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in this thread I'm going to write about tactical system; what I think about it now, my wiew on each of sliders and what could change.
tactical system haven't changed for some time now and I find many things are missing and this system doesn't support this ME too well. also I think that it's too complecated and that tactics have too much influence on the game- the human factor is missing.
my 1st topic will be mentality, the basis of any tactic.
my starting point is comparing reality to FM world
MENTALITY
-WHAT IS MENTALITY?
it's team's way of playing-> attacking and defending. so more attacking this style is more players will perticipate (have attacking duties) when the team is in ball possesion. via versa more defensive mentality is more players will defend (have defensive duties) while possesion is lost.
mentality is also balance between defending and attacking. with how many players they attack/defend.
all that (mentality) should be understanded as a tendency . players try to perform their duties. it's not allways possibile as human factor is present. that's why there are players better in defending and those who prefer attacking duties.
-what it does?
most obvious segment of mentality is transforming of defending and attacking shape. more attacking tactics is more players will leave their defoult position in formation. they will also do it more often. via versa defensive tactics try their formations not to get too streched by attacking moves as they leave space for opposition to use. that is a forward runs segment of tactics.
mentality in my opinoum shouln't have influence on how quick the ball gets forward as it does now in FM. passing style and tempo should influence that.
-what are attacking/defensive duties?
the most attacking tactic is one in which all 10 (11) players attack equaly and they think only about attacking/moving forward. of course such a tactic (gung ho) isn't possibile to play all the time. that's why there are duties. basic distinction would be that defenders defend and attackers attack. but in football all players do both and not nacessery at same intensity.
it means that duty is an instruction. more defensive it is less player has to bother with attacking moves (dribling, creating chances, going forward, shooting...). but again it is a tendency. even centre back have their attacking duties.
tactical duties/instructions are (few of many): stay back/hold your position (more often), go forward (more often), try through balls, drible, hug line, double mark opponent, come deep, back off (easy tackle) opponent, playmaker, target man duties...
so my suggestion is that what are now prefered moves should be player duties/instructions.
another thing that needs changing is forward runs. they are allready given by mentality; team or player. so we wouldn't have forward runs slider anymore, only mentality. if we wanted our DC to stay back we would just tick "stay back" instruction and give him more more defensive mentality.
that is about it on mentality, I don't have more complains on this metter.
mentality slider of 22 clicks is too big in my opinoum. either you play all out attack, attacking, defensive, all back or balanced metality. 10 click slider would be more then enough.
attacking style doesn't need to be also attractive. mentality needs to work together with other tactial parts. most imortant aretempo/time wasting and formation. of course all other tactical stuff is also important like passing style, D-line, width, closing down...
these are football styles:
-"catanaccio", ultra defensive, all men behind ball;
basic caracheristics are formation with lonely striker, very deep D-line, narrow and compact formation, closing down near own goal. probably big target man up front, very direct passing by-pasing the midfield. team wants not to loose, score maybe on some counter. attacking runs are made by very few players. holding the ball much. this style are playing teams with much poorer quality of opponents or when trying to hold the pressure. italy was master of this footbal.
-counter attacking
team relies on counter attacks as the main weapon doesn't want to gamble by out-playing opponent team. quicker tempo probably more direct passing. possesion is not important that much. deep, narrow. very effeciant tactic especially awey.
-balanced style or possesional football
samba football. short passing, many one-twos, slower tempo, beatifull to watch when given your players enough freedom. the point of this style is to out-chance opponents by more possesion and surrounding their area. need to have good technical and passing players. downside of this tactic is it's quite easy to defend due to it's slower tempo. that's why teams combine it with counter attacks when possibile, thesedays.
-attacking style
very fast, modern style. players try to get forward as soon as possibile the ball also. more direct passing, forcing counter attacks when possibile. possesion not so important. premiership style. arenal, man united and roma play it especially eficient.
-all out attack, "gung ho"
nothing to loose style, very fast, all players going forward, even keepers.
this is really basics of football.
it would be nice to have theese styles in the game as pre-set. sliders move to right place automatcly. things would simplify both for humans and AI.
this is really basics of football.
it would be nice to have theese styles in the game as pre-set. sliders move to right place automatcly. things would simplify both for humans and AI.
