FM 12 Match Engine - Thoughts?

Personally i think its great, and definitely the best SI have done!! What are peoples thoughts on this?

I agree too.

Obviously haven't spent a ton of time with it yet, but this far it appears very similar to FM11 to me. Got some of the same peculiarities (header back from goal kick to oncoming striker, headers from strikers tending to loop right over the bar, lots of corner goals and very few direct free kicks, those sorts of things). I didn't have any major gripes with that ME so it's still overall fine as far as I can tell. The 3D viewer is a little smoother though, but that's about it for things of note for me.

I really, really like it. First time in years have I seen a match engine look nigh on perfect "out of the box", as with the rest of the game.

I think it is the best they have produced in the last few years (personally I still think CM03/04 is better though!).

My only real complaint, other than the ones that Scab mentioned a couple of posts up, is that there still seems to be the problem of strikers missing easy chances by a huge distance time and time again.

Towards the end of my Bristol City Pre-season I had a game against my Under 18s just to let the team have an easy win, get morale up, and go into the season on a high. Nicky Maynard, who had been on great form in the previous friendlies had 11 shots on goal in that match, 7 of them clear cut chances. He scored nothing, hit the target once and missed the goal by more than 6 hards every single other time. In what reality would a player on great form suddenly miss that many chances by that great a distance in an easy match.

I havent played that many matches on the demo, but I have been a bit concerned about the amount of goals from corners and indirect freekicks. I didnt change any of the settings for my set pieces but 4 of my 6 goals has come from those set pieces. Have anyone had a problem with too many goals from these situations, or was I just lucky in my few matches?

I havent played that many matches on the demo, but I have been a bit concerned about the amount of goals from corners and indirect freekicks. I didnt change any of the settings for my set pieces but 4 of my 6 goals has come from those set pieces. Have anyone had a problem with too many goals from these situations, or was I just lucky in my few matches?

I haven't had much success off set pieces yet and when your only talking about 4 out of 6 thats hardly a big sample. Give it more time and see if it continues.

I had a save back on fm 10 when my first 7 goals for the season were penalties but then i had no more penalties for the rest of the season. Its just random sometimes. Maybe you have players that are good at set pieces, maybe the teams you've played so far are bad at defending set pieces.

I haven't had much success off set pieces yet and when your only talking about 4 out of 6 thats hardly a big sample. Give it more time and see if it continues.

I had a save back on fm 10 when my first 7 goals for the season were penalties but then i had no more penalties for the rest of the season. Its just random sometimes. Maybe you have players that are good at set pieces, maybe the teams you've played so far are bad at defending set pieces.

Yeah, I know the sample is limited to say the least. I have already pre-purchased the game through steam and I never manage to consentrate much on a demo. As I said I was just a bit concerned but the fact that noone has brought it up as a problem most likely means that there is no problem there.

Only thing for me though, has anyone had there Keeper save a penalty. Im yet to have this happen!

In FM11 to score from direct free kicks I think you need to understand the ME's tendencies. I'm still experimenting with FM12 but it seems to be similar.

It seems that the ball travelling pathway in the ME is not really that similar to real life situation. Normally we would let a right footed player take the kick if it is on the left-ish side of the pitch, so that it curls from right to left. But the problem is the game rarely lets the ball go above the wall and under the bar.

So the majority of goals come from curling the ball completely around the wall on the outside. That means you need to get left footed player to kick left freekicks and right footed player to kick right side freekicks. I've had reasonable success with this set up.

But really, this is just adapting to the match engine and does not make the free kick experience very realistic. I really think the way direct free kicks are handled needs to be addressed and corrected to reflect how it works in real football.

In FM the players are able to curl the ball so much on the horizontal plane but they aren't able to curl it vertically as much.

I think this year sets a record for the fewest complaints about the ME! I guess because 11.3 was so refined there's no reason to have any complaints.

I love the tweaks SI have put in this year with the extra animations.

