Whats the point in changing the game ?

Why does everything that worked tactics wise on fm08 now does not work at all ????? Why is this its impossible to work out what to do now.

Well in an attempt to improve the realism of the match engine, code will be changed and loop holes removed. So unfortunately things that worked in FM08 may not be so effective in the new version.

so let me get this straight. You want the same thing every year? Why?

Interesting. I find my FM'08 tactics to be fairly effective in FM'09.

Perhaps your '08 tactics relied heavily on taking advantage of loopholes in the match engine which have since been closed?

so let me get this straight. You want the same thing every year? Why?

i dont think thats what he's saying to be honest. i think the point he is making is that all the tactical knowledge you built up during 08 now does not seem to work. thus, it seems like you have to 'learn' the game all over again

forgive me if im wrong but i think thats what his point is

I agree with the op by the way

Sorry but its a new game, of course you have to "learn" it again. You wouldn't jump from COD4 to COD:WaW and be like "Oh, snap. Theres new weapons and new maps, I didn't want this, I thought it would be the same game" - would you?

"What's The Point In Changing The Game?"

The match engine is ridiculus...

I myself would actually be able to finish better then EVERY striker in the game

That's why they should change the game... Not change it completely, Just fix the issue's

"What's The Point In Changing The Game?"

The match engine is ridiculus...

I myself would actually be able to finish better then EVERY striker in the game

That's why they should change the game... Not change it completely, Just fix the issue's

Wow, what a good post

Perhaps you could be a bit more helpful and detail what you think doesn't work and give evidence and perhaps the changes will be included in the future . Also remember we should get patch 2 out before Xmas

You need to help yourself here fella

Because if they didn't change anything it would be the same!

Interesting. I find my FM'08 tactics to be fairly effective in FM'09.

Perhaps your '08 tactics relied heavily on taking advantage of loopholes in the match engine which have since been closed?

To be honest, my FM08 tactic relied quite heavily on the sideways arrow which I'm struggling to replicate effectively on FM09. I wouldn't call that a loophole.

Wow, what a good post

Perhaps you could be a bit more helpful and detail what you think doesn't work and give evidence and perhaps the changes will be included in the future . Also remember we should get patch 2 out before Xmas

You need to help yourself here fella

When i mention the strikers can't finish, I think most "Most" people will know what i am talking about...

Just incase you don't know... It doesn't matter if the striker is From a top Europeon club or a Lower league club, he will miss more then 3/4's of the goal scoring oppurtunities

I don't need evidence, My evidence is all the people that complain about the unrealistic-ness of that part of the game...

Hopefully the new patch will be out before Crhristmas & it'll fix the bugs for all of our sakes!

unrealistness

*Head explodes*

Its called a challenge. A bit boring if it was the same every year, you'd just use the same players, tactics, staff and styles, knowing that you'd win without any stress.

To be honest, my FM08 tactic relied quite heavily on the sideways arrow which I'm struggling to replicate effectively on FM09. I wouldn't call that a loophole.

That's a fair point - I'd certainly like to see a bit more flexibility in lateral positioning (which is what sarrows gave us), as well as ways to specify some of the typical winger behaviors (hugs touchline, cuts inside, etc) which appeared to be available as PPM's in previous versions but are missing from the PPM's in this year's version.

However, if you approach the game from a "Let me work out a new tactic in this version" perspective rather than a "Let me replicate last year's tactic" perspective, I think you'll be able to find success.

Just incase you don't know... It doesn't matter if the striker is From a top Europeon club or a Lower league club, he will miss more then 3/4's of the goal scoring oppurtunities

Brilliant. All is as it should be, then.

