Tactics testing, Opposition report

[SpecialOne Miko]

i) At the moment, the game lacks of some feedback to tell the user how his tactic is good/bad. You are supposed to be a manager, sometimes with multiple licenses, even a former star player, but you dont know if the tactic you're working on at the training ground all week gonna be right or wrong.

 

My first suggestion is:

Give us some AI teams, out of any league, to play against, to test our tactics "for free". The kind of AI teams we had in FML  i.e. Teams with different levels of skills, and playing styles. With a view on their set up (formation obviously, and TI/PI). Then the manager can freely choose against wich he's gonna test his tactics. With no injuries, no team talk, just testing.

 

ii)The opposition scout report, is a mess of stats, neither immersive or realistic.

 

My second suggestion is:

Give us the "written" opposition scout report we had (if I remember correctly) back to fm2007/2008. It was the kind of (adapted with today roles):

Hi coach, I've seen Arsenal in their last game  against Stoke at the Emirates. Arsène used a 4-2-3-1 formation with medium to high defensive line, heavy closing down, and fast tempo down the wings. The back four didnt play offside rule for what I saw.  No man marking either. Giroud had a good game, with a TM role, he scored twice. We have to be careful about Theo Walcott. His pace was devastating. He played very well, on the right wing, with an agressive winger role. Ozil was also dangerous , in a Trequartista manner, not doing much defensily, but he opened the Saints defense with lethal passing. bla bla bla....

With a link to the highlights of the scouted game, I think this is much more interesting and immersive.

[pedrosantos]

I would add mentality, team shape and TIs. Reports could become more complete depending how many times an opponent team was scouted (like the current scout reports on players)

[Karnack]

Haha!

I just logged in to write something like this. I've finally realised that I'm awful at FM and a big part of it is because I can't create a good tactic. For me it's because I just don't get enough feedback. For example:

I just started a new save with Liverpool, went with an attacking tactic focusing on overlapping wing-backs and two forwards. I tried it out during the pre-season for 8 games. Playing everything from League One teams to Roma, Chelsea and Juventus. I had immense success with the tactic, I scored over 30 goals in 8 games (3-1 against Juventus, 5-2 against Roma and 3-2 against Chelsea to name a few). Unrealistic of course, but I hoped it would give me an idea of what was to come. 3 games into the season and I have scored 0. Had a total of 3 shots on goal and shipped a total of 8 goals in the back.

Now, I assume a real world coach would have caught this problematic tactic much earlier, actually he would have seen in training that players were awkward in their roles, they couldn't really link up with their team mates, the defenders were poorly shielded etc. We can't get that data because we can't see the training and we can't talk to our players and coaches on a daily basis. So we need something.

Something along the OPs suggestion. 

[SpecialOne Miko]

1 hour ago, pedrosantos said:

I would add mentality, team shape and TIs. Reports could become more complete depending how many times an opponent team was scouted (like the current scout reports on players)

Absolutely (was too lazy to write a full report example). But yes, the scout should tell you of those too.

"they played compact football, attacking and defending like one. Very narrow off the ball, the wingbacks were huging touchline on the ball.".;and so on....

 

Yeah definitely.

[tiago_wakabayashi]

+1 for your idea

[HUNT3R]

On 8/11/2016 at 16:39, SpecialOne Miko said:

My first suggestion is:

Give us some AI teams, out of any league, to play against, to test our tactics "for free". The kind of AI teams we had in FML  i.e. Teams with different levels of skills, and playing styles. With a view on their set up (formation obviously, and TI/PI). Then the manager can freely choose against wich he's gonna test his tactics. With no injuries, no team talk, just testing.

 

This is why you can arrange friendlies in pre-season to "test" a tactic. It's a gamey idea that can't be done IRL, so why add it? If you really need to break reality, "test" it in FMT.

[SpecialOne Miko]

11 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

This is why you can arrange friendlies in pre-season to "test" a tactic. It's a gamey idea that can't be done IRL, so why add it? If you really need to break reality, "test" it in FMT.

