crossing simulator 2017

[Nymeria]

So this is just a quick question/complaint, but has this series always been this focused on crossing?

i just played a match in which my 4 and a half star striker had 5 1v1 chances with the keeper, all of which he either put way wide, or were saved by the keeper flying across the goal at 100mph. i wish this was strange, but it sums up every match i've played in this game. the only reliable way to score is low crosses from the touchline. i don't want to question this masterful game of strategy and tactics, but i feel like i've seen other kinds of goals scored in football. i might be wrong about that though.  

[MBarbaric]

although you exaggerate a fair bit, the ME does have some issues with crossing.

[Nymeria]

it's no exaggeration for me tbh. the entire game revolves around finding the best tactic for getting the ball to your wingers on the touchline, so they can hit a low pass to a striker who cant nock it in from -1 yard. of course the AI can score in other ways, just not the player.

i honestly can't remember the last time i scored from a 1v1.

[AFCBeer]

If your striker has concerns such as 'worried his lack of goals is affecting his confidence' then it's virtually impossible for him to score anything but the simplest of chances. It's an over exaggeration in the FM17 match engine but unfortunately it's true. 

There are other reasons from a tactical perspective as to why a striker isn't scoring. But if I see any reference to a goal drought about any of my players, unfortunately I need to leave him out for a few weeks as I know he isn't going to score. 

[pats]

Striker lacking confidence, low morale, low composure, low finishing, low technique, shooting angle, GK good at 1v1 etc...... 

These are few factors that can affect your striker. There can be many more. 

[Sussex Hammer]

10 hours ago, AFCBeer said:

If your striker has concerns such as 'worried his lack of goals is affecting his confidence' then it's virtually impossible for him to score anything but the simplest of chances. It's an over exaggeration in the FM17 match engine but unfortunately it's true. 

There are other reasons from a tactical perspective as to why a striker isn't scoring. But if I see any reference to a goal drought about any of my players, unfortunately I need to leave him out for a few weeks as I know he isn't going to score. 

Spot on.  One of my FM17 bugbears when players like Lukaku, Isak and Barbosa for me will be banging them in with the team winning 4-0s, 3-0's and the like when an unexpected draw or defeat will bring a strikers / teams goal scoring run to a shuddering halt.  Suddenly players with for instance 10 goals in 6 games will fail to net for the next 6 games and your winning green dots on the fixture list will be replaced by yellows and reds as your previously free scoring team forgets how to play!  Struggling through is the best way to deal with it I find and just hope one comes of a knee or backside and then you are off and running again.  I find it happens three times a season but at different periods so it wouldn't necessarily coincide with Christmas or late season with little clusters of poor form and I gave up trying new roles or formations and just struggled through.  One thing it might be worth trying which worked for me a couple of times is to stick a midfielder with a slight ability to play up front as a forward.  Sometimes he scores one and you are back to winning ways and the strikers start scoring again.  However resist the temptation to leave that midfielder playing there because it doesn't last!!! 

[Svenc]

So much misconceptions. It's like guys never follow any scoring streaks in football, and also skipped their physics classes. One on ones tend to be one of the more overrated chance type in football, in particular narrowed ones, simply due to their dramatic nature, which the name "One on one" should give away. That doesn't make them bad chances, completely the opposite, they can fall anything between roughly a 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 chance , so a forward missing multiple ones in a match isn't anything to write home about (you guys realize the average shot conversion is no more than 1 in 10). A cross successfully connecting changes the direction of the ball in an instant, which makes it closer to an one on zero, poor keeper. I doubt FM has all that near accurate, just saying. Hopefully FM will one day have a stats that approaches anything like what the BBC has introduced to their coverage of the EPL, as it would make those debates less subjective and never going anywhere.

FM can be fairly frustrating, but I've yet to see something that is as anywhere near as frustrating as actual real football is, which includes injuries, anything (and if this were to happen, SI would be threatened with law suits again). Now if the game shouldn't aim for anything quite like it, that is a viably position, Fifa et all don't really much either do that. FM is tons more predictable, and far less random. My ideal version of FM would do all that, which is why I tend to take on the counter position in such discussions. After testing a few, the most frustrating and random things still tend to happen with tactics that don't follow basic football logics, but try to game the ME, which ideally shouldn't be possible anyway and is only doable because of some bad defending/defensive holes paired with far too limited AI managers who can't really "spot" where their side is one-dimensionally targeted. And who would only "react" via chance -- when they "prefer" a formation in their profile that would plug those holes and either apply it from kick-off, or switch to it at some point mid-match. This annoying defending had its own threads as it is frustrating even if you don't aim to game it, justified. Which brings me to @MBarbaric, who rather than exaggerating and ranting and distracting from the core issues, highlights them always nicely imo.

 

17 hours ago, MBarbaric said:

although you exaggerate a fair bit, the ME does have some issues with crossing.

Yup, you also did some nice vids how guys out on the flank tend to get too isolated easily too. Let's hope the guys are watching.

[bowieinspace]

I do see a lot of the low cross from the touchline type goal, but I wouldn't go as far as you do with your initial post there OP. I've actually given up playing wingers on Fm17 in my current save as I find they're wasteful and being dominant through the middle of the pitch is actually more effective in FM17. I won't go into the low cross from the touchline type goal, this may happen more often than it does in real life, I don't really know, but if you're exclusively only seeing those goals it might say something about the way the team is set up or your players? Certainly it's better than it was in FM16 where wide defending was a big issue.

I think at least part of this issue comes from many human managers being the dominant team, meaning space gets restricted through the middle as they pin the opposition back, and chances the striker has through the middle become rushed or not as clear cut as the graphical representation on the screen would have you believe. It tends to create a certain type of uniformity in terms of chances created. I'm not saying that's the case for you OP just more that it's pretty common on the forums.

[HUNT3R]

On 10/15/2017 at 00:26, Nymeria said:

of course the AI can score in other ways, just not the player.

If the AI can do it, you can too. It's the same ME and they have the same tools as you. I get plenty of goals in a host of different ways. In fact, usually my assists from out wide is under real life figures, both scored and conceded. 

[Svenc]

The interesting thing about scoring streaks too is that if SI have this anywhere near correct -- it is that streaks would happen all by themselves. Top forwards convert about every 4th-5th attempt they take, long-term average. Most forwards average however but 2-3 attempts per match, some even less. The likes of Messi and Ronaldo have 5, or 7 respectively. Kane currently breaks it a bit as he consistently bangs in about every third. ANd seasons can differ wildly. Will be interesting how this looks at the end of his career (Huntelaar during his best had similar, but couldn't keep those). In-game, from my experience, if you don't get a forward to consistently trying at least 3 attempts + average per match currently, he won't be a consistent scorer, usually. This is a stat displayed in his profile, or at least you can calculate it. When guys in the tactical forums taught the AI how to make Messi Messi-like (scoring a goal plus per match), they did so by tactically channeling the bulk of finishes to him, to the point that he took 6 attempts per match. Whilst that sounds "simple" enough as a tactical masterplan, AI managers are and have always been incapable of doing such. Note to SI: Meh. Note to Nymeria: It's your tactics, buddy. If it isn'T ill-luck, that is.

A (world) class forward for his level converts about 1 in 3 of his generally one on ones (if you all lump them together). This  is fairly universal across levels, probably as players tend to compete on the levels they belong to, as else nobody would field them. In particular with the latter number, you can run a simplistic one on one simulation, with a six sided dice, a pen, and a paper. A 1 in 3 chance is the same as a 2 in 6 chance. Rolling that dice 20, 40, 60 times you can start simulating. Every time you roll a 5 or 6, it's a goal, you write that down as an X. If you don't roll a 5 or 6, it's not a goal, you write that down as an O. I can guarantee you will get a few interesting patterns there. Streaks are an inherent part of football DNA, and always will be. No least because, to generalize, outside of tap-ins and penalties, in most scenarios no forward in football is expected to score, that is in mathematical terms, scoring opportunities above a 1 in 2 chance (50% +) are  rare. Players make a difference, but clubs spend millions in an attempts to go a few extra percent. Additionally, some players may be reliable on tap-ins and/or stuff falling to their feet (the poacher types), other more complete types may create opportunity all by themselves (Messi). Then you've got guys like Ronaldo and Ibrahimovic, who can be a bit adventurous in their finishes in general (Ronaldo averages a remarkable 7 attempts per match throughout his entire playing career).

