Subject: I gotta rant....

I guess I am starting this for a couple of reasons, one because I feel like I have a few things to get off my chest but secondly because I saw the thread about wanting to get to 1000 users which I kinda think is a joke due to the fact that since I started playing about 4 years ago, the # of active users has dropped almost in half. I feel that the reason people have stopped playing is due to some inherent major flaws in the game, that I feel could be fixed very easily and would add much more enjoyment to the game but for whatever reason is simply ignored or disagreed with.

Let me start out by saying that when I first started playing, I loved this game. I appreciated the fact that I would have to make a long steady climb to reach the top but I relished the challenge. But having reached the top (sorta, I made it to the Majors last season but was relegated immediately) I feel that I spend more time being upset with what in my mind are huge glaring flaws than I do with the things I still like about the game. It's making me think about leaving Sokker as well, like so many other Americans have lately.

So without further delay, here are some of my huge issues with Sokker in no particular order.

1. Juniors and junior school. Why oh why on earth did we have to fix something that wasn't broken. This new system where guys are constantly going up and down is just stupid and what's worse is that it is such a waste of time. I mean, how frustrating is it when you have a guy about to come out formidable after 23 weeks in your school only to have him drop down 3 levels to solid right as he comes out? Is this the Sokker game designers favorite joke to play on it's members? I do very much like knowing the age of my kids right from the get go and that should absolutely stay, but otherwise, can we please just go back to the previous system where by I could immediately cut all poor and below kids that entered as well as cut anyone who had not popped after 5-6 weeks of being in my school because their talent sucked. End the surprises and the guessing games PLEASE!!

2. Fans. The fair-weatherness factor of these alledged "fans" is off the freaking charts crazy dumb. I have been a Texas Rangers fan for my entire life and up until this season, they really had experienced little to no success. But if I applied the Sokker rules of fan allegiance to the Rangers, the club would have folded decades ago with -20 million fans as the root cause. Maybe Sokker and I just have very different opinions as to the definition of the word "fan". If I am a fan, I am a fan for life, thick and thin, good times and bad, that's it. I've lost well over 200 fans in the past 20 weeks of this game, and that's just dumb. Even when I'm not happy with teams I root for, I am still and pretty much always will be a fan. I understand that not everyone feels that way but come on, the rate at which fans are leaving is just completely stupid. Cut that percentage of fans that leave our clubs by about 95% please and then I'd call that much more accurate to what I would define as to how a real life fan would act.

3. Tactics. I'm probably going to get many of you to disagree with me here but I think that tactics play WAAAAAAYYYYYYY too large a role into the outcome of games. IMO, if two teams are marking almost the same as each other, then the team with the better tactics should win about 60-65% to 40-35% of the time. But when one team outmarks the other by 7-10 points across the board then I don't care what the dumb tactics are, the better team should win that game 90-95% of the time, just like they would in real life. I'm not saying that upsets should never happen or that form shouldn't play a role as well, but right now, it's way out of proportion to reality. Scale that back down a bunch Sokker. Which leads me into the next huge issue ......

4. The dreaded 8-1-1 formation. This issue alone, might be the single worst thing that has ever happened to Sokker. And of course if Sokker mimicked real life, this formation would cause no problems at all, because it's never actually played in real life and if some team were to play it, they would most assuredly draw or lose every game that they played because they would NEVER score. But not in Sokker!!! I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a ball crossed in from a winger heading to the lone striker with no less than 4 defenders in the box and by some very very regular miracle, this cross finds this one striker and that striker then proceeds to not only win the ball away from my 4 Brilliant or better defenders but then also has the skill to beat my Unearthly Keeper. This seems to happen about 15 or so times a season to me and it's such BS that man to date has not been able to come up with the technology to measure exactly how much it is. Now, if my defenders were Poor and my keeper to, then I'm okay with this but of course that is not the case. This type of goal should happen literally once every 500 crosses into the box. The designers of the game need to work something into their equations that basically says that if you only have one striker committed to the box and there are 4 defenders also in the box then chances of a goal happening drop almost to absolute zero, as it would be in real life. I mean, how often do you ever see in real life this type of goal happening? Never is right. You would have 3 defenders marking one guy and then another guy just hanging around, that guy is never going to score.

