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Originally posted by gunnerfan:
I've always thought that the biggest challenge in making the match engine realistic lies in the realm of individual player decisions on the pitch, especially when defending. You tell your center back to mark tightly always, and he does, even when IRL he might not if the situation required him to drop off his mark in order to cover the first defender (and on those occasions, the AI more often than not creates scoring chances by putting the ball into the very space he would have covered IRL). If you tell him to tightly mark never, than he doesn't mark tightly in any situation. If you say mark tightly always, but then allow more creative freedom, you will see that creative freedom reflected on the attack, not on defense. Sigh.
One aspect of defending that is nowhere addressed is whether you defend goalside or ballside. IRL, that's a major consideration, because marking ballside, your goal is to deny the attacking player the ball, while playing goalside, your goal is containment. The decision you make is based on the attackers speed and skill level, as well as that of the defender.
I think a lot of the frustration we see regarding the match engine is really more about the tactical interface. Although we've made a lot of progress since the days of "wibble/wobble", there are still limitations.
I agree and I think that more tactical instructions there are it's harder for ME (players) to decide, probably. maybe this types of games should make "thinking" that player's should know some things by defoult (how to mark fast striker and how strong and not fast, for example) due to not over-complicate things with too many tactical stuff. I hope this meant smth to you...
Personally, i feel that for FM09, they need to scrap whatever controls there are on one-on-one finishing success, and work on making defenders capable of stopping the laughable number of chances created.
Fix this and the number of moans on these boards would be halved.
Mitja, I think the key is to identify tactical decisions the manager would make, as opposed to the tactical decisions a player would make. The manager would typically set the framework, and then the player would make on-field decisions. So, if I tell a center back to tightly mark the opposing striker ballside (to try to deny him the ball), that's a legitimate coaching decision, and it has implications for how the other defenders react. By overplaying the attacker, the center back is going to be out of position to recover if an attacker gets the ball in the space behind him, and so everyone else needs to be ready to react and cover.
Maybe a better approach from that of individual player instruction would be a group-based instruction against an opposing player. So, instead of the simplistic "tightly mark - always", you could choose between "deny ball" and "contain".
Mitja, good point about players (not just MCs) holding the ball too long. Sometimes, it's worse in FM than it used to be when I was coaching my son's team. :eek:
The main problem as i understand it is that we don't have enough options on width per level, tempo per position , front runs , marking etc to master the capabilities of the match engine.
AI capitalizes on all match engine buffs while we can not (well we can but it took me 1 year to perfect a simple formation in fm07 and i don't plan to do it again for fm08 ).
How i can order my winger to enter the box from the side pull GK on the side of the post and then pass to the striker in the penalty area?
More control will be a nice addition i think.
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.
Originally posted by Themistofelis:
The main problem as i understand it is that we don't have enough options on width per level, tempo per position , front runs , marking etc to master the capabilities of the match engine.
AI capitalizes on all match engine buffs while we can not (well we can but it took me 1 year to perfect a simple formation in fm07 and i don't plan to do it again for fm08 ).
How i can order my winger to enter the box from the side pull GK on the side of the post and then pass to the striker in the penalty area?
More control will be a nice addition i think.
I agree with you. but I don't think more control-more tactical complexity would work well. as it obviously doesn't work with this amount of parameters, one over rides another and so on....
better solution would be to re write tactics and simplify them.
Originally posted by gunnerfan:
I've always thought that the biggest challenge in making the match engine realistic lies in the realm of individual player decisions on the pitch, especially when defending. You tell your center back to mark tightly always, and he does, even when IRL he might not if the situation required him to drop off his mark in order to cover the first defender (and on those occasions, the AI more often than not creates scoring chances by putting the ball into the very space he would have covered IRL). If you tell him to tightly mark never, than he doesn't mark tightly in any situation. If you say mark tightly always, but then allow more creative freedom, you will see that creative freedom reflected on the attack, not on defense. Sigh.
One aspect of defending that is nowhere addressed is whether you defend goalside or ballside. IRL, that's a major consideration, because marking ballside, your goal is to deny the attacking player the ball, while playing goalside, your goal is containment. The decision you make is based on the attackers speed and skill level, as well as that of the defender.
Absolutely spot on - defenders are just so mind-numbingly stupid.
- Why is it such a challenge for your defenders to clear their lines? They just seem to clear it short distances to the AI time and again, which invites more pressure. It seems impossible to clear it up the pitch consistently.
- Why can't I tell me defender whether I want him ballside or goalside? They seem to get caught in a place between the two, particularly full-backs.
- Why is marking such a challenge? They seem to mark a specific spot, not a player, and they don't use any common sense. IRL if a striker beats a central defender, his partner will come across as a help defender. This doesn't happen in FM, and often the other centre-half stands and watches a striker go in on goal. This is especially apparent when playing against a lone striker, who runs down the middle.
- Why do full-acks always either close an opposition full-back down or go in board, but never actually defend the spot they are supposed to? I've lost count of how many times my full-back goes to close down someone he's not meant to, leaving the AI winger with time and space to cross.
In general, the first step for me is to overhaul the defensive side of the game, as right now defenders still don't have the bread and butter down pat, and still consistently make basic errors that would be out of place in an under 10s game.
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