Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work

20 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello everyone, following extensive testing, we can confirm that the average the number of recommendations and near matches has increased following the tweaks we made in the Main Data Update.

We’re sorry that some of you are still not happy, to clear up some misconceptions. We made no changes to Scouting between Full Release and our first Major Update.

Another important thing to note is that when creating a Recruitment Focus you have to factor in the quality of your squad.

For example, if you are a top Premier League club with a very talented group of players, your scouts will obviously have a harder time recommending players that they feel will make a significant impact on your team.

So, say instead you are a mid-table team in League One, your scouts will have a wider selection of players to look at and recommend to you.

I hope this information was helpful, please do continue to leave your feedback, thank you.

I feel like there's still a bit of a misunderstanding here that is affecting how the issue is being addressed. A lack of recommendations is a symptom of the issue but it is not the issue. The issue is that scouts are simply not scouting enough players, whether they are worthy of recommendation or not. @wazzaflow10covers it well above. 

 

Edit: to elaborate, if I am manager of Barcelona and decide I want to find the next Messi, I can assign a few scouts to a recruitment focus looking for u18 players with five star potential. It might take ten years for them to produce one single recommendation and that's expected, because there aren't dozens of Messis out there waiting to be discovered. Alternatively, they might produce more recommendations but the players will fall short, and that is also acceptable given the number of hyped kids who "only" become very good players. In either scenario though, these scouts should be producing reports on thousands of players until they find the promised one. They might only be taking these reports to 50% knowledge before satisfying themselves that the player isn't good enough, but they should still be looking at the players and producing the reports. 

Edited March 2 by Undy

At this point, I am not holding my breath on any fix to this. Apparently, there is nothing wrong with this, and we are wrong. 

Edited March 2 by DavutOzkan

I'm probably too critical in this matter but I don't understand why scouting was revamped for FM24. I fondly remember the time when you had two ways to scout - setting up scouting assignments to increase world knowledge and specific short or long term scouting focuses to find players for the first team.

How @Zachary Whyte phrases himself - it sounds like the scouts will only look for players that can improve the team. Filtering away future candidates because of Interest and Current Abilites based on squad quality

In my opinion, scouts shouldnt be the ones filtering and removing candidates. As I have understood how scouting works IRL, the scouts travel the world by watching matches and tournaments, they then report back to the club about their findings and then it's up to the club, or DoF, to decide whether they are likely to be a priority signing.

Over the years we have heard lots of incidents where the scouts has a huge database of player files that he takes with him if he leaves.

What I feel has been lost with scouting on FM24 is the idea to identify potential future signings. Now, I haven't been able to test this in-game with the latest patch but a feature request for FM25 is the ability to scout for players that can improve the youth team or first team. Distinguish this with two different buttons that you check.

In terms of this information - I don't quite understand you:
"Another important thing to note is that when creating a Recruitment Focus you have to factor in the quality of your squad.

For example, if you are a top Premier League club with a very talented group of players, your scouts will obviously have a harder time recommending players that they feel will make a significant impact on your team.

So, say instead you are a mid-table team in League One, your scouts will have a wider selection of players to look at and recommend to you."

If we take into accout what you said earlier about Players Interest then wouldn't there be less recommendations for a lower league side? The number of players in the database with the quality to play that level is higher but due to reputation and nationality, I'm sure there will be less players that wish to play for club X (e,g Derby) due to reputation and league level.

It's more likely that more players is interested in joining a bigger club, such as Man Utd if we don't count in the squad quality.
In this matter I think it's worth to consider how you can merge the Squad Planner and Scouting. You could have color coded scout reports or focuses that let your scouts to think long-term - Right now, it seems everything is about improving the squad immediately. When scouting for players under the age of 18 the current squad quality shouldnt matter

1 hour ago, Passion4FM said:

 

In terms of this information - I don't quite understand you:
"Another important thing to note is that when creating a Recruitment Focus you have to factor in the quality of your squad.

For example, if you are a top Premier League club with a very talented group of players, your scouts will obviously have a harder time recommending players that they feel will make a significant impact on your team.

