Potential

I think it's pretty silly limiting a players potential because IRL you really can't know how good a footballer can eventually turn out to be.

The current system is good,but I suggest just a slight change...Breaking potential.

If a player reaches his potential and keeps playing good football his CA should keep improving beyond the PA limit.Or in other words,dynamic PA...It's should be improvable just like CA.

I think it would really give the game something different...

You can't have a dynamic Potential. Your potential is how good you can get. When you hit that level, you cannot go past it.

This is talked about quite a lot on here and it always comes down to half the people thinking players are limited in terms of PA because you cannot become better than you are destined to be. Then the other half are like yourself and feel the current system does not represent certain players. Then people start naming players that reached their potential early and never improved any more after that people start naming late bloomers and then the thread turns into a petty argument about if Francis Jeffers reached his potential or if injuries stopped him getting any better.

Personally I like the way it is, I would however like some sort of system where older players can have a boost in CA.

Players are only limited by their potential ability if you know what it is. The number is hidden for a reason.

As an example, i picked up Jack Robinson (surprise release by Liverpool, but i didn't realize how good he is in reallife back then) as Stafford Rangers in BSN. My scouts told me he had the potential to become a good league 2 player in the future, which is plain AWESOME for a BSN-team. Time goes by, promotions come and go. Long story short, he is now my left back in Premier League. Perhaps slightly low stats for the level of play, but he still manages to average over 7.

This is the kind of player that the dynamic-potential would love to use as example that the PA system is flawed, yet it happened with a fixed PA.

Agree with AcidBurn...

I also think people are way too preoccupied with CA/PA and the star rating system. I've been playing CM/FM series since CM1 and have purchased every single game since then and i can honestly say some of my best ever players have been only rated 3 stars PA. A massive example of this is Sean Scannell. His PA in the Editor is around

is believe and he still turns out to be a £25 million plus player when he hits 27/28 years of age. (I think Schalke bought him off me for that)

I still stand to the conclusion that if a player is creating goals / scoring goals, no matter what is CA/PA/Star Rating then play him. I've seen a dozen of my friends buy a 5 star striker and play him every game whether is morale is low, his shots on target is low etc just beause he has the "potential" to be the next Jack Lester (Super Jack Lester )

Also i don't understand why some people dump their 33 year olds because their star ratings go down. So what if they're 2 stars. If they've contiously been a fantastic player for you then keep them!

Personally I like the way it is, I would however like some sort of system where older players can have a boost in CA.

Totally agreed, its soul destroying when you know your 28year old superstar is only going to get worse from there

Players are only limited by their potential ability if you know what it is. The number is hidden for a reason.

As an example, i picked up Jack Robinson (surprise release by Liverpool, but i didn't realize how good he is in reallife back then) as Stafford Rangers in BSN. My scouts told me he had the potential to become a good league 2 player in the future, which is plain AWESOME for a BSN-team. Time goes by, promotions come and go. Long story short, he is now my left back in Premier League. Perhaps slightly low stats for the level of play, but he still manages to average over 7.

This is the kind of player that the dynamic-potential would love to use as example that the PA system is flawed, yet it happened with a fixed PA.

He has a PA of

Granted, the researchers are not always right. Maybe they shouldn't put a solid figure down for all of the plauers u23. This would give you more movement. As far as regens go, they are going to get as good as they have the potential to be, no more, no less.

People need to stop revealing player PA's or at least use spoiler tags, not everyone wants to know a players potential.

He has a PA of ...

To me, when i first found him, he didn't have a potential of X. He had the potential of a good league 2 player. To me it appeared as if his potential increased as his performances took him to the next level, and that is the experience most people seem to be looking for. If anything, the scout reports needs a tweak, because the system works perfectly fine.

I think it's pretty silly limiting a players potential because IRL you really can't know how good a footballer can eventually turn out to be.

The current system is good,but I suggest just a slight change...Breaking potential.

If a player reaches his potential and keeps playing good football his CA should keep improving beyond the PA limit.Or in other words,dynamic PA...It's should be improvable just like CA.

I think it would really give the game something different...

Agree with AcidBurn...

I also think people are way too preoccupied with CA/PA and the star rating system. I've been playing CM/FM series since CM1 and have purchased every single game since then and i can honestly say some of my best ever players have been only rated 3 stars PA. A massive example of this is Sean Scannell. His PA in the Editor is around

130

is believe and he still turns out to be a £25 million plus player when he hits 27/28 years of age. (I think Schalke bought him off me for that)

I still stand to the conclusion that if a player is creating goals / scoring goals, no matter what is CA/PA/Star Rating then play him. I've seen a dozen of my friends buy a 5 star striker and play him every game whether is morale is low, his shots on target is low etc just beause he has the "potential" to be the next Jack Lester (Super Jack Lester )

Also i don't understand why some people dump their 33 year olds because their star ratings go down. So what if they're 2 stars. If they've contiously been a fantastic player for you then keep them!

1. How would the game work if there wasn't some sort of guideline as to what amount of talent a player could reach? Without potential ability, you could sign the whole American Samoa national team for Arsenal then turn them into world beaters.

2. I suppose the star rating is to sort of point new players of the series in the right direction. Once you get to know the game, all you really want is to read the scouting report. But then again, you seem to be complaining about dodgy scouting reports. So I recommend hiring a new scout.

it would make sense that an average youth player who may only reach PA of 120 in a club with average facilities in a mediocre league may never get better than that, however he could get a lucky break and move to a bigger club with excellent facilities and play in a stronger league. who's to say that that player shouldn't be able to surpass that barrier as the surrounding factors suggest he can exceed expectations.

of course replicating this without every single player becoming a world beater would be difficult and there would have to be some reasonable limits as it would be mad to expect barcelona to sign a group of kids with 100 PA from a minor club and expect them to all be potential 200 PA players.

