Two footness needs to be reworked.

2 Footness has to be one of the biggest flaws in the game, I've been playing over 30 seasons in 08 and now in my fifth season in 09 some things don't make too much sense.

The penalty of being two footed is just too big, I'm aware that it's just a ''skill'' but this skill takes so much CA up that it is in most cases, save the 180+ CA players, it is rather useless.

In my current Birmingham save in 2013 there is a regen AMC who I sold to Tottenham, his weaker foot is 1(!), so he has like only one leg, but he still way outperforms luka modric and matter of fact most database players with a avg. rating of 7.33 with a CA of 177 and aged 20.

He still performs even when he is showed onto his weaker foot, because here comes the problem with being two footed, not only your technical skills are lower compared too a player in the same positiona and similar CA, but also your mental and physical stats.

He is stronger and faster and mentally better then most database players and even with his useless second foot he will find a way to get himself in position to assist a goal or score one.

I sold this season Lewandowksi(9.1.0), who is CA wise an average player for the premiership level.

Now I tried 3 different targetman who all are atleast 1-3 levels better then him (10-30 CA difference), but they just cannot outperform him, not even close.

He used to score 25+ goals a season with 15+ assists on top of that(league only).

While the new strikers(all gelled in) are all at least weak-reasonable footed and have....lower mental and physical stats!

A player who has like no second foot can use up all the ca that could have went into the second foot into physical,technical and mental attributes.

Now he may not be able to use his technical skills with the weaker foot, but being a lot faster,stronger,smarter and more cool infront of the goal make more then up for it.

It is no fair dealoff.

The only time two footness is usefull, is when it's a database player whose stats have been very well spread and he has lot of CA, think Kaka,Messi,Bojan,C.Ronaldo....

But even then I'm not sure that a Kaka with 1 foot wouldn't outperform the other one, just by being faster and mentally better.

The + of being two footed should be tweaked a bit especially for regens, because being two footed can be a huge advantage in real life and most pros are quite good with their other foot aswell.

This whole thing is geared a lot more towards the regens then the database players, as they are created by people to be very well balanced.

You just don't see a regen like Tevez or Messi, amazing stats with being almost either footed.

I agree with most of what you've said. I think the effectiveness of being two footed should be toned down in the match engine (but still keep it advantageous) and therefore there is less need to drastically reduce stats of these players.

I also think that for certain positions two-footedness has a minimal effect and therefore the stat reduction penalty is far too severe. The main one being GK, where two-footedness is only useful for punting out passbacks, which might happen maybe once or twice a game. And even then the most one footed goalies can swing a foot and put the ball out for a throw.

So overall i think the system could do with being toned down but not completely removed.

Yeah the goalkeeper thing is ridiculous,it doesn't make any sense to reduce the stats of the keeper for being two footed.

Is it even usefull for fullbacks or defenders at all?

Yup, this two footedness thing has been very very badly thought out.

I got FMRTE and edited a few players less prefered foot ratings to make them higher including messi, aguero and a couple of quality regens. The game month after those players atts (all of them apart from the ones that don't change) were reduced insanely. When i changed the preferred foot ratings back the next month the atts were increased to how they were before. How does that work? do the preferred foot ratings take up a percentage of the CA? and therefore when increasing it do the other stats have to go down?

Shizzle, what you can do is to use in-game editor tool and incease WFA (to at least 7-8) of that player then his other stats should drop. i know it's not what you're looking for...

this has been discussed milion times. i doubt game develpers will change their mind unfortunatly.

I got FMRTE and edited a few players less prefered foot ratings to make them higher including messi, aguero and a couple of quality regens. The game month after those players atts (all of them apart from the ones that don't change) were reduced insanely. When i changed the preferred foot ratings back the next month the atts were increased to how they were before. How does that work? do the preferred foot ratings take up a percentage of the CA? and therefore when increasing it do the other stats have to go down?

tha's how it works.

so then surely this could easily be changed to be made more realistic in the future yes?

i liked old CM style where WFA was just another stat

Messi uses his right foot only for runing but he's still decent player...

i liked old CM style where WFA was just another stat

if only...

I've got two-footed players outperforming my one-footed ones (except, predictably, from set-pieces) - it really does help especially in central areas. Although I suppose in some cases you'd prefer the benefits of being one-footed (i.e. standing crosses, set-pieces, long shots from slightly wide).

It sometimes feels like fully-developed two-footers are similar to one-footers with 20 CA points higher, to me. My first-choice AM C, a pure two-footer, was outscoring my strikers halfway through the season because he was able to take advantage of crosses from both flanks and through-balls from both strikers, and was able to attack both sides of the box with no noticable disadvantages.