Whilst FM models "confidence", sort of, as players can grow frustrated in-game or confident, SI may actually fall for a fallacy in here, the fallacy of the "hot hands" in other words: the human brain loving it to spot patterns in what may be pure randomness. If it is actually a fallacy that strikers grow in and out of confidence or not, studies differ AFAIK. However from my experience it doesn't overly influence anyhow (and imo shouldn't). At least not to the extent that it big time significantly shifts the probabilites of scoring / missing the next shots. Which is another fallacy of the human brain, that the next shot would be influenced what happened before, as a general hard rule.... which also influences gambling markets in interesting ways. That guy has missed two penalties now, surely he must score the next one?  Ask Crystal Palace too, things don't quite work that way.
 

 

[RBKalle]

It's all very interesting, but the XG thing kinda disproves itself with Crystal Palace's "exception", doesn't it?

Our perception of what "should have been a goal, surely!" varies from person to person and while I'm sure there's a lot of research behind the XG concept, it falls back on the "let's find a pattern" fallacy... World-class strikers can miss a sitter, while unremarkable players can score an overhead kick from 18 yards out... Sure, the latter is a once-in-a-career event, but that's part of the "FM is cheating" mindset.

We all remember the time we lost a game to a screamer by a player with 4 in Long Shots, while our Fin 18/Cmp 18 striker couldn't hit a barn door from 5 inches away.

FM could and should do a better job in presenting us with clearer stats and less quirky ME representation of chances, but I maintain XG and other statistical stuff aren't going to help because they're almost as objective as the guy ranting about that pesky, cheating AI.

[Guest]

If the OP were to rephrase his post to "Low crosses are much too powerful, and even the top strikers appear much too stupid on one-on-ones", I would agree with him.

 

He was slightly overstating his case, though...

[Svenc]

9 hours ago, RBKalle said:

FM could and should do a better job in presenting us with clearer stats and less quirky ME representation of chances, but I maintain XG and other statistical stuff aren't going to help because they're almost as objective as the guy ranting about that pesky, cheating AI.

They're not "objective". They still outperform any  expert on television by quite a bit, same as any such metric does in other areas,. According to pundits on television, every second match would result in a cricket scoreline. Addmitedly these days with the money broadcasters pay, they are as much product sellers as they are reporters. So spicing a dour 0-0 draw up a bit and adding drama to where there may be few is arguably part of their job. You also don't seem to understand the point of this. It is meant to simply have a second gauge of how decent a chance may be is, and thus also can "help" in gauging whether a side is getting a bit "lucky" or vice versa. Palace are as good as an example for this as Dortmund, who would finish that season just short of the Europa League, being dead last by end of January. They had a chance of being relegated, but the sometimes absurd amount of chances they wasted suggested it was slight. Not in on-offs, but over months. That's precisely what this is for. It's no truth. But comparing any such metric to the guy who makes Twitter implode about the game being rigged any time his 30 matches unbeaten run comes to an end seems a bit premature.

For the game xG doesn't matter anyhow. Internally the game must have its own anyway, and that's actually what's calculated, an "objectively" truth. The research SI look into will look similar to any metric that tries to judge chances. The most common factors haven't changed much in such finishing research much. Anything better than the CCC would do. The in-game CCC is a subjective interpretation of a subjective stat that is barely used anywhere, and SI change the definition on random occasions. Sometimes headers count, sometimes don't. Not because whether that header had a reasoanable chance of going in according to the game's caculations, but because there is an ongoing debate whether a header should be a CCC. And as that CCC isn't used anyhwere, guys think their players should convert anything long-term between at least 50 and 80 percent of them (which depends on the type, and is also false). Plus anything that hasn't players screaming bloody murder because his world class forward doesn't convert like 8 out of 10 one on ones, as he does on Fifa with some regularity. Improved visuals will only go so far. And what's worse, the final match reports draw heavily from FM's simplistic key stats (possession and shots). According to FM, a side is "wasteful" simply because it has a lot of shots without scoring much.
 

Good point about the unremarkable players also being able to do remarkable things. The "game is rigged" type is this persistent he has already publicly announced to file law suits against SI for rigging his matches (this is no joke). You can compare him to the managers who would always find excuses, such as the ball being too bouncy on the night. However, this type of player is a lost cause. He doesn't understand the nature of football from the ground up, virtual or otherwise, because individually, anything goes. Football boils down to this: The team with the better chances is more likely to win a match. However with average win margins of but one or two goals, same as roughly a third of matches ending in draws, same as class forwards missing most of their attempts, that far from always happens. FM is targeted at football fans, so I am confident the majority would understand this. Give them a bit better feedback to gauge which side really did create the better opportunity on the night. Real managers have it too.

[GoldenGoal]

If 1v1 are bad then what is the best chance for a striker that we should try to create? And how to improve the quality of the shot for 1v1 chance?

Should i avoid trying to create 1v1 chances?

PPMs like Round GK and Lob GK are not used at all by the strikers, so how to improve shot quality for 1v1 chance?

How to avoid player using weak foot when there is no reason to? Even with PPM to use weak foot less often the strikers keep trying to use it.

Is there any setting we can change in the tactics screen or player instructions screen to improve 1v1 shot precision? There is no setting to select near or far post to instruct the striker to shoot to, however people always reply "it's your tactics" for bad shot precision so where are the instructions that affect this?

A type of chance that is better than 1v1 for example is when there are 2 players against a GK and all that is needed is one player to pass the ball to the other player. But this rarely happens, the player usually prefers to take a shot from the bad angle. Where is the setting to instruct him to pass in this situation?

People keep saying its the tactics of the player, but never advise how to improve shot accuracy. The game has barely any instructions controlling shooting, its no wonder people often complain about this.

 

[Svenc]

18 minutes ago, GoldenGoal said:

People keep saying its the tactics of the player, but never advise how to improve shot accuracy. The game has barely any instructions controlling shooting, its no wonder people often complain about this.

 

I did not say that one on ones are bad. They're really good chances. They just aren't as fantastic as their drama suggests. You can compare this to the showdown of a great Leone western, where two guys face-off each other and the result is only determined in between them. For a moment, time seems to stand still, the tension is barely any higher. Except, that one guy is actually in a significant advantage, and it's usually the keeper. There are so many situations in a match where the keeper is actually at a severe disadvantage. Tap-ins, penalties, anything that actually wrong-foots him. I also agree with your assessment that shooting techniques in-game are too limited. I don't think improving them will result in much improved one on one converion rates as a game doesn't have to mirror football to the T to have comparably finishing rates of specific chance types.

For things that tactically negatively influence chance conversion (outside of what the opponent is contributing -- it should be natural that if you face a lot of teams simply packing their box, your guys would oft find it harder to find space and score).

1) Compressing the area of play as that can force players into weak shots (explained today here).

2) Forcing  all play down the middle (wide players barely advancing or encouraged to do much; having all players sitting narrow), will create exclusively/primarily one on ones from no angled balls. All the keeper has to do with those is running straight out his goal to worsen the angle. Plus as the ball is typically played in the forwards back off a centrally through ball, he has to turn and shoot. If you expand your area (width, wider players contributing too), you additionally create on on ones from wider positions, from angled balls. Angled balls are typically played into the feet of the forward rather than into his back, and have a higher chance of conversion, in-game imo too, anyway

3) Chances falling to one finisher. If he's taken out of the game, or in FM body language speech "gronwing frustrated/nervous" you lack secondary options. That's not about fielding more than 1 forward, btw. Wingers, etc. can be regularly finishers too. You can insert columns in your squad screen such as "shots per 90 minutes" which show which players are your most regular finishers

In general, it is useful to realistically gauge whether your forward is finishing at expected rates. Sometimes it can be perception playing tricks. You will see shot conversion rates in the team reports, also for your oppositions. Stats are also to be found in the forward's profile (shot conversion, etc.). However, as FM for sure has random elements (see above about the randomness in actual football), these numbers can fluctuate even without changing much

[Guest El Payaso]

Basing the style of play on crossing hardly was too successful for David Moyes. 

