Anyone else get the feeling that drama is built into the game?

I've been playing with Wolves for 5 seasons now and have noticed that a few of my games, especially in the last couple of seasons in the premiership, seem to be played out in a way that deliberately makes the matches exciting.

For example, I had AEK in the group stages of the champions league. During the away game against them I went 1-0 down after 10ish minutes. I was all over them but they somehow managed to squeeze through and find a goal. I changed nothing though, as the match stats showed I was doing absolutely nothing wrong and I continued to pile pressure on them up until half-time. After half-time I eventually found the equalizer I deserved around about the 60th minute. However, come stoppage time the score was still level, with the match stats showing one of those familiar 1 shot on target, 1 goal to 30 shots on target, 1 goal. Then, in the final seconds of stoppage time I poke a deserved ball over the line and find myself 2-1 up at the final whistle.

I'm not complaining that I won, but I couldn't help feel that I was always going to win that game and it just did it in the most dramatic way. This has happened to me a number of times, especially this 5th season, and I wondered if anyone else had experienced the same thing, including times when the opposition has turned a defeat into a win against you.

I've been playing with Wolves for 5 seasons now and have noticed that a few of my games, especially in the last couple of seasons in the premiership, seem to be played out in a way that deliberately makes the matches exciting.

For example, I had AEK in the group stages of the champions league. During the away game against them I went 1-0 down after 10ish minutes. I was all over them but they somehow managed to squeeze through and find a goal. I changed nothing though, as the match stats showed I was doing absolutely nothing wrong and I continued to pile pressure on them up until half-time. After half-time I eventually found the equalizer I deserved around about the 60th minute. However, come stoppage time the score was still level, with the match stats showing one of those familiar 1 shot on target, 1 goal to 30 shots on target, 1 goal. Then, in the final seconds of stoppage time I poke a deserved ball over the line and find myself 2-1 up at the final whistle.

I'm not complaining that I won, but I couldn't help feel that I was always going to win that game and it just did it in the most dramatic way. This has happened to me a number of times, especially this 5th season, and I wondered if anyone else had experienced the same thing, including times when the opposition has turned a defeat into a win against you.

i dont think the game has been coded so that goals come more often in injury time etc. just some times these things happen, people getting tired, not concentrating enough at the end of the game. i see ammounts of late goals in real life games and it pretty much ends up being the same ammont on my game, some seasons more some less.

no i have experienced the same as platinum. of course its a game after all..so its designed to be exciting. and , in my opinion, a little biased towards the player..otherwise nobody would play the game. none of us like losing so things like the 30 shots to 1 show that the game is tryingto mae it more exciting.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> Anyone else get the feeling that drama is built into the game? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

No. Its a football game. Football is generally pretty dramatic

@ Neji - that's very true! However, I reckon that this season my fan base must consist of nothing but youngsters, as many of my older fans will have all died from shock-related heart attacks. Seriously, my Wolves team are the Leeds of the premiership when it comes to late, game winning goals.

but its a game...a model of the sport..so it wont be completely accurate. its designed to be challenging but entertaining with the majority of players i know having win % above 60....not many teams have that in real life

Human nature is such that the occasions when these things do happen stick in the mind far more than the far more regular occasions when they don't happen, thus totally skewing our viewpoint.

As others have said, football games will often naturally build up to a climax in injury time if the game is still alive rather than one team winning 3-0 and cruising. The losing team at 1-0 or 2-1 down will obviously be pushing as hard as they can for the equaliser. In real life Sunderland scored a lot of late late goals last season. So basically it is the game attempting to mimic reality rather than attempting to introduce spurious drama where there shouldn't be any.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by johno:

but its a game...a model of the sport..so it wont be completely accurate. its designed to be challenging but entertaining with the majority of players i know having win % above 60....not many teams have that in real life </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe the majority of players you know always pick good teams or exploit the various match engine weaknesses etc...or maybe they've just been playing FM for so long that they are very good at it.

For a new player it must be an astoundingly difficult game to get the hang of now. I've been playing it for quite a few years and am still making plenty of mistakes and failing to undersyand how to get my tactics right.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">so its designed to be exciting. and , in my opinion, a little biased towards the player..otherwise nobody would play the game. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

iirc in the match engine doesnt treat the AI any differently to the player. if you watch a few neutral games you will otice they are the same as our own games(although some of s use perculiar tactics)

yes but in business its about making profit, selling games and making sure the player has fun. so SI sat down and thougth how can we make a challenging yet fun game for the player. if it was completely accurate there is no way any team but the big 4 could win the EPL and in this game, as it is made for entertanment, you can actualy win it with a wide array of teams. its not like im better that keegan or moyes but its a game.

If a player wit hsome grasp of good tactics, good player management etc lost over half the games they played (unless v poor lower league team) they would get fed up and go play GTA or something else. SI wouldnt make money as people wouldnt play the game. its a ballance of simulation and fun. so in my opinion its SLIGHTLY biased towards the player. not much but enough to tip the ballance to fun

Your argument about it being biased towards the player is totally flawed. I see AI teams break the domination of the top 4 (in England) so it isn't just something a human manager can achieve.

