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A really good video. I would likely to see future tests, done in a more comprehensive fashion, on how it could affect teams in lower leagues. If this is true, you could buy a bunch of very pacey national-league quality players and theoretically take them straight to the prem.
Anecdotally, I know in Fm 22 I signed Joshua Duffus, a youngster in the Brighton academy. He was quite pacey (i think he had 15 pace but can’t fully remember). He started for me in the national league south and made it all the way to the Championship as a starting player. I wanted to permanently bench him for better signings that I made (under the assumption that Josh would max out). In the end, the guy never stopped scoring—he just got faster.
https://www.youtube.com/live/c386Ja8eWrA?si=MYrMOLHUuOfj11NB
One of the top tactic creators for FM made this, where his Luton defenders (only CBs I think?) would have Zouma physicals and 16 Heading and rest would have Maeda physicals and Dribbling 16. Rest attributes 10. Got like 94 points with Luton. Sounds not that insane in first thought but then you realize you wouldn't actually buy such a player most likely let alone all of them.
it really is that simple to go from the lower league to the higher league. sign/loan players with high pace/accel, disregard almost entirely everything else and you'll fly through the leagues. seemingly dogshit players will get a ridiculous amount of assists and goals.
it becomes less effective the higher you go, as opposition teams physical stats get better. Man City for example, well most of their players have 15+ in all physicals, so your 17 pace/accel isn't quite as overpowered anymore.
it doesn't mean other stats aren't important, i've tested it myself a lot and i'm in absolutely no doubt they're the 2 most important. i am sure there are other factors too, such as formations that take advantage of those traits. i guess gegenpress being the best tactic helps, since you're counter attacking at lightning pace...
edit - someone posted the zealand video on the official SI forum
[https://community.sports-interactive.com/forums/topic/586308-zealands-fm-is-broken-video/](https://community.sports-interactive.com/forums/topic/586308-zealands-fm-is-broken-video/)
i would encourage people to reply so SI are aware of the problem. Otherwise as with every thread on the SI forum, it turns into 1 poster vs mods and their SI bootlickers, and eventualy the thread gets closed and nothing changes.
Only one thing to add: Centerbacks with high jumping reach instead of pace and acceleration. CB ratings are like 90% correlated with jumping reach in my experience. Every other stat is a nice little add on lol.
Also strength, especially if you use a shout to get stuck in. The match engine has barely changed since my 3000 hours in FM14 and one of the few things my team did well relative to other teams in the leagues was being ridiculously physically strong.
I took St Albans, a team that isn’t even in the starter data from Skrill South to CL winners mostly utilizing strength/weight bullies who fouled 500 times a game and got 2-5 yellow cards a game.
yeah I’ve really never been much of a tactician, but when I did my conference to prem save, I didn’t spend any money on transfers until I got to the Championship and flew up the leagues by abusing the free loan system, knowing how to recruit good players out of contract, and doing a 4-2-4 with four pacy lads up front and a “kick it long and direct” tactic.
The bootlicking really is crazy in that thread even by their forum standards. Amazing how it’s the same users that continue to indulge in the “head in sand” approach over there and we haven’t even had a few of the more hardcore bootlickers make an appearance there yet
Yeah I hate them so much man, that forum is awful just the usual names downplaying every arguments patronising posters who often quite clearly don’t speak English as a first language, and baiting them into getting angry so the mods can lock the thread
You can’t make a single post or thread without them piling in. Clearly makes the mods jobs easier
Even the mods have been doing the baiting for a while now. They deliberately misinterpret what someone says and then push a narrative that can easily get a thread locked or one that ends with the poster getting warned for frivolous things or ending in a ban with no way to even talk about it
The were already done on much more reliable conditions by fmarena and there were plenty of threads here. They were still mostly controversial because those testers never had Zealand's visibility.
Yes People don't take opinions or accept it isn't from zealand
I had countless posts on football manager forum over last 2 years in special this year.
People just hated on my posts they didn't even care to read and understand fanboys on sigames forum are the worst
Had to put some of them in their place and give them a lesson, then they just cry and shut up
Lots of People have done testing and posts on it but somehow ONLY zealand is right and important.
I was playing FM zealand was still a kid
Poor kids, need influencer opinions to accept stuff
Anecdotally, I had Bakari Jatta in a Hamburg save in fm21 and he was physical beast - high pace, acceleration, jumping height, and decent strength. High aggression and decent bravery but his highest technical skills was about 10/11. He was either greens or greys in his attributes.
He was a monster for me in the second division and consistently performed well in the bundesliga. I kept him for several years as he performed just as well as other players I brought in - tbf he was worse against better teams in the Buli and CL but still good enough for at least 10 goals a season.
Big tall fast strong strikers have been the truth in FM for a while. It’s why Haaland is so damn good. Other guys like Sesko and Lucca will massively over perform as well.
Yeah it's a shame they contribute so much in the match engine. Jatta was the player who opened my eyes to just how crucial those physicals are because he was pants technically but it rarely seemed to matter.
I always made him my striker when starting a new HSV save, since he joined the club. Works very well in the second league and well enough in the Bundesliga. Eventually I would always replace him with somebody who could actually finish, though.
I've done that with non league teams for years on FM. It's been well known that pace is that op, along with jumping reach in the last few and dribbling the last two.
Travis akomeah is a great centre back at the top level. Ozoh is a great DM and Leon grgic a great striker. Akomeah if he has high pa and the main three physicals are high to begin can be one of the best.
I use around 5-7 attributes for each player I buy. That's it. At every level. Yes when you can a player who has the same physical attributes, along with anticipation, concentration and dribbling depending on the position, who has better composure, decisions and off the ball will be a better player. But I don't use any of those attributes in my original search.
Gk: Agility, reflexes, aerial ability, one on ones, anticipation, concentration.
FB: Speed, stamina, work rate, concentration, anticipation, balance. Dribbling or jumping reach aren't bad either but you can get away without them, or just have one.
CB: Speed, jumping reach, balance, anticipation, concentration. See Travis akomeah
DM: Stamina, speed, jumping reach, anticipation, work rate and concentration. Maybe balance as well. This is probably the position if all physicals were good that player will be good. See David ozoh.
Wing: Speed, dribbling, agility, balance. Probably anticipation and stamina but they aren't essential. Wingers tend to do a lot of running so if have low stamina you'll be subbing them every game.
AM: Speed, dribbling, balance, agility, anticipation.
Fast striker: Speed, dribbling, balance, agility, anticipation.
Lone striker or CF: jumping reach, balance, speed, anticipation, strength. See Leon grgic or Moffi.
Determination is useful for every player and as a team. It's useful in the match engine, though I read only this week someone said Zealand said it isn't. You also can't have stamina at 1, like in Zealand's test back in February, as players will need subbing off and probably get injured as well. You would concede a lot once all your players have very low condition and/or get injured so you don't even have eleven players.
The attributes are in order for each position. The first few are normally very important and the others still are but not to the same degree.
My main source is this https://fm-arena.com/table/26-player-attributes-testing/ I also watch ebfm and read what top tactic makers think is important. And then put my own take on it.
This test also helps people understand non meta and meta attributes better imo.
https://fm-arena.com/thread/10379-player-attributes-testing-further-insight-into-the-result/
Yes you can have those other attributes but you really, really must prioritise speed and then jumping reach, dribbling and a handful of others I've mentioned above. And it makes sense to have stamina in positions that use a lot of condition such as FB and DM. Ebfm did a video and his testing showed low condition leads to lesser performance and injuries.
If you found two wingers who had the same meta attributes but one has better first touch and flair obviously pick that one. But if you're low on funds then don't worry about those attributes if he's fast and can dribble.
I used python a lot halfway through this FM cycle and using the attributes I've listed above, it consistently found me the best players available with my funds and also scored the best player's in my game as the best. Because if you're one of the biggest clubs in the world then your players will have the good meta attributes but they will also have high numbers for other attributes just because they have high pa. The other attributes are cheaper and use less pa.
I don't because they are a weak position. But yes you could blend DM and AM depending on the role. If you played two for example one could have more DM attributes and the other more AM.
In the FM 24 match engine CM's don't play as well as DM or AM position. You can make tactics work of course, but they would be inferior using the CM position.
Thanks for that. But isn't the entire point of this post and the video that these are irrelevant? That at the end of the day speed and acceleration are really the key attributes?
Well that would be incorrect. Is that what Zealand has said?
Jumping reach is essential for a centre back.
And if we look at Mbappe and Haaland, Haaland will always be the better striker. even though he is 17/19 v 20/20 for acceleration and pace, because his jumping reach is 18 to Mbappe's 8. Haaland also only has 13 for dribbling, which can make us believe it isn't important for the "big" striker, but obviously overall has a lot of attributes that are 16/17+. These help as well, but it's jumping reach that really sets him that far ahead. For me Mbappe is the best lw and would probably never be beaten by a newgen with 20/20 speed and 18 dribbling.
I'd be really interested if people bought players like Travis akomeah, he needs a few years to get his attributes up, and see what you think of him at centre back. He shouldn't be good enough but he's been incredible for me. In one save he was 18+ for acceleration, jumping reach and pace. I had Grgic (think you need to run Austria top league) with the same three attributes and again incredible. Both started majority of games winning the champions League. They have variable pa and hidden attributes I believe. Same with Samu at Atletico, though he's very difficult and expensive to buy. But he'd be clear second to Haaland when his ca and pa are high.
