Player Search screen is very slow

Anyone else getting this? Takes ages to get anything to happen. To sort players etc. I have it filtered by only 4* star players. But even when I reset the filter, it still takes ages.

12 seconds to load up.

10 seconds to reset the changes

10 seconds to sort by a column

11 seconds to add a condition

11 seconds to filter by potential 4*

54 seconds in total.

But that's only with 1 filter. If I was looking for >U18>Right Winger>Work Rate>Pace etc. it would take an additional 11 seconds for each one.

that's another 44 seconds on top of that.

The other player search screens is a lot quicker.

In my player search screen I've got

76,379 players found - when unfiltered.

I reckon it's because of so many players.

But I still reckon it should be a bit faster.

After I have filtered by 4* potential it takes 15 seconds to sort just 7 people found?

I'm gonna have to dissapoint you, the problem is on your side. While I only have 56 000 players on my search screen, everything is really smooth and responsive.

Hmmm I wonder at what point it gets to that slows it down?

So at 56,000 it's responsive. And at 76,000 it's not.

I've got an i7 2630QM processor and 6gb Ram.

Surely it should be faster in the player search?

What year of the game are you in? I'm in 2019. But noticed a slow down around 2015.

on my i5 760 it takes about 3-4 seconds to load 85k players .

Hmm interesting.

What year are you in?

What leagues and how many are you running?

on my i5 760 it takes about 3-4 seconds to load 85k players .

Around the same as mine on my i7 960 with 6 GB DD3.

No OP, it should not be anything like as slow as in your game.

Have any of you used the Game Detail Level to add or remove leagues?

Or managed on two different continents?

I have heard of others say the player search screen is unusually slow. Trying to find a common denominator.

It's pretty slow for me with large numbers of players involved. Not quite to the extent in the OP, but then I don't have that many players appearing.

Have you got man countries loaded? Or many leagues? As in all of England, Spain and France, for example. Or Say, Brazil, Argentina, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy but only a selection of maybe the top two tiers?

Nope, I have just one country loaded, with extra players loaded.

Wonder then if it's the extra players loaded?

What year are you in? Wonder if the player search is getting bogged down with extra players as more are added each year.

I'm in 2021, but I don't think that is relevant. I think it is just down to having a lot of players on the screen.

But others have more players and don't have a delay or at least less of a delay?

Not sure what you mean by having a lot of players on the screen?

I just want to note that at the start of the game the Player Search worked pretty well and fast.

So in 2011, 2012, 2013 it was pretty smooth. In 2019 now and it takes a while.

But you're in 2012 and now you are experiencing a delay.

So I'm a bit lost here as to what the cause is?

I meant just for me, the more players I have on the screen the slower it seems.

My estimated game speed is just 2 stars, could that be linked?

I just want to note that at the start of the game the Player Search worked pretty well and fast.

So in 2011, 2012, 2013 it was pretty smooth. In 2019 now and it takes a while.

But you're in 2012 and now you are experiencing a delay.

So I'm a bit lost here as to what the cause is?

Sorry about that, it was a typo. I'm actually in 2021.

Mine is marked as 3.5 stars.

I reset it the Game Detail Level to Default. And it's not improved at all.

Here's my Game Status

Sorry about that, it was a typo. I'm actually in 2021.

No worries, happens

Was it faster at the start of the game, do you recall?

It might well have been, but my scouting knowledge was awful then so not that many players would appear.

I've definitely got a much better scouting knowledge. Had about 4,000 know players when I started in Brazil Division 3.

Now in the Prem with Arsenal, 9 years later. The scouting knowledge has grown considerably.

Would it be that the more that is added to your Player Search screen, the slower it goes?

So perhaps if you started as a Well Known manager, say on Ex-International you'd have a pretty good knowledge when you take over a well known team, therefore less players added over time?

The number of players definitely affects the speed of that screen. It is even more noticeable when getting multiple scout reports (try getting scout reports for 500 players ).

My computer is a few years old though, so I don't expect everything to be that quick.

I have this exact problem as well, with the same set up as FM11. I have a lot of leagues as view only, and about 85,000 in the game (less than FM11) and the player search screen is so slow I simply don't use it.

Even with filters so there are less than 500 players on the search, it can take over 30 seconds to look at 2 players with all the waiting.

Yeh I have it filtered to just 4* star players. Which is a total of 7.

I'm after going through all my subscriptions of leagues, players etc. and trimmed it down. That didn't make any difference... waste of time lol. Well might stop some news reports.

