Predetermined match results?

First off, I'd like to say that the gameplay of FM09 is better than I expected. But, as in previous FM versions, and now even more noticeable with the 3D engine, there are several pretty huge things that concern me.

Let's start with the obvious one, bare in mind I manage Barça, and my team in 2011 consists of world class stars only now:

Asenjo, Zapata and Cruz are all 35mil+ stars and the others on the pitch, needless to say, are fantastic players.

Because of the very attacking style of play, my team creates ample chances and finishes them off with pinpoint precision. UNTIL they have a solid lead, varying from 3-1 to 7-0 depending on the opponent and something else, which is what bugs me.

For some reason, the team starts making horrible mistakes after they've secured the win, even if it's as early on as 30'. Open goals get missed by killers like Messi, Eto'o and Henry, defenders seem not to care any more and world-class midfielders suddenly lose the ball all the time.

Now, you can say this is not a bug, because when you're leading with 5-0, it doesn't really matter any more. BUT, the weird thing is, that if I reload the game from right before the match, the same goal difference so often comes back. Let's call this goal difference the 'predetermined goal difference', because it'll pop up again later. If I win 3-2 against Sevilla, for example, it's bound to be a very, very similar result should I reload; 2-1, 3-2 again, 4-3 or with a little luck 3-1. How that scoreline is set up of course varies. I can get ahead 3-0 after one half, but I would bet money on it that Sevilla will score once or twice in the other half then.

So here's my major concern: is the result of a game determined beforehand, based on the players and the style of play? It even goes beyond the result: if a player gets injured, chances of him getting injured again when you replay the game are much higher than normal. I once tried it out 5 times, and 4 out of those 5 games the same player had to be taken off.

There are of course exceptions, a game which usually ends in 4-1 can end in 6-0 as well, but a bad result is bound to occur again and again, even if all players are on top form, happy and statistically much better than the opponent.

You might think it's because the opponent has the right set-up, or marks really well that day, but the weird thing is that -if arranged again a day later- the same bad game could result in a stunning victory.

Now for the gameplay issues, mostly related to my above concern:

1/ The speed issue: I've seen quite a lot of others posting this one, and it is a very odd bug: players who are much faster statistically don't have the will to outrun slower opponents, even if their determination, concentration, positioning and all related stats are rated very high. This rarely ever happens if the team isn't doing well, it happens all too often if the predetermined goal difference is exceeded. If my team is supposed to lead with 2 goals more, but at that moment they have 3 or even more than 3 goals over that predetermined goal difference, the team starts sucking until the others score and re-arrange the goal difference balance.

2/ Crosses: my wingers and wing backs are all instructed to dribble past the opponents and cross the ball in the penalty area from the byline. Players like Alves, Messi, Cruz (a generated player) and Ronaldo are all pretty good at crossing the ball, with their crossing stats varying between 15 and 18. But half of their crosses from the byline cross (pun intended) the byline before they reach the penalty are, which means goal kick for the other team. Pretty frustrating, and probably not a known issue because those failed crosses aren't in the highlights, obviously. You can only see them in a full match, or check the % of successful crosses.

3/ Passing:I think the passing part of the game is one of the best programmed pieces, there's little to whine about in that area. But creating chances and giving the right passes is often so horribly bad after that clinical predetermined goal difference has been reached. Very creative midfielders like Xavi and Messi all of a sudden don't spot that chance any more and always take the easy way out by passing back to the defenders, even though they're instructed to keep up their attacking and creative play. Sometimes a very obvious and easy pass to a lightening fast striker like Eto'o, Henry or Balotelli is just not given, even if those strikers aren't marked and aren't offside.

4/ Finishing: Perhaps the most painful thing to watch after the clinical goal difference point is that all of my players seem to do their very best not to score. The most blatant thing I've ever seen was when we were 6-1 in the lead in a league match, Eto'o missed from 20 yards with NO ONE before him or marking him. The goalie had rushed forward for a corner for the opponents in the last minutes, when my defenders headed it away and Eto'o, no one there to stop him, could easily run right into the opposition goal with the ball. Of course, things like that happen, but I've seen so many of such fails I could make a youtube compilation of them.

So, the entire point of my post is that players, no matter how good, seemingly give up after a critical point of goal difference has been reached. It allows the opposition to restore the balance because they also seem to become a lot better. Even with a goalie as good as Asenjo has become (he's almost a copy of Casillas, except better physique), average strikers rush past my world class defenders and are suddenly able to finish it off as if they've traded stats with my own strikers.

