retired_nedim

Seems like a dumb question... but the more I seem to play FM the more it seems to be that there is no form. In real life, you look at a players previous games and be able to work out how they are gonna perform.

In FM, it doesnt seem to work like that. It seems that teams just randomly lose games out of no-where, self capitulating in a spectactular fashion.

When it happens in real life, you can always find a logic reason. Examples? Arsenal v Spurs. Arsenal have been playing well all season, but leading up to that game, they did have a bit of a dip in form. Also, it wasnt the normal team. So, you can see clear reasons.

I cant remember a case in reason history where a team plays mid-week, wins by 3-4 goals, then at the weekend fields a pretty much unchanged and lose by 3-4 goals against similar opposition.

However... its a regular occurance in FM.

Its understandable of course. Form even in the real world is this mystical force that no-one seems to be able to really understand.

retired_alphonsia

Surely if you knew what all the result were going to be there would be no fun in playing? It's the unpredictability that makes football what it is.

retired_murphjoa

everything in real life is just chance
anything can happen

jus like on the game

you cant say just because you won the last game by many goals
your gonna score many goals next week

chance

retired_w0lfpack1

I'd suggest that there are logical reasons for behavior in the FM game-world - that the problem isn't "random", its that we don't get sufficient feedback to be able to tell what the cause is .. which makes it feel random.

That's a subtle distinction - but its a very empowering one, because it gives you something to look for in your save-game. (Or other literature, such as T&TT).

Its actually one of the reasons that "Blade" (my story over in FMS) got so detailed .. by forcing myself to look at my game as closely as I was doing, I found causes of behavior that I would have missed without that focus.

I do wish that SI would work on the game communicating the reason behind outcomes to us - so in that, I think we agree.

. . .

If you're hitting a point of real frustration with apparent randomness in FM, I think you might benefit a lot from reading the Communication and Psychological Warfare thread.

. . .

As for the question from the title, "Does form really exist?", I think it does, as a "hidden variable" on a player-by-player level. I've certainly seen a player go on a run of beautiful form and perform (predictably) very well for a spell .. and then run into something that breaks it.

It makes sense, IRL, confidence is a huge aspect of performance in football .. heck, in school, and in the workplace, too.

I think a number of us players believe that it does, at very least up front: I can't count the number of times I've seen somebody ask "How do I get a striker out of a scoring slump", and people's answers vary, but they're often things like "Make him your penalty taker until he scores a goal", "Play him in the Reserves or a meaningless Cup game so he bangs in a couple", "Bring him in off the bench in games you're winning," and "Make him your free kick taker/penalty taker when you have games under control."

All of those, obviously, are aimed at getting him a goal, and therefore improving his "form".

. . .

The more I think about this last section, the less I like it - I don't really want to distract your thread into a discussion about it, so I'm going to post it, and hope nobody really responds to it.

Okay, I know we all hate it when somebody comes along and quotes some obscure result from 1957 to disprove our blanket statement. But this one intrigued me enough to go look at the various team-schedules at soccernet.espn.go.com - you can flip through teams using a drop-down.

This EPL season alone has seen some fine flips in form - quoting only results which, for at least one team, form a back-to-back run of matches, and trying to steer clear of Cup matches:

Bolton 4-1 Wigan
Wigan 5-3 Blackburn

Derby 0-5 West Ham
West Ham 1-1 Tottenham

Tottenham 5-1 Fulham
Tottenham 6-4 Reading
Aston Villa 2-1 Tottenham

Tottenham 5-1 Arsenal
Man Utd 3-1 Tottenham

Everton 7-1 Sunderland
Sunderland 1-0 Derby | Portsmouth 0-0 Everton

Sunderland 0-4 Man Utd
Sunderland 3-1 Bolton | West Ham 2-1 Man Utd

Man Utd 6-0 Newcastle
Newcastle 4-1 Stoke

Sunderland 0-3 Wigan
Sunderland 2-0 Portsmouth

Liverpool 3-0 Sunderland
Sunderland 2-0 Wigan

Blackburn 4-2 Reading
Reading 2-1 Newcastle
Fulham 3-1 Reading

Newcastle 1-4 Portsmouth
Portsmouth 0-0 Man City

Sunderland 2-0 Portsmouth
Portsmouth 3-1 Derby

Liverpool 6-0 Derby
Derby 1-0 Newcastle
Arsenal 5-0 Derby

Now, I'm not looking at those for your other criteria: "pretty much unchanged side" .. and obviously none are actually "win by three, lose by three" - but they do seem to indicate that the all-elusive "form" isn't the only thing you can look at for a given match IRL.

(Again, I don't think we really want to spin off into a debate about that - results do have a component of randomness both IRL and in FM, and I think the key issue here is the frustration we get from the perception of randomness, not whether or not randomness is realistic.)

retired_RedRobin

Amaroq - I agree with everything you said, except that the real life examples I don't think stand up to much scritiny. In almost all cases the quality of the opposition is the reason for the result, so Man Utd thrashing Newcastle and Newcastle thrashing Stoke is not really a change in form it's a change in quality of opposition.

retired_w0lfpack1

Again. I don't really want to get into a debate about it. There are certainly some you can dismiss on those grounds - but there are a number you can't, e.g.:

Sunderland 0-3 Wigan (16th)
Sunderland 2-0 Portsmouth (8th)

Bolton (15th) 4-1 Wigan
Wigan 5-3 Blackburn (9th)

Reading 2-1 Newcastle (13th)
Fulham (19th) 3-1 Reading

etc.

There's probably a story to each of those, too - I'm sure somebody who follows the team in question could explain each of them.

The thing is, I suspect that there is an explanation for every FM result, too...

... but that we don't get sufficient feedback from the in-game characters around us (assistant, captain, media, coaches) to be able to determine why a result happened.

We do get that IRL, even as fans, as the media tends to try to "explain" everything, pinning each loss on something - jobbed by the referee, poor performance by Player X, wrong tactics by manager Y, champagne hangover after previous win, tremendous performance by the opposite team, etc.

retired_dellydoolittle

:thup:

Flair- of course form exists and I also agree that sometimes some weird things happen in FM with this metter. it's hard for a computor game to perfectly copy such a comlex thing like football.

remeber, the ball is round.