Free formations

Am i the only one that wants the ability to freely place my players on the pitch and tactics screen as the primary change to FM10??

I think it's a VERY serious flaw that the most comprehensive football management game is lacking this fluidity in tactics.

I've been wanting this since CM98/99 and with the restrictions on player runs that was seen in FM09 (a backwards step again) this, for me, is the change that would be of greatest benefit to the game.

I would advise you to go into the Training & Tactics forum and READ READ READ

You are mistaken

such a smug silly answer.

yes you should be able to place your players where you want, its obvious that you should after all you are the manager. Instead because of the limitations of a the match engine and tactics system you cant.

Other things you cant do is simply tell your full backs to overlap, tell your winger to cut in etc etc

I know there are work rounds with this but involves rolling dice with the ridiculous slider system.

Am i the only one that wants the ability to freely place my players on the pitch and tactics screen as the primary change to FM10??

I think it's a VERY serious flaw that the most comprehensive football management game is lacking this fluidity in tactics.

I've been wanting this since CM98/99 and with the restrictions on player runs that was seen in FM09 (a backwards step again) this, for me, is the change that would be of greatest benefit to the game.

What benefit would you gain by being able to place your players anywhere on the pitch??

Your players don't stay where you put them at the moment, they move around dependant of what instructions you give.

The fixed positions do at the moment is give a general area for the player to work within which is enough.

How often do you see Alex Ferguson say drop back 10 yards Wayne? or move 5 yards to your left Cristiano?

What benefit would you gain by being able to place your players anywhere on the pitch??

Your players don't stay where you put them at the moment, they move around dependant of what instructions you give.

The fixed positions do at the moment is give a general area for the player to work within which is enough.

How often do you see Alex Ferguson say drop back 10 yards Wayne? or move 5 yards to your left Cristiano?

No but alex ferguson can say to wayne rooney I want you to drop into left midfield when we dont have the ball but when we have the ball play off the front man - explain to me how you would convey that in FM

Or what if you want to tell your right midfileder to play narrow but your left midfielder to play wide. You cant do it.

The current tactics system is seriously flawed and counter-intuitive

Firstly- being able to place players anywhere would create all sorts of exploits, and anyway, how many players will know the difference between one pixel each side? It will only create confusion and exploits.

theboydonegood- it's impossible without arrows (as we all knew it would be :roll: ). I think I remember PaulC or someone similar saying that they were hoping to get a few instructions like that implemented soon, but whether that means FM2010 or FM2020, I don't know.

Full backs overlapping is very easy tbh, just give them forward runs. Cutting inside you can do, but doing it is so complicated, illogical and has so many negative repercussions that it's not worth while.

1. the fact that it causes exploits just illustrates the fact that the match engine and tactics system is flawed.

2. there shoiuld be far more instructions rather than messing around with stupid sliders

3. overlapping full backs is not as simple as giving them forward runs you also have to tweak the mentality etc and do the same on the midlifelder ahead of them.

I'd love to be able to freely place my players.

However SCIAG is right the flaws would be Immense, Build a wall in ur box to stop goals in last minutes, All sorts of buggered up looking tactics that would wreck the game.

Am i the only one that wants the ability to freely place my players on the pitch and tactics screen as the primary change to FM10??

I think it's a VERY serious flaw that the most comprehensive football management game is lacking this fluidity in tactics.

I've been wanting this since CM98/99 and with the restrictions on player runs that was seen in FM09 (a backwards step again) this, for me, is the change that would be of greatest benefit to the game.

I totally agree with this ... as a manager of a football team YOU decide what formation you want to play and YOU decide what your players do ... what SI are basically saying is that it is impossible to tell a player to make diagonal runs ? .. well i find it very fustrating !

No but alex ferguson can say to wayne rooney I want you to drop into left midfield when we dont have the ball but when we have the ball play off the front man - explain to me how you would convey that in FM

Or what if you want to tell your right midfileder to play narrow but your left midfielder to play wide. You cant do it.

The current tactics system is seriously flawed and counter-intuitive

So we are back to the age old discussion of players playing in two positions

The tactics you see on FM are based on the "defensive" formation so in your extreme Rooney example you would need to place him in the ML position with attacking orders.

I do agree though that we need easier control over horizontal movement and have expressed these thoughts in many threads even before FM09 was released.