If however, you commit more guys in the box, like they do in real life, then each defender has to mark guys one to one, then the odds of scoring go way up, which will fix the other part of the 8-1-1 formation by forcing guys not to play 8 defenders (I know it's more like 5 defenders and 3 mids who hang back a lot, but you get my point) back all the time, allowing almost zero goals.

This is the exact opposite of the "beautiful game" and needs to be addressed.

5. Training. I'm pretty sure in real life that every single guy on the team can train something very specific if they choose to in a given week, so why can't we in Sokker. It's dumb that's why. If you want to slow how fast people train to compensate then fine but I should be able to train each guy in whatever I want from week to week.


I'm sure there are plenty more issues that need to be fixed but these are just the most glaring ones off the top of my head. Feel free to add on, or flame away on me if you'd like.

+ 1000

one comment I would add is that, maybe a Team Chemisty factor should be implemented into the game. Where if you have a core group of players that have been playing together for X amount of games, or for 4+ seasons together, then that would add some type of increase to their overall marks, and then that is where you would see a team that marks 51 draw/beat a team that marks 62.

ripping on tactics being important pshh might as well go play hattrick

put some effort into figuring out what you are doing wrong

Ranting is my thing so I just couldn't resist responding :-)

1. I'm surprised that you still do not understand this new junior school system. When you see your junior level drop from, say, excellent to solid, it is not that he's gotten worse, Every junior has his true level that is steadily increasing and what is fluctuating up and down is the information that you get. Sometime the true level of the junior is overestimated, at other times it is underestimated. So if the information you get about this junior is that he dropped from 10 to 8, he was probably around 9 all the time, but one week his skill was overestimated (hence you saw 10, when it was really 9), and the following week it was underestimated (it showed you 8, when it still really was 9). You learn the true level when you pull him.

I personally think this uncertainty makes it closer to reality and it is a bit more difficult to learn the true skill level. Maybe a matter of personal preference, but I like it.

2. Fans. I think you are right, the system has some issues. However, I also believe that the worst is over. It was the problem of transition form the old system to the new. In the old system the numbers of fans were ever increasing. If you did well, the numbers were growing fast, if you did poorly the numbers were growing slow or not at all. Most teams go through good and bad periods but in the old system the total number of fans depended mostly on how long you played the game since you just kept adding them. Some teams that used to be good but declined in quality and performance still had very large fan numbers. I believe that the idea of the new system is to make the number of fans proportional to the current quality of the team and if the team goes through a bad period, the number of fans decreases. Makes sense to me, but it also created a big problem in the transition from old to new system. Some old teams were so far ahead of themselves in terms of the fan numbers compared to their current performance that the program had to somehow decrease the number of fans to a reasonable level. The result was that some old teams had the fans dropping out like flies even if they didn't do very bad in their leagues. This has been going on long enough that I believe we've reached the new equilibrium and the fan numbers are appropriate to current team performance.

3. The role of tactics. That is by far the BEEEEEEEST part of the game. You can make up for the deficiencies in your team by using clever techniques. Otherwise you could just buy good trainees, set their training and come back 3 months later to see how great your team has become.

4. 8-1-1 formation. I have never seen that so I have no comments.

5. Training. Here I agree. It would be very nice to be able to have individualized training for at least some players. Maybe on top of general and formation training we could add an individual training fro each player.

I agree that the game could be improved but I totally disagree with some of your criticism. On the other hand I have some ideas of my own. Probably the biggest improvement would be setting conditional tactics depending on the current score in the game. Let's say I have a game that I must win. I set up two tactics: one offensive, one very defensive. I start with the offensive tactics but when I score I switch to the defensive tactics and try to protect the result. Sort of like current conditional orders except that they would apply to the entire team and not individual players. The biggest drawback of this game is that you do not have any means to react to the progress of the match as it is being played. You can set conditional orders for individual players anticipating certain developments but adding conditional orders for the entire team, like changing tactics mid-game, would be awesome.

