A Massive Rant About What I Would Like to See in FM09

I though I'd do one of these "What I think FM09 should be like" -bits of my own. Before I go any further, however, I'd to like to stress that I'm not saying that this is what FM09 has to have or be like to be a good game and I'm not trying to tell the FM people how to do their job. I've bought all the FMs and the preceeding CMs (well, one of each at least) in the past decade or so and will probably buy the next ones (again, one copy of each) too regardless of whether my wishes come true or not. But still, I'd like to express some of these thoughts I have. I might also be useful to know that I like playing with smaller teams. Not LLM, but with teams I can feel like I've actually made a difference in. Often I choose my own hometown team, Rovaniemen Palloseura, as lousy as they are. These are issues that I have come across while playing the game.

1) Change the player attribute system from 1-20 to 1-100

I know this would cause some major D-Toxing issues with players, like myself, who drool at the sight of those good old juicy twenties in a player, but a wider scope actually makes sense. For some reason FMM already portrays attributes in this way, and if, in fact, FM already has this secret 1-100 attribute system, why not provide the players with this information. It would enable more realism, since there simply is more variety in players than the current system allows to portray. Often it forces the game to portray an old veteran as an equal to a 26-yearold neverheardof playing in a Finnish bushleague. It does this to emphasize that this veteran is just a waste of shoes in any respectable football club while still maintaining that the said 26-yearold is slightly more than that to his little team. Still, in real life, if we take this veteran and this nobody and put them into a team, who do you honestly think will be more useful in a Finnish whatever league. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd provide some pictures but you all got the game so just check out a player like Diego Fuser and do some digging in the Finnish First Division, you'll find an unrealistic match at some point.

The veteran vs. equal loser example brings yet another point

2) Introduce some kind of culture/experience/pastleaguestandard/intelligence/whateveryoucancomeupwith factor, be that invisible or not

Although Diego Fuser might be a bit of a has-been in the professional football circles, he would still be an assett to a club in a more "primitive" league. Teams can use the old, clumsy but experienced and thus intelligent players just as they can use the young, fast, skilled but relatively dumb ones. This would add more variety to playing with smaller teams. If you are from a small town rooting for a small club like me, you know how exciting it is when some well-known has-been joins the club and is actually more than useful for the team. He organises the team better, has presense on the field and during half-time and even increases the clubs reputation a bit. Sadly, however, in FM the player is usually just a sum of his attributes and the 100 or so caps and ten years in the English Premier Division seem to just not matter at all.

This in turn brings up yet another point

3) Introduce a more drastic difference in how players perform in leagues with different standards

I have expressed this opinion before only to have it handed right back to me, but I still think that the league in which a player plays in, makes a difference in his abilities as a player. I know he won't be taller, faster or able to jump higher, but performance is more than that. And for those of you, who still disagree, if league doesn't, why is it that FM upgrades the ratings of, say, Finnish veterans who have moved back to Finland. Mika Nurmela, for instance, was useless until he came back to Finland, and suddenly was a lot better. Even if I brought him to England with his newly found skills. It's not a case of him getting better, but just coming into a league in which his experience gives him an upper hand. He's not the only example by the way. There are also players who have been great here, like Paulus Roiha, who then go pro and abroad only to stink. In these cases the next FM will portray the player with lower ratings. But hasn't gotten worse has he, nope. He's just not able to perform in a different kind of league. Similarly, I don't remember Andriy Shevchenko being a big hit in England no matter how good he was in Italy. I would just bring so much more realism and variety to the game, to have players perform differently in different leagues.

