First Touch

[lonestar190]

Is it just me or does it seem like the first touch of most players is too good, regardless of what the stat number is?  Playing in the lower leagues, and I almost never see bad trapping, bad touches, mis-controlled balls.  Instead, I see players take perfect control of 60-yard lobbed passes at a full run and instantly be able to pass or shoot.  

It makes the long ball over the top overpowered because everyone can take it down like Messi.  Outside the top leagues (and even in them) long, hard hit balls are often lost because of bad first touch.  It's why lower level leagues tend to see more pressing than higher leagues - the ball is often mis-controlled and taken even if you arrive a second or two after the ball.

Really needs to be looked into, because lower leagues should involve a lot more pinging of the ball around and a lot more possession changes.  

[Guest]

I think the same but I have recollections that whenever an ME is released that has what I feel is a more appropriate level of poor touches the bugs forum is awash with folk complaining.

[FrazT]

It seems that in this part of the ME it has been difficult to get the correct balance

[Snorks]

1 hour ago, Barside said:

I think the same but I have recollections that whenever an ME is released that has what I feel is a more appropriate level of poor touches the bugs forum is awash with folk complaining.

The bugs forum always seems awash with people complaining.

to the OP: I would agree also.

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, FrazT said:

It seems that in this part of the ME it has been difficult to get the correct balance

At times I thought the balance was fine however in these instances the ME was let down by limited 3D animations resulting in poor or non-existent reactions from the player after taking a poor touch.

 

[FrazT]

Yes, it is easy to mix up poor coding from poor animations and I often don't know which to shout at!!

[DP]

2 hours ago, FrazT said:

Yes, it is easy to mix up poor coding from poor animations and I often don't know which to shout at!!

The worst part of the game is not being able to see how attributes affect the overall match engine. I don’t know if the first touch is due to coding or animation issues and there is literally no way to tell. Same with things such as crossing. How can I successfully analyse how good someone is at crossing if I don’t know if it’s coding, an over powered crossing mechanic in the ME, animations or something else. 

Don’t even get me started on penalties. 

It’s all a bit of a mess in this respect, tbf. 

[Guest]

With enough experience of watching full matches it is possible to make a reasonable judgement between what’s an ME issue & what’s an animation issue, granted it’s not an easy & does take time to learn the difference.

[Cal585]

5 hours ago, DP said:

Don’t even get me started on penalties. 

I watched my striker hit a penalty into the crossbar yesterday. He then stood there as the ball rolled past his feet until a defender cleared it out behind him.

I feel like a lot of the complaints around the game are due to poor animation rather than a poor ME. Players shooting the ball at the corner flag or getting tackled and standing there watching their opponent get back up and run off with it are the situations that make people feel like the game is against them or somehow rigging the contest. Whereas if long shots were a lot closer or you could see your player trying to get back up after being floored then or other situations that looked more natural then people get more involved with the drama and understand why it is happening.

I would like to see more variation in the First Touch visuals. But I assume it is something that still has a proper effect even if not always shown properly. At least targeting players with poor First Touch for more closing down in OIs seems to work more often than not.

[enigmatic]

22 minutes ago, Cal585 said:

I watched my striker hit a penalty into the crossbar yesterday. He then stood there as the ball rolled past his feet until a defender cleared it out behind him

This is probably correct behaviour; he's not allowed to play the ball until another player touches it

[herne79]

56 minutes ago, Cal585 said:

I watched my striker hit a penalty into the crossbar yesterday. He then stood there as the ball rolled past his feet until a defender cleared it out behind him.

 

43 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

This is probably correct behaviour; he's not allowed to play the ball until another player touches it

It is correct behaviour and part of the laws of football.

If I had a penny for every time somebody raised this as incorrect behaviour or a bug in the ME....

[Guest]

ME & animations improvements could still help, having the player being able to move before the ball becomes active for them would be a start while adding indirect free kicks inside the area the ME would be a nice addition so that every now & the a penalty taker does touch the ball off a rebound or a keeper handles a back pass.

From the animations the user needs to see the disappointment or frustration in player body language, anything would be better than the statue pose & of course improved body language cues would be available for use during other phases of the match.

[RodentofDoom]

6 hours ago, FrazT said:

Yes, it is easy to mix up poor coding from poor animations and I often don't know which to shout at!!

All of it 

 

[Cal585]

3 hours ago, enigmatic said:

This is probably correct behaviour; he's not allowed to play the ball until another player touches it

 

2 hours ago, herne79 said:

 

It is correct behaviour and part of the laws of football.

If I had a penny for every time somebody raised this as incorrect behaviour or a bug in the ME....

You are both right of course. I had a complete brain fade while writing that thinking the keeper parried it or something. Actually I have no idea what I was thinking 

[DP]

8 hours ago, herne79 said:

 

It is correct behaviour and part of the laws of football.

If I had a penny for every time somebody raised this as incorrect behaviour or a bug in the ME....

Which is fine but wouldn’t you ask yourself why so many here have seen it in the game whereas I can’t think of one real life example? Ever. 

That’s the real problem. 

[RWClarke]

On 20/09/2018 at 19:43, DP said:

Which is fine but wouldn’t you ask yourself why so many here have seen it in the game whereas I can’t think of one real life example? Ever. 

That’s the real problem. 

It happens quite a lot in real life when penalties rebound, I've seen it myself plenty of times. The issue here is surely down to the animations not truly explaining the situation (which is just a nitpick), rather than how the engine handles it?

[..Valhalla..]

