Is luck deciding?

[Loath]

So go and play CM2 =] No one will force you to play FM09 and I think most ppl don't want to use various tactics like 3-7-0 or whatever, this is Football Manager, it's simulation of real world and we want it to be realistic mate.

You probably missed my point a bit, but it's okay, I know my English isn't perfect. The remark about having CM with an updated database (which I wouldn't get if I just started playing CM2, by the way) was meant as a sort hyperbolic example. I just miss the fun I used to have with the old CMs. And while I'm all for realism in certain areas of gameplay, I think if the realism makes the game tideous it's not worth of being in the game. What I mean is, it's great that you can mold your team and playing style to your liking down to every last detail, but it's not all that great if can't play, or much less enjoy, the game unless you actually do go down to molding every last detail. Why are casual gamers considered such a worthless group? We pay the same amount for the game no matter how intensily we end up playing it.

I've been with CM and FM from the first CM2 onwards and I have had the chance to gradually get used to the new features and level of details each new version has brought. This year's version seems to be very close to my breaking point and I can't help but wait with horror the next version, since it could very well be kind that forces me to say good bye to the game I've played and loved for so many years. Obviously people like you enjoy the new versions, and it's okay. I don't mind. But I don't think I'm alone wishing the next FM would be more like the ones we used to have.

Also, it would be interesting to see how many new players does FM gain every year and if that pace has slowed down at all. It would also be interesting to find out how low a learning threshold do new player's think FM09 has.

[pele10]

AI has all the luck my teams never have any.

[Fredric Drum]

I have lots of luck. Or maybe I just don't have a selective memory.

[Will2061]

Well, I've just had a nice little run there, allow to me digress.

Playing as Middlesbrough and with the holidays giving me my first opportunity to get stuck into a long term game (the first few months have all been about building / tweaking and understanding how and why tha tactics work. I've set my team up with a basic 442 with lots of variations depending on whos playing a given game (for instance I have two CM's who can play both DM and AMC and if theyre both playing I have them swapping position but I also have my standard ones for a pure DM/MC).

Made a cracking start to the season, far beyond what I expected and I was laying in 6th after 20 games, scoing 27 and conceding bang on 20. Now at the end of the season, without changing my personnel, my tactics, my team talks (morale has been excellent all season) I've just avoided relegation by the skin of my teeth and I haven't won 20 games, yes thats 20. In this time from the 18th game I've scored 13 and conceded 39, can't buy a win for love nor money and I'm sat here just about to rip my screen off its hinges.

My question is what on earth has happened for this to occur, in all my years this is the first time I can recall such a run coming off such a high quality start, for no appreciable reason. It feels as if the game itself has just decided that I'm not allowed to win, or at least perform anymore at all. I'm no mug, I would have settled for mid table mediocrity as I build my team and I don't have the syndrome of blaming everything on the game, but surely something is wrong here?

I consider myself to have a good knowledge of the tactics, I know what the sliders do, why I'm adjusting and what I expect them to do. My problem comes for the abundance of individual errors from players who stand there gawping with the ball at their feet waiting for it to be taken off them, centre backs who let the ball roll past them into the attackers foot without challenging, own goals when theres no pressure on them, players running towards the ball at half speed as though their boot is falling off as they're running, the seemingly still too high ratio of balls hitting the post, strikers who hit in straight at the keeper whilst through one on one. I could go on but I think you get the drift.

Its also worth noting that during this season I haven't had a single penalty, or scored from a direct free kick.

Why did nothing I tweaked work to even the slightest degree, why did my tactics stop working in such a ridiculous fashion? What is the point of everything I've just written? What point am I trying to make?

I forgot halfway through but its late and I'd started so I just carried on...

[Fredric Drum]

Yes, Will, all those things can happen, and it's hard to understand what the heck is going on. I think that the squad will sometimes get cursed by black magic and you need to just wait for it to wear off. But I'm pretty sure that it's not down to your tactics when your players suddenly look like they've been fed tranqulizing drugs in their lunch. I've seen what you describe, players waiting to be disposessed, not making easy interceptions, defenders casually jogging in the general direction of the ball while a striker is inbound with the pedal to the metal. No slider juggling is going to fix that. It could be other factors in the team or your opponents or that there was just an inevitable loss of "form", if there is such a stat in FM. I've had it happen when all factors I know about should be perfect, so... uhm... it will pass, hopefully before you're fired.

[Will2061]

Its just so frustrating when it feels like you've done everything you can do and nothing, other than buying better players which isnt going to be a viable option anytime soon, will change it.

Luckily my board clearly havent got much ambition and have offered me a new contract

[Paulo Snelzinho]

good post and i agree with the points about the tactics sliders being a bit dated and a bit vague, maybe if we could have training matches in 3d as part of training (not friendlies) then we could get a grasp of these sliders a bit more easier than having to restart games and play them again (which is something i don't do anyway but i'm sure loads of you do) .