Has anyone else noticed the same thing? People complain enough about gameplay flaws, but I think I've figured out what's the cause of it, and it is that annoying goal difference limit, that seems predetermined from the moment you start the game.

Well about the predetermined result in a way it is but you can still change it. When you click confirm to start the match the resulf at the end of the 1st half is calculated and the game shows you highlights that lead to that result. If you make a change then the result is recalculated. AI changes are built into the calculation. It is likewise for the 2nd half.

I obviously don't know how the game calculates when injuries happen but most factors for the calculation are probably already set well in advance and not just before the match. By that I mean the players condition, morale and whatever else is used.

So basically it is predetermined as in it does not happen as you go along but you can still change it.

Nice Post Oy.

I've seen the crosses thing, even in key highlights. They are certainly different this year!

I have not noticed the passing issue late in a game, but the speed, crossing (and corners, for that matter) and finishing issues seem real enough to me.

Some tactics I've played with don't seem to produce a lot of the bad 1v1 situations, while others do. Likewise, I might not see the poor passing choices because my passing is more direct than you'd play with Barca. But the endline play and speed issues...well, what can anyone say? They make it difficult to feel like the game is representing your actual players.

I had the same thought, OP - and the same suspicions, but I thought it to be futile to argue against it, because it isn't a bug - its merely game design I believe.

Thanks for the post and effort anyway

Missing an open goal and hitting the crossbar. Seen it time and time again.

I can, just about, accept it when the team has been doing poorly (although the missing of chances by a variety of world class players is way too blatant) but when you're doing well... I'm not so sure.

Quite possibly poor design.

I wouldn't say they are predetermined, but I could say that things become more hard for you if you play very good.

Probably just programming in order to produce realistic results. The one thing I noticed when I'm leading against big club is that opposition player become more motivated (fired up). The other way is just that they somehow employ best possible tactic.

So for example if you are leading 3:0 against a good opponent by halftime, there is a lot of chance that opponent will score a goal or two in 2nd half.

Of course all highlights that you watch are determined when you confirm all of your settings and what you see is just a movie that shows outcome of your and opponent setups.

The predetermination thing I expect to be nothing but another conspiracy theory and you do devalue the other good points of your post by mixing those issues up.

Scores ARE pre-determined before the match starts, but are recalculated each time you make a change.

Once the pre-determined score has been achieved obviously the rest of the game will end up with a few chances that come to nothing, but it shouldn't suddenly make the players blatantly awful, which at the moment it does.

To be honest, I can tell when the pre-determined score has been reached for most of the time because of the way my players are playing late on in the game, this actually helps me because it gives me an indication that it's time to change something or the result will stay the same (providing I'm not winning by a mile).

Scores ARE pre-determined before the match starts, but are recalculated each time you make a change.

I remember reading in a thread about a couple of weeks ago, and PaulC claimed that the actual match is calculated second by second.Though, the highlights are predetermined or pregenerated, or something like this, iirc.

Sorry if I misunderstood that, but I clearly remember him correcting a moderator (or tester), who said the same thing as you.

Thats right. No score is predetermined before playing a match through. The playthrough creates the result. Yes, we play through once before showing highlights in order to create the highlights. I've explained it a fair few times in more detail elsewhere.

Anyway, if players ease off when ahead that is down to their motivation on the day.

It's not about easing off when ahead (to me anyway), it's about wandering around daftly in any highlights following the last goal in the match.

Shame on you! C.Ronaldo doesn't deserve to wear our holy Blaugrana shirt! Shame on you!

On topic. I don't think they are predetermined.

Well, maybe it's the last goal in the match because they are all wandering around daftly. There's no predetermined score as such. Make a change and anything could happen.

Thanks for all the replies first off.

I'd like to say that I am convinced the scores aren't exactly predetermined, but the outcome is more or less fixed, somehow. This could of course be explained by the quality of the players, the used tactics, the instructions given to the players and the motivation that all remain the same in that one match, no matter how many times it gets played, but still. I've mentioned it in the first post: when Barça's dream team I built up would play another rather strong team like Sevilla in Nou Camp, the odds would probably be something like 70% win 22% draw and 8% loss. This of course doesn't change in a single week.

