Should PA become CPA?

When we start a new game of FM, each player in the database has a rating out of 200 for CA (Current Abililty) and PA (Potential Ability).

Current ability is the standard the player is at when you start a new game and Potential abilty is the maximum ability rating the player can achieve in the gameworld regardless of coaching or training or success etc.. (Theses figuers can be viewed in the editor)

Over the years there have been many discussions on these forums about doing away with PA, setting everyones PA to 200 or some other methods to make player development a bit more realistic.

The problem with a fixed PA is that while a high rating for some of the young wonderkids in the database will mirror real life, players in their 20's and 30's have very little or no chance of improvement. Take Andy Dawson of Hull City as an example. He has been with Hull during their incredible rise from the Third Division to the Premier League, and became an established Premier Leauge defender at the age of 29/30 who some were suggesting an England call up and move to a top six club may be in the offing.

In FM there is no structure to allow a player playing in the third division at the age of 25 to be a top Premier League defender by 29. I know this is an extreme rare example of late player development, but it is possible and happens all the time in England, just not on the same scale as jumping 4 divisions in 5 seasons! When Reading got promoted a few seasons back some of their players became established Premier League players in their 20's despite been at lower league clubs for their entire footballing carrers. Nicky Shorey being a great example having played in all 4 divisions too. Everton signed Tim Cahill from the first division when he was 24 and he has become one of the best centre mids in the EPL in his late 20's.

Wouldn't it be great if training, coaching standard, team success and players mental attributes were able to influence PA. Instead of a fixed rating, it could become CPA (Current Potential Ability). It would of course be difficult to implement it to mirror real life but it would be more realistic imo, plus alot more fun for us users if you could turn a reject mid 20's striker into a good player due to your training, coaches you have brought in and general team success etc.. It could also give more meaning to the players personallity and mental strength. It also means the users could form special relationships with players who stay incredibly loyal to you.Those with the desire to do well and have high mental attributes will be far more likely to succeed, meaning that not just any Joe Blog from the conference could be turned into an international player.

Any comments?

Thanks for reading.

Jimmy Bullard and Jermaine Beckford being another 2 examples. Think it's a good idea myself tbh, but don't see it happening unfortunately.

I think there should be "talent system"(from 1 to 10) like in the FIFA Manager series. I never saw late bloomers in FM series. This is ridiculous and game becomes boring and unplayable after a few seasons.

i agree, i think pa's should either change or be set higher but just make development harder. Players like Drogba and Arshavin have developed late in there careers among other numerous examples.

Think it is a great idea but would be surprised if it was in fm11 - lets hope I am wrong

I think the problem here is people are forgetting that players performances are judged by average ratings and consistency as opposed to their PA/CA etc. You're judged on Premier League quality by how you play in that division.

However saying that, we have seen examples in the test room of players rising up the leagues and becoming Premier League players - if a player has a peak to hit they can get there as their training facilities improve and they shoot up the leagues.

So say Dawson was a 70CA/135PA when he was in League Two, 90CA in League One, 110 in the Championship and so on. It is harder for players of a certain age to increase their CA (this is something we're looking into) but not impossible.

I think the point he was making was that Dawson might not have been given 70CA/135PA when he was in League 2. His idea is a valid one, but I can only assume difficult to implement. I guess Didier Drogba would count as a late bloomer. I like the game how it is, but this would definitely be an improvement.

Jimmy Bullard and Jermaine Beckford being another 2 examples. Think it's a good idea myself tbh, but don't see it happening unfortunately.

Both Bullard and Beckford should have had high PA ratings when they were in the lower leagues.

I agree that players in their late 20s can come good later on in life, and it would be nice to see this in FM, especially if a player (Beckford being a good example, although I doubt he'll do much long-term) moves to a much better club than the one he has been playing at. Difficult to implement.

In general, though,fixed PA is certainly realistic. If I regressed to being a 12 year-old schoolboy, trained every day, kept my fitness as high as could be, I really doubt I would EVER make the professional grade. I have simply never been athletic enough, never savvy enough on the field, never able to predict the unpredictable, always lose composure one-v-one. About all I have ever been able to do (and still can) is save most shots pinged at me on a five-aside pitch.

People DO have a limit to what they can achieve in football. Whether that is through their mental skills or physical prowess.

So, while I would LOVE to see a feature that might take a high-PA, low-CA 26 year old closer to his PA through improved training, coaches, better opposition, etc, (he'd need a very high Determination attribute), I won't be gutted if we don't see it any time soon. After all, this happens so very rarely.

NB - my prediction for Beckford: he'll do pretty well at first, but his attitude will let him down in the long run and will go the same way as Rob Earnshaw and Darren Huckerby.

I think the problem here is people are forgetting that players performances are judged by average ratings and consistency as opposed to their PA/CA etc. You're judged on Premier League quality by how you play in that division.

But with the current FM system, in order for players to acheive Premier League quality they must have a certain fixed PA. There is no way for a player of any age with a low fixed PA to develop into a top class player, regardless of quality of training or team success. With a variable PA it gives the user the opportunity to create an enviroment to improve players beyond the level pre-determined by the researchers and imo increase the appeal of FM to gamers.

If you take a look at Tim Cahill's PA in CM02/03 when he was still in the first division, his PA would be alot lower than his CA/PA in FM10. My point is we dont know how players are going to develop over time, so instead of taking a guess and giving him a definite rating at the time of release, why not develop a system that leaves it possible for the user to improve players PA.

It would be a massive addition to the game imo that has it's obvious appeal to users. Not only the satisfaction of getting a player who has struggled in his career to play well for you but it also makes training, player personalities and building releationships a much more important part of the game.

I read yesterday that Mark Hughes is on a mission to turn Bobby Zomara into an England international. Why not give your FM users the chance to feel that same buzz from management?

If you don't look at the PAs using editors or external utilities then they may well appear to be variable.

In general, though,fixed PA is certainly realistic. If I regressed to being a 12 year-old schoolboy, trained every day, kept my fitness as high as could be, I really doubt I would EVER make the professional grade. I have simply never been athletic enough, never savvy enough on the field, never able to predict the unpredictable, always lose composure one-v-one. About all I have ever been able to do (and still can) is save most shots pinged at me on a five-aside pitch.

But when we load a game of FM, we are not dealing with 12 yr old school boys, we are dealing with professional footballers who have no opportunity to improve regardless of certain key elements like training and team success. The researchers have to set a PA based on their current ability, but that is a bit of a flawed system because they can't see into the future. Why not leave PA open?

I don't think PA is a problem here, but maybe the efficiency of the scouting system is. If someone had the real life equivalent of 60CA aged 20 and a 170PA then I don't think he would necessarily be spotted by scouts, but it is true that in recent FMs you don't really see players rot away in the lower leagues before getting a big break. I think there is, on another level, potential for it - I recall cases of me signing hot prospects and over a long period never really giving them the game-time they needed, then selling them on to a smaller club/league around age 24, seeing them blossom there, then watching as they move around a bit, do a bit of growing, and finally find themselves as a first teamer at a big team in their late 20s. Actually I just saw a very similar thing to what you're talking about with Jack Wilshere - I sold him to Dundee United aged 20, he played pretty well there but went largely unnoticed, went to West Ham aged 25, had a good season as they were promoted from the Championship, had a couple of solid Premier League seasons as they were comfortably mid-table, and then finally got his big move to Liverpool and his first England cap aged 29.

so I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with the PA system, more that there has to be some kind of mechanism whereby players can go unnoticed. I think this happened more in FM06 - I remember having a look through a snapshot of a classic team of mine using Genie Scout and finding a guy aged 34 who'd never played above Serie C despite a PA of 195!