This doesn't really bring up another point, but I still have one

4) Allow the managers to make a more of a difference

I did a little test. I simulated a season with Rovaniemen Palloseura with their manager Kari Virtanen at the helm. Results were as expected. He bought the wrong kind of players with the little money he had, and finished lower mid table (I had upgraded them to Finnish Premier league and started January 2008). Fair enough, he had limited talent and limited resources, can't ask the guy to make wine out of lepers or whatever. Okay, so then I took Marcello Lippi, the not so unknown fellow and placed him at the helm of the same team. Oddly, nothing really changed. In fact, he had a slightly worse season .I know a lot of the simulation is a bit random so things like that can happen, but why didn't such a giant of the football world make any difference in the team. The players he brought in were just as bad (and as low rep), the tactics he used were I guess pretty much the same. That's not how it is in real life, is it? Is Arsene Wenger just a fluke? Or Alex Ferguson? Or how about just Job Dragtsma of the Finnish FC Inter Turku. In reality, a good manager makes a difference. And it would add more variety to the game to have the teams go on winning streaks not to mention develop into better teams because of good management.

Well, again this brings up a good point

5) Why don't managers make a difference in players' careers (and why can't positions be preferences rather then labels on a player)

It seems that all the players are set in their ways in FM. If there's a regen with finishing, off the ball and pace of 18 or more, and who is only accompished as a sweeper (I know I don't have pictures, but it happens, you know that, I know that, we all know that). A good manager would maybe say, hey, you look like striker. And boom, suddenly he is in his element. Now I know this is also a matter of attributes not relating to playing position, but I think it would be better if the player could be molded more by the manager. It happens, just ask poor Thierry Henry. My vision is this. Players are not midfielders or such, but players with preferences, experience of certain playing positions and some set of attributes. It's up to the manager to best utilize this package. Sometimes a defender does become a good striker fairly quickly because of the playing system (Henri Myntti in Finland this season). Sometimes a defender is just a moving piece of meat if placed in the offensive line. This, would be up to the manager intuition and skill.

I don't know how this can be programmed, but making poor manager less likely to connect the correct attributes for any given position might be one trick.

And now that we are talking about managers changing and molding players, let's take the really fat cat out of the bag

6) Make youth development easier or at least theoretically possible (it is actually more realistic that way)

I have tried using training schedules other people have designed and supposedly had great results with and I've tried my own. I've tried my own not-so-good coaches - which, interestingly enough, seemed to make the players worse as if the coaches were making them eat doughnuts and gently think about football for their workout - and I've tried editing my own super coaches with +/- 0 results. I've also done this with players that have automatically come through my youth academy, as well as with players I've edited as my own "blossom-please-blossom" players with huge potential, work rate, stamina, determination, professionality and all that. And yet, nothing. I haven't had a single usable player come through my youth squad, ever. I'm not saying that great talent is born every day or that just any kind of training should produce quality players, but if you're going to make it that difficult, at least have some "leave it to the assistant manager" option available, so that I can get a great youth coach and watch him build me new players. It will make the game more interesting when you can make a difference in what the game world looks like. And, by the way, some managers actually get help in training players.

And while we're on the subject of player development

7) Why exactly don't players older than 23 improve their attributes and thus their game

The world has seen players, with whom things have "clicked" even after they've had some years under their belt. And since the game measures the quality of the player by his attributes, these attributes would have to develop as well. I know the game keeps telling me that players tend to peak in this and this age, but I haven't really seen any signs of this. If some of you have experienced things differently, then I might be wrong, cause this is not a thing I have really consentrated on. But I have noticed, that I haven't had any late bloomers ever in the game. Which makes it slightly more boring then real life, where things like that do happen. It doesn't have to be a drastic improvement or a common one, but even if just a little bit and every now and then.

8) This is a separate topic. More of a question really. Why is it that low rep clubs can't afford to send scouts abroad? I suggest that you take a long hard look at the Finnish Premier League teams where half the guys are from some African country and then tell me, how did they get there without scouts? Granted, that in the case of my hometown team it was one of the players who brought more of fellow Zambians with him, but I'm pretty sure that also counts as scouting.

9) Another separate thought. If you develop the editor so that one can turn the greyed out teams into a playable league by creating the players by one's self, you'd undoubtedly have some brave industrious fan make an update that benefits your game. That's free and yet compeletely new playable content. Is a feature like that, really so hard to create?

