Wakers

The game results in Fm 2008 are totally, utterly and completely random.

I had become fed up with the engine forcing McCarthy, Santa Cruz, Derbyshire and Rigters to shoot straight at the opposing goalkeeper every single time, while the oppositions strikers magically wake up in the 80th minute and slot two into the top corner 6 games in a row that I decided to test something.

I saved the game before my match against Aston Villa at home. I then played the same game 6 times with the same tactic, same team talk, same ignoring the press before the match, same team selection etc.. Do you know what happened? I got 6 completey different results! I mean, ffs! There's no wonder people struggle to figure out the match engine if that happens.

First result:

2-2 - followed the trend of my form lately, we battered the opposition playing my defensive, slow tempo formation, 15 shots and 10 on target, yet our goals come from a deflected shot and a corner. At 85 minutes, with my team trying to defend the lead, time wasting raised a little bit, just into the 'much' category, a ball is played forward to Carew, Nelson lets it drift by him (why ffs) and carew from the corner of the box smashes it into the top corner. Then in 94 minutes Emerton inexplicably throws the ball straight to agbonlohor who races thru to score. I wish my strikers could carry the ball into the box before tying to shoot..heh.

Second game and we lose 1 - 4. I had 8 shots on target and they had 5, friedel gets a 5 at half time (2-0 after 2 shots) sub him and bring on Brown, who then gets a 4, despite saving a shot.

Third game, a victory! The game is boring and lifeless, we are given a penalty in the 30th minute which Savage blasts into the corner.

Fourth game, another victory! We dominate play, 2 brilliant flowing moves result in a goal each for McCarthy and Santa Cruz - note that both shots were straight at the keeper but seemed to go in - even when we score my strikers still shoot at the middle of the goal.

Fifth game - 1-2 defeat. We were played off the park here by Brazil playing in Aston Villa kits. Were lucky to score the first goal after 2 minutes due to a deflected shot from McCarthy. Before the deflection it was going straight down the middle of the goal...

Final game - 4-0 victory! Aston Villa have more shots on goal than us but miss everything thankfully, meanwhile Sorensen has a nightmare, collecting a 4 after 90 minutes. McCarthy scored from 30 yards with a very curvy effort, apart from that, the 2 of the goals were straight down the middle of the goal again.. and one was scored by Pederson shooting across the goal.

Now, how on earth are we supposed to figure things out here if the results are this random. The match engine needs serious, serious work from what I can see. Strikers simply do not try and go around the keeper. Every shot that is on target is straight at the keeper - no wonder people complain about super keepers!

Your defenders will sometimes randomly just let the ball go past them so that the ai can score; despite having team instructions on easy tackling we gave away 25 free kicks in one of the games, 5 of which were around the box in the last 10 minutes of the game.

When strikers get 6 yards out from goal they are guaranteed to put it wide.

There needs to be some form of feedback from the game as to what is going wrong with a player's tactics, because common sense approaches simply do nothing.

Now I know that this doesn't happen all the time during the game, This is the second season with Rovers, and the first one went brilliantly, we finished 4th, only having one sticky run in the middle of the season when the fixtures piled up. But the sad thing is, this is guaranteed to happen at some stage, and it is just so mind numbingly irritating because all the player sees happening is your strikers suddenly forgetting that a goal has corners and your defenders making mind numbingly stupid decisions.

It never appears that your tactics have stopped working, it just appears that the match engine has decided you're doing too well and need to be taught a lesson in humility.

After this, I am taking a break from Fm2008, probably until the next demo comes out, seeing as the guys at SI don't believe this is a problem, which is sad, because there clearly is.

drambuie2

I'm intrigued by your tests - I must admit i'm at 'mouse breaking' point with the game
sometimes, and agree totally there needs to be a tactic-tester or asst manager feedback option to let you know where/why an apparently sound tactic is failing (the options/tweaks etc are too many and various now I think) - I've been trying Villa and Man City, regularly getting say 15 chances and only 5 on target, opposition get less and score more as a ratio regularly and it is infuriating.

I usually play the top teams , and I think the better players tend to override a lot of the issues by scoring more often, from less chances etc so some of the 'issues' with the engine are less apparent. Having started trying the 'weaker' teams it just seems to be one random, annoying result after another as you say, for no apparent reason either (and I don't watch the games in 2d pitch mode as it's too painfully slow tbh).

One thing I have wanted for ages, and I think the game needs, is a simple selection that allows for 'play the ball on the ground' instructions - the target man 'play to feet' seems to make little difference to the number of headers my five foot nothing stiker needs to make in a game and setting short passing seems to have little impact on the number of heading attempts. Realistically headers will need to be made sometime but to restrict them seems to be very hard to achieve.

It all gets rather frustrating really!