Quote Originally Posted by vad View Post
Here are some results.

Game 1. The opponent is close by strength. Zonal marking, low pressure, watched the game, did not change anything. Won 5:0.

Game 2. The opponent is stronger by a star, and higher level. Zonal marking, low pressure, watched the game. At minute 60 was losing 0:2. Switched to high pressure, man-to-man marking. Saw no improvement, the opponent scored one more goal. Lost 0:3.

Game 3. The opponent is stronger, 130 vs 127. Zonal marking, low pressure, watched the game, made no changes. Draw 0:0.

So from all looks it appears that the change is only about being "realistic", but it has no impact on the gameplay and on the chance to win. That is, if you set your team for high pressure and man-to-man marking, you will enjoy high realism of their losing condition twice faster, but their more intensive play will not translate into scoring more goals or losing less.

Such is Nordeus' definition of high realism.
Hi there, vad!

I wanted to answer this to avoid reaching the wrong conclusions. But first of all, thanks for taking the time to do this study However, as you would agree, the study is not long enough and thorough enough to assume anything.

Tactics do have an important impact into the game. Selecting different pressure styles (high pressure - whole pitch vs low pressure - half pitch) HAS an impact in your players and in your team's performance. Same works with man-to-man and zonal defensive styles. More demanding tactics give you a boost on your performance, in exchange of higher condition drop. As in real life. Of course we can't tell you how it affects the performance of your players, this is up to every manager to "investigate", but yes, of course, high pressure gives you an extra performance boost, while normal pressure doesn't (however, it also influences other things).

Before, it didn't make sense to have one tactic (high pressure) giving a team better performance, in exchange of same drop condition than the other option. What we have changed is the impact in the condition that these tactics require, and obviously they're not tactics that should be constantly used, because YES, they use a lot of condition.

In your study you mention 3 games, but you can't make conclusions based only on the few changes/settings you did for every one of them. For example in the 2nd one, you switched one tactic with 0-2, but you already said he was stronger by a star, and higher level. It ended 0-3. How do you know it wouldn't have ended 0-4 if you hadn't selected that? Well, you don't.

Game 3: you selected zonal and low pressure, ended drawing the match. How do you know you wouldn't have won the match if you had switched to high pressure at half time? Maybe that boost would have had a decisive impact, hurt the other team and led you to score a goal (or even a couple).

Just because you switched tactics in one match against a much stronger opponent when you were losing 0-2 and you immediately didn't score 5 goals doesn't mean these tactics don't have impact on the game/performance/chances to win. Switching to high demanding tactics like these will give you a boost but of course won't guarantee you'll immediately win the game. They just give you more chances, at a price.

I'll say that again: More demanding tactics will have impact in your performance and chances to win, BUT in exchange of your players consuming more condition. Like in real life, if you have your whole team doing high pressure on their rivals, yes, that gives you better performance ... for a while, because it makes your players lose a lot of energy very quickly, so you can't (or shouldn't) be doing that all the time in all the matches. Just when you need it.

If you force your team to press hard their rivals for the whole 90 minutes match, of course they will be exhausted at the end of it. No teams in real life do that pressure for 90 minutes, because when you've been doing this for a while, player performance drops as they get more and more tired.

That is the goal of the change we did.