This is not a rant, just me looking for answers.

[Morgan O'Bree]

You are missing the point entirely. I'm saying that it doesnt matter what subs you make, it has no impact. It will make you think it does.

Another thing. You may be able to manipulate possession but possession does not mean you will score or concede goals, nor does it mean you will win or lose. I have seen people with 80% possession lose and vice-versa. So dont give me the argument that you can change possession and that makes a difference.

So all this to say: pre-determined results are possible in this game. You have not proven that it is not happening. I have only proven that it is a possibility, nothing else. I would hate to think that we are wasting our time thinking that we are making a difference in our games while all the time the game was settled in the few minutes before the game actually started.

Who knows? Well, the devs know...

Colin OUT!

It's you not getting the point. What i said is ofc match doesn't change changing a position for a sub of the same position. But it does change flow when you change players using a new module. Going from 4-1-2-1-2 to 4-5-1V as i stated before didn't change the possession only, but changed the flow of the game: the favor bar (the one above the stats) which has been costantly pushing in my favour, stopped after 5 mins (necessary to sistem to elaborate sub and module change) and reversed against me. With the narrow diamond not once in the entire game this did happen. Further proof is that as soon as i put the AMR/AML as two AMC after the goal (then reorganizing through the middle again) the favour bar returned in my side for the last 3 mins.

So even if as you say the substituted was meant to score and the one who got in score instead, that might be true just for the same roles. Game engine couldn't possibly apply that to a different role as if he generated that role (ie DL) scoring, once the DL is removed from the game for a ie ML the system won't "find" the scorer entered in.

[Hecke]

@Simon: Yeah youre exactly right. People need to state here "yeah there is something wrong devs should do something". So devs see it and can really do something. You have to make a difference between howling i lost a match and these things. Im in season 20 and i know the difference, believe me. Espacially this season was so curious ive never seen in the 19 seasons before. Is it so unlikely that the devs changed something in the engine and that turns out bull**** now?

You could find out if games are meant to have an particular outcome. Set up a friendly. One opponent makes his formation as worse as he can (ST ST St AML AMC AMC AMC AMR ML MR DL) with defensive tactics, own half whatever. the other one sets up a normal formation. narrow diamond should do. otherone is illegal anyway. After game started you just exchange formations. See who wins...

[Maor23]

The OP summed it up when he said that no answer will satisfy him, that is true for most complainants I guess

of course no answer here on this forum could satisfy me as this result already happened and ruined a tiny part of my own game play without being able to do anything about it. I'm not tricked by those robotic answers anymore that they keep giving to every single complain or bug report. the title of this thread may be a little misleading, it wasn't about just getting some answers it was more about being heard, adding another voice to the huge amount of complains that have the same basis.

it's not the first time I complain about something on this game and probably not the last (if I keep on playing), and this is also not the first online game I've ever played. I complained about a bug a month ago or so and got the most arrogant answers I could get, all I expected was a normal "we'll look into it, thank you for the report" instead I got a "check your internet connection", "perhaps you don't understand how it works" and my favorite "this is the first time someone reports such bug". so it's not possible that I'm the only/first one with a bug basically I'm just a lying scum, who doesn't understand the game and with a bad internet connection, right.

It seems to me that what the thread is about is some people wanting the game to work like this:

I have a better team, I win the match

OR

I want to understand exactly how the game works so that I can put out a winning team every time

this is so NOT what this thread is about, Hecke explained it to you in the best way possible but I just wanted it to come from me too as the opener of it. I can find real life examples for everything (Barcelona had 89% of possession against Celtic and still lost 2-1) but the thing is that it's rare in real life and common on this game, that's my biggest complain. I have a better team, I shouldn't win them all but I should win them more.

sorry for going a little off-topic.

[jey2208]

I understand the frustration that can come from the game because even we at Nordeus sometimes get heated when we get too many injuries and lose important matches (we sadly don't have an "I win" button as developers ).

even the creators cannot control the creation.
because of its randomness or what?

[Narf]

...

BUT, changing formations, tactics, substitutions during the game do affect play, because otherwise how would a sub get injured/sent off/score a goal if that was all decided before the start?

