Unrealistic pass completion rate in lower leagues - the death of direct game.

More data:

Just finished playing the best team in the league at home, take a look at match momentum:

Direct Tactic:

Short Tactic:

In case I haven't yet proven my point, take a look at league's attributes comparison:

 

We have one of the worst passing and technique attributes in the whole league in the lower league, how can I be doing so much better playing tiki-taka style against the best team in the league?? It's just blowing my mind.

Edited December 14, 2021 by kjarus1

It is something that our QA team will look into, but this is going to be a very difficult area to investigate. 

Yup, There needs to be more inaccuracies which was suppose to be a new feature this year. The lack of intercepted passes is also a culprit here.

It is a complex issue but it is a bug we are looking into, some initial thoughts from the QA team detail that there's a lot of first time short passes being played which are having this impact.

What would be the best way to softfix lower league teams racking up unrealistic possession stats? As currently it's ruining my enjoyment from the game.

Should I use an in game editor to alter opposition managers preferred style of play or alter something else? Or perhaps start a new save on FM21? Thanks.

I'm afraid we're not aware of any concrete soft fixes at the moment, I'm sorry. 

Can only thank you for the patience shown so far, we're doing everything we can. 

Appreciate the reply...I've loaded up my old save on FM21 to keep me occupied till the winter update comes out. Hopefully there'll be an improvement when that comes out though I understand it isn't something that's likely to be easy to fix. Still, good to have some feedback on the matter.

Exactly as Michele says, the short and medium passages are perfectly average.

The problem is the number of long passes made, which is below average.

By increasing the number of long passes the average naturally goes down.

The problem will be to make the defence understand that when they are under pressure they should not throw meaningless balls....

These updated statistics will certainly be of use to you.

Are you planning on fixing this in the next big Update?

Thanks!

It's not something I'm at liberty to disclose I'm afraid. Sorry. 

This whole issue isn't limited to passing. There is a huge problem with the discrepancy in players ability and their suitability for a certain style of play.

The problem is that it is nearly non-existent, the game is far too tactics driven and players (apart from goal scoring maybe) don't make enough of a difference to styles.

If i have a team of players with passing of 5 to 8 and I ask them to play tiki taka, they should TRY but it should be obvious in the game that you just don't have the players for it.

I don't think this is a short term fix but for the next FM, players stats need to start mattering more in this game.

You can play the short passing game in league because the engine is not weighted enough towards stat checks for players. I'm seeing players with extremely low vision and passing play line breaking passes CONSTANTLY and CONSISTENTLY.

It's all linked to player stats and their impact on the engine.

On 07/02/2022 at 21:27, TheArsenal63 said:

This whole issue isn't limited to passing. There is a huge problem with the discrepancy in players ability and their suitability for a certain style of play.

The problem is that it is nearly non-existent, the game is far too tactics driven and players (apart from goal scoring maybe) don't make enough of a difference to styles.

If i have a team of players with passing of 5 to 8 and I ask them to play tiki taka, they should TRY but it should be obvious in the game that you just don't have the players for it.

I don't think this is a short term fix but for the next FM, players stats need to start mattering more in this game.

You can play the short passing game in league because the engine is not weighted enough towards stat checks for players. I'm seeing players with extremely low vision and passing play line breaking passes CONSTANTLY and CONSISTENTLY.

It's all linked to player stats and their impact on the engine.

This is definitely part of it, but some of it is likely also tied to the bizarre risk evaluation behaviour of players in their own defensive third.

You will regularly see - and frankly this is kind of terrifying to me - players pass the ball back to their own GK in their own box with opposing players everywhere around them. I frequently see backpasses to the GK right after corners with 5-6 opposing players still in the box. At the same time, however, getting CBs to hit long diagonals - even with the right role and the right PPMs - is incredibly difficult.

Something is fundamentally off with respect to which passes players think are on or not.

