FM09 - Will it be worth it

[chopper99]

i really feel like crying right now

but none of them stopped the AI midfielder to score a 40 yarder on the 95th minute, a scorcher which was the only single shot on goal on their behalf, while my keeper on the goal whose CA is 170ish was gazing amazedly

i really am annoyed with myself cause i keep on repeating myself.

if people can still say "you must tweak your tactics" then i have nothing more to say, they are definitely missing the whole point of this discussion.

If a player with low shooting ability is scoring 40 yarders against you then you're obviously not closing this player down. Even a crap player, if given free reign to shoot whenever they want, will get one right eventually. I'm sorry, this is me again saying that this is down to your tactics, but that's because it is. And I say this for two reasons:

1 - This doesn't happen to me and it doesn't happen to plenty of other people I know who play this game. It may happen very, very rarely but that's fine with me as these things happen.

2 - I've known people complain about the exact same problems in the tactics forum only to have someone like wwfan, isuckatfm, ched or another of the useful posters help them out and help them improve their tactical settings to combat these problems. I've actually seen people overcome these problems by taking on the advice given to them and implementing it.

So for the two reasons above I stand firm in my opinion that a lot of the problems brought up in this thread are entirely down to something the user is or isn't doing correctly. I agree that it's too difficult to be able to tell why something is or isn't working, but that's a topic for another thread and something that will hopefully be improved in '09 with the introduction of more useful ass men. But the fact remains that these problems, no matter how difficult to identify and overcome, are down to something your doing and can for the most part be solved by doing something else.

[turbinator]

after watching the sigames video on youtube i can honestly say this game looks amazing, but my main concern is that is going to need at least a duo core, 2 gb system to run this game, which i havent got..has the SPECS been releases yet. cant see them anywhere, and the game itself there is loads to do i cant help thinking that maybe just maybe there is TOO much to be doing on this game..

[Mitja]

why don't we have a possibillity to see how AI makes their tactical set up? it would solve almost all our problems and we wouldn't have to read hundreds of pages in T&TT forum, to figure out what for example, mentality in conection with passing style meens. hmmm...

[chopper99]

why don't we have a possibillity to see how AI makes their tactical set up? it would solve almost all our problems and we wouldn't have to read hundreds of pages in T&TT forum, to figure out what for example, mentality in conection with passing style meens. hmmm...

Because the game would then lose a lot of its challenge, and it's that challenge that keeps countless people playing and buying the game. With total transparency you would never need to learn the game yourself and it would become very boring very quickly. The AI needs to provide a decent challenge to the user to keep the game interesting.

[Millie]

this really became a ****ing contest, which is sad...

it shouldn't have been so difficult to understand the moaners' complaints from a point of view which does not carry "you pathetic losers, you moan cause you can't win" in it...

Nobody has said that. Only those who wish to criticise the game in this thread have refused to see the other side of the argument so far. Just because you don't get the answer you want doesn't mean people aren't trying to help. Re-read what wwfan has said after his tongue in cheek comments about "it's you tactics" please.

[Mitja]

Because the game would then lose a lot of its challenge, and it's that challenge that keeps countless people playing and buying the game. With total transparency you would never need to learn the game yourself and it would become very boring very quickly. The AI needs to provide a decent challenge to the user to keep the game interesting.

I wasn't thinking about that you'd be able to check how AI's playing at any time, just some basic principles. having in mind that Ai doesn't use fancy formations or any other cheat, it's fair to say that even a poor AI manager is better than most humans, imho. and that's a good thing, it makes the game harder.... there was a very interesting thread written by Abramovich a few years ago about how AI was setting their tactics.

[sven78]

This is beginning to hurt now.

The only person who is making an assumption that one slider notch makes a difference is the OP. If you are thinking like that then there is no wonder you are struggling. There will be fundamental structural flaws in your tactic if you are constantly seeing the scenario you describe. That some of these flaws still allow you to dominate possession and generate high shot counts is down to an ME weakness that I have already detailed in the thread. That type of dominance will win you a lot of matches, but it will also generate weird looking results. If you continue to play in a manner that exploits this weakness, you will continue going round and round the same frustrating routines. If, however, you sit down and think:

How would I play against a team that has parked the bus in real life?

