The impact of the positional attributes

I have always wondered about how important is the positional rating of a player to his performance in a given position. It is fairly difficult to answer that question empirically, because so many factors influence a player's performance in a match - I do not try to answer this question with the research I will describe to you... But I think a related question can be answered quite precisely - how much does the AI managers value the positional attribute vs CA.

Since FM09 we have been able to see the assistant manager/coach star assessment of players in positions where the player is only accomplished. I have noticed, as certainly most of you have, that when deployed at non-natural positions, coaches/assist managers lower the assessment of a players ability up to 2 stars. This led me to wonder to how much CA points does one point in positional attribute correspond to. To find this out I did the following:

1- Set a player to have 1 in every position, except 20 at AM C and 20 at S C. (David Villa at Valencia)

2- Changed my assistant manager JPA and JPP to 20,20 - in order to get the most accurate assessment possible.

3- Set Villa potential to 200 with FMRTE.

4- Moved Villa CA around to find the boundaries of the different star ratings (for instance 4 stars was given for CA=[169,175] and 2 stars for CA=[130,137])

5- Changed Villa rating as a striker to 19, and repeated step 4. Changed him to SC = 18 and repeated step 4, etc...

6- Having done this up until SC = 15, I averaged how much did the boundaries of the star assessments change in response to a change of 1 in the S C positional rating of villa, and came to the conclusion that 1 point in the positional attribute is equivalent to 6!!! CA points, at least in the way the AI sees a player.

A clear recommendation coming out of this analysis is for training a player for a position if you plan to use him on it, even if he is already accomplished at it. Good news in this regard is that is much easier to get better in a position since FM09, especially if the player is not only training but also playing in the position. It is even possible get players to become natural in a position, unlike FM08 and before.

On my view though, this is a huge overrating of the importance of positional attributes. C Ronaldo has competence 14 has a S C, therefore, if my calculations are correct, from the point of view of the AI he is has good as a 154 CA SC playing at the striker position (eg. Tommaso Rocchi)... seems like too heavy a penalty to me.

That is a very good investigation you have posted here and alot of thanks from me personally for producing this information.

However the crucial point is whether or not an increase or decrease in Position Attribute actually means 6 CA is taken up, and your post does not make that seem particularly likely.

It is possible that the Stars used ingame are merely a simple way of judging a players probable ability by looking at his Positional Rating and his CA. The fact that the CA requirements for an additional star dropped by 6 every time you increased his positional rating by 1 does not mean that the Star system is particular accurate as a guide, nor indeed that 1 positional attribute actually takes up 6 CA.

In FM09 there was very little evidence for CA dropping when retraining players into new positions. I have read that FM10 does things slightly differently in this respect, but I do not think that the Star system is anything more than a value produced by comparing certain features. I certainly do not think that 6 CA is taken up every time a player improves his positional rating by 1 point, because to my knowledge their is zero match day impact from positional rating and positional rating is simply a means of weighting particular attributes for CA destribution.

In other words each time you increased a players Positional Rating by 1, what you did was decrease the amount of CA needed to improve the Attributes key to that Position and increased the amount of CA needed to improve Attributes that are not key to that Position.

What that means is that each time you increased a players positional Attribute it became easier to gain improvements in those key positional attributes from the same CA, so he became better at that position.

A competence of 14 in SC for Cristiano Ronaldo does not mean he is as good as Tommaso Rocchi as a striker. It means that his current CA combined to his rate of increase of attributes for the SC position is similar to Tommaso Rocchi in the SC position. Tommaso Rocchi might be at SC 20 so increase his SC attributes faster than Ronaldo while having a lower CA.

It is a complicated business as I see it, but the way I see it could be wrong and I would be happy to be proved wrong.

The more investigations the merrier, and you have definately provided some quality information here.

A lot of things to comment on your comment

Your comments:

That is a very good investigation you have posted here and alot of thanks from me personally for producing this information.

However the crucial point is whether or not an increase or decrease in Position Attribute actually means 6 CA is taken up, and your post does not make that seem particularly likely.

=> No! I am not saying that increasing a position attribute by 1 takes 6 ca points. I am only saying, that at least as far as the AI is concerned, a player with positional attribute = y and CA=x is equivalent at playing that position to a player with positional attribute = y-1 and CA = x+6.

It is possible that the Stars used ingame are merely a simple way of judging a players probable ability by looking at his Positional Rating and his CA.

=> I totally agree with this... but then why would SI set this equivalency, if not because the performance of a player deteriorates 6 CA points for each positional point bellow 20.

The fact that the CA requirements for an additional star dropped by 6 every time you increased his positional rating by 1 does not mean that the Star system is particular accurate as a guide, nor indeed that 1 positional attribute actually takes up 6 CA.

=> I have to agree that this is not necessarily representative of performance in the ME, but it is what our Assistant managers tell us, and what I believe the AI managers guide themselves by.

In FM09 there was very little evidence for CA dropping when retraining players into new positions.

=> CA did not drop due to players getting trained to new positions... what happened was that attributes were re-weighted due to the weights of the new positions learned. That still happens in FM10, but now in a way not exploitable by the human player.