16 hours ago, Sneaky Pete said:

This is definitely part of it, but some of it is likely also tied to the bizarre risk evaluation behaviour of players in their own defensive third.

You will regularly see - and frankly this is kind of terrifying to me - players pass the ball back to their own GK in their own box with opposing players everywhere around them. I frequently see backpasses to the GK right after corners with 5-6 opposing players still in the box. At the same time, however, getting CBs to hit long diagonals - even with the right role and the right PPMs - is incredibly difficult.

Something is fundamentally off with respect to which passes players think are on or not.

What I imagine is happening is that SI are in constant battle between performance and realism. If the engine has to be very accurate to player stats, all 36 of them, it would be burdensome so they weigh checking some stats and not others or at least not accurately.

I really think one of the biggest issues for FM is their low pc requirements. It needs to work on ancient laptops and PCs and it hinders their ability to make a better match engine as well as better graphics.

Any news on this bug?

I really hope SI can fix this Possession Bug in the march Update. 

It's still the same information as before - we can't confirm specifics in advance of patch releases. In part because the situation can always change.

Didn't see this in the patch notes. Can anyone confirm if this was tweaked?

32 minutes ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

Didn't see this in the patch notes. Can anyone confirm if this was tweaked?

+1

1 hour ago, Mars_Blackmon said:

Didn't see this in the patch notes. Can anyone confirm if this was tweaked?

I can confirm it has not been tweaked at all, the match engine is actually now a lot worse than it already was. good job SI!

Everyone, it's not the news you're looking for, it's not been tweaked for this update, nor do we think we will have anything concrete to implement in FM22. 

It boils down to the complexity of the issue and the amount of testing we would feel comfortable with before releasing a change like this into the game. 

Something to keep in mind is that flatly comparing real passing date to FM isn't reliable:

• There are different ways of tracking a pass, and different data providers will provide different stats. We use SciSports and they typically have higher completion rates that the others. 
• We will always know the AI's intention in game, unlike in real life. Think of a fluke cross that ends up in the net - pundits would debate this post match, but we know the true intention and could track it accurately. The same goes for clearances that end up at the feet of a teammate, for example, we can say with certainty if the AI meant it as a pass or a hit and hope. 

This isn't to say we don't feel there needs to be changes - we're not saying everything is fine.

We will always look to make improvements, we just have to err on the side of caution with this particular issue. Simply put, more time is needed to make a change this underlyingly big. 

I can only apologise, but the issue is right up the top in terms of priority and we will do everything in our power to ensure it's improved upon for next years edition. I was only informed yesterday that this wasn't quite making the cut or else we wouldn't have kicked the can this far down the road. 

 

 

On 25/02/2022 at 10:30, Kyle Brown said:

Everyone, it's not the news you're looking for, it's not been tweaked for this update, nor do we think we will have anything concrete to implement in FM22. 

It boils down to the complexity of the issue and the amount of testing we would feel comfortable with before releasing a change like this into the game. 

Something to keep in mind is that flatly comparing real passing date to FM isn't reliable:

• There are different ways of tracking a pass, and different data providers will provide different stats. We use SciSports and they typically have higher completion rates that the others. 
• We will always know the AI's intention in game, unlike in real life. Think of a fluke cross that ends up in the net - pundits would debate this post match, but we know the true intention and could track it accurately. The same goes for clearances that end up at the feet of a teammate, for example, we can say with certainty if the AI meant it as a pass or a hit and hope. 

This isn't to say we don't feel there needs to be changes - we're not saying everything is fine.

We will always look to make improvements, we just have to err on the side of caution with this particular issue. Simply put, more time is needed to make a change this underlyingly big. 

I can only apologise, but the issue is right up the top in terms of priority and we will do everything in our power to ensure it's improved upon for next years edition. I was only informed yesterday that this wasn't quite making the cut or else we wouldn't have kicked the can this far down the road. 

 

 

This is the exact response many people were looking for if things don't work out. SI has suffered in the past few years because of a lack of communication , you guys had a habit of completely stone walling people who bought your games and completely ignoring or not communicating with them on aspects of your match engine.

