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Dynamic Club/Competition/Nation Reputation


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As most of you know, reputation has a very large effect in the game, ranging from deciding whether a player will join your club, to whether your club will be able to stomach facing a team like Man Utd or Real Madrid. Although it probably isn't evident to quite a few members of the community, previous iterations of the Football Manager franchise have had a dynamic club reputation (increases with promotions, trophies, etc.) but both Competition and National reputations have been static. In other words, you could play until the year 4503 and the EPL will still be the top league, even if you've single-handedly made every single team in the Latvian league winners of the Champions League.

If you only manage teams in the top flight, this wouldn't effect you very often, as you'd find yourself in one of the best positions in the world (everyone wants to join your club, and the prize money is spectacular) but for Lower League Managers and people like myself who play in underdog leagues (A-League myself), it is almost impossible to leave a lasting impression on the game world. As far as I understand, the Competition and National reputations are still static in FM09, but I think that at the moment this is the games biggest flaw, and I emplore the SI staff to reassess the importance of dynamic reputations. To sum up my point in an easily digested fashion, I will briefly outline how static and dynamic reputations would effect an LLM game after a successful 10 year period (Actual examples exist in the LLM section of the forum, but this one is imaginary).

Team: Vikingur

League: Icelandic 1st Division

Honours: Won top Icelandic League 8 times, Progressed past group stage of Champions League once, been in group stage twice.

With static reputation:

-Reputation of team has increased considerably

-Reputation of league is same as it was in year 1

-Prize money in league is same as it was in year 1

-English, Spanish, Italian and German leagues are still at the top of the pile

-Vikingur still have trouble signing players above Blue Square North level, due to poor incentive to join a poorly reputable league

-Impossible to keep any quality players due to high appeal of main European leagues

-Quality of Icelandic regens, and youth players through squad are still very poor

-National team is still struggling to make a mark on world football

-A comparative End Game is reached

With dynamic reputation:

-Teams reputation has increased considerably

-Reputation of league has increased due to one of its teams making waves consistently on the world stage

-Prize money in league has increased due to popularity of football in country increasing

-English, Spanish, Italian and German leagues may still be top, but depending on how teams have fared, one or two of the leagues may have dropped quality a little, and other mid-level Euro leagues such as the Dutch league may have caught up.

-Vikingur can now compete for transfers against League 1 English side, and possibly score the odd CC Championship level player

-The quality if Icelandic regens has increased slightly, as has the quantity

-National team is still struggling, but there is hope on the horizon

-The game world has shifted slightly, and given another 30 or so years, the Icelandic 1st division may become a considerable league in Europe.

The main reason I wish to bring this to the foreground of the community, is that if any of you have played 30+ year LLM games, you have most likely found the brick wall of static reputation tiresome. You would have found yourself pumping hours into the same team for year upon year, season upon season, finding that even though you are getting results, no-one wants to join your team, and you still get pocket money prizes in your league, and only 23 people attend your matches. Obviously there is a potential for dynamic reputations to cause the game to become ridiculous. The game world may become saturated in money, or you may find the top flight jumping from country to country so often that it is impossible to keep a job. These problems can be easily solved by giving current reputations some sense of inertia, making reputation changes slow enough to not flip the world on it's Asia, but fast enough to not make LLM managing in obscure leagues pointless. It is a bit bothersome to run a 100+ year simulation of the game (on holiday whilst unemployed) only to find that the world cup is Brazil vs Germany, and the Champions league was Liverpool vs Barcelona, and to check on dear little Vikingur to find that they still have an amputee goalie.

I hope someone reads this and understands what I'm ranting on about, but this is personally a large issue for me in the game. It isn't game breaking, but it is preventing this game from being something beautiful.

Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I may not have a perfect understanding of the reputation system in the game, but to the best of my knowledge the points discussed in this post are true to the game. If I have misunderstood or misinterpreted any game mechanic, please feel free to correct me.

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One the problems with this is that it isnt down purely to footballing reasons. Geography and world economics has a massive part to play in how/why world football is how it is.

Its no coincidence that the better leagues (just based on europe) are the most densely populated and richest countries (England, Italy, Spain, Germany and France). It wouldnt matter that a team from the Romania won the Champions League over and over, it would still be a poor country (no disrespect to any Romainians) to live compared to the euro super powers. A league one player would rather play for Laeyton Orient and live in London, then play for and live in Brasov.

This wont change (not in my lifetime anyway), and for it to change in FM a world economics model would neeed to be introduced.

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One the problems with this is that it isnt down purely to footballing reasons. Geography and world economics has a massive part to play in how/why world football is how it is.