So, say instead you are a mid-table team in League One, your scouts will have a wider selection of players to look at and recommend to you."

 

After my quick test last night with the same team I always manage, with the new patch, I think it's just broken. 6 weeks scouting with four scouts in the top division in Norway, and not a single recommendation for my FC Nordsjaelland team. So you're telling me that my four scouts with full knowledge of Norway could not find a single suitable interested player in Norway? It doesn't make sense. If we're doing something wrong with setting up scouting focuses, then I would 100% welcome a step-by-step instructional guide on exactly how they should be set up. 

2 hours ago, Passion4FM said:

I'm probably too critical in this matter but I don't understand why scouting was revamped for FM24. I fondly remember the time when you had two ways to scout - setting up scouting assignments to increase world knowledge and specific short or long term scouting focuses to find players for the first team.

How @Zachary Whyte phrases himself - it sounds like the scouts will only look for players that can improve the team. Filtering away future candidates because of Interest and Current Abilites based on squad quality

In my opinion, scouts shouldnt be the ones filtering and removing candidates. As I have understood how scouting works IRL, the scouts travel the world by watching matches and tournaments, they then report back to the club about their findings and then it's up to the club, or DoF, to decide whether they are likely to be a priority signing.

Over the years we have heard lots of incidents where the scouts has a huge database of player files that he takes with him if he leaves.

What I feel has been lost with scouting on FM24 is the idea to identify potential future signings. Now, I haven't been able to test this in-game with the latest patch but a feature request for FM25 is the ability to scout for players that can improve the youth team or first team. Distinguish this with two different buttons that you check.

In terms of this information - I don't quite understand you:
"Another important thing to note is that when creating a Recruitment Focus you have to factor in the quality of your squad.

For example, if you are a top Premier League club with a very talented group of players, your scouts will obviously have a harder time recommending players that they feel will make a significant impact on your team.

So, say instead you are a mid-table team in League One, your scouts will have a wider selection of players to look at and recommend to you."

If we take into accout what you said earlier about Players Interest then wouldn't there be less recommendations for a lower league side? The number of players in the database with the quality to play that level is higher but due to reputation and nationality, I'm sure there will be less players that wish to play for club X (e,g Derby) due to reputation and league level.

It's more likely that more players is interested in joining a bigger club, such as Man Utd if we don't count in the squad quality.
In this matter I think it's worth to consider how you can merge the Squad Planner and Scouting. You could have color coded scout reports or focuses that let your scouts to think long-term - Right now, it seems everything is about improving the squad immediately. When scouting for players under the age of 18 the current squad quality shouldnt matter

My post was already long so I didn't want to add more but I have saves from 2023 where as Man Utd I had over 2500 players scouted. When I stopped playing that save because of the scouting issue that seemed to appear in December I had 1600. Where did those reports go? I know there's a 1 year filter on the reports but it's not like I stopped scouting. I used to have 100+ report cards to review, to the point it was almost way too much to check acknowledge on there. Now? There's nothing. Literally nothing. I know they say nothings been changed but something related to scouts finding players has broken. I'm utterly perplexed as to what has happened. I don't own 23 because I hated how badly away teams were nerfed but I really wish I could go back and compare over a longer save.

Should we open a new ticket regarding this? I don't know how it works but yeah, very disappointed of the lack of communications post-patch that was supposed to fix this.

58 minutes ago, zeza said:

Should we open a new ticket regarding this? I don't know how it works but yeah, very disappointed of the lack of communications post-patch that was supposed to fix this.

No, they monitor them all, they have it plugged into their systems, creating more and more will just make you angry when or if, they dont respond. 

Should I upload my save file too If i encounter the same issue?

17 horas atrás, kbogusz disse:

Should I upload my save file too If i encounter the same issue?

They know there is a problem but they can't solve it because they are focused on FM25. It's better to focus on something that will make them money than to solve a problem with something that already made them money.

I am actually just infuriated by this. It just ruins the experience. Just quit my Brighton save going into the 4th year because its just pain staking finding players. Started a save making my own club in National North and I swear I don't even get any free transfers recommended when at Dorking when the game first came out I got loads of players recommended.

