Did FM became too elitist tactic-wise?

[Rashidi]

15 hours ago, tacticsdude said:

And on another topic,
I'm very curious as to how exactly pro managers set their tactics in the real world. I have an idea of what managers/coaches would say to players, and I've heard managers talk about their tactics and instructions, but I haven't seen any of their charts or tactics paperwork. Are there any examples, screenshots, apps that show the tactical instructions of first-div managers like Guardiola, Wenger, Mourinho, Conte, etc?

In the course of my work I have met coaches and discussed how they approach setting up teams, and its almost a universal mantra - defensive and offensive phases in the play. Eg.  How players work on positional play in a 442 to deny a No 9 space using 2CMx2CDs to form a box. Today they use apps, one such app that is being used is from https://tacticalpedia.com, you can even go to the website to find out more about how they approach the game. There are fairly good insights into analysis, positional play etc.  From what I understand about SI they do take feedback from professional coaches and professional players too. 

[hoppo1982]

1 hour ago, Rashidi said:

In the course of my work I have met coaches and discussed how they approach setting up teams, and its almost a universal mantra - defensive and offensive phases in the play. Eg.  How players work on positional play in a 442 to deny a No 9 space using 2CMx2CDs to form a box. Today they use apps, one such app that is being used is from https://tacticalpedia.com, you can even go to the website to find out more about how they approach the game. There are fairly good insights into analysis, positional play etc.  From what I understand about SI they do take feedback from professional coaches and professional players too. 

Having coached until 19's and assisted at senior level  i'd agree with a lot of this. A lot of RL tasks translate directly to FM

 

- Asses the squad and pick a shape to suit (Perhaps a playing style but this is very dependant on the players availability and time available to coach) 

- In conjunction with the above assess the standard of overall league opposition

Normal sessions (not pre-season as there are fitness issues to be addressed) would included sessions based around the different phases of play.

1. Our shape during the build up - thru each third of the field

2. Our shape and actions should we lose the ball (Transition to defence) 

3. Our shape when we lose the ball (Defensive shape) 

4. Our shape when we win the ball (Transition to attack)

5. Our shape when attacking (this ties in with number 1)

We generally worked on very basic set-piece information due to the restriction of time. 

(I try to work with individual players within the sessions : A DM in a 4-3-3 shape may need assistance with body shape etc) 

 

 

Different coaches will approach each of the above in different ways and some will prioritise some over other (My impression is Mourinho places very little emphasis on shape during the attacking phase and seems to want players who think on their feet during the attacking phase and solve problem)

 

Where i struggle to enjoy FM is implementing the same process into the game. Influencing the defensive shape can be done. Attacking shape is a little more difficult. The transitions are very difficult to influence.

I play the game for a number of weeks until i become frustrated that a simple tactical tweek IRL cannot be translated into FM.

 

All of the above is of course just my opinion and other coaches with more experience than i may have different or contrasting views.

 

 

 

 

[tacticsdude]

1 hour ago, hoppo1982 said:

All of the above is of course just my opinion

Thank you for sharing.

How do you illustrate tactics to the team? I imagine you have a few sit-down sessions with whiteboards. Do you provide any written materials for players to take home and review/study?

[hoppo1982]

1 hour ago, tacticsdude said:

Thank you for sharing.

How do you illustrate tactics to the team? I imagine you have a few sit-down sessions with whiteboards. Do you provide any written materials for players to take home and review/study?

Tactics board usually but i would often stand right in the middle of a session to coach shape or a particular player. I also try to obtain passages of play from games they will know and share them in a group chat or individually to each player.

Some of them would come to watch League of Ireland matches and be asked to take notes on the player playing in a similar position to them

[AI-brahimovic]

It took me 5 years of playing FM to realize that actually what I was doing for the vast majority was - when it was successful - based a lot on fully functioning tactics I looked at and modeled (not fully 1 by 1), so especially recently when dropping this habit completely (actually I only did this back in 2012/2013 when starting out), I feel that as time goes on and I become more knowledgeable on tactics, it looks like every year I get less good at it and see myself failing much, much more often losing my job when, say taking on a mid-table team in Championship.

So with every new FM, especially recently, I feel it has become harder and harder to get into it, especially tactic-wise with so many changes being made to the interface and options year by year. So the game definitely I think is not beginner-friendly which I guess it never intended to become anyway and that's fine. Even me though as someone who played the FM series for 5 years and probably spending 3000 hours, it is becoming more difficult to keep up and find a functioning strategy, finding a way to figure out the mistakes I make, etc. I feel what the game is really "missing" that would make it probably "less elitist" would be some sort of transparency-setting maybe in 3 steps that would change how much of your failure would be explained for you.

For example, when setting up your strategy and trying, I feel the assistant manager's feedback many times is not enough to figure out where things go wrong. If there was more input like "you shouldn't try to do X when also doing Y, it's a paradox", it would make the game much easier to get into especially after a while. For me, taking a break sometimes for 10 months and then returning to it, as much as I absolutely L-O-V-E everything about it, wanting to spend 1000+ hours every year actually, I simply can't at the time because I spend 12 hours on the pre-season, then figure out my tactics only to get sacked around mid-season time especially recently.

PS: I managed to get promoted teams that were expected to go back down in the top 5 in top leagues such as Serie A Italy, won the Turkish league in year 1 Leicester-like with a promoted team with barely any transfers and had some other crazy results (all without using downloaded tactics), so that being said, I know how success looks in this game, so I just wanted to make sure you see I've had some good success in 2014-2015 but especially recently, the game has become more difficult even for maybe experienced players like me (although I'd assume I am not anywhere near the level of played hours of some of you guys).

[Svenc]

1 hour ago, AI-brahimovic said:

So with every new FM, especially recently, I feel it has become harder and harder to get into it, especially tactic-wise with so many changes being made to the interface and options year by year.

Some of the changes to me are odd too, but in general, everything that previously worked throughout the years still fully stands. I started out a little differently though. Fully determined to work things out myself (I didn't even look at any guide or anything), so that's a different starting point. This was during the final years of the slider iterations, shortly before the Creator came into the fold. Still remember making a couple threads where I got replies from Ov where I was wondering whether all of the instructions actually had much of an effect (also exposing my rather simplistic thoughts on it all back at the time - expecting the likes of Dorchester to hold onto possession with ease against a pressing Barca).   LMAO

Ever since, the game's become much quicker, and that was also one of the arguments when the Tactic Creator was pursued. From then on the tactical forums wasn't as much about providing downloaded tactical sets or pages of individual slider instructions. Everybody would ideally be able to put somethign together in a mere minute perhaps. Matches of mine are totally whizzed through most of the time, training I've never hugely spend much time on (though one day I may). I've never spend a dozen hours on pre-season in my lifetime on this though to.... and this includes all the other stuff. Game has never been only about tactics at all, after all. The general rule of the thumb as far as I am concerned is that as soon as you spend hours on trying to get something to work, you are doing it wrong. It's not what this was supposed to be like.