Its no coincidence that the better leagues (just based on europe) are the most densely populated and richest countries (England, Italy, Spain, Germany and France). It wouldnt matter that a team from the Romania won the Champions League over and over, it would still be a poor country (no disrespect to any Romainians) to live compared to the euro super powers. A league one player would rather play for Laeyton Orient and live in London, then play for and live in Brasov.

This wont change (not in my lifetime anyway), and for it to change in FM a world economics model would neeed to be introduced.

You make a good point.

But it is worth noting that leagues do change over time. In Australia the quality of football has increased a ridiculous amount, and in 20 years I'd expect Australia to be a powerhouse in the sport both domestically and internationally. The reason for this is not only the creation of the A-League, but more importantly that the National team qualified for the world cup. A small event pushed up the reputation of the sport by an amazing amount. Sure this may only be possible due to the foundation of having a strong Australian economy behind it, but it is a perfect example of the reputation of the sport changing rapidly.

It may be over ambitious of me to want to turn the Icelandic league into a European powerhouse, but it is completely unrealistic to assume that the world of football will forever be the same. It is also slightly less enjoyable :p

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Good post, I've thought of this myself, and I completely agree.

As for living standards and such, I don't think it matters as much as you think. Norway has been considered by the UN to be the best country in the world to live in for a whole bunch of years now, and we still struggle to get good players from pretty much anywhere because the league is bad. About a decade ago, when Rosenborg were doing really well in Champion's League, we got a lot more focus though, and a lot of good foreign players into our league.

I think almost every country in the world has good places to live if you have the money, which a professional footballer always has (at least if it's for a decent team).

Also, it's impossible for us to predict living standards 10years+ into the future, Iceland is a good example actually, with the economic crisis there right now (and no offense to Iceland, not saying it's become a worse place to live, just an example of unpredictability). Who knows, in 20 years Romania might be a wealthier country than, say Portugal or the Netherlands, who have fairly respected leagues now.

If this were to be implemented, it should be done carefully though, even if an icelandic team wins Champion's League 10 years in a row, Iceland probably wouldn't be a huge footballing country. Baby steps would be the way to go, at least in the beginning. Could always adjust it next year ;o

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What a fab post. Excellent contribution to the forum.

I agree completely with OP. Many smaller leagues would improve over time with the continued success of one team. As for economics, many rich countries have small leagues and therefore the potential for the reputation and 'pulling power' of these leagues to be improved is enormous i.e. Norway, Iceland, Poland, Australia, etc. It would be great if this could be replicated in the game. There should also be the potential for a league to grow due to improvements in the finances of its top clubs ie through improved competition earnings and investment. The Russian league may well be showing signs of this in real life- with the money now available I'm sure that it will not be long before top name players are attracted to the top Russian teams. It would also prevent gamers hitting the LLM ceiling as described by the OP.

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That suggestion has been put across fantastically, really love the idea of being able to help change the reputation of a whole country. Scotland is a prime example of how reputation can change in real life (within a relatively small amount of time) and if at least one team does well in Europe each season then the national team and the league reputation will progress further.

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I concur, if the LLMs don't get rewarded with years of effort into improving the quality of the game in the respective countries, it almost makes management feel like a waste in the long run.

Could someone from SI at least acknowledge the problem? Funny how such common complaints tend to not hit any of the developers when they are playing this game

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I hope someone reads this and understands what I'm ranting on about, but this is personally a large issue for me in the game. It isn't game breaking, but it is preventing this game from being something beautiful.

Exactly my thoughts! I am a huge fan of the game and enjoy it a lot. One thing bothers me still. And it is this reputation matter. I know people who have won many consecutive UCL-trophies with small clubs and at the same time a struggling to keep players as they would prefer playing in a bigger club. It would be great if I can make the club bigger.

Hopefully SI will read this and maybe we will see this change in 2010 or 2011? Either way it will be a major step forward. I would compare it to 2D->3D

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For what it's worth, I think dynamic league reputation would be great.

Isn't there a 'desirability factor' or something for each city, which determines in-part whether players would want to move there or not? Would this not account for the 'russia factor'?

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There are a lot of non-football factors that influence the football in different ways, but the game does have stats on the editor for the economic development of individual nations, and if this could change in the course of the game then the impact of economics on the improvement of the national league and of youth coming through in that country could be accounted for.

This is one of the best ideas I've seen put forward in a long time.

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Excellent post. This has also been brought up in the challenges forum (aka Gundo's challenge) that these glass ceilings exist due to country rep.