10) This is just me, I've been told that the following feature is useless to everyone else but me, but I still maintain that it could be useful. The feature I'm referring to is adding leagues to save-games. Has this ever happened to you? You are playing a great 3-4 months game and are on your 20th season, you made a name for yourself and the regen factory has for some odd reason popped out new super star players (although they that way when came out, and weren't developped into such) and then you think, hmm... you know, I'd like to manage my hometown team/Juventus/some other hillbilly team. But nope. You were too stupid to think of this 3-4 months ago and so you have to start everything all over again. Why not have an option of adding a league. Sure it'll take time to simulate 20 seasons worth of events, but it won't take forever. And nobody has to use this feature unless they are prepared to wait. I know I would've used this feature quite a few times in the past decade or so.

Well that's all I have, but If you've managed read through all of that, why not tell me what you think. It can't all be bad, right?

P.s. Sorry for any errors in grammar or spelling, it ain't my first language

A few responses from me. Thanks for sharing your in-depth thoughts about the game, Loath. I especially appreciate your interest in the game from a "medium" team's perspective. LLMs have their characteristics and I know a lot of people in here play EPL-or-nothing. Both are different gaming experiences. So is the middle ground, where I like to play.

I though I'd do one of these "What I think FM09 should be like" -bits of my own. Before I go any further, however, I'd to like to stress that I'm not saying that this is what FM09 has to have or be like to be a good game and I'm not trying to tell the FM people how to do their job. I've bought all the FMs and the preceeding CMs (well, one of each at least) in the past decade or so and will probably buy the next ones (again, one copy of each) too regardless of whether my wishes come true or not. But still, I'd like to express some of these thoughts I have. I might also be useful to know that I like playing with smaller teams. Not LLM, but with teams I can feel like I've actually made a difference in. Often I choose my own hometown team, Rovaniemen Palloseura, as lousy as they are. These are issues that I have come across while playing the game.

1) Change the player attribute system from 1-20 to 1-100

I know this would cause some major D-Toxing issues with players, like myself, who drool at the sight of those good old juicy twenties in a player, but a wider scope actually makes sense. For some reason FMM already portrays attributes in this way, and if, in fact, FM already has this secret 1-100 attribute system, why not provide the players with this information. It would enable more realism, since there simply is more variety in players than the current system allows to portray. Often it forces the game to portray an old veteran as an equal to a 26-yearold neverheardof playing in a Finnish bushleague. It does this to emphasize that this veteran is just a waste of shoes in any respectable football club while still maintaining that the said 26-yearold is slightly more than that to his little team. Still, in real life, if we take this veteran and this nobody and put them into a team, who do you honestly think will be more useful in a Finnish whatever league. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd provide some pictures but you all got the game so just check out a player like Diego Fuser and do some digging in the Finnish First Division, you'll find an unrealistic match at some point.

The veteran vs. equal loser example brings yet another point

Personally I like the 1-20 scale. I've played sports sims with less and greater scales. On a 100-point scale, it's lots of bigger numbers but no better understanding of a player. The different between a 63 and a 67 on a 100-point scale? Probably not enough to matter. Show it to me as a 13, close enough. Ratings are scouted, so they're inexact anyway. Also ratings are only a part of the overall story on a player - game performance, scouting reports count too. All three are estimates of his next game's performance anyway.

2) Introduce some kind of culture/experience/pastleaguestandard/intelligence/whateveryoucancomeupwith factor, be that invisible or not

Although Diego Fuser might be a bit of a has-been in the professional football circles, he would still be an assett to a club in a more "primitive" league. Teams can use the old, clumsy but experienced and thus intelligent players just as they can use the young, fast, skilled but relatively dumb ones. This would add more variety to playing with smaller teams. If you are from a small town rooting for a small club like me, you know how exciting it is when some well-known has-been joins the club and is actually more than useful for the team. He organises the team better, has presense on the field and during half-time and even increases the clubs reputation a bit. Sadly, however, in FM the player is usually just a sum of his attributes and the 100 or so caps and ten years in the English Premier Division seem to just not matter at all.

