Scouting inaccuracies

I scouted two right backs. The first right back was judged to have a potential ability of 3.5 stars and the second 2.5 stars. This seemed quite odd given the visible attributes so I took a peak in FMRTE and found out the first one had a PA of 130 whereas the second had 165. I got the same results with multiple scouts - some of them having continental or world-class reputation and 20 JPP. This is quite a let-down given that I tend to filter player findings by potential. Am I to conclude that scouting is not to be trusted or is there something I'm missing?

The players are 17 and 19 respectively. Nevertheless, given the choice: a 19 y.o. with a PA of 165 and a 17 y.o. with 130, I would definitely go for the former. His hidden and mental attributes are also much superior.

I've noticed some odd things there as well. I found a 16yo with a really nice attribute distribution for a player of his age, a sort of youngster you know he'll be a star at a glance. However, my world class scouts keep reporting he's 2-2.5 stars potential so I decide to check him out with FRMTE. It turns out his PA is 190 with decent mental attributes. The same thing happened again twice after that, with different players. Driven by the experience, I've done some experimenting. I found a 15yo youngster from Cameroon via FRMTE, 180 PA with good mental attributes. Then I sent several of my world class scouts to roam Cameroon, one after another, and no one ever spotted that player.

Isn't that somewhat intended? That the scouts can miss how good a kid is going to be?

Isn't that somewhat intended? That the scouts can miss how good a kid is going to be?

I agree. People already say the game is too easy. If all it took was scouts with 20 JPP & JPA to find all the best players, imagine how much easier it would be. This is why I never rely 100% on scout reports, but instead use them in conjunction with my own view of the players attributes. Only then will I make a decision on the player.

Fair enough. I had the impression that reports by world class scouts with perfect stats more or less reflected the "programmed" reality.

What I find strange is that scouts seem to always give the same ratings and suggest the same players. I think in reality different scouts would present conflicting reports and varying judgements on the same player.

I do think, for the future, scouts should give different reports on players. It would give more value to higher attributes for judging players, and mean you'd actually want to keep certain scouts if they're right more often than not, rather than now where you could get rid when they start asking for too high a wage, safe in the knowledge that they're easily replaced.

Good to see to be honest. Scouting is far too easy in my opinion. Out of interest how much did you scout these players? If it was any than three matches each then you should not expect anywhere near accurate results.

Good to see to be honest. Scouting is far too easy in my opinion. Out of interest how much did you scout these players? If it was any than three matches each then you should not expect anywhere near accurate results.

I scouted the players I was talking about around 10 games each and the scouts were still wrong.

What i would like to see with scouting is the attacking, defensive etc attributes affect scouting. If you have a ATT 20 scout (with 20 JPA, JPP) you would have a more accurate read on his attacking skills and so on making scouts way more specialised

I can forgive scouts for missing a player completely, that happens; but I do expect him to be reasonably accurate in his reports over three or four accasions.

In my experience scouts are very accurate in this game. When multiple scouts identify a young player as having 5 star potential he almost always turns into a star, unless he has some development issues. Also I've found my assistants, regardless of their judging ability and potential ratings, to be very accurate with respect to their star ratings. I don't use FRMTE much, but when compare my players' ability per FRMTE to the current ability star ratings provided by my Assistant, they almost always line up with few exceptions.

I think the fact that scouts in this game are so accurate is a good thing though. An argument can be made as to whether it's realistic, it's probably not, but I'd rather have one or two good scouts tell me a player's potential accurately rather than going through the time-consuming process of having 10 different inaccurate scouts provide me with their potential star ratings and then take an average, combined with match reports, to assess the player's potential. This game is already too time consuming at times for me.

Im relieved to know that there are inaccuracies in the scout ratings.

I always get disappointed in myself when i only rely on the stars and nothing else, but its so hart not to.

For the next FM I wouldnt mind there to be an optional way to remove the star ratings, and just have text

I'm with the crowd of people that actually appreciates this happening on occasion. I've generally noticed scouts to be off by a half to a full star on their first report card. From a point of realism, you'd probably need to follow a young player like that for the better part of a season to be able to gauge how good he might become several years down the road. For the most cases, the initial scouting report of a newly generated youth candidate is far too accurate - how does your scout (no matter how awesome he is) have any significant knowledge of some 15 year old kid that just got signed to a youth contract at a 3rd division club in the Ivory Coast?

Finding good youths should be a lengthy ongoing process, involving your scouts watching the kid on and off over a length of time. The fact that you can run through a list of youth intakes and get a pretty decent sense of who is going to be worth buying is one of my least favorite parts of the game. That should probably be combined with a bit of an overhaul of how scouting is set up and runs, though.