While I agree 100%, the problem is finding a balance. The changes would have to be slow, and the main powers would have to stay that way. The thing is that even if you did have the best team in the world playing in Iceland, you still have the issues of restrictions caused by population to consider. Thus, even if the league's rep was slowly dragged along by your success, there would have to be some sort of cut off mechanism to regulate that.

I think the Scottish league is a great example of the limitations caused by the size of the country. Celtic (and ok, Rangers) are to me easily among the biggest clubs in the world. I have no doubt that if you dropped them into the English league, once they got going, they'd be massive, like you couldn't believe.

But right now, they're massively restricted. The TV income they receive is curtently commesurate to the size of the country. Even if all the teams got better, the league itself would still have narrow appeal to fans in other countries, thus restricting the possibility of those crucial TV streams ever rising by a meaningful level.

Then you could also regard Scotland as a 'developed' football nation, by which I mean it's very well established, and has those massive clubs that occasionally make inroads in Europe. Basically, it's Iceland in, say 50 year's time, under your analogy. Has that in itself improve the quality of the league or national team overall though? It doesn't seem that way really. Yes it has a higher rep than other similar sized countries, but can we compete at the top table? Not a chance.

Ultimately therefore, I think it should be dynamic, but there would have to be pretty strict limits in place.

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Quality OP, and it's really a problem which probably got everyone complain who tried to manage in a small(ish) nation.

I'm all for dynamic reputations, as it's really annoying that after two decades the football world can be still quite static.

Just an example from my longest FM07 save, playing LLM. I've started with the tiny Swedish team of Akropolis, and after like more then a decade we were up in the Allsvenskan. We won it in some years, and local club reputation went soaring. Right.

The thing that kept my goat was when we were constantly playing either in the CL or in the UEFA Cup group stages, yet for example Norwegian teams - who did about **** all that period, and have not been qualified for the CL for 5-6 years - could simply poach my players. Even midtable teams.

That's where - as MachinegunHead states - things go wrong.

League reputations do not change all of the sudden, but they certainly do over time. I'm not an expert in Scandinavian football, just a sports journalist, but I think there was a shift of power between Sweden and Norway.

1980s SWE>NOR

early 1990s SWE>NOR

from mid- to late 90s SWE=NOR

2000s SWE<NOR

This goes for the league level. A shift like this can be traced back to a single team's great performance (Rosenborg's countinous CL-presence probably brought a lot of money into Norwegian football), economic conditions (See Russian league nowadays, or the Ukrainian big clubs: they are filthy rich thanks to their billionaire owners, and all of the sudden the league level and attractiveness goes way up). Sometimes there is a sudden peak at footballing level (see e.g. Slovenia around 2000), which is followed by decline.

So league reputation is quite dynamic IRL (although it's a slow dynamism usually), and I think it's very much influenced (and restricted, see the Scottish example) by the world economic factors too. Climate (see Russia) is also a limit, as was said. The problem is that I don't really know how these factors could be done within the frame of the game.

The way the people look at the sport also influences lots of things. E.g. in my native Hungary crowds nowadays are drastically down from even the 90s, not speaking about the 50s or 60s - decades of struggle made the stands empty.

A thing I can imagine in FM would be a "League reputation index", which could be calculated from the club coefficients/national team coefficient/the economical situation of the local teams/area desirability. From these a 1-20 rating (or any other scale) could be calculated and leagues could be re-ranked based on their performances.

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High quality posts Bermybhoy and Emgergo. I understand, and agree with, both of your posts entirely.

Obviously pointing out that it IS a problem is the first step, and consequently the easiest one. I think you've both raised some quite feasible problems with a dynamic reputation system, but you've both come up with good ideas on how to overcome it. I think that the inclusion of set boundaries of the game to keep things realistic, and the constant comparison between leagues, are great starting blocks for a new reputation system.

Obviously with the boundaries, you will need them to prevent Macedonia becoming a powerhouse, as that will (most likely) never happen. But currently in the game the only deciding factor with its success against other smaller nations is based entirely upon their luck with the regens. The regens themselves being highly randomised and skewed to maintain the initial standings of teams. So I think not only would boundaries be required to prevent small nations from becoming massive (as you pointed out with population being a huge factor) but I also think that any reputation system (and its boundaries) would need to also link into the regen system. Of course this raises more questions and challenges. Using Australia as an example, we have only really started paying REAL attention to football over the past 4 years, and we probably wont start seeing a huge jump in youth players for another few years. So there are obvious lag effects with changing reputation as well. Of course, it'd be harsh to expect the whole system to be revamped and remodelled perfectly within one year by SI.