Yes at the start of the season, but not during the season, if you want to change something. So no, this is not what I'm talking about.

[HUNT3R]

Just now, SpecialOne Miko said:

Yes at the start of the season, but not during the season, if you want to change something. So no, this is not what I'm talking about.

You haven't answered the main question though.

[SpecialOne Miko]

Just now, HUNT3R said:

You haven't answered the main question though.

Ok fair enouht.

No that's not a gamey idea, thats how it is IRL. When the manager gives the roles to the players, he can see during training if the roles complete each others well. No need to play a competition game wich could costs points. 

[HUNT3R]

Just now, SpecialOne Miko said:

Ok fair enouht.

No that's not a gamey idea, thats how it is IRL. When the manager gives the roles to the players, he can see during training if the roles complete each others well. No need to play a competition game wich could costs points. 

So then, what you're asking is for training to be expanded to see tactical concepts. That's far better than stopping time, travelling to an alternate dimension and playing against any team you want to summon.

[SpecialOne Miko]

10 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

So then, what you're asking is for training to be expanded to see tactical concepts. That's far better than stopping time, travelling to an alternate dimension and playing against any team you want to summon.

Problem is, I cant see the devs expand on training system...

[yields]

Huge +1, starting testing saves to do this personally it works well, but super annoying.

[HUNT3R]

4 minutes ago, SpecialOne Miko said:

Problem is, I cant see the devs expand on training system...

It's far more likely than the alternative, which would turn this from simulation into an arcade game. And let them decide that? If it's a decent, fleshed out idea, why not?

[SpecialOne Miko]

21 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

It's far more likely than the alternative, which would turn this from simulation into an arcade game. And let them decide that? If it's a decent, fleshed out idea, why not?

One of the bets way to go, would be to look at Pro-Evolution soccer and the way they introduced their attacking/defending philosophies

 

edit: a video is better

[borivoje213]

18 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

It's far more likely than the alternative, which would turn this from simulation into an arcade game. And let them decide that? If it's a decent, fleshed out idea, why not?

I agree with Hunter.  Think of it like a training pitch feature that you can drop into at any time (which would be unrelated and have no effect on attributes.

A sand box pitch where you select your lineup from your squad and allow your assistant to make a lineup from the remaining players, and ask him to line up "approximately" like he thinks a specific opponent might do based on their scout report (for example.

Then you could simply play it out and see what it looks like, perhaps initiate re-runs (completely new generated) of the same situations like corners/freekicks etc so you could tinker with what seems to work quite well.

...a bit like teams do in training.

[HUNT3R]

1 hour ago, borivoje213 said:

Think of it like a training pitch feature that you can drop into at any time (which would be unrelated and have no effect on attributes.

I like this, except the quoted part. I don't think it should be possible "at any time". There must be limitations. Maybe a limited amount of times you can do this per day? Or have it work in a similar way to arranging a friendly, where you can do it once only per day, but it won't 'cost' more condition than 'normal' training.

[noikeee]

1 hour ago, borivoje213 said:

I agree with Hunter.  Think of it like a training pitch feature that you can drop into at any time (which would be unrelated and have no effect on attributes.

A sand box pitch where you select your lineup from your squad and allow your assistant to make a lineup from the remaining players, and ask him to line up "approximately" like he thinks a specific opponent might do based on their scout report (for example.

Then you could simply play it out and see what it looks like, perhaps initiate re-runs (completely new generated) of the same situations like corners/freekicks etc so you could tinker with what seems to work quite well.

...a bit like teams do in training.

This is an excellent idea. Eventually it could even be expanded to full editable scenarios such as 11 vs 10 men, test specifically corners or freekicks, one team attacks and the other defends, etc.