Just my $0.02


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I disagree with number 3. Tactics SHOULD always play a major role in the match like in real life, regardless of the level of the skills of the players.

Take a look at Greece when they won the Eurocup in 2004.

Inferior players with a superior tactic = Champions.

Probably the biggest improvement would be setting conditional tactics depending on the current score in the game. Let's say I have a game that I must win. I set up two tactics: one offensive, one very defensive. I start with the offensive tactics but when I score I switch to the defensive tactics and try to protect the result. Sort of like current conditional orders except that they would apply to the entire team and not individual players. The biggest drawback of this game is that you do not have any means to react to the progress of the match as it is being played. You can set conditional orders anticipating certain developments but adding conditional orders for the entire team, like changing tactics mid-game, would be awesome.

This was pointed out to the devs but they said it was impossible to do with the currect match engine. Although there is a game where you can do that with a good match viewer called Ultimatemanager.eu , you can change your tactics in mid game depending on the situation like you said, also some of the complaints like individual training and such are fixed there.

The game is new, so its a bit raw in some aspects, but its fun, sokker is still better in my opinion, but its a fun game to play for those who want to see something new.
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point 4 is good, I made a post about this is the bugs/ideas thread last night that was about this.

Defenders should react more naturally to the ball in all situations, but it's really evident on crossed balls and through balls where they either stand around while the only striker reacts or they run in sand while the striker looks like he's on speed.

But if they nerf through balls and winger tactics they need to also give offenses other ways to score. They could do this by increasing short passing effectiveness, adding more one-time shots, and making attackers run more intelligently with the ball (running to space rather than blindly forward, turning their backs on defenders to protect the ball etc).

It would require a major engine overhaul, but its something I hope they are working on.

Pity

I knew I would get a lot of people disagreeing on the tactics point. Again, I am not saying they should not play a role, I just don't think that they should play as big a role as they seem to do in this game as often as they do.

I guess my point is that I kinda feel like a 10 point spread in markings between two teams is practically like a jump in leagues in Sokker, like a first placed team in an A league might have a 10 point marking spread on a first placed team in B. So then if I transfer that to the real world and use La Liga as an example, I'm now having Barcelona going up against current last placed team Real Zaragoza.

And in my opinion, even if Barcelona ran the exact same 4-4-2 every single time they played that game, that no matter what Real Zaragoza did tactically that Barca is going to win that game 75-80% of the time, drawing another 10-15% and losing very very rarely.

Again, I am not saying that upsets can't ever happen, but Greece in 2004 was just that, a fluke that happened over 6 years ago. It's happening with much more frequency in Sokker and I think it's nowhere near true to real life is all.

The Fan mood is nowhere near fixed. Here is an example.... I am 4th in my league, so I'm in the top of the table....I win my league match this week to stay in 4th place, get all 3 points, yet I still have 9 supporters leave the club. That makes no sense.

I like being able to set tactics, I think they should play a part in this game. I don't think Jefe was saying that they should be aboloshed altogether, I just think he is just frustrated with how the tactics sometimes play out, i.e. his point on the 8-1-1 formation with defenders not being able to stop one guy 4-1, I can't remember if he mentioned it, but he does have quality defenders (Brilliant), and I doubt he is going up again Strikers with Unearthly Tech and Striking all the time, but I could be wrong. I don't know maybe a few of the Major league guys who kicked his ass all over the place could shed some light on their player talents. :-)

other than that, I think his other gripes are valid.

The Junior program is a crapshoot/lottery, and I'm not really sure why he's complaining, because his school is the goose that keeps laying the golden eggs. :-) Mine on the other hand is horrible and terribly frustrating.

I talked about fans.

Training is out and out stupid. Why are we limited to only training x amount of players per week? This is so unrealistic compared to real life.

To your point, you can't just buy good trainees, set their training and forget about it, because the players talent is hidden and unless you have a friendly relationship with a guy on the game who is going to give you information about the guy you are buying, you probably don't know what you are buying when you buy, so you are going to at least have to invest 3-11 weeks of monitoriing the player after you buy him, just to see how fast he will bump depending on what his skill level is currently at.

Zaragoza is stronger than most EPL teams, especially Chelsea.

