Did KNAP's Table Ruin Football Manager 2020?

Are you guys playing the game or are you just plugging-in a tactic and simulating to the end of the season. I don't think this is a very effective way to try out a tactic. ? Simulating it and managing the team in-game will have different outcomes.

I've noticed something about FMScout Tactics and most tactics from the knap's table. These tactics employ either a positive approach or an attacking mentality in their operations. In all my years of playing football manager, this year has by far had the most uploaded tactics and a lot of them are very similar.
I used Knap's Bad Company Tactic for a save in Ukraine, it worked out well with Shakhtar Donetsk in the league but the Champions League was a whole different ball game. My players were so used to attacking, that playing a Cautious Mentality against a stronger Barcelona team in the quarterfinal was impossible. I've started a save with Blyth Spartans in English Non-League football using Balanced mentality and to my surprise, I'm yet to lose a game after being predicted to finish bottom of the league.
In my "ManCity save", an obvious set-up in which an attacking mentality can be employed. I found it difficult to defeat a Bournemouth team at the Vitality Stadium when playing on an already fluid "attacking mentality." what do you do when you attack and you can't score? defend? Lol.

Suddenly playing with attacking mentality is not so interesting anymore as you cant obviously pick Norwich City and say "Play Attacking", and win the league. I don't think the match engine is that gullible. You might struggle mid-way through the season as you do not have the players required to play that way. What happened to Balanced, Cautious, and Defensive mentalities? Using a tactic that relies on soaking up pressure and moving the ball quickly from defence to attack. A tactic that can effectively employ "High Tempo" and "Run at Defence".
Well, I'm going back to it and I hope it works, else FM20 would be boring in my opinion if it does not. So from now on, I'm challenging myself and everyone here on FMScout, not to leave attacking behind but to be more realistic when creating tactics. It does not always have to be attacking.

hey man while i think you can go with your opinion after all fm20 is a game. not everyone is interested with tactics. personally i don't like creating tactics but i love football manager simply because of developing young talents and selling them for a lot of money.

Just don't use them is my advice or any tactic that contains the same out of possession TI's which are known to break the ME.

You can have far more enjoyment shaping you own realistic style & building a team/squad to fit that style.

If you look on the Si forum there's a reason all the well known Si tactical mods don't post on Knap's tactics page. They want to encourage people to play the game of course so they don't criticise but they don't get involved either as they know it's broken their match engine & they hope via other threads to discourage using that style of tactic.

I think my next post is something that will interest you
....the title of the post will be... Pre-game Tactics VERSUS In-game tactical decisions!

Look-out for it, i hope to post it very soon.

......I love the game and my friends make fun of me because i play it slower than they do.

Forget, plug and play tactics...... i believe in a lot more.

Also @reuben sequeira ..i agree......i love to develop and a sell players as well.
I also love to buy-and-flip players for profit (big or small).

I am not a simulator, i play to manage and to try and do the best i can.

Looking forward to it already Hendy my friend.

Well

The Knap tactics were found on SI forums as well for the last 12 years, so if you think they ruin the game, I guess you would have to get him to stop

I don't agree with your reasoning or arguments, knap tactics can be tweaked as much as any tactic.
The way they are set up might not even be how they look like ingame.
RDF f example is great at tweaking those, but I guess the point is you should not have to. We switch to cautious a lot during game. The mentality is set like this in the match engine, and I will argue every time that it's up to te makers of the game to make it different, not the user.
It's plug and play tactics for those who don't have time to spend a lot of time setting up, but still want to play.

Even so, it's very simple not to use it.

And everything is possible in this ME with attacking.
I have won with Norwich first season no signings. I have won with Sheff Utd using 3 strikers on very attacking.
Union Berlin in germany, attacking using man marking.
It's hard, but is not that a challenge in it self?

It's not all about tactics. It's about training, moral management, picking the right players for the tactic, keeping all fit and happy with enough games. It's about squad hierarchy and personalities for your players.
It's a puzzle, the tactic might be the frame, but you will need a lot more than that.

PS! I should say I helped build the knap table to make these available for people, and I have co built some of the tactics. Just look at them as a framework.
Realistic? No.

But if that's where we are going all of us would have to start as free agents without badges..
It's a game, play it how you want.

@Rober I agree with most of what you're saying. I tend to run the game similarly to how you do it too. I noticed in this iteration of Football Manager, "tactic" has not really been a focus on how you are successful in a particular season. It's beyond that, I find myself drawn into building youth and selling them off to bigger clubs for money. My objectives in Ukraine were not even to win anything in Europe, just to compete. It's rewarding, and sometimes I forget to even tweak tactics in Football Manager 2020.
I'm not trying to dictate how people should play the game and what they should focus on rather than having fun with it. I'm trying to spark up a conversation for even more variety in how we play it. I say so because, as stated in my earlier post "most of the tactics are too similar", I don't completely dislike that, but I'm open to creating more variety in tactic creation and testing.
An Attacking or Positive mentality being the backbone of the tactic while tweaking it in-game works just fine. They are so widely used, new gamers can easily think those are the only two mentalities you should use in the game. I'm keen to experience the opposite, setting up a team Cautiously or Defensively and occasionally switching to attacking mentality to surprise the opposition. It's a new challenge in itself to try and win games not because you used the "likely favored" attacking mentality, but because you play a different way for what is considered "the norm" tactically.

Personally, I hate the tactical side of things. I play this game for squad management, so for me, the KNAP table suits me just fine. Let's me find a tactic I know will work, without putting myself through countless hours of trial and error. Probably wouldn't even play the game if plug and play tactics didn't exist TBH.