Goal scoring expressed as a percentage of shots attempted for all teams in the EPL last season:

17.57% Aston Villa
15.64% Arsenal
15.53% Tottenham Hotspur
15.24% Everton
14.63% Manchester United
14.60% Birmingham City
14.32% Chelsea
13.93% Manchester City
12.53% Newcastle United
12.52% Liverpool
12.35% Reading
12.25% Middlesbrough
11.88% Blackburn Rovers
11.68% Portsmouth
10.97% West Ham United
10.62% Bolton Wanderers
10.35% Fulham
10.06% Sunderland
9.37% Wigan Athletic
6.94% Derby County

In other words, if strikers missed only 75% of their goal scoring attempts in-game ... there would be too many goals scored.

Brilliant. All is as it should be, then.

Goal scoring expressed as a percentage of shots attempted for all teams in the EPL last season:

17.57% Aston Villa
15.64% Arsenal
15.53% Tottenham Hotspur
15.24% Everton
14.63% Manchester United
14.60% Birmingham City
14.32% Chelsea
13.93% Manchester City
12.53% Newcastle United
12.52% Liverpool
12.35% Reading
12.25% Middlesbrough
11.88% Blackburn Rovers
11.68% Portsmouth
10.97% West Ham United
10.62% Bolton Wanderers
10.35% Fulham
10.06% Sunderland
9.37% Wigan Athletic
6.94% Derby County

In other words, if strikers missed only 75% of their goal scoring attempts in-game ... there would be too many goals scored.

You know what i mean

You know what i mean

No, I don't think he does. Your crying that 75% of chances are missed by strikers, yet Amaroq has clearly shown you that in real life last season, the average conversion rate of any team was no higher than 17.57%

If anything, a 75% miss rate is too low, and it should be closer to every 4 out of 5 chances missed.

For what its worth, a lot of goals are scored in this game. In League 2 Currently (The league I'm in) the top scorer has 27 Goals in 28 Games. Here are the rest of the stats from this player :

Goals / Shot Attempts : 27 / 108

Shots on Targets / Attempted : 60 / 108

So he scores averagely 1 from every 4 shots, and only has 3 of every 5 on target. Thats pretty much exactly where it should be, and exactly what you're saying also.

however - what you arent taking into account is that it is 80+% of all chances that are missed - not 80% of chances by strikers - a lot of those misses are from long range speculative efforts by wing backs and mid fielders.

The issue is the clear cut through on goal point blank misses that strikers seem unable to complete.

And I even understand WHY this is the caese - SI have coded in that there should be less goals to make it more realistic - but rather than having less clear chances, they just make sure that the strikers miss more clear chances.

however - what you arent taking into account is that it is 80+% of all chances that are missed - not 80% of chances by strikers - a lot of those misses are from long range speculative efforts by wing backs and mid fielders.

The issue is the clear cut through on goal point blank misses that strikers seem unable to complete.

And I even understand WHY this is the caese - SI have coded in that there should be less goals to make it more realistic - but rather than having less clear chances, they just make sure that the strikers miss more clear chances.

Here in lies the problem, its too easy to get a striker one-on-one with the keeper. If all these shots went in most games on FM would finish 5 and 6 all.

Defending needs to be improved to stop these chances, but when these chances come along (which IRL is not that often really, as opposed to crosses, and longshots) they should then be decided by striker ability/form against goalkeeper ability/form, rather than the random number generator we seem to have at the moment.

Sorry but its a new game, of course you have to "learn" it again. You wouldn't jump from COD4 to COD:WaW and be like "Oh, snap. Theres new weapons and new maps, I didn't want this, I thought it would be the same game" - would you?

erm no, thats not what i said at all. thats why i put the learn like that. fm doesnt completely change every year does it. but the tactics have been changed so much this year that you have to completely re-work everything-i dont remember having to that on any other fm previously.

oh and the cod thing, yes i know that itll be different, but the basics are still the same arent they? its still an fps. you still have guns and shoot people dont you?

and no it isnt a "new" game in the fullest sense. Its a re-work of the last one, which was a re-work of the last, and so on.

when you played GOW2 did you have to 'learn' that? no, cos its pretty much the same as GOW, witha few bells and whistles added on. (insert any game franchise here)

Here in lies the problem, its too easy to get a striker one-on-one with the keeper. If all these shots went in most games on FM would finish 5 and 6 all.

