Jack Joyce

March 5

3 hours ago, RDF Tactics said:

With the NCB, we didn't lose our heavy possession numbers haha (also showing with the right set-up and in the right league, you can fully take control of possession in a nice set-up/system).

However, we can see a little drop, compared to our midfield, with the defence passing %. Partly down to the NCB?

Now, our BPD has attempted 102 passes. Is this further backing up the BPD tactical freedom claim? or even reduced tactical freedom for the NCB? Possibly both haha

but there is a significant drop in passes attempted with the NCB. He also has a lower passing %. Mostly because with the limited times he does receive the ball, he looks for that long pass as we are operating with a higher tempo. Get that ball from back to front quickly.

I get that, maybe, the role itself should override instructions. So regardless, NCB is to hoof the ball. But I also believe you should be able to manage the frequency and balance the risk. One great way is to understand *better* the mentality/risk-taking

Don't get much time to respond to things on the forums recently - but just wanted to say this is a really interesting discussion so thanks for all your thoughts on the CB roles. It's great food for thought.

March 4

3 minutes ago, whatsupdoc said:

Does staff quality play into the accuracy of their feedback and what roles it shows they are playing?

From what I remember it factors into the speed at which they're able to identify the roles the opposition are playing. So you'll be left in the dark for longer if your staff are worse.

March 4

4 hours ago, andu1 said:

I've seen AI use IWB's in 4-2-3-1 all the time. Never seen them use libero, maybe it's disabled for AI.

AI managers can use the Libero role, but currently only if it's set as a preferred role by the researcher.

1 hour ago, RDF Tactics said:

This is the only thing I disagree with about your comment. Only because clubs IRL have analyst who work on live matches feeding the manager the same thing the game feeds us.

By HT or even half way through the first half of a match IRL, managers are able to make tweaks based off the information given from their analyst. They’ll be able to spot things (not everything).

and then in FM, don’t quote me on this though, the roles we see aren’t always correct. In my current save, the roles keep switching as if our analyst isn’t exactly sure and somewhat guessing.

and by removing it and saying players should detect that, basically you’re saying we should all play the same way. Extended or comprehensive highlights.

Now, we have to understand people play the game differently. Some don’t have the time to even play games like that. Spending 30mins on each match, closely analysing your opponent’s.

FM have many different player types. Getting everyone to play in the same way would take away so much what people love about FM in the first place. Plus, analyst is totally a thing IRL.

Thats just speaking from experience. I was a performance analyst at Cheltenham Town Ladies and my job exactly was to feed that information during games “we need our RW to make runs between their full back and CB. Their FB loves to attack and doesn’t get back in position quick enough” . It’ll then be down to the manager if he wants or can make that tweak.

edit: actually, maybe having the option to have AI player roles visible can be added in preferences/options?

Allowing FM players to make the game even more tailored for them

This is essentially how it's designed yeah, your staff are watching the match and feeding back to your on what roles the opposition are using.

We believe info like this is really important because where FM differs to real life quite significantly is, in FM you're watching highlights. If you're on key/extended highlights then you don't see the full picture like a real manager would, so you need a bit more information to fill in the blanks.

December 15, 2023

On 14/12/2023 at 16:34, whatsupdoc said:

Hmmmm it'd be nice to get a reply from a dev.

@Jack Joyce are you able to confirm whether the dashed orange partnership lines:

(A) impact performance and aren't just visual; and

(B) that dashed orange lines are worse than no lines at all, rather than a step in the way to a green link.

The partnership lines are reflective of the player's past performances when used together, and don't impact performance directly.

So a good link just means that the two players tend to perform well when used in a partnership (get good ratings).

December 5, 2023

6 minutes ago, Rodrigogc said:

Thank you for the explanation!

No worries! This clip from Luke Williams was really interesting and about a similar topic https://x.com/LowerTiers/status/1727315641747886161?s=20

December 5, 2023

11 hours ago, Rodrigogc said:

I've watched all 3 goals in the last 5 matches, and in fact they came exactly from the areas this image show. But look, there were 2 assists from crosses and the other one was inside the penalty area, originated by a corner, that's okay. But the data shows that the assist came from corner taking, when actually the corner taking led to a player receiving the ball outside the area, moving into the area and passing to the striker to score, so the assist type was not a corner type of assist at all, unless the game considers that which is a flaw. Has anyone ever tested it ?

