Dumbing Down

First of all it would be rude for me not to introduce myself for those who don’t know I am Levo, and now that ‘To Madeira’ side of Saint and Greavsie, thanks to Q. I have been around the scene for along long time, since the days of a site called Project CM was being headed by a Singaporean Chelsea fan who was the talk of the scene. I haven’t been around as much as time allowed me back at the tender age of 14 when I first arrived on the FM community, but I have popped my head up every so often on GK, Life in FM and The Saints and now here on FM View in another attempt to push my opinions upon you. So lets get on to what I am really here for…

The new FM is nearly in the shops, so it is that periodic time where I write a few blogs for any site that will have me or failing that setting something up at my own domain, then getting the writing bug out of my system before leaving a few months after release when work overwhelms me. Therefore how best to kick off a few blogs that hopefully will keep you entertained, then to write them on the best new feature that has ever hit FM. This new addition will favour more people than the 3D match engine, enthral more management apprentices then the 20^th press conference of the season and will have more debating over then the move from text commentary to a 2D match engine. Of course I am talking about the new Football Manager Tactic creator.

The tactic creator that has been shown off at MirrorFootball and YouTube shows a quick and easy way to set up a new tactic for your team, telling it what you want your players to do and how the team should play. But in a few quarters many of those wannabe deluded elite types think that the new wizard is Football Manager dumbing down.

There have been people who may suggest that moving away from the sliders is just looking to put the game into the mainstream, making it easier for everyone to play the game. Even suggesting that the sliders are the only way to go about making a tactic, using intelligence and an understanding gained from years of trial and error. But those same people will be the first to complain when the game is not realistic enough for them, that the teams don’t play the way they should do on a real pitch.

What has to be realised though is that the new tactic generator does make it much easier to set up tactics within the game; it does allow the mainstream manager setup a decent package of tactics without years of experience in FM. But it does not mean that you have to be less intelligent to setup these tactics. The same amount of football tactical knowledge is needed to play the game and in the process making it more real. In the team talks and tactical meetings with players you wouldn’t draw on the chalk board, “Stevie you are going to close down today at around a 4, but the whole team you only have around 6 creative freedom, reign the flair in”. No instead you would give them straight instructions on how they should play or give them roles that are understood by yourself and the players. This in itself makes the game more realistic as you are pinning understandable football terms to the players, meaning that you no longer need to learn in depth what each slider will do, how any changes will reflect in the match engine and the relationships between the different sliders in the game. These then a blessing for the casual user who just want to apply their real world knowledge to Football Manager.

I am certainty going to look forward to this new feature in the game, the one I am most probably more excited about then any. For years now I have vowed to learn the in’s and out’s of tactics within the game, but each year and rightly so FM has made them more complex and I just want to be able to pick up the game sometimes and play, allowing myself to immerse myself in a fantasy world that can reflect the real world.

The sliders obviously are still there for those that want to ticker in the old way but obviously the introduction to a lot of the features over the past few years are to simplify a game that through the years has become more and more complex. Selling millions of the game they need to please the hardcore gamers who know how to play the game inside out as well as the silent majority who don’t know anything about the tactical theories that can be debated over in great detail at FM-Britain. What many might not know is that this tactical wizard has been aided by these people on the scene that are already masters of the sliders, using their knowledge translate and hopefully we will see in the upcoming game our instructions translated with fantastic accuracy and give a whole new interest and debate into tactics on FM, helping our much guarded community in the process.