mingonças Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 I started in the last sunday a new online save with a friend and we both went to Campeonato de Portugal, the lowest playable level in Portugal. We did almost the entire regular season, and while the match engine has some upgrades, we got disappointed with the end result, specially me, since I played the alpha version (I was one of the testers) and I was really hopeful for the final version. I'm doing two posts for two main griefs that both me and my friend have with the Match Engine. This post will be about long shots. I attached a zip file with some pkms and I'm going one by one and detailing what I think was wrong in that specific match. CD Cerveira 1-2 SC Vianense Luís Santos, a player with 8 finishing, 7 long shots, 11 technique and 6 strength scored a long range goal that hits the post before going in. Ah... ok, it can happen from time to time, despite being weak at shooting the ball. 3 goals in the season, but this one was the first. SC Vianense 1-2 Bragança Dinando, a player with 10 finishing, 11 long shots, 11 technique and 8 strength scored a long range goal. Ok, good attributes for this division, frontal position, certainly possible... 4 goals in the season. Lank Vilaverdense 2-1 SC Vianense In the first shot of the game, Marna, a player with 13 finishing, 9 long shots, 11 technique and 12 strength runs for 20/30 metres and scores from outside of the box a great goal. Again, good attributes for this division, with only the goalkeeper in his front, it can happen, despite being a difficult execution. 7 goals in the season. Maria da Fonte 3-3 SC Vianense Oh, this one. João Cunha, a player with 8 finishing, 5 long shots, 13 technique and 2 strength scores an absolute wonder of a goal from 30 meters, in the first 30 seconds and in his first touch. This could be a Puskas nominee, and with his only goal of the season! After that, Alexandre Moutinho, a player with 6 finishing, 6 long shots, 9 technique and 4 strength scores another first touch long shot, this time from 20/25 meters, and guess what, his only goal of the season! There's also a great goal inside the are from José Xavier, but he has 14 finishing, so I won't pick on that, and he has 12 goals. This game was what made me write this post, it was completely absurd how two players that the game values as completely awful in shooting the ball score two wonder goals in the same game. Keep in mind that these two players are not professional. But it doesn't end here.SC Vianense 1-2 Merelinense Mailó Cruz, a player with 12 finishing, 9 long shots, 7 technique and 13 strength inners his Ibrahimovic self and receives the ball with his back to the goal, turns around and shoots a delightfully precise shot to the left corner. 12 goals in the season.Águia Vimioso 4-2 SC Vianense Renan Soares, a player with 8 finishing, 11 long shots, 12 technique and 8 strength, with the trait "Long Shots", scores a crossed long shot from 20/25 meters. This one is acceptable, a player that likes to shoot from range and has attributes that at least are acceptable. However, it is his only goal in the season. This was only the games that I played. Now, for the ones played by my friend. São João de Ver 1-2 Lusitano Ká, a player with 11 finishing, 7 long shots, 11 technique and 11 strength, scores a great goal outside of the box after a long ball from his defense. "Good" attributes and acceptable, despite the difficult execution. 5th goal of the season. Raphael Almeida, a player with 7 finishing, 11 long shots, 9 technique and 11 strength, scores a goal just outside of the box, with a big error from the goalkeeper. Acceptable, despite being his only goal of the season. Lusitano 3-1 Tirsense Luís Almeida, a player with 12 finishing, 8 long shots, 9 technique and 8 strength, scores a great crossed shot from just the inside of the box. Good finishing attribute and acceptable, despite the difficult execution. Only goal of the season. Lusitano 1-1 AD Sanjoanense Paulinho, a player with 9 finishing, 10 long shots, 13 technique and 9 strength, scores a first touch crossed shot just inside the box. Great goal from a player with "good" attributes, but I'm starting to see another pattern... Only goal of the season. Lusitano 4-0 Anadia Adilson Sanches, a player with 7 finishing, 5 long shots, 10 technique and 11 strength, scores a great goal in frontal position from 25 meters. Players like him shouldn't probably score goals like this, only from time to time, but as you see in this post, it's not only from time to time. Also, only goal of the season.Lusitano 3-1 Castro Daire Márcio Santos, a player with 9 finishing, 8 long shots, 11 technique and 8 strength, scores a great shot from 20/25 meters. And Mauro Santos, a player with 8 finishing, 10 long shots, 12 technique and 7 strength, scores a great placed shot in the right side of the goal. Two mediocre players score two great goals, however, they both score a lot of goals, 8 for Márcio and 6 for Mauro, so at least they continue to score goals? Vila Cortez 2-1 Lusitano Chiquinho, a player with 1 (!!!!) finishing, 7 long shots, 9 technique and 9 strength, scores a wonder goal, a curling shot going straight to the top left corner. Another Puskas nominee, and with his only goal of the