Also, how can you say it ruins the game? FM is a single player game, someone else using a downloaded tactic doesn't affect you in any way whatsoever, it's just your elitist attitude showing here. So why don't you just shut up, and let people play how they want?

I absolutely love these posts and i smile after reading each one.

The Football Management game can be played in so many ways and i love how everyone approaches it.

Some play to see the future and simulate, some to find the next big talent, some play for the financial fun and some play for joy of player development from youth academy to 1st team glory.
AND WE ALL LOVE WINNING

The rubiks cube that is Management.
Whichever way you like to play….. do it, live it, breathe it and enjoy it.

Me personally, i hate organising pre-season games.... that just kills me but everything else i love.

I do like the paragraph from Rober’s post:
It's not all about tactics. It's about training, moral management, picking the right players for the tactic, keeping all fit and happy with enough games. It's about squad hierarchy and personalities for your players.
It's a puzzle, the tactic might be the frame, but you will need a lot more than that.

This is very true and personally I believe that, FM is about building a vision plus a culture, a way of playing and finding the players to help you achieve that, within the system you establish.

Sometimes I think people forget that the FM engine does also have a stronger non-tactical side to it as well. To be honest, I wish this side of the game was developed further.

Not to mention there are lots of ways you can impact a game before, during and after the match. Tactics definitely help, and are important, but that alone will not get you all the trophies.

2020-07-07 07:00#275724 H e n d y : I absolutely love these posts and i smile after reading each one.

The Football Management game can be played in so many ways and i love how everyone approaches it.

Some play to see the future and simulate, some to find the next big talent, some play for the financial fun and some play for joy of player development from youth academy to 1st team glory.
AND WE ALL LOVE WINNING

The rubiks cube that is Management.
Whichever way you like to play….. do it, live it, breathe it and enjoy it.

Me personally, i hate organising pre-season games.... that just kills me but everything else i love.

I do like the paragraph from Rober’s post:
It's not all about tactics. It's about training, moral management, picking the right players for the tactic, keeping all fit and happy with enough games. It's about squad hierarchy and personalities for your players.
It's a puzzle, the tactic might be the frame, but you will need a lot more than that.

This is very true and personally I believe that, FM is about building a vision plus a culture, a way of playing and finding the players to help you achieve that, within the system you establish.

Sometimes I think people forget that the FM engine does also have a stronger non-tactical side to it as well. To be honest, I wish this side of the game was developed further.

Not to mention there are lots of ways you can impact a game before, during and after the match. Tactics definitely help, and are important, but that alone will not get you all the trophies.

Also i forgot to add one very important thing.
....... Coaches are so under-rated and almost forgotten about in the game. They are the most important peolpe you need to have when trying to work-on and improve the tactics of your team.

@H e n d y - exactly! for me, there must be a little jealousy. Also, if someone dislikes the fact that these tactics (that help thousands of people) then why don't they try to help and create tactics for people that's less of a "plug n play"

i don't get this post at all. Knaps tactics are not something you must use. Besides, Knap has been releasing so many tactics over YEARS, so why now someone has an issue? i just don't see how someone releasing tactics ruins the game for someone, that's a little crazy to me

I don't have a problem with Knap releasing tactics, I have used them myself too. I follow the table and pick a style that suits what I want to achieve and I run with it. that happens, not a lot but I admit I use knap's table too. I did not ask anyone to stop using Knap's table, I did not also say Knap ruined FM, I only asked: "If it DID". Its a question based on the similarity of the tactics. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

2020-07-07 08:02#275729 i_am_a_God : I don't have a problem with Knap releasing tactics, I have used them myself too. I follow the table and pick a style that suits what I want to achieve and I run with it. that happens, not a lot but I admit I use knap's table too. I did not ask anyone to stop using Knap's table, I did not also say Knap ruined FM, I only asked: "If it DID". Its a question based on the similarity of the tactics. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

To those replying sensibly with their own opinions and views about the game, thanks. It's much appreciated. To the others? well, I hope my question doesn't bother you too much

It's a great question in my opinion.

To reply on the recent posts of course these tactics haven't ruined FM20. For many many people, potentially the majority who play the game, they have actually helped them no end.

Any tactics creator who puts in this much effort to help people deserves huge plaudits. Not just Knap, all tactics creators who know what they are doing put great work in to help people.

My own personal frustrations come from seeing how it can be done differently if the player wanted to & trying to get that message across. This is actually quite a difficult task. There are those that want to do it themselves, but it's reaching them & communicating with them that I see as the challenge.

do you not think it's a weird question to ask? like, what were you hoping for for? you wanted a sensible discussion but the title of this topic is hardly sensible. I understand you want a discussion, but asking if something has ruined the game clearly looks like you think there's element of truth in thinking that.

you say the question is based of the similarity of tactics, there's about 100 different ways you could've asked that, but you chose something that hardly represents what you want the discussion to be...You even used Knap in all capitals, you clearly wanted some sort of reaction from it and you got one and trying to play all innocent lol

Also, there are many different tactics on this site that offer something different than the popular instruction, but positive/attacking is what works on this game, EVEN when you are trying to achieve a defensive tactic or even counter so that's part is on FM. People find it much more accurate to play counter football using Attacking mentality but like SI/FM say themselves, Attacking mentality does not mean you can not be defensive minded and vice-versa. So its a case of testing the tactic yourself to see the results. Just because someones tactic is on Attacking mentality, does not mean the tactic will be all out attacking, it can be very stable defensively