Match Engine Update and Attribute Adjustment, by FIDAdmin1

This text has been divided into three parts:

1. Important Match Engine Update.

2. How does momentum arrow and slider work?

3. Free attribute adjustment?

Please read these parts as careful as possible – it is important information!

1. IMPORTANT MATCH ENGINE UPDATE

We believe that we have now taken an important step towards decreasing the influence of “randomness” in the match engine and that we have now managed to put more emphasis on “user decisions” and attributes instead. The biggest changes is related to momentum that will not only influence how footballers can move on the field but will now also have an impact on the outcome from different situations.

The changes made in the new match engine version (just recently released on all matches) can be summarized as follows:

- Momentum will influence result when trying to receive a ball

- Momentum will influence result when trying to fight for a ball

- Momentum will influence result when trying to tackle or dribble

- Pass Quality (the bars) will influence the result when trying to receive a ball

- Pass Quality (the bars) will influence the result when trying to fight for a ball in and around the penalty area

- Attributes will have a slightly stronger importance on fight for ball and tackle/dribble

- Special abilities were overpowered and we have decreased impact from ALL special abilities with similar amount

We have also made some slight tweaks related to how momentum influences movement:

- The difference between high momentum and no momentum has been increased SLIGHTLY.

- The amount that a footballer can turn when in high momentum has been decreased SLIGHTLY.

- The acceleration of footballers has been decreased SLIGHTLY so that it takes longer time to reach max momentum.

Here’s a more in-depth description of the effects these changes will have on the game:

Receiving and Fighting for the ball:

A footballer will have a higher chance of receiving or fighting for a ball with low momentum and less chance with high momentum. Also the quality of the pass (displayed with bars) will have an effect on the chance that a teammate and an opponent will have to successfully receive or fight for the ball (in and around the penalty area). The quality of the passes will only increase the chance of winning a fight for the ball in and around the penalty area and the reason for this is to better simulate the higher determination and focus of destructive play that defenders have around the penalty area and the increased passing skills that are needed to still get the ball to teammates in a good way. This means that defenders overall have a better chance to win fights for the ball around the “dangerous” penalty area but that passers can now counter the increased defensive awareness of the defending team with high quality passes or lower the chance even more with low quality passes.

Result in game play:

We believe that this change will now put a lot more importance into positioning, passing accuracy, passing quality and user decision when it comes to momentum. Footballers will have to make sure that they can reach the ball with as little momentum as possible in order for them not to fail with their reception and in order for them to increase their chances in a potential fight. Passers will have to pass the balls much more carefully to their teammates in order not to have them move a lot in order to reach the ball. It will also be more important to let more skilled passers hit the passes into the penalty area to give the potential goal scorers better chance to win those important fights for the ball in and around the penalty area. We also believe that there may be situations where it is better to go for the end point of a pass instead of trying to receive early (with very high momentum) in order to make sure you can have the ball under control next turn.

We believe it will also put new requirements when it comes to attributes and some footballers may find themselves needing more skill in new attributes. For example a speedy footballer with bad receive skills may find that he needs to decrease his momentum in order not to risk failing with receiving a ball. This will then actually slow that footballer down since he can’t move as fast as he would have liked. Increasing the receive skills should be the focus for such a footballer.

Tackling and dribbling:

A footballer will have a higher chance of tackling with low momentum and less chance with high momentum.

Result in game play:

We believe that dribblers will have to make “smarter” moves in order to get their opponent to reach them and tackle them with high momentum. We will see less dribblers trying to move straight through their opponents (making it easier for them to tackle if they can stand still and tackle).

Attribute Importance:

Attributes will now carry a SLIGHTLY higher weight in fight for ball and tackle/dribble situations where both footballers have “the same” prerequisites. For example if two footballers can fight the ball with all other parameters evening out, then there will be a bigger chance of the footballer with the highest fight for ball skills winning the situation.

Results in game play:

We believe that it will now be much more important to make intelligent decisions on the field in order to outsmart your opponents. If you are playing a ball towards a team mate who is underpowered against his marker then you better make sure you (and your team mate) do whatever you can to give him as high a chance of succeeding as possible.

2. HOW DOES MOMENTUM ARROW AND SLIDER WORK?

We have found that not everyone fully understands how the momentum arrow (and the momentum slider) works and we thought it would be a good idea to clarify it slightly. There is one important thing to understand here:

- The amount of momentum that you specify with your arrow or slider is only your “desired momentum” and may not necessarily become the “actual momentum” you will receive.

The easiest way to describe this is to say that your actual momentum will be decided by the following parameters:

- Your ability to break/turn

- Your ability to accelerate

- Your breaking time

- Your acceleration time

Basically what this means is that if you for example move max what you can move during a turn and try to break down to 0 momentum then you will not be able to do so because you had no “time to break” (you were moving during the whole turn). Another example is that if you move only say 20% during a turn and you were moving from standing still the previous turn, then you do not have enough “acceleration time” to reach 100% momentum (for most footballers reaching the very max momentum it can take multiple turns of maximum movement). The actual momentum you will be able to reach during that time is then also dependent of your “acceleration ability”.

We hope this clarifies things for some of you who had not fully grasped this yet. We intend to create a specific topic about this in the help section on the forums later to give further details on how it works.

3. FREE ATTRIBUTE ADJUSTMENT?

With this new match engine release we have finally reached a point where we believe we can allow for the third and final attribute adjustment to be opened. We will open the adjustment up tomorrow (we will inform in the forums when it has been opened) and it will be open until December 19th at 23.59 UTC and the limit on how much you can decrease an attribute will be set to 30%. It will be up to everyone to decide for themselves when they want to perform their attribute adjustments but we strongly recommend that you wait a few matches in order to be able to analyze how these new match engine updates have changed the match engine.

We really hope that these new changes will create an even deeper game experience from FID matches from now on where the feeling is that everyone has a bigger chance of influencing the outcome of a situation through the making of intelligent moves and decisions and if you want to discuss the changes please do that here.

Please note that the version of the match engine client should be 2012.12.03. To make sure that you have this you should clear the cache before logging in to any match.

Yours Sincerely,

International FIDA