I don't know if anyone really reads my incoherent ramblings but I do quite like writing them and I expect this post is going to turn out that way.
I was going on the other day saying it was "all about your form!" and tonight has kind of highlighted this again to me.
I restarted last season on the beta and signed players as per my previous post for my template for success. However, due to the reset I haven't give them the due care and attention they deserve. I play and ORG in the AFA (EFA in live money) and managed to finish mid table in the Championship in the first two runs of the season without really playing much. I was hoping to try and add some weight to my point that player ability doesn't actually mean very much at all but lack of actually playing has hindered this a little.
Meanwhile, my team on live could do no wrong. I log on, get hammered then fluke some last minute winner, score some total fluke, score 2 in stoppage time, score offside goals and everything you can imagine. I've been tinkering a bit on live with some trials and tactics and lost several friendly games yesterday. Tonight I set up a quick play and my team which previously could do no wrong has been thoroughly beaten by pretty much everyone. I ain't too fussed by this, I actually don't mind losing when it's logical, and I deserved to lose these games tonight.
But i've been playing 2 GWs at the same time tonight and my beta team which was previously generally getting pasted all over the place by far better teams has taken the place of my live team! Suddenly they can do no wrong, PP has me top of the league! While typing this I remembered I kicked off a game 5 minutes ago, no worries, it doesn't need my attention, i'm unbeatable! (bollocks, they have just scored... brb! - yeah i've been 2swed!) None of the injuries are sticking tonight, nothing is going wrong.
Back to live, coming up to the last quick play game. The opposition is down to 10 men and my previously unbeatable team can't string two passes together, they can't do anything. They finally get a late equaliser and hold onto the draw like their lives depend on it. It's only a friendly competition, there's no stress and i'm not really fussed, just testing things out and all that.
But it really does highlight just how quickly and deadly seemingly random changes of form can be.
The beta team is in the AFA and we are on a 5 day season at the moment due to some previous issues with the league not starting. So when I logged on I had a shed load of games to play. As per my previous post I started by playing the easy home games first, then progressively working my way up to the more difficult teams to get my form going. This FA is the way forward, I haven't even played an FA game in the last 5 days on Live ! I really think more people ought to try this FA, it's so much better than the standard ones. There's always games to play and the AI limits are pretty relaxed and even if you fail in the first run of the season you have another couple to completely turn it round!
Anyway I didn't get a response to my email to support (I did say I didn't want one, and I don't) however, i'm sure it was just a coincidence that SA10 turned up in the GW tonight. Probably just a coincidence the MP rules changed to some resembling common sense and one of the default EXTA FA competitions actually started. Good work chaps.
Friday, 9 April 2010
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Livin' on the Edge
There's somethin' wrong with the world today
The light bulb's gettin' dim
There's meltdown in the sky
Greetings,
This mail is regarding the GW Butragueno.
I don't especially want or expect a reply but I wish to express some concerns relating to the manner in which this GW is being organised, or not as the case seems to be.
With reduced emphasis on everything but official FA competitions I hoped that moderators and organises would take it upon themselves to turn GWs into a vibrant place of activity and interest. I anticipated this may take the form of friendly competitions run via the XTRA FA in terms of Quick Play competitions, weekly competitions, additional cups and games.
From what I can gather, several of the other GWs are running such competitions, yet in my GW we have had nothing whatsoever. I have asked, as have several other people why this is and the question is either ignored or answered with a strange non-nonsensical response. "We need to advertise it, people need to join, there's not many competitions in the XFA"
As a customer and supporter of the game I find it totally unacceptable that decisions relating to how GWs are run appear to be left completely in the hands of moderators who can apparently do as little or as much as they please. There needs to be some kind of vaguely consistent approach to how extra competitions are handled - they are least needs to be some.
I am really unable to grasp what the issue is here, why can my GW not have extra competitions and games to play ? I simply do not understand what the problem is. From what I can gather, organising the initial qualifying seasons is a fairly automated process so it's not as though their whole time is tied up dealing with this aspect of the game.
Could you please prod someone in my GW to actually do something and create some competitions please ? Failing that, i'd perhaps suggest replacing them with people who have some interest in making this game succeed.
Also some kind of clarification and consistency in relation to rules across GWs would be useful. Why have I always been allowed to use formatted text in the Market Place on previous GWs but this is not allowed on my current GW ? Why do I HAVE to state my JP level and assessment % when advertising youth players ? I could be lying about either fact anyway ? Surely the responsibility should lie with the buyer to discuss this with me. Is there really a rule stating i'm not allowed to post a link to a player that ONLY I have bid on in a wage auction ? I'm told that there was an official mail sent about this, unfortunately I did not receive this. I did request this to be forwarded to me so I could fully understand any additional rules which are not included in the Code of Conduct but unfortunately no one was able to provide this to me. In addition to this there are various other rules i'm fairly certain are simply made up.
