No Visible Attributes - Will it ever happen?

Do you think a game could develop that does not give you any player attributes. Instead you have to look at certain training drills, coach and scout reports, actually study players in matches, study statistics to get an idea of the skills and physical abilities.

Could it ever work?

Nobody would play it tbh. It would reduce the fun to a point it'll be even worse than work.

I would hate that tbh ... extremly time consuming

I agree with SAFC1. If this happened it would be the death of FM I think. I know that I would never play it and would quickly go to the competition.

Out of the Park baseball has an option to do this.

Actually only using Graphical Attributes does make you rely on some help really. Maybe they should be used in LLM gaming

I would burn all my copies of the game if this happened. Even my old green box of Championship Manager 97/98.

I think it could work, provided you still have assistant/coach advice. If there was an option to turn it off i'd definately try it.

The current number stats are far from realistic.

The game could still have them internally, but the player should only see something simple; Like scout/ass man reports. Stats explained as "Exeptional","Very good", "God", "Average", "Poor" and the number of stats reported to the player probably reduced.

The current number stats are far from realistic.

The game could still have them internally, but the player should only see something simple; Like scout/ass man reports. Stats explained as "Exeptional","Very good", "God", "Average", "Poor" and the number of stats reported to the player probably reduced.

They may not be realistic in themselves, but they contribute to a realistic effect. The idea is to simulate the level of knowledge you would have of your players' abilities in that situation - which, as a full-time manager, would be very large.

lol, I want my players to have their abilities described as "God"

All mental attributes should be hidden IMO.

I guess someone could just make a skin that doesn't shows atributes. Or replaces them with good, awful etc.

Wasn't there a skin released (maybe for FM08) that had these hidden?

if there's one that can replace it with 'good', 'outstanding', etc, then i'd give it a try. The problem is that the assistant manager advice isn't so good at weaknesses. It would be difficult to assess a central midfielder, for example. Take the example of Anderson, it would be difficult to see that he's supposed to be an attacking playmaker sort of midfielder rather than relying on him for any defensive duties, because all your assistant would say about his weaknesses would probably be that he was poor in the air.

edit: actually, 'poor in the air' is something that annoys me, it would be great to have the weaknesses bit more detailed. A lot of the time it's like 'yeah, he's five foot six, I know he's not gonna be any good in the air! I didn't buy him for that!' It would be better if they were more likely to point out a tendency to get forced off the ball, or a lack of balance or bad movement or something, because you can sign a player who seems brilliant but is missing the vital stat that makes the difference between a decent player and a goal-machine (compare the scoring records in-game of Pogrebnyak and Milevskyi for a good example of this.)

if there's one that can replace it with 'good', 'outstanding', etc, then i'd give it a try. The problem is that the assistant manager advice isn't so good at weaknesses. It would be difficult to assess a central midfielder, for example. Take the example of Anderson, it would be difficult to see that he's supposed to be an attacking playmaker sort of midfielder rather than relying on him for any defensive duties, because all your assistant would say about his weaknesses would probably be that he was poor in the air.

And that's why I'm against the "good, outstanding, ..." thing. You say Anderson is poor in the air, in my game he's got a 9 for heading. So whats a 5 then? What's a 1 then? You need to know there are 7 (or was it 8) tiers in the game.

That means that a premier league player is "good" in even his weak points. And that a BSS player is "poor" or "very poor" is his strenghts.

+ isn't that just using words for numbers?

You have to remember that this is a game. If you take away an obvious ability to see how good a player is, then it will become a lot of more of a chore - IMO, at least.

I would think that you would make us of the graphical representation of attributes if this appeals to you. It's not exactly what's being asked for but it makes it a bit different to numbers.

I would like it, it would be more realistic and give you more involvement, but alot of people wouldnt like it and wouldnt play FM because of it.

I would dislike it.

Maybe if there was an option it would be better, so you have the choice whether to see them or not.

One word - Boring!

To me, it's boring to be able to say 'well rooney is obviously a better finisher than berbatov' by using one point to prove it. Alex Ferguson may know his players, but would he be able to tell you the answer? Especially with players who aren't your own. What does the average manager know about a player he's scouted? He has to look at videos, his performance, get his scouts opinions, and look at his record. That's how it should be in FM.