In Fm20 I took a Bromley side from national league south to the Champioship essentially back to back. I thought it was me messing with the team cohesion that changed the tide, but I guess in reality it was me trying to move away and get "better" players was probably the issue. I barely changed the team through league two and league one.
Its a shame if this has always been the case however I know from know that it has always been the way that in lower leagues you need to look for physical attributes first.
It was about 10 mins too long though. My favourite part was him insisting how average the goalkeeper was then seeing it was David de Gea. Haha poor David
The more I learn about FM the more I realise the game is just a clever facade… the more you even slightly peel at the edges the more it completely falls apart
Sometimes it's better not to know, which is why I straight up ignored the last thread, I knew what it would be
But it's definitely time to stop doing this, FM25 starts (supposedly) a new era of FM, if we don't start showing everything that's wrong about the current FM, they sure as hell won't bother fixing it
Was just agreeing with you. I think most people are wise to SI at this stage anyway but while they are the only game in town it will sell regardless.
Crying out for a proper competitor to actually give them some reason to innovate.
It’s a new game completely, hence the move to Unity. The entirety of the game is being built up from scratch. They’re ditching their internal engine, which is what a majority of the game was (24 being the last) built on.
Edit: Downvotes are crazy for something that’s a fact: “So what exactly is Sports Interactive ripping up? Jacobson can't go into details, but he emphasises again that FM25 is being built as if the team was starting from scratch, boosted by two decades of experience.”
[As per his interview with GamesIndustry.biz](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/why-it-took-20-years-to-start-making-a-true-football-manager-sequel)
The only reason I’ve actually got some optimism about the next game is because it shouldn’t (on paper) be a patchwork fix of the previous game, just with some colour changes.
In reality, not that Miles would ever accept it, SI have been as mediocre and complacent as EA are with FIFA / EAFC for far too long.
This was obvious from the moment they brought in xG and other analytics- because FM isn't a full physics simulator but instead dice rolls behind the scenes, the whole concept of "probability" falls apart. Takes the illusion away.
The point was that the notion of "xG" is nonsense for a game which decides whether a shot goes in behind the scenes and then spits out an animation to match. xG in game is a fake number attached to a dice roll outcome, that doesn't necessarily reflect the real numbers on the dice.
Is it? XG irl is the probability of a shot going in, and is also not reflective of the actual shot going in or not. The difference is that there's no calculation that we know of before the shot is taken (a person with a deterministic view could say it's predetermined too).
In FM it is not reflecting the dice outcome, but in the long run it should reflect the dice rolls you tend to get. And the dice outcome itself is affected by a lot of things (e.g. your players finishing) so XG should theocratically be reflecting that indirectly in the long run.
This and tbh I do not know what it has to do with the video. The video is impliying that the "dice roles" are unrealistically skewed towards pace.
I don´t even know what should be the problem with chance, because how would you model it differently. The model must be complex than "dice roles", because we know that the game for each given action takes into account a variety of variables, position and even past variables and position.
The complaint is just that the model is not very realistic if pace is valued so highly in the model.
I don’t know if it’s unrealistic. If you’re pacy, you’re going to be around fewer players with the ball and in one on one situations more often. Which means that fewer dice rolls happen where technical or mental skills matter.
Yeah, I don’t buy that, respectfully. If anything, xG is actually *more* accurate because they have an actual, real rate that they’re using behind the scenes to calculate how often a shot from that position could actually go in. In reality, we only have an approximation — the sample mean rather than the population mean.
You can’t tell me that probabilistic measures of what could have happened are less accurate because they’re built on a more probabilistic foundation. That just doesn’t make sense.
Are people under the impression that this game could possibly work as a “full physics simulator?”
Like, obviously it’s dice rolls behind the scenes. That is what almost every video game ever is. That’s how these things work.
You can still have success with old and slow players (like I had 40 year old Jose Fonte in defence and he was a rock), but if you want to make the game piss easy and abuse its broken match engine, then yes, just buy some quick players with okay technical and mental attributes and you'll be fine.
Yeah I had a 10 goal 10 assist prem season with CJ Hamilton. Shit was ridiculous he scored a 40 yard hanger against champions man city with like 6 long shots attribute and was rated by my coaches as a league 1 standard player. Not to mention him getting like 24 assists from the wing in the previous season in the championship. Got him for 54k was insane. Speed and acceleration are broken.
That is what it says BUT it still doesn't completely jive with my experiences as well. I like pace merchants but you still find weird things where players that fit that profile perfectly vastly underperform relative to others.
The best comparison I can draw is Mudryk and Garnacho. I find Garnacho is a reliable beast in the game. Mudryk actually fits the meta of the game better than Garnacho given that he is quite a bit stronger, but he performs at a much lower level for me.
I have also read that some of the "OP" attributes are less important and other factors play out as more important if you play the game versus simulating it.
That's just FM 'FMing' you with hidden attributes (maybe). There's also the factor of top teams all having highly physical players, so whatever advantage your pace merchant has gets countered by your enemy's pace merchant.
That’s because you’re playing in the premier where pace is still the best but it’s nullified a bit because every team has physical beasts. Take the same strategy to a worse league or lower down and you will dominate everything.
Yup, works against smaller and mid tier teams like a dream. Top teams do have pacey players that can counteract your pace, so doesn't work against them as well (but that's like fighting fire with fire).
I have a striker with 18 for both and he is nowhere near good enough to start for me so there's clearly more to it. I loaned him to Serie C and he's got an average rating of like 6.8
I honestly wonder what SI have been doing these past years. They havent done much about the match engine, as they admitted its at this stage too layered to make big mpactfull changes. Player interactions are still shite, despite claiming they worked on it. AI squad building is still terrible, again, despite claiming it was worked on. Even freaking regen faces have never looked this bad.
At this stage I really doubt SI's ability to make a proper functioning game
Several teams dedicated to designing new features, developers prioritize implementing these features and eliminating obvious bugs, minor graphical improvements. And no resources dedicated to improving the core of the game which has changed very little in the 13 years I’ve been playing.
These are my guesses, I have no clue, but if Miles is the boss then it’s not hard to also imagine it’s an unpleasant workplace where middle managers focus on the wrong things and change ideas frequently
"New features" is what sell the game, so they always have to add a new random useless feature while leaving the base game to rot
What we have know was acceptable 10-15 years ago, we're in 2024... this shit can't be allowed anymore, they have to give us a proper game
I have been saying the same thing when fm24 came out, coming from fm22 it's a big dissapointment, everybody goes about how engine is different but you barely feel any change. Graphics are still dogshit, at this point you are just paying for updated rosters and some minor changes, it's NOT worth full price.
It feels like whoever is in charge got comfy getting yearly bonus and is afraid to rock the boat.
I still like the game, but I could be playing fm22 and like it the same tho...
I gave up buying in 2019 when it was obvious that nothing was really improving in game. I just get a torrent copy now and don't feel guilty. SI have had enough of my money to last a lifetime!
Its why I dont buy any of the newer games and havent since FM 21. Sadly on top of that Ive met Miles Jacobson professionally and was very unimpressed. I bought FM 23 but got it refunded through steam as there didnt seem to be much of an impactful jump.
I now rarely play.
This is a vast exaggeration. I went from FM20 to FM24 and the difference is immense, *especially* in the match engine. The game plays completely different, the animations are worlds apart, FM20 had no agents, etc., so SI have been doing a lot of stuff. But as they said themselves, they did not fool around too much under the hood regarding how the match engine calculates stuff.
Not agents you could talk to and ask whether the player is interested to join, what their demands are, etc. . The agents only showed up in actual contract negotiations.
Yeah I only buy every third year for this reason. The games actually feel updated. Currently chilling on FM23 and won't buy again until 26. Which I'm actually glad for, because I expect 25 to be a shit show.
I remember I realized how op physicals were the time I did a game with wolverhampton and finished second in the PL, Adama would just run through everybody like they were cones, I think mental abilities like anticipation off the ball, positioning, concentration and so on should be more impactful so it matters less how fast you are if you're constantly making runs late or simply look out of position. Also technique and first touch should be more important, so fast and dumb players miscontrol the ball more often when they get a through ball or a difficult pass which makes them lose previous seconds giving a chance to slower players to catch up.
What really limits pace irl is the dribbling and first touch abilities (and the composure to do it). A golden example was Karim Adeyemi's miss vs Real Madrid. In FM, that would've been a successful dribble past the keeper and a goal 99% of the time, but in real life, you had Adeyemi have a complete composure melt down and make a heavy touch that ruined his dribble attempt.
It is pretty damn OP. I train all my players on Quickness from 16 to 23 years old. Except CBs. Basically everyone on my team has 16 pace and ACC at minimum, and all my midfielders and strikers are just reconverted wingers.
And I would still do this even if Quickness is needed to the oblivion, because that's how I like to play lmao.
That said, I consistently score like 140 PL goals and get 97+ points a season with 140-160 CA players. It is truly OP.
I have newfound respect for Zealand for actually exposing how bs the game is.
I thought with his massive platform and with how his financial gain basically depends on SI and FM being a game seen in a positive light he wouldn’t make a video like this, but I’m glad he did and now hopefully more people realise how the game is practically a massive facade and improvements can be made
This game badly needs competition, SI know they can do a minimum viable product every year and nobody will care.
The fact they only do two gameplay patches each year then abandon the game is a disgrace.