Dar2000 - sure we're dealing with professional footballers, but even then, I'm afraid that I have no confidence in the ability of, say, a random QPR youth player to be the next Messi if he's just trained right and tries hard enough. Sure SI can't predict the future accurately all the time - hence plenty of players who become superstars in FM but amount to nothing in real life (poor Nik Besagno), but they have to pretend to or else the game wouldn't make sense.

I'm in the "fixed PA is fine, but the development system could use some work" camp.

In fact, personally, I'd increase a lot of players PAs by a fair bit, particularly lower level players, but at the same time make it much harder to actually reach that potential. For example, a player that currently has 90 PA, might now have 110, but find it hard to develop beyond ~90 CA. However, if ideal situations did occur, he could become that bit better and step up to the next level. I'd also allow more development later in a player's career (mainly techincal/mental - physical improvements should mainly be limited to younger players)

Just as a rough idea, I'd probably say that on average, most players should reach, maybe 70-80% of the PA.

Unfortunately, like all people suggestion a flexible PA, you are mixing up PA and CA development.

Every player who reaches a certain level of abilty always had the potential to reach it. He may be an early or a late developer but certainly no matter when he reaches his peak, he had it in him from day 1 on.

I agree with you that late developers are not as common in FM than irl and that in FM very few players make remarkable progress after being 24 or actually even after being 22 years old. This is something which needs to be looked at as irl we clearly see some players making considerable development also at later stages of their careers.

However this has nothing to do with the concept of PA as such.

But when we load a game of FM, we are not dealing with 12 yr old school boys, we are dealing with professional footballers who have no opportunity to improve regardless of certain key elements like training and team success. The researchers have to set a PA based on their current ability, but that is a bit of a flawed system because they can't see into the future. Why not leave PA open?

This again is a research issue. If PA is set too rigidly, then too many players will hit the ceiling too soon and be done with development.

Of course, this is bad too. But it's down to bad research and the limitations of research.

One possible solution would be if SI advised their researchers to be more generous with leaving room for development by assigning higher PAs as before while maintaining the CA level on the current level. At the same time SI would have to alter the code for CA development to allow for more late development on the one hand while restricting CA development on the other hand to avoid too many players from reaching their full potential. I'm in full support of that approach. I don't believe that most players reach their full potential irl

But this as well is not the fault of having a PA which is set in stone. The problem, if there is one, lies elsewhere.

Dar2000 - sure we're dealing with professional footballers, but even then, I'm afraid that I have no confidence in the ability of, say, a random QPR youth player to be the next Messi if he's just trained right and tries hard enough.

Thats where attributes and other factors such as personallity and confidence of the player etc..

Im not saying that any player should be able to turn into the next Messi, but if he has decent attributes and determination and responds well to your training and coaches then he could become a decent player.

How often in FM do you come across a player with good attributes but your best scout only gives him 2 stars? I see it quite often and took a chance on a strker once who was sound technically, mentally and physically but he could not find any form in the higher league. The game pre-set him to be a player for a low repuation league and there is no chance of change there unfortunately.

Look irl at Arsene Wenger. Some of the players he has signed over the years have been unknown to most of us and come from smaller repuatation leagues. He trains them in certain ways and develops them into top players. Look at Patrick Vieria for example. I even read somewhere that Wenger buy's some young players based on their physical and technical ability and trains them into positions he feels would suit them best. Instills the mental attributes in them.

It does happen on football manager if you do it right, certain players might not look good from when you look at them but they play alot better then their stats show. My current captain of my Fleetwood Town team has been with me since I signed him on a free from Liverpool, back when I just got into League one (had him on loan in league two and one of the reason I got promoted). He is still with me today as my captain in the Premiership. He was been with me for 10 seasons and helped me rise through the leagues. He might not look the best but since being in the Premierleague, he has played in 3 seasons, he has only missed 10 games and finished with 7.00+ each of those seaons yet my assistant only rate him as good for a championship team.

Just not that often really

It does happen on football manager if you do it right, certain players might not look good from when you look at them but they play alot better then their stats show. My current captain of my Fleetwood Town team has been with me since I signed him on a free from Liverpool, back when I just got into League one (had him on loan in league two and one of the reason I got promoted). He is still with me today as my captain in the Premiership. He was been with me for 10 seasons and helped me rise through the leagues. He might not look the best but since being in the Premierleague, he has played in 3 seasons, he has only missed 10 games and finished with 7.00+ each of those seaons yet my assistant only rate him as good for a championship team.

Just not that often really

Part of this is down to the fact that your AssMan (and coaches, scouts, AI teams etc) rate players on CA/PA (or to be more precise, what they believe the CA/PA is, they're not always right), when what actually matters is attributes. Now, certainly, CA is a measure of the players total attributes, but it doesn't tell you how well they're arranged. Often high CA players will have a fair bit of that CA tied up in attibutes which aren't all that important for their position*. So, sure, they might be good all round players, but someone with less CA, but those points only "spent" where it really matters, could end up being better for a particular role.

I actually consider this to be one of the major flaws in long term AI teambuilding. The obvious example is the prevalence of low jumping (say, less than 12 for a prem level team) CBs once a few cycles of regens have appeared. In RL, these players would be incredibly unlikely to make it as a top level CB regardless of how all round talented they might be (though they'd probably be moved to another position), but in FM, big clubs will pick them up if they've got good CA/PA. I've seen teams like Chelsea having a total jumping score of their defense under 20.

*while this kind of attribute is "cheaper" in terms of CA, it's still not usually "free". For example, using some completely made up figures, for a CB, 20 tackling might cost 10 CA, while 20 shooting might cost 4, and vice versa for a striker.

Changing something like this, has the potential to unbalance the game.

If a fixed upper limit of ability was changed into a variable upper limit, then it could be possible to end up with a game filled with thousands of 'world class' players. As much as I want to see the game progress and develop, I don't want to see a development like this.

But how you do you go about limiting the effect so the game stays reasonably balanced.

Training & Tutoring currently seem to have only a marginal effect on player development, whilst match experience produces much larger changes.

Determination, Work Rate and the 6 or so hidden stats might not be enough.

There have been lots of threads on this before, and I still disagree with the notion of some sort of changing PA, which in my opinion goes against the whole nature of PA, and reality, in the first place. Everyone in the real world has some PA, even though this may seem like an abstract concept. Sure, we have no way of measuring my PA in numbers, but there is a limit to what I can do both physically and mentally. This hard limit will never, ever change. My CA will fluctuate over time, however.

What FM needs, and probably what SI has been diligently working on for some time, is a tweaked development system allowing for different player growth rates, as well as a better way of distributing CA among regens.

And I'll second PhroX's observation that the AI would do a better job of selecting players if it looked at key stats (though this isn't really related to the PA debate).

And I'll second PhroX's observation that the AI would do a better job of selecting players if it looked at key stats (though this isn't really related to the PA debate).

Or form.

The AI, especially with International matches, will pick a named star having a torrid time of poor performances, over a lesser known player that is having a period of brilliance.

Jimmy Bullard and Jermaine Beckford being another 2 examples. Think it's a good idea myself tbh, but don't see it happening unfortunately.

Can you point out what Beckford has ever done at the top level? As far as I recall, absolutely nothing so far. Not a good example.

Does CA ever change without a corresponding change in an attribute? In other words, can you have a pool of 'unspent' CA that needs to be allocated via training?

(I've been playing heavily for over a month and still haven't got my head around it all!)

I really don't worry about CA/PA personally.

If they have decent enough attributes to perform the role I wish within my tactics, then that's all I need to know. If my coaches suggest they've still got potential to develop their attributes, then that's a bonus.

