Football Manager 12.1.1 update *OFFICIAL* Feedback Thread

[mije1983]

Thanks for the tip - already tried this unfortunately and I can't choose any other option than "always keep this game up to date" in the "updates" menu. Does anyone know if there's a way of getting round this?

That's weird as it should be a dropdown menu :confused:

I don't know of any other way to do it, but maybe have a look in the Steam forums to see if there is a different way to the standard.

[grade]

watch my keeper the guy in green......

I mean seriously???

That is a bug, report it to bug forums and share the PKM for the guys at SI to look at it and fix it.

[Burty76]

This patch has ruined it for me. Surely there must be a workaround to restore the previous version? Some kind of fix that people have used?

[Svenc]

No it isn't, they are what people are blaming everything for (including the price of chips:lol:) mainly because they had some tweaks.

Forget all the hypotheses and just do what comes naturally, the game isn't some kind of Chinese puzzle and if you just do what a manager would you'll do fine.

The last sentence should be isolated made a sticky in its own right. Sadly as soon as someone posts unproven theories like this, they're being touted as fact. There is no way some smallish slider adjustments will ever cause any side to collapse - if you read through the patch notes it will however seem logical that:

- tactics relying overly on corner (exploits) to score

- risky tactics relying on the boost that comes with superb morale across the board, e.g. boost of the dribbling success of a single inside forward/winger

- tactics that employ risky positioning play, such as the full backs pushing forward all the time regardless of opposition and scoreline, and the player never adapting to anything

etc. might not be as effective anymore, as corners, both extreme ends of the morale scale and a bug that caused the AI teams to not properly react to a scoreline are changed and fixed respectively. And that is it. The game has never been about babysitting your players at all times via talks if you didn't want it to, nor is the visual part of the engine merely an estimate representation of what is being calculated, no matter how often everything is being theorized by someone, and then picked up as fact by a dozen.

[paganizer]

Interesting case. It's possible it isn't related to 12.1 at all, but also possible that one of the minor ME changes has had an unusually significanr effect on your team. The main ones I can think of:

- we made AI attacking corner routines more similar to the human ones that we know are effective. But to balance things we also made delivery of corners a bit less accurate and also made it harder to head the ball accurately under severe pressure. So if your team was corner reliant, this could be a factor.

- we made AI managers use touchline instructions a bit better. Main one used more is 'work ball into box' for the higher standard teams.

- I fixed a slightly curious bug in the positioning of full backs in the defensive third of the pitch which in theory allowed teams to get in behind defences too easily in wide areas. Whether you were unwittingly exploiting this I don't know obviously.

- team talk changes relating to managers world reputation in relation to works rep of their players. This would probably only apply if you are a low reputation manager in charge of a team of international standard players.

I haven't scored much from corners. Also noticed the corner delivery in new patch... it's plain bad.. like the ball drifting over the entire defence and ending up for throw in. This seems to happen often, but I guess forcing short corners could counter that.

I have seen many chances and goals created from my wingers getting behind the defence, so that could explain it? Just didn't see it as a bug. So if those are all the changes, all my formations must have been working only because of my wingers?

I guess i'll try playing more direct and ditch the Wingers/InsideForwards, when I feel like playing again

[TheBetterHalf]

@ Paul C

The Attack strategy no longer using counter attacks ( box set to yes) and the defensive strategy using it, it this a change between patches, 12.0.x to 12.1.x or was it change between editions ( FM11, FM12)?

Cheers

[PaulC]

Yes was a change in 12.1.

[Mike7077]

PaulC - I notice you said you fixed a "slightly curious bug" in full-back positioning. One thing I've been unable to do anything about is my full-back almost seeming to stand aside for wingers as they attack us, allowing them down the wing and not looking to stop their progress until right at the byeline. Sometimes they'll eventually make a tackle resulting in a throw-in, but more often or not it results in a corner against us. What was bothering me a bit was the odd positioning of my full-back as a winger takes possession and starts to attack us down the wing. I couldn't figure out how to stop it. Is this what you've fixed?

[FanasdaBola]

Th teamtalks lost the sense, the reactions are simply absurd, I can not play like that.

[PaulC]

PaulC - I notice you said you fixed a "slightly curious bug" in full-back positioning. One thing I've been unable to do anything about is my full-back almost seeming to stand aside for wingers as they attack us, allowing them down the wing and not looking to stop their progress until right at the byeline. Sometimes they'll eventually make a tackle resulting in a throw-in, but more often or not it results in a corner against us. What was bothering me a bit was the odd positioning of my full-back as a winger takes possession and starts to attack us down the wing. I couldn't figure out how to stop it. Is this what you've fixed?

