Game engine changes and the "long passer" quality

On Wednesday 17th, the crew introduced some changes to the game engine that had been alluded to for around a month. These changes certainly look to adjust the balance between long balls and midfield heavy formations, among other things.

Long passer quality

A new quality, long passing, has been added to the game. Between one and four players in each team have been randomly assigned the quality, which looks to have the following characteristics:

• Improved performance with long balls
• Increased probability of created chances being crosses
• Improved performance from indirect free kicks (in the same way that shooting power affects direct free kicks)

All told, the quality doesn't necessarily look set to affect managers using 4-5-1 or 3-5-2 with pressure particularly much, although it may improve the chances of teams looking to use "long ball formations", such as 4-3-3 and 5-3-2.

Other game engine changes

There are a few other subtle game changes across different areas:

• Fatigue will have a lesser effect on teams with less possession. This one will directly impact teams that use long balls (and therefore have lower possession), but it's not clear at this point how the effects of pressure compare i.e. whether pressing will tire players more than not having the ball quite as much.
• Changes to win bonuses. Apparently, these didn't work quite right before.
• Adjustments to "defensive strategies". The crew have been deliberately vague, which I do like, so this one could take some working out.
• Preparing for formations. I think the effects may have been increased here. I know the figure was originally derived from something called the "bogey team factor", which was hidden so I would have presuemd to be quite small to start with.

Overall, I think the changes could be a step in the right direction, although I don't see a big shift from the 3-5-2 / 4-5-1 prevalence just yet. There needs to be a greater influence on chance creation introduced for forwards, IMO, as a number of managers are abusing the system's apparent disregard for low quality attacking players. I will be converting one fo my teams, Grim Fandango, into a long ball team, primarily using 4-3-3 and 5-3-2 I think (as these formations require just one player switch so they will use a similar squad composition). I aim to load up with long passers in defence and midfield, and will sign a decent striker with heading ability and see where that goes.

Game updates

There has been a recent update from Saarde, one of the X11 crew about a number of updates that are planned for the game (as well as info about recent changes). The full list is here.

I'll be honest, I like the look of what is being planned. The presumption is that the tweaks to the game engine will revolve around possession and (hopefully) shifting the emphasis away from the midfield when it comes to creating chances (although that would affect my teams that are using all-round defenders and midfielders upfront for the moment).

The AI for teams will be helpful as well, IMO. The Xpert leagues have a lot of dead teams and giving the coaches in Division 7 a bit more of a challenge can only be a good thing.

I anticipate the quicker league format (i.e. three games a week with shorter training) will be popular among web users too. I'm in two minds as to whether I'd be joining a league like that - I don't have much time on weekends - but if the option becomes available for existing league admins to switch, I can see it being taken up.

Firefox plug-in

I've been thinking for a while about how to make things a little easier within the X11 site, and I thought I'd have a punt at a plug-in, which I've finally gotten around to releasing. Note that this has been signed with AMO (and subsequently renamed), so existing users wishing to update may find that existing data is not retained.

Essentially, it records team and player details and allows calculation of a player's exact skill without having to move to a separate site. It stores calculated values and then displays them when you hover over a player's skill (almost) anywhere else on the site. It also records evaluation details, and gives a more precise value for a player's compatibility (in degrees left or right of the centre of the dial, -90 (left) to 90 (right)).

To use it, download the file from the link and run it in Firefox. Once that is done, it will work in the background picking up data from pages you view. I've opted against fetching data directly as the crew might not like it and it's a bit naughty if people have slow connections or data limits.

You'll want to visit pages in this order:
The lobby (which you are directed to when you log in anyway).
The squad page for each team - this loads player data.
The players bought page - this loads players' starting skill.
After that, you can go to the change reports page and, when you select a player, their skill should be calculated and stored.

The plug-in will also fetch details on evaluations (although you have to leave the page open for at least 3-4 seconds before you navigate anywhere else - sorry about that) and it should update the list on the market main screen with the player's evaluated compatibility and their estimated value (if they have one).

Next up, I'm looking to add reminders about CR training, warnings if PRs haven't been issued and notifications if players you declare an interest in are close to their deadline. I'm open to suggestions though about what would make people's lives easier.

If I get what I want to done on the FF plug in, I may look into Chrome but I will only really consider looking at those two browsers.

A team with no forwards?

