Football Manager Classic Tactics

[Schotsmannetje]

Good afternoon,

I just had a little bit of a brainfart this morning whilst taking a shower and I would like to share it with you. It's about FMC's tactics.

Correctly if I'm wrong, but isn't FMC introduced to give more casual gamers an opportunity to experience a less complex and faster FM-experience? And therefore providing FM to a broader audience?

Why then have they not tried to make the most difficult part of FM (imho anyway), the tactics, less complex?

I can imagine that the kind of players that play FMC do so because they just want to be able to pick a decent side and get decent realistic(!) results with default tactics and formations. It seems as if, just like in FMC's big brother, you seem to get punished for using default tactics and formations and not tweaking your tactics to fit the match engine. Yes I agree with you that the full career mode should be a big challenge in every aspect of the game, including tactics. But in my opinion it's a missed opportunity not to make the most difficult part of the game, the tactics, less complex when you try to give more casual gamers a less complex and faster FM-experience with FMC. If FMC-players start getting a grip on the game, they could still make the decision to try the more challenging experience of the full career game.

In my opinion FMC should be a gateway for more casual gamers into the awesome football experience that FM is, but at the moment I can imagine that a lot of gamers (even big football fans) are taken aback by the complexity of the tactics, even in FMC. It seems counterproductive to me to keep the tactics this complicated in FMC. Sort of contradicts the goal of FMC really.

Mind you I'm not a game developer and I have no idea if what I'm saying is possible. I'm just curious!

[playmaker]

While FMC may be a good starting point it is actually aimed at people with experience of football games, not at beginners.

As long as people understand football language they should have a decent chance of getting to grips with the new tactics interface.

[DaBossa]

Im with you - I thought FMC was going to be a quicker less time consuming version - wrong. (Its take me 40hrs to play 15 games)

I was hoping for as you said a streamlined tactical game - set my base formation and basic team instructions before each match, but then let the game work out player instructions to suit my set up - like all players having a "auto" option on the tactics screen not just FBs and CMs.

[KingEric07]

I'm over 20 seasons in on FMC and I like the new tactic system. Unlike the old slider system I feel more in control of the new thing. What I have noticed is the simpler the tactic the better. Giving too many instructions (team and player) seems to unsettle the team

[s33r]

Have to add a voice to the tactics being simpler as I could never quite get the balance right on the old sliders. FM, whether in Classic or "Full Fat" mode, assumes the player has some knowledge of football and therefore knows the basic principles behind the tactics. Even without that there are plenty of in-game and community based tutorials not to mention that, if you want, you can just select one of the pre-built tactics and go from there. However as you've found that won't often yield instant results and kind of drives you to learn more so, imho, it's perfect from someone who has a passing knowledge of football but wants to learn more. By pushing them towards inventing their own tactic or tweaking existing known tactics they're learning; how awesome is that!?

As with anything within FM it'll take as long or as short as you want. While FMC is oft touted as a stripped down, whizz through version of FM if you want you can spend hours pouring through everything and not clicking continue till everything is sorted.

[Schotsmannetje]

While FMC may be a good starting point it is actually aimed at people with experience of football games, not at beginners.

As long as people understand football language they should have a decent chance of getting to grips with the new tactics interface.

Im with you - I thought FMC was going to be a quicker less time consuming version - wrong. (Its take me 40hrs to play 15 games)

I was hoping for as you said a streamlined tactical game - set my base formation and basic team instructions before each match, but then let the game work out player instructions to suit my set up - like all players having a "auto" option on the tactics screen not just FBs and CMs.

Have to add a voice to the tactics being simpler as I could never quite get the balance right on the old sliders. FM, whether in Classic or "Full Fat" mode, assumes the player has some knowledge of football and therefore knows the basic principles behind the tactics. Even without that there are plenty of in-game and community based tutorials not to mention that, if you want, you can just select one of the pre-built tactics and go from there. However as you've found that won't often yield instant results and kind of drives you to learn more so, imho, it's perfect from someone who has a passing knowledge of football but wants to learn more. By pushing them towards inventing their own tactic or tweaking existing known tactics they're learning; how awesome is that!?

As with anything within FM it'll take as long or as short as you want. While FMC is oft touted as a stripped down, whizz through version of FM if you want you can spend hours pouring through everything and not clicking continue till everything is sorted.

Okay I've learned that FMC was designed to give gamers a quicker gameplay, not necessarily a less complex gameplay. Fair enough. And yes I completely agree that the tactics have become less complex already because of the abolishment of the sliders. But still, in my opinion, the tactics are very complex in the sense that you can take hours to perfect your tactics. And yes it is indeed an awesome learning school to learn how football tactics work. But it still doesn't fit the description of FMC. Don't get me wrong, I prefer FMC to the full game, but to me it still seems odd that using simple default tactics rarely gives you decent results and that you still seem to need to tweak your tactics to perfection to get a decent run of results, whilst FMC is designed to provide quicker gameplay (which isn't even really the case, in my case, because of having to tweak tactics).

Why can't you, for example, use the match plans that you can use for 'Instant Result' when playing the match yourself?

And about football knowledge (@playmaker). If you look through the different forums, especially the tactics forums, you will notice that different people have different insights as to what certain terms and/or instructions (should) mean. For example, wwmfan suggests in his twelve-step-guide-thread that to dominate play in the style of Arsenal and Barcelona (lot of possession, patient buildup), according to the way FM is build, in FM you'd have to adopt the "Counter" mentality. To me that doesn't make any sense. My point being: You can't always really project knowledge about football IRL onto the game and get results. You really have to learn how this particular match engine works to be able to get results. That makes sense for the full game, because when you play the full game you accept the fact that it's going to take a lot of time to understand how the game works. But for FMC, which aims at providing faster gameplay, that shouldn't be the case in my opinion.

Another example is 4-2-3-1. Nearly all teams, both clubs and international teams, have adopted this tactic and got results with it. But loads of people are reporting that this formation, with which ever instructions, doesn't get you a decent run of results. And yes you might argue that for the full game you'd have to tweak the instructions until you completely get it right and start getting results. But if FMC is designed for faster gameplay, you'd expect a formation that's been adopted by so many teams all over the world, like 4231 (and with success I might add), to give you decent results as a base. THen you'd still be able to tweak your tactics to get to a level of perfection.

[s33r]

Some fair points in there and agree that many people have differing opinions but so is true in the real footballing world. Personally I've had a mixture of results having picked a formation that best used the players available. Occasionally I've had to change things around due to injuries etc that you'd expect but in most sessions I've been able to get through 2-3 months of in-game time or more depending on how results were going. I can't say I've spent hours on my tactics and as far as results go, given the team I'm managing, I'd say we're over achieving at the moment. Sure the ME issues aren't making things easy at all and perhaps this isn't helping your perception of a complex tactical game but personally I believe you can just pick an "off the shelf" tactic, make a few per-team tweaks and get something out of most games.

In regards to match plans I think the theory there is, in my mind, when you hit Instant Result you're sort of self imposing a touchline ban and therefore you are telling your Assistant what you want the team to do. It's then up to him how the game goes, the subs to be done and what to change and when. If you're managing the game that's where touchline shouts etc come in and if you're just playing the game and not lobbing out the occasional shout then you're leaving out an important part of match day. Maybe it's just the way I play but I personally find FMC delivering what I expected both in terms of time required and complexity.