I too would have to echo Scab's comments however, although it is too early to say... My wingers especially have a tendency to produce weak shots that go wide during a one on one with the keeper, but then again I've only been managing the squad for a few weeks so it could be due to the players in question. There's not really any point in me criticizing the ME until I've put a whole season in, I reckon.

Its very much based on the 11.3 one. Any changes have pretty much all been related to improving the 3D experience as opposed to changing the manager and player AI.

Why haven't you fixed so much bugs?

I think what people have to remember when analyzing a demo's match engine is this:

In most cases you have just finished (or are even continuing) a long FM11 save. We've got our tactics down perfectly. Team blend and tactics familiarity are perfect and the team (hopefully!) is performing as expected.

Then we jump into a demo and all of a sudden the players aren't doing as instructed. You can't really base a ME on that until you've played a good many games.

Its very much based on the 11.3 one. Any changes have pretty much all been related to improving the 3D experience as opposed to changing the manager and player AI.

Paul, any chance of a list with the changes in the ME over the summer?

cheers

Only think I've noticed is that Full backs get beaten 99 time out of 100, but maybe that because I'm only watching key highlights and that a Full Back putting in a crutching tackle on a winger isn't a key highlight

Flaws in FM 11.3 that irritates me, my defenders often clear the ball for a corner instead of whack it out towards the sidelines for a throw in.

Im playing a 451 and my lone strikers often head the ball on towards no body up field too.

Is it any better in FM12 demo? (i havent got the demo and dont plan to)

As for direct free kicks, the only thing that gets me some goals and consistently look dangerous is player with "Hits free kicks with power". Hoping SI would improve the direct free kick to look more like real life.

Best ME till now in my opinion!

Not exactly ME related, but I really love the new director cam! For my part, the camera angle could change even more often, or even be able to set custom views for each situation (Touchline view for corners, behind corner view for goal kicks etc.). Behind Goal view is cool, but i think when you're using it as your replay view it should automatically switch to the net the goal was scored on, instead of having to manually reverse it. Still a nice view though.

Other issues of mine:

Defenders heading a striker through 1v1 with the keeper of a goal kick- never seen this happen in actual football, yet seems to happen almost every game on FM.

Players are unable to use their body "shield" an opponent from the ball in order to let the the ball go out for a goal kick or throw, resulting in the defender hacking the ball wildly away.

Players are unable to take quick, counterattacking, freekicks. In the EPL, I see this happen most games: a player is fouled, the whistle is blow, and the FK is taken before the fouled player can get up off the ground (one to two seconds after the whistle). In FM, the team always waits for everyone to get into position before taking the kick, even with tempo on max.

Short corners could use some work. As it is now, we can only have one player come short to get the ball, leaving him and the CK taker isolated from the rest of the team. Upon receiving the ball, the player who "came short" will dribble to the byline where he will be closed down by the nearest defender. This happens perhaps 3 in 5 short corners. However, I've only used short corners for a few games in FM12, so this is not really a fair assessment.

Any defender can play pinpoint first time passes when receiving the ball in the air as a result of an opposition free kick, goal kick, or opposition heading the ball upfield. Only skilled defenders should be able to do this consistently.

Lone strikers occasionally head the ball upfield to no one in particular, as if they've forgotten they don't have a strike partner. Although this happens somewhat rarely.

Shooting-range free kicks are quite unrealistic, but this has already been mentioned multiple times.

The ME on a whole appear smoother an flows more nicely than it did in FM11, but in my experience (which is less than 20 games on the demo) changes have been mostly graphical. Midfield passing looks more realistic, and I haven't seen any players run the length of the pitch doing step-overs yet A decent improvement, but there's still a few key issues that need addressing.

My thoughts are that's it very much based on 11.3 and not much else is added except a few animations.

There's way more than a "few" animations in there. Anyone who's actually paid attention should be able to see how much it's come on.

The representation of what your players and opponents do is on a completely different level from last year's game.

When I heard we were going to be getting the 11.3 match engine all over again, I decided not to bother with the game this year. It's not that I hated the match engine on 11.3. It's just, I resented paying for the new game with no improvements to the match engine.

However, having played the demo, I've pretty much changed my mind. The improvements in animations alone are so strong that it feels like a much-improved experience.