Back in October, I outlined my plan to develop my team in the League of D (Huge Pythons at the time, but since renamed Grim Fandango), which involved rotating 4-5-1 and 5-4-1 and heavily developing three defenders and three midfielders at a time. I've been getting excellent returns on DV, but I've found the side currently yo-yo between the two divisions - the mentors are good enough to haul the team to the top flight, where they get thrashed. I've also only been able to train six players at a time in five slots.

I've since had a bit of an epiphany, thanks in no small part to one of my other sides - Steel City Starlets. Now, the Xpert Ladies is an odd league in that youths cost a small fortune in the closed season and the YA is a worthy investment. I'd got the defenders and midfielders I needed to take the team forwards and was using my strikers to generate revenue. However, my YA had been falling short on quality strikers to train during the season, so the ones I was promoting I was actually leaving out. Instead, my two youngest mids are all-rounders and I'm rotating them up front, thus allowing me to play my strongest midfield. That got me thinking, why not just scrap forwards altogether?

I have a dim view of forwards right now, both in terms of their utility and their profitability, but I figure I could use the forward slot as a means of training up my very weakest youths if they are all-rounders. The plan would be to use a permanent 4-5-1, with my mentors as a GK, two DF and three MF. That leaves me two defensive slots, two midfield slots and a forward slot for youths. I could rotate three youths in defence, three in midfield and then have an all-round defender and all-round midfielder rotate in the space up front. They'd earn 85% of the usual ME, which multiplied by the 63% earned for half a match means that, if they rotate at half time, the ME gained is still like playing one whole game out of two up front. With all-rounders being handy in a small squad anyway, it seems like a no brainer, especially with me developing two extra youths at a time.

I'm hoping to adapt my Orange Mooses side to use all-rounders in this closed season, then will shift to my other teams in due course. I'll let you know how it goes.

Compatibility and teamwork

In this post (and I know it's been a while), I'd like to talk about compatibility, its effect on teamwork values and how that can impact the performance of individual players and the team as a whole. I'd also like to talk about how you can use knowledge of your players' compatibility values to your advantage, in terms of getting the best from your players and also helping them improve their teamwork values.

I'd like to refer people to Widzy's guide (which is, in turn, hosted on Terjekv's site), which is essential reading if you're not very familiar with compatibility.

Compatbility can be a little misleading in that the value you see on the player's page relates to how well they get on with the team, but the teamwork values (and the most direct effects on performance) are based on how well the player gets on with players in the same part of the team. What happens during a game is like this:

• The average teamwork value for the team parts are worked out
• All the players in each team part have performance adjusted based on how close their value is to the average
• The whole team's teamwork value is calculated by combining the three team parts
• The whole team has a performance adjustment based on the overall team value

The mechanism here means that one individual that gets on badly with the team will suffer the most directly, will have a slight effect on the rest of their team part, but the effect on the whole team should be a bit smaller. Unusual things can happen with lone strikers - the teamwork for the attack with a 5-4-1 or 4-5-1 is always 20, so the striker will never suffer directly, but they may have an effect on the whole team's value.

Another piece of information on the player page is the "works best / worst with" information. The thing to remember here is that "works worst with" does not mean "works badly with". The information is handy in that you can use the link to move from one player to the other to see just how close their values are.

Teamwork values are updated after each game and should generally converge over time (although divas will do what they want). The players adjust to the rest of their team part first (and this is the largest part of the adjustment), then the overall team value. Over time it is not uncommon for two team parts to move to slightly different values e.g. defenders may be all slightly left of centre while midfielders are all slightly right of centre. This can depend on the players that are used together and the signings that you make. The teamwork adjustments can be exploited by deliberately selecting players that may "drag" other players' teamwork values one way or another. Friendlies are also useful in the sense that they give a full teamwork adjustment, even though they give minimal match experience.

When buying players, the important thing to remember is that your older players - the ones that you need the performances out of straight away - are the ones that need to have the best teamwork. They should be all "good" at least, but keep an eye on the actual meter. If you're looking at two defenders with "good" compatibility, one left and one right of centre, then you may wish to check your defenders' values to see if they tend to converge slightly left or right of centre, as one of the two prospective signings might be a better fit. Younger players are less important as they will get many games to improve their compatibility before they become first team regulars, but try to sign players that are at least fair and be wary of signing too many players that may drag team parts in different directions.