Season 36 Round 4 / 60
Game Time 2024 Mar 28, 21:38 UTC(+00:00)

A Noob's Journey. Season 5

Published by   lee1950 at 2021-08-07 19:39 (2 years ago)

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Joined F4F on Round 2 of Season 5. Just in time for the first match. I had already read the Tutorials, the 'Questions to Tegimus' forum thread, and lurked in Global Chat so I wasn't totally lost. Lots to do and decide on your first day!
- pick season sponsor (set my goals too low, lol)
- assess roster and set starting lineup
- start building your facilities
- start figuring out all the tactical options
- bid on a Scout and coaches
- re-read all the tutorial info
- team Badge pix (highest priority!)
- start playing with all the screens in the game
- other things that I forgot to do

Roster: Had a surprisingly successful first season, thanks in large part to my striker, Rabi Nasser, who scored 92 goals in 41 matches. (30 league, 7 Nat Trophy, 4 league Cup matches). Four 40+ rated players (2 MFs, 2 CBs) and a 60+ rated WB gave me good depth for Div 2.2. The only worry was I would be playing with a 16 year old GK with a 20 rating. I expected to surrender a lot of goals! Turned out the GK's secret attribute is that he's 8 feet tall and 12 feet wide, as he did pretty well.

Tactics: I went with the default settings most of the season. Mentality/Normal; Playstyle/Mixed; Pressure/Own Half. Occasionally I'd switch to Direct or Longball instead of Mixed when facing a stronger midfield. Mostly a 4-1-2-2-1 to force as many scoring chances to Nasser as possible. Only had one good DM, otherwise I would have gone with 4-2-2-2-1 as a base, but being more offensive worked out for this squad. I'm a veteran of an old football browser game named Freekick, that shut down ~5 years ago. I've been looking for a new football game since then and F4F seems to scratch that itch nicely. I thought F4F was less tactical than Freekick, but after a season I'm starting to see that a lot of the options are there, just more subtle, and require you to think hard about your formation.

Season summary: won England Div 2.2 with a 28-0-2 record. First loss was early to a strong Bot team. Second loss late in the season to the second place team. Overall went 36-2-3 in competitive games. Lost in League Cup Finals on PKs, and National Trophy Semi-finals in Extra time.

Total Income $ 171,794,090
Total Expenses $ -208,284,340
Gross Profit/Loss $ -36,490,250
Released 3 players. Sold 1. Bought 3. Might regret selling the 16 year old later, but his Learning was 1.5 and his rating had only gone up 0.83 after 30 rounds, so maybe not. :)

My noob-ish impressions: Lots of depth. A casual player can log in once a day and do reasonably well with a little effort, but the game does reward you for putting in more energy. The game moves fast; with a minimum of 32 competitive matches each 30-day season. More if you advance in the Cup competitions or playoffs. And up to 60 more matches if you want to schedule friendlies. You start off with a decent squad of brand new players, quite capable of handling most of the bot teams. I'd say only 2 or maybe 3 players are obvious cuts. Your initial budget is plenty to add a few players once you figure out what kind of players you want. Hire a Scout before you go shopping. There are lots of 90+ skill Scouts on the market. You need Coaches, including a Physio. Your players won't recover fitness fast enough unless you have a Physio. You start with no facilities. Stadium or youth academy are probably the best 2 options for the first investment. Stadiums start giving income as soon as the seats are finished. The academy has the potential to give a bigger payout but takes longer before you see any return. I started with 5000 seats, then a Training Centre, then more seats, then Youth Academy, then more seats - which was probably not optimal, but I have a lot of younger players that I'd like to train as well as possible. I like that the developer is very active in the game. That's a huge positive.

Only negative for me is that I can't post to Chat. Tegimus has looked at everything and can't find an issue inside the game, so it's 99% likely the problem is at my end, altho I have no idea what it is. I'm blaming my ISP, lol. I can see Chat, but can't post. So if anyone has been wondering why I didn't reply to them in Chat, that's why.

I'm glad Tegimus decided to make F4F. imo, it's already much better than the other football games I've tried. I'm looking forward to seeing it when it starts to grow beyond 250 active teams.
Last updated by   lee1950 at 2021-08-07 19:39 (2 years ago)
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