Why I believe FM is less fun to many people, and where I believe the solutions are...

There have been several threads these days talking about how the new match engine has spoiled the fun for many people. How it's become such a nightmare of slider-tweaking and micro-management, and how you actually NEED to read the TT&F09 guide in order to just understand the way the match engine works and how it interprets the tactical instructions.

Obviously not everyone feels like this, and many people are having fun after the patch solved several issues. But up to this points I believe we can't deny that something has changed. For some people this change is great and is the way to go, while for others this is just too much and it's more than they can take. Both of these are perfectly valid opinions.

However, there's something that both parts will agree with: while us loyal fans will probably keep playing the game, newcomers to the game will find it much harder to get into the game as they did, for example with FM08. And it's funny considering that the fact that arrows were removed now gives much more realism to the game. How can it be that, even though a potential "frustration" has been removed (player movement caused by arrows was hardly logical), and all steps seem to have been taken in the right direction (regardless of the grafical and animation quality, 3D DOES offer a better understanding of what's going on), still it seems to be even more frustrating to play for many people than it was in previous versions.

Being a tactical and football lover myself, I have to admit that on one hand I love the importance that tactics now have within the game. However, I also have to say that I believe the game has become less accesible for reasons that have nothing to do with realism.

I love the fact that you need to find an appropiate tactic to have success, and that, otherwise, you could pick your Real Madrid side and almost take them to relegation because of your bad management skills. That's the way things go in real life (ask Koeman and Valencia fans, hehe).

But, while that part is OK in my opinion, the main problem here is the way that tactics are handled by the sliders and tactical instructions.

One good example is the fact that you NEED to change tactics over the course of the match. I think many of us got used, from time to time, to just sit there through the full match with the same tactic, and watch our team sucess without hardly changing anything but maybe the team mentality, maybe a couple of intuitive tweaks to the formation, and of course some subs. This obviously wasn't right, and in FM09 it's really hard to have success in the long term if you play like that, which is fine and means improvement in my opinion. But the problem is that the way things are implemented right now, you'll need to spend about 30 minutes in every match to tweak individual instructions for each and every player on the field so that you make the appropiate strategical changes during the course of the game. In other words, the tactics UI was appropiate to play without tweaking things too much, but it's not well designed to play with the level of involvement it now requires.

I believe it's not so much about the lack of tactical knowledge by the players, but about the lack of "intuitiveness" in the design of the tactics screen to allow you to transfer the instructions you have in your head into the match engine.

One good example are the mentality sliders.

The way the game works right now, you'll probably need to assign individual mentalities to almost all of your players to be able to have sucess. It's fine to do that before matches and while you're designing yor tactical system, but it's just a pain in the ass to have to go through each and everyone of your players just because you scored a goal and need to change the whole team's mentality by minute 6'.

The global team mentality slider doesn't help because individual mentalities are NOT relative to the global team mentality slider, and thus, it renders useless most of the time.

To the people claiming that it's more realistic this way: have you EVER seen a coach that calls all of his eleven players, ONE BY ONE, to tell them indivudal instructions just after they scored a goal? Obviously not. What they do is giving general team orders as to how they should perform now, which players will understand and apply properly given the fact that they KNOW they just scored a goal, and thus they're aware something has changed because they understand the situation. There might be two or three players that receive specific orders to change their position or do something completely new, but most of the others will just be told something global along the lines of "be more defensive/cautious now" or, of course, "use our defensive strategy" (which is the same as "loading" any saved tactic you may have).

Of course, the manager should have 2 or 3 different tactics which have been trained and practiced over the course of the season (which could be the equivalent to the different tactics that we should "save" to load them later in the game). I'm not saying that you should go through a full match with the same tactic.

But you know sometimes you just want to make small tweaks to your team and make sure that they do understand them. And you want to make sure that you know what you're telling to all of your players. And this is where I believe the game needs changes. It's ok if the game penalises you for giving the wrong instruction to a player, but it's not ok if the game penalises you for giving an instruction that you don't even KNOW you're giving to a player, just because the game has failed to make you notice so.

So, for a start, I think the mentality slider should be relative. Otherwise, it's just worthless unless you go on "all attack" or things like that.

Then, there's the problem that we players don't have a photographic memory. We CAN'T remember the exact instructions we gave to each and every single player at any time.

So sometimes you want to change your tactics and you KNOW exactly what you want to do, but you just can't be bothered to check all 11 players' instructions to see what their "passing style" is or if they have a high or a low "closing down" setting.

This is why I believe the current "FWRs" system symbolized by arrows has been a HUGE improvement in my opinion, as it makes human managers notice something that could other times pass unnoticed. The way things work right now, I could forget to change the passing style slider or the mentality slider, but I KNOW I won't forget to check on the FWR's slider, because it's right there, in the form of a physical arrow in the tactics screen.

However, it's fact that every single instruction can have the same importance that the FWRs have in every match.

So in my opinion... we just need a better way of controlling things. A more intuitive one. The game has a great potential as it is, because it actually simulates things pretty well and penalises you for every single thing that you do wrong. And I'm all for that because I love realism, as I think most people do here. That's the reason why we are playing FM and not crappy FIFA manager.

What people don't like is being penalised for things they haven't even noticed they should look at. And that's what most people are frustrated about. They just don't have such a strong "responsability feeling" that they should have to go through eleven different instructions sheets everytime they want to change something in the way their team plays.

But I think things could be greatly improved with approaches similar to the arrows that represent the FWRs settings.

I'm not sure what the best solution would be. But graphical icons or signs that represent what the instructions for each player are could be a great step forward, along with ways to change them without having to manually click the player name and go though the painful sliders.

Another example are the "dots" added next to each player shirt, that represents how good they're suited to play in that position. One always had a bare idea of how good a player was in each position, but this now gives a much more solid way of taking this into account and not forgetting things.

So I just believe that we need to find a good way to represent instructions in a more graphical/intuitive way so that we can always be aware of what they're set to. At least for the most important ones...

What do you think?

Good post and a lot of it is spot on.

But can we now get back to the more important matters, like WHY I DIDNT BEAT ARSENAL 6-0 IN THE CUP WHEN I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND EVEN WENT ATTACKING.

I agree with you in principle.

A number of people have been talking about this - that tactics are not intuitive due to their very, very complex application. A strong knowledge of football does not necessarily translate into the ability to create a tactic.

Good post and a lot of it is spot on.

