Upcoming ME tweaks, by FIDAdmin1

So, we are now working on a new set of Match Engine tweaks that we want to release within a week or two in order to have the momentum concept influence the gameplay even more than it already does. We believe these tweaks will add additional depth to the game and at the same time will make it possible to increase importance of attributes in situations where the user decision of one footballer is just as good (or bad) as his opponent’s (hence decreasing the influence of randomness).

Here’s a summary of the tweaks we are working on:

1. Receive ball

- We will make it so that momentum will play a role in receiving a ball. It will be more difficult to receive a ball at high speed and easier at low speed. We will build it so that the effect is mostly based on general speed (not relative speed compared to footballer’s skills) but also a smaller amount on footballer’s individual speed. So if you are a very quick footballer trying to receive at 80% of your speed you will most likely get bigger decrease in chance compared to a slow footballer trying to receive at 100% speed. This also caters for the younger footballers (who are usually not so speedy) since they will quite often come at the ball with a low general speed.

- The pass quality will also play a slightly bigger role in receiving now.

Vision:

We believe that this will make it important for speedy footballers to also have good reception skills if they want to be able to receive the ball at full momentum. Otherwise those footballers would have to slow down in order to increase their chances to get the ball which would partly defeat the purpose of being speedy 

We also believe that we will see more passes going just through footballers that can hardly reach the ball (they will have to stretch to reach it and with full momentum) which could also see more low through passes being played through the defensive lines. We may even see great passers (who can get off a 4 or 5 bar pass) play them balls almost straight through defenders.

We also believe that we will see situations where footballers will not dare to try to receive the ball but instead will leave it and go towards where “the ball will bounce to” next turn in order not to risk it going straight through them.

2. Fight for ball

- We will make it so that momentum will play a role in Fights for the ball. It will be more difficult to fight for a ball at high speed and easier at low speed.

- We will now also let pass quality play a role in the fight for ball cases. Of course if a ball is hit long upfield the pass quality won’t make much of a difference but at shorter distances a well placed pass will increase the chances of your team mate winning the ball.

Vision:

We believe that this tweak will make FFB attributes even more important. As a defender there will be situations where you will have to fight for a ball with more momentum than your opponent and in those cases you must make sure you are a monster (compared to your opponent) in order to win the fight.

We believe that positioning will be much more important after this tweak. One must make sure not to have to fight an opponent in full momentum in a dangerous situation (if you are the defender). 

We also believe that passing accuracy will become even more important. Miss your target with a lot and the opponent may be able to fight it with as little momentum as possible and your team mate will be in trouble.

3. Tackle/Dribble

- This is the trickiest part to tweak and we have not yet taken a final decision on how the tweak will be implemented. At minimum we will make it so that a tackler will get less chance of tackling at high momentum and higher chance at tackling with low momentum.

Vision:

We believe that this will make dribbling and tackling much more challenging. Tacklers will have to position themselves well and make sure they can cover most of the dribblers run by having set a good momentum. Dribblers will try to set their momentum before receiving the ball so that they can make a following run that forces the tackler to tackle at high momentum (and preferably early on the run so that the tackler is left behind if dribble succeeds). We will most likely see a much more careful dribbling AND tackling game and this may even result in standoffs where a dribbler makes a short move to lure his opponent to tackle at high momentum whereas the tackler instead just closes up on the dribbler without tackling.

4. Further Momentum tweaks

- We intend to increase the difference between full momentum and no momentum SLIGHTLY. We believe that a footballer with full momentum should be able to move a bit longer compared to a footballer with low momentum or momentum in the wrong direction but this is going to be a very small tweak.

- We intend to decrease the amount that a footballer can turn when at full momentum SLIGHTLY. This is of course still decided by a footballer’s attributes but we want to narrow the run that footballers can do when having a high momentum in order to make it less “forgiving”. This tweak will however also be very small.

- We intend to make acceleration slower so that for example a footballer performing a short run can’t accelerate as much as a footballer making a long run.

5. Special Ability tweaks

We intend to decrease the effect from Special Abilities in some areas now that momentum and other parameters are becoming stronger parameters in the game.

SIDENOTE:

We would like to highlight one thing and that is that we believe that after these tweaks “the star system” (or the success indicators as they are also called) will finally become much more interesting. With so many new and dynamic parameters (like momentum and pass quality) being more involved the star result displayed in a fight, receive or tackle/dribble will finally give a bit of useful information to the user since it is based on the specific situation. So for example if a footballer that is clearly stronger than his opponent loses a FFB with 2* it would indicate that the opponent had a lower momentum than him AND/OR the pass quality influenced the outcome. With this information the user can start evaluation what he can do to improve his situation which has always been the main idea with this star system.

Upcoming free adjustment

Now, we know that many of you are wondering when we will open up the free adjustment that we have promised in relation to the introduction of momentum. We were hoping to be able to open up the adjustment when the leagues were “turning” (after 11 matches) but we realize now that we will not be able to so. As you can see from above there are some interesting and important tweaks coming within a week or two and it would be very bad to open up the adjustments before these tweaks has been released. Of course some of you will argue that you can decide for yourself if you want to perform the adjustment now or later and that we might as well open it up now and let it run for a longer period but that is not a good way of doing it. Not everyone follows the development as closely and there may be users seeing that the adjustment page is open, going to adjust without realizing that we will come with an important tweak just shortly after. Therefore we will not open the adjustments until the tweaks has been performed.

Edit: Seems I was unclear about one thing here. The free adjustment will be opened shortly after the tweaks has been released (1-2 weeks from now) meaning that the adjustments will be opened during this season.

Edit2: changed pass success to pass quality (bars)

SOURCE: https://forum.footballidentity.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2551463#post2551463