Defending needs to be improved to stop these chances, but when these chances come along (which IRL is not that often really, as opposed to crosses, and longshots) they should then be decided by striker ability/form against goalkeeper ability/form, rather than the random number generator we seem to have at the moment.

Utterly aggree

Brilliant. All is as it should be, then.

Goal scoring expressed as a percentage of shots attempted for all teams in the EPL last season:

17.57% Aston Villa
15.64% Arsenal
15.53% Tottenham Hotspur
15.24% Everton
14.63% Manchester United
14.60% Birmingham City
14.32% Chelsea
13.93% Manchester City
12.53% Newcastle United
12.52% Liverpool
12.35% Reading
12.25% Middlesbrough
11.88% Blackburn Rovers
11.68% Portsmouth
10.97% West Ham United
10.62% Bolton Wanderers
10.35% Fulham
10.06% Sunderland
9.37% Wigan Athletic
6.94% Derby County

In other words, if strikers missed only 75% of their goal scoring attempts in-game ... there would be too many goals scored.

You can't use this to anything. This counts longshots, defenders who gets a scoring chance ect. Come again with statistic for strikers scoring % on one on ones and other big chances, and you can be taking serius

Interesting. I find my FM'08 tactics to be fairly effective in FM'09.

Perhaps your '08 tactics relied heavily on taking advantage of loopholes in the match engine which have since been closed?

Most sense I've read in GQ for a very long time.

You can't use this to anything. This counts longshots, defenders who gets a scoring chance ect. Come again with statistic for strikers scoring % on one on ones and other big chances, and you can be taking serius

I would have posted had that information been easily available; the complete Opta report isn't made available to the public and I have to rely on news article digests.

Dave C has repeatedly posted on this in the past, and I hope he will spot this thread to provide some additional data.

Anecdotally, this season's top four goalscorers are all at or under 28%:

Scorers  Team     Goals   GPS  	   	   	   	 
Anelka   Chelsea    13    28% 	  	  	  	 
Robinho  Man City    8    24% 	  	  	  	 
Ronaldo  Man Utd     8    22% 	  	  	  	 
Zaki     Wigan       8    19%

(Opta does also provide stats for one-on-ones, but I haven't spotted any digest for them.)

Plus, this paragraph summarized last season from guardian.co.uk:

Wayne Rooney? Michael Owen? Jermain Defoe? Dean Ashton? Pah, if Fabio Capello was doing his job he'd know England's finest finisher is ... Joleon Lescott, who this season recorded a phenomenal goals-to-shots ratio of 42.1%, way ahead of the Premier League's next best (who, as it happens, was also an Evertonian - Yakubu, with 28.3%).

Papa Bouba Diop could do with some lessons from Lescott - of all the players who didn't score this season, he was the one who missed the most, firing off 46 futile shots. Still, at least a few of those efforts made the keeper work; Diop's compatriot Henri Camara could only dream of such accuracy - in 10 appearances for West Ham the striker could not muster even a single shot on target.

We've had this discussion numerous times, as far back as FM'05, with people arguing that "top" strikers ought to perform better. I think SI place a high weight on the Opta stats, and spend time tuning the match engine to produce realistic stats as a result.

If you want to argue that its broken, go ahead - but please do it by finding a league-wide statistic for a given year of a given league IRL, and then give us the league-wide statistic for a given year of that league in FM.

I don't want to argue, but the stats you have found now is better in a debate Normaly I just follow this never ending discussion, and I think both side has somting to come with, but also a lot of useless posts. It's always good with better match engine, but in the last few versions of FM it seems that you can only play one style of football if you want to win. In past versions I could win with different formations and differetn play styles, but lately I can only play one kind of tactic and one kind of style. I kinda miss the good old days when I didn't have to play the same style and formation over, and over again.