season! Hélder Rodrigues, a player with 11 finishing, 11 long shots, 14 technique and 9 strength, scores also a great goal inside of the box without much of an angle to do so. But this one is a good player, I must say, he has 8 goals. Sp. Espinho 1-2 Lusitano A shot from jut outside of the area that goes to the top right corner at the first minute from Mauro Santos, a player with 8 finishing, 10 long shots, 12 technique and 7 strength, where it's disallowed and a great shot that also goes to top corner from Ricardo Leal, a player with 8 finishing, 6 long shots, 7 technique and 9 strength are this game's unbelievable goals. Ricardo's goal was his only one in the season. Lusitano 2-1 Valadares Mauro Santos (again!), a player with 8 finishing, 10 long shots, 12 technique and 7 strength, scores another great goal, this time a first time shot that hits the bar before going in. Is this Mauro Santos or peak Gerrard? As you can see, the long range goals are completely unrealistic. These are not long shots that are normal to see in a low level game, like shots in a frontal position or shots from players that are indeed great players in that regard, this is a collection of goals scored by awful to mediocre players, with some exceptions to give you context of what is expected. This makes the game feel like a complete lottery, where out of nowhere, a bad player can score a worldie, either to doom or save our team. So, in internet and gaming language, nerf long shots pls. Tonight I'll make another post regarding the second big problem I found in this ME: long balls from centrebacks to forwards. long_shots_galore_mingoncas.zip 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SI Staff CJ Ramson Posted December 2, 2020 SI Staff Share Posted December 2, 2020 54 minutes ago, mingonças said: I started in the last sunday a new online save with a friend and we both went to Campeonato de Portugal, the lowest playable level in Portugal. We did almost the entire regular season, and while the match engine has some upgrades, we got disappointed with the end result, specially me, since I played the alpha version (I was one of the testers) and I was really hopeful for the final version. I'm doing two posts for two main griefs that both me and my friend have with the Match Engine. This post will be about long shots. I attached a zip file with some pkms and I'm going one by one and detailing what I think was wrong in that specific match. Thanks for the extensive report and range of PKM's - we will take a deeper look into this issue. A few points to remember, no matter what level you're playing at, long shots are still a realistic possibility. In real life, no matter how low down the football pyramid you go, players are still technically gifted enough to score goals from distance. Sometimes in real life a player you don't expect can score a worldie from distance (Kompany vs Leicester for example) - I'm not using these examples as a way to rationalise anyone scoring a long shot, but it is certainly something we see happen in real life more often then many people realise. Lastly, 'nerfing long shots' means balancing other areas. Set piece goals, one on one conversion etc. it is all a delicate balancing act and not one where you just turn switches up and down. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mingonças Posted December 2, 2020 Author Share Posted December 2, 2020 34 minutos atrás, CJ Ramson disse: Thanks for the extensive report and range of PKM's - we will take a deeper look into this issue. A few points to remember, no matter what level you're playing at, long shots are still a realistic possibility. In real life, no matter how low down the football pyramid you go, players are still technically gifted enough to score goals from distance. Sometimes in real life a player you don't expect can score a worldie from distance (Kompany vs Leicester for example) - I'm not using these examples as a way to rationalise anyone scoring a long shot, but it is certainly something we see happen in real life more often then many people realise. Lastly, 'nerfing long shots' means balancing other areas. Set piece goals, one on one conversion etc. it is all a delicate balancing act and not one where you just turn switches up and down. Thanks for the quick answer! Sure, I agree that no matter the level, long shots are realistic, I said that in my post. Some players are indeed technically gifted to score goals from distance. However, this is a non-professional league and with players that the game says they are bad at doing so. A long shot should be one of the most difficult approaches to score a goal, because it needs power to reach the goal and accuracy to hit the goal and to make more difficult for the goalkeeper to save it. Most of the goals I put were scored by some weak players in those attributes and most of the shots were absolute master goals, but my main grief isn't that it happened once or twice, it's that it was way to often. And ok, a master goal can be done with a hail mary from a technically weak player, like a powerful long shot, but most of the shots were curled placed shots. Even the greatest players in the world struggle to score those with the frequency that I saw in the matches I've uploaded to this post. Kompany's example is not