Do we need a stats update?

Due to the large number of players available in the game do we feel that the stat system is currently still relevant where 1 is the lowest and 20 is the highest. Should the game perhaps work on a 1-100 system?

Due to the large number of players available in the game do we feel that the stat system is currently still relevant where 1 is the lowest and 20 is the highest. Should the game perhaps work on a 1-100 system?

Like I said in the other threads attributes aren't 1-20 they are 1-200, we just see 1-20 as users.

Think they're 0.5-200 actually, but yeah

People spend too much time thinking about individual attributes. "Is 20 better than 19?" is meaningless. It's the sum of their attributes that matter.

I do not feel that a change to the attribute range is required. I'd prefer to see a slightly more conservative approach to the ratings given, in particular those on the mental attribute tree & fewer instances of people justifying a ratings boost for player A just to match or better player B.

This could also be linked with a tightening up of the training system to make it much more difficult to develop players who have very few or no flaws & for the development of mental attributes to be much more closely linked to their match performance.

A short answer to the original question. No.

A longer answer. I'd be annoyed if they moved away from it. As Cougar said, the attributes you see are reduced by a factor of ten, so they're really 0-200 (or 0.5 Ackter you massive killjoy ). But 1-20 is just...FM. At least for me. It might be because FIFA do it, but there's something that seems quite amateurish about the 1-100. Maybe it's because of the extra detail, or the larger scale even. Or it could just be my mental conditioning to expect FM style numbers.

But getting away from the wistful sepia-toned argument, I'm not sure there's really any necessity to change it. The only big argument for changing it would be if SI were to officially bring in a level much lower than what we have now. They won't do that (IMO) so the point is moot. In the end, the attributes in isolation are fine to be between 1 and 20. If they were to change, it wouldn't really change anything under the hood, just means you'd be looking at more finely grained numbers. Would anyone really be able to tell much of a difference between someone who has a specific attribute of 75 and one that has 80, any more than the same guy having 15 and 16 in the current system?

Editing to also add that this has potential for a decent discussion. If anyone votes yes (one has so far) it would be interesting to hear the reasoned arguments as to why. Would be nice to have a decent debate on the subject if both sides can articulate their arguments. Or we'll just descend into a bunfight like usual.

Sky Sports seem pretty happy to use 1-20 now too

It's probably because there's no appreciable difference between 19 and 20, let alone 19.4 and 19.5. We just don't need to see any of those differences as the attribute in isolation is meaningless. I don't even see numbers any more when I look at a player's attributes, I see the "shape" the attributes make instead. It's all about the combinations.

The game uses 0-200 as a way to control development and training. The actual difference between those numbers is negligible.

As an example, I see players like this:

He has a decent shape for a left back.

To go into a bit more depth with an example, the change from "Creativity" to "Vision" and subsequent rearranging of their positions really threw me off originally. It basically threw my entire way of judging players out the window because the shapes looked wrong to me. Why did my defenders suddenly have a massive dip when the bottom part of Mentals needed to be fat etc etc

I can't tell if I've explained this well or if I'm just making people question my sanity.

I'm the same as Ackter, except I use the Attribute Analysis graph. I have a shape in mind for each role in my squad (a heart for my striker, a baseball infield for my CBs, etc). At a glance, I can tell if any player is worth a finer look. The actual numbers are irrelevant. As many have pointed out, there is zero discernible difference between a player with 13 for Vision and 14 for vision, why make it even finer?

And, indeed, your left back has a good shape for a left back Ackter

I was thinking of modding my skin so it showed no numbers, just the four colour stages of attributes. So a player would only have 4 stages of attribute: crap, average, good, excellent.

It'd be interesting to see what difference it'd make to the game experience.

In a chaotic system like the FM match engine, the finer the detail you observe it at, the more that the differences get lost in the noise.

On top of that, there's a psychological term called 'just noticeable difference' which is exactly what it sounds like - a measure of the smallest difference people notice. In FM terms, you won't notice the difference between passing of 170 and 172. To be honest, you probably won't notice the difference between 16 and 17 but I think increments of 5% are a quite effective measure. A good balance between noticeable differences and range of values.

The 0.5 to 200 scale is great for rich match engine calculations but it's a good call to simplify it for the user.

I can't tell if I've explained this well or if I'm just making people question my sanity.

Bit late to worry about that

For those of us long familiar with seeing the scale as 1-20 (even if it's rather more incremental in practice) and using those numbers to be able to make a rough judgement about a player at a brief glance a big change in the visual scale would be tricky to adjust to. Doing attributes out of 20 seems like a good way of doing it as if was as little as a smaller scale (as far as the user can see) wouldn't be able to show the same level of variation of attributes and differences of values wouldn't register as much in a larger one so it seems nicely balanced as it is.

