An open letter to the BoD | My argument to allow player instructions

[McLumberjack]

Hello SSL community, (and specifically the BoD @Canadice @Lpapi @Zoone16 @Daleks @OTK @GHamss @gaucho12 )

I come to you today with my argument in favor of allowing player instructions in the SSL. I have done ample research and testing and think I have a solid case to argue that having them be illegal, is creating more work and issues than it is actually worth.


Chapter 1 - Why are player instructions banned in the first place.

In my time in the BoD I have raised this question before, I got the following 2 reasons:

1. Player instructions would create an extra barrier because of their complexity.

The first argument boils down to the fact that Football Manager is already a complicated game. There are many different tactics, options, meta's that all need to be accounted for as a manager/tactician. Allowing player instructions would make this task even more daunting and increase the barrier of entry for any new managers. Add to this the fact that fm24 is no longer able to be aquired through normal means, this would only further the difficulty of finding proper management for organisations. A task that has proven increasingly difficult already.


2. Player instructions are broken/overpowered

The second argument comes down to the fact that there is an idea that certain player instructions "break the engine" in a way that makes them so overpowered, that adding them would mean everyone would have to run the exact same tactics and or player instructions to even have a chance of winning. This would ruin any creativity and give an incredible advantage to the teams that know what they are doing. 


I hope to have captured the general idea of why player instructions are currently illegal, however if anyone has any extra arguments I would love to hear them.


Chapter 2 - Player instructions creating barriers 

The argument that player instructions make the game too hard ignores the current state of the league. I checked the latest matchday (MD3) and went by every majors team to see what formation they were playing.

Catalunya: 4231 not fmArena
Hollywood: 3 striker formation not fmarena (although they do also run fmArena strats sometimes)
Reykjavik: 4231 fmArena
Shanghai: 4231 fmArena
USP: 343 fmArena
Xelaju: 4231 fmArena
AC Romana: 4231 fmArena (slight adjustment)
CA Buenos Aires: 4231 fmArena
CD Tenochtitlan: 4222 fmArena (adjusted)
Liffeyside: 4231 fmArena
Schwarzwalder FV: Honestly I do not know what to call this but definitely not from fm arena
Tokyo: 4231 fmArena

So out of 12 organisations we have:


6 organisations running the exact same meta 4231 formation downloaded from fmArena
2 organisations running a tactic from fmArena but slightly adjusted (some roles switched but generally the same)
1 org running a different formation straight from fmArena
1 org running a self made tactic, but who also runs fmArena tactics on different matchdays

Which leaves 2 orgs not running an fmArena tactic. This was with me checking only 1 Matchday and only in the majors. 


We can not pretend that you need deep tactical knowledge of fm24 to be a good manager these days, if anything, trying to rely on normal football manager knowledge is a liability in the SSL. The way the meta has evolved here rewards only one kinda of football. High pressing, high intensity, attacking football.

My argument is that adding PI's would actually make it easier for a new manager if people are already downloading the tactic anyway, now it just removes the need to open the tactic in football manager and manually removing the player instructions. If anything this will LOWER the barrier of entry. New managers or tacticians would not even need the game in order to make tactical submissions (There would need to be an adjustment with the current system where you have to post a screenshot, however that should not be too hard if you can just have them fill in the players in the positions on a form). 

In order to make things fair there would need to be ample information provided about the existance of fmArena and how it works, but we need to stop pretending like most teams are spending hours cooking in the lab thinking off brand new formations from scratch, that just does not happen any more (with some exceptions ofcourse).



There is also a clear example of the ban of player instructions hurting the integrity of the league which happened back in season 21. In this season Hollywood FC used player instructions illegally for 3 matchdays, this was however only found out at the end of the season. Hollywood FC won the title this season eventhough they had broken the rules. In a league where everyone is allowed to use player instructions a scenario like this could have never happened. Ironically having the instructions be illegal, increases the likelyhood of cheating/unfair advantages being had by organisations.