The problem with FM in terms of crossing is that due to the lack of pressure on the crosser and really poor zonal marking (plus AMLRs not back tracking) the overlapping full back will always escape couple of time freely. Don't remember the exact amount of numbers on FM 2017 but roughly I would say that the amounts of attempted crosses compared to average in real life were something between 2-4. So this meant that one full back on FM could exceed the amount of crosses per game compared to a full team IRL and I remember seeing examples of this happening. The accuracy of crosses is not too good though but if you get 3-4 times more chances to put in the perfect cross per game then it's bound to happen that crosses are really effective eventually, the quantity simply is so high that any team will eventually be successful. 

The lack of pressure on the wide players both lead to more free crosses which IRL would lead to much better quality but also to the fact that dribblers always have dat bit more or more likely much more space to use their qualities. IRL even teams like Crystal Palace can make things really difficult for such quality players like Eden Hazard to play well:

As you can see: he doesn't have space and Crystal Palace are making things really difficult for him. Also he isn't yet in his best form which influences to this performance. And this is not just one off as teams always do try to take the space away for players like him. They rarely are successful for full 90 minutes but usually do reasonable well throughout most of the match as Hazard, even though he is a superb footballer, is still a human and also the defenders do know how to play football and they always have that option to double or even triple him. 

On FM though the ML/MR and AML/AMR is one of those easiest ones to make perform really well. Even with just decent options they're almost like hard coded to be successful if you don't do something really poor tactically. Lots of assists and even goals with some roles. For example on my most latest save in Finland I had a MR as a wide midfielder who is 'a decent Finnish Premier league player". Scored 16 goals in his first 18 league games while IRL it took this very same player 30 games this season to score his first one. 

Compared to previous iterations of FM I would say that FM 2017 was more like "triangles working" (  ) type of FM but that for me doesn't remove the fact that wide play still is quite far from realistic and being effective down the flanks is still one of the easiest things on FM tactically. 

[GoldenGoal]

5 minutes ago, Svenc said:

I did not say that one on ones are bad. They're really good chances. They just aren't as fantastic as their drama suggests. You can compare this to the showdown of a great Leone western, where two guys face-off each other and the result is only determined in between them. For a moment, time seems to stand still, the tension is barely any higher. Except, that one guy is actually in a significant advantage, and it's usually the keeper. There are so many situations in a match where the keeper is actually at a severe disadvantage. Tap-ins, penalties, anything that actually wrong-foots him. I also agree with your assessment that shooting techniques in-game are too limited. I don't think improving them will result in much improved one on one converion rates as a game doesn't have to mirror football to the T to have comparably finishing rates of specific chance types.

For things that tactically influence chance conversion (outside of what the opponent is contributing -- it should be natural that if you face a lot of teams simply packing their box, your guys would oft find it harder to find space and score).

1) Don't push every single player forward as it compresses the area of play and can force players into weak shots (explained today here).

2) If you force all play down the middle (wide players barely advancing or encouraged to do much; having all players sitting narrow), you will create exclusively one on ones from no angled balls. All the keeper has to do with those is running straight out his goal to worsen the angle. Plus the ball is typically played in the forwards back, he has to turn and shoot. If you expand your area (width, wider players contributing too), you additionally create on on ones from wider positions, from angled balls. Angled balls are played into the feet of the forward rather than into his back, and have a higher chance of conversion, in-game imo too, anyway

3) Ideally not all chances fall to one forward. If he's taken out of the game, or in FM body language speech "gronwing frustrated/nervous" you lack secondary options. That's not about fielding more than 1 forward, btw.

4) Try to realistically gauge whether your forward is finishing at expected rates. Sometimes it can be perception playing tricks. You will see shot converion rates in the team reports, also for your oppositions. As well as in the forward's profile (shot conversion, etc.).

None of these help.

1 and 2 are not related to the precision of the shot but how you get to the chance. What i mean with 1v1 chance is only the GK and no player around so no packed area, a lot of space and good angle, if a tactic creates a lot of these so why is the tactic problematic? How to improve precision of the shot in this situation? Regardless of angle, what are the instructions to improve the precision of the shot? Where can i tell the striker where to shoot?

3 i usually only use 2 subs in case i need to replace 1 bad striker going through that. But how to improve his shot precision when he is frustrated and when he is not?

4 no instructions for improving precision of shot here. This seems to assume player finishing is confined or reduced in the game to keep a certain ratio of scored and miss just to keep up with stat standards. This can make the striker shoot to the corner flag or do stupid things to be forced to miss to keep with the ratio.

You mentioned that shooting techniques are limited, what about dribbling the GK? Why do players not try to dribble GK? Even with PPM this never happens. This would be a good technique to do in 1v1 situation.

How much of a difference finishing and composure make?

[Svenc]

23 minutes ago, GoldenGoal said:

4 no instructions for improving precision of shot here. This seems to assume player finishing is confined or reduced in the game to keep a certain ratio of scored and miss just to keep up with stat standards. This can make the striker shoot to the corner flag or do stupid things to be forced to miss to keep with the ratio.

Categorically not what happens, and no initial release highlighted this more strongly than FM 2015. In the first couple of months, if you (or the opposition) put his advanced players on attack duty, they basically ceased to defend, not get behind the ball. Not only were teams overrun in their own half with half the players just staying "upfield" (every attack a decent chance and goal), if they intercepted, it was a counter attack (every interception a decent chance, and likely, a goal). These forums were actually rage quit central, as a few players didn't spot it, or underestimated its impact.

 

There were teams who regularly had hockey scorelines, until this was patched. The AI couldn't handle it too.



The way SI do this is that they tweak their stuff and run hundreds of simulations (mostly involving AI managers). At the end of the process, Ideally, they have stats that are similar to football, but there are no boundaries as such. Take a look in any tactical download forum, where guys average huge amounts of goals even with poor teams.


As for individual finishing tecfhnique, outside of the limited PPMs and watching the footedness, there is not much you can do. However dismissing the former advice as that's "just how you get into position" is dismissing key components of all football. Creating space is either done by individual skill, or tactically. If your tactical structures don't create space, but rather choke it, you always rely  on individual technique, which you want to avoid. The above points are pretty fairly "common sense" in that sense imo. It's by far the biggest influence you have over things by a mile as of FM, currently, imo.

[RBKalle]

12 minutes ago, Svenc said:

They're not "objective". They still outperform any pundit and expert on television by quite a bit, and metrics will only improve in the future.

That's not a huge feat to be honest, as most pundits aren't that analytical and go more on instinct. Or are moderately incompetent.

 

12 minutes ago, Svenc said:

You also don't seem to understand the point of it. It is meant to simply have a second gauge of how decent a chance really is, and thus also can "help" in gauging whether a side is getting a bit "lucky" or vice versa. Football tables pretty much lie all the time, if you put your money on those, you'd lose. xG is no objective truth either, or any metric. However, it can still help to put things into a few added perspective.

But how are the "scoring %" calculated?

I mean, chances surely can't have the same conversion ratio if it's Cristiano Ronaldo on the ball instead of Federico Macheda. And the same header is surely more dangerous if it's Crouch rather than Ryan Fraser.

Also, I guess the scoring % doesn't take into account dumb luck, like keepers slipping in easy shots (especially from distance).

I'm not saying it's a poor idea, but I have my reservations on how it works.

 

12 minutes ago, Svenc said:

 

The game has an internal xG anyway or should have -- as behind each shot there should be a calculation. So there'd be no need for SI to create a metric -- like they do with the CCC stat, which is awful. No least because it is a subjective interpretation of a subjective stat that's not even used anywhere -- and on some releases header finishes can count as such whilst on others they can't. Simply because behind the scenes SI have deceided that "header finishes need not apply, not whether internally that header had a decent chance of conversion.

The only thing that could make this worse in-game if in a particular match, guys would scream "rigged!" if the result wouldn't fit the metric. It speaks to reason that scoring varies hugely in football. On the odd day you win a match from 3 direct free kicks and a long shot. In the next four your side fails to score a goal despite your side hammering an opponent. And yes, that stuff happens. Any such metric simply is meant to help a bit in gauging whether a side couldn't have scored / conceded a bit more, as football results can be bloody random across all levels. However, one thing remains universal until the end of time, and hopefully also is so in-game: The side with the better chances is more likely to nick this. Problem is, it far from always does for as long as the average win margins in football remain by but a goal or two no matter for which team. Comparing such to players who scream "rigged" every time they drop a single point in a winless run of 30 seems a bit daft.

 

The game would definitely benefit from something more clear than the current CCC.