This in turn brings up yet another point

A very real-life scenario. Good points. Interesting to see how this might be included in a future version.

3) Introduce a more drastic difference in how players perform in leagues with different standards

No comments.

This doesn't really bring up another point, but I still have one

4) Allow the managers to make a more of a difference

No comments.

Well, again this brings up a good point

5) Why don't managers make a difference in players' careers (and why can't positions be preferences rather then labels on a player)

It seems that all the players are set in their ways in FM. If there's a regen with finishing, off the ball and pace of 18 or more, and who is only accompished as a sweeper (I know I don't have pictures, but it happens, you know that, I know that, we all know that). A good manager would maybe say, hey, you look like striker. And boom, suddenly he is in his element. Now I know this is also a matter of attributes not relating to playing position, but I think it would be better if the player could be molded more by the manager. It happens, just ask poor Thierry Henry. My vision is this. Players are not midfielders or such, but players with preferences, experience of certain playing positions and some set of attributes. It's up to the manager to best utilize this package. Sometimes a defender does become a good striker fairly quickly because of the playing system (Henri Myntti in Finland this season). Sometimes a defender is just a moving piece of meat if placed in the offensive line. This, would be up to the manager intuition and skill.

I don't know how this can be programmed, but making poor manager less likely to connect the correct attributes for any given position might be one trick.

Retraining positions based on attributes is a good idea and can be done in game, and done successfully. It's worth the small time investment to do so. I find that selecting retrain on a similar position to existing skills (ex: a MC learning to be ML, AMC to FC) and playing the player at that position for about 15-25 games will give him the beautiful green dot of ability.

And now that we are talking about managers changing and molding players, let's take the really fat cat out of the bag

6) Make youth development easier or at least theoretically possible (it is actually more realistic that way)

I have tried using training schedules other people have designed and supposedly had great results with and I've tried my own. I've tried my own not-so-good coaches - which, interestingly enough, seemed to make the players worse as if the coaches were making them eat doughnuts and gently think about football for their workout - and I've tried editing my own super coaches with +/- 0 results. I've also done this with players that have automatically come through my youth academy, as well as with players I've edited as my own "blossom-please-blossom" players with huge potential, work rate, stamina, determination, professionality and all that. And yet, nothing. I haven't had a single usable player come through my youth squad, ever. I'm not saying that great talent is born every day or that just any kind of training should produce quality players, but if you're going to make it that difficult, at least have some "leave it to the assistant manager" option available, so that I can get a great youth coach and watch him build me new players. It will make the game more interesting when you can make a difference in what the game world looks like. And, by the way, some managers actually get help in training players.

The long-game regens problem aside, I've had decent luck with developing young players into valuable first team members. A couple things that I look for - first, when he's young he still has decent attributes at the key places (FC, technique, pace, finishing; DC, marking, tackling,...). Secondly, there is no substitute for regular first team play. I've had half-way looking prospects grow and grow though regular first team or substitution play. A 3-star potential can turn into a 5-star current ability. Sometimes it pays to just take a chance.

And while we're on the subject of player development

7) Why exactly don't players older than 23 improve their attributes and thus their game

No comments.

8) This is a separate topic. More of a question really. Why is it that low rep clubs can't afford to send scouts abroad? I suggest that you take a long hard look at the Finnish Premier League teams where half the guys are from some African country and then tell me, how did they get there without scouts? Granted, that in the case of my hometown team it was one of the players who brought more of fellow Zambians with him, but I'm pretty sure that also counts as scouting.

A good point that probably has some realism or middle-ground that could be reached. I assume the reason for limiting scouts' scope is budget. It costs money to jet around the place. But the current system (tell me if I'm wrong) is that if you can't afford to send any scouts abroad, you can't afford to send even one. What about capping the number of international scouting trips/travel? Maybe allow one of the team's three or four scouts to travel to certain regions and countries? As finances improve, maybe let out the leash on a second? Example: I'm playing as a cash-strapped English Championship team right now. The Board only lets me scout UK & Ireland. Not France, not Belgium, not Sweden. I can send all three scouts to Ireland at the same time, but I can't send one to Holland.

