Are there "scripted" elements in FM?

[Johnny Ace]

When's it's 4-2-4 or 4-3-3 time for the AI it's time to buckle down, 3 at the back, 2 DMs, time wasting, anything horrible the AI usually do to us 

[aDuck]

YES

Suffers from the same miracle goalies which drove me mad in FM2017 that are 1000% better than Jan Oblak but with the arms of f**king Dhalsim from Street Fighter and yet only get average ratings at the end of the game.

Not to mention when your star defenders turin into Joey Deacon from Blue Peter who just stand there and lose the ball which leads to a goal against you.

Exactly what savescumming was made for.

Edited August 20, 2020 by aDuck

[Rashidi]

On 04/12/2019 at 01:42, Johnny Ace said:

When's it's 4-2-4 or 4-3-3 time for the AI it's time to buckle down, 3 at the back, 2 DMs, time wasting, anything horrible the AI usually do to us 

When the AI goes 424 on me I squeal with delight.

[Neil Brock]

Have posted this a couple of other places but feel it's appropriate in the 'scripted' discussion and why that isn't true at all. 

Remember with the match engine it's a representation of football. Each chance that happens is calculated based on all the many many factors which happen within the FM gameworld and match situation at that time. There is no difference between what can happen for the player or the AI - if there's such a thing as 'superkeepers' (which for the record we've seen nothing in the code to suggest this) then the AI would encounter it just as often as the player.

The player will have an advantage over the AI because they have more freedom to think and experiment. We tend to find players use much more attacking and aggressive tactics as a whole, which can cause them to create more chances overall, but often leave themselves exposed at the back which means the AI get much easier chances on the counter attack. This can cause imbalanced match stats where a player has had lots of shots (not always from good positions) and not converted, where the AI has very few shots, but those they do have are from extremely good positions which are converted.

This is partly why our moderators use tactical reasoning as a starting point for issues raised on these forums.

Everything influences the match, to the extent if I tried to list everything here it'd take an extremely long time.

Aside from the many external factors which can influence (weather, player morale, importance of match, referee, where the fixture takes place, whether the away team has had to travel a significant distance for the fixture etc) every single attribute (both hidden and visible) for every single player has it taken into account, but certain elements will change every time a match is 'replayed'. Absolutely there is a random element in game much like there is real life, whereby luck and chance will be involved.

For instance, your best player makes a costly mistake in the first minute of match one - this affects him with an instant drop in confidence and he has a poor game, struggling to find his form. In match two, he makes a key assist, gains confidence and plays exceptionally well.

The role of the manager is to use all the elements they have at their disposal (player recruitment, tactics, form management, team talks etc) to make the best choices possible for each and every fixture. But even in doing so, even if you get everything absolutely perfect, in some instances you will still lose or draw a match you would expect to win. That is football in real life. That is also how it works in FM. The game does not 'decide' you are suddenly going to lose because it's programmed that way. You only win or lose depending on the hundreds of factors which go into every match which is then calculated in the match engine based on every single decision that happens. For every pass, each player will use their attributes (such as vision and decisions) to calculate all the available options for said pass. Higher the vision, more options available. Once in that split-second they've decided what pass to play, more attributes are used (such as passing, composure and technique) for the player to attempt said pass. But even then other factors will determine whether the pass is successful - the other player's anticipation and positioning, whether the ball is played hard or soft and is affected by the wind, whether an opposing player has very high anticipation and decisions to intercept the ball.

A huge number of calculations are used just for one pass. Now multiply that across the entire game for every single thing that happens in the match, there are thousands if not millions. And bear in mind for every single calculation the match engine does not determine any difference between the AI and the user player - this is not a factor taken into account.

So when you ask what decides the result of the match or a weaker time scoring with a shot, it's pretty much everything. Except whether the teams are AI controlled or user controlled. As this is not something used in any calculation.

But all the above has to sit into the constraints of trying to produce an accurate representation of football. It's not an easy task and we've never claimed it is. But it's something we're extremely passionate about and work incredibly hard towards. The elements worked on under the hood are pretty extraordinary and whilst the payoff may not always be obvious to the casual observer, I can assure you the building blocks are in place to continue to make strides forward in making the game more realistic.