Actually the XG thing could apply much more fittingly to FM (which is, after all, a numerical simulation).

Currently the analysis is lacking on two sides: first, stats are a bit murky and there's no way to see what counts as CCC, what not, and why. Secondly, you can't possibly understand why your world-class striker is fluffing goals right in front of the goal, time and again.
Is it morale? Complacency? Bad luck? The ME misrepresenting a situation? Who knows...

[Svenc]

38 minutes ago, RBKalle said:

But how are the "scoring %" calculated?

 

A few Guardion/BBC articles explained this.  The reason this works fairly well is also that Ronaldo doesn't turn a "bad" chance into a "good" one, having Ronaldo in there may increase the chance to score, but not by that much. Additionally, research into factors what influences the chance to finish dates back a long time, and it's pretty experienced by now. As argued, there isn't that comically huge a difference between players as what's oft suggested. Ronaldo scores a lot of goals, and he's also adventurous which explains some of his numbers. However he still also averages 7(!) scoring attempts per match, whic is more than thrice that what the average forward gets a match (naturally also influenced that he plays for the more "dominant" teams). I've already argued that as of FM 2017, from my experience, unless your forward doesn't average at least 3+ attempts per game, he will be rather streaky. When the guys in the tactics forums got Messi to be on fire almost every single match, they made it so that he averaged 6+ attempts per game.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/40699431
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/feb/24/football-numbers-game-gary-neville

 

I think the ME will always be such a "black box". You will never be able to pinpoint exactly why a player is fluffing at chances. You may, however, similar to Arsene Wenger, use metrics to get a "second opinion" as to a player's actual performance, what may be expected of him, and where he actually falls into. I personally could always deal with that fairly well, others don't. I've been been advocating for better feedback for a long time though (and will never cease to thrash the CCC stat). It's funny that SI also deal in half chances, which don't appear anywhere, by the way. Did anybody realize that those seem scored at lesser rates (long-term average) than on target shots? Why they have them as a specific category thus seems a mystery to me, as gifting them a specific category suggests it's something better than the "vanilla" shooting stats. Out of interest, how would you improve things? As tempting as it may, I don't think that they will ever make the result of the internally "dice rolls" appear over a players head like: "Player into space: check, distance to next defender: massive, distance to goal: 0, complacency: none, scoring probability 89%) or something. Maybe the could add animations, like players hanging their heads, but this runs the risk of it becoming a parody if overdone, plus a source of unintentionally humor.

What it comes down to is to me: How does a manager try to determine all of that in football, what does he use for this, where are the limits? This will be a challenge, no least because the interaction between manager and player in-game is fairly abstract and limited. As much as sometimes you'd like to sit down with the guy to talk things through, pre-determined multiple choice dialogue topics/options in games have never much passed as properly simulating an actual conversation. However, it is precisely that barrier that can further fuel frustration. You would like to dig further, but... you can't. To me the morale/motivation stuff is overrated to me though. If forwards continue to have decent chances, they bang them in, even with bad finishing attributes (which you can test via the editor). This suggests SI go by aforementioned analytics / finishing research, and imo they are right. It's preferable to have guys always at the "top of their game", as it means he is more likely to perform, but at the same time it won't cause a slump all by itself.

 

[GoldenGoal]

17 minutes ago, Svenc said:

post

Creating good chances isn't that big of a deal. The mystery here is having good shot quality. The problem is when you are doing those chances you said constantly and the players still keep missing. Then what is there to do? Like the OP a lot of people can create these sorts of chances you mentioned before (space, good angle, no defenders around) without much problem but the shooter misses, and when they post here they get unrelated advice about creating chances instead of scoring them.

What are the instructions that affect finishing?

If you say apart from footedness and PPM there is not much to be done why people say its tactics when there is no sort of tactical instruction dealing with this?

[Svenc]

8 minutes ago, GoldenGoal said:

Creating good chances isn't that big of a deal. The mystery here is having good shot quality. The problem is when you are doing those chances you said constantly and the players still keep missing. Then what is there to do? Like the OP a lot of people can create these sorts of chances you mentioned before (space, good angle, no defenders around) without much problem but the shooter misses, and when they post here they get unrelated advice about creating chances instead of scoring them.

They typically get that advice as from experience of long-term players, if chances continue to be missed, the chances are overrated by those players. Either that, or they have unrealistic expectations. If you consistently create decent chances on this, you'll score. Something like that Dortmund 2015 season from my experience is impossible in-game. E.g. I really don't think a forward missing a few one on ones should be a deal, even if you only have so much control about the actual finishing technique // the finishing techniques the game portrays being limited either way. Which is one of the prime reasons why I've been begging for added feedback, so that this would be less of a "subjective" debate, and that the game would better "confirm" what it truly considers to be superior chances, and what not. In particular that this is a computer sim, which means it is somebody's interpretation of a sports, not the actual sports. And the visual feedback etc. will always be more limited than in an actual match of football.

Historically, it's always just a back and forth of a kind that arguably wouldn't exist between "real" football managers. However, some of us have this less so, others more of "it". Often times that "it" is  simply perception bias -- I've already written in another thread today that lots of guys have perfectly decent chance conversion, are even outconverting similar AI opponents without realizing, as they purely focus on the matches where chances aren't taken; and also don't go through the matches of AI managers, but purely theirs. It is, naturally, well possible to both underperform and outperform (AI) opponents, as else there would be literally no point to the game. Here's still hoping!

[RBKalle]

58 minutes ago, Svenc said:

Out of interest, how would you improve things?

I think we're often looking at the issue from the wrong side...

Despite SI's best intentions, I think it's clear the ME still creates way too many good chances (due to the infamous defensive weaknesses), or at least the ME "represents" more chances as better than they actually are.
Therefore to avoid waterpolo-like scorelines, something must happen to keep the goals tally to a more acceptable level. In the past we had "superkeepers", over the last few years we've seen virtually EVERY striker occasionally turn into Ade Akinbiyi for no apparent reason.

So the obvious solution would be "fixing" the defensive issues to reduce the sheer amount of chances, good or allegedly good, That'd lead to a more reasonable number of "CCC" (whatever that means), and most FM'ers would be less frustrated because their strikers would not miss three sitters within the opening half hour of a game.

If that wasn't possible, I'd actually like a better breakdown of chances, possibly with the very XG thingy.

[Guest El Payaso]

43 minutes ago, RBKalle said:

I think we're often looking at the issue from the wrong side...

Despite SI's best intentions, I think it's clear the ME still creates way too many good chances (due to the infamous defensive weaknesses), or at least the ME "represents" more chances as better than they actually are.
Therefore to avoid waterpolo-like scorelines, something must happen to keep the goals tally to a more acceptable level. In the past we had "superkeepers", over the last few years we've seen virtually EVERY striker occasionally turn into Ade Akinbiyi for no apparent reason.

So the obvious solution would be "fixing" the defensive issues to reduce the sheer amount of chances, good or allegedly good, That'd lead to a more reasonable number of "CCC" (whatever that means), and most FM'ers would be less frustrated because their strikers would not miss three sitters within the opening half hour of a game.

If that wasn't possible, I'd actually like a better breakdown of chances, possibly with the very XG thingy.

This is true but also matches might become too boring to manage especially for people who only use key highlights. One solution to this is that they could possibly change the whole highlight system so that more of the good chances would actually be 'could have been a good chance' where the final pass is misplaced or a defender makes something spectacular to prevent the chance. Would also raise all of our confidence towards balance as you could see glimpses of good defending also in the highlights. 

Bad finishing compared to real life quite clearly is there to keep numbers of goals realistic and it has always been like that. It's kinda sad really as you rarely see even world class players making that little difference that eventually wins trophies and by that I mean finishing the chances that actually aren't even HC or CCC. If this kind of behavior would be in the game it would also add lot variability to the engine as you could for example manage with Stoke against Chelsea and while your defenders are doing everything right and limiting them to HCs and not even that but eventually Chelsea win the ball in the midfield and Hazard has that space to sprint against the defense on a break and rifles it in from the edge of the area. Nothing that your defense can do about it and world class play from Hazard... And then I woke up.

[Svenc]

9 hours ago, RBKalle said:

I think we're often looking at the issue from the wrong side...