I find with all these "struggle" posts, it's often hard to find what specifically the player is actually looking for. So if they cannot express what it is, that's difficult. From my experience players are often (not always) doing fine, or even very fine without realizing. The assistant feedback, I agree, it can be terribly misleading. I think, was it @MBarbaric who suggested some kind of "coaching" quiz as an optional game mode in the start menu. In particular if you started aping popular tactics, they were often geared towards a purely statistical domination. They still are. Like, if I have more shots, possession and CCCs (argh!!!!!), all fine. Problem is, this has never worked that way, and that logics is still rife with players. Often times that statistical domination is purely achieved via exploits, not a defensive / attacking soundness. One of the first saves I did back then was taking the worst BL side and putting up some basic counter attacking football in place... that tought me to never worry about the opposition dominating every single stat the game has ever had on offer. if you had never fiddled much with the dynamics, it's tough. The rest of the feedback that's in there (or isn't) can kill you then.



 

[Guest]

On 20/02/2018 at 22:52, Sunstrikuuu said:

FM suffers from the Paradox Paradox.  By the time you've played enough hours to understand what you don't like about about the game you've played so many hours you've forfeited your right to complain.

That’s the flaw with the logic that hours played has a direct correlation to user enjoyment & value for money, in a game with the depth of FM neither of those work & will likely lead result is false assumptions on the end user experience.

The OP in this thread leaves FM running, how are his hours played adjusted to what he actually plays rather than just having the game idle?

https://community.sigames.com/topic/429559-computer-keeps-turning-on-with-fm-running/

[tacticsdude]

Yeah, I'm nearing 400 hours according to Steam but I leave it open plenty. I'd say maybe up to 25% of it is idling time for me.

 

11 hours ago, AI-brahimovic said:

So the game definitely I think is not beginner-friendly which I guess it never intended to become

I think your opinion is valid and important to take into consideration as the flip side of that is people like me who feel that game is too easy once you figure it out.

But if the game is not beginner friendly for being too hard to pick up and play, and it is not veteran friendly for being to simplistic in its tactics and ME, then who is it for?

I think it does want to be beginner friendly with the named roles and its single formation panel (instead of having something to represent phases and transitions). The problem is that the roles are not easily understandable as the game wants them to be, and you can fail plenty with the roles in ways that you wouldn't IRL, because in FM your players are on rails and will continue to make the same mistakes over and over, when IRL they would think throughout the game and become more effective as the match goes on.

So I've said before that the tactics UI is way too complicated for the beginner (when it should and tries to be easy) and at the same time it is not complex enough to set normal modern tactics on it. It needs an overhaul.

Feedback
To your point about getting feedback, I think that's very fair. The game is trying to give you feedback via the assistant manager, but I think the consensus is that you shouldn't listen to that as it is not very smart feedback. I think at this stage the game is not capable of giving good feedback, so that's something else that should improve. But keep in mind that RL doesn't come with perfect feedback either - you can ask your assistant what he thinks is going wrong, but he could be just as wrong or worse than you are, and listening to your assistant and changing the tactics accordingly doesn't guarantee anything gets better. That's why you are in charge of tactics and you have to set your own philosophy, not someone else's.

For instance, the question: why can't my fullback cross? - there are many ways you can come at it an many ways to solve it and they all have pitfalls you have to plan for. Do you make him play higher up the pitch so he has a bit more time on the ball to get a cross out? but then he will be out of position more often to defend a counter. Do you ask him to pick his crosses more carefully, then he tries it less often which means the ball gets rotated sideways more often than crosses are attempted - this will cost you attack chances. You can also abandon trying to cross with your fullbacks and instead use a midfielder to move into that space, but now you are messing with your formation.

So your assistant can say:
"boss, the fullback is not getting his crosses out. I think we should ask him to play higher."

It is your job as the manager to realize that your assistant is applying his own philosophy of the game to give you advice, and that this is only one of many ways to approach the problem. It is also your job to preempt what effect this recommendation would have on the game if you choose to follow it. Otherwise the next piece of advice might be:

"boss, the fullback keeps getting caught out of position, I think we should use a CM to manmark that winger"

And on it goes, playing the game by your assistant's philosophy whether it is any good or not.

[Viking]

The tactics in FM nowadays are confusing and unforgiving to the point where I no longer care and just play a straight 4-4-2, watch the clownfest that are my players on the pitch, and replay the match if I think I should be able to win it in real life.

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Viking said:

The tactics in FM nowadays are confusing and unforgiving to the point where I no longer care and just play a straight 4-4-2, watch the clownfest that are my players on the pitch, and replay the match if I think I should be able to win it in real life.

Doesn’t seem much point in playing FM if that’s your general approach, what enjoyment are you experiencing when playing?

[shirajzl]

11 hours ago, Barside said:

Doesn’t seem much point in playing FM if that’s your general approach, what enjoyment are you experiencing when playing?

He's winning games and trophies, buys and sells players etc.?

I've never understood people's amazement at others cheating in single player game. People find enjoyment in different things, in different ways.

[Viking]

17 minutes ago, shirajzl said:

He's winning games and trophies, buys and sells players etc.?

Spot on. I've never cared much about the tactics. I'd love to see a DoF mode in FM, where you just buy players, hire managers, and stay away from tactics, player dynamics, and other soul draining things. Or at least a "noob mode" for creating and using tactics. I am so far behind on the FM tactics journey I think I'd have better success building a moon lander than get a grasp of all the scary player roles, team shapes, player instructions and what not.

[Guest]

All that matters is whether you’re enjoying the experience.

[Svenc]

Constantly reloading out of frustration can't be fun though (not sure). Assistant managers and the optionally match plans (FM Touch) were likely put in for a purpose a couple years ago. (Still no proper tactical assistants as I see them from my end).

[Overmars]

I think the tactics are alright. The only thing "too elite" about it is the use of obscure (at least to me) names for player roles. But that's a very minor grievance, and more comical than anything else.

[Rashidi]

On 2/22/2018 at 20:48, tacticsdude said:

And on it goes, playing the game by your assistant's philosophy whether it is any good or not.

I thought the game was called Football Manager and not Football Assistant Manager. 

[Yankee112DK]

The problem is that the tactics setup invites elitism and over-thinking. 

1) No-one - literally no-one - can accurately and easily explain the difference between "Fluid" and "Structured". It doesn't at all translate to any part of the regular football debate/talk. How can a team be "very fluid" and "more disciplined"? Remove it altogether.

