So, what actually creative freedom does?

I still after many years and versions of FM haven't quite understood what the creative freedom setting does. I've tried searching, believe me, and I've only found some wild guesses like it will allow players to disobey your instructions and do what he sees fit. Is this the truth? Have SI ever confirmed this?

After reading this http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=69932&highlight=creative+freedom it seems it does pretty much nothing.

I don't understand why the instructions must be kept so secret. Only answers seem to be something like "it allows players to be more creative" or to question like "what does attacking mentality do?" the answer is "the player is more attacking". Da...

And regarding to this, is there a manual available to people who ordered the game from Steam? Altough I know the manuals have been next to useless before. It's stunning that fans have to write 55-pages pdf to at least make some sense to the tactics.

Thank you.

And I posted this to the general discussion instead of tactical because SI never look or answer in the tactics forum.

nice first post, i didnt read the link u provided but i do think they trigger the player to disobey you more, and do things on his own, do what he thinks should be done, even if its against your orders

Creative freedom, from what i've noticed, it lets the team seek out opportunity's, without useing the set tactics, it's pretty much the same as Free role, where it lets the player use their own initiative to get the job done, but in this case it uses the whole team...from the tactics i've used this is what i've noticed, it might be different for different tactics i'm not sure but for me, it works pretty well when you just want a goal

Thanks for the replies! I am starting to think I posted this to the wrong forum after all. This quickly drifts to the tactical guessing kind of thread. No offense to anybody!

Maybe I just wanted to make a general "I'm very dissatisfied with the in-game helps and manual" statement. This game must be very frustrating for the new players. I started with CM2 and I'm still quite confused sometimes.

its simple, with low creative freedom ur players will do less risky balls and keep the posesion as much as they can, going for the easy option. Much creative freedom will mean ur players will look for the killer balls more often and move into free space breaking away from there set position. The downside to this is losing the ball more often and having a player out of position if the other team counter attack. the plus side is ur creating more chances in attack.

I though that direct passing and try trough balls often would equal to "try killer balls often" (and what about the PPM!?) and I've read that the free role tells player to roam more freely out of his position. It's all very confusing.

Unless you can say "<a member from SI> said that it means..." then your information is pure guessing to me. I've read all the guesses already. Again: sorry if that sounded harsh. I'd just like to hear the facts.

nappis - yes thats how I interpreted it too.

its a shame that it is so confusing. ho hum.

I used to use creative freedom as creativity. it seems logical. but it isnt its a degree of free role. which isnt' what you think it is.

sliders suck but how else can it be done?

anyway i use very low creative freedom throughout the team - the highest players are on normal. and i use free roles and change the defensive line/width/passing style to suit the situation. works well.

from my experince with creative freedom its very different from just through balls. for example a player may decide to play a long ball from the right wing straight to the left wing if he notices the player is unmarked. But again he may lose possesion the ball may go out for a throwing etc. whereas if he hadnt had much creative freedom hed have just played a simple ball back to the defence. thats just my personal experince though thats why i put my creative freedom on low if im winning and its in the 80th min so my players keep possesion and dont do any risky passes.

nappis a very good question look in this thread and download the document it will explain this and a whole lot more

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=61144

I'm thinking that SI stick to the general "creative freedom means the player is more creative" approach because they want to keep some kind of mystique around the match engine and they don't want people playing the game to really understand how it works. It's fine approach perhaps, but it's kind of hard to accept when the whole game feel is very mechanic and spreadsheety.

I mean they could present the players in verbal form instead of accurate numbers of their skills and the tactics screen feels very mechanical too with all the sliders and checkboxes.

how would u make a football managment game play with out sliders and check boxes???? if ur able to shout commands at players and they understand perfectly then i want the same game u do .

nappis a very good question look in this thread and download the document it will explain this and a whole lot more

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=61144

Yes, I have read it as I stated that it is baffling that the fans have to write a manual for the game. It is a very good document though. It's not official though and it is written by looking at the matches and trying to understand what affects what. So it's still lots of guessing and "it feels like this". I could be wrong? Have the authors official source for their claims? I know Paul Collyer (or somebody from SI) do thank them in the document.

the idea of shouting of players is not a good one another football manager game does this and it doesnt work nappis wwfan doesnt guess but explains but in his work like he says its only the beginning not the end and as for mentality/ creative freedom i find the more you use the more your likely to score but aslo the more your likely to concide but it goes hand in hand with many of the other sliders and cannot alone be effective hope this helps. it depends on what kind of players/what kind of manager you have

how would u make a football managment game play with out sliders and check boxes???? if ur able to shout commands at players and they understand perfectly then i want the same game u do .

I am glad that usually game designers are not as unimaginiative as you are.

There have been some good suggestions to improve the UI of the tactics in these forums.

the idea of shouting of players is not a good one another football manager game does this and it doesnt work

Maybe it was just poorly implemented. But no, i'm not supporting pure shouting and commanding by words system, but the GUI (graphical user interface) could use some cleaning up.

From my other post:

"I think the core mechanics are fine, but the GUI (graphical user interface) is REALLY outdated and very unintuitive. It's basically the same as it was in CM2, when it worked fine when there were only couple of buttons. Now it's crazy mixture of intervening sliders and checkboxes where simple instructions require moving of several sliders and in the worst case for 11 players!

One idea that popped into my mind was a "command wheel" which you could open up by just right clicking a player on the 3d view. You could choose things like "be more defensive" and that would drop the mentality slider in the background couple of clicks or "try more/less through balls" etc... It would feel like you are yelling instructions to the player from the sideline instead of tuning some car engine or something like that.

I also can't understand why all the information is hidden under couple of buttons when there is much room in the "tactical pitch". The formation should move according to defensive line and width settings. Also the players should move a bit up or down from their position when you change the mentality. Maybe other settings could also have some visual aids."

nappis thw command wheel sounds fine but i have made 5 tactical changes for 1 formation with 15 diffrent player sets in them it took forever but iam starting to see some good results

sorry to explain

1 tactic ie 4-4-2

5 mentalitys ie defend/counter/balanced/attack/control.

15 player sets per tactic so on a match day i have a total of 75 diffrent tactics to choose dependant on my opp but more important depends on my player capabilitys ie i would ask CHRIS EAGLES to man mark somebody it just not his game

yes there must be a easier way of doing this i agree

Oh, and one nice thing would be ability to save player spesific instructions. Like when you have a great AMC playmaker and not so great AMC playmaker and you have to substitute the latter for the former, you could just change the instructions by one click. This should be REALLY easy to implement as there already are preset instructions available for different roles and you can make your own in the xml file. This has been requested before, but still there are no "save these settings as preset" button.

According to the FM 2007 manual:

Little Creative Freedom means the player(s) will play standard, basic football, taking no risks.

Normal CF means they will play their normal style, looking to use their skill and creativity if the opportunity arises.

Much CF means they will use as much creativity as possible and should only be given to players who are skillful like Brazilians.

Generally, very few players should be given high CF, the maximum usually being three. If you give it to too many, there'll be too many players trying to change the game themselves, which will reduce potency in attack and make your team more prone to mistakes.

The attributes to decide CF seems to be Flair, Creativity and Decisions.

Case closed.

So it doesn't mean how much a player can deviate from your instructions then?

My post says it kinda means they can.