My biggest peeve with it is that it's impossible to really gauge how good a player is if weaker feet come into play. There's something like 7 different descriptions for foot strength (very weak, reasonable, fairly strong, etc.) but the scale is from 1-100, so there's potentially around a 28-point gap between feet strength (bottom of strong to top of very strong, for example) which gives a huge difference when it comes to the other attributes. The AI can occasionally underrate players like this as a result (and you might end up doing so too) - or overrate one-footers.

He still performs even when he is showed onto his weaker foot, because here comes the problem with being two footed, not only your technical skills are lower compared too a player in the same positiona and similar CA, but also your mental and physical stats.

Agreed, that's the problem right there. Two-footedness should only have an effect on technical skills, but I don't know how this can happen under the current CA way of managing attributes.

I don't like the way Current Ability works. It also produces problems to training: if you train something useful, some other useful attribute will drop to maintain Current Ability. This alone almost destroys the whole idea of training. Combine this with the grouping of attributes in training regimes, and training becomes too much work for too little to gain.

Moreover, positional weighting of attributes causes a ridiculous and completely unrealistic problem: if you retrain a player to a new position, the important attributes of the new position will drop because they weigh more towards CA now.

The Current Ability concept is useful and relatively simple, but by now it is already causing too many problems. Training, positional versatility and two-footedness suffer big time. As far as I am concerned, Current Ability (the way it modulates attributes, anyway) is one of the biggest problems this game currently has.

SI need to make a choice at some point. Either combat all these problems individually or do away with the concept of Current Ability, replace it with a smarter system and solve them all at once. I don't know what a smarter system would be like though, as I would need to be ...smarter to know that.

Sorry for generalizing too much, but I believe that all these problems are linked to the one OP is mentioning.

The current ability system ties the research aspect together with the game, and allows us to control progression sensibly. The chances of it being changed in the short or mid term are pretty much zero.

Thanks for your answer, Paul. I perfectly understand the database issues. However, I still feel that progression must be improved at some point. I spend most of my FM time tweaking training, that's what I like to do, but I still find that the game does not allow me to do cool or extremely useful stuff with it (not talking about merging tactics and training- that's a different matter). I agree with you that progression is currently sensible, but a game of the quality and immersion of FM should have much higher goals, I am certain you agree. The words "cool" and "extremely useful" that I used are key here.

Spending a lot of time on training gives minimal advantage right now, I feel it's not fair. I also find this unrealistic (ha! I knew this key word would get you!)

Footedness is indeed overrated.

I have a double-footed wonderkid on my team which means that his CA must be at least 160 iirc. Yet, his attributes make him look like a young bench warmer alternative at max. And also he's in no way performing like a 160 CA player either, 6.76.

Then I have a regen for the same position. My coaches and scouts rate him much lower and think I should offload him, but (as all regens ) he just has one foot, thus great stats and he rocks on the pitch, 7.33. So in the end the far worse player is the far better one on the pitch because the attribute penalty seems to weigh a lot more that the both feet benefit.

And that's not in goal, Paul, that's an attacking MR.

Thanks for your answer, Paul. I perfectly understand the database issues. However, I still feel that progression must be improved at some point. I spend most of my FM time tweaking training, that's what I like to do, but I still find that the game does not allow me to do cool or extremely useful stuff with it (not talking about merging tactics and training- that's a different matter). I agree with you that progression is currently sensible, but a game of the quality and immersion of FM should have much higher goals, I am certain you agree. The words "cool" and "extremely useful" that I used are key here.

Spending a lot of time on training gives minimal advantage right now, I feel it's not fair. I also find this unrealistic (ha! I knew this key word would get you!)

Tbh, training seems to be heavily flawed and close to useless to spend time on. I admire your patience

i really can't understand the logics why does foot abilty weight so much. i've never seen a player who was stronger, smarter and more skillful becouse he was one-footed.

i would never say being two-footed is a massive advantage IRL also.

Tbh, training seems to be heavily flawed and close to useless to spend time on. I admire your patience

I 'll tell you my secret: I admire my patience too!

To be fair, I don't think that training is that flawed in itself. Most of the training problems lie in the way that training cooperates (or does not cooperate) with the other game modules, i.e. attributes progression, current ability and match engine. (That is not to say that training cannot be improved in itself, of course it can)

It is the same with the two-footedness issue, in my opinion. The problem is not 2-footedness in itself, it is the way it cooperates with the Current Ability module. Tweaking the CA penalty for having a strong weaker foot may combat the problem to some extent. However, in order to completely solve the problem, the game needs to be "told" that 2-footedness should only cause a penalty on very specific attributes.

