My Complaints about Natural Fitness

For those that might not know natural fitness controls two things. One how quickly a player recovers lost condition between matches. Secondly the age and rate a player declines at.

I have two complaints about this attribute.

One it makes possible to know at what age a player will start to decline. It’s ridicules that I can scout a 16 year old and know with a fair degree of certainty that he will start to decline rapidly at 28 or play on till his early thirties before slowing down.

It leads to the weird situation where you pass up buying a 27 year old player because you know that he is going to be significantly worse next season despite the fact that he has shown no deterioration up to that point.

I would say make it a hidden Attribute except that doesn’t address my second complaint.

The length of time you take to recover from injury or exertion does increase with age.

As these things are governed by natural fitness it should deteriorate with age.

But natural fitness doesn’t because if it did players would go into downward spirals losing physical attribute points more quickly each year.

My suggestion, a new hidden attribute that governs the age and speed at which a player declines at while leaving Natural Fitness to control the speed at which condition is recovered at. Both my complaints would be addressed by this I couldn’t know what age a player would peek at before it happened and as players got older it would take them longer to recover condition because their Natural Fitness would reduce.

I have never seen a 28 year old players stats drop rapidly, ever. Natural fitness is not a stat i pay a huge amount of attention too and i have never encountered that problem.

Natural fitness attribute is not that important in my view.

There are a number of hidden attributes which already influence how much a players attributes 'decrease' as he passes his peak. It's not all entirely related to natural fitness.

I'm presuming professionalism is one? But unless there is some hidden mechanism to decrease the rate condition recovers at with age my second complaint about Natural fitness not decreasing with age is still valid right?

excellent point whilewoof.

Ideally it would be 2 different stats;

1) Recovery between games/from injury being one. (Which generally declines for many as they get older)

2) A secondary stat of physical declining (or not) with age

Interestingly;

A bit of analysis I did suggests those with high natural fitness, professionalism and ambition seem to have the best chance of being better at an older age on the game. Also possibly determination and how the game plays out (injuries etc).

It's still too severe though, except when starting a game where old players have be given artificially higher numbers, the game itself is pretty biased against them and there becomes a decline of good older players (outside of GKs and the odd freak 36 year-there should be many, many more).

The analysis I did shows that there are severly less 35+ years old players as the game progesses and they are severly worse in terms of CA, then players who start at 35+ when you first start the game.

@ Stephanie McMahaon :

Natural Fitness is mostly important to know how many matches a player can play without being tired. It helps you to create a squad rotation routine among your players.

Second tip, condition recovery between two matches can be adjusted by yourself when you adjust training load individually for each player.

In real life natural fitness is vital in my view, in the game it isn't. Trust me I'm a vetran from the days of CM2 and always bring the little guys up to dominate the world

in god we trust, the others pay cash.

The analysis I did shows that there are severly less 35+ years old players as the game progesses and they are severly worse in terms of CA, then players who start at 35+ when you first start the game.

Id like to know if its even possible to have a Giggs or Maldini on FM? An interesting experiment would be to create 100 players with Giggs' Physical and Technical attributes from an old CM and his Mental and Hidden attributes from FM12. Let the game run through a few seasons until the Giggs' reach 39 years old then take a look and see if any bare any resemblance to the real thing.

Id like to know if its even possible to have a Giggs or Maldini on FM? An interesting experiment would be to create 100 players with Giggs' Physical and Technical attributes from an old CM and his Mental and Hidden attributes from FM12. Let the game run through a few seasons until the Giggs' reach 39 years old then take a look and see if any bare any resemblance to the real thing.

I used FM Scout to look at time machine saves on both the 12.0 patch and 12.2 patch, and basically in terms of their current ability, it isn't possible for outfield players. There are some decent keepers in their late 30s, but outfield players I'm confident enough to say you will never have a player at Giggs or Zanetti's Current Ability levels for future old players- nowhere near, it's actually very unrealistic (though it's better than much older versions of the game).