On ‎20‎/‎09‎/‎2018 at 19:43, DP said:

Which is fine but wouldn’t you ask yourself why so many here have seen it in the game whereas I can’t think of one real life example? Ever. 

That’s the real problem. 

Same here. I recently messaged my friend on Facebook with a video of this "bug" which was met with laughter since (as he explained with great relish) it is within the rules of the game, yet not once have I seen this happen IRL in order for me to even realise the law exists.

[DP]

On 22/09/2018 at 01:34, RWClarke said:

It happens quite a lot in real life when penalties rebound, I've seen it myself plenty of times. The issue here is surely down to the animations not truly explaining the situation (which is just a nitpick), rather than how the engine handles it?

It happens ‘quite a lot’? Really? What examples do you have at hand?

[herne79]

A couple/few people on the forum who have seen this penalties thing in their games doesn't change the rarity.  Out of the millions of FM matches played, by the simple law of averages somebody somewhere will see this.  Personally I never have.  Similarly somebody somewhere will see instead of a regular kick off at the start of the match, a direct shot at goal from the centre spot.  I've seen that once (he missed).  There are probably other rare laws of the game built into FM that we rarely see as well.  But if one person sees it a lot in their games, then report it as a bug.

Anyway, about that First Touch issue...

[FrazT]

Is it just me or are there a disproportionately high number of unpressured short 5-10 yard passes that are consistently hit off the ground, requiring the receiving player to have to raise their foot or jump to control the ball?  Not exactly a first touch issue, but a very poor technical pass without being under any opponent pressure

[RodentofDoom]

4 minutes ago, FrazT said:

Is it just me or are there a disproportionately high number of unpressured short 5-10 yard passes that are consistently hit off the ground, requiring the receiving player to have to raise their foot or jump to control the ball?  Not exactly a first touch issue, but a very poor technical pass without being under any opponent pressure

Haven't particularly paid attention to that

of course, im going to see it all the time now though 

 

 

It's a bit like how leaving cross instructions set to mixed results in just floated crosses

there's all sorts of odd little things in the ball control/handling animations

[RWClarke]

14 hours ago, DP said:

It happens ‘quite a lot’? Really? What examples do you have at hand?

Please don't take my words out of context. "Quite a lot when penalties rebound", which in all reality is maybe two or three times over the course of a 40ish match season. If you find any video of penalty rebound that stays in play, you'll almost always see the striker float as if they're offside until a teammate (or defender) touches them back into play. It'll take maybe 30 seconds on YouTube or Twitter to find two or three examples of this if you like. Here's one for you. If you watch enough football highlights shows, it will come up every now and again. The best example that springs to mind is this, from a match at Bradford.

Check out this great article on the matter from the Guardian. Some players who've been unaware of the law and had disallowed rebounds include Peter Reid & Teddy Sheringham. There's a good video here of an incident with recent Bristol Rovers signing Stefan Payne whilst playing for Sutton. 

So yeah, the situation does come up occasionally. Some players are aware of the rule and wait, some try to score. As Herne79 says, with enough of us playing the game it's an issue that'll affect some of us two or three times eventually, albeit still a rare one.

[Snorks]

17 hours ago, DP said:

It happens ‘quite a lot’? Really? What examples do you have at hand?

Anytime a penalty hits the post or crossbar.

The taker cannot touch the ball again until another player has - you will see him try if it rebounds off the goalkeeper, but he shouldn't if it comes back of the framework. If he touches it, it's a 'double-hit' and should result in an indirect free-kick to the defending side.

[Snorks]

17 hours ago, herne79 said:

A couple/few people on the forum who have seen this penalties thing in their games doesn't change the rarity.  Out of the millions of FM matches played, by the simple law of averages somebody somewhere will see this.  Personally I never have.  Similarly somebody somewhere will see instead of a regular kick off at the start of the match, a direct shot at goal from the centre spot.  I've seen that once (he missed).  There are probably other rare laws of the game built into FM that we rarely see as well.  But if one person sees it a lot in their games, then report it as a bug.

Anyway, about that First Touch issue...

Haven't actually checked the law book on kick offs since it changed, but doesn't it now have to be played backwards?

(We get the law changes come into play later than the rest of the world - the following season usually - and while I am not involved at the moment, I heard someone say they had been instructed that it had to go backwards now.)

[FrazT]

I dont think that is a requirement for it to go backwards and both forward and backwards are available.  Kicking it backwards only involves 1 person whereas playing it forward to another player normally involves 2 people, so backwards  will be a lot more popular

[DP]

2 hours ago, Snorks said:

Anytime a penalty hits the post or crossbar.

The taker cannot touch the ball again until another player has - you will see him try if it rebounds off the goalkeeper, but he shouldn't if it comes back of the framework. If he touches it, it's a 'double-hit' and should result in an indirect free-kick to the defending side.

Yes, I know the rule but I can’t remember seeing any examples IRL. Certainly not regular examples as the poster who I was replying to stated. 

[rdbayly]

On 23/09/2018 at 11:23, RodentofDoom said:

Is it just me or are there a disproportionately high number of unpressured short 5-10 yard passes that are consistently hit off the ground, requiring the receiving player to have to raise their foot or jump to control the ball?

Totally agree with this. There is a notable tendency for passes to arrive at the recipient between knee and hip height. This seems to be the case regardless of distance between players or attributes that govern passing.

What this leads to is players having to check their stride and ‘jump’ to control the ball. Aesthetically it blunts attacking moves compared to FM17.

It may also explain why so many posts about earlier builds raised the issue of passes bouncing off players backsides.

And what is deal with the very off-putting ‘leaning forward’ running animation players get locked in to?