Every year people complain, "Next time don't give us loads of new features, just fix the bugs!". Well this time the ME is far slicker and is pretty much bug free. We won't have to wait for 3 patches to play the game now. It's 11.3 with considerable polish - plus with the added director's camera which I'm absolutely loving.

Regarding a couple of complaints above: (1) wayward shooting. For me, it's always been the case in FM that at the start of a new campaign in pre-season friendlies, strikers are always hopeless. It takes them a while to find their shooting boots. In my first match my Man United first team struggled to a 2-1 victory against my reserves - as is the norm as far as I'm concerned. (2) the one issue that I have noticed is that all 4 of my DCs scored from corners in the pre-season. I haven't touched any set-piece settings.

Outside the ME there are a number of new features; not as many as in previous releases, but the amount of serious bugs appears to be tiny. Quality, not quantity appears to be the order of the day here, which again suggests a reduction in bugs. Reading the forums it seems to me the bugs are far fewer and less game-breaking than ever before. Maybe even one release-day patch will be sufficient to play the game for the rest of the year (Jan data upgrade notwithstanding).

Personally I was very hesitant about buying FM12, particularly in the light of Steam activation. However, having played the demo I have to say I'm mightily impressed and will be putting my order in after all.

I have noticed the following issues:

- Still to many offsides after corners

- Easy to score from corners (Daniel Agger is my top scorer with standard corner setup)

- Scoring from headers after a cross from the wing happens very rarely even with a tall TM and cross aim TM

- Scoring from direct free kicks happens very rarely

There are many improvements that actually counts.

After playing a version of my FM11.3 tactic a while I suddenly realized that the strikers had better movement in the box on crosses, allowing them to actually score on them (rather than the wingers). So I now re-created my FM10.3 tactic, a flat 4-3-3, where the full backs had really attacking roles crossing lethally from the byline all the time. However, the full backs are the same useless gits as in FM11.3. So they now cross from deep quite often as I allow them to run forward often. In order to build up attacking play at all (not just kicking the ball upfield) I had to set the rest of the team to run forwards rarely, with good results. Playing Barnet, media prediction 24th in League Two, I am now in a top 4 position in the league after 6 or 7 matches. So it looks good!

The Team Talks make much more sense than before. Gone are the unintelligible one-liners, replaced by actual sentences which have meaning. It is annoying that telling the assistant to take care of them means you are unable to do anything, especially since he never uses individual team talks, but all in all a great improvement.

I tried press conferences a bit, and it seems like they are much more relevant than before. There are still too many of them, so in the long term I will have to leave them to the assistant, but if I ever desire to do a full-micromanagement save I don't think it will be too much of a hassle.

The direct links between the player shirt icons and the player instructions window + pitch to the team instructions window are gone and that is a major step back.

There needs to be an "exit" button next to the back/forward arrows if their function is to stay as it is now.

The animated representations of the match engine are much improved.

Non-corner set-pieces (including penalties) are still completely nonsensical. This part of the game needs major work.

Long shots decision making is still bad. I bet that all the uploaded tactics in the tactics forum will still have long shots set to Rarely all over, as always. My argument for removing the slider altogether and let it be handled by Mentality and Creative Freedom (possibly letting the Long Shots attribute be a tendency as well as a skill) still stands. Aguero is pretty much useless now.

Transfer and contract negotiations seem more polished and realistic, at least when signing players. I don't know much about selling them yet.

It seems like the midfielders are back-tracking more in general. Defensive mentalities seem less passive. Defending appears more realistic. Maybe it is only my imagination, though. Or the improved animations.

All in all, FM12 is probably going to be a better game than FM11 at least in short-term games. I will reserve my judgement on long-term saves until I have played 5+ seasons.