OK ... I've seen a player get injured with a BROKEN LEG and then the same player manages to score before he gets replaced. How do you explain that? LOL

...

It's why I'm trying to strike a semblance of balance here - I think Nordeus are doing a fantastic job with this game AND are working hard to make it better. Of course they will never be able to make everyone happy all the time

Don't get me wrong - I understand your reasoning and you seem like a rational thinker, but "a fantastic job" ... really?!

1. A quote from their own Help section:

At the end of day 2, leagues are generated attempting to fit as many friends who are the same level in the same league as possible.

This is my third season and I am yet to be put in the same league with a friend. All because of these "different servers" for which you'll never know how many are there of them, which one are you using, why you don't have a choice of one when registering and why is it hard for any developer to do a simple friendlist check before adding a player to it. You have no way to influence it and if we weren't on the forums - we wouldn't know about it at all.

Even if I consider myself unlucky, I have at least 5 mutual friends that registered the next season after me - only 2 of them had the luck of being in the same league AND everybody else complained that they don't have any friend in the same league. 2 out of 5 attempts to match a claim from their own Help section isn't a good ratio, not in my book at least.

2. The unwanted friendlies problem

Another quote, this time from an "Ask the Devs" session:

When will managers be able to stop unwanted friendlies and the only way a friendly can go ahead is if both managers agree?

We’re trying to figure out a solution for the unwanted friendlies issue, but we don’t think that waiting for approval to be able to play a friendly is an appropriate one.

I haven't seen a single player that hasn't complained about this problem and what EVERYBODY wants is the requirement for such matches to be approved. Yet, the devs don't think this is an appropriate solution (for reasons that we'll again probably never really be told) and they seem to have been thinking about an alternative for months now.

And it's not just the lack of an approval process that is frustrating - everything in the game enables you to suffer from it. The only way to not have unwanted friendlies is to not have friends, because of the following crap:

- You have to be in the game in order to receive a notification about the match, and now with the daily maintenance going away, this means that you have to be in the game 24/7.

- If you're using Facebook, the only way to remove a friend is to unfriend them for real on FB. Seriously, wtf is with this one?! It's not like we all have "gaming" accounts on FB, why should I delete real-life friends (or even worse - relatives) just because a few people at Nordeus don't care about this problem?

- Even if you are in the game when the match is arranged, you have to be looking at it. This is probably THE ONLY flash game left on Facebook with no sounds. I actually read another dev reply to a different question, saying that they don't want to annoy people at work. What? Now they can't put a mute button too?!

- You can reject a match that has already been arranged, but not if there are less than 3 minutes left until it starts, yet they enable for friendlies to be arranged for as less as 4 minutes prior to a match. I understand the whole 3 minutes thing for a League, CL or Cup match, but for a friendly - why the F?

I was unfortunate enough to experience both of the last two at once, but here's the kicker - I still would've had time to reject the game if this next flaw didn't exist ...

- The mobile application doesn't send notifications for them either. My phone plays a sound 2 times before a scheduled match - first time notifying me that I have a match soon and second time that it's about to start. Even if I wasn't tech savvy enough, this alone is proof that they can notify you, but they simply don't. There are two possible problems here - either these notifications only work as a pair and I don't get notified because nobody arranges a friendly with enough time in advance or they are simply not sent for friendlies. Or both. You see - these notifications are triggered exactly 4 minutes apart and even though the second one says that the match is about to start, this happens 4 minutes before the actual kick-off, so even only the second one would make me really happy.