But can we now get back to the more important matters, like WHY I DIDNT BEAT ARSENAL 6-0 IN THE CUP WHEN I DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND EVEN WENT ATTACKING.

VMX: a good post, well constructed and thought out!

Nial: very clever way of pointing out the flaw in these forums. the idiots are given way too much le-way to vocalise and divert the course of discussion. any minute now someone will be along to throw in idle provocation to the op or others that follow on and the mods won't arrive until half an hour of it has passed under the bridge and simply close the thread.

i'd love it if there were two parts of these forums or the mods layed on a place where there were very strict rules of conduct and topic relevance was paramount so people with a genuine passion and interest can get themselves heard and discussed without being slow clapped off the scene by morons.

I completely agree with you on the sliders, and I have started a few threads about that myself. As an audio-engineer I work and see sliders, knobs and faders every day all day long, so I would be very pleased if all the sliders in FM are disappearing. I would also prefer a more graphical way of tweaking your tactics. What happened to the days when you could have 2 formation screens: 1 for when your team is in possession, and 1 for when your opponent is in possession.

In future versions I would also like to see a visual representation of set pieces instructions. I want to be able to see where I put my players during corners and free kicks, both during offensive and defensive situations. A bird view of the respective box would be enough. That way I could see which player is at the first post, which player is on the edge of the box, which player attacks the ball from deep, which player challenges the Gk, etc.

Furthermore, I think the sliders have way too many notches. It's ridiculous that you can make your team play with 20 different kinds of mentality. No real life team can do such a thing. 5 should be more than enough:

- Everybody behind the ball

- Defensive

- Balanced

- Offensive

- Everybody forward

What I would also like to see, is having the ability while watching in TV mode to adjust the mentality by pressing 2 buttons. 1 button for increasing the teams mentality and 1 button for decreasing the team's mentality. Shouldn't be that difficult, but very helpful.

Very solid post.

Getting the tactics part to be a bit more intuitive would really help people who are are having a hard time tacticswise. The biggest issue on my part is the details of the slider system. This could probably use a bit of a rework when FM10 pops up in about 11 months

But the hard part isn't always spotting the problem, its coming up with a solution, and I haven't really got anything worth mentioning as replacement features. But I agree that the visibility of forward runs in the tactical overview is great, perhap a few more key settings could be displayed this way, like passing style and mentality

Hassebasse out

In my opinion they've done a very good job in FIFA09 with their tactics. You actually see a moving graphical representation of the team's instructions, like the runs and passes your players will make, and at which tempo with how much risk they will do so. You can really change a lot of stuff. The risk players take when they make their passes, how much movement freedom they have, what tempo your team applies when they're attacking, and so forth. They have the same kind of thing for defending. It works really really well in my opinion. Have a look at it if you can.

I agree with a large amount of it but I don't believe that you need to change your tactic throughout a match in every match. If you are giving a thumping to a team, you won't need to change it then, unless you intend to sit back to save energy.

I think the main reason that this game isn't as fun is that there is very little margin for error with tactics, even for a big team like Arsenal. There has to be a point where the players ability takes over from what you ask them to do. The best example of this is with strikers. Relative to the rest of the team, strikers get quite a bit of creative freedom. You can ask a player to make 'mixed' forward runs and run with the ball 'often' or make long shots 'normal'. If this is the correct striker set up, then they should respond and score at a good rate. If it is slightly wrong, I'd like to think that this could be negated to an extent by their creative freedom. However, they don't seem to express it in this version very well. There seems to be no margin for error. Your striker setting is either effective or not. Tactics shouldn't be this prescriptive. They aren't in real life

Thank you all for your comments.

To jedclough: Well, maybe if you're managing a kickass team (any of the top four in Spain, England or Italy for example), you could be able to succeed with the same tactic over and over again. But for the rest of the teams (and specially in LLM), you can't let players decide what to do too often when their creativity and other stats aren't much higher than 10... If you read the TT&F'09 you'll realise that it's indeed very convenient to make tweaks in your tactics depending on your opponent players and tactics.

I think there are lots of things that could be improved. One of them has already be mentioned in a different post, and it's about assigning instructions to players rather to positions. The typical case of having a midfielder who has 18 in long shots and a sub midfielder who has 4 in long shots. The way things are now, if you design your tactics so that the midfielder attempts long shots often, you'll need to change that everytime the sub is on the field. I think we all should agree that you should be able to assign certain instructions to players rather than positions (maybe the same way that we do with free kicks, corner kicks, etc).

I also think that maybe the arrows could represent something else than FWR's. I mean, do you think you'd ever assign a player a mentality of 3 with FWR's set to "often"? I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to, but I believe that we need to be able to control more of the tactical instructions in a more "graphical" way, so that they jump at us in the tactics screen and they don't go unnoticed.

Example: I could have a player who is playing with an offensive mentality and FWR's in "mixed". But when I'm winning and the match is about to end, I might want to tell him to be more defensive and hold back. The way current tactics are designed, I would need to tone his mentality down, then set his FWR's to "rarely" and then tweak his "closing down" settings so that he doesn't just lose his position to steal balls we're not interested in.

I could also need to set his passing style to "direct" and reduce his "creative freedom" close to zero in order to make sure that he doesn't lose any stupid balls in dangerous places.

Wow. That's five different instructions that I would need to change. What if I need to do something similar with, say, 4 of my players? Just awful.

On the other hand, what would a real life manager do?

Well, as his players are HUMAN, he would just tell them to "be more defensive" and also to "be very cautious". They'd probably understand that as playing deeper in the field, hardly making any forward runs and holding their position, while avoiding to make risky passes in dangerous positions.

But not every FM player is willing to go through all those 5 tactical changes for every player, because people just tone down their mentality and probably give the players back arrows. People will "forget" that if the player had a high closing down, high creative freedom and short passing style, they'll still remain there, and they will completely ruin the defensive instructions he just tried to give to the players.

Then, he'll come to the forums and post about he not being able to hold onto a win, and he'll be told that he lacks the tactical knowledge needed to play properly and that he needs to read the 50 page long TT&F'09 to understand things. Or, in other words, "it's your tactics".

But it's not the tactical knowledge that he lacks. It's the fact that it's hard to understand that we players need to go through an insane amount of steps to make obvious changes that should be "packed" in simpler instruction commands. He knows that he wants his player to be more defensive, but he isn't aware that it's not enough to change the mentality slider to "defensive" to give that instruction.