Chapter 3 - Player instructions are not overpowered

The second argument is a lot harder to debunk with only words, so we have to turn to one of my favorite things... data!


i wanted to find out just how overpowered and "broken" player instructions really were, so I set up an experiment. Here is the setup of the league I made:

• I used the original database for this season
  
• I only focused on Major Divison 1
  
• In the pre game editor I edited the league structure so there would be 24 teams who all played each other 4 times
  
• I duplicated each team so there were 4 of each
  
• I duplicated each player so there were 4 identical copies of each team
  
• I gave every team the formation they were running after MD1
  
• Each season I simulated would mean every team played 92 matches
  
• Each simulation every team had their attributes frozen, no injuries, perfect morale, perfect fitness, max tactical cohesion
  
• After each simulation I would take the average position, average points per game, average goal difference per game, average goals for and against and average win% by combining all 4 of the cloned teams and taking the average of that.
  

With the basic setup of the league explained I will go to my methodology and what I was trying to achieve by doing it. 

The goal was to prove that not only are player instructions not overpowered, my theory was that there is a WAY bigger difference between a basic preset fm24 formation and a downloaded fmArena tactic without player instructions.

Than there is between a fmArena tactic without player instructions versus one that does have player instructions. Now onto the actual experiment.

1. For this experiment I picked Xelaju, my reasoning was that they were somewhere in the middle of the pack (which means we can see both the upswings and downswings) and because they are already running the meta 4231 formation from fmArena.
   
2. I first simulated the control, this was every team with their normal tactic. Xelaju with their fmArena 4231 without player instructions. I simmed this 38 times, which means a total of 13,984 Xelaju matches and 41,952 total matches. The results and Xelaju tactic used can be found under here.
   

Xelaju fmArena 4231 NO PI's
Average Position: 15.91
Average PPG: 1.16
Average GD Per Game: -0.4
Average GF Per Game: 1.51
Average GA Per Game: 1.92
Average Win%: 31.66%




Next it was time to test the same exact formation, only with player instructions. The tactic I used was HIGHWAY STAR 4231 P107 FC downloaded from fmArena, which is the best performing 4231 formation. I ran this formation for 5 seasons which is 1840 Xelaju matches. Formation and results below.



Xelaju fmArena 4231 WITH PI's
Average Position: 14.55
Average PPG: 1.26
Average GD Per Game: -0.24
Average GF Per Game: 1.63
Average GA Per Game: 1.87
Average Win%: 35.22%
Next it was time to test one of the fm24 default tactics. For this test I used the gegenpress 4231 DM AM Wide preset that fm24 provides us. I also ran this formation for 5 seasons. Formation and results below.




Xelaju default gegenpress
Average Position: 20.4
Average PPG: 0.87
Average GD Per Game: -0.98
Average GF Per Game: 1.2
Average GA Per Game: 2.17
Average Win%: 21.96%

Finally, because I suspected the gegenpress preset is the best case scenario when it comes to presets, I tested another preset too. The 4231 DM AM Wide control pressure preset, once again 5 seasons.




Xelaju default control possession
Average Position: 22.5
Average PPG: 0.49
Average GD Per Game: -1.6
Average GF Per Game: 0.55
Average GA Per Game: 2.14
Average Win%: 10.43%

So, looking at those numbers, the conclusion is actually pretty crazy.


The whole reason we banned player instructions was because we were scared they were "broken" or "overpowered." But the data shows that the "PI Gap" is only 0.10 PPG. In our actual 15-game SSL season, that is a difference of 1.5 points. We are literally talking about one draw turning into a win every two seasons. That’s it. That is the "game-breaking" advantage everyone is so worried about.

But now look at the other gap. The difference between someone using a default FM24 preset like Control Possession and someone using a Legal fmArena tactic is a massive 0.67 PPG. Over our 15-game season, that is a 10-point swing.

Lets stop for a second and think about how backwards that is. We are perfectly fine with a manager having a 10-point advantage just because they knew which website to download a formation from, but we are issuing fines and spending hours auditing files to prevent a 1.5-point advantage.

Its the football manager equivalent of allowing fully automatic assault rifles but banning sights for them because "it would be too dangerous".

And it’s not just about the points, it is about the incredble amount of wasted time and energy. Right now, the auditing/simming department has to open every single .fmf file and manually check every single player screen just to make sure a manager didn't accidentally leave "Tackle Harder" checked. It’s a massive waste of time for a 1.5-point difference.

Plus, as I mentioned before, this actually makes it harder for new managers. A new guy downloads a tactic, thinks he's good to go, and then gets slapped with a fine because he didn't realize there were illegal instructions hidden in the wing-back role. If we just allowed them, a new manager could actually "plug and play" like they’re supposed to.