3. Match scheduling times and the "1 day in Top11 = 1 week in real life" rule

Friendlies are one thing, but regular match schedules are completely controllable and dependable on the game engine. To say that this schedule is often unfair is an understatement and no Top11 manager will disagree here. I'm not talking about somebody playing around 13:00 and another manager playing late at night - this sure is unrea, listic as well, but I agree that it is a hard to solve issue due to all programmers' nightmare - the timezones. I'll even ignore another issue - this is often random for teams originating from the same timezone or region. As much as I hate having matches at 11am, people have different preferences and I can live with it.
But having 2 matches in a row with starting times within a 10-minute timeframe - please, Nordeus, do something about it! Conspiracy theorists would say that it is made so that you have to spend boosters boosters between them, or tokens to change the kick-off time, but it's just not the case. I've had 2 away matches of this type with mere seconds between the first one ending and the second one starting - this is pure laziness on the devs part! How much does it cost to write a simple IF condition (pseudo-code):

if (this_match.start_ts - prev_match.start_ts < threshold)
    this_match.start_ts += 3*60*60;

4. Poor excuses for why, for what and how much tokens are used

From another "Ask the Devs" session:

@Lowyat_Slyder Why offers only being unlock during level 4? Why we need to use token to buy players on auction but not money only?

Tokens represent managerial influence, which is needed to convince a player to join.

...

@DaveAnderson82 why do i need 2 use tokens for u21 player that have camr threw the youth systems?? i should be able 2 sign them for free!

The money invested in youth centers only increases the speed at which new young players are available. The tokens represent the managerial influence required to keep the players interested after they have completed their training.

So tokens represent "managerial influence" - ok, I accept that. BUT, who says that after you've spent e.g. 30 tokens in a bid war and then quit because there's not worth it going further then it means that you no longer have interest in that player? Because that is the only logical explanation to why you lose tokens when you didn't manage to get an auctioned player.

WTF is this "keep the players interested" ****? A young teenager just completed the required training that supposedly took him years is finally given a chance to play for the first team and all of a sudden it's the manager that needs to convince him to stay interested?! Sure, we all know of Paul Pogba, but he is a one-in-a-million case. This isn't even remotely close to a real-life situation.

And the list goes on and on ... influence to change shirts, club name and emblem, etc. Most people start by just wanting to see what this game is - how many people seriously take the time to choose names, colors, designs and whatever the hell there also is during registration? And they ask tokens for all of this crap ... not that I care much about this, but for them claiming to try so hard to replicate real-life football and being so high on this "managerial influence" excuse, this is simply absurd. At the very least - sure, give a way for people to buy premium stuff, but put a price tag on them instead of tokens unless you want to say the truth ...

Tokens are THE in-game currency, we all know it and it's no secret that they want us to spend as much of them as possible. Instead of making up this "managerial influence" they should just cut the crap say that it's a costly game to play. We all agree that the amounts of tokens that they ask for are outrageous, the least they could do is to be honest in exchange.

5. Attending matches

Especially lately, it seems like you have a better chance by NOT attending games. I mean seriously, lately I almost haven't seen an attending manager to win their game and where I used to win by at least 3 goals I now struggle to score.
Also - auto-subs happen instantly in case of an injury, but manual ones don't. Some say it's because there needs to be a break in the game, others say that the players need to warm up ... give us a damn warm-up button during games then - I almost always know in advance which subs I want to use, and waiting 10 "minutes" for an injured player to be replaced is ridiculous! Plus, it's way too common for real-life managers to have players warming up regularly during a match even if they don't end up using them. They might've thought that they're adding a "realistic" factor to the game, but they didn't - this is in no way fun and it effectively gives a non-playing manager advantage over one that tries to be involved in the game as much as possible.

6. Bugs, lots of them

The GK bug - they fixed it, by introducing a new one!
The condition bug (players not regaining) as of the last update.
The results turned into draws bug - believe me, this could only happen due to loss of data. To their credit - this is the most fair solution of them all, in case match results are lost and can't be recovered.

The away goals bug - if you play in a direct-elimination style stage/tournament and both legs finish say 1:1 in regular times, then after the game goes into extra time if both teams manage to score but it's still a draw - whoever is the away team wins! No penalties! I reported this one a few days ago - don't know if they have done anything about it.

And I believe I already mentioned that I had a player with a broken leg that scored a goal - how is that possible?

This is all obvious stuff that anybody who knows football can see. It doesn't include game cashes and who knows how much stuff breaks on the back-end.