For example, and WITHOUT removing the current set of tactical instructions you have in the tactics screen, you could be able to give a generic "be very defensive!" command to a player during a match, which would reduce his mentality and would set his FWR's to rarely. Maybe a generic "hold position!" command which should reduce both his FWR's (if they weren't already at "rarely") and also his closing down depending on the position he's playing in (again, closing down should also be relative to a player's position). And we could also have a "be very cautious!" command which would, of course, reduce the player's creative freedom considerably and probably set his passing style to "direct" so that he doesn't take any risks in defensive positions.

These commands could be given as orders inside the tactical screen, or maybe using some kind of graphical representation similar to the current arrows for FWR's, which would be great if SI manage to find a good way to fit most things in.

This is just a bare idea, and you should still be able to tweak each instruction individually if you wanted to. But we should just be given the option to make simple things fast, so that we don't need to go through lots and lots of options to just communicate a simple idea to a player.

The way it is right now, it ends up with many people believing that they were wrong about what the team needed to do to succeed in a match, when they were actually right. They were just not capable of translating what they wanted to do into the actual match engine because they didn't believe such a simple task should take 10 minutes and would require going through 20 different slider-tweaks.

I hope someone from SI can read this and give an opinion...

Personally i love the new match engine, its still flawed, but its as close to real football as S.I have ever gotten.

I agree the problem lies in the unintuitive GUI used for the tactics module, while the ME has evolved beyond recognition in recent years, we still have this clunky old tactics module killing (for me) a lot of the enjoyment of the game.

I don't want the game to lose difficulty , but i do want to be able to try to transfer some of my ideals and football philosophy's into Fm without having to read a 50 page fan made guide or play guessing games foe hours on end till my players at least attempt to do what it is i wanted.

My problem with the newer versions is that they add more and more tedious repeatable task to do between the fun. Press confrences are fun the first 3 times after that it's just in the way. I always use the 2nd most possitive reply on all questions, always gives the best result.

setting up opp instructions each match, even though you chose the same each time. ++

CM01/02 you only did the fun parts and that game was 10x more addictive than any of the CM4 series. Si have lost focus on keping the game fun. Sure the things they have added are in the game, but they are no fun. and a game should be fun.

When playing cm01/02 you sat for 3 hours saying to yourself, ok just one more game and I'll go to bed. Now the game puts you to sleep before it even gets dark outside.

My problem with the newer versions is that they add more and more tedious repeatable task to do between the fun. Press confrences are fun the first 3 times after that it's just in the way. I always use the 2nd most possitive reply on all questions, always gives the best result.

setting up opp instructions each match, even though you chose the same each time. ++

CM01/02 you only did the fun parts and that game was 10x more addictive than any of the CM4 series. Si have lost focus on keping the game fun. Sure the things they have added are in the game, but they are no fun. and a game should be fun.

When playing cm01/02 you sat for 3 hours saying to yourself, ok just one more game and I'll go to bed. Now the game puts you to sleep before it even gets dark outside.

Id tend to agree, in fact only a few days ago i met my brother for a beer and he was moaning that the game had become far too serious.

Maybe its the way the game was always going to evolve, its more of a sim than a game now .

Its hard to guess if SI intended this or if they have just lost their way with the fun : realism balance.

As for the new features.......i couldn't agree more , id much rather do without silly filler features like press conferences in favour of reworked tactics modules, or even just something that actually moves the game forward.

The ME has coem so far in the last few games, the rest of the game is still lagging way way behind though.

the fun element has been ripped out entirely for me. Its like a tedious routine now... before match boring press conference, during match crap and unrealistic match engine, post match boring press conference, then looking at my news screen to see 5 more players out injured for month. i mean is this game improving every year?? imo no

Injuries and a lack of conditioning in my forwards and other attacking players are draining the joy for me. It is hard to get excited about landing a big time playmaker when you know that because he is making forward runs, or whatever SI's reasoning is, he'll end up too tired to play 2 games in a week and when he does play you'll likely have to pull him for an injury. That is my only real problem so far. In my most recent complete season, my two best attacking players were both involved in about 30-35 games. Between league and cups I probably had around 65-70 games for the season. So in half my games I wasn't able to chose my best, and favorite, players.

I'd say tweak conditioning so that forwards and midfielders recover slightly faster. I like rotating players. I think it adds a good dose of realism. But I don't think that a team in the Blue Square Premier or League 2 should be rotating most of his squad each match, yet that is what I'm usually forced to do. I liked the system from a previous version when players recovered faster, but became jaded or requested a rest if they were played too often.

I can't believe how many topics there are like this and 99% of the time they all miss out the other important area of the game = training.

It's not just the ME and tactics etc that need changing it is also the training module. The game will only progress when all fundamental areas of the game are at a sufficient level.

Unfortunately, it looks likely it will be a good few years yet for all the fundamental areas to be at a sufficient level.

Thank you all for your comments.

... That's five different instructions that I would need to change. What if I need to do something similar with, say, 4 of my players? Just awful.

Yep, the unrealistic micromaninging are currently killing the fun of it.

On the other hand, what would a real life manager do?

IRL the tactics are discussed and set before the match, you got no "in-match-tactics-tell-everyone-exactly-what-to-do-screen". IRL tactics are more like "a recommended direction", not a "exact-route-with-speed-calculations-and-glideslope" as the tactics options in FM.

In IRL you select your bunch of 11 and give them the positions. You handle out individual responsibilities and special tasks. You give the players a general idea of what to expect and what to watch out for. You may tell some of the players to try a lot of the stuff they are especially good at. You try to make everyone comfortable with their roles and you seek to establish a "will to win" within the team.

Currently no way to do IRL tactics with the little robots You tediously control to the highest detail in FM matches. FM are currently, as far as tactics goes, moving away from reality.

This is a quote from Ray Wilkins about Phil Scolari's experiences at Chelsea:

Every game we play is like a European Cup final. The biggest thing that Felipe has noticed since taking over is that there’s not one or two games where you might be able to say, ‘I might get three points there.’ Every game we have to organise ourselves meticulously. That’s exactly what he does and it takes it out of you.

The current version of FM does pretty much the same thing. You have to concentrate, react, change, look at the opposition etc, etc prior to every match. In that respect, FM09 is closer to reality than any other football management game, ever. However, as this debate has shown, there is an element of fun missing. This is partly to do with the slider system and partly to do with the misconception, which I am probably partly responsible for, that everything has to be tweaked to perfection for every game and every situation in the game.

