Tutoring... do they ever gain more than a little?

Every time I use the feature the players are initially delighted to do it but eventually the tutored one 'gains very little' according to the news item. Doesn't seem to matter how influential the selected tutor is. Also they seem more willing to learn the negative traits of their tutors. For example, I let a professional player tutor a fairly determined one. As a result the player lost about 4 points of his determination (16->12 if I remember correctly) but didn't apparently really gain much in professionalism ending up with a 'balanced' personality.

Is it all even worth bothering?

Yes.

You apparently look at each player's personality before suggesting the partnership, but I've found if they are too far apart, the tutoting will almost certainly fail. It's a long, hard journey to get a "Slack" player to turn into "Professional"...

Having said that, even a perfect pairing can and will fail, because success is something of a rarity, especially with the top option.

Yep, but when they do succeed, it gives a nice happy shine to it. I have seen my share of failed tutoring, but there are times when it goes extremely well.

But it shouldn't be that hard to get a fairly determined player to be a bit more professional should it? Instead all it did was make him less determined. Makes me think the negative aspects far outweigh the positive ones.

But it shouldn't be that hard to get a fairly determined player to be a bit more professional should it? Instead all it did was make him less determined. Makes me think the negative aspects far outweigh the positive ones.

Whilst in a lot of cases its guesswork as to what level the hidden stats are in this case you could see that the determination of the tutor was much lower than the tutee and in that respect it was a poor choice of tutor.

Also in my experience I would say a player with slack personality is hardly worth bothering with.

I had a 7* potential striker at 16 and after 3 seasons of tutoring/training/playing he hasn't improved much in skills and his personality is now balanced. His potential has now also dropped to 4*

Whilst in a lot of cases its guesswork as to what level the hidden stats are in this case you could see that the determination of the tutor was much lower than the tutee and in that respect it was a poor choice of tutor.

The difference was 4 points so I thought the extra professionalism would make up for it plus I didn't expect him to lose all 4 points. There's always something to lose, but when they hardly ever gain anything then I guess I just won't bother in the future.

An excellent tutoring session, with the older player having high determination, ambition and professionalism, will be converted into the younger player, which will make him much better. His CA will rise quicker with higher a/d/p stats.

Thing is I don't really ever know if a player has all three unless I use scouting tools which I don't. So it's a gamble, one that's not too likely to pay off anyway. So it seems ironically the only players worth tutoring are indeed the slack ones (though I don't even remember ever having one in my squad).

Thing is I don't really ever know if a player has all three unless I use scouting tools which I don't. So it's a gamble, one that's not too likely to pay off anyway. So it seems ironically the only players worth tutoring are indeed the slack ones (though I don't even remember ever having one in my squad).

I must admit I do agree with this to a certain extent.

Its difficult finding the right tutor in my squad and in probably 75% of cases I look but don't bother suggesting tutoring.

Just to give some perspective with regards improvement:

The 16yo slack striker above went from 1* to 2* CA in 3 seasons and dropped from 7* to 4* potential.

At the same time I had a fairly professional DC come through (also 7* potential) who had one season of tutoring and moved to professional with high determination. In the same 3 seasons he went from 2* to 6* CA, has just about reached his potential and was a regular in the 1st team at 19.

So what you're saying is it's worth it if the good personality traits of the tutored player are good already, then you have a chance of quick improvement. But then you don't know if it's tutoring that's having the effect. I bought a 5 star potential (on the highest level, top premiership) central defender, threw him right in the team because I was lacking in the position and he gained 5 points in most key stats in a season. That without any tutoring whatsoever. His personality was ambitious btw.

What I'm saying is that players with low personality traits are not likely to fulfill their potential anyway. Your slack player would have probably developed even less if he wasn't tutored. Whereas ambitious, professional and determined players improve quickly regardless.

As I understand it:

playing = skill improvement.

Good personalities = faster skill improvement if coupled with playing.

and of course younger players improve faster.

My slack striker had equal if not more playing time than my DC but his personality severely hindered his skill progression. By the time his personality had reached an "average" level he would have wasted many of his best learning seasons and his skill progression would be hampered by his age.

i hope they improve/make the tutoring option clearer in FM10, as it is very difficult to ever gain a little apparently

My best was my Young goalkeeper, who said he was happy that he was able to gain a mental aspect to his game or something, it must also surely be down to luck though, as i tried it again and he got nothing

I'm not entirely sure that "gained a little" actually reflects the stats changes; I think it has much more to do with the change in player relationship and the learning of prefered moves than the numbers.

Either way, always make sure the determination of the tutor is equal or higher than that of the tutee and you should see it rocket; I've had plenty of guys manage to get 3 or 4 notches of determination in a year with constant tutoring.

I ask Mehmet Ekici to learn from Lassana Diarra and finally Ekici said that he learnt a bit from Diarra. Few days later, he said Diarra is hard to work with and he dislikes Diarra. Sigh..