I think that far too many people are blinkered by what they see displayed by the game editor, FMRTE or scout utilities. It's entirely how well you use a player tactically, in relation to their suited attributes, that's the key thing.

My favourite example, is Óscar Pérez in my Granada CF saves. Everything about him screams "average". Were I to encounter him whilst searching for players to sign, no doubt whatsoever, I would probably overlook him. However, even though he's little chance of gaining in his skills, used with specific settings within my tactical framework, he performs exceptionally, with over 7.50 average ratings each season, until his abilities really do start to decline once he hits 32/33. This is a player that I keep in my side from the Spanish third tier, through to high enough league finishes in the Liga BBVA (Primera) to qualify for Europe. In one save, he was even nominated for Spanish Player of the Year. This is (at that point) a 30 year old player, who had only played two games at the highest level, prior to my "management" of the club.

If you blinker yourself by basing your signings purely by the virtues of their CA/PA, then there's a great deal you're missing out on in this game. You'll also likely overlook players you may consider to be "lesser quality", based on the CA/PA assumptions, missing out on players who might actually be better suited to your tactical preferences, or certain roles.

SO, I don't personally think that PA should become more flexible. It's got plenty of additional (some hidden) attributes that can add flexibility to how well (or not) a player will develop, or if they'll reach their PA at all. It's entirely possible for players to be "late developers" already, based upon a combination of their attributes, how well you utilise their abilities, training, match performance.

I really don't worry about CA/PA personally.

If they have decent enough attributes to perform the role I wish within my tactics, then that's all I need to know. If my coaches suggest they've still got potential to develop their attributes, then that's a bonus.

I think that far too many people are blinkered by what they see displayed by the game editor, FMRTE or scout utilities. It's entirely how well you use a player tactically, in relation to their suited attributes, that's the key thing.

My favourite example, is Óscar Pérez in my Granada CF saves. Everything about him screams "average". Were I to encounter him whilst searching for players to sign, no doubt whatsoever, I would probably overlook him. However, even though he's little chance of gaining in his skills, used with specific settings within my tactical framework, he performs exceptionally, with over 7.50 average ratings each season, until his abilities really do start to decline once he hits 32/33. This is a player that I keep in my side from the Spanish third tier, through to high enough league finishes in the Liga BBVA (Primera) to qualify for Europe. In one save, he was even nominated for Spanish Player of the Year. This is (at that point) a 30 year old player, who had only played two games at the highest level, prior to my "management" of the club.

If you blinker yourself by basing your signings purely by the virtues of their CA/PA, then there's a great deal you're missing out on in this game. You'll also likely overlook players you may consider to be "lesser quality", based on the CA/PA assumptions, missing out on players who might actually be better suited to your tactical preferences, or certain roles.

SO, I don't personally think that PA should become more flexible. It's got plenty of additional (some hidden) attributes that can add flexibility to how well (or not) a player will develop, or if they'll reach their PA at all. It's entirely possible for players to be "late developers" already, based upon a combination of their attributes, how well you utilise their abilities, training, match performance.

This sums up my approach to CA/PA far better than I could have said it

PA isn't the real issue...

I'm all for having some sort of "soft cap" in PA, but I'm totally against giving every other player a 160PA "just in case they bloom later on".

Let's be honest, for every Late Bloomer in real life, there are hundrerds of unfulfilled talents and thousands of average players. A 26 years old who has spent a career in lower division will hardly turn into an international profile just because he somewhat gets signed by Arsenal or Real Madrid... No matter how better the training and the facilities are at the new club, a player has a natural level he could never exceed.

At best, he could benefit from playing alongside better players, but that'd be more a matter of basking in others' reflected glory...

The real issue in FM is the excessive weight CA/PA and reputation have on AI's transfer policy and players development.

Oh and the fact newgens are horribly unbalanced, often producing potential World Class player [PA >180] with fatal physical, mental or technical flaws.

The combination of those two factors will ultimately lead to AI teams bringing in "undevelopable talents" instead of focusing on more workable prospects, albeit with a lower potential.

A 185PA striker with 5 Natural Fitness, 6 Consistency and equally low Professionalism/Pressure/Temperament is much worse than a 155CA/PA player with adequate mental/physical traits.

P.S. The real problem with CA/PA is the fact CA doesn't go up (or down) quickly enough to reflect sudden career changes...

IRL Luca Toni went from around 120 to 150-160 in just two seasons... in FM that would rarely happens, much less for a 26 years old guy...

In FM, once you're labeled as "lower league material", there's no way to change that after a certain age. Also because the maximum PA is probably way out of reach already...

When/if the newgen flaw will be fixed, THEN we could really see if PA can be adjusted in order to offer more freedom.

There have been lots of threads on this before, and I still disagree with the notion of some sort of changing PA, which in my opinion goes against the whole nature of PA, and reality, in the first place. Everyone in the real world has some PA, even though this may seem like an abstract concept. Sure, we have no way of measuring my PA in numbers, but there is a limit to what I can do both physically and mentally. This hard limit will never, ever change. My CA will fluctuate over time, however.

This is true but it makes no sense to determine a PA value for a player at the start of his career (i.e. for a database player in the database, and for a regen upon generation). The ideal scenario is a situation where PA is scrapped and players are simply thrown into the game and left to develop, with the idea being the game is able to balance itself out to ensure not everyone turns out like Lionel Messi.

It's a bit like saying your career will never progress beyond a certain position or rank in a company - this is not a good idea because all the information used to determine your limit is all the information up till now and before: So it takes your current rank into account, as well as your education and upbringing. What it fails to take into account is any future information - such as you winning the lottery or finding a skill you never thought you had, which opens future doors. This is a bit like PA being essentially revised in the future, and you finding a skill you never thought you had is a bit like a late bloomer finding a prolonged purple patch of performances and possibly better training facilities.

So yes, you do have a limit, but no, to me, it makes no sense to determine it at the start. A Blue Square Premier player will have his PA determined by his current circumstances that are miles off a Premier League player - but if circumstances allow, he may well fight his own way up the ranks and his PA will increase as a consequence.

Then it suggests that there is no actual need for PA as it is a defined limit but if it keeps moving around is there a point? The answer is, "Not really" - it only influences how players develop (as you approach your PA, development slows as the PA is the limit). Therefore it makes sense to develop a system where the player's development is not a function of this limiting PA, but perhaps has an average expectation equal to that of the PA value that would have been assigned. This is probably beyond current processing power at the moment.

This is true but it makes no sense to determine a PA value for a player at the start of his career (i.e. for a database player in the database, and for a regen upon generation). The ideal scenario is a situation where PA is scrapped and players are simply thrown into the game and left to develop, with the idea being the game is able to balance itself out to ensure not everyone turns out like Lionel Messi.

But then the only factors to prevent "Fred", "John" and "Jake" from becoming three Messis will be their mental trait, the team they play for and the amount of top level football they'll get.

The notion of players having "no limit but the sky" is a tad silly IMO.

It's a bit like saying your career will never progress beyond a certain position or rank in a company - this is not a good idea because all the information used to determine your limit is all the information up till now and before: So it takes your current rank into account, as well as your education and upbringing. What it fails to take into account is any future information - such as you winning the lottery or finding a skill you never thought you had, which opens future doors. This is a bit like PA being essentially revised in the future, and you finding a skill you never thought you had is a bit like a late bloomer finding a prolonged purple patch of performances and possibly better training facilities.

But if, let's say, you have just a grade-school education and the best job you've had was at McDonald's, you won't EVER be able to land a Manager/CEO job, no matter what you'll do... (unless you go to highschool and college, but that'd take time and you'd be much older and not a viable candidate anyway).