Letting Paul work on a new M.E for future versions can only be a good thing there's only so far you can take some work/code before you need a revamp

at end of the day its all for the best of fm and our experience

i like some of the new camera angles. free kicks dont look miles wide everytime they are off target anymore. my only complaint is my goalkeeper got sent off for handling the ball INSIDE his own penalty box and it wasn't from a passback. i wanted to post it onto youtube so people could see it on here but i can only seem to upload goals.

i like some of the new camera angles. free kicks dont look miles wide everytime they are off target anymore. my only complaint is my goalkeeper got sent off for handling the ball INSIDE his own penalty box and it wasn't from a passback. i wanted to post it onto youtube so people could see it on here but i can only seem to upload goals.

You could upload the .pkm file (the entire match file) to GameFront or similar, and link to it here.

There are many improvements that actually counts.

The direct links between the player shirt icons and the player instructions window + pitch to the team instructions window are gone and that is a major step back.

I brought this up in the bug-section, the thread got closed after the first reply, since its intended to be that way.. You can right click on the shirt/pitch and then go to player instructions or team instructions

To be honest we didn't really keep one as pretty much all the changes were relating to stuff like animations and other under the bonnet components. I tend to keep these logs updated for AI changes but apart from toning down keepers handling outside their area there weren't really any.

Our main focus was improving the 3D element for FM2012 while also working on longer term ME stuff that won't see the light of day until next year at the earliest.

The upside of this is that we don't have a ME that needs patching and is very much road tested 'out of the box'.

I agree that the ME on 11.3 was brilliant and didn't need fixing, but the downside of "improving" the 3D element is that I (and many others) cannot see it because we need much better graphics cards. I'm happy to keep playing FM11 for another year if 3D is the only thing improved.

Other issues of mine:

Defenders heading a striker through 1v1 with the keeper of a goal kick- never seen this happen in actual football, yet seems to happen almost every game on FM.

Players are unable to use their body "shield" an opponent from the ball in order to let the the ball go out for a goal kick or throw, resulting in the defender hacking the ball wildly away.

Players are unable to take quick, counterattacking, freekicks. In the EPL, I see this happen most games: a player is fouled, the whistle is blow, and the FK is taken before the fouled player can get up off the ground (one to two seconds after the whistle). In FM, the team always waits for everyone to get into position before taking the kick, even with tempo on max.

Short corners could use some work. As it is now, we can only have one player come short to get the ball, leaving him and the CK taker isolated from the rest of the team. Upon receiving the ball, the player who "came short" will dribble to the byline where he will be closed down by the nearest defender. This happens perhaps 3 in 5 short corners. However, I've only used short corners for a few games in FM12, so this is not really a fair assessment.

Any defender can play pinpoint first time passes when receiving the ball in the air as a result of an opposition free kick, goal kick, or opposition heading the ball upfield. Only skilled defenders should be able to do this consistently.

Lone strikers occasionally head the ball upfield to no one in particular, as if they've forgotten they don't have a strike partner. Although this happens somewhat rarely.

Shooting-range free kicks are quite unrealistic, but this has already been mentioned multiple times.

The only major complaint is the goal kick/header leaving the striker 1-on-1 that is still happening..

I tend to buy fm in two year gaps and fm12 is going to be my next purchase. Its a huge improvment from fm 2010 and I can't wait for the full release, well done si!

I completely agree with Liliywhites11 post #19.

I think there are some issues with crossing as well. The crosses tend to be flat very often and they only rarely float up. Also the players don't seem to be too interested in moving towards the crossed ball unless it's exactly directed at them.

To be honest we didn't really keep one as pretty much all the changes were relating to stuff like animations and other under the bonnet components. I tend to keep these logs updated for AI changes but apart from toning down keepers handling outside their area there weren't really any.

Our main focus was improving the 3D element for FM2012 while also working on longer term ME stuff that won't see the light of day until next year at the earliest.

The upside of this is that we don't have a ME that needs patching and is very much road tested 'out of the box'.

Now Paul I understand your skepticism about the easiness issue of matches....

Understandable, I share your feeling, anyway something has to be different somewhere else.... IMHO...