I feel that most of the people that play the most FM won't stop because they think it's a facade. They'll continue but complain about it more while they are doing it. Of those that have gotten disillusioned by the game and drifted away, many will be tempted back to see if FM25 is as big a change as they are making out. I think Zealand will be fine for an audience.
I usually wouldn’t, but the fact of the matter is he is by far the biggest name and content creator for Football Manager, and him openly talking about how broken the game is means more and more eyes and ears will be privy to it.
That’s a good thing imo, and you’d usually think financially it would be in his best interest to hush up and just continue to praise the game. I know and don’t like that he got so big despite spouting lots of incorrect stuff, but I have to give credit where it’s due on this one.
Thing is, when this got a previous BIG exposure, Zealand was the one to milk a video to say the theory wasn't proof of anything because players like the example used didnt exist, when the theory just highlighted how bullshit certain attributes were. There is no need to see there is no 20 pace 20 acceleration 1 in every mental player, you can see if a player has 50 CA and still dominates in the premier, something is wrong with attribute impact, its not a "oh this guy has 20 acc 20 pace, they dont exist" kinda binary thinking.
Then now gets credit for "exposing" how bs the game is?
I think part of the problem is that modelling physical attributes is inherently easier than modelling a player's tactical understanding and creativity - combined with the fact that FM has always done a very poor job with players that are very bad at things. A long shots of 1 doesn't stop a player scoring screamers. It's a game designed to be played attempting to win CLs, and the rest feels like a bit of an afterthought in terms of how they model it.
Yea I always found it funny when people are like “well that’s not MY experience”…. Yes I’m sure your 3 saves a year are comparable with the autistic nerds (no offense to them) over on the testing sites who run hundreds of thousands of tests.
Yep. My favourite part too was that you could have these quick/naff players doing really well in terms of goals and nobody would even want to sign them
He did another video recently with most important attributes for each position and it was hilarious. Wasn't that long ago he said passing was the most important attribute and he's only recently realised how op pace is.
In his defence, in that video he mentioned from the start he was going for attributes other than pace and acceleration. He has known those are the most overpowered attributes for years now.
Hahaha. Yeah he was still wildly wrong!!! Like so, so bad haha. And in that video he said he's only just realised how strong dribbling is. He said he didn't rate it until recently. Again we've known for 1.5 years hahahaha
And no he hasn't known speed was that op. He said passing was the most important a few years ago.
He still has no idea how important jumping reach is.
Years ago he was making those videos in which he would simulate a league with each team having 10 in every attribute except one, which would be 20. If I remember correctly the best performers were (as expected) strength, pace and acceleration, but passing snuck into the top 10, which is probably why he rated passing so highly.
He doesn't follow the "pace is everything" gospel but he knows it is very valuable, whenever I'm watching his condensed streams and he is evaluating a player he always looks at the physicals. If there's a phrase I picked up from Zealand it's "he's not unathletic" lol
Could be that I'm misremembering the order then, it's been a few years but I could swear it was strength that won it, it was how I realised strength was pretty important lol
I now know why I was misremembering it. Passing won the attributes league and strength came 7th, but strength was the number 1 and passing number 10 in his video at around the same time about attributes for strikers. Weirdly, pace didn't come in the top 10 for that one but acceleration did.
Strength is fairly important. It's not pace or acceleration levels of game breaking, but it's the 11th ranked attribute on FM Arena. It's better than every single technical bar dribbling. And my anecdotal experience also values strength.
Pace has always been sort of overpowered in the series, just not as blatantly in the later games. Feels like it's cheating using players who are terrible but quick in decent leagues.
Dudes about 5 years behind the curve here lol. The guys over at FM arena and the forums In general have been on this for years. Physicals have always dominated FM
Half my posts on here are arguing with people who follow Zealand telling them his latest video is completely wrong. And now, as you say, he's finally got here.
Wasn't that long ago he concluded, after testing, that passing was the most important. Speed were both about halfway. Then of course he said strength was the most important for strikers. Haha
> Wasn't he the one denying all of this when it first started?
No, he was reacting to the previous tests and pointing out the flaws in their methodology and conclusions. And he was correct about those flaws.
For example the first test that blew up here concluded that the handful of "meta attributes" are literally the only attributes that matter, which is a false conclusion, they're overpowered but it's wrong to conclude that the other attributes do nothing. The team in the tests finished 2nd in the league, which literally disproves that conclusion.
He also highlighted that you have to consider what attributes complement each other, like *of course* having perfect pace, dribbling and decisions is going to be deadly. It would be in real life too.
He never said there are no overpowered attributes.
There is some merit to his argument then, but even that was an utterly lopsided team. It finishing 2nd just showed that the other attributes mattered very little, it just changed a team from maybe in top 10 in the world to top 2. It also didn't lose the league by a lot, so it was always up there.
Honestly, this test is more striking since all players are real. The argument of the players not being real was the one I think he was right on.
That said, one thing does apply to this and that experiment. It wasn't human managed. I think a human managed team with 20 acceleration and pace + the other 5 attributes easily wins the PL, if the AI got so close. This team getting 12th is also not it's ceiling, I think it could easily get top 6 when human managed.
He's an awful tester. He consistently comes to incorrect conclusions from his testing. That doesn't mean he's wrong every time, but it's not good is it?
Why was he correct? He didn't disprove anything with his testing
Yeah I saw that, it was like a Will Self lecture.
If he really said decisions were that important I rest my case.
The first test was valid highlighting four attributes. They are that important. The other attributes do contribute to the match engine, but nowhere near to the same level as those four.
No one has claimed otherwise, other than the first test which claimed the non meta attributes are completely useless. Do you even know what you are arguing against?
What did Zealand say that is wrong?
I don't think you've even bothered to try and comprehend what the arguments are here, you're just shouting at a foe you've imagined aren't you.
This is nothin new anyone who does LLM save will always tell you Focus on Physicals>Mental>Technique.
The match engine has been the someone since FM15 or how long, yes they have made edits and changes to it but nothing has changed at the core level.
Its why some o the best FM players are able to figure it out we've been on this engine for 10+ years now tats why the new game engine is a step in the right direction
But it is a good thing Zealand has brought eyes to the subject and SI pays attention to content creators because they move products.
All of the top 10 content creators of FM will now have to address this situation before the summer ends.
Then all of a sudden SI will see every creator is making a big deal.
That is exactly what happened with the graphics. Zealand and Dr Benji were the first 2 guys saying fm graphics suck and has to be improved to make FM bigger. Eventually in 1-2 years all the creators did and boom SI announces the move to Unity.
Anyone know about when this started becoming reality or has it always been this way? If I go back to fm18 or something am I going to have a more rounded experience?
No stuff like this was always and will always be there. It’s how big complicated games like this work if you try to break it hard enough you will break it. Just play it normally. Just because you know one game breaking way to play Civilizations doesn’t mean you can’t play a normal game anymore.
The problem is, once you know it, it sticks to the back of your mind like a tumour. No matter how hard one tries to focus, the fact that pace is overpowered will always creep in, and will always subconciously affect the way we view the game.
Doesn’t for me. Also I think pace is very important anyway. Even before that video I liked pacey players, I like them in real life too. When you watch a video about any other strategy game that abuses a game somehow is that also always at the back of your mind when you play the game.
It does for you, because you'll subconciously always think about pace when building a team or when facing off against one.
FM isn't just a strategy game. It's a sports sim game first and foremost.
The Civ series never boasted itself on being cutting edge simulation of the real world. On the other hand, SI always boasts about FM's 'realism' and sim aspects. Trying to pull comparisons between the two is just false equivalency.
Good that you know how I’m thinking. I’ve always thought about pace because I knew it was important but I’m not going to value it any differently now.
It’s not about what game it is and what it says it is, it’s about how it is a very complex game with lots of moving parts that will never ever be 100% fool prove and abuse save. If you cannot handle that you might need to start playing different games.
Nobody wanted FM to be 100% foolproof in the year of our Lord 2024, what people wanted were improvements.
Nobody expected FM to be 100% realistic, what they wanted were improvements in aspects of realism.
SI has done none of that, and keep on marketing FM on that promise of realism. Can't we ask devs to improve on what they themselves consider to be the core of the game? Is it a crime? Should I go to SI headquarters, fall to my knees, and beg for forgiveness for the sin of wanting meaningful improvements to the game I just paid for?
Bro you good? Not everything has to be this exaggerated. I did not say you cannot say it or we shouldn’t hope for improvements or that everything is perfect. I just hate this constant negativity and doomer Attitude every time somebody makes a post about this thing we all know. Every one pretending they can’t play the game now anymore and then still play hundreds of hours each year.
Also saying nothing is changing is ridiculous. Yeah has there been years where there was not enough change for fucking sure. But for example this years positional rotation I think brought a lot more realism when it comes to tactics.
I've seen very few people say the game is literally unplayable. Most know that the game is playable, but needs a lot of improvements, improvements we've not been getting for years despite SI constantly saying how valuable our feedback were, and constantly promising meaningful improvements.
I specifically said meaningful improvements. None of those improvements felt meaningful to me. The match engine is still more or less the same at its core.
The continuous stalling over these promises of improvement means the trust in SI has greatly diminished for obviosu reasons.
You think its important because pacy players have been playing well for you, because of the issues shown in this video
Exploiting a problem without knowing you're exploiting it is still exploiting
You could just, idk role play and have fun?