As for the league reputation index, I think you've got a great idea Emgergo. Especially seeing as all the factors you brought up are already within the game engine. I can't see it being too difficult to run a calculation once or twice a year that re-ranks leagues based on all these factors, and then allow the new rankings to weigh on player's decisions. I personally think it would be quite an effective, and simple way to implement the idea of a dynamic league reputation, but it would mostly be the perfect tweaking of the system that would pose the real problem.

To put it simply, the game is based upon the idea of teams competing and vying for top spot in their respective league. Is football not also a case of leagues competing in the exact same manner, to become the best on the world stage?

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The more I think about this post the better it gets.

I really like all of the carefully thought-out responses and agree with all of them. The 'glass ceiling' actually prevents me staying at smaller clubs from lesser leagues for longer. If dynamic reputations were introduced I could see the possibility of a 40, 50, 60 etc year career at one lesser league club. At the moment I get the all too familiar 'I've achieved all I can here' feeling after a relatively short space of time. It would be great if SI could implement this.

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  • SI Staff

It is as someone has said, that the league repuations are fixed and club reputations are limited according to these and that is the same for Fm09, but this is certainly something that interests me because it would make the game more interesting in the long term.

However it is a complicated change and from a testing point of view creates further challanges, so it is something we will look into and be very careful how we go about it.

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It is as someone has said, that the league repuations are fixed and club reputations are limited according to these and that is the same for Fm09, but this is certainly something that interests me because it would make the game more interesting in the long term.

However it is a complicated change and from a testing point of view creates further challanges, so it is something we will look into and be very careful how we go about it.

Now I'm excited. I could hear the adrenaline in your post EdL- admit it, your brain is whirring with ideas of how this could be approached... Good work. I'll look out eagerly for further news... Glad I'm not a coder tho, this could be a serious headache!

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Excellent opening post, I have to agree with it in its entirety. A dynamic club reputation would be a far better way of running the reputation section of the game, however tight restrictions would have to be brought into to stop the whole game world flipping on its head.

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It is as someone has said, that the league repuations are fixed and club reputations are limited according to these and that is the same for Fm09, but this is certainly something that interests me because it would make the game more interesting in the long term.

However it is a complicated change and from a testing point of view creates further challanges, so it is something we will look into and be very careful how we go about it.

Thank you very much for your reply.

Having programmed (not for video games though, engineering simulations) in the past, I can understand the challenge that making a static variable into a dynamic one would pose. Most likely it would throw the currently equilibrium that generally exists in the game world on its head, and would be hard to ensure that each person's game world turns out 'realistically'.

Although I also think that it would be daft of SI to not take on this ambitious challenge.

As for how long it would take you, I must admit that I'd be surprised if it was implemented before FM11. (you can take that as a challenge as well, if you want :p)

Again, I am glad that someone from SI can see the value in such a change. Here's to hoping that one day it is a reality!

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MachinegunHead, I'm quite on board with the need - I've been campaigning for dynamic competition and national reputation(s) for quite some time.

I think it winds up being more important to people in emerging nations, obviously. I want to be able take an MLS team and the U.S. national team, and turn them into a side with a legitimate chance to win the World Cup some year. When you look back at the past 20 years of U.S. "soccer", you can clearly see how dynamic this nature is. In 1986, the U.S. team was unable to even qualify for the World Cup and was a massive underdog when facing Mexico; by 2004, the U.S. team reached the final eight of the World Cup and beat Mexico both in qualifying and in the Round of 16. We've gone from not having a league at all to having a league that was about equivalent to League Two in quality of play and international reputation, to having a league that is about equivalent to the Championship in quality of play and international reputation.

For that to happen in-game, those numbers have to be dynamic.

The other examples given - Russia, Sweden/Norway, Australia - further illustrate the point .. and honestly, fifteen years ago I'd have said that the Italian and Spanish leagues outranked the E.P.L. for the "top league" status.

League reputation is quite dynamic IRL (although it's a slow dynamism usually), and I think it's very much influenced (and restricted, see the Scottish example) by the world economic factors too. Climate (see Russia) is also a limit, as was said. The problem is that I don't really know how these factors could be done within the frame of the game.

It seems to me that there are two possible approaches here.

One is setting a "PA" for each country, based on population, climate, and economic prowess. Thus, the U.S. - and China - might both have maximum P.A. ... so long as it requires truly extraordinary progress in that nation to improve the current reputation towards the P.A. So, you might set the Latvian P.A. much, much lower.