2) There are 27 roles for a defensive midfielder, but no way to instruct the pressing and counter-attacking of your team. This is just grotesque.

3) The tactics and player views heavily emphasizes "best role" to the point where you almost feel obliged to use the best role for a player even though it is very debatable and favors certain roles heavily. It pushes the player to utilize very complex roles like Inverted Wing Back, Segundo Volante, Carrilero etc. without telling the player how these roles combine with each other in his team. 9 out of 10 FM players will be best suited by the classics like "Central Midfielder", "Winger" etc. - so stop advising newbies to use the specialist roles. Perhaps have the specialist roles more "hidden". This will help a lot of struggling players to get much better results quickly and enjoy the game much more.

[themadsheep2001]

35 minutes ago, Yankee112DK said:

The problem is that the tactics setup invites elitism and over-thinking. 

1) No-one - literally no-one - can accurately and easily explain the difference between "Fluid" and "Structured". It doesn't at all translate to any part of the regular football debate/talk. How can a team be "very fluid" and "more disciplined"? Remove it altogether.

2) There are 27 roles for a defensive midfielder, but no way to instruct the pressing and counter-attacking of your team. This is just grotesque.

3) The tactics and player views heavily emphasizes "best role" to the point where you almost feel obliged to use the best role for a player even though it is very debatable and favors certain roles heavily. It pushes the player to utilize very complex roles like Inverted Wing Back, Segundo Volante, Carrilero etc. without telling the player how these roles combine with each other in his team. 9 out of 10 FM players will be best suited by the classics like "Central Midfielder", "Winger" etc. - so stop advising newbies to use the specialist roles. Perhaps have the specialist roles more "hidden". This will help a lot of struggling players to get much better results quickly and enjoy the game much more.

1) The concept of fluid and structured actually do originate from tactical football talk (if not the names)

Structured used to be known as rule of Two, and was based on the structual shape Alex Ferguson gave his sides; The central defenders are mainly responsible for defending, full backs and defensive midfielder are responsible for defending and defensive transitions, with central midfielders responsible for the controlling the centre of the park and linking attack to defence. Attacking mids and Wide attackers were attacking transitions and attack phases, and Forwards are mainly the attack phase,.

Fluid was known as 5x5 and was based on Arrigo Sacchi, and if anyone needed a more modern example, this is the typical structural choice of Rafa Benitez, most notably at Liverpool and Valencia

5x5 meant Sacchi (and Benitez as a follower of Sacchi's work) liked having 5 players in front of the ball and 5 players behind it; Centre backs, full backs, and holding mids all responsible for the defensive phases, attacking mids, wingers and forwards involved in the attacking phases. Everyone was involved in transitions.

The reason a team can be "very fluid" (Lobanovski's theory of universality) is because while there is a bit of overlap between the two; Shape is responsible for the compactness of the team, Creative Freedom is responsible for level of self decision making of a side (how much they might deviate from team instructions while doing so). They arent the same thing, and while Shape needs better naming and execution, it can't done away with as you need a mechanism for controlling the amount of space between the lines

2) While you can control the level of block, pressing within the ME needs more work, only then can you really add more instructions to it, that said, i'm not a fan of how closing down is named or displayed

3) This is something that can always be tweaked, i think it's probably slightly skewed towards specialist roles, but also users need think more about what they are trying to build themselves in terms of roles, and duties. I never worry about what is supposedly the optimum role, I look for what a role does and how it links to what I'm trying to achieve on an overall level

[Deisler26]

5 minutes ago, themadsheep2001 said:

3) This is something that can always be tweaked, i think it's probably slightly skewed towards specialist roles, but also users need think more about what they are trying to build themselves in terms of roles, and duties. I never worry about what is supposedly the optimum role, I look for what a role does and how it links to what I'm trying to achieve on an overall level

But to the man on the street who doesn't see that correlation, it's very confusing. 

The recent thing of a player being Accomplished in a position, but having no roles within the position at Accomplished is awful.

[themadsheep2001]

Just now, Deisler26 said:

But to the man on the street who doesn't see that correlation, it's very confusing. 

The recent thing of a player being Accomplished in a position, but having no roles within the position at Accomplished is awful.

I agree. In a bid to simplify things, its probably got more complicated. Strip it back a little visually, add the detail to PDF and let users learn. I think they are trying to help new players by spoon feeding a bit, but there's simply too much in the game. It's got to be a little bit trial by fire really, cant force it onto players or you might end up overwhelming them

[Yankee112DK]

46 minutes ago, themadsheep2001 said:

1) The concept of fluid and structured actually do originate from tactical football talk (if not the names)

Structured used to be known as rule of Two, and was based on the structual shape Alex Ferguson gave his sides; The central defenders are mainly responsible for defending, full backs and defensive midfielder are responsible for defending and defensive transitions, with central midfielders responsible for the controlling the centre of the park and linking attack to defence. Attacking mids and Wide attackers were attacking transitions and attack phases, and Forwards are mainly the attack phase,.

Fluid was known as 5x5 and was based on Arrigo Sacchi, and if anyone needed a more modern example, this is the typical structural choice of Rafa Benitez, most notably at Liverpool and Valencia

5x5 meant Sacchi (and Benitez as a follower of Sacchi's work) liked having 5 players in front of the ball and 5 players behind it; Centre backs, full backs, and holding mids all responsible for the defensive phases, attacking mids, wingers and forwards involved in the attacking phases. Everyone was involved in transitions.

The reason a team can be "very fluid" (Lobanovski's theory of universality) is because while there is a bit of overlap between the two; Shape is responsible for the compactness of the team, Creative Freedom is responsible for level of self decision making of a side (how much they might deviate from team instructions while doing so). They arent the same thing, and while Shape needs better naming and execution, it can't done away with as you need a mechanism for controlling the amount of space between the lines

Thank you for this very good explanation - it was only partially how I perceived it. But how on earth would a team cope with changing from the "rule of two" to the "5x5" mid-game? Why does it not impact tactic familiarity more? It seems like a setting that is more strategic than tactical and should be more closely tied to training than the match-to-match tactics.

 

[Viking]

8 hours ago, Barside said:

All that matters is whether you’re enjoying the experience.

It's somewhat like that processed cheese you've been buying for the last 20 odd years. You know, that one that they graduality have made to be more like real cheese. The one that nowadays by no means taste bad, but leaves a weird bitter coat in your mouth. You chew it down because you know it's now more cheese than ever and all the cool kids says it's the best, but you can't help longing for a big chunk of that processed simple (and probably bad) thing you once enjoyed.