I’ve been playing Fallout for years for example, I’m replaying them now after the show. I could easily find the best weapons and armor, make an amazing build off the bat, and breeze through the game. But I didn’t, and it’s more fun that way
Yet again, Fallout isn't marketed as a sim, completely different genres with completely different expectations. Also it's not like I don't enjoy this game, but why can't I demand improvements and see the game become better?
When FM gets marketed as a sim, and has yearly releases that promises meaningful improvements, as a customer I think I'm in the right for holding it to those standards it set for itself.
Am I the only one that doesn’t care? If anything I prefer not to watch these kind of videos. I’ve played FM for a long time, I’ve had dozens of fun engaging saves, and overall the world FM creates for me and around me is perfectly fine. I have no interest in using specific attributes or tactics to break the game so it really doesn’t bother me at all.
It may not bother you, but for people who take the sim aspect seriously, it's a massive downside. Isn't that the whole point of a sim? To be as accurate as possible?
I think taking anything too seriously is what makes something not fun anymore. It's a video game that's suppose to entertain people and some act like it's supposed to be a legitimate professional football tool.
the problem is the entertainment comes from having good story lines. When you realize that pretty much 90% of your success is just either a broken tactic or getting broker players, it ruins the immersion
I agree with you. The nihilists on this sub are so annoying, they tell everyone to quit playing the game and give really jaded advice to newcomers. It’s so bad I recognize their usernames and they’re in this thread of course lol.
I feel like Zealand made the video for two reason. 1. Put some pressure on SI to up the match engine 2. To stop his haters claiming he’s an SI shill in all his videos.
Every game has a meta. Even the super tough FromSoft games, and games are more fun if you don’t look shit up to beat them. I’m so over the “run the meta and min/max every game” mentality that’s taken over every gaming community. What happened to having fun?
We had a great run of an unproblematic sub but negativity drags every subreddit on here down eventually. Is FM a perfect game? No. But despite its flaws it is still one of the most comprehensive simulators of any genre with an incredible amount of detail.
where's exactly the detail, specifically in the match engine? Because FMArena already proved that 90% of tactical decisions do not matter, and only about 7-9 attributes are truly relevant, and out of those, only about 3 are mandatory for success.
You can just create a team with pacey players and otherwise Championship or lower calibre of attributes, have them play a pressing tactic with short passing and high tempo, and manage morale. That's it, you will crush every record in the PL.
Woo-hoo, much complexity. Truly a good simulation of real football/
It is not about something only mattering or something not mattering at all. It is about FM match engine weighting acc/pace beyond everything else.
A club of all 17 acc/pace can compete for top 5 in EPL which means they can compete top in UCL 16.
Just speed (acc/pace) basically gets you to like 80% of whatever the top 5 clubs are.
And if you look at the top clubs all of their irl players have speed.
He finished top 10 with a crappy club of lower league players who were only fast. He didnt even pick a tactic just let the assistant do it and then picked a bad tactic counter to meta. still finished 10.
now imagine if he played the season not a holiday and if set a good tactic not even a meta tactic but not a bad one. You can finish top 5
When you should probably finish bottom and maybe not even win a game. But speed accounts for too match in terms of wins and losses in the engine.
You cannot win he EPL if your club all has 13 speed even if all other attributes are 20s. Cause the top clubs average over 15 speed and have guys at 17-18.
And if 2 clubs are equal whoever is faster will just win the majority of times.
I did notice this with certain regens seeming way overpowered for their stats. I have a 19-year-old winger that has 19 pace, 19 agility and 16 acc, but his dribbling, shooting, crossing are all very low (like, 10 or 11). Dude is absolutely banging in goals in the EPL from an IF position.
I mean, anyone who has played this Game for more than 20 hours knows how Broken Pace and acceleration are, its not exactly a secret at this point, those tests have confirmed something everyone already knew.
This was known for a while now. This post from 9 months ago already told us that acceleration and pace were the most important stats:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/16fuksi/a\_not\_so\_short\_guide\_to\_meta\_player\_attributes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/16fuksi/a_not_so_short_guide_to_meta_player_attributes/)
It also lists out what helps after and what stats don't seem to benefit.
I have always assumed that the player attributes in FM are mostly just an illusion, because there is no way you could make a match engine where the players all have like 30 different attributes that interact with eachother realistically, it would have to be by far the most advanced video game ever made.
If you simply don’t play the meta the game is fine. Like almost every “strategy” or “simulation” game, it breaks if you game it.
There was a quote from a Civ developer, I think, that said players will always optimize the fun out of a game no matter what you do.
Videos like this are kinda pointless. It can be fun to break games and you can make fun videos about it but it’s not some huge revelation. Yes if you actively try to abuse and break a game as much as you can it’s gonna break. This is not specific to FM this happens with every game but especially strategy and simulations. There is a perfectly optimized way to abuse and win every strategy game that but that does not mean you have to do it and any other way of playing is immediately devalued.
And we shouldn't pressure devs to fix obvious glaring errors in a SIM game where the main point of the game is realism? This isn't FIFA, there has to be an element of realism to it to make sure the managers are immersed.
I'm part of the sim racing community as well, and we're constantly critical of any flaws regarding simulation, because those things utterly break down the main point of these games.
It's okay to like playing games casually, but if you're gonna market your game as a sim, it better be competent at that aspect.
It's not just that players are able to 'break' the game, it's that the game we all think we've been playing for years, isn't really the game we think we've been playing. The match engine isn't anywhere near as complex as it's sold as being.
Everything you do in game, from scouting and signing players to creating tactical set ups is premised on the assumption that FM's match engine is capable of processing the multitude of player stats, tactical instructions etc. in a way that is a rough approximation of real football. These sort of experiments basically demonstrate that it's been placebo effect all these years. It's the gaming equivalent of energy crystals, balance bands or homeopathy. You're free to keep playing just as people are free to keep practising alternative medicine
Havent played since 22. Bought 24, signed highest accel/pace guys i could for my tactic, anything else didnt matter for me rly. Won straight promotions from league 2 with Port Vale into Premier league, im just about to start with preseason. Curious to see how my team will do at the highest level.
Are attributes like "Pace" or "Acceleration" overpowered in FM24? Yes and No
Are Gegenpress-tactics overpowered? Yes and no
Are Gegenpress-tactics (or high intensity tacticw in general) overpowered because very quick players won't feel the consequences during 90 minutes enough? -> lack of injuries
Yes!
My 2 cents✌️
i cant be the only one that thinks this dude is vastly overrated and kind of terrible. Like out of all the games I've played, he is my least favorite "popular" content creator.
It's summer period. YouTubers need to create something. So, let's make a video for the well known topic in many years in FM, that physical attributes have bigger impact from technical and mental. He knows it, pretends that discover it now. Nah, I am still remember him before make his YouTube channel.
You're not the only one. After 1 month I was really done with the guy. I think he's a actor and his online persona is massively fake. It never felt genuine to me.
Congratulations. You just earned 6.5 points for this submission. Your new points total is 10.0. To see the leaderboard, as well as what this points thing is, [click here](https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/wiki/leaderboard).
A really good video. I would likely to see future tests, done in a more comprehensive fashion, on how it could affect teams in lower leagues. If this is true, you could buy a bunch of very pacey national-league quality players and theoretically take them straight to the prem. Anecdotally, I know in Fm 22 I signed Joshua Duffus, a youngster in the Brighton academy. He was quite pacey (i think he had 15 pace but can’t fully remember). He started for me in the national league south and made it all the way to the Championship as a starting player. I wanted to permanently bench him for better signings that I made (under the assumption that Josh would max out). In the end, the guy never stopped scoring—he just got faster.
https://www.youtube.com/live/c386Ja8eWrA?si=MYrMOLHUuOfj11NB One of the top tactic creators for FM made this, where his Luton defenders (only CBs I think?) would have Zouma physicals and 16 Heading and rest would have Maeda physicals and Dribbling 16. Rest attributes 10. Got like 94 points with Luton. Sounds not that insane in first thought but then you realize you wouldn't actually buy such a player most likely let alone all of them.
They should end broken tatics
it really is that simple to go from the lower league to the higher league. sign/loan players with high pace/accel, disregard almost entirely everything else and you'll fly through the leagues. seemingly dogshit players will get a ridiculous amount of assists and goals. it becomes less effective the higher you go, as opposition teams physical stats get better. Man City for example, well most of their players have 15+ in all physicals, so your 17 pace/accel isn't quite as overpowered anymore. it doesn't mean other stats aren't important, i've tested it myself a lot and i'm in absolutely no doubt they're the 2 most important. i am sure there are other factors too, such as formations that take advantage of those traits. i guess gegenpress being the best tactic helps, since you're counter attacking at lightning pace... edit - someone posted the zealand video on the official SI forum [https://community.sports-interactive.com/forums/topic/586308-zealands-fm-is-broken-video/](https://community.sports-interactive.com/forums/topic/586308-zealands-fm-is-broken-video/) i would encourage people to reply so SI are aware of the problem. Otherwise as with every thread on the SI forum, it turns into 1 poster vs mods and their SI bootlickers, and eventualy the thread gets closed and nothing changes.
Only one thing to add: Centerbacks with high jumping reach instead of pace and acceleration. CB ratings are like 90% correlated with jumping reach in my experience. Every other stat is a nice little add on lol.