Kind regards
-----
email I have sent to support tonight. Had enough already.
The light bulb's gettin' dim
There's meltdown in the sky
Greetings,
This mail is regarding the GW Butragueno.
I don't especially want or expect a reply but I wish to express some concerns relating to the manner in which this GW is being organised, or not as the case seems to be.
With reduced emphasis on everything but official FA competitions I hoped that moderators and organises would take it upon themselves to turn GWs into a vibrant place of activity and interest. I anticipated this may take the form of friendly competitions run via the XTRA FA in terms of Quick Play competitions, weekly competitions, additional cups and games.
From what I can gather, several of the other GWs are running such competitions, yet in my GW we have had nothing whatsoever. I have asked, as have several other people why this is and the question is either ignored or answered with a strange non-nonsensical response. "We need to advertise it, people need to join, there's not many competitions in the XFA"
As a customer and supporter of the game I find it totally unacceptable that decisions relating to how GWs are run appear to be left completely in the hands of moderators who can apparently do as little or as much as they please. There needs to be some kind of vaguely consistent approach to how extra competitions are handled - they are least needs to be some.
I am really unable to grasp what the issue is here, why can my GW not have extra competitions and games to play ? I simply do not understand what the problem is. From what I can gather, organising the initial qualifying seasons is a fairly automated process so it's not as though their whole time is tied up dealing with this aspect of the game.
Could you please prod someone in my GW to actually do something and create some competitions please ? Failing that, i'd perhaps suggest replacing them with people who have some interest in making this game succeed.
Also some kind of clarification and consistency in relation to rules across GWs would be useful. Why have I always been allowed to use formatted text in the Market Place on previous GWs but this is not allowed on my current GW ? Why do I HAVE to state my JP level and assessment % when advertising youth players ? I could be lying about either fact anyway ? Surely the responsibility should lie with the buyer to discuss this with me. Is there really a rule stating i'm not allowed to post a link to a player that ONLY I have bid on in a wage auction ? I'm told that there was an official mail sent about this, unfortunately I did not receive this. I did request this to be forwarded to me so I could fully understand any additional rules which are not included in the Code of Conduct but unfortunately no one was able to provide this to me. In addition to this there are various other rules i'm fairly certain are simply made up.
Kind regards
-----
email I have sent to support tonight. Had enough already.
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Tick Tock
8 days to go until my next game, good times.
Been outbid on various players so far, can't afford more than about £18k wages on anyone with a £110k signing on fee, about £10k short of buying anyone then.
Had a disagreement with a mod when I told him I don't follow made up rules.
Still no competitions, events or anything of interest running.
Nothing else happening.
Been outbid on various players so far, can't afford more than about £18k wages on anyone with a £110k signing on fee, about £10k short of buying anyone then.
Had a disagreement with a mod when I told him I don't follow made up rules.
Still no competitions, events or anything of interest running.
Nothing else happening.
Sunday, 4 April 2010
Recipe for success
I'm fairly certain everyone thinks i'm a bit mad and most of the stuff I go on about is wrong, so bearing that in mind i've decided to share with you how to become a great team with a few easy steps. Of course, as with most things no one will listen to me so it makes no difference.
Ingredients
11 Players
1x Corner hacker
1x good corner taker
3x Fast strikers
2x Fast fullbacks
-Simple tactical knowledge
The Formation
Set up a simple 4-3-3. You can use the tactics creator to do this. You want to set it to be more fluid, you can choose control strategy if you think your players are superior but you may wish to stick with standard strategy instead. Passing should be set to more direct and roaming set to stick to position.
The Players
For all players you should avoid anyone with stamina below 14, you can compromise on DCs.
Technical and mental attributes are not especially important, it's all about the physicals, you want players with very strong physical attributes.
Fullbacks should have the following attributes. Pace & Acceleration must be at least 16 (the higher the better) and tackling around 14. Nothing else really matters but other defensive attributes are useful, but mainly look for the physicals.
Central Defence - Heading/Jumping - at least 17/17, this is important for corners. Pace & Acceleration should be at least 12. (higher is preferable but hard to find on a budget) Tackling and marking are the next attributes to look for but are of less importance. Filter on heading/jumping at 17 and tackling 14 then pick the best.
Forward, central - This is your money man. This needs to be your best player, he must have pace & acceleration at least 16+ (preferably higher) with strong dribbling ability. Finishing, composure etc are not important although they are obviously desirable. The faster and strong the better, this is the key.
Forwards, right and left - Pay attention to the footedness of the players, you want to ensure you have a left and right footer. Again, pace & acceleration is required here, you want 17/17 ideally with good dribbling attribute. Nothing else really matters but again, finishing and the likes are desirable.
