Ditch the "mentality" slider altogether.

[govas]

I do not see the utility of the attacking mentality and creativity sliders. Suppose you play a highly creative, attack minded player on the wings, with the sliders set at low creativity, low attack mentality and lots of runs forward. Mind you, we're talking about a player which has an attack minded approach to the game. Basically such settings will conflict with each other, and with the mentality of the player, since you are asking a attack minded player to play defensively (low creativity and attck) and to attack at the same time (runs forward). Suppose the hold the ball setting is set, and we're talking about a real mess.

To me it would seem more natural to go by a combination of player's attributes and tactical settings. Suppose I want a creative, attck minded player on the wings. Then, I would chose a player with high creative, flair, finishing and agression attributes, I would ask him to hold the ball and put the shots slider to often. To me this woud tell the player to be creative when on the ball (hold the ball) and take lots of chances (shoot often). If I would want a defensive approach I would ask the opposite, short passing, pass the ball quickly to more skilled players and do not take unecessary chances (do not hold ball, shots on never, short passing, quick tempo). I'm not a fan of the slider sistem, however a slider which tells each player how fast to play the ball would be more appropriate then the creativity and attack sliders. I believe that the attributes of the player should dictate how creative and attack minded the player is, not instructions from the manager.

Also, I do not get the idea of identical instructions for all positions. Different positions require different instructions. What does the run forward slider mean for a striker? Never got that part.

[footynut]

Wow, I've just spent hours reading through a lot of this thread and now totally confused.

You read so many conflicting opinions of what people think the sliders do that you have to be really careful of what you believe.

Now I've always taken that mentality affects the players position on the pitch, a bit like saying play 10 yards further forward from your default position or 10 yards deeper. That was my understanding from the manual but a lot of posts here say that this is not true. It doesn't seem to have reduced my success as I always over achieve but I would like to have a better understanding of what the mentality slider actually does?

Also in TT&F it talks about the defensive line linked with mentality but I'm completely confused now as to why this is the case. Could someone explain to me in easy to understand terms please?

God I need a cup of tea

[pauly15]

heh- sorry for the brain explosion. I think it's becoming less and less about understanding it because the ability to make your own play is basically lost. You have to follow the TT&F rules with all their limitations or it doesn't really work out. The sad thing is that this was totally ignored, things are still exactly the same, and they seem to have taken on one advisor which is TT&F, which I think is sad for the game given their stubborness in the face of obvious robot-problems.

[footynut]

Back with my tea now

What really threw me with this thread is that you get wwfan, who's opinions I generally trust, saying that mentality doesn't directly affect a players position on the pitch and then Paul C the maker of the game coming out and saying it does!

Then follows a whole load of further posts which confuses even more!

It definitley needs to be made clearer in FM2010 to what actually everything does.

[footynut]

Now correct me if I'm wrong but I play my FCd on a lower mentality as recommended in TT&F but my FCd is good in the air and shooting from distance but from my understanding of what wwfan said in this thread, having a low mentality is counter productive in getting him to take long shots as he takes less risk.

I'm confused...

[pauly15]

basically wwfan logic is that if the player is defensive mentality, it will not only drag his position deeper, but it will also lessen the risks he takes when on the ball. IE. He will only shoot if the opportunity is good if he's on 7/20 mentality. If you want him to shoot on site or at any slight opening, then you have to put his mentality much higher to get him to take that risk. But by doing so you necessarily have to alter his positioning to be further up the pitch and effectively not an FCd.

[footynut]

I've just read the posts in your other thread where I branched off to this one in the hope of a better understanding of mentality. That's the danger because people do seem to say something one minute only to contradict themselves the next.

I now read in your other thread that mentality does directly affect a players position on the pitch which a lot of this thread seemed to suggest otherwise.

I suppose the only true way is to watch the games in full and make your own conclusions.

[Cougar2010]

basically wwfan logic is that if the player is defensive mentality, it will not only drag his position deeper, but it will also lessen the risks he takes when on the ball. IE. He will only shoot if the opportunity is good if he's on 7/20 mentality. If you want him to shoot on site or at any slight opening, then you have to put his mentality much higher to get him to take that risk. But by doing so you necessarily have to alter his positioning to be further up the pitch and effectively not an FCd.

I'm surprising myself here by actually agreeing with Pauly's post

In my experience the mentality also changes his position a little as well as altering his "risk" level for making decisions.

It is one of the small problems with the current options but I would expect this to be changed in the next version.

[pauly15]

sorry to have led you astray- i really am the false prophet! hehe- What we're talking about is unecessarily confused by TT&F constantly switching between talking about the effect of mentality on positioning and the effect of mentality on individual instructions like forward runs. It seems to switch back and forth between both when it suits to explain, but mentality is rarely acknowledged as effecting everything as that would be too confusing because the risk and positioning settings contradict each other- that is the problem with it. Having a player with risk taking settings in a withdrawn position is difficult if you follow his logic. You can counter it with Creative Freedom and Free Role, but I always thought they were about different things. Namely the "free role" attribute rating, and the "Flair" attribute.

[footynut]

I'm surprising myself here by actually agreeing with Pauly's post

In my experience the mentality also changes his position a little as well as altering his "risk" level for making decisions.