It is a good debate..

I didnt get my stats right, But i was only guessing, and i thought 75% of chance's been missed was quite high, Obvious it wasn't.

All i'm tryin to say is that loads of people are havin there strikers missing when it come's to one on one's and clear cut chance's.

That's all iv'e got to say

however - what you arent taking into account is that it is 80+% of all chances that are missed - not 80% of chances by strikers - a lot of those misses are from long range speculative efforts by wing backs and mid fielders.

The issue is the clear cut through on goal point blank misses that strikers seem unable to complete.

And I even understand WHY this is the caese - SI have coded in that there should be less goals to make it more realistic - but rather than having less clear chances, they just make sure that the strikers miss more clear chances.

You have, NO. Idea.

I don't want to argue, but the stats you have found now is better in a debate

Yeah, unfortunately they don't reach the level I'd like to see, e.g., encompassing the full season's worth of data for strikers only, or covering one-on-ones.

Its a shame Dave C's posts on the issue have been lost in one of the forum data purges, as he had much better stats to back it up with than I do.

Does anybody know how to subscribe to the Opta stats?

It's always good with better match engine, but in the last few versions of FM it seems that you can only play one style of football if you want to win. In past versions I could win with different formations and differetn play styles, but lately I can only play one kind of tactic and one kind of style. I kinda miss the good old days when I didn't have to play the same style and formation over, and over again.

I've had success with both 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 in recent versions. I'm tempted to go after a 5-3-2 with wingbacks just to see if I can make it work, but I'm not willing to force my current team to abandon what's working for them.

It is a good debate..

I didnt get my stats right, But i was only guessing, and i thought 75% of chance's been missed was quite high, Obvious it wasn't.

All i'm tryin to say is that loads of people are havin there strikers missing when it come's to one on one's and clear cut chance's.

Yeah - its an easy guess to miss, because we idolize the stars, and we think of them as "lethal", "clinical", etc.

What's missing, in my mind, from the Opta stats is an indication of how accurate they are in "clear cut chances", because that's what's glaring in game. On the other hand, Tevez missed two clear cut chances in my mind on Wednesday night ... and of course, NepentheZ's link provides hilarious anecdotal evidence.

I do suspect that the people who are experiencing this are seeing that either:

1. Defending is a little too poor, so therefore finishing had to be a little too inaccurate for a "clear cut chance", or

2. The 3D display causes things to appear "clear cut" when they aren't.

.... but my experience tends to be the opposite.

What I've found is that trying to keep a defender goalside isn't working the way that it did in previous versions; he doesn't block the shot as well as he did in FM'08 .. and the fact that he isn't closing down the shooter means that the shooter gets a "clean chance", and tends to hit it too easily. I see this both in the goals that I score and the goals that I concede, so it makes me think that "clear cut chances" score too often, not the other way around!

This is especially true in the 18-30 yard range.

You have, NO. Idea.

The clip at about 2:15 of that video ... that has to be a RL representation of FM'09, right?

We've had this discussion numerous times, as far back as FM'05, with people arguing that "top" strikers ought to perform better. I think SI place a high weight on the Opta stats, and spend time tuning the match engine to produce realistic stats as a result.

If you want to argue that its broken, go ahead - but please do it by finding a league-wide statistic for a given year of a given league IRL, and then give us the league-wide statistic for a given year of that league in FM.

Realistic stats may be fine, but it needs to generate realistic highlights to match these as well. In FM we have strikers constantly going clean through with no-one near them, keeper not coming too far out and yet they manage to keep messing up hilariously. If you wanted to prove the realism aspect in this you'd need to filter out your real life one-on-ones where this exact scenario happens and calculate percentages out of those. And even then you'd not be able to convincingly prove anything.

