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

[VMX]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One good example are the mentality sliders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you think?

[Niall_The_Miller]

Good post and a lot of it is spot on.

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

[dankrzyz]

I agree with you in principle.

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

[Les Girondins]

Good post and a lot of it is spot on.

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

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

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

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

[Schotsmannetje]

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

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

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

- Everybody behind the ball
- Defensive
- Balanced
- Offensive
- Everybody forward

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

[hassebasse80]

Very solid post.

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

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

Hassebasse out

[Schotsmannetje]

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

[jedclough]

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

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

[VMX]

Thank you all for your comments.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[treble_yell_:-)]

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

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

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

[Butters76]

My problem with the newer versions is that they add more and more tedious repeatable task to do between the fun. Press confrences are fun the first 3 times after that it's just in the way. I always use the 2nd most possitive reply on all questions, always gives the best result.
setting up opp instructions each match, even though you chose the same each time. ++

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

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

[treble_yell_:-)]

My problem with the newer versions is that they add more and more tedious repeatable task to do between the fun. Press confrences are fun the first 3 times after that it's just in the way. I always use the 2nd most possitive reply on all questions, always gives the best result.
setting up opp instructions each match, even though you chose the same each time. ++

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Dicko99]

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

[boywonder9]

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

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

[gazzamcg]

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


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


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

[tiltman]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[wwfan]

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

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

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

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

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

What type of tactical structure do you wish to use:

1: Heavily Structured
2: Structured
3: Balanced
4: Lightly Structured
5: Fluid

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

1: Expressive
2: Standard
3: Disciplined

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

1: Pressing
2: Standard
3: Stand Off

What type of passing pattern do you wish to use:

1: Continental
2: Possession
3: Standard
4: Counter-Attacking
5: Lower League


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

Choose a player/position description:

GK = Standard Keeper
GK = Sweeper Keeeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive GK
Standard GK
Attacking GK

Assign role to player:

Cech
Cudicini


Choose a player/position description:

DC = Stopper
DC = Cover
DC = Standard
DC = Libero
DC = Sweeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive DCL/R
Standard DCL/R
Attacking DCL/R

Assign role to player:

Carvalho
Alex
Ivanovic
Terry


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

[Les Girondins]

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

[wwfan]

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

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

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

[AIK]

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

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

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

[Les Girondins]

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

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

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

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

[Kewell08]

Les Girondins, did you read his post yet?
What wwfan suggests would be the "intuitive" system everybody wants that easily allows you to transfer what's in your head to the game. That's what everybody is asking for.
Quel problem?

[Les Girondins]

Les Girondins, did you read his post yet?
What wwfan suggests would be the "intuitive" system everybody wants that easily allows you to transfer what's in your head to the game. That's what everybody is asking for.
Quel problem?

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



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

[vrv]

Defense (Defensive line pressure, offsides trap, marking, width, mentality,ect.)
Buildup (Fast, Slow, Risky or Patient. Long, mixed or short passes. creative freedom and movement)
Attack (amount of shots, passing, crossing, freedom, movement, pressure)

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

[Les Girondins]

Defense (Defensive line pressure, offsides trap, marking, width, mentality,ect.)
Buildup (Fast, Slow, Risky or Patient. Long, mixed or short passes. creative freedom and movement)
Attack (amount of shots, passing, crossing, freedom, movement, pressure)

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

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

[VMX]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Les Girondins]

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

[Saevel]

Good post by the OP.

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

[Squirmy Rooter 2.0]

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

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

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

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

[treble_yell_:-)]

Good post VMX

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


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

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

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

[SCIAG]

Good post VMX


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

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

[3889011]

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

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

[treble_yell_:-)]

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

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

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

[ajm]

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

[Thierry Henrhys]

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

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

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

[Simon Tipple]

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

It's been seen.

[VMX]

It's been seen.

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

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

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

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

[Grim80]

There is some great views of FM on here but I would like to add my view as to why I think FM09 is terrible in comparison to previous versions, for me its the tactics or lack of control of them. Example, I set my team up to play quick, counter attacking passing football yet for most of the game my players dwell on the ball, don't make quick passes when team mates have made runs or made themselves availible for a pass and pass back constantly sometimes going from a potential great counter attacking moves to passing it back to the keeper. These are not poor players either, the guilty ones are full of creativity, pace, passing and decision stats.
Then on several other occasions I set up to not play offside, tight mark the opposition forwards and defend deep. So why do I conceed(sorry spelling) 2 goals in 2 mins when I find my defence pushing high up the pitch nowhere near marking the forward when the through ball is played they step up playing offside!! Once maybe is acceptable but 2 in 2 mins!? It's just stupid, I know in real life managers are faced with teams not working to their instuctions but this is just silly, they are doing the complete opposite of my instructions. So what is the point in having such an in depth tactics system if your team totally disregard it on the pitch? I don't mind losing goals and getting beat, I wouldn't mind if the forward shook off his marker and scored but the way the engine plays is nowhere near my tactics so what is the point!?
I'm sick of spending so much time reading in depth tactic discussions and setting my team up to its strengths according to SI's way of the games tactics only for it to play completely different in the game.
I can't remember FM ever being this bad, I have endured crazy events in the past but have always accepted that tactically I got beat or lost goals from my own tactical downfall but this one is not playing right pure and simple!!
Sorry for the rant but I'm annoyed that one of my favorite games has gone to **** in my opinion.

[tjmtjm]

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

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

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

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

[PaulC]

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

[Majkee]

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

- Everybody behind the ball
- Defensive
- Balanced
- Offensive
- Everybody forward

I can not agree. Look at two strikers partnership (big/small - one operates deeper and second one more foward):
They could be set to mentality 16 and 20 and it is still your category of everybody forward. In your setting, they will operate in the same manner.

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

The same is for creative freedom: level of attributes is various from 1 - 20 and therefor there are 20 notches for creative freedom in tactics etc.
I am not fan of reducing the number of notches in tactics.

[gipsy]

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

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

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

[Majkee]

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



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

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

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

What type of tactical structure do you wish to use:

1: Heavily Structured
2: Structured
3: Balanced
4: Lightly Structured
5: Fluid

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

1: Expressive
2: Standard
3: Disciplined

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

1: Pressing
2: Standard
3: Stand Off

What type of passing pattern do you wish to use:

1: Continental
2: Possession
3: Standard
4: Counter-Attacking
5: Lower League


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

Choose a player/position description:

GK = Standard Keeper
GK = Sweeper Keeeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive GK
Standard GK
Attacking GK

Assign role to player:

Cech
Cudicini


Choose a player/position description:

DC = Stopper
DC = Cover
DC = Standard
DC = Libero
DC = Sweeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive DCL/R
Standard DCL/R
Attacking DCL/R

Assign role to player:

Carvalho
Alex
Ivanovic
Terry


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

wwfan, great idea of tactics generator.
But I can guarantee you, as far as I know people, that soon or later, thay will be asking for current "slider notches" system and "generator" will be obsolete. A lot of people will generate tactics and after that, they will adjust it to their style of play and will be asking for more and more options in generator which will be at the end the same thing as it is now with sliders but with different names for sliders.
Generator is nice to have and it should serve as tactics creator for newbies or people who just do not want to manage tactics. Soon or later, they will use sliders as they will be more and more advanced and experienced.
So if someone is asking, where is the fun, my answer is, the fun is in finding of the proper tactics which really works for your team (I am not talking about another game aspects of fun like good transfers, good training etc.).
As VMX has written - do tactics sliders more user friendly (e.g. tick for grouping all sliders which is different to when personal sliders will be related to team sliders imho, to visaulize some key tactic instructions as it is with FWRs etc.).
May be complete and interactive visualisation should be done with tactics e.g. when I click cross from, arrows should indicate for every player from were to cross (forward arrow - byline, no arrow - mixed, back arrow - deep) etc.

[Majkee]

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

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

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

This should lead to SPOILER - get the best AssMan, look what he can do with OI and then copy it to do it yourselve...it is "SPOILER" option for me like AssMan team talks option.
Yes it should be as option for AssMan, but the result of it should be hidden from user.

[PGB_SPURS_FM09]

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

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

[Majkee]

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

Why stupid? It is ok. Look at the last match between Villa and Everton. If MON did not change A.Young with Gabby for last 15 minutes and instructed them differently as in halftime (Young switched Gabby from AML to S because he is too small and Everton played every ball through the air), Villa would lose and would not win it.
It is not stupid to loose if you do not react, it is stupid not to react and win every match despite a lot effort from AI manager to exploit your tactics...

