Is it still my tactics 5 years later? RE: hitting the post an 'inordinate' amount of times

I've always had a problem with certain aspects of the match engine in the FM series, i.e. dominating matches and not winning (it happens in real life but to nowhere near the same level as FM), offsides, and hitting the woodwork.

"It's your tactics" is the old response to any problems with the match engine. Is it actually my tactics though? I mean, if I changed from my 4-5-1 to a 4-4-2 or something, would I suddenly stop hitting the post less? Or if I set the tempo to slow so they think they have more time to make decisions?

Or is it just a bug in the game whereby the game's only way of telling you that your tactic isn't any good when you have a world class team is for it to let you hit the post almost every single game (and regularly multiple times in a game)?

The game seems to have latched onto the fact I hit the post all the time and asked me how I felt about it when we hit the post four times in one match and another four times in another.

So, is it a problem with my tactic, a bug, or a combination of both?

And in the next match.....http://i.imgur.com/2T0vw.png

Is there any good reason for this to be happening other than a poor bit of code that's been in FM for 5+ years?

Well, in that screenshot, it seems you've held possession well, and whilst you've threatened the Man United goal on occasion, you've been too conservative and haven't dominated chance creation like you should have done. You might have wanted to increase the tempo or directness of your passing, increased the amount of through balls you were playing, added more players to the attack, or encouraged dribbling. United counter attacked well and carved out a similar number of chances to you. Perhaps you didn't give Hernandez the attention he needed early on.

If you look at the first two screen shots then you'll see it's actully OP who's managing United.

people who loves to tell u its kinda realistic are usually moderator or die hard fans

Robin - Again cut out the sarcasm and spouting absolute nonsense. If you've nothing decent decent to say or contribute to a topic then just don't post,

Cheers.

Robin - Again cut out the sarcasm and spouting absolute nonsense. If you've nothing decent decent to say or contribute to a topic then just don't post,

Cheers.

i am only sharing my experience on this forum

Well I suggest you do it in a more constructive manner.

Well I suggest you do it in a more constructive manner.

you feel offended is only because you are that kind of person

Sorry I have no idea what you are talking about??? I am what kind of person?

Either a fan of FM or a mod, he is right, those who stick up for the game tend to be fans of the game, strange world we live in really.

?? Define fan? Is that fan as in will love it no matter what? Or fan because they enjoy FM12 this year?

Sorry I have no idea what you are talking about??? I am what kind of person?

try to use the best way to explain the flaws of the game and to convince people that actually its ur tactics problem

try to use the best way to explain the flaws of the game and to convince people that actually its ur tactics problem

Still at a loss on your posts? Are you implying that it the flaws of the game and nothing to do with tactics? Or was you saying that its a tactics problem?

Sorry I have no idea what you are talking about??? I am what kind of person?

try to use the best way to explain the flaws of the game and to convince people that actually its ur tactics problem

It's common sense that if you are losing games then it will have something to do with tactics along the way.

If you look at the first two screen shots then you'll see it's actully OP who's managing United.

So it is. Don't quite understand the complaits about the Liverpool match then, hitting the woodwork twice in a match is far from extraordinary so I presumed he was moaning about having 60% possession and not winning.

So, back on topic like...

OP - I'd agree that there's probably a few too many woodwork incidents in FM. I believe someone round here compared their own FM season to last year's Premiership and found that they had hit the woodwork more than double the number of times the team that did it most in the Prem did (Liverpool I believe). It's just a nuance (read: flaw, issue, weak point, whatever) in the match engine. Obviously FMdoesn't replicate real football 100%. It's a game and there are clearly issues within the match engine that I'm sure SI have a great big list of. If 'hitting the woodwork' isn't on there, then it probably should be.

I've always felt that FM does a very good job of ending up with a realistic and understandable scoreline. This doesn't mean the best team always wins, it means that as in football sometimes a team will go to a big club, have one shot on target and win 1-0. It happens. I'm a West Brom fan, and last season we went to Arsenal and turned them over. No doubt a few people would have called it an unrealistic score on FM.