No it isn't that Mike.

[PaulC]

Th teamtalks lost the sense, the reactions are simply absurd, I can not play like that.

If you have clear cut examples of it not making sense feel free to send the .pkm match files to me or upload them to our FTP.

[Mike7077]

No it isn't that Mike.

Ha! Thanks.

I guess I'm on my own with this one, then.

[FanasdaBola]

There are so many that it is impossible to enumerate all, it is impossible!

If a player is stressed out and you tell him to calm down and play without pressure, is about to shut down!

They simply do not react to teamtalks, or when they react in the opposite direction is the logic.

At the end of the game if you say the team that these unhappy, but would like to thank the commitment of an individual player, it just hangs.

It's not worth talking individually with a player. It's ridiculous!

[PaulC]

Just send the next match where something clearly wrong happens. If we don't get the evidence we can't do much....

[stevemc]

I can't believe how many goals I'm conceding after the new update. Its like the positioning of my defenders is 'out of my control'.

And worst offending is after the 90th minute, I'm in November, and I've conceded 7 equalising goals after the 90th minute in league games, after clearly dominating these games too.

Add that to the fact that my strikers are now making much poorer decisions in front of goal, missing clear one-on-one's by quite a margin wide, and hitting the woodwork on far too many occasions.

I don't know what to do anymore!?

[Kriss]

Ha! Thanks.

I guess I'm on my own with this one, then.

I think it's an inherent problem with the ME Mike, they'll track the winger but won't put in a tackle until he's nearly reached the byline, it's always annoyed me but I suspect it's something to do with their zonal/positional awareness.

Could be wrong of course:)

[Mike7077]

I have my goalkeeper set up to distribute to the LB. This was working fine, but after the update, the LB has started just standing there. The goalkeeper will roll or pass the ball to him, but he'll stand there frozen. My LCB will come haring over as fast as he can to get the ball, while my LB just ignores it. On occasion, however, my poor overworked LCB is outpaced by an opposition striker. I'm yet to concede this way, thankfully, as the strikers who've won the race have proceeded to fire wide when it's easier to score, but I can't figure out how to stop this, other than to alter the 'keeper's distribution to "mixed". But I hate it when they hoof it upfield because it just comes straight back (which isn't unrealistic, by the way. I just like controlling possession).

[sanplastiq1]

wowwwwwwwwwww Thank you

[Mike7077]

I fundamentally don't understand morale anymore. Players are schizophrenic. Randomly having low morale out of nowhere. It doesn't make any sense.

[Preveza]

I hate the bug that implements OI's automatically. Pull your finger out SI!!!

[Matej]

PaulC, did u reduce scoring from corners, when we put player on first post and near post aim? Ty

[stevemc]

I can't believe how many goals I'm conceding after the new update. Its like the positioning of my defenders is 'out of my control'.

And worst offending is after the 90th minute, I'm in November, and I've conceded 7 equalising goals after the 90th minute in league games, after clearly dominating these games too.

Add that to the fact that my strikers are now making much poorer decisions in front of goal, missing clear one-on-one's by quite a margin wide, and hitting the woodwork on far too many occasions.

I don't know what to do anymore!?

^^^

Anyone else finding this?

[kostako]

Now in the A-League, the League/Premier winning manager gets no League win recorded, and the Finals Series/Championship winner gets 2 league wins recorded instead of a single Cup win; even if they didn't win the regular season at all (ie. deserved 0 league wins).

Brought it up in the League Specific Issues area here, but figure the more people see the more likely it is to get dealt with

[PaulC]

PaulC, did u reduce scoring from corners, when we put player on first post and near post aim? Ty

I hope so but don't have any statistical confirmation.....

[Kain]

I can't believe how many goals I'm conceding after the new update. Its like the positioning of my defenders is 'out of my control'.

And worst offending is after the 90th minute, I'm in November, and I've conceded 7 equalising goals after the 90th minute in league games, after clearly dominating these games too.

Add that to the fact that my strikers are now making much poorer decisions in front of goal, missing clear one-on-one's by quite a margin wide, and hitting the woodwork on far too many occasions.

I don't know what to do anymore!?

I'm hitting the woodwork far too much, but not really affected by the rest. Do you change to a more defensive outlook during the last 10 minutes? Because if the opposition are only a goal down, they're going to change to a more attacking outlook to try and equalize.

[crafty bison]

I hope so but don't have any statistical confirmation.....

Scoring from corners has definitely been corrected in a non-exploit situation (out of the box settings). I didn't test exploit either before or after patch.

[BiggusD]

^^^

Anyone else finding this?