What would I do to protect a narrow lead with 15 mins to go in real life?

How would I play a closely matched team at home and away in real life?

How would I play a much better team away in real life?

.. and then designed a set of tactics with this in mind you would see FM08 in a whole new light.

There is no such thing as a magic tactic, although knap's version of kimz is probably the best plug and play there is. FM is not about designing a super tactic and letting it play. It is a management simulation. If you ask yourself the above questions and design a set of tactics to deal with each scenario you will be managing the team. There are an awful lot of people who do this and get a huge amount of enjoyment at playing FM.

WWFan I appreciate your comments and I don't want to turn this into a thread where I pick up on the comments you make and you pick up on comments I make but one point which I will make from the above actually helps me explain my ultimate frustration with the game.

If I have created a tactic which keeps good possession and creates lots of chances (I don't count 30yd shots as a chance, I am talking about good passing around the box with consistently double figure chances from maybe 12 yards and closer) then exactly what is it that prevents my 17+ finisher from finishing atleast 1 of these. If morale is high, fitness high then I honestly don't know what "fundamental structural flaw" there is. Unfortunately its comments like this that make me, and possibly others, think that other things are at work.

Honestly if I wasn't creating chances or was loads of goals leaking goals, I have a knowledge of football so would have an idea what to do but when I a dominate possession, create 15+ clear chances each game and I continually get beat by very late winners or draw to very late equalisers then you have to admit that the game is overly harsh on the human player for not understanding the correlation of the sliders. I mean my striker not finishing is not to do with any of the defensive sliders so it is obviously the attacking ones i.e creative freedom etc. My striker is described as finishing with power so I tried low creative freedom in the hope that he would simply do what was natural to him i.e fire in powerful shots. I wasn't happy with his finishing ability so set creative freedom higher on the scale assuming that it gave him more license to find the net. Results of his finishing stayed the same regardless. Hopefully this example shows you that I do think about it and don't just complain for the sake of it but honestly my frustrations just got the better of me having put the game down for abit, hence the thread kicking off.

This thread has probably ran its course so to finish off then this is my final thought.

My biggest gripe is not winning the games that stats and all round play should be rewarded with. I can accept defeat if I get out played, no problem (Champs League example from previous post). What I cant accept is dominating possession game after game, creating hatfuls of chances game after game and continually coming away with nothing. This simply does not happen IRL and I can't accept something in my tactic is wrong or I wouldn't keep possession or create chances. Anyone who says this happens is deluded. Before everyone replies offering up 1 off games when it has happened then I am aware of this happening IRL once or twice in a season.........what I am talking about is runs of 7 and 8 games, followed by a couple of wins and then another 7 or 8 games.

Taking this further then, if for arguments sake I accept its my tactics that are to blame, then how can the AI teams, not 1 team.......all teams, consistently be able to break late in the game and score with there one chance. For me this is where the game is not simulating real life football as many people wildly claim it does. If you are dominating the game, creating chances then it is obvious your opponents will tire so how is it that the AI players never fatigue like the human players, how come the AI player can switch to a 4-2-4 tactic with players with low adaptability stats but somehow click into gear immediately and change the way they are playing despite having been pushed back and forced to defend for the previous 80mins. Honestly sometimes I found myself laughing at what unfolds when the AI manged teams switched to 4-2-4. I could probably start a new thread just on the 4-2-4 thing but I won't. My biggest problem with it is that the AI gets the advantage of it every single time to there advantage not detrement. All the threads I read are how to defend against it or how to protect a lead from it...................this is absloute nonsense. Why should you have to. Facts are facts if a team is getting beat at Old Trafford 1-0 they would never switch to 4-2-4 with 10mins to go because they would get an absloute thumping 9.9999 times out of 10. Honestly wouldn't happen. Also every team does it. Not one tactical genius AI manager.......every single one without fail. I have now got the impression that it was put in the game for certain situations however it is now used far to commonly by the AI with some ridiculous results. Maybe its SI's own diablo tactic.............thats a joke by the way.