You kind of already have this if you set up a friendly vs the reserves/U20s side, but a sandbox "training pitch" where you can edit both team's tactics and come up with specific scenarios, not bound to the timing of a real 90 minutes match, could be great. It needs to be a well-thought feature though. Surely it couldn't give you any advantage whatsoever in terms of tactical familiarity, attributes, etc (you don't want users to be forced to go through these potentially boring training sessions just go gain an edge), but I also kind of agree with Hunter that there should be some kind of limit, too. Perhaps if you decide to use the sandbox training pitch, you "lose" a normal training day?

[HUNT3R]

13 minutes ago, noikeee said:

Perhaps if you decide to use the sandbox training pitch, you "lose" a normal training day?

That was my thinking, but yes, the details of how to implement such a thing is key.

[AFCBeer]

One thing I'd like to see is a proper link between work on the training ground and tactical fluency. I know there is the tactics Match Preparation but it's not a particularly strong feature of the game. 

Think of the successful sides in real life. Most have a well defined style of play developed over months, even years on the training pitch. It's not because the manager selected tactics match prep for 12 games!

Many years ago a version of the game allowed you to assign specific training activities. The rest of the game (may even have been CM then) wasn't really sophisticated enough for choices to have an obvious impact then and the feature was unpopular. 

My suggestion would be to bring part of this back with a direct link to your tactics. So if you want to play a high tempo pressing tactic, you can only reach tactical fluidity if you choose training sessions emphasing those skills. 

It would be hard to design this without being too complicated, but I'm sure if it was clearly explained in game it would be possible. 

[eriktous]

On 9/22/2016 at 19:35, AFCBeer said:

clearly explained in game

Yeah, that's really one of SI's strengths...

[Weston]

On 8/11/2016 at 09:39, SpecialOne Miko said:

ii)The opposition scout report, is a mess of stats, neither immersive or realistic.

 

My second suggestion is:

Give us the "written" opposition scout report we had (if I remember correctly) back to fm2007/2008. It was the kind of (adapted with today roles):

Hi coach, I've seen Arsenal in their last game  against Stoke at the Emirates. Arsène used a 4-2-3-1 formation with medium to high defensive line, heavy closing down, and fast tempo down the wings. The back four didnt play offside rule for what I saw.  No man marking either. Giroud had a good game, with a TM role, he scored twice. We have to be careful about Theo Walcott. His pace was devastating. He played very well, on the right wing, with an agressive winger role. Ozil was also dangerous , in a Trequartista manner, not doing much defensily, but he opened the Saints defense with lethal passing. bla bla bla....

With a link to the highlights of the scouted game, I think this is much more interesting and immersive.

I also wish opposition reports included more on the actual players. What's the point of an opposition report if when I go to do opposition instructions I can't see the attributes of any of the opposition players? I find myself manually sending scouts out to do team reports of upcoming opposition to get more info on their squad. Opposition report would be greatly improved if they included more of this, more in-depth suggestions on opposition instructions, etc.

[pedrosantos]

Looking at the released fm17 video, scout reports will be much more complete including opponent mentality and team shape, closing down and so on, which is a great improvement. What I would like to see is eventual changes during a match also being enable in some screen. Please, don't let the improvement just stay with the scout report

[Harrycorn]

On 11 August 2016 at 15:39, SpecialOne Miko said:

i) At the moment, the game lacks of some feedback to tell the user how his tactic is good/bad. You are supposed to be a manager, sometimes with multiple licenses, even a former star player, but you dont know if the tactic you're working on at the training ground all week gonna be right or wrong.

 

My first suggestion is:

Give us some AI teams, out of any league, to play against, to test our tactics "for free". The kind of AI teams we had in FML  i.e. Teams with different levels of skills, and playing styles. With a view on their set up (formation obviously, and TI/PI). Then the manager can freely choose against wich he's gonna test his tactics. With no injuries, no team talk, just testing.

 

ii)The opposition scout report, is a mess of stats, neither immersive or realistic.