[MBarbaric]

1 ora fa, themadsheep2001 ha scritto:

Structured used to be known as rule of Two, and was based on the structual shape Alex Ferguson gave his sides; The central defenders are mainly responsible for defending, full backs and defensive midfielder are responsible for defending and defensive transitions, with central midfielders responsible for the controlling the centre of the park and linking attack to defence. Attacking mids and Wide attackers were attacking transitions and attack phases, and Forwards are mainly the attack phase,.

3

So to sum it up

STRUCTURED: 

                                                             DEF PHASE                   DEF TRANSITION            ATT TRANSITION              ATT PHASE

                                                                 CD

                                                                 FB                                              FB

                                                                 DM                                           DM

                                                                                                                                                         CM?

                                                                                                                                                         AM                                   AM

                                                                                                                                                          W                                     W 

                                                                                                                                                                                                    S                                

1 ora fa, themadsheep2001 ha scritto:

5x5 meant Sacchi (and Benitez as a follower of Sacchi's work) liked having 5 players in front of the ball and 5 players behind it; Centre backs, full backs, and holding mids all responsible for the defensive phases, attacking mids, wingers and forwards involved in the attacking phases. Everyone was involved in transitions.

1

FLUID

                                                           DEF PHASE     DEF TRANSITION        ATT TRANSITION                ATT PHASE

                                                                  CD                            CD                              AM                                   AM

                                                                  FB                             FB                                W                                      W

                                                                   DM                           DM                             S                                         S

 

Am I reading it right because, if you, I.E., take 4-4-2 in both cases you get 5/5 split with the difference being the transitions?

FLUID all players contribute to transitions while

STRUCTURED only FB,DM,AM,W contribute to transition. 

If you think about it further, the difference would actually be that, in STRUCTURED, strikers and central defenders don't get involved in transitions. 

i'd like to ask what is the common understanding of, i.e. "defensive transition" if CD's in structured shape do not get involved in defensive transition? How is it even possible since they are the deepest player on the pitch by definition?

this might be counterintuitive, but this is how I see it. The defensive transition isn't really about players in defensive positions, they are by default a part of the defensive transition (and defensive phase, if not directly by coming towards the ball, then indirectly by their off the ball positioning). It is more about players higher up the pitch and defines how many "attacking" players participate in defensive transition.

Same with attacking transition. Those that are high up the pitch will participate by default (if not directly by coming towards the ball, then indirectly by their off the ball movement), the real question is, how many players in deeper positions participate in attacking transition.

[themadsheep2001]

26 minutes ago, Yankee112DK said:

Thank you for this very good explanation - it was only partially how I perceived it. But how on earth would a team cope with changing from the "rule of two" to the "5x5" mid-game? Why does it not impact tactic familiarity more? It seems like a setting that is more strategic than tactical and should be more closely tied to training than the match-to-match tactics.

 

Fair questions. For me, this is where I personally feel Simulation and gameplay collide a bit, and I'm not sure there is right or wrong answer here

[themadsheep2001]

42 minutes ago, MBarbaric said:

So to sum it up

STRUCTURED: 

                                                             DEF PHASE                   DEF TRANSITION            ATT TRANSITION              ATT PHASE

                                                                 CD

                                                                 FB                                              FB

                                                                 DM                                           DM

                                                                                                                                                         CM?

                                                                                                                                                         AM                                   AM

                                                                                                                                                          W                                     W 

                                                                                                                                                                                                    S                                

FLUID

                                                           DEF PHASE     DEF TRANSITION        ATT TRANSITION                ATT PHASE

                                                                  CD                            CD                              AM                                   AM

                                                                  FB                             FB                                W                                      W

                                                                   DM                           DM                             S                                         S

 

Am I reading it right because, if you, I.E., take 4-4-2 in both cases you get 5/5 split with the difference being the transitions?

FLUID all players contribute to transitions while

STRUCTURED only FB,DM,AM,W contribute to transition. 

If you think about it further, the difference would actually be that, in STRUCTURED, strikers and central defenders don't get involved in transitions. 

i'd like to ask what is the common understanding of, i.e. "defensive transition" if CD's in structured shape do not get involved in defensive transition? How is it even possible since they are the deepest player on the pitch by definition?

The transitions are a part of it, but this is mainly about the structural spacing.

So your Bands of Two were

CD

FB and DM

CM

AM and W

CF

 

5x5 was

CD,  FB, DM

AM W FC

They were similar but the former had more mentality splits

In structured, the defenders sat deeper than the full backs and their aim was mainly clear the ball away once won, rather than being in the same "line" and regularly being part of any further build up

[MBarbaric]

So, if you want Sacchi defensive style,  the  game indeed interprets it well (although naming it FLUID for some reason), as it provides minimum mentality splits between players which ensures the players stay closer to each other creating short and narrow defensive shape.

However, how does that work during the attacking phase?

1 ora fa, themadsheep2001 ha scritto:

In structured, the defenders sat deeper than the full backs and their aim was mainly clear the ball away once won, rather than being in the same "line" and regularly being part of any further build up

Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but does that imply that, in FLUID, CB's stand in same line with an aim of being a regular part of any other build up?

Frankly, that makes no sense because:

If you want to encourage the build-up, then you want players in different vertical lines (translated to FM terms, it would mean different mentalities, I guess STRUCTURED). Not in the same (or staggered lines) like in FLUID as it makes easier for the defenders to cover the passing lanes.

So why was the decision made to keep fluid/structured during both phases? What good does it do to be fluid (in FM terms) during the attacking phase or structured during the defensive phase?

[themadsheep2001]

32 minutes ago, MBarbaric said:

So, if you want Sacchi defensive style,  the  game indeed interprets it well (although naming it FLUID for some reason), as it provides minimum mentality splits between players which ensures the players stay closer to each other creating short and narrow defensive shape.

However, how does that work during the attacking phase?

Perhaps I am reading it wrong, but does that imply that, in FLUID, CB's stand in same line with an aim of being a regular part of any other build up?

Frankly, that makes no sense because:

If you want to encourage the build-up, then you want players in different vertical lines (translated to FM terms, it would mean different mentalities, I guess STRUCTURED). Not in the same (or staggered lines) like in FLUID as it makes easier for the defenders to cover the passing lanes.

So why was the decision made to keep fluid/structured during both phases? What good does it do to be fluid (in FM terms) during the attacking phase or structured during the defensive phase?

I'm currently out, remind me to reply to this tomorrow with a more detailed answer than I can give righr now. Alternatively pick the mind of @Rashidi who understands it even better than I do. Been a while since I had to pick it apart 

[Svenc]

5 hours ago, themadsheep2001 said:

1) The concept of fluid and structured actually do originate from tactical football talk (if not the names)

Structured used to be known as rule of Two,

Aye. The original rule of Two by the way was not much advisable to use by about FM08 anymore (due to reworks made how things interacted, again, mentality, its effect and stuff are an SI concept and always rife for some tweaking). Therefore, even for a long-term player that knows where this is coming from, it's curious that it's again implemented like that (or at least that's what is hinted at in the player individual feedback screen).

