The Big Debate: FM's Tactical Direction

I Love FM

I am a long term player of the CM/FM series and have never bothered to post on these forums before. However, I have some major concerns about the ‘direction’ in which SI are taking the game.

Following on from spending far, far too long reading the thread 'Ditch the mentality slider altogether', I would like to have my two cents worth on the subject ‘what is currently wrong with FM’s ME and tactics UI’. I have some suggestions on how I believe the current situation might be improved.

For the impatient, the key problems are outlined immediately below and the key solutions suggested are in bold. Important ideas about the nature of the game in general are blue. It would really make more sense to read the whole thing though!

The Problems

Here are the four main problems, as I see them, with the ME and tactics menus:

1. It is often unclear what effect the sliders will have on the game and, as we know their effects are also interrelated, the effects of changing single or multiple sliders are very difficult for the layman to predict, making unforeseen conflicts/negative effects common for the uninitiated.

2. In many regards, instructions appear to duplicate one another or affect the same aspects of player behaviour, and here it is unclear which instruction will take precedent or if the instructions are interdependent.

3. Simple footballing ideas, commonly understood by the armchair fan, are only achievable in game through a series of small and interrelated instructions that are not going to be obvious to the uninitiated, they are counter-intuitive to set up and employ.

4. The consequences of your tactical changes are not always obvious in the ME or are clouded by the elements that (feel like they) are out of your control effecting results. We have reached a point where there is such a complicated interplay of such a vast amount of maths and numbers at work that results often feel random and frustrating – BECAUSE THE PLAYER FEELS THEY DO NO UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED, WHY AND WHAT THEY SHOULD HAVE DONE TO AVOID A BAD RESULT.

Let’s be very clear. You CAN learn to understand and manipulate the match engine and you can have great success. But it takes the type of time and dedication few of us have. The issue most FM fans have is simple: why should I have to read the TTF, traipse through the forums, or worst of all, download someone else’s tactic, in order to see my team play the way I want or simply to win consistently. No other videogame would make it rules and requirements for success so obtuse.

What would I like to see done?

There are two areas of concern. One is the way in which feedback is given to the player about how a match in the ME unfolds (not something I believe many people debating this issue have considered). The second is the way in which the player is presented with the decisions he or she has to make regarding tactical instructions. Like many things in FM the two are interrelated.

ME Feedback

The ME, in its current state uses 3 forms of feedback:

1. The statistical data, which, while integral to the experience, most players will be ignoring most of the time.

2. The 2D/3D match engine, which can only tell you certain limited things, such as the position of the ball and the players. Obviously important but not an insight into the mechanics of what happened and why.

3. The match commentary text, which has always tried to illuminate WHY the outcome of a highlight was achieved by giving an insight into what the players did or implying the cause of their successes or failures. This is a role SI seem to have downgraded since the arrival of the 2D match engine, despite the two NOT providing exactly the same information.

This final aspect is the one that seems most obviously open to alteration if we are to improve the player’s experience.

What I am suggesting is that the text commentary is used to give textual insights into the cause and effect that lead to certain highlight taking place.

The ME should be capable, in theory, of identifying the main causes of a goal being conceded or scored or whatever the case may be and linking that to a textual comment that informs the player.

This might also be particularly useful in regards to giving the player an insight into what the opposition AI is actually doing. I don’t think I often know.

Before anyone goes berserk at the mere suggestion, think the idea through carefully. This need not be as direct as ‘Team X’s width slider is set too high creating too much space’. It would be a comment that is in keeping with the way in which we all talk about football while still giving the player a clear idea of the factors that are affecting the outcome.

This would not make the game too easy for two reasons:

1. The decision to change something in response to the suggestion will have other knock on effects, you play more defensively, you create fewer chances, etc and it would still be the decision of the player what to change and how. The risk/reward of a good videogame is still at your command.

2. It would allow the introduction of a ‘difficulty setting’ in FM for the first time. Novice players could have more detailed and transparent tactical advice, the hardcore player could tone the comments down. It would be scalable according to the degree of support a player wanted.

There might also be the possibility of introducing the concept of pre-, in-game, and post-match analysis of tactical issues by ‘pundits’. They could highlight tactical issues and offer advice. The newcomer could have them on for every game or only big games, the hardcore player could turn them off.