Saying all of that (and I'm aware we're in TL;DR territory here), there are always going to be anomalies and matches where you get 'FM'd' - largely this is down to the point I made above; the general inclination of user to play attacking, expansive football compared to the AI's generally more conservative approach. But there will be occasions where someone is just plain unlucky. If you're being 'unlucky' a lot, there has to be a responsibility on the manager that there is something clearly not right. Now you may feel aggrieved if you feel this is less a 'football' mistake and more a 'match engine' mistake, but within your FM gameworld they are the same. We aim one day for the two things to be absolutely interchangeable and already we feel we're well on our way there.

[Spanner]

On 01/12/2019 at 14:49, HUNT3R said:

As there's no such thing, there's nothing to turn off. I would suggest either trying to close out games or improve how you're trying to close out games. If you want advice, the tactics forum will always be willing to help.

I would say that @HUNT3R has a very valid point here. 

I will try to say this as fair as i can. I have noticed that when you do as the OP said (on FM20), there is a highly likelihood of the other team scoring so in connection with Hunt3r's post i would say the following:

1. Do not change your tactics just ride out the game with the tactics you have.

2. Never change your team instructions to defend deep (leave wingers up or at the half-way line).

3. change players to waste time but plan your moment to make the substition......i have a life-long theory....never change players when the opposition have a corner or freekick!!!

All of those will help you close out a game better and before you ask, yes.....i have done exactly the same as the OP x2 times and then never again.... you could say i am an algorythm man!!!  

[aDuck]

13 hours ago, Neil Brock said:

Saying all of that (and I'm aware we're in TL;DR territory here), there are always going to be anomalies and matches where you get 'FM'd' - largely this is down to the point I made above; the general inclination of user to play attacking, expansive football compared to the AI's generally more conservative approach. But there will be occasions where someone is just plain unlucky. If you're being 'unlucky' a lot, there has to be a responsibility on the manager that there is something clearly not right. Now you may feel aggrieved if you feel this is less a 'football' mistake and more a 'match engine' mistake, but within your FM gameworld they are the same. We aim one day for the two things to be absolutely interchangeable and already we feel we're well on our way there.

Then there's a hell of a lot of "anomalies" when it comes to miracle goalkeepers who save 14 out of 15 shots on target while the opposition strikers who have not had a single shot on target in the Vanarama North League suddenly turn into Robert Lewandowski and hit a winner FROM THE ONLY CHANCE THEY HAVE HAD ALL GAME with 6 minutes to play.

That's not scoring against the run of play. That's taking the. You're not convincing me this game isn;t scripted.

 

[FrazT]

57 minutes ago, aDuck said:

Then there's a hell of a lot of "anomalies" when it comes to miracle goalkeepers who save 14 out of 15 shots on target while the opposition strikers who have not had a single shot on target in the Vanarama North League suddenly turn into Robert Lewandowski and hit a winner FROM THE ONLY CHANCE THEY HAVE HAD ALL GAME with 6 minutes to play.

That's not scoring against the run of play. That's taking the . You're not convincing me this game isn;t scripted.

 

Please watch your language on the forums- it is really not necessary to get your point across.  I will edit it this time.

[Svenc]

3 hours ago, aDuck said:

Then there's a hell of a lot of "anomalies" when it comes to miracle goalkeepers who save 14 out of 15 shots on target while the opposition strikers who have not had a single shot on target in the Vanarama North League suddenly turn into Robert Lewandowski and hit a winner FROM THE ONLY CHANCE THEY HAVE HAD ALL GAME with 6 minutes to play.

That's not scoring against the run of play. That's taking the. You're not convincing me this game isn;t scripted.

 

Aye, shots on target that aren't converted regularly are too easy to come by, in particular headers. That's not "scripting" though. The reason you don't ever see this the  other way round is  just you not ever parking the bus against an attacking AI yourself (or doing it badly). 

https://community.sigames.com/topic/391460-park-the-bus/

Like 9.9/10 FM'ers. This has to be posted every.single.time. You know why? Because the chance of the AI ever improving too much drops below zero if anybody still believes in "scripting". As you can see, the developers care deeply about this. If the Ai were to improve, so would the accusations.

Edited August 21, 2020 by Svenc

[Rashidi]

16 hours ago, Spanner said:

Do not change your tactics just ride out the game with the tactics you have

I wouldnt say don't change tactics entirely, but you can close out games with a few tweaks.

[yolixeya]

7 hours ago, Svenc said:

Aye, shots on target that aren't converted regularly are too easy to come by, in particular headers.