I also maintain that the "rule of two" mentality theorem would undermine the concept of having a team mentality/strategy you pick first to begin with. But that's now a bit too mechanical... and as I don't know what's been reworked behind the scenes since (nor do I have much interest in the pure mechanics anmore these days), I take it as it comes. The way I play hasn't been much affected ever since in generally. Either way, the day this is fully translated over into the real football world, that day will be a good one! However, for that to happen there needs to be more feedback than from those who know the insides of the code on a purely mechanical level, as argued. I think there's been a handful of  players who have gained a fanatastic inside knowledge here, the coders have it too either way, but the danger is seeing things primarily from that perspective.

As far as I remember it, when the intitial TC was considered/proposed FM Live era, there was a hesistation in particular from the players who could not do without tweaking their mentality to the nth degree (even by those who did bad stuff harming their performance). There's a possible history lesson in there. I fully maintain the game would have not survived for much longer tactically had that TC not happened, as it was all this inaccessible to anybody who didn't experiment and discuss his findings and theories. And even then it was a fistload of clicks for the most simple of things. Had that TC never happened, these boards too would be 99% dominated by zero tactical debate too, but entirelly downloads that  "break the engine", upon which nothing matters anymore, and the interactions between the modules can become nonsensical, including player performances, transfer markets, and  more.

The term "playing the ME" cropped up on the last page. The less this appears, the more successful the translation, imo. Ideally you can go through each pick you make step by step, and think, yes that is the thought process of a manager. As soon as in your picks you are considerind that on defensive/fluid your forward may be on a lower mentality than on defensive/structured, and that may make him slightly more prone to become a bit involved in defending, etc. you are thinking "FM". Match engine. Gamey stuff. That's nought to do with this being a video game simulation of a sports. After all, the tactical options you've always had on Fifa/PES,e ven Sensible Soccer, they are entirelly football based. Some of them even allow there to be more flexibility than FM has ever had in the meantime, curiously (even though their engines naturally remain largely arcade one way soccer action sims).

[Kuchiki]

I've played since 97/98, on average I'd say a minimum 3 hours a day even if I am idle a lot of the time and in my opinion the game has become too elitist tactics wise. I consider myself to be very unsuccessful at this game at this present time, admittedly I do make things harder for myself I prefer full fat fm over touch, starting off with sunday league experience as that is true to myself, I like to manage lower league teams because I find the immersion of myself managing Liverpool from the off unrealistic and apparently it's more of a simulation than it is a video game , I also have a desire to bring the youth intake up to first team level which I struggle with.

I never used to struggle this much, I was very successful with a number of fm's and cm's using my own created tactics but FM17 and now 18 are causing me a lot of disgruntlement.

What annoys me most is that I have spent hundreds of hours reading threads, articles and videos on tactics and guides and still be unable to attain success in fm, I consider myself to know a lot about tactics now but I can still take a team from league 2 put in a good 20 hours into pre-season etc start playing through 5-10 league games and have only 5 points to show for it and yet my brother who still plays the game like it was the good old CM days who knows nothing about the complexity shape, mentality, team instructions etc he can still take Swindon up to the premiership using a single 4222wide formation that he created and only looked at pace, acceleration and yellow stars...

I believe the majority of FM players probably have less knowledge about the game than I do though many are still successful and I believe that is mainly down to a simplistic way of playing or cheating.

If you have a look on twitch for live streams on FM or youtube you will see that the vast majority never analyse what happens during an attacking transition or a defensive transition the way they play the game is to sign someone who has 3.5 stars+, download a tactic, hit continue and watch the match on key highlights.

Where is the reward for putting in hours of reading on the tactics forum?  I feel like I should be rewarded for learning what shape means or learning that if I allow the opposition space to cross that my central defenders better be good in the air. But no after all these years I'm still worse at FM than my brother and many others who haven't read a single thing on this tactics forum. 

My opinion is that the game is just too complex and it doesn't do a good job of translating to real life football, fifa does a better job it's just easier to set up, there are too many things about fm which I think could be simpler like why have attributes like Determination and Work Rate when they are basically the same. Why is consistency a hidden attribute but decisions is not? Why link the Penalties attribute with concentration or composure because if a player fluffs a penalty due to low composure then guess what he shouldn't have a high penalty taking attribute. I'd like to see FM become easier to set up tactics and playing styles because at the moment there's just too much reading, too much comparing numbers and not enough of watching a game looking at the pitch to see who is having a bad game, having the player ratings reflect he's having a bad game and the manager spotting it and doing something about it. That's what football manager in my eyes should be about. 

One last thing I think that there are very few people who actually know what they are really doing, it's a guess but I'm going to say only about 1-10% of the people who play FM actually play it the way it was designed to be played.

I'd like to see more people including myself become more successful at FM playing the game as it's meant to be played and not limited to the few who have inside knowledge or have written and published articles after spending so much of their own time learning the game for them to then try and sell their services for their guides and advice on how to play the game.

[themadsheep2001]

For a start, determination and work rate are certainly not "about the same"...

Secondly there's no one way to play FM, nor has there ever been a way FM was designed to be played. There are a multitude of ways to play

[themadsheep2001]

@MBarbaric Fluid was designed in attack (as far as i remember) to represent the spacing Sacchi liked in attack. Remember we are not talking generally looking to create space and depth, but rather 5x5 was an emulation of the theory Sacchi and his disciples, who wanted his players operating within a certain distance of each other (ive forgotten what it was sorry), so that in theory short passing options were always on and the team was linked. He didnt really look to stretch the pitch in the way you think, or that you would naturally assume. Whether this is the right or wrong way as such to attack is another debate, but it was relatively accurate in terms of emulating that.

The real issue now is that we absolutely need to be able to control compactness, horizontally and vertically, but "shape" in its current guise needs to change. The counter to that is that it also needs to change in a manner that the AI can use properly.

 

[Kuchiki]

20 minutes ago, themadsheep2001 said:

For a start, determination and work rate are certainly not "about the same"...

Secondly there's no one way to play FM, nor has there ever been a way FM was designed to be played. There are a multitude of ways to play

Seriously? you don't think work rate and determination are similar?!

Secondly I never said there was one way to play the game but you can see by the amount of work that has gone into FM that it is a game that wants to encourage users to think more than just sign player with 3+ stars and hit continue.

After spending a bit of time writing my post I don't appreciate the dismissive tone of your 3 sentence post even if you find my post grossly opinionated.

[themadsheep2001]

19 minutes ago, Kuchiki said:

Seriously? you don't think work rate and determination are similar?!