[jayahr]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondly, assigning roles to individual players can also be a good step forward. Certainly whether a player should attempt long shots often depends on his according attribute way more than on where he's playing on the pitch, whereas other settings depend on his tactical role in the team. This is why I'm still a little bit cautious about assigning a complete set of instruction to an individual player.
Difficulties might occur if the player is versatile, like a DR, M RC, which is quite regular. All three positions require very different tactical instructions. I even assign very different instructions within one tactical position, to my player Tim Cahill for instance, depending which of the two MC roles he is supposed to play. If we had set our player to an individual set of instructions which does not relate to his position/role we are actually worse off than having set instructions for a position in the tactics which might or might not need to be adjusted a bit to the player's individual qualities. And creating two or more sets of individual instructions for one player is again so much micro management that most people would be as annoyed as they are now.

So what should be done imho is to identify which settings are actually linked more to the player and less to the position he plays.
I guess the long shots setting is one for the player side.
Run with ball might be, but I would not tell my full back to dribble a lot even if his attributes enable him to do that, so it might not be.
Same with creative freedom and a free role. Out of my 5 more attacking minded players, the attributes are what determine these settings for me, but for the 5 defensive players creative freedom is always low and free roles are not assigned.

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

Therefore, giving individual instructions to players rather than assigning those to a position primarily, does not get us far.
It does however, once it is combined with assigning instructions to a tactical role, like wwfan suggested.

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

Such hierarchy of individual instructions would thus look like this in the order of priority:
1. Individual player settings (with the option to just make settings for one or few categories and the others left blank)
2. Pre-defined player role settings (templates might be given by SI as those different instructions connected with the roles are common sense at least after reading TT&F or created manually by the user)
3. The individual instructions from the tactic
Of course, in terms of how much or often a user has to deal with these, the order would be the other way around.

So how would this work?
1. Load a tactic
2. Drag and drop differring player roles to players pre- or in-game (makes for quick changes without loading a complete other tactic)
3. Only use the general individual settings once for long shots (and maybe one or two more things if you like)
Done

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

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

[AmA Deo]

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

Respecta

[RT--]

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

[RT--]

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

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

[VMX]

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

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

Yep, I think most people would prefer some kind of 'relativeness' between the individual and the global sliders. It would save a lot of time.

On a different note, the thread you linked above has really good examples of a graphical implementation such as the one I mentioned before. I think it would be great, and I recommend everyone reading this thread to go there if you haven't already.

This is the link again :

Tactical Visual Aids

[sgw]

Great thread, I especially like wwfan's ideas for doing away with the sliders.

I've found myself in a similar position to most of the people here. I love them FM series, and have played it religiously since the 1990's. I'm also pretty up on my football, I played to a decent level as a kid and have no problem telling my inside right from my libero. I have found in the last few incarnations, though, that a lot of the fun has started to come out of the game, and that it has become increasingly difficult to translate the style of football I want through the sliders to my team. I would love a simpler and more transparent interface, and the chance to enjoy playing the game again.

[wwfan]

I'm just going to extend the ideas here to the next level. Obviously, I am basing all of this on the TT&F concepts as it is the only complete tactical conceptual system we have.

Stage One: Setting Up a Set of Tactics

What type of formation do you wish to use:

3-2-3-2
3-3-2-2
3-4-3 (Flat)
3-4-3 (Diamond)
3-5-2
4-1-4-1
etc, etc

What type of tactical structure do you wish to use:

1: Heavily Structured (each has a pop up box explaining the conceptualisation)
2: Structured
3: Balanced
4: Lightly Structured
5: Fluid

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

1: Expressive
2: Standard
3: Disciplined

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

1: Pressing
2: Standard
3: Stand Off

What type of passing pattern do you wish to use:

1: Continental
2: Possession
3: Standard
4: Counter-Attacking
5: Lower League

What type of tackling pattern do you wish to use:

1: Aggressive
2: Standard
3: Cautious

What type of d-line do you wish to play:

1: High
2: Standard
3: Low


Given a choice of 20 formations, the combinations here lead to the possibility of 40,500 different tactical sets, which is 121,500 unique, working tactics. If the tactical theory is good, I think this is entirely possible.


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

Choose a player/position description:

GK = Standard Keeper
GK = Sweeper Keeeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive GK
Standard GK
Attacking GK

Assign role to player:

Cech
Cudicini


Choose a player/position description:

DC = Stopper
DC = Cover
DC = Standard
DC = Libero
DC = Sweeper

Assign role to position:

Defensive DCL/R
Standard DCL/R
Attacking DCL/R

Assign role to player:

Carvalho
Alex
Ivanovic
Terry

Having gone through each role and player, you will now have a set of three tactics that are customised to your own preferences without you having touched a slider. From this point, you have three different tactical access screens. The first two are as they are currently, the indiviudal and team tactical screens. This allows the current slider system to remain for the hardcore tweakers. However, you need to add tactical tabs relating to all the 20 notch sliders, which work thus:


Mentality System Tab

Tactic

Bob's 4-1-2-1-2 Attacking


Current Mentality System

Heavily Structured (Modified) (based on the original structure informing the tactic in the wizard)


Change Mentality System

Heavily Structured
Structured
Balanced
Lightly Stuctured
Fluid

Check any of these and you can see all the individual sliders (below) move to their new settings. Uncheck them, and the sliders revert back to how they were previously.


Change Team Mentality

A slider that block moves the mentality of every player up and down by the same amount. Thus, you decrease it three notches, every players' individual mentality decreases three notches. You increase it three notches, every players' individual mentality increases three notches. It greys out as soon as one player reaches maximum or minimum mentality, as further changing from this point will impact upon the overall structure. However, it will ungrey if you move the maxed out player/s' individual mentality in the below slider system.


Change Individual Mentalities

GK: [---------/--------]
DR: [----------/-------]
DL: [----------/-------]
DC: [---------/--------]
DC: [---------/--------]
DMC: [--------/---------]
MC: [-----------/------]
MC: [----------/-------]
AMC: [-----------/------]
FC: [-----------/------]
FC: [---------------/--]


Match/Save Options

Change for current match only and leave unsaved
Save as alternate attacking tactic (Bobs' 4-1-2-1-2 Attacking v1)
Save as primary attacking tactic and overwrite current tactic
Save as primary attacking tactic and save current tactic as alternate
Overwrite alternate tactic (Choose tactic to overwrite)
Save as alternate primary tactic (insert name)


If you choose to make it a primary tactic, it auto saves to the fixed drop-down tactics boxes in the tactic screen. If you choose to make it an alternate tactic it saves, but in a different location. Ideally, we then have three archived tactic menus, thus:

1: Bob's Primary Tactics

4-1-2-1-2 Attacking
4-1-2-1-2 Control
4-1-2-1-2 Standard
4-1-2-1-2 Defensive
4-1-4-1 Defensive

2: Bob's Alternate Tactics

4-4-2 Attacking
4-1-2-1-2 Attacking v1
4-1-2-1-2 Attacking v2
4-1-4-1 Defensive v1

3: Bob's Archived Tactics

(overwritten earlier versions of Primary/Alternate tactics)

If you hover the mouse over the tactic in question, a dialogue box appears explaining the settings, thus:

Bob's 4-1-2-1 Attacking v1

Mentality System: Heavily Structured (Modified)
Creative Freedom System: Expressive
Closing Down Pattern: Pressing
Passing Pattern: Possession (Modified)
Tackling Pattern: Standard
D-line: High
Specialist Roles: Sweeper Keeper, Defensive Playmaker, Creative Forward (Modified), Box to Box Midfielder (Modified)

NB: The specialist roles information appears if the user chose these roles as position instructions when setting up the original tactic. Once instructions for that position have been tweaked, the role stays but saves as: (Modified). If the user wishes to return the role to default specialist role settings, or create new ones for different positions, he can do that via the 'set to' instructions.

[shoome]

That's a great post VMX, I've been saying similar myself since FM07 (though far less eloquently).

I'm at the stage now where I simply don't have the time to both play FM and spend hours in the forums reading endless tactical discussion - result, I end up lifting a tactic from someone else (same with training schedules) and playing with that. The ever-decreasing free hours I have I want to spend playing the game, not drowning in a sea of sliders and opponent instructions in a futile attempt to come up with a half decent set of tactical instructions (in an exercise that bears no relation to real management whatsoever).