One thing that has to change is the ease at which you can generate tactics. It is tediously frustrating to design 3-5 tactics, each of which requires 100s of slider clicks, prior to your game/season. There is already somebody working on a third party tactics builder which should hopefully remove this problem and allow tactics to spawn at the flick of a load button. Hopefully a fully working version will be available sooner rather than later. This is a good short term solution and will probably reduce much of the current frustration for those that choose to download it. However, it is not a viable long term solution.

Personally, I think the default tactics should go and be replaced with a tactics generator which spawns Attacking/Standard/Defensive versions of a formation. This could be achieved by asking a series of questions which alter the variables throughout the set, thus:

What type of tactical structure do you wish to use:

1: Heavily Structured

2: Structured

3: Balanced

4: Lightly Structured

5: Fluid

What type of creative freedom system do you wish to use:

1: Expressive

2: Standard

3: Disciplined

What type of closing down pattern do you wish to use:

1: Pressing

2: Standard

3: Stand Off

What type of passing pattern do you wish to use:

1: Continental

2: Possession

3: Standard

4: Counter-Attacking

5: Lower League

From here, you could add player templates, so you could do the following:

Choose a player/position description:

GK = Standard Keeper

GK = Sweeper Keeeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive GK

Standard GK

Attacking GK

Assign role to player:

Cech

Cudicini

Choose a player/position description:

DC = Stopper

DC = Cover

DC = Standard

DC = Libero

DC = Sweeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive DCL/R

Standard DCL/R

Attacking DCL/R

Assign role to player:

Carvalho

Alex

Ivanovic

Terry

The options here are to have a role specific to a tactic (which means any player in that position plays to those instructions) or to a player (which means picking that player overrides the standard instructions in the tactic). This could be done for every player/position. For many, this is all they would have to do in the tactical module outside of using OIs. For others, the sliders would still be there for fine tuning/tweaking. Add a 'So Be It' button for the OI instructions your Ass Man suggests and away you go.

Whilst I can't disagree with Mr. Wilkins, I can suggest that since perhaps I am not being paid £120, 000 a week to do it, I might resent having to spend half an hour prepping my team every single match. It feels like work, it tires me out mentally and bores me to tears but unlike work, it doesn't reward me for my effort. With the greatest of respect wwfan, this is the problem: people like yourself want it to become as anal and introverted and micro managed as possible and the majority want it to be more accessible and less labour intensive. Simulation is fine, but if there's almost no fun involved it just doesnt have any long term appeal.

Whilst I can't disagree with Mr. Wilkins, I can suggest that since perhaps I am not being paid £120, 000 a week to do it, I might resent having to spend half an hour prepping my team every single match. It feels like work, it tires me out mentally and bores me to tears but unlike work, it doesn't reward me for my effort. With the greatest of respect wwfan, this is the problem: people like yourself want it to become as anal and introverted and micro managed as possible and the majority want it to be more accessible and less labour intensive. Simulation is fine, but if there's almost no fun involved it just doesnt have any long term appeal.

This is where I am heavily misperceived. I don't micro manage. I don't tweak match by match. The main reason behind the early release of TT&F was because Beta testers were struggling with the tactical module and it was regarded as a temporary solution to a problem that was obviously quite widespread. It is simply a translation tool, so the sliders aren't a hugely misunderstood mess.

If you had actually read the rest of my post rather than just the Wilkins' quote, you might have picked up on my trying to offer alternatives to the tedious slider clicking.

For me, the two things that make FM09 less fun than 06 & 07 (08 was crap) is the tactics that has been talked about and the loading time in 2D that seems to be a new "feature" we got with this new 3D ****. Remove the loading time before a match in 2D, let us who don't give a **** about 3D play the game faster as we did before.

With tactics, I’ve always thought about if it isn't possible to handle that to the Assistant Manager with some instructions?

Something for FM09. Something similar to what wwfan wrote. I just tell the assistant that i want to play an attacking football with short passes and offensive wing-backs and then he does the rest. He'll also be in charge of the instructions about the opposition team (show foot, tackles and all that stuff). He also do necessary changes during the match, so it's just to play through it. Then the tactic people can have their advanced tactics and we who likes other parts of the game don’t have to spend 20 minutes on every match.

The ability of the Assistant will play a bigger role too.

This is where I am heavily misperceived. I don't micro manage. I don't tweak match by match. The main reason behind the early release of TT&F was because Beta testers were struggling with the tactical module and it was regarded as a temporary solution to a problem that was obviously quite widespread. It is simply a translation tool, so the sliders aren't a hugely misunderstood mess.

If you had actually read the rest of my post rather than just the Wilkins' quote, you might have picked up on my trying to offer alternatives to the tedious slider clicking.

I wasn't referring to the UI specifically. There is a perception among most normal folk that the people who write 80+ page documents (which, again with respect, I found extremely hard to follow when you started using algebra to define mentalities) on how to understand the tactics module and the match engine generally like it that way, and are happy to lord it over those lesser mortals who just want to have fun. These people as you say, invariably seem to be the beta testers and their likes are shaping releases. It is far too complicated, there are just so many variables now that whilst laudible in their conception, in practical terms, just make the game extremely random and mind numbingly tedious. People can't sit down and play it, and they can't enjoy not being able to relate what they are seeing to what they have just spent half an hour carefully trying to implement. The ambigious sliders are just the tip of the iceberg - the use of language, the use of redundant individual instructions, the lack of any coherent in game support or advise etc. All before we even begin to anaylse where the experience isn't in fact realistic and is in fact very buggy and flawed at times.

Put simply, we are now all playing the game of Tactics Module 2009. There's not a lot of football involved anymore. Its a spreadsheet and we're all chasing the magic formula the AI can't cope with. This is just not what people sign up for. If I wanted that, I'd go and sign up for a GCSE maths course. Suspension of belief, immersion, usability, accessibility, simplification of the entire match day experience, workflow enhancements, match engine simplification, more relevent advise from the AI/Ass man, less random modifiers = more fun. Fun is what sells the series. We've had two years of simulation now and the reception has been luke warm at best, hostile at worst.

Les Girondins, did you read his post yet?

What wwfan suggests would be the "intuitive" system everybody wants that easily allows you to transfer what's in your head to the game. That's what everybody is asking for.