Now imagine I play Sevilla in the Liga on a Sunday, but have to play them again on Thursday for the Cup. If I replay the Sunday game time and again, the outcome will be more or less the same in almost all games. But, if I continue to the game on Thursday, it's very, very likely that that game will be vastly different than the game on Sunday, depending on how the Sunday game went. Even though every single thing stays the same, given that no one gets injured and everyone is on form, the games vary a lot. Perhaps it's the motivation or form of the day of the players that is far more important than I think, but then that would be something we, as FM gamers, could not see as a stat. Because about 3-4 players respond positively on my press conferences before the game and the players I select as the starting 11 are all very happy and on 95-100% fit. So, basically everything is the same as in that previous match. And still the games are very different from each other. That is of course a good thing, because it would get pretty boring if the games were all the same. But the thing is that they so often are if you reload them.

So my question here is: why is the same game on Sunday (Barça-Sevilla in Nou Camp, everyone is happy and fit, same tactics etc.) so different (thank the football gods for that) from the game on Thursday, but the game on Sunday, if reloaded and reloaded, stays about the same?

As PaulC has explained, the match results are not pre-determined and all match incidents are calculated second by second. As with the La Liga and the Cup they're a different competition and your players may have very different motivation levels playing in each. Actually you're lucky you always manage to get a win when you reload.

How about the fact that players stop doing an effort to score again after they have accumulated a nice lead? Even if I change my setup and swap some players, it's still very unlikely anything in the scoreline will change. Today I was leading with a nice and comfortable 0-4, but Messi, of all players, missed 2 (!) penalties. With a 17, sometimes 18 on his penalty taking stat, the least you could say is that it is suspicious. They really don't seem to want to score after a certain point.

How about the fact that players stop doing an effort to score again after they have accumulated a nice lead? Even if I change my setup and swap some players, it's still very unlikely anything in the scoreline will change. Today I was leading with a nice and comfortable 0-4, but Messi, of all players, missed 2 (!) penalties. With a 17, sometimes 18 on his penalty taking stat, the least you could say is that it is suspicious. They really don't seem to want to score after a certain point.

That happens very often in reality too. There are countless times when a team goes several goals up in a match they sub consciously ease off.

Yeah, complacency kicks in.

2 games in real life are rarely the same. That the brilliance of football in general. Results cant be pre-determined as otherwise you wouldnt get FA cup shock etc as you do in real life. What i would say is there is a certain degree of AI involved in the game that would make the results as realistic as possible. More often than not players who are injury proned get injured....FACT look at Kieron Dyer. Barcelona with that team will win against most teams regardless of scoreline. What i would suggest is stop trying to find faults and loop holes and repeating the same games over and over again and actually enjoy the game!!!

That happens very often in reality too. There are countless times when a team goes several goals up in a match they sub consciously ease off.

Of course players start slacking off, but missing two penalties if you're name is Messi just isn't going to happen any time soon. Even if Barça would be leading 10-0 in the final period of the game.

2 games in real life are rarely the same. That the brilliance of football in general. Results cant be pre-determined as otherwise you wouldnt get FA cup shock etc as you do in real life. What i would say is there is a certain degree of AI involved in the game that would make the results as realistic as possible. More often than not players who are injury proned get injured....FACT look at Kieron Dyer. Barcelona with that team will win against most teams regardless of scoreline. What i would suggest is stop trying to find faults and loop holes and repeating the same games over and over again and actually enjoy the game!!!

You just don't get the point of this post. I'd suggest you read it before posting a comment. Besides, why would I bother typing such a huge post if I didn't enjoy the game? I only posted it because I feel it's an issue that may upset the players who go further than buy all their favourites and skip matches to get to the next transfer window faster.

I like to scrutinise matches and noticed this time and again, so I decided to make a post of it. 3 of my friends had the same complaints and still agree with me, but they just don't bother visiting a forum for it. But, since most people disagree with me, I'm gonna give it a rest. I stand by my opinion though; I played 4 games in a row tonight, replayed them all and they were almost copies of the first time I played them. I won twice with only 1-0 against Elche, even though I normally would win with at least 4-0. Defeated 3 other teams, but all games were closer than they normally would've been the first time, and the second time I played them. My guess is that there are a variety of stats and attributes of players that we don't see, concerning their motivation and perhaps fitness, that determine the outcome of the game just as much as their actual stats, their happiness and the coherence of the team.

How often did Messi miss 2 penalties for you? If it is once then of course it could happen. It is certainly not impossible but obviously very rare.