It'd be boring if we had to spend 6 hours assessing one player too.

I don't see the problem with having it as an option. Generally, I want to manage my favourite clubs, and I know the players at my favourite clubs. Of course, you're putting faith in the data compilers then.

If you want a quick assessment you ask your staff. If you want a detailed assessment, have a look for yourself.

I believe it could be done without ruining the game, Although a no attributes option would only ever appeal to hard core gamers. It would need a complete overhaul of the game hovever and would me massively dependent on getting very accurate stats from matches the scouts watching games and so on, I belive it would only appeal to the hard core gamers because it would mean most of the playing time would be spent going through matches sifting through tonnes of stats rather then then than the actual managing a club itself, for instance training, tactics managing finances and so on.

if you think about it, it wouldn't be boring and would stop these sort of games being 90% spreadsheet. You could have a vast scouting network (like IRL) and contacts at other clubs maybe after building up relationships with them. You could find out about up and coming players via word of mouth and or scouting as well as media coverage. Then its up to you to go watch the player, send your scouts, get feedback. Less spreadsheet, more managing would be my kind of game.

I think personally that this would be the death of FM if it ever happened.

Do you seriously expect people to sit there analysing match after match trying to figure out how good someone is!?

If you had no job/studies/social commitments in your life and played FM 12 hours a day then yes, im sure some people would find this great. However, if you play a couple hours a day like most people...no chance!

id definitely try it if there was an option for it. would be very challenging but to do this the scouting shoud be improved massively and much more in-depth.

They could have the option to show players outside of your club through those "graphical attribute" bars, instead of explicit numbers - so you'd only have a rough idea of how good they were, even after scouting, and would have to take a slight leap of faith when judging whether they were actually better than people in your team. That I'd like.

However, FM has the problem that we all watch real football too. And we have jobs.

We don't have the time to invest in FM that managers, who are paid for what they do, have the time to invest into learning about their players and the simulated football world.

I don't want to have to watch a few simulated hours of training for every FM game day, just so I can spot Gerrard's best position (he would have no listed weaknesses, and too many strengths for his role to be clear).

I don't want to have a simulated hour of conversation with my scouts in Sierra Leone, and then watch simulated training and game footage of some bare-footed African prodigy, and then fly him to my club and watch him for a simulated two-week trial to see if he's worth signing.

It's hard work being a football manager - but for us, it's leisure time.

They've got to model the game accordingly.

As others have pointed out, the attributes are there to simulate the level of knowledge we'd have if we were actually immersed in the game world.

I know what Wayne Rooney is good at because I've watched him play for years. I can't do that in the game if I want to play more than one season on FM before the new one comes out and do other things with my life as well.

it would be impossible to play like that when youre in a long term game, when all players are regens

Some good ideas, except for the "it would kill the game" stuff. I think players who rush through the game obviously want it to be as easy as it can be but option boxes are a definite possibility for the more serious manager.

The graphical attributes does achieve it to an extent but when you compare players the numbers come back up. So I would like to see graphical attributes across the board.

The other idea mentioned was using descriptions like poor, average, good, very good, and excellent It was suggested that a good player for me might be a poor player in another squad. Simply solved your, your Ass Man and scouts give you info as how the player would rate in your squad. Again you would have to watch the player to get the full picture.

I like the idea of it being an option to have graphical attributes/ word descriptions across the entire game and the more mental abilities removed.

Take leadership, creativity, flair and intelligence as an example. I should not get these ratings. The commentary and after game summaries could be part of these. They would have to be improved.

"Eg: Player A made some intelligent runs into space and was the most creative player on the pitch." "Player B inspired his team from the heart of defense. He controlled the back line with his aggressive tackling and shut done the opposition." I start to get clues about my players abilities. After a few months you would have your ideas off who is what.

So I agree that no attributes could be better done with less graphical/word description attributes shown as an option.

I suggested this a while back, glad to see someone agrees with this idea - hopefully one day it will become a tickbox feature

The attributes make FM look scientific and give it depth. If you remove them it will make the game look simple.

