Nearly that time again 2017

[JR866Gunner]

On 03/08/2016 at 15:28, Boss said:

Don't think I'll get FM17 as I'm enjoying my FM16 game too much

i say this every year.... lol

[FauxNine]

I've been loving FM16. I had played the ones before a tonne more to be honest though, but that's just a personal time thing. 

I noticed that the full backs were very good at the start of the game so I used that to my advantage. Other than that, I can't really think of any major problems that I've experienced. Can't bloody wait for FM17. Always love a new FM.

I'm aiming to have a better computer by the time the next one comes out so it runs super smooth. I'll literally upgrade purely for FM haha.

[gavo01]

As a lame player of FM16 I used the "crossing Issue" to my advantage, so I have no problems with it. 

As for getting FM17, that will depend on how much they improve international management. I play FM as a NT manager and would like to see more improvements in this area.

I would also like to see Kosovo's NT included now they are officially UEFA members.

If at least one of these is addressed in FM17, I will be buying it. 

 

[Marathon Dress Week]

Good luck to the FM17 beta testers. Better know as those who purchase the game on release.

[KingCanary]

FM16 has unfortunately been my least favourite FM and the first I've ever just stopped playing. The crossing and defensive AI issues just became to much for me although clearly I'm not in the majority. Hopefully 17 is an improvement.

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, Marathon Dress Week said:

Good luck to the FM17 beta testers. Better know as those who purchase the game on release.

Others in this thread have taken the time to post constructive comments & then you pitch in with this.

[nicko]

One thing I am hoping for on FM17 is a re-vamp with the transfer market lioke alot more activity

 

[Marathon Dress Week]

54 minutes ago, Barside said:

Others in this thread have taken the time to post constructive comments & then you pitch in with this.

Sorry if I have hurt your feelings, but that is just the taste that FM16 has left in my mouth.

Maybe just accept that not everyone shares your view of the game?

[Guest]

You could actually take the time to read my posts in this & a few of the other threads at the top of the page to get an idea about my opinion of FM16, I've been openly critical about FM16 in the public sections & hyper critical in private areas.

[Sunstrikuuu]

On 8/3/2016 at 08:33, mr arsenal said:

Its that time again when we all start looking forward to the new installment of the best game on the market 

So how has everyone found 2016 in general , how did you cope with the known crossing issue or did you just give up ?

FM 2016 in my opinion was a mess and a significant step backwards from 2015.  Bugs and poorly-designed 'features' went unaddressed and new and exciting stupidity was added.  I'm not buying 2017 until after 17.3, if at all.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

On 08/08/2016 at 16:37, shirajzl said:

Tactics which just throw players forward and overload AI have always been a problem for every ME we've had.

Svenc usually refers to download section(s) here and forums like fm-base where people wanting super tactics congregate, but I've seen many people in other places (forums, blogs, YT) making unbalanced, overloading tactics without ever wanting to exploit the ME per se. They think they've just created an attacking tactic which produces expected results, but in fact they only work because mindlessly overload the AI works, too.

This has been somewhat infuriating for me to see. Sometimes you can ask for advice and get very conflicting advice which sets you back in the learning process. I've seen some people advise to use automatic roles, and there's stuff on Steam which is basically almost a 0-0-11 formation with 5 million instructions that win every match. 

 

I said to one of the devs ages back, that the problem is these things succeed, and then people who try and wrap their heads around making a sensible tactic, only to have inconsistent or poor results, get frustrated, don't learn (or refuse to learn) and resort to the 'exploit' tactics to skate by. They'll say they enjoy the game, they might even give it a good review, but it's not exactly in my eyes a good thing, because it's just a cycle that isn't conductive to the learning process.

 

On 03/08/2016 at 13:33, mr arsenal said:

Its that time again when we all start looking forward to the new installment of the best game on the market 

So how has everyone found 2016 in general , how did you cope with the known crossing issue or did you just give up ?

 

Roll on Footy manager 2017 

 

I'll admit I've had a frustrating time with FM 2016, god knows I've asked for help plenty and have made zero progress in some respects. But, I was ill when FM2016 came out (heart issues) and so I've been very very late to the party really in terms of getting a save going. The frustration would just put me back in hospital (lol), but...

I've made something, and it is finally starting to click, without any help at all. And that's really making me be a very proud little bugger.

I'm also glad to see my nephew (the next generation) pick up the game and have a whale of a time with it.

I think 2016 has some very good ideas, like the highlighting of staff attributes, the staff job panel too. But some are half-baked, for example, you should be able to search by attributes/roles for staff like you can already do for player roles on the transfer market. I also think the crossing/defending isn't really that good in FM 2016, and that there are probably far too many shots coming at dodgy angles.