I have noticed the following issues:

- Still to many offsides after corners

- Easy to score from corners (Daniel Agger is my top scorer with standard corner setup)

- Scoring from headers after a cross from the wing happens very rarely even with a tall TM and cross aim TM

- Scoring from direct free kicks happens very rarely

I have noticed when the ball is next to corner or side line players just keep run on to it and push it outside, why cant player actually save ball to not get outside?

The only major complaint is the goal kick/header leaving the striker 1-on-1 that is still happening..

This is why I may give it a miss this year. Its a situation/bug/exploit that can't really be avoided unless you play with very slow strikers, or use a deliberately nerfed tactic as not to take advantage of it, and even that doesn't often prevent it. And making 1 on 1 finishing atrocious isn't really a "fix" to the problem.

What i notice so far (i play with the same tactic that i play in FM2011.3, its 451 formation):

- Fullbacks get more to the line to cross the ball;

- Targetman moves around a little bit more than in 11.3;

- Seems a little bit easier to the AI to escape the offline trap;

- A tactic with short pass and low tempo is more real now! The players pass alot more;

- lower number of CCC, but pretty much the same efficiency;

- Still dont see a GK doing a bad pass, quite the opposite actually;

- Still too many goals from corners;

- Still too few goals from FDKs;

In overall, i think its the best ME ever in FM history... but as always theres still room for improvement, hopefuly in the full release

To be honest we didn't really keep one as pretty much all the changes were relating to stuff like animations and other under the bonnet components. I tend to keep these logs updated for AI changes but apart from toning down keepers handling outside their area there weren't really any.

Our main focus was improving the 3D element for FM2012 while also working on longer term ME stuff that won't see the light of day until next year at the earliest.

The upside of this is that we don't have a ME that needs patching and is very much road tested 'out of the box'.

Very good idea to keep the fully tested version, although I'm still disappointed with the lacking flexibility/lack of options when it comes to untraditional tactics. It does however give me a bit of hope that you are working on an "overhaul" of the engine for the next (next) version.

In FM11 to score from direct free kicks I think you need to understand the ME's tendencies. I'm still experimenting with FM12 but it seems to be similar.

It seems that the ball travelling pathway in the ME is not really that similar to real life situation. Normally we would let a right footed player take the kick if it is on the left-ish side of the pitch, so that it curls from right to left. But the problem is the game rarely lets the ball go above the wall and under the bar.

So the majority of goals come from curling the ball completely around the wall on the outside. That means you need to get left footed player to kick left freekicks and right footed player to kick right side freekicks. I've had reasonable success with this set up.

But really, this is just adapting to the match engine and does not make the free kick experience very realistic. I really think the way direct free kicks are handled needs to be addressed and corrected to reflect how it works in real football.

In FM the players are able to curl the ball so much on the horizontal plane but they aren't able to curl it vertically as much.

I just wanted to bump this :-)

Still can't get any strikers to score headers. It's why I hated 11.3 and still hate this.

Still can't get any strikers to score headers. It's why I hated 11.3 and still hate this.

Seriously?

I suggest starting a thread in the Tactics forum asking for advice on how to get the best out of your aerial game. You should get loads of help in there, it's definitely possible.

One thing I never see in FM is goalkeepers being sent-off for bringing on-rushing forwards down. Is this even in the game?

In general terms, the game also needs to make it a lot easier to see if a referee's decision was right or not. In a press conference you'll often get asked about a referee's decision and you can't answer because the match view doesn't allow you to have a really good look at it.

Seriously?

I suggest starting a thread in the Tactics forum asking for advice on how to get the best out of your aerial game. You should get loads of help in there, it's definitely possible.

Maybe it's just me then. But no matter what I do i can'tget big target men to score headers, they either lose the header or loop it to the keeper. I'm winning games but not enjoying it.

stuff that's still missing:

Players stretching or sliding to intercept loose balls - unless the ball goes directly to feet players don't intercept: this is pretty basic. The game deals much better with riochets etc than it did in FM10 (the last version I'm familiar with), but players still need much better AI for reacting to loose or interceptable balls.

