Svenc Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 I'm still on FM08, quite so very happily. I'm hardly an expert when it comes to tactical settings. You can win trophies and relegation spots without any TT&F™ indepth knowledge in this game. And I'm currently running a little test, just to fiddle around with the match engine. As such, I tend to also put sliders into extreme positions and combinations I usually don't do in my regular games. After all, that is what's ought to produce the most varying results. I also picked two rather different teams.The first is Barcelona, La Liga. The other, well... Dorchester Town, Nationwide South. Both running a basic 4-4-2 formation. And yes, I watch long chunks of entire play rather than what the CPU wants me to see in highlight modes. Thing is, a couple of things make me scratch my head. Some sliders and tick boxes don't appear to have any effect. At least not to the extent I was expecting. With some sliders, the effect is absolute obvious. Mentality clearly visually affects positioning, as well as the passing mentality. Width clearly has an effect on a side's shape. Your defense line can be pushed all the way up or stay behind. These are all fairly obvious anyway. Passing? If I set Dorchester's passing slider all the way down to ultra-slow and ultra-short, their mentality to ultra-defensive, and try to limit through balls as much as I can while setting creative freedom to zero to ensure they're more likely to follow my instructions, I still see them hammering plenty long and direct passes to the forwards even in situations that look as if the lads could happily try to keep the ball in their own lines the way I wanted them to. Or they put the ball down the flanks and eventually out of play. Closing down? If I then set Barcelona's closing down slider all the way down, there appears to be no real noticeable difference between this and a more aggressive style. Dorchester never has any time on the ball, their full backs getting closed down far into their own half. At the end of the match, with Dorchester set to "KEEP THE BALL AS LONG AS YOU CAN" and Barcelona set to "DON'T CLOSE DOWN" Dorchester has had about 40% of time on the ball and completed 56% of their passes - maybe their skill just sucks that much. Obviously, the description of the closing down slider is off anyway: it reads "own area", "own half" and "whole pitch", but to anyone who has tried to tweak the closing down of individual players it's fairly obvious that the labels of this slider are a little deceptive. It seems it's more like an invisible circle around the little player dots, whereas they'd close down anyone who enters. As such, positioning (and thus mentality) surely plays its part into this too. Free role? Gave this to Ronaldinho, but contrary to what the manual says he stayed firmly in position throughout the entire game. In some ways it'd be useful if the manual tried to cover the engine and the settings as a "game" anyway, the way some guides (which sometimes appear to contradict themselves) on the net do: Compare what the game's manual says about time wasting to this guide on cmfrenzy.com Time Wasting This is probably more complicated than tackling, because it is not set into three segments on the slider, but set into twenty segments. When we think of time wasting, we automatically think of that **** who runs to the corner flag, and winds down the clock, to ensure a victory. And if you set the time wasting slider to 20, they will probably do that! But obviously, there’s much more to time wasting, or I wouldn’t be writing this article. So what happens if I set the time wasting slider to 1? What does the team to do then? They don’t waste time, that’s for sure. No I am serious, as soon as they get the ball; they get rid of the ball. So what happens if I set the time wasting slider to 10? Does the team time waste one minute then get rid of the ball the next? No. The team won’t rush things, nor will they spend a lot of time on the ball. To summarise, time wasting is a slider used to decide how long your players will spend on the ball before making a pass/shot/cross. Too much time wasting and your players will take too long on the ball and miss good opportunities to pass/shoot/cross. Not enough time wasting and your players will rush things, and there final pass/shot/cross may not be as good as it could be. Not only does this try to explain the time wasting option via the game's mechanics, how this is actually implemented into the engine and how you're supposed to handle this rather than giving a basic descpription of what "time wasting" is supposed to be about in real-life football. On top of that, this sounds like something totally different than what the manual says altogether. And then it could also be totally wrong. Who knows. Anyway, about my perceived superficiality regarding some settings: You're the players' manager. You're not God. They are players. Not Lemmings. They clearly are supposed to have a brain of their own. There are also attributes that are supposed to affect a player's discipline regarding tactical instructions (teamwork etc.). But I'm still a bit puzzled by certain things I saw most recently. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimbobWWFC Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 With regards to the closing down and passing insructions for the 2 teams, maybe you should try the same test, but the other way around. For example, Dorchester players may be playing long balls despite your instructions, because the players are not good enough to keep possession of the ball with short passes. SO try this instrution for Barcelona. Also, as for closing down, Barcelona's players are faster, fitter and used to closing down opponents in certain areas of the pitch, so it may be hard to tell them to immediately stop what they have been doing for years. So try these tactical changes with Dorchester, and see if they back off Barcelona, etc. I think these things would make the test results more accurate. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Svenc Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 With regards to the closing down and passing insructions for the 2 teams, maybe you should try the same test, but the other way around. For example, Dorchester players may be playing long balls despite your instructions, because the players are not good enough to keep possession of the ball with short passes. SO try this instrution for Barcelona. You're probably correct. The levels of these teams are just too far off. Not only on the technical side of things. But also in terms of mentality and physicals. I never managed a side as low as Dorchester and thus I'm not familiar with player's behavior on that level. Still, I thought that any paid football player could play a super slow, super safe, short passing game that merely tries to keep possession as long as possible if given the time and space. It's probably also down to a lot of mental attributes that would make them kick the ball all around the pitch. FM's engine might exaggerate certain factors to have that difference between grass roots, low league football and the absolute top flights. Probably it's just scarily accurate in depicting the difference between semi skilled semi-amateur players and the world class. Also, as for closing down, Barcelona's players are faster, fitter and used to closing down opponents in certain areas of the pitch, so it may be hard to tell them to immediately stop what they have been doing for years. That'd be nuts. There's no feedback or anything for anything like that in the game. I mean, this is supposed to be a serious sim, and that's awesome, but there's got to be transparency and traceability for factors like that. Else it's just guesswork. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Svenc Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 You were perfectly right about this. It's just that Barca's players are mentally, physically and (obviously) technically so much stronger. I had THEM trying to keep possession via short passing, ultra-defensive mentality etc. and they came out with about a whopping of 90% of time on the ball. No more failed passes, no more poor decisions, no long balls further north and much, much better execution of my instructions in general. Which makes this a pretty decent template to try out the effect of all sliders, actually. As there's nothing that gets in the way of trying everything out. At least as far as Barca is concerned. I had no idea how different sides can play (and be played) until I took control over two teams as far away from each other as these. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimbobWWFC Posted February 2, 2009 Share Posted February 2, 2009 Well done, nice to see you have some results from your very dedicated testing It is difficult to test these things when you are using players with very poor stats, such as Dorchester, so we cannot expect them to be able to do the more advanced things we tell them (that's why they are in BSS or whatever). Although off-topic, I suggested this after recently starting unemployed, then becoming Team Bath manager. A very successful tactic from previous games wouldn't work with Team Bath, until I moved the Creative Freedom slider down, because players at that level are much less creative obviously. That is why I thought it would help you out to try the experiment with Barcelona too Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Svenc Posted February 3, 2009 Author Share Posted February 3, 2009 It's really impressive the more I'm thinking about it, no doubt. It is difficult to test these things when you are using players with very poor stats, such as Dorchester, so we cannot expect them to be able to do the more advanced things we tell them (that's why they are in BSS or whatever). Still, whilst Dorchester may obviously not be able to keep the ball over even over shortest distances as comfortably as sides of higher levels, they may also made look even worse at this by their opposition. I think I had Barcelona still set to a rather attacking mentality, meaning that there was bound to be someone around applying pressure at all time, closing down tuned all the way down or no. Part of the "problem" with attribute systems as complex as FM's is that it's pretty hard to have all the feedback in the game that'd be needed to base decisions on. Was this failed pass now down to lack of technique, the passing skill? A bad decision made in a hurry due to an opposing player putting your lad under pressure? And so on. But then, real-life managers wouldn't know exactly either. Still the tools at their disposal to judge are hardly as abstract as what you have in a computer game, be it text commentary, dots or 3d animations. No matter how advanced, a computer game is never going to be an exact copy of the real thing. It's a fine line SI are walking, and if they can improve on feedback and thus gradually make the experience even more intuitive, FM can only become an even better game. Another observation I made: When I started out playing Football Manager 08, I used to watch matches in their entirety pretty often, but I never looked at the clock - the real one, that is. It seems that the engine is capable of simulating well more than a full hour of real-time football. Which is pretty impressive, considering that it's all calculated various times throughout a match in its entirety. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimbobWWFC Posted February 3, 2009 Share Posted February 3, 2009 When I started out playing Football Manager 08, I used to watch matches in their entirety pretty often, but I never looked at the clock - the real one, that is. It seems that the engine is capable of simulating well more than a full hour of real-time football. Which is pretty impressive, considering that it's all calculated various times throughout a match in its entirety. Wow, good stuff. I have never had the patience to watch a whole match, although I also feel I am missing out on the main benefit of seeing what actually happens in a match, not just what the highlights make me see. How long does it take to play a full game on FM? Does it play for anywhere near 90 minutes? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Svenc Posted February 3, 2009 Author Share Posted February 3, 2009 I did this often, but I'm still not sure. Chances are it's not 90 minutes, as the engine sometimes skips events when the game comes to a halt and nothing actually happens. Prior to free kicks, corners, etc. but not always. The manual says it's "not the full 90 minutes", but from personal experience I'd say it's pretty close. Wonder if SI themselves ever bothered to stop the clock... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bigwig Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 Doesn't take anywhere near 90mins to watch a full match since you can still adjust the match speed so it goes quite quickly. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny Forest Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 I would suggest if you want to try and play this passing game,to have a dm,that have a good passing.I play the passing game with hayes and yeading and it did start to work. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Svenc Posted February 4, 2009 Author Share Posted February 4, 2009 Doesn't take anywhere near 90mins to watch a full match since you can still adjust the match speed so it goes quite quickly. Been talking about a speed setting that makes everything happen in real-time speed, of course, i.e. the slider stays in the middle. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Os Posted February 4, 2009 Share Posted February 4, 2009 Full game takes around 40-50 mins Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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