Potential is your absolute maximum limit you can EVER achieve in your life. The system is fine, you have people who reach their potential early, some who dont, some who never will etc. etc. Potential is a set figure, in the game AND in real life, you can't just go around changing it, you can only change your progress towards it(oh hey there CA).

This just doesn't work. Potential=fixed, end of discussion, it works that way in real life, it should work that way in game.

it would make sense that an average youth player who may only reach PA of 120 in a club with average facilities in a mediocre league may never get better than that, however he could get a lucky break and move to a bigger club with excellent facilities and play in a stronger league. who's to say that that player shouldn't be able to surpass that barrier as the surrounding factors suggest he can exceed expectations.

Potential is completely irrelevant in that regard, he has the same potential in a BSN club as he has in a Premiership club. He just wont reach the same CA. Even if he drops down to your regular sunday pub league, his PA will still remain the same.

Seriously SI, just remove the ability so see PA in any way from the game and editor, that way a lot less people will complain.

Potential is your absolute maximum limit you can EVER achieve in your life. The system is fine, you have people who reach their potential early, some who dont, some who never will etc. etc. Potential is a set figure, in the game AND in real life, you can't just go around changing it, you can only change your progress towards it(oh hey there CA).

This just doesn't work. Potential=fixed, end of discussion, it works that way in real life, it should work that way in game.

Potential is completely irrelevant in that regard, he has the same potential in a BSN club as he has in a Premiership club. He just wont reach the same CA. Even if he drops down to your regular sunday pub league, his PA will still remain the same.

Seriously SI, just remove the ability so see PA in any way from the game and editor, that way a lot less people will complain.

As long as the PA system is used there will always be people who create scouting tools to view these numbers.

1. How would the game work if there wasn't some sort of guideline as to what amount of talent a player could reach? Without potential ability, you could sign the whole American Samoa national team for Arsenal then turn them into world beaters.

In the same way that not every player reaches their potential due to, say, injuries, or a lack of first-team football. If PA is turned into some factor (say "talent"), it just becomes another "hurdle" for a player to cross - talented players may, say, develop quicker, but that is nothing without first-team football.

So for your example, American Samoan players are more likely to generate low-talent players, hence they are unlikely to develop at the rate that Arsenal players do. Possible, but extremely unlikely.

Potential is your absolute maximum limit you can EVER achieve in your life. The system is fine, you have people who reach their potential early, some who dont, some who never will etc. etc. Potential is a set figure, in the game AND in real life, you can't just go around changing it, you can only change your progress towards it(oh hey there CA).

This just doesn't work. Potential=fixed, end of discussion, it works that way in real life, it should work that way in game.

There is a big difference between "there exists some maximum over some time" and "I'm going to define a maximum right now". We don't know the maximum because we cannot predict the future; we have a rough idea but we may be wrong, underestimating or overestimating. Any value we pick for the maximum right now may be less than reality, or more than reality. PA only lets it be less than reality.

If you like, say you were to predict the maximum speed of my Golf GTI car. You walk up to it and noticed it's a little banged-up and look up the top speed of a Golf GTI, and knock a few off the top speed. Let's say you say X as the top speed. Then, a year later, I show you that the car actually has a rocket engine - X is clearly wrong now, and it's underestimated - X should have been higher.

Any prediction of X right now is almost surely wrong. You don't know the maximum - you only have (educated) guesses.

Potential is completely irrelevant in that regard, he has the same potential in a BSN club as he has in a Premiership club. He just wont reach the same CA. Even if he drops down to your regular sunday pub league, his PA will still remain the same.

Seriously SI, just remove the ability so see PA in any way from the game and editor, that way a lot less people will complain.

That will be useful for custom databases, isn't it?

And if people don't complain, how does the game improve?

Just out of curiosity how do other football management games use a similar potential system?

If you like, say you were to predict the maximum speed of my Golf GTI car. You walk up to it and noticed it's a little banged-up and look up the top speed of a Golf GTI, and knock a few off the top speed. Let's say you say X as the top speed. Then, a year later, I show you that the car actually has a rocket engine - X is clearly wrong now, and it's underestimated - X should have been higher.

Any prediction of X right now is almost surely wrong. You don't know the maximum - you only have (educated) guesses.

Another PA thread, another x42 post

The researchers are only making estimates for real players and we have negative numbers to vary the outcome.

The newgens and to a certain degree the negative PA players the game assigns the PA & the game is god therefore knowing the maximum, whether you like it or not - SI staff have told you this in previous threads.

In the same way that not every player reaches their potential due to, say, injuries, or a lack of first-team football. If PA is turned into some factor (say "talent"), it just becomes another "hurdle" for a player to cross - talented players may, say, develop quicker, but that is nothing without first-team football.

So for your example, American Samoan players are more likely to generate low-talent players, hence they are unlikely to develop at the rate that Arsenal players do. Possible, but extremely unlikely.

There is a big difference between "there exists some maximum over some time" and "I'm going to define a maximum right now". We don't know the maximum because we cannot predict the future; we have a rough idea but we may be wrong, underestimating or overestimating. Any value we pick for the maximum right now may be less than reality, or more than reality. PA only lets it be less than reality.

If you like, say you were to predict the maximum speed of my Golf GTI car. You walk up to it and noticed it's a little banged-up and look up the top speed of a Golf GTI, and knock a few off the top speed. Let's say you say X as the top speed. Then, a year later, I show you that the car actually has a rocket engine - X is clearly wrong now, and it's underestimated - X should have been higher.

Any prediction of X right now is almost surely wrong. You don't know the maximum - you only have (educated) guesses.

That will be useful for custom databases, isn't it?

And if people don't complain, how does the game improve?