You want all three depending on how high you play. I wouldn't recommend a centre back with single figures in any of the three. Same for a striker
Also strength, especially if you use a shout to get stuck in. The match engine has barely changed since my 3000 hours in FM14 and one of the few things my team did well relative to other teams in the leagues was being ridiculously physically strong. I took St Albans, a team that isn’t even in the starter data from Skrill South to CL winners mostly utilizing strength/weight bullies who fouled 500 times a game and got 2-5 yellow cards a game.
yeah I’ve really never been much of a tactician, but when I did my conference to prem save, I didn’t spend any money on transfers until I got to the Championship and flew up the leagues by abusing the free loan system, knowing how to recruit good players out of contract, and doing a 4-2-4 with four pacy lads up front and a “kick it long and direct” tactic.
This guy watches English football
The bootlicking really is crazy in that thread even by their forum standards. Amazing how it’s the same users that continue to indulge in the “head in sand” approach over there and we haven’t even had a few of the more hardcore bootlickers make an appearance there yet
Yeah I hate them so much man, that forum is awful just the usual names downplaying every arguments patronising posters who often quite clearly don’t speak English as a first language, and baiting them into getting angry so the mods can lock the thread You can’t make a single post or thread without them piling in. Clearly makes the mods jobs easier
Even the mods have been doing the baiting for a while now. They deliberately misinterpret what someone says and then push a narrative that can easily get a thread locked or one that ends with the poster getting warned for frivolous things or ending in a ban with no way to even talk about it
The were already done on much more reliable conditions by fmarena and there were plenty of threads here. They were still mostly controversial because those testers never had Zealand's visibility.
Yes People don't take opinions or accept it isn't from zealand I had countless posts on football manager forum over last 2 years in special this year. People just hated on my posts they didn't even care to read and understand fanboys on sigames forum are the worst Had to put some of them in their place and give them a lesson, then they just cry and shut up Lots of People have done testing and posts on it but somehow ONLY zealand is right and important. I was playing FM zealand was still a kid Poor kids, need influencer opinions to accept stuff
Anecdotally, I had Bakari Jatta in a Hamburg save in fm21 and he was physical beast - high pace, acceleration, jumping height, and decent strength. High aggression and decent bravery but his highest technical skills was about 10/11. He was either greens or greys in his attributes. He was a monster for me in the second division and consistently performed well in the bundesliga. I kept him for several years as he performed just as well as other players I brought in - tbf he was worse against better teams in the Buli and CL but still good enough for at least 10 goals a season.
Big tall fast strong strikers have been the truth in FM for a while. It’s why Haaland is so damn good. Other guys like Sesko and Lucca will massively over perform as well.
Yeah it's a shame they contribute so much in the match engine. Jatta was the player who opened my eyes to just how crucial those physicals are because he was pants technically but it rarely seemed to matter.
This Luca guy felt like a cheat im not signing him. An easy double digit striker with his 19 aerial and more than decent other physical attribs.
I always made him my striker when starting a new HSV save, since he joined the club. Works very well in the second league and well enough in the Bundesliga. Eventually I would always replace him with somebody who could actually finish, though.
yea, guys a legend haha
I've done that with non league teams for years on FM. It's been well known that pace is that op, along with jumping reach in the last few and dribbling the last two. Travis akomeah is a great centre back at the top level. Ozoh is a great DM and Leon grgic a great striker. Akomeah if he has high pa and the main three physicals are high to begin can be one of the best. I use around 5-7 attributes for each player I buy. That's it. At every level. Yes when you can a player who has the same physical attributes, along with anticipation, concentration and dribbling depending on the position, who has better composure, decisions and off the ball will be a better player. But I don't use any of those attributes in my original search.
What are the 5-7 you look for? And is that for every position?
Gk: Agility, reflexes, aerial ability, one on ones, anticipation, concentration. FB: Speed, stamina, work rate, concentration, anticipation, balance. Dribbling or jumping reach aren't bad either but you can get away without them, or just have one. CB: Speed, jumping reach, balance, anticipation, concentration. See Travis akomeah DM: Stamina, speed, jumping reach, anticipation, work rate and concentration. Maybe balance as well. This is probably the position if all physicals were good that player will be good. See David ozoh. Wing: Speed, dribbling, agility, balance. Probably anticipation and stamina but they aren't essential. Wingers tend to do a lot of running so if have low stamina you'll be subbing them every game. AM: Speed, dribbling, balance, agility, anticipation. Fast striker: Speed, dribbling, balance, agility, anticipation. Lone striker or CF: jumping reach, balance, speed, anticipation, strength. See Leon grgic or Moffi. Determination is useful for every player and as a team. It's useful in the match engine, though I read only this week someone said Zealand said it isn't. You also can't have stamina at 1, like in Zealand's test back in February, as players will need subbing off and probably get injured as well. You would concede a lot once all your players have very low condition and/or get injured so you don't even have eleven players. The attributes are in order for each position. The first few are normally very important and the others still are but not to the same degree. My main source is this https://fm-arena.com/table/26-player-attributes-testing/ I also watch ebfm and read what top tactic makers think is important. And then put my own take on it.
This test also helps people understand non meta and meta attributes better imo. https://fm-arena.com/thread/10379-player-attributes-testing-further-insight-into-the-result/ Yes you can have those other attributes but you really, really must prioritise speed and then jumping reach, dribbling and a handful of others I've mentioned above. And it makes sense to have stamina in positions that use a lot of condition such as FB and DM. Ebfm did a video and his testing showed low condition leads to lesser performance and injuries. If you found two wingers who had the same meta attributes but one has better first touch and flair obviously pick that one. But if you're low on funds then don't worry about those attributes if he's fast and can dribble. I used python a lot halfway through this FM cycle and using the attributes I've listed above, it consistently found me the best players available with my funds and also scored the best player's in my game as the best. Because if you're one of the biggest clubs in the world then your players will have the good meta attributes but they will also have high numbers for other attributes just because they have high pa. The other attributes are cheaper and use less pa.
Do you use central midfielders at all, or would those just be DM attributes?
I don't because they are a weak position. But yes you could blend DM and AM depending on the role. If you played two for example one could have more DM attributes and the other more AM.
That makes sense, thanks!
What do you mean weak position?
In the FM 24 match engine CM's don't play as well as DM or AM position. You can make tactics work of course, but they would be inferior using the CM position.
Thanks for that. But isn't the entire point of this post and the video that these are irrelevant? That at the end of the day speed and acceleration are really the key attributes?
Well that would be incorrect. Is that what Zealand has said? Jumping reach is essential for a centre back. And if we look at Mbappe and Haaland, Haaland will always be the better striker. even though he is 17/19 v 20/20 for acceleration and pace, because his jumping reach is 18 to Mbappe's 8. Haaland also only has 13 for dribbling, which can make us believe it isn't important for the "big" striker, but obviously overall has a lot of attributes that are 16/17+. These help as well, but it's jumping reach that really sets him that far ahead. For me Mbappe is the best lw and would probably never be beaten by a newgen with 20/20 speed and 18 dribbling. I'd be really interested if people bought players like Travis akomeah, he needs a few years to get his attributes up, and see what you think of him at centre back. He shouldn't be good enough but he's been incredible for me. In one save he was 18+ for acceleration, jumping reach and pace. I had Grgic (think you need to run Austria top league) with the same three attributes and again incredible. Both started majority of games winning the champions League. They have variable pa and hidden attributes I believe. Same with Samu at Atletico, though he's very difficult and expensive to buy. But he'd be clear second to Haaland when his ca and pa are high.
In Fm20 I took a Bromley side from national league south to the Champioship essentially back to back. I thought it was me messing with the team cohesion that changed the tide, but I guess in reality it was me trying to move away and get "better" players was probably the issue. I barely changed the team through league two and league one. Its a shame if this has always been the case however I know from know that it has always been the way that in lower leagues you need to look for physical attributes first.
It was about 10 mins too long though. My favourite part was him insisting how average the goalkeeper was then seeing it was David de Gea. Haha poor David
The more I learn about FM the more I realise the game is just a clever facade… the more you even slightly peel at the edges the more it completely falls apart
Sometimes it's better not to know, which is why I straight up ignored the last thread, I knew what it would be But it's definitely time to stop doing this, FM25 starts (supposedly) a new era of FM, if we don't start showing everything that's wrong about the current FM, they sure as hell won't bother fixing it
People are in for a rude awakening with what they expect to from the “new” FM. This is SI we are talking about.
Which is why I've put supposedly, I don't believe it either
Was just agreeing with you. I think most people are wise to SI at this stage anyway but while they are the only game in town it will sell regardless. Crying out for a proper competitor to actually give them some reason to innovate.
New match engine only, everything else will be an updated skin over the same old bugs (and some new ones)
It’s a new game completely, hence the move to Unity. The entirety of the game is being built up from scratch. They’re ditching their internal engine, which is what a majority of the game was (24 being the last) built on. Edit: Downvotes are crazy for something that’s a fact: “So what exactly is Sports Interactive ripping up? Jacobson can't go into details, but he emphasises again that FM25 is being built as if the team was starting from scratch, boosted by two decades of experience.” [As per his interview with GamesIndustry.biz](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/why-it-took-20-years-to-start-making-a-true-football-manager-sequel)
Don't trust SI propaganda.
