Official Line on Upsets

[Desnudo]

Posted by BjornHolmer on US conference:

"While we did indeed make a major change to the game engine one and a half year ago (by introducing individual achievements, known as "special events"), and will make another later this season (already announced Tactic Types), the big change as regards midfield importance is within the public perception of things.

Upsets have always happened. They are no more common today than before. Midfield have NEVER been everything, but as long as almost everyone accepted that clichée, and told newbies that simplified truth (nothing wrong in that - newbies need to start with simplified truths and then learn the depths later on) - then few people saw the exceptions and few people actively challanged it

What has happened is that as we get more and more experienced coaches around the world, we also get more and more seeing the "deviances" from the simplified picture. We're having a lot of Copernicuses and Galileii these days (the 16th century dudes who said "Hey, the sun appears to go up each morning, but what if the earth is revolving around the sun instead of the other way around").

My own stance is that midfield has always been somewhat too important, from a design perspective, but never even NEAR being "everything". There are, in fact, other at least as important imperfections - for instance defence (and defenders in particular) and set pieces being too unimportant, and these are just as important to get tuned as midfield dominance. 3-5-2-dominance is, by the way partly the result of the combination of three factors:

* Actual midfield importance in game engine
* The public conception that "mdifield is everything", and as Indy (I think it was) correctly pointed out in a conference recently, this is "the easy and safe way to do it". Nothing wrong in that, especially not for newbies.
* Training logic. For various reasons, it have made a lot of sense training midfield and if you do, you'll be mad unless you use three inner mids, and the most obvious way of doing that is with 3-5-2. Here, and interesting thing is that the recent increased importance of expereience may mean that less people want to put 3 boy-scouts with wretched expereience as inner mids."

[FrogMan]

quite interesting Desnudo, thanks for posting it.

FM

[vex]

That's as official as it gets.

[Havok]

Bjorn is right on the money here. I think alot of people are getting a little carried away with midfield and upsets. I see people bitching about losing on the USA conferance board because they had like 1 or 2 levels better midfield and lost.

The best example is the KC Wizards. He has probally the 3rd best midfield in the ML (TT and Slashers are better) yet he still is almost unbeatable. Mainly because he's got a great all around team.

The Midfield in HT is still very important, but its not everything. And now that experiance has come into play, its not to hard to build a good midfield out of older middy's with good experiance. Hell, you can probally buy three 30-35 year old solid middy's with weak or higher exp. for around 200k and they will all play like excellent middy's.

If i would have known experiance was gonna be this important, i probally wouldn't have switched to PM training :)

(sorry i kinda went off topic a little there)

[vex]

Yeah, after season 21, I'll be switching my training to scoring.

[larrymcg421]

Another thing people don't understand is ratios.

For instance, my team usually gets a weak midfield. When we play teams in our division who have a wretched midfield, thats a difference of two levels. Now an excellent versus passable midfield is also a two level difference but those two levels aren't nearly as dominating.

The weak vs. wretched is a two to one advantage, which would be the equivalent of an excellent vs. weak midfield. So when people bitch about their one level midfield advantage, they don't often understand that its a very small advantage the higher you go.

[Bee]

Originally posted by larrymcg421
Another thing people don't understand is ratios.

For instance, my team usually gets a weak midfield. When we play teams in our division who have a wretched midfield, thats a difference of two levels. Now an excellent versus passable midfield is also a two level difference but those two levels aren't nearly as dominating.

The weak vs. wretched is a two to one advantage, which would be the equivalent of an excellent vs. weak midfield. So when people bitch about their one level midfield advantage, they don't often understand that its a very small advantage the higher you go.

That's a very good point. As more players improve their teams the 2 level difference become less and less an advantage, so it seems there are more upsets.

[Havok]

Originally posted by vexroid
Yeah, after season 21, I'll be switching my training to scoring.

Yeah, i probally would have switched to scoring if i would have known that experiance would be so important. a 3-4-3 with an offensive coach is insane.