I fully and completely agree with you. And that's exactly what i'm getting at, yet you seem to be missing one important thing. For people that we do not know what potential they could reach, negative PA numbers are assigned(I'm against fixed PA myself just to be clear, there need to be a lot of extra negativa PA values to allow tweaking in that regard). However as for your golf comparison... It's not exactly the best. You can't attach a rocket to the player, but even then, let's assume that what you said is correct. Your car simply is not the same anymore, it has to be treated as a completely different entity, a human cannot be biologically engineered in a way that you could just modify a car, a human has absolute limits that cannot be broken without, as you stated in your example, drastic modifications. I could have a billion years time to study maths, yet i still would not be as good as some people are at maths, my potential simply does not reach those of geniuses, and i will NEVER reach that, no matter how hard i try. The problem IMO stems from PA being a set number, but not in a way that it should be dynamic, you cannot judge someone's potential with complete certainty, yet whatever potential they truly have(and honestly, nobody knows), will never ever change. However there is one potential such as the one OP is talking about, it's called Current Ability. CA does not set your atributes, it sets the limits of how good you can be right now, it's pretty much the best thing you can do with the system being as it currently is.

Complaints such as yours are fine, as they are well founded and have a reason behind them, and you state why you believe so, no problem with that. However arguments that stem from "i think, i believe" not from "such is, i have x to back it up, y prooved that can be the case" arent going to improve anything.

There is a big difference between "there exists some maximum over some time" and "I'm going to define a maximum right now". We don't know the maximum because we cannot predict the future; we have a rough idea but we may be wrong, underestimating or overestimating. Any value we pick for the maximum right now may be less than reality, or more than reality. PA only lets it be less than reality.

And this is what i wanted to adress in a post further up about Jack Robinson. I was told he had the potential to play two divisons up. That was the reality the game showed me. Now, many years later the game show me that what i originally thought was reality was wrong. He was far better than what i was told and can play at a Premier League level.

The value picked as a maximum was League 2 skill level. The actual skill level turned out to be Premier League quality. This is completely opposite to what you say about "PA only lets it be less than reality".

And this is what i wanted to adress in a post further up about Jack Robinson. I was told he had the potential to play two divisons up. That was the reality the game showed me. Now, many years later the game show me that what i originally thought was reality was wrong. He was far better than what i was told and can play at a premier league level.

That's a totally different issue. You need to hire a new scout.

Another PA thread, another x42 post

The researchers are only making estimates for real players and we have negative numbers to vary the outcome.

The newgens and to a certain degree the negative PA players the game assigns the PA & the game is god therefore knowing the maximum, whether you like it or not - SI staff have told you this in previous threads.

the PA system is a bad one when it comes to reflect the real world. If not for the all-knowing scouts and Assmans though, it wouldn't be that bad in the gameworld. A more flexible model should utilize a Gaussian distribution of PA. e.g. if you have 1000 players who all have a PA of 125, then depending on what the standard deviations are set to, 90+% or so should attain a CA of 120-130. But there should be players who exceed this and players who never get close to that potential. So that in theory it would be possible for a player with PA to get a surprisingly high CA. But the amount of players with a PA of 125 who get to say 150 CA, should be something that is very very rare. As in maybe 1 in 1000 players on an average.

What something like this would do, would at least make scouting a little less all-knowing activity. If the player has 125 in PA, the scout will tell you that player X will get so good compared to your best player in that position. But he could actually be wrong. Which would at least add some amount of uncertainty to the game, as well as giving some leeway into the researchers ability to precisely determine a players PA.

PA by it's definition may mean that that's the best potential a player will ever get to, but as the fallible humans we are, we just aren't capable and all-knowing enough to determine this completely accurately.

That's a totally different issue. You need to hire a new scout.

Yeah, and i have . But cant you see the bigger picture here? The current system can, with a little tweaking, do the exact same thing as people request in this thread. You probably will not agree with my reasoning, but please point out why my situation is a completely different one.

If there is a problem with the CA PA system it is that there is a direct trade off between your maximum skill level in abilities that have no reason to act as limitations on each other. A given player probably does have a maximum pace he could ever have, but that maximum speed should not be reduced just because he spends a lot of time practicing his shooting. A more realistic system would given each player a PA for each skill and how many they max out would depend on the training they receive, they playing time they get, and luck (including injuries).

I think it's pretty silly limiting a players potential because IRL you really can't know how good a footballer can eventually turn out to be.

The current system is good,but I suggest just a slight change...Breaking potential.

If a player reaches his potential and keeps playing good football his CA should keep improving beyond the PA limit.Or in other words,dynamic PA...It's should be improvable just like CA.

I think it would really give the game something different...

Well, you shouldn't know their potential anyhow? So there goes your argument.

This is talked about quite a lot on here and it always comes down to half the people thinking players are limited in terms of PA because you cannot become better than you are destined to be. Then the other half are like yourself and feel the current system does not represent certain players. Then people start naming players that reached their potential early and never improved any more after that people start naming late bloomers and then the thread turns into a petty argument about if Francis Jeffers reached his potential or if injuries stopped him getting any better.

Personally I like the way it is, I would however like some sort of system where older players can have a boost in CA.

With dynamic potential Francis Jeffers after all injuries, not playing any matches etc, it would be lowered and somehow reflect real life..

If you get a decent youthplayer, (which rarely happens), it would be fun if you decide to use him because of good stats for the right position, tacticts or whatever and then he turns out to be a star because you chose to give him the chance early instead of him laying in reserves because you know his PA cant change.