I understand the reasoning behind this ruling originally, however I think we have come to a point where we are only doing it "because that is how it has been" not because it is the correct course of action.



Chapter 4 - Conclusion

So to conclude, I think I have made a strong case on why allowing player instructions would be a positive overal change for the league.


The testing is clear, while player instructions do have an effect on tactics, it is in no way the deciding factor and a quite minor one in the grand scheme of things. Making them illegal does nothing to make the league more equal and only provides more useless work in the background.


If we finally lift this ban, three things happen immediately:

We actually make it "Plug-and-Play" for new managers. A new manager can just download a tactic and jump in. Counter intuitively it will make the barrier of entry lower for new managers. (A big point here would be to have information about downloading tactics available for all managers, so there is not an unfair advantage there)

We prevent the potential of cheating or unfair scenario's . No more situations like Season 21. Everyone is on the same playing field and has access to the same tools.

People who are currently doing auditing can commit their time to different parts of the league. 


The data proves that player instructions are not some cheatcode, they are a small part of the greater tactical ecosystem. Just a small part of the game that we have turned into a massive headache for ourselves.





I invite everyone to provide counter arguments in the comments and I will be happy to reply. It could be that I missed something.

Finally if the BoD needs access to any of my testing data I would be happy to provide, I have saved all the tactics, saves, results and more and can provide everything for proof.

[CROney3]

I ain't reading all that.

Happy for you tho!

Or sorry that happened.

[norththegreatestshowman]

I'd like to say Shanghai ran at least 9 different tactics last season and that being resumed to "Shanghai: 4231 fmArena" hurts a bit (:,3), and while we do indeed sometimes use FMArena tactics or some twist of it (if we dont just outright use our opponent's tactic against them), our combined hours of testing last season for Minors and Majors made me realize that our instruction-less variation of FM has a lot of pros and cons, but it ultimately feel like you can take advantage of more things as an outsider than in the "complete" game cause we, as a community, have less knowledege of it (See Shanghai battling for the title last season when they shouldnt really be).

My fear is that by allowing PIs, we are doing one more steps towards (and I'm not saying that in any mean way, I love you guys) the USPification of the league, where everyone will be slighlty pushed more toward the same meta/builds/tactics. I know that the game doesnt really promote variety, but I would like to see less clones of Rashford and Rubio, and see a bit more uniqueness. IRL, we enjoye(d) our football/soccer heroes a lot because they were different. Pelé, Van Basten, Ronaldo, Henry, Berbatov, Torres, Müller : we all like them even more because they were different, not just another Copy of Erling Haaland on steroïd. I dont know about you, but differences make me dream. Something I really like is to try is to promote uniqueness with the players of my orgs, because when I joined, we had dudes like Sky Ryze that had off-meta builds that are legends of SSL. It's really dope to see people like Billy Bob or Vito Habjanic who builded their players for FK/CK, or Joe Mamba who tried to build to score as many bicycle kicks as possible. I really want the league to stay interessant and diverse, so taht in 5 years, some of us can say : "Do you remember about "insert player" and his crazy "flair"-oriented build ? It was crazy !" in a similar way of our fathers and grandfathers talking about Maradona, Garrincha or Puskas. In the end, I get your ideas, but if we really want to "casualize" our tactics/systems when more than 30% of the league has the game in some way or form, then I feel like managers could just manage the tactics themselves and we could (and perhaps even should) get rid the tactician jobs with the auditor ones.

Your argument 1.1 about FM24 being nearly unobtainable is a hard reality, but I feel like I would be way more on your side some years ago when less than 10-15% of the leagues played FM, but with reddit class getting us more and more people from FM subs (and therefore in possession of the game most of the time), I feel like this is not a good direction for the league to go and that if we should change stuff, we should go toward something else (like a rework of the costs of some stats like physicals that was talked about earlier this week).

In any case, I would really like to be more precise and complete about my thoughts, but It's 2AM here and I'm waking up in 4 hours for german courses. Please dont downwote my reputation to the ground :,3

[Domffl]

Hollywood FC are cheats and crooks

[CROney3]

Hollywood FC are cheats and crooks

Oh my god, he admit it!