A guy in my divison runs a 3-4-3 with an offensive coach and his forwards get him 7.5 stars a game. I think 2 are solid and 1 is passable. He puts up a Brilliant central attack.

[-Panther]

my theory on offensive/defensive coaches is get the one opposite of your training. I train strikers so I want and have a defensive coach.

I, personally, would rather have a balanced team putting up formidable all around, rather than brilliant attack and passable defense vice-versa.

although some prefer to have a coach to match their training. to each his own. but I'm seeing more and more balanced teams winning more over unbalanced.

If I could literally veg out for 2 days on HT, I think it'd be interesting to see how many of the 'upsets' are weaker MF but balanced attack/defense beating stronger MF but highly unbalanced attack/defense. especially with the new experience system.

I always say: what good's a brilliant MF if you've got inad-pass attack/defense?

I'd rather have inad-pass MF, and brilliant attack/defense.

Hence, I've built my team's defense/attack before my midfield.

midfield is also the easiest to improve as most people train MF, therefore you can get on the market anyday/time and find a middie. until you start looking for magnificent+.

again, to each his own :)

[YoSoySean]

I agree with Panther. I've always trained keeper and when I had a defensive coach, my offense blew. When I finally got a reason to fire my coach, and enough money to get a new one, I got a solid offensive coach and my team became much more balanced.

[sterlingice]

Originally posted by -Panther
my theory on offensive/defensive coaches is get the one opposite of your training. I train strikers so I want and have a defensive coach.

I, personally, would rather have a balanced team putting up formidable all around, rather than brilliant attack and passable defense vice-versa.

I definately agree with that. Because I have an offensive coach, I've been more willing to spend cash on defensive players. That's why last week I had solids and excellents across the board. I'd much rather have that than an oustanding offense but an inadequate defense that they can break.

SI

[TargetPractice6]

Originally posted by larrymcg421
Another thing people don't understand is ratios.

For instance, my team usually gets a weak midfield. When we play teams in our division who have a wretched midfield, thats a difference of two levels. Now an excellent versus passable midfield is also a two level difference but those two levels aren't nearly as dominating.

The weak vs. wretched is a two to one advantage, which would be the equivalent of an excellent vs. weak midfield. So when people bitch about their one level midfield advantage, they don't often understand that its a very small advantage the higher you go.

Chew on this. A simplied possession formula is like this:

Team1 / ( Team1 + Team2) * 100

where Team1 and Team2 represent the numerical midfield ratings of the teams (disas = 1, wretched = 2...). So of course the better the midfield, the greater the divisor. This leads to the smaller possessions. I thought it was just an interesting tidbit and you are right on the money larry.

[-Panther]

Originally posted by TargetPractice6
Chew on this. A simplied possession formula is like this:

Team1 / ( Team1 + Team2) * 100

where Team1 and Team2 represent the numerical midfield ratings of the teams (disas = 1, wretched = 2...). So of course the better the midfield, the greater the divisor. This leads to the smaller possessions. I thought it was just an interesting tidbit and you are right on the money larry.

that's actually extremely close. In the match I tied Bonafide, he had a solid midfield to my inad.

solid = 7
inad = 5

7 / ((7+5) * 100)

if you do the multiplication before division:

7 + 5 = 12
12 * 100 = 1200

7 / 1200 = .005833333333

first half possesion: The fortyfive minutes were dominated by Bonafide, with an impressive 58 percent possession of the ball.

second half you also have to add stamina into the equation.

[TargetPractice6]

You don't need to multiply the 100 before dividing. In fact, the elimates the purpose of the 100.

7 / 12 = 0.58333333
* 100 = 58.3333333

[-Panther]

Originally posted by TargetPractice6
You don't need to multiply the 100 before dividing. In fact, the elimates the purpose of the 100.

7 / 12 = 0.58333333
* 100 = 58.3333333

good point, don't know why I did multiplication first. didn't try other way though lol