This would also be great with the newgen system, where some players have very random stats, (lacking in flair when they're winger, bad tackling when they're DC etc), and if you happen to get a player with "right" stats for his position and his PA is low, he become almost useless. But with dynamic PA this player after some matches would become much better, and perform much better than expected, and the other newgen with higher PA but bad stats would after I don't play him get lower PA because he's in fact useless if he's lacking important stats for his position. Don't see many starplayers that's lacking important stats so these newgens should get lowered PA if they dont play/perform. Instead you maybe get a late bloomer newgen that's much better because you decide to make him a star..

Yeah, and i have . But cant you see the bigger picture here? The current system can, with a little tweaking, do the exact same thing as people request in this thread. You probably will not agree with my reasoning, but please point out why my situation is a completely different one.

Because he gave you incorrect information in regards to how good your player can be come. This thread is morefocusing on the flexibilty of the Potential Ability system.

With dynamic potential Francis Jeffers after all injuries, not playing any matches etc, it would be lowered and somehow reflect real life..

If you get a decent youthplayer, (which rarely happens), it would be fun if you decide to use him because of good stats for the right position, tacticts or whatever and then he turns out to be a star because you chose to give him the chance early instead of him laying in reserves because you know his PA cant change.

This would also be great with the newgen system, where some players have very random stats, (lacking in flair when they're winger, bad tackling when they're DC etc), and if you happen to get a player with "right" stats for his position and his PA is low, he become almost useless. But with dynamic PA this player after some matches would become much better, and perform much better than expected, and the other newgen with higher PA but bad stats would after I don't play him get lower PA because he's in fact useless if he's lacking important stats for his position. Don't see many starplayers that's lacking important stats so these newgens should get lowered PA if they dont play/perform. Instead you maybe get a late bloomer newgen that's much better because you decide to make him a star..

Francis Jeffers isn't an example of dynamic potential, he just failed to reach his potential which happens to many players iin FM already.

Your potential and current ability covers every position, so if he had good attributes for a defender; then all you need to do is retrain him as one. I think you got confused between potential ability and positional ability.

Dynamic potential just wouldn't work in the way people are describing it, I agree that fin some circumstances your potential could increase or decrease but the system in FM is good enough. In fact the negative numbers system is mildly dynamic as it sets the player's potential ability around a certain number rather than an exact one.

The only addition to the potential ability system that I would see beneficial would be for player's potential abilities to decrease if a serious injury occurs.

PA by it's definition may mean that that's the best potential a player will ever get to, but as the fallible humans we are, we just aren't capable and all-knowing enough to determine this completely accurately.

Why does it need to be accurate?

The only input a human has is when a researcher allocates a PA to a real player. As long as the good players in RL are generally good players in the game does it really matter? If you asked 100 users what the PA of Rooney should be you would get a range of answers and you would never please everybody. As humans we often have different opinions, a quick look in the data forum shows how people argue over odd attributes.

With this in mind I've said in previous threads I would be happy for every player to be given a negative PA and let the game decide from save to save.

In general in these threads there are two issues raised:

A) My player has hit the ceiling and won't improve despite playing well - This happens in real life all the time and is a non-issue.

B) The PA of player X has improved each version from FM05 to FM11 therefore the researchers got it wrong in older versions - Yes they did but it didn't matter at the time as nobody thought player X was going to turn into a world class player. There were no threads in 2005 saying player X's PA is too low or 2006/7/8. The threads only started to appear in 2009/10/11 saying in 2005/6/7/8 the PA was wrong.

Why does it need to be accurate?

The only input a human has is when a researcher allocates a PA to a real player. As long as the good players in RL are generally good players in the game does it really matter? If you asked 100 users what the PA of Rooney should be you would get a range of answers and you would never please everybody. As humans we often have different opinions, a quick look in the data forum shows how people argue over odd attributes.

With this in mind I've said in previous threads I would be happy for every player to be given a negative PA and let the game decide from save to save.

In general in these threads there are two issues raised:

A) My player has hit the ceiling and won't improve despite playing well - This happens in real life all the time and is a non-issue.

B) The PA of player X has improved each version from FM05 to FM11 therefore the researchers got it wrong in older versions - Yes they did but it didn't matter at the time as nobody thought player X was going to turn into a world class player. There were no threads in 2005 saying player X's PA is too low or 2006/7/8. The threads only started to appear in 2009/10/11 saying in 2005/6/7/8 the PA was wrong.

I couldn't agree more. I reckon this thread has hit a dead end.

With dynamic potential Francis Jeffers after all injuries, not playing any matches etc, it would be lowered and somehow reflect real life..

If you get a decent youthplayer, (which rarely happens), it would be fun if you decide to use him because of good stats for the right position, tacticts or whatever and then he turns out to be a star because you chose to give him the chance early instead of him laying in reserves because you know his PA cant change.

This would also be great with the newgen system, where some players have very random stats, (lacking in flair when they're winger, bad tackling when they're DC etc), and if you happen to get a player with "right" stats for his position and his PA is low, he become almost useless. But with dynamic PA this player after some matches would become much better, and perform much better than expected, and the other newgen with higher PA but bad stats would after I don't play him get lower PA because he's in fact useless if he's lacking important stats for his position. Don't see many starplayers that's lacking important stats so these newgens should get lowered PA if they dont play/perform. Instead you maybe get a late bloomer newgen that's much better because you decide to make him a star..

Yes, I'm sure every Joe Bloggs from Braintree is a wonderchild in disguise. Really, the only issue here is that you look at the PA and are disappointed. What's to say you don't have a 200 PA player in your youth setup? There could be for all you know... Wait, unless you look at their PA, hence ruining the game's mechanisms for what you're describing.

So true Some Guy. Don't bother with pa and ca people. Play the game without editors etc. Then you will enjoy it.

the current system is wrong.. if somone mistakenly put wrong DB, and many will do, it just make players stop developing, so what? if my player developed faster, i have no point now to train him or play him games as he will never improve? that is stupid

tbh it is the easy way to find a solution to a problem to just cap it

the better solution will be, to have player development rate value instead. this will assure a player will develop faster or slower as we want without stupid cap.

