Game engine tweaks - you thoughts?

[magic3]

Sometimes you can get a foul but the referee lets play go on by playing advantage.

good call, didn't think of that one.

[hullabaloo]

i have lost almost all interest in the game this season after just one week, because of how totally random it has become. Disheartening

[Morgan O'Bree]

Statistics reflects how the match went, being them true or not.

A team which shooted more/more on goal usually is the one who played best, pressure and possession talking.

Point is the engine tweaks over the past season randomized some results.
I'lltry sum up a few:

1)At the start of 1st and 2nd half you do get ALWAIS a serie of 3 dangerous action (even before being able to check up possession and pressure), which are pre-set by the engine as "warm up". Premitting that it's stupid, and very unfair, that's how it is. What surprised me is that you might get those 3 actions all in your favour, hence produce 3 goal occasions in 1 minute, but then checking at the stats you might see:

a)your shoots/target increase
b)Despite you producing the actions, your counter stays to 0-1, while the opponent's raises (o.o).

Now, what i've noticed, it's that when the "bug" occurs (b), you're bound to take a goal despite having the chanches or dominating the match. No matter what shows up in the commentary, you'll get the corner kick or the free kick or the long range shoot which will take you down.

2) One on One occasions: I alwais wondered why bother to make SAs for forwards (1vs1) if the engine make them pass the ball abut 9 times out of 10. If this wasn't enough, the passes are alwais or almost alwais distributed to defenders. whenever this happens, the goal is missed and a CK at max is earned.

Here too, it's not only unreal, but it's evident that this is a set cycle by the engine where your chanches of scoring are decreased by giving the ball to a player with low attack statistics. I find hard to believe there is a script "promoting" this, rather than believing there is a script (better call it anti-script) which joins the moment with the pure PURPOSE of decrease the % of scoring made into the calculation of the action by the engine.

3)Formation and orders. I lost count of how many times i played an offenive formation (3-4-1-2, 4-2-2-2, 3-5-2 V...) setting the orders on an offensive way (full pitch, short pass, offensive ment) just to see my team, despite being the better one on field and with the supposedly right counter, suffer at midfield or being able to barely win 1-0 or 2-0 by a corner of free kick.
On the right opposite side, i saw many teams using very defensive formations (5-3-2, 5-4-1, 5-3-1-1) overpowering the opponents at midfield (with who?) and producing 3,4,5 goals per match.

You call it a simulation? I can bare the fact that moving a ML to a AML might not influence the outcome, as for moving from 2 st to 3 st won't have any effect. If the engine is simple, then it's expected. But here we're talking of starting lineups, and generally about the team's gamestyle.
It's RIDDICOULOUS that an offensive team will get pressured, and that they won't be able to score lots (or at least have lots of occasions) WHILE it's even more riddicolous that a 5-3-1-1 is able to shoot on goal MORE times than the opponents, and even easily score over 4 goals a match.
FORMATIONS CHOICHES SHOULD REFLECT THE SIMULATION OF THE MATCH. A defensive play would get pressured but be able to hold up (excluding the goal occasion calculated) near their area, and have few scoring occasions, here too which might lead to score by engine's calculation. An offensive team should hold the plays in their hands, and produces many occasions while being vulnerable to counters.
SEEING A DEFENSIVE TEAM dominate the field, or scoring by pressuring the opponents is riddicolous.
[OFC we're intending a situation where the teams are either equal or there is one team stronger by at least 1*]

4) Substitutions: Why bother to give us 3 when you script the engine to raise the rate by 250% every time you end up subs.