This could be why my striker had the best conversion rate this season. He didn't play huge amount of games so it's a smaller sample size, because he was playing more in CL and cups but I don't think that is the only reason why he was the best. He has a jumping reach of 5 so he isn't winning a lot of headers to bring his conversion rate down. 

[Artin]

yes there are. here's one example -- https://community.sigames.com/topic/524875-little-fm-things-that-annoy-you/?tab=comments#comment-12513776

 

[LOVEFMyeah]

On 20/08/2020 at 13:53, Neil Brock said:

J'ai posté ceci à quelques autres endroits, mais je pense que c'est approprié dans la discussion «scriptée» et pourquoi ce n'est pas du tout vrai. 

N'oubliez pas qu'avec le moteur de match, c'est une représentation du football. Chaque chance qui se produit est calculée en fonction de tous les nombreux facteurs qui se produisent dans le monde du jeu FM et la situation de match à ce moment-là. Il n'y a aucune différence entre ce qui peut arriver pour le joueur ou l'IA - s'il existe des `` super-gardiens '' (qui, pour mémoire, nous n'avons rien vu dans le code pour suggérer cela), l'IA le rencontrerait tout aussi souvent. en tant que joueur.

Le joueur aura un avantage sur l'IA car il aura plus de liberté pour penser et expérimenter. Nous avons tendance à trouver que les joueurs utilisent des tactiques beaucoup plus offensives et agressives dans leur ensemble, ce qui peut les amener à créer plus de chances dans l'ensemble, mais se laissent souvent exposés à l'arrière, ce qui signifie que l'IA a beaucoup plus de chances de contre-attaquer. Cela peut entraîner des statistiques de match déséquilibrées où un joueur a eu beaucoup de tirs (pas toujours de bonnes positions) et non convertis, où l'IA a très peu de tirs, mais ceux qu'ils ont proviennent de positions extrêmement bonnes qui sont converties.

C'est en partie pourquoi nos modérateurs utilisent le raisonnement tactique comme point de départ pour les problèmes soulevés sur ces forums.

Tout influence le match, dans la mesure où si j'essayais de tout lister ici, cela prendrait un temps extrêmement long.

Mis à part les nombreux facteurs externes qui peuvent influencer (météo, moral du joueur, importance du match, arbitre, où le match a lieu, si l'équipe à l'extérieur a dû parcourir une distance significative pour le match, etc.) chaque attribut (à la fois caché et visible) pour chaque joueur en a pris en compte, mais certains éléments changeront à chaque fois qu'un match est «rejoué». Il y a absolument un élément aléatoire dans le jeu, tout comme dans la vraie vie, dans lequel la chance et le hasard seront impliqués.

Par exemple, votre meilleur joueur commet une erreur coûteuse dans la première minute du premier match - cela l'affecte avec une perte de confiance instantanée et il a un jeu médiocre, ayant du mal à trouver sa forme. Dans le deuxième match, il effectue une passe décisive, gagne en confiance et joue exceptionnellement bien.

Le rôle du manager est d'utiliser tous les éléments dont il dispose (recrutement des joueurs, tactiques, gestion des formulaires, discussions d'équipe, etc.) pour faire les meilleurs choix possibles pour chaque rencontre. Mais même en faisant cela, même si vous obtenez tout absolument parfait, dans certains cas, vous perdrez ou tirerez toujours un match que vous vous attendez à gagner. C'est le football dans la vraie vie. C'est aussi ainsi que cela fonctionne en FM. Le jeu ne «décide» pas que vous allez soudainement perdre parce qu'il est programmé de cette façon. Vous gagnez ou perdez uniquement en fonction des centaines de facteurs qui entrent dans chaque match qui sont ensuite calculés dans le moteur de match en fonction de chaque décision prise. Pour chaque passe, chaque joueur utilisera ses attributs (comme la vision et les décisions) pour calculer toutes les options disponibles pour ladite passe. Plus la vision, plus d'options disponibles. Une fois dans cette fraction de seconde, ils ont décidé quelle passe jouer, plus d'attributs sont utilisés (comme la passe, le calme et la technique) pour que le joueur tente cette passe. Mais même dans ce cas, d'autres facteurs détermineront si la passe est réussie - l'anticipation et le positionnement de l'autre joueur, si le ballon est joué dur ou mou et est affecté par le vent, si un joueur adverse a une anticipation très élevée et des décisions d'intercepter le ballon.

