retired_e_fores

OK, so lets first establish whether this 'problem' exists or not. The simple and correct answer is yes, otherwise the vast amount of complaint/cries for help would not exist, and I personally experience it occasionally - the most common occurance on the confidence screen is "the fans are disappointed that the team did not convert chances into goals".

Secondly, is it a problem? My answer is yes. When you set up your team and sliders and go into a game, you view progress and judge success firstly by seeing if you are getting shots on goal. You then see if these shots are on target. You may further look and see who is taking the shots and from where. I personally don't see anything wrong in the assumption (assuming you dont watch the whole match). Indeed the only way to play the game without watching whole matches is to assume that as the SOT's from your strikers pile up you will score. Afterall, IRL, the managers job is to ensure that the TEAM create chances in good positions - the INDIVIDUAL player has to score them through his own merits.

The standard response answer is "it's your tactics". That answer is perfectly valid, as people have not experienced this problem by taking certain (though unknown) tactical approaches. But this does not solve the problem. You only know if your tactics are successful in scoring goals if they do, in which case fair enough. But if you're in a game, and the chances are piling up, you can only really accept that a goal isn't coming at about 70-80 mins, and tweaks may not have enough time to work, and then you've thrown away some more points.

IMO the defending on the match engine can occasionally be horrifically bad, and this adds to the problem - as decent chances pile up, perhaps the match engine has to compromise?

I wouldn't say the problem is a bug, more a design fault, and arguebly one that really ruin the game. Indeed even this problem can be traced back to the games horrifically bad feedback problem, something almost everyone has been clamouring about for a while now - since I joined these forums at least. The main in-game feedback on success is SOT's, and if these don't tell the whole story, there isn't a lot else to go on. Yes there can be genuine solutions to the problem (out of form strikers, a few bad games, bad morale perhaps), but the frequency with which complaints arise is too great for people to argue that this isn't a problem. It is, but I wouldn't call it a bug.

retired_FaultyFate

Ok, let's do it

If we constantly have more than 20 shots per game, it's a bit unrealistic, isn't it? Well, at least compare to real life. Ok, then we have to assume that this is some kind of a message that game gives us - domination indicator, if you will, or something else. Assuming that we are supossed to score no more than 3 goals on average (just to mimic real life) we end up with average 5-15% shots effectiveness. Is it low? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on SoT number of course.

Ok, let's move to more detailed analysis. Assume I did not watch the match at all, so have no idea who took the shots, from where and how dangerous they were. Let's look at the individual after-match stats. Who took shots? If more than half of them are not STs' attempts, you may suspect good portion of those are long shots. They have less chances to go on target and even less to go in. Why our players do it? Good question, but it most likely due to our tactic/instruction, not because the game is programmed this way.

Now, how many corners we had? 5? And? Well, we can take a look at match report, of course, but even without getting too deep, chances are that at least 3 of them ended up with a shot, but not a goal.

Next step, let's look at STs' shots. STs are supposed to have better chances than other players and have them more often. Say everyting look reasonable, and STs collect at least half of shots. How many were on target? 7 out of 13 (assuming everybody else together had 3 out of 12)? Hey my STs have 14-15 finishing (they are not perfect), AI defenders are also not a Sunday league players, so I guess that's not too bad. Assuming 2-3 out of those 7 were headers, which are in general less dangerous, 1 or 2 were really not dangerous, we end up with 4-5 really dangerous shots (a couple off target, 2-3 on). If 1 went in - that's great, because opposition keeper also supposed to do his job plus it looks like opponent played defensively - they did not bother to shot on my goals more than 3 times.

So we sorted out our shots. Of course more detailed analysis (including match report, watching match on extended highlights etc.) would give us better ideas, but really the only relatively unrealistic part in the game is number of shots. May be it's just way to make 2D match more watchable (otherwise you would be bored to see ball in the middle all the time), maybe some signal as I mentioned earlier.

Now we need to analyse oppositions 3 shots - 2 goals effectiveness. It's more difficult to do without watching the match, but let's try. Who scored? STs? Are they fast and any good at all? Oh, not so bad, mine are better, but those are ok too. Wait a minute, I took 25 shots. Doesn't it tell me I was on the opposition half most of the match? But who was back? Oh, two my DCs and they had quite a few interceptions. Hmmm, but what were they intercepting if I was attacking? Long balls toward opposition STs? And what if they missed 3 or 4 out of 20? Not big deal, huh? But nobody there to help them, so opposition ST has one on one. Yes, I know, he is not supposed to score more than 1 out of 6 because that's what my STs do (popular complaint). Well, but may be he missed his 5 in previous matches and will miss the next few but not against me... I can describe many other possibilities, but let me stop here.

Anyway, I can agree that having 20-25 or more shots per game is too much. I am pretty sure it's mainly an indicator of aggressivness. After all the game does not have many tools to tell us something about match, and if we fail to watch matches on extended highlights in 2D at least from time to time, don't check match reports, and sometimes don't even bother to look at the individual after game stats, who should we blame? Everything else does not look strange. If opposition plays counter attack and I allowed more than one clear break, having 1 allowed shot - 1 goal result is not the worst one I could imagine. And if I see this a few games in a row, that's my problem.

