Asunto: About the Engine

I open this topic to continue the previous discussion.

@Vlady

""Being able to avoid the own formation and the ratings of own players is a feature of the game or a bug?"

- I don't understand the question."

Look at this match: soccer.powerplaymanager.c...

A.F. Hurricanes started the match with a 10-0-0.
After (probably) 10 minutes he changed his formation to a "normal" one, (4-4-2/3-5-2/3-4-3..). This can be understood by looking at zonal ball possess.

Doing this, he achieves two things:

1) he hides his real formation to the opponents. Very usefull because it's quite hard to understand his real formation

2) he hides his real strenght. How can opponents understand his strenght without player ratings?

Imagine most users acting like this. What do you think a new user would think? Would he like seeing reports with players playing 10-0-0 vs 8-2-0 withoung having chances to understand why one team wins and how the match engine works?

Is this something you like, something you tolerate for the joy of "shrewd" people like AzGift or you didn't even notice it?

Obviously, this "trick" is well known but few people use it because most people think it is the same as using a bug. And could be (mostly) avoided setting 30° as the first minute to be able to make changes of formation instead of 10° as now.

@Vlady

"yes, we do actually. Not 20 or 100, but thousands of matches."

Last time I asked you to make this kind of tests you answered me you didn't need it. I was so astonished I left the international forum for months.

@Ciukitu

"And why's that? Just because you have better ratings? (don't forget that ratings are just to let you know if player's position are OK, if players' training is OK)
I think that in this game you will loose at least 25% from games played because you are using bad tactics. With only 2 normal defenders, that are retaining possession and passing, you will have a decreased defensive possession (chances of get a goal)."

I'm using bad tactics? He's playing without wingers, low importance, without M and I'm using bad tactics because I "only" have 2 normal defenders?

I think you are kidding me. I've always considered you an intellinget guy, but you can't fool me so easy

@ everhenr

"I think you have a point...

But maybe if you used different tatics you'd win more?

I don't know, but I think the tatics you used on this example match you mentione is a little bit weird and defensive (4-5-1).

I mean, your team is stronger, but then you could use one more forward and try to press their weak defenders (only 3).

Plus, you set up your team to attack only through the middle... And he uses 3 central defenders without wing backs.

So maybe, on this match specificaly, you got what you set you deserved.
But I'm with you and @jorgenius regarding the percentage of shots that results in goals. "

No, I'm not stronger in that match. Simply, he suicided with an extremely bad formation. I didn't know he would have used cush a crazy formation and I defended trying to get 1 point from the match.

But we are speaking about the psychological part of the match.

Look at the match, I simply destroyed him!

His possess
Difesa: 17.45%
Centrocampo: 19.41%
Attacco: 8.33%

My possess
Difesa: 9.84%
Centrocampo: 30.59%
Attacco: 14.38%

I'm aware that this match is not as absurd as the one I lost 2-1 vs Bullee. But come on! I had an incredibly bad luck!
Simply by playing with a bad, crazy and nonsense formation like that, he would deserve to loose at least 90% of time (against a same-strenght opponent, of course).

@illesnille

"Yeah, and you are at place five right now, isn't that good enough. You can't expect to be at exactly the same place as your team-strenght when the league isn't over yet.

I think the engine is good now if you look at long perspective, but can have some upsets if you look match for match, just like real life."

Guy, just look at the matches and their statistics!
I've never said I wanted to be first! Just said the engine gives tooooo many strange results. Clearly, that happens to everybody!

Obviously, is you take a team this 130 strenght against a 30 one, you'll probably get no strange results. But I'm referring to matches where there is a clear stronger team but not as strong as to take 70% ball possession because in I and II divisions can't be (or, in the future won't be) such a difference. Taking 55% possess (and obviously great mid and attack possess), a team is dominating (yeah, can be exceptions.. but this is just to explain the idea).

So just look at the matches and count: what is the % of "strange" matches?
(my "strange" definition can be found in the other topic)

In my opinion is too high, because sometimes it arrives at 35-40% while it should stay IMHO not over 20%. Let's say 15%. (remember that 50% = total random, 0% = stronger always win). That's all!

In 99% of complaints the reason for complain is that he complainer doesn't really understand how small the differences between the teams really are. If the team stars are 80 against 100, anything can happen. Anything. If you understand that, you'll find out there's actually not many surprises. Little surprises do happen but after 42 matches the best teams will be in the positions where they belong. That's how it works in real leagues too. You said your team is 4th strongest in your league and you are 5th placed now. Where is the big random surprise?

Of course there are those really big surprises, like a mid II division team winning a strong I division team but they are very rare.

Ohh.. did I forgot to say that the game is not about who has the highest possession but who scores more goals? I wouldn't say you destroy anyone if you have 55-45 possession and that's just because you play with 4-5-1 short passes having 30-20 possession in midfield.

Wow! I'm finally mentioned in the first post of a topic!

Anyway, I'm doing this for 4 reasons:
#1 because I can - why shouldn't I use anything I can to my advantage or just for the sake of having fun at a game? Except hacking and such.
#2 playing jokes on my opponents - okay, this is probably funny only to me but fk it
#3 perhaps it will inspire the devs to improve the engine - they said we'll be able to see player position changes in match reports..
#4 this one is a secret.

Calling me a bug user is not appropriate and kind of offensive but do what you wish. At least I've found some fun in this game while you're just crying about every point lost.

The tatics used by A. F. Hurricanes is simply ridiculous and should be STRONGLY punished or avoided by adding filters to the tatic's page "save" button.

Thins like that CAN'T happen in a football simulator.
Come on devs...

I agree with you on that.
Crazy formations shouldn't be allowed or accepted by the match engine. That isn't football.

That is plain simple and clear in my opinion.

Nothing is wrong with GE, just guide is ridiculously poor for understanding it.

As AZGift said "Engine is good as it is, we just don't know exactly how it works. More info and a better guide would be great."

We train wingers with 20% on shot and they do great in this GE, they even score a lot of goals . Thats faaaar away from RL.

Why are you still comparing this game with RL football?

Sorry guys if I'm "disappeared".
I'll answer as soon as I can, I think tonight

Another one to the collection:

soccer.powerplaymanager.c...

I'm seeing that the best thing to do with this simulator:
- Don't care about energy and go with VERY HIGH even against stupidly weak opponents.

LOL
And look who is the Man of the Match...
My goalie!!

He made 1 save on the whole game and he's the MoM.

Just great! =)