1. the fact that it causes exploits just illustrates the fact that the match engine and tactics system is flawed.

2. there shoiuld be far more instructions rather than messing around with stupid sliders

3. overlapping full backs is not as simple as giving them forward runs you also have to tweak the mentality etc and do the same on the midlifelder ahead of them.

I believe this is being addressed in the next version.

The FIFA Manager series had a great system of assigning every player a position on the pitch depending on where the ball currently is and who's got it until recently. Something similar to this game's slider system was in place as well, so you basically could tell the players exactly where to be in what situation.

In theory anyway, their 3d match engine has plenty of flaws, but that's another story. Unfortunately they scrapped it in the ongoing effort to dumb down the game. I'd love to have a system like that in this game. Yea, some exploits may be possible, but it's much closer to actual tactics training sessions happening in real football.

I believe this is being addressed in the next version.

Good I have been saying for ages that the sliders should go and be replaced with a drop down boxes with player instructions. There should be default player instructions for every position on the pitch which you can use.

Everyone has different definitions and expectations of what tactical control is, but we also have to remember that it is only a computer game and realistic perfection is very unlikely to be achieved.

I'm quite happy with the micromanagement that the sliders brings, but like the OP I would prefer better base position placement as part of tactics.

i'm glad there's some support here. It shouldn't flaw it as people say becasue if a game like LMA Manager implemented it 4 or 5 years ago then it shuold be accessible to the best management game going.

And with regards to manipulation of uber defensive tactics... can someone show these people Euro 2004 and the Greece team that won.

I'd also like to point that the restrictions in forward runs and the removal of some of the player preferred moves is counter productive. And, that i've never been able to get a player to learn a new style when i suggest to pass shorter for a defensive midfielder for example either.

These are the most important things to me.

i'm glad there's some support here. It shouldn't flaw it as people say becasue if a game like LMA Manager implemented it 4 or 5 years ago then it shuold be accessible to the best management game going.

And with regards to manipulation of uber defensive tactics... can someone show these people Euro 2004 and the Greece team that won.

I'd also like to point that the restrictions in forward runs and the removal of some of the player preferred moves is counter productive. And, that i've never been able to get a player to learn a new style when i suggest to pass shorter for a defensive midfielder for example either.

These are the most important things to me.

Forward runs haven't been restricted or even changed while the PPMs that were removed did nothing anyway, they were just eye candy.

Well, on FM it is impossible to have a player set to the out and out centre forward role (that position in the middle, just behind the strikers, but ahead of an AM) it used to be a position I liked to have filled in the past, you can have it filled on fifa whenever playing with Barca online, Henry always sits there behind Eto'o and Messi, feeding the ball through to them.

If that is classed as an exploit on FM then there is something wrong, I've tried to use a striker more defensive minded, and an AMC more offensive minded, but it doesn't fill that void. How the FM tactics interface works, implies that how Rooney plays for Man Utd doesn't exist. Or how Zigic used to play for Valencia, or even how Sidibe plays for Stoke.

The lack of the centre forward is my only true gripe about the game, yes you can use sliders, but whilst some were saying you can use sliders to achieve this, if you could give him the default position, uncircumstantial like some of the sliders are, they wouldn't be needed.

How I'd love to line my side up like:

RB - CB - CB - LB

RCM - CM - LCM

- CF -

ST - ST

The only compromise these days is AM with forward runs often, but manipulate the mentality so he doesn't go too far, restrict creative freedom so he won't go too far, and of course if you stick luca toni there, or any other big CF/targetman kind of player there, he gets a big red dot because its not the right position.

Otherwise play him in the centre of the strikers, which pushes them further out wide which you don't want, and try to make him more defensive, without forward runs and he ends up sitting in with midfielders unless you get it perfect.

It would be a good idea IMO. I like to play with two CMs, one of which sits back. On FIFAManager this is represented by placing him slightly further back, not using sliders. Again, i like to have one more attacking CB, Winger and FB. Then theres the problem of how to create a proper CF in the game. i.e. you can't without considerble effort. This idea would sort this out.

It seems to me like the problem isn't with the sliders but with users not understanding how to apply them correctly...

nni - More that we can't be bothered to spend several weeks working out how they work, only to change our mind as to how we play.

Well, I think you'll be happy with fm10 then. iirc the biggest change will be the addition of the tactics wizard which will create "slider templates" for different tactical instructions.