Anyway hopefully people who enjoy the game and dislike us "whingers" may get some appreciation that my frustrations are not just put on here for the sake of moaning. I do genuingly have issues with the game that I don't understand and logic tells me that something is wrong. I have used tactical bibles etc and that is how I have managed to create tactics which have won me leagues but none in my case have eradicated the little things which continually ruin season after season for me.

Thanks all for your contributions to the thread........I admit my opening post was a touch stinging but I like to read peoples thoughts and regardless if they agree or diagree with me they are your thoughts. See you in FM2009............of course I will still try it out.

[Guest hayta]

i give up on this topic

thanx and good luck to you all people..

[isuckatfm]

Here's my take on it:-

For hayta, knap and similar posters of the past the issue is not about tactics. The issue is about micro events that appear to them to be heavily biased towards the AI:-

- a player with crap attributes scores a long range screamer

- their top class striker misses sitter after sitter yet the crappy AI striker scores with his only chance of the game

- AI mini me striker beats their 'beast in the air' centre back to head home and win the match

- AI striker with lower anticipation, acceleration, pace, determination, morale, condition and any other attribute you can consider reacts quicker to a through ball to slot home an equaliser in the 90th minute

- AI players react quicker to rebounds despite attribute differentials and score from said rebounds

- quality Human managed defender makes poor backpass under limited pressure which AI striker runs onto and scores

etc., etc.

At the root of this is posters like hayta see these micro events go against them far more often than they see them go for them. This has brought them to the conclusion that there is an in built AI bias towards what I term a successful event. Thus there is absolutely no amount of posting of evidence or otherwise that will convince them that this is not the case. The SI designers have always stated that the match engine does not differentiate between Human and AI managers, it just crunches the numbers and generates an output. But posters like hayta see in their games a consistency in the micro events that suggests to them this is not the case.

I see their point of view and understand the frustration but fundamentally it comes down to whether or not you believe the afore mentioned statement

The match engine does not differentiate between Human and AI managers

If your experience of this is that this statement is false then there is nothing anyone here can do to convince you otherwise. I say this from experience of a thread documenting evidence of this over at FM-Britain

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=7738

The poster showed many screenshots of his team dominating and not winning, the AI getting the rub of the green, etc. all to show that the game had an in built mechanism that prevented him from overachieving. In said thread a poster by the name of SI Forums Rock!!! posted identical types of evidence showing the very things the thread starter documented as 'dodgy and going for the AI consistently' actually happening in favour of the human manager.

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=7738&st=550

Now despite this the thread starter is still convinced that the game is out to get him, that it is him against the AI and that by hook or by crook the game will 'beat him'. He speaks of winning titles and being successful yet the same old things keep on happening. He still holds true to that conclusion

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=8656

and I honestly believe that nothing will ever convince him that there is no AI bias at work.

Don't get me wrong I see these things happen to me aswell but the game is attempting to simulate football which is not always deterministic. Usually the cream will rise to the top (which has been my experience on 08) but there will be matches where things just don't go your way. If the engine was work on the basis of only a given set of attributes can do a certain thing it would become horribly repetitive and predictable.

- a crap striker can finish a one on one

- a midfielder with crap passing attributes can occassionally hit that perfect through ball

- a generally poor keeper can have a good day

If you see these things happen regularly in your game against you then it isn't really 100% explainable by 'it's your tactics'. But the simple fact remains that if you aren't willing to accept this statement (again)

The match engine does not differentiate between Human and AI managers

you will never get enjoyment from the game and you will always be convinced that something suspect is going on under the hood. No amount of posting by others will convince you otherwise.