It sounds like a confidence issue, not a tactical one.

[jimmyt86]

in my preferences screen should I still be seeing version 1.0?

[big daddy]

I can't believe how many goals I'm conceding after the new update. Its like the positioning of my defenders is 'out of my control'.

And worst offending is after the 90th minute, I'm in November, and I've conceded 7 equalising goals after the 90th minute in league games, after clearly dominating these games too.

Add that to the fact that my strikers are now making much poorer decisions in front of goal, missing clear one-on-one's by quite a margin wide, and hitting the woodwork on far too many occasions.

I don't know what to do anymore!?

Yes I have the same problem, I was winning most of my games 1-0, 2-0 , only concided 8 goals in 30 games, but after the update I struggle to score on easy chances and letting in 7 goals in 5 games.

[paganizer]

First off - I'm not saying there wasn't a problem with morale before the recent patch. I did have a run of 30+ games scoring goals in every match.

However something seems to be wrong now. I'm not even sure it has anything to do with morale...

This is before the patch - as you can see I'm doing fine:

This is after patch - can't score goals anymore:

Now before you say this is because my team-morale must have gone to pathetic by now, then take a look at the morale of my squad...

I haven't changed the way I play and I'm not playing with just one tactic. I use 3 different tactics to counter the opponent formations. All of them seem to be broken, or rather my players seem to be broken, cause they can't score anymore. It's a bit frustrating to say the least. Anyone able to shed some light on this problem?

Just a follow up to help fellow strugglers..

To start winning again, I did the following to all my tactics:

- I read someone suggested playing more pressing, so I went from default to "more pressing"

- I also went from default to "more expressive".

- Last I upped the directness of play. I played short passing and instead went for default passing. This MIGHT also be because of the upped tempo, so if you want to play short passing try upping the tempo.

These changes turned it around somewhat with 4 wins and 1 loss. It's still not like before, but atleast I'm scoring again and not dropping points every match.

Maybe just one or 2 of these changes will help.. haven't tested enough, but it's a start for the frustrated folks out there.

[wwfan]

Yes I have the same problem, I was winning most of my games 1-0, 2-0 , only concided 8 goals in 30 games, but after the update I struggle to score on easy chances and letting in 7 goals in 5 games.

I imagine you were inadvertently taking advantage of the 'set piece routine' bug, which saw users converting as often as 1 goal in 4.5 shots, which is a totally unrealistic level. Once you'd scored, you'd then be getting the 'match prep' bug, which meant that AI 'get back into the game' secondary tactics were untrained and thus very ineffective. You'd also have taken advantage of the 'morale' bug, which would keep everyone in your team on superb morale, while heavily penalising many AI teams. The common outcome was winning many matches by the odd goal and conceding very few.

Just a follow up to help fellow strugglers..

To start winning again, I did the following to all my tactics:

- I read someone suggested playing more pressing, so I went from default to "more pressing"

- I also went from default to "more expressive".

- Last I upped the directness of play. I played short passing and instead went for default passing. This MIGHT also be because of the upped tempo, so if you want to play short passing try upping the tempo.

I'm glad you are winning again. However, there are no 'best ways' for tactics. You can win by playing short or direct, sitting back or pressing, being disciplined or expressive, playing slowly or quickly. The key is having a logical system that suits your team.

[JR866Gunner]

Wish i could get mine to run....one minute its stating the steam servers are too busy...an update was pending, so went online and let it do its stuff.

a swift machine reboot and now when launching I get game unavailable at this time, try later... wtf! Ive verified game cache as well!!

[Aim_Less]

Assmen being useless with teamtalks is driving me insane

[paganizer]

I imagine you were inadvertently taking advantage of the 'set piece routine' bug, which saw users converting as often as 1 goal in 4.5 shots, which is a totally unrealistic level. Once you'd scored, you'd then be getting the 'match prep' bug, which meant that AI 'get back into the game' secondary tactics were untrained and thus very ineffective. You'd also have taken advantage of the 'morale' bug, which would keep everyone in your team on superb morale, while heavily penalising many AI teams. The common outcome was winning many matches by the odd goal and conceding very few.

I'm glad you are winning again. However, there are no 'best ways' for tactics. You can win by playing short or direct, sitting back or pressing, being disciplined or expressive, playing slowly or quickly. The key is having a logical system that suits your team.

I know there are no best ways. I was just saying what helped me change my 3 tactics from losing after patch to winning again. I should have been more precise about my playstyle though. Generally i play a balanced, standard/control, Short passing game. I use 3 very different formations to counter opponent tactics (4-1-2-2-1, 4-1-3-2. 3-1-2-3-1). That worked well until patch. Now it seems to works again with those little adjustments. But you are right these changes might not work well a bunch of other tactic styles.