Un grand nombre de calculs sont utilisés pour un seul passage. Maintenant, multipliez cela sur tout le jeu pour chaque chose qui se passe dans le match, il y en a des milliers, sinon des millions. Et gardez à l'esprit que pour chaque calcul, le moteur de match ne détermine aucune différence entre l'IA et le joueur utilisateur - ce n'est pas un facteur pris en compte.

Donc, quand vous demandez ce qui décide du résultat du match ou d'un temps plus faible avec un tir, c'est à peu près tout. Sauf si les équipes sont contrôlées par l'IA ou contrôlées par l'utilisateur. Comme ce n'est pas quelque chose utilisé dans aucun calcul.

Mais tout ce qui précède doit tenir compte des contraintes d'essayer de produire une représentation exacte du football. Ce n'est pas une tâche facile et nous ne l'avons jamais prétendu. Mais c'est quelque chose qui nous passionne et pour lequel nous travaillons incroyablement dur. Les éléments travaillés sous le capot sont assez extraordinaires et bien que le gain ne soit pas toujours évident pour l'observateur occasionnel, je peux vous assurer que les éléments de base sont en place pour continuer à faire des progrès pour rendre le jeu plus réaliste.

En disant tout cela (et je suis conscient que nous sommes dans le territoire de TL; DR ici), il y aura toujours des anomalies et des matchs où vous obtenez «FM'd» - en grande partie, cela est dû au point que j'ai souligné ci-dessus; la tendance générale de l'utilisateur à jouer au football offensif et expansif par rapport à l'approche généralement plus conservatrice de l'IA. Mais il y aura des occasions où quelqu'un sera tout simplement malchanceux. Si vous êtes souvent «malchanceux», le manager doit être responsable du fait que quelque chose ne va clairement pas. Maintenant, vous pouvez vous sentir lésé si vous pensez que c'est moins une erreur de «football» et plus une erreur de «moteur de match», mais dans votre monde de jeu FM, ce sont les mêmes. Nous visons un jour à ce que les deux choses soient absolument interchangeables et nous sentons déjà que nous y sommes bien partis.

 

You said it all, this is how you have to live FM...

[aDuck]

This is what I'm talking about when I say keepers tap into the f**king Matrix. We scraped this although my team supposedly bossed the game.

And the keeper, for all his Agent Smith inspired efforts? A 6.8 rating. Utter BS. He went full bloody Oblak. Close range or long range, didn't matter. This is what I get every other game despite my strikers all have finishing stats of at least 10 and pretty good compusure considering the level my team plays in. Sure, we're not exactly Barcelona but the amount of miracle saves after miracle saves after miracle saves from eight yards tends to annoy.

[Svenc]

3 hours ago, aDuck said:

This is what I'm talking about when I say keepers tap into the f**king Matrix. We scraped this although my team supposedly bossed the game.

And the keeper, for all his Agent Smith inspired efforts? A 6.8 rating. Utter BS. He went full bloody Oblak. Close range or long range, didn't matter. This is what I get every other game despite my strikers all have finishing stats of at least 10 and pretty good compusure considering the level my team plays in. Sure, we're not exactly Barcelona but the amount of miracle saves after miracle saves after miracle saves from eight yards tends to annoy.

HOw is this going OBlak if you scored 4 goals? Going simply by these flawed stats -- on average, that is seasonal long-term average, you'd expect there to be a goal roughly every 3rd shot on target. You're just 1 short of expectations. 

Bad example, and there would be quite a few, like 17 SOT for zero goals. That said, over the season you will and should always have variance in this, as that is football. Go through Pep's point drops this term, all of them (-> whoscored). Just in both matches against Spurs combined he conceded 4 goals off 5 shots total. Unless the game wouldn't aim to simulate anything like that, this will always happen. Football, the realz one is a sport where shot conversion is massively variable throughout matches. A club might win 1-0 on a perfect long-distance strike one week and then lose 2-1 the next while firing a dozen shots from good positions right into the keeper's chest, whilst the opposition hits it all.

As said, the only way you don't ever see this the other way around, includig having opponents who struggle to score off a dozen shots on target, is that you don't play consersative or outright counter attacking against an attacking AI yourself -- or are doing it badly. 

Edited August 24, 2020 by Svenc

[XaW]

4 hours ago, aDuck said:

This is what I'm talking about when I say keepers tap into the f**king Matrix. We scraped this although my team supposedly bossed the game.