The point is: a 25yo player who was part of Chelsea youth team and then got loaned out and sold to League One clubs probably wasn't, isn't and won't ever be good enough for Chelsea or for EPL.

A 1993 Ford Fiesta won't ever reach 200mph, no matter if the driver is your grandpa or Lewis Hamilton.

So yes, you do have a limit, but no, to me, it makes no sense to determine it at the start. A Blue Square Premier player will have his PA determined by his current circumstances that are miles off a Premier League player - but if circumstances allow, he may well fight his own way up the ranks and his PA will increase as a consequence.

Then you can basically sign Kettering Town's whole youth team for peanuts, and by the time they're old enough for first-team football you've got yourself 15 average-to-good EPL players...

If it worked that way, any random kiid could become a successful professional footballer if he spent some years at Ajax Academy or at La Masia...

Then it suggests that there is no actual need for PA as it is a defined limit but if it keeps moving around is there a point? The answer is, "Not really" - it only influences how players develop (as you approach your PA, development slows as the PA is the limit). Therefore it makes sense to develop a system where the player's development is not a function of this limiting PA, but perhaps has an average expectation equal to that of the PA value that would have been assigned. This is probably beyond current processing power at the moment.

That's just how CA should work already....

An upper limit, albeit soft, must exist. No matter how the game handles it, any player you sign can become twice as good as he was, and that's not how football works

But then the only factors to prevent "Fred", "John" and "Jake" from becoming three Messis will be their mental trait, the team they play for and the amount of top level football they'll get.

The notion of players having "no limit but the sky" is a tad silly IMO.

I'm not suggesting players have no limit. I'm saying the simulation should be able to ensure that on average there are only a sporadic number of Lionel Messis. Take, for example, the fact that only a handful of clubs can transform a promising youngster into a Lionel Messi. This ensures that at the very least only a select few who are able to play for these clubs may become a Lionel Messi. Then there's intra-squad competition - not every youngster will get the same number of chances as any other, ensuring development only will benefit the lucky ones, further reducing this number. And so on.

Another example is contrived and silly but imagine if you had a whole litter of kittens and you "rated" the best kitten as the kitten who explored (as kittens do) the furthest away from you after half an hour. The PA idea would put a limit on each of the kittens so that the one with the highest "rating" definitely travels the furthest (or does so with a larger probability) - but those with low ratings are hard-coded to never go any further than their limit (i.e. distance). My idea simply lets the kittens roam free with the idea that a kitten is less likely to go so far because it's scared and will return to its comfort zone - the same idea that the simulation will simply not allow such a situation to be likely. It may, of course, be possible, if very unlikely, for all the kittens to end up miles away from you - but this is a bit like saying it is very unlikely that all your next intake will become Lionel Messis. The simulation could be made watertight such that the probability of this happening is less than you winning 100 lotteries in a row.

But if, let's say, you have just a grade-school education and the best job you've had was at McDonald's, you won't EVER be able to land a Manager/CEO job, no matter what you'll do... (unless you go to highschool and college, but that'd take time and you'd be much older and not a viable candidate anyway).

I'm not so sure about that - see this: http://www.womenhomebusiness.com/success/cordia-harrington-from-rags-to-riches-success-story.htm - not quite what you need, but working at McDonalds simply opened some barriers and closed some others.

In reality not everyone will become a Director or Executive - most may end up only holding respectable low-level management ranks at McDonalds - but some opportunities may simply arise - you meet the CEO personally, or you start working in one area and it turns out you're pretty good in that area - which affect how you develop in that company.

The point is: a 25yo player who was part of Chelsea youth team and then got loaned out and sold to League One clubs probably wasn't, isn't and won't ever be good enough for Chelsea or for EPL.

Probably not, but can you be certain? The most you can say is that it is highly unlikely. The current system simply prevents this from happening - my system would allow it with a very low probability, so low that in practice you may never see it unless you play hundreds of years in-game - in which case you might see one player doing it.

A 1993 Ford Fiesta won't ever reach 200mph, no matter if the driver is your grandpa or Lewis Hamilton.

I agree and the simulation will still represent that - if your CA is, say, 20, in practice even if you joined a Premier League team and got the absolute best education your peak CA will still probably not be 200.

But it's not the greatest comparison - players develop, unlike a 1993 Ford Fiesta.

Then you can basically sign Kettering Town's whole youth team for peanuts, and by the time they're old enough for first-team football you've got yourself 15 average-to-good EPL players...

In practice that's not true. Firstly the chances of a rubbish player turning out like Messi is overwhelmingly less likely than a promising youngster turning out like Messi, so doing this is a bit like buying 20 lottery tickets and crossing your fingers instead of investing the money. Secondly even if their potential is limitless it still means they're likely to still turn out to be possibly good for Kettering Town-level standards at their very best. Garbage in garbage out.

I would of course not design this system to allow any youngster to have the same sort of odds of becoming the next Messi as any other - you still need promising players, good facilities and first-team football. However, I think hard-coding this in is a bad idea because some combination of freak events (i.e. some 15-year-old becomes a first-teamer at a lower-league side, making his development exponentially quicker than any other youngster) could allow a Messi to develop in a more unusual way.

If it worked that way, any random kiid could become a successful professional footballer if he spent some years at Ajax Academy or at La Masia...

See above

That's just how CA should work already....

An upper limit, albeit soft, must exist. No matter how the game handles it, any player you sign can become twice as good as he was, and that's not how football works

The main problem with a soft limit is that it only allows movement in one direction. This is possibly acceptable because of the nature of CA and PA - you can fail to reach but not exceed it. However it has the same problems as previously described in the sense that a player is still almost dictated by this PA. It's probably a more simple short-term solution.

I agree that players in their late 20s can come good later on in life, and it would be nice to see this in FM, especially if a player (Beckford being a good example, although I doubt he'll do much long-term) moves to a much better club than the one he has been playing at. Difficult to implement.

In general, though,fixed PA is certainly realistic. If I regressed to being a 12 year-old schoolboy, trained every day, kept my fitness as high as could be, I really doubt I would EVER make the professional grade. I have simply never been athletic enough, never savvy enough on the field, never able to predict the unpredictable, always lose composure one-v-one. About all I have ever been able to do (and still can) is save most shots pinged at me on a five-aside pitch.

People DO have a limit to what they can achieve in football. Whether that is through their mental skills or physical prowess.

So, while I would LOVE to see a feature that might take a high-PA, low-CA 26 year old closer to his PA through improved training, coaches, better opposition, etc, (he'd need a very high Determination attribute), I won't be gutted if we don't see it any time soon. After all, this happens so very rarely.

NB - my prediction for Beckford: he'll do pretty well at first, but his attitude will let him down in the long run and will go the same way as Rob Earnshaw and Darren Huckerby.

WTFFFFF are u talking about. hes profilic goalscorer in ccc.

Again, those arguments just support a changing of CA and development, not of the final PA of a player. Maybe it is just such an abstract concept for some, or maybe people are disappointed that some little nobody they sign from the lower leagues will almost certainly stay a nobody, but changing PA to some floating level or removing it does not solve the problem and only makes things less realistic. Again, every human has some unknown-to-us limit to what they can do. It exists, has existed, and will always exist. It's in our genes from day one. Things in life can change our CA and help make us the best we can be - good education, family support, diet, exercise regimes, whatever, but when all is said and done there is still a maximum to our ability. Thus, it does make sense for a PA to be set for each player at their creation.

x42bn6, I understand your suggestion of promotion within a company, but I believe that example is not quite the same as player development and is, in fact, far more complex than what we're dealing with in game (I realize though that I have used mental attributes and probably referenced a job before, too). But things such as winning the lottery, the bias toward or against you that your boss might have, arriving late to work, social loafing, etc etc etc can all play a role in your progression up the corporate ladder, and all those factors are too numerous to expect a game to reflect similar depth. Furthermore, I believe that it is much easier to see a set physical limit to a person's abilities than a mental limit, because it is obviously much easier to observe outward, physical abilities than everything that goes on inside our heads.