BUT, I've been impressed with the match engine when it does 'click'. I see overhead kicks, nice one touch passes, outright cynical fouls etc, a lot more than I did before. 

As for FM2017? Well, because I'm late to the party, I'm only just getting into a save, so I doubt I'll pick up 2017 on launch. In fact, I'll wait for .3 anyway, as that is usually the more complete, solid version. Unless I find the game on the cheap somewhere, like I did with FM2016, it's swings and roundabouts really, it'll probably end up in my collection at some point, but I want to stick with 2016 for now, not just because I'm a bit late, but because it's been one of those versions that has made me really smash my head on the desk in frustration, and I want to conquer it as a point of pride. No doubt, I'll annoy the moderators on here with my incessant whinging when I do pick up 2017, until I master that, cos we wouldn't want them to rest on their laurels! XD

[shirajzl]

44 minutes ago, isignedupfornorealreason said:

 I've seen some people advise to use automatic roles, and there's stuff on Steam which is basically almost a 0-0-11 formation with 5 million instructions that win every match. 

I said to one of the devs ages back, that the problem is these things succeed, and then people who try and wrap their heads around making a sensible tactic, only to have inconsistent or poor results, get frustrated, don't learn (or refuse to learn) and resort to the 'exploit' tactics to skate by. They'll say they enjoy the game, they might even give it a good review, but it's not exactly in my eyes a good thing, because it's just a cycle that isn't conductive to the learning process.

 

Yes, this is exactly the biggest problem in my opinion, too. It's true that ME has gone a long way in preventing "Diablo tactics" over the years, but the fact remains overly aggressive tactics which simply overload the AI still work splendidly. Sure, you get more of those frustrating "30 shots, no goals, AI gets 1 shot, 1 goal" matches, but judging by what people have been posting, in the long term those tactic work really well. Download sections on FM fan sites are full of such tactics, often with elaborate explanations by the author, sometimes even claiming to replicate real life tactics of some manager, but in fact they only replicate the good old "throw everyone forward" trick that has always worked in CM/FM.

As long as such tactics work, moving forward will be difficult, especially since SI are doing a horrible job at explaining game mechanics. That directly leads to what you described; people try to learn, get to the wall of confusing tactical instructions without understanding how they work and interact and then those people simply give up and go back to the download section. People like Cleon and Rashidi have been doing a good job trying to explain stuff, but all their efforts are still a drop in the ocean of what an average user actually needs to play the tactical aspect of the game comfortably.

[Guest]

It will be interesting to see the general reaction should SI be able to address the issues that allows those overload the attacking third tactics to consistently work, what's encouraging is that they understand the underlying causes so its just a case of being able to come up with solutions in the code to address them. Of course it's not a simple case of adding a few new lines of code but once you understand the problem a solution is only a matter of time & patience.

[shirajzl]

9 hours ago, Barside said:

It will be interesting to see the general reaction should SI be able to address the issues that allows those overload the attacking third tactics to consistently work.

The forum would burn.

What's more, all those "tacticians" over at fm-base and similar sites would be the angriest and completely lost. However, after a year of outcry and "I'm done with FM" posts, things would settle down.

I do wonder, though, how many people would really quit FM because a lot of FM players use downloadable tactics. If you suddenly take that away from a massive chunk of your player base, it'd be curious to see how many would be ready to stay and finally learn the game.

[isignedupfornorealreason]

4 hours ago, shirajzl said:

The forum would burn.

What's more, all those "tacticians" over at fm-base and similar sites would be the angriest and completely lost. However, after a year of outcry and "I'm done with FM" posts, things would settle down.

I do wonder, though, how many people would really quit FM because a lot of FM players use downloadable tactics. If you suddenly take that away from a massive chunk of your player base, it'd be curious to see how many would be ready to stay and finally learn the game.

 

Whether they learn or not would end up being irrelevant. People will always find a way to game the system. Always. >_>

[Carninho]

i'll buy FM17 just like i have for everyone since CM1. I dont mind the first few weeks of playing a buggy game, as it gives me a chance to test out the game before really sinking into a long term save. to pay £30 for a game that i play every day is just a no brainer for me. 

I care more about FM than I do about ‘real’ football. FM/CM kept me going when Forest were relegated to the Championship and even to League 1 IRL, as I was excited about managing my Forest team in those leagues.

FM16 though is the first edition that I have really struggled with tactic wise, and if I hadnt downloaded a few tactics from this forum I'd be very frustrated. But my biggest issue this time round has been the regens. It seems that the game is unable to create regens for every position. In FM16 I've not had a worthy fullback come though any of my managed academies, 90% of the players worth keeping are strikers, and even then they can play in every role except Complete Forward. Wingers are rare too and an Inside Forward is the rarest of all. CB's and DM's are generally 5'10''...