Quel problem?

Les Girondins, did you read his post yet?

What wwfan suggests would be the "intuitive" system everybody wants that easily allows you to transfer what's in your head to the game. That's what everybody is asking for.

Quel problem?

I'm just having a whinge. Feel free to disregard everything I say between now and coffee time. Haven't indulged today, in fact I have been all positive and friendly and its making me feel a bit repressed. Whilst not actually useful or relevant to wwfan (nothing personal) or his posse of philanthropic novelists, I just wanted to have a splurge about .. well everything and nothing.

:thup:

PS: I have now read the post. Sounds good. Can we get it in the next patch?

Defense (Defensive line pressure, offsides trap, marking, width, mentality,ect.)

Buildup (Fast, Slow, Risky or Patient. Long, mixed or short passes. creative freedom and movement)

Attack (amount of shots, passing, crossing, freedom, movement, pressure)

Basically just add some of the things that FIFA did with their tactics thing to the FM one. We definitely need more options so we can make it more realistic. Doesn't need to be complicated just thorough.

Defense (Defensive line pressure, offsides trap, marking, width, mentality,ect.)

Buildup (Fast, Slow, Risky or Patient. Long, mixed or short passes. creative freedom and movement)

Attack (amount of shots, passing, crossing, freedom, movement, pressure)

Basically just add some of the things that FIFA did with their tactics thing to the FM one. We definitely need more options so we can make it more realistic. Doesn't need to be complicated just thorough.

Ok sincerely I think wwfan's idea is great: but not to replace the current system, merely as a utility for allowing people to get started quicker. With a point of reference provided by these simple questions you add at once a way of providing instant accessibiliy to the tactic module but you also add by proxy almost a difficulty modifier. Hardened tactics gurus will skip it all and head straight for the sliders. Everyone else can just get stuck in. Very good suggestion! You can just do away with the 'standard formations' menu completely and incorporate it into the wizard.

One thing that has to change is the ease at which you can generate tactics. It is tediously frustrating to design 3-5 tactics, each of which requires 100s of slider clicks, prior to your game/season.

I completely agree with wwfan about this. Not so much in the "tactics generator" part, but with his opinion about the current situation of the tactical system.

In fact, this makes me remember about the old days when we had the training module completely revamped. It was so IMPOSSIBLE to deal with the design of the training schedule specifying every single exercise that players should do, each and every hour of everyday of the week, that hardly anyone would even try to touch the training. Then it was replaced with more generic instructions and, for me, I find it easy (although not very fun) to design training schedules for the different kind of players I have.

I believe something similar needs to be done with tactics, but nothing as "radical" as what was done with training.

I don't want to say to my ass. manager something like "I want an offensive tactic with short passes and possesion football", and see how the team performs great with an average squad without me know WHY it performs. I don't want it to be that easy, because I actually want to feel responsible for the good (or bad) football that my team does. And I like to find the most appropiate passing style for the different player roles, I like to give creative freedom only to the players that I know are suited for that, and I want to see how one of my FC's plays in a different way than my other FC just because I gave them completely different instructions, even though they seem to be played in the same position to a casual viewer. Damn, I want to FEEL like a Football Manager.

And I would be very, VERY disappointed (and could well lose all interest in FM) if SI designed such an easy and simple tactical system that you couldn't have any control over that kind of stuff. I think the specific "exercise by excercise", "hour by hour" timetables for the training schedules were just TOO MUCH for almost any player. But I believe tactical instructions DO need to be there, we just need them to be tweaked in an easier way.

However, we need a system (or maybe just a UI) that can allow us to keep simple things simple when the instruction you want to do IS actually simple. If I want my player to be defensive and cautious, it should be as easy as that, even if "internally" it moves 3 or 4 sliders. I shouldn't need to "remember" that even if I tell him to be defensive, a high closing down setting will make him completely lose his current position because he will chase a player 10m away from him. And I shouldn't need to remember that even though we're winning by just 1 goal and the referee is about to whistle, he will make a stupid short pass to my central defender that will be intercepted by the opposing striker and will mean the 1-1 in minute 91, unless I happen to go through all my 4 back players and change all of their passing settings to direct. Those things should be taken by granted when you give generic instructions. Being defensive or attacking should mean more things than placing yourself higher or deeper in the pitch... because players have heads.

The game, thus, should ONLY require you to get deep into the tactics when you actually want to try something different from what you (and everyone) would give for granted. Give your personal touch, or design that one tactic that fits your team like a glove, either because it's your personal idea and your sign of identity as a manager (talk about making one of the center backs join the attack with the ball on his feet) or because you have one or two players that you believe to require a couple of special instructions to get the best out of them.

Example:

Say that I'm winning 1-2 in minute 80' and I tell my team to be defensive and very cautious, ok. I expect them to know what I mean by defensive and cautious. But then, say that I want to get a personal idea of mine in the game, a very particular one. Let's say that I have a right winger who is really, really fast, and I want to use him in a special way, leaving him as the only player with high closing down, FWRs often and 'run with the ball' often. And then I'd like to tell my team to send through balls to him. Well, I'd expect to be able to set the 'general' defensive instructions for my team in a quick and easy way, just like a real life manager would. But then I'd like to be able to get this special idea of mine inside the match engine, and for that I would assume that I need to get a bit more in depth to achieve what I want. I assume that I'd need to get into my right winger's specific instructions (somewhere I should rarely need to go while playing normally), and I also assume I'd need to set him as a target man and tell my team to attempt through balls at him.

In other words: getting yourself involved in detailed individual instructions (or "micro-management") shouldn't be a need, but an OPTION to attempt special things.

Well, THAT is the kind of system I believe in. One that allows any manager (both 'tactical-addict' type and 'easy-going' type) to set a simple and common tactic which uses no specific tweaks in an easy and quick way, as well as giving the most common and usual instructions to his players (or to his whole team) during a match in an intuitive and quick way too. He shouldn't expect his team to perform any better than what his players are worth, but he shouldn't expect to fail miserabily in the field because of consistently stupid performances either. Then, and only if the manager wants to do something "out of the ordinary", he should need (and be able to) go into more specific instructions (either global team instructions or individual ones) and make the appropiate changes. If this changes are good and effective, he would prove himself as a good tactical manager and (maybe) get his squad to overperform. If they fail, he would know that his ideas were probably wrong, but hopefully he would realise which ones were wrong by looking at the ME.