Midfield - Doesn't really seem to make much difference what you do here. Just go for the physicals, as strong as possible. You obviously want to be looking for good passers and those with beneficial midfield attributes, dribbling is beneficial too. You want a DM in the middle then and at least one decent AMC on one of the sides. I've always been a bit crap at finding midfield players tbh, what i'm trying to say is go for someone who's reasonable in midfield but has very strong physicals.
Make sure one of the above players has at least 17 in corner taking.
The Tactics
You now need to go to all of your individual player instructions and set long shots to rarely. If you have a midfielder with especially good long shots you may want to allow ONE player to be set to sometimes.
Set corner aim to far post, set free kick aim to best header. You want to be taking inswinging corners so a corner taker for the left foot and one for the right would be useful.
You want your best header on attack far post and your second best header on challenge GK (both of these must be DCs, it doesn't work with strikers) and a third player on near post flick, a striker will do for this. Ensure you have plenty of players back so you don't get caught on the break - at least 3.
Duck N Dive
Also known as DnD ;) Ok something you need to understand now. The quality of your team and tactics actually has very little bearing on the result at all. This is absolutely crucial, you must manage your form. It's all about the form.
Therefore you need to ensure you have good form and mitigate any potential dips. You have a massive advantage in home games so you need to start your league campaign by playing a weak team at home to get a strong result. Pick your games carefully, you ideally want to play as many home games, against weak teams, as possible to start you off. It doesn't matter if you leave yourself with a load of away games as you will be on top form by then.
Hopefully you have now won all of your early home games, have followed my above team advice and are now in top form. You are almost unbeatable so challenge the good teams now ! If you go more than 2 games without winning - be that a draw or a loss - DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER. STOP STOP STOP. DUCK AND DIVE. Get yourself on DND. Stop what you are doing, you are about to enter bad form. You need to find someone bad to play or someone suffering injuries, someone else bad form. Duck in and out of DND and snipe your targets, you MUST get yourself back to winning ways or you are screwed.
I've experienced going 40 odd games being completely unbeatable to literally not winning a single game in 40 games, believe me - bad form is a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Avoid leaving games to your AI if at all possible, it's far easier to beat other peoples AI. If your on bad form, make sure you check who's online in your league before removing yourself from DND. Only do so if there's some easy teams about.
Matches
If you are not in control of the match within the first 15-20 minutes or the opposition is looking dangerous you need to change things immediately.
Hassle opponents and pump ball into the box combined are good shouts. If you have done as I have said you should have vastly superior physical dominance and stamina over the opponents and should be able to take advantage.
If that's not working try run at defence. You should have tons of pace in your side and good dribbling so you can run straight through them.
Avoid going massively attacking if you are losing. If you are going to lose, your going to lose, take a 1-0 defeat over a 3-0, it will mitigate form and morale reduction.
If you are losing but have been dominating the play then control/attacking strategy is a worthwhile change. Pay attention to the condition of the opposistion players and try and push home your physical dominance if possible.
If you are playing a title rival and it's going sour then it's time to get dirty. Get stuck in, your aim now is to injure as many players as possible to create problems for them in other games. Hassle opponents and hard tackling are a must.
If someone has an especially annoyingly good player you may want to hard tackle him from the start to try and injure him, if one of your DCs gets booked then you need to remove this immediately.
Key points
Physical players - do not compromise.
Stamina - avoid <14
Manage your form - duck n dive!
Cooking time
About a season
If your feeling adventurous then try the above without playing 433 but another narrow formation instead.
Of course, i'm totally deluded and wrong about everything so this simple formula wont win you any games, so don't bother trying it ;)
Taste
Hit submit team, sit back and enjoy your 3 strikers bamboozle the opposition defence, i'd suggest eating some nuts at the same time.
*** for reference - i'm currently only employing about half of the above, due to an awful pool, mainly the plan for next season!
Ingredients
11 Players
1x Corner hacker
1x good corner taker
3x Fast strikers
2x Fast fullbacks
-Simple tactical knowledge
The Formation
Set up a simple 4-3-3. You can use the tactics creator to do this. You want to set it to be more fluid, you can choose control strategy if you think your players are superior but you may wish to stick with standard strategy instead. Passing should be set to more direct and roaming set to stick to position.
The Players
For all players you should avoid anyone with stamina below 14, you can compromise on DCs.
Technical and mental attributes are not especially important, it's all about the physicals, you want players with very strong physical attributes.
Fullbacks should have the following attributes. Pace & Acceleration must be at least 16 (the higher the better) and tackling around 14. Nothing else really matters but other defensive attributes are useful, but mainly look for the physicals.
Central Defence - Heading/Jumping - at least 17/17, this is important for corners. Pace & Acceleration should be at least 12. (higher is preferable but hard to find on a budget) Tackling and marking are the next attributes to look for but are of less importance. Filter on heading/jumping at 17 and tackling 14 then pick the best.