This is actually normal and how most clubs and data companies track corner goals - a corner goal isn't just a goal scored directly from the taker's kick, it's a goal from the corner phase of play. Otherwise no short corner or 2nd phase play would ever be considered a corner goal.

December 1, 2023

Just now, Cle said:

I tested 11 major league in the morning  (5 years with full details). The problem (where at least 150 goals are missing) is only with 2 league. France Ligue 1 and German Bundesliga 1.-2. England Premier, Italy Serie A, Spain La Liga etc... are perfect.

France Ligue 1: IRL about 1050 goals, so missing more than 200 goals

2023/24   893
2024/25   790
2025/26   839
2026/27   831
2027/28   826

Germany Bundesliga: IRL about 950 goals, so missing 150-200 goals

2023/24   773
2024/25   713
2025/26   770
2026/27   818
2027/28   812

If it's just those two leagues then it's likely because there's something specific about teams/players in those leagues that makes them different to other leagues. We'd need to identify that really to know what to change, but it's likely a research/data thing causing it.

December 1, 2023

18 minutes ago, trviggo said:

@Jack Joyce Is what is possible in matches/the match engine relative only to the players in that match or the full range of ability from 1-200? In other words, will there be a tangible difference in the football displayed in League 2 vs a Champions League final assuming tactics and everything other than players' relative skill is the same?

It's a bit of a legend that you can't use certain tactics and have to play differently in lower league management than in the Premier League, but I can't say I'm noticing a difference in FM24 so curious if this is accurate or not, and if so where one would notice it the most.

The ME uses the full range of attributes, which can vary over time depending on tons of factors such as consistency, big matches, morale/body language etc.

What this means is that your 18 finishing striker won't always be 18 finishing 100% of the time, for example if they're inconsistent they may sometimes be playing like a 13 finishing striker for portions of the match.

In terms of playing styles though, there's nothing stopping you from playing any style really based on level of play. The football you're playing is relative and that's important to remember, for example Notts County in the National League last season played a very Pep-esque possession system that received a lot of plaudits, and Barrow did before them at the same level as well. Now, that doesn't mean they're as good as Man City! But relative to the opposition they're playing, they were extremely capable of keeping the ball and building attacks from back-to-front.

November 30, 2023

9 minutes ago, avenger22 said:

I would ask this question to the mods, i mean for example are there changes in ME which are not in changelog ? i mean some movements or defending behaviour stuff like that or everything released is at is it in changelog i am curious about this.

The changelog tends to just be a summary of the key changes, but there's nothing major left out of the list.

There's often fixes for knock ons to other fixes that hadn't been public yet etc. That we don't list or just combine into a single line.

We didn't make any changes to attacking movement, most of the changes were to do with set pieces tbh.

5 minutes ago, Muja said:

Nope, the first ME was 24.0.1

The only change between beta and the next ME was reducing injuries to GKs.

November 30, 2023

1 minute ago, Razor940 said:

Is it normal that in the portuguese translation the attributes in the development hub are sorted like the english one? It's kinda odd.

I have no idea sorry, I'm all about the Match Engine so when it comes to this sort of thing I know as much as you do. Best to report it as a bug in the bugs forum and someone will let you know.

November 30, 2023

3 minutes ago, wazzaflow10 said:

Got it. Thanks for the explanation.

Find it really fascinating it's trained on itself - that's got to take for ever to determine if its "right".

It's certainly unique but we feel it creates the best metric - if we based our xG numbers on real life finishing then it's never going to be as accurate within an FM world as when trained on FM data, even though we obviously always strive to make our finishing as close to real life as possible anyway, there'll always be slight differences.

But it also gives us a lot of added benefits when covering leagues where data coverage isn't the best, for example in lower leagues or in womens football it's very difficult or nigh on impossible to get the level of real-life data our xG models require. But when training using FM data we can play all the matches we like, as many times as we like with all the data that we could possibly ask for.

November 30, 2023

1 minute ago, wazzaflow10 said:

Is this saying it takes time for the xG model in your game to adjust to the latest model? Or that matches played prior to the update do not reflect the current xG model (i.e. the game doesn't adjust those values post hoc)?

We run a ton of simulated matches via an automated tool which updates our xG data. We then push that data into the next update so all your xG will update immediately for the next match you play.