Static dribbling - by which I mean that the only players for whom dribbling seems relevant are fast players. I'd like to see more players with great pace and poor touch/technique/dribbling overrun the ball and lose control of it. The fact that they don't is one of the reasons pace is so overrated in the game. But the main issue is that players don't do anything with the ball in static positions. How many times have you seen a skilful but not especially quick player kill the ball dead, facing a defender, and then drop a shoulder to send the defender the wrong way before moving off, or passing the ball in the other direction, or squeezing a shot towards goal. No pace involved. This is a fundamental element of football, but nopt simulated at all in FM, with the effect that skilful players without pace are way less useful than donkeys with pace 15+. Make ball-control usable in static positions, and increase the likelihood of low-quality fast players miscontrolling the ball, and you'd have a much better balanced ME...

stuff that's still missing:

Players stretching or sliding to intercept loose balls - unless the ball goes directly to feet players don't intercept: this is pretty basic. The game deals much better with riochets etc than it did in FM10 (the last version I'm familiar with), but players still need much better AI for reacting to loose or interceptable balls.

Static dribbling - by which I mean that the only players for whom dribbling seems relevant are fast players. I'd like to see more players with great pace and poor touch/technique/dribbling overrun the ball and lose control of it. The fact that they don't is one of the reasons pace is so overrated in the game. But the main issue is that players don't do anything with the ball in static positions. How many times have you seen a skilful but not especially quick player kill the ball dead, facing a defender, and then drop a shoulder to send the defender the wrong way before moving off, or passing the ball in the other direction, or squeezing a shot towards goal. No pace involved. This is a fundamental element of football, but nopt simulated at all in FM, with the effect that skilful players without pace are way less useful than donkeys with pace 15+. Make ball-control usable in static positions, and increase the likelihood of low-quality fast players miscontrolling the ball, and you'd have a much better balanced ME...

Very good points RR. I thought I saw a defender slide to intercept a through-ball in my first match of FM12 and got excited, but I haven't seen it since so I'm starting to think I imagined it. And like you said, If if a player dosen't have pace, even a ****-poor defender has a decent chance to separate him from the ball, as long as he's got the pace to catch up (unless of course its a winger attacking your full-back, in which he will launch a slide tackel which will in all likelihood miss both the player and the ball).

Now Paul I understand your skepticism about the easiness issue of matches....

Understandable, I share your feeling, anyway something has to be different somewhere else.... IMHO...

Sorry to quote myself, I try to release a politically correct post.

There was a similar situation within FM11 and also FM10. There were complaints about the amount of injuries and they have been toned down in latest patches/releases. To be honest I have never had that issue anyway I had no problem when they have been toned down.

The ME of FM12 seems to have the same behaviour related to won matches IMO and if a match ends 12-0 that's fine for me, it may happen. Let's try now to see the picture from a satellite point of view, I mean do not focus on a single match, take the whole fixtures lists posted many times instead. You should admit that there are many similarities with the injury issue raised in the past years so IMO it deserves an analysis at least like you did for the injuries matter on latest FM edition.

I also played some matches into the FM12 demo and I have also preordered FM therefore I have no interest on throwing mud over FM12, I would just say I have the same interest that moved dozens of forumers the last years passed by related to the amount of injuries. I didn't agree, anyway I have never pointed any of the forumer arguing the opposite BTW.

So, which is please your opinion, not on a single match even if won 10-0 but on the general and satellite point of view on all the weird stripes of victories collected for example from users playing middle table teams ?

Thanks in advance

To be honest we didn't really keep one as pretty much all the changes were relating to stuff like animations and other under the bonnet components. I tend to keep these logs updated for AI changes but apart from toning down keepers handling outside their area there weren't really any.

Our main focus was improving the 3D element for FM2012 while also working on longer term ME stuff that won't see the light of day until next year at the earliest.

The upside of this is that we don't have a ME that needs patching and is very much road tested 'out of the box'.

You focus on 3d elements instead of concentration on fixing bugs like big win 5,6,7-0 or 1. and that players listen what are demands from coach. You dont know what is important to players of the game??? Everybody will say that reality of the game is more important that graphics...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you really need to calm down a bit, spamming threads with the same thing over and over will not do any good.