I 'll tell you my secret: I admire my patience too!

To be fair, I don't think that training is that flawed in itself. Most of the training problems lie in the way that training cooperates (or does not cooperate) with the other game modules, i.e. attributes progression, current ability and match engine. (That is not to say that training cannot be improved in itself, of course it can)

It is the same with the two-footedness issue, in my opinion. The problem is not 2-footedness in itself, it is the way it cooperates with the Current Ability module. Tweaking the CA penalty for having a strong weaker foot may combat the problem to some extent. However, in order to completely solve the problem, the game needs to be "told" that 2-footedness should only cause a penalty on very specific attributes.

Completely agreed.

As far as training is concerned, that cooperation to me is however all what training is about...

The problem is not 2-footedness in itself, it is the way it cooperates with the Current Ability module. Tweaking the CA penalty for having a strong weaker foot may combat the problem to some extent. However, in order to completely solve the problem, the game needs to be "told" that 2-footedness should only cause a penalty on very specific attributes.

This is gold right here, Si need to do this, it's a must.

I had to dig this up for this.

The database players and two-footness can stay as they are, but regarding regen creation, the ''penalty'' should only be for technical attributes.

This is how it should be, I've never seen the regens come really close to the database players because of this, being good with both feet and having great physical and mental stats just doesn't happen for the regens.

And guys please don't regard Messi as an example of a good one footed player, his second foot is like fairly strong, that's like a weaker foot of 12-14 compared to my example of 1(!).

And about the kid, I should buy him back, Tottenham would have been relegated without him, he always performs around the 7.50 mark even if Tottenham lose 1-4.......

A two-footed MC will be better than a one footed MC, same with an AMC. They can shoot with their weaker foots and pass with weaker foots more accurately.

A two-footed MC will be better than a one footed MC, same with an AMC. They can shoot with their weaker foots and pass with weaker foots more accurately.

and will have all the other stats lower. how many stats 'are using' feet and how many don't? there's much more than passing, shooting and dribbling in football game.

then why not use weighting only for stats that use foot?

Maybe it's because of the way it's coded?

Being both footed could improve a player in all areas of his game ???

I hope not as that denotes sloppy programming as no way does being dual footed make you faster in real life, or enhance your ability to anticipate and decide what to do on a football field.

I think every player stat should have its own separate potential for every player including weaker foot potential(!) no overall potential! and a simple algorithm to calculate the average potential for scout reports etc. Obviously it would double the data for each player on the database but with todays (and tomorrows) PCs it would be worth it to vastly improve this area of the game. No more having to 'unteach' a player one stat to increase another.

I never expeirenced a good player who was both footed.

No its all about the overall attributes matching the CA. Bottom line, 2 players with identical attributes but one is two footed one is right footed only. Which one should have the higher CA? Obviously the two footed one. The question is by how much.....

By however much it takes to keep their attributes identical?

Unworkable, from a game and research point of view.

How so? the potentials could be generated at random when you start a new game based on an algorithm which takes into account the player's position/positions and a single value for their potential ability. No extra reasearch would be needed - only the algorithm.

Because it would mean bigger changes to those attributes.

No its all about the overall attributes matching the CA. Bottom line, 2 players with identical attributes but one is two footed one is right footed only. Which one should have the higher CA? Obviously the two footed one. The question is by how much....

then it's obvious the weighting for WFA is much too high for any position becouse it shouldn't effect any mental, phisical and most of techical stats. i'm sure you agree with that.

Most of the technical stats? I'd say it affected more than half of them; I'll give you Corners, Free Kicks and Penalties on the grounds that you have time to choose your foot, and Marking, Long Throws and Heading on the grounds that your footedness is irrelevant, but the other eight look footedness-relevant to me.

and what did i say wrong then?

Most of the technical stats? I'd say it affected more than half of them; I'll give you Corners, Free Kicks and Penalties on the grounds that you have time to choose your foot, and Marking, Long Throws and Heading on the grounds that your footedness is irrelevant, but the other eight look footedness-relevant to me.

yeah sorry my mistake! there are more tech att that deal with foot abitly than those that don't. but still there's plenty of room to put weighting in those 8 attributes.

i don't know how much each attribute weights for top midfielder i think it's far more important to have 'good decision stat' than WFA. all of them have good weak foot (some slightly better, some a bit worse and some will use it more frequently) becouse they're kicking the ball every day and whole life and they're really good at it.

player's WFA is probably more important in youth or x level football.

imo

maybe it could be implemented that when a player reaches some point of CA (100 for example) he couldn't have WFA less then let's say 5-6. simple workaround and quite realistic probably?

