Some thoughts about newgens and player development

Firstly I’d like to say how pleased I was to see the newgen process get a serious overhaul in FM 11. I think the templates are a great step forward and we are very nearly at a stage where obvious anomalies in the way player attributes are generated will be a thing of the past and long term games will be a lot better for it.

Arse licking out of the way there are still some pretty obvious problems. Mostly these centre on attributes that don’t use CA points I think they’re called tendencies by SI and that’s how I will refer to them from now on.

The problem is that they are too randomly allocated. They don’t increase much if at all as the rest of the players attributes increase, So a low value in say Flair given to a high PA newgen will stay low even when he reaches his potential. This flaw was very obvious with AMCs. In the researched db high PA AMCs almost all had a high flair. Newgen AMCs were created with a wide range of values in Flair often low and these newgens were less effective then the players they replaced.

My first thought was to tie Flair to PA so the higher a newgen’s PA the more likely he was to have a high flair attribute. That would work but It would make it very easy to find good young newgen AMCs by searching for flair 15+ and snapping them up knowing that they are likely to have high PAs.

My solution to the flair problem is to generate and modify it by looking at other attributes of the player. Long shots, Dribbling, Technique, Creativity, Composure and a random element. The better the value of those attributes the higher the flair attribute and as the other attributes increase so does flair. The advantage to this is that gamers won’t be able to cherry pick low CA high PA players by looking for abnormally high flair.

Bravery, Aggression and Determination.

I think there are two problems with these attributes firstly researchers are either too willing to give high values to big name players or too unwilling to give high values to lower level players. These are attributes aren’t dependant on natural ability or physical gifts only on the willingness of players to put their bodies on the line and do every thing they can to get the ball. Even down at the lowest levels you will find guys fighting for every lose ball and going for it even when they know they are second favourite.

My second problem with these tendencies is that they are not closely enough tied to player’s roles. Stoppers, Target men and Ball winning DMs are three roles where an above average willingness to put your self and others at risk is vital and right now there are too many newgens created who fit these templates but lack in one of these three tendencies.

The hidden attributes are also a problem. Partly because SI wants to use the whole range of values for newgens but don’t use the extreme low end of values for researched players and partly because they don’t use CA and therefore aren’t influenced by the value ‘CA’ that broadly describes how good a player is.

Ambition, Pressure, Professionalism, Temperament, Consistency, Important matches all these attributes are vital in determining how well a player will perform over his career but unlike the other attributes that use CA there is no metric to show how well these values are being recreated in newgens.

Creating a new value XP from a formula that weight the importance of these hidden attributes SI can insure that newgen players are created with hidden attributes that more closely follow the pattern of hidden attributes in the researched players in the db by insuring that the spread of XP players remains the same over time the same way it does with CA and PA.

Because SI want to use the low value not found in the db for some hidden attributes they could even create a formula that allowed them to create some players with lower XP then found in the db but compensate them with higher CA\PA in return. This would make sense because the only reason difficult, unprofessional and temperamental players get clubs willing to hire them is because they have better skill sets then other more stable players who are easier to work with.

Great post!

Agree completely with this post. Hope SI are reading this and maybe incorporate some of these ideas in future versions of FM.

well thats 6 hours i wont get back!

some good points there, two little things tho, regarding the flair issue, i have never noticed a good player with low flair struggling to be qually as good as a good player with high flair, i have seen it banded about that it has a big effect but i have yet to experience that, these players still become top top players regardless.

the second bit is about the hidden attributes of researched players, i think SI have to be very careful with them, wrong portraying any current player as unprofessional or lacking ambition can lead to legal problems.

Still good post mate well thought out!

Great stuff, I agree with all of it.

A very good post.

well thats 6 hours i wont get back!

it took you 6 hours to read that? jeez.

On Topic. pretty good ideas here.

Good post, though the one thing that really annoys me about newgens is the amount I get that have 17+ for Heading when they're usually around 175cm tall with <10 Jumping. I mean, I know these players do exist (Javier Hernandez springs to mind) but the amount I get is just ridiculous sometimes.