Alternately, you could ensure that you took into account a number of factors in creating the current reputation:

- performance of national team in past eight years

- performance of best club team in international competition in past five years

- performance of fifth-best club team in international competition in past five years

- population

- climate

- economy

This would do a lot for, for example, explaining the Scotland phenomenon. The performance of Celtic and Rangers in international competition - ooh, speaking of which, I'm delighted to get a live broadcast from Celtic Park this afternoon - is one positive factor. However, the population, climate, and economy are all factors against .. and when combined with the performance of the national team and the fifth-best club team, you begin to see a lot of limits.

Thus, improving Scotland's national reputation beyond its current would require not just making Celtic champions of Europe, but perhaps also having a couple other human managers turning clubs like Hibs and Hearts into European powers, maybe winning the UEFA Cup, etc., and turning the national team into a perennial qualifier for both the Euros and the World Cup, possibly even getting beyond the group stages.

Even that might not be enough to overcome climate, economy, and population to make the S.P.L rival the E.P.L.

(Incidentally, you might argue that the E.P.L. is as strong as it is *despite* having a few points off for climate.)

. . .

For a first pass at dynamic reputation, I think you could set climate, economy, and population as static values.

Eventually, long-term, I'd love to see economy and population become dynamic factors as well; I understand that many European nations have fairly static populations but that is not the case for most of the world. And, its obvious that economic cycles vary from country to country and simply within themselves.

Personally, I think it would be a lot of fun to struggle against a collapsing economy, trying to maintain my club's stature despite dwindling revenues ... and of course, it would be tremendous to be in a nation which went through an ecomonic boom.

Long term, not short term.

. . .

Slightly more interesting to think about is the idea of dynamic competition reputations. Any idea how that would work?

For example, the League Cup used to be more important to English sides, did it not? How would we simulate the dwindling importance?

. . .

This is certainly something that interests me because it would make the game more interesting in the long term.

However it is a complicated change and from a testing point of view creates further challanges, so it is something we will look into and be very careful how we go about it.

I am very glad to hear that - thank you for taking the time to reply!

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Fantastic post Amaroq. You obviously HAVE thought about this for a lot longer than I have :p

I think dynamic competition reputations is a lot harder to visualise conceptually. One cannot really predict how teams will approach certain competitions in 10 years time, nor would I even know what kind of factors to base it on. I mean, if I looked at it from the perspective of myself as a manager in the game, most of it comes down to comparing the rewards, and effort, associated with each competition.

Maybe the best way to simulate it is to allow each AI manager to have a priority for a certain outcome. If they want cash they will aim for the optimum cash goal, and possibly use poor paying competitions as practice matches for their 2nd team. For example a team in the BSS would ignore most cups and just put all their resources towards winning the league, as it provides a pathway to better competition, and hence more mulah. Maybe if done in a particular way, you may be able to create the effect of some competitions losing importance.

As for competitions on continents, you wouldn't expect the things like EUFA and Champions League to make a switchero, as their formats lend to one always being more prestigious than the other. I would however like to see the possibility for other continental cups to become more renown. I'd love to see the Asian Champions League ending up with a higher quality of football, and more prize money :D

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I dont know if my opinion will count for anything... But how about only the league you are playing can be

dynamic repuation... Would that make all the programing etc easier? Like if you do play LLM, most likely you'll

only want to take a team or a league to the greatest hieghts so it doesnt really matter if the other leagues

are still crap or the same right?

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I dont know if my opinion will count for anything... But how about only the league you are playing can be dynamic repuation... Would that make all the programing etc easier? Like if you do play LLM, most likely you'll only want to take a team or a league to the greatest hieghts so it doesnt really matter if the other leagues are still crap or the same right?

It depends what kind of LLaMa you are. The LLaMas on the SI LLaMa forum strive for realism above all else; therefore, your suggestion wouldn't be acceptable in the same way as 'load all players from nation X' is unacceptable because it unbalances the game long-term. To keep things in proper long-term balance all leagues would have to be dynamic and interdependent.

Like others, I'm encouraged that EdL takes a serious interest and I hope he brings it to the notice of the team when they start brainstorming ideas for FM10 (by which time Amaroq should be a full-time consultant! ;)).

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A simple solution would be to allow Nations/Competitions to have VERY SLIGHT and weighted dynamic reputations. Meaning, nations with established leagues among the top, but outside slightly, like Scotland, Holland, France, Germany, etc... would be able to move around a bit over LONG periods of time, but smaller nations like Israel, who just aren't going to be attracting the top players any time soon, will not be dynamic, or will be so slightly dynamic that it would take 200 years for them to get to the reputation level of the EPL or La Liga, etc.

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For people that like to have long term games, leagues must be dynamic. A league can't realistically remain a 'poor' league if it dominates the champion's league 10 years in a row. Think of the attention, reputation and investment that would go into that league which has shown itself growing to be a force to be reckoned with?

