A message to SI devs if you can be bothered

[stuartclark16]

I have been a football manager fan for a lot of years now. I buy the game every year and I probably always will. In the first rendition of this years title, I thought some serious improvements had been made. It felt like the game wasn't trying to hold you back, and that your tactic was performing as it should. For example, if you dominated a team, you would be rewarded with a win most of the time.

I constantly have games now, however, where I am simply dominant, yet they may come away with a 1-0 win, with my strikers missing the most basic of chances. It is horrendously frustrating. I feel like every time SI patch the game, in this year and the last years, they make it worse. They make the game harder to succeed at, not by making it a tougher challenge against the opposition, but where your team will fail to play the football you set them out to play, and will not finish any chances they have, where the oppositions strikers will.

Anything that was effective in the game- free-kicks for example, have now been nerfed fully. It went from being able to score free-kicking to the developers going "oh no, free-kicks work, the ruin them entirely!"

I hope SI devs are on the look out for posts like this or scan these forums, because I want them to know they have, yet again, ruined their game.

 

[wkdsoul]

Post it on the SI site?

 

[stuartclark16]

Post it on the SI site?

I shall- does anyone else feel where I'm coming from??

 

[Mike.]

I shall- does anyone else feel where I'm coming from??

Not really, no. And probably wouldn't post this on their forum. There's very little constructive about it so it would almost certainly be ignored. It's just an angry rant.

 

[stuartclark16]

Not really, no. And probably wouldn't post this on their forum. There's very little constructive about it so it would almost certainly be ignored. It's just an angry rant.

It is an angry rant on the face of it, but it carries a message. I don't believe I am being unfair with my comments, however I concede that it came out of frustration. All born from the love of the game!

 

[Death Ball]

Is there a premade draft for these messages?
It's always "I'm a long term Football Manager fan and this game is awful, I may drop this game because this version has this issue that everybody (everyone going to rage threads, that is) has been complaining through every past version".
Attacking possession to hog up the ball isn't the only style. Dominating a match is not making more shots or having more ball, it's about imposing your game plan. And one of the many gameplans there are is "let the rivals get a lot of possession, a lot of shots, let them get frustrated and their defence bored of little work then hit them in a few counters to get them napping at least once". A plan that's specially effective when the rival wants to get more ball and more shots but isn't attentive enough to see the signs he's getting too many and not that good of it, because then his rival is the one dominating the match as it goes the way they want but he believes he's getting his way. You see high amount of shots and possession and you think you're dominating, when your team is actually doing none of the things it needs to do with that possession, which is create better chances where the goalkeeper can't get within inches of the ball or there aren't a bajillion players in the path of the ball.
If those results weren't possible, FM would be the shittiest football simulation, as it would turn into "make this cookie cutter possession tactic and take a nap, then pat yourself because you won, even if it's because the game has just picked a strategy as the right to win a match and it won't let you try anything different".
If something worries me of this version is I've not seen as many of this "I dominated yet lost" messages, I'd rather it be because FM Base is dying (please don't) than the game being in the way to be a pile of "you got to take more possession and shots and you'll win no matter what you do with them" manure.

 

[stuartclark16]

Is there a premade draft for these messages?
It's always "I'm a long term Football Manager fan and this game is awful, I may drop this game because this version has this issue that everybody (everyone going to rage threads, that is) has been complaining through every past version".
Attacking possession to hog up the ball isn't the only style. Dominating a match is not making more shots or having more ball, it's about imposing your game plan. And one of the many gameplans there are is "let the rivals get a lot of possession, a lot of shots, let them get frustrated and their defence bored of little work then hit them in a few counters to get them napping at least once". A plan that's specially effective when the rival wants to get more ball and more shots but isn't attentive enough to see the signs he's getting too many and not that good of it, because then his rival is the one dominating the match as it goes the way they want but he believes he's getting his way. You see high amount of shots and possession and you think you're dominating, when your team is actually doing none of the things it needs to do with that possession, which is create better chances where the goalkeeper can't get within inches of the ball or there aren't a bajillion players in the path of the ball.
If those results weren't possible, FM would be the shittiest football simulation, as it would turn into "make this cookie cutter possession tactic and take a nap, then pat yourself because you won, even if it's because the game has just picked a strategy as the right to win a match and it won't let you try anything different".
If something worries me of this version is I've not seen as many of this "I dominated yet lost" messages, I'd rather it be because FM Base is dying (please don't) than the game being in the way to be a pile of "you got to take more possession and shots and you'll win no matter what you do with them" manure.

It seems you have taken this post the wrong way. I love football manager, and I always will. I was just stating a few thing which I believe are currently wrong. As aforementioned, it is born out of the love of this game.

My game-plan has been imposed. My tactic from a previous version of the game worked brilliantly, but now less so, we still play the way I want to, but my players don't seem to be able to score and create in the same way as they did whilst using the tactic in question (4-1-2-3). This is all I am saying here

 

[Bigpapa42]

The issue I have with these kind of rants - as cathartic as they may be - is that there is very little constructive in it. They are almost always anecdotal observations of a few specific moments. And the majority of the moments that people complain about are real football situations. Don't get me wrong - I get frustrated by stuff too, I make the same broad generalizations at times, and I enjoy a good rant. But as for value.....?

Anecdotal observations are problematic. We all do it, but it tends to be highly inaccurate. Because it relies on memory and certain things tend to stick out in our memories. The way they stick out makes them more prominent, and more prominent feels more frequent. But its not necessarily true. Something may happen once every five matches, but when it does, it sticks out so you are left thinking "This is happening constantly". When its not.

Beyond that, many of the complaints that are forwarded in these type of threads (not necessarily this one specifically) is that they are rants about things that do happen in football. As an Arsenal supporter, nearly every loss to a club outside the top seven under Wenger in the last 7-8 years of his reign fell into the "we dominated but lost, that's so unrealistic" category. Most matches where one team has like 20 shots on goal don't tend to result in 10 or 12 goals unless its a friendly between massively unmatched sides.

As for some of the specific complaints in the OP here....

-not finishing chances is down to a multitude of factors. And its realistic. Even very good strikers can have horror misses. Giroud went a full half a season without scoring for Arsenal despite having amazing opportunities that were much harder not to score than to convert.

-the same factors that impact your strikers also impact the AI strikers. They are no more "lethal" than yours. From the sound of the complaint, it sounds like goals given up on the counter. Again, realistic. They happen. Leicester won a title doing that to clubs. Liverpool under Klopp was susceptible to that under they bought Van Dijk, and Arsenal were for a long time under Wenger.

-some of the complaints listed aren't complaints that are seen all the time, by everybody. Part of why the common response to any rant thread is "its your tactics, mate". Because, well, it is. And your players, and who you play against, etc. I haven't had any trouble scoring from free kicks or from corners, but I also have players who are superb at those. So experiences differ.

When you run into problems - something happen legit too frequently (based on actual tracking, not anecdotal observation), unrealistic football actions, or outright bugs, posting them up to the forum is the best thing you can do. The devs can't fix everything and they do ignore certain problems (likely for reasons), but they do try to fix stuff. We just need to give them details and PKMs.