All that's important is how the game interprets and shows a player's potential. Some improvements can definitely be made in this area, but changing the CA/PA system is not the way to do it.

the current system is wrong.. if somone mistakenly put wrong DB, and many will do, it just make players stop developing, so what? if my player developed faster, i have no point now to train him or play him games as he will never improve? that is stupid

tbh it is the easy way to find a solution to a problem to just cap it

the better solution will be, to have player development rate value instead. this will assure a player will develop faster or slower as we want without stupid cap.

Players already develop at different rates, infact, genie scout even tells you at what rate they are developing. Some Guy explained it perfectly, you only actually care about your players not developing because you know what their CA/PA is... and isn't it funny how thats not even intended to be a possibility without editors?

the current system is wrong.. if somone mistakenly put wrong DB, and many will do, it just make players stop developing, so what? if my player developed faster, i have no point now to train him or play him games as he will never improve? that is stupid

tbh it is the easy way to find a solution to a problem to just cap it

the better solution will be, to have player development rate value instead. this will assure a player will develop faster or slower as we want without stupid cap.

Your annoyed because your players have limited potential? Ask your chairman for a bigger transfer budget...

All that's important is how the game interprets and shows a player's potential. Some improvements can definitely be made in this area, but changing the CA/PA system is not the way to do it.

Great judgement.

Players already develop at different rates, infact, genie scout even tells you at what rate they are developing. Some Guy explained it perfectly, you only actually care about your players not developing because you know what their CA/PA is... and isn't it funny how thats not even intended to be a possibility without editors?

Another great point, why are these guys so intent on using these in-game editors and scouting tools just so they can go on the forums and complain about it all. If you want to use them, that's fine but don't go around the forums blaming SI for everything and showing a massive amount of ruthlessness. Admittedly the game needs improvements, but give the poor guys a chance, I'd like to see you develop a football management game of around the same standard...

The system works fine as it is now, and to date, nobody has come up with a good alternative that would work as intended. Everytime people say PA should be increased if a player goes to a bigger club, they tend to ignore that this, in a different way, already happens.

The fact is, the current system is ideal for keeping the game realistic in the long-term. Not everybody at Arsenal or Man Utd will become a world-class player. Not everybody in League Two will be destined for a career in the lower leagues. The current system keeps the right amount of world class players, decent Premiership players, and every other level in the game. The only thing I think that would improve the game would be for scouts to be slightly less accurate at the top level, and occasionally rate players incorrectly. In much the same way as Spurs once sold Peter Crouch for just £50,000, thinking he'd never make it in the Premiership.

I think it's pretty silly limiting a players potential because IRL you really can't know how good a footballer can eventually turn out to be.

You wouldn't know how good a player can be in FM either if you didn't look at their PA.

Not all players reach their PA. i have a young player at Liverpool. Starts at Liverpool in the game. He's currently 20 now and his PA is 177, CA 100, but his stats are terrible and i have no intention of playing him.

No doubt if he moved to a team that would value him he could hit his potential.

So here is an example of a player that seems to be bad but could become pretty special if a team valued him. now if you dont peep at his PA, this would give the same outcome as your dynamic PA. so there doesn't seem to be any need for change.

Why does it need to be accurate?

The only input a human has is when a researcher allocates a PA to a real player. As long as the good players in RL are generally good players in the game does it really matter? If you asked 100 users what the PA of Rooney should be you would get a range of answers and you would never please everybody. As humans we often have different opinions, a quick look in the data forum shows how people argue over odd attributes.

With this in mind I've said in previous threads I would be happy for every player to be given a negative PA and let the game decide from save to save.

It doesn't need to be, and it can't be. Which is exactly why it is kind of stupid to just give a definite number to players. I'm not sure exactly how the negative numbers work, but as far as I've understood they give each player a range of PA which is randomly given, so it seems like a reasonable way of doing it which would give a little bit of leeway to how the game turns out. Anyhow though, the CA/PA system isn't an urgent issue. It's the scouts and Assmans all-knowing-ness of the CA/PA and overreliance on these stats as opposed to the actual playing abilities of the individual.

In general in these threads there are two issues raised:

A) My player has hit the ceiling and won't improve despite playing well - This happens in real life all the time and is a non-issue.

B) The PA of player X has improved each version from FM05 to FM11 therefore the researchers got it wrong in older versions - Yes they did but it didn't matter at the time as nobody thought player X was going to turn into a world class player. There were no threads in 2005 saying player X's PA is too low or 2006/7/8. The threads only started to appear in 2009/10/11 saying in 2005/6/7/8 the PA was wrong.

Which is why there should be flexibility in PA. There's no need to completely rewamp the system though. It works fine as it is, but it should be a little bit less static in terms of who turns out good and who doesn't.

Yes, I'm sure every Joe Bloggs from Braintree is a wonderchild in disguise. Really, the only issue here is that you look at the PA and are disappointed. What's to say you don't have a 200 PA player in your youth setup? There could be for all you know... Wait, unless you look at their PA, hence ruining the game's mechanisms for what you're describing.

You would know immediatly due to your coaches reports. Which is stupid. Sure maybe Messi was a wonderkid even 10 years ago, but noone would really know if he would turn out to become one of the worlds best players or not. On FM though, the Assman and scouts would know all the way that he had a PA of 190-200 and talk about him accordingly.

You would know immediatly due to your coaches reports. Which is stupid. Sure maybe Messi was a wonderkid even 10 years ago, but noone would really know if he would turn out to become one of the worlds best players or not. On FM though, the Assman and scouts would know all the way that he had a PA of 190-200 and talk about him accordingly.