The game is biased against old players - thats why many FMers play the game in a similar way (i.e. buy youth, sell players at 30ish before decline) aka "The Wenger Way" due to the nature of how players peak and then decline on the game. There is some variability in the game these days which is good, but it should be a much bigger spread (maybe it's to hard to implement in the game?)

There's also less of them as the game develops, the amount of players who are 35+ is often halved or worse. (Example - one save I looked at started with about 300 players who were 35+, 7 seasons later there was about 80.)

Out of the older players that do survive, even the players who age best -like CRonaldo or Rooney from my experience- are still worse and have lower current abilities then starting olding players. Ronaldo and Rooney at 35 are worse than Giggs at 38, Zanetti, Seedorf, Nesta, V.Nistelrooy etc, even Andrei Shevchenko!

It entirely depends on the player, players like Giggs are maybe becoming slightly more common now, but its still not the norm. I have had regen's come through, with good personalities play first team football to 36-38, infact i have 4 players over 35 still in my current squad, my captain is 37 and still a starter, playing top level football, scored the winner for me in the champs league final at 36 last season. If you have a professional player and as importantly, you look after him with the correct training and amount of game time, there is nothing to stop most players playing well into their 30's. The AI looks at CA/PA, thats why they dont play them, i look at attributes and performances, never CA/PA.

@milnerpoint - you are right it's not the norm, but FM in terms of CA is biased the other way IMO and the analysis I did does seem to back it up.

If you have ways of keeping players better for longer though I'm all ears. What do you mean by the correct training and game time? e.g. training, do you give them a lower overall intensity- focus more or less on aerobic (i've read both as the way but don't know).

What do you do with their physical stats. And do you still play them and they perform with lower Ass Man stars?

I'd say that many real players with high CA/PA in the game, who have average to bad personalities, are lucky they weren't reliant on FM's development process as youngsters, because they wouldn't have got anywhere near the level they actually are.

It entirely depends on the player, players like Giggs are maybe becoming slightly more common now, but its still not the norm. I have had regen's come through, with good personalities play first team football to 36-38, infact i have 4 players over 35 still in my current squad, my captain is 37 and still a starter, playing top level football, scored the winner for me in the champs league final at 36 last season. If you have a professional player and as importantly, you look after him with the correct training and amount of game time, there is nothing to stop most players playing well into their 30's. The AI looks at CA/PA, thats why they dont play them, i look at attributes and performances, never CA/PA.

What is the correct amount of training and game time and what do these veteran players look like?

I'd like to see a screenshot of that 37 year old please Milner.

I'm not saying the OP's idea isn't more realistic, but the last thing this game needs is more attributes and variables. There are several attributes that I personally consider a bit redundant (for example, Important Matches, Consistency, Bravery, etc.) and SI is already having a hard enough time balancing player development in long-term saves without introducing even more variables to complicate things. It's really amazing that the system works as well as it does given all the different factors and subsystems at work.

Just a couple weeks ago I was writing about this somewhere else:

"Some thoughts regarding the biology here: The age at which an athlete starts to decline physically is only partly up to him/her. I don't think any more attributes are needed, and in fact it should have less to do with Natural Fitness (as it's used in game), at least in a strictly linear way. Some people will just hit a wall one day and start declining. Others are more gradual. Still others are able to basically resist declining for quite some time. The ability to recover stamina and muscle fitness between events has basically zero to do with when aging starts taking its toll. Obviously, someone with continued strong "Natural Fitness" (again, as we use it in game) will have an advantage over someone with weaker N. Fitness if they were both to hit their "day of decline" at the same time. The fitter person has a greater ability to recover and thus effects of aging may be masked. But Natural Fitness and "When you get old" are not (necessarily) the same biological attribute. If you want to hang the latter on the former, fine, but I thought it was worth pointing out that we are talking about two different things.