Despite SI's best intentions, I think it's clear the ME still creates way too many good chances (due to the infamous defensive weaknesses), or at least the ME "represents" more chances as better than they actually are.
Therefore to avoid waterpolo-like scorelines, something must happen to keep the goals tally to a more acceptable level. In the past we had "superkeepers", over the last few years we've seen virtually EVERY striker occasionally turn into Ade Akinbiyi for no apparent reason.

Does the game artificially nerf finishing to keep scorelines realistic?

As pointed out previous with that example from FM 2015, where users and AI prior to he first big patch easily had circket scorelines every week: None of this is how this works. It's been categorically denied even by the coders in the past. It's the other way around. It's too easy to amass weak attempts that have limited chance of being converted. I've outlined here as to why that is the case at its most drastic. This is also the position taken in discussions in previous years by better mods. This goes back ten years.  Outside of individual tweaks to finishes, there was one time were it was acknowledged that there was a severe issue. It related to a specific type of on one one, where it was acknowledged that the keeper reach was too good by PaulC AFAIR, the main coder. Since then, it's a consistently struggle to bang it into players' heads that a) dominating the simple stats the game offers isn't enough (and isn't managing either way). And that b) misconceptions how decent certain chances really are, including one on ones, are rife. The reason that the game on overall produces "realistic" scorelines is because each build goes through hundreds of simulations, with each build trying to take into account finishing research rather than fantasies (one on ones converted at no more than roughly 1 in  3 rates, narrow ones under pressure more like falling into a 1 in 5 category etc.) We don't even get to see the builds which are never made public, however.

The superkeeper that wasn't

You know how that "superkeeper" myth typically come about? Exactly that way. Keepers make a ton of saves of shots David James' grandma could save, and see a rating bump. The only "evidence" we have now is in that some players have that "issue" with finishing, others don't, or at least less so. And haven't big time had it in years. The problem in such such threads is oft that every time somebody tries to explain some of the problems, he risks being labeled a "fanboy", or that he tries to defend the game. This is fueled because FM leaves a lot of judgement to the player. I have never taken that stance. I'M pointing out:

- Missing feedback. Highly unlikely that any of those sides was just "unlucky". That's daft.
- Some more missing feedback.
- It shouldn't under any way be possible that just swarming the centre of the pitch you can dominate Barcelona in their own backyard, no matter how poor that side is. This is possible however. Some of the current reasons are outlined in this thread. Whether you are creating space that way is another thing (again, there is no reliable stats for creating space, shots and possession won't do).
- All in all, the issue isn't that the game nerfs finishing. It is that you can dominate all kinds of stats without consistently creating chances that are decent. Or if you don't believe in that: What the game consideres to be decent chances. The likes of wwfan, according to SI also one of their former more valuable testers, were fighting a loosing battle here across almost all forums, including the now defunct FMBritain, where he visualized what are good chances as per the game, and which aren't. Initially the CCC stat made his task even worse, as every random shot was awarded the "CCC". The evidence that he never much dropped points whereas most players did alone should have been telling, however he tended be mostly ignored in favor of bad theory. To quote his, and outside of few exceptions, I tend to totally agree these days, and I've also watched a few.

Quote

I have yet to see any pkm in which the 'unmissable' chances were anywhere near as good as the complainer stated, and I have watched a lot.

If you see anything even remotely approaching a "sitter" in these highlights for WHU, including the one on ones in the second half, we're not talking level in any kind of way straight ouf of the bat, and that was from one of the most notorious complainers on that front. All we can do at this point would be to agree to disagree. However, my experiences tells me I'm on the right track, whereas you'd continue to be frustrated.
 

Stress testing finishing

If you wanted to stress test how bad finishing in tons of actually space really is on this, you had to take over two teams, and make one sides defensive shape implode *. As that as per the game's UI and coded "common sense" (every side roughly has some baseline standard of zonal marking coded) only happens if you field experimental, nonsensical shapes, you won't ever get this in a running game against AI opponents, however. And this will reveal some wonky decisions, which is why individual finishes are always being tweaked. There is also a sever lack of finishing technique, and some of the bad defending naturally leads to these on occasion warped match statistics. You could also make a case that FM is limited how it models different player traits, such as @ElPayaso, and that there should be more of a difference (I still think he overvalues what the presence of world class players do in terms of purely converting the end products. As pointed out, any forward who consistently bangs them in also does so because he averages multiple times the decent opportunity, which naturally is also a result of consistently getting into decent shooting positions via off the ball movement, dribblings, which all are superior skills all itself.) Scoring rates don't differ as wildly from player to player as is suspected, though better ones may put the added difficult finish away. Recently the Mirror pointed out how valuably Sigurdsson is in terms of finishing his class speciality, the direct free kick -- 7 whopping goals over 6 seasons. This is Sigurdsson, it's also still a punt from yards out even for his. Similar applies to any other "chance type". However if you wait for SI to fundamentally overhaul scoring rates as such, or are under the impression that the game nerfs things to keep scorelines in check, you will likely continue to face frustration, as all the aforementioned has been going on for like ten years running. The issues thus:

The actually issues in all of this

- Easy to dominate any kind of stats the game offers without consistently creating decent chances (as even the decent chances should be missed quite regularly, doubly so an issue -- if you can't warm up to the idea that outside of tap-ins and penalties, the forward isn't favored to score, it's tough). FM 2017 has arguably made it worse again, though it's a long-term issue
- Missing feedback on all fronts
- Connected to this, many users highly overrating the quality of chances
- Also connected to this, on occasion downright nonsensical final match reports which further fuel into this
- AI mangers being very limited in how to recognize in what area of the pitch they are being targeted. This leads to random frustration in particular with so called "super tactics" that dominate the FM fanscene.  They don't subscribe to basic football logics the game has tried to reward ever since. They typically try to game the game engine's current weak area (this year's central spaces). But any time an AI opponent happens to field an approach which mitigates those holes by purely chance, you're in for matches with up to 20 shots on target, 40+ overall and minimal return. Again, not in any kind of way for consistently creating space and decent chances, however.  Otherwise, that users average 3, 4, up to5  goals consistently should be alone be evidence that the game doesn't nerf rates to keep scorelines "realistic". To my knowledge, there has never been a Barcelona side that scored more than 150 goals per season. Or a side just promoted into the EPL breaking all scoring records with 100 goals+ Just take a look around FMBase et all. You'll see. There are always defensive holes, but these are the only guys who actually exploit them every year, and the results follow suit.

I'd be very concerned if one of the more influential current batch of internal testers takes a fundemantally different stance, personally. Sorry for the long post, whoops.

 

*

[Defensive]

Its funny that the main complaint all around this board for months now is that narrow formations are completely overpowered and play through the middle would be way too  good because wide midfielders would stay wide. Now there is a thread called cross simulator and the same people are complaining that crosses are overpowered.

[Guest El Payaso]

11 hours ago, Svenc said:

You could also make a case that FM is limited how it models different player traits, such as @ElPayaso, and that there should be more of a difference (I still think he overvalues what the presence of world class players do in terms of purely converting the end products.

Well I might not be correct completely but for example:

Dybala last season scored 7 out of his total 16 goals out of chances that on FM wouldn't even be counted as a HC.

Hazard scored 6-7 goals out of 17.

Messi 22 our of 57.

While Ronaldo only 10 out of 42.

And also to mention about Dybala and Hazard is the fact that neither of them scored any goals from crosses. Of course for example Ronaldo nowadays is a player whose presence inside the penalty area is so high that he will always be the most effective inside the area while on the other hand with players like Messi and Hazard you have different kind of scoring solutions. Hazard for example scores most of his goals (like I mentioned above) from quick breaks while in a style of play relying on crossing or low tempo short passing he would be less effective as those do not represent his strengths. Dybala on the other hand is a player who I wouldn't want to be taking too many free kicks against my team IRL while on FM he might miss five direct free kick chances from optimum position a game and never looking threatening. (The really high amount of free kicks from dangerous areas once again pointing out issues in the 17 ME). Also one thing to consider about these all three is that all of them are the main penalty takers so quite a many goals also came from penalties for them, especially for Dybala.

And just to get the "triangles working" (  ) once again to the thread: not a single goal like that scored by any of them. These goals simply don't happen IRL.

I would also claim that players like Nainngolan and Gerrard and Lampard in the past scored fairly high amount of goals from chances that not many players regularly score. 