Forward, central - This is your money man. This needs to be your best player, he must have pace & acceleration at least 16+ (preferably higher) with strong dribbling ability. Finishing, composure etc are not important although they are obviously desirable. The faster and strong the better, this is the key.
Forwards, right and left - Pay attention to the footedness of the players, you want to ensure you have a left and right footer. Again, pace & acceleration is required here, you want 17/17 ideally with good dribbling attribute. Nothing else really matters but again, finishing and the likes are desirable.
Midfield - Doesn't really seem to make much difference what you do here. Just go for the physicals, as strong as possible. You obviously want to be looking for good passers and those with beneficial midfield attributes, dribbling is beneficial too. You want a DM in the middle then and at least one decent AMC on one of the sides. I've always been a bit crap at finding midfield players tbh, what i'm trying to say is go for someone who's reasonable in midfield but has very strong physicals.
Make sure one of the above players has at least 17 in corner taking.
The Tactics
You now need to go to all of your individual player instructions and set long shots to rarely. If you have a midfielder with especially good long shots you may want to allow ONE player to be set to sometimes.
Set corner aim to far post, set free kick aim to best header. You want to be taking inswinging corners so a corner taker for the left foot and one for the right would be useful.
You want your best header on attack far post and your second best header on challenge GK (both of these must be DCs, it doesn't work with strikers) and a third player on near post flick, a striker will do for this. Ensure you have plenty of players back so you don't get caught on the break - at least 3.
Duck N Dive
Also known as DnD ;) Ok something you need to understand now. The quality of your team and tactics actually has very little bearing on the result at all. This is absolutely crucial, you must manage your form. It's all about the form.
Therefore you need to ensure you have good form and mitigate any potential dips. You have a massive advantage in home games so you need to start your league campaign by playing a weak team at home to get a strong result. Pick your games carefully, you ideally want to play as many home games, against weak teams, as possible to start you off. It doesn't matter if you leave yourself with a load of away games as you will be on top form by then.
Hopefully you have now won all of your early home games, have followed my above team advice and are now in top form. You are almost unbeatable so challenge the good teams now ! If you go more than 2 games without winning - be that a draw or a loss - DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER. STOP STOP STOP. DUCK AND DIVE. Get yourself on DND. Stop what you are doing, you are about to enter bad form. You need to find someone bad to play or someone suffering injuries, someone else bad form. Duck in and out of DND and snipe your targets, you MUST get yourself back to winning ways or you are screwed.
I've experienced going 40 odd games being completely unbeatable to literally not winning a single game in 40 games, believe me - bad form is a catastrophe of epic proportions.
Avoid leaving games to your AI if at all possible, it's far easier to beat other peoples AI. If your on bad form, make sure you check who's online in your league before removing yourself from DND. Only do so if there's some easy teams about.
Matches
If you are not in control of the match within the first 15-20 minutes or the opposition is looking dangerous you need to change things immediately.
Hassle opponents and pump ball into the box combined are good shouts. If you have done as I have said you should have vastly superior physical dominance and stamina over the opponents and should be able to take advantage.
If that's not working try run at defence. You should have tons of pace in your side and good dribbling so you can run straight through them.
Avoid going massively attacking if you are losing. If you are going to lose, your going to lose, take a 1-0 defeat over a 3-0, it will mitigate form and morale reduction.
If you are losing but have been dominating the play then control/attacking strategy is a worthwhile change. Pay attention to the condition of the opposistion players and try and push home your physical dominance if possible.
If you are playing a title rival and it's going sour then it's time to get dirty. Get stuck in, your aim now is to injure as many players as possible to create problems for them in other games. Hassle opponents and hard tackling are a must.
If someone has an especially annoyingly good player you may want to hard tackle him from the start to try and injure him, if one of your DCs gets booked then you need to remove this immediately.
Key points
Physical players - do not compromise.
Stamina - avoid <14
Manage your form - duck n dive!
Cooking time
About a season
If your feeling adventurous then try the above without playing 433 but another narrow formation instead.
Of course, i'm totally deluded and wrong about everything so this simple formula wont win you any games, so don't bother trying it ;)
Taste
Hit submit team, sit back and enjoy your 3 strikers bamboozle the opposition defence, i'd suggest eating some nuts at the same time.
*** for reference - i'm currently only employing about half of the above, due to an awful pool, mainly the plan for next season!
Saturday, 3 April 2010
I'm the chairman of the bored.
I'm in the Vintage FA right now and I have played 22 games in the first 10 days or so. This was a deliberate tactic to play as many teams as possible early on while I had good form and before they had the chance to sign players as they unlocked.
So now I have 11 days to go until any AI lands, I have played all of the active teams in my qualifying group and as per normal FML the rest seem to have signed up and not even bothered playing the game. Half my group is inactive or has signed in just a couple of times so i'm unlikely to meet them live.