The game does try to present much of this information in other ways – the pre-match scouting reports or assistant manager’s in-match feedback – but these tools are often obtuse or unhelpfully implemented and only relate to one or two of the tactical instructions you can give. The assistant manager in particular seems like a sticking plaster, he mainly warns you about problems with your mentality settings (which no one seems to understand, except a select few) or push you towards using the opposition instructions.

The key idea here is to link the player’s decisions to the outcomes in the ME, in plain English (or whatever language you play the game in) using the common language of football that we all believe we understand. If I, as a player of the game, can understand more easily why something happened because it is discussed in terms of my own inputs, then that would be beneficial.

But, for that to work, the way in which my decisions are presented to me in the tactics menus needs to change.

The Tactics Menus

The sliders are a logical consequence of the ME being a massive probability engine. Very broadly speaking my understanding is this: the in-game players’ decisions are based on the probability of their success in performing any given action and your instructions alter percentages that effect their decisions. So when we encourage a particular action we alter the percentage chance of success required for the player to attempt the action. Broadly speaking. Once the player has made the decision of which action to take, based on the parameters we have set and their own statistical attributes, the ME then computes whether the action is performed successfully, based on the conditions and player attributes. As a way of constructing the ME, this makes perfect sense. Twenty degrees of action on a slider to represent five percent increments in probabilities.

Unfortunately, a slider with twenty notches, interrelated with half a dozen other sliders with twenty notches, creates a layer of abstraction that is beyond the uninitiated and is unhelpful. Where the player is presented with a range of options so minute, the difference between any two adjacent settings on the slider becomes so indistinct as to be unhelpful. The settings available to the player need to be distinctly different in their intent. The difference between ‘Closing Down: 17’ and Closing Down: 18’ simply does not feel meaningful.

The ‘Team’ settings sliders should be visually removed and replaced with drop-down text boxes. The scale of choices should be reduced from twenty down to either five or ten with a textual description, in the common ‘language of football’, outlining what the slider will do when changed.

The underlying mechanic does not need to change.

This would be more reflective of actual football. The paradigm of the UI should be to model the player’s interaction with the team on the kind of verbal instructions a manager could give.

As the language of the proposed new text commentary would use a similar vernacular, the two systems would dove-tail and allow the player more of an understanding of what is happening when and why. Cause and effect is re-established between tactical instructions and ME. It was always there but the player either felt it was indeterminable or, in some cases, it actually was indeterminable. You don’t want to tell the player everything all of the time, clearly, but there needs to be a more obvious link between my decisions and what happens in the ME for the videogame to feel like a fair and engaging challenge and not, as is frequently the case, dumb luck and random chance. These are elements of a real life football manager’s experience and they should be part of the game but you cannot allow them too much free-reign – this is a videogame after all.

The other advantage of removing the ability to tweak 120 positions on different sliders would be to change the emphasis of the tactics entirely.

A successful player would no longer be the one that mastered the alchemy of the slider settings but one who, having defined a general style of play was then able to set the individual player instructions that created successful attacking strategies or successfully frustrated the opponent’s. The successful player would make key substitutions, introducing different kinds of players to fulfil different kinds of roles or making alterations to the formation, and that would win them the game.

Success should not be about meticulously tuning the tactics before a game, clicking play and having your ‘super tactic’ crush all before you with little need for your interference. The emphasis should be on your tactical preparations for each specific opponent and how you intervene during the matches, something that the current tactical system makes harder for most of us to do successfully.

In addition to these changes, there should be more tick-box, ‘hold up the ball’ style instructions.

I should not have to tease a desired style of play (overlapping fullback, winger cutting inside, striker dropping deep, I could go on) from a multiple set of sliders and instructions.

The skill in the game should be whether I made the right tactical decision – was asking that player to follow this instruction at this stage in the game the right thing to do – not whether I understood the mysteries of the tactical instructions and ME enough to coax such a result out of it.

The existence of preferred moves shows that it is possible to have a player respond to such an instruction within the ME, so why should a player only do these things if they are predisposed to do so? Why can’t I, as the hard-headed tactician that I am, tell them to?

Finally, the individual player instructions for areas currently controlled by sliders should be a modifier of the whole team instruction.