It is one of the small problems with the current options but I would expect this to be changed in the next version.

And that was my understanding of it too as that is what it tells us in the manual.

[footynut]

sorry to have led you astray- i really am the false prophet! hehe- What we're talking about is unecessarily confused by TT&F constantly switching between talking about the effect of mentality on positioning and the effect of mentality on individual instructions like forward runs. It seems to switch back and forth between both when it suits to explain, but mentality is rarely acknowledged as effecting everything as that would be too confusing because the risk and positioning settings contradict each other- that is the problem with it. Having a player with risk taking settings in a withdrawn position is difficult if you follow his logic. You can counter it with Creative Freedom and Free Role, but I always thought they were about different things. Namely the "free role" attribute rating, and the "Flair" attribute.

As I've just posted in the tactics forum, the free role is another thing I find confusing as in TT&F it explains it as encouraging a player to abandon defensive duties and focus on finding attacking space which is my understanding of how it is in real life.

The thing I find confusing is that in TT&F it suggests giving a free role to at least 1 player in a defensive strategy, 2 in a Balanced strategy and 3 in an attacking strategy when in real life name me any team that gives more than 1 player a free role and with most this is rare in itself.

[foofighter23]

i havent read all 4 pages but i'd like to comment.

i believe that the mentality slider should be viewed as a 'defensive slider'. meaning it should be viewed with only defending in mind not attacking. there was a thread in ttf where this was discussed where it was found that players on a lower mentality get abck quicker than those with a high mentality. i came to the conlusion that this is what it should be mainly used as.

if you want your players to track back faster, use a lower mentality (this goes for all players!), particularly good against a counter attacking side, if your not that bothered you can employ a high mentality to teams that like to keep the ball and pas it around the back line therefore giving you more of a chance of winning the ball in their half.

coupled with other sliders i think this is the best way of getting the best out of the mentality slider. forget the 'position on the field' the formation does that for you along with arrows imo. saying thaty i think it has an effect whereas if you want your players in different positions to others then setting a ment of 20 as opposed to 17 will see the 20ment pushed up further because he has less of a defensive duty than the player you have given 17 to, even if its not that much, there is a difference, though dont ask me to evaluate a 'notch'

use it as a sort of creative freedom for defending. you can have a striker on a low mentality and he will still line up in attack as thats his position in the formation.

ive used a global low mentality for many editions of the game and they have always been amongst the best ive made

[lance101]

After reading this whole thread and chewing on the various insights contained, I think the whole issue posed by Rupal and others could be easily solved in the ME. As I see it right now, there is a variable (mentality) that influences players decisions on a pitch on a variety of issues, namely:

Positional issues:

- Is the player more likely to track back.

- Does the player start forward runs earlier (wwfan dixit).

- Does the player drop a little deeper or stay a little ahead of his line partner.

and On the ball risk taking issues:

- Does the player attempt more forward risky passes.

- Does the player shoot more often.

- Does the player stay on the ball longer, even when under pressure.

- Does the player cross, even if from a bad angle.

The way I see it, it would be beneficial to separate these two types of effects, and SI could achieve this simply by giving us two sliders, and using the value of our "positional" slider when a player is deciding the first type of issues, and using the value of the "risk taking" slider, when a player is deciding the second type of issues. This would still not be a perfect remedy (ie. you might want to have a player drop deeper in attack, but not necessarily track back), but would surely make the game easier to play - eg. we would no longer have to worry if F C that are asked to drop deeper not being as fierce as the ones who are asked to stay a little forward.

[veni_vidi_vici]

Works the mentality in FM 2010 even like described for FM 2009 in this thread?

LG Veni_vidi_vici

[rontopspin]

My biggest problem is that in real life I believe most managers have two shapes in mind that they would like their team to adhere to, one for when the team is in possession and one for when the team is not. In FM I struggle to get my team to resemble the shape I want them too when defending and I guess it's largely down to the closing down slider, in real life I would be able to tell my team clearly when we are in possession I want us to be in such and such a shape, however when we lose the ball this is the shape I want us to assume.

When my team is attacking and in possession I want them to pass the ball around and stretch the opposition making the pitch as wide as possible, but when the ball is lost I want my team to come much more narrow. When in possession I want my central defenders to hold a position just deeper than the halfway line, however I don't want that to be my defensive line when possession is lost. I believe this could be solved pretty easily by providing the opportunity to give your team 2 sets of seperate tactics, i.e what you want them to do when they have the ball and what you would like them to do when they don't have the ball. As it is I believe this to be a very poorly implemented aspect of the game.

[kkev]

in the cm3 tactics screen (back in 2001/2) there was one screen for player's positions when you have possession and one screen for players' positions when you did not have the ball. i'm not sure why this was removed, as it is the foundation of all football tactics. since then the match engine and tactical options have massively increased, but have become far less clear

[mg539]

why has a thread with last post nearly a year ago been dredged up?? I'm guessing alot of this is now irrelevant with the TC...

[PaulC]

I think so, there is no possibility of us returning to arrows or "wibble wobble" at any time soon. We prefer to enhance the tactics creator to give the required flexibility.