Is finishing the AI compensator?

[marcus72]

I can't understand this game.

I have lost the league again with 2 points.

I have lost 5 matches and 7 draws. During those games I had on average 22 chances vs 7. I had on average 2,7 CCC vs 1. I had on average 1,5 woodwork hits vs 0,2. Of course, in the games I won, my statistics are even more dominating.

I have had 4 penalties all season, 3 missed (of which 2 resulting in point loss). My worst penalty taker had 16 penalty attribute. I had also 4 penalties against me, 3 scored (all influencing the result).

My striker (Doumbia) is top goalscorer, his subtitute (Rochina) is number 6 in the scorechart. I have the most goals, best defence etc... I am playing slow, short passing, nobody on long shots. The season before was exactly the same story.

I just have all the time matches in which I am incredibly "unlucky". Smells like "realism compensation". I thought I was doing something wrong, but on the forum it seems to be a general issue. The transfer system should be more difficult, but this "luck of the day" is really ennoying and exaggerated.

[Stephanie McMahon\'s Secret Lover]

These forums used be pretty good but nowadays we 7,000 threads on the same topic.

[GazTheDoood]

Theres no realism compensation, just alot of people who don't like losing and look for AI favouritism as a reason.

[marcus72]

If the issue is soo often mentionned, it means that the issue is troubling many players. And each time somebody talks about it, he is considered a bad loser who doesn't understand the game. The thing is: this game is great but way too easy. You can make in two seasons a world class team, even making money by selling worse players more expensive. After 3 seasons with Blackburn I have a great team, 70 M cash, paying 40M salaries a year (top teams 150M). I dominate almost every game (normal match is 30 chances vs 5, even vs top teams). But I cannot win the league, as the number of matches that I don't win creating chance after chance (so why changing tactics, to create less chances?) being missed by top goalgetters, happens so often that it ruins the game. I want the game to improve and I think that smarter and more difficult AI in transfer markets and general management would make the game more challenging and better. Reducing the number of illogic or luck driven results would make the game better as well. That's why I made my post.

[Tom2k8]

If the issue is soo often mentionned, it means that the issue is troubling many players.

Or people aren't noticing it when it happens to them. I've won a lot of games in which my team was second best all game.

[Jops14]

It happens to me all the time too in my Hoved save. I dominate a game with 20 shots regularly. And end up having repeated 1-1 draws and 1-0 losses when the AI team has had only 5 shots. Its starting to become a joke.

[Erimus1876]

Creating 25 chances a game is the problem, not how many you miss (unless you're Barcelona!). If you converted 50% of those chances the game would be a complete farce with regular ten - nil and 12-1 wins.

A more enjoyable game would be to create (on average) no more than 5 or 6 good chances a game and convert maybe 2 of them. But since AI defending is atrocious its so easy to carve teams open and pepper their goal with chance after chance. Finishing has to have a poor conversion ratio to keep scorelines in check. When SI fix defending these threads will hopefully be a thing of the past.

[DougyMarshall]

Having 20 shots to their 5 shots means nothing, its the quality of your 20 shots versus the quality of their 5 shots.

When i go up against the likes of Chelsea or Barcelona in the CL they almost always out shoot me heavily but i restrict them to long range efforts that means my Keeper and Defenders will 95% of the time block/save the shot easily.

While my shots though lesser in number are much better quality, several from inside the box, which means that my shots are much harder for the AI to deal with than their shots are for my players to deal with.

As Scotland manager against France in 2022 i had the following stats:

Shots in total

France 21 shots, Scotland 5 shots.

On Target

France 5 shots, Scotland 3 shots

Goals

France 0, Scotland 2.

Right away you can see that france had less than 25% of their shots on target while i had 60% of my shots on target. Of frances shots on target more than 50% of those where from outside the box, while my shots all happened inside the box.

If your shots are low in quality then its your tactics that are at fault, not the game.

[SCIAG]

I have had 4 penalties all season, 3 missed (of which 2 resulting in point loss). My worst penalty taker had 16 penalty attribute. I had also 4 penalties against me, 3 scored (all influencing the result).

That's unfortunate but by no means impossible. For example, Reading were the best team in the Championship this year and only scored 2 of their 7 penalties.

As for chances, in real life about one in seven shots are scored. Even Lionel Messi scores only about one in three or four shots. The game is very close to reality in this respect. The problem comes when human players, often inadvertently, exploit the match engine's weaknesses, usually by playing unrealistically narrow and relying on through balls.