Nowadays Athletic Bilbao is the team I play the most on FM and for example Aritz Aduriz is a problem for me. He is a great penalty area player IRL and it is true that he has fair bit of tap-in type of goals because of his style of play and qualities but on the other hand on his day he is also a really great finisher and can finish difficult chances. Because of his technical limitations and age you can never nowadays expect him to have a CCC galore against any team but instead he relies on his finishing quality.

On FM you do get these same type of chances that often are not easy to convert but the difference on FM for me is that he isn't considerably better finisher than someone like Theo Walcott or Danny Welbeck and because of that it is really hard to get him scoring regularly. Same goes with players like Edin Dzeko and other slower players that are not favored in the ME as type of players. 

@Defensive the same defensive problems such as lack of pressing and too loose marking do not just influence on one part of the pitch.

Don't know about you @Svenc but at least I see a clear difference between all of these cases: different type of players and different kinds of systems do produce different kind of goals and world class players that are not the 'penalty area' type of players rely quite heavily on their good quality of finishing and even scoring good percentage of their goals outside the penalty area. This really isn't the case on FM to me and you never run into situations like:

"Nothing really wrong with your setup, you just don't have the right type of players to play it successfully."

[RBKalle]

Posting funny Memes about serial ranters who expect to win every match 10-0 despite having set their team up with a D&D dice isn't gonna help I'm afraid...

@Svenc, some of your points make sense, but you're not getting where I'm coming from.

IIRC, there was confirmation of "superkeepers" in at least one past build of the game (FM 10.2 maybe? Or was it even earlier?). Don't wanna call them "superkeepers", fine, it's "strikers inexplicably shooting AT the keeper despite having 18 Composure and Finishing and >170 CA".
The end-product is still the same: way too many one-on-ones don't get converted.

Now, the "1 goal in 35 shots" debate is a different story, because indeed some CCC aren't that clean-cut to begin with, and half of the remaining shots were half chances, long shots or tame attempts.

Note that I'm not pointing that out out of frustration, it's just a neutral assessment of what I've witnessed over the years.

Issues with how CBs suck at defending specific situations have been reported for years and CONFIRMED by the staff and by the tactical gurus. The thing is you don't even have to go out of your way to experience them, whether in your favour or against you it's irrelevant.
It's not the infamous Corner Exploit, where you had to set a corner routine up in a specific way to cheat the ME... CBs being split open by through balls happens organically all the time. All you can do is try to minimize the issue, but it WILL happen.

And if it happens too many times in a game, you either get unrealistic scorelines or the game must intervene to keep things reasonable. Hence, poor finishing and/or "superkeepers", or a mix of both.

 

P.S. Also, specific formations, styles or type of players have worked too well in one build, only to become ineffectual in the next one... A few years ago, all you needed were pacey players, even if they were banana-footed. Then it was crossing galore. Not to mention almost every side, from Barça to the worst side in the worst playable league, can pull off impressive tiki-taka through the middle.

Come on, as much as it's "our tactic" or "our perception", the ME has its quirks and it often feels like we're playing the ME's take on football rather than football.

[Guest El Payaso]

1 hour ago, RBKalle said:

Now, the "1 goal in 35 shots" debate is a different story, because indeed some CCC aren't that clean-cut to begin with, and half of the remaining shots were half chances, long shots or tame attempts.

We also have to remember that while the CCC stat is dodgy indeed it works both ways and often some really easy chances in the game aren't even registered as HCs. I've been reporting about these to SI for 2-3 versions in a row and that is a fact that both the SI staff and I have noticed and acknowledged. I would even rather claim that the CCC and HC stat is rather missing chances than registering too many. 

I personally don't understand why people always keep talking about the CCC and HC stats in a way that they don't function in just one way when we can all clearly see that it's a two way failure that both rewards CCCs and HCs for nothing and also keeps missing registering some really easy chances.

[Svenc]

@El Payaso

I'm not talking stats. What's in there is of very limited use, even if you knew how to handle it, and can also appreciate laws of probability, as in the end, every shot has a chance of being converted -- some just less and some more so. I personally go through matches shot by shot via the analysis tool, see also the link to the tactics forum. That the ME's limited in what it portrays, also in terms of indivdual player traits is not in doubt and a different topic (out of interest, how does Aduriz compare to your in-game stats-wise, also in terms of shots he needs?). This isn't primarily about the defending issues. This was primarily about the argument that the game would drum up bad finishing to keep scorelines in check as it created too many decent chances, or if you're more comfortable with that, chances the game and its coders considers to be some more decent than others. Doesn't happen. Ditto super keepers. If you follow that myth that the game would basically punish sides for creating too decent, you're in for massively frustration. Both in an attacking, as well as a defending sense, like when you're parking the bus yourself and try to reduce your opponent's shots to comparably low percentage attempts. I recommend to try a few of the tactics that systematically exploit the defensive issues we've talked about here over the past year, just so that everybody gets a "feel" for the difference what's actually forwards in decent space on this and what isn't. Finishing LaLiga first season with 170+ goals is a complete fantasy, but achievable. Pointing out defending holes aren't enough, I'm afraid. You've got to systematically exploit them.
 

23 hours ago, RBKalle said:

Posting funny Memes about serial ranters who expect to win every match 10-0 despite having set their team up with a D&D dice isn't gonna help I'm afraid...@Svenc

I hope it will, at least in highlighting some badly missing feedback to SI. All of such approaches are great for comically emphasizing them, from my experience lots of players suffer from it in various ways, though. The last time your side had struggled to break a deep sitting defense down, for instance, did you check how many attempts you actually created from open play, and how regularly that happened, as everything else will see boxes jam packed by definition, in-game or real football alike?

Quote

IIRC, there was confirmation of "superkeepers" in at least one past build of the game (FM 10.2 maybe? Or was it even earlier?). Don't wanna call them "superkeepers", fine, it's "

strikers inexplicably shooting AT the keeper despite having 18 Composure and Finishing and >170 CA".
The end-product is still the same: way too many one-on-ones don't get converted.

That was the one one on one issue talked about, The Special One On One, if you will, and it wasn't quite like that (composure and finishing attributes have only meant this much if the guy wasn't in space and vice versa, btw.). The issue was a defending error (centre backs splitting), which allowed a certain kind of one on one (similar to the difficult type in the WHU video 2nd half, btw) to be created too oftenly. A central/narrow one, with the assist played typically into the forwards back, and with him having to turn and oft pushed to shoot immediately. The initial argument was that whilst this happened too ofently due to that bug, it also was suggested that it wasn't as lethal a chance type (and it still isn't). It was however acknowledged by PaulC that also the keeper reach was too effective (thanks google), so the "super keeper" for once had some weight. Some user tactics would focus on those one on ones entirelly, (no AI ever did), which lead to the frustration. Any kind of other type of one on one was argued to be fine. Since then there hasn't been anything on that scale, and nothing that would suggest an overhaul is on the cards. It is of note here that SI never toned down the finishing. It just wasn't picked up on testing as AI/tester tactics never created such one on ones in such volumes. Your tactics basically needed to funnel every single attack down the middle, which you may or may not agree is rather unusual. As it's happened in the past and it is silly to argue there couldn't be any issues: If you think there is something, you are best to report it with some detailed match reports. But I strongly suggest being open as to an explanation and not immediately suggesting to the staff what you imply here, as from my experience, all you may get is a standard reply of "not how this works" and your feedback not being made top priority thus. It's already unfortunate that much of the staff isn't much around here anymore, as it could explain a few things. A big part of this is that they've needed to explain precisely such stuff over and over again.

Almost every perceived "super keeper" since is typically down to users misjudging the chances, and the game awarding rating bumps to keepers too easily, which has many factors. This relates to misconceptions as to real life finishing too though. Note that PaulC in the above too considered the keeper to be in a strong position. Outside of tap-ins and penalties, the keeper edges most scenarios in actual football but that's repeat. Limited animations, finishing techniques, bad decisions, defending holes making it easy to get into weak to average shooting positions (in particular, but not limited to, set piece finishes with limited chance of a conversion etc.) all contribute to that perception. No matter how much they improve this, visually this will never fully look like football, and also never fully replicate football elsewhere. However after a while, you get some feeling of what's some more more decent and what is less decent. I'm confident to argue that stuff is misjudged all the time, but then, art imitating life. Some of the more "dramatic" keeper motion capturing animations recorded since may also not help. Suspicious will remain, though the game needs better feedback bad. It is in the nature of the beast. The guys behind CIV even cripple their AI in places so that that suspicious never manifests. In a sense, it is natural to be suspicious about what's going on, and may that even be a theoretical possibility of game code that would ensure "scorelines remain realistic" -- despite evidence of otherwise being all around the FM scene ever since. I can only warn anybody to go with such acknowledged FM myth, in particular without yourself even challenging it. It will cripple your understanding and enjoyment of the game. And there's enough real issues to worry about without them, in particular for SI who've denied it and for which any such feedback is a waste of time as they stated that's not how this works  (could still lie, mind, in spite of all).