I have always managed portsmouth for about the last 5 years and never play as any other team (im a spurs fan but my m8 who i play with on a network is also a spurs fan so i let him be spurs)

creating tactics has always been way to much tweaking and effort for me which is why i always just grab other peoples tactics and give them a try and if not doing great tweak some individual settings to see if it improves.

if it still dont do well , i try the next tactic and so on until i find one that works reasonably well and just stick with it. i dont want a tactic where i win the league, every game and every season. Just a tactic that gives me a fighting chance most seasons.

after i find this tactic that gives me that fighting chance, i then work on bringing better players to the club or different players to see what players like those tactics. you start to clock what teamtalks done you well in the past etc and it all comes together.

but the difficulty of the game is the only reason i play it, i remember in fm 06 i could win the league quite easily in the first season with portsmouth and so could a m8 who i network with spurs and it was always a 2 horse race every season between us 2, more often than not one of us would win the champions league and we stopped playing after a couple of months and only came back for a sesh when new patches were released but it was still the same. and fm 07 was the same to

fm 08 was a big step up in difficulty for me, unless you used crazy tactics which i always stayed away from anyways, and me and me m8 couldnt get enough of the game. we started to get succesful in the end after much practice and just before 09 come out

ive been doing suprisingly well with portsmouth in 09 in the network games we played, i used a 4 4 2 i used in fm 08 in the relased game and come 4th first season and 2nd in teh 2nd season, then in the 3rd and 4th season come 8th and 10th, and we restarted as we only ever play about 4 - 7 seasons max.

I dont like to have 4 different formations depending on home and away games or what kind of opposition so i only ever stick to one tactic which is the bog standard 4 4 2. i may sometimes if losing move my wingers up to attacking mid wingers, and move my fullbacks up to wing backs, or move 1 of my forwards to an AM midfield role and leaving 1 up front but thats only if im getting smashed or played off the park and is more of a desperation move to get something out of the game, has only ever worked on a couple of occasions .

in our next couple of restarts that formation never worked again and i was getting at best 8th in the league.

yet more restarts ensued and by this time the 9.02 patch was released and i grabbed a new tactic, tweaked it a little bit, come 3rd first season only 1 point from the top, and currently on 2nd season and im 2nd in the league but its so close between the top 6, only 5 points from top to 6th and is about 8 games left to be played.

so its not impossible to get some sort of success. for me even when i do bad i enjoy the game and it provides a different sort of challenge, i always prefer the challenge of trying to win the league, as to trying to save my job , but netherless that challenge is always there and that's what keeps me coming back.

I love the different scenarios every season brings. sometimes like i say saving your job is more important, sometimes your doing ***** in the league but doing well in the cups and all focus is on the cups. sometimes you really just need that champions league qualification to bring in the much needed funds and have more players interested in joining your club the following season, so all cup competetions get full reserve team treatment. sometimes just premier league survival is the ultimate goal (although if im ever doing this badly with portsmouth i end up getting sacked).

fm 09 is definitely my favorite version and it continues to improve for me every year. football in real life can be very unpredictable is no need for me to list loads of examples . so to be any team with the same tactic and walk competions would make for a very boring game for me.

I do recommend playing with a m8 or two on a network tho for the main reason you can never restart the game if your doing ***** or on a on a bad run. which makes you try more to tweak a tactic or if doing that badly change it all together, rather than just restarting a game and trying something new all over again.

Its a lot slower paced as you often play games on different days and times, so you have more time to look at players and the tactics rather than when your singleplayer and you rush through to the next games.

with the randomness of the game its never the same season even with the same tactics and same players so basically what i'm trying to say is just work on your team on the actual game and season your on and dont be so quick to restart.

play through the seasons even if your doing bad, until you get the sack and then restart or maybe you do turn it around and have success then used that tactic to star the next restart you do whenever that may be.

i always start with the same tactic once ive found my fighting chance tactic on a restart, but over the course of the seasons i may have tried something new cos i was doing bad, but ive had to carry on as my m8 was doing good and a restart wasnt an option . for the last 2 years ive had whole entire games over 5 seasons when i never made the top 4 and for most seasons i wasnt even in europe. but i still enjoyed the frustration and challenge of trying to get the players to play better.

all in all theres always the next season / next restart to try again to improve.

playing like this gives me a much better feeling of accomplishment, even if it was just to save my job, even if ive just about sneaked into the euro vase so the following season i still had reasonable players who wanted to join.

and then every so often you have a great season, or a great cup win and even that holy grail of winning the league on occasions. which makes it all that more rewarding.

sorry for spam but i just wanted to try to keep some of your enthusiam up to play the game and to also explain not all of us want an easy ride to the top.

to end the post, the tactics i do agree with could be a lot better and i might actually try to make my own if it wasn't so twiddly and also the training to as i always just download a training scheme to.

but the rest of the game is heads and shoulders above all other football management games and i still feel grateful that a company has made a game off this kind with so much in it for such a low price that i cant knock it for its small flaws.

[Will2061]

The annoying thing for is when pre 9.2 I'd just about finished my first season (i.e. the first full season where I was happy with my tactics set to go for a good run) and I was very comfortable in mid-table with 5 games left, a few good results could have put very nicely in the top half.

However the patch seemed to make some sort of difference to my tactics (I see no reason why it should - my tactics were not using exploits or anything other than general football knowledge of how I wanted my team to play) and I had to tweak again, now I'm left wondering where to turn to next.

As a side note I'm in the pre-season of my 2nd season and all my best players are getting poached, the chairman is going over my head to accept them and because of my poor league finish theres basically no one I can sign to replace them that will be near their standard.

So in effect I feel as though my save is ruined and I'm considering starting again to begin more tweaking.

[ham_aka_stam]

I must admit, I have not read this thread however it is something I have always been interested in.

I'd like to point out that luck plays a huge part in football, a notable economist calculated that in professional sports, the majority of manager sackings are due to runs of bad form which can be statistically attributed to luck. Imagine a team (and therefore manager) which/who loses 15games in a row (the economist is american so did not count draws). This poor run of form cannot be used as proof that the manager is bad, as there is more than a 5% chance that this poor form is due to nothing more than bad luck. This stands true to basic statistics, you cannot prove anything unless the chance of the outcome ocurring due to luck is less than 0.05 (5%).