Does anyone realise that something like Very Poor - Poor - Average - Good - Very Good is actually a scale from 1-5?

Does anyone realise that the attributes in-game are from 1-100 and that they are actually scaled down to 1-20?

Does anyone realise that we implicity scale things by ranking them above and below each other, and that the easiest way of ranking players is by numbers?

Ferguson would be able to rank his players by dribbling and he'd know that Nani is our best dribbler and Kuszczak our worst. He implicitly would place Nani at, say, 100 and Kuszczak at 1 and then is able to interpolate each of our other players on this 1-100 scale. So he can rank the players. Oddly enough this is what our mind roughly does - Nani is much better at Kuszczak at dribbling, but how much? We can find a number which represents this if we try hard enough.

Which is why this idea is actually bollocks, because a scale of 1-5 (Very Poor - Very Good) is obviously not enough to distinguish our players.

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I just wanna say that "NO VISIBLE ATTRIBUTES" IS POSSIBLE... but it require STATE OF THE ART 3d MATCH Engine where FIFA 2010 looks like Sensible World of Soccer 96'... so its possible maybe FM30?

Does anyone realise that something like Very Poor - Poor - Average - Good - Very Good is actually a scale from 1-5?

Does anyone realise that the attributes in-game are from 1-100 and that they are actually scaled down to 1-20?

Does anyone realise that we implicity scale things by ranking them above and below each other, and that the easiest way of ranking players is by numbers?

Ferguson would be able to rank his players by dribbling and he'd know that Nani is our best dribbler and Kuszczak our worst. He implicitly would place Nani at, say, 100 and Kuszczak at 1 and then is able to interpolate each of our other players on this 1-100 scale. So he can rank the players. Oddly enough this is what our mind roughly does - Nani is much better at Kuszczak at dribbling, but how much? We can find a number which represents this if we try hard enough.

Which is why this idea is actually bollocks, because a scale of 1-5 (Very Poor - Very Good) is obviously not enough to distinguish our players.

Do you realize that some of us watch our players play every minute of every game? I can rank the players myself as Ferguson does. Not get a sheet of paper that tells him who is the better dribbler. he watches them train and play. Do you realize we were talking about features for the future and as an option? Do you realize that a scale of 1 to 5 means you have to make decisions about who to pick based on match performance, ass man, coach, and scout reports. You would have to really know your team. A valuable OPTION for serious players.

Does anyone realise that the attributes in-game are from 1-100 and that they are actually scaled down to 1-20?

I'm fairly certain attributes are actually 1-200 in the ME.

I think a "watching matches" approach is way out the window due to time constraints.

However moving away from a spreadsheet approach I do wonder how close you could get to a good game based on stats.

eg for tackling you could see a players "average tackles per game" & "% of tackles won"

same for passing, mental stats would need work from the scouts to give an indepth report while physical skills could be measured.

For pace/acceleration you could have times for 20m & 60m say.

It'd be boring if we had to spend 6 hours assessing one player too.

you don't do this already?

crap!

I rarely use - or even look at - the numerical attributes these days - I use the "Overview" graph instead when looking at players. When comparing two players it is invaluable and much better than using numerical attributes.

After a while you get to know what the graph of a good "target man" or a good "pacey striker" looks like, and can tell at a glance if a player will fit into your system.

When you have two players for a position, or you are looking at a potential replacement, seeing the two graphs overlaid shows you exactly where each players is weaker/stronger and is sooooo much quicker than comparing attributes.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind if they did hide the numerical attributes as long as they kept the overview graph. The one thing it doesn't do is show a player's training progress, but it could be tweaked to do this by simply overlaying two graphs - his current one and his one from a month ago - this would be really neat thing to do anyway - wonder if they thought of it for FM10?

It works ok as it is, if it was changed everyone who had played any previous version would have to learn everything again.

Do you think a game could develop that does not give you any player attributes. Instead you have to look at certain training drills, coach and scout reports, actually study players in matches, study statistics to get an idea of the skills and physical abilities.

Could it ever work?

There is a game that does just that. It's called SAAP 2009. I've never played this game, but it seems interesting.