Anyone that plays youth only challenges in FM16 has my full respect   

[Neil Brock]

It's difficult to have a system where the best way of figuring out whether a tactic is working is to watch a 90 minute match of it, when very few users (understandably) want to watch 90 minutes for every game. Ideally the game needs to feed back to the user better, but it's difficult to find a system to do this, given the numerous potential tactics available to the AI, and the fact you don't want to get to the point where people feel they are being spoon fed the answers.

Also of course, even with the perfect tactics, setup and players, you can still lose games you should rightly win. That's football I'm afraid. 

[isignedupfornorealreason]

2 minutes ago, Neil Brock said:

It's difficult to have a system where the best way of figuring out whether a tactic is working is to watch a 90 minute match of it, when very few users (understandably) want to watch 90 minutes for every game. Ideally the game needs to feed back to the user better, but it's difficult to find a system to do this, given the numerous potential tactics available to the AI, and the fact you don't want to get to the point where people feel they are being spoon fed the answers.

Also of course, even with the perfect tactics, setup and players, you can still lose games you should rightly win. That's football I'm afraid. 

Don't I know it...

I lost 1-2 to Newcastle, when I dominated the living snot out of them. They got the goals via a free kick and a corner. To say I was miffed is an understatement. I at least kept my cool enough to tell the boys to not worry about the result though. We hit the post, we controlled it, we just didn't put the game to bed. Ugh.

 

I think SI are going to be tackling that accessibility question for a long while yet to be honest. 

[Sunstrikuuu]

53 minutes ago, Neil Brock said:

It's difficult to have a system where the best way of figuring out whether a tactic is working is to watch a 90 minute match of it, when very few users (understandably) want to watch 90 minutes for every game. Ideally the game needs to feed back to the user better, but it's difficult to find a system to do this, given the numerous potential tactics available to the AI, and the fact you don't want to get to the point where people feel they are being spoon fed the answers.\

I'm glad to see this discussed.  One of the problems with FM as it stands - not merely in tactics but in most facets of the game - is that the feedback given to the user isn't adequate.  The two places this comes up most are transfers, where human players can't understand why players are valued in particular ways or do or do not draw particular offers, and tactics as you've said.  Within the larger sphere of tactics, a common complaint since FM 14 has been that the role descriptions either don't provide enough, or provide misleading, information about what the player does and how it differs from similar roles.  For players who don't have lots of experience, it can be pretty daunting to puzzle out what the differences between an Enganche, an Advanced Playmaker on Attack and a Trequartiste might be and how they'll affect a tactic.  As the number of roles and duties expand, the lines blur further and clear and detailed explanation of the differences becomes more necessary.  One suggestion, championed particularly by Cleon, I think, has been to contract the number of roles, especially in the fullback/wingback positions and the central/defensive/attacking midfield positions, and expand the number of PIs available for each role.  That makes the system more transparent and allows for better testing of tactics.  It also allows for more specialty roles with hard-coded behavior like the half-back.

[shirajzl]

I understand SI's fear of going too far and spoon-feeding the users, but right now we're miles and miles away from it. The tactical interface is simple on the face of it, but once you dive deep into it without having the knowledge, you're lost quickly and frustrated even quicker when you see very few things are explained well, especially the knock-on effects of picking a certain role/duty/PI/TI.

There's huge space between what we have now and spoon-feeding area, massive strides are needed in that direction.

[Cougar2010]

6 minutes ago, shirajzl said:

I understand SI's fear of going too far and spoon-feeding the users, but right now we're miles and miles away from it. The tactical interface is simple on the face of it, but once you dive deep into it without having the knowledge, you're lost quickly and frustrated even quicker when you see very few things are explained well, especially the knock-on effects of picking a certain role/duty/PI/TI.

There's huge space between what we have now and spoon-feeding area, massive strides are needed in that direction.

 

I'm not sure you could even spoon feed a game such as FM tbh.

 

This is where a lot of users have issues.  They are so used to games having X+Y=Z that they have trouble dealing with FM where there are so many variables on a match by match basis.  This is why the tactics forum is full of experienced users giving generic advice because you simply cannot give specific advice unless you are sitting in front of the PC playing a match and even if you did and it was relevant to that particular match & situation it wouldn't be for the next one.

 

The AM giving advice in game is the way to go in the long term but the ability of the AM (FM) to give good advice consistently is also a long way off IMO due to the coding/processing that would be needed.

[warlock]

5 hours ago, Cougar2010 said:

The AM giving advice in game is the way to go in the long term but the ability of the AM (FM) to give good advice consistently is also a long way off IMO due to the coding/processing that would be needed.

If I might stick my oar in here...