This is the lowest Nordeus you can reach. Many times one last sub can move a game, or can clinch an opponent to fixed result, or sub a player which has exahusted its stamina. But atm it's useless as everyone is scared to use his last sub cause 99% there'll be an injury.


many more to come, but i gotta go

[tongly45]

i agree with you in 2 and 4, it's definitively stupid. Why 3 subtitution make injured ? and a one to one striker often is selfish, he doesn't pass the ball for someone else. Often in this game he has good rating.

point 1: i didn't notice that, but at the end and the first minutes of each half, it happen in real life, i couldn't blame it if it's luck or random, blame it if your team have significatively less goal than other in that periode

point 3fensive formation doesn't mean you dominate the match, either possesion ball. Possesion ball doesn't mean you have more kick more goal. dominate the match doesn't mean you win. But i agree that if you lost more than 2-0 it's rìdikulous. also, a defensive formation win more than 3-0 is rare.

Statistics reflects how the match went, being them true or not.

A team which shooted more/more on goal usually is the one who played best, pressure and possession talking.

Point is the engine tweaks over the past season randomized some results.
I'lltry sum up a few:

1)At the start of 1st and 2nd half you do get ALWAIS a serie of 3 dangerous action (even before being able to check up possession and pressure), which are pre-set by the engine as "warm up". Premitting that it's stupid, and very unfair, that's how it is. What surprised me is that you might get those 3 actions all in your favour, hence produce 3 goal occasions in 1 minute, but then checking at the stats you might see:

a)your shoots/target increase
b)Despite you producing the actions, your counter stays to 0-1, while the opponent's raises (o.o).

Now, what i've noticed, it's that when the "bug" occurs (b), you're bound to take a goal despite having the chanches or dominating the match. No matter what shows up in the commentary, you'll get the corner kick or the free kick or the long range shoot which will take you down.

2) One on One occasions: I alwais wondered why bother to make SAs for forwards (1vs1) if the engine make them pass the ball abut 9 times out of 10. If this wasn't enough, the passes are alwais or almost alwais distributed to defenders. whenever this happens, the goal is missed and a CK at max is earned.

Here too, it's not only unreal, but it's evident that this is a set cycle by the engine where your chanches of scoring are decreased by giving the ball to a player with low attack statistics. I find hard to believe there is a script "promoting" this, rather than believing there is a script (better call it anti-script) which joins the moment with the pure PURPOSE of decrease the % of scoring made into the calculation of the action by the engine.

3)Formation and orders. I lost count of how many times i played an offenive formation (3-4-1-2, 4-2-2-2, 3-5-2 V...) setting the orders on an offensive way (full pitch, short pass, offensive ment) just to see my team, despite being the better one on field and with the supposedly right counter, suffer at midfield or being able to barely win 1-0 or 2-0 by a corner of free kick.
On the right opposite side, i saw many teams using very defensive formations (5-3-2, 5-4-1, 5-3-1-1) overpowering the opponents at midfield (with who?) and producing 3,4,5 goals per match.

You call it a simulation? I can bare the fact that moving a ML to a AML might not influence the outcome, as for moving from 2 st to 3 st won't have any effect. If the engine is simple, then it's expected. But here we're talking of starting lineups, and generally about the team's gamestyle.
It's RIDDICOULOUS that an offensive team will get pressured, and that they won't be able to score lots (or at least have lots of occasions) WHILE it's even more riddicolous that a 5-3-1-1 is able to shoot on goal MORE times than the opponents, and even easily score over 4 goals a match.
FORMATIONS CHOICHES SHOULD REFLECT THE SIMULATION OF THE MATCH. A defensive play would get pressured but be able to hold up (excluding the goal occasion calculated) near their area, and have few scoring occasions, here too which might lead to score by engine's calculation. An offensive team should hold the plays in their hands, and produces many occasions while being vulnerable to counters.
SEEING A DEFENSIVE TEAM dominate the field, or scoring by pressuring the opponents is riddicolous.
[OFC we're intending a situation where the teams are either equal or there is one team stronger by at least 1*]

4) Substitutions: Why bother to give us 3 when you script the engine to raise the rate by 250% every time you end up subs.