Professionalism. Again, this could be a strong reason why someone would remain fit, but there could also be other reasons. Vanity? Competitiveness? A naturally longer aging curve? I think its fine to come up with a formula to affect player aging and base it on Natural Fitness and Professionalism, say, but it ultimately would be a bit more realistic to add a healthy dose of randomness to it as well, to account for the attributes that are never going to put in the game. A wide bell curve with there always being a few oddballs would be a breath of fresh air to the game. You might find yourself a Zanetti in your squad, each year wondering if he'll start aging. Or you might find your promising regen has been declining since his 27th birthday, reasons unknown. "

TL;DR: Fitness and Aging are different processes and it would be nice if eventually FM spiced this up by splitting it up or adding some further randomness to allow for the occasional Zanetti (or aging 26 year old!).

I'm not saying the OP's idea isn't more realistic, but the last thing this game needs is more attributes and variables. There are several attributes that I personally consider a bit redundant (for example, Important Matches, Consistency, Bravery, etc.) and SI is already having a hard enough time balancing player development in long-term saves without introducing even more variables to complicate things. It's really amazing that the system works as well as it does given all the different factors and subsystems at work.

I do agree that "more variables", while handy for representing reality, should be only a last resort. I think you could actually make something like "Aging" and derive the value via a hash on the player's numerical ID. EG: "Player 858483 X Hash --> Aging = 15(20)". Then allow all the other factors to impact the process: Professionalism, Ambition, Determination, etc.. while the underlying biological process is fairly set in stone.

from doing some basic player searching, professionalism seems to have the biggest effect on deterioration rate in older players

I do agree that "more variables", while handy for representing reality, should be only a last resort. I think you could actually make something like "Aging" and derive the value via a hash on the player's numerical ID. EG: "Player 858483 X Hash --> Aging = 15(20)". Then allow all the other factors to impact the process: Professionalism, Ambition, Determination, etc.. while the underlying biological process is fairly set in stone.

Well, as I see it, the problem is that the "FRED system" tried to do too much to fast. It was introduced to create more randomness (compared to simply regenerating real players as youngsters with new names) and reflect the unpredictability of the real world, but from the outset, it was too random. There were too many variables with too little organizational structure and, thus, too many players with weirdly incongruous attributes (incredibly tall, Jumping 2; Pressure Handling 20, Important Matches 1). With recent versions, SI have been walking it back a little by adding more structured templates for generated players, but in hindsight, they should have just started with a far more simple, predictable system of player generation/development and then slowly introduced more variability with each version. But consequently, as it stands, adding any additional randomness is just going to exacerbate many of the problems people have with the long-term game. Separate Natural Fitness from "peak age" and you'll have dozens of players irritated that their superstar 26 year-old with "Natural Fitness 20" is falling apart faster than you can say "Ledley King."

When has players being irritated stopped the year-on-year improvement of the game? If you can find a Zanetti or Giggs being produced then you probably want to balance this with a few early declines as well. I think it would help long term games immensely because you really would have to reassess your squad every year instead of signing someone, training them up, then being absolutely confident that they will continue at their level until age X (barring injury). You may get ready to replace your Giggs and then think "Hold on, let me see how much he's aged" rather than just know that "Whelp, he's 32, so that is that". It would add a bit of that missing variety to the game once you've won everything and are wondering what to do next.

Of course people would complain. Then they would wonder why they play FM13 so much more than FM12.

The problem is that their complaints would be justified, because as is the case with many attribute distributions now, there are just too many extreme and illogical instances generated. I would be fine with this idea once the general player generation and progression system is perfected, but until then, more randomness for the sake of "realism" will likely just produce more unrealistic extremes. I'm all for year-to-year improvement, but with recent versions, that improvement has (rightfully) taken the form of scaling back the already excessive variability in other aspects of player development.

I can think of hundreds of new subsystems that would, ideally, add fun nuances to the game (how about a "fitness" and "longevity" rating for every muscle, tendon and ligament!), but realistically, I would really prefer to see the player development system simplified and made more consistent before anything else is added. Fix the big picture then add the little details.