It depends on how good your scout and assistant manager are. It's really frustrating having to repeat that all the time. I know that sometimes they can be too accurate but nothings perfect.

You would know immediatly due to your coaches reports. Which is stupid. Sure maybe Messi was a wonderkid even 10 years ago, but noone would really know if he would turn out to become one of the worlds best players or not. On FM though, the Assman and scouts would know all the way that he had a PA of 190-200 and talk about him accordingly.

My best striker right now was considered by the coaches to have the potential to be a "good Bajnokság player". Why did I sign him, because he was quick. He's not considered (a mere 3 years later) as one of the most promising talents in Europe and is already known for his goal scoring ability. Your coaches don't tell you anything really. It's a guess, I've seen players who are meant to be the second coming of Pele turn out to be nobodies and players who should be off loaded turn into World Beaters. The Scout reports aren't perfect. If all you're looking at is the scouts reports then you'll probably be surprised now and again, like in real life. Enjoy yourself!

You would know immediatly due to your coaches reports. Which is stupid. Sure maybe Messi was a wonderkid even 10 years ago, but noone would really know if he would turn out to become one of the worlds best players or not. On FM though, the Assman and scouts would know all the way that he had a PA of 190-200 and talk about him accordingly.

no one talks about my player even though his PA is 177 and CA is 105. my scouts rate his potential has 2 and a half stars. 177 for PA is pretty good right?

no one talks about my player even though his PA is 177 and CA is 105. my scouts rate his potential has 2 and a half stars. 177 for PA is pretty good right?

It is, but it depends on his age, and the players they can compare him against. Since you're at Liverpool, that potential, while being high, isn't that crazy, especially considering his age. However, if you were to get a player through the youth ranks with a PA at that level or above, I'm pretty sure you'd know pretty soon that his potential would be in that area just by looking at the reports and at the players they compare him with, without checking the editor.

It is, but it depends on his age, and the players they can compare him against. Since you're at Liverpool, that potential, while being high, isn't that crazy, especially considering his age. However, if you were to get a player through the youth ranks with a PA at that level or above, I'm pretty sure you'd know pretty soon that his potential would be in that area just by looking at the reports and at the players they compare him with, without checking the editor.

I've just had a look at the player and he is 21 years old. I've had him in the team for the last 5 years. He's never really been rated more than 3 and a half stars and he's actually down to 2 stars now.

Because he gave you incorrect information in regards to how good your player can be come. This thread is morefocusing on the flexibilty of the Potential Ability system.

If we, the wannabe managers, were told that a young player could become a player with ability x, and despite that he turns out to become a player of ability x+50, that means his potential ability appear to have changed. Aka it's being flexible.

And yes, in the background of all this is an absolute number, but that absolute number is not visible unless using cheat-tools and thus irrelevant to the discussion.

The problem is that when you get to top level, the scouts are so good that they are pretty much always right. That is the big issue. Even with education and years of practicing, i don't believe any scout in the world could pick out talents as accurate as they can in football manager. In real life when someone is scouted and recommended, it is based on their current ability in relation to their age, and not their potential. In my opinion all that is needed is making scouts less reliable when it comes to judging PA, more prone to bias due to reputation and current ability. Today, a scout can accurately pick out a player sixteen years of age who will not improve past his current level. I doubt anyone in the world could see that a player has stalled without research that goes far beyond the maximum of three matches.

Just out of curiosity how do other football management games use a similar potential system?

Not sure. I can only speak for TCM 2005 which seems to have a concept of talent, where a 5-star player (i.e Rooney, as he was in that game) simply develops quicker, as opposed to a 1-star player who developed really slowly. However, it was possible to get really good players at 1-star talent level (who would more than likely be stuck at that level for ages) and rubbish players who had 5-star talent (who developed quickly). TCM 2005, however, had this concept of "playing level" where, say, Rooney might start off as a 14.0 and Ronaldo a 14.2, and their "playing level" would go up and down with development, morale and form (so a Rooney recovering from a serious injury might have a rating of 9.0; at his maximum form and morale, he might be a 15.6). Then a team's playing level would be the sum of the playing levels of the selected players, giving you a rough idea of who was better. Playing levels were probably a general boost in all attributes - you could have a 18.0 striker who had pathetic finishing, for example - the case for one of my players in that game, who wasn't actually that bad but became lethal once he took his Emile Heskey boots off and put Fernando Torres's - er - Cristiano Ronaldo's on. Consequently it was really hard to develop this playing level as you improved - to go from 17s to 18s/19s often took 2-3 years of straight concentration in this level.

One thing I never understood was the fact that TCM 2005 also had this concept of "level" where I think Rooney started at a level 6 forward and when he was at his peak in my game he was a 7. I can only imagine this somewhat restricts development because I had some players who increased their playing level training but didn't get a playing level boost for some reason; however, I had some players who developed despite the fact they were 7s. So I don't know if this is a limit or something or whether TCM 2005 was bugged (it had a ton of bugs). The idea of levels might even be a red herring since the game doesn't refer to them at all besides one screen - it might have been something EA scrapped behind the scenes but forgot to remove from a screen. Documentation of this feature is, understandably, non-existent.

And, of course, patches changed things a lot. However, the patch never worked on my PC so I was stuck with the unpatched game.

You can think of TCM 2005's talent levels as a folding of the player's innate talent plus professionalism and ambition in Football Manager. Perhaps a bit like PES 6's development curves (and PES 6 doesn't imply a limit, I believe - it just suggests how they develop and lets the user do their Master League magic).

CM10 follows FM10 I believe. CM08 followed FM too, I think.

Another PA thread, another x42 post

The researchers are only making estimates for real players and we have negative numbers to vary the outcome.