However, sometimes the way in which FM achieve it's end score can be a bit strange. Crab-walking players, your goal kick their DM heads it upfield for a 1on1 goal. Things like that.

The way I look at it, I'm thankful that FM is as fun as it is and is (compared with other management games) of a very high standard. I would adore a (proper) steampunk RPG (done well) but no-one seems to have made it yet. I'm glad the bloke who invented the first football management sim woke up one day and decided to do it.

The ball hits the post slightly more in the ME than in real football. Not by much, but enough to be noticeable if you are a dominant side. That's pretty much all that needs to be said.

And as the AI team hits the post with equal regularity it is sometimes and annoyance and sometimes a lifesaver!

Heh im having the same problem. I hit the post more times than score a goal. Still stuck in conference 4 years later. I dominate most games, have more shots at goal and more clear cut chances. No luck though.

Unless you're Liverpool... We've hit the post 4098 time this season already...

The funny thing is it genuinely is you tactics. I don't hit the post that often.

When I create tactics, I tend to keep things/changes I like and to discard things I dislike. Things I like involve creating big chances, dominate possession and efficiency in front of goal and things I dislike are repeated player mistakes, failing to keep possession and lack of decisiveness and aggression when not in possession.

Pretty logical, right? A bit of a universal experience I assume.

Unfortunately, this process of tactical improvement can lead to your inevitable doom. You would think that the more chances you create and the more possession you have, the better, but this is simply not the case. You tweak the tactics in order to create more chances and dominate more, and in most cases this works excellently. However, there are cases where a few missed chances and saved shots in the beginning of a match will make the players lose confidence and become stressed (wound-up), and the difference between a very good finisher and a poor finisher in those situations is that the former will hit the keeper or the post instead of missing.

Translated into FM terms: when you hit the post, this means your strikers are missing the target. It is not a would-be-goal at all.

Another issue is that some chances are better than others, and in FM that difference is mostly caused by the angle of approach to the keeper. Running straight at the keeper at a 90 degree angle is not a good chance in FM - without the Rounds Keeper + Shoots with Power PPM's and lots of Composure and self-esteem the striker will very likely miss. Steep angles are also bad, especially if the opposition successfully manages to "show onto wrong foot" - something which the 3d animations may not display clearly enough.

So yes, it is your tactics if the above is correct.

I very rarely experience repetitive woodwork shots with my tactics, hardly any at all. So then it must be you who are doing something wrong.

The funny thing is it genuinely is you tactics. I don't hit the post that often.

Hitting the post or missing one on ones should have nothing to do with this tactics, which is the base of the OP's argument all along.

It's an inherent flaw in the engine and it won't be fixed until we see a new engine.

When I create tactics, I tend to keep things/changes I like and to discard things I dislike. Things I like involve creating big chances, dominate possession and efficiency in front of goal and things I dislike are repeated player mistakes, failing to keep possession and lack of decisiveness and aggression when not in possession.

Pretty logical, right? A bit of a universal experience I assume.

Unfortunately, this process of tactical improvement can lead to your inevitable doom. You would think that the more chances you create and the more possession you have, the better, but this is simply not the case. You tweak the tactics in order to create more chances and dominate more, and in most cases this works excellently. However, there are cases where a few missed chances and saved shots in the beginning of a match will make the players lose confidence and become stressed (wound-up), and the difference between a very good finisher and a poor finisher in those situations is that the former will hit the keeper or the post instead of missing.

Translated into FM terms: when you hit the post, this means your strikers are missing the target. It is not a would-be-goal at all.

Another issue is that some chances are better than others, and in FM that difference is mostly caused by the angle of approach to the keeper. Running straight at the keeper at a 90 degree angle is not a good chance in FM - without the Rounds Keeper + Shoots with Power PPM's and lots of Composure and self-esteem the striker will very likely miss. Steep angles are also bad, especially if the opposition successfully manages to "show onto wrong foot" - something which the 3d animations may not display clearly enough.

So yes, it is your tactics if the above is correct.

I very rarely experience repetitive woodwork shots with my tactics, hardly any at all. So then it must be you who are doing something wrong.

That has nothing to do with reality.