7. Game quality

The game is usually slow, often lags during auctions causing you to lose them and I swear - this is the first game that I am not able to play from work! That last one I know why and while yes - my company does try to filter all kind of outbound connections, but I do know how to get around all of them. They have not intended to filter Top11 in particular, yet the poor technical design of the game limits me from accessing it. That same bad design that is behind the friends on different servers problem. Oh, yes - did I mention you can't even watch your friends matches? Yes, that one too.

8. Lack of quality support

In the few times that I wrote to Nordeus support, they have either ignored half of my questions or repeated the same PRE-DEFINED answers (that I already knew anyway) all over again. Just like the dev above ignored the question of why Negotiations are not available for levels 1-3.

Oh, and what a decent reply I got for a cheat report of a certain 'Fatih' supporting his team during matches via another 4 'Fatih' accounts! They can't do anything about it, because they can't "verify" if it's the same person or not and only Facebook can tell that, so I should try contacting Facebook (they don't allow multiple accounts, for real).

At first I was very understanding of the support agent's reasoning, but after I gave it some more thought - the very same problem that I described as number 7 means that while you play, you are directly connecting to their servers and not by using Facebook as a medium (speaking in technical terms here, of course you open the game through FB otherwise). This means that they have your IP address, your browser name and version, they have cookies stored on your computer, etc. If they cannot verify such a cheat by that data it means either one or both of the following:

a) They don't log such data, which automatically means that they should all be fired.
b) They do log it, but they are way too incompetent to be able to analyze it.

And believe me ... I don't want to sound like a kiddie presenting himself as an elite h4x0r, it just so happens that it's my day-to-day job to work with similar technologies. Those are all facts and I'm not making them up.

But let's imagine for a second that I am your average manager, which is not a programmer and is told to report that person to Facebook instead. How the hell would you do that when there is NO WAY to actually access their profile through the game?! What are you supposed to do? Hack into the game? Search a million of people on Facebook named 'Fatih' and try to guess which one is he?

If I didn't know that most support agents are trained to just copy-paste pre-defined answers to known questions I would imagine them laughing at me for they just indirectly said to me that they don't care and I should just deal with it. But the sad thing is - they probably believe I went to report it to the FB staff.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

You call THIS ^ a fantastic job and trying hard to improve?!

P.S.: Please don't take it personally, it's your use of "fantastic" that just triggered all of this, which is otherwise directed at Nordeus.

Real life examples from English football - Bradford City get to a cup final, team costs about £200k. QPR terrible in EPL, full of expensive internationals and much higher 'quality' than other teams. If the equivalent to those things happens in a game people will scream "it's not realistic"

I agree on QPR, but especially in the UK - most teams have higher-priority goals than the Cup tournaments. This makes it easy for lower-division teams to reach higher stages of the tournament. There is no such factor as a priority on Top11 - you just get screwed at random.

Of course easy for me to say, my team is doing well. And yes I've only played a couple of months. But that doesn't make my opinions less valid - as I stated, I know manager games well as does my Greek friend above, so I know this is a good one

Btw, just so you know - a friend warned me that I'll quickly forget about the easy days of being a 1st or 2nd level manager. He turned out to be right, just saying - be prepared to quickly change some of your opinions after your next promotion.

It's you not getting the point. What i said is ofc match doesn't change changing a position for a sub of the same position. But it does change flow when you change players using a new module. Going from 4-1-2-1-2 to 4-5-1V as i stated before didn't change the possession only, but changed the flow of the game: the favor bar (the one above the stats) which has been costantly pushing in my favour, stopped after 5 mins (necessary to sistem to elaborate sub and module change) and reversed against me. With the narrow diamond not once in the entire game this did happen. Further proof is that as soon as i put the AMR/AML as two AMC after the goal (then reorganizing through the middle again) the favour bar returned in my side for the last 3 mins.

So even if as you say the substituted was meant to score and the one who got in score instead, that might be true just for the same roles. Game engine couldn't possibly apply that to a different role as if he generated that role (ie DL) scoring, once the DL is removed from the game for a ie ML the system won't "find" the scorer entered in.

I bolded a sentence about some "favour bar" ... there's no such thing - this is a possession bar. Try switching to an illegal formation during a game and you'll see it working live - that "favour bar" will quickly go to 80/20 against you.