Maybe I'm looking for a dumbed-down version, I don't know, I've not really thought of any viable solutions. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, it's still the best on the market by far - but I'm sad to say that I'm finding it even less accessible than ever.

[VMX]

Thanks all for your support, I really appreciate it

I think wwfan idea looks nice indeed. I don't know if the Q&A format would be the best option, but the concept is definately to help people who just don't want to mess up with the whole design of a new tactic from the ground, slider by slider.

And it would also ease things considerably for the rest of us "tactical-addicts", because if I want to design my own 4-5-1 system, I would just go through wwfan's steps first, choosing that formation and the different settings offered, so that I get all the annoying stuff done automatically (i.e.: setting up all mentalities, etc.). Then I would tweak the special instructions that I wanted to create. But it surely would be better to start from a tactic which already works just fine, and tweak it, rather than having to build it from the start everytime. That way, you would avoid the risk of making lots of mistakes in the sliders settings before even starting to tweak the tactic further than its basic design, which is the main problem right now.

And yes, the mentality system definately needs to work like that. You could then push your whole team's mentality up or down at once, and you could still access any individual player and tweak his mentality separately.

But I would also welcome greatly a graphical addition like the one exposed in the 'Graphical Aids' thread. This way, people would see how their new tactic is designed (which has just been created by wwfan's 'wizard', so it's a working tactic by default) and would kind of "teach" the manager to a certain extent how tactics should be, without the need for him to check and memorize the instructions from 11 sliders sheets or having to read a 50 page document. By seeing the correct instructions (at least some of them) represented in a graphical way over and over again when you access the tactics screen, you would probably start to get used to them and "memorize" them unconsciously, so next time you needed to make a new tactic you'd probably know some new things that you didn't know before...

I think it can only work great

[12thMonkey]

I'm not a software game designer, but I do play, so this results in me having opinions, but no real way to solve the problems.
This post I think does a great deal to demonstrate what is making FM less and less appealing-- although it's still fun.
The poster above who said that there's a lot of work to be done between the "fun" parts is dead on.
I love simulations, and FM is clearly among the best, but I do feel that more of the game should be like the the player attributes-- there are, what, sixty or seventy attributes for each player? The match engine calculates all of them depending on the situation in the game, and provides for incredible realism. But this is all done behind the scenes. I don't need to memorize all of the attributes of each of my players, or make decisions about each one. The match engine does all of the hard work, and the result is a player who is playing well... or isn't.
The rest of the game should be like this. Complex and incredibly realistic under the hood, but a smooth ride behind the wheel.

[AmA Deo]

That's a great post VMX, I've been saying similar myself since FM07 (though far less eloquently).

I'm at the stage now where I simply don't have the time to both play FM and spend hours in the forums reading endless tactical discussion - result, I end up lifting a tactic from someone else (same with training schedules) and playing with that. The ever-decreasing free hours I have I want to spend playing the game, not drowning in a sea of sliders and opponent instructions in a futile attempt to come up with a half decent set of tactical instructions (in an exercise that bears no relation to real management whatsoever).

Maybe I'm looking for a dumbed-down version, I don't know, I've not really thought of any viable solutions. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, it's still the best on the market by far - but I'm sad to say that I'm finding it even less accessible than ever.

The same here. I simply don't have the time anymore to make a tactical set of my own. So many sliders to configurate!

Therefore I currently use someone else's tactic. I hope SI will take this thread very seriously and look at the ideas. I like wwfan's ideas and I hope something like that can be implemented in Fm 10.

[footynut]

An excellent post VMX and I agree with most of what you say

[PjW_JJJ]

Arsene Wenger is reported to have said (“Wenger” J Rees) “I’m not going to tell Lee Dixon to pass it there. He has the ball, he’s an intelligent player, let him go and play. What do I tell Tony Adams about defending? What can I tell Thierry Henry about goal-scoring” and David Seaman: “It was not so much that players were being told to do this and that but more that they were not being told not to do things”.

Preparation in training: physical conditioning; being aware of team shape; passing and moving drills; minimal instructions if necessary about the opposition’s defensive frailties, probable formation and attacking threat. Then let the players play.

If only we could have a game where you could concentrate on the things you have to concentrate on in real life.

The tactical setup of this game and the subsequent focus you have to put into this game has become totally out of kilter since the days of CM3/4.

Do people really like this slider system and the fact that players are utter idiots if you don’t have that keyhole combination combined with the one and only appropriate team talk to avoid total annihilation?

I don’t think most people do. I think the game has gone in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, the pseuds corner that is the T&TF has been dominated for years by a few “gurus” who like this system and have wielded an effective bullying campaign on anyone with the temerity to question it. A bit like questioning liberal shibboleths in a PC dominated world. You are immediately marked out as ignorant and inadequate.

What of these “gurus”? Where has this influence come from? What is their performance on FM live when actually tested in real conditions rather than hiding behind the BS that a forum allows? How good are all those tactics that came with pdf tutorial? Worse than my own, in my experience.

And the game designers have been using this small group of slider system fans in their development of the game! To make it even more annoying for the rest of us who just want a leisure time game that attempts to mirror the real world. Instead we have a game that satisfies a few who have this quasi-religious, faith based hold on the “theories” of the game, who stop at nothing to twist pretentious management theories and God knows what else in order to legitimise the route the game has taken.

[Les Girondins]

Arsene Wenger is reported to have said (“Wenger” J Rees) “I’m not going to tell Lee Dixon to pass it there. He has the ball, he’s an intelligent player, let him go and play. What do I tell Tony Adams about defending? What can I tell Thierry Henry about goal-scoring” and David Seaman: “It was not so much that players were being told to do this and that but more that they were not being told not to do things”.

Preparation in training: physical conditioning; being aware of team shape; passing and moving drills; minimal instructions if necessary about the opposition’s defensive frailties, probable formation and attacking threat. Then let the players play.

If only we could have a game where you could concentrate on the things you have to concentrate on in real life.

The tactical setup of this game and the subsequent focus you have to put into this game has become totally out of kilter since the days of CM3/4.

Do people really like this slider system and the fact that players are utter idiots if you don’t have that keyhole combination combined with the one and only appropriate team talk to avoid total annihilation?

I don’t think most people do. I think the game has gone in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, the pseuds corner that is the T&TF has been dominated for years by a few “gurus” who like this system and have wielded an effective bullying campaign on anyone with the temerity to question it. A bit like questioning liberal shibboleths in a PC dominated world. You are immediately marked out as ignorant and inadequate.

What of these “gurus”? Where has this influence come from? What is their performance on FM live when actually tested in real conditions rather than hiding behind the BS that a forum allows? How good are all those tactics that came with pdf tutorial? Worse than my own, in my experience.

And the game designers have been using this small group of slider system fans in their development of the game! To make it even more annoying for the rest of us who just want a leisure time game that attempts to mirror the real world. Instead we have a game that satisfies a few who have this quasi-religious, faith based hold on the “theories” of the game, who stop at nothing to twist pretentious management theories and God knows what else in order to legitimise the route the game has taken.

Very eloquent and fair post. I agree with you entirely.

[Yasko75]

Very eloquent and fair post. I agree with you entirely.

Arsene Wenger is reported to have said (“Wenger” J Rees) “I’m not going to tell Lee Dixon to pass it there. He has the ball, he’s an intelligent player, let him go and play. What do I tell Tony Adams about defending? What can I tell Thierry Henry about goal-scoring” and David Seaman: “It was not so much that players were being told to do this and that but more that they were not being told not to do things”.

Preparation in training: physical conditioning; being aware of team shape; passing and moving drills; minimal instructions if necessary about the opposition’s defensive frailties, probable formation and attacking threat. Then let the players play.

If only we could have a game where you could concentrate on the things you have to concentrate on in real life.

The tactical setup of this game and the subsequent focus you have to put into this game has become totally out of kilter since the days of CM3/4.

Do people really like this slider system and the fact that players are utter idiots if you don’t have that keyhole combination combined with the one and only appropriate team talk to avoid total annihilation?

I don’t think most people do. I think the game has gone in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, the pseuds corner that is the T&TF has been dominated for years by a few “gurus” who like this system and have wielded an effective bullying campaign on anyone with the temerity to question it. A bit like questioning liberal shibboleths in a PC dominated world. You are immediately marked out as ignorant and inadequate.

