Philosophy of Balanced Skills

Posted by: Mateusz Mucha on Fri, 29 April 2005 13:20:17 (3436 Reads)

The match engine, as the central part of the whole system, must be designed very carefully. Every other aspect is either directly or indirectly connected with it. With so many dependencies, it needs to be very balanced. Let's take a look at how our match engine enforces a nice balance of players' technical skills (or, in other words, how did we achieve a dynamic need for skills).

One thing we've always disliked in most of football management games (not only online ones) is that they pretty much require a fixed (and static) set of skills. So, in brief, a perfect central midfielder would have 50% of his total skill points in passing, 20% in tackling and so on. In worst cases, the use of skills is calculated linearly (i.e. one point of increase is valued the same for good and bad players) and independently (passing is not connected with tackling in any way) at the same time. In such case, it's simply the best practice to train only one skill for every player (midfielders would only train passing, defenders just tackling, etc.).

So we have two principles here: there mustn't be any golden formulas (or the game would get boring for experienced players) and there must be some connection between the skills (so you wouldn't train a player in just one skill). Let me show you the way we handled it.

Imagine an ideal situation: Peter is a typical defender and plays as a central defender. All circumstances are neutral (no special tactics, no individual orders for him, weather is "normal", regular opposing forwards are on the field). We could say that he will use each of his skills to some extent. So when he's in the defense zone, he'll use a lot of tackling, some passing, little dribbling and some air skill. Whenever not defending, he'll help midfielders a bit and he'll use a different set of skills there. Sometimes he'll venture to the attack zone; he might even try to shoot at the goal. In each of those areas he'll use a certain set of skills.

Let's change our guy a bit. Peter seems to be quite powerful and not very agile, even as for defender. Being so slow, he prefers rather not to dribble around the opponent, but to pass the ball to his teammates. He uses less dribbling and more passing. Psychological traits influence the set of skills as well.

Now... we have chosen a special tactic for our team... or not! Let's make it more interesting - our opponents have chosen to play high balls. Their wingers keep throwing high passes into the middle of our penalty area and Peter keeps jumping into the air. Obviously, he uses his air skill more often and regular "ground-based" tackling not as often as usually.

Same mechanisms apply to other factors: weather, individual orders for Peter, etc. So, as you can see, there's no room for any golden formulas here. Also, in conjunction with our training system, it's a good idea to build a diversified squad. Some players would be good for certain games, others will be better in other games. If you take endurance-power opposition into account (for example you can train your player to be more a good short-distance runner and he'll play more intensively, but he'll get tired more quickly - so it's a good choice to use such player as a substitute), you have a nice overall picture of how demanding might be the task of building a good squad.

OK, so far so good. But still, tackling is the most important skill for Peter, so why not to make him a monster that can tackle very well and cannot pass or dribble at all? Here's simple answer. After Peter successfully tackles the ball, he needs to do something with it. If he can't pass the ball at all, he'll keep giving it away for free. So his tackling becomes much less effective (what's the point of stealing the ball if you give it away a second after?). Same apply to other skills. A great scorer will not use his shooting 100% efficiently if he can't dribble. He will simply loose the ball before he can shoot. Midfielder will not use his passing as often if he can never tackle the ball successfully.