I read that it takes up around 10 CA points, but have noticed massive differences in regens with two footed ability having terrible stats. My world class regens have great stats but only one footed, they still perform fine, so doesnt bother me all that much.

Give this some thought please, unless it's impossible (I'm not a programmer) -

How about scrapping attribute points for left foot and for right foot?

And introducing a new attribute called "Weaker Foot". Could still be based from 1 to 20.

That way, none of the other attributes would be toned down that much, display-wise, so we can all be happy with seeing a world class player's other attributes as they should be, on the screen.

Does the game really need to apportion CA points for a player's stronger foot, when it is always going to be 20 anyway?

This might help to tone down the weightings at the same time, allowing for more distribution of CA points to other attributes, since 20 out of 40 possible points for both feet have been eliminated.

Sorry if this sounds kind of complicated but I know I'm making sense to myself lol.

I don't think attributes should suffer because of footedness. However there should be two attributes to do with footedness.

1) Strength of foot (like we already have).

2) Frequency of weaker foot use.

Obviously when the weaker foot is used THEN the attributes suffer.

Not sure I've explained this properly.

I always thought it was confusing to see the stats and then having to check the footedness to see if the player was actually that good. I was thinking that it should be something like having a weaker foot would block off CA rather than having a stronger foot taking up CA that could be used for other things. I don't know how to explain it, but something like:

Two same players, one has PA 100 and he is only one footed. The presence of the weaker foot would lower his maximum possible CA to say 80, and he can only free up the leftover PA if he learned to use his other foot. Because there are levels of foot accuracy the PA freed could be exponential rather than constant. I don't know if this makes sense but it makes sense to me that a footballer would have an increase in all aspects of his game when they learn to use the weaker foot better.

To be fair though lots of problems could come up by doing this.

Maybe it's because of the way it's coded?

Being both footed could improve a player in all areas of his game ???

I hope not as that denotes sloppy programming as no way does being dual footed make you faster in real life, or enhance your ability to anticipate and decide what to do on a football field.

It does, let's look at it technically

His long shots, passing, dribbling, tackling, finishing will be more effective as he can do it with the other foot.

Mentally, I can't think of too many stats being affected, but Anticipation and Composure could be affected, what if a player anticipates a move and uses his weaker foot?

Physically, his balance and agility will improve, if he gets tackled on his left foot (stronger foot), then he can just move the ball to his right and dribble.

So it seems like it does improve all areas of game, mentally probably being the weakest, IMO.

Two same players, one has PA 100 and he is only one footed. The presence of the weaker foot would lower his maximum possible CA to say 80, and he can only free up the leftover PA if he learned to use his other foot. Because there are levels of foot accuracy the PA freed could be exponential rather than constant. I don't know if this makes sense but it makes sense to me that a footballer would have an increase in all aspects of his game when they learn to use the weaker foot better.

To be fair though lots of problems could come up by doing this.

yeah makes some sense but player with that CA is a pro-player, he can be even international. ALL these players have some ability with their weak foot. we're not talking about 7 y.o. kids. you can't play football professionaly and not able to control the ball with your left foot. problem occurs when you have db is full of +140 CA with WFA 1. same goes for regens.

comon sense tells that WFA is something like this:

WFA 1 - player's having trouble controling the ball and passing the most simple passes with that foot. he can't shoot with it.

WFA 5 - player's is well able to control the ball and pass simple passes. shooting and crossing will still be poor, he won't be able to use that foot much when dribbling, he will avoid using his weak foot.

WFA 10 - player will still avoid to use that foot. but his ability with weak foot is decent now.

........

how many PL or Championship or League 1 players are there with absolute no ability with weak foot (WFA 1-5)?

It does, let's look at it technically

His long shots, passing, dribbling, tackling, finishing will be more effective as he can do it with the other foot.

Mentally, I can't think of too many stats being affected, but Anticipation and Composure could be affected, what if a player anticipates a move and uses his weaker foot?

Physically, his balance and agility will improve, if he gets tackled on his left foot (stronger foot), then he can just move the ball to his right and dribble.

So it seems like it does improve all areas of game, mentally probably being the weakest, IMO.

A player who is both footed will have a better chance of passing and controlling the ball technically(as he has an option to use his weaker foot to good advantage - hence why I think CA should be higher for those with dual footedness, he is a BETTER player). His agility and balance effectively stay the same. (A player who can use both feet should generally have good agility and balance ratings anyway).