What actually matters is not how the shots on goal ratio compares to real life but rather what the players are doing in the match engine. When we see something that looks odd and out of place happen too often it damages the realistic feel far more than some slightly unbalanced stats would. And that is what's happening with the one-on-ones again. It's not nearly as bad as it was in 8.0.1 for example, but seeing as it had to be changed from 8.0.2 where it was near perfect I assume realistic match stats have been put before realistic match action. The right thing to do to achieve that, instead of handicapping the strikers, would be to finally fix marking so that strikers going clean through on goal would be rare as it is in reality. Until that happens we're going to have to do with either unbalanced stats or excessive amount of odd looking events in the match engine.

Amaroq, did you have great succes with 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 in the same versions, or was it one tactic in one version and the other in a nother version?

Same version, Maestro.

To be fair, it wasn't '09; I haven't had enough time with '09 to get far enough that I've wanted to start toying around with alternate formations.

In FM'08, though, I had quite a bit of fun running eight managers with eight different squads, and each wound up with their own "managerial style", both in terms of preferred formation, passing style, etc. Enough of them experienced success that I was pleased with the match engine's flexibility .. and oddly, the one that struggled was using a tactical suite which I had had plenty of success with on a previous FM'08 save.

So, I think I'd encourage people to remember that the players available, personality and morale, media handling, "gel", tactics that players are familiar with, etc, all come in to play in determining success or failure.

Ok nice to hear that I'm wrong. But I stiil have a belive that the slider setting is completly random from version to version, and you have to be lucky to hit somthing taht works. Even the smallest change can make a loosing team to a winning team and visa versa. I wait for the new patch and try and se if I can get a hard tackling, kick and rush tactic to work

the computer AI totally cheats and it puts me off the game

When i mention the strikers can't finish, I think most "Most" people will know what i am talking about...

Just incase you don't know... It doesn't matter if the striker is From a top Europeon club or a Lower league club, he will miss more then 3/4's of the goal scoring oppurtunities

I don't need evidence, My evidence is all the people that complain about the unrealistic-ness of that part of the game...

Hopefully the new patch will be out before Crhristmas & it'll fix the bugs for all of our sakes!

LOL - This is a lifelike stat, in fact its higher than I'd expect

I dont mean to be funny but watch matches, either live or on TV

erm no, thats not what i said at all. thats why i put the learn like that. fm doesnt completely change every year does it. but the tactics have been changed so much this year that you have to completely re-work everything-i dont remember having to that on any other fm previously.

oh and the cod thing, yes i know that itll be different, but the basics are still the same arent they? its still an fps. you still have guns and shoot people dont you?

and no it isnt a "new" game in the fullest sense. Its a re-work of the last one, which was a re-work of the last, and so on.

when you played GOW2 did you have to 'learn' that? no, cos its pretty much the same as GOW, witha few bells and whistles added on. (insert any game franchise here)

i'm with you 100%. there are too many people complaining about this fm for it to be anything other than a major problem with the game. i've never spent so much time on these forums and the reason for that is i'm usually spending too much of my time playing the game to come on here and type pointless drivel. this year because the game is so unplayable i don't have a choice.

call of duty is a first person shooter. the only new thing in any new cod game are the maps. if you're a killing legend at cod4, like i (captaintefal look out for me), you'll go straight to cod5 and start killing at a similar level as before. you don't start playing a new cod, do really well for the first 2 or 3 games then for no apparant reason get maced every game. unsure why you've gone from a kill ratio of 1 death to 4 kills, to a ratio of 10 deaths to 1 kill you go on the call of duty forum and are told 'its your tactics mate'. cod is a fps, you run around and shoot people, its that simple. fm is a football management game, you choose your tactics, build a team and in fm09 for no apparant reason get 5 points from your first 10 games when you'd expect to have got 4 or 5 times as many from the game played.

i hope its all sorted out on the patch but i fear the problems are too deep to be sorted out in a single patch. fingers crossed though, its christmas, it'll be the best present i get

To be honest, my FM08 tactic relied quite heavily on the sideways arrow which I'm struggling to replicate effectively on FM09. I wouldn't call that a loophole.