It would be great to have something like this in managers profiles to get better ideas if you really achieving what you want. That is if I want to play counter attack and my profile says I am "all out attack" kind of manager, then clearly something wrong. If it is preset in tactical part as you suggest, I can picture lots of complaints: "I have chosen attacking style but my team does not score, blah, blah, blah". Besides, I am pretty sure that each of us has slightly different ideas on how one or another style should look like, and it does not really matter if we start tweaking from preset or from scratch.
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tactical duties/instructions are (few of many): stay back/hold your position (more often), go forward (more often), try through balls, drible, hug line, double mark opponent, come deep, back off (easy tackle) opponent, playmaker, target man duties...
That's a good idea in general, but I am afraid it may add unnecessary complexity to the game. Let's face it, in the game world we will never be able to explain players our instructions as we would IRL. That is explaining what we want to see on "what if" basis. If I would have to give my FB instruction like "overlap winger, but track back to the middle once ball is lost, close down there, and if the attack on the other side of pitch, do the following...", I would get confused on the third player, and most likely give contradicting instructions to my team, so that I would never see what I thought I would.
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another thing that needs changing is forward runs. they are allready given by mentality; team or player. so we wouldn't have forward runs slider anymore, only mentality. if we wanted our DC to stay back we would just tick "stay back" instruction and give him more more defensive mentality.
Here I totally disagree. By setting my DC mentality to attacking but forward run rarely I am telling him "Hey, you need to support attack from deep. You may occasionaly run forward but only when you see a good opportunity". That's how I have my DCs actually setup and I almost never see them near opposition area, but they pick up most of balls cleared by opposition before ball crosses center line. If I want him to stay back 95% of time, I simply put him on ultra-defensive mentality with forward runs rarely.
it might bring complexitiy to the game, but I think that will be included sooner then later. it means that you would actually be doing smth. right now we have run with ball instructions, through ball, cross... which is allmost the same.
example, right now you must do wonders to double mark player, which was invented by some tactical genious. then you would only have to tick that option. I can't imagine a team who don't double players like cristiano, messi...on FM it is allmost impossibile.
about forward runs;
I disagree about your DC example. and you said that you do it like that but you don't see them move forward. I'm also missing that part in the game (to see DC going forward, which actualy does happen IRE, not often but anyway). all I wanted to say is you give your player foreard runs with mentality (team or individual).
my mentality writing was more like hypotetical stuff. but I think mentality is very important. now I want to write smth that is more FM like.
positioning and movemnet are maybe the worst things in this ME. also poor defending is reason why so many chances do happen now, in my opinoum. if SI could fix it many problems would disapear.
mostly that stands for midfielders, not helping each other so basicly we have 1-1 marking instead of team, zonal. defending shape is really bad. it's too streched in both sides- width and hight. the gaps between defense-midfield-forwards are enormious. players should stand more close to each other, that's why so many gaps happen. both MCs never hold the line no metter what closing instructions are. opponent MC can out play them with one-twos, or sneak behind whenever they want, leaving poor defenders to be out numbered constatly. how can that happen. maybe that kind of defense is played in conference, but I doubt.
also movement is very bad. the good thing about it is if it was better we wouldn't have 40+ shots per game, we would have 60+. what is it I don't like with movemnet.
- rarely see your striker or winger to come deep for the ball, IRE they most do it on regular basis. (no metter if it's one of the preffered moves or not). maybe this is due to forwards runs set to often (even though I trie it all, wingers are standing on the flanks anyway), but there are no instructions that tells a player to come for the pass. the resoult is your MC holding on the ball, making cyrcles and finaly loosing it.
but I must admit that I like the movement of full backs this year!! could be better...league 2 standard.
- rarely see your winger to cut inside. they just hold to thier wing. not even a conference standard. IRE we can see wingers doing all kind of movements; from cuting inside to going to whole other flank, comming deep, huging the line, going forward, to the box.... if we are lucky we could see our wingers in the box but that happens rarely no metter what instructins are. extremly poor!!
-free role not working on wingers. related to uper paragraph. but it works on strikers!! hmmm...
-MCs rarely come deep for the pass also. standing to close to each other. resoulting in lost posession often.
my mentality writing was more like hypotetical stuff. but I think mentality is very important. now I want to write smth that is more FM like.
positioning and movemnet are maybe the worst things in this ME. also poor defending is reason why so many chances do happen now, in my opinoum. if SI could fix it many problems would disapear.
mostly that stands for midfielders, not helping each other so basicly we have 1-1 marking instead of team, zonal. defending shape is really bad. it's too streched in both sides- width and hight. the gaps between defense-midfield-forwards are enormious. players should stand more close to each other, that's why so many gaps happen. both MCs never hold the line no metter what closing instructions are. opponent MC can out play them with one-twos, or sneak behind whenever they want, leaving poor defenders to be out numbered constatly. how can that happen. maybe that kind of defense is played in conference, but I doubt.
also movement is very bad. the good thing about it is if it was better we wouldn't have 40+ shots per game, we would have 60+. what is it I don't like with movemnet.