I do have LOTS of scouts.

How do I find out what my percentage of Scouting Knowledge is at?

If you remove the automatic update it would speed up the load time as you would only apply them once.

But it sounds very strange that it takes over 10 seconds to implement a change. I loaded 70k players, but won't find them all yet since I manage Bradford in Championship in 2013-14. If in eight more seasons I find that the player search screen is that slow I will be disappointed too for sure.

Edit: only 1-3 seconds delay with me and I have an Acer Aspire dual core with 6gb ram and nvidia 1gb. Hardly top of the line these days.

How do I find out what my percentage of Scouting Knowledge is at?

Under the scouting button, go to knowledge. Then hover the mouse over the bar showing World knowledge and the tooltip will appear

How do I find out what my percentage of Scouting Knowledge is at?

Scouting - Knowledge

Then hover over the 'World' bar.

Thanks guys

Right my scouting knowledge is at 53%.

Wonder if this is making a difference?

Do you have the 'hide unrealistic transfers' checkbox ticked? I think I read in the bugs forum that this can cause major slowdowns in shortlists in FM12 due to the game recalculating whether players would be interested in joining your club or not, so it may have an impact on the player search screen as well.

I tried it there and it makes no difference whatsoever.

I have an idea. I can make my game available to anyone who is NOT experiencing this delay in the player search.

If they test it and see if it is in fact the saved game or my computer.

Anyone interested in testing it? Remember you must be experiencing a Fast reaction to going to the player search screen.

There's definitely a bit of slowdown with the dynamic searching, but it's not too bad for me. I get some slowdown with player conversations too, actually.

I have an idea. I can make my game available to anyone who is NOT experiencing this delay in the player search.

If they test it and see if it is in fact the saved game or my computer.

Anyone interested in testing it? Remember you must be experiencing a Fast reaction to going to the player search screen.

Sure, upload it to a filesharing website and I'll have a look.

Excellent I have sent you a PM with the file to download.

Thanks.

OK, think I've pinned the problem down. Sorry for the wait, but it slowed my computer to a crawl and kept crashing FM.

The player search screen was slower than usual for me - about 5-6 seconds, so not as bad as you but still annoying. This is on a desktop with an i5 2500 and 4GB RAM for reference. The problem seems to be scout reports. There are hundreds of them. I went through the scout list and deleted them all and now the player search screen is back to normal; it takes a second or two to do things if the assistant is filtering unrealistic targets, and is near instantaneous if I turn that option off. When I was going through and deleting those reports I found that FM's RAM usage started shooting up, going over 3GB towards the end which is pretty astounding. Don't think I've ever seen it go past 2GB before and it kept crashing. My guess is that the game had paged all the scout report data to disk and was loading it back into memory to delete it, so if it was accessing that data from disk when you used the player search screen it would explain the slowdown.

Obviously you can't really play the game without scout reports, so the only thing I can think of to minimise this problem would be periodically going through the reports and deleting the ones with very low star ratings (I'd probably do 2 stars and below but it depends what level of players you look for). It's a pain but I can't think of any other way around it. Might be worth raising it in the bugs forum as well.

Hope this helps!

OK, think I've pinned the problem down. Sorry for the wait, but it slowed my computer to a crawl and kept crashing FM.

The player search screen was slower than usual for me - about 5-6 seconds, so not as bad as you but still annoying. This is on a desktop with an i5 2500 and 4GB RAM for reference. The problem seems to be scout reports. There are hundreds of them. I went through the scout list and deleted them all and now the player search screen is back to normal; it takes a second or two to do things if the assistant is filtering unrealistic targets, and is near instantaneous if I turn that option off. When I was going through and deleting those reports I found that FM's RAM usage started shooting up, going over 3GB towards the end which is pretty astounding. Don't think I've ever seen it go past 2GB before and it kept crashing. My guess is that the game had paged all the scout report data to disk and was loading it back into memory to delete it, so if it was accessing that data from disk when you used the player search screen it would explain the slowdown.

Obviously you can't really play the game without scout reports, so the only thing I can think of to minimise this problem would be periodically going through the reports and deleting the ones with very low star ratings (I'd probably do 2 stars and below but it depends what level of players you look for). It's a pain but I can't think of any other way around it. Might be worth raising it in the bugs forum as well.

Hope this helps!

Maybe the entire testing team used the option to filter scout reports when sending them out? It is a feature we are supposed to use but I never do...

Maybe the entire testing team used the option to filter scout reports when sending them out? It is a feature we are supposed to use but I never do...