There's been more votes for updating it - anyone who did that care to post their reasons behind changing it?

I was thinking of modding my skin so it showed no numbers, just the four colour stages of attributes. So a player would only have 4 stages of attribute: crap, average, good, excellent.

It'd be interesting to see what difference it'd make to the game experience.

you can actually achieve this if you change the attribute representation from numbers to bars. the only thing that makes attributes distinct is the colour. so you basicaly get crap color, average, good and excellent. as you can change the threshold you can set the colors any way you like it depending on division you play.

i am playing like this for few years and it is really easy to see what are good or bad sides of each player without going into detail you can't really quantify (difference between 15 and 16 for example in vision).

If anything, I want the judging of attributes by the researchers to be more uniform. I also want the attributes to be scaled down. Far too many, particularly English club players have attributes that are FAR too good for their level. I mentioned several times over the previous season that goalkeepers in particular were barely any different, with a world class keeper like De Gea more or less equally Cardiff's Marshall down in the Championship if you focused on the core attributes. They, in my opinion, needed to have a wider gap. When someone is world class it should be blatantly obvious.

Course, personal bias comes into it a lot, I always find teams like Liverpool so ridiculously overrated it is a joke. I also felt defenders were often a bit too good for their own good, particularly Manchester United over the last few seasons have been an obvious example; - I guess, we'll never have full agreement, but it would be good to see the more clearer cases dealt with - wasn't there mention that the English researchers were going to be told to scale it down a bit?

I've voted yes now mainly from a devil's advocate point of view. I actually don't think the game NEEDS it nor do I think it SHOULD happen, but I'm sure there is some kind of progress to be made.

One thing that bothers me is that comparing two players is a little too definitive for my liking. That is to say it is too easy to KNOW that player X is faster than player Y, and so on. Follow up questions to this could be: who is faster with the ball or without? In a straight line or not? In this regard I think the mechanics work well, because the attributes combine with each other to give these questions an answer - for example by considering a players Pace and Acceleration in combination with his Dribbling, Agility and Stamina.

The problem for me is that when you start to look at the attributes like this, it becomes too easy to understand the type of player you are dealing with. For instance, high tackling means very little in combination with low teamwork or bravery. I think comparing players is far too clear in this respect.

An extreme change that I would like is for the game to remove attributes altogether. No idea how this could be achieved, especially without revolutionary graphics, but maybe some decent ideas could come up by considering this extreme situation, even if it is unlikely.

For example, consider how people generally talk about football. If we were to agree that player were a good passer, then imo we are incorporating attributes such as composure, decisions and vision into this. Without any one of those attributes we may not describe the player as being a good passer. In Fm, this player could actually have 20 Passing.

So my idea would be to somehow replace the attributes with some kind of collection of match-relevant skill sets.

I'm imagining you click on a player, and instead of the attributes there are 2 or 3 panes showing a variety of things. Perhaps you could choose from multiple panes to allow you judge players in your own way. The information in the panes would be generated from the players attributes, etc, which would be hidden.

The first pane may appear like a heatmap and show the players preferred position. For instance if you had two AML's, one a natural wideman, and the other an inside forward type, then the wideman's heatmap would be much more dense into the corner flag area, with the inside forward type showing more preference to (widish) central areas. These differences could be amplified by the presence of PPMs such as "hugs line" or "Cuts inside."

A second pane may be "specialties." This could be something like "Excellent at picking out players from wide positions." Now this could be due to high crossing, however the player may actually have exceptional teamwork, decisions, and anticipation, and actually have quite bad crossing. I wouldn't know for sure. Other things could be "Very quick while running with the ball (Pace, Acceleration, Agility, Dribbling etc)," or "Excellent at making penetrative runs at speed (Speed, Off the Ball, Anticipation,) or "Very good at holding off players to retain the ball (Strength, Balance, First touch). And other obvious ones like "dominant in the air" (Jumping, Aggression, Bravery, Teamwork,) or "never stops running" (Stamina, Determination, Work Rate) etc. Perhaps these descriptions could come in gold, silver or bronze to indicate a rough level in terms of world football, rather than your current level.

A third pane would be weaknesses, working in the same way as above. For instance "Very unreliable set-piece taker (could be free kicks 20 but composure 1,) or "Has problems hitting the target on a regular basis (could be weak finishing, or good finishing in the context of poor composure, balance, decisions or consistency.)

