How important do you rate the star system on scout reports?

It just seems as though this system is a little bit flawed IMO. Im currently in my 4th season in pre season all be it and there are a few top players kicking around now for next to nothing, most notably RVP from Arsenal listed for £2.9m. Im currently Newcastle BTW i scouted RVP off a number of my top scouts and all reports coming back as 2 stars for CA and PA now wait a minute RVP is now only 30 in my game and i currently have in my squad as strikers, Sturridge, Campbell and Balotelli.

In real life at 30 RVP would clearly still be better or at an equal standard to these strikers in my squad yet seems to be scouted at way below these players in standard. Very Strange, i tested this with a few other top players in real life to see if this was a one off but no, the other players i tested were, Pablo Hernadez (valencia) Diego capel (sevilla) Essien (chelsea) Lennon (Spurs) to name a few. These are all class european talent, world renowned players yet somehow not deemed suitable or good enough for my Newcastle side.

Is anybody else finding the report outcomes strange for players? How much attention to the reports do you pay and do they change your thinking a little regarding pending transfer offers?

Im going to assume RVP has had a bad injury and his CA has dropped, as he is 30 his PA is pretty much irrelevant as he will never reach it again, with the fact he is also transfer listed shows the AI does not rate him any longer, if he has not played for a while and had a bad injury i see no problem with him being rated 2 star, especially if you have those strikers in your team, remember the stars are only relative to your team. So at the moment your scouts tell you what you have is better than what your scouting. Essien will be the same, and Lennon is not world class especially not ingame, again neither will have had much first team football in the past few years, Essien is always injured for a long time and his stats will drop, Lennon doesnt really get a game for spurs for whatever reason.

No bad injury to my knowledge i checked his injury record and was out for just the odd week here and then. I realise it goes on current squad rating etc but surely RVP is a better forward than sturridge and campbell at present time and 3 years into game time. RVP is a renowned world class striker whos form this season is just incredible.

I can see your point regarding essien but i believe Lennon to be a top premiership winger and reguarly does play when fit.

I just dont think it has been balanced this year very well regarding scout reports and the star system.

No bad injury to my knowledge i checked his injury record and was out for just the odd week here and then. I realise it goes on current squad rating etc but surely RVP is a better forward than sturridge and campbell at present time and 3 years into game time. RVP is a renowned world class striker whos form this season is just incredible.

I can see your point regarding essien but i believe Lennon to be a top premiership winger and reguarly does play when fit.

I just dont think it has been balanced this year very well regarding scout reports and the star system.

Before he is on the transfer list at 30 something must have happened that means his CA has dropped significantly, also remember its 3 years down the line, none of us can tell if RVP will still be the player he is now, in 3 years time. He has had a very bad history of injuries so far. I have seen pics of RVP in the 4th season and i would not touch him with a prem league team.

Lennon is a good player on his day, but he does not perform at that level consistently, and for whatever reason he does not get a regular game in an AI controled spurs team, again if he hasnt played much his CA will have dropped and as such he looks less appealing.

Sometimes the scouts just get it wrong. In my game, Owen hargreaves was available on a free, and all of my scouts rated him as two stars. I signed him and my assman rated him at 3 and a half stars and he was a good player for me.

Lennon seems to drop right down in his late 20's in any game I play ( I'm not playing as tottenham) and usually ends up in the championship or even league one!!

I see it as guide and nothing more.

I neither trust nor distrust it explicitly.

post a screen shot of RVP and your other strikers, might be able to figure it out

It really depends a lot on the quality of the scout team, to be honest. In my lower league games, where I can't ever get anyone better than 13/13 at judging player ability/potential, the star system is completely useless. Let a few different scouts create a report and later see my assistant manager's opinion on him and the same player will more often than not be described as a useless waste by one person on my staff while another will see him as a successful first team player in my league.

With better staff, the star system will become more important and it can work well enough, so that your club could become or stay successful by relying solely on the scouting reports and their star ratings. Personally though, I only use it to filter and reduce the number of player profiles I'll have to take a lot at for myself and I've never bought a single player without checking out his stats before. The star ratings for the players' best positions are always rather generic and will never guarantee that you'll get a player that fits your current tactic or requirements.

I worship it .

It really depends a lot on the quality of the scout team, to be honest. In my lower league games, where I can't ever get anyone better than 13/13 at judging player ability/potential, the star system is completely useless. Let a few different scouts create a report and later see my assistant manager's opinion on him and the same player will more often than not be described as a useless waste by one person on my staff while another will see him as a successful first team player in my league.

With better staff, the star system will become more important and it can work well enough, so that your club could become or stay successful by relying solely on the scouting reports and their star ratings. Personally though, I only use it to filter and reduce the number of player profiles I'll have to take a lot at for myself and I've never bought a single player without checking out his stats before. The star ratings for the players' best positions are always rather generic and will never guarantee that you'll get a player that fits your current tactic or requirements.

This. I tend to make my first goal getting SOMEONE (Assman, scout, coach, whatever) who has quality scouting attributes (20/20 eventually, but the higher the better, especially early on). It's not gospel, but it gives you a much clearer picture of what you can and can't expect out of the player.

That said, the stars are still a guide; if you can find a way to make a limited but fast poacher work, for example, it doesn't much matter if his passing sucks.

I never pay attention to it.

For me, the bigger flaw is the fact that the stars are distributed on a relative scale that adjusts as your team's reputation/performance improves. Of course, even though the scale adjusts, the stars on old reports do not. I find that terribly misleading, and I wish a more absolute scale/measure could be offered to improve the consistency.

I think most people misjudge scouting star system, i'm sorry if i'm incorrect as i really havent checked this yet on 2012 but this is pretty much how it worked on 2011 lets take into account these two situations both with a 20/20 scout

1. you're playing barcelona and your amc is messi

2. you're playing benfica and your amc is aimar

now u gonna scout for hazard let's say, on the first situation hazard will probably be recommended as a 3 stars as he's not an improvement over messi, although he won't be no dead weight on ur team either. on the second case he'll be recommended as a 4.5 stars as he'll increase the amc position.

IMO ppl tend to think that scout reports state the players CP and PA generally but it does nothing more than state how the player will perform on your team, on his position in relation to the other players u got playing that same position.

It's known that 2 players playing the same position, with one having higher PA than the other doesn't mean the one with higher PA will be better on that position, which means the scout will probably recommend the one with lower PA with more stars

I can't understand why you can't scout your own team players.