the best one, because he is a technically gifted player, in fact, one of the best on ball defenders of this century, so while it is not expected to see him score a long range goal, he is capable to do so, even more if he was unmarked and in a frontal position to the goal, like he was against Leicester. Once again, and I want to emphasize this: the problem isn't that it happens, is the frequency of it happening and the type of goal it is. The list contains at least 15 goals from long range in a poor division, where those long range goals where almost all of them a difficult execution that even professional players would dream of scoring. Unfortunately, FM doesn't have a statistic for goals from outside of the box, but for the arguments' sake, we lastly played the 19th round, so let's round up and say that in 38 games played (we didn't play against one another since we are in different groups), there were these 15 long range goals scored, which translates to 0.39 goals per game, where there's human input in the game. In the Premier League, top 5 league in the world, there were 38 goals from outside of the box in the first 10 rounds. If we double that value so we can have the same ammount of games, we get a hypothetical 76 goals from outside of the box in 20 rounds. Since every round has 10 games, this 76 goals for 200 games, or 0.38 long range goals per game. In the last season, with all 38 rounds, the value goes to 0.34. In the Championship, the value surprisingly grows to 0.38 , but in England's League 1 and League 2, the value in both divisions drops to 0.28. In Liga NOS, in the last season, the value also is in 0.34. In Bundesliga the value is 0.40 and in 2.Bundesliga is 0.28. So, the ratio of goals outside of the box per match lowers when you go down the league pyramid, which is normal, because the quality of the players also becomes lower. And even this statistic can be wrong, because goals from outside of the box can be a shot almost inside the area or even set pieces, which I don't know if Whoscored puts them in the same category. However, this is just for argument's sake and to help both you and me. Finally, I absolutely understand that you eventually would need to balance other areas, I thought it was obvious that my comments was more in a fun way. I'm a computer science engineer studying a masters in simulation, I know how stressful can be programming an engine like this one. My suggestion would be to downgrade the long shots from awful players and from positions where it's not expected to score, and even the tendency to shoot them, while also trying to improve the rate of passes through the full backs and the centre backs. Hope my post can help you improve the game. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mingonças Posted December 17, 2020 Author Share Posted December 17, 2020 Hey @CJ Ramson, was this reviewed for the new ME? Cheers 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SI Staff CJ Ramson Posted January 4, 2021 SI Staff Share Posted January 4, 2021 We've made no changes to this area but will continue to look into balancing it better. I understand why you say they should be less consistent from lower quality players, but a semi professional footballer with 5 long shots, is still technically better than a random fan from the stand. The attributes are in relation to being a footballer. On 02/12/2020 at 15:00, mingonças said: Finally, I absolutely understand that you eventually would need to balance other areas, I thought it was obvious that my comments was more in a fun way. I'm a computer science engineer studying a masters in simulation, I know how stressful can be programming an engine like this one. My suggestion would be to downgrade the long shots from awful players and from positions where it's not expected to score, and even the tendency to shoot them, while also trying to improve the rate of passes through the full backs and the centre backs. Genuinely appreciate this level of understanding. I think it is way too risky of an area to make changes to at this time. But you made a very fair point with some good evidence to back it up so I will raise this with the Dev team to better balance it in the future. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flumpy_85 Posted January 6, 2021 Share Posted January 6, 2021 Yes please leave long shots alone. They were rare in 2020s edition and i love seeing them and the different variety of goals in this years one although they seem to be less common since the update. Genuinely dont understand why some people want to make the game less fun. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaintsCanada Posted January 12, 2021 Share Posted January 12, 2021 I completely agree with the original post. I'm playing in the semi-pro 4th division in South Korea. Not a game goes by that someone with like 6 long shots and 8 finishing finds themselves in 2 yards of space and blasts one just inside the post from 25 yards. The current M.E. is like a whole world full of Matt LeTissiers. In general, finishing is too precise. I swear 70 to 80% of goals hit the side netting rather than the back of the net. Again, in a very low-level division. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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