But maybe something interesting is going on in my GW ? Yeah, I can dream. As per usual, it seems no one has the slightest interest in doing anything whatsoever to make the game fun. It's almost like they want the game to fail ? Maybe they used up all their energy sucking arse to become mods in the first place and can't be bothered to do anything else ?
The number of players on my GW has slowly dropped from 200+ online back down the normal FML number of around 80-100. Why ? Because there's nothing to fucking do, there's literally no reason for me to be online for the next 11 days.
When is the Xtra FA starting I ask. When people have had the chance to join i'm told. What ? Everyone is already in it ? When is the ladder starting ? Soon i'm told.
Seriously, I just don't understand ??? What IS the problem here. Why can't competitions be run ? What IS the issue ? Am I being unreasonable expecting there to be official competitions to be running every day ? I'm paying for this game and there's no reason whatsoever for me to even be online. I know what to expect from the game, i'm not expecting some amazing new single player experience the next time I log in, but why can't we make the best of what we have got ? Why ??
Before live relaunched, when the beta GW was busy it was great, there was always something going on, some event, quick plays, quizzes, RTG for a while, competitions to beat the CPU teams etc etc.
Qualifying is done, as I've stated before you know what the league table is going to look like after a few days. I'm going to finish 1st - 3rd, there's no doubt.
Next season I think i'm going to head off to the Extra Time FA to give me something more to do, and it looks much easier than my current FA so I should be a shoe in for a bit more prize money.
Anyway, i've become so bored i've decided to forget my keep it tight strategy and i'm blowing as much as the bank will allow on a bid tomorrow. I've thought about this extensively and it's a no lose situation, I hope.
Cya in 11 days time barring signing in to make bids!
So now I have 11 days to go until any AI lands, I have played all of the active teams in my qualifying group and as per normal FML the rest seem to have signed up and not even bothered playing the game. Half my group is inactive or has signed in just a couple of times so i'm unlikely to meet them live.
But maybe something interesting is going on in my GW ? Yeah, I can dream. As per usual, it seems no one has the slightest interest in doing anything whatsoever to make the game fun. It's almost like they want the game to fail ? Maybe they used up all their energy sucking arse to become mods in the first place and can't be bothered to do anything else ?
The number of players on my GW has slowly dropped from 200+ online back down the normal FML number of around 80-100. Why ? Because there's nothing to fucking do, there's literally no reason for me to be online for the next 11 days.
When is the Xtra FA starting I ask. When people have had the chance to join i'm told. What ? Everyone is already in it ? When is the ladder starting ? Soon i'm told.
Seriously, I just don't understand ??? What IS the problem here. Why can't competitions be run ? What IS the issue ? Am I being unreasonable expecting there to be official competitions to be running every day ? I'm paying for this game and there's no reason whatsoever for me to even be online. I know what to expect from the game, i'm not expecting some amazing new single player experience the next time I log in, but why can't we make the best of what we have got ? Why ??
Before live relaunched, when the beta GW was busy it was great, there was always something going on, some event, quick plays, quizzes, RTG for a while, competitions to beat the CPU teams etc etc.
Qualifying is done, as I've stated before you know what the league table is going to look like after a few days. I'm going to finish 1st - 3rd, there's no doubt.
Next season I think i'm going to head off to the Extra Time FA to give me something more to do, and it looks much easier than my current FA so I should be a shoe in for a bit more prize money.
Anyway, i've become so bored i've decided to forget my keep it tight strategy and i'm blowing as much as the bank will allow on a bid tomorrow. I've thought about this extensively and it's a no lose situation, I hope.
Cya in 11 days time barring signing in to make bids!
Friday, 2 April 2010
I'm cancelling!!!11
Actually i'm not, i'm fairly happy at the moment. However, reading the forums it seems any minor little thing is causing people to threaten to cancel their subscription. In my opinion it's generally a blatant excuse for general ineptness.
Lets look at the common reasons:
Corners
Oh my god, someone has scored 20 goals from corners in 20 games. I'M CANCELLING!!!
T-Bag says: There's not a lot wrong with corners, have you TRIED defending them ? Pretty much every single one I have scored, my corner man hasn't even been marked by a defender ? Do you need an explanation why your 5'6 winger can't mark my 6'6 DC ? There are a few too many goals coming from corners though, so go provide some links so they can reduce it a little.
Injuries
I've had 5 players injured in 10 games, omg omg, this is ridiculous, I should always be able to play my best team at all times, I'm not going to win the league now because I have injuries. I should never need to use any subs or backup players, what is this nonsense!
T-Bag says: Go buy some more players fools. Go create a football squad rather than a team of 11 players. It's not exactly a novel concept when managing a football club.
But but, I can't afford any players ? If you genuinely can't afford to buy some more players for 16k then you are an idiot and deserve these problems. If you can afford 16k i'll be happy to point out dozens of great players you can buy.