P.S. I must say - I often fail to do even part of this analysis, look at stats, etc., so please don't tell me that people don't have time to do it and want just play - I know . But I can accept the result of my time constraint - there is always trade-off between playing matches and playing manager

leftfoot

moggydave if you happen to go into the General Discussion section I just posted a topic along very similar lines. I hadn't seen your topic before posting mine in GQ so I swear on a stack of bibles there is no plaigerism going on here.

If you feel you have a case then have your lawyer contact mine and we'll sort something out

Also I agree 100% with everything you've posted.

saku11

One whole i think there are many good points in this discussion. however, I use atm lcr all of whom have excellent finishing stats and do not take long shots and act essentially as a second line of strikers. so those extra shots that are discounted as long are really not and should be raking up goals like christiano ronaldo.

Secondly my strikers with 19 finish and composure should finish at a better rate that those with 15 right? The problem is that they dont. the technical stats of my strikers are mostly irrelevant.

one issue i am not sure about is excatly what constitutes a long shot. shots from the 18 are not long. long to me is a 30 yard shot but it seems like anything outside the 18 is long in the game. any thoughts?

retired_bendersgrrl

How high is your strikers technique? If the player is taking a shot first time or off a turn with low technique he is likely to mess it up every time. Also, check on the positions screen of the player to see which is his strongest foot and whether he is taking most of his shots from this foot. You can tell which foot the ball is at as there is a small arrow in the direction of movement which skips from left to right of the centre depending on which foot the ball is at. if you striker is shooting with his weaker foot, consider playing him on the opposite side of the strike force. playing a right footed player on the right doesn't work if he's cutting in and using his left all the time.

retired_lmccray

TBH guys, I don't really have problem with the shots in this game. Yes, sometimes my team dominates possession and I have 25-30 shots with only 10 on target without scoring a goal. But that happens IRL too. To me it's all about balance - a manager has to find a way to make the team score in multiple ways.

I've also had games where my team takes 8-9 shots, 6-7 on target and I win 2-0. I find FM08 for the most part very close to the real game. I watch all my games (including frendlies) on extended highlights always, so I'm able to see what's going on. When you are using big club (Barca, Man U, Milan, etc.) and playing a game vs. a team fighting against relegation of course they'll park the bus...You will get 20-30 shots and nothing more out of the game...Don't you think that is realistic?

What I see that's little frustruating for me is the amount of chances my ST get one-on-one and miss them by shooting into the GK. But then I see that the GK has good attribute that matches my ST's finishing/composure....I guess superkeepers is the way the match engine finds a way to counter my domination....

In the end it comes down to your tactic....it's all about finding the right balance and creating enough chances to score, but not too much.

Currently, I have a save with Arsenal, second season...I played against Liverpool at Anfield and won 3-0. Dominated every aspect of the match. I had 14 shots, 10 on target and scored 3 goals. Would you say that's a good rate? My next match was against Chelsea at home. Again, I dominated every aspect of the match - I had 18 shots, 12 on target but scored only 2 goal. Why? Cech is one of the best GK in the game, for some even the best. Post match the media said that if it wasn't for him I could've won with much bigger margin.

The more attacking your style the more chance, but also more misses. Why? Well just think about what is the way to increase your attack using the sliders. I'm not talking about the right way to attack more...just based on instincts...1) Max attacking mentality 2) more creative freedom 3) higher tempo 4) more width etc. It all leads to more chances, but these chances are taken in a hurry. Therefore less likely to be successfull. It's all realistic to me....

Just my 0.02....

retired_thehpsleb

It doesnt matter if your player have 10 or 20 technique. It happens to all kind of strikers.
When kaka have 15 shots 9 on target and only score on which is from penalty there is something wrong
Its a bug and SI knows about it. The Patch should be ready in 2-3 weeks .

retired_FaultyFate

Definitely... But if this is a patterns, I would seriously reconsider Kaka's instructions. I don't care how good he is - it shows he does not play as a team player. AMC should not take 15 shots per game, even if all 15 end up in. And if you play him as ST, then it's understandable - he does not know how to do it.

clc023

personally i think its all down to tatctics.

i have games with 40+ shots with half being on target, but most were long range and came from all areas of the team.

other games i may only have 10-15 shots but win 5-0.

tempo plays a big part in this. high tempo will result in shots being fired in all the time from everywhere, escpecially from midfielders with long shots set to often or mixed.

moral can have a big part to play. a game against man city had my lfc team have no shots period in the 1st half, but an inspiring half time team talk and i won 3-1 with over 15 shots.

the point im making is there is more to this game than just hitting play and expecting your team to kick ass. i constantly tweak tactics.

anyway just my thoughts

retired_thehpsleb

Definitely... But if this is a patterns, I would seriously reconsider Kaka's instructions. I don't care how good he is - it shows he does not play as a team player. AMC should not take 15 shots per game, even if all 15 end up in. And if you play him as ST, then it's understandable - he does not know how to do it. </BLOCKQUOTE>

I play kaka as Amc, 10 creative freedom 15 mentality. TTB often, RWB mixed, longshot rarely. But the problem is that he got PPM " shoot from distance" ...so every time there a small chance for him to shoot at goal he does so