your team? That's cool if it's your game and how you want to play. But if you're as good as you claim you should be able to take something other than an exploiting gegenpress and win. Sorry I don't buy the "i'm just trying to be altruistic and thinking about the poor new players who can't make out of the box tactics work" angle. If you know the ins and outs of this game you wouldn't be claiming its impossible to play any other style. The one style that happens to be what most teams are trying to implement? Its no wonder it works better because they have players that will work better in that system than others. They've already been built for it. Asking them to play a completely different style is going to end in failure more often than not. There are absolutely areas FM can improve in terms of being more direct in counter attacking situations or finding space in teams that are pressing too high to punish tactics that are too aggressive. It does happen but there's a limit to where the game recognizes something is over aggressive vs something is so extreme it can't handle the inputs.

When you present hard cold facts and logic I'm sure the we all will listen. So far you've just been moaning about how bad you are at this game. Its okay. Its a hard game. There's a whole tactics forum that can help you. I appreciate the well wishes for my life. It's going swimmingly.