[McLumberjack]

I'd like to say Shanghai ran at least 9 different tactics last season and that being resumed to "Shanghai: 4231 fmArena" hurts a bit (:,3), and while we do indeed sometimes use FMArena tactics or some twist of it (if we dont just outright use our opponent's tactic against them), our combined hours of testing last season for Minors and Majors made me realize that our instruction-less variation of FM has a lot of pros and cons, but it ultimately feel like you can take advantage of more things as an outsider than in the "complete" game cause we, as a community, have less knowledege of it (See Shanghai battling for the title last season when they shouldnt really be).

My fear is that by allowing PIs, we are doing one more steps towards (and I'm not saying that in any mean way, I love you guys) the USPification of the league, where everyone will be slighlty pushed more toward the same meta/builds/tactics. I know that the game doesnt really promote variety, but I would like to see less clones of Rashford and Rubio, and see a bit more uniqueness. IRL, we enjoye(d) our football/soccer heroes a lot because they were different. Pelé, Van Basten, Ronaldo, Henry, Berbatov, Torres, Müller : we all like them even more because they were different, not just another Copy of Erling Haaland on steroïd. I dont know about you, but differences make me dream. Something I really like is to try is to promote uniqueness with the players of my orgs, because when I joined, we had dudes like Sky Ryze that had off-meta builds that are legends of SSL. It's really dope to see people like Billy Bob or Vito Habjanic who builded their players for FK/CK, or Joe Mamba who tried to build to score as many bicycle kicks as possible. I really want the league to stay interessant and diverse, so taht in 5 years, some of us can say : "Do you remember about "insert player" and his crazy "flair"-oriented build ? It was crazy !" in a similar way of our fathers and grandfathers talking about Maradona, Garrincha or Puskas. In the end, I get your ideas, but if we really want to "casualize" our tactics/systems when more than 30% of the league has the game in some way or form, then I feel like managers could just manage the tactics themselves and we could (and perhaps even should) get rid the tactician jobs with the auditor ones.

Your argument 1.1 about FM24 being nearly unobtainable is a hard reality, but I feel like I would be way more on your side some years ago when less than 10-15% of the leagues played FM, but with reddit class getting us more and more people from FM subs (and therefore in possession of the game most of the time), I feel like this is not a good direction for the league to go and that if we should change stuff, we should go toward something else (like a rework of the costs of some stats like physicals that was talked about earlier this week).

In any case, I would really like to be more precise and complete about my thoughts, but It's 2AM here and I'm waking up in 4 hours for german courses. Please dont downwote my reputation to the ground :,3

>I'd like to say Shanghai ran at least 9 different tactics last season and that being resumed to "Shanghai: 4231 fmArena" hurts a bit (:,3)
Like I said, all I did was go to MD3 and check which formation teams ran, I was not making any value judgement.

> our combined hours of testing last season for Minors and Majors made me realize that our instruction-less variation of FM has a lot of pros and cons, but it ultimately feel like you can take advantage of more things as an outsider than in the "complete" game cause we, as a community, have less knowledege of it (See Shanghai battling for the title last season when they shouldnt really be).
You need to explain this as I do not understand

> My fear is that by allowing PIs, we are doing one more steps towards (and I'm not saying that in any mean way, I love you guys) the USPification of the league, where everyone will be slighlty pushed more toward the same meta/builds/tactics. I know that the game doesnt really promote variety, but I would like to see less clones of Rashford and Rubio, and see a bit more uniqueness.

This is a nice ideal, however this has been very clearly and obviously already trending the other direction for a long time now in the SSL. People are using the same formations, people are creating similar builds. Which is normal, any game like this will slowly get a more defined meta, things will be optimized. Let me remind you again that on a random matchday, 6! teams were running not only the exact same formation but the exact same instructions. Sure there are some teams who test extensively and are really creative with formations but not most. Also, you can still do those things even after having player instructions, like the testing showed the difference really is not that big. It will have less off a "metafying" effect than having fmArena tactics does. I think a big point is also, regardless of formation and roles virtually EVERYONE uses the same tactical instructions already. I think the exact same thing would happen with player instructions. There is a set of the best ones, people would learn it and then you can just be just as creative (or not creative) with your formation and roles. I have tested different formations with the same tactical instructions extensively and the difference between the best and worst ones is marginal, so really you can go crazy there in any case.


My argument is not even that I think that having player instructions would make the meta more or less diverse, I think it would stay exactly the same as it already is. People would just add the meta player instructions to their players. Which is why I think it is stupid to spend so much time and a whole department checking to make sure it does not happen.