What you keep asking for with your changing (or non-existent) PA is just a change in growth models and CA points distribution. Thus, a lowly BSP player might have a PA of 140 set at the game start but has a CA currently of 70. His CA growth would increase at a much faster rate were he to play in the Premier League and have access to better coaching and facilities, but unless he gets those, his CA won't increase much. His CA being limited by his surroundings is never a 'changing PA', because there is always some maximum that he can achieve. PA is not dependent on surroundings, CA is.

And, ignoring all of our theoretical talk, I imagine it is probably very impractical to do away with PA and have some random "toss the newgens into the wind and see how they develop" model. We are dealing with limited computing power, limited development time, and my guess is that using PA makes it infinitely easier for SI to ensure that there is a relatively realistic distribution of both Messis and absolute flops.

@ x42bn6

I see your point about the game itself limiting the amount of players who can become World Class, but I still think it's potentially devastating and ultimately wrong.

My example of Kettering Town's youth squad was an exaggeration, because of the inherent low skills involved, but if you just think of two "generic EPL prospects" (Jody Morris or Richie Wellens, to name two who didn't quite make it), then with your system both would have turned into international superstars, just because of them being part of a Top Club.

All they'd need would be first team football.

So why bothering spending money on already established stars if you can sign a bunch of average younger players and watch them grow like the Beanstock from the Magic Beans fairytale?

x42bn6, I understand your suggestion of promotion within a company, but I believe that example is not quite the same as player development and is, in fact, far more complex than what we're dealing with in game (I realize though that I have used mental attributes and probably referenced a job before, too). But things such as winning the lottery, the bias toward or against you that your boss might have, arriving late to work, social loafing, etc etc etc can all play a role in your progression up the corporate ladder, and all those factors are too numerous to expect a game to reflect similar depth. Furthermore, I believe that it is much easier to see a set physical limit to a person's abilities than a mental limit, because it is obviously much easier to observe outward, physical abilities than everything that goes on inside our heads.

Well not really - development of players is arguably just as complicated - it requires the balancing over all teams over all leagues, the analysis of intra-squad competition (lots of potential Lionel Messis may result in no Lionel Messis at all because none get any substantial game time - all get roughly equal but less), and of course training facilities and coaches. All simulations inevitably cut out things for simplification anyway.

What you keep asking for with your changing (or non-existent) PA is just a change in growth models and CA points distribution. Thus, a lowly BSP player might have a PA of 140 set at the game start but has a CA currently of 70. His CA growth would increase at a much faster rate were he to play in the Premier League and have access to better coaching and facilities, but unless he gets those, his CA won't increase much. His CA being limited by his surroundings is never a 'changing PA', because there is always some maximum that he can achieve. PA is not dependent on surroundings, CA is.

Well not really, considering BSP players roughly get PAs around 80-90 and 140 is arguably the Lionel Messi of the BSP. His PA is indeed dependent on surroundings - why else do League One players have, on average, higher PAs than BSP players? If a player changes his circumstances what was predicted before should usually change as well.

And, ignoring all of our theoretical talk, I imagine it is probably very impractical to do away with PA and have some random "toss the newgens into the wind and see how they develop" model. We are dealing with limited computing power, limited development time, and my guess is that using PA makes it infinitely easier for SI to ensure that there is a relatively realistic distribution of both Messis and absolute flops.

Er, yeah, because that's exactly how to design a simulation...

There are multiple ways of designing stochastic simulations and looking at them analytically rather than stochastically, like Markov models. But you would be surprised with what we can do with current processing power. Of course it's easier to hard-code limits in but hard-coding implies that "you don't need to hard code it" - the implication being that there is definitely a way to do without PA, just that SI aren't ready to do away with it yet.

It will have to be designed from near-scratch of course which may require a bit more development time than a year, but a non-hard-coded system designed well is superior to a hard-coded one of equal quality, so I see no reason why SI shouldn't aim for it.

I personally see CA and PA vanishing within the next 5 years as a result of development and the wonders of Moore's Law anyway.

@ x42bn6

I see your point about the game itself limiting the amount of players who can become World Class, but I still think it's potentially devastating and ultimately wrong.

Because if something bad can happen... Something bad will happen?

My example of Kettering Town's youth squad was an exaggeration, because of the inherent low skills involved, but if you just think of two "generic EPL prospects" (Jody Morris or Richie Wellens, to name two who didn't quite make it), then with your system both would have turned into international superstars, just because of them being part of a Top Club.

All they'd need would be first team football.

Er, no, they wouldn't be definitely likely to turn into international superstars. They'd still need a good amount of development and first-team football.

All my system does is remove the hard-coded PAs assigned to them at the start of the game, the idea being that they will (say) be more likely to become lower-Premier League/higher-Championship style players at their peak. They may (less likely) become decent Premier League players or rubbish Championship players, and even less likely (but still possible) to become good Premier League players or mid-table League One players. And a miniscule chance they'll become top players, or fall out of the professional ladder altogether (maybe he suffers cruciate injuries one after the other).

The idea of "PA" then becomes one that suggests that on average, they'll be somewhere within this "PA" range, but there's a chance they'll a little further away fall on either side with diminishing probability. A bit like a normal distribution:

But imagine the lower scale is numbered, say, 80-90-100-110-120-130, i.e. 110 in the middle, and the curved line is the probability of it happening.

So why bothering spending money on already established stars if you can sign a bunch of average younger players and watch them grow like the Beanstock from the Magic Beans fairytale?

Again, just because something bad may happen, it doesn't mean that it will.

The chances of this happening can be designed to be minute, so if you do manage to succeed, then that's great - you were overwhelmingly unlikely to do so anyway - you could have made your job easier with better youngsters to start with, but well done irregardless.

The system should not change the fact that if you have rubbish players to begin with, you are likely to have rubbish players in the end. Some might prove you wrong and go on to become good - some might prove you wrong and become even worse than you imagined.

I'm not implying all players will turn out to be brilliant - in reality the worst players to begin with may turn out to be pretty good, while the best players to begin with might mix with the wrong crowd and fall down the ladder quite dramatically. The chances of that happening of course are lower than the status quo of least promising players -> worst players and most promising players -> best players.

I just think it's a bad idea to hard-code their future in at the beginning given that circumstances can change drastically.

Well not really - development of players is arguably just as complicated - it requires the balancing over all teams over all leagues, the analysis of intra-squad competition (lots of potential Lionel Messis may result in no Lionel Messis at all because none get any substantial game time - all get roughly equal but less), and of course training facilities and coaches. All simulations inevitably cut out things for simplification anyway.

My point was that it is easier to simulate and understand factors that go into physical things, such as training, than mental things, such as the factors contributing to career success.

Well not really, considering BSP players roughly get PAs around 80-90 and 140 is arguably the Lionel Messi of the BSP. His PA is indeed dependent on surroundings - why else do League One players have, on average, higher PAs than BSP players? If a player changes his circumstances what was predicted before should usually change as well.

PA only appears to be dependent on surroundings because in-game players with a certain PA range are detected by clubs and purchased based solely on that PA. I'm suggesting that a realistic solution would be PA independent of league, but the CA will depend heavily on the players' surroundings. I'm not claiming that the AI scouting and purchasing habits are ideal, but I'm pointing to real life.

