lupesinfabula

This is probably an extremely common feeling, and could be just frustration at a bad season talking, but doesn't it seem like the "rules" (algorithms?) which determine how your input (team talks, ticking boxes, player instructions etc) affects what happens in a game are just impossibly obscure? I.e. they might be detailed and logical, but they are impossible to work out?

How often do you put together a very strong team, everyone playing in their favourite position, no crazy instructions (like overdoing the creative freedom or defensiveness), and you have consecutive losses such as 5-0 and 8-1 to teams that are supposed to be your equals?

Of course sometimes it goes well, but after playing numerous games, I can't help thinking that (unless you give ridiculously inappropriate instructions) it's mainly down to chance. If there are genuinely controllable effects, the amount of effort you would have to put in to learn and make use of them would mean almost playing the game in real time, and certainly watching the whole 90 minutes of most matches. It seems like you would have to keep constant track of every single variable, observing every aspect of each player's performance and developing a complicated code-book to interpret the information you get from the match report, assistant feedback, media etc. This might well be a realistic reflection of management, but it does not sound much like game-playing.

Given that I can't spend hours preparing for each match, it basically feels like everything I do (apart from buying and selecting good players to play in the right positions) has more-or-less random effects.

Of course, this has always been an aspect of the experience of FM/CM, but doesn't it seem that with the increase in the number of things you can do that might affect the game - but in ways that you are incapable of understanding - this aspect is getting out of control?

Klimowicz

because the AI gives special instructions to their players. there is no point having the quickest wingers in the world who prefer to run down the line then cut inside if you play normal creative freedom, through the middle, normal pace etc, especially if the AI tells its fullbacks to close down wingers.

why would you not give players specific instructions? the AI obviously uses individual instructions such as tight marking on the target man for example. talking from experience here.

create a tactic, set up loads of pre season friendlies and test it out. better still, get your ass-man to do the pre season, and check the stats after the game. thats AI vs AI with your team.

this is a simulation. what some people suggest about this aspect of the game is like saying "use the up, down, left & right keys for Flight Simulator".

Ched

because the AI gives special instructions to their players. there is no point having the quickest wingers in the world who prefer to run down the line then cut inside if you play normal creative freedom, through the middle, normal pace etc, especially if the AI tells its fullbacks to close down wingers.

why would you not give players specific instructions? the AI obviously uses individual instructions such as tight marking on the target man for example. talking from experience here.

create a tactic, set up loads of pre season friendlies and test it out. better still, get your ass-man to do the pre season, and check the stats after the game. thats AI vs AI with your team.

this is a simulation. what some people suggest about this aspect of the game is like saying "use the up, down, left & right keys for Flight Simulator". </BLOCKQUOTE>

Although at the same time SI claim (well ov collier) that they want the game to be accessible to people who haven't got the time to tinker so much, which is quite blatantly not possible with this version of the game. The "default" tactics do not work, the "default" player position instructions do not work - why do they bother adding these items at all?

Klimowicz

i agree, it's obviously not accessible to those people. don't know why they bothered saying that tbh. earlier versions, maybe.

it would be better if they included preset tactical tweaks with the default formations, or even asking the assistant manager to call the specifics. they would be basic, but at least they would balance the lack of tweaking with the AIs tweaking.

for example, if you pick an attacking formation, attacking, tempo, & direct passing would be selected with the formation type.

not for me, i'm fine with fm08, but if this was my first FM game, i would be banned from these forums for overly aggressive posts.

Newky

irl luck often has a huge effect on a teams fortunes.

Look at Spurs this season. They had an expensively assembled squad, that had played well for 3 seasons and was tipped for a top 4 finish, playing for a respected coach. Yet for some reason a few things go against them and they suddenly look like they may go down if something drastic dosent happen.

This is reflected in FM (perhaps too much so) where you can have great players great tactics manage the media etc brilliantly and yet still get poor results for long periods. So managers are left with the feeling that, although they have numerous options and buttons to press, what they are doing dosent actually have any great effect on the game.

Personally I just run holiday games now as I find the whole thing too frustrating to manage the day to day running. I think SI are succeding in their goal of making a realistic football sim but each release seems to have less satisfying gameplay.

mitja

I agree on luck and especially spurs (tevez 93rd from corner, I guess everybody would moaned how come the shortest player on the pitch can score from corner in extra time) me being the first, lol

I think FM08 made a step forward from previous incarnations and at the same time it's unbelievebly buggy. I'd just liek to see most of these features get fixed and we'll have exellant game...

lupesinfabula

After trying all the intuitive things - such as giving players with high creativity and intelligence more creative freedom, playing down the wings with strong wingers, using 'target man' with strong, fast strikers with good positioning and work rate etc - and finding that none of this seemed to make any difference whatsoever overall (good wins, terrible losses would come seemingly at random) - I reverted to default tactics, thinking that if I have a good team, at least I should perform somewhere near pre-season expectations. But it doesn't seem to work that way.

Now you may say that this is a good reflection of real life. But this is supposed to be a game. I have no problem with it being a complicated strategy/simulation game, but as a game there has to be some demonstrable and comprehensive relationship between the user's input and the outcome, even if chance is an intrinsic variable. The argument that the lack of knowledge about why results turn out the way they do is more realistic does not hold for me. In real life a manager can employ an infinite range of techniques for finding out what he wants to know, and what effect his tactical decisions are having. We simply have this black box called a match engine. Put your input in, see what comes out. No explanation as to what happened inside.

I have tried giving players specific instructions. There's just no consistency in the effects they have - or at least, none that I have been able to work out playing a 4 season game with the same team 10 times. What I am suggesting is that if there is a logical relation between my instructions and the players' performance, to figure it out I would have to engage in a massive set of experiments, e.g.:

Keeping tactics and strategy exactly the same, play 10 matches, observing stats and outcome. Then change one small factor (e.g. right-winger gets lots of creative freedom) and play the same match another 10 times, observing average difference from other stats. Do this with each manipulable tactical variable and combination of variables (9 sliders with 3-20 notches each in different combinations + tick boxes - thousands of possibilities which you could maybe narrow down to 50 or 100 significantly different combinations), repeating a match 10 times for each. Maybe 500 matches. Then do this all again with a different kind of team.

I'm willing to be told I'm wrong. What I really want is to be shown I'm wrong. The manual is completely useless for working out how to play successfully (it's basically a set of tautologous definitions of football terminology) and most advice you get on forums tends to be ineffective (probably because it depends on each individual's circumstances in the game) or unhelpfully general, such as "don't forget about team talks!" or Klimowicz above:

This is good advice, but it's probably what we all do anyway. The problem is, you would need about 1,000 pre-seasons with the same initial conditions to start getting a sense of why a tactic works.

But I'm willing to accept that it might be me. I'll have another go at trying to intuitively get to grips with it all before I give up on the game entirely.