Training

[Mahmoud Mohammed]

You should be able to see your players in training and train them with drils,matches and fitness tests

[Preveza]

Care to expand on this?? 

[Cougar2010]

7 hours ago, Mahmoud Mohammed said:

You should be able to see your players in training and train them with drils,matches and fitness tests

What benefit do you get from watching them?

How many times would you watch them before being bored and not bothering?

In an earlier version of FM you used to set drills & training matches, bottom line very few people bothered with it, set it up at the the start of the save and never touched it after that.

[YKW]

On 28/05/2017 at 14:48, Cougar2010 said:

What benefit do you get from watching them?

Absolutely loads of benefits.

The first one would be the increased information that the user had. If you consider the graphical limitations of the 3D ME then it becomes even more important that people have this extra information in order to understand what is being shown to them during a match and what it really means.

For example, the user could be given a better idea of what each attribute does and, crucially, what it looks like at different skill levels. Even more importantly it would be a way of helping the user understand that the attributes didn’t work in isolation – e.g. imagine two players both with 20/20 Pace/Acc but one with 20 Stamina and one with 5 stamina. Who will get from one end of the pitch to the other the fastest? If the drill is to dribble in and out of cones then dribbling 20 may be the key stat, but if it is combined with Agility 1 then perhaps the result would be surprising.

Attribute growth would make more sense both in terms of the impacts of the increased skill and also the means by which the skill was increased. If I set somebody to have individual training, what is actually happening?? With 3D training then you would be able to see your squad separate themselves based on the individual training you had chosen, and depending on your facilities see what actual activities they are doing. For example some players would be doing intensive weight training in the gym, some might be practicing free kicks, some might be shooting against the goalkeepers. If you are managing United for example and you give Rashford individual free kick taking then you should be able to see him improving over time in 3D but also he should be there sometimes getting tips from Rooney, or just working with him in general. Tutoring would obviously follow a similar template, with ‘mentoring off the pitch’ perhaps just involving proximity of the two players during regular training, and ‘improve his game’ showing those two players spending more time together as individuals on drills that were relevant to the PPMs of the tutor, for example. If he has ‘shoots from distance’ then one thing I may see is him and his tutee both shooting from distance, with the tutor at least at first being much better than the tutee.

What about player personality and squad blending? What does a squad who’s morale is low LOOK like? Poorer execution and improvement during training? Poor body language? What about a squad who “would be willing to die for each other?” It would be rewarding to be able to see a difference between the two situations. What about individual players who haven’t blended in because they are new signings and/or they don’t speak the language. It could be a clearer representation of the dynamics in the squad if such players would be visibly on the fringes, by walking on their own between drills for example, or by not receiving many high fives during the drills. 

What about each individual personality of my players? If they are ‘Slack’ or ‘Casual’ then surely there would be visible differences in their overall approaches? Yes, sometimes I would like to see my players messing about and breaking out into a game of crossbar challenge. At the other end of the scale, my ‘Model Professionals’ and the people who “put a lot of effort into staying at peak condition:” I would like to see this for example by arriving early/leaving late, visibly helping other members of the squad, undertaking personal training of their own accord, and maybe visibly telling off the ‘Slack’ and ‘Casual’ squad members who weren’t concentrating.

For a more direct link to a match situation, how about the possibility that weather effects, pitch conditions, and also morale effects could be represented in the 3D training in a way that helped the user understand when those factors were having a significant impact on their match. For example if I have noticed during training what it looks like when my GK spills shots or my players lose their footing because of the rain then I will be more aware of when that is happening in a match. Ditto for the condition of the pitch and the ball bobbling away from first touches, or the effects of playing in strong winds. And also for things like a player not being focussed or not giving 100%.

Forgetting the extra information that the user could get, there is also the benefit of the user actually learning things about real football. For example developing a good knowledge of actual training drills and schedules used in professional football, and given their visual representation, developing a basic ability to replicate these drills in real life.

Similarly I could gain an increased understanding of the skills and abilities needed to function in any particular tactical system. This would be especially true if my overall tactical choices influenced the default training schedule of my team. For example if I want to implement a high pressing strategy then I would immediately see that my default training schedule was much more dominated by physical, endurance based activities, whereas if implementing a tiki-taka style then it would be much more dominated with tactical and technical activities. (modifiable if I want to go in depth.)

If some kind of tactical sandbox also existed in training then as well as being something fun to just play around with there would also be a much greater ability for the user to actually understand the language of the 3D ME. For example by being able to organise training matches at will in order to see your tactical choices in action and change them or the players involved on the fly. What about being able to temporarily instruct PPMs during training to test their suitability to the player and the tactic?

But it’s not just about the extra information that the user gets and the increased opportunity for the user to learn about real football.

The 3D training environment would work along with loads of other parts of the game in a way that was really fun overall. For instance there would obviously be a graphical representation of your clubs facilities. This would include quality and number of training pitches, and the size, quality and variety of other facilities like gyms, canteens and leisure. ‘State of the Art’ facilities would differ greatly from “Below Average Facilities,” and watching your club improve, or getting a new job and enjoying the better facilities would be satisfying. This would also affect the number and type of training activities that are available to you, and the quality of each.