Secondly I never said there was one way to play the game but you can see by the amount of work that has gone into FM that it is a game that wants to encourage users to think more than just sign player with 3+ stars and hit continue.

After spending a bit of time writing my post I don't appreciate the dismissive tone of your 3 sentence post even if you find my post grossly opinionated.

FM encourages you to choose your own way to manage, whether thats Keegan style motivation and simply pick the best players, or paying extremely close attention to detail. And you fail or succeed on your choices doing so

 

They are not really that close, but like many attributes they link with otherrs.

Determination speaks to how driven you are.

Work rate is essentially how much you get around the pitch

Mental vs physical

And there was no dismissive tone, I simply wrote a short answer

 

[Kuchiki]

1 minute ago, themadsheep2001 said:

They are not really that close, but like many attributes.

Determination speaks to how driven you are.

Work rate is essentially how much you get around the pitch

Mental vs physical

 

I'm sorry but I disagree I think they are very similar, if you saw Suarez fighting and battling against strong defenders for 90mins but only notching up 9km while his team mates notch up 11km that doesn't mean to say he's worked any less harder than his team mates who may have gotten around more of the pitch than Suarez. If you had a kid studying uni and he read all night every night you could say that he has a great work rate, he's really driven...where does the physical part come into it? Let's translate it on to a football pitch a Goal Keeper can have great Work Rate if he is focused and never switches off for that 90mins he plays in a match never letting a single shot past him he can show great work rate without getting all round the pitch and you can talk about him being driven and works hard because they go hand in hand.

If Work Rate was physical it would or should be on the physical attributes list.

[themadsheep2001]

8 minutes ago, Kuchiki said:

I'm sorry but I disagree I think they are very similar, if you saw Suarez fighting and battling against strong defenders for 90mins but only notching up 9km while his team mates notch up 11km that doesn't mean to say he's worked any less harder than his team mates who may have gotten around more of the pitch than Suarez. If you had a kid studying uni and he read all night every night you could say that he has a great work rate, he's really driven...where does the physical part come into it? Let's translate it on to a football pitch a Goal Keeper can have great Work Rate if he is focused and never switches off for that 90mins he plays in a match never letting a single shot past him he can show great work rate without getting all round the pitch and you can talk about him being driven and works hard because they go hand in hand.

If Work Rate was physical it would or should be on the physical attributes list.

You're entitled to disagree. However in FM work rate (using the definition of: the amount of energy that is expended in sport or physical exercise) relates solely to how much they are willing to get around the pitch. 

Determination speaks to how driven they are on and off the pitch. You cannot mould them together because they are not similar in FM. Often linked but actually separate.

Cristiano Ronaldo is a peak example of a player who is highly driven, but never really covered huge amounts of ground on the pitch. He is and was explosive when he needed to be

[Kuchiki]

I just think it's superfluous, work rate is essentially determination + stamina I don't feel the need to include it as an extra attribute, I'd rather there be an extra technical attribute such as blocking.

[RBKalle]

Il 23/2/2018 in 17:26 , themadsheep2001 ha scritto:

The concept of fluid and structured actually do originate from tactical football talk (if not the names)

Tactical football talk that dates back a good decade (Sacchi stopped being a relevant manager at club level 27 years ago!) and, most important, is way too much on the insider side of things for being one of the KEY aspects of the game.

Isn't there a more streamlined and football-friendly way to handle all this unholy "compactness+creativity" pairing?

As I've said already, should Formation+Roles+Duties take care of the basic compactness? Then a rather straightforward set of options for Creativity should do the trick. Ideally, the TC screen would then reflect in a much more detailed way how my formation will translate on the pitch (as opposed to the rather fixed setup we have now).

[themadsheep2001]

9 minutes ago, RBKalle said:

Tactical football talk that dates back a good decade (Sacchi stopped being a relevant manager at club level 27 years ago!) and, most important, is way too much on the insider side of things for being one of the KEY aspects of the game.

Isn't there a more streamlined and football-friendly way to handle all this unholy "compactness+creativity" pairing?

As I've said already, should Formation+Roles+Duties take care of the basic compactness? Then a rather straightforward set of options for Creativity should do the trick. Ideally, the TC screen would then reflect in a much more detailed way how my formation will translate on the pitch (as opposed to the rather fixed setup we have now).

Not sure why you've only quoted that part out of everything i've said on it (out of context I might add) , but tactical football talk underpins the very nature of a) what FM is trying to achieve and b) how you inform and build a match engine, and therefore TC that seeks to try and replicate real life football.

For the reasons I've already laid out, your suggestion doesn't solve the problem, because compactness isn't simply a case of roles and duties and formation. You might seen to play the exact same way, but feel the need to squeeze space where a dangerous player is operating between the lines. City are a very good example of this. Roles and duties not necessarily changing, but manipulating depth and width to manipulate opponents and space. You need to be able to set out overall horizontal and vertical compactness first, independent of roles and duties

My last post to Mbarbaric summed up what needs to change

[MBarbaric]

4 ore fa, themadsheep2001 ha scritto:

Fluid was designed in attack (as far as i remember) to represent the spacing Sacchi liked in attack. Remember we are not talking generally looking to create space and depth, but rather 5x5 was an emulation of the theory Sacchi and his disciples, who wanted his players operating within a certain distance of each other (ive forgotten what it was sorry), so that in theory short passing options were always on and the team was linked. He didnt really look to stretch the pitch in the way you think, or that you would naturally assume. Whether this is the right or wrong way as such to attack is another debate, but it was relatively accurate in terms of emulating that.

The real issue now is that we absolutely need to be able to control compactness, horizontally and vertically, but "shape" in its current guise needs to change. The counter to that is that it also needs to change in a manner that the AI can use properly.

 

5

thanks for the answer, the bolded part is true indeed, but it accounts only for the defensive phase.

-he wanted short and narrow defensive unit

however, FLUID doesn't incorporate (or does it?) few other fundamental parts of Sacchi's defensive phase:

- the defensive unit vertical movement - when opposition player on the ball faces away from Milan goal, the D-line would aggressively move forward to shorten the playing field and the team would collectively press 

                                                                      -  when opposition player on the ball faces Milan goal, the D-line would back pedal to cover the space behind their back, and the whole defensive unit would  collectively get behind the ball

- the defensive unit horizontal movement - when the ball moves towards the flank, the defensive unit would keep its short and narrow shape sliding towards the center of play in order to squeeze the playing field for the opposition. This would put the opposition under pressure at expense of leaveing the opposite flank exposed. 

 

The only thing represented in ME is having a short and narrow defensive unit (sort of, as strikers aren't really participating), not to mention exact positioning and pressing required to really pull it off that doesn't exist at all.