The newgens and to a certain degree the negative PA players the game assigns the PA & the game is god therefore knowing the maximum, whether you like it or not - SI staff have told you this in previous threads.

As I have said time and time again:

- If something is an estimate, it can be wrong - in both directions.

- If something is an estimate, why make it a hard limit in the game? Why not make it a, well, I don't know, estimate?

- If you make it a hard limit, it is impossible to be right if you underestimate.

- Negative numbers have their own issues that they are too wide for some leagues and even for some players.

As for the "God" idea, I've belittled that one enough too. Saying the game is "God" is like saying "the game says 2+2=5". The assumption itself should be questioned - it's not a get-out clause. Occam's Razor suggests that the most correct solution is probably one that applies the least assumptions. And in this case, I think the "God" assumption is wrong. It can't be "God" because the game cannot predict the future, as an omnipotent being can. I can prove this - I have the choice to play 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 against the AI. The AI doesn't know what I will play. If the AI had a perfect strategy, it would be able to have a strategy for the infinite number of possibilities the human can pick given the pseudorandom number generator. There is a finite amount of memory in a computer. Therefore the game does not have a perfect strategy, and therefore the game is falliable. Therefore the game cannot be "God". Or more succinctly, the game cannot be "God" because a human is involved. And even then it cannot "know" everything in the future if the game is just simulated - as games can be infinitely long, and memory is finite.

Riz Remes has said that PA is an approximation that isn't perfect. Riz didn't reply to my idea that a car's maximum speed could be influenced by external factors in a "positive" way. I've been told many other things - this is the important bit.

I fully and completely agree with you. And that's exactly what i'm getting at, yet you seem to be missing one important thing. For people that we do not know what potential they could reach, negative PA numbers are assigned(I'm against fixed PA myself just to be clear, there need to be a lot of extra negativa PA values to allow tweaking in that regard). However as for your golf comparison... It's not exactly the best. You can't attach a rocket to the player, but even then, let's assume that what you said is correct. Your car simply is not the same anymore, it has to be treated as a completely different entity, a human cannot be biologically engineered in a way that you could just modify a car, a human has absolute limits that cannot be broken without, as you stated in your example, drastic modifications.

The jet engine example was a clearly-exaggerated example where new information leads to a revision of X (here, X = top speed of my modest Golf GTI) - and in this case, new X is greater than old X.

It doesn't have to be a "drastic modification". My Golf GTI, for example, could house an engine that has been tweaked by a professional to have a 10% increased top speed limit than a normal Golf GTI, that was not apparent upon first sight. The car might have a nitrous booster that was hidden. The car might be driven by an F1 driver who knows how to get the best out of my car. Or maybe the course is all downhill and hence the top speed for a flat surface is too low a prediction.

The last one is the important bit - external factors may be "better" than expected and hence will influence X in a "positive" way.

For a player in FM, this refers to development that is beyond expectations - look at Chris Smalling or Jimmy Bullard, for example; or late-bloomers like Luca Toni.

Say a researcher wants to predict the PA of a player. The PA isn't a 100% certain value - the researcher would have to know the future. So the value is less than 100% certain. Let's assume all researchers work on the 95% level (and there is a genuine question mark here that all researchers have differing levels of optimism which posits an issue with PA. Humour me for a second). Would it not be outlandish for the researcher to have underestimated PA here? I would think this is a yes, since if the researcher can't underestimate, it implies that the value they pick for PA is THE maximum - this is certainty - 100% certainty - which is a contradiction.

What does this mean? It means that the game shouldn't treat an estimate as a hard limit. The researcher may be rather pessimistic and be wrong.

Some have argued that it's alright to be wrong because it's corrected over research phases. I say we can go one better and design the game such that within the game itself, it can "correct" these PAs (which are almost surely wrong anyway). I then say that because PA now jumps around all over the place, do we really need it? It's a limit that will never be reached anyway - do we really need to store it? And it leads to the fact that where a player peaks depends on where he starts and how he develops.

I'm going to requote one of the sentences in the last post because there is a separate issue:

a human cannot be biologically engineered in a way that you could just modify a car, a human has absolute limits that cannot be broken without, as you stated in your example, drastic modifications.

The thing is, though, we don't understand the human body enough to know what these absolute limits are, and thanks to evolution, those limits change all the time. Arguably the human race over time has an infinite limit, although in a few billion years time, we won't be really humanoids anyway - but the whole point is that we don't know these limits, so there is arguably an infinite limit that is less and less likely as you increase the limit. For example, Usain Bolts are rare, while slowpokes like myself are commonplace. If the ultimate human being was measured terms of in pure speed, the more you increase the speed, the smaller the number of people this reflects, until beyond Usain Bolt, the set is small - reflecting the fact that Usain Bolt Jr. might be even quicker when he grows up - nobody knows. You can't say "nobody will be quicker than Usain Bolt", if you like - therefore the set cannot be empty - in fact, you don't know how big the set should be.

Which brings me to...

I could have a billion years time to study maths, yet i still would not be as good as some people are at maths, my potential simply does not reach those of geniuses, and i will NEVER reach that, no matter how hard i try.

The same thing applies here. Let us say we measure your mathematical ability by the density of brain cells in your brain. Without knowing the full innards of the brain, we don't actually know how dense the brain cells can be in your brain. Say the average human being has 100 cells per square centimetre (a clear guess, not that it matters). Could you say with complete certainty that you will never exceed 110? 120? 130? The answer is no - you cannot be fully certain, because you cannot predict the future. You can certainly say, of course, that you are less likely to be at 250 than 150, but in reality, at no point can you actually say, "no, I'm definitely not going to be here".