I have read that FM10 does things slightly differently in this respect, but I do not think that the Star system is anything more than a value produced by comparing certain features. I certainly do not think that 6 CA is taken up every time a player improves his positional rating by 1 point, because to my knowledge their is zero match day impact from positional rating and positional rating is simply a means of weighting particular attributes for CA destribution.

=> I think you are confusing things here a little... the positional attribute DOES have a direct effect on performance! CA on itself does not have a direct effect on ME performance, but it controls how high your attributes are, and therefore it has a significant impact in the quality of a player.

In other words each time you increased a players Positional Rating by 1, what you did was decrease the amount of CA needed to improve the Attributes key to that Position and increased the amount of CA needed to improve Attributes that are not key to that Position.

=> It is the other way around from what you said actually...

What that means is that each time you increased a players positional Attribute it became easier to gain improvements in those key positional attributes from the same CA, so he became better at that position.

A competence of 14 in SC for Cristiano Ronaldo does not mean he is as good as Tommaso Rocchi as a striker. It means that his current CA combined to his rate of increase of attributes for the SC position is similar to Tommaso Rocchi in the SC position. Tommaso Rocchi might be at SC 20 so increase his SC attributes faster than Ronaldo while having a lower CA.

=> I would not say that 14 SC 190 CA ronaldo is has good a striker as the 20 SC 154 CA Tommaso Rocchi, but if my calculations are right, an assistant manager would say that to me, and an AI manager would think that!

It is a complicated business as I see it, but the way I see it could be wrong and I would be happy to be proved wrong.

The more investigations the merrier, and you have definately provided some quality information here.

That post is a little hard to read.

If you are saying that the star system of judging ability and potential is pretty useless then I agree.

If you are saying something else would you mind explaining it in a more conceptual manner, like a post explaining what you think it means?

This is a good thread but I find it easier to understand points when they are explained as an idea, or an easier to read and understand idea

I tried editing my previous post to make more perceptible how I am answering your various comments. If you wish, I will elaborate more tomorrow. Time for me to go to sleep now

This is very noticeable when you push the game beyond it's natural limits with FMRTE. Put a player to have 29 (i think that's the magic number) in a position, and he starts playing like superman. Rather strange to watch. In fact, it completely disregards his player stats...

Which is odd really.

One thing that has occured to me when reading this thread is that positional ratings (I beleive) dictate where a players increased skill points will appear.

I have two players and I use Genie to ascertain much information on them.

One of them has 20 rating in left wing and pretty much only that is worth noting. The other has 20 in FC, 18 in AMC, some other various 15+ points in AMLR.

When I try to get their skills up, both through ingame methods... ie training, but also using genie, the player with the 20 in left wing develops skills highly relevant to his position (AML), however thay player will a high distribution of positional points seems to develop a wide range of skills.

This, following this post, leads me to beleive that positional points determine which skills are more likely to be gained from differing areas of training and playing.

that make sense?

I'll try and test this out this evening if I can get FMRE working, but it seems to have broken and their download link contains nothing.

LAM

Training (to my knowledge) works on a template method, where certain attributes are more likely to go up than others. This is what has caused the DM marking attribute bug, where DM regens always seem to have low marking.

True,

But.... I'll have to give some examples of what I mean, as I can not explain it effectively.

Lets say you have two players. Both play in the AMC role alone (ie not anywhere else)

Player 1 has 20 in the AMC role and 20 in the AML role.

Player 2 has 20 in the AMC role.

If you were to give the same training program to both players with focus on the 'setpeice' skill (just as an example).

I beleive player 1 is likely to pick up more more points in 'Crossing' than player 2 as he has positional points in this area. Play 2 is likely to pick up more points in the remaining skills as he is not sharing them with another position.

Does that make sense?

As I said, this is only 'food for thought' and I can not confirm if this is the case or not.

LAM

But...

isn't the Star Rating relative to the average level of your squad, and/or of the players of the same role?

I mean, David Villa will get a 4 stars rating in Valencia, but if you're scouting him as, say, Osasuna, he'll get an higher rating.

So how does that influence your analysis?

Interesting point. I am sure I read somewhere on FM2009 that the star rating can even differ based on your reply to where you will finish in the league.

Someone had commented that they were a strong team and said they would finish top half and most of their players were 4/5 stars. The same team then produce only 3.5/4 star when he said he would win the league.

I guess that makes sense. If you take an average team - say Stoke. How does their team rating reflect their ability to stay in the league..... well, you would say that its 4 stars, ie they have a realyl good chance of staying up. however, what would their stars look like if their goal is to win the league... well, they would have to be 2 stars (or lower) as they really dont stand a chance of doing that.

LAM

Interesting point. I am sure I read somewhere on FM2009 that the star rating can even differ based on your reply to where you will finish in the league.

LAM

Correct. In season 2 I was predicted to be a relegation battler (and chose fight bravely against relegation), and had a defence all with 5/6 stars. I stayed up, and in season 3 I was predicted a mid table finish and had to choose "safe mid-table position" as my goal.

The same defenders dropped to 3/4 stars.

The star ratings therefore directly rate to the expectations of the club that season.

Yeah, the stars depend on team reputation, league reputation and season expectations... but all of those factors were fixed in my experiment, given that all those CA/positional attributes/star ratings were measured in the same day, with me changing the CA and positional attributes in FMRTE and then seeing how that impacted the star ratings in the game.