They don't have to by dynamic freely. Would it be too complicated to have League reputation grow according to team performances in continental competitions?

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Well done for such a great idea, in essence it definitely makes the FM game world way more realistic, and thanks EdL for taking the time to reply to such a good suggestion.

Lets see how this pans out over the coming weeks/months/years

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I'm gonna post to bump this back onto the first page. Would be good to get more constructive suggestions in relation to dynamic reputations.

I personally don't have anything to add to this thread, beyond the fact that I agree wholeheartedly with the OP that it would improve the integrity of the long term game outside of the major nations.

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I have been suffering from the static reputation playing in the Austrian League. I won 13 consecutive titles with Sturm Graz and won the Champion's League twice, which I considered quite an accomplishment within about 15 seasons, seeing as the team reputation will never exceed national status.

While my (the manager's) reputation went up to continental pretty soon and I believe by time I changed to the German League (due to the obvious limitations as stated in several posts above) it was even worldwide. This reputation helped me in securing lots of highly talented youngsters, but by time they reach approximately 23 they are moving on to bigger clubs. With these sales (basically being a high quality training facility for big clubs) I managed to be the richest club in the world and certainly could pay pretty much any wage a player would demand.

The stadium expanded from 15400 to about 45000 and was reasonably filled most of the time and also created some further income.

But the Austrian League is the Austrian League. Realistically enough other clubs did not manage to maintain a good level, because they could simply not finance it. TV money for a year are about 1.6 mio EURO and if you win the league you get the amazing amount of about 450.000 EURO. Needless to mention, that these funds will not be able to get you quality players beyond a certain hot prospect status.

While I agree with the original idea, that it would be nice to see the reputation develop a bit according to performances (national team and club performances on international level) I also think that it has to be kept in mind that certain nations are small and that they will realistically never manage to get a league average attendance of above 10.000 per game. Therefor it will limit TV money and it will limit the prize money from the national league. I paid much more bonuses to my squad every year for cup and league, than I ever got in from these competitions.

And these factors will not or if, only very slowly change. Capacities are limited in the game, which is also a good thing, because a village with 5000 ppl will never fill a 50.000 stadium. You cannot take weather, economy etc into consideration for this game, becuase it would highly exceed not only the need but also the programming.

But I do think that a club should be able to gain continental reputation for performances. This gain in reputation will allow better players which again will allow greater international success. And that brings in the money. Especially for a club where you get about 2 mio EURO for prize money and TV money when winning the league.

So to sum it up: club reputation (and therefor nation reputation as a requirement) should be able to increase and decrease, while I think that prize money etc for competitions should not really change, because I don't see it happening. After all club reputation is all you need to rise in order to make the changes you want. And e.g. Sturm Graz will never reach a level of Real Madrid or Manchester United, no matter what happens, because the infrastructure and surroundings have their limitations, as well as the nation has it's limitations (e.g. lack of "football maniacs" like I am ;))

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As someone who almost exclusively plays long-term games I'd love for all reputation values to be dynamic. The quality of leagues change in the same way clubs do, just over a longer period of time. Also, we do now have recently established leagues like the MLS and A-League in the game and those are bound to improve even on rather short term. For the MLS especially, it's hard to argue that the market or attractiveness of the country would be a hurdle for development. I think this is one of few shortcomings of FM when it comes to long-term games so while I'm sure it's a pain to balance, it'd be a great improvement to the sort of open gameworld concept that the game is built on.

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  • SI Staff

The dynamic reputations for leagues and nations does indeed sound like a good idea and I'm sure things like this will be looked at in the future. However, I do need to remind everyone about some of the points raised in this thread about the complexity of making reputations dynamic, as it would have to tie in with a lot of other areas of the game, such as finances.

Building a dynamic fluctuating financial model that really works realistically is something that is not that easy to accomplish. As we have seen in real life lately, global finances are anything but predicatable and even the so called professionals of the financial world can make a huge hash of things on a grand scale. So considering the current level of detail we already have in the finances of the game, changing all of that to work in a truly dynamic fashion with national economies developing etc. would be quite a feat for a computer game that is still mainly about football managing and global economics :)

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The dynamic reputations for leagues and nations does indeed sound like a good idea and I'm sure things like this will be looked at in the future. However, I do need to remind everyone about some of the points raised in this thread about the complexity of making reputations dynamic, as it would have to tie in with a lot of other areas of the game, such as finances.