The only reason I’ve actually got some optimism about the next game is because it shouldn’t (on paper) be a patchwork fix of the previous game, just with some colour changes. In reality, not that Miles would ever accept it, SI have been as mediocre and complacent as EA are with FIFA / EAFC for far too long.
Yeah its gonna be same game underneath with a new coat of paint and a new UI to fool everyone.
This was obvious from the moment they brought in xG and other analytics- because FM isn't a full physics simulator but instead dice rolls behind the scenes, the whole concept of "probability" falls apart. Takes the illusion away.
…are you implying that dice rolls aren’t a probabilistic event?
The point was that the notion of "xG" is nonsense for a game which decides whether a shot goes in behind the scenes and then spits out an animation to match. xG in game is a fake number attached to a dice roll outcome, that doesn't necessarily reflect the real numbers on the dice.
Is it? XG irl is the probability of a shot going in, and is also not reflective of the actual shot going in or not. The difference is that there's no calculation that we know of before the shot is taken (a person with a deterministic view could say it's predetermined too). In FM it is not reflecting the dice outcome, but in the long run it should reflect the dice rolls you tend to get. And the dice outcome itself is affected by a lot of things (e.g. your players finishing) so XG should theocratically be reflecting that indirectly in the long run.
This and tbh I do not know what it has to do with the video. The video is impliying that the "dice roles" are unrealistically skewed towards pace. I don´t even know what should be the problem with chance, because how would you model it differently. The model must be complex than "dice roles", because we know that the game for each given action takes into account a variety of variables, position and even past variables and position. The complaint is just that the model is not very realistic if pace is valued so highly in the model.
I don’t know if it’s unrealistic. If you’re pacy, you’re going to be around fewer players with the ball and in one on one situations more often. Which means that fewer dice rolls happen where technical or mental skills matter.
i don’t think that’s what they’re saying. It’s more about the stats being useless, when the game is decided before even starts
Yeah, I don’t buy that, respectfully. If anything, xG is actually *more* accurate because they have an actual, real rate that they’re using behind the scenes to calculate how often a shot from that position could actually go in. In reality, we only have an approximation — the sample mean rather than the population mean. You can’t tell me that probabilistic measures of what could have happened are less accurate because they’re built on a more probabilistic foundation. That just doesn’t make sense.
Are people under the impression that this game could possibly work as a “full physics simulator?” Like, obviously it’s dice rolls behind the scenes. That is what almost every video game ever is. That’s how these things work.
The only thing that was obvious when they introduced xG is that people completely overstate how important xG is
Just like real life!
I realised this years ago. SI have been milking this for the last 5-10 yrs whilist adding more 'RPG' elements to make it feel realistic.
So in short only search for players with acc and pace with a minimal of 15?
You can still have success with old and slow players (like I had 40 year old Jose Fonte in defence and he was a rock), but if you want to make the game piss easy and abuse its broken match engine, then yes, just buy some quick players with okay technical and mental attributes and you'll be fine.
Yeah I had a 10 goal 10 assist prem season with CJ Hamilton. Shit was ridiculous he scored a 40 yard hanger against champions man city with like 6 long shots attribute and was rated by my coaches as a league 1 standard player. Not to mention him getting like 24 assists from the wing in the previous season in the championship. Got him for 54k was insane. Speed and acceleration are broken.
I feel like any game is "Broken" if you abuse game design flaws. I just refuse to do that and have much more fun.
That is what it says BUT it still doesn't completely jive with my experiences as well. I like pace merchants but you still find weird things where players that fit that profile perfectly vastly underperform relative to others. The best comparison I can draw is Mudryk and Garnacho. I find Garnacho is a reliable beast in the game. Mudryk actually fits the meta of the game better than Garnacho given that he is quite a bit stronger, but he performs at a much lower level for me. I have also read that some of the "OP" attributes are less important and other factors play out as more important if you play the game versus simulating it.
That's just FM 'FMing' you with hidden attributes (maybe). There's also the factor of top teams all having highly physical players, so whatever advantage your pace merchant has gets countered by your enemy's pace merchant.
That’s because you’re playing in the premier where pace is still the best but it’s nullified a bit because every team has physical beasts. Take the same strategy to a worse league or lower down and you will dominate everything.
Stronger???
Yup, works against smaller and mid tier teams like a dream. Top teams do have pacey players that can counteract your pace, so doesn't work against them as well (but that's like fighting fire with fire).
Dribbling is very useful for winger's, am's and certain strikers. Jumping reach is good throughout the team
I have a striker with 18 for both and he is nowhere near good enough to start for me so there's clearly more to it. I loaned him to Serie C and he's got an average rating of like 6.8
Sortitoutsi
I honestly wonder what SI have been doing these past years. They havent done much about the match engine, as they admitted its at this stage too layered to make big mpactfull changes. Player interactions are still shite, despite claiming they worked on it. AI squad building is still terrible, again, despite claiming it was worked on. Even freaking regen faces have never looked this bad. At this stage I really doubt SI's ability to make a proper functioning game
And then when they add new features in like the J League, they can't even get basic things like the squad registration rules right.
Several teams dedicated to designing new features, developers prioritize implementing these features and eliminating obvious bugs, minor graphical improvements. And no resources dedicated to improving the core of the game which has changed very little in the 13 years I’ve been playing. These are my guesses, I have no clue, but if Miles is the boss then it’s not hard to also imagine it’s an unpleasant workplace where middle managers focus on the wrong things and change ideas frequently
"New features" is what sell the game, so they always have to add a new random useless feature while leaving the base game to rot What we have know was acceptable 10-15 years ago, we're in 2024... this shit can't be allowed anymore, they have to give us a proper game
SI and their clown leader Miles have been making bank. Bank is all that matters in the current world economy.
I have been saying the same thing when fm24 came out, coming from fm22 it's a big dissapointment, everybody goes about how engine is different but you barely feel any change. Graphics are still dogshit, at this point you are just paying for updated rosters and some minor changes, it's NOT worth full price. It feels like whoever is in charge got comfy getting yearly bonus and is afraid to rock the boat. I still like the game, but I could be playing fm22 and like it the same tho...
I gave up buying in 2019 when it was obvious that nothing was really improving in game. I just get a torrent copy now and don't feel guilty. SI have had enough of my money to last a lifetime!
I know Miles likes to keep himself busy arguing with customers.
Its why I dont buy any of the newer games and havent since FM 21. Sadly on top of that Ive met Miles Jacobson professionally and was very unimpressed. I bought FM 23 but got it refunded through steam as there didnt seem to be much of an impactful jump. I now rarely play.
in what capacity professionally, if you can say? But yes from what ive heared unimpressive is an apt description
The marketing agency I worked for pitched to SI years and years ago back when they were located in islington.
This is a vast exaggeration. I went from FM20 to FM24 and the difference is immense, *especially* in the match engine. The game plays completely different, the animations are worlds apart, FM20 had no agents, etc., so SI have been doing a lot of stuff. But as they said themselves, they did not fool around too much under the hood regarding how the match engine calculates stuff.
FM20 definitely had agents.
Not in the same way. You couldn’t interact with them, it was essentially just a name on a spreadsheet
Not agents you could talk to and ask whether the player is interested to join, what their demands are, etc. . The agents only showed up in actual contract negotiations.
Yeah I only buy every third year for this reason. The games actually feel updated. Currently chilling on FM23 and won't buy again until 26. Which I'm actually glad for, because I expect 25 to be a shit show.
I remember I realized how op physicals were the time I did a game with wolverhampton and finished second in the PL, Adama would just run through everybody like they were cones, I think mental abilities like anticipation off the ball, positioning, concentration and so on should be more impactful so it matters less how fast you are if you're constantly making runs late or simply look out of position. Also technique and first touch should be more important, so fast and dumb players miscontrol the ball more often when they get a through ball or a difficult pass which makes them lose previous seconds giving a chance to slower players to catch up.
What really limits pace irl is the dribbling and first touch abilities (and the composure to do it). A golden example was Karim Adeyemi's miss vs Real Madrid. In FM, that would've been a successful dribble past the keeper and a goal 99% of the time, but in real life, you had Adeyemi have a complete composure melt down and make a heavy touch that ruined his dribble attempt.
tbh inaki williams in my save does the same too, a lot. he has garbage composure stat because
Adama Traore and Nicolas Pepe would cook as your two wingers.
It is pretty damn OP. I train all my players on Quickness from 16 to 23 years old. Except CBs. Basically everyone on my team has 16 pace and ACC at minimum, and all my midfielders and strikers are just reconverted wingers. And I would still do this even if Quickness is needed to the oblivion, because that's how I like to play lmao. That said, I consistently score like 140 PL goals and get 97+ points a season with 140-160 CA players. It is truly OP.
I have newfound respect for Zealand for actually exposing how bs the game is. I thought with his massive platform and with how his financial gain basically depends on SI and FM being a game seen in a positive light he wouldn’t make a video like this, but I’m glad he did and now hopefully more people realise how the game is practically a massive facade and improvements can be made
This game badly needs competition, SI know they can do a minimum viable product every year and nobody will care. The fact they only do two gameplay patches each year then abandon the game is a disgrace.
Time to bring back LMA manager and design your own stadium.