[Overmars]

The reason so many people complain about the conversion rate is that so few people play a counterattacking strategy. If most players try to dominate the game, then most players will experience more hard-luck losses than good-luck wins.

[ndebergerac]

If the issue is soo often mentionned, it means that the issue is troubling many players.

Many, but based on the responses in these numerous threads, very much the minority. Instead of starting another ranting thread, how about go read another one, maybe if you open your mind up a little, you might actually get some advice on what's going wrong.

As you haven't mentioned using different strategies, I'm going to go ahead and assume you use the same tactic every game, no matter who your up against or what tactic they use. (For the record, I feel you just made a bunch of stats up in the opening post to suit your argument).

[Tom2k8]

The reason so many people complain about the conversion rate is that so few people play a counterattacking strategy.

Really?

I always play counter attacking away from home

[Overmars]

Really?

I always play counter attacking away from home

But if you dominate the clear cut chances or shots statistics, then you are still controlling most aspects of the play. For you specifically, based on what you said upthread, then I can see why you would win a fair share of games where the other team had more shots and/or chances.

[Krald]

Well, look at RL, when the big teams lose, they often still dominate otherwise, just dont manage the finishing touch. It's unrealistic.

Also like another said in this thread, I've won a fair few games I otherwise got dominated in. Heck, on my Truro FM2011 game, I left Truro, joined Dundee Utd, had far worse players, but somehow managed to win 3 champions league titles in 4 years, which is a better ratio than my super-star mostly 185+ CA Truro team. We did win some games we werent "supposed to" fairly and with good play, but often-times we got dominated but just has that finishing touch.

There is no AI bias.

[billyboyeden]

There is a 6 page thread called something like "why is the AI so much better at finishing" where wwfan went to great length and conclusively prove that there is no AI bias/compensation and gave fantastic advise on how to alter your tactic to combat a poor conversion rate. I genuinely believe that thread should be stickied !

[edgar555]

I can't understand this game.

I have lost the league again with 2 points.

I have lost 5 matches and 7 draws. During those games I had on average 22 chances vs 7. I had on average 2,7 CCC vs 1. I had on average 1,5 woodwork hits vs 0,2. Of course, in the games I won, my statistics are even more dominating.

I have had 4 penalties all season, 3 missed (of which 2 resulting in point loss). My worst penalty taker had 16 penalty attribute. I had also 4 penalties against me, 3 scored (all influencing the result).

My striker (Doumbia) is top goalscorer, his subtitute (Rochina) is number 6 in the scorechart. I have the most goals, best defence etc... I am playing slow, short passing, nobody on long shots. The season before was exactly the same story.

I just have all the time matches in which I am incredibly "unlucky". Smells like "realism compensation". I thought I was doing something wrong, but on the forum it seems to be a general issue. The transfer system should be more difficult, but this "luck of the day" is really ennoying and exaggerated.

See the bolded part, thats where you make a rod for your own back and make out like you're whinging because you've lost, basically because that's exactly whats happened. Maybe your players just can't hack the pressure at the business end of the season.

[BiggusD]

I think WWfan is right when he says that some strategies will cause the ME to do silly stuff (my example in that thread iirc was a friend's tactic downloaded from here that conceded every single chance the opponent created - which was from zero to 2-3 per match, normally). However, it is still unclear why the ME did that. The conceded goals were always scored by players under heavy pressure etc. It was not possible for neither me nor him to isolate what caused this.

So, while WWfan is right that there is no rubber-banding, the prevailing presence of user experiences that are undoubtedly interpreted as rubber-banding is still a problem for SI. Until we as users are told visually or via statistics (or as assistant advice, even) why creating 30 one-on-ones per match is bad, these threads will continue to pop up.

It is also important to remember that games need both instant and long-term gratification. If SI fixes the defending issues fewer chances will be created and hence the rewards of tactical tweaking will diminish; in other words - if we can't see what difference we make as managers, we will stop playing! So even if SI could, I argue that they should not stop "exploit tactics" altogether.

[achilles-the-victorious]

LOL, can't remember the last time I read a thread where a guy complains about playing on the counterattack, and scoring 2 goals on his teams 6 shots!

Its so true, most people who write these threads are very 1-dimensional in how they play, and because a tactic has worked for 20 games straight when it doesn't work in the 21st game then there is a problem with the simulation! Chances, shots, they mean nothing, OK people? Goals decide games. Figure out how to get your team a goal up and life will be dandy.