[chopper99]

I wasn't thinking about that you'd be able to check how AI's playing at any time, just some basic principles. having in mind that Ai doesn't use fancy formations or any other cheat, it's fair to say that even a poor AI manager is better than most humans, imho. and that's a good thing, it makes the game harder.... there was a very interesting thread written by Abramovich a few years ago about how AI was setting their tactics.

I remember a thread like this from '07 which was very interesting. The guy who wrote it had edited the database to make someone like Alex Fergison his assistant manager and then gone on holiday so he could somehow check the tactical settings that SAF was using when controlling his team.

There were some very interesting results, especially when it came to free roles (I think about 6 players in the team had free roles or something).

But now in the game the best way to get an idea of how the AI managers are playing is to watch extended highlights or full games. This is pretty realistic, as the real life equivalent of being able to see the AI managers tactical settings would be for a manger to bug another managers office, training ground and dressing room.

Is it more fun for it to be more realistic? For me yes, but of course for others the answer will be no.

[MrPompey]

AI Cracking tactics. Didn't Man City with a Manager named after your names sake Sven play an interesting formation which earned them good results up until Dec 07 in the Premier. From Jan 2008 onwards ALL premiership clubs found them out playing tactics to counter it. Man City's winning spree came to an end and they struggled to find a top league position that they enjoyed earlier.

It happens in real life also. If you think FM08 is frustrating how did you feel at half time watching the England game on Saturday. Playing this game on FM08 would you also have expected a better result at half time, I expect so! I think sometimes football is frustrating in real life and much of this is incorporated into the match engine. There are few easy win matches anymore.

Its only right Sven has opportunity to detail his frustration and expect a logical response, some of the replies are bit disheartening. Think grey instead of black and white all the time

I think what would help is if we see more explanation behind the interaction of formations and tactic opporuinuties. This is best done in 2 ways, a) for the average gamer who is happy with making a change, expecting some change on the pitch but not worried about what happens under the hood. Many gamers play FM this b) for the enthusiasts there needs to be much more detail behind the tactics and combinations explained. No-one is expecting to find a win all tactic, well I hope not, but an understanding of how the tactics interact and then how to select / buy / find players that fit. Alternatively study the players you have and select tactics with tweaks and formations that best suit the players. I do wonder if sometimes the former approach is taken when perhaps it should be the latter? With a better understanding of the principles I think frustrating for some would be reduced

[Goofus]

As usual, a great response from isuckatfm.

And to the OP, it's great you have not abandoned the thread and have actually came back to listen to our advice, unlike other 'moaners'(no offence Moaner) who make a thread and then disappear faster than Ronaldo with 2 transsexuals.

I would love to see this thread continue. Post your views, don't give up on this thread.

[Rashidi]

Sven, I don't know if this will help you, but this is what I've noticed. In different leagues within the same country you sometimes need to adapt. I play different in lower leagues, usually more direct/high tempo and I try to overpower them with pace. When I get promoted I usually find that my squad gets whipped unless I make a fundamental change to my team. I still maintain the same tactic. Against better teams I have one style of playing and against weaker teams I have another. My tactic stays the same I just make small changes to tempo/defensive line and width.

You are on the right track with getting high possession stats which is generally the right idea, sometimes you need a bit more variety in styles of attack up front to make that extra difference. Its not uncommon to find the best managers having one base tactic which has at least 5 ways to score. I could score with a direct style of attack down one flank, one touch passing through the middle, direct punt to a hold up man who lays it off to a striker with high acceleration and off the ball. Sometimes if you find that you have a lot of possession and find that you can't break them down, its good to ease up and hit them on the counter.

All these are possible with one tactic. The biggest challenge is knowing how to interpret the 2d action, and the biggest tool to have in your arsenal is Opposition Instructions and having a split view.

This discussion should really move to the Training and tactics forum where its more suited. However we do not condone threads that say the AI cheats, cos it can't.

[Rashidi]

And goofus..please don't abuse Ronaldo..whichever one he may be..cheers

[Goofus]

Sorry, probably went a bit overboard there.