[fmnewcastle]

Been playing FM for years. Huge fan of the game think brilliant things have been done to make it one of the greatest games ever.. I put hours upon hours into this game playing it (probably much more then I should) After this patch I simply stopped playing the game. It was a blast before yes the morale was a bit bugged and at times became simple but I had freedom in the transfer market, could sign coaches to any position I wanted. I usually play with Newcastle and I've never had any unrealistic achievements or transfers (trust me I've tried to sign some players that I had no chance at getting). Now I can't do anything in the transfer market, I can't sign any coaches/scouts and the morale is terrible no matter what I do with team talks, team meetings, personal talks, media handling nothing. I've started and restarted countless games just to play with it and find out if there is anything I can do and there is not. I've tried everything. I'm simply done playing until the transfer window is over and that new update comes out. It took the fun out of it and became a 2nd job. Could the game have been adjusted to increase the difficulty? Probably some tweaks here and there yes. Did the fun have to be sucked out of it? No. Some people enjoy the new updates but I do not. Not meant to complain or bash people who work on it because I know a lot of time is put into the game and if this is the direction FM is headed so be it. However, if changes aren't made in the next patch I'm simply done playing and probably won't buy FM 2013. With that said I hope improvements can be made after the January transfer window because I'm already suffering from some withdrawal.

[stevemc]

I'm hitting the woodwork far too much, but not really affected by the rest. Do you change to a more defensive outlook during the last 10 minutes? Because if the opposition are only a goal down, they're going to change to a more attacking outlook to try and equalize.

Yeah I have a tactic for the last 10 minutes of a game, and I've used it to close out games (which didn't work) so tried building another tactics (and that didn't work either)

It sounds like a confidence issue, not a tactical one.

Doubt it, because after winning my pre-season matches the morale was great, and in the first game of the season, these silly last minute goals started.

Yes I have the same problem, I was winning most of my games 1-0, 2-0 , only concided 8 goals in 30 games, but after the update I struggle to score on easy chances and letting in 7 goals in 5 games.

Yeah, my forwards are missing far too many chances (mainly against the woodwork), also my right winger is the leading scorer in the league (by some distance too).

[Coentrao]

I understand that with the starting experience system that players will have a hard time motivating for you at the start, but how long does this take to change? After one season they start trusting you more?

[PaulC]

I understand that with the starting experience system that players will have a hard time motivating for you at the start, but how long does this take to change? After one season they start trusting you more?

You will need to make a name for yourself, basically. Could take at least a season at the top levels, although none of this is relevant really at the lower league levels.

[Total_Football]

I think we've made a decent fist of it to be fair, but there is always room for improvement.

We just felt the balance of the ME in 11.3 was very good so decided not to make too many changes since. That doesn't mean work hasn't been ongoing in the background for future releases obviously!

Bingo.

In my opinion the match engine is absolutely and completely NOT balanced or realistic, the ME is more or less broken. The early goal problem and others are examples of this. IT just has a tabloid/arcadey feel to it, with too many scripted events and in my opinion, not enough of what you do to prepare for a match has any impact what so ever on what happens. And why on earth a game that has graphics worse than actua soccer in the 90s should take up so much processing power I will never know. In my opinion not addressing the weaknesses in the BROKEN Match Engine is a major blunder. You have just lost a customer, I will not be forking out for another game which has something fixed, that should have been fixed 2 or 3 games ago, just because SI felt tinkering with the UI and not fixing bugs for 3 games running was good enough.

Thankyou and goodnight.

[PaulC]

Bingo.

In my opinion the match engine is absolutely and completely NOT balanced or realistic, the ME is more or less broken. The early goal problem and others are examples of this. IT just has a tabloid/arcadey feel to it, with too many scripted events and in my opinion, not enough of what you do to prepare for a match has any impact what so ever on what happens. And why on earth a game that has graphics worse than actua soccer in the 90s should take up so much processing power I will never know. In my opinion not addressing the weaknesses in the BROKEN Match Engine is a major blunder. You have just lost a customer, I will not be forking out for another game which has something fixed, that should have been fixed 2 or 3 games ago, just because SI felt tinkering with the UI and not fixing bugs for 3 games running was good enough.

Thankyou and goodnight.

I'm sorry you feel that way but you have a right to your opinion and we can't please everyone all the time.

[wwfan]

^^^

Anyone else finding this?

Do you have a very young team? I found that a young defence would often fold in the last ten minutes and that I needed a two goal cushion to be sure of the win. Now they are maturing, late goals are becoming a rarity.

