Play Creatively

When you use Play Creatively, there is a greater chance that special events (both positive and negative) will occur during the match. If both teams use Play Creatively, the chance for special events will be even greater.

The downside is that teams playing creatively will be less focused on the defense, thus losing some defensive ability.

Playing creatively will probably be good for SE-optimized teams.

Now after I have observed the effects of this tactic for a couple of matches, I can share my thoughts on it.

Theoretically speaking, there is no reason why a team should get more SE chances if the other team chooses to play creatively. I understand the need to balance out the benefits, but this is ridiculous. It's a design flaw, the name does not fit the concept too well.

Indeed, I must agree that special events were significantly underpowered, and needed a boost, but come on. The HT team should be able to do better than that.

All this being said, who should use the new tactic? Let's review the benefits.

First, it seems like playing creatively increases only the chance for goal special events as opposed to weather special events. These include (by position):

Defenders: tiredness (negative), unpredictable (positive/negative), technical vs head (negative)

Midfielders: tiredness (negative), unpredictable (positive/negative), technical vs head (negative)

Wingers: cross pass (positive), experience (positive), quick (positive), technical vs head (positive), unpredictable (positive)

Forwards: unpredictable (positive, 2 kinds), experience (positive), technical vs head (positive), quick (positive).

Others: counter-attacks (positive), corners (positive), long shot (positive)

Unless I missed something, it looks like the forward and winger positions account for 10 different positive events, and the midfielder and defender positions - just for 2, both of them carrying significant negatives.

The natural conclusion is that Play Creatively is designed for offensively profiled teams. 3 scorers + offensive winger or 2 offensive wingers + 2 scorers seem to be the minimum required for maximizing the potential benefits from the tactic.

As far as negative events are concerned, defensive trainers might want to avoid the tactic, since the presence of 4 or 5 inexperienced defenders in the squad turns it into a time bomb.

Also, since the method of calculating the defence penalty is probably based on a percentage decrease, teams with weaker defence lose less.