[Alessandro]

Originally Posted by renojedi

I see your point of view but will disagree from the perspective that without a 2D display, we count on what the current interface provides to know what we are "seeing" Right now, there is too much guessing. You are right that we don't want a perfect match but something as simple as telling us the formation the opponent is using would help paint a picture.

Well, I somewhat agree, but if you get to know what formation the opponent is using, then it's a perfect match, since the description says that the tactic X is strong against Y and weak against Z

With OOTP, it didn't matter early on when the interface was less advanced as baseball tactics require less adjustment than hockey tactics. The suggestions above are good but it is still guessing. With multiple variables to account for, guessing which one is causing your problem and just randomly trying different fixes takes away from immersion.

Again, I somewhat agree and I somewhat don't agree. I don't know much about baseball, though. I think that IRL the coaches do a lot of guessing, more than what we think. It happens often that a team underperforms, and not all the time does a coach know the exact recipe. Sometimes finding a good unit combination comes out of guessing. Maybe in the game it relies too much on guessing (but when you do the same thing more than once, and it works, maybe it's guessing the first time, then it's not guessing anymore), but you can't rule out guessing from the IRL circumstances.

Some feedback of what you are seeing from the assistant would go a long way to narrowing which variable(s) is causing the poor performance and make it actually feel like our in game adjustments are making a difference.

Here I agree. The assistant should hint you someway into getting to understand a little bit more what it's working and what is not. Telling us why some players/units are doing good or small hints like "your lines are struggling, you may try to simple things up", or "we need a goal, perhaps upping our tempo may work", or "our opposition is outmuscling our lineup, we should try to play more on the perimeter", this kind of hints aren't too direct and can suggest you something to do. However, it's not easy to draw the line where you are hinting a bit or suggesting too much. Some FM games in the past were too easy for some players with a good knowledge of the game because it gave too much information. Like you could just set your tactic as your assistant told, and you'll win no matter what (well, almost). They had to completely rewrite the tactics and the playing the match out parts to fix this problem. I don't remember if it was the jump from FM 17 to FM 18, or from 18 to 19, but I guess you got the point.