It's an odd mathematical "paradox" that doesn't really make realistic sense. An example I show is that some casino games have a theoretical infinite payout that bankrupts the casino - yet they keep making the casino money. It's because the actual maximum really doesn't matter. They don't know the maximum - it's infinite. What matters is that the game is balanced so that it makes the casino money on average - if you like, a bit like "make sure the players develop sensibly on average in the game".

The problem IMO stems from PA being a set number, but not in a way that it should be dynamic, you cannot judge someone's potential with complete certainty, yet whatever potential they truly have(and honestly, nobody knows), will never ever change.

True, but if we don't know what that number should be, a number we pick shouldn't be certain either.

We know my Golf GTI has a maximum speed, but I don't really need to pick one out now and make it my "potential top speed" in my new fancy racing game. I'm just going to make my fancy racing game so awesome that it can take into account all the possibilities - whether it be a jet engine, downhill slope, nitrous or flat tyre. And it will be realistic because I'm going to model all the physics so well that it feels realistic. The top speed? Who cares? What matters is that on average, the car feels average; in special-case scenarios, it feels special.

However there is one potential such as the one OP is talking about, it's called Current Ability. CA does not set your atributes, it sets the limits of how good you can be right now, it's pretty much the best thing you can do with the system being as it currently is.

CA doesn't work like that. CA is basically a weighted average of all the attributes. It allows you to compare two players as being roughly equal even though they may be very different (i.e. CA 140 goalkeeper vs. CA 140 striker - very different, but they do have similarities).

Why does it need to be accurate?

Why should we aim for realism at all? Good question really.

If we enter a value that is possibly wrong, then the ultimate game would know this value is possibly wrong. If the value is wrong when X, Y and Z happen, then in the game, when X, Y and Z happen, then the game corrects this value.

We don't have to assume estimates are correct.

The only input a human has is when a researcher allocates a PA to a real player. As long as the good players in RL are generally good players in the game does it really matter? If you asked 100 users what the PA of Rooney should be you would get a range of answers and you would never please everybody. As humans we often have different opinions, a quick look in the data forum shows how people argue over odd attributes.

It's a PA thing, not an attribute thing. Also, it's not a democracy in reality, and it's not a democracy in-game.

The issue is that PA is assumed to be right when it quite clearly isn't.

With this in mind I've said in previous threads I would be happy for every player to be given a negative PA and let the game decide from save to save.

The issue isn't that it's different in each generation - the issue doesn't address why it's different.

In general in these threads there are two issues raised:

A) My player has hit the ceiling and won't improve despite playing well - This happens in real life all the time and is a non-issue.

I'm interested in knowing why they hit their ceilings. PA is an issue as it begs the question - a player reaches their limit because... They've reached their limit. I suspect that there is actually a reason why we consider them to have reached their ceilings - be it age and not really playing well, or injuries.

Put it this way - if a 90/90 player averaged 10.00 in the Premier League consistently over many seasons, he would quite frankly develop in reality since no matter what opponents do to him, he keeps scoring. He's learning - he's developing. A player who averages 10.00 per match has quite frankly not hit his ceiling - but he has in-game.

B) The PA of player X has improved each version from FM05 to FM11 therefore the researchers got it wrong in older versions - Yes they did but it didn't matter at the time as nobody thought player X was going to turn into a world class player. There were no threads in 2005 saying player X's PA is too low or 2006/7/8. The threads only started to appear in 2009/10/11 saying in 2005/6/7/8 the PA was wrong.

Covered above where we don't have to make PA "correct".

This argument where a "90 CA player averages 10.0 every game" is a silly one for a number of reasons. The most glaring is that as CA/PA is meant to be something "under the hood", if a player was averaging 10 a game would it really matter what his CA or PA for that matter were or if he was improving?

Also, your "the game isn't God" argument is both irrelevant and doesn't make any sense. What do managers in game have to do with the game being able to know what a players potential is? Hang on, that's right... NOTHING! The managers in the game follow the same rules in game as we do. Also, if you're just referring to if the game can beat us. You should listen to some people on here who thing the game can rig matches as it sees fit.

Also the whole "estimating PA" thing you were on about. Why should it go "both ways"? Researches are estimating PA like scouts in game do. The game can decide PA as it creates the players (I guess you could make a "God" argument around that), but the real players are "projections" of themselves onto the database. It is what their PA appears to be in game, not what it actually would be. Sure, PA is a simplistic model of how this sort of thing is, but so is most of how quantum mechanism is applied in modern science, and that's pretty damn accurate.

Why they hit the ceiling, some players do. There are so many "future stars" at 17-21 who look like the next Pele, but turn out to be nobodies. Some due to injuries, but a large majority just because they never improved.

Again, the PA model isn't perfect, but it works and replicates the real world very well. Especially when it is only regens involved and this projection of the real world onto the database becomes irrelevant.

This argument where a "90 CA player averages 10.0 every game" is a silly one for a number of reasons. The most glaring is that as CA/PA is meant to be something "under the hood", if a player was averaging 10 a game would it really matter what his CA or PA for that matter were or if he was improving?

It does, because a player who does that in reality would be improving and learning. That player surely hasn't peaked.

The value is (relatively) immaterial anyway. The argument works for, say, 9.0 and possibly 8.0 and 7.0. Probably not for 6.0 and below, of course.

This is talked about quite a lot on here and it always comes down to half the people thinking players are limited in terms of PA because you cannot become better than you are destined to be. Then the other half are like yourself and feel the current system does not represent certain players. Then people start naming players that reached their potential early and never improved any more after that people start naming late bloomers and then the thread turns into a petty argument about if Francis Jeffers reached his potential or if injuries stopped him getting any better.

Personally I like the way it is, I would however like some sort of system where older players can have a boost in CA.

hahahaha so true, there are so many of these threads now.

I'm still in the boat that until someone proves they have a better option ( and in the countless threads no one yet has shown they have) then the current system has to be kept.