EDIT: And I would add that what you describe is already modeled. There are Giggs-quality older players and there are early declines (for many reasons beyond Natural Fitness, as Neil pointed out). Your complaint that the degree of variability for a given player is too predictable and needs to be further complicated is another issue and one that, for most players, wouldn't really improve the game and would just add even more illogical "oddballs" to irritate the players who would prefer more "big picture realism" rather than premature and unbalanced representations of every conceivable quirk in the world of football.

@milnerpoint - you are right it's not the norm, but FM in terms of CA is biased the other way IMO and the analysis I did does seem to back it up.

If you have ways of keeping players better for longer though I'm all ears. What do you mean by the correct training and game time? e.g. training, do you give them a lower overall intensity- focus more or less on aerobic (i've read both as the way but don't know).

What do you do with their physical stats. And do you still play them and they perform with lower Ass Man stars?

What i do is when they reach 32/33 i put them on training programmes that focus mostly on the fitness aspect, i also put all older players on quickness focus training which is probably a bit of a cheat but with the players in my team im sure it has slowed that regression down a bit. Like i said tho, i think the right personality is important to make sure they keep training hard. Game time i make sure these specific players only play important games, or come on when younger players are getting tired, they will rarely start a game when they are tired, anything below 95% means they will be benched, they dont play cup games but at the same time, they will play at least 3 games a month so they are always kept in good condition, that i think is vital, as soon as their match fitness starts dropping their attributes start to drop quicker i have found anyway. I kinda copy what Fergie does as silly as it sounds, i keep these guys for the important moments, but keep them ticking over.

The other thing i always consider is the role the player plays. My captain the 37 year old is a target man, very tall, great in the air, so he has never been that quick, i think at his peak his pace was 14, now at 37 its 9, so pace has never been a huge part of his game, fair enough he doesnt score the same number of goals or get away from people like he used too, but with his physicals dropping he has gained mental points which play a big part so he is still useful to the team, i have been lucky with him in the fact he is a charismatic leader by personality and has a huge influence when on the pitch which prob helps keep him useful.

Another i have is a 36 year old who has been my left winger for years, but naturally starts the game as a central mid. Since he has become older and lost his pace i decided to move him into the middle, because of his good creativity i thought he could be used as an advanced playmaker rather than a winger, a role where again pace doesnt make a huge difference. He wouldnt do a job as a left winger now, and if i do have to play him there he plays as a wider midfielder rather than attacking winger as i used to play him. You have to adapt the way you use the players as their attributes change.

The third i have is a 35 year old centre back, he now plays as a covering defender rather than a stopper like when he was younger, again that means with his lack of pace, but great reading of the game he can now leave the aggressive defending to a younger guy who can get back quicker and use more of his mental stats.

The forth is a right winger, 36 now, i havent had as much success with because he doesnt really have the ability to play through the middle and i dont need two old guys keeping my younger player out in that position but he is still useful when needed but is retiring at the end of this year because he doesnt get enough games.

Also you have to look at who your playing around them. I always have 1 workhorse central mid, right now i have one described as a midfield general, he will run all day and night and cover everything that moves in the middle, so having an older guy not running about as much beside him works ok, it might not work as well if he was played beside a less energetic player. The target man plays along side a younger quick player all the time, the poachers i buy are always quick small guys so again having a slower target man is not a problem, he wins flick on's or holds the ball up and it seems to work well. These guys will also rarely start all of the same games ill rotate them around so im keep experience in the team along with youth.

Phew long post sorry!!

@Hand of God:

I don't disagree with you that FRED templates should continue to be improved. I also agree that there are illogical oddball FREDs now and then. I also agree that it is irritating to long term games when you realize just how rare a well-templated FRED is going to be, particularly for AI teams. As you said, this is a separate issue.

Should templates be improved before end-of-career decline is improved? I think your points are well taken and while I don't quite agree, I understand them. Where I don't agree is in that I don't think adding some nuance and realism to end-of-career processes has much to do with improving templates, unless of course you are suggesting that SI can't do both (I hope not)?