In my current savegame in Italy AI-managed Palermo have apparently attached themselves to a rocket-launcher this season and were top of Serie A into March. Meanwhile my Fiorentina side who finished 4th behind Inter,Roma,Juventus 1st season and then 5th behind those same teams and Milan last season are again behind those same teams, but now also behind Palermo too (and Lazio). Unsurprisingly (and disappointingly really, despite it possibly playing into my hands) Palermo are now falling apart at just the wrong part of the season, but still, they are an overachieving AI team whereas my team are stuck in a slow reverse gear! I'm not the world's greatest manager by any means, but I've been playing long enough to be a very competent manager with plenty of trophies in previous versions and even in FM08.

So my point is there is no bias programmed in in favour of the human player, but obviously a human player has a human brain and will always have that ability to maybe out-think an AI "brain" when it comes to tactics or transfer deals, etc.

Try telling this to the people that complain when they have 30 shots and 0 go in. They'll disagree.

i dont think its a case of the game being biased to the player, just we can adapt,change and learn whereas the AI is restricted by code.

cant wait for the time to come when we have very intelligent AI (it as already passed some people imo). hopefully it will happen before the world ends in 2012

I all ways have to remind my self that the AI does not cheat, it is irrational to think that it would be coded to add excitement on purpose.

I do think the coding "accidentally" creates excitement. We have all seen that when you are in a tight relegation or league title battle, that if you lose or draw, the teams around you tend to do the same.

The sceptics amongst us would point and say that the program is coded to do keep up the suspense. Where as I believe that the coding is done in such a way that the AI teams know how their rivals are doing and crack under the pressure or take their eye off the ball so to speak.

In real life most games are decided in the second half. There's also a lot of goals in the last 10 mins when players get tired and lose concentration. Its the same with FM.

I actually think that the game fails to create any kind of a sense of drama, to be honest.

I'd love SI to make situations that would be dramatic in real life feel more dramatic in the game.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by The Lambs:

I all ways have to remind my self that the AI does not cheat, it is irrational to think that it would be coded to add excitement on purpose.

I do think the coding "accidentally" creates excitement. We have all seen that when you are in a tight relegation or league title battle, that if you lose or draw, the teams around you tend to do the same.

The sceptics amongst us would point and say that the program is coded to do keep up the suspense. Where as I believe that the coding is done in such a way that the AI teams know how their rivals are doing and crack under the pressure or take their eye off the ball so to speak. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

When I was managing Stockport in the Premiership in FM07 we kept losing. Other teams didn't. We got relegated very comfortably, the only drama being the usual thing you get of suddenly finding a streak of form when it's all too late to matter and you need to win your last 5 games and hope everyone else loses all theirs and that you overturn a goal difference deficit of 362 and that aliens land in your back garden.

I agree galmdring, when I am ruining away with the league or getting hammered constantly, I don't notice it. But when it is tight on points and I slip up (or pull off an unlikely win) I notice the teams close to me seem to do the same.

As said, I think it is more coincidence than any attempt to program in suspense. I think I am noticing it a lot more in my current game, because I am constantly in a battle for a play off position each season.

I agree I see it a lot, but I think it is like so many other things that people notice - it's one of those things that you just notice more when it does happen than when it doesn't so even if it is only 25% of the time you tend to remember it as if it is more like 75% of the time.

I'm certainly looking at other teams results every week in my Werder Bremen save. We are doing a stunning job of attempting to defend our Bundesliga title this season. I particularly liked the bit where we headed into a Saturday on which we weren't playing in 5th place which was already a disaster and I had a massive shock on looking at the table after Saturday's results to find we had dropped to 7th ahead of a really tough game against one of the teams above us on the Sunday...I knew it was all quite close, but I hadn't really noticed before that just how many teams were snapping at our ankles

Now it's all just a massive stromash of 6 teams all scrambling for points and all winning, drawing and losing at different times, but each with enough regularity that for the moment we are remaining in a fluid mass with only our positions changing every week and no-one pulling away or getting dropped off the end!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Mike7077:

I actually think that the game fails to create any kind of a sense of drama, to be honest.

I'd love SI to make situations that would be dramatic in real life feel more dramatic in the game. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I find that very surprising, I feel sometimes that SI have got it just right with the drama of this game and I never feel bored. I just also got the feeling that the drama had been built into the game to make matches more exciting.

What I'm interested to know is whether SI built drama into the game and it just so happens that football IRL can be just as dramatic, so it reflects football anyway, or is it that things like tiredness in the last 10 minutes do set in and cause late goals. Maybe both play a part.

Gotta agree "The Lambs". The amount of times I've been on top of the league or second or something on the last day and slipped up and believed that I'd let my chance of winning the league go only to look at the live scores and see the other team doing the same too is uncanny. It's saved my bacon a few times! I hope and think its to do simply with the pressure getting to the other (ai) team as it has done to my own players aswell.

Quality thread hunting.

I stand by what I said in this thread all those years ago.

On my Spurs save i was at home to Aston Villa, i was completely dominating the match from start to finish. I took the lead in the 6th minute when Modric slipped a lovely through ball to Bale which he slotted home. half time came and Jose Sosa was carrying an injury, i played him on the right wing as an inside forward and he managed to be my top assist player so i brought on Lennon.... Anyways the match went on and on i was absolutely dominating it but i just couldnt beat Given. 3 minutes stoppage time was added at the end of the match and as i was expecting nothing at all to go wrong. Given blasts a ball down field which is picked up by Bent who turns Sandro like he isnt even there runs about 10 yards and blasts a 30 yard screamer into the top left corner and i drew 1-1. End of the match it was Villas first shot on target... i seen it coming though i just knew something like that was going to happen