Heh, I completely forgot that option existed. I never use it either. Just checked and you can filter by star rating for ability and potential, so you could set them to only report on players with at least 3 stars potential for example. That would solve the problem. Nice spot!

Where have you removed the scout reports? I thought I did this already but maybe you did something different?

Ok removing lots of scouts reports now. 4,127 scout reports! The computer is hanging here. This could take a while?

Many many many thanks for looking at it. It was driving me mental.

Perhaps there should be an option to only Retain Scout Reports where a player is rated at whatever star rating you choose?

Or the option to purge scout reports when you have accumulated over 500 or 1000 or something?

Not sure if this is going to fix it or not? Stll hanging.

This is concerning

CPU has been at 13% and Memory has risen from 1.5 to 2.75 and still rising since starting the process of removing scout reports.

Should i be worried?

This is concerning

CPU has been at 13% and Memory has risen from 1.5 to 2.75 and still rising since starting the process of removing scout reports.

Should i be worried?

It won't cause any lasting damage, but you might get a few crashes. What I did is save the game after I'd cleared one scout's reports, so that if the game crashed doing the next one I didn't have to start from the beginning again.

Scout reports are removed a year after the report was filed, which would probably be good enough for most players. I think you're probably an exceptional case, since you've got so many scouts and the database is big.

I scout any player that shows potential. I don't expect scout reports for under-par players to be kept. Nor did it occur to me to remove the scout reports.

It's a major hassle managing the subscriptions, news feeds, and now I have to juggle the scout reports.

Honestly, this is a computer, you should be able to set these options to automatically remove unnecessary things. In this case, I'd like the option to automatically not keep any scout report of any player below 3.5 stars.

It stops being a game when you're doing this, more of an admin chore...

I'm to leave it for another 15 minutes and see if the Memory starts to reduce if it does i know it's nearly there. If it's still going up I'll force quit the program.

I scout any player that shows potential. I don't expect scout reports for under-par players to be kept. Nor did it occur to me to remove the scout reports.

It's a major hassle managing the subscriptions, news feeds, and now I have to juggle the scout reports.

Honestly, this is a computer, you should be able to set these options to automatically remove unnecessary things. In this case, I'd like the option to automatically not keep any scout report of any player below 3.5 stars.

It stops being a game when you're doing this, more of an admin chore...

As I posted above, when you set up a scouting assignment you can filter it so he only files reports on players with at least 3.5 star potential. You do it in the same box that pops up where you set the scouting region or competition etc. I didn't realise until now that you could do that, but it should stop the problem from happening in the future. I imagine this is what SI expected everyone to do.

Oh, and if you're having problems deleting all the reports let me know. I've still got the save game after I removed them so I can upload it somewhere for you.

Yeh I've set that up already. I don't know why there's scout reports for most of these players?

I've filtered the scouting already, well just today before I sent you my game. As I realised I only wanted to sign players with 3.5 stars or more. Was looking to increase my youth squad. So have them scouting under 18 with potential 3.5 stars.

I think over the years at 3 different clubs, and national coach level, I built up a lot of scout reports. I thought the game would remove them automatically - or be at least smart enough to discard the lowest rated ones, how wrong was I lol.

Still going through deleting the scout reports. It's torture. All I want to do is play the game.

I think I'll put this into the Bugs/Technical Issues forum - as I feel that the options for storing Player Scouting should be more apparent and easier to purge.

Thanks for all your help.

What I mean is, my real life manager does not come to my desk and remove any old irrelevant reports. I do that myself.

Similarly the scouts should be doing housekeeping, by discarding irrelevant reports. I shouldn't have to.

Yes, it would be a good feature and I think pretty easy to fit into Team Policy. I hope SI listen!

I will post a link back to this thread. I will also upload that save to the FTP site so they can see the issue first hand.

On my only day of FM I did not expect to be doing the Scouts work for them. I have not played a football match in 2.5 hours.

Posted it here

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/290236-Old-scout-reports-severely-hamper-Player-Search-screen?p=7370885#post7370885

Not bad. Spending my Saturday clearing out scout reports. Not how I planned to spend it lol. Sigh.

It is now working as I expect. Barely any delay.

Please SI fix it.

Hmmmm

How do you handle scout reports? I'm sick of removing them to be honest.

I have set my scouts to find just 3.5 stars potential. But over time these can become 3 or 2.5 stars or even less.

The scout reports are severely slowing down my Player Search screen. Any ideas?