Of course I wish SI would improve issues in a certain order of importance, but if this particular improvement comes up then I think it'll be a good thing for the game. I can see what you mean regarding adding additional randomness when there is already too much, but I think this area is different enough from templates that it would be a good thing even if templates weren't improved (which I'm confident they will be). I guess that is where we disagree. I think there will be enough demand for Zanettis and Giggs that this kind of thing will be implemented eventually.

I'd say that many real players with high CA/PA in the game, who have average to bad personalities, are lucky they weren't reliant on FM's development process as youngsters, because they wouldn't have got anywhere near the level they actually are.

It's a good point.

EDIT: And I would add that what you describe is already modeled. There are Giggs-quality older players and there are early declines (for many reasons beyond Natural Fitness, as Neil pointed out).

Disagree here, analysing several future saves there are NO Giggs quality older players. None...

At the moment, the analysis I did suggests the most important stats are;

-Nat Fitness

-Ambition

-Professionalism

And maybe also to a lesser extent; Determination and Inj Proness- but I'm less certain on these.

The point is, as Smac said Natural Fitness is covering two different factors. Eventually I would like it replaced with something like a recovery stat (from training & matches)- which peaks for most in late twenties and a different CA longevitiy stat that is factored with professionalism/ambition what happens in the game etc. - with a few freaks that can have long careers like real life. (But with allowance for the Romario type players who had long careers even though the'r professionalism was questionable)

At the moment - many play the game in a simplistic fashion. "oh, so and has hit a certain age, I better sell him" - it's far too simple to do that

I agree with Smac, but I don't think it has to be too random

What i do is when they reach 32/33 i put them on training programmes that focus mostly on the fitness aspect, i also put all older players on quickness focus training which is probably a bit of a cheat but with the players in my team im sure it has slowed that regression down a bit. Like i said tho, i think the right personality is important to make sure they keep training hard. Game time i make sure these specific players only play important games, or come on when younger players are getting tired, they will rarely start a game when they are tired, anything below 95% means they will be benched, they dont play cup games but at the same time, they will play at least 3 games a month so they are always kept in good condition, that i think is vital, as soon as their match fitness starts dropping their attributes start to drop quicker i have found anyway. I kinda copy what Fergie does as silly as it sounds, i keep these guys for the important moments, but keep them ticking over.

The other thing i always consider is the role the player plays. My captain the 37 year old is a target man, very tall, great in the air, so he has never been that quick, i think at his peak his pace was 14, now at 37 its 9, so pace has never been a huge part of his game, fair enough he doesnt score the same number of goals or get away from people like he used too, but with his physicals dropping he has gained mental points which play a big part so he is still useful to the team, i have been lucky with him in the fact he is a charismatic leader by personality and has a huge influence when on the pitch which prob helps keep him useful.

Another i have is a 36 year old who has been my left winger for years, but naturally starts the game as a central mid. Since he has become older and lost his pace i decided to move him into the middle, because of his good creativity i thought he could be used as an advanced playmaker rather than a winger, a role where again pace doesnt make a huge difference. He wouldnt do a job as a left winger now, and if i do have to play him there he plays as a wider midfielder rather than attacking winger as i used to play him. You have to adapt the way you use the players as their attributes change.

The third i have is a 35 year old centre back, he now plays as a covering defender rather than a stopper like when he was younger, again that means with his lack of pace, but great reading of the game he can now leave the aggressive defending to a younger guy who can get back quicker and use more of his mental stats.

The forth is a right winger, 36 now, i havent had as much success with because he doesnt really have the ability to play through the middle and i dont need two old guys keeping my younger player out in that position but he is still useful when needed but is retiring at the end of this year because he doesnt get enough games.

Also you have to look at who your playing around them. I always have 1 workhorse central mid, right now i have one described as a midfield general, he will run all day and night and cover everything that moves in the middle, so having an older guy not running about as much beside him works ok, it might not work as well if he was played beside a less energetic player. The target man plays along side a younger quick player all the time, the poachers i buy are always quick small guys so again having a slower target man is not a problem, he wins flick on's or holds the ball up and it seems to work well. These guys will also rarely start all of the same games ill rotate them around so im keep experience in the team along with youth.