This makes total sense from both the player’s perspective and in real life.

I do not want to have to change eleven individual players’ sliders, possibly two or three sliders each, to affect a change in the way the whole team plays.

This change would also stop the problem of play becoming disjointed. At the moment I might instinctively give my striker and my centre back mentality settings fifteen places apart. It feels right. But then they are too spread out because of the choices I have encouraged them to make.

If I define the team mentality and then set individuals as ‘more or less’ than the team there is less likelihood of these problems arising. If my whole team is attacking I might ask my defender to hang back slightly more than the rest but I wouldn’t tell him to go stand on the six yard box by himself while everyone else forges ahead into the opposition half. In real life, even the most mentally challenged footballer is capable of reconciling his own instruction to play more defensively with a later instruction for the whole team to be more attacking. He will still be more defensively minded than his team mates but he will look to be more attacking, as instructed.

So, what do you think?

Many people will think these two sets of changes are ‘dumbing down’. Any perceived reduction of the level of detail, or the degree to which you can create a ‘unique’ tactic, is often approached with cynicism, if not outrage.

But I think that in any other videogame the demands FM makes of the player and the obtuse nature of the way in which you interact with and ‘control’ the game would be such a cause for frustration that you simply wouldn’t accept it.

You can’t simply say that the fact that the machinations of the ME sometimes feel random is ‘like real life’. This is a videogame and I deserve to understand, for my £30, how I’m supposed to play it. And that’s without recourse to the TTF, forums and tactics downloads.

These changes would reaffirm the element of role-playing that some of the recent media additions have introduced, through introducing ‘text as verbal instruction’ as the main tactical interface. It would reaffirm the connection between the player, their decisions and the results in the ME. And it would allow the casual gamer to get involved. The underlying mechanics do not need to be changed necessarily to achieve this. Unless of course, the way in which the sliders work really can’t be explained in such simple, plain English, in which case there’s a bigger problem...

To use one final analogy (and please note this is purely figurative), sometimes the videogame really does need to be more like ‘rock, paper, scissors’ than like trying to predict weather patterns - more of a game and less of an arcane science.

I've just finished reading through this thread, in which all your questions are addressed. Hold your breathe through the vitriol and cut to the information provided by Ov, Millie and wwfan who are involved in the developments.

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=112977

Many thanks for the invitation, which I would be happy to take you up on.

What I'd really like to see though, is what other members of the forum think of these ideas.

I for one am really fed up of watching poor old Wwfan defending himself on these forums.!

People make criticisms of the game and people like him try to show them how to get the most out of the game RIGHT NOW. It doesn't always go down well because the complaints are about what people would like the game to be, not what it is at the moment.

The way I see it, if you want help playing the game, Wwfan and the like are a good place to start.

If you want to discuss the direction the game is going, you should leave him alone and try starting a CIVIL discussion elsewhere.

My issues with the TTF are something else entirely...

And thanks for that too, phnompenhandy, I'll have a look!

(the previous reply wasn't aimed at you though!)

Oh, right. Had actually had a look at that thread already phnompenhandy.

I guess it all really depends on the form this 'tactics wizard' takes. If it pushes everyone towards the TTF model (i.e. the excel spreadsheet they made available) I'm not sure I'd be too happy...

Well I interpret it as implying that you 'shout' (one click) and the tactics default to settings determined by TT&F. Presumably you can tweak those settings beforehand and move away from TT&F assumptions, but that's precisely what the so-called 'casual' gamer doesn't want to do.

Personally I'm a fan of TT&F - for me they are implementing football logic into tactics. However, I can see that some people have negative issues although I can't get to the root of the rational objections. If the issue is the effort of studying a 50-page manual, then that's precisely what's obviated by the wizard (plus wwfan said they've move a quantum leap away from that excel spreadsheet by now). If you and others do have a more rational and reasonable objection to TT&F then I can understand that you may well be irked by the direction FM10 is taking.

I'd say the best thing you can do is take up Ov's offer, and get stuck into the beta. Either you'll be 'converted' and realise that your objections are misfounded, or you'll offer positive criticism and play a role in moving the game in the direction you think best. Either way, a 'win-win scenario'!

