Even the best players have ~50% wins. Because the strategy currently is so obvious and so much relies upon luck, that even the best players can do little to differentiate themselves.
To add more skill to the game we need more abilities to influence the game. This creates more decisions to make, further differentiating players.
I suggest adding 2 skills to the game. They are skills you can use without any card.
Reckless Tackle - you can use this button when the opponent has the ball. It works like a intercept or challenge card, except much higher chance of failure and penalty card. (Such as 5% red card, 30% yellow card, 40% foul, 25% successful challenge). This button just gives you an option to do something when the opponent has the ball and you have no reactions to play and so you can't do anything right now. It's usually a bad move but its up to the player to decide when it might be worth it. Thus adding skill and interest to the game, and also creating more scenarios where red cards will actually occur (as right now they are an overly rare occurrence). Bad players will over-use this and lose games because of it. It also adds more style to the game. As some managers want to be a team of "enforcers", trying to intimidate and physically dominate their opponents, while others want to play a clean, beautiful game.
Toe Poke- The offensive counterpart of the above skill. This button can be used any time you have the ball in the opponent final third. Its a shooting opportunity that has a very low chance of succeeding. Since we use 20 sided dice, it cant be less than 5% chance of scoring (currently like outside shot) so maybe it would need to actually have 0% chance of scoring directly and only have an indirect chance of scoring (like by turning into a corner kick or PK, etc). Or maybe its a 5% direct chance of scoring but only if you are inside the opponent's box. Again, the point of this skill is to give you an option to do something when you end up in the opponents third with no shooting cards. Maybe you even used your holds and still had to dribble into the box of the opponent. When that happens presently you are forced to kick the ball away which doesn't make any sense (that's like punting in american football, not soccer). Adding this button gives more options to make a decision to the player which adds more skill and interest. It's supposed to be a bad skill, not as good as a normal card, but in a certain scenario it would be the best option to use.
Thanks for reading, please implement something like this.
Also here are some more half baked ideas:
Injuries - works similar to getting a red card unless you burn a sub
substitutions - get a boost of some extra cards
formations - everyone starts as 4-4-2 but you could switch to a more defensive 5-4-1 or a more offensive 3-4-3 (for examples) in order to receive more attacking or more defensive cards (not sure how the mechanic for this would function, tbd) like if you needed to try to make a comeback or if you wanted to defend your lead.
To add more skill to the game we need more abilities to influence the game. This creates more decisions to make, further differentiating players.
I suggest adding 2 skills to the game. They are skills you can use without any card.
Reckless Tackle - you can use this button when the opponent has the ball. It works like a intercept or challenge card, except much higher chance of failure and penalty card. (Such as 5% red card, 30% yellow card, 40% foul, 25% successful challenge). This button just gives you an option to do something when the opponent has the ball and you have no reactions to play and so you can't do anything right now. It's usually a bad move but its up to the player to decide when it might be worth it. Thus adding skill and interest to the game, and also creating more scenarios where red cards will actually occur (as right now they are an overly rare occurrence). Bad players will over-use this and lose games because of it. It also adds more style to the game. As some managers want to be a team of "enforcers", trying to intimidate and physically dominate their opponents, while others want to play a clean, beautiful game.
Toe Poke- The offensive counterpart of the above skill. This button can be used any time you have the ball in the opponent final third. Its a shooting opportunity that has a very low chance of succeeding. Since we use 20 sided dice, it cant be less than 5% chance of scoring (currently like outside shot) so maybe it would need to actually have 0% chance of scoring directly and only have an indirect chance of scoring (like by turning into a corner kick or PK, etc). Or maybe its a 5% direct chance of scoring but only if you are inside the opponent's box. Again, the point of this skill is to give you an option to do something when you end up in the opponents third with no shooting cards. Maybe you even used your holds and still had to dribble into the box of the opponent. When that happens presently you are forced to kick the ball away which doesn't make any sense (that's like punting in american football, not soccer). Adding this button gives more options to make a decision to the player which adds more skill and interest. It's supposed to be a bad skill, not as good as a normal card, but in a certain scenario it would be the best option to use.
Thanks for reading, please implement something like this.
Also here are some more half baked ideas:
Injuries - works similar to getting a red card unless you burn a sub
substitutions - get a boost of some extra cards
formations - everyone starts as 4-4-2 but you could switch to a more defensive 5-4-1 or a more offensive 3-4-3 (for examples) in order to receive more attacking or more defensive cards (not sure how the mechanic for this would function, tbd) like if you needed to try to make a comeback or if you wanted to defend your lead.