Er, yeah, because that's exactly how to design a simulation...

There are multiple ways of designing stochastic simulations and looking at them analytically rather than stochastically, like Markov models. But you would be surprised with what we can do with current processing power. Of course it's easier to hard-code limits in but hard-coding implies that "you don't need to hard code it" - the implication being that there is definitely a way to do without PA, just that SI aren't ready to do away with it yet.

It will have to be designed from near-scratch of course which may require a bit more development time than a year, but a non-hard-coded system designed well is superior to a hard-coded one of equal quality, so I see no reason why SI shouldn't aim for it.

I personally see CA and PA vanishing within the next 5 years as a result of development and the wonders of Moore's Law anyway.

I am no expert on programming, so I was only surmising. However, throughout your comments and those that follow your response to me, you fail to point out what, exactly, in your model would prevent any number of random players from becoming world beaters. You suggest that only the ones that receive lots of first team time and training with a good club will develop so, but this is not realistic at all. There are many players who would still be terrible in the top flight regardless of how many years they spent training at the club. Granted, good training is a big part of development, but so is a person's innate ability. A PA system recognizes this; floating, unlimited potential for everyone does not.

My point was that it is easier to simulate and understand factors that go into physical things, such as training, than mental things, such as the factors contributing to career success.

I'm not sure about that personally, considering we don't understand the human body as much as we'd like. There isn't one silver bullet way of making a great player - all clubs use different approaches.

I am no expert on programming, so I was only surmising. However, throughout your comments and those that follow your response to me, you fail to point out what, exactly, in your model would prevent any number of random players from becoming world beaters. You suggest that only the ones that receive lots of first team time and training with a good club will develop so, but this is not realistic at all. There are many players who would still be terrible in the top flight regardless of how many years they spent training at the club. Granted, good training is a big part of development, but so is a person's innate ability. A PA system recognizes this; floating, unlimited potential for everyone does not.

Well, for example, in order to get to the top you need a lot of first-team football. Immediately one factor stopping most players from reaching the top is the fact that teams should not take a team of 16-year-olds and throw them into the frying pan. This is because 16-year-olds are unlikely to be good enough for the first-team immediately. Even if you tried, you would be unlikely to get them to perform well which could harm their development - in the same way that in-game you have to perform well consistently to progress. Ratings and form indirectly affect development in this way.

Each player doubtless has some form of "talent" - this is the idea I had with "PA" (in quotes). This could suggest a rough value for where a player will reach on average, like a pole in the ground with you tied to an elastic band, and your development suggests you trying to get away from this elastic band. It doesn't suggest, however, that the elastic band "pulls you back" - it just simply makes it harder and harder to get away, somewhat constraining your range but doesn't actually prevent you from reaching Lionel Messi or the "worst amateur player possible"-status. Another abstraction is where your "PA" is the middle of a valley, and your development is climbing up the mountains on either side. Some players are ultra-talented and their valley lies further forward - so they have to work a lot less hard to get to the end. Some players are rubbish and their valley is miles away, but in theory they could work very very hard and get to the end. Some have nice, gently valleys - perhaps the highly professional ones who have good training facilities - so if they are rubbish, at the very least they will be likely to develop more quickly than a normal youngster of the same talent, in the same way that gentle valleys are easier to climb. Some have nasty, steep valleys - i.e. unprofessional players, who need to do so much more to go a further distance - they're stubborn and difficult.

If you like, you still need to get all the stars to align in order to produce a Lionel Messi in the same way that sometimes playing a youngster constantly doesn't always work to produce a legend.

I think that far too many people are blinkered by what they see displayed by the game editor, FMRTE or scout utilities. It's entirely how well you use a player tactically, in relation to their suited attributes, that's the key thing.

In my experience scout reports are fairly accurate as to how a player will peform for you regardless of attributes. I mainly use these reports when deciding who to buy. Iv'e come across plenty of players with decent attributes but low scout ratings who just do not perform well at that level. Iv'e found that filling your squad with "3 star players' will make you very successfull. Of course you need to make sure you have the right balance in certain areas like a ball playing defender along side a cover man etc.. Attributes are great when for example you have 4 strikers in your squad and you want 2 big strong deep lying forwards alongside 2 small quick advanced forwards. Having four "3 star" slow deep lying strikers would not work so well.

But if scouts are accurate and supposedly able to see CA/PA, then surely it plays a massive part in the game. If you go purley on attributes, you might find two strikers that look nearly identical to each other but one has a '3 star' rating and one a '2 star', you can bet the 2 star will not perform near the same level.

If what you say is true then scouts are an unneccesary and misleading addition to the game.

What I still don't get is HOW the game would be able to "limit" the growth of the players...

If lower leagues' low standard of play/facilities will prevent most of the younger players there from becoming good, how will that be possible at the highest level?

If all a player needs is great training and first team football at a Top Club, then ANYONE with a decent base, say CA 130ish around age 20-22, could and will turn into a top level player, and beyond.

The growing use of Negative PA in the database introduces a more "loose" approach, allowing it for more variety and also for keeping the game a bit more unpredictable, just like the future of many players in real life is hard to predict [e.g. who knows, Lukaku could be the next Eto'o or the next Lamptey...]

Having NO PA AT ALL would mean any "Jonathan Greening" could become a world-class player just because he was at Man Utd at a young age... Just a matter of playing him as much as possible, and the rest would just happen by itself. Disregarding the actual "talent level" of the guy.

So, unless the game has another way [always a fixed numerical index anyway, you can call it PA in a 1-200 scale or "Talent Level" from 1 to 10, but the difference is nominal...] to recognize the inherent difference in talent guys like "Jeffers", "Pennant" and "Gerrard" had and have, FROM THE BEGINNING, it'll be just a matter of who plays where, and how much.

Basically turning the game into a lottery...

Otherwise you're implying Dele Adebola could have become as good as Fowler had he signed for Liverpool instead of settling down for Crewe?

See, while I think soft PA could work, I do accept as a incontrovertible fact that players do have natural talent and that's the major factor in determining what kind of career they'll have.

P.S. If you haven't "it", you can't get "it", no matter if you train every single day til you pass out.

Malmsteen played guitar for years til his fingers bled, but he had TALENT anyway. Had he been a talentless idiot [instead of a talented one], the best he could have achieved would have been playing in pubs, at best.

Another example.. you surely are familiar with the "C+ student who works twice as hard as the B+ student who barely opens a book"... How comes? Shouldn't the one who studied the most be the better one? Or is it about something else?

What I still don't get is HOW the game would be able to "limit" the growth of the players...

If lower leagues' low standard of play/facilities will prevent most of the younger players there from becoming good, how will that be possible at the highest level?

I've described some ideas above.

There may be physical limitations too. It's not like "the best car in the world will definitely reach a million miles per hour". There may be physical limits as a result of everything. Like testing cars - the actual limit may not be known, but there is definitely a limit.

If all a player needs is great training and first team football at a Top Club, then ANYONE with a decent base, say CA 130ish around age 20-22, could and will turn into a top level player, and beyond.

Like I said, you also need first-team football. And it is difficult to envision a scenario where lots of youngsters are thrown into the mix as first-teamers.

Indeed, there may be some chance involved.

I never implied all you need is good training and facilities either. Indeed, what's stopping SI from, say, diminishing the effects of training to reduce the rate of CA gains?

The growing use of Negative PA in the database introduces a more "loose" approach, allowing it for more variety and also for keeping the game a bit more unpredictable, just like the future of many players in real life is hard to predict [e.g. who knows, Lukaku could be the next Eto'o or the next Lamptey...]