No offence to Zach but he comes in here once every few weeks and it's clear as day he either doesn't have a clue what the issue is or doesn't really actually care. Just comes in patronising like we are all stupid and don't know how to set up a focus. I mean I've even watched series on YouTube and theyll have even stricter focuses on than me and get 100s of players coming in. I've been playing FM for years there is no way I'm doing assignments wrong or not broad enough.

 

Have 20odd scouts in my Brighton save. Sending like 1 scout to Brazil, argentina, south america, belgium, france germany and so on. Litteraly got about 20 assignments with 1 scout each to either a single country or groups of counties or regions. Looking for half star CA 2.5PA and Brazil got me about 8 recommended. I search with loads of cheap easter Europe nations got me 1 recommended. The rest got me 0. Now you're not telling me that's not broad enough. There should literally be hundreds of recommended players with that star rating even if they are D,C,Bs.

 

It's not just youth either. Tried setting them up for first team players and they just don't bring anything in. I refuse to do it manually because it's a right time kill. 

 

Everyone needs to start hammering the reviews on steam. Probably won't do anything but at least it's something. It's just killing my motivation to play 

I have the same experience as you @garndogg. Doesn't make sense at all but yeah, let's wait on @Zachary Whyte to give us a feedback about it.

I REALLY don't think they don't aknowledge that it's broken, but I don't believe that they know what's the issue as per Zach's prior responses.

Hello @zeza

I left a detailed comment on this post back on Page 6.

2 horas atrás, Zachary Whyte disse:

Hello @zeza

I left a detailed comment on this post back on Page 6.

I've seen that and we had many replies after that, even a great post of @wazzaflow10 asking about how scouting works and we are still having trouble on this matter.

It's honestly infuriating that Scouting is still broken, Zach.  You understand that I've sent this glitch report in DECEMBER 2022 and we got 1 update about it that didn't fix it at ALL.

SCOUTING IS BROKEN, WE DON'T GET ENOUGH SCOUTED PLAYERS, EVEN WITH VERY BROAD PARAMETERS 

 

Em 05/03/2024 em 04:52, garndogg disse:

ave 20odd scouts in my Brighton save. Sending like 1 scout to Brazil, argentina, south america, belgium, france germany and so on. Litteraly got about 20 assignments with 1 scout each to either a single country or groups of counties or regions. Looking for half star CA 2.5PA and Brazil got me about 8 recommended. I search with loads of cheap easter Europe nations got me 1 recommended. The rest got me 0. Now you're not telling me that's not broad enough. There should literally be hundreds of recommended players with that star rating even if they are D,C,Bs.

This post basically summarizes my experience, even after the "fixes" in the last patch

 

 

Edited March 6 by zeza

3 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello @zeza

I left a detailed comment on this post back on Page 6.

I don't know exactly what the disconnect is, but scouting is definitely not working for me, and I do things exactly as I did them in FM23. If it was designed to be harder this year, that's fine. I would actually favor it being a bit harder to find wonderkids and such, especially in different continents, but it's current level is not only too hard, as shown in my uploaded save, it's basically non-existent. 

If we are doing it wrong for this year's version, someone from SI needs to let us know exactly what is going wrong, and not just tell us to use a more broad focus. Give us a post, with screenshot examples, of EXACTLY what we need to do. Or better yet, use the SI YouTube video to do a video. That would probably be the most helpful. 

2 hours ago, zeza said:

I've seen that and we had many replies after that, even a great post of @wazzaflow10 asking about how scouting works and we are still having trouble on this matter.

It's honestly infuriating that Scouting is still broken, Zach.  You understand that I've sent this glitch report in DECEMBER 2022 and we got 1 update about it that didn't fix it at ALL.

SCOUTING IS BROKEN, WE DON'T GET ENOUGH SCOUTED PLAYERS, EVEN WITH VERY BROAD PARAMETERS 

 

This post basically summarizes my experience, even after the "fixes" in the last patch

 

 

Saying the same things over and over again isnt going to help you nor them sort this issue, voicing your issue constantly is going to clutter up analysis others have done and make things harder to skim through and find the appropriate posts. There are others who are in the same boat as you and have just not said anything because they haven't got the feedback to give cause its been covered quite extensively in here and the general feedback thread. There's still a major update to be done, this was just a DATA one, yeah you can be dissapointed and let them know, but be critical about it rather than just stating it. E.G. that post above. 