[Svenc]

I started a new save as a Sunday League rep manager at Bayern Munich. I've also never once read one of the elaborate team talk/training/etc. guides in my entire life, as I would rather develop my own philosophies based on experience, rather than milk every bonus point and advantage I can out of the game's mechanics. This is also the reason that Tactical Theorems is the only guide I ever recommend to newcomers to the game, as it is communicating a template to build your own ideas upon, rather than boiling down to a power gaming guide meant to maximize the gain in every aspect of the game.

I think that some have become overly obsessive about team talks in particular, seeing them as a mini-game that needs to be "won" (green arrow) rather than lost (red arrow) at all times in order to achieve anything. Which is exactly what it is, being overly obsessive - this is my team as a Sunday League rep manager who often times still cannot reach his players, has mixed results on the "arrows front" and who just had a team talk going in the wrong direction (seven red arrows) - really, so what?!: http://s14.directupload.net/file/d/2755/bzpdu7mw_jpg.htm

[Aim_Less]

i agree with Total_football , ME is horrible 12.1.1 screwed it even more . my defenders keep making mistakes that we only see in very lower leagues doing it .

I have read several forums and the complain is the same its like SI is dedicated to destroying tactics that were effective not improving the ME

[fmnewcastle]

I'm sorry you feel that way but you have a right to your opinion and we can't please everyone all the time.

It appears to me like this has displeased many people.

[kostako]

At the moment I remain unaffected by any supposed negative effects of the improved morale modelling, so I'll refrain from voicing any opinions on that at this time.

I do believe however that the endless moaning about team talks is hugely unwarranted. If you're less reputable than your players they listen less, if you're more they take whatever you throw at them unless it's way out of line. That said, the effect of any team talk player reaction - as has been stated by the dev guys in here, and which have been validated on a personal level via my own experiences - is usually pretty small.

As a test, final game of the season with a team with good/very good morale and against a team I was expected to thrash I told them all that there was no pressure - which was met by a ton of complacency. I then told the individual groups that I expected a performance - resulting in a sea of red, confused players. Half time, 4-0 up. Opposite case at half time, told them not to get complacent, met with much "gained focus, seemed motivated, etc. except for the star winger (ex-Boca player, who is clearly of a higher rep than me) who was angry with that. So I got aggressive and told him I expected a performance, still angry obviously. He goes out and scores one of the two goals of the half (a cracker) and we win 6-0, the biggest win of the season.

Last year you didn't get that instant feedback for teamtalks, but now with red and green every time you say something it's far too easy for people to come on here and blame that for their bad luck or poor tactical choices or run of bad games. With added transparency to team talks it's become an easy target. However, for me the transparency has had an opposite effect whereby I now know the magnitude of the impact of team talks on match performance is far less than I believed it to be in the past.

[Total_Football]

It appears to me like this has displeased many people.

I agree, I am currently uninstalling FM2012 and reinstalling 2011. It is much the same game, except the match engine at least functions to a good standard, and the player interaction system works most of the time, and the rest of the game actually works. These things in 2012: match engine (which they will not be working on, I find this completely incomprehensible) and morale/interactions are completely unacceptable. I can't describe how frustrating I have found the match engine on 2012, it take a considerable amount of investment of time and effort to play this game well, and to be rewarded after all that with this atrocity is just going to put many, many people off.

If you want my advice SI, stop making the match engine about sensationalism and random events, and make it an extension of the simulation. I want to see the work I do before games have at least some bearing on the game, else whats the point? Its not just me either, if you go round forums of even FM fan sites, you will find a tangible disgruntlement at this years game.

[Kriss]

Errr, the match engine has remained virtually unchanged from FM11 so your comments are rather self contradictory to me.

The reason for next to no changes is that it had really reached its ceiling as far as curing its long term ills, therefore PaulC and his team are working on the next generation ME which presumably will be capable of having things like the not quite fully curable corner problem and other well known glitches ironed out.

[Total_Football]

By virtually unchanged I was referring to the game as a whole not the match engine. If you have two identical plates but one is broken, they are still identical, just one is broken. Same with the match engines.

[pigfacemonkeyman]

Do you have a very young team? I found that a young defence would often fold in the last ten minutes and that I needed a two goal cushion to be sure of the win. Now they are maturing, late goals are becoming a rarity.

Improved stamina?

[Bhoy!]

I have a question, when I go to the Game Status page it says my Version of the game is 12.1.0 242761 (m.e v993). I'm guessing that means it hasn't been patched to 12.1.1 yet, even if I have been online on Steam a couple of times in the past few days. Any idea how to get the game patched to the latest version?