I agree that Messi missing 2 penalties is a rare occurrence, and I also agree the way the match engine seemingly tries to keep scores realistic can be unrealistic at times. But now that PaulC is aware, I would just get on with the game and accept it as the nature of the match engine.

I also play with Barcelona and Messi has a habit of missing penalties for me too. I think it is only in big matches though. Against the smaller teams he has no trouble, but against the likes of Madrid he seems to bottle it. I never let him take them in big matches now.

I used to be absolutely convinced that the AI "cheats". What I mean is that when you are doing too well it artificially makes the game harder for you, be it either with an un expected loss by a late goal or a total spanking from an average team. This was before I managed to make my first great tactic in FM08. I won every single big and small title 4 seasons in a row with Inter Milan, the last 2 seasons without using the corner bug/exploit even though the original idea of the tactic was to get a huge amount of corners (and it did). I finally had to admit that I used to be wrong, the AI doesn't cheat because if it did, it surely would have got me knocked out from some of the cups a few times during the 4 seasons and I wouldn't have got a 50-59 (can't remember exactly but 50 something) game unbeaten run at one point... Of course with Inter after a few seasons and that much success->prize money I had an amazing team and winning the league was always going to be 100 % obvious but in the cups upsets can happen. Still everything went like it was "supposed" to and because I had 15-30 shots against 0-8 in 95 % of the games I always managed to win the cups as well.

How often did Messi miss 2 penalties for you? If it is once then of course it could happen. It is certainly not impossible but obviously very rare.

It only happened once, but it only happened once that I got 2 penalties after having such a comfortable lead. And it's not just missing penalties, I stated earlier on that Eto'o missed a pretty much made goal and there are dozens of other examples like that.

I agree that Messi missing 2 penalties is a rare occurrence, and I also agree the way the match engine seemingly tries to keep scores realistic can be unrealistic at times. But now that PaulC is aware, I would just get on with the game and accept it as the nature of the match engine.

Yes, that is exactly what I mean, even though 11-0 would be pretty ridiculous in La Liga, where a 6-1 win by Barça these days isn't that rare, but still, with the way my team plays and creates chances, they would deserve that scoreline. I am of course not saying the SI staff are going to lie about it, but I am confident there are 'hidden' stats concerning motivation etc (see previous post) that seriously influence the game. I know for a fact that there are stats about how 'famous' a player is, in his own country as well as in the world and I think there are more stats like those that determine their will to play all-in the full 90 minutes. Those probably vary with how highly a player rates important matches, how consistent he is etc.

I also play with Barcelona and Messi has a habit of missing penalties for me too. I think it is only in big matches though. Against the smaller teams he has no trouble, but against the likes of Madrid he seems to bottle it. I never let him take them in big matches now.

Well, it's not just Messi. If I change my first-choice penalty kick taker to Hernán Cruz, the generated left wing back, who has 17 on penalty taking as well, he'll make the same mistakes. Messi actually does amazing in the big games for me. And rightly so, because the last couple of years he's been the one to destroy Real in the derbies and many other teams that are considered important.

I used to be absolutely convinced that the AI "cheats". What I mean is that when you are doing too well it artificially makes the game harder for you, be it either with an un expected loss by a late goal or a total spanking from an average team. This was before I managed to make my first great tactic in FM08. I won every single big and small title 4 seasons in a row with Inter Milan, the last 2 seasons without using the corner bug/exploit even though the original idea of the tactic was to get a huge amount of corners (and it did). I finally had to admit that I used to be wrong, the AI doesn't cheat because if it did, it surely would have got me knocked out from some of the cups a few times during the 4 seasons and I wouldn't have got a 50-59 (can't remember exactly but 50 something) game unbeaten run at one point... Of course with Inter after a few seasons and that much success->prize money I had an amazing team and winning the league was always going to be 100 % obvious but in the cups upsets can happen. Still everything went like it was "supposed" to and because I had 15-30 shots against 0-8 in 95 % of the games I always managed to win the cups as well.

It's not about not winning games, it's the manner of how you win one. If Barça has 30 shots, with 15 on target, and they're leading 4-0, but the AI decides that's too much, you can count on it that a mediocre striker of their WILL score with probably their only shot on target. And even if my goalie is one of the 3 best in the world, he won't stop it.

That doesn't mean the AI makes me lose a lot of games, at all, but in most games we truly outclass teams, so much even that the scoreline shouldn't be 4-0 but 6-0 instead of 4-1 in our previous example.