I mean seriously, come on

[adj]

Third season at Everton ad third successive FA Cup final. All through the save i appear to have the hoodoo over City as i think its 6 wins from 9 matches but this scoreline is quite frankly ridiculous. I appreciate i've bult a very good team (we won the campions league the following week, 1-0 v Juve) and sometimes everything comes together but City are still a very good team and this just isn't realistic. I don't like to scream bug at things but its pretty difficult to explain any other way. I've played the same formation pretty much all season and the starting XI was my first choice apart from Lukaku getting injured in training beforehand and Nole taking his place so its not like I sprung a tactical master stroke on them, Thoughts?

 

 

[Svenc]

Hit save match and upload. Otherwise no thoughts. This isn't a stats sim, there's play behind eventually leading up to the goals.

In general what can contribute to added goals:

- bugs (marking, player movement/decisions, etc.), both open play and set pieces possibly
- weird AI tactical decisions. There is an opponent too and he plays matches dynamically, i.e. upon conceding may apply desperate measures to get back in a tie, including, on occasion, outright formation changes during a match. It may also include weird picks in the line-up too

That's a goal scored every 2 shots, so there might be visibly holes in there exploited, against this AI man in particular and what he was doing. Is this a tactical download? Those aim to exploit aforementioned bugs, but also on occasion lack of AI tactic decision making. If you want a realistic experience, the aim of those isn't it. You could question of course whether at all this should be possible, and conclude that the game were poor because it is, but then really old releases had far bigger exploits of that kind. All styles of play are viable. But ultimately, what you put in, you may get out. In the meantime, be glad. I reckon a lot of perennial rage quitters would kill for conversion rates like this. ;-)

[adj]

here you go

 

 

Man City v Everton.pkm

[Haiku]

Is this a downloaded tactic or yours? I'm asking because I'm having real trouble with tactical consistency this year, but there are certain tactics which exploit the match engine flaws. Even it is cheating tactic It's still a game issue nonetheless.  

[janrzm]

That save would have been over for me at that point and probably sooner, I reached too many cup finals with Newcastle in two seasons and quit. These results probably shouldn't happen, I raised a similar query but it was a game between two Ai teams. I'm sure someone will point you to this - Freak results happen seems to be a stock answer for this kind of thing.

[Farina]

What formation did City use?

[Svenc]

5 hours ago, janrzm said:

That save would have been over for me at that point and probably sooner, I reached too many cup finals with Newcastle in two seasons and quit. These results probably shouldn't happen, I raised a similar query but it was a game between two Ai teams. I'm sure someone will point you to this - Freak results happen seems to be a stock answer for this kind of thing.

They happen. It is how they come about in football and how they may come about in the game. Football does have errors and players losing their nerves. However it doesn't have bugs and it also hasn't the dynamics that an abstract computer simulation inevitably will have. Inevitably, the frequencies may also differ.

At a quick glance this is a bit of both, circumstance, but also tactics and ME/AI. From my experience it isn't usual that there's multiple goals off set pieces scored in a match (as was the case here). Minute 4 and 45, the goals are from an attacking throw in. 50 is from a bad corner clearance (but then City didn't keep anybody up top to clear to). Additionally, there is a reasonably big amount of individual error involved, also way above average in my book. The City defenders multiple times set up shots by either dropping the ball or playing it into attacker's feet. At 44:25 Stones basically deflects the ball straight into Nole's feet. There's comedy stuff happening in FM, but that's a big one. Both sides play reasonably aggressive lines, City seem pretty much maxed out (hello Guardiola).

Nole in particular is unleashed off through balls in behind those extreme lines multiple times, which doesn't always lead to a shot, but remains danger all throughout (22:50ish). Also 13:16, unleashing the winger in behind the line, etc. A couple of goals are scored directly that way (28, 71, 77), which makes the interceptions/dropped balls that effective. This is the kind of stuff that never happens against defensive AI that immediately drop deep. Unfortunately, I found that on FM 2016 or previous too, AI have very limited ability to "read" when it's getting punished that way continously and high lines, rather benefiting of it.  I too had a match on FM 2016 away to City where I had scored 4 of 10 shots (they had more than 20, all lesser stuff, despite it showing up as CCC). And Guardiola who thanks to his attributes given in the editor would from experience also always insist on his high lines was punishable in such a way in the game at Bayern too.
 

edit: That's the bigger ones to me, as per the scoreline. You'll probably find that even the "magic downloads" exploiting actually holes may struggle to produce such miracle results on a regular basis despite generally overperformance. Or did it happen before?

[Dagenham_Dave]

I love how a big result in a cup final is the thing that's unrealistic about this story and not the fact you've won the Champions League with Everton in the 3rd season. 

[Guest]

@Svenc: The goals at minute 4 and 45, are they scored or conceded from an attacking throw in? (No option to check the pkm now.)

 

The reason I ask is because the one thing I fear the most in the game are my own attacking throw ins. They tend to lead to devastating counter attacks, and the player taking the throw in seems to make astonishing decisions about where to throw. (I believe it was CM 03/04 where you had to fear your own goal kicks the most, until it was fixed later on.)

 

(Incidentally, my very first competitive match in the game was against Man City away. With Liverpool. I beat them 1-6. It looked very strange.)

[Guest]

@adj: As it happens, I just played against Man City. I beat them 4-0. Looking at the match, I was thinking that Guardiola is a complete fool in the game, and he doesn't learn. In other words, the AI isn't good enough.

 

His defensive line was ridiculously high, and Origi had three open runs at goal (only scored one of them, though). Sturridge, at the end, had a fourth, and scored.

[Svenc]

xzar, tbf, this can happen out of a  running match against any opposition, in particular the "big dogs" that expect to beat you away. In particular if you manage to take the lead, they typically switch to something more aggressive then outright. It can be harder to break down the teams parking the bus as contrary to this every single attack "stalls" in front of the op's box, in particular if they manage to hang on in there (and your tactics aren't suited at all for the task, i.e. stretching the pitch, movement, etc.). Whilst that doesn't mean you won't ever win big against the defensive teams (often the lesser ones), this previously lead to a couple of matches where you won quite big against the big boys, and found it easier to score. I've argued this on previous already, the AI would need an awareness of this. On FM 2016 SI made the d-lines at their most aggressive a lot more aggressive, and I had saves where I won fairly big against the big teams in particular too. And yeah, guess how Guardiola managed to lose up to 8 games in the Bundesliga then despite that massively superior squad...

 

9 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

@Svenc: The goals at minute 4 and 45, are they scored or conceded from an attacking throw in? (No option to check the pkm now.)

 

 

Scored from an attacking throw in -- i.e. Everton are awarded those and score. I know what you mean though, regardless of decisions, when there is an interception, the defaults push quite many players upfield, I'm also not convinced of the oft default of but one guy covering attacking corners, btw. When for fun grinded out a sequence of 8 straight 0-0 draws (don't ask )  I made additionally sure that all the attacking set piece set-ups kept like everybody behind the ball to make doubly sure (didn't want to accidentally score a set piece goal after all too).