All sideways arrows did was make players position themselves a little wider. Something you can do to the team as a whole using width.

Hopefully we'll get some individual width sliders for FM10.

Hopefully we'll get some individual width sliders for FM10.

I've always wondered why we don't. The same goes for tempo, and considering how much of an effect tempo has on strikers etc i'd love to have the ability to tell my team to play with a quick tempo, but give my striker a lower setting.

One thing a lot of people seem to underestimate is the importance of Balance on Finishing. It's in my top 3 crucial attributes for a striker (the others being technique, and, of course, finishing).

Other things like composure, anticipation etc are important, but they (like most of the other mentals) are blanket attributes that apply to all positions. People only seem to consider balance when looking at wingers, for some reason.

I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of a majority of attributes and how they affect certain areas of the game, and if you don't frequent the tactics forum you'll be left a little baffled when your players don't appear to play to tactics etc. The relevance of attributes and tactical sliders needs to be more accesible for everyone and not just forum users, I had a suggestion yesterday that may go some way towards helping people understand both aspects of the game a little better. http://www.community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=79065

Worst thread ever.

So you don't want them to change the game at all?

If you want to stick with your current tactics, go back to 08. If you want to play 09, then make new tactics.

should you need to visit the tactics forum to be able to play a football management game? a tactics forum shouldn't be able to teach me anything that watching 30+ live games a year and christ knows how many (my missus might have an accurate account) t.v games over 30 years and 20 years of playing football manager games haven't already taught me.

Worst thread ever.

So you don't want them to change the game at all?

If you want to stick with your current tactics, go back to 08. If you want to play 09, then make new tactics.

worst post ever, if you don't like a thread don't post on it. if you're so happy with the game why aren't you playing it instead of posting on here.

should you need to visit the tactics forum to be able to play a football management game?

That's precisely my point, tefal. That's not taking anything away from the tactics forum, but I hate the idea that 14 year old football fans should be expected to decipher the tactics forum in order to play a computer game.

I don't visit the tactics forum and know how to play it, but I historically spend a lot more time on the game than the average user, and spend a lot more time testing rather than playing.

It's definitly something that needs to be addressed, and I'm sure SI have it in their minds.

Ok, I mistyped. I meant worst post - the opener.

And I don't have 09. The point is that asking for everything to remain the same is simply stupid. Apologies to the rest of the posters in the thread. Seriously though. "What's the point in changing the game?" ...?

What a joke.

I'd like to suggest that we should also post the link that Nep gave us in any and all of the threads complaining about hitting the woodwork to often. Especially the Ronnie Rozenthal clip!

Pre patch, I noticed a problem with hitting the woodwork from long shots. Post patch I seem to have a problem with hitting the woodwork from headers.

my tactics work fine in fm09. a slight variation on the fm07 tactics in fact. but then my tactics are a standard. a tactic that is in no way special . as a result it can't be considered to be exploiting loop holes (whether on purpose or not).

setting a winger to run with ball is generally going to work for all iterations. setting very specific tactics which rely on quite speicfic match engine functions wont necessarily.

When i mention the strikers can't finish, I think most "Most" people will know what i am talking about...

Just incase you don't know... It doesn't matter if the striker is From a top Europeon club or a Lower league club, he will miss more then 3/4's of the goal scoring oppurtunities

I don't need evidence, My evidence is all the people that complain about the unrealistic-ness of that part of the game...

Hopefully the new patch will be out before Crhristmas & it'll fix the bugs for all of our sakes!

From earlier this year (May) according to OPTA stats, Ronaldo was having just under 4 shots per game and scoring just under one. This would be around 3/4's. And that is one of the best players in the world, most other players would be lower than that.

SORRY for my mistake, What i meant was, The stikers miss way too many easy chance's, One on One's, They take the worng option by running to the side of the goal and crossing it instead of another one on one.