A fourth pane could be something like "medical and training statistics" which could all be generated based off a players attributes and personality, and perhaps morale also. For example, for my own team I would have stats that my various coaching and medical teams would be gathering for me. A simple one would be sprint times for various distances, which obviously would imply the relative attributes for Pace, Acceleration and Stamina for example, perhaps shrouded slightly by some personality and morale effects. You could click sort the lists so that it was easy to see who was the best and worst. Additionally you would have some stat on endurance and recovery - implying things like Stamina and Natural fitness. Penalty conversion rate could also be a thing - it could imply penalty taking attributes, but also composure and pressure, if the player usually misses in a match but is great in the training stats.

Before you confirm a transfer, the medical happens, and the players results appear in the list for you to quickly compare. This would be the first opportunity to be told the player was injury prone.

I think having panes 1, 2 and 3 available for all players, essentially as a heavily expanded scout report, and then making pane 4 only available for your own players would be an interesting balance between more and less information. It should be relatively easy to do as it is just a series of calculations made from the players attributes and personality.

Overall I think the database is brilliant, and the attributes are the right ones, especially in terms of running the ME. But I do think that obscuring the attributes and replacing them with a skill set derived from these attributes could be a good way to go.

The problem with attributes is that they are never wrong. We have staff opinions to try and throw us off track, but as soon as we've uncovered their attributes, we know - without a doubt, how good they are.

Moving the user display away from the current attribute panel gets a from me, the challenge for SI would be in how they allow the manager to judge a player based on coach/scout text descriptions without simply replacing the numbers with a line for text for each attribute on the report card & your idea of linking attributes to skill groups is a good one.

Improving the 3D visuals to a much more realistic level of detail would be needed so hat there less doubt as t what the match engine is attempting to show us via the 3d engine & I'd like to think such a push for higher end graphics would be welcomed by a majority, this could also help in creating a training ground module where the manager can watch what players are doing (if they want to) & would ultimately require FM'ers to give much more thought to what players are doing in training & in matches when making decision on who to buy, who to select for the match & how to use them.

The compromise would then be to keep the current attribute panel UI & to not have the training ground system for FMC, a classic view for the game labelled as the classic version.

Some interesting discussion points there YKW as usual and I agree with certainly some of it.

A few years ago the idea of removing attributes was a total no no but I think that is a direction FM could take, even if its just as an option to start with.

Ackter said earlier he doesn't really see attributes any more he sees shapes in the number columns while I see it more like benallen (post #10), shapes based on the attribute anaysis graph. I may glance at the actual numbers to see if there is a weakness in the key skills but in general I'm moving away from seeing the individual numbers and have done for a while now.

I can see a lot of users disagreeing with the idea but I think it would benefit FM in the long run to hide the numbers and show something more generic for each player.

It would have to be an option - removing the current attribute view would be commercial suicide tbh

It would have to be an option - removing the current attribute view would be commercial suicide tbh

If it was done gradually I don't see why.

Sliders got removed and there was uproar but the community adapted over time getting used to the alternative. Like any major change some will like it some won't.

There's a huge different between replacing sliders and replacing attributes.

Remove attributes and the casual market is gone.

One to test the market through a pre-release beta & the attribute panel imo should remain for FMC, to say it would be commercial suicide when there are multiple FM based products could be viewed as being a little too cautious.

It certainly would be a tough call for Miles to make.

One to test the market through a pre-release beta & as I said the attribute panel imo should remain for FMC, to say it would be commercial suicide when there are multiple FM based products could be viewed as being a little too cautious.

It certainly would be a tough call for Miles to make.

Maybe SI can create an option to show decimal points? If you says the range is already from 0-5 to 200, i don't see why we can have an option to show a decimal point.

There's a huge different between replacing sliders and replacing attributes.

Remove attributes and the casual market is gone.

Depends what it gets replaced with, I can't see the casual market being too bothered about 40 odd detailed attributes being replaced by something that is a bit more simplified & generic.

I would have thought the biggest opposition to this would be the hardcore users.

Maybe SI can create an option to show decimal points? If you says the range is already from 0-5 to 200, i don't see why we can have an option to show a decimal point.

Maybe SI can create an option to show decimal points? If you says the range is already from 0-5 to 200, i don't see why we can have an option to show a decimal point.

What benefit would you get from that as a user?

You can't tell the difference between 15 & 16 passing so knowing a player is 15.3 and another 15.7 makes no real difference.

Maybe SI can create an option to show decimal points? If you says the range is already from 0-5 to 200, i don't see why we can have an option to show a decimal point.

Why?

You can't tell the difference between 19 and 20, how would you be able to tell the difference between 19.4 and 19.5?

