FM2008 star system is very stupid, check this out!

Now i've found something wierd and not happy, I sold a player from my team, he had 4 gold stars, once he joined the other club I scout him, I had only 1 star, WTF is going on?! Is the scouting system a fluke?

I sold Ronaldo, he has max stars in my Man Utd squad...I think 7 stars or 8 (this was to test to see if above was right), I scouted him when he joined Inter...guess what the same scout says 3 stars now?

Also the stars on the squad screen and the 'Assistant advice...> Get team report' have different stars, i've just found this out, i'm very angry!

I always but players what the scouts tell me, if a player looks brilliant and the scout says 2 stars I don't buy, can't believe this.

your scouts CA and PA judging must be useless then!

I used my best scout with 19 CA and 19 PA

I always but players what the scouts tell me, if a player looks brilliant and the scout says 2 stars I don't buy, can't believe this.

My goodness, what prompted you to be so trustful of artificial intelligence. It's just a game, it's definitely not going to be perfect. Leave the abject obedience of AI to when robots take over the earth.

And its replicating an objective opinon, so they will get it wrong.

Because scouts at top clubs are never wrong.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2001/06/14/sfnjef15.xml

They base their opinion on current form and performances, as well as reputation. Of course, in real life, your scout would know all about Ronaldo having had him at your club, but I don't think this is how the scouts work. Perhaps a weakness, but since the example you give was engineered it's hardly a fair test.

There ARE well-known issues with scouting, though, and you're not wrong that the star system is flawed. Something SI have said many times they are reviewing for FM09. But you can't expect any scout to be flawless, in FM or real life.

A perfect scout could be part of making the game's easy level.

I always employ an assistant with high judging ability. He gets to scout the players other scouts tell me are great. Yet often he will say someone's ability is ***** so I sign them, then the moment he signs he changes his mind and rates him ***.

Personally I think scouting has become a total lottery.

Scouting in general sucks.

I am using fmm to edit my scouts judgment to 100/100 so all of them are 100% perfect

I have a central defender with CA/PA 170/175 and send my scout to watch another central defender with CA/PA 117/130 .

The reply is that the 117 guy is not that far in ability from the 170 and he has the potential to be as good as him.

LOL

The stars are relative to the other players in your squad. If your 'star' player moves to a team with a better squad, his star rating will change.

We know...scouting sucks.

In my game 4 stars means one of the best in the world, 3 stars would be a leading premier league player while 2 stars means at worst a good premier league player. Completely useless.

Ratings should be based on an absolute scale and not some silly relative scale. Whoever thought that was a good idea needs a kick in the nuts if you ask me.

Originally posted by phnompenhandy:

The stars are relative to the other players in your squad. If your 'star' player moves to a team with a better squad, his star rating will change.

WHS... Bad example but say you have Ronaldo in the Derby County side(soryy Derby fans), he'll be given a 7* rating as he'd be by far there best player in the side, if you then filled that Derby County side with players like Messi, Silva, Aguero etc etc all the best players in the game, his * rating would probably move to a 3* or 4*, not because he's got worse, but because the standard of the team is very high, so now he's just no better than rest of your squad.

In my previous save i had my team win everything avaialable domestically and in Europe (and the CWC) twice in a row, no player had more than 4*'s.

Hope I got across what I meant.

Originally posted by Navie:

Also the stars on the squad screen and the 'Assistant advice...> Get team report' have different stars, i've just found this out, i'm very angry!

I think that's because when looking at a report card the player is rated in his natural position, but when you look at the team report he might not be playing there, thus he's rated lower.

I.e when the assistant rates a DMC at say 4 stars, it means he has 4 stars in his natural position, but if, in the team report, he is placed in a CM-role, he might only be rated with 3 stars.

Simple test for you to do to explain this situation. Start a game, have one manager as Arsenal and one as Nottingham Forest. Get a scout report from each team for one player e.g. Pablo Piatti. Note the difference in opinion. It isn't necessarily down to the skill of your scout but more likely the quality of the player in relation to the players you already have.

Originally posted by liam_everton89:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by phnompenhandy:

The stars are relative to the other players in your squad. If your 'star' player moves to a team with a better squad, his star rating will change.