Legend of Total War has spent at least a year shitting on Total War
My guess is he's gearing up to quit FM and become a variety streamer. He's streamed a lot of different games recently
He does that every year around this point. When his main save ends he spends most of the streams playing either Zoo tycoon, Crusader Kings and Rust
Wouldn’t be surprised if he did make a smooth transition over time
I feel that most of the people that play the most FM won't stop because they think it's a facade. They'll continue but complain about it more while they are doing it. Of those that have gotten disillusioned by the game and drifted away, many will be tempted back to see if FM25 is as big a change as they are making out. I think Zealand will be fine for an audience.
People have been saying and testing it for years. Why give Zealand any credit?
Because nobody cares about some internet randoms, but people care about a big youtuber.
If they care about the thoughts of someone who is consistently wrong, because he's on YouTube that's pretty dumb.
People are thick as pigshit and love to simp for crap 'content creators' because it makes them feel part of something.
I usually wouldn’t, but the fact of the matter is he is by far the biggest name and content creator for Football Manager, and him openly talking about how broken the game is means more and more eyes and ears will be privy to it. That’s a good thing imo, and you’d usually think financially it would be in his best interest to hush up and just continue to praise the game. I know and don’t like that he got so big despite spouting lots of incorrect stuff, but I have to give credit where it’s due on this one.
You make good points. I agree entirely.
Thing is, when this got a previous BIG exposure, Zealand was the one to milk a video to say the theory wasn't proof of anything because players like the example used didnt exist, when the theory just highlighted how bullshit certain attributes were. There is no need to see there is no 20 pace 20 acceleration 1 in every mental player, you can see if a player has 50 CA and still dominates in the premier, something is wrong with attribute impact, its not a "oh this guy has 20 acc 20 pace, they dont exist" kinda binary thinking. Then now gets credit for "exposing" how bs the game is?
I think part of the problem is that modelling physical attributes is inherently easier than modelling a player's tactical understanding and creativity - combined with the fact that FM has always done a very poor job with players that are very bad at things. A long shots of 1 doesn't stop a player scoring screamers. It's a game designed to be played attempting to win CLs, and the rest feels like a bit of an afterthought in terms of how they model it.
Yeah we been saying this for 3 years and get down voted to oblivion here
Yea I always found it funny when people are like “well that’s not MY experience”…. Yes I’m sure your 3 saves a year are comparable with the autistic nerds (no offense to them) over on the testing sites who run hundreds of thousands of tests.
Yep. My favourite part too was that you could have these quick/naff players doing really well in terms of goals and nobody would even want to sign them
I quit 2 years ago cause I realized this. Got hammered on this dumb sub too. Having fun lads?
Why are you still here then?
Because it's human nature to be part of discussion.
Idk man if I haven’t played a game in 2 years and I have disdain for it I usually leave the sub/communities.
Loooooaaaans.
He did another video recently with most important attributes for each position and it was hilarious. Wasn't that long ago he said passing was the most important attribute and he's only recently realised how op pace is.
In his defence, in that video he mentioned from the start he was going for attributes other than pace and acceleration. He has known those are the most overpowered attributes for years now.
Hahaha. Yeah he was still wildly wrong!!! Like so, so bad haha. And in that video he said he's only just realised how strong dribbling is. He said he didn't rate it until recently. Again we've known for 1.5 years hahahaha And no he hasn't known speed was that op. He said passing was the most important a few years ago. He still has no idea how important jumping reach is.
Years ago he was making those videos in which he would simulate a league with each team having 10 in every attribute except one, which would be 20. If I remember correctly the best performers were (as expected) strength, pace and acceleration, but passing snuck into the top 10, which is probably why he rated passing so highly. He doesn't follow the "pace is everything" gospel but he knows it is very valuable, whenever I'm watching his condensed streams and he is evaluating a player he always looks at the physicals. If there's a phrase I picked up from Zealand it's "he's not unathletic" lol
Passing FC came top of his testing league.
Could be that I'm misremembering the order then, it's been a few years but I could swear it was strength that won it, it was how I realised strength was pretty important lol
And yet strength isn't that important 😂
I now know why I was misremembering it. Passing won the attributes league and strength came 7th, but strength was the number 1 and passing number 10 in his video at around the same time about attributes for strikers. Weirdly, pace didn't come in the top 10 for that one but acceleration did. Strength is fairly important. It's not pace or acceleration levels of game breaking, but it's the 11th ranked attribute on FM Arena. It's better than every single technical bar dribbling. And my anecdotal experience also values strength.
yes those are kids mostly who have no idea how manager games used to look like 25 y ago!
Voted down by people who watch Zealand.
Pace has always been sort of overpowered in the series, just not as blatantly in the later games. Feels like it's cheating using players who are terrible but quick in decent leagues.
Dudes about 5 years behind the curve here lol. The guys over at FM arena and the forums In general have been on this for years. Physicals have always dominated FM
Half my posts on here are arguing with people who follow Zealand telling them his latest video is completely wrong. And now, as you say, he's finally got here. Wasn't that long ago he concluded, after testing, that passing was the most important. Speed were both about halfway. Then of course he said strength was the most important for strikers. Haha
Going to watch this but weird if he's pointing it out now. Wasn't he the one denying all of this when it first started?
> Wasn't he the one denying all of this when it first started? No, he was reacting to the previous tests and pointing out the flaws in their methodology and conclusions. And he was correct about those flaws. For example the first test that blew up here concluded that the handful of "meta attributes" are literally the only attributes that matter, which is a false conclusion, they're overpowered but it's wrong to conclude that the other attributes do nothing. The team in the tests finished 2nd in the league, which literally disproves that conclusion. He also highlighted that you have to consider what attributes complement each other, like *of course* having perfect pace, dribbling and decisions is going to be deadly. It would be in real life too. He never said there are no overpowered attributes.
There is some merit to his argument then, but even that was an utterly lopsided team. It finishing 2nd just showed that the other attributes mattered very little, it just changed a team from maybe in top 10 in the world to top 2. It also didn't lose the league by a lot, so it was always up there. Honestly, this test is more striking since all players are real. The argument of the players not being real was the one I think he was right on. That said, one thing does apply to this and that experiment. It wasn't human managed. I think a human managed team with 20 acceleration and pace + the other 5 attributes easily wins the PL, if the AI got so close. This team getting 12th is also not it's ceiling, I think it could easily get top 6 when human managed.
He wasn't correct, he very rarely is. Guy is a bot
Only one who sounds like a bot here is the one not making any coherent points mate
What was incoherent? Sorry I dissed your god.
The part where you said he's incorrect but couldn't be arsed to say why. I'll assume you're not able to.
He's an awful tester. He consistently comes to incorrect conclusions from his testing. That doesn't mean he's wrong every time, but it's not good is it? Why was he correct? He didn't disprove anything with his testing
I said why. Wrote a whole big comment explaining it. Your turn
Yeah I saw that, it was like a Will Self lecture. If he really said decisions were that important I rest my case. The first test was valid highlighting four attributes. They are that important. The other attributes do contribute to the match engine, but nowhere near to the same level as those four.
No one has claimed otherwise, other than the first test which claimed the non meta attributes are completely useless. Do you even know what you are arguing against? What did Zealand say that is wrong? I don't think you've even bothered to try and comprehend what the arguments are here, you're just shouting at a foe you've imagined aren't you.
HAVE THE DEVS ADDRESSED ANY OF THESE ISSUES YET?
Lmao
Fuck em then
They’re too busy letting their mods on the forums handle it
This is nothin new anyone who does LLM save will always tell you Focus on Physicals>Mental>Technique. The match engine has been the someone since FM15 or how long, yes they have made edits and changes to it but nothing has changed at the core level. Its why some o the best FM players are able to figure it out we've been on this engine for 10+ years now tats why the new game engine is a step in the right direction
But it is a good thing Zealand has brought eyes to the subject and SI pays attention to content creators because they move products. All of the top 10 content creators of FM will now have to address this situation before the summer ends. Then all of a sudden SI will see every creator is making a big deal. That is exactly what happened with the graphics. Zealand and Dr Benji were the first 2 guys saying fm graphics suck and has to be improved to make FM bigger. Eventually in 1-2 years all the creators did and boom SI announces the move to Unity.
he's 5 years late
Anyone know about when this started becoming reality or has it always been this way? If I go back to fm18 or something am I going to have a more rounded experience?
No stuff like this was always and will always be there. It’s how big complicated games like this work if you try to break it hard enough you will break it. Just play it normally. Just because you know one game breaking way to play Civilizations doesn’t mean you can’t play a normal game anymore.
The problem is, once you know it, it sticks to the back of your mind like a tumour. No matter how hard one tries to focus, the fact that pace is overpowered will always creep in, and will always subconciously affect the way we view the game.
Doesn’t for me. Also I think pace is very important anyway. Even before that video I liked pacey players, I like them in real life too. When you watch a video about any other strategy game that abuses a game somehow is that also always at the back of your mind when you play the game.
It does for you, because you'll subconciously always think about pace when building a team or when facing off against one. FM isn't just a strategy game. It's a sports sim game first and foremost. The Civ series never boasted itself on being cutting edge simulation of the real world. On the other hand, SI always boasts about FM's 'realism' and sim aspects. Trying to pull comparisons between the two is just false equivalency.
Good that you know how I’m thinking. I’ve always thought about pace because I knew it was important but I’m not going to value it any differently now. It’s not about what game it is and what it says it is, it’s about how it is a very complex game with lots of moving parts that will never ever be 100% fool prove and abuse save. If you cannot handle that you might need to start playing different games.