 

Sacchi was all about a unit, a collective, therefore, I can understand the minimal spacing in FLUID, but it is really a simplistic view of what Sacchi did and that only applies to a defensive phase. I'd argue that attacking is completely different beast better left for another discussion.

1 ora fa, RBKalle ha scritto:

Sacchi stopped being a relevant manager at club level 27 years ago!

Since then the biggest change in defensive organization wasn't introduced by any manager but by FIFA when they changed the offside rule and back pass to GK. 

[MBarbaric]

 

1 ora fa, themadsheep2001 ha scritto:

compactness isn't simply a case of roles and duties and formation. You might seen to play the exact same way, but feel the need to squeeze space where a dangerous player is operating between the lines. City are a very good example of this. Roles and duties not necessarily changing, but manipulating depth and width to manipulate opponents and space. You need to be able to set out overall horizontal and vertical compactness first, independent of roles and duties

sorry for double post- 

roles and duties should split into defensive/offensive phase as it is in real. a player can be a CF when attacking and a CM while defending. A cb can be a cb while defending and a RB while attacking...

Overall horizontal/vertical compactness is a must, we should have, dare I say, a slider for that 

 

[themadsheep2001]

26 minutes ago, MBarbaric said:

 

sorry for double post- 

roles and duties should split into defensive/offensive phase as it is in real. a player can be a CF when attacking and a CM while defending. A cb can be a cb while defending and a RB while attacking...

Overall horizontal/vertical compactness is a must, we should have, dare I say, a slider for that 

 

Yep, I've long been an advocate for attacking and defensive phases. As I alluded to before, it's got to be something the AI can handle too 

[Rashidi]

2 hours ago, MBarbaric said:

 

sorry for double post- 

roles and duties should split into defensive/offensive phase as it is in real. a player can be a CF when attacking and a CM while defending. A cb can be a cb while defending and a RB while attacking...

Overall horizontal/vertical compactness is a must, we should have, dare I say, a slider for that 

 

 

2 hours ago, themadsheep2001 said:

Yep, I've long been an advocate for attacking and defensive phases. As I alluded to before, it's got to be something the AI can handle too 

Therein lies the issue.

[BMNJohn]

2 hours ago, Rashidi said:

Therein lies the issue.

I'd rather take a punt and say the AI doesn't perform all to well to begin with when it comes to building tactics and squads, so the AI should be revamped alongside the tactical system anyway. My perspective is also that all those "hybrid" roles such as IWB (a player with FB and midfielder duties) or HB (DM and CB duties) wouldn't be needed if we could choose the positioning with and without the ball (à la PES). Hopefully making it simpler for the user would also allow to make it simpler for the AI as well. Yes, I prefer being optimistic in such situations.

[Rashidi]

1 minute ago, BMNJohn said:

I'm gonna take a punt and say the AI doesn't perform all to well to begin with when it comes to building tactics and squads, so the AI should be revamped alongside the tactical system anyway. My perspective is also that all those "hybrid" roles such as IWB (a player with FB and midfielder duties) or HB (DM and CB duties) wouldn't be needed if we could choose the positioning with and without the ball (à la PES). Hopefully making it simpler for the user would also allow to make it simpler for the AI as well. Yes, I prefer being optimistic in such situations.

This exercise of creating a defensive phase and an offensive phase has been done before, and it failed miserably for the AI. With all things being equal, the human will always have an advantage. The challenge lies in finding a way to make the AI harder to beat whilst it uses the same options humans do, and to that while making the football simulations as realistic as possible.

[BMNJohn]

Just now, Rashidi said:

This exercise of creating a defensive phase and an offensive phase has been done before, and it failed miserably for the AI. With all things being equal, the human will always have an advantage. The challenge lies in finding a way to make the AI harder to beat whilst it uses the same options humans do, and to that while making the football simulations as realistic as possible.

You mean with the arrow system? Then I'll consider that it's been quite a while since it got dropped and there isn't much of a reason to try again with the progress in technology and hopefully the progress of SI devs since then. Yes, I'm filled with optimism.

I doubt the AI can be made harder to beat while using the same options as the human manager because the human manager is able to think outside of the box, and there's no such thing as a true Artificial Intelligence nowadays. The AI managers behave within the constraints of their favourite style as implanted in the db. As such, poor FM version of Guardiola is the caricature of tiki-taka while his real-life version is able to find solutions to issues presented to him while maintaining a certain style. And I doubt FM Bielsa knows what "+1 defender" means. The AI may have the same options as a human manager, it's also terrible at using them and terrible at drawing conclusions from about anything, too often thinking backwards (if the AssMan feedback is anything to go by).

I therefore think the current system should be scraped and reviewed from the ground up; how feasible it is I don't know, but clearly it isn't working all that well for both the player and the computer. I also think the AI should be allowed to somewhat "cheat" while staying believable to bring balance.

 

[Svenc]

13 hours ago, Kuchiki said:

Iadmittedly I do make things harder for myself I prefer full fat fm over touch, starting off with sunday league experience as that is true to myself,

Starting reputation has always been sort of an occifially difficulty level (aside of the club you pick -- e.g. in-game Barcelona according to SI is easy mode even though in football only the best managers work at the best clubs :p) . Not sure I think it's impact has even been increased over the years. I mostly start with automatic myself. There's certainly been some weird stuff reported when players picked unsuitable reputations this year. This has an impact across the board either way, it's not merely tactical, though has it's knock-ons there too. Players just won't respect you. I think the easiest you can go is if you additionally allocate all the points at the start towards the tactcial manager attribute side of things. Coaches you can hire -- the tactical attributes meanwhile can big time influence how a squad reacts to all of your actions, and how much a hassle it may be to manage them, e.g. players requesting a move and how the player reacts to you neglecting that, and so on. Fm Touch isn't an easier game, btw. It's streamlined -- taking out most of the press and man managemtn, but that's different. You should ask how your brother plays the game as it's likely different from the ground up either way.

3 hours ago, Rashidi said:

This exercise of creating a defensive phase and an offensive phase has been done before, and it failed miserably for the AI. With all things being equal, the human will always have an advantage. The challenge lies in finding a way to make the AI harder to beat whilst it uses the same options humans do, and to that while making the football simulations as realistic as possible.

 

Another challenge may be to aim for a realistic balance long-term. In real football, tactics alone only do this much. They are tools to get the most out of players by shaping playing styles. They also may help to stage a few upsets, they can contribute to keeping a long-shot up by turning a few draws into wins and losses intro draws. What they don't ever do anymore is superior sides getting beaten over and over again by inferior teams. That's stopped by about the stage in development of football at which zonal marking has become a world wide standard, and English internationals aren't confused anymore whom to at all mark against an Hungary team, to lose such a match like 1-7 consequently. In my opinion there's always been gaps on the pitches of FM that you need to pet that would never exist in football.... Last season the centre of the pitch due to the wide midfielders, the three forwards not tracking back just staying high and mighty for easy counters all over. Traditionally this is advantage to the human player, as he's always always the only one who is aware of them. And always will be.

