retired_joshan47

It does happen in real life, and that's why it happens in the game, if your team is good enough then you will win things, simple as that but teams very very very very rarely go unbeaten for very long periods of times. It just happens. However I do agree with your points about the team talks and media. Media is just so annoying (especially the old player one) and team talks have too much of an impact. They obviously have an impact in real life, but if you're 1-0 up and you say pleased instead of encourage it won't make you're side lose 6-2 as happened to me once. </BLOCKQUOTE>

The problem is sometimes 'encouragement' is not available when you think it's the proper talk. Why not make all the wording available when I don't choose to let assistant manager handle team talk?

retired_joshan47

Yeah, something needs to be with the confidence section. I won EPL before the last round. When I drew 2-2 with Everton in a meanless match, with 11 second string players, fans confidence went very low. What's so funny is at the begining of the next season. The board and fans single-picked this match, asking me to tell the players that kind of performance was unacceptable!

retired_shatara_1988

SI has a tricky balance to strike with this game, in my opinion, between creating a very realistic simulation of football and a game that is fun to play. Last year i think they got it about right - there was a lot of complexity and nuance there for people (not me) who wanted to play with every player's mentality and get maximum performance out of their side, but it was possible to create pretty basic tactics that would perform reasonably well.

I've found that not to be the case so much with this year's edition, perhaps in part because i also like the 4-4-2 which is apparently the Devil's Formation or something in this edition. It has been a much bigger struggle to create a simple tactic set that will see my side (usually) win games that we're meant to win, put up a good fight in games that are supposed to be relatively even, and (somewhat) not embarrass ourselves in games where the other side is favoured. At times it seems that sticking with a 4-4-2 is just not possible.

I still believe (going to stop posting about it now, though) that some sort of optional, in-game, tactical advice would be a huge boon to the game, especially for the 'stats wavers' wwfan mentions above - people who just don't understand where they are going wrong could get some sort of guidance about what the weakness of their current tactic is. Wwfan's insights about the effects of using farrows/barrows instead of altering mentality or tempo are no doubt correct, but there's no way of learning that in game except through trial and error, which for some people is just not fun. Again, some sort of tactical feedback post-game or between games would be useful here.

I understand from previous responses from SI people, though, that they're dead set against including a feature like this.

That being the case, i think that if SI wants to maximize the continuing appeal of this game, they need to make sure that *both* players who find decoding and carefully balancing their tactics *and* people who enjoy other parts of the game the most have a chance to do well.

I think the people who put in lots of work into intricate tactics should be rewarded in the game and should succeed beyond those who do not. It only makes sense, and obviously a reasonable number of FM players are this kind of player. However, in an ideal world the game should still be playable and enjoyable for players who like the depth of the FM game world but don't necessarily want to get immersed in tactics.

Sorry for a long post.