With my approach, all researchers need to do is stick a "talent level" which could be a rough figure for peak CA, in the knowledge that on average they'll be around this area but will not need to specify a range. Indeed, the ranges can be too wide for some minor leagues, where even a 10-CA difference makes a big difference (think leagues who on average have their best players between ranges). With my system, the actual ranges are immaterial.

Having NO PA AT ALL would mean any "Jonathan Greening" could become a world-class player just because he was at Man Utd at a young age... Just a matter of playing him as much as possible, and the rest would just happen by itself. Disregarding the actual "talent level" of the guy.

"A car has no limit to its speed, if you ignore the laws of physics."

Any player could become world-class - but some are simply more likely to become world-class than others. Does this not reflect real-life?

So, unless the game has another way [always a fixed numerical index anyway, you can call it PA in a 1-200 scale or "Talent Level" from 1 to 10, but the difference is nominal...] to recognize the inherent difference in talent guys like "Jeffers", "Pennant" and "Gerrard" had and have, FROM THE BEGINNING, it'll be just a matter of who plays where, and how much.

I agree with that, but I disagree with this beginning figure being a fixed PA, even a soft one. You wouldn't get a high PA without being at a club with good facilities and coaches, and having a good personality for development, so players at the top are very likely to hit their PA. PA becomes a self-serving mechanism where players at the top predicted to be the best will be overwhelmingly likely to become the best, as their high PA promotes their development.

There isn't enough uncertainty, in my view.

Basically turning the game into a lottery...

Otherwise you're implying Dele Adebola could have become as good as Fowler had he signed for Liverpool instead of settling down for Crewe?

He might have been good enough - who knows? What if Fowler had suffered multiple serious injuries and Adebola had been forced into the first-team fold early as a result, promoting Adebola's growth? What if Adebola had struck a good chime with the rest of the Liverpool squad in the same way that the likes of Henderson (Sunderland) and Fàbregas (Arsenal) just fit into the team after being put into the first-team picture? Both their futures could have differed vastly with a few "what ifs".

See, while I think soft PA could work, I do accept as a incontrovertible fact that players do have natural talent and that's the major factor in determining what kind of career they'll have.

I accept they have talent too - see my talent idea above. It can also be designed to be the most important factor in development.

You just need to understand that removing limits doesn't mean that everyone will become brilliant. Removing speed limiters in cars doesn't mean they reach infinite speeds. For example, if SI decided it was a good idea to limit CA growth to 1 CA per season (say), then it would immediately mean that nobody would hit CA 200 (since they need to start with CA 180 or something to get there). However, if it turns out that SI's simulator did not have this hard-coded 1 CA/season, but it just so happens that the simulator has an inherent limitation of 1 CA/season, then it would be exactly the same thing. In the same way that a car manufacturer doesn't know what their car's maximum speed is, but discovers it on a test track.

P.S. If you haven't "it", you can't get "it", no matter if you train every single day til you pass out.

No, but it shouldn't stop you from becoming a good player if you work hard in some circumstances - you'll have to work harder though, if you've got less talent.

Roy Keane wasn't the most talented footballer in the world but he's still arguably one of Manchester United's best ever midfielders. His passing, positioning and creativity wasn't the greatest for a box-to-box midfielder and he was about as controversial as they come. World-class? Definitely.

With Roy Keane you would assign a slightly lower talent value, but his immense mental attributes and professionalism (in training of course) and ambition, combined with an amazing drive, would mean that he would easily surpass his talent value and become world-class.

The advantage of having talent separate from PA is clear here - if you have an outstanding talent who has a pathetic attitude, then you can simply make his talent very high and let him run around in your simulation. Most of the time he will never fix that attitude so he'll become a moderately-OK footballer most of the time. But sometimes he may fix his attitude and become world-class; sometimes he may get even worse and end up in lower-league sides. He'll always have that "it" factor however and there wouldn't be much of a need to change it over time. However, in the current system, a player who continues to fail initial expectations will continue to have his PA lowered - see Freddy Adu, for example. In this system, he'll have a high talent but perhaps low adaptability so every time he moves he simply never fulfills his talent.

Malmsteen played guitar for years til his fingers bled, but he had TALENT anyway. Had he been a talentless idiot [instead of a talented one], the best he could have achieved would have been playing in pubs, at best.

Another example.. you surely are familiar with the "C+ student who works twice as hard as the B+ student who barely opens a book"... How comes? Shouldn't the one who studied the most be the better one? Or is it about something else?

I understand all that - I'm not sure you understand me.

I accept there is a talent level, but I disagree with that being PA.

I am perfectly fine with the CA/PA system personally. I'm overly curious so I tend to look at my players to check how their ca/pa changes just to give an easier indication than scout reports and green up arrows as to how players are improving, I find it easier to look at a number and see "Oh, he's improved that much". Some players make it to their PA, some get close, some fall far short, there's a good variety, and I've sold players that stopped improving aged 21 and seen them improve from 135 ca up to around 150 slowly over time, and become fairly good players.

I've also seen ones go from 110 ca to 135 after me rejecting them because they just weren't improving. These are all players that are past the normal improvement time and did most of their growing slowly after being 22.

I'll admit it seems sometimes almost broken how players never seem to "bloom late" but remember this is a vast game, and there's no way you can see everything that's going on. It'd similarly feel broken if even 1/4 of players needed till 27 to reach their peak it's about a realistic balance really but considering some "fun" too. I personally love having a young squad, developing talent and having an average squad age of 22, I think it's fun and I wouldn't want it to become massively harder by far more "late bloomers" who I'd end up selling on thinking they wont make it.

Only thing that might be broke is that I almost never see good PA players staying at the lower league as they develop, they're almost always spotted by a top flight club and bought by age like 18 or something.

x42bn6, I have to disagree with your car example. Actually, I have to agree with it as it supports what I'm saying about a hard PA that exists for every player. A production line Toyota Camry can never go 200mph, ever. Some Ferrari models can, right off the factory line. The motor oil you put in each car has an effect. So does the climate, the weather. So does the skill of the driver. But no matter how many of these variables you change, a hard limit exists to how well that car can perform. Humans are the same way. Removing PA for your proposed system ignores this. Even if it were to generate the same levels of trash versus world class players as the current system, I disagree with its realism and use based on these grounds. It is not true in real life that Wenger and Arsenal can pick up any 15 year old Joe Schmoe and convert him into a world class superstar, even if they are given all the first team time, mentoring, and training possible.

Furthermore, your example of mountains and valleys only further supports my belief that the growth model needs reworking. It does not, however, argue against PA.

Your 'talent level' idea is just the growth models under a different name, and does not reject the notion that somewhere out there exists a maximum of what anyone can achieve - including Roy Keane. So perhaps he started out real life with a low CA in most attributes, but his PA was always high to begin with.

The system is fine. The problem is that everybody is messing around with the editor and then complains that he isn't suprised.

Andy Dawson , nice example and it's a good idea.

x42bn6, I have to disagree with your car example. Actually, I have to agree with it as it supports what I'm saying about a hard PA that exists for every player. A production line Toyota Camry can never go 200mph, ever. Some Ferrari models can, right off the factory line. The motor oil you put in each car has an effect. So does the climate, the weather. So does the skill of the driver. But no matter how many of these variables you change, a hard limit exists to how well that car can perform. Humans are the same way. Removing PA for your proposed system ignores this. Even if it were to generate the same levels of trash versus world class players as the current system, I disagree with its realism and use based on these grounds. It is not true in real life that Wenger and Arsenal can pick up any 15 year old Joe Schmoe and convert him into a world class superstar, even if they are given all the first team time, mentoring, and training possible.