If there was actually proper, zonal defending and behavior in there, which is teams moving about as a unit in both phases, some of those holes would never exist. Tactics are tertiary to squad and player development, which is also the reason that an ME that can be (gamed/micro-tweaked) to the degree that "AI could not win against a player" has always been a rather poor one at simulating football management proper. That naturally also goes two ways... human players may find it a tad harder to underachieve based primarily on tactics, except if they do nonsensical stuff. At the moment, they are more likely to rage when the AI goes 4-3-3 narrow for ten minutes a match in order to stage a massive comeback, whilst they were missing that hint. Matches in FM can be turned upside down by some of the most simplistic formational switches. That's not very football.

That's it on the tactical end. Players fit in here too: We've also had various releases/patch cycles that showed what an impact on AI team performance it has if, for instance, the dribbling prowess of class dribblers was toned down. On some releases Chelsea were pretty tough to stop by the simple fact that Hazard could complete like 8, 9, 10 dribbles per match, running each defense racked. It's naturally a balancing act...

[RBKalle]

10 ore fa, themadsheep2001 ha scritto:

Not sure why you've only quoted that part out of everything i've said on it (out of context I might add) , but tactical football talk underpins the very nature of a) what FM is trying to achieve and b) how you inform and build a match engine, and therefore TC that seeks to try and replicate real life football.

I quoted only the beginning because to me it's part of the problem. The ME and TC are based on very specialistic (and not the freshest, I may add) football theories that aren't part of common football knowledge.
Which, in itself, wouldn't even be a problem had everything been "under the hood", but the moment you need to write 5 or 6 paragraphs to explain what FM means with Fluid, Structured and Rigid, it becomes an issue and underlines the growing rift between FM-speak and football-speak.

 

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For the reasons I've already laid out, your suggestion doesn't solve the problem, because compactness isn't simply a case of roles and duties and formation. You might seen to play the exact same way, but feel the need to squeeze space where a dangerous player is operating between the lines. City are a very good example of this. Roles and duties not necessarily changing, but manipulating depth and width to manipulate opponents and space. You need to be able to set out overall horizontal and vertical compactness first, independent of roles and duties

 

But, as @Svenc and @el_payaso (and other, shall we say, "less diplomatic" users) have been pointing out already, the current system has created confusion and has plenty of hidden pitfalls, while still failing to recreate basic football situations, couldn't be worth changing the basics, doing away with the apparently very restricting "Mentality" thing?

 

Formation, Role and Duty should dictate the core shape/compactness, then there already are TI that can act as modifiers to that. Width, Closing Down, Defensive Line etc can easily make an already compact formation even tighter, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, can stretch a compact formation in both width and length.

[MBarbaric]

1 ora fa, Svenc ha scritto:

If there was actually proper, zonal defending and behavior in there, which is teams moving about as a unit in both phases, some of those holes would never exist.

This is true. However, if implemented, it would only reveal how poor the offensive phase in the ME is. The ME needs this defending as off the ball movement present in the ME would never be able to break down a sound defensive shape. Both phases in the game live off of each other and feed themselves to produce a believable stats/results. This is the reason, I think, we haven't seen any major development in tactics in recent years. It is only tinkering with ME trying to plug wide issue, central issue... But it can't really work as the whole ME isn't playing according to football but according to ME/FM. It won't be resolved anytime soon if they don't start a complete rework of the ME.

Somebody previously asked how managers do the tactics. Very short answer is wibble/wobble (well, at least for those managers who want to have a complete control of their team, Bielsa i.e.). You basically divide the pitch in, i.e. 3 horizontal zones (defensive, middle, attacking thirds) and three vertical zones (left, central, right channel). Then you drill the players to occupy the exact position in relation to where the ball/teammates are. Lots of manager use wibble wobble explicitly (that board with magnetic players) while others use it less but essentially do the same thing when creating offensive drills.

Now, anyone knows which was the last FM that had wibble/wobble? As I remember, that was taken out as the human user was able to exploit the game too easily. Never liked that argument as in single player game if one wants to exploit he can do it as much as he wants as far as I am concerned. However, if the defensive phase would indeed be able to employ sacchi style defence, then it would be a real challenge to break down the AI even if you had wibble wobble. Or even, better, allow wibble/wobble in defensive phase as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Svenc]

20 minutes ago, MBarbaric said:

Now, anyone knows which was the last FM that had wibble/wobble? As I remember, that was taken out as the human user was able to exploit the game too easily. Never liked that argument as in single player game if one wants to exploit he can do it as much as he wants as far as I am concerned. However, if the defensive phase would indeed be able to employ sacchi style defence, then it would be a real challenge to break down the AI even if you had wibble wobble. Or even, better, allow wibble/wobble in defensive phase as well.

That was before my time playing regularly.. my first CM technically was CM2 (97?), but I didn't play it much. Must have been scrapped by the time of CM3/4ish. Btw, if you want to have a look, CM 2010 still had something like that. It had also incorporated proper set piece editors. But, alas, that was easy to break too. Like, push all your players into the box, and the goalie would be unmarked etc.

Still sound ideas, mind! The problem with any exploit is, is that players may succeed primarily due to such without the intention of doing it,, and may stumble upon such without realizing. As far as FM goes, the things that have been consistently rewarded have been the exact same ever since from my end. However, anybody who relied on the wibble/wobble or Farrows of old to cover structurally unsound tactics had a real hard time adapting. Same as anybody will do who currently exploits the forwards, and more. From a designer's perspective, that is also to consider. At which point does the exploit start, and when it is at all perceived as being as one... If you get **** sides sitting top of the league or break all kind of scoring records it should be fairly obvious, and tbh you could just go into the editor for that. Saves a bucketload of time (and may not be near as frustrating). But alas... Still all some good ideas.

The Farrows and Barrows were unrealistic though, if you remember them. Transitioning from defense to attack is a process. The way those arrows worked was like this. If we win the ball, you, left back, will immediately become a CM, sprint into that position, disregard any play around you. Similar for backwards arrows. How much SI are worried about primarily exploits may also depend on how viable they want their multiplayer to be. Offline, who cares. FM optionally has such (and I personally would only ever play against people I know). Plus whilst FM Live, the online MMO may be no more, there is still an Asian MMO powered by SI code. I personally think it must be quite terrible an experience, but that's me.

[BMNJohn]

48 minutes ago, MBarbaric said:

The ME needs this defending as off the ball movement present in the ME would never be able to break down a sound defensive shape.

Ah come on, you know it's realistic.