5-2-3 have just killed SWOS :)

You'll be doing walk-in goals next!

Another thought on custom tactics in general, from a philosophical point of view....

I think that in general, the argument that as they are part of the game, we should use them is reasonable. On the other hand I don't think that this an axiomatic truth; I think any group of players should decide what suits their needs best.

I have mixed feelings about tactics in SWOS. I think the feature is implemented in a problematic way, that I would have done differently if I were in charge of Sensible Software.

It's one thing to move players around in a different formation in order to better suit your playing style. What I really, dislike is that on top of this, SWOS seems to modifiy the physical performance of the players according to the positioning of them. ie the same player will run faster or slower, depending on his positioning. To me this is a total nonsense ... the whole red cross/green tick thing - I don't like it. The whole thing about having a specific tactic that causes player values to increase.... of just moving players randomly around chasing green ticks - nah, this a flawed feature to me, a design bug.

My guess is that the root cause of the decision to implement things like this goes back to a constraint that the developers faced in the 1990s: namely that in career mode, you need to be able to generate results without a game actaully being played. So, there are two different ways to generate a result: view result, or view match. View match runs an AIvAI game, butview result generates a result much more quickly based on some calculations. So, in order for formations and tactics to have any influence in 'view result', it was necessary to do something cheap and basic, like modifying player attributes and abilities based on positioning.

In an ideal world, view result and view match would be exactly the same thing. In 2020, this would be possible - just run an AI v AI match as fast as possible without drawing it. On any modern machine that would take almost no time at all, but of course in the 90s, this would take far too long - hence the alternative method to generate a result more quickly.

If this were the case, you would not need the artificial boosting/cutting of speed etc.

thd79 wrote:

Another thought on custom tactics in general, from a philosophical point of view....
It's one thing to move players around in a different formation in order to better suit your playing style. What I really, dislike is that on top of this, SWOS seems to modifiy the physical performance of the players according to the positioning of them. ie the same player will run faster or slower, depending on his positioning. To me this is a total nonsense ... the whole red cross/green tick thing - I don't like it. The whole thing about having a specific tactic that causes player values to increase.... of just moving players randomly around chasing green ticks - nah, this a flawed feature to me, a design bug.

I agree on most of this. It sort of creates a "gold standard" of tactics were attackers are stacked in the middle like (playa1/klinkall) to get the performance ticks. I've been having trouble creating a good 523/433 tactic because of this. The wider I put the attackers the worse the performance. No matter how you place them, they want to be stacked in the center, which kind of goes against the creativity you could have creating your own tactic. Like I've said time and time again, the standard tactics and tactic editor are flawed.

You're reasoning about why it was done the way it was makes sense, and the calculation of player values etc.

However I do want to point out that there is some sense to the fact that you just cant put Maldini (LB) into attack with George Weah (A) and have a double 5 star attack. Swos only have 7 player skills, and their position, nothing else. I guess the connection is there, but how to balance it all out im not sure to be honest.

Do you value career mode over player vs player mode, perhaps this is the question.

My feeling on the Maldini example is that Maldini, and defenders in general should not have high marks for shooting and finishing! If Maldini had more sensible stats, then putting him up front would make less sense, even without the 'Red Cross' handicap. I think it was a bit silly to create players with stats THAT high in all areas

spectrando77 wrote:

Why are custom tactics home player right only? Anybody should be able to play any tactic they like, it’s a swos feature since the 90s. If opponent can ask you not to play custom, you should have the right to ask them not to play their favorite tactic.

This guy is my childhood friend since I was 10, in fact my first human opponent in swos and we still play He was nice to post here and support the freedom, but he asked me the other day to play with joystick instead of keypad to make the game more balanced (see our scores and you'll see the inbalance he's talking about )

The point I'm trying to make is, as per the first post, everybody will have their subjective opinion of fairness, balance, quality of the game and what is the right thing to do.

Seeing that some of the conversation is going towards the discussion of these things and technical reviews, I just would like to highlight that all these are also the discussions commonly had in real football, and that at the end there are rules only to make things logical for most. We frequently see VAR offsides which may be questionable, fair or unfair, but the rule is to persist as it is logical and common sense.

I don't know the exact history but don't think there was a poll to either start the offsite rule or a campaign to remove it, but being logical and common sense at the end is what made it stick.

With the freedom to use any tactic, I think is logical and common sense, fairness or impact on quality of the game is not a good decision factor as again they are very subjective, varied and polarized.

Thanks all for sharing your opinions and being open to change for freedom EVEN THOUGH you don't like tactics or the games involving them, this was the maturity I knew the community now has and thank you very much for proving it!

I'll appreciate keeping the conversation moving with even more opinions and keep playing APL games, both very useful for a healthy review by admins to decide if or NOT any action should be taken.

Thank you all again for being awesome!

Hey, I suggested the APL league but couldn't post from mobile, however I think SRNx1 would be much better for this league especially because most people are not familiar with custom tactics and may be a little scared of the huge swings of SRN