Old matches played on an older ME will use the old xG data still, any new matches will use the new xG data. What it means though is that if finishing was better in a new engine, the xG would be higher per shot to reflect that, so you can't really use xG to identify better or worse finishing from a game balance POV since it's baked into the data in the first place.

November 30, 2023

2 minutes ago, RealRed said:

but the lack of goals scored are.

You can believe what you like, but I'd suggest that you need a lot more than one or two matches to draw any sort of conclusion over there being a lack of goals in the new engine or not.

You don't have to go back very far to see real-life matches with these exact sort of situations - PSG v Newcastle only a couple of days ago had an xG of 4.54 for PSG, and they needed a very questionable penalty to even score once. If a team never performed under their xG then football would be very boring!

November 30, 2023

4 minutes ago, diLLa88 said:

I do, but I want to give it a bit more time before blaming the match engine. My next game ended 1-1 with 3.47XG (see post earlier above), so that seems slightly worrying.

Just so people are aware, FM's xG model is trained on FM match data from the latest engine. So the xG stat will adapt to the finishing of the current engine automatically and is not likely to be representative of any changes to finishing or chance conversion between versions.

November 30, 2023

Yes, goals are lower following the ME changes as a result of defensive improvements and tweaks to heading accuracy when players are being challenged directly by a defender.

For example in the Premier League, total goals per game went from around 3.1 per game to about 2.84 which should hopefully be a pretty good balance.

November 30, 2023

Full detail matches are played out decision-by-decision (of which there's 4 per second per player), whatever happens happens, we don't have anything like X % chance of winning that gets adjusted.

So when there's a red card, we just play out the match with 10 v 11 and see what happens. It might be that the team with 10 sit back a bit more which can make it a bit harder to create open-play chances depending on your system and team.

November 26, 2023

On 24/11/2023 at 18:21, stopazricky said:

I'm going to go as far as quoting @Jack Joyce into this conversation. A growing portion of players feels more and more like virtually all the mechanics of the games are placebo. Through the work of Evidence Based Football Manager, this is being put to test in a scientific manner and increasingly proven to be true.

I would love to hear official feedback from SI about it. Not necessarily here, not necessarily now, but I believe they simply can't afford to ignore this - from a moral perspective, not monetary, of course.

If there's ONE thing I wish we'll get with Unity-based FM is precisely this - the game actually behaving the way it's supposed to, and the way it says it does. A glaring example is training penalties, which... should improve penalties. How quickly? How much? At what age? I don't know, but it should do something, something at all.

Would need to see specific examples - but I wouldn't call what Evidence Based FM does "proof" by any stretch of the imagination. I've been sent their stuff before.

For example in the post you're replying to - Marking absolutely does have an effect in the ME, almost every aspect of tracking runs and defending against dribbling factors in marking.

It can be very easy for misinformation like this to spread from flawed tests, often without much scrutiny on how those tests were carried out.

November 23, 2023

As has been said above, there's so many variables at play, even when playing two teams who are using the same formation.

The best thing you could do is a large series of matches against the exact same team with the exact same lineup and conditions, only changing the instructions in question. This way any statistics you collect are about as consistent as you can make it, and with a sufficient enough sample size to rule out... just bad luck.

November 17, 2023

12 minutes ago, kiwityke1983 said:

I saw a chart on Reddit earlier today for League One teams to highlight each team's style of play and the gap between highest number of passes and lowest was weirdly about 1.8.

That being said I thought the number of passes was crazy low with the lowest being about 1.7 and the highest about 3.5!

OPPDA is probably one of the best examples of a stat that can be interpreted/implemented in hundreds of different ways, depending on provider. But other stats such as xG, 'big chance', clearance, dribble etc. are all oftentimes just subjective, down to the interpretation of the person recording the stats and can differ between providers.

As an example, some providers don't use xG to decide what a 'big chance' is, instead it's just down to the person recording the stats to decide whether it feels like one to them. Some providers even use this kind of subjective 'big chance' statistic IN their xG calculations! Comparing stats between different providers can be a dangerous game.

For OPPDA, not just the location of the pitch you use, but also simply how you define a 'defensive action' in the first place will have a huge impact on how the resulting stat comes out. I generally wouldn't recommend comparing this stat to real-life providers, instead just using it to compare different teams within the gameworld and seeing if the teams that are low/high feel right based on how they are playing.

November 17, 2023

If you are on Very Attacking mentality in added time then your goalkeeper will join attacking corners automatically.