Someone got a wonderkid in their pool
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!! Someone got a wonderkid in their pool and I didn't !! No one should get wonderkids, everyone should get one! This guy is going to be the best team in the world forever just because he got this this player. He's going to sell him for £20m and beat everyone forever.
T-Bag says: So fucking what ? Sort your own team out instead of worrying about what someone else got. Go find some players to make your club better, make your tactics the best they can be for your players, win something, win some money and go buy the wonderkid off him, go buy another one. My pool was bloody awful, one of the worse I have ever seen yet i'm top of my qualifying group. Why is that ? Maybe because I spent a little bit of time sorting my team out ?
The days off getting in early and copying & pasting a list of wonderkids into search have gone. Take what you have got and go MANAGE your bloody team. Sell some players, buy some more. I managed to sell the utter crap in my starting pool so I know it's possible.
Where are my skill points?
SUPPORT ARE THE LOSE, I SHOULD HAVE 50m SKILZ POINT BUT I ONLY HAVE 30m. I'm quitting unless they are all returned within the next 6 hours.
T-Bag says: Skills don't do anything. Next.
Other
This is a genuine point someone made in my GW. Some guy set up a quick play competition for 20 teams, then reduced the number to 10 so had to remove some clubs. To be nice he sent a mail asking people to confirm within 5 minutes and he would remove the away/offline people to get the competition going.
Some guy was AFK at the time then went into a rage he got removed and said he was quitting and moving to another GW.
Another guy was going mad that our FA had no U17 competitions and couldn't seem to understand the explanation that there was only 10 U17 teams on the whole GW.
T-Bag says: What is wrong with everyone ? I must conclude that now everyone has had an equal start and they can no longer hop to another GW to perpetually start again they need a new excuses for anything that goes wrong. Stop trying to justify your own problems with half arsed excuses and threats to leave the game. Someone is always going to make it to the top before everyone else, just play your own game and have fun. The FAs have been tiered in such a way that it actually works much better at the middle/lower levels than it used to so you should never really be having any contact with the better clubs if they do break away.
THINK about what is causing whatever issue is effecting you then THINK about what the solution might be. Tip - It's the bleeding obvious one staring you in the face.
Lets look at the common reasons:
Corners
Oh my god, someone has scored 20 goals from corners in 20 games. I'M CANCELLING!!!
T-Bag says: There's not a lot wrong with corners, have you TRIED defending them ? Pretty much every single one I have scored, my corner man hasn't even been marked by a defender ? Do you need an explanation why your 5'6 winger can't mark my 6'6 DC ? There are a few too many goals coming from corners though, so go provide some links so they can reduce it a little.
Injuries
I've had 5 players injured in 10 games, omg omg, this is ridiculous, I should always be able to play my best team at all times, I'm not going to win the league now because I have injuries. I should never need to use any subs or backup players, what is this nonsense!
T-Bag says: Go buy some more players fools. Go create a football squad rather than a team of 11 players. It's not exactly a novel concept when managing a football club.
But but, I can't afford any players ? If you genuinely can't afford to buy some more players for 16k then you are an idiot and deserve these problems. If you can afford 16k i'll be happy to point out dozens of great players you can buy.
Someone got a wonderkid in their pool
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!!! Someone got a wonderkid in their pool and I didn't !! No one should get wonderkids, everyone should get one! This guy is going to be the best team in the world forever just because he got this this player. He's going to sell him for £20m and beat everyone forever.
T-Bag says: So fucking what ? Sort your own team out instead of worrying about what someone else got. Go find some players to make your club better, make your tactics the best they can be for your players, win something, win some money and go buy the wonderkid off him, go buy another one. My pool was bloody awful, one of the worse I have ever seen yet i'm top of my qualifying group. Why is that ? Maybe because I spent a little bit of time sorting my team out ?
The days off getting in early and copying & pasting a list of wonderkids into search have gone. Take what you have got and go MANAGE your bloody team. Sell some players, buy some more. I managed to sell the utter crap in my starting pool so I know it's possible.
Where are my skill points?
SUPPORT ARE THE LOSE, I SHOULD HAVE 50m SKILZ POINT BUT I ONLY HAVE 30m. I'm quitting unless they are all returned within the next 6 hours.
T-Bag says: Skills don't do anything. Next.
Other
This is a genuine point someone made in my GW. Some guy set up a quick play competition for 20 teams, then reduced the number to 10 so had to remove some clubs. To be nice he sent a mail asking people to confirm within 5 minutes and he would remove the away/offline people to get the competition going.
Some guy was AFK at the time then went into a rage he got removed and said he was quitting and moving to another GW.
Another guy was going mad that our FA had no U17 competitions and couldn't seem to understand the explanation that there was only 10 U17 teams on the whole GW.