This way, if you see a player doing something in the pitch and you KNOW you specifically told him to do so as a special instruction, you'd probably identify that move as your own idea and would realise if the thing turned out well or wrong. However, when things are done because of instructions you DIDN'T KNOW you had given (i.e.: forgot/couldn't be bothered to cheack ALL sliders of ALL your players), you can hardly tell if the things they do are because of one instruction or the other.

I know this post is really long and that I tend to write these kind of bricks lately, but I truly do this because I want to make myself clear in what I believe to be such an important part of the game. I hope that the SI guys can actually find a solution along these lines as I'm 90% sure it's something that would please everybody. Note that I'm not getting too specific about HOW to achieve such "polivalent" system. For the most part, that's because I just want to get the idea clear without distracting readers with anything else, and also because I'm not too sure about what the best system would be. But SI have solved things like these before, and they're obviously the ones who are best placed to find the solution and work out the best possible way to implement those changes within the existent limitations.

Maybe wwfan's "Q&A" system would be a way to go, though I find it a bit too simple for what I'd expect from FM. However, the base idea is the same as mine, as long as the current individual instructions are still kept there for people to tweak them if they want.

Yup. For me the ability to give personal instructions to players, in a general not statistically perfect fashion is more akin to 'management' than pushing sliders around or mucking about with mentalities. There needs to be a mystical quality to the game that represents this human input in a way that isn't quite so anal and precision exacting. Just 'try and beat your man and put in some good crosses' requires me to interact with min 3 sliders, come up with a mentality, worry about marking etc etc etc etc.

Good post by the OP.

The game definitely needs to be made more intuitive, and sliders/attributes need MUCH better official explanation. I'm fine with the number of sliders, and the complexity of them, but I need to know EXACTLY what they do in what situations.

VMX, sincere thanks for taking the time and effort to make such detailed, intelligently written posts.

I started playing the series at CM2 and bought every yearly release upto and including FM2006. Since then I have stopped playing it, as after trying each demo I just don't enjoy it like I used to, and you have perfectly described the main reason why.

It is only posts like yours that have kept me coming back to the forums, despite no-longer actually playing the games. I just hope from a personal point of view that this is one topic that the people at SI actually read.

While I'm sure that they won't lose too much sleep over whether or not I buy their products, the ideas and suggestions in this thread are just the sort of thing that would tempt me to once again splash out that 25 quid a year (or whatever it is now!).

Good post VMX

pretty much how i feel, i dont want to lose any of the complexity, i just want to be able to make my team perform how i want, and know that success/failure is my fault , if i lose a late goal in a tight match i want to see why it happened, not be left wondering if i had had one of the sliders X notches higher the result would have been different .

I used to enjoy the game regardless of my teams success , now i just play the game and wonder if im not using whatever style of tactic is best to use against the AI this year.

In my spurs game im 4th in season 2, scoring lots and playing nice football, but recently ive lost to Reading and Wolves, now this is fine, im sure on any given day these results could happen, but id be less angry if i had been beaten by a strong physical / direct style of play from these teams, instead my team with the likes of veloso sanchez and arshavin get out paced out passed and out scored by teams that have average at best players. They played like brazil or a classic dutch side and THAT simply would not happen.

Fm has become very Rock/Paper/Scissors where every player given the right tactics is a potential superstar , and any team with the right tactics can achieve massive success .

Good post VMX

In my spurs game im 4th in season 2, scoring lots and playing nice football, but recently ive lost to Reading and Wolves, now this is fine, im sure on any given day these results could happen, but id be less angry if i had been beaten by a strong physical / direct style of play from these teams, instead my team ... get out paced out passed and out scored by teams that have average at best players.

You mean like Tottenham did at the Madejski two years ago?

This thread has been absolutely fantastic with loads of constructive criticism (I hope someone from SI is actually reading this).

It would be nice to have GUI like in FIFA 09 which is very intuitive, easy to learn and also far more realistic than the sliders system in FM.

You mean like Tottenham did at the Madejski two years ago?

2 years ago reading were not in the championship and spurs didnt have the squad i have in FM

You will see i acknowledged that on any given day team A can beat team B, what annoys me in FM is you never see a team like Stoke or Reading or Bolton play a strong physical , direct/long game, i can count on one hand how many games ive played in this years FM where the opposition played anything but quick , snappy precise passes with marauding full backs and super fast wingers who can tear my 60 million defence to shreads at will

i think you should have your player instrucions an then the team insrtucions should start centre at beging of a game an the you push them forward an back wards there for increase or decrese all players instructions acoordinglydependin on if you require a goal or defending a lead you could then highlight the players you want to do this there for say back 4 an dm decrease by 5 then highlight rest decrease by 2 would make things whole lot quicker.

This thread has been absolutely fantastic with loads of constructive criticism (I hope someone from SI is actually reading this).

It would be nice to have GUI like in FIFA 09 which is very intuitive, easy to learn and also far more realistic than the sliders system in FM.

Exactly what i was thinking. Even just for one of them to post to say, 'Fair enough, we've seen it and take it into account.' because the OP has put alot of effort into drawing up a constructive post, a thing that people get killed for not doing and something that people get no credit for when they do so fair play OP

It's been seen.

Thanks a lot for your support guys, I really appreciate your comments

And I'm also really glad that Si BHA has confirmed they have seen it, hehe.

It's always nice to make posts like these, no matter the effort, if they're actually useful towards making a better FM experience for future versions.

Let's hope that SI guys agree with us and that we can see an improved tactics system in future releases that we can all enjoy

There is some great views of FM on here but I would like to add my view as to why I think FM09 is terrible in comparison to previous versions, for me its the tactics or lack of control of them. Example, I set my team up to play quick, counter attacking passing football yet for most of the game my players dwell on the ball, don't make quick passes when team mates have made runs or made themselves availible for a pass and pass back constantly sometimes going from a potential great counter attacking moves to passing it back to the keeper. These are not poor players either, the guilty ones are full of creativity, pace, passing and decision stats.

Then on several other occasions I set up to not play offside, tight mark the opposition forwards and defend deep. So why do I conceed(sorry spelling) 2 goals in 2 mins when I find my defence pushing high up the pitch nowhere near marking the forward when the through ball is played they step up playing offside!! Once maybe is acceptable but 2 in 2 mins!? It's just stupid, I know in real life managers are faced with teams not working to their instuctions but this is just silly, they are doing the complete opposite of my instructions. So what is the point in having such an in depth tactics system if your team totally disregard it on the pitch? I don't mind losing goals and getting beat, I wouldn't mind if the forward shook off his marker and scored but the way the engine plays is nowhere near my tactics so what is the point!?