 

My second suggestion is:

Give us the "written" opposition scout report we had (if I remember correctly) back to fm2007/2008. It was the kind of (adapted with today roles):

Hi coach, I've seen Arsenal in their last game  against Stoke at the Emirates. Arsène used a 4-2-3-1 formation with medium to high defensive line, heavy closing down, and fast tempo down the wings. The back four didnt play offside rule for what I saw.  No man marking either. Giroud had a good game, with a TM role, he scored twice. We have to be careful about Theo Walcott. His pace was devastating. He played very well, on the right wing, with an agressive winger role. Ozil was also dangerous , in a Trequartista manner, not doing much defensily, but he opened the Saints defense with lethal passing. bla bla bla....

With a link to the highlights of the scouted game, I think this is much more interesting and immersive.

Training needs to be more interactive, like being able to watch training matches. I've had to start a second game to experiment with tactics to implement in my main game. 

Also agree that the opposition scouting reports are next to useless. I have to trawl through the detailed team stats to try and figure out what type of style the opposition plays ie. number of crosses per game, headed goals, average possession etc...

[Powermonger]

On 9/29/2016 at 18:24, pedrosantos said:

Looking at the released fm17 video, scout reports will be much more complete including opponent mentality and team shape, closing down and so on, which is a great improvement. What I would like to see is eventual changes during a match also being enable in some screen. Please, don't let the improvement just stay with the scout report

I like some of the updates they have made to the scouting reports from what I can tell from the teaser trailer however I am reserving judgement until I see it in the flesh because from the scout reports we get now and what is alluded to in the teaser, they still seem woefully inadequate to what real life managers would get. I have a whole post drafted in my head ready to write up and post if FM17 doesn't live up to what is required for scout reports.

[pedrosantos]

2 hours ago, Powermonger said:

I like some of the updates they have made to the scouting reports from what I can tell from the teaser trailer however I am reserving judgement until I see it in the flesh because from the scout reports we get now and what is alluded to in the teaser, they still seem woefully inadequate to what real life managers would get. I have a whole post drafted in my head ready to write up and post if FM17 doesn't live up to what is required for scout reports.

Yeah, really never understood why things like Mentality, Team Shape, player roles duties were always left out, both before a match and during a match, but too late is better than never so lets just hope for the better.

[Powermonger]

1 hour ago, pedrosantos said:

Yeah, really never understood why things like Mentality, Team Shape, player roles duties were always left out, both before a match and during a match, but too late is better than never so lets just hope for the better.

Yes, no idea why player roles are left out, that should be there at a minimum because scouts would sure to relate this back to the manager when they scout opposing teams. As it stands the information is rather basic and doesn't really tell you anything. It's the equivalent of someone just going to a football news site and copying and pasting a basic overview to the manager.

On 9/22/2016 at 03:29, SpecialOne Miko said:

One of the bets way to go, would be to look at Pro-Evolution soccer and the way they introduced their attacking/defending philosophies

 

edit: a video is better

I like their tactical setting diagrams, makes visualising things much better. I wish FM had these kinds of inclusions.

[Fosse]

The opposition scouting is poor in its current guise, "Here's a load of information I should have analysed, here's a few more ambiguous stats and of course a few vital things I've not done.".

[Powermonger]

22 minutes ago, Fosse said:

The opposition scouting is poor in its current guise, "Here's a load of information I should have analysed, here's a few more ambiguous stats and of course a few vital things I've not done.".

Pretty much.

Just going over the new scout report page, some of the items listed are confusing. Pressing style for instance says "Closing Down"?? which makes no sense. I can only think that they have deliberately changes some text for the teaser to hide some changes. Actually even Mentality says Adventurous which is not currently in game.

 

[HUNT3R]

5 minutes ago, Powermonger said:

Actually even Mentality says Adventurous which is not currently in game.

 

It doesn't have to be in the game for this to be true. Any Mentality above Standard can arguably be described as adventurous.

[Powermonger]

2 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

It doesn't have to be in the game for this to be true. Any Mentality above Standard can arguably be described as adventurous.

True I had thought of that, just didn't write it

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.