T-Bag says: What is wrong with everyone ? I must conclude that now everyone has had an equal start and they can no longer hop to another GW to perpetually start again they need a new excuses for anything that goes wrong. Stop trying to justify your own problems with half arsed excuses and threats to leave the game. Someone is always going to make it to the top before everyone else, just play your own game and have fun. The FAs have been tiered in such a way that it actually works much better at the middle/lower levels than it used to so you should never really be having any contact with the better clubs if they do break away.
THINK about what is causing whatever issue is effecting you then THINK about what the solution might be. Tip - It's the bleeding obvious one staring you in the face.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Kung Fu
Full on, I moved to Hong Kong
With Bruce Lee's brother and Johnny Wong
I've posted about injuries before but I thought I may as well do a more considered post this time.
First off the old injury system was stupid on all levels. It used to drive me insane how I would get players injured in some random QP which didn't even have any prize money thus leaving me short in the league. Then I would end up dodging opponents waiting for my player to come back.
Of course I usually had some kind of backup and I really wanted to give some of these guys a shot, but why would I ? I could wait a day and have a HHN striker scoring a hatrick or I would give some chump i'd taken a punt on a chance. There's not even a decision to make here, you log off and wait. I wanted to have to play my fringe players but it simply wasn't worth the risk especially when no one else was doing this either.
So finally injuries are changed to a match based system so you can no longer dodge games and crucially you can play as many friendly games as you like without the chance for your season to go down the pan.
Great ! Except now I don't play any friendly games because there's no point ! My old GW pretty much avoided the DYM thing and people had the sense not to join them. There was only one guy running them and they were rank/reputation restricted so I was never allowed to join. "DYM rank 50+!!" etc. We did manage to get a few small prize money competitions running regular, there wasn't much cash to be made but it gave you something to play for.
The second reason I'd play friendly games was to try and win team of the week or push on up the rankings. Again there's no longer any point to this either as the prize is RP 100k and the rankings are soon going to be meaningless again once we split into Bronze, Silver etc. So I can now play as many friendly games as I like, except I don't want to play any now.
The main complaint is predictably people who are unhappy with the amount and length of the injuries being sustained. People are used to being able to have squads of 16 players with slender cover but this isn't enough any more. A football management game which doesn't require squad management isn't really much of a management game is it ?
Generally i'd say you are looking at having 2-4 players out at all times which is probably about right. Obviously some people are going to get unlucky but perhaps they have injury prone players or no physio skills to help. I'd say you should be looking at least 1 backup player for each position. So if you play 4-4-2 you would want 4 strikers, 4 DCs, 4 wingers etc. In the old days I would have just gone for 1 backup striker, 1 backup DC etc.
I do however think there are a couple of perception issues which are seeming to exaggerate the problem a little. The first is the ME shows every single knock as a highlight where as on FM10 it barely shows any on key highlights so you don't even notice some of them. I would say there does seem to be far too many knocks but when the ME is showing you 5+ every game then they really stick in your mind.
The second is a bit of a flaw with how the injury system works because the problem it solved has actually created a new problem. You are only getting players injured in official games, so who are you playing in official games ? You are playing your strongest 11 players, therefore the only players you are ever going to see injured are members best 11.
If you go look at clubs in real life i'd guess you would see that every single one actually has quite a lot of players injured, but how many of them are reserve team players and how many are youth players who don't figure in the first team ?
We are told that the injury rate in FML is lower than real life and i'm sure it is. But on FML the only players getting injured are first team players so i'd assume that the percentage of first choice players injured in FML is actually much higher than real life.
My other annoyance is the number of players getting injured during matches, whether they stick or not. Many don't stick for me which is nice but it's more common to see a player go off injured than it is to get through a game without someone getting injured. Between both teams you are looking at 2-3 players, or often more, getting slightly injured every single game with many more knocks on top of that. This is totally unrealistic, it doesn't happen on FM10 and it doesn't happen in real life. I never use all of my subs any more because you can guarantee that someone is going to get injured at some point.
I'd like to see match based injuries reduced by around 50% but training injuries increased by the same value to compensate. Now i'm sure this would lead to much rage when people logged on to find out that their star striker has picked up a 25 match injury falling over a cone in training. But at least this way, ALL of your squad is going to be susceptible to injury rather than just your best 11. Every match I play at the moment I know there's a good chance that one of my best players, and I don't have many "best players"!! is running the risk of getting himself crippled. I'd rather log on instead and find out that my backup youth striker has put his back out stretching for the TV remote.
I do actually generally like the new injury system including the amount of injuries but I do have some rage. When a player comes back from an injury they tend to be on 85-90% condition depending on how long they have been out for. In case you have missed this, condition no longer increases with time either ! So this means you have to play games to get condition up too. With the way that it drops in game now it would be silly to risk a key player on 90% because he's going to become useless fairly quickly.