Get stuffed, Cougar

Why?

You can't tell the difference between 19 and 20, how would you be able to tell the difference between 19.4 and 19.5?

At least it would make the effects of training more visible. And as I said, just as an option in menus, like tick this to show decimal points not a feature or something.

At least it would make the effects of training more visible.

You can see this already in the game.

Get stuffed, Cougar

You can see this already in the game.

Yeah the 45 degree arrows represent a increase or drop don't they but just not a visible one, say 16.2 > 16.3 or something.

You can also see a more accurate representation on the training development graph.

I'm kinda surprised that more hasn't been made of the attribute graph/octagon, do people not use it as much as I do?

Its more or less my first port of call when looking at a player.

Yeah the 45 degree arrows represent a increase or drop don't they but just not a visible one, say 16.2 > 16.3 or something.

No, I'm not talking about arrows. A player's Development tab shows exactly how he's progressing, to the decimal.

Edit: Get stuffed, Barside.

I'm kinda surprised that more hasn't been made of the attribute graph/octagon, do people not use it as much as I do?

If SI removed the octagon, I wouldn't even notice.

I never use the octagon.

At least it would make the effects of training more visible. And as I said, just as an option in menus, like tick this to show decimal points not a feature or something.

I hated this idea, completely, until I read this. It could be a nice touch to see it from a training development standpoint.

I'm kinda surprised that more hasn't been made of the attribute graph/octagon, do people not use it as much as I do?

Its more or less my first port of call when looking at a player.

I never use the octagon, it's far too vague to be of any real use to me.

I'm kinda surprised that more hasn't been made of the attribute graph/octagon, do people not use it as much as I do?

Its more or less my first port of call when looking at a player.

I use it regularly and it would be another thing I'd find it tricky to adjust to not having if it was removed, especially when comparing players.

I'm kinda surprised that more hasn't been made of the attribute graph/octagon, do people not use it as much as I do?

Its more or less my first port of call when looking at a player.

I find it incredibly handy to get an overview of a player.

I never used to like the octagon but over recent FM's I have found myself referring to far more than the attribute panel, if there was actually something useful in the current menu I'd considering not having the attribute panel on the player profile page.

I use it regularly and it would be another thing I'd find it tricky to adjust to not having if it was removed, especially when comparing players.

I wasn't thinking about removing the octagon I thought it could form at least part of the replacement of the numbers

I've voted yes now mainly from a devil's advocate point of view. I actually don't think the game NEEDS it nor do I think it SHOULD happen, but I'm sure there is some kind of progress to be made.

One thing that bothers me is that comparing two players is a little too definitive for my liking. That is to say it is too easy to KNOW that player X is faster than player Y, and so on. Follow up questions to this could be: who is faster with the ball or without? In a straight line or not? In this regard I think the mechanics work well, because the attributes combine with each other to give these questions an answer - for example by considering a players Pace and Acceleration in combination with his Dribbling, Agility and Stamina.

The problem for me is that when you start to look at the attributes like this, it becomes too easy to understand the type of player you are dealing with. For instance, high tackling means very little in combination with low teamwork or bravery. I think comparing players is far too clear in this respect.

An extreme change that I would like is for the game to remove attributes altogether. No idea how this could be achieved, especially without revolutionary graphics, but maybe some decent ideas could come up by considering this extreme situation, even if it is unlikely.

For example, consider how people generally talk about football. If we were to agree that player were a good passer, then imo we are incorporating attributes such as composure, decisions and vision into this. Without any one of those attributes we may not describe the player as being a good passer. In Fm, this player could actually have 20 Passing.

So my idea would be to somehow replace the attributes with some kind of collection of match-relevant skill sets.

I'm imagining you click on a player, and instead of the attributes there are 2 or 3 panes showing a variety of things. Perhaps you could choose from multiple panes to allow you judge players in your own way. The information in the panes would be generated from the players attributes, etc, which would be hidden.

The first pane may appear like a heatmap and show the players preferred position. For instance if you had two AML's, one a natural wideman, and the other an inside forward type, then the wideman's heatmap would be much more dense into the corner flag area, with the inside forward type showing more preference to (widish) central areas. These differences could be amplified by the presence of PPMs such as "hugs line" or "Cuts inside."

A second pane may be "specialties." This could be something like "Excellent at picking out players from wide positions." Now this could be due to high crossing, however the player may actually have exceptional teamwork, decisions, and anticipation, and actually have quite bad crossing. I wouldn't know for sure. Other things could be "Very quick while running with the ball (Pace, Acceleration, Agility, Dribbling etc)," or "Excellent at making penetrative runs at speed (Speed, Off the Ball, Anticipation,) or "Very good at holding off players to retain the ball (Strength, Balance, First touch). And other obvious ones like "dominant in the air" (Jumping, Aggression, Bravery, Teamwork,) or "never stops running" (Stamina, Determination, Work Rate) etc. Perhaps these descriptions could come in gold, silver or bronze to indicate a rough level in terms of world football, rather than your current level.