This is the lowest Nordeus you can reach. Many times one last sub can move a game, or can clinch an opponent to fixed result, or sub a player which has exahusted its stamina. But atm it's useless as everyone is scared to use his last sub cause 99% there'll be an injury.


many more to come, but i gotta go

[hullabaloo]

i didnt know you'd get injured if you use the 3rd sub. never thought abt it

[FCB]

4) Substitutions: Why bother to give us 3 when you script the engine to raise the rate by 250% every time you end up subs.

This is the lowest Nordeus you can reach. Many times one last sub can move a game, or can clinch an opponent to fixed result, or sub a player which has exahusted its stamina. But atm it's useless as everyone is scared to use his last sub cause 99% there'll be an injury.


many more to come, but i gotta go

i didnt know you'd get injured if you use the 3rd sub. never thought abt it

yesterday's match I did sub at 77th minute and it was my 3rd sub and that player injured at 84th minute ...with out any reason ...no comments for tackling , nothing ...

[pnr8555]

And why Bradford City gets into the Capital One Cup final?

[Zabanya]

Definitely. I have lost a few games to managers who didnt even play every day and me watching every match at home. If this is a football manager game, MAKE MANAGEMENT COUNT.

And YES! I had put BLUE arrows on all my defenders and what? My striker is one on one and he passed it to my blue arrowed defender instead of any attacking mudfielder i had. TBH id rather have a clever striker who knows who to pass to than a good quality striker. LOL

[zJordan]

If I don't see this season pick up this will be my last.

[Ljepoje]

Things that I have noticed:

Weaker teams achieving more good results than would be expected (even given the random nature of football)

Abandoned, unwatched teams doing better than those with active managers

Illegal formations are penalised in possession, but that has no impact on result


My thoughts:

On the first two points, basically from a business point of view Nordeus wants to keep the game competitive so that you can't just by your way to the top. If you could, F2P players would just abandon the game and it would become a token spending pissing contest

Instead they want F2P players to be encouraged to spend money to improve their team when it is doing well, rather than abandoning it because it loses all the time. Also, they need to encourage people who already spend money to keep spending it. If your team kept winning, with all your scouts playing well and training well, you wouldn't do this

For those who play and watch matches regularly, Nordeus knows you have an interest in this game, that you are invested in it and will earn them money (either buying tokens or through their sponsors, I doubt they care which). You keep doing this and they are happy - even if you go through a season or two of not being happy

To me that seems like punishing your regular users when you should be rewarding them

To Nordeus (honestly, I hope MDK reads some of these posts; many are irate, but often make reasonable points within an angry diatribe)

I understand why you would want to maximise your revenue, I have a business background myself, but this seems to be pushing the approach quite far. I know your userbase is growing and no doubt your revenue too, but what about your per customer earnings and your customer retention rate?

Do your care about existing customers, those that put time an effort into the game, those that build communities around the game such as on this form and other platforms?

Many are extremely frustrated because despite their commitment, you seem to be treating a lot of people like schmucks. Sometimes your tweaking will throw up anomalies - how about some PR to keep your diehard fans informed?


And also, illegal formations - why define something as illegal, fix a possession penalty of 20%, but then effectively have that make no difference whatsoever to the result?

Not only is the PR quite bad, but the actual in game communication is terrible. I've seen many possession focussed threads on here because that is the only dynamic indicator we have as to how our team is doing. If that is essentially worthless, then the game is reduced to pure luck in the eye of the user

When you get to that position, people will think there is no point playing the game because they cannot impact the result. When people feel like that, I'm quite sure they will leave

Bigger companies than this one have lost their way, losing their userbase and collapsing spectacularly. We are all invested in this, I think every regular on this forum wants you to succeed as a business and to keep playing a game they are passionate about - passion that is expressed in commitment but also anger when the feel something is amiss


Honestly, I don't expect anyone to read this or it to have any impact on anyone from Nordeus. It has helped me to get it out of my system, and I think it's a well reasoned post

If anyone read this far - thanks!

Well spoken!