WHS... Bad example but say you have Ronaldo in the Derby County side(soryy Derby fans), he'll be given a 7* rating as he'd be by far there best player in the side, if you then filled that Derby County side with players like Messi, Silva, Aguero etc etc all the best players in the game, his * rating would probably move to a 3* or 4*, not because he's got worse, but because the standard of the team is very high, so now he's just no better than rest of your squad.

In my previous save i had my team win everything avaialable domestically and in Europe (and the CWC) twice in a row, no player had more than 4*'s.

Hope I got across what I meant. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think it may be more related to your Club's reputation rather than relative to other players in your squad. Reason I say this is I'm managing FC Bulle in the Swiss League (Gundo's Challenge) and last season my team were all rated between 4-7 stars.

I got lucky and had an excellent Champions League run. The day after the season switch over (when I assume club reputation is recalculated based on the previous season's achievements) my players are rated between 2-5 stars.

No new better players in the squad so relative to the best player at the club very little would have changed.

I think in your Derby example after a season or 3 the relative ratings would drop as you suggest, but only because Derby would have risen in reputation as having so many good players would improve their league placing, cup performance etc.

No, it's also related to the other players in your squad. I signed Pierre Ducasse and he was the only DM C in my squad, and he was good (161/179) so he was given 7 stars. It went down to 6 stars after my young D/DM/AM C became better and after I signed Marek Hamsik, went down to 4. It doesn't say much about his ability (he's the 2nd best player in terms of CA in my squad) but it does say stuff about his net worth.

You can take the star ratings as follows: If you sold this player, the higher the star rating, the harder they will be to replace.

Originally posted by backpackant:

Because scouts at top clubs are never wrong.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2001/06/14/sfnjef15.xml

They base their opinion on current form and performances, as well as reputation. Of course, in real life, your scout would know all about Ronaldo having had him at your club, but I don't think this is how the scouts work. Perhaps a weakness, but since the example you give was engineered it's hardly a fair test.

There ARE well-known issues with scouting, though, and you're not wrong that the star system is flawed. Something SI have said many times they are reviewing for FM09. But you can't expect any scout to be flawless, in FM or real life.

That HAS to be the best example given to settle any issue EVER!!

Brilliant!!

P.s. Arsenal fan that did have the traumatic experience of watching the 'fox in the box' on a number of occasions.

I would love to see the scouts reports on him just before he signed!!

Pure genious!!

Originally posted by x42bn6:

No, it's also related to the other players in your squad. I signed Pierre Ducasse and he was the only DM C in my squad, and he was good (161/179) so he was given 7 stars. It went down to 6 stars after my young D/DM/AM C became better and after I signed Marek Hamsik, went down to 4. It doesn't say much about his ability (he's the 2nd best player in terms of CA in my squad) but it does say stuff about his net worth.

You can take the star ratings as follows: If you sold this player, the higher the star rating, the harder they will be to replace.

Daemonic is correct. This is a similar topic where I tried this

Originally posted by nogravy:

Currently the number of stars given is based on your teams reputation and the CA/PA of the player you are scouting. It doesn't matter how good your current players are. If the player lines up within whatever the CA/PA limits are for what a backup for your reputation should be he'll get 3 stars. 4 star, good players, can be expected to get regular playing time for a team of your reputation based on their CA/PA and so on. If you want to know whether the player is better than your current players, read the report and the scout compares him to your current best.

On my Braintree save I'm the best in the premier league and my players are mostly 3 and 4 stars according to my scouts, with only the Football Jesus getting 5 stars. However, if I create a new user and take over newly promoted Watford, and I scout those players, they get 7 stars. Just to remove a few variables for those who don't have FMM, raising Watfords reputation to match Braintree's causes the Watford scouts reports to drop back down to what the Braintree scouts had said. Changing the players reputation doesn't have any effect on the stars.

And because I forgot to add it before, if you change the players CA and PA to say, 12/24, the player will only get one star, ignoring that his skills are still excellant. If I scout the best GK by CA in the world, he gets 4 stars and is supposedly about the same as my current keeper. If I then sell my GK and his backup, that GK still gets 4 stars, but is now labeled as twice the player of my 19 year old GK.