9) Another separate thought. If you develop the editor so that one can turn the greyed out teams into a playable league by creating the players by one's self, you'd undoubtedly have some brave industrious fan make an update that benefits your game. That's free and yet compeletely new playable content. Is a feature like that, really so hard to create?

No comments.

10) This is just me, I've been told that the following feature is useless to everyone else but me, but I still maintain that it could be useful. The feature I'm referring to is adding leagues to save-games. Has this ever happened to you? You are playing a great 3-4 months game and are on your 20th season, you made a name for yourself and the regen factory has for some odd reason popped out new super star players (although they that way when came out, and weren't developped into such) and then you think, hmm... you know, I'd like to manage my hometown team/Juventus/some other hillbilly team. But nope. You were too stupid to think of this 3-4 months ago and so you have to start everything all over again. Why not have an option of adding a league. Sure it'll take time to simulate 20 seasons worth of events, but it won't take forever. And nobody has to use this feature unless they are prepared to wait. I know I would've used this feature quite a few times in the past decade or so.

Seen this brought up, unforunately every time the response is "can't program it". That's unfortunate, because it's a good idea. I'm not a programmer so my thinking on this is only so elementary. Every team and league has greyed out teams. Is it really impossible to shut down or activate a team/league at a given point in the season? Obviously, this would be limited by the processing/sim speed as to how many leagues you can have active. But what a happy bunch of gamers to have the option of "I'm not interested in playing Indonesia's league anymore" and instead "I'll turn it off and activate Northern Ireland instead". Of course the league doesn't have the simmed out history of those leagues that have been active over the past several years of playing... but... even an imperfect "fire it up where it is right now, fill in the blanks with some AI-generated information" might outweigh the few shortcomings.

Well that's all I have, but If you've managed read through all of that, why not tell me what you think. It can't all be bad, right?

P.s. Sorry for any errors in grammar or spelling, it ain't my first language

With so many points, I wonder if you'd want to take them one at a time? Maybe start with the first point and see how we go?

there is some good points, but ill just comment on my own issues first.

FM06 was the best game imo. FM05 was a revelation but 06 just cleaned up, but since then weve had nothing. Well i lie, we had 07 and 08 (but just numbers), no real changes or improvements, just a waste of money. I hat ethe was SI rip us all off. I used to love football manager but it just seems to me they are starting to want $$$$ more than making a great game. My main issue is that the game is just stupid for a game thats constantly in developement.

Transfers, since when should i have to pay 32m for a kid rightback from a midtable italian team. not even a rival to me. His MV 10m. The game is stupid. I was at liverpool and had cleaned up for years except no-one would buy my players for a penny. Why do only i sign free transfers. Player power is now part of football. Ronaldo saga for example. I want my player who i signed as a no-body in 3 years time to demand a transfer to Madrid. I want public fallouts etc.

Scouting needs a revamp as well as transfers. As does training. I prefer the old type of 06 (my personal preference).

I agree with you about the leagues after you start a game, but i can understand why that just wouldnt work, but it would be nice.

1. You are one user who wants it. SI are a business and no doubt they have a marketing department who did research that suggests users prefer 1 to 20 and hence they probably won't change it until the point where their research indicates it would be preferred. I do agree though that the extra spread does in theory make it easier for the user to see differences in players but if you consider the match engine effects you will see it makes limited difference.

For example say two players are 10 for attribute A but the stored 1 to 100 has them at either side of this scale (50 vs 54 say). The difference is only 4% relative to the maximum possible which I doubt would contribute significantly to performance.

For relative players it is the same difference if you think about it. Player A has visible attribute 10, player B has visible attribute 15 => 25% more of possible 'visible' maximum. If Player A is at the lower end he has 50, and player B at higher end he has 79 => 29%. Again the difference is 4% of the maximum possible. I can't see this 4% making a huge difference to performance but I could be wrong.