Coaching badges could be linked, both through the activities that are available to me (if I run training myself,) and in terms of overlap between the interface and activities/events that are shown. Why not have a virtual coaching course in game, and use a similar or identical presentation as the 3D training? When undertaking a coaching course in the game you would have the option of viewing the relevant 3D ‘tutorials’ with a brief demonstration of, for example, a different training principle or activity, that was then accessible as manager in the 3D training mode. This would also make recruiting and training staff a more interesting job, as they may have access to drills that I can’t perform myself, maybe because they have a higher coaching badge than me or maybe because the drill is a ‘special’ one that can only be attached to certain staff, like ‘curls ball’ for players.

Speaking of staff, what about the way that different staff personalities and skills could be represented? What would be the difference between an Assman with 5 Level of Discipline compared to one with 19 Level of Discipline? Being able to see this play out would be fun, for example because my players are visibly messing about more often in sessions run by my low LoD assman. Of course a suitable solution could be to put my low LoD Assman on a category or drill where he would mostly be interacting with highly professional players, who may even be better suited to more autonomy. Filling the training category screen with 5 star coaches is too thin of a goal.

Other events in the game could have a new place to be shown. What if you have a player who has turned up late to training. Later that day your Assman may alert you to that fact, but it would be funny if actually you had just noticed by yourself, either because you specifically wanted to check on his free kick progress, or because you watch his car turn up while all the other lads are already training. Could there be visible arguments/fights at times when morale is really poor and the pressure is on? These fights may or may not be leaked to the media. Or randomly you may see that a prospective signing is at the training ground with his agent.

Have whatever screen this 3D training is located in be accessible at any time of day but have the 3D appearance be relevant to what time of day it is. For example at 7am there may just be a groundsman mowing the pitches. During the regular day if training is scheduled then that is what is there. Once the evening comes then maybe there are special lights helping to maintain the pitch, and just a few lights on in some windows of the main clubhouse (deadline day would be an exception.) Perhaps there is one of my most ambitious and professional players still out there training? Maybe I’m at a lower level and some kids have climbed over the gate and are playing a game of Wembley.

Along with that you could add any number of ‘silly’ ideas that were just there to be nice little surprises.  For example there has to be ‘Simlish’ style audio consisting of things like general hubbub,  cries of frustration, encouraging grunts, and of course sarcastic cheers.

Imagine your joy when, in an extremely rare 3D training event, the ball hits one of your players square in the balls and he goes down into the fetal position. The squad all sarcastically cheer and perform various celebration animations. Morale goes up.

 

Or imagine this: by double clicking on a ball that was near my manager character in the 3D training it would begin a really simple “click to keep the ball up” mini game. My record would be logged as a nice little personal stat. The more kick-ups I do in a row the more of my players start paying attention, if I get to 100 then they all cheer. At the point I finally don’t keep the ball up, one of the squad may step up and start doing kick ups of his own to try and beat my record. Obviously there is the chance that I can fall over, which would also be a trigger for the sarcastic cheer and celebration animations. Morale goes up.

Obviously if I choose to do the above too frequently then I would suffer a pretty large hit to my “level of discipline” value.

As a counter question, what are the benefits to you of the current training system?

[Cougar2010]

@YKW

Thats a lot of words YKW for this subject.

Personally I think whatever good or bad ideas people come up with for 3d training the bottom line is a large % of the userbase won't bother with it.  A fair slice of the community struggle with watching matches on anything more than key highlights while even those like myself that take more time using comprehensive highlights probably wouldn't bother with 3d training beyond a casual look at the start.

I just can't imagine a scenario where a decent number of users would watch training on a regular basis so it feels like any resources spent on creating this area would be wasted.

Having a sandbox enviroment like a training match scenario where users could play around with formations/roles/duties/orders for both teams might have more legs and I could see it appealling to those users that frequent the tactical forum.

16 hours ago, YKW said:

As a counter question, what are the benefits to you of the current training system?

The benefits of the current system is that it works fairly well while taking a minimal amount of input/effort from the user.

[YKW]

1 hour ago, Cougar2010 said:

The benefits of the current system is that it works fairly well while taking a minimal amount of input/effort from the user.

Hmmm. If we’re talking about whether it works well then surely we have to have some standard to gauge that against? I think that any feature has to be realistic and fun, in which case it could be said to ‘work well.’ Training isn’t realistic or fun, so to me it works really badly.

If the standard is that the feature fits in with and doesn’t mess up other parts of the game then I accept it works quite well. If the standard is that it is easy to use, then I also accept it works quite well. If the standard is that it can’t be exploited then it works quite well.

But it is not realistic and it is not fun so it isn’t serving the primary purpose.

How do you know how much people would use a feature that doesn’t even have a complete concept? How would you know this with enough certainty for it to be a bottom line?