From their website, explaining the representation of players atributes:

http://www.machoward.com/skills.html

" Have you ever heard of a striker being described as "a clinical finisher" or a midfielder as "a midfield general"? Of course you have. But have you ever, outside of a computer game, heard a striker described as having 17 out of 20 for finishing or a midfielder with 15 out of 20 for passing? Of course you haven't. Why not? Because we understand instinctively that our knowledge of a player's skills are a matter of opinion - they're subjective, imprecise and verbal - and using numbers suggests a certainty that simply doesn't exist.

Let me let you into a secret - the reason smgs give players skill numbers is because it makes the programming job very much easier. However, it produces a totally artifical informational environment in the game and destroys that skill of the manager we might describe as "discovering the qualities of the players". A significant management challenge has been lost and is replaced by what is little more than a comparison of numbers.

SaaP dulicates the real-world description of players and their skills. Coaches, scouts, fans, press, other managers will all express their opinions verbally and you can take from these what you think they are worth. There are some statistics - goal scorers, starts etc - and there are numerical opinion statistics such as ratings for match and training performances. And there is the match itself. From these and experimenting with your selections and tactics, you will come to understand your players by a process of "discovery".

Deprived of their numbers some say there's a lack of information on skills but that's just nonsense - but there is sometimes a lack of judgement in handling the information. "

Thanks for that link ^^, going to try the demo and see how it is.

Do you realize that some of us watch our players play every minute of every game? I can rank the players myself as Ferguson does. Not get a sheet of paper that tells him who is the better dribbler. he watches them train and play. Do you realize we were talking about features for the future and as an option? Do you realize that a scale of 1 to 5 means you have to make decisions about who to pick based on match performance, ass man, coach, and scout reports. You would have to really know your team. A valuable OPTION for serious players.

The problem is we don't actually see players play remotely close to real life. We see two players collide but one player comes away - did this player actually dummy the other, or was it just a lucky bounce?

We implicitly rank things by numbers irregardless - an implicit scale appears in your mind when ranking players and trying to find out who goes where. The problem is we do not have a true match representation nor do we watch players train and play practice matches. It is impossible to "know" your squad as a result.

Yes X42bn6,

As stated earlier the match engine, commentary, and match reports would all have to be improved to make this possible But some form as an option would be an interesting development.

I tried that SAAP game about 4 years ago and it was terrible. Maybe he has improved it by now :0

I don't think getting rid of attributes altogether would be a good idea, but I think (at least the option) to move towards a slightly less precise option that 1-20 would be better.

The radar graph doesn't do that for me, really.

In the skinning forum, I asked about the possibility of changing the numbers in a player's profile to symbols or just blocks of colour (http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=146174), representing 'poor', 'average', 'good', 'excellent' or something along those lines (perhaps one or two more categories). It may be that it turned out to be too much of a chore without the attribute numbers, but it'd be an interesting experiment.

Scout reports could certainly be improved along these lines, as well.

Something where a 'report card' would just highlight 4 or 5 attributes in green to indicate a strength, but 3 or 4 in red to indicate a weakness would be good.

And then you could improve the accuracy of the report with more match reports, until you had all the attributes down to poor/average/good/excellent.

I remember "Sick As A Parrot" game from the early nineties! I didn't realise it was still going!

I personally reckon the current system is a bit too precise. I'd prefer to have to scout a player in a different league for 6 months before I even got close to seeing exactly what his attributes were.

I think you'd have to know your own players attributes otherwise it would make the game very difficult. But I think that the accuracy of the view on your own players should gradually increase with the time you work with them. So the attributes start off a bit vague, but after 6-12 months you can see them accurately. I'd like visibility of your new players attributes to depend out their ability and the ability of your assistant, ie, is your assistant good at scouting current ability or adaptable? I basically want the 'Fog of War' to thicken, and include your own team. I think it would give the transfer system a bit more risk (unless you scouted comprehensively).

I don't think it should be possible to completely know all of a players attributes until you've been his manager for at least 6 months. It'd mean that managers tend to buy players they've worked with before because the risk of signing someone completely new is too great.