Building a dynamic fluctuating financial model that really works realistically is something that is not that easy to accomplish. As we have seen in real life lately, global finances are anything but predicatable and even the so called professionals of the financial world can make a huge hash of things on a grand scale. So considering the current level of detail we already have in the finances of the game, changing all of that to work in a truly dynamic fashion with national economies developing etc. would be quite a feat for a computer game that is still mainly about football managing and global economics :)

Hah, well, I don't think anyone in the world would be able to disagree with you. I was just watching the youtube preview of FM09, and Miles said, "It is also important for us to get the financial modelling correct. We've spent a lot of time to try and model every financial aspect of the game correctly". So I can understand why you'd be tentative to making it even harder.

I'm guessing that it is this stage in the discussion of an idea, that you realise that it may be an unrealistic dream to implement it in the detail that we've been discussing in this thread. I guess it might just be a case of ignoring financial, population growth, and all the other various factors to do with dynamic clubs, competitions and nations with regards to their reputation, and simplify the concept. As you've discussed Riz, it may be near impossible to do make the system truly dynamic, but what if an illusion was created for the game player? It may be possible to remove the reputation ceiling for over-achieving clubs, without destroying the delicate balance you've achieved in the game.

What if the decision making variables that determine whether a player will accept or reject a contract were altered? If a small Irish team has made the champions league final a few times, and will most likely qualify for the next few years, would it not be realistic for an English Championship player to say, "hang on, if I join this team, I might be able to win in Europe, and play under this amazing manager. I may also be able to put myself in a shop window by accepting the contract!".

You may not have to make the game dynamic in any fashion if you could just find a simple work-around for the ceiling that strikes a lot of clubs in the game, when realistically the ceiling shouldn't exist.

To help drive the point home, here is a summary of the most expensive transfers in the Ukrainian Football League:

1 	2007 	Nery Castillo 		Shakhtar Donetsk 	$30m 
2 	2004 	Matuzalem 	        Shakhtar Donetsk 	$18.75m 
3 	2007 	Ilsinho 	        Shakhtar Donetsk 	$14m 
4 	2007 	Cristiano Lucarelli 	Shakhtar Donetsk 	$11.2m 
5 	2005 	Fernandinho 	        Shakhtar Donetsk 	$10m 
6 	2005 	Elano 	                Shakhtar Donetsk 	$10m 
7 	2007 	Pape Diakhaté 	     	Dynamo Kyiv 	        $9.8m 
8 	2007 	Ismaël Bangoura 	Dynamo Kyiv 	        $8.4m 
9 	2005 	Jádson 	 	        Shakhtar Donetsk 	$6.25m 
10 	2005 	Ciprian Marica 	 	Shakhtar Donetsk 	$6m 

Shaktar Donetsk have signed a high quality batch of players over the past 4 years, despite being in quite a low quality league. As previously stated, this is due to their constant European and Domestic success. If a club's reputation was allowed to surpass the ceiling set by the league's, then you may be able to create an illusion of a dynamic system. That way, teams that constantly over-achieve will end up being able to draw in high quality players (as Shakhtar have done) despite being in a low quality competition. In fact, this would require no change to the current financial system, as the club's growth will be limited by the financial system. In game, without a ceiling, Shaktar will still not be able to become a Manchester United as the static economic and attendance factors will limit their fortune, and as such will not have the buying power of the larger European clubs. BUT, when they do get the money, they will be able to attract the players they can afford. This will remove one of the main reasons a lot of us avoid the small European leagues that you've gone to the effort of including into the game.

I think such a compromise will allow you to let a player take a small club to the big time, but any ceiling they run into will no longer be an unrealistic one of 'reputation' but one of their own finances. It may be unrealistic of me to dream of a dynamic system in Football Manager any time soon, but I'm sure you clever people at SI can come up with ideas such as these to create an illusion of one to the player, without creating too much work for yourselves.

Again, thank you for reading this long post :p

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Nice to see SI finally talking about this.

Many others, like me, had raised the issue of dynamic reputation years before, but I hadn't seen a specific answer from SI.

I'm really glad they are showing interest, since it would make long term games completely different than they are now. Good job OP!

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  • 2 weeks later...
MachinegunHead, I'm quite on board with the need ...

I think it winds up being more important to people in emerging nations, obviously.

i disagree with this statement.

-the very best players want to play in the best league, and IRL this is constantly changing....

