Mystify Soccer - Tactic scouting

Tactic scouting

I'm pretty sure managers don't realise how influential tactics are in Mystify Soccer. This is because I get bug reports from managers asking how on earth they have lost a certain game and when I look into it I tend to find nothing too badly wrong.

Admittedly, there are instances where I do find errors in the game engine and even though there hasn't been anything major for quite a while I still want people to question it in case there are future issues. I'm constantly developing the game and, as such, problems may continue to randomly appear. Most changes these days are minor tweaks but it only needs me to have forgotten a certain aspect for that minor tweak to open up a whole load of issues.

Anyway, I think a lot of managers just remember the old match engine where the best rated team tended to win regardless of most other aspects. This new engine will take a lot more into consideration than you've maybe even thought of, all relevant to varying degrees. This includes captain selection, form, bits of luck and loads more that I don't want to mention. I can even think of a few that I'd be impressed at if somebody thought of them.

Tactics also do play a part, possibly a bigger part than you think. There also isn't a set of tactics that will always work as certain ones can be countered with others. They also need to work well with your team line up. For example, setting an attacking team with 6 defenders is probably going to give you a disadvantage. Again, I don't want to give examples as that spoils it but don't fall into the trap of thinking you should have won because you had the best 11 players in terms of skills alone.

It's only a few weeks ago though that I realised you actually have no visibility of the other teams' tactics. One of my plans is to inform a manager after the game, how the other manager played against them - after all, they should have seen that for themselves. Before I do that I'm just finalising a scouting system for other teams' tactics. I'm hoping this will be with you tomorrow and then you can see how other teams are playing before you meet them. It's up to you to manage this scouting though.

Another slight improvement I will be implementing at the same time is regarding the links to players in the transfer list or pool. They currently just take you to the first page of the relevant list. I've altered this so that you will go to the page that the player is on.

You've possibly also noticed that both the pool and list can be sorted by the date players were added now too.