What of these “gurus”? Where has this influence come from? What is their performance on FM live when actually tested in real conditions rather than hiding behind the BS that a forum allows? How good are all those tactics that came with pdf tutorial? Worse than my own, in my experience.

And the game designers have been using this small group of slider system fans in their development of the game! To make it even more annoying for the rest of us who just want a leisure time game that attempts to mirror the real world. Instead we have a game that satisfies a few who have this quasi-religious, faith based hold on the “theories” of the game, who stop at nothing to twist pretentious management theories and God knows what else in order to legitimise the route the game has taken.

Excellet post...

[Darth Bodde]

I just want to be able to, for example, be able to click a 'get it wide' box instead of increasing a width slider, which is in no way realistic.

[BuryBlade]

A stunning and detailed post looking at the tactics in the game- I recently stopped playing 09 and went back to 08 because tactically I couldnt cut it on 09. This is from someone who has coached football at youth/junior level for several years and has a good understanding of the game

I think that 09 is too difficult to achieve successful tactics and actually implement what you have in your head into the game

[Les Girondins]

FM really is on the precipice of doom and gloom: the current system is not viable long term. As the competition improves, they do so with the benefit of hindsight, having seen the feedback and frustrations FM is causing they can take a year (in CM's case) to create something that will steal a big chunk of the dissilusioned FM'er fanbase.

If S.I. don't radically re-think their strategy and the absolute head up arse affair that is each successive release, they are going to get murdered over the next few years. Sales might be strong, even now, but it won't last if they continue to deviate from the successful formula of tactic/fun/play/work balance of the late CM's. I am not advocating a dumbed down FM, but two things strike me as imperative: re-capture the casual gamer's interest without shipping a tiered or castrated 'lite' option and address the absurd system requirements and get it running quickly and consistently on low end machines again.

Also on the subject of 'drag' the current ui is about ten years out of date. It is twee, unresponsive, poorly structured, spartan and eye wateringly ugly. FM is a game of 1's and 0's, we all accept that, but if there is no sense of immersion or visual joy it is only going to compound and exasperate the already overly clinical and sterile feeling game world.

I hate to re-cycle my own catch phrases so much: but FM really does leave you feeling as if you are trudging through filler between matches. And that seems to me to be a very bad situation. FIFA and CM etc. are currently poor but they have a major advantage over FM now - they can see that what S.I. are doing wrong and they can (in the case of CM) afford to take a step back and really go all out to burst FM's bubble.

Finally S.I. need to get a grip on their parent companies obsession with DRM and advertising/placement and ridiculously short release cycles that leave the product only ever half finished and only ever patched to a playable level months after it goes on sale.

[bemerry65]

Some fantastic idea's on this thread! I would just like to add mine to them. I play as Manchester United and have tried many different methods and spent numerous hours trying to get my players playing like they do IRL. When Man Utd attack they all change positions and they are dam near impossible to mark. In this addition SI have touched upon changing positions but i still feel it could developed for uses in all teams, and for managers (such as ourselves) to build a tactic around.

I agree with the previous ideas of making tactics simple for people to use (but not to simple) I would love to be able to build say 5 different tactics at the start of the game of same or simular formations for different situations for example; 0 - 0 at half time. The tactic in the first half isnt working for the team so it needs to be modified (change to tactic 2). As time goes on 60 mins, 70 mins, 85 mins the team becomes more attacking and more men are pushed forward in-order to win the game. Having these different pre-made tactics will lower the amount you will have to do during the game. I also believe that you still should have the option to make slight changes to individual players such as wingers to run at individual players (weak player in the opposition to exploit which is individual to each team) I understand that it will take alot of time at the beginning of the game to make these tactics but i feel it will save time in the long run and will be simple enough to allow the people who decide they want to do minimal tactic changes and also satisfy people who like to do things right down to the final point of detail. I understand that theoretically you could already do this but changing the main tactic of the players ofton will be time consuming and may confuse the players and not get the result you were aiming for.

This would be a dream for me.
what do you think?

PS - sorry for blabbering on a bit and going round in circles but i wanted to try and get my point across

[iamjerome]

can't believe i'd not read this thread yet but i've no real additions to say because vmx and pjw_jjj have covered pretty much all my thoughts on the situation in FM.

very interesting suggestion by wwfan, very interesting.

[crafty bison]

Some truly fantastic posts from VMX and wwfan.

[treble_yell_:-)]

Arsene Wenger is reported to have said (“Wenger” J Rees) “I’m not going to tell Lee Dixon to pass it there. He has the ball, he’s an intelligent player, let him go and play. What do I tell Tony Adams about defending? What can I tell Thierry Henry about goal-scoring” and David Seaman: “It was not so much that players were being told to do this and that but more that they were not being told not to do things”.

Preparation in training: physical conditioning; being aware of team shape; passing and moving drills; minimal instructions if necessary about the opposition’s defensive frailties, probable formation and attacking threat. Then let the players play.

If only we could have a game where you could concentrate on the things you have to concentrate on in real life.

The tactical setup of this game and the subsequent focus you have to put into this game has become totally out of kilter since the days of CM3/4.

Do people really like this slider system and the fact that players are utter idiots if you don’t have that keyhole combination combined with the one and only appropriate team talk to avoid total annihilation?

I don’t think most people do. I think the game has gone in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, the pseuds corner that is the T&TF has been dominated for years by a few “gurus” who like this system and have wielded an effective bullying campaign on anyone with the temerity to question it. A bit like questioning liberal shibboleths in a PC dominated world. You are immediately marked out as ignorant and inadequate.

What of these “gurus”? Where has this influence come from? What is their performance on FM live when actually tested in real conditions rather than hiding behind the BS that a forum allows? How good are all those tactics that came with pdf tutorial? Worse than my own, in my experience.

And the game designers have been using this small group of slider system fans in their development of the game! To make it even more annoying for the rest of us who just want a leisure time game that attempts to mirror the real world. Instead we have a game that satisfies a few who have this quasi-religious, faith based hold on the “theories” of the game, who stop at nothing to twist pretentious management theories and God knows what else in order to legitimise the route the game has taken.

/Thread

Tbh was the same in the FML beta forum, anyone who dared question the game mechanics were jumped upon by the same group of rabid loyalists everytime

[Les Girondins]

/Thread

Tbh was the same in the FML beta forum, anyone who dared question the game mechanics were jumped upon by the same group of rabid loyalists everytime

Well that's ok. FMLive is a subscription service, when the revenue drops they'll take note. If it doesn't - would you?

[wacman1389]

Great OP VMX

Also great from wwfan

I really like the ideas presented, and I think one of them involved giving verbal instructions, like "beat your man and put in some good crosses" for the wingers. Though it may be hard to actually put in the game, I think it would help out a lot.

I don't remember if it's possible, but I'm pretty sure you can edit the templates (attacking MF, left back) on the tactics screen. I think one way of working around the slider problems would be to make your own templates (though you'd have to make like 100 of them) and set them for your players when need be.....

so if for instance, I'm winning 1-0 and I want my players to play more defensively, I could set every player to their respective defensive template. Granted this would take a decent amount of effort, and time to implement, it could be a workaround for now. Also, if you don't have everything right in the template, it may not work out......so it's not the greatest idea, but I think I may try it.

[DJ Backchat]

i think you have to ask is football manager a game or simulation.

game means lots of users, lots of fun, "easier"

simulation means less users, less fun, for the TTF junkies.

so what do we believe the general public want?

[Les Girondins]

i think you have to ask is football manager a game or simulation.

game means lots of users, lots of fun, "easier"

simulation means less users, less fun, for the TTF junkies.

so what do we believe the general public want?

That is a very superficial evaluation tbh. A simulation does not need to be so anal and pedantic with the sliders and so many user mutable variables to still be a simulation ..

What is needed, as wwfan and others have suggested is a new interface layer between the end user and the sliders to add a bit of 'magic' back to the game experience. So you can let the game get on with managing the match engine and just give cursory instructions as to how you want the team to peform with additional team and individual player instructions on top. This will allow you to 'manage' your team, give them instructions and react to the AI on match days without having to spend forty five minutes clicking buttons or putting together five differenet varations of the same formation just to satisfy the mentalities demon.