I would also argue about the game engine not being able to apply a score to a player in a different position. It's quite simple to do so - you have 2 teams with 11 players each. Eliminate the goalkeeper as it would never let him attack and it's down to 10 each. All 20 of them could easily be marked in the following form:

<team_number><player_index>

Where each of the fields is presented by a single number - 1 or 2 for teams and 0-9 for player numbers (it always starts from 0 in programming). No matter how many substitutions and or which positions they are made - if players 10, 15, 17 and 24 are scheduled to score - they will.

I'm not saying it works that way - I'm saying it can. Just my 2 cents.

[SimplySimon]

And I was so close to not responding any more on this post until.... people actually came back with excellent and specific points

Maor23 - you are right about the support, it's not Nordeus being arrogant though. They outsource through Zendesk who have a copy/paste approach (with all their clients). I had an issue myself and had to send several emails pointing out the inaccuracies and even contradictions in the first few messages they sent me. After that, it got better and the responses were personal. Unfortunately that's not likely to change and we'll have to put some effort into being heard. I do believe that needs rational and polite communication, nobody responds well to abuse

You are also right about Hecke explaining the problem better than your OP, which was perhaps understandably a bit emotionally charged. I guess I was trying to get at the problem of the thread descending into rants and conspiracy theories afterwards. There was a point in your OP, just clouded by a bit of rage :-)

Narf - some really 'fantastic' points! Sorry if that word riled you, maybe I was overcompensating for the amount of abuse the devs get from some ranters. At least a good job though, right?

You really should copy some of the above into this thread

I agree with most of your points entirely. In fact the only major flaw I can find is that in European competition, if a tie is level after both legs away goals DO count in extra time. I also don't believe in pre-determined results/scorers etc. - maybe partly because it would take away some of my enjoyment of the game if I honestly felt that I couldn't influence the outcome of a match

Some of your points are probably about them 'overcompensating' i.e. attending matches makes less of a difference than it used to because they are trying to respond to people supporting themselves through multiple accounts. Of course better communication would clarify that, but I understand it is also difficult for them to announce stuff when they are testing it because that would affect player behaviour and corrupt the test

Overall, that sort of response is exactly the feedback they need to hear and delivered in a way that is concise, clear and well communicated so please put it where it might get seen :-)

[gkassimis]

Ok, baited into one last response. Of course I read the thread properly and responded as best I felt I could, addressing two specific points from the OP as well as other posters. I'll say it once more, the game engine will never make everyone happy because it comes down to what a person can accept as a realistic result - ultimately it's very difficult to simulate the real thing, because it's so unpredictable

Real life examples from English football - Bradford City get to a cup final, team costs about £200k. QPR terrible in EPL, full of expensive internationals and much higher 'quality' than other teams. If the equivalent to those things happens in a game people will scream "it's not realistic"

Of course easy for me to say, my team is doing well. And yes I've only played a couple of months. But that doesn't make my opinions less valid - as I stated, I know manager games well as does my Greek friend above, so I know this is a good one

The devs have done well, created a great game, and clearly try to make improvements. I try to be a voice of reason or to offer a counter point, perhaps people just want someone to say "Yeah, same for me, ****ing stupid devs don't listen, they need to change it/change it back blah blah blah"

So rather than my post ruining the thread, it is the comments heading this way that ruins the forum. There is a vent thread to screw off about all the injustices of the game engine, because these frustrations will always exist

The OP summed it up when he said that no answer will satisfy him, that is true for most complainants I guess

-sign off-

first of all i respect everyones opinion but playing less than 2 seasons is a very short period to come to safe conclusions. 80% of my friends have quit the game because the devs don't fix specific craps. it has nothing to do with winning or loosing. it has to do with the way the result comes. i can accept a bad performance and a lose from a weak team. but i mind loosing from a much weaker team playing with less players, illegal formation, wrong positions etc.

[gkassimis]

@Simon: Yeah youre exactly right. People need to state here "yeah there is something wrong devs should do something". So devs see it and can really do something. You have to make a difference between howling i lost a match and these things. Im in season 20 and i know the difference, believe me. Espacially this season was so curious ive never seen in the 19 seasons before. Is it so unlikely that the devs changed something in the engine and that turns out bull**** now?