If the tactical wizard is the same as in FMLive (and there's no reason to assume it'll be any different) then the level of on the fly "shouts" it gives is fantastic, and far more realistic than having to wait until the ball goes out to get any instructions at all across...

I'm also hoping the "opposition instructions" tab from FMLive moves across. Being able to see a players stats and footedness while setting their instructions is fantastic.

The main issue with the current slider system is that it's completely counterintuitive.

It may work fine for the software engineers, as players we often have to spend more thought about getting the system to do what we want rather than our actual tactics and that's always an indicator for questionable game design.

I haven't played FMLive yet, so I won't comment on those changes.

If the current tactics aren't flawed tell me how can i make my left winger play wide and my right play more narrow.

I think somewhere in between the two main views would be useful. Not completely free as in the OP suggesting as that really would create mayhem for the match engine, but not as static as it currently is.

As the Positions window is really only a visual representation of the way you have your team line up it is inherently limited. Personally I don't want the old wibble/wobble system as it was in the past, although a newer and better version might be nice.

What I feel would be useful is if the Positions windows told you more than it currently does. Currently the only things we see from the window is the general position of a player, which player it is, forward runs and the position ability of players. I've seen posts (with mock ups in the past) that show a lot more information visually represented such as their mentality within that position, closing down, free roles and so on.

If the current tactics aren't flawed tell me how can i make my left winger play wide and my right play more narrow.

Line up:

LM CM CM CM

And set slider to fullish wide....should do it I reckon.

The real reason WIBL/WOBL screens were dropped is that they couldn't allow for a satisfactory 2D match engine, and the player would have a huge tactical flexibility advantage over the AI, which presumably would need to be restricted to variations on a stock set of formations.

With the current system, the x and y co-ordinates a player should be on a pitch in for any given position of the ball in the game is determined primarily by one of 20 width and 20 attacking settings (not that other things like player mental attributes, forward run attributes, physical condition and having a clear run on goal don't have some effect. I'm also sure it's not a simple as increasing the width simply pushing a player's median position a metre wider - I'm sure there are all sorts of subtle effects on probability of cutting inside, probability of abandoning a position to attack/defend the far post etc). From the point of view of balance, it offers exactly the same options as AI managers, and AI manager preferences can easily be determined by a set of numerical attributes. It's also limits the scope for formations based around massive attacking or defensive overloads and makes programming effective counter-strategies relatively straightforward.

This is actually far more control than a RL manager would have (players would naturally drop back or push forward given certain match situations anyway and the manager's role overall effect on tactical changes during the match is primarily encouraging/discourage this).

What we haven't got control over of is the subtle deviations from a standard setup, like having narrow wingers and wide fullbacks. Some straightforward things are practically impossible, like determining whether the DMC should generally cover one or both flanks to try to stop crosses coming in (NOT the same as man-marking a winger) or drop into the penalty area to clear the cross away. This was what the "free formations" in WIBL/WOBL added.

We also can't encourage specific variations, so you can't have your two-footed winger play very wide normally but mix things up by cutting inside without also giving him the creative freedom to run around the pitch like a headless Nani. This wasn't possible with WIBL/WOBL either

A list of attacking and defensive instructions similar to the PPMs (varying according to the position players are selected in - so an AMC would get the option to overlap but a DC wouldn't, and your wingers and defensive midfielders can be encouraged to defend the) would offer the best balance; intuitive and reasonably easy to test and program the AI to utilise.

Some more flexibility over encourage/discourage particular passing options would be nice, so that I can tell my star creative midfielder that he should often play the ball in front of my fast striker, and rarely into the feet of my other striker, get the central defence to pass often to the creative midfielder and rarely to the DM and encourage my fullbacks to play the ball down the line to the winger in front of them, who should cross often to the head of the slow striker and often to the feet of the quick striker

I can do some of the above under the existing system, but not without compromising other aspects of the formation.

Better visual representation is much needed too: even something simple like moving a player on high attacking settings a couple on pixels further forward so that you could instantly spot imbalances in player instructions would be a starting point. Visual representation of closing down with shading and the defensive line shouldn't be too difficult to introduce either (although personally I hate both these unintuitive, poorly understood options)

A very simple view only version of WIBL/WOBL where you could see a visual representation of the assumed starting positions and movement direction(s) of a player within a given formation