I hope “
Arteta is God” won’t mind me expanding on his ideas in
this thread (and nicking his title). He woke me up a bit regarding this issue.
:thup:
FM isn’t unlike other PC games when stripped down to it’s bare bones. It is a game of searching for, identifying, and solving problems given to you by the various aspects of the game. For example (quite an obvious one), you see by looking at the league table that you concede too many goals. You look in your tactics and decide that the reason may be that your CD’s have too much creative freedom. You intend to solve the problem by lowering the creative freedom. You then proceed to play a few more games and see if you concede fewer goals. If you do, you put a small smile on your face and carry on. If you don’t, you try to find another reason and aim to solve this problem another way.
What makes FM unique and far more challenging than other games is that there is a vast quantity of areas where there may be a problem for you to solve. To take the aforementioned situation, the problem’s root could be:
-Tactical. Even if you identify it as a tactical problem, you have to further identify which aspect of the tactics. Is it marking, high mentality, forward runs etc? And even then you have to identify to what degree you should adjust, and then identify what pros and cons this tweaking may have on performance in future games, and then further correct any cons, and the process starts again.
-Morale/media. The information given as to how your players react to team talks is quite minimal and so it is hard to tell if your teams talks are getting the players performing at their best. You have to decide whether you being to expectant, or not enough. The player personality descriptions are very ambiguous and you have to learn over time how players react to the media. Many choose to automate team talks and ignore the media, but this arguably is unrealistic and takes away some of the challenge/fun.
-Training. Is training too intense? Is it not intense enough? This is the most ambiguous and confusing area for identifying problems as you simply have very little idea about what is going on.
-There are plenty of other areas: personality clashes, contracts and transfers, tiredness, over-rotation, under-rotation…
Now some put a fair amount of time into the game in order to find and identify the vast amount of problems one may encounter. These players probably enjoy much success. But realistically this cannot be done for many who just want to play. Yes they want a challenge, but they don’t want to search through every aspect of their team to find out why their AMC playmaker has a rating of only 6.
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So to take my recent and incredibly frustrating Valencia game as an example. Here’s a list of some of my approaches:
-Downloaded Seasoned Alcoholics training schedules and slightly reduced intensity.
-Played a basic 442 and adjusted my tactics for each game in accordance with the scout report and my own judgement. My tactical mechanics allowed me to do this quite easily and flexibly.
-Occasionally spoke to the media and did my own team talks in a way I have had previous success with.
1st Season
Sold a few backup players and brought in one young striker as a kind of backup/squad player. Just before the first La Liga game star man David Villa got injured. Oh well I thought he’ll be back in two weeks. Here’s how things progressed:
-My tactical set-up seemed to be working well. I was top of the table (the plan was to win La Liga) for most of the early part of the season. When I lost it was because I may have made mistakes tactically. I made a few mistakes and slumped into second, 3ish points behind Real Madrid. Barca and Athletico were over 10 points back in January.
-Vila got injured as soon as he was back over and over again. At the same time many other important players (Morientes, Vicente, Albelda, Del Horno) got injured for much of the early part of the season. Many players picked up knocks in game. Many picked some up in training. Here I had a problem. So I reduced training intensity to much lower than I normally have it. That did little. So I considered adjusting tackling (everyone was on medium).
-However over the course of the season my players picked up 14 red cards between them, for a variety of reasons. Albiol got sent off twice in as many games for bringing down the last man. I had two men sent off in the CL final, one for a two footed tackle, the other for two yellow cards. Angulo got sent off twice for elbowing. Villa (after his injuries) got suspended for 6 games for a headbutt. Here I clearly had another problem. But if I reduced tackling, surely my injury problems would worsen? If I increased it my discipline would get worse. My fines for sendings off got more severe throughout the season and I stopped appealing against bans (even when I may have had grounds for it). I was helpless to solve this issue.
-I got a few games wrong in March and was not helped by having key players injured or suspended which turned wins into draws. I came 4th in La Liga, semis in the Cup (which I should have won, I was by far the best team in the semis. I lost to Getafe). As mentioned I came runner up in the CL (loosing to Chelsea 2-1 in the final). I was a little annoyed but figured with some money to boost quality I would be better next season.
2nd Season
I brought in Torres (best player in La Liga previous season) and Rafael Van Der Vaart. I was set to go. The only area where I was weaker was at right back. This didn’t worry me.
-Suddenly all my best players from the previous season plummeted in form. Ayala and Canizares should have performed well after signing new contracts but were totally rubbish. I had 6 points after 7 games and was so annoyed (on an almighty scale I assure you) I gave up.
In the second season I had encountered a problem, but like the previous season, when I corrected what seemed to be the obvious and likely reasons, nothing changed. I used the same tactical approach, same training, same media approach etc. I hadn’t brought that many new players and my squad overall was stronger. The players fitted their roles better than the previous season. I had entered it with so much optimism and yet when I tried to correct various problems no visible changes to results happened. This was what really annoyed me. I was putting in time and work and yet clearly I was correcting the wrong areas. I may have been making things worse when I thought I was correcting things, but I don’t really know.
I love this game. I should be studying at the moment but instead I’m playing FM. However I am increasingly realising as I play more and more games and click that “new game” button more often how little I really know about the reasons why I succeed or fail. There is far far far too much ambiguity and too many factors to take into account such that I can feel like I’m playing blind. This isn’t helped by the slider system which is fundamentally ambiguous and unclear at times.
There is a debate about the need for difficulty levels. I’d be against them. I’d also be against SI making the game fundamentally easier or making FM08 such that super-tactics return. But I must ask for clearer guidance when playing the game such that it is less frustrating and more satisfying. A few ideas have been put forward:
-Scrapping the sliders.
-Better and more informative manual.
-More useful and informative Ass Man and other backroom staff such that identifying the root causes of problems is less of a pain. Some have said that optional levels of advice would be a better way of implementing “difficulty levels”.
Others have been mentioned.
I’ve just started a new game with Valencia. If I get more success, less injuries and less suspensions I will probably have no idea why. I will be using a very similar approach to last time. Same training. Same media methods. Same tactical methods (though a 4-2-2-2 instead of normal 4-4-2.
I hope SI will understand the growing frustrations of some and perhaps make the game more accessible and practical for people who don’t spend their lives playing PC games.
Cheers if you read this.
Moggydave.
I can't accept success or failiure without a reason either...... 
Linear Mode