Kidding aside, that's a good point about Zaragoza/Barca.

Also with Greece, that was a fluke, it happenend 1 time six years ago. It can happen, but it shouldn't happen as often as it happens in Sokker.
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They have a teamwork factor if you didn't know... Same concept.

Whenever you get a new player via transfer or YS, his Teamwork starts at 0.

The Fan mood is nowhere near fixed. Here is an example.... I am 4th in my league, so I'm in the top of the table....I win my league match this week to stay in 4th place, get all 3 points, yet I still have 9 supporters leave the club. That makes no sense.

Fan Mood is weighted, and since your last game only makes up about a tenth of that, we have no where near enough information to say if it makes any sense.

As for the junior school, I've been able to sell a much larger percentage of youths with the new system. I've 100% in favor, but then again if I had made more cash under the old system I would be in favor of that I guess.

The reason it was changed, rumor goes.

Greg didn't like that the top sales in the game came from new youth pulls.

ultimate manager raw example => opposite of income is outcome

Well I suppose I'll add my 2 cents to a few points.

The first place I will give a little talking is....yeah you know exactly what I'm going to talk about

3. Tactics. I'm probably going to get many of you to disagree with me here but I think that tactics play WAAAAAAYYYYYYY too large a role into the outcome of games. IMO, if two teams are marking almost the same as each other, then the team with the better tactics should win about 60-65% to 40-35% of the time. But when one team outmarks the other by 7-10 points across the board then I don't care what the dumb tactics are, the better team should win that game 90-95% of the time, just like they would in real life. I'm not saying that upsets should never happen or that form shouldn't play a role as well, but right now, it's way out of proportion to reality. Scale that back down a bunch Sokker. Which leads me into the next huge issue ......

Tactics are the only reason I play this game while my hattrick team sits with a big bank account in the bottom league.

I know what you are saying about the better team should win more and yada yada but tactics are not the problem, the problem is the game doesn't allow any adaption once the game starts.

For example, let's say I play 4 defenders in tight and my opponent plays 1 striker and 1 winger far outside. In reality, I'd be like "okay sure this is easy, we'll just have 1 defender move out to guard the winger. In sokker, this doesn't work. Instead the winger will run free the whole game because he guessed (or scouted) that you play a tight middle defense. As much of a problem as it presents, I don't have too many issues with this mainly because I love scouting and playing the guessing game. I think that brings all the fun into it when you have to try and play to counter your opponent. If you didn't have to do that, then every game you would just let your players go out in the same general formation then make adaptations 1 minute in and be fine and the game would be boring (unless of course both of you could keep changing tactics as the game is played but everyone isn't always going to be online during matches so that would just be dumb).

Where I do have an issue with players not being smart is, as you were saying, in the 8-1-1 formation. There is no way in hell that 1 striker should ever have a chance when I have 4 defenders and a goalkeeper in the box. When all 4 of my defenders are in the box and a cross is played, instead of making sure they cover a man or even get to where the ball is going, they just chill in their designated spots. I think when defenders are running back or at LEAST are in the box, they should have some sort of instinct built into the game to where they will mark up on the attackers in the box. Then you can have some sort of calculation to see who will win the header and etc but if there is only 1 striker, maybe 2 guys mark up on him and the other 2 go to their positions.

Since this would take away a little bit of offense (but in reality it would just force people to stop turtling) I think they should also do a little bit more with forwards. Like you were saying or someone was saying, have them run to open space or have give and go's or maybe even add moves the player can try to do to juke a defender instead of just maybe breaking a tackle and then being slowed down.

I don't really care to touch on many other of the issues but I would like to add a little something for training. I think training should be left alone. Yes it makes sense to be able to train each player however you want, but that would completely shatter the economy of this game. something like goalkeeping which only trains 2 people a week suddenly would allow everyone to train goalkeeping and teams would become increasingly amazing very quickly since you could just buy a bunch of youngsters and train them all in whatever you wanted to train them in. Also, you'd never really need to buy and sell them that much anymore since you could just change what u train that individual solely in.

I think it's best to keep the training system the way it is simply to keep young players flowing around the market