It's been said: "Ask the right question".
Is this game a perfect reflection of football management? Not at all! And I don't think it ever will be one. Irl there are too many variables that impossible to implement in the simulation.
Does this game capture key moments of football management? Partially, I would say 30%. There has been huge improvement since earlier versions, but stil a lot needs to be done.
Did programmers have an intention to make it hard for human players? Maybe and even likely, because if game is easy people stop playing very quickly. Thing is AI can "learn" only based on algorithm assigned, while a human player can learn every day. Therefore, AI should have initial advantage.
Is using "random" function really cheating? Not really. If you flip a coin, the probability theory says it's 50-50 chance of head or tail. If you repeat it 10 times, you should expect 5-5 or close outcome. In reality it can be 8-2 or even 10-0. The problem is that "random" function in this game works a little differently. Most likely it works like this "A beats B 80% of time
if they both have "right" instructions". Thing is B (weak AI team) has right instruction more often then A (strong human team), and as a result 80% become 50% etc. The only question is actual numbers that has been used, and whether the code takes into consideration the quality of AI manager.
Can human player come up with "right" instructions? Yes! The thing is that "right" instructions are not unique, so we have to either tweak, or accept decrease in probability of positive outcome.
What could (and probably should) be done to improve human player chances? Information! Detailed manual that explains not how to setup each player / team, but rather what exactly each slider / comment / team talk does from
game creators point of view would be a good start. We can figure out it by ourselvs, but it is so time consuming... And people buy this game to play, not to test. Improved feedback system, etc. And here we back to question 2 - the more key moments of football management captured, the better.
Does it make sense to complain about "unrealistic" outcomes again and again? Not really. The game is released only once a year, and patches fix only real bugs. Each version is better than previous one in terms of football simulation, but it will never be perfect. Excluding random factor would lead to simplification (buy the best players => win everything), whilst in presense of random factor there always be unrealistic outcomes.
Linear Mode