I'm sick of spending so much time reading in depth tactic discussions and setting my team up to its strengths according to SI's way of the games tactics only for it to play completely different in the game.

I can't remember FM ever being this bad, I have endured crazy events in the past but have always accepted that tactically I got beat or lost goals from my own tactical downfall but this one is not playing right pure and simple!!

Sorry for the rant but I'm annoyed that one of my favorite games has gone to **** in my opinion.

Thanks VMX, you've articulated very well a lot of the concerns I have.

For me one of the main factors that detracts from the tactical element of the game is that the actual application and language of the tactic system is completely counter-intuative to many of the assumptions that we would typically make about how the game would be played out in real life. The Time Wasting parameter in particular has always struck me as a very peculiar, and individual settings for items such as Creativity and Closing Down always seem to go against my common-sense instincts based of real-life footballing scenarios. As the slider system has then been tweaked by SI throughout the last few FM series releases (and their subsequent patches), I have felt it has become more-and-more detached from what I undertstand of the real-life game.

The tactical studies, analysis and testing in TTF are fantastic, and I have succesfully implemented a lot of the concepts when I play my own games. However, when I do this unfortunately it sometimes feels as if I'm participating in the best way to beat an arbitrary 'system' set out by the match engine. As a previous poster has mentioned, what we now seem to have is simply a cold clinical approach to the correct number of notches on each slider for certain situations. What I want is to feel as though I can problem-solve and use ingenuity through my own tactical knowledge of the game and awareness of what my players and staff can do, using a framework that is easy to formulate and adapt to match situations.

In doing this I think the link between Tactics and Training should be more established. It would far more realistic and engaging to have a means of trying out strategies and formations within the training module and then have feedback provided by players and staff on how they adapted and the tactic's effectiveness ahead of a match situation. I also like the idea of players 'learning' in training a set of supplementary strategies which can called upon during games - e.g. what each player/position should do in closing out a game / chasing a game / putting on 10 mins of pressure etc.

Furthermore, I think the sliders have way too many notches. It's ridiculous that you can make your team play with 20 different kinds of mentality. No real life team can do such a thing. 5 should be more than enough:

- Everybody behind the ball

- Defensive

- Balanced

- Offensive

- Everybody forward

They could be set to mentality 16 and 20 and it is still your category of everybody forward. In your setting, they will operate in the same manner.

Look, ME and tactics should utilize 7 different levels of player positions on the pitch: GK, SW, D, DM/FB, M, AM, S and if tactics want to reproduce mentality options related to each position, there must be min. 3 notches of mentality for each level (7*3=21). That is why mentality slider has 20 notches imho.

The same is for creative freedom: level of attributes is various from 1 - 20 and therefor there are 20 notches for creative freedom in tactics etc.

I am not fan of reducing the number of notches in tactics.

since oppoisition team instructions are becoming important in fm 09 (wasnt the case before) couldn't SI add an option wher03you could ask your asst. to manage these just like team talks etc? This could show us how to handle these efficiently.

As far as I am concerned, this is what I did with teamtalks when they were first introduced and now I handle them completely.

Don't know if this would be hard to implement on 09 (probably with 9.0.3 after january window?)

This is a quote from Ray Wilkins about Phil Scolari's experiences at Chelsea:

The current version of FM does pretty much the same thing. You have to concentrate, react, change, look at the opposition etc, etc prior to every match. In that respect, FM09 is closer to reality than any other football management game, ever. However, as this debate has shown, there is an element of fun missing. This is partly to do with the slider system and partly to do with the misconception, which I am probably partly responsible for, that everything has to be tweaked to perfection for every game and every situation in the game.

One thing that has to change is the ease at which you can generate tactics. It is tediously frustrating to design 3-5 tactics, each of which requires 100s of slider clicks, prior to your game/season. There is already somebody working on a third party tactics builder which should hopefully remove this problem and allow tactics to spawn at the flick of a load button. Hopefully a fully working version will be available sooner rather than later. This is a good short term solution and will probably reduce much of the current frustration for those that choose to download it. However, it is not a viable long term solution.

Personally, I think the default tactics should go and be replaced with a tactics generator which spawns Attacking/Standard/Defensive versions of a formation. This could be achieved by asking a series of questions which alter the variables throughout the set, thus:

What type of tactical structure do you wish to use:

1: Heavily Structured

2: Structured

3: Balanced

4: Lightly Structured

5: Fluid

What type of creative freedom system do you wish to use:

1: Expressive

2: Standard

3: Disciplined

What type of closing down pattern do you wish to use:

1: Pressing

2: Standard

3: Stand Off

What type of passing pattern do you wish to use:

1: Continental

2: Possession

3: Standard

4: Counter-Attacking

5: Lower League

From here, you could add player templates, so you could do the following:

Choose a player/position description:

GK = Standard Keeper

GK = Sweeper Keeeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive GK

Standard GK

Attacking GK

Assign role to player:

Cech

Cudicini

Choose a player/position description:

DC = Stopper

DC = Cover

DC = Standard

DC = Libero

DC = Sweeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive DCL/R

Standard DCL/R

Attacking DCL/R

Assign role to player:

Carvalho

Alex

Ivanovic

Terry

The options here are to have a role specific to a tactic (which means any player in that position plays to those instructions) or to a player (which means picking that player overrides the standard instructions in the tactic). This could be done for every player/position. For many, this is all they would have to do in the tactical module outside of using OIs. For others, the sliders would still be there for fine tuning/tweaking. Add a 'So Be It' button for the OI instructions your Ass Man suggests and away you go.

But I can guarantee you, as far as I know people, that soon or later, thay will be asking for current "slider notches" system and "generator" will be obsolete. A lot of people will generate tactics and after that, they will adjust it to their style of play and will be asking for more and more options in generator which will be at the end the same thing as it is now with sliders but with different names for sliders.

Generator is nice to have and it should serve as tactics creator for newbies or people who just do not want to manage tactics. Soon or later, they will use sliders as they will be more and more advanced and experienced.

So if someone is asking, where is the fun, my answer is, the fun is in finding of the proper tactics which really works for your team (I am not talking about another game aspects of fun like good transfers, good training etc.).