Don't really get your point about it forcing players to look lesser than they are. The reality of it is players have to deteriorate otherwise the database can't be refreshed due to players retiring. We might disagree and say that a 38 year old real life Michael Carrick will probably be able to pass as well as the 27 year old Michael Carrick. As true as that may be in your opinion it just isn't feasible to implement. So CA has to drop and attributes have to drop alongside it so that players get dropped/released and eventually retire.

2. Not sure what your issue is but in my current game

38 year old Alexander Hleb plays for Walsall in BSP

38 year old Nickey Shorey plays for Welling in BSS

37 year old Michael Carrick plays for Rotherham in L2

37 year old Joe Cole plays for Accrington in L2

36 year old Joey Barton plays for Matlock in BSN

3. Interesting idea but the difficulty would be in how exactly you would implement such a system for newgens. I could only see it causing frustration. As it stands adaptability plays a role and for me it's a nice, simple system that does it's job.

The issue you highlight with the Finnish player has more to do with the difficulty in researching players. In an ideal world all players in the database would be compared to analyse discrepancies but time constraints mean SI can only issue guidelines and rely on the researchers to apply them to the best of their ability

4. Can't disagree with that to be honest. The editor alongside visible attributes suggests different managers behave differently but sometimes visibly crap managers overperform (Frank Lampard in my game has atrocious visible attributes yet he has kept a less than talented Leeds team in the top 8 in the Premiership for 3 seasons running). There are also managers who seem to consistently be capable of ruining clubs for whatever reason (Gareth Southgate springs to mind).

But for your Lippi example there are questions as to how AI managers scout, to what extent there are limitations on who will join a particular club, how exactly AI manager attributes are implemented (do they buy players to fit their preferred system e.g. a long ball manager buys big target men etc.). Reach for the stars by all means but I think the day a computer game can accurately represent this in the manner you desire is the day computers will rise up and take over the world

5. Brought up before and I'll give you my theory as to why it is not 'doable'

· database consistency re distribution of positions

· AI necessary to analyse and decide

· processing costs of having every single manager do this

6. From analysing the database in my game there are plenty of AI managed players and my own who have 'blossomed' although there is a well worn issue of CA rarely if ever developing to levels seen in the real researched players (Bojan, Rooney, Ronaldo, Fabregas, Aguero etc.) at a young age. There are also those who didn't blossom due to low starting CA, injuries, time spent at lesser facility clubs, lack of first team exposure and sometimes for reasons I can't pinpoint. Sometimes their CA continues to grow and sometimes it stagnates.

7. Late bloomers do happen and it is controlled in a nice elegant way with lower CA. Maybe not as often as you like but it does happen. I'll contrast 2 strikers and how they developed. First CA is aged 16 and then in yearly steps.

The Wonderkid, PA 198

98 -> 119 -> 137 -> 150 -> 165 -> 173 -> 185 -> 186 -> 189 -> 193 -> 195

World Class 180+ at 22/23

The Late Bloomer, PA 189

76 -> 86 -> 98 -> 107 -> 121 -> 136 -> 152 -> 164 -> 171 -> 180 -> 183

World Class 180+ at 25/26

Both of these are managed by the AI so it isn't anything to do with me using the various tricks for making players develop quicker.

8. No comment as I'm ignorant as to how exactly real life clubs determine where scouts can be sent.

9 and 10. I would guess that the SI programmers play the game and this has crossed their mind but for implementation reasons it has not been put in the game. Not being a programmer I can't really comment on how easy/hard it would be but prior posts by others indicate it isn't quite as simple many think it might be (this isn't meant in a derogatory way but often the many have no knowledge of coding etc.). My uneducated guess is that it has to do with memory assignment and control but no doubt a coder will post back that my guess is nonsense .

Something similar along the lines of your thinking:

I'd like to see coaches go after players that fit their style of playing. For instance, if a coach uses a monster at the forward spot to launch headers at goal, it wouldn't make much sense for him/his club to shell out big bucks for a small, speedy forward and expect him to play in the same role. Although some coaches do make adaptations to the talent on hand, the vast majority have a proven system they abide by.