All I can do is put this into a rubbish analogy to try to explain what I mean.

Two players have exactly the same talent only player1 can't use his left foot and player2 can.

Player1 gets put into a goalscoring position to the left of the goal, not in a lot of space and the ball is on his left side. He can either decide to shoot with his weaker foot with a rubbish chance of finishing or he can decide to turn and put the ball on his better foot (which, as he has no space results in him being tackled/pressured out of the goalscoring opportunity) and try to look for a better chance.

Player2 would have buried the chance/had a good attempt at goal in the same scenario.

Player2 is the better player.

He would not be more agile, have better balance or anything.

I rarely see a player use his weaker foot in a match, no matter how strong it is, expect under pressure. I.e a cross is made into the box and the player has to act quickly and is forced to use the weaker foot due to his position. This leads me to think that the use of the weak foot is either not efficiently implemented into the ME, and that it therefore punishes the players to much by taking away CA points on something that is not very effective.

Why? Well..

I have two wingers, playing on opposite sides, both 20 on right and 15 on left foot. Winger A playing on the left side has instructions to cross often from the byline (low-medium CF). I want him to go to the byline, then decide to curl it inwards or outwards. He, however, cut's inside very early at almost every chance (before he's even close to the box).

Winger B, playing on the right side has free role, CF, cross rarely from mixed. Instead of cutting inside, or trying to find space more centrally, like his instructions suggests, he goes to the byline, then runs in to the box and either shoots from a bad angle, gets tackled or passes backwards.

So, my impression is that a player will make tactical decision (that might go against your instructions) and behave like they have only one strong foot, no matter how strong his weaker foot is. The only reason I can see why they behave as described as above is because they are slightly better with their right foot.

My strikers (both favouring their right foot) do something similar. Striker A, playing on the left side, has a 14 rating for his left foot. Striker B, on the right side, has 13 rating for his left foot.

What happens is that striker A will move in towards the center (cut inside, sort of), while Striker B will move out towards the right hand channel. This goes for runs, dribbles, and when they create space for a shot. It's very predictable, but it's shouldn't be because my instructions don't tell the to do this and they should not adapt their positioning and play so heavily to their strong foot when they have a decent weak foot (and are subsequently punished for it in terms of attributes).

The same can be said of Wingers. IRL the good thing about a winger being good with both feet is that they can go either way. From the byline they can curl the ball inwards or outwards, from deeper position they can cut inside or go down the flank and be equally effective doing both, thus causing all kinds of trouble. Unless I've missed a button in the instruction this is not reflected properly.

My impression is that the same happens to midfielder as with the strikers. I have a midfielder with a 17 rating on his weaker left foot playing on the left side of the center. He will, unless being forced, generally pass ball towards the right hand side of the field. He will also move slight towards this side, pushing my other right footed midfielder out towards the flank.

A player who is both footed will have a better chance of passing and controlling the ball technically(as he has an option to use his weaker foot to good advantage - hence why I think CA should be higher for those with dual footedness, he is a BETTER player). His agility and balance effectively stay the same. (A player who can use both feet should generally have good agility and balance ratings anyway).

All I can do is put this into a rubbish analogy to try to explain what I mean.

Two players have exactly the same talent only player1 can't use his left foot and player2 can.

Player1 gets put into a goalscoring position to the left of the goal, not in a lot of space and the ball is on his left side. He can either decide to shoot with his weaker foot with a rubbish chance of finishing or he can decide to turn and put the ball on his better foot (which, as he has no space results in him being tackled/pressured out of the goalscoring opportunity) and try to look for a better chance.

Player2 would have buried the chance/had a good attempt at goal in the same scenario.

Player2 is the better player.

He would not be more agile, have better balance or anything.

Maybe they couldn't be more agile or have better balance, but try testing this out to see who is the better player on the match engine.

Get 2 MC's, maybe create 2 replicate players and have one of them have a very weak left foot, while the other very strong with both feet. Logically, the one with stronger 2 feet will make more passes and be the better player on FM?

CHeck out the stats, the 2nd MC will get more passes and he can pass with both feet, therefore he will have more key passes, assists, etc, so actually, Player 2, the one with 2 strong feet, will be the stronger player on FM09. The reduced stats on the Player's menu are just purely cosmetic, they should be reversed if anything, but that's another flaw in FM, which is full of flaws.

A two footed striker on FM will always be more dangerous than a one footed striker, the match engine takes this account, same with wingers, defenders, midfielders.

moj: Being two footed is a great benefit to a player!