I wish I could cheat without feeling dirty!

I recently started a new save in which I increased the PA of four young players in my favorite team. My reasoning was that they would now be able to keep up with clubs progression to the top and become top players and club legends. However after winning promotion I feel that my cheating has tarnished my achievement. I am going to restart my save without the edits but I would like others opinions on how much such changes are cheating given that a players potential is basically guesswork and opinion based anyway.

I am Leicester City and the changes I made are as follows:

Jeffrey Schlupp - new PA of 180

Danny Drinkwater - new PA of 180

Ben Marshall - new PA of 177

Andy King - new PA of 167

I will not list their origanal PA's so as to avoid spoilers.

Thoughts please guys and gals.

I always go by the thought that if you have to ask 'is it cheating', then it probably is. But then different people get enjoyment out of the game in different ways. All that matters is that YOU are enjoying your game however you are playing it.

You are right that the PA of players is really only guesswork but they are mainly done by researchers who see the players week in week out. So they tend to have a better knowledge than the average person.

From my point of view, the fact that you said your achievement of promotion was tarnished indicates that you think the changes you made to the players may have been unrealistic.

However as I said at the top, as long as you enjoy the game then you should play it whichever way you see fit.

You never know. They may not reach their potential even with a higher PA.

I've done similar but I gave players -9, -10 etc.

My favorite thing about this game is developing youngsters. Its gonna be interesting to see how things go in my game as I'm only focusing on developing my youngsters. I won't touch newgens for at least 5 years.

Like I said before, it guarantees nothing.

I can see where you're coming from increasing the PA of youth players. When winning promotions, your youth recruits often ends up left behind. In my game I only have people with 0,5 gold stars or below (silver stars) potential rating, and they are just there as fillers so i can have a youth team.

Noone here should judge you for increasing their PA. It's a single player game, and you play it the way that gives you the most enjoyment. For some of my friends that means making themselves and their friends as 200/200 CA/PA and winning every match with five goals. For others it is playing the LLM-way, being even more restrictive than the game allows. For most players their zone of comfort is somewhere in between, and that's perfectly fine

I always go by the thought that if you have to ask 'is it cheating', then it probably is. But then different people get enjoyment out of the game in different ways. All that matters is that YOU are enjoying your game however you are playing it.

You are right that the PA of players is really only guesswork but they are mainly done by researchers who see the players week in week out. So they tend to have a better knowledge than the average person.

From my point of view, the fact that you said your achievement of promotion was tarnished indicates that you think the changes you made to the players may have been unrealistic.

However as I said at the top, as long as you enjoy the game then you should play it whichever way you see fit.

I see the players every week(almost) also. It would be extremely unlikely that, IRL, these four would all reach that level but I see no reason that one couldn't. My issue is that not one player at my club has any chance of becoming a leading player in the premier league and therefore will have no long term in my save. That is disappointing when they are players that you yourself rate and like. I will be able to have a team full of players with a higher CA than these guys will ever reach in about three seasons.

I have already started my new and clean save but it will be with a heavy heart that I'll move these guys on in a year or two. Maybe one of them can stay as a back up.

looking at the youth man utd get, you can't use any of it, no matter how much they are rated in the reserve league, imo all these youth players are all far too low. and spoils it a bit, they should be low, but at least be developed to the teams standard with work.

looking at the youth man utd get, you can't use any of it, no matter how much they are rated in the reserve league, imo all these youth players are all far too low. and spoils it a bit, they should be low, but at least be developed to the teams standard with work.

Yeah that is kind of my point. I think maybe higher PA's in general but much, much harder to reach would be better. That way there could be a few more surprise players and also a few more failed high PA players. Maybe I am just bitter that my players are crap and it is fine as it is though.