Look at Los Angeles this year with Gullit in charge. Theoretically, LA should have had the offensive talent to play with three forwards like Gullit intended, even going so far as to bring in Carlos Ruiz to bolster their attack. As we've seen, though, LA's horrible defense forced Gullit to abandon the 4-3-3 and go with a 4-4-2, only to fail as LA doesn't have the talent to play such a formation. Had Gullit attended the draft he may have recognized players that would fit into his system and selected accordingly, and may well still be coaching the team.

Sorry, but I am not a particularly smart person and I haven't figured out how to work those pretty quotes in box, so I'll just do this manually.

First of all, thank you for your thoughts.

"Retraining positions based on attributes is a good idea and can be done in game, and done successfully."

I realise that this is a possibility already in the game, but it doesn't seem to work quite as fluently as having players without specific labelling would. Granted that now I have now, perhaps, started splitting hairs so nevermind. Just an idea anyways.

"What about capping the number of international scouting trips/travel?"

I'd go for that!

"For example say two players are 10 for attribute A but the stored 1 to 100 has them at either side of this scale (50 vs 54 say). The difference is only 4% relative to the maximum possible which I doubt would contribute significantly to performance."

Fair enough. Okay so we got a difference of 4 percentage here. And how many attributes do we have, I'm not going to count but let's say 20. Each have this minimal 4 percentage difference and suddenly there is a difference of 80 percentage. Granted I don't know how the attributes actually affect the gameplay, but in this case its more a matter of tuning the game then not having a difference between the players. I'm not a programmer and I don't really know how hard it would be to make the game take these differences into consideration, but I do know that 1-100 can portray things more accurately than 1-20. Even differces like 4% which 1-20 can't, by the way.

"2. Not sure what your issue is but in my current game"

The issue I have is not so much that big players can perform well in smaller leagues, that seems to happen sometimes, but that players from smaller leagues automatically perform well in big leagues as long as their attributes are up. Hermanni Vuorinen was the top goalscorer in the English Premier League one season (can't remember in which team, but it wasn't one of the big ones or one of the small ones). Well, you know, actually my issue is also other way around, since I haven't really seen this veterans rule smaller leagues thing happening that often. I mean sure I see veteran players playing in small teams, but since their attributes have go down, their next to useless. Again, I stress that this is nothing like a deal breaker for me, but I just miss being able to bring a player like Diego Fuser in RoPS and having him play like you'd expect him to play. Surely he'd be more useful than let's say Chanda Mwaba, though he is pretty skilled fellow.

"5. Brought up before and I'll give you my theory as to why it is not 'doable'"

Fair points and you're probably right, but one can always hope, right.

"7. Late bloomers do happen and it is controlled in a nice elegant way with lower CA. Maybe not as often as you like but it does happen. I'll contrast 2 strikers and how they developed. First CA is aged 16 and then in yearly steps."

You could be right. Maybe my issue is having players get comfortable in a team. I'd just like to have someone like "Antti Haapala" in my game. A guy you never heard of got responsibility after playing a long time in the same team in the same system, suddenly bloomed. But, sadly, only for that team. Isn't all that hot anymore. But I'd like to have things like that happen. Could be I'm not playing right, could be that it's not cost efficient to make happen. But, again, one can always hope.

And again, I would like to thank everyone for their opinions. It always nice to read someone else talking about mine

Fair enough. Okay so we got a difference of 4 percentage here. And how many attributes do we have, I'm not going to count but let's say 20. Each have this minimal 4 percentage difference and suddenly there is a difference of 80 percentage. Granted I don't know how the attributes actually affect the gameplay, but in this case its more a matter of tuning the game then not having a difference between the players. I'm not a programmer and I don't really know how hard it would be to make the game take these differences into consideration, but I do know that 1-100 can portray things more accurately than 1-20. Even differces like 4% which 1-20 can't, by the way.