 

Real issues like that wide midfielder stuff...

[Dave1990]

23 hours ago, El Payaso said:

We also have to remember that while the CCC stat is dodgy indeed it works both ways and often some really easy chances in the game aren't even registered as HCs. I've been reporting about these to SI for 2-3 versions in a row and that is a fact that both the SI staff and I have noticed and acknowledged. I would even rather claim that the CCC and HC stat is rather missing chances than registering too many. 

I personally don't understand why people always keep talking about the CCC and HC stats in a way that they don't function in just one way when we can all clearly see that it's a two way failure that both rewards CCCs and HCs for nothing and also keeps missing registering some really easy chances.

The CCCs and HCs that are wrongly marked were one of the biggest problems in FM17.

We have talking about the problems that gameplay has for years, that one of the 1vs1 opportunities is certainly one of the most annoying, because the frequency of errors in these particular situations is certainly much higher than the reality. The absence of dribbling at the goalkeeper is a reason why you see so many mistakes in the game, in fact in the last few years it's more dangerous the FB or winger that runs in the flanks and crosses rather than a striker completely alone in front of the opposing goalkeeper. 
That's why I don't reproof anyone who calls FM to "crossing simulator",  in fact I also call it "Crossing Manager" over the last two years.

[Guest El Payaso]

6 hours ago, Svenc said:

@El Payaso

I'm not talking stats.

I thought that you claimed that there are not big differences in terms of how different types of good players score their goals. You cannot expect to score from crosses with players like Dybala and Hazard while Ronaldo and for example Kane and Aduriz clearly are superior penalty area players. While on the other hand no team on the planet scores goals by passing the ball around at the edge of the penalty area.

For me FM's ME does not show these differences and especially world class finishes are really rare and the scenarios where the goals are scored really rarely make any sense or show differences between styles of plays or the qualities that certain players have. Like I said for example Dybala doesn't feel threatening even if you give him 5-6 good chances to score a free kick in one game as he is going to be always scoring the average amount of goals based on real football stats even if he is getting 3-4 times more chances than he gets IRL.

 

[Svenc]

Well we got two things mixed up, and that was my fault.

1) Bad theory: Game keeps scorelines realistic. This is a close cousin to the bad "result is predetermined" myth. And easily disproven both by tacticians that  exploit the adefensive flaws each year, unless you consider an average of 4+ -5 goals realistic. This is even ignoring the bug reports, and suggesting to SI that what they would do to "fix" such stuff would be switching a lever that would turn forwards into idiots might not go well with them. I'd almost consider it an insult to players who provide detailed second by second match play bug reports each year as to why such results oft come about. Also, does this go one way only?  Also doesn't look very realistic to me ,  and whilst this in my opinion is made possible in parts because of how ridiculously easy it is to control the middle of the pitch (swarm it with players, solved), I feel bad for anybody who's under the spell of such bad myth, as he will never fully feel a connection between his doings and the results.  I totally agree with RBKalle that the game should be at least trying to approach somewhat similar to xG, maybe FMxG would be of  benefit. Anything more detailed would do. No least because it evidently is a challenge to gauge the quality of a chance in football  --- less alone in a simulation of it. Which not only will have limitations, but also be somebody's interpretation of the actual sports.

2) Individual player traits. I added a remark about that re: Sigurdsson. However free kicks probably aren't the best example, more below.

 

9 hours ago, El Payaso said:

For me FM's ME does not show these differences and especially world class finishes are really rare and the scenarios where the goals are scored really rarely make any sense or show differences between styles of plays or the qualities that certain players have. Like I said for example Dybala doesn't feel threatening even if you give him 5-6 good chances to score a free kick in one game as he is going to be always scoring the average amount of goals based on real football stats even if he is getting 3-4 times more chances than he gets IRL.

 

Where do you gauge that from? It might actually be the case! A while ago I was concerned by an SI posting stating that similar to their soak tests they would look at the overall numbers of goals scored from set pieces rather than actual conversion rates. The numbers of set pieces is evidently massively influenced by tactics, some player tactics would produce set piece after set piece, as they make it easy for defenders to get a foot into play. In football teams average like 30-35+ corners for a goal, and specialist sides may outperform such, but not by gigantic margins. If SI would solely look at the percentages of corner goals scored, it could mean that in-game sides would need much more corners to score, ditto dfks. DFK's are difficult as "average" guys over a season can outconvert the lesser ones easily, as generally few goals are scored. Over a season, Ronaldo in 2014ish returned with a close to zero (cherry topped in the Summer when he successfully placed a SOL = Shot On Lahm). With a specialist in the side you are usually guaranteed a few added goals mid- to long-term. There's a limit tough and that's justified. Still the actual conversion rates are nowhere to be found in-game...

The "generally more chances than IRL" part is why I'm asking for Aduriz (first paragraph). From my experience, unless your forward at least averages 3+ attempts per match, you won't get him to score consistently. That was the point. Anyway, the bulk of my post was about this: The game does not deliberately nerf finishing to keep scorelines realistic. It never has. If it did, it did a poor job, as the "corner bugs" too, easily lead to a shetload of added goals, and centre backs that could rack up as many as 20+ goals per season if you insisted on the easy ride (no AI pulled that stunt off). It can all be perceived as such, so looking for things that improves feedback is vital, same as being open to issues. Going back ten years, nothing's much changed. In ten years it may be much the same. Animations may look more fluid, decisions may be more varied, wide midfielders may have been fixed, and Miles may have turned bald. But players will still rage about forwards missing one on ones, in particularly the more difficult ones. SI unlikely will completely overhaul their general stance as apparently nobody seems to have convinced them quite yet. What I do hope is, now that they've teamed officially up with Stats plus a few clubs, it will improve to the point that feedback is better, and that it gets ever more realistic. Time will tell, thread bookmarked.

[Guest El Payaso]

20 hours ago, Svenc said:

Where do you gauge that from? It might actually be the case! A while ago I was concerned by an SI posting stating that similar to their soak tests they would look at the overall numbers of goals scored from set pieces rather than actual conversion rates. The numbers of set pieces is evidently massively influenced by tactics, some player tactics would produce set piece after set piece, as they make it easy for defenders to get a foot into play.

Just from my own experience. I think that the highest amount I reached in one game was 8 direct free kick attempts from good positions with a good taker without any of them being threatening. I think that it's fairly logical conclusion that as the engine clearly has problems in terms of danger area defending especially in the middle of the park, this will also draw more fouls on those areas and with more fouls of course more free kicks. I would boldly claim that based on my experience the conversion rate of a direct free kick must be really low compared to real life. 

In real life I wouldn't want a player like Dybala or Marcos Alonso taking any free kicks from dangerous positions against my team while on FM I won't mind as they maybe bury one out of twenty of their attempts. And the number 20 is not based on any stat it's just a random number that might be close to reality.

https://www.sportskeeda.com/slideshow/football-players-with-the-highest-free-kick-conversion-rate?imgid=69961

If this is true for example Pjanic has 18.4% conversion rate and the number of attempts is really low compared to what they get on FM. Of course players like Messi and Ronaldo for example have less than 10% conversion rate but this also is a stat that varies a lot. But based on every site I have checked the most alarming stat would be the one that shows how many attempts the players on FM get to score goals. So a good free kicker on FM should reach 10-15 goals per season just from free kicks I would say. 

This basically means that the effectivity and quality of direct free kicks has been highly nullified. 

[Svenc]

6 hours ago, El Payaso said:

This basically means that the effectivity and quality of direct free kicks has been highly nullified. 