I think you're absolutely right about the solution, and how long we might wait for it. But it would be nice to see SI making moves in this direction. Whatever a manager's tactical problems, following the advice of the AM in-match is likely to make things worse, not better. As it stands I'd rather SI pulled it altogether than have the endless examples of Artificial Stupidity (pass it shorter, go more direct, we're winning most headers, we're completely overrun in midfield). 

Even worse, if anything, is the tactical advice in staff meetings before a match (in full FM, thankfully missing in FMT). In my last FM save, having spent weeks getting the team to tactical fluidity, I was constantly told to change the formation, change the mentality, change the width, depth, closing down - just about everything.

My other pet hate is the role and duty suitability feedback. I *know* the green pie segments don't mean much, if anything; I know the star rating doesn't mean much; but when you put a player into a position and duty it's hard to ignore the "feedback" that says he isn't going to do well there.

Any improvements in these areas in 17 would be welcome, and far more so than pointless gimmicks like 'see yourself on the touchline with ugly hair and badly-fitting suit'.

[Chesters86]

I say the same every year, that I won't get the next release because not that much changes these days but then I always end up getting it on release day!! Have no clue what to expect from FM 17 features wise, so looking forward to the announcements from the SI team.

[grade]

12 hours ago, warlock said:

If I might stick my oar in here...

I think you're absolutely right about the solution, and how long we might wait for it. But it would be nice to see SI making moves in this direction. Whatever a manager's tactical problems, following the advice of the AM in-match is likely to make things worse, not better. As it stands I'd rather SI pulled it altogether than have the endless examples of Artificial Stupidity (pass it shorter, go more direct, we're winning most headers, we're completely overrun in midfield). 

Even worse, if anything, is the tactical advice in staff meetings before a match (in full FM, thankfully missing in FMT). In my last FM save, having spent weeks getting the team to tactical fluidity, I was constantly told to change the formation, change the mentality, change the width, depth, closing down - just about everything.

My other pet hate is the role and duty suitability feedback. I *know* the green pie segments don't mean much, if anything; I know the star rating doesn't mean much; but when you put a player into a position and duty it's hard to ignore the "feedback" that says he isn't going to do well there.

Any improvements in these areas in 17 would be welcome, and far more so than pointless gimmicks like 'see yourself on the touchline with ugly hair and badly-fitting suit'.

That is why I refuse to listen to none of the advise my AI staff gives, I do not go to any staff meeting and I don't even listen to my AM during match. I mean I play my own way, win or loose (yes I play like since first FMs). Like has been said every version of FM i'm starting from scratch anyway. What tactic work on FM16, will not work in FM17.

I prefer to read here on the forums (there is thousands of threads to choose from tactics forums) about what exactly I'm doing wrong and correct it accordingly.

[Cougar2010]

13 hours ago, warlock said:

If I might stick my oar in here...

I think you're absolutely right about the solution, and how long we might wait for it. But it would be nice to see SI making moves in this direction. Whatever a manager's tactical problems, following the advice of the AM in-match is likely to make things worse, not better. As it stands I'd rather SI pulled it altogether than have the endless examples of Artificial Stupidity (pass it shorter, go more direct, we're winning most headers, we're completely overrun in midfield). 

Even worse, if anything, is the tactical advice in staff meetings before a match (in full FM, thankfully missing in FMT). In my last FM save, having spent weeks getting the team to tactical fluidity, I was constantly told to change the formation, change the mentality, change the width, depth, closing down - just about everything.

My other pet hate is the role and duty suitability feedback. I *know* the green pie segments don't mean much, if anything; I know the star rating doesn't mean much; but when you put a player into a position and duty it's hard to ignore the "feedback" that says he isn't going to do well there.

Any improvements in these areas in 17 would be welcome, and far more so than pointless gimmicks like 'see yourself on the touchline with ugly hair and badly-fitting suit'.

Yeah fully agree with most of that tbh.

In terms of AI advice in match the only ones I listen to are the ones relevant to OIs/opposition players such as dangerous crosser, dangerous long shots, one player getting too much time on the ball.

The staff meeting tactical advice is no different to the in game tactical advice which is more or less next to useless.

The green pie segments for position/role don't work very well because each role requires a different amount of key attributes.  Complete forward will always have less segments than a poacher even if the player is a good fit for a complete forward and this leads to confusion and FM feeding poor information back to the user.

The segment & star issue should be a fairly straight forward fix tbh and I would be going down the road of adding some sort of modifier into the coding between the attributes & the segments so that each role and duty could be equally rated against each other.  I would kinda expected this to have been quite obvious when the feature was created and its the sort of thing you see quite often in statistical analysis.  I would even go as far as to say SI dropped the ball with this one as I remember having the same sort of issues doing cost analysis at work 20 odd years ago as well as in my own time when I created spreadsheets for a few online games I played.