- rarely see your striker or winger to come deep for the ball, IRE they most do it on regular basis. (no metter if it's one of the preffered moves or not). maybe this is due to forwards runs set to often (even though I trie it all, wingers are standing on the flanks anyway), but there are no instructions that tells a player to come for the pass. the resoult is your MC holding on the ball, making cyrcles and finaly loosing it.
but I must admit that I like the movement of full backs this year!! could be better...league 2 standard.
- rarely see your winger to cut inside. they just hold to thier wing. not even a conference standard. IRE we can see wingers doing all kind of movements; from cuting inside to going to whole other flank, comming deep, huging the line, going forward, to the box.... if we are lucky we could see our wingers in the box but that happens rarely no metter what instructins are. extremly poor!!
-free role not working on wingers. related to uper paragraph. but it works on strikers!! hmmm...
-MCs rarely come deep for the pass also. standing to close to each other. resoulting in lost posession often.
I am sorry, but I couldn't find a single proposition I could completely agree with. In fact, most of "problems" you describe are fixable. However, it does not mean I like it how it is . To me the main problem with movements is attacking moves without ball. For example, I have TTB often for the most of the players, and they do try it. Moreover, from what I see in 2D most of trough balls make total sense to me, i.e. there is a free space on right flank, so DM passes ball there. It woul be ok if my winger tried but couldn't catch ball. However, what I observe 75% of times is he does not even try. Instead, STs tries to catch it. But from what I see it's not intended for ST, and IRL I would require winger to run for it. It's not a surprise that in those 25% cases when winger runs for it, he creates a good scoring chance.
Another example of bad movement without ball is how AMC moves when ST (TM) holds ball somwhere between center line and area. Instead of trying to sneak between DCs and get one on one chance AMC often offers himself as short option a couple steps closer to the center line. Funny but TM seems to do exatly what I would do - pass between DCs - at least 50% of times. But since nobody is there, either defs or GK remove danger. Only when TM passes a little deeper to one of the flanks, wingers try to cut the angle to make it one on one. But they are not the best option imo, as AI's FBs track them down.
To summarise - it looks like players asked to try trough balls understand the instruction correctly, but players who are supposed to get those balls don't really understand it. Maybe I have not found correct combination of players instructions, or maybe it requires more than one season for players to play together - I do not know. But to me those moves are obvious and I don't understand why they rarely happen.
The AI of the game is not clever enough and it's still improving. In fact, I think it's the level of complexity that matters as there are so many factors to be included in the AI tactical analyzing and the tactics system are so connected to the match engine.
Well, put it simple, the match engine is like CPU and the tactics system (sliders) is like programming language. Maybe in future we will have easier and funnier way to give our instructions to our players in the game.
I think, of course, most of those sliders are always necessary as to draw and define the basic structure of a formation, though some of them are too hard to really utilize and understand (sliders 0-21).
exactlly. I was reading an interwiew with luka modric few days ago. he was asked how important is tactics. and he said of course it's important but when the kick starts he only wants to win; make the pass, cut the opposition's, to drible the player and not let him past... and that's how things should be in FM also. all those features that influence the mathc (morale, team talks, media talks, form, tactics, wheather, bla bla...). I agree that all these have some effect but once when kick off starts it's just a game.
with all these complexity we still don't have some realy basic instucions like double mark the player, or too tell players they should come for the pass, or to hug the line. I know that coud be done with arrows and farrows and sliders and I don't know what, but that's not it.
tactical rewriting; suggestions 
. To me the main problem with movements is attacking moves without ball. For example, I have TTB often for the most of the players, and they do try it. Moreover, from what I see in 2D most of trough balls make total sense to me, i.e. there is a free space on right flank, so DM passes ball there. It woul be ok if my winger tried but couldn't catch ball. However, what I observe 75% of times is he does not even try. Instead, STs tries to catch it. But from what I see it's not intended for ST, and IRL I would require winger to run for it. It's not a surprise that in those 25% cases when winger runs for it, he creates a good scoring chance.
Linear Mode