I entirely understand what you mean phnompenhandy, and reading the TTF allowed me to get a much better handle on what was going on in the ME, but my issue is the effect the existence of the TTF wizard has on the way people are playing.

For example, I don't think anyone at SI ever said you had to have a 'tactics set' but that's the way the wizard pushes you.

Now, if you follow that attitude to tactics, the casual gamer maybe reduced to a way of playing the game that simply isn't fun. That is, they set the standard tactic, see how the match is progressing and then swap to the attacking or defensive tactic as and when seems sensible.

You can obviously alter the basic templates the wizard generates, to fit your own tastes, your particular players, the next opposition, (I'm sure that's what Wwfan et al would want you to do) but I suspect many won't.

What you end up with is setting your tactic once and then, to be reducitve, pressing a button to select either Attack/Standard/Defend.

The advanced player might add 'Control' or 'Shut Up Shop'.

That's not what I think the guys who wrote the TTF would have expected or wanted but that's how I see friends using it and that's what I was tempted to do myself. One friend's only other interaction was to make a sub if a) someone's condition was low b) someone's match rating was low.

I would rather have a core tactic and be able to tweak the team sliders, in-game, to affect the match (drop deep/play narrower to close out a game for example) but with the current state of the sliders that kind of action won't necessarily work.

I know what I'm suggesting sounds overly simplistic in football terms but does Sir Alex actually shout 'Ok lads, now use the defensive variation we practised'. Perhaps to a degree, but probably not.

that's a fantastic post Barr, you sumed our thoughts from 'Ditch the mentality..' thread really well. I'm sure I would have written this by myself exactly the same, if english was my first lenguage I guess I owe you one..

it's funny how everything's quiet about changing the tactical interface since SI told about new Wizzard. I think it is a fantastic addition, especially for new FM players, as it should make life much easier. but I wonder how much the system will change/improve in it's fundament, as slider will still be - sliders? you questioned their comprenhansion, effect, actions, linkings with each other, with ME.. it would be nice if SI considered that before moving on with Wizzard also.

the good news is that I believe wwfan and Millie are of our way of thinking, what I could gather from that thread in T&T forum. they just won't acknowlede it too often.

there's one more thing I'd like to bring out. what about AI? will it be improved, will AI use the same Wizzard patterns? it must be a very hard task surely, but that is also one aspect of this game that hasn't been changed for long time. I think that's fair thing to say having in mind humans are using sophisticated systems like TT&F (and Wizzard is based on it) while AI's still in 'all global age'. there should be 'equal' system for humans and AI. now it feels like a race between F1 car and ordinary car, which is well able to beat F1 just becouse of perfect decision making.

PS - ideally the tactics should be succinct and intuitive/fun enough to interact with that you would want to tweak your tactics before every match, in response to the opposition. In the current iteration that isn't really that appealing.

At the moment with the TTF formula, the casual gamer's pre-match decision is whether to start with either the defensive or attacking tactic if the match odds are particularly grim/favourable.

PS - ideally the tactics should be succinct and intuitive/fun enough to interact with that you would want to tweak your tactics before every match, in response to the opposition. In the current iteration that isn't really that appealing.

At the moment with the TTF formula, the casual gamer's pre-match decision is whether to start with either the defensive or attacking tactic if the match odds are particularly grim/favourable.

which leads us to linking the tactics with training and match preparation being an important part of tactics.

I Love FM

What I am suggesting is that the text commentary is used to give textual insights into the cause and effect that lead to certain highlight taking place.

The ME should be capable, in theory, of identifying the main causes of a goal being conceded or scored or whatever the case may be and linking that to a textual comment that informs the player.

This might also be particularly useful in regards to giving the player an insight into what the opposition AI is actually doing. I don’t think I often know.

Regarding this points, I'll find useful something that some (american) football games or similar already have: a log generated after every game, that can be read simply with notepad, with all the infos about the game played.

What I miss in terms of informations are stats like the classification of goals made and taken (counter-attack, from the right flank, from the left flank, from long shots etc...). Regarding passes, we know how many passes players do, but not in which direction etc...