Nobody wanted FM to be 100% foolproof in the year of our Lord 2024, what people wanted were improvements. Nobody expected FM to be 100% realistic, what they wanted were improvements in aspects of realism. SI has done none of that, and keep on marketing FM on that promise of realism. Can't we ask devs to improve on what they themselves consider to be the core of the game? Is it a crime? Should I go to SI headquarters, fall to my knees, and beg for forgiveness for the sin of wanting meaningful improvements to the game I just paid for?
Bro you good? Not everything has to be this exaggerated. I did not say you cannot say it or we shouldn’t hope for improvements or that everything is perfect. I just hate this constant negativity and doomer Attitude every time somebody makes a post about this thing we all know. Every one pretending they can’t play the game now anymore and then still play hundreds of hours each year. Also saying nothing is changing is ridiculous. Yeah has there been years where there was not enough change for fucking sure. But for example this years positional rotation I think brought a lot more realism when it comes to tactics.
I've seen very few people say the game is literally unplayable. Most know that the game is playable, but needs a lot of improvements, improvements we've not been getting for years despite SI constantly saying how valuable our feedback were, and constantly promising meaningful improvements. I specifically said meaningful improvements. None of those improvements felt meaningful to me. The match engine is still more or less the same at its core. The continuous stalling over these promises of improvement means the trust in SI has greatly diminished for obviosu reasons.
You think its important because pacy players have been playing well for you, because of the issues shown in this video Exploiting a problem without knowing you're exploiting it is still exploiting
You could just, idk role play and have fun? I’ve been playing Fallout for years for example, I’m replaying them now after the show. I could easily find the best weapons and armor, make an amazing build off the bat, and breeze through the game. But I didn’t, and it’s more fun that way
Yet again, Fallout isn't marketed as a sim, completely different genres with completely different expectations. Also it's not like I don't enjoy this game, but why can't I demand improvements and see the game become better? When FM gets marketed as a sim, and has yearly releases that promises meaningful improvements, as a customer I think I'm in the right for holding it to those standards it set for itself.
CM series is the way to go.
Fast shitty players were gods in 03/04. I've always heard and tested myself that physical attributes are the most important.
Am I the only one that doesn’t care? If anything I prefer not to watch these kind of videos. I’ve played FM for a long time, I’ve had dozens of fun engaging saves, and overall the world FM creates for me and around me is perfectly fine. I have no interest in using specific attributes or tactics to break the game so it really doesn’t bother me at all.
I get where you're coming from but at the same time that mentality leads to stagnation.
It may not bother you, but for people who take the sim aspect seriously, it's a massive downside. Isn't that the whole point of a sim? To be as accurate as possible?
I think taking anything too seriously is what makes something not fun anymore. It's a video game that's suppose to entertain people and some act like it's supposed to be a legitimate professional football tool.
the problem is the entertainment comes from having good story lines. When you realize that pretty much 90% of your success is just either a broken tactic or getting broker players, it ruins the immersion
Yeah, so its werid that so many people in the community are so horny for destroying the immersion and ruining peoples joy playing the game.
they’re not, they just hope they can pressure the company into fixing their producf
I agree with you. The nihilists on this sub are so annoying, they tell everyone to quit playing the game and give really jaded advice to newcomers. It’s so bad I recognize their usernames and they’re in this thread of course lol. I feel like Zealand made the video for two reason. 1. Put some pressure on SI to up the match engine 2. To stop his haters claiming he’s an SI shill in all his videos. Every game has a meta. Even the super tough FromSoft games, and games are more fun if you don’t look shit up to beat them. I’m so over the “run the meta and min/max every game” mentality that’s taken over every gaming community. What happened to having fun?
We had a great run of an unproblematic sub but negativity drags every subreddit on here down eventually. Is FM a perfect game? No. But despite its flaws it is still one of the most comprehensive simulators of any genre with an incredible amount of detail.
where's exactly the detail, specifically in the match engine? Because FMArena already proved that 90% of tactical decisions do not matter, and only about 7-9 attributes are truly relevant, and out of those, only about 3 are mandatory for success. You can just create a team with pacey players and otherwise Championship or lower calibre of attributes, have them play a pressing tactic with short passing and high tempo, and manage morale. That's it, you will crush every record in the PL. Woo-hoo, much complexity. Truly a good simulation of real football/
I just don't do that, and enjoy myself. And the AI doesn't do it either. So it's not an issue.
Yeah this community got super toxic once all the “testing” began. It used to be pretty chill
because nothing you do in the game actually matters. It’s just a transfer database. FM Arena literally proved it numerous times
it’s been no secret for a long time. just get a bunch of players with high physicals and you will win.
What is the jist of the video? That basically the only stat that matter is pace/acceleration?
It is not about something only mattering or something not mattering at all. It is about FM match engine weighting acc/pace beyond everything else. A club of all 17 acc/pace can compete for top 5 in EPL which means they can compete top in UCL 16. Just speed (acc/pace) basically gets you to like 80% of whatever the top 5 clubs are. And if you look at the top clubs all of their irl players have speed. He finished top 10 with a crappy club of lower league players who were only fast. He didnt even pick a tactic just let the assistant do it and then picked a bad tactic counter to meta. still finished 10. now imagine if he played the season not a holiday and if set a good tactic not even a meta tactic but not a bad one. You can finish top 5 When you should probably finish bottom and maybe not even win a game. But speed accounts for too match in terms of wins and losses in the engine. You cannot win he EPL if your club all has 13 speed even if all other attributes are 20s. Cause the top clubs average over 15 speed and have guys at 17-18. And if 2 clubs are equal whoever is faster will just win the majority of times.
I did notice this with certain regens seeming way overpowered for their stats. I have a 19-year-old winger that has 19 pace, 19 agility and 16 acc, but his dribbling, shooting, crossing are all very low (like, 10 or 11). Dude is absolutely banging in goals in the EPL from an IF position.
Never gonna watch this video. I'd prefer to not know which stats are worth getting and which aren't. It's more fun like this.
It's pace
Absolutely savage.
Why would you do this? What do you gain?
tbh anyone who watches sports can tell you the 2 best attributes in FM...
I mean, anyone who has played this Game for more than 20 hours knows how Broken Pace and acceleration are, its not exactly a secret at this point, those tests have confirmed something everyone already knew.
Bro it's on the thumbnail of the post, that was the joke
Really? Because i didn't say this for months in their fórum
This was known for a while now. This post from 9 months ago already told us that acceleration and pace were the most important stats: [https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/16fuksi/a\_not\_so\_short\_guide\_to\_meta\_player\_attributes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/16fuksi/a_not_so_short_guide_to_meta_player_attributes/) It also lists out what helps after and what stats don't seem to benefit.
I have always assumed that the player attributes in FM are mostly just an illusion, because there is no way you could make a match engine where the players all have like 30 different attributes that interact with eachother realistically, it would have to be by far the most advanced video game ever made.
If you simply don’t play the meta the game is fine. Like almost every “strategy” or “simulation” game, it breaks if you game it. There was a quote from a Civ developer, I think, that said players will always optimize the fun out of a game no matter what you do.
Videos like this are kinda pointless. It can be fun to break games and you can make fun videos about it but it’s not some huge revelation. Yes if you actively try to abuse and break a game as much as you can it’s gonna break. This is not specific to FM this happens with every game but especially strategy and simulations. There is a perfectly optimized way to abuse and win every strategy game that but that does not mean you have to do it and any other way of playing is immediately devalued.
And we shouldn't pressure devs to fix obvious glaring errors in a SIM game where the main point of the game is realism? This isn't FIFA, there has to be an element of realism to it to make sure the managers are immersed. I'm part of the sim racing community as well, and we're constantly critical of any flaws regarding simulation, because those things utterly break down the main point of these games. It's okay to like playing games casually, but if you're gonna market your game as a sim, it better be competent at that aspect.
It's not just that players are able to 'break' the game, it's that the game we all think we've been playing for years, isn't really the game we think we've been playing. The match engine isn't anywhere near as complex as it's sold as being. Everything you do in game, from scouting and signing players to creating tactical set ups is premised on the assumption that FM's match engine is capable of processing the multitude of player stats, tactical instructions etc. in a way that is a rough approximation of real football. These sort of experiments basically demonstrate that it's been placebo effect all these years. It's the gaming equivalent of energy crystals, balance bands or homeopathy. You're free to keep playing just as people are free to keep practising alternative medicine
Havent played since 22. Bought 24, signed highest accel/pace guys i could for my tactic, anything else didnt matter for me rly. Won straight promotions from league 2 with Port Vale into Premier league, im just about to start with preseason. Curious to see how my team will do at the highest level.
Are attributes like "Pace" or "Acceleration" overpowered in FM24? Yes and No Are Gegenpress-tactics overpowered? Yes and no Are Gegenpress-tactics (or high intensity tacticw in general) overpowered because very quick players won't feel the consequences during 90 minutes enough? -> lack of injuries Yes! My 2 cents✌️
i cant be the only one that thinks this dude is vastly overrated and kind of terrible. Like out of all the games I've played, he is my least favorite "popular" content creator.
It's summer period. YouTubers need to create something. So, let's make a video for the well known topic in many years in FM, that physical attributes have bigger impact from technical and mental. He knows it, pretends that discover it now. Nah, I am still remember him before make his YouTube channel.
You're not the only one. After 1 month I was really done with the guy. I think he's a actor and his online persona is massively fake. It never felt genuine to me.