I had great success on 9.2.0! I got Torres to tutor N'gog and it worked really well. N'gog became excellent backup scoring plenty and being a major force in the air. He was also described as a wonderkid after the tutoring and before i started my third season Inter came in with a £20 million bid! I was so happy to have developed him into a quality striker and there was no way i was going to sell him. Sadly i lost the save before the end of my third season.

don't get me started on tutoring. As arsenal I recently had jack Wilshere tutored by Arshavin. A couple of weeks later i get the message that it has failed and that Wilshere is 'disillusioned' saying that there is no way he can learn from the player when there are such big differences in personality between them . Strange I thought, i was sure i made this choice after some thorough checking and comparison. So i check their personal descriptions to find that they have exactly the same personality description - fairly determined. Now don't get me wrong, i don't expect tutoring to work all the time, but don't give me some ridiculous reason as to why the tutoring hasn't worked. What am i supposed to learn from this? How am i supposed to take on board this 'feedback' from the game so that i avoid making the same mistake again? Sorry, I love playing this game, but this is just another area where SI have made a sloppy attempt at integrating an important part of real life management into the game. Results are too random, some players ridiculously hard to tutor successfully (especially th ones who really need it), and the feedback provided is insufficient, or as with my example, totally illogical.

The big changes are in the hidden (mental) attributes. Often the tutee thinks he hasn't learned anything but in fact his hidden atts have increased nicely. Maybe he doesn't 'feel' more professional and only realises when he's more mature.

don't get me started on tutoring. As arsenal I recently had jack Wilshere tutored by Arshavin. A couple of weeks later i get the message that it has failed and that Wilshere is 'disillusioned' saying that there is no way he can learn from the player when there are such big differences in personality between them . Strange I thought, i was sure i made this choice after some thorough checking and comparison. So i check their personal descriptions to find that they have exactly the same personality description - fairly determined. Now don't get me wrong, i don't expect tutoring to work all the time, but don't give me some ridiculous reason as to why the tutoring hasn't worked. What am i supposed to learn from this? How am i supposed to take on board this 'feedback' from the game so that i avoid making the same mistake again? Sorry, I love playing this game, but this is just another area where SI have made a sloppy attempt at integrating an important part of real life management into the game. Results are too random, some players ridiculously hard to tutor successfully (especially th ones who really need it), and the feedback provided is insufficient, or as with my example, totally illogical.

Why did you pick a tutor with the same personality??

Did you have an idea what their hidden stats were beforehand?

I just had three tutorings conclude succesfully on the same day...mind, they all started on the same day, too...

Cougar2010

I’m not 100% sure that we are on the same wavelength on this one, but I’ll respond as best I can.

I didn’t chose Arshavin as his tutor just because of his personality, but it was a factor. I also considered his mental and technical stats, PPM’s and the fact that he plays in the same positions as Wilshere, and is a similar type of player as what I would be hoping Wilshere may become. So these factors made me (based on past experience and what I thought I knew about how tutoring works) think Arshavin would be a good tutor for him. I didn’t think it was 100% guaranteed to work. My point isn’t that it didn’t work per se, but that the reason given for the failure is illogical (ie saying its because of different personalities when they have the same personality) and provides me, the player, with absolutely nothing in the way of meaningful feedback as to why my decision didn’t work and why, so that I can then learn form this and make better choices next time. That’s the essence of my complaint.

dz47, the problem is that the players have very different hidden personality stats that would actually cause them to clash. I don't want to get too specific, but one player was a 19 in one hidden attribute and the other is a 1. You should also keep in mind that the only reasons to tutor are to increase determination, alter hidden personality traits, or pick up PPMs. Technical stats and the like aren't affected.

Tutoring is kind of broken right now because the personality descriptors are so vague. Without using an editor, its very difficult to know if a guy would actually make a good tutor. Coach reports can give a little insight into what type of hidden attributes they may have beyond their basic personality descriptor as well.

Aytumious

I agree with what you’re saying. When I mentioned technical stats, I didn’t mean that I expected him to increase these, as I know tutoring doesn’t do this (even though it probably should….how come a player can ‘learn’ to be more determined through tutoring, but he can’t learn to be a better dribbler? Doesn’t really make sense to me). I also don’t think that we should have to use editors to check on ‘hidden’ stats to determine if someone would make a good tutor (which makes me think of another related gripe of mine….why are some of these stats hidden anyway? Why is determination unhidden, but things like professionalism and consistency hidden? How can it be ‘common knowledge’ what a players determination level is, but not their consistency? I fail to see the logic as to why we can’t ‘see’ these stats).

Like I said in my original post, to me this is a feature that has been sloppily implemented by SI. I’m not looking for a feature that gives me 100% certainty that tutoring will work, but I would expect feedback that is logical and useful in the sense of my learning/future decision making as the player. In earlier versions the player reports would often give advice as to who would be a good tutor for a youngster, ie ‘player x would benefit by being tutored by player y’, but this seems to have been taken out of the latest version and replaced with………………………….. ?