Just taking the mickey out of him, however,no ill-will intended.

And yes, I too am getting high possession stats, but my finishing sometimes is dire.

[Guest hayta]

i am still around just crying with my condemned career down the corner... please don't touch me...

[Goofus]

There's no need to overreact, and i have no intention of touching you. I'm thousands of miles away anyway.

[Guest hayta]

once you imply someone had fled the topic then you make them overreact...

i only did not see further discussion as unnecessary, cause everyone was repeating themselves, i decided not to write anything else, if you don't mind?

[Goofus]

Wasn't the OP the Sven dude?

[MrPompey]

JUP, Sven was the OP, maybe he'll retirn sometime soon .......

[sven78]

JUP, Sven was the OP, maybe he'll retirn sometime soon .......

I' m back.

To pick up on a valid point you made about the England v Andorra game. As I said in my post this does happen I accept this, poorer teams can frustrate so called superior teams on occasions........the point I was making was slightly different. Andorra stifled England, didn't let them play and got men behind the ball. What I experienced was nothing like this. I wasn't getting stifled. I was playing my version of what could be described as a 4-2-4 or an attacking 4-3-3 and continually cutting through the opponents. Had I been stifled and not been creating chances I would have known and identified this as an obvious problem, however as I was creating chances and retaining possession I just became totally at a loss as to how to rectify it.

Thanks for the post Rashidi. Some interesting points. I have an Anderlecht game running at the mo. Only a few games in. Will have another bash taking on board some of your comments / observations.

[drambuie2]

Just reading through this thread with some interest. Must admit i'm one person who has variously expressed

annoyance/frustrations etc much the same as the OP at times.

I still get to the point in my games - and yes i'm still playing it to my annoyance at times - that I wonder how a crappy midfielder with 8 tackling and

10 passing can string together 38 out of 40 passes, make 5 of 5 tackles against my far superior players. Or a goalie

who concedes 2 goals per game on average suddenly gets an 8 rating and seems to have 6 arms. Or a bottom of the league

team with poor to very poor morale and no wins for ages pulls out a world beating performance against me who has players with

high ratings, superb morale etc. Not once or twice but seemingly much too often for comfort/believability. I rant and rage -

I really do understand football - I have watched it for 30 years yet this knowledge hardly translates to the game.

But ... there doesn't really seem to be a conspiracy; faults and problems sure (4-2-4 too effective etc), but no bias. To me almost all of the frustration is the 'hidden' nature of the

engine and sliders as has been said many times. I would like to see more on why this happens - why certain formations work/don't work, how those poorer

players are doing what they do. Watching the engine at times isn't a solution for me as I want to play through seasons pretty fast.

What I would like is simpler controls - tell my fullbacks to press on and overlap - not confusing sliders. Tell my players to keep the damn ball on the floor - not some combination of

hard to fathom sliders that still ends up with balls lumped up the pitch to my short arse forward. (Hmm maybe England managers have sliders too considering

the useless direct passing they always seem to try). Guess though these things will not come now as the engine gets more complex.

However I will add that as mentioned above I get more than my fair share of these 'AI fixed' issues! I score in 1 chance and the AI has 10 at times. I play teams

off the park when I shouldn't. My goalie suddenly plays a blinder and my striker suddenly hits a hot run of form. Football irl isn't as 'random' as FM seems to be at times

but certainly isn't a simple matter of x is better than y so x wins. Us whingers do tend to ignore the rub of the green when we get it!

Despite my whinging i'll almost certainly buy the new one.

[Moaner]

As usual, a great response from isuckatfm.

And to the OP, it's great you have not abandoned the thread and have actually came back to listen to our advice, unlike other 'moaners'(no offence Moaner) who make a thread and then disappear faster than Ronaldo with 2 transsexuals.

I would love to see this thread continue. Post your views, don't give up on this thread.

none taken. and im still around, don't you worry. my laptops gone tits up. i lost all my FM stuff- the lot.