And the keeper, for all his Agent Smith inspired efforts? A 6.8 rating. Utter BS. He went full bloody Oblak. Close range or long range, didn't matter. This is what I get every other game despite my strikers all have finishing stats of at least 10 and pretty good compusure considering the level my team plays in. Sure, we're not exactly Barcelona but the amount of miracle saves after miracle saves after miracle saves from eight yards tends to annoy.

I had the other way:

I won 2-0 here and we were outplayed! We were seen are major underdogs so I started of quite conservative. Then we nicked an early goal and just sat back and tried to take the pressure and counter every once in a while. We got our 2nd half way into the 2nd half. I think just about everyone of my players were on a yellow because we kicked them off the pitch and frustrated them. And when my goalkeeper had a good day, it was a really good match for us.

Does this always happen to me? Of course not.

Here I kinda felt cheated since I lost 2-3 at home and the opponent barely had a chance. And I were even up 2-0 at half time, but I failed to guard against complacency, and when they got an early goal in the 2nd half my team just folded and we really failed to pressure the other team and let them have lots of long shots without being hassled... Really annoying, but totally preventable and a fail that is totally on me.

The point is that "superkeepers" and "getting FM'ed" are very often tactical errors that user could act on. That said, I do think the game lacks clearer feedback to the user and that the feedback part could help with handling these things so many could look at their tactics and squad management before getting all tinfoil hat and claiming scripting or other such rubbish.

[sporadicsmiles]

7 hours ago, aDuck said:

This is what I'm talking about when I say keepers tap into the f**king Matrix. We scraped this although my team supposedly bossed the game.

And the keeper, for all his Agent Smith inspired efforts? A 6.8 rating. Utter BS. He went full bloody Oblak. Close range or long range, didn't matter. This is what I get every other game despite my strikers all have finishing stats of at least 10 and pretty good compusure considering the level my team plays in. Sure, we're not exactly Barcelona but the amount of miracle saves after miracle saves after miracle saves from eight yards tends to annoy.

This is a great example of why people tend not to take this thing seriously (aside from the fact there are no scripted super keepers and the game cannot tell the human and AI players apart in the ME). You are complaining that the AI keeper was a super keeper, after scoring 4 goals against him. You did dominate this match, but your defence was crap so you scraped a win. Which probably points to some aggressive setup that you never bothered to dial back when you had a 3-1 lead and immediately conceded. Then when the AI started to attack more it was successful because you were still pouring forward. Sound about right? If you want to avoid tight games like this, work on how to defend leads. The AI does not sit back and not change anything during a game, so if you do not react when it has dome something that is dangerous to you, then you can really only blame yourself. 

Besides, a goalkeeper who concedes 4 goals would not be getting my shout for MOM, or any adulation from me as a super keeper. A quarter of the shots he faced he conceded. So every 4 shots on target, you score. That sounds like a pretty average performance to me. 

The question of why there would be elements of scripting to annoy the player is beyond me as well. What possible purpose would it serve? 

[Svenc]

7 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

The question of why there would be elements of scripting to annoy the player is beyond me as well. What possible purpose would it serve? 

By far the most common reasoning is to keep the super human player from winning everything (keeping things interesting). In the past, this line of reasoning had been particularly taken by users of "super tactics" (it's already in the name, innit). 

Presumably, the tactic would be so perfect (I dominate poss+shots every match!) that every once in a while certain leveling mechanisms would kick in. As the user also dominates stats every match, he cannot ever face this the other way around, rather, his only point drops are every time with having more shots and poss (a bit like Pep this term), and things go full circle.

On that tactics front: For as long as a "super tactician" doesn't find a way to field 30+ players visibly occupying every square inch of the pitch at any one time, there will be no flawless tactic ever.

Secondly, matches against an actual run of play are supposed to be part of the game. (Not all matches where a side had far more shots and dropped the points was against an actual run of play).

Thirdly, if the AI managers were to get smarter, such players would feel "cheated" a whole lot more, which is why this is worth figthing against for anybody who'd prefer that AI development doesn't stall at some point. The AI already has an edge over any such player in that it doesn't care about the shots -- it only cares about the goals and may only attack / expose itself in bursts of a match rather than the 90 minutes through.

 

tldr; If you go with "scripted" theory, you don't get this game. (Unfortunately, not getting this game does not necessarily translate to not winning.)

Edited August 25, 2020 by Svenc