Actually, in many ways, re-mystifying the whole tactical module to an extent will make it feel more like a management game not a spreadsheet. Players may or may not do what you tell them all the time, they may work hard for you, they may not. All that is presently implemented, all that variety and all those statistics can still play the part they do, just in a less obtuse and exacting fashion.

The key is: can S.I. implement this or something similar without punishing the player for preferring a less involving experience?

[wwfan]

Arsene Wenger is reported to have said (“Wenger” J Rees) “I’m not going to tell Lee Dixon to pass it there. He has the ball, he’s an intelligent player, let him go and play. What do I tell Tony Adams about defending? What can I tell Thierry Henry about goal-scoring” and David Seaman: “It was not so much that players were being told to do this and that but more that they were not being told not to do things”.

Preparation in training: physical conditioning; being aware of team shape; passing and moving drills; minimal instructions if necessary about the opposition’s defensive frailties, probable formation and attacking threat. Then let the players play.

If only we could have a game where you could concentrate on the things you have to concentrate on in real life.

The tactical setup of this game and the subsequent focus you have to put into this game has become totally out of kilter since the days of CM3/4.

Do people really like this slider system and the fact that players are utter idiots if you don’t have that keyhole combination combined with the one and only appropriate team talk to avoid total annihilation?

I don’t think most people do. I think the game has gone in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, the pseuds corner that is the T&TF has been dominated for years by a few “gurus” who like this system and have wielded an effective bullying campaign on anyone with the temerity to question it. A bit like questioning liberal shibboleths in a PC dominated world. You are immediately marked out as ignorant and inadequate.

What of these “gurus”? Where has this influence come from? What is their performance on FM live when actually tested in real conditions rather than hiding behind the BS that a forum allows? How good are all those tactics that came with pdf tutorial? Worse than my own, in my experience.

And the game designers have been using this small group of slider system fans in their development of the game! To make it even more annoying for the rest of us who just want a leisure time game that attempts to mirror the real world. Instead we have a game that satisfies a few who have this quasi-religious, faith based hold on the “theories” of the game, who stop at nothing to twist pretentious management theories and God knows what else in order to legitimise the route the game has taken.

This is an exceedingly unfair observation. None of the 'gurus' have had any direct influence on how the sliders work. As far as I know, the only direct contribution to the workings of the game in terms of its instructional mechanics was my suggestion that the arrows should be removed in order to make the 2d play more realistically. Nobody has ever fed back on the sliders themselves. They underwrite the ME to the extent that removing/significantly changing them would require a total recoding of the ME. They cannot go, just be translated into a more user friendly UI.

What has happened over recent versions is the playing 'theories' of the game have split into two camps, those that worked towards a more realistic simulation and those that attempted to break the ME via some highly creative tactical ideas. A huge amount of ME development has been aimed at stopping the latter option from working, i.e. plugging the holes that they exploit. Removing the arrows largely fulfilled this function. However, what it has also done is suddenly make the tactical system an unintuitive, convoluted mess for many. In previous FMs, it was pretty easy to employ arrows to 'plug' gaps. The back arrowed FB could cover the hole behind an FB with forward runs set to often, the wingless formation with all midfielders forward arrowed could unrealistically control possession inthe centre of the park as the AI couldn't mark it properly, the forward arrowed AMC could drift unmarked through the defence and slot home easy goals. None of this could happen in real football, at least not with the regularity it does in FM. Yes, you want an AMC to drift late into the box and score, but he shouldn't do it every single time you get the ball, no matter what else is going on. He should use his brains and move into positions that could help out the move (a la your Wenger examples). In previous FMs players didn't do that (they could but the arrows stopped it). In FM 09 they do.

As such, tactics have become more like you Wengeran example. You have to rely on your players to a much greater extent than you did previously. You can no longer design tactics that gurantee moves developing in a perfect way, or players performing exactly as you wish. You can try to restrict or encourage certain moves, but ultimately you end up having to trust your team. However, you can never get to this stage unless you have a basic grasp of tactics. That is all that TT&F is trying to do, to translate the sliders to the extent that everybody who reads it can grasp tactical fundamentals. In the simplest terms, all you need to do is read the frameworks section, as that sorts out the most basically required instructions. The remainder is just gloss. If you grasp the basics, you can play FM in exactly the manner you wish, focusing on oppositional frailties and your own player strengths and changing things around if/when things are going right/wrong. If you can't grasp the basics, then everything will fall apart, pretty much as it would in the real world. This is simultaneously the key strength and weakness of the ME, in that it rewards 'good' tactics as much as it punishes 'bad' ones. The real problem is in knowing how to avoid the latter, which for many is an exercise in frustration.

I don't think a single 'guru' has ever argued there needs to be a 'keyhole combination combined with the one and only appropriate team talk' for any situation. That is a misperception of the forums, offered up by people who are frustrated and struggling with FM, and influenced by the period of FM history when the tactical forum's function was to develop super-tactics. All the current 'gurus' are extremely flexible in their tactical/match strategies, which is why they are good at the game. They also understand the slider system pretty well. However, that does not mean they are unable to criticise it or will defend it unto death. What has happened this year is that they developed a massive document intended to help people translate the sliders into real world instructions because, during Beta testing, there was a recognition that the current UI/slider system was widely considered to be unintuitive and difficult. TT&F was a preemptive response to the issues people are currently struggling with, although it was understood to be a temporary measure for FM09 prior to better in-game tactical options being available for FM10. That it was done in free time by fans and not part of SI's development strategy is something I think needs a serious amount of thought, as it suggests the game's complexity is slipping away from those who make it, which explains why the default tactics included in FM09 were so average. I imagine it has been a bit of a wake up call.

The main problem with changing this is that you need to really understand the sliders in order to offer viable alternatives. The sliders need to remain as they underwrite the ME. You can't suddenly reduce 20 notches to 5, remove or add sliders willy-nilly, as it will horribly unbalance the ME. What is required is a secondary method of translation that can sit on top of the sliders and allow users to feel they are giving real world instructions to their players. I have argued for the form this could take earlier in this thread. Outside of this argument, I have yet to see anybody come up with a viable option that could work given the current restrictions. Plenty of people criticise the system and explain how they would do it better and how their conceptualisation fits the real world, but that isn't the question that needs answering. What needs to happen is for SI to develop a conceptual framework that translates the millions of slider notches into real world terminology that can be incorporated into a GUI. This is where the user base can help.

As for the rest of your post about 'gurus' hiding behind forum anonymity, I find it somewhat unsavoury. TT&F was written as a helpful guide for those that were struggling, off our own backs with no pay. It is hardly about 'lording' it over the incompetent, nor about defending the slider system. It is part of the recognition that something needs to be done. We are not slider fans (for God's sake, how can anybody be a 'fan' of an input method!!!) Sliders are largely irrelevant to how we play the game, our translations of them into real world footballing ideas are what matter. As long as you can do this in FM, it doesn't matter a jot how. Sliders, tick-boxes, drop downs, a wizard; all are possibilities. What this argument is about is how many are finding the current method inadequate, not about people defending it. Nobody has ever defended the system as being the best imput system money can buy. They have just tried to come to terms with it as best they could and offered ideas and theories that others could choose to use should they so wish. Whatever you might think, that is as much input we have ever had to the input system, translating it back into real world terms. We are truly reactive in this matter.

The TT&F accompanying tactics were not supposed to be great tactics, rather alternate defaults for the ones included in the game. All they were supposed to do was get your team performing roughly to the expected level. Thus, if you were Arsenal, a title challenge, WHU mid-table. WBA a relegation battle. As for our performance in FML, there is the slight issue of tactics skills having to be unlocked, which rather puts the tacticians at a disadvantage. However, once I had unlocked enough skills, I always finished top four in my division (winning it twice) with arguable one of the two-three weakest squads. To experiment with how I would do without match-by-match tactical input, I played an offline season, in which my team, having finished 1-2-1-4 in previous years, came 15th. Other teams with great squads tended to finish in roughly the same position, whether their manager was on or offline. I have temporarily dropped out of FML to concntrate on work, forum duties and FM, as I don't have time for it all, but I intend to return for the next stage of Beta development. I promise to update you on my performance.

[dobbie567]

I downloaded the demo to see initially if my PC would run it, I've been playing FM/CM for a few years on and off so I was going to buy it if it did.

I agree that it is more intensive in terms of tactics, I think it's good for those who want more realism and more detailed involvment. I've found though that although I enjoy the press conferences and the more detailed tactics, now being married and having a toddler, I don't have the time to play games like FM so much.