Similar to other set pieces, it could be that SI seem to mainly look for the number of goals scored -- but not the number of  events it takes to score them. In other words, the conversation ratios of set pieces may indeed differ from footie. Already argued that set piece attempts in general are fairly common in this. I'd eye this far more closely than anything from open play. Despite the defending holes, you'll generally find few matches where a dominating side has most of its shots worked from open play, even if their respective manager isn't much contributing to it, tactically by making it easy for defenders to get a foot into the play. If you followed match reports on stats outlets, you'll note this is common place in football. If you've never done this, go through each shot in the box of a few random matches, no matter if AI or human controlled. Shot counts in general are always inflated some by set piece attempts on this. As you hint at, this needs balancing, as it influences match dynamics. Most attempts off those imo fully justified aren't grand chances as such, in particular the headers in crwoded boxes off IDFKs and corners. However, if sides would crumble too easily too from merely set piece play, than that could create a huge bias in favor of attacking tactics -- similar to the genuinelly corner bugs of old... some matches against defensive AI would have never been won otherwise, and indeed, there is evidence that players find it a bit of an added struggle since. Would be interesting to have more stats. Would be also worth eyeing the actual conversions, as else SI risk creating a fantasy, which they may not want. This may be some against the odds thus, but on a former kept long-term save I had lost a match to 3 direct free kicks in the 5th tier of German football. So careful what we wish for.

Bits of OT: Whilst it's oft pointed out as something "sensationalist" in such reports, It's no much surprise that Messi and Ronaldo oft rank pretty "low" in such seasonal pecking orders published btw -- or that numbers fluctuate hugely between seasons (the faces on such lists alongside them, btw). This happens with any event that sees limited repeats, in this case even to limited return. The smaller the sample size, the less telling the report. Ronaldo and Messi typically take a lot of kicks. If their numbers would oft be closer to the average long-term conversion of free kicks  (which is indeed roughly 1 in 20+), that's only to be expected. To exaggerate, any fool could get additionally lucky a few times. But good and back luck don't just repeat. Long-term doing better than the average is indicative of some sort of skill either way (unless the keeper was rigged ) . Such stats should be collected long-term, in-game too, as seasonal numbers don't tell very much. As in the Crystal Palace story, even over the fairly reasonable sample size of 80 "generally shots", quite some interesting stuff can happen.... including converting zero of them, however unlikely it may be. Under 100 attempts, as far as I'm concerned you wouldn't need to start to gauge who may be superior and who wasn't (and as your article states, Calhanoglu has become much more quiet since, the above "Messi/Ronaldo must be sh*te" graphics is 2 years old). Messi ain't that bad.  The margins in sports are just smaller than what pub wisdom dictates, which is universal to every competitive sports on every competitive level. As fantastic as those Pjanic numbers are, he too may enjoy them while they last. Calhanoglu can boast even more unbelievably impressive -- all depends on which time-frame you eye.

[Guest El Payaso]

@Svenc I think that many issues of stats on FM ME should be approached with a view of 'why is this happening' instead of nerfing the end results such as why teams are getting so many chances from set pieces, why teams are putting in some many crosses, why strikers and midfielders are passing the ball so much etc. I would be really interested to see what it would do to the ME if SI for once made strikers track back and actually defend under the ball like they do IRL. In theory this could solve many problems that the engine has such as instead of slow tempo attacks being super effective teams might actually start winning the ball back more often and by that creating sensible breaks where they can create chances and score. Even the best teams in the world basically need to create quick breaks to threaten as any team in the world can defend in numbers and by that make it super hard for any team to create anything by playing short passes in low tempo. 

[Svenc]

12 hours ago, El Payaso said:

@Svenc I think that many issues of stats on FM ME should be approached with a view of 'why is this happening' instead of nerfing the end results such as why teams are getting so many chances from set pieces, why teams are putting in some many crosses, why strikers and midfielders are passing the ball so much etc.

Absolutely. From older releases and also much more detailed patch notes of prior releases, generally that's what's happening though. I clearly remember FM 2012, where it was possible to have defensive shapes like this. When enquired, I also remember PaulC static publicly that they didn't want to address this anymore for that release, as it had the power of influencing the number of goals getting scored, naturally. In current releases, such shapes would result in hockey scorelines (as they did on FM15, when giving advanced players an attack duty looked similar), as decision making has seen significant changes, ditto attacking movement (counters for instance where really rather poor historically). That human managers in particular can abuse the flaws, just flood the centre of the pitch with players and get Barcelona pinned back with ease is also a direct result of what you bring up. Giving away fouls around the area can only happen if a side is getting pinned back. Somewhat encouraging is that similar was fixed in the past. Deeper midfielders centrally, on a prior release had it just as easy to just recycle the ball as in this, as they were neither pressured from a forward much, nor any midfielder. And on FM 2013, a 4-4-2 defending looked like this. For a while, the deeper forward would always tend to track back, with only the more advanced one staying high. It's also been acknowledged that players on FM aren't a "physical presence" as such AFAIK. The reason they don't always run straight through each other is because the code checks whethere there is a player in front of another one before an attacking run, and makes players run around those. However, there couldn't be physically contact as such. Once that's in there, that may fix some stuff in itself. Hopefully, anyway.

By how much the conversion rates of DFKs differs currently naturally is hard to tell. It's been argued that the numbers fluctuate too as the physics models in the game are changed // not accurate enough. However, as physics don't merely influence set pieces, but everything, they produce knock-ons everywhere. I think the guys wish they just could enter numbers such as "direct free kick conversion for an average player: roughly x%" and be done with it. It probably also wouldn't be a very good simulation. This is still all the more reason to include a more detailed breakdown as to how decent a chance as to the game really is -- internally as to the calculations, not semantically, see the SI clear-cut debate (should a header be a CCC or not? Pointless!). Still anybody following bits of studies, even somebody with a bit of common sense should be able to at least roughly estimate. Clearly if the average shot is very broadly speaking a 1 in 10 chance, and bonafide penalties are converted at roughly 80% rates, even the best stuff from open play, typically at pace,  etc. must sit somewhere in between. And anything more difficult, be less than that. Such has been always argued in the past, as according to the testers, such research is taken into account. It must be naturally, as code is Maths. Things won't get more realistic just by having a free-flowing open ended high end physics simulation in there. There have to be benchmarks as to what it's trying to do.

Just seen a newbie to the German FM comm, arguing he watches possession and shots. Moar of each, better. Whilst that shows a bit of fairly common misconceptions about football right there, until SI will provide such, he, like many, will learn this the harder FM way. He will also be easier target to bad FM myth, which will not only influence his understanding of the game, and enjoyment, but also rub off on his results.

[Guest El Payaso]

@Svenc no wonder that I always found FM 2013's ME the best one so far. That screenshot must be one of the reasons why so. Although I also remember that occasionally on FM 2015 my DLF did drop all the way to the edge of our own penalty area when the opposition was retaining possession for a long time. 

Making strikers defend in the ME would for sure add more pressure on the ball carriers as the defensive side would now be defending in numbers. This probably could solve such issues as too many crosses and too many pass attempts as it wouldn't be so easy for wide players to spurt past their markers as too much slack is allowed and short passing in the middle would be harder as the attacking side probably would play more short handed attacks. In terms of counter attacks and quick breaks this would definitely raise the probability as the defending team would definitely be more capable of winning the ball back and when the break starts the strikers wouldn't be so isolated from the rest of the team and by that the other players might have more tendency to rush forward quickly when the striker receives the ball.

Would be super interested to see how the engine would evolve from the current if the defensive shape would be something like this:

At least it would make such roles as BPD more useful and also would bring us all the feeling that there isn't too much time and space on the pitch and also would nullify some of the nonsense that the ME has. And by less space when attacking roles also could become more challenging and actually demand those attributes that are highlighted. I remember seeing (and doing this myself too) people using technically weak ball winner type of players as playmakers without any real negative effect while IRL something like DLP is a challenging role as that is a role where the opposition usually likes to apply really much pressure on. On FM 2017 my ball winning midfielder without any good technical attributes and passing ability was able to do the job in that type of role as well as my main man with required attributes as he always had full peace to pass the ball around and make the first touch. While IRL what just happened to for example Xhaka. I would definitely want to kill of all those 'forward on support duty turning in front of the defensive line and rounding the centre backs or setting someone else up' type of goals that were possibly the most common on FM 2017. I bet that it would make the ME hugely more variable and probably a lot more sensible type of chances and goals were created. 

In total I would call the 17 ME a well balanced horror show.