As far as I know the game is coded in 1 to 100 and those are the values used in the match engine. I see what you are saying with the multiple attribute argument but I think that just shows SI can't win. I prefer the 1 to 20 option but if they are stored as 1 to 100 then I think an option for the user would be useful much like attribute masking.

The issue I have is not so much that big players can perform well in smaller leagues, that seems to happen sometimes, but that players from smaller leagues automatically perform well in big leagues as long as their attributes are up. Hermanni Vuorinen was the top goalscorer in the English Premier League one season (can't remember in which team, but it wasn't one of the big ones or one of the small ones). Well, you know, actually my issue is also other way around, since I haven't really seen this veterans rule smaller leagues thing happening that often. I mean sure I see veteran players playing in small teams, but since their attributes have go down, their next to useless. Again, I stress that this is nothing like a deal breaker for me, but I just miss being able to bring a player like Diego Fuser in RoPS and having him play like you'd expect him to play. Surely he'd be more useful than let's say Chanda Mwaba, though he is pretty skilled fellow.

Didn't know any of the players you mentioned but had a quick look in the editor. Very surprised Vuorinen could turn into top scorere in the Premiership and even more surprised that a Premiership club would buy him looking at his CA/PA. I'm guessing your Finnish (or have actually seen Finnish football) so I'll defer to your real life knowledge of seeing Mwaba

Maybe my issue is having players get comfortable in a team. I'd just like to have someone like "Antti Haapala" in my game. A guy you never heard of got responsibility after playing a long time in the same team in the same system, suddenly bloomed. But, sadly, only for that team. Isn't all that hot anymore. But I'd like to have things like that happen. Could be I'm not playing right, could be that it's not cost efficient to make happen. But, again, one can always hope.

You're not the only one who would love to see the game go that way but it's the nature of code that players will inevitably be determined by their attributes. As much as it would be realistic to have players have one off seasons the only way to do that would be to alter their attributes which I could only see causing user frustration.

On one of the Madden games they had a 'break out' system where players attributes could change if they suddenly performed better than they had in previous seasons. Nice idea in theory but in practice it just resulted in me as the gamer deviating from realistic play to exploit it. Or if 'exploting' the system wasn't my kick then getting frustrated at a player's attributes dropping due to him performing poorly. Personally I prefer that performance is linked more to a manager's ability to get the best out of a player tactically than attributes changing for set reasons based on rules in the code.

A thought on the scouting restriction thing- the programmers may have done this in an effort to prevent lower clubs from stockpiling cheap talent from nations like Argentina or countries in Central America, where the players cost little but have decent enough stats to impact your team.

A thought on the scouting restriction thing- the programmers may have done this in an effort to prevent lower clubs from stockpiling cheap talent from nations like Argentina or countries in Central America, where the players cost little but have decent enough stats to impact your team.

Could well be - and I don't disagree. But it seems that there isn't any compromise in the settings. Being a smaller club, you should have some tough choices to make and be limited by one's finances, reputation, et cetera. But in some ways, it doesn't even give you those tough choices to make.

1) Change the player attribute system from 1-20 to 1-100.

Well no. I believe 20 is the holy grail of player differentiation. Heck, it could work with 10, but 20 adds that extra bit of precision. As it is now, we know that below double figures we're looking at a garbage attribute and above 15, we're looking at a premier attribute. That's all we really need to know.

2) Introduce some kind of culture/experience/pastleaguestandard/intelligence factor.

This is more like it, one way I can see this implemented is that a player's resilience/determination is increased when playing in a lower league, as he has experienced the top level.

yeeees RoPS!!!!

I agree with pretty much everything you say here... particularly about regens. It seems to be virtually impossible to develop your own players, no matter how good your youth system apparently is... and when you do manage to sign a promising youngster, farm him out on loan until your ready to give him his first full first team season at age 18/19, chelsea come in with an offer and the chairman accepts it.... and thats it, 3-4 seasons of hard work breeding the guy down the drain!! grrrrrr