A third pane would be weaknesses, working in the same way as above. For instance "Very unreliable set-piece taker (could be free kicks 20 but composure 1,) or "Has problems hitting the target on a regular basis (could be weak finishing, or good finishing in the context of poor composure, balance, decisions or consistency.)

A fourth pane could be something like "medical and training statistics" which could all be generated based off a players attributes and personality, and perhaps morale also. For example, for my own team I would have stats that my various coaching and medical teams would be gathering for me. A simple one would be sprint times for various distances, which obviously would imply the relative attributes for Pace, Acceleration and Stamina for example, perhaps shrouded slightly by some personality and morale effects. You could click sort the lists so that it was easy to see who was the best and worst. Additionally you would have some stat on endurance and recovery - implying things like Stamina and Natural fitness. Penalty conversion rate could also be a thing - it could imply penalty taking attributes, but also composure and pressure, if the player usually misses in a match but is great in the training stats.

Before you confirm a transfer, the medical happens, and the players results appear in the list for you to quickly compare. This would be the first opportunity to be told the player was injury prone.

I think having panes 1, 2 and 3 available for all players, essentially as a heavily expanded scout report, and then making pane 4 only available for your own players would be an interesting balance between more and less information. It should be relatively easy to do as it is just a series of calculations made from the players attributes and personality.

Overall I think the database is brilliant, and the attributes are the right ones, especially in terms of running the ME. But I do think that obscuring the attributes and replacing them with a skill set derived from these attributes could be a good way to go.

i quoted this so anyone missed it could read it. this is pretty much how it works in real. you never look only at one attribute but in blocks. and as in real you can't quantify creativity with an attribute you need descriptions. it is quite different for phisycall attributes which are measured precisely (at least on top level). nevertheless the manager doesn't need all that precision he needs sintesised version from fitness coaches.

if SI decided to go YKW's route it would get pretty close to reality which brings another problem. making the game closer to work, it should really be optional as i guess a lot of players like the simplicity and exatcness of numbered attributes.

if SI decided to go YKW's route it would get pretty close to reality which brings another problem. making the game closer to work, it should really be optional as i guess a lot of players like the simplicity and exatcness of numbered attributes.

The age old problem that comes up in so many areas in FM.

Personally, I would be far from against something like this. It would be quite a seismic change though, and I could see there being a fair bit of fury from those who would rather not do that much work in judging players. They might be derided as casual, but I can definitely understand if someone would rather just look at numbers and compare that way. After all, we've never known any different.

However, if there was a way they could bring it in where it's an option - traditional numbers, and less traditional "fog-of-YKW" that's outlined in that post - then I think they'd be a lot safer. But do they want to do that? Could they do that? Big choice to make.

I don't think we'll ever see them move away from the norm, but hopefully we could maybe get a bit more skinning support so that someone could build it in.

YKW, I'd suggest you post it in the wishlist thread, so it doesn't get lost. I agree with Ackter in that I cannot see it happening, but it's a good idea. Maybe the ideas can be used and some of it could be incorporated in a way.

if SI decided to go YKW's route it would get pretty close to reality which brings another problem. making the game closer to work,

Never understood the work argument myself.

You play a football manager sim because you want to simulate playing as a manager just like you play other genres because you want to experience/roleplay/simulate that type of genre.

When you say a game is too much like work what you are basically saying is you don't enjoy it and that it takes too much effort, in which case why are you playing it?

When you say a game is too much like work what you are basically saying is you don't enjoy it and that it takes too much effort, in which case why are you playing it?

While I don't agree with the entire sentiment MBarbaric used, the above kind of proves the point. If a user feels like they're having to put too much into judging a player, then they'll feel like it's tedious, like a job. And, like you say, they won't enjoy it and will stop playing. You've got to get the balance right.

Personally, I would be far from against something like this. It would be quite a seismic change though, and I could see there being a fair bit of fury from those who would rather not do that much work in judging players. They might be derided as casual, but I can definitely understand if someone would rather just look at numbers and compare that way. After all, we've never known any different.

Personally I'm not seeing the idea as one that takes more work.

I'm viewing it more that instead of detailed numbers what the user sees is more vague and generic, much in the same way that for tactics the sliders were replaced with roles & duties.