Thats why (and it pains me to say it) I don't think i'll buy FM09, and stick to 08. Simply because I can usually get a couple of matches played on 08 when i have time, but with 09 to give it the effort you need to succeed takes me too long (it takes me a while on FM08 ) It's not a criticism of SI or FM09, just a sad FM fan who's realising that his playing days are maybe over.

[DANNY1000000]

I think the team metality slider should be like the training slider where you can set all the individual categories to medium, high etc but when you click further right on the overall all the individual metality sliders should increase.

As for maybe the others such as closing down, passing and so on

[Yallii]

What has happened over recent versions is the playing 'theories' of the game have split into two camps, those that worked towards a more realistic simulation and those that attempted to break the ME via some highly creative tactical ideas. A huge amount of ME development has been aimed at stopping the latter option from working, i.e. plugging the holes that they exploit.

This is more or less what's different on the game for the past two or three versions. Game development has pushed the gamers into playing the game in a certain way. A good example of this are team talks and opposition instructions. They used to be tucked away in under a button. Now they're right there before you play a match. Also, what's wrong with the these 'supertactics'? If people like to play with them, let them play. To them scouting, building a squad is more important. Others put more emphasis on tactics.

I can't really put it to words well...

[wwfan]

This is more or less what's different on the game for the past two or three versions. Game development has pushed the gamers into playing the game in a certain way. A good example of this are team talks and opposition instructions. They used to be tucked away in under a button. Now they're right there before you play a match. Also, what's wrong with the these 'supertactics'? If people like to play with them, let them play. To them scouting, building a squad is more important. Others put more emphasis on tactics.

I can't really put it to words well...

There is nothing wrong with 'supertactics' from a gaming perspective. However, from a simulation perspective, which is where SI is coming from, there is a lot wrong with them. Supertactics do not exist in real life, therefore SI will strive to remove the possibility of supertactics from the game. For them to do anything else goes against their intention of producing a 'football management simulation'. You can make the argument that such a game is not one you'd like to play, but as a conceptual model it drives SI's development strategy. You can't design a game around how every segment of the market wishes it to play. You need to have a conceptual vision of how it should look and move towards that. If that means people who like building a squad and want supertactics to play with are disappointed, then that's the price you have to pay.

[RT--]

As usual, wwfan, I think you've advanced some very well thought out arguments in defence of the ME and the 'simulation' ideal to which SI are trying to push themselves.

I realise that the match engine is based entirely around the current 'slider' instructions, but I'm glad you agree that the interface needs to be changed, and that the goal is to present it in a way that feels a bit more realistic, and a bit less like you're doing some low-level programming.

What did you make of the Tactical Visual Aids thread, can I ask? I think, for certain instructions, something along those lines could be a very helpful start.

Ultimately, I'd like to see the tactics/match-engine overhauled slightly and see player attributes and natural positions dictate what happens even more that it currently does. I still think concepts like 'passing style' are better suited to a four/five notch scale than a twenty notch scale, and so too things like 'creative freedom' and 'mentality'. Verbal instructions to a player, in real life, just wouldn't allow room for anything more.

In real life, I think players have a tendency to drift towards their natural positions, as well, regardless of where they're played. Play a natural left winger in a central role, and he'll be likely to drift out left naturally, and vice-versa for someone who's used to playing in the middle being put on the wing. Similarly, play a defensive midfielder and an attacking midfielder together in the middle, and their tendency to make forward runs and position themselves will probably come naturally (depending on their decisions, positioning, etc.). You could argue that players with good dribbling should run with the ball by default, players with good passing/creativity should try through balls and direct passing more often, and players with long shots should shoot from distance by default, as well (again, dependednt upon decision-making, etc.).

Maybe this all happens now, if you just put creative freedom right up, but I haven't seen any evidence of it myself. Of course, you have PPMs as well, but I don't think they're necessarily the answer.

[RunningCloud]

An excellent thread. Hopefully, SI will take it to heart and try to restore the "fun" to its current exercise in tactical complexity that seems to assume all managers are rocket scientists and all football players are valid doctoral candidates. This is not the real world. A few probably are, but most are not. Meantime, it's back to FM06 and hoping that CM09 can strike a better balance than FM09. Maybe FM10 will sort things out. I'll wait until the forums verdict is rendered before buying it.

[Yakatadu]

This is a great thread but could the current system with its huge number of variables be maintained under an advanced tab? Consequently it would allow users who don't want to micro-manage everything a quick way in AND allow the tweakers something to fiddle with. The trick would be for SI ti find the best ratios for each blanket touchline instruction . e.g screaming go to all out attack drives your players attitude by increasing their att. mentallity, creativity, pressing, tempo etc

The other option would be to have a simplified team slider system with a maximum of 4/5 overall options (attack vs defense, posession vs long ball, fast vs slow (tempo) and creative vs simple. (risk)

The trick would be that if you move the attacking slider up your defensive slider decreases. It would mean that a balanced option would be in the middle but it would also give a visual confirmation of how your choices would effect the overall play. A big problem is that the sliders just aren't relative/relevent to each other at the minute, maybe having the sliders move around to your decsions would help? The best example i can think of right now would be that when you move the creative slider up the attacking slider would move because it doesn't seem right that you'd have an ultra creative defensive player. E.g Pirlo is creative but he's looking to get forward and make space he's not a gattueso type of pitbull who breaks up the play.

Y

[Les Girondins]

Well for all the bluster I don't even think the sliders are realistic simulation of football management. No manager has control over his players to the extent the sliders offer and demand for a good team performance. In reality football is a game played by 22 men; a manager can scout the oppostion, prepare his players with pep talk and tactical suggestions and try to impart some of his own philosophy/approach and send his men out to do their jobs. The people who get the medals are the players - the people who get the big money when they can do things other players can't do, or can't do as well.

Managers are just there to try and maximise their potential (with the aid of coaches) and to try and get one up on their counterpart. Ultimately, the players do the job of winning football matches and tactics account for maybe 35% of the result in my opinion. The rest is morale (before and after the game), fitness and talent. Good players can do a job on their own initiative and poor players need leadership and guidence.

To an extent all of that is represented in FM 09 but the tactics (being the human players chief input to the game and main interface with their team/source of challenge) are given far too much import on the way things progress presently. Unfortunately changing that to be a player centric game engine from a human input one, would require a total rethink of FM 09. So we must accept the present system of human selection of best numerical combinations to achieve the most accurate render of their own vision for play.

The reason I feel FM falls down is because the AI is (being an algorythm) infallible. It has to be hamstrung by random probability etc.

It would be nice if the AI actually did what it did with more variety (tactically) and more in keeping with the individual player stats and potential, not simply responding to your tactical judgements. 11 Championship players might havea a good game or two, but in the long run they cannot compete with 11 premiership players for fitness or individual skill yet in FM 09 a lower league player can dribble like ronaldo and finish like inzaghi when it suits him. With the emphasis so high on human tactics and team selection, it seems inbalanced and unfair and a little too conceited.

[DamianJMcGrath]

I have a small question - using wwfan's admittedly brief snyopsis of how his idea could be implemented (by selecting the style of play, passing styles, etc, and then assigning these "roles" to players), there would only be a finite number of options to choose from, and so selecting the "perfect" choices would become a greater possibility, leading to claims of supertactics.

Games could turn into a game of roulette - "pick the right choices until you win".

And even if you expand the number of possible selections, are you not just back in a situation you have now with the sliders, where people are baffled by what slider option (1 to 20) to pick and how best to combine them with other options?

[wwfan]

@ Les Girondins: It's an interesting and oft repeated argument. Where it is lacking is in the assumption that bad management and tactics don't cost matches in real life. They undoubtedly do, or managers would never get sacked. In real life, top teams have top managers, so are tactically well prepared. Perhaps they do make, as you suggest, 35% of difference. In FM life, it is possible for a top team to be managed by a complete muppet who consistently makes bad decisions. Perhaps they can make 35% of difference in a negative direction?

I'll ask you this. If FM and the FM09 ME didn't punish bad managerial decisions to the extent it rewarded good ones (or indeed more so) then would it be a game worth playing? We have people complaining that they let 3-0 leads slip. The standard question is 'did you decide to sit on the result, kill the match and perhaps grab a late fourth once the opposition was totally demoralised' to which the reply is always 'no, I continued to play flat out, thus taking further attacking risks I didn't need to take, exhausting my players, and giving the other side the chance to get back into the game'. It's a bad managerial decision that the game sometimes, although not always, punishes. If it didn't do this, then it would be pointless playing.