Personally I think that the best Football Management game in 10 years or whenever will have a 3D training environment at the heart of it. To me it’s a question of how it would be executed, not whether or not it should be included. It shouldn’t just be designed as something to watch, but as something for the user to engage with, and learn things from, both about how the ME, attributes and animations work and also about how real life training works. It would look pretty, have progression over time that was rewarding, and give me even more reason to feel like I was actually there and actually involved. And it could be an outlet for loads of other stuff within the game like coaching courses, personalities, squad dynamics etc.

I think that you are seeing what you don’t like about the idea and then not allowing yourself to believe it could ever be anything else.

Obviously the great idea may not come, but still, this is the feature requests forum. Instead of calling ideas bad why not just help develop them to be the best they can be and then the issue of whether they are feasible from a business standpoint can be left to SI?

I appreciate that you are against the concept, and perhaps with good reason, but surely you must have your own ideas of how you would develop training, even just within the existing framework? By the most important standards of realism and fun it is terrible right now.

 

[Cougar2010]

7 minutes ago, YKW said:

Hmmm. If we’re talking about whether it works well then surely we have to have some standard to gauge that against? I think that any feature has to be realistic and fun, in which case it could be said to ‘work well.’ Training isn’t realistic or fun, so to me it works really badly.

If the standard is that the feature fits in with and doesn’t mess up other parts of the game then I accept it works quite well. If the standard is that it is easy to use, then I also accept it works quite well. If the standard is that it can’t be exploited then it works quite well.

Well for me the standard is that it does it job and allows the players to develop at a realistic rate without being OP or time intensive.

In that regard I feel like it serves its purpose.

 

7 minutes ago, YKW said:

But it is not realistic and it is not fun so it isn’t serving the primary purpose.

How do you know how much people would use a feature that doesn’t even have a complete concept? How would you know this with enough certainty for it to be a bottom line?

It is realistic to the point that you are giving certain instructions as to which skills/positions etc are trained without going into the finer details on a day to day basis.

Is it fun? subjective but then I'm not sure you could ever make the training part really fun.  Its a part of the game thats needed but one that isn't a primary part of the game.

How do I know people wouldn't use it? Well I don't 100% but my experience of playing the game for 25 odd years, participating on various forums for much of that time, talking to people IRL and seeing the reactions to the various training setups CM/FM have had in during that time leads me to believe unless its virtually a mini game in itself it generally wouldn't be used.  Even then if it was a mini game it would slow down the amount of time users spent on the core part of the game.

For a more direct comparision I don't know if you remember but one or two versions of FM around 10-15 years ago had training slots where you picked what type of activity the squad did in each slot.  After the initial gloss wore off most users didn't bother with it, simply setting something at the start of a save and then forgetting about it because it was too much effort/too time consuming.  SI listened to the user base and it got removed and replaced with something less time consuming.

 

 

7 minutes ago, YKW said:

Personally I think that the best Football Management game in 10 years or whenever will have a 3D training environment at the heart of it. To me it’s a question of how it would be executed, not whether or not it should be included. It shouldn’t just be designed as something to watch, but as something for the user to engage with, and learn things from, both about how the ME, attributes and animations work and also about how real life training works. It would look pretty, have progression over time that was rewarding, and give me even more reason to feel like I was actually there and actually involved. And it could be an outlet for loads of other stuff within the game like coaching courses, personalities, squad dynamics etc.

I could be wrong but I would totally disagree with that.

My impression of the average user is that they want to buy players & play matches.  Everything else is secondary to that and slows down the way they want to play the game.  Thats not to say they don't want or need the secondary items its just that they need to do their job without feeling like it takes up too much time.

I fully appreciate what you've described above but I just don't think it will happen.

 

7 minutes ago, YKW said:

I think that you are seeing what you don’t like about the idea and then not allowing yourself to believe it could ever be anything else.

Not at all, I think its fairly obvious that my response is not a personal one but my opinion of how the userbase would react to it.

 

7 minutes ago, YKW said:

Obviously the great idea may not come, but still, this is the feature requests forum. Instead of calling ideas bad why not just help develop them to be the best they can be and then the issue of whether they are feasible from a business standpoint can be left to SI?

The whole point of a discussion is to listen to both sides, the pros & the cons. 

Unfortunately this one for me has far too many cons and next to no pros.

 

 

[YKW]

@Cougar2010 Interesting perspectives, personally I'm less interested in what you believe is wanted by a large number of people that you haven't met or spoken to, and more interested in what you personally enjoy, and what you are personally entertained by.

If you had the option of changing training within the game in any way you wanted, without having to worry about whether anyone else would like it or not, what sorts of changes would you make?

[YKW]

@Cougar2010 I would be interested in hearing your ideas?

[Cougar2010]

47 minutes ago, YKW said:

@Cougar2010 I would be interested in hearing your ideas?

Sorry, been busy but I have gave it some thought.

Honestly with the way the game functions atm I think what we have now is more or less about as good as it gets.

As I've said its not OP, simulates training fairly well, allows you to develop players fairly realistically and isn't time consuming.  I'm sure there are bits you could dot the I's and cross the T's with but within the current framework I think it basically works.

If you were to rip everything out and start again from the drawing board I might do some things differently but for that its not just the training module it would be how it integrates with the rest of FM.

 

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.