We may in future add an option to disable this functionality, in case some managers don't want their keepers ever going up for them, but allowing a goalkeeper to attack every corner regardless of match context is not supported in the new system and there's not really a realistic use-case for it.

On 13/11/2023 at 01:21, Ellis_D said:

Is this no longer possible? Got to say, I will be very, VERY disappointed if this new set piece style has taken away the possibility of not only sending my keeper up for corners (I like to do saves where my keeper gets loads of goals), but also getting to choose where my players go for each corner.

Only had a quick look so far, but can't work it out. Hope I'm wrong?!

There should also be nothing prevent you from choosing where players go for each corner (other than the goalkeeper thing above).

November 16, 2023

6 minutes ago, greenz81 said:

Anyone from SI confirm something for me?

With regards to stamina, how does the game calculate it in-game? Is it dynamic, as in it goes up and down in-game or is it static, in that it basically goes down as the game goes on?

Say for example, a player has stamina of 20 and the player makes a run down the wing. Does the players stamina drop down to say 4, then recover to say 18, once they have finished running?

It reminded me of when i used to play Fight Night and you would button bash for the first few seconds, but your stamina would be depleted, so wouuld have to wait until it went up again, then you could button bash again.

I was only thinking if it is static, then could that be the reason why Genpress is overpowered over the last few versions, without having the type of players needed (high stamina, work rate, determination and acceleration).

There is short-term condition which drains when a player is running at speed, and they'll need a break to recover it. This is separate to the 'overall' condition you see on a player.
Oftentimes when you see a player slow to track back, or your team waiting for the next pressing trigger, they're recovering their short-term condition.

November 15, 2023

14 minutes ago, whatsupdoc said:

Around a week later, same issue with a different player. Parisi demands to be a star player. We're in 4+ competitions (after winning the CL last year) and there is another left back at the club better than him.

Definitely worth posting these examples in a bug thread, ideally with a save game right before the negotiation if possible. They really help a lot with this kind of stuff

QA will investigate it in detail to see if there's any issues under the hood

November 15, 2023

7 minutes ago, whatsupdoc said:

Possibly...

I don't feel he's at a point where he can reasonably become "unhappy" at not being given that role. I'm in his favoured personnel and so is one of his team-mates. He's made 14 appearances last season against weaker sides. He's 20 years old.

It's not my area to be honest - but in situations like this I think it'd come down to the player's hidden attributes, how ambitious they are etc. Some players would be happy in this situation (Foden), and others won't be (Palmer). It's a tricky balance and obviously it's never a nice position to be put in as a manager. But it's the sort of story that's nice to tell in FM since it's a common problem in football, with players like Balogun as well at Arsenal.

November 15, 2023

13 minutes ago, whatsupdoc said:

Another example of squad management issues. Ribeiro wants a new contract, he's unhappy. I go in to offer and he wants to be a first team regular and for our central midfield to be improved:

Not saying there's not issues with this stuff - but realistically speaking is this that bad? It seems like a case where a player wants regular first-team football, and you're rightly not willing to offer it. It's not that unusual for a player to rate themselves higher than you might do.

Bit like Cole Palmer leaving City to Chelsea. He was valued at City but wanted to be a regular starter and City wouldn't guarantee that.

The only real solution is to sell them, right?

But obviously you can make a bug report for anything you see, and the team will check it all.

November 14, 2023

20 minutes ago, RDF Tactics said:

Our DM should be cutting off the pass to the ST rather standing behind the ST haha but defensive IQ is another conversation.

This was actually more so for those who feel bad or guilty for having to use these "OP" instructions. I just wanted to show that actually, that's not happening all the time and actually, the AI aren't defending too differently as we can see with the stats. I just think using these "OP" instructions helps you be a little more proactive off the ball rather than a prime LFC press for 90mins

Defending is very... involved There's a lot of factors, and even when doing a high press, you're right in that there's situations where the team is forced to revert into a mid/low block based on the situation, short-term condition of the players etc.

Looking at your posts there's various different things going on - set pieces are very isolated and separate to any open-play issues, so cases where your team is too deep against an AI goal-kick are isolated issues that can be reported specifically for those situations alone. But I assume its because the opposition is taking a long kick, so your team isn't anticipating the play going short.

Other things - such as the DM looking to get goal-side of the striker when they should be screening - again specific issues that can be reported as its own thread. Or strikers not tracking back well enough with the team.

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