The only major issue is that people think they are making logical football decisions but are punished for them by the game mechanics i.e. having DCs on mentality 1 and MCs on 10. Get rid of these translation errors, so everybody understands their tactical decisons, and then it is only poor decision making rather than that is punished. It will make for a better game. However, you need the slider complexity for the engine to work as it does. Everything is in the translation of the sliders, not in the mechanics of the game.

[wwfan]

I have a small question - using wwfan's admittedly brief snyopsis of how his idea could be implemented (by selecting the style of play, passing styles, etc, and then assigning these "roles" to players), there would only be a finite number of options to choose from, and so selecting the "perfect" choices would become a greater possibility, leading to claims of supertactics.

Games could turn into a game of roulette - "pick the right choices until you win".

And even if you expand the number of possible selections, are you not just back in a situation you have now with the sliders, where people are baffled by what slider option (1 to 20) to pick and how best to combine them with other options?

Even with my brief description of a possible wizard, we have the following scenario:

20 formation shapes
3 flavours of each shape
5 mentality systems
3 creativity systems
3 passing systems
3 closing down systems
3 tackling systems
3 defensive line positions

That works out to 72,900 unique tactics. Adding roles to each one (based on an assumption of 2 possible roles per positions plus a generic alternative) generates a possibility of 2,450,700 unique tactics (all which should more or less work). I don't think we have to worry about 'picking the right choice until you win'.

[Les Girondins]

Even with my brief description of a possible wizard, we have the following scenario:

20 formation shapes
3 flavours of each shape
5 mentality systems
3 creativity systems
3 passing systems
3 closing down systems
3 tackling systems
3 defensive line positions

That works out to 72,900 unique tactics. Adding roles to each one (based on an assumption of 2 possible roles per positions plus a generic alternative) generates a possibility of 2,450,700 unique tactics (all which should more or less work). I don't think we have to worry about 'picking the right choice until you win'.

But he has a point - what is the point of 72, 900 unique tactics if only one will work effectively against the AI's swiss army style panopoly of match winning eventualities?

[wwfan]

But he has a point - what is the point of 72, 900 unique tactics if only one will work effectively against the AI's swiss army style panopoly of match winning eventualities?

The game doesn't work like that. The AI shifts between more aggressive and more cautious variants of a pretty simple tactical setup. It perhaps has 7 versions of a standard formation, which we can categorise as:

Shut up Shop
Defend
Counter
Normal
Careful Attacking
Aggressive Attacking
Overload

It simply picks the one it 'believes' is the right tactic for the right situation. Where users go wrong, no doubt directed by the tactical forum's long-term obsession with 'super-tactics', is failing to do roughly the same thing. Users have the advantage but fail to make use of it by sticking to a single match strategy rather than shaping how the team plays to the opposition and the situation. The stronger your side, the less you have to shape. However, even if you're Arsenal, taking exactly the same approach away against Man Utd as you do at home against WBA is asking for trouble. A tactical wizard will generate a basic set of tactics (Defend/Standard/Attacking) which will allow every user to go into a match with a chance of picking the right tactic. If they start away at Old Trafford with Attacking, they will rip you apart. Defend and you might get a point. The wizard will push people into that mindset, which will reduce frustration levels and help everybody understand their tactical decisions.

[Les Girondins]

The game doesn't work like that. The AI shifts between more aggressive and more cautious variants of a pretty simple tactical setup. It perhaps has 7 versions of a standard formation, which we can categorise as:

Shut up Shop
Defend
Counter
Normal
Careful Attacking
Aggressive Attacking
Overload

It simply picks the one it 'believes' is the right tactic for the right situation. Where users go wrong, no doubt directed by the tactical forum's long-term obsession with 'super-tactics', is failing to do roughly the same thing. Users have the advantage but fail to make use of it by sticking to a single match strategy rather than shaping how the team plays to the opposition and the situation. The stronger your side, the less you have to shape. However, even if you're Arsenal, taking exactly the same approach away against Man Utd as you do at home against WBA is asking for trouble. A tactical wizard will generate a basic set of tactics (Defend/Standard/Attacking) which will allow every user to go into a match with a chance of picking the right tactic. If they start away at Old Trafford with Attacking, they will rip you apart. Defend and you might get a point. The wizard will push people into that mindset, which will reduce frustration levels and help everybody understand their tactical decisions.

Thanks for explaining.

[iamjerome]

other than an evolution in terms of tactical GUI/system, team talks / squad interaction needs quite an expansion too because the team talks as it is have too much weighting for too little options; i do believe they should have a LOT of power but the very limited amount of interaction options nulls the fun / interesting aspect of it.

[wacman1389]

other than an evolution in terms of tactical GUI/system, team talks / squad interaction needs quite an expansion too because the team talks as it is have too much weighting for too little options; i do believe they should have a LOT of power but the very limited amount of interaction options nulls the fun / interesting aspect of it.

I completely agree........I think if they were to change the human input aspect for the entire game, we may see a revolution in gaming.....like, I could see wwfan's question and answer input for tactics.....but what if like you said they changed team talks and media Q&A? What if every bit of input was more like talking and less like a spreadsheet?

Like you could sit down with your Ass. Man. upon arriving at the club and go over the various tactics you'd like to implement based on the squad.....it could go just like wwfan, only more conversational, with hints to different tactics to lean towards based on player skill (and ass man tactical skill/judging player ability.....and a bad ass man would just hint less......he wouldn't give out wrong information) You could draft up a couple different formations (with forms of the formations) and after every week of training you could get a report on how the squad reacts to the tactics.

Team talks could be helped by adding specific tactical instructions to give to each player.....kinda like individual player instructions, but instead of making them do it via sliders, you tell them to do it with words. Players could get used to playing certain styles (like they do now).

My favorite thought about this form of implementation would be discussing things with the board, mainly transfers. I know that some boards are highly involved with transfers, and based on your board's level of involvement, you could wiggle extra money out of them for transfers, or you could come up with a shortlist of dream players you'd like to add to the squad, and based on those players' star power (along with the likelihood of getting them) that can factor into how much money you're allowed to spend.

I know the writers would have a LOT of work on their hands in order to successfully switch the game over into the realm of conversational gameplay, but I think it could be pretty amazing if done correctly.

[3889011]

I am just posting that this thread does not go inactive because it is the one of the most constructive threads I have seen on this forum and would be shame that it is forgotten.

[Thierry Henrhys]

It's been seen.

I thank you knid sir!

[wacman1389]

lol I was considering bumping it, but I wasn't sure if that was allowed.......what do you guys think of my idea?

[underwaterblade2008]

Fantastic post, I hope some of these ideas are implemented to bring sum of the fun back into the 'game'. wwfan's suggestions of new tactics are definetly what is required, maybe with a graphical representation on the tactic as well. But I definetly want the ability to not only introduce a team tactic, but also tell specific players to do certain things eg long shots, I don't want to have to change tactic for a position when I make a substitution because my substitute cant shoot etc.

[tiltman]

To please both the casual and the hardcore gamer I think multiple thing have to be done with the FM's tactical GUI.

A)
Player individual tactical settings. Long shots slider, Run with ball slider etc that overrides the current tactics settings. These sliders represent personal instructions and are done by the manager to take advantage of (or avoid) a players individual strengths or weaknesses.

B)
Tactic creation in a more intuitive way. Through manager questions or a new GUI representation.

C)
Introduction of "Tactical set", when the manager enters a match he select a "tactical set" not a tactic. A "tactical set" contains 5 induvidual tactics: Very definsive, defensive, normal, offensive, Kamikaze.
Then a simple way to select wich of the tactics within the "tactical set" to use as the match are proceeding. For the casual manager an option to let the ass. man. handle the tactic switching.