Eh? PA is a bit like Toyota looking at their Camry car, looking at the pure best it could theoretically perform, and then putting a speed limiter in it. The top speed quoted for cars usually involves scenarios replicated at best-efforts in the test lab. Sometimes you can find scenarios where the car can go faster, such as a better road or, er, going downhill. This is what I mean by having a rough talent level - in theory this car may go this fast, but indeed in practice it may go quicker or slower.

I never implied Joe Average could join Arsenal and turn out to be the next wonderkid. All I am saying is that Joe Average "could" become the next wonderkid, but if his PA isn't assigned to a high enough value then he definitely won't be. The most talented footballers are still much more likely to become the best footballers in the end - so why don't we simply let the simulator demonstrate this? In the same way that some car simulators may not hard-code a maximum speed into their cars - just that they design their car simulation such that the top speed of a Golf GTI is substantially lower than a Lamborghini Diablo. The fact that there is no maximum speed limit in, say, GT5, for example (barring numeric overflow), shows that cars don't become infinitely quick such that a Golf GTI is indistinguishable from a Lamborghini Diablo.

Yes, with my system you could pick up any rubbish youngster and it is possible to make them into the next Lionel Messi. However, just like GT5's system, the game will be designed such that it will become extremely difficult to do such a thing, to the extent that there isn't much point in signing rubbish youngsters. I wouldn't subscribe to the idea that "it might happen, so it will" - it is extremely unlikely to the extent that even if you managed to succeed, you would have to break pretty much all levels of realism (i.e. find a very specific way to make this youngster perform to 10.0 ratings every game to promote his development) to get that far, arguably breaking the simulation because no rational manager would do such a thing.

The recipe for success is rather simple: Talent + attitude + good training + first-team football + lots of luck. In reality players like Roy Keane lack one or two of these but still became world-class, but a PA barrier is immediately and irrevocably halting towards this, due to the fact that it is a hard limit.

My general ire with the current system is largely based on the fact that Lionel Messi may have CA 100 at his peak (i.e. he suffers so many injuries he falls down the ladder quickly - still unlikely though), but this is still more likely than him having CA one more than his PA.

As for realism, take the current system - all you need to do is pick the most talented youngsters, tutor into them the correct attitude, and find first-team football and fingers-crossed avoid serious injuries, and voilà - you're done. How realistic is that? Some of the best players in the world, indeed, aren't the most talented but they make up for it with other criteria - another example may be Gennaro Gattuso, who is perhaps guilty of relying on his strength and tenacity too often in the past rather than skill, but was up there as one of the best defensive midfielders or box-to-box players at his peak. We often hear talk about "limited but effective players" - like the Fletchers and Jagielkas of this world - players of not great talent but good attitudes and are effective enough to make up for it.

Furthermore, your example of mountains and valleys only further supports my belief that the growth model needs reworking. It does not, however, argue against PA.

How?

I used it as a metaphor to show that my system would have an average (i.e. over thousands of simulations) peak CA in the middle of this valley, and that it is increasingly difficult to move away.

Your 'talent level' idea is just the growth models under a different name, and does not reject the notion that somewhere out there exists a maximum of what anyone can achieve - including Roy Keane. So perhaps he started out real life with a low CA in most attributes, but his PA was always high to begin with.

I never rejected that notion that people have maxima - I'm just saying, "Why not let the simulator show that players have a limit?" "Talent level" is merely based upon the fact that we have only a rough idea of how good a player is - real or regen - this is the "it" factor, if you will. However, in the same way that we allow players to fail (i.e. never reach their PA or get anywhere near it), why not allow players to exceed original expectations, for the very reason I mentioned about changing circumstances? After all, the "equation" for success only has talent as part of it - why should it be the limiting factor? A talented player who only plays for lower-league sides will only ever have a low peak CA - make the move to a big club and suddenly a whole new range of options opens up.

I agree that with the current system Keane would always have had a high PA - reflecting the fact that his PA is determined by not only his talent but his attitude as well - in other words, his talent is mixed into his PA. This limits how he develops of course - he will develop well in-game but 9 times out of 10 he will become as Keane in real-life because of his high PA.

Examples:

Roy Keane (current system):

Talent + attitude + training facilities + coaches + luck with injuries + first-team football at a young age => PA 182 (or whatever it was at his peak)

Roy Keane (my system):

Talent: 150 (not the most talented player in the world)

Talent + attitude + training facilities + coaches + luck with injuries + first-team football at a young age => a peak CA probability distribution centred about CA 160, with a wide tail (good attitude, training facilities, coaching and first-team football) allowing Keane to easily bypass CA 150, but getting progressively harder the further he goes away (this is the mountain and valley idea).

Of course he may fail in the same way the old system allows him to fail - say he does his cruciate several times as a youngster. In this case researchers would downgrade his PA - in this case the game notes this and sees his peak CA as being slightly lower because he missed the "golden age" of development as a youngster. There is no doubting his talent is, however, still potentially that of a Premier League player, and depending on his first-team football he could compensate for it.

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In essence you can think of my system as something like:

1) Move the PA marker back some notches - take a player who has PA 160 - move it back to, say, 130

2) Allow peak CA to vary around this 130 marker, such that, say, 99% of the time peak CA is less than or equal to 160

3) Allow movement beyond PA 160 - a little movement perhaps - making it more difficult the further you go - reflecting the fact that if you are Joe Average you will need miracles a million times over to get to Lionel Messi

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As for growth changes, this reflects this too. Say Virtual Roy Keane in my system suffers lots of injuries as a youngster and quickly falls down the ladder. His career, once fairly promising, now looks rather bleak. However, he catches a lucky break and makes a move to another club and establishes himself as a fine performer at 26, capturing the attention of bigger clubs - who then make a move for him, which opens up more opportunities and raises his computed peak CA (because training facilities, coaches and quality of first-team football is changed, computed peak CA therefore changes) - and because of Keano's attitude, he quickly relishes his surroundings and makes a late run in his CA raise, like a late bloomer if you will. He may never be as good as Real Roy Keane, but because he had that inherent talent within him and a good attitude, he could break out of his doldrum part of his career. A bit similar to large CA-PA differences perhaps.

PA is a variable if viewed in game by official means. My solution to this problem is not to change the system, but to encrypt it. That way it won't be able to be viewed by these cheat programs and therefore keeping it unknown and more realistic.

I find it so incredibly sad that people buy players based on PA rather than the player's statistic spread and by means available ingame. I've had some excellent players over the years and they weren't ever anything to look at, but their attitude was right and stats in the right places.

PA is NOT the problem. Capped PA works fine, and you don't need to add some new "CPA" function in.

What's needed is improvement to the player development model that sees players reach their peak at different rates and ages.

So say you have Player A and Player B at Torquay, and both are CA50 PA120 at 18.

Player A peaks early, at 22, at CA84. At this point, Player B is at CA61.

Player A barely develops past CA84, adding only a couple of points by the time he is 30.

Player B moves on, moves around a couple of clubs, before "clicking" at 29 at Cheltenham. His CA (and performances) go from 67 to 81 over the season. He moves to a bigger club, and eventually peaks, age 33, at Derby on CA 107.

No other features needed, just a development model with more variation.

If you don't look at the PAs using editors or external utilities then they may well appear to be variable.

hahaha....

well as we all know they are not variable and it is a huge flaw in the game.

there are many examples of players who developed into world class after their early twenties.

the game kills that possibility via giving out fixed numbers to everyone, pretending some average match ratings of the last three seasons can predict the next 10 years of player development...

for a game that wants to be as realistic as possible this is a pathetic mechanic.