I'm looking forward to it more than to the Wizzard. if only the player attributes system gets sorted now

imo if you get it right with tactical system, re-worked menual (or any other info what each instruction does and how and when they interact), improved AM feedback and solid ME (where every instruction does what it is meant to do), then there's no rush for such identifying system as we should well be able to figure it out by ourselfs. that is the hardest part of being a football manager, and as I see it, this system would work more like difficult level then..

I entirely understand what you mean phnompenhandy, and reading the TTF allowed me to get a much better handle on what was going on in the ME, but my issue is the effect the existence of the TTF wizard has on the way people are playing.

For example, I don't think anyone at SI ever said you had to have a 'tactics set' but that's the way the wizard pushes you.

Now, if you follow that attitude to tactics, the casual gamer maybe reduced to a way of playing the game that simply isn't fun. That is, they set the standard tactic, see how the match is progressing and then swap to the attacking or defensive tactic as and when seems sensible.

You can obviously alter the basic templates the wizard generates, to fit your own tastes, your particular players, the next opposition, (I'm sure that's what Wwfan et al would want you to do) but I suspect many won't.

What you end up with is setting your tactic once and then, to be reducitve, pressing a button to select either Attack/Standard/Defend.

The advanced player might add 'Control' or 'Shut Up Shop'.

That's not what I think the guys who wrote the TTF would have expected or wanted but that's how I see friends using it and that's what I was tempted to do myself. One friend's only other interaction was to make a sub if a) someone's condition was low b) someone's match rating was low.

I would rather have a core tactic and be able to tweak the team sliders, in-game, to affect the match (drop deep/play narrower to close out a game for example) but with the current state of the sliders that kind of action won't necessarily work.

I know what I'm suggesting sounds overly simplistic in football terms but does Sir Alex actually shout 'Ok lads, now use the defensive variation we practised'. Perhaps to a degree, but probably not.

I hope the new system allows for both methods. Because of how Ov has coded it, the options for changing things are always in view, which should encourage people to experiment and develop a style and strategy they are comfortable with. Some will switch strategies, whereas other will use the lower level tweaks to narrow or push up.

I hope the new system allows for both methods. Because of how Ov has coded it, the options for changing things are always in view, which should encourage people to experiment and develop a style and strategy they are comfortable with. Some will switch strategies, whereas other will use the lower level tweaks to narrow or push up.

Regarding D-Line deeper or pushed up, it's not so clear on the pitch where the D-Line is. Is there the possibility to see it on the screen tactic? D-Line=0 what does it mean, our goal line ?

For too long FM has been about trying to use the interface to interpret your mental thoughts into a tactical system. The new FML wizard is the first new FM feature that has excited me in a loooong time. I want to be able to tell my players in plain English what I expect of them. If that doesn't work then I've made a mistake. I believe that will be alot less frustrating than the current 'tweak this and hope for the best' system.

this has been an excellent post and thread, sorry to bring it up but i only accidentally came across it today and wanted to acknowledge my appreciation of the initial post as well as the following addressing and / or support from olly / paul / mitja / wwfan

This would really help the casual gamer/new to football gamer like me. I largely regret having purchased the game. I am learning much from it but the time requirement is such that I hardly ever get to play it and when I do it's mostly "off-field" stuff and when I finally get to a match, I'm usually left frustrated. I will have to do a lot of grassroots research into the "playability" of the game for beginners like me before I consider purchasing another iteration of this series.

That said, I do like the potential this game has. But I must say that FM09 seems to have reached a point where it tries to emulate too much of real life. We can't have full control over absolutely everything like a real manager does. The real life manager is paid handsomely and spends nearly all his waking hours running his team. You can't expect that level of commitment on a video game, but that's what FM 09 feels like. I know it's sort of a paradox to give people the depth they want without drowning them, but I feel a difficulty scale would solve this problem. Mighty Barr's suggestions and the proposed wizard are/would be steps in the right direction toward bringing this much needed variability to the FM experience.

Hey brilliant opening post that, certainly got me thinking. Just got me thinking of something else actually. Were all aware of limitations, and how certain limitations affect the Match Engine, e.g. removing certain PPMS, however I am intrigued to know wether FM09 and any relevant patches were all maxed out (in terms of coding and limitations, and would it have been possible to add other features to the FM match engine, in relation to tactics?) I hope I have worded that correctly...

Just a thought really.