Often times when the first goal is elusive you need to try something different, a different tempo, a different mentality, or different width and d-line. A good substitution can also swing the game back in your favor. Right now my side is on a La Liga record-breaking 48 game unbeaten run! No big secrets: just good squad rotation, one tactic for home and one for away, and getting the best out of your players.

The reason so many people complain about the conversion rate is that so few people play a counterattacking strategy. If most players try to dominate the game, then most players will experience more hard-luck losses than good-luck wins.

[Marc Vaughan]

Firstly - there is no bias (just to get that out of the way).

Secondly - one thing I've noticed with a lot of people don't take into account changing weather and pitch conditions this is ESPECIALLY important in certain countries/regions such as England.

For instance that nice neat short passing you normally use might be great against bigger clubs in good conditions, but on the road against a smaller team on a cold rainy day you might find its not the best approach to utilise - in marshy conditions lumping it forward or letting a big lug nod it in from a set-piece isn't that bad an idea at times

Finally its not a bug if you can't win EVERY match or competition all the time, a lot of people tend to post complaining their team of world beaters didn't win the league - if you think about real-life Man Utd, Chelsea and Man City all arguably have a team of 'World Beaters' but only one could win the league ... as such its not wholly unrealistic if you fail to get the title each year, after all if there was no challenge in winning it the game would be boring imho.

I'm almost certain that Chelsea winning the Champions League would have been reported as a bug if most FM players had been playing against them .... even more so their match against Barcelona

PS - This is not to mean that I don't get annoyed while playing FM, I've had my fair share of tantrums, thrown mice and general swearing while playing each version of the game .... but I've also had a contented smile on those days when things come together and go right for me (Eastbourne Boro - currently in 2048, fairly dominant in the Premiership these days, but that didn't stop blooming Manchester United from tipping us to the title last season).

[Govnar1]

Firstly - there is no bias (just to get that out of the way).

Secondly - one thing I've noticed with a lot of people don't take into account changing weather and pitch conditions this is ESPECIALLY important in certain countries/regions such as England.

For instance that nice neat short passing you normally use might be great against bigger clubs in good conditions, but on the road against a smaller team on a cold rainy day you might find its not the best approach to utilise - in marshy conditions lumping it forward or letting a big lug nod it in from a set-piece isn't that bad an idea at times

Actually this is the best idea in current ME. My team scored 21 in 30 league games from corners and indirect free kicks on default corner routine and mixed delivery.

[sfg]

Isn't there something wrong with the realism of a game where virtually EVERYONE is successful? I mean if the game is supposed to be realistic how on earth could you dominate the Premier League with Eastbourne Boro? If it's realistic and you can do that, I think you should change jobs, England could use you!

I realise that there has to be an element of fun, but we have press conferences, for example, in the name of realism, even though many find them unbearably dull, so isn't there something wrong where just about everybody wins and regularly, whereas don't most managers finish their careers with nothing, certainly not a cabinet full of trophies?

Shouldn't it be the case that most people who play finish as perennial losers, eeking out a living at a succession of lowly clubs, only dreaming of what it would be like to win a big competition, not finishing with a career that makes the greatest bosses in history look like amateurs, so if you do become a top manager it's a serious achievement? I think the A.I needs to seriously raise its game.

[bvb_paton_rfc]

If the issue is soo often mentionned, it means that the issue is troubling many players. And each time somebody talks about it, he is considered a bad loser who doesn't understand the game. The thing is: this game is great but way too easy. You can make in two seasons a world class team, even making money by selling worse players more expensive. After 3 seasons with Blackburn I have a great team, 70 M cash, paying 40M salaries a year (top teams 150M). I dominate almost every game (normal match is 30 chances vs 5, even vs top teams). But I cannot win the league, as the number of matches that I don't win creating chance after chance (so why changing tactics, to create less chances?) being missed by top goalgetters, happens so often that it ruins the game. I want the game to improve and I think that smarter and more difficult AI in transfer markets and general management would make the game more challenging and better. Reducing the number of illogic or luck driven results would make the game better as well. That's why I made my post.

No it doesn't it means there are many people who can't take losing and would rather blame the AI. For player who has lost the league with Manchester United, there is one who has won the Champions League with Dag and Red or Livingston. See some people lose and then look at themselves to find how to fix it, some just look at anything but themselves. It's the same in real life.