6 horas atrás, BigV disse:

Saying the same things over and over again isnt going to help you nor them sort this issue, voicing your issue constantly is going to clutter up analysis others have done and make things harder to skim through and find the appropriate posts. There are others who are in the same boat as you and have just not said anything because they haven't got the feedback to give cause its been covered quite extensively in here and the general feedback thread. There's still a major update to be done, this was just a DATA one, yeah you can be dissapointed and let them know, but be critical about it rather than just stating it. E.G. that post above. 

I'm sorry if I'm passionate about this issue.

 

6 horas atrás, BigV disse:

here's still a major update to be done, this was just a DATA one,

I disagree with you. They stated in the patch notes that tweaks were made to scouting and a whole lot of other issues, so please, read the patch notes before saying that kind of stuff. 

2 hours ago, zeza said:

I'm sorry if I'm passionate about this issue.

 

I disagree with you. They stated in the patch notes that tweaks were made to scouting and a whole lot of other issues, so please, read the patch notes before saying that kind of stuff. 

You can be passionate and still be critical in feedback rather than saying the same stuff several times.

Tweaks were made, i'm certainly getting more on avg than I was which is what the patch notes and zach stated. Im currently doing a test whereby im comparing 6months of scouting, from my previous save to the new save, im 4 months into my new one and have an extra 64 reports, some being more recommendations rather than near matches. It's still nowhere near what was during the past fm but it's *something*- my point was a Data update is not the same as the major update, there'll be more bugs and hopefully this issue, that will be fixed. 

@Zachary Whyte I've done a bit of a test on a fresh Arsenal save. 

So there still isn't much coming through after nearly 2 months on holiday. I set up at 1.5 stars 2.5 stars in Argentina, South America, Scandinavian countries and a world wide one 15-22 age for all. 

Scandinavia got 0 in all 3 tabs.

Argentina got 0 apart from 2 in progress which produced 2 D ratings.

South America produced 0s apart from 1 in progress which was a C. 

And World wide produced 8-0-5 but I'm pretty sure most if not all we're already scouted players from when I first loaded in as it had results in when I checked share reports.

I did notice a Brazilian in my scouted players tab which apparently pinged om 2 focuses one being South America but when you go to focus he isn't in there.

I've now knocked all them down to 0.5 silver star 2.5 gold and added additional scouts to the focuses and gone on holiday for a other month.

So after another month 

Scandinavia came back 0-0-0

Argentina 0-0-2 so an extra player is now in progress. But there's also 3 extra scouts assigned.

South America 0-4-1. So got an increase of 4 near matches. But also assigned 4 scouts from 1 scout. All near misses state asking price is above market value which I'd say is irrelevant and should just be in recommendations. Although the best found was only 2.5 gold starts potential and 4 stars in total with the white stars. So not really any good.

The world wide one 8-10-9 up from 8-0-5 but with 3 extra scouts assigned. Near matches 2 old or asking price above market value. And not very good anyway.

Also I've not noticed any new players in the scouted players tab after an extra month either.

I know it's a bit long and probably some of the same stuff above but thought I'd do a test and explain what I found post update to see if anything had changed. Thought I'd write down my results here incase any of the information can shed any new light on what the issue could be.

3 months scouting at a big club like arsenal should be providing more results. Expecially for the world wide with 4 scouts assigned. Don't think I produced any aside from the pre scouted ones when loading up in 3 months when there's players like Scalvini, Baldanzi, Diamonde, Inciso, Fati which are all well know wonder kids just to name a couple. 

 

It makes the game impossible as it takes that long if they even suggest anyone to find players to update your sqaud. Even more so the lower down the leagues you go. I'm in a save in the national league and I've had to leave it as I just don't get any players suggested to improve the squad.

