wazzaflow10

Just had bellingham drop 4 points from June to October. Also personality change from perfectionist to model citizen (yay?). I did have him in a mentoring group with Erikson whos determination is 16 at the start but after his determination dropped from 20 to 19 I removed Bellingham from the group. I can understand that being the cause but the effect seems way too high. Edit: I also uploaded two files to you guys named Bellingham Pre determination drop July 2024 and Bellingham Determination Drop Oct 2024. I might have a few in between if needed as well as a few pre transfer.

First thoughts on the beta Overall impression: Solid but frustrating. Not entirely sure how to configure tactics in the new ME quite yet. Will definitely need a few visits to the tactics forum to figure out how to fit pieces together. The good: Loving the new ball physics and general 3D textures. Player movements look much more fluid. Keeper animations are solid - can even see them punch the ball. Attacking player movement is much improved. Generally take up much better positions. Players will often play the obvious pass forward if available. Crossing doesn't always hit the first man and go out for a corner and player seem much more willing to cross at appropriate times. It's a nice change of pace from the wait for cross then clang it off the player nearest you loop. The bad: Defending set pieces is a nightmare. I think all defensive players get a 200 point IQ drop the moment the ball goes out of play. Seem to have zero awareness on threats, particularly on throw ins and the natural position recovery after the ball is cleared initially. Everyone seems to be caught between mark player I'm near and run blindly back to my assigned position. Leads to a lot of heart in mouth stuff. Speaking of throw ins - the deep attacking throw in offsides bug is still present. If a player is taking a throw in from the corner flag, the player receiving the ball should never attempt to play a one-two with him. The ugly: Given up 3 Penalties in 4 games. Probably not a bug but holy hell. None of them are even tackles. Just players "pushing" another player when a ball gets lofted from 40 yards away. Other random thoughts: With the new positional awareness for attacking movement I feel like we'll need better defensive tools or at least a better understanding of what is available to have players be responsible for certain channels. Faced a 4-3-3 double mezzala with an IWB and IFB and DLF and could not stop them nor get on the ball. Man Marking pulls players out of position and positional marking seemed to have no effect. I don't expect it to be addressed this year but I hope it doesn't lead to some crazy OP tactics that don't look bad but take advantage of poor defensive awareness or tactical limitations. Wish there was more context on duels. Seems like a lot of players will just give up the ball while trying to dribble. I'm sure its hard to show in 3D but the text would be nice if it said there was a tackle or a poor touch or something. Jumping reach/heading appear to have an outsized importanace (at least in premier league) on the game. Would like to see more hoofs/clearances make it over the top of defenders and have them at least have to chase things down.

I'm creating FM23 save starts with different parameters/leagues loaded/mods for this very thing. Convert to 24 upon release and then convert to 25 when that happens.

Absolutely. It went from a I'll play around December on gamepass after the first major patch and buy when its on sale for posterity sake to buy Day 1. Completely booted Cities: Skylines II off the top spot for me. I hope my family doesn't mind that I've gone missing.

Yeah hope so. I was pretty down on the game back in the spring. the new features have me super excited. More than I thought I'd be after the Unity announcement. Hopefully only one more week of waiting for the beta.

It could happen if he's at his PA limit. The game really should put left and right foot abilities for the technical attributes to level the playing field. I know from a researcher's point of view that's impossible. But the game does impute the values somehow. I think that would be fine even if formulaic. I think the rationale though is if he's spending time on his weaker foot and is at his limit then something else must be getting neglected so the points have to be taken from somewhere else. Realistically though it should be very, very hard to train your weaker foot after a certain age like 18+. Not sure how many players came up with only being able to use one and then became nearly equally two footed. I don't think it should take CA points cause it can wreak havoc on a player's attributes if they're at their PA limit.

Makes sense then yeah. I kind of wish (not to confuse this with a tired debate) that players would "look" the part of a PL caliber player if they've had success. Clearly a guy with 10 in 18 would be in much more demand. Game can't be perfect though. Guessing this was a youth only save?

yep that's the one I remember. Again can't confirm 100% cause it was 20 years ago now and lost contact with a lot of my old teammates over the years. Small world. You're probably the only person I've talked to who has gotten the reference. Maybe its bigger in Detroit.

funny story I'm not local to detroit but had an old trainer from the detroit area (played college at Valpo and played pro indoor/outdoor) and one of his childhood friends came to our practice one day doing all sorts of unusual things for a practice session. At the end of the practice he gave us all t-shirts that said wazaflo(w?) on them. I have no idea if its associated or not b/c this would have been around 2001/02/03. Anyway it just stuck with me. Especially after Wayne Rooney. So the name is a bit of a portmanteau of that and Rooney. I'm looking at the picture of the owner of the team.. seems like that could be the guy. Hair wasn't as long but definitely kind of the vibe/style I remember. Edit: Looking at the logo much more closely now. the color scheme was different more baby blue from what i remember and no dragons behind it. But the ball as the center of the flower/ellipse thing was definitely something i remember.

