I am NOT putting anyone down here, but this is the difference.
Well, there are 2 sorts of tactics. Those that are made with the TC and aims to beat the opponent.
Lets start with the "normal tactics".These tactics dont use tweaked sliders to take advantage of any ME flaws. You can still make some small tweak to the player settings, to make sure that your advanced FC with no team work and poor stamina dont even try to close down or play an all zonal makring system etc but these tweakes are always made because you have an idea on how things should work, that you feel some settings simply are lacking in the TC. When it comes to these tactics, its not about "working or not working". Either you are using an approach that suits your team nor not. An approach that is stabil and suit your status as a club or not, an approach that suits the pitch condition or not ( i,e, no short passing in the lowest of league if the pitch is really, really muddy).An approach that lets you take advantage of the opponents weaknesses or not ( like playing down the flanks against a 352) and one that restrict the opponents best players from playing to their best or not.
The other kind of tactic is one that has a lot of tweaked sliders, sliders that have been tweaked by trial & error, a tactic that is a plug & play tactic. These tactics - once one have found one that is really, really good and lets you heavily overachieve - all have one thing in common and its that the reason for them working is because they exploit some weaknesses in the match engine. These tactic are often one-dimensional and when the opponent " plugs" this hole, they fail. A tactic using fullbacks on the lowest of mentality, dcs on a higher mentality, heavy, heavy closing down and in the slowest of ways along with using counter attack is one that exploits it. Its not sprung from reality, its just tweaking sliders until stumbling across something that works, without actually knowing why it works
I actually prefer the new system,but more often than not,i can't get my players to do what exactly i want them to do by that.
thats why i shifted to getting other peoples tactics and then tweaking them to make them work the way i want them to play,since i knew which slider shift would result in what,e.g.-in the first version my main concern was that there is too much space for the opposition dm to exploit as my dms are too defensive,so i knew there were 3 ways to fix it,push d line up or make dms man mark opposition cm or third increase mentality which will push them higher up the pitch.So I knew what I was doing,but it is true how many clicks will get the thing to work the way I want it to play was more trial and error.
as for the defenders,my defenders were found lacking by through balls a lot,hence the decrease in their mentalities,but when i did that I realized since my cps were trying to go even further behind the fbs,making even more space for opposition when they countered,hence the push up in mentality.
And as for the high closing down all over,the wingers and striker and amc close down in hope that they put pressure on opposition so that they make a wrong pass,which my pushed up dm and fbs can intercept,(and high dm closing down makes them put pressure on both opposition wingers and mcs).So yes,when I was making it,it made sense to me,but there were times I was like what do i have to do to get my winger to track back,so then i tried the man marking system,lol.
so yes what you said is true,it is the other type,but it never intended to beat the game,more like.it beat the game while trying to achieve what it wanted.by game i mean the me.lol.
and thanks a lot for the explanation mate.
will try and develop a normal tactic once I'm done with uni exams in june!
and ill give your tweaks a roll!