In real football a team that controls the match, has the most chances and the higher possession generally wins. It's not written in stone, sure, and losses can come.

But when a team succeeds on the these things REGULARLY tends to win most games. Anything else is just blind fanboyism to defend some of the serie's flaws.

That has nothing to do with reality.

In real football a team that controls the match, has the most chances and the higher possession generally wins. It's not written in stone, sure, and losses can come.

But when a team succeeds on the these things REGULARLY tends to win most games. Anything else is just blind fanboyism to defend some of the serie's flaws.

Strangely, I didn't mention the word "real football" or "real life" in my post at all.

That is because this is a game and real life is therefore irrelevant. I propose paying more attention to what works and what works not in the game, and concentrate on real life in real life.

Let's strip things down to basics here to give a bit of perspective...

FM is a game - a series of scripts written by humans to give a representation of real life football. Because it's a game / a series of scripts, somebody, eventually, would find a perfect set of tactics for each match, and absolutely hammer the opposition. (see CM0102 - the popularity of that game has meant that tactics have been created that have lead to RIDICULOUS results). There are tactics already that give great performances.

Now, onto the woodwork issue. To make the number of times you hit the woodwork realistic, is almost impossible. People who have compared hitting the woodwork with how many times it happened in real life, are just barking up the wrong tree. For that to be a true representation, you would have to have had the same amount of shots in your FM game over the course of a season as there was in real life. Not possible. The user that tested it may well have hit the woodwork twice as many times, but because of various tactics, and being able to give good tactics to your teams every game, I dare say the total number of shots over the season was more than double as well.

The match engine has to make you miss. It's a visual representation of a script running. When you miss good chances it's already frustrating regardless of whether it's off the post or it's gone wide - At the end of the day, you're missing a shot.

The script runs, and it decides "goal" or "no goal". It then represents this visually.

I think people forget the basics of how the game works when they think of these issues.

Why don't you put the hit the post slider to rarely in the tactics screen?

people who loves to tell u its kinda realistic are usually moderator or die hard fans

that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn't it? i mean, if they're not moderators you can label them fanboys and handwave away anything you disagree with. if i'm not mistaken the OP has been experiencing the same frustration for 5 years. does that not make the OP a "die hard fan"?

as to the OP i myself have had no problem with the number of misses but it does seem that way more shots hit the post than real life. this applies to both teams not just the one i'm managing so if the problem is tactical then do the default tactics need looking into maybe? i wonder if it's been spiked slightly to make misses more dramatic... and if this slight spike maybe gets amplified by certain combinations of tactic vs tactic...

yeah.. the match engine is cranky.. the only way to make the number of times u hit the post go down is to actually not use long shots and to work the ball into the box.. long shots are messed up.. they either go 1) straight at the keeper 2) straight at the crowd 3) hit the post

rarely would u get a long shot in unless the player had good off the ball, good positioning good decision making, long shot, technique, 1st touch, creativity... in short, almost never.. now before some mod come along and trash my post, i can assure u i know because i use FMRTE to did a little experiment of my own.. when the opponent's keeper has all 1 for keeper attributes, u will still hit the damn woodwork if ur player is trash, but the shots that go straight at the keeper are not saved as much..

when u edit the outfield player to give them 20 for the above mentioned attributes, the conversion of long shots increases, but still not as much..

in short, long shots are messed up in this game.. go use a cheat corner regime to balance it out for urself if u are unhappy that long shots are messed up, or just stop using long shots as ur means of grabbing goals.. (sucks i know but if u cant do anything about it, u got to work around it)

A long time fan is different from a fanboi.

A long time fan can find faults and wants them fixed, a fanboi will defend everything wrong with the game and blame it on the user. I find them quite comical and desperate at the same time.

If they worked for a tyre company, theyd blame a driver for a blow out by saying he was taking too many left hand turns!

There's only so much realism the game can create. I think too many people here are expecting FM to be almost 100% like real life management. That's never going to happen. Cut them some slack. There are humans. I'm sure they recognize that the woodwork is being hit more than real life. It will improve maybe in the next FM Engine. Just accept that for now, the match engine visual representation of a 'miss' is of hitting the post.