New setting for Fm 12 please SI, "Realism" option

It would involve removing player attributes from all screens, as well as potential/current ability stars, limited scout reports/assistant feedback etc.. This could all be implemented via check boxes in the preferences menu.

There is only so much you can modify with the current skin system. Trying to take out these bloody ability stars is more trouble than it's worth.

Not sure how I'd play the game with all this data removed. I can't see many people wanting an option for this. I could be wrong...

I'd love this option.

So you would remove any way for people to judge how good a player is except by how they train & play?

This option would be nice if there was a logical correlation between the attributes and their ability.

I don't think the match engine is visually reliable enough to judge player ability or potential on. How else would you know if a player is a donkey or not?

not only that you dont get enough feedback from training to judge players enough on that alone, personally think to get that to a usefull level it would involve alot of work.

There is nothing wrong with knowing how good your own players are on a numerical scale, or indeed knowing how they may turn out (if Wenger didn't have scouts but watched a youngster play for a while, he could formulate an opinion of his own about this player's potential). In fact, I'd say it's more realistic...

Realism is watching a player play and then deciding if he is suitable for your team. Realism isn't clicking on a player's profile and determining straight away whether a player is good enough. I've found it too easy in the past to build up a world class youth team in 3 or 4 years. All you need to do in this regard is hire a scout with reasonable stats and it becomes simple. One scout report determines whether or not you buy a certain player and that is simply wrong.

If you watch a club's U-18's play for example you can quickly identify which players you wish to watch again and go from there.

Realism is watching a player play and then deciding if he is suitable for your team. Realism isn't clicking on a player's profile and determining straight away whether a player is good enough. I've found it too easy in the past to build up a world class youth team in 3 or 4 years. All you need to do in this regard is hire a scout with reasonable stats and it becomes simple. One scout report determines whether or not you buy a certain player and that is simply wrong.

So scouting needs to be improved - does this justify removing all star ratings and attributes?

You implicitly know Nani is one of the better wingers in the Premier League, without even looking at his attributes - the star rating helps here.

You implictly know that O'Shea's finishing is much worse than Berbatov's - the attributes help here.

And guess what? It's not just first-team games that help you make that decision. In addition, because the game does not immerse you as much as reality (in reality, we spend days absorbing information about football, whilst in the game, one day can equal one whole season played), the game cannot just remove all the attributes. We watch football games in reality, yes, but we also watch replays and highlights, read commentary on matches and games, study the interwebs for social networking comments, and read newspaper reports. We spend hours arguing on Internet forums about how Rooney is better than Torres (or vice-versa), or debating whether Arsenal should go back to 4-4-2 and avoid 4-3-3. Football is everywhere in reality - yet it is so condensed in the game. The game simply cannot immerse you in the same way as reality can.

The fact you can see attributes is an abstraction of the amount of information you have, in addition to the information you have via the club and your staff - and maybe even your players themselves. And it so happens that for this sort of data, numerical data is the best way to present it.

The game then becomes one of attrition where GIVEN you know XYZ, how can you get the best of the team? Rather than "spend hours figuring out that Nani is a better crosser than Evra, then wonder how you are going to figure out the other 30 or so attributes in a reasonable time frame."

If you watch a club's U-18's play for example you can quickly identify which players you wish to watch again and go from there.

And you remember it through attributes.

Scouting would need to be drastically improved, you'd have to be able to watch all the key movements of that said player during a match so you can evaluate how they do yourself. So this isn't just some simple thing they can just throw in, it'd need drastic changes to really work. So I don't really think it's worth it, as it's pretty much just a more complicated version of what is now, I mean in game, with player attribute masking, it models exactly what you say, you dont know how a person plays till he's scouted, but when he's scouted a more accurate picture appears.

A simple way to make it work harsher would be to just be super-super harsh with attribute masking and make it so even the most well known players in the league's stats aren't known till you see them play. Yet is it needed? I don't think it'd be a priority.

That said, it could be cool to have scouts give highlights and low-lights of a player's actions in a game when you scout them, a compilation of passes, tackles, and so forth involving the player. So maybe if that was deemed.. useful enough, your "dream" of "realism" could work.

This would be great, just would need to be an option when initially setting up the game. So people could still use the attributes. I like it though!

Watch all the player movments? I don't have time for that, that would take forever!

My point was the attribute system is a matter of cold fact. As soon as you start managing a club you appoint set-piece takers based on numbers. You design tactics based on numbers, there is no trial and error which is what football is about. I have never, ever been sacked on FM because it's so easy to identify which positions need strengthening just from assistant reports.

I could quite easily design a tactic without watching my team play which I have done before. You know the strengths and weaknesses of your players immediately so it's all rather pointless at the end of the day. You are basically just playing until you reach the top because you will never, ever lose the top spot once you're there. The game won't let you.

I don't see why it would be so controversial to include this option. It barely changes the mechanics around and i'm operating like this already, albeit with a modified version. If I just had the option to turn off the current/potential ability stars that would be a start.

My point was the attribute system is a matter of cold fact. As soon as you start managing a club you appoint set-piece takers based on numbers. You design tactics based on numbers, there is no trial and error which is what football is about. I have never, ever been sacked on FM because it's so easy to identify which positions need strengthening just from assistant reports.