If a player comes back on 85% fitness, the first game will tend to take him to about 92% fitness, then each game after that seems to only increase fitness by 1-2% ! So you need to play a ridiculous amount of games to get them ready. CPU clubs will do - I actually spend most of my time logged on banging out games in challenges trying to make sure everyone is back up to fitness.
With Bruce Lee's brother and Johnny Wong
I've posted about injuries before but I thought I may as well do a more considered post this time.
First off the old injury system was stupid on all levels. It used to drive me insane how I would get players injured in some random QP which didn't even have any prize money thus leaving me short in the league. Then I would end up dodging opponents waiting for my player to come back.
Of course I usually had some kind of backup and I really wanted to give some of these guys a shot, but why would I ? I could wait a day and have a HHN striker scoring a hatrick or I would give some chump i'd taken a punt on a chance. There's not even a decision to make here, you log off and wait. I wanted to have to play my fringe players but it simply wasn't worth the risk especially when no one else was doing this either.
So finally injuries are changed to a match based system so you can no longer dodge games and crucially you can play as many friendly games as you like without the chance for your season to go down the pan.
Great ! Except now I don't play any friendly games because there's no point ! My old GW pretty much avoided the DYM thing and people had the sense not to join them. There was only one guy running them and they were rank/reputation restricted so I was never allowed to join. "DYM rank 50+!!" etc. We did manage to get a few small prize money competitions running regular, there wasn't much cash to be made but it gave you something to play for.
The second reason I'd play friendly games was to try and win team of the week or push on up the rankings. Again there's no longer any point to this either as the prize is RP 100k and the rankings are soon going to be meaningless again once we split into Bronze, Silver etc. So I can now play as many friendly games as I like, except I don't want to play any now.
The main complaint is predictably people who are unhappy with the amount and length of the injuries being sustained. People are used to being able to have squads of 16 players with slender cover but this isn't enough any more. A football management game which doesn't require squad management isn't really much of a management game is it ?
Generally i'd say you are looking at having 2-4 players out at all times which is probably about right. Obviously some people are going to get unlucky but perhaps they have injury prone players or no physio skills to help. I'd say you should be looking at least 1 backup player for each position. So if you play 4-4-2 you would want 4 strikers, 4 DCs, 4 wingers etc. In the old days I would have just gone for 1 backup striker, 1 backup DC etc.
I do however think there are a couple of perception issues which are seeming to exaggerate the problem a little. The first is the ME shows every single knock as a highlight where as on FM10 it barely shows any on key highlights so you don't even notice some of them. I would say there does seem to be far too many knocks but when the ME is showing you 5+ every game then they really stick in your mind.
The second is a bit of a flaw with how the injury system works because the problem it solved has actually created a new problem. You are only getting players injured in official games, so who are you playing in official games ? You are playing your strongest 11 players, therefore the only players you are ever going to see injured are members best 11.
If you go look at clubs in real life i'd guess you would see that every single one actually has quite a lot of players injured, but how many of them are reserve team players and how many are youth players who don't figure in the first team ?
We are told that the injury rate in FML is lower than real life and i'm sure it is. But on FML the only players getting injured are first team players so i'd assume that the percentage of first choice players injured in FML is actually much higher than real life.
My other annoyance is the number of players getting injured during matches, whether they stick or not. Many don't stick for me which is nice but it's more common to see a player go off injured than it is to get through a game without someone getting injured. Between both teams you are looking at 2-3 players, or often more, getting slightly injured every single game with many more knocks on top of that. This is totally unrealistic, it doesn't happen on FM10 and it doesn't happen in real life. I never use all of my subs any more because you can guarantee that someone is going to get injured at some point.
I'd like to see match based injuries reduced by around 50% but training injuries increased by the same value to compensate. Now i'm sure this would lead to much rage when people logged on to find out that their star striker has picked up a 25 match injury falling over a cone in training. But at least this way, ALL of your squad is going to be susceptible to injury rather than just your best 11. Every match I play at the moment I know there's a good chance that one of my best players, and I don't have many "best players"!! is running the risk of getting himself crippled. I'd rather log on instead and find out that my backup youth striker has put his back out stretching for the TV remote.
I do actually generally like the new injury system including the amount of injuries but I do have some rage. When a player comes back from an injury they tend to be on 85-90% condition depending on how long they have been out for. In case you have missed this, condition no longer increases with time either ! So this means you have to play games to get condition up too. With the way that it drops in game now it would be silly to risk a key player on 90% because he's going to become useless fairly quickly.
If a player comes back on 85% fitness, the first game will tend to take him to about 92% fitness, then each game after that seems to only increase fitness by 1-2% ! So you need to play a ridiculous amount of games to get them ready. CPU clubs will do - I actually spend most of my time logged on banging out games in challenges trying to make sure everyone is back up to fitness.
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