Suggestion: Playing Style

In real life a player's playing style can be just as important as his ability. For example some talented players waste their ability by failing to play to their strengths while others make the most of limited ability. A player's style of play may work well in one team, but not in another. The way FM attempts to simulate this is through PPMs, but these are quite unrealistic in several way:

1. As SCIAG has pointed out (http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=41948), the PPMs in FM are binary. A player either tries long shots or he doesn't. In reality there is more of a gradient: some players never try long shots, some try them occasionally, some try them every match. Scholes tries long shots more than Carrick, but less than Lampard.

2. Most player in FM don't have any PPMs and those that do rarely have more than about three. As a result very few players have much individuality.

3. Real managers don't know the PPMs of every single player in the world, but on FM I can go to the profile page of an obscure Chinese semi-pro and see that he likes to cut inside even though I know nothing else about him. In real life, this is the type of thing you discover after scouting a player.

Another aspect of playing style that isn't covered by PPMs is sportsmanship. In FM every player has a hidden sportsman ship attribute which determines how likely he is to dive or cheat in some other way. This is unrealistic because:

4. We all know about players who dive. It is as easy to find out as whether a player it good at shooting or whether he tries tricks. This should be something you can easily view after scouting a player.

5. Player who engage in one form of poor sportsmanship don't necessarily engage in another. I'm sure we've all heard about centre backs who resort to all sorts of unsporting tactics to put off opposition strikers, but I'm sure they wouldn't be caught dead diving or feigning injury.

For these reasons I think that PPMs should be removed from the positions tab on a player's profile and incorporated in a playing style section. When you view a players profile, you would be able to select playing style from the drop down menu as shown below:

When you click on "playing style" you would see the following page:

Here every possible PPM is listed along with a value ranging from 1-20 which indicates how often a player does it. A player with 1 for showboating would never showboat; a player with 20 would showboat contantly; and player with 10 would do it sometimes. When you are viewing the profile of a player who you don't have much knowledge of these numbers would be partially or fully masked. This would address points 1, 2, and 3.

Things such as "tendency to dive" would also be included in the same section thereby addressing points 4 and 5.

i like this idea

Yeah, I think this is a good idea. Well done on compiling a well thought out post.

Hmm, interesting idea. I think it would give a lot more variability to the match engine and could work well. However, would take a good few months to compile and implement all of this extra data, maybe that is why it hasn't been included yet. Certainly would add greater depth to the game.

I suppose the extra research needed would be a bit of a drawback, but I'm sure researches who've seen enough of a player to fill in his attributes would also be able to fill in playing style fairly accurately.

Too many stats for people to worry about.

Just too many attributes really. For example how will researchers rate centre backs (who never play anywhere else) for hugs the touchline? Bit pointless having it in the game if most centre backs will have 1/20.

I agree that it would be good to see players have more of their own playing style on the pitch.

Some of those playing styles are surely just are the opposite of each other, for example places shots and shoots with power, play way out of trouble and clears into row Z.

Tries hollywood passes and tries killer balls often are also very similar.

Selfishness surely just teamwork?

Though I guess you were just showing the general idea for now.

This would be a nightmare to research accurately!

Just too many attributes really. For example how will researchers rate centre backs (who never play anywhere else) for hugs the touchline? Bit pointless having it in the game if most centre backs will have 1/20.

I agree that it would be good to see players have more of their own playing style on the pitch.

Some of those playing styles are surely just are the opposite of each other, for example places shots and shoots with power, play way out of trouble and clears into row Z.

Tries hollywood passes and tries killer balls often are also very similar.

Selfishness surely just teamwork?

Though I guess you were just showing the general idea for now.

Yeah, the ones I put in were just to show how it would work. I don't seriously think every player should have a rating for how often they attempt scorpion kicks.

Maybe if a player had 1/20 then it just wouldn't show up.

Nicely presented, but too much work.

I like the idea, but it becomes needlessly complicated when you consider the number of PPM they can be. Perhaps, players are only rated on PPM they have or have attempted. For example, a goalkeeper or central defender would not have the PPM "hugs touchline" or "gets to byline". Also, I don't think you need a range betwen 1-20, rather 1-5 may be suffice.

More choices would be great, not sure about the 1-20 idea though.