I think an absolute scale would be so much better (as Jakobx said)

Originally posted by jake_robinson:

I think an absolute scale would be so much better (as Jakobx said)

Agreed. The relative scouting is a joke. At this rate we'll soon need degrees in English & Maths to understand what a half decent player is.

Originally posted by jake_robinson:

I think an absolute scale would be so much better (as Jakobx said)

Imagine being Southend for a minute. When you scout a player, you want your scouts to assess his ability in relation to your club. For example, Nigel Quashie would be a good signing for Southend so would deserve a high rating whereas if your scouts came across him while you were managing at Arsenal then obviously his ratings would be lower.

And to go a bit further with this point, a two star rating for a "good" Premiership player might seem a bit silly at first glance but it depends who you are managing. Why would a top team in the division give a "good" player a particularly outstanding rating? A "good" premiership player would though be more highly rated by scouts at lesser teams in the division though.

An absolute scale would be over simplifying it.

Originally posted by jake_robinson:

I think an absolute scale would be so much better (as Jakobx said)

Rubbish. How are people playing LLM supposed to decide between 1,000 1 and 2 star players in that case?

Originally posted by pelicanstuff:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by jake_robinson:

I think an absolute scale would be so much better (as Jakobx said)

Rubbish. How are people playing LLM supposed to decide between 1,000 1 and 2 star players in that case? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Aye. if anything they should be made even narrower.

If I'm playing as one of the big 4, have just won 4/5 titles and a couple of european cups, and have one of the best teams in the world...

I should see "Top championship player" as one star. They shouldn't even be a consideration. However, they can get 2-3 stars at times.

old system is fine.its good for small clubs

big rich clubs already have HUGE advantage so they dont need more help from assistant stars.

my2c

I take no notice of my ass man at all, and I take notice of my best scouts when I am unsure about a player.

Normally I go on pure gut instinct from playin the game for so many years. I am sometimes wrong and sometimes I am right.

As an example I have a left winger who came through my youth ranks. My ass man says 'offload him as soon as possible' I ignore him bacause the lad obviously has talent. He goes on to average 7.42 over 8 seasons becoming one of the clubs favoured personnel & vice-captain.

Originally posted by pelicanstuff:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by jake_robinson:

I think an absolute scale would be so much better (as Jakobx said)

Rubbish. How are people playing LLM supposed to decide between 1,000 1 and 2 star players in that case? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

We dont have to stick with 7 star system. We can easily have a system with 10 or even more levels. That should be more than enough even for those managers that cant get out of lower leagues quickly.

Once you start trying to visually distinguish between 9 and 10 stars, things get silly.

But - it would still take a lot away from people managing in the lower leagues. There's no way that out of ten levels, any more than the first three would be relevant to LLM, and it would make scouting a lot less useful for those who really need it.

This is exactly why i've started using miniscout, deletes all the guess work. If the scout reports were half useful, i wouldnt have a need for mini scout. Which is also why i dont hire scouts just 2 or 3, to watch opposition and get match reports on loanees.

As an example I have a left winger who came through my youth ranks. My ass man says 'offload him as soon as possible' I ignore him bacause the lad obviously has talent. He goes on to average 7.42 over 8 seasons becoming one of the clubs favoured personnel & vice-captain.

This is also a bug IMO. Assistants tend to want to offload young players because they are no good right now, even though in their own reports they say that their potential is good. Yes, with people like Saivet, Bojan or Piatti the assistant will see they have the potential to be good players... But for most others, they want to offload.

For example, in my Wigan U18s I have Tommy Amos, who my assistant says has the potential to become a good Championship striker but will probably be better than that. Every single player in my U18s is stated as definite Championship potential, and every single one is recommended to be offloaded...

I love the relative star system. If you understand that it's relative then there is no problem, and the star recommendations give you an excellent idea of whether they are good enough for your team. It's when you don't understand it that it causes problems.

And finally, people have been quoting players' CA and PA stats to prove that the system is wrong. These stats weren't meant to be seen, and I doubt there is a single person on these forums who can sit down and give a clear, absolute definition of what they are and what they effect. That means they don't prove anything.