Just to add the database has numerous leagues as playable and a total of 451k players apparently 

 

Edited March 7 by garndogg

On 01/03/2024 at 20:55, wazzaflow10 said:

Hi Zachary,

Thank you for your team's consideration for this bug report. I have a few follow up questions/comments for you and the team. Apologies for the length in advance.

I think we've covered in here the function for IF a player is recommended in a focus. Your note above makes perfect sense if recommending a player for Derby County v Manchester United. In the quick tests I've conducted since 24.3 release I've seen that recommendations are much easier to come by if your team is of a lower quality. I'm 100% on board with that concept.

Could you shed some light on the process that covers IF a player is scouted and/or how the game chooses what players to scout? It seems odd to me that if I have Derby county with all 5 of their scouts and Manchester United with their 30+ scouts, both have scouted the same number of players over the same period of time. More scouts + more budget should equate to more reports - maybe not perfectly linearly, but certainly the advantage of being a large club is the scouting network is much more extensive and comprehensive. Attached screenshots below show the same number of players scouted for both teams.

Just to put it concretely - If Derby County has one scout assigned to scouting England and Manchester United has two or three or four scouts assigned to scouting England the number of players scouted for Manchester United should be significantly higher than that of Derby County.

It seems to me that there is some ambiguity between what the recruiting focus concept is and what the recruiting focus UI is instructing the game to do. Below are two prevailing thoughts I've had on how it works or supposedly should work. I hope this clarifies some of the pushback myself and other have provided.

What it sounds like you are telling us:

• When creating a focus, the min CA and min PA and Age applies to determining IF a player is scouted then clearly there are fewer players for Manchester United to scout based on default focus values. It should stand to reason then if I am playing as Man Utd and set the min CA and min PA to 1/2 silver stars I want to scout the entirety of the region/competition that I've selected. However this does not happen. No matter my CA/PA threshold the number of players scouted is unchanged. Thus, the intense frustration of not being able to find players. We know they are there but the game will not uncover them for us with the tools we have been provided. We don't have a good explanation in the game as to why our scouts appear to just be sitting around.

What I believe to be the intent of the recruitment focus mechanism is below:

• If the assumption of min CA and min PA does not factor into if a player is scouted, but rather IF a player is recommended, then Man Utd should have a significant and sizeable scouting database advantage over a team like Derby County. Ultimately, the number of players recommended would be much smaller due to "failing CA checks" or "Lack of interest due to playing for rival teams". This assumption is in line with your statements in my opinion. Assuming this is correct the following is the disconnect between what we experienced prior to one of the patches and 24.2.
• In this situation, ALL scouted players who fail a recommendation check (for any reason) would go into the scouted players tab but not be designated as a match for a recruitment focus. This to me makes more sense from a technical and strategic perspective. If I am Derby County - do I waste time scouting the Premier League? I'd likely get zero recommendations for transfers but maybe a handful of hopeful loans. Or if I'm Man Utd do I bother scouting the Championship and below hoping to uncover a gem for cheap? Again very few recommendations due to failed CA checks but maybe I find an interesting breakthru prospect with good PA. If I do scout those leagues I should have comprehensive of knowledge of them whether they generate recommendations or not - provided I scout the league long enough or have enough scouts to warrant comprehensive knowledge.

To level set all this - the expectation for me isn't that the human manager would have complete or perfect knowledge of every single player in the game or an area. In fact I think we should have more imperfect and asymmetrical knowledge of external players (for another day). To use a previous example, if playing as Man Utd we would know that someone like Haaland is likely not interested in joining at game start. If we are extensively scouting England or the Premier League, however, a lack of interest on his part should not preclude us from having minimal or marginal scouting knowledge of him. I don't have an expectation that he would ever be interested in joining during the save. Along those lines, who would have ever thought Neymar would be interested in joining PSG until he did. The main point I'm trying to address is if I'm looking for a striker I want to know as much of the universe as I can given the resources I'm allotted in both scouting manpower and monetary budget. If I'm told no by Haaland's agent and no by Osimhen's agent and so on until I get to Rasmus Hojlund that's more realistic to me than the game "pre-filtering" who shows up based on a black box algorithm. I can sympathize with the idea that the black box would prevent complaints of "why is so in so not interested in my team when I've won the Champions League 5 years in a row. Everyone should be interested in my team." Sometimes ignorance is bliss. 