As VMX has written - do tactics sliders more user friendly (e.g. tick for grouping all sliders which is different to when personal sliders will be related to team sliders imho, to visaulize some key tactic instructions as it is with FWRs etc.).

May be complete and interactive visualisation should be done with tactics e.g. when I click cross from, arrows should indicate for every player from were to cross (forward arrow - byline, no arrow - mixed, back arrow - deep) etc.

since oppoisition team instructions are becoming important in fm 09 (wasnt the case before) couldn't SI add an option wher03you could ask your asst. to manage these just like team talks etc? This could show us how to handle these efficiently.

As far as I am concerned, this is what I did with teamtalks when they were first introduced and now I handle them completely.

Don't know if this would be hard to implement on 09 (probably with 9.0.3 after january window?)

Yes it should be as option for AssMan, but the result of it should be hidden from user.

I agree with a large amount of it but I don't believe that you need to change your tactic throughout a match in every match. If you are giving a thumping to a team, you won't need to change it then, unless you intend to sit back to save energy.

You do have to change your tactic. I was 3-0 up at half time with spurs against bristol yet we drew 3-3 at the end of the match. I didn't change anything. I said pleased at half time. If i'd have altered my tactics it probably wouldn't have happened! Its stupid but that seems to be the way it is on this FM.

You do have to change your tactic. I was 3-0 up at half time with spurs against bristol yet we drew 3-3 at the end of the match. I didn't change anything. I said pleased at half time. If i'd have altered my tactics it probably wouldn't have happened! Its stupid but that seems to be the way it is on this FM.

It is not stupid to loose if you do not react, it is stupid not to react and win every match despite a lot effort from AI manager to exploit your tactics...

I'm adding to the list of praisers now. Really good stuff.

I'm also of the firm belief, that tactical micro management pre- and in-game should rather be an option for something special than a need. I guess this is the very core of what some people turns off FM currently and while many people just don't do it (either consciously because they cannot be bothered or just because they are unaware of the need) this is responsible for their lack of success which obviously at least partly correlates with fun.

Also, this is what can make playing FM feel tedious.

Now, as the issue is identified, one has to think of what can or should be done about it.

To be fair, the need to tweak some 5 individual settings for 3 to 7 players when wanting to go defensive or attacking only exists if you haven't made template tactics which you can just load quickly. If you adhere to that set of five tactics as suggested by wwfan in TT&F you only have to do this once and there should only be minor need for further tweaks. Consequently, this is not my main gripe about the need for micro-management. Still it is one as sometimes you might want to make only slight alterations and having something like 13 tactics ready for every situation feels a bit over the top.

One good first step would be to have the option to make relative changes, i.e. 'all 2 notches more defensive, please'. Not exactly the wording Fergie would use but understandable to us users Also not exactly enough if closing down, run with ball and forward runs stay the same. As you can set the forward runs easily by dragging the arrows, there might at least be a comparable option for closing down to give the user a much more comfortable option to tweak things without going into too much detail (however, that would still come at the expense of still not getting every detail right - yet it is still an improvement to doing nothing).

Secondly, assigning roles to individual players can also be a good step forward. Certainly whether a player should attempt long shots often depends on his according attribute way more than on where he's playing on the pitch, whereas other settings depend on his tactical role in the team. This is why I'm still a little bit cautious about assigning a complete set of instruction to an individual player.

Difficulties might occur if the player is versatile, like a DR, M RC, which is quite regular. All three positions require very different tactical instructions. I even assign very different instructions within one tactical position, to my player Tim Cahill for instance, depending which of the two MC roles he is supposed to play. If we had set our player to an individual set of instructions which does not relate to his position/role we are actually worse off than having set instructions for a position in the tactics which might or might not need to be adjusted a bit to the player's individual qualities. And creating two or more sets of individual instructions for one player is again so much micro management that most people would be as annoyed as they are now.

So what should be done imho is to identify which settings are actually linked more to the player and less to the position he plays.

I guess the long shots setting is one for the player side.

Run with ball might be, but I would not tell my full back to dribble a lot even if his attributes enable him to do that, so it might not be.

Same with creative freedom and a free role. Out of my 5 more attacking minded players, the attributes are what determine these settings for me, but for the 5 defensive players creative freedom is always low and free roles are not assigned.

So after brainstorming, the only thing which I would like to be able to assign to a player (which should then override any team tactics setting, if that was still necessary at all after introducing an individual long shots option) are his long shots settings.

Therefore, giving individual instructions to players rather than assigning those to a position primarily, does not get us far.

It does however, once it is combined with assigning instructions to a tactical role, like wwfan suggested.

If you have a set of tactics with individual instructions for different positions, you could drag and drop a pre-defined role (see wwfan's post) over a positions. This would override the default settings of that tactic. If you then have the option to choose for yourself which instructions should be given to a player always (like the long shots one for me) which would again override all other instructions, then you have a very good mix of both comfort and depth.

Such hierarchy of individual instructions would thus look like this in the order of priority:

1. Individual player settings (with the option to just make settings for one or few categories and the others left blank)

2. Pre-defined player role settings (templates might be given by SI as those different instructions connected with the roles are common sense at least after reading TT&F or created manually by the user)

3. The individual instructions from the tactic

Of course, in terms of how much or often a user has to deal with these, the order would be the other way around.

So how would this work?

1. Load a tactic

2. Drag and drop differring player roles to players pre- or in-game (makes for quick changes without loading a complete other tactic)

3. Only use the general individual settings once for long shots (and maybe one or two more things if you like)

Done

Imho it is the combination of these options which would give the user a much more comfortable approach to tactics while maintaining the tactical depth which is now only achieved by tedious micro management. Any one of them by themselves don't really do the job as they have downsides to themselves as well.

Of course, you could also not change too much and just make it easier to change the individual settings with icons or options which are as easily accessible like the coloured dot for the positional ability or the arrow for forward runs. I just haven't come up with an idea good enough to implement this

Some good stuff here, and some of it will be brought up by me when we sit down and discuss FM2010 features in the New Year.

Respecta

This thread ties in quite nicely with this thread on 'Tactical Visual Aids'.

Although the idea of adjusting the 'global mentality' in the middle of game is a seperate point, and a good one.

Being able to say 'keep the same sort of shape, but be a bit more defensive/attacking' would be a useful shortcut to changing everyone's mentality, closing down, creative freedom, forward runs, etc.