[LeedsinPremierLeague]

Great Post. We have now reached a point where the main discussion issue around this game is: Has SI gone too far in trying to make it as real as possible? Is the game evolving in the right direction?
In terms of tactics I remember that before CM4 there was a fantastic tactical design where you would have the "with ball" option vs the "without ball" one. Then the field was divided in areas and you could set your team depending where the ball was and if you were attacking or defending.
Before the match engine you couldnt really understand what was going wrong with your tactic, but nowadays it is even harder to make players actually do what they are told to.
The game reached this level of success because it was the best football manager game. It still is but a lot of people are missing the good old days. Too much emphasis is being put in graphical animation! What is the next step? To design a tactic and play it like PES? That is not the reason why we love the game.
In the past 3 years I have been suggesting one thing regarding the database and I think that this could be a major breakthrough. The fans have to be as involved as possible in the game and the database is something that should be dealt by the fans, giving SI more time to perfect the game. The database should be divided in blocks (per country would be the easier way). In each country, you can easily assign members to improve the country's teams. England is the best league to play because there are more people involved...If you could do the same in the other countries, it would be fantastic.
One could then download the Italian, Spanish, German or French teams completely up to date.

[Mitja]

i haven't read the whole thread (which is great) yet but i salute all ideas here and would like to add a couple of my thoughts..

what i would like to see to change in tactical system is that it conects to training. in real life all tactical ideas are worked at training sessions, which should be represented in FM that tactical screan is part of trainig system and not seperate one. a manager should than decide at what percentage players will train his tactical ideas and individual training sessions for their improvement. just like when you want to train new PPMs now. i think this would be a perfect representation of how things work in real life, plus training would become more important than it is now (finding the right balance between team and individual training sessions).

than you'll need to decide what kind of football style you want your players to play - just like what wwfan wrote. you shouldn't be allowed to have too many different tactics at start, only a standard one (or three if managing in top level) which should than easily after some time be expended to home/attacking and awey/defensive, depending on complexity of your tactics, squad gellness and level you're managing (conference teams players need probably far more time to adopt than PL players given the same tatcical system). let's say by the start of the season any PL team should be able to have those three tactics as long as you employed them in your friendly matches (i think that's important).

i'll try to back up my ideas with real life situations (i'm not a RL manager though so i might be wrong about few things). what happens tactically when manager takes over a new club? he tries to explain his tatcical style in training sessions and starts to employ those ideas in matches. it takes some time for players to adopt to new system. more complex the tactics (structured mentality system, different passing styles, closing down...) more time it takes for players to adopt probably (this should especially be the case with lower league teams).

for example if a new manager came and brought a DVD for players to learn 15 tactics with 5 different formations which he wants to use, what would players be thinking? what i want to say here is that imo making a new and successful tactics or sets needs time, patiente and some consistancy - building on training ground, especially when trying to employ very complex tactical set-ups (juande ramos at spurs?). i don't doubt united have as many different tactics as we can imagine or at least they can easily tweak the ones they have as much as SAF wants, players can quite easily adopt to different formations and other changes becouse they're used to more or less same ideas. but all these tactics have something incomon - pretty much the same mentality, passing patterns, marking style... and that is tactical consistancy or a SYSTEM. that's something i think is widely missing in FM. it's too easy to employ direct, high tempo game in one match and possessional style in other. imo even united can't transform from one style to completly another (probably they could but they don't) just like that, i'm not saying united won't drop (in FM terms) their tempo, forward runs and closing down and increase time wasting when they're leading...

the first task a new manager needs to do tactically is to employ A SYSTEM of standard (preffered tactical style), home (attacking version) and awey (defensive version) tactics. it might be the case he uses only 1 or 2 of his tactics for a system. players generaly know exactly what is their task in given tactics. more often than not, different tactics will have quite few things incomon at least at the begining. more they differ, harder the players adopt to the system of course. more tactics a system has, harder they learn one tactics. as time goes on the manager can expand his tactical ideas, make tactics more complex, have different versions of one tactic, he can easily tweak the existing ones..

i think all these could contribute to expending a tactical and training sides of the game and tactics would become more 'building like' and not 'findind the right combination like'. also i'd like to add that everything it goes for human users should be the same for AI. i think it's a kind of a cheat if we can build complex tactics with sophisticated individual instructions and AI cannot.

all imo

[Yallii]

other than an evolution in terms of tactical GUI/system, team talks / squad interaction needs quite an expansion too because the team talks as it is have too much weighting for too little options; i do believe they should have a LOT of power but the very limited amount of interaction options nulls the fun / interesting aspect of it.

It's an extremely repetitititive part of the game though. SI should perhaps look at those sort of elements of the game. Maybe we could make rule sets? Like 'if **** is **** reply is ****'.

[underwaterblade2008]

It's an extremely repetitititive part of the game though. SI should perhaps look at those sort of elements of the game. Maybe we could make rule sets? Like 'if **** is **** reply is ****'.

Agreed team talks are a very boring repetitive element of the game, and you normally find yourself selecting the same options in the same scenario's. A set of rules you could set would be good so for instance if your players are averaging less than 6.5 you automatically say you want to see more. If a team is below you in the league you automatically say I think you can win today, etc.

Press conferences in this years game I find a total bore, another introduction which brings nothing to the enjoyment of playing the game.

Another aspect of the tactic I would love to see a massive redesign is the set piece (Free Kick and corners), I'd love to be able work out set pieces on the training ground. Tell players where to run and be able to time runners based on when the ball is delivered. You could set 8-10 set pieces up and give each one a weighting as to how often it is used.
Training could also be introduced into this situation, you could get a feeling back from coaches as to how practiced your team is at each set play.

[lawd]

First and foremost this is not a post meant to tear into SI or Fm I have been a loyal customer for over 10 yrs and love the FM series in general. Though in FM09 I have a problem.

Unlike a lot of ppl I had no difficulty in installing the game and entering codes etc, but it would have been even better to just put it in and play it.

My problem comes with some of the flaws I see in the game, and of these 2 stick out the most.

1- The revamp of the tactic system.
Now I'm not saying I want a return to the old diablo like tactics, but in this version of FM I have found the tactical aspect of the game incredibly frustrating, and unfreindly to the user. I have not got the time or patience to sit for hours on end nit picking at tactics every game, now I realise this is a management simulation game, and real life managers would nit pick on a game by game basis. But I spent 30 quid on a game which does not in turn pay me thousands a week to manage a team, it is a game. I have been through countless threads on developing tactcs, but if I was asked to explain the slider system I would have no clue, creative freedom still baffles me, as when I set no long shots and a low CF to my midfielder he takes 30 yrd shots anyway. I have a clear idea on how I want to see my team play, and it should not be so hard to translate that to the game, perhaps when in a press confrence I tell the media I want to attack with some style, or control the game, my ass man could give me helpers on where to think of having width, and mentality and clossing down etc on the sliders. tied in with this is pre season. Now Iin FM08 I was immensly proud f the tactic I created it played football I liked seeing and gave me an unbeaten run in the legue of 120+ games, so naturally I attempted to reproduce it for this years incarnation, pre season starts well with a games scoring, 6-0, 6-0, 4-0, 3-0, 3-0 and a general dominace and pleasing style, but when the seasn kicks in I can't by a goal and keep succumbing to the oppositions keeper playing long balls straight through my team, or monumentally ridculous mistakes by my players who due to the 3d engines animations compound my annoyance even more.

Which brings me to point number 2

2- 3d or not 3d that is the question.
At first I was as excited and wowed that FM would be going 3d, I couldn't wait to see dazzling runs and 30 yrd screamers. The problem is in my opinion that the ambition and idea seem not to be represented by the product. The 3d engine the a remarkable feat and step forward just doesn't capture football, the animations are repetitve and frustrating especially when a real life footballerwouldn't pass the ball of his own team mate then stand and watch the opponent take it straight through to score, or be unable to head away a long balll by an opposing keeper. I just feel the 3d engine has come to soon, and although I admire SI for taking the step forward the old saying if it aint broke don't fix it cmes to mind, and perhaps another season of 2d would have been better whilst the 3d was perfected.


The last point I will make is about the bug/patch scenario. I begrudge payin £30 for a game which isn't finished and to which I cant enjoy until said patches are realesed, I understand the pressure of deadlines, and unforseen happenings in production etc, but FM09 just feels unfinished, and a bit to real, it is a game and should first and foremost be fun, with aspects that a hardcore gamer can immerse themselves in, or hte casual gamer can pick up and enjoy.

I really don't want to complain, and I really wanted to rave out how great FM09 was, but in all honesty it just seems lacking.

[Mitja]

isn't every year the same...the game is too hard and unfinished until you adopt to new ME and final patch comes out. i find 09 much more logical compared to 08 and about as hard/easy. are you one of those who were using those crazy arrows?