Newgens Set piece attributes

I'd like to proposes a way of generating set piece attributes for newgens, Corners, Freekicks, Penalties and long throws.

I'm sure many of you have noticed that newgens seem to be better then average in these attributes and that players who are good at them are not necessarily the type of player you would expect to be good e.g a six foot six centre back who takes an excellent corner. And if you go back and look at FM08 it was very rare to see a high setpiece attribute on a newgen so clearly its difficult to set a CA cost for these attributes that doesn't make high values too common or too rare.

My proposal is that the CA point cost of these attributes should be calculated not based on a newgen template but on a baseline set by the other attributes of the newgen.

I'll give an example. Corners the base line is 80% of Crossing and 60% of technique divided by two.( I'm no mathematician these number are for demonstration purposes ) So Player A who has Crossing 15 and Technique 10 has a base Corners attribute of 9 for a cost of zero CA points. Now you clearly cant leave it there Newgens would be far too uniform, so the set piece attributes deviate based on a bell curve with the base line as X

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If we call -s and +s three CA points in either direction we can see that 68% of players with a base line 9 for Corners are going to end up with a Corners attribute between 6 and 12. If the number is higher then the base line it costs CA points if lower they get CA points back to spend in other areas, Obviously not the attributes that determine the base line for set pieces. The upside of doing it this way is that good goal scorers will be more likely to be good penalty takers and good play makers good freekick takers but its not set in stone so you will still occasionally get the odd stopper who hits a mean free kick or the goal machine striker who goes week at the knees from the penalty spot.

15 crossing and 10 technique for a 9 in set pieces? That will mean every average-and-above taker go to the top clubs, a lower league side will be lucky to find someone with more than 4-5...

As I said above the number are for demonstration purposes you can play about with them until you get something that works better, and Crossing and Technique are suggested for Corners only the other set piece attributes would be based off different attributes. I was thinking Finishing and Composure for Penalties. Long shots, Passing and technique for Freekicks maybe Jumping and strength for long throws.

A quick play about shows that dividing by 1.4 instead of two might work better.

The 15/10 guy would have a baseline of 13 then.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea if it is a problem(I haven't noticed it myself though).

15 crossing and 10 technique for a 9 in set pieces? That will mean every average-and-above taker go to the top clubs, a lower league side will be lucky to find someone with more than 4-5...

That's why a bell curve distribution is used. Lower league players, in general, will have low set piece attributes... but there will remain an element of randomness to ensure that some lower-ability players will have much higher-than-average set piece attributes.

In regards to the problem itself, set piece attributes aren't part of the training schedules and they are weighted as "low priority" attributes for every position, so it is rare to see them develop very much (in regards to weighting and attribute prioritization, this is the reason that centrebacks don't see their finishing improve very much). To get around this, SI appear to use some kind of "set piece specialist" template that allocates higher set piece attributes upon newgen creation. However, this means that you often see newgens with very little attributes but, say, 16 Free Kicks and 15 Corners. Additionally, the template appears to be overused, likely to ensure that there are "specialists" at multiple ability levels, so the population of genuine set piece specialists vastly increases as newgens come into the game.

Anyway, excellent post whitewolf, derived ratings and bell curve distributions need to be implemented in many areas of the game where we see weirdly incoherent attribute distributions (particularly in terms of "personality" attributes).

Superb idea and very well presented. Even if this idea isn't taken up exactly as presented, I think there certainly does need to be something done about the spread of set-piece attributes about newgens. It's silly that a 6'4 centreback, who is poor at crossing and has mediocre technique is randomly very good at corners.

Good idea, which makes me wonder how SI actually do it themselves. Its been a problem for far to long imo

I like your reasoning (and presentation!) in this regard (then again, I'm a sucker for math).