Phew long post sorry!!

Thats great- I'm going to implement your ideas, so big thanks.

Just a quicky questions;

1)So you keep the overall intensity/workload of training the same; but drop their technical training and increase aerobic and strength?

2) In terms of thier star ratings from your coaches, how do they relate to the rest of your team?

Thats great- I'm going to implement your ideas, so big thanks.

Just a quicky questions;

1)So you keep the overall intensity of training the same; but drop their technical training and increase aerobic and strength?

2) In terms of thier star ratings from your coaches, how do they relate to the rest of your team?

I keep the intensity the same, just lower some of the other area's and add to the aerobic side of things, as long as you dont lower the other area's too much the player wont suffer, its also quite a good trick if you have an unbalanced youngster, i have put young guys on intensive physical training when they are decent enough mentally and technically but missing the physicals. Rest days are also vital, a guy of 35 doesnt need to train every single day, especially if he has played a game that week, i tend to give these guys a days rest if they play the previous game.

I dont look at star ratings when making a judgement on these guys because the AI only really looks at their CA overall and a few key area's, their CA is going to lower as they get older, its unavoidable and thats why the AI stops playing them after a while and their attributes really plummet, its also why you can usually pick up old guys on free transfers quite easily, in this save i signed a 35 year old frank lampard and got a good season out of him, a 34 year old Rooney but not quite as good and a 33 year old Graham Dorrans who played 2 years for me before going to Dundee for another season. If i were to look at star ratings i would not have signed them. I'm not at the game now but i cant imagine my old players are rated more than 1 star, not compared to the rest of my team.

I think that this whole thing could be solved by increasing the amount of Mental & hidden attributes gained through age and experience. The goal is to increase the amount of older players who contributes by being calm, composed and intelligent. Right now it is not necessary to keep these players if you manage to sign kids with good mental attributes, which is quite easy as it is. There's a reason SAF keeps the veterans around, on top of the league - and this should be replicated in FM.

I mean, not ALL moody, hot-headed super-fast strikers should become model professionals carrying the weight of the entire team on their shoulders once they reach 30, but it should be the norm that experienced players have much better mental attributes (and hidden attributes like consistency) than younger players. It should be very difficult to win Premier League with an average squad age of 21; they would simply fail too often - buckling under pressure, having too many off days and making too many costly mistakes.

Agreed, id quite like to see personalities develop as players get older, not in the way they do now with tutoring, but in terms of people calming down as they older, as it stands the likes of Ballioteli will always be a hot head, in reality you'd like to think slowly he is calming down a bit. By the time he is 30 its hard to imagine him being the same as he is now. I think that would help with older players being able to play for longer in the game.

I keep the intensity the same, just lower some of the other area's and add to the aerobic side of things, as long as you dont lower the other area's too much the player wont suffer, its also quite a good trick if you have an unbalanced youngster, i have put young guys on intensive physical training when they are decent enough mentally and technically but missing the physicals. Rest days are also vital, a guy of 35 doesnt need to train every single day, especially if he has played a game that week, i tend to give these guys a days rest if they play the previous game.

I dont look at star ratings when making a judgement on these guys because the AI only really looks at their CA overall and a few key area's, their CA is going to lower as they get older, its unavoidable and thats why the AI stops playing them after a while and their attributes really plummet, its also why you can usually pick up old guys on free transfers quite easily, in this save i signed a 35 year old frank lampard and got a good season out of him, a 34 year old Rooney but not quite as good and a 33 year old Graham Dorrans who played 2 years for me before going to Dundee for another season. If i were to look at star ratings i would not have signed them. I'm not at the game now but i cant imagine my old players are rated more than 1 star, not compared to the rest of my team.

Thanks, I'll give it a go (you've just given my 41 year old Rivaldo a new deal lol)