In all honesty surely this is the case in reality? Perhaps not when you start, in which case there could perhaps be some "attribute masking" of the sort (but remember that the manager doesn't suddenly start existing when he starts managing - the manager has had around 30 virtual years worth of hopefully watching football!). But a manager knows his squad well - perhaps is a little deluded or overprotective of some players, or stubborn enough to neglect certain areas, but he knows the squad.

I could quite easily design a tactic without watching my team play which I have done before. You know the strengths and weaknesses of your players immediately so it's all rather pointless at the end of the day. You are basically just playing until you reach the top because you will never, ever lose the top spot once you're there. The game won't let you.

See the above - there's an argument for masking attributes when you first start, but the implication is that you didn't know anything beforehand.

This might be the case if you were joining an obscure club - but perhaps not if you are joining, say, Real Madrid, whose team you know fairly well already, even if you aren't a manager.

But even for the obscure club, what if you knew the obscure club in reality? For example, and English club at level 11 or something? Attribute masking then becomes wrong.

To me, the safest method would be to reveal all.

I don't see why it would be so controversial to include this option. It barely changes the mechanics around and i'm operating like this already, albeit with a modified version. If I just had the option to turn off the current/potential ability stars that would be a start.

The latter is fine but I would question whether that's more realistic or not - simply because you do know rather quickly whether player X is better, worse or equal to player Y in the end.

The issue isn't just about knowing your club but knowing a lot of other clubs in great detail.

Do you think the Barcelona manager could rate the Bolton team from fastest to slowest let alone most determined to least determined? Fans of the clubs argue with researchers about the points given so to say all managers would know that player x from another random top division club is better than player y at a, b,c but not d, e ,f is just not the case.

Sure if Barcelona for some reason had to play them they might scout them out and get to know a bit about them from watching a few games but not without this and not in such detail.

Maybe the numbers could be in different colours whereby one indicated a slight knowledge and could be wildly inaccurrate, one is pretty good knowledge and relatively accurate, and another for definitely correct.

The game uses numbers because unlike real life you dont get to spend hours with a visual representation of your players on a training pitch and the match engine isn't detailed enough to be able to asses ability and potential

Don't think that's realism, Suge - I think it takes it a step too far to leave us completely dependent on our AssMan's opinion, and current form as guides.

What would be realistic, I think, would be if the "graphical attributes" option, or whatever it's called (where instead of numbers for the attributes you get different length/colour bars), was changed so that it showed only, let's say 6 different levels: Lvl 1: 0-2, Lvl 2: 2-6, Lvl 3: 6-10, Lvl 4: 10-14, Lvl 5: 14-18, Lvl 6: 18-20, with the overlapping numbers (2,6,10,14,18) showing randomly (or perhaps depending on form?) as one or other of the two levels they inhabit.

That way you could quickly discern the obvious things that one training session or MoTD, or the press could show you IRL: you could see that Messi is a World Class (18-20) dribbler of the ball, or that your CB can't finish at all (0-2).

You'd also be able to see basic differences- you could distinguish an attacking FB's crossing (unless its Clichy's) from a defensive FB's crossing. And you'd be able to get a feel for a player's style with one glance- you could tell that Neymar is a skilful dribbler, with a lot of flair and not that much strength - just like IRL you'd know this from reading the press, watching highlights etc., even if you don't watch the Brazilian league.

However, you would have all the controversy and uncertainty that real life generates also. You might think that the hottest striker of the moment, banging in goals for fun, is certain to have 17 or 18 finishing and composure and be the lynchpin of your side, when really he has 14 for both and is far from the superstar you'd hoped. So you'd actually get proper flops in this game- I don't think I've ever had cause to regret a big money purchase in FM/CM, in the 10 years I've been playing- would be nice to get one wrong.

You'd always be unsure as to whether a player doing well in a mid-table club could make the leap to a team in European competition (ie, whether those Lvl 3 stats were 12s or 14s, whether his Level 5 stats were solid 16s or yet more 14s in disguise)

Deciding between two similar players would suddenly be tricky. You'd suddenly have to look to his passing percentage to decide who was a better passer of the ball- you would no longer be able to make perfect decisions about, let's say, "who has the better passing, Xabi Alonso or Fabregas?", just as IRL you'd see different answers to that question.

You'd have to rely on what you see in games and scout reports, and trust a player's form as a measure of his talent - risking an Afonso Alves moment - or second guess yourself about that cheap player offered your way, in case he was too good to be true (PSG didn't buy Hernandez, when offered him on the cheap, because they were suspicious of the price tag- Man Utd came in not too long after, after some thorough scouting, and now PSG feel silly.)

But, unlike your suggestion, Suge, you'd have the basic knowledge necessary to get around the FM footballing world, without having to spend as long trawling through your FM world as we all already do following real-life football- cos I don't think there are many people with the patience to exhaustively follow two footballing worlds simultaneously.

Hire crappy scouts, don't use for assman for reports or feedback, and tick mask player attributes when creating a game, and don't ever click a player's attribute screen. Don't ever sign a player without trialing them first, etc. There you go. Option enabled.

Realism is what you make it in this game. You don't have to use all the options available to you. It's not too hard to "handicap" yourself into whatever playstyle you find fun.