You could find out if games are meant to have an particular outcome. Set up a friendly. One opponent makes his formation as worse as he can (ST ST St AML AMC AMC AMC AMR ML MR DL) with defensive tactics, own half whatever. narrow diamond should do. otherone is illegal anyway. the other one sets up a normal formation. After game started you just exchange formations. See who wins...

exactly. i have done it several times and the team who plays in the beggining with proper formation and correct positions but for 80 minutes with illegal formation and wrong positions is winning the team that is starting the match with illegal formation and wrong positions but for 80 minutes they play properly

[cracicot]

It's you not getting the point. What i said is ofc match doesn't change changing a position for a sub of the same position. But it does change flow when you change players using a new module. Going from 4-1-2-1-2 to 4-5-1V as i stated before didn't change the possession only, but changed the flow of the game: the favor bar (the one above the stats) which has been costantly pushing in my favour, stopped after 5 mins (necessary to sistem to elaborate sub and module change) and reversed against me. With the narrow diamond not once in the entire game this did happen. Further proof is that as soon as i put the AMR/AML as two AMC after the goal (then reorganizing through the middle again) the favour bar returned in my side for the last 3 mins.

So even if as you say the substituted was meant to score and the one who got in score instead, that might be true just for the same roles. Game engine couldn't possibly apply that to a different role as if he generated that role (ie DL) scoring, once the DL is removed from the game for a ie ML the system won't "find" the scorer entered in.

Morgan, all you did was change the flow of the commentary and favor bar. The in-game changes always do this. I do not disagree with that. I am saying that in the case where games are pre-determined, your favor bar means jack squat except for entertainment. The game commentary is playing out the results it already determined and will take into account any changes you make during the game. This is such a simple concept: game engine checks both teams a few minutes before game time. game engine determines result based on the numbers and creates a commentary that fits the result. Manager logs in and watches game. Manager makes changes and commentary and favor bar are dynamically changed/adapted. This is most likely the reason for anything to take a few minutes after you make changes. Finally, results are posted.

What you have to understand is that under this process, you can make changes to the commentary and favor bar only. This makes it seem like the game is not pre-determined.

I am not saying that this is the case, but I am saying that this is very possible. From what I have read, there are many former managers that have seen results that made them lean towards the games being pre-determined. As you can see, I am trying to be very careful with my words as I am not sure about the past occurances and would like to know more. I talk about what I know, and ask questions about what I dont know.

Colin OUT!

[cracicot]

I bolded a sentence about some "favour bar" ... there's no such thing - this is a possession bar. Try switching to an illegal formation during a game and you'll see it working live - that "favour bar" will quickly go to 80/20 against you.

I would also argue about the game engine not being able to apply a score to a player in a different position. It's quite simple to do so - you have 2 teams with 11 players each. Eliminate the goalkeeper as it would never let him attack and it's down to 10 each. All 20 of them could easily be marked in the following form:

<team_number><player_index>

Where each of the fields is presented by a single number - 1 or 2 for teams and 0-9 for player numbers (it always starts from 0 in programming). No matter how many substitutions and or which positions they are made - if players 10, 15, 17 and 24 are scheduled to score - they will.

I'm not saying it works that way - I'm saying it can. Just my 2 cents.

Narf, my hero. I TOTALLY agree with you on absolutely EVERYTHING you said. I couldn't have said it better myself....well maybe, but you beat me to it.

As a programmer myself, it is refreshing to hear from another person with experience. It gets frustrating with people with no experience stating that its impossible for the results to be pre-determined. We both know that it is possible but I cant prove that it is true. Nor do I care to. I have better things to do with my day. I just put that possibility out there so people can think about it.

All very good points. Nordues certainly has to up their game if they want to show us that they are serious about providing a game that is fair and enjoyable. Of course not everyone is going to be happy with this game, not matter what Nordeus does, but that is human nature. It just seems that Nordeus should be doing more. As a result, more people will speak out like you and me.

Colin OUT!