I'm curious if there's anything hidden behind the scenes that you might miss out on like certain attributes or ways the game calculates player behavior. I think when OOTP does this they say starting a new game will give you the full experience as some attributes are disabled or not used and may affect how the game is played. It doesn't seem like 24 will have much difference but curious if 25 would. Shame I already abandoned my save for 23 though. Put it in the recycle bin and apparently emptied it recently. Oh well.

Amazing you took him from the national league to the PL. How did you only manage 600k for a fee though? Seems really low unless he was out of contract?

Yeah it was definitely quirky. I never looked too hard into it tbh but that makes sense.

I could be misremembering or did something wrong. However I was starting a journey man save and wound up in africa (Forget which nation - Nigeria maybe). Took the job at the end of the season and couldn't add anyone in the first transfer window of the league that ran from Dec-Feb. No one in the league could. It was the only time i've ever ticked that box. Had to abandon the save cause half the players left and couldn't add anyone.

I was also thinking of one winger in the midfield strata and one winger in the AM strata too rather than just the straight 4-2-3-1. Never felt like the AI/ME handled that formation well so I stopped using it.

I'm sure Man Utd fans will play this way so they can sign Belllingham and Kane instead of Mount and Hojlund even if the budget doesn't allow. I'm sure in the game though Kane would probably sign a new contract unless SI set him as unwilling to do so. I think there's merits to both. The Your world gives you a fresher start and can't double dip in the summer window. That has been a minor criticism of mine. The no transfers in first window option didn't work well for teams that had their offseason from Nov/Dec to Feb/Mar. So the Your World option kind of levels the playing field a bit. It would be a good test to check out the new AI Squad building logic that's for sure. The real world though feels much less gamey though especially if you sim partially into the season before taking on a job. If i'm doing a big club save I often wait til the first manager at one of the big European clubs gets sacked (except Pep lol). I'd probably start with a real world save here just to give the clubs the expected squads.

Question for the SI team - does this upgrade to positional play and awareness improve the engine's ability to deal with asymmetric tactics? I think the general consensus was that asymmetric formations tended to have players pop up in odd positions that the AI/Engine couldn't handle or didn't expect. Are these formations more balanced now that players are more aware of their surroundings?

So do you have to be signed up for fmfc to get these new features in game? Or are they part of the full game regardless of fmfc status? Kind of dumb/annoying I have to give out marketing information to see features of a game before its released.

You can control who's covering for who based on roles and positions so long as its somewhat logical. If your goal is to create some extreme variant of total football it should fail spectacularly ever time. But SI doesn't have the time to test every single possible thing a user could do to find weaknesses/exploits. The adjustment of the DM to move across if there's an IWB on their side and a vacated area from a DM pushing forward is a massive, massive improvement. The effectiveness of that movement probably depends on the player too. I don't think you could have a player with poor positioning/OTB movement and poor physicals play that kind of role. You don't have total freedom because the AI isn't capable of creating a tactic with total freedom. WIBWOB in theory is the best answer but it doesn't work in practice because the possibilities are infinite. Give enough people enough time and someone will break the match engine. The tactics page is meant to keep users honest to a degree so that SI can create an AI that is competitive and a match engine that provides repeatable feedback. The other alternative is SI allows the AI to see the match engine under the hood and work out in game what the best tactic is with total freedom. It wouldn't take very long before the AI converges on a game breaking tactic that no one can beat. What SI is trying to do is keep the user and AI honest within the context of the match engine they've created. As the game evolves they'll evolve the engine like they've done with Pep's new tactics or the Raumdeuter 10-15 years ago. You're never going to create a never before seen tactic in this game. Its just not designed to be a free for all simulator. Maybe one day in the future with enough data on player movements and patterns of play from real life they'll tell us to go hog wild. And I'd expect unbalanced/unrealistic tactics at that stage to be severely punished.

Question I'd have for the team - in regards to player positioning/off the ball movement/rotational fluidity should we expect an increase in importance of tactical familiarity and team cohesion during match days? Have there been any adjustments in how quickly/slowly a team/player can get up to speed and retain competence in a role/shape/creative freedom? 10/10 so far on the new features though. Really well done.

Well there's always CM 01/02

I'm sure they curated clips from the game that highlighted the feature they were showing. Also seemed like they picked Man City v Stratford SI Purple in a few clips. I'd hope in lower leagues (not that I have time to play those anymore) would have more hoofs just from TIs/PIs and the new player movement puts more emphasis on the mental attributes. That'd have a fun impact on people only signing wonderkids instead of prime-aged players at the top level too.

Away goals are down significantly for every team in FM23 compared to real life. It causes issues for the lower half of the table and in particular relegation candidates simply not scoring enough and not getting the correct amount of points. That's why you'll see the bottom team with points totals in the teens regularly. They are too passive away from home against everyone especially if the reputation is hugely different.