80's - probably germany

early 90's - italy

mid 90's - still italy, although it is worth noting that the french and dutch league was FAR more high profile during this period than they are now, because the french league kept many of their stars and had all the best african players, and the dutch hoovered up their respective regional talent (and ajax had an incredibly productive youth system). now these players have followed the money, so the best ones are in the more highly paid leagues.

late 90's - take your pick between italy, germany, spain

early 00's - spain

currently - england

so where are world's best going now? spain and england, because they have the best two leagues. the other leagues mentioned can still attract quality, but they cant get the elite. in an FM game the elite make a massive difference.

currently, i never manage outside of spain/england because the league development isnt possible so i dont see the point. but if it was, i would manage in the italian/french/german leagues in a heartbeat, to try to take them back to the top table of european football.

i think the main factor for the smaller football nations is improving both quantity and quality of players from their own nation. taking Scotland as an example, rangers and celtic have always been massive clubs and can afford to spend money on foreigners. the best way other scottish clubs can challenge them is by producing quality home grown, and by doing this reputation of the country increases by

a) improving the national team

b) more competitive/better quality domestic league, leading to

c) more money to attract better foreigners and

d) more european success

so how in the game could you create an environment where the probability of producing better (local) regens would be higher?

a) quality of coaching - i'm not sure how much this is weighted at the moment, but IMO it is FAR more important than standard of facilities (which is also a factor obviously)

b) nation or club having a period of success, increasing nation rep (more players), leading to a broader base of talent

so i think to implement the dynamic leagues, far more emphasis of the game should be placed on the coaches (and them developing young talent) because that is how smaller nations get noticed - they start developing their own.

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One the problems with this is that it isnt down purely to footballing reasons. Geography and world economics has a massive part to play in how/why world football is how it is.

Its no coincidence that the better leagues (just based on europe) are the most densely populated and richest countries (England, Italy, Spain, Germany and France). It wouldnt matter that a team from the Romania won the Champions League over and over, it would still be a poor country (no disrespect to any Romainians) to live compared to the euro super powers. A league one player would rather play for Laeyton Orient and live in London, then play for and live in Brasov.

This wont change (not in my lifetime anyway), and for it to change in FM a world economics model would neeed to be introduced.

That wouldn't be the case for leagues like MLS in America and the A-League in Australia though.

For example I did a lot of stuff with the New York Red Bulls and the Melbourne Victory, like win the regional competitions and (with New York) the World Club Championship, and I got to the final with Melbourne. The league reputation stays the same.

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Some of it is silly though. Rangers and Celtic regularly go between national and continental reputation. We may not have the money in Scotland but for these teams, both of whom should be capable of Worldwide reputations, to be rated thus is silly.

Both teams are bigger in every way, bar Sky TV money, than most EPL teams. Are Sky going to be around forever to finance the ridiculous spending English teams are capable of as the finances are in the game?

15 years ago Rangers were the biggest and best club in Britain. Why should the game be fixed to stop one of the Old firm regaining past glories?

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Some of it is silly though. Rangers and Celtic regularly go between national and continental reputation. We may not have the money in Scotland but for these teams, both of whom should be capable of Worldwide reputations, to be rated thus is silly.

Both teams are bigger in every way, bar Sky TV money, than most EPL teams. Are Sky going to be around forever to finance the ridiculous spending English teams are capable of as the finances are in the game?

15 years ago Rangers were the biggest and best club in Britain. Why should the game be fixed to stop one of the Old firm regaining past glories?

Spot on mate, most EPL clubs will be in a poor state when/if skys tv money ever dries up.

Just like to say this is one of the best threads ive read in many years on the forum.

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  • 1 month later...

I fully agree with you guys. I`m playing in Polish league and there not possible sign any worth players even thought you`re playing in CL or UEFA. The Dynamic reputation would be great thing and it need to be implemented as soon as possible the game is unplayable as for me at the moment

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  • 2 weeks later...
Spot on mate, most EPL clubs will be in a poor state when/if skys tv money ever dries up.

Just like to say this is one of the best threads ive read in many years on the forum.

I'm flattered :D

I haven't been on the forums for a while, so I figured I'd come back and check the discussion on this thread, and to also bump it (I know, I'm evil) for some new people to have a read of, as I'm sure many people didn't know this thread existed, and I'm also sure a lot of these people have strong opinions on the issue, and I'd love to hear from them!

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The Rangers & Celtic comparison is, I think, a good one. These 2 clubs probably do have a continental (pushing worldwide) reputation, and they've pulled up the profile of the scottish leagues.

So, yeah, a dynamic reputation would make sense - a successful team or two could pull up the reputation of the whole league and hence the reputation of an "average" club in that league. Who could then attract a slightly higher standard of player (assuming they have the money).

I guess it needs no restriction on the reputation of a single club, the leagues reputation to be based on the average reputation of the clubs involved, and players to take into account club and league reputation when decidign if they'll join.

Simple as that!

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