I am happy to see that communication has improved, that was one area that this forum was terrible at for many years. In fact I stopped going to the general discussion because of people blatantly telling others there are no bugs in the match engine and it was all perfect.

But once you acknowledged the issue and have a plan to fix it, most people will be more willingly to accept it rather than letting them become frustrated and leave as customers.

On 26/02/2022 at 20:41, TheArsenal63 said:

This is the exact response many people were looking for if things don't work out. SI has suffered in the past few years because of a lack of communication , you guys had a habit of completely stone walling people who bought your games and completely ignoring or not communicating with them on aspects of your match engine.

I am happy to see that communication has improved, that was one area that this forum was terrible at for many years. In fact I stopped going to the general discussion because of people blatantly telling others there are no bugs in the match engine and it was all perfect.

But once you acknowledged the issue and have a plan to fix it, most people will be more willingly to accept it rather than letting them become frustrated and leave as customers.

Agree - perfect response. 

This is gamebreaking for me so I won't be playing FM 22 sadly, but feel much more satisfied in the understanding it's a known issue that SI are trying to resolve so fingers crossed for FM 23. 

5 hours ago, dannyfc said:

Agree - perfect response. 

This is gamebreaking for me so I won't be playing FM 22 sadly, but feel much more satisfied in the understanding it's a known issue that SI are trying to resolve so fingers crossed for FM 23. 

I feel the same way. It's gamebreaking. I had some fun with FM22, a lot of improvement this year, but I just can't ignore this issue. I'm glad SI is working on a fix for next edition. 

I will wait for FM23.

On 25/02/2022 at 02:30, Kyle Brown said:

• There are different ways of tracking a pass, and different data providers will provide different stats. We use SciSports and they typically have higher completion rates that the others. 
• We will always know the AI's intention in game, unlike in real life. Think of a fluke cross that ends up in the net - pundits would debate this post match, but we know the true intention and could track it accurately. The same goes for clearances that end up at the feet of a teammate, for example, we can say with certainty if the AI meant it as a pass or a hit and hope. 

As others have said, Kyle, this was a great response. While some might consider this gamebreaking, I actually find the SciSports data-tracking discrepancy pretty convincing but I was curious if there was somewhere I could read more about their metrics compared to others? 

On 02/03/2022 at 07:35, dannyfc said:

Agree - perfect response. 

This is gamebreaking for me so I won't be playing FM 22 sadly, but feel much more satisfied in the understanding it's a known issue that SI are trying to resolve so fingers crossed for FM 23. 

 

On 02/03/2022 at 12:47, lukavski said:

I feel the same way. It's gamebreaking. I had some fun with FM22, a lot of improvement this year, but I just can't ignore this issue. I'm glad SI is working on a fix for next edition. 

I will wait for FM23.

 

 

I just want to reiterate what Kyle said incase it was missed:

On 25/02/2022 at 10:30, Kyle Brown said:

There are different ways of tracking a pass, and different data providers will provide different stats. We use SciSports and they typically have higher completion rates that the others. 

 

If the SciSports metric is always going to higher then opta ( or whichever stats company you choose to reference for comparison between FM and real life ), you have to also take this into consideration when looking at the stats themselves.

We are working internally on numerous things and pass completion was higher then we would like. But if you're going to take stats alone on their own, we have found in other cases when statistical issues have been raised that it was down to the fact we calculate the stat differently within the game then the event being an actual issue. 

Not saying that was the case here this was an issue and isn't where we would like it to be. Although there are certain events counted as passes that wouldn't have been in real life which added to the complexity and severity of the issue from a visual statistical perspective.

Just wanted to make this a little clearer as it seems this was glossed over a little. Yes we acknowledge this as an issue but there also factors making it appear worse then you feel it is on paper.

 

Thanks everyone and thank you for raising it and contributing to this thread.