poggo

After giving much thought about the ups and downs of this year's game, I decided to do a little experiment.

DISCLAIMER: Mind you, you can call me stupid all you want; you can tell me it's my tactics; you can even tell me that's the way things are supposed to work; I'll post this anyway, because I apparently have a problem and want to share it.

So, back to the experiment.

I created a little test game, with the idea that I would play and replay one single match all the time, in order to come at terms with the intricacies of the tactics, instructions, sliders and what not.

I would use one single downloaded tactic that was supposed to be alright (judging by the response on the tactics forum), and tend to use the same line-up at all times. I chose Napoli, the match in question being against Parma.

First iteration: 1-1, with the obligatory 94th-minute second-shot-of-the-game equaliser. Fair enough, I said, let's load it again. Second iteration (same tactic, same line-up): 0-4, with a hat-trick by Igor Budan of all people. OK. Load it for the third time. 3-0, with a hat-trick by my own Calaio. 4th time, 0-0. Fifth time, a thriller of 6-4. Sixth time, 0-0 again.Seveth time, 0-2, with a brace by Matteini, Budan being completely out of the game. Seventh time, 4-1, with my Walter Gargano exploding and havng 2 goals and 2 assists.

Now, let me remind you. I tended to use the same formation, tactic and line up all the time. As far as I could see, the AI also employed the same line-up all the time. I was doing exactly the same things during the match, my players played in a very similar (not to say identical) fashion in every match. The flow was almost identical, the chances too.

Finaly, what bothers me. When you are doing fairly similar things, in a fairly similar environment, using fairly similar tools in a fairly similar fashion, you are supposed to get fairly similar results. I understand it's a game od football and that things occur, fair enough. 2-1, 0-0, 1-1, 1-2 I can accept. But while the matches were almost a carbon copy of themselves, the results ranged from 4-1 to 0-FOR NO APPARENT REASON.

I am not saying that there was no particular reason, as I am sure there certainly was; I am talking about no APPARENT reason. At that moment, if you had asked me (or any random player here, I believe), what the feck was happening, I'd sure have told you that the match engine was throwing complete random crap at me. I'm doing the exactly same things; one time I'm 4-0 up, next time I'm 4-1 down. And there is absolutely no way for me to understand what I have been doing wrong, and why it was not wrong the first time, but no it is.

Bottom line? Even in the days of yore, when we had the (in)famous wibble/wobble screens and no 2-D, if you had common sense, you could tell what's wrong. Now, there's no way in the world. Instead of thinking, analysing and correcting, it has become wild guesswork and hassle. And that, I think, is why a lot of people here feel the game is a let-down.

Amaroq

Why shouldn't it throw up 4-0 / 1-4 results when playing the same two matches back-to-back, assuming that the two teams are fairly well matched?

poggo

I'm not saying it shouldn't. In football, everything can happen, which makes the sport enjoyable.

BUT. What I was talking about is explaining and understanding things in the game. Eleven players playing with the same opposition, same tactics, same morale, same venue, same weather etc. And I'm completely unable to fathom why these guys have 24 shots on goal one time, and only 3 the next time. Surely the game takes all the variables into account while processing and showing what happens? It's a programmed match engine, it cannot be THAT random. But there's no way of telling as to the whys and whats.

But of course, I might be wrong.

Äktsjon Männ

I'd say the problem is the amount of goals there. Games between evenly matched teams don't usually turn out as 6-4 goalfests, unless they both go gung-ho. This new version of the match engine has a problem with defending, it just doesn't work properly. Forwards can run rings around defenders and they constantly get through on goal, their finishing however is fooked up so it becomes a lottery. You can get more consistent results with defensive formations but the matches will still be far from balanced.

Amaroq

Äktsjon Männ - I've found a lot of downloaded tactics ARE very gung-ho attacking, so that's not too surprising.

Yeah, there I agree with you, poggo. (You'll see that quite a bit in my post history, I'm sure!)

We don't get real / detailed feedback the way that we would as a real manager of a real team - in other words, we don't have in-character feedback from our assistant, our captain, our coaches, etc, that might help us to understand where we went wrong on a given day.

In the example given, an 0-4 result might be as simple as "It looked like the lads got a bit panicky when we went down early ..." ..

weelillad

This is a very interesting experiment. However, I think there needs to be more testing before we can come to any conclusion.

poggo, you've been playing the same match repeatedly, using the same tactic. Now, what will happen if you improved your tactic? Will the results show improvement?

Maybe you could play the same match 10 times, then collate some stats, like range of scores, goals scored by both sides etc. Then adjust your tactic, make it better (or easier yet, make it worse), then play 10 more games. And work out the stats again and see if there's any noticeable change.

It will simulate our own learning process, where we set a tactic, observe our performance over a few matches, then tweak it and see if things improve. Well, at least, it simulates mine. \

How does this all sound?

poggo

Yep, will do that tomorrow (It's been a loooooong day).

I will not be improving my tactics, though, as that would defeat the purpose of the experiment. Immproving and mingling with tactics will certainly show improvement; in the end, that's what everyone here does, right? However, the idea was to see how many random, as well as how many fixed events there are in a match.

So, I'll do the same things all over in ten to fifteen games and collate stats; thus, we'll see what the match engine comes up with and how many variables there are.