[gaucho12]

My own opinions not BoD. Purely from a science perspective this study doesn't really compute. Here is a list of reasons:
1) CPU Managers were not given "meta" tactics nor tactics that rotate as we see with the majority of teams in this league. There really isn't any information on what other managers are doing, for an experiment like this there are too many factors to consider when each of them are individuals with a great range of control.
2) 1 season is not conclusive evidence
3) The article doesn't specify that the freezing of players stats, making sure that all teams have perfect match fitness morale occurred after matchday for all teams, nor that the home vs away was properly set up.
4) SFVs formation was clearly a 4-3-3.
This study doesn't hold much weight in this argument especially considering bullets 1 and 2. I am personally against it because this league should not become a plug and play league, and with all the FM knowledge people already have we are treating it as such. Another reason is because for orgs who do spend the time to test it adds on another layer of complexity, especially for orgs not flushed with tacticians. The main issue would be finding a way to create a sliding scale for attributes where you can not invest heavily in any set of attributes enough to where a clear meta can not be found allowing for a wide variety of tactics.

[McLumberjack]

My own opinions not BoD. Purely from a science perspective this study doesn't really compute. Here is a list of reasons:
1) CPU Managers were not given "meta" tactics nor tactics that rotate as we see with the majority of teams in this league. There really isn't any information on what other managers are doing, for an experiment like this there are too many factors to consider when each of them are individuals with a great range of control.
2) 1 season is not conclusive evidence
3) The article doesn't specify that the freezing of players stats, making sure that all teams have perfect match fitness morale occurred after matchday for all teams, nor that the home vs away was properly set up.
4) SFVs formation was clearly a 4-3-3.
This study doesn't hold much weight in this argument especially considering bullets 1 and 2. I am personally against it because this league should not become a plug and play league, and with all the FM knowledge people already have we are treating it as such. Another reason is because for orgs who do spend the time to test it adds on another layer of complexity, especially for orgs not flushed with tacticians. The main issue would be finding a way to create a sliding scale for attributes where you can not invest heavily in any set of attributes enough to where a clear meta can not be found allowing for a wide variety of tactics.

Not to be rude but I feel like you responded without reading my entire article.
> 1) CPU Managers were not given "meta" tactics nor tactics that rotate as we see with the majority of teams in this league. There really isn't any information on what other managers are doing, for an experiment like this there are too many factors to consider when each of them are individuals with a great range of control.
From my article:

I gave every team the formation they were running after MD1

Every single team had the exact formation and instructions they ran after MD1 of this season, sure some teams switch their tactics midseason however that is actually irrelevant to this test. I was testing Xelaju's performance. The rest of the league NEEDED to stay the same in order to be able to have proper results.


> 2) 1 season is not conclusive evidence

From my article:

I first simulated the control, this was every team with their normal tactic. Xelaju with their fmArena 4231 without player instructions. I simmed this 38 times, which means a total of 13,984 Xelaju matches and 41,952 total matches. The results and Xelaju tactic used can be found under here.

I ran this formation for 5 seasons which is 1840 Xelaju matches.

I also ran this formation for 5 seasons.

once again 5 seasons.

So in total I ran 53 seasons, because every season contained 4 exact clones of Xelaju (and all other teams) that is equivalent to 212 seasons, which is 100% statistically significant.


>3) The article doesn't specify that the freezing of players stats, making sure that all teams have perfect match fitness morale occurred after matchday for all teams, nor that the home vs away was properly set up.

from my article:

I used the original database for this season

The original database was used, just adjusted to have more teams. Home away etc was all the same.

Each simulation every team had their attributes frozen, no injuries, perfect morale, perfect fitness, max tactical cohesion

>SFVs formation was clearly a 4-3-3.
I am not used to seeing both a full back and wingback on the same side but thats just me I guess.

>This study doesn't hold much weight in this argument especially considering bullets 1 and 2. I am personally against it because this league should not become a plug and play league, and with all the FM knowledge people already have we are treating it as such.
I emplore you to actually read the article/study before saying it does not hold much weight.

>Another reason is because for orgs who do spend the time to test it adds on another layer of complexity, especially for orgs not flushed with tacticians.

The chance of finding a tactic that is actually better than any of the fmArena ones (without doing massive controlled tests involving thousands of matches) is very small. 99% of orgs can better spend their time worrying about player activity, scouting, player builds and other things :)