By no means am I trying to game/hack the scouting system or ask you to make it insanely easy to spot and sign wonderkids. There's the player search tool for people who want to play the game that way. My interest is keeping the game somewhat realistic in the sense of as manager I have a network of scouts who build a repository of players that I can then ask to further scout or discard.

I sincerely appreciate you and the rest of the SI dev/qa team's hard work to address these challenges given the magnitude of changes happening in the next 6 months.

 

 

 

I second this.

 

I get that, for example, Man Utd would have less A or B graded players suggested to the manager, however that would then mean there are 100's if not thousands (depending on the number of recruitment focuses etc) that are graded E, D or C. 

 

This article from The Athletic - The reality of football scouting in 2023: ‘You do it for love – not money’ - The Athletic - showcases their reporter watching 4 matches with a scout. My assumption is from previous FM versions and logical extrapolation for the FM world, is that the scout would generate a report on ALL the players featured in those matches. So a scout assigned, for example, to The Championship, should be delivering a report on every player they watch in that recruitment focus and assigning that report a grade, be that A through to E against the quality of your club. The purpose of the scouting/recruitment centre is then to filter out the unwanted gradings of players

 

So the scenario would play out like this.

I'm Man Utd. I've set a recruitment focus as minimum current ability at the very bottom (1 star youth potential) and minimum 3 star (senior) potential. No age restrictions. Recruitment focus is England.

My expectation is that the scout I allocate should be providing me a report of all of those players who meet the criteria (in theory 100's of players) and then assigning them a grade of report against man utd's squad. So I'll still get 100's of reports but mainly B's/C's.

The same scenario with the same scout but as (for example) Solihull Moors, would generate the same NUMBER of reports but classed as A or B potential reports.

 

Does that make sense?

Edited March 7 by mattskelding
clarification

Hello everyone, to reply to your recent comments I wanted to say a few things.

First off, to reiterate we do not think that Scouting is ‘Broken’. We have done substantial testing and have not found, nor believe there is any ‘Bugs’ to fix. That’s why we said we ‘tweaked’ the current scouting system in our latest update instead of ‘fixed’. 

The current system is working as intended, as it was in FM23 when scouting was revamped and recruitment focuses were introduced. The intention of the revamp was to make scouting less speculative and more streamlined towards players that are of the required standard to make an impact on your first team either now or in the future.

The recent update we put out increased the average the number of recommendations and near matches.

As I mentioned before you really need to factor in what team you are playing as.

To go through some recent examples, @garndogg

Arsenal is a very big club with an excellent first team squad. The Recruitment Focuses you’ve setup have you looking for under 22s with 2.5 star minimum PA in Scandinavia and South America.

Given you are Arsenal that's basically a player of the same standard as someone like Emile Smith-Rowe or Eddie Nketiah that is interested/available to move. So, it’s not surprising that results are limited. The 1 Star CA ability rating is compared to your current squad so if you’re Arsenal that will be elite players.

In your Brighton example you say you got 8 recommendations when searching in Brazil. We feel that is a good amount of recommendations for a club like Brighton.

@StatboySpurs in your example, searching for just Norway is quite narrow, switching  ‘Norway’ to ‘Northen Europe’ gave me much more recommendations.

Another important thing to note is that Scouts won’t give every player available right away, it will be a gradual process, otherwise the game would be too easy.

So, in conclusion, our main advice would be:
1.    Factor in what team you’re playing and current ability of your squad.
2.    Make sure your focus is broad and don't overwork your scouts.
3.    Ensure the scouts who are assigned to your focuses have an extensive knowledge of the area you’re sending them to.
4.    Have ‘include results found in other recruitment focuses’ tick box selected.
5.    When creating recruitment focuses for high potential players ensure the CA criteria is set very low and that you are setting them too ongoing. (You shouldn’t anticipate a huge number of recommendations to be returned for these focuses as only a select few players in the whole database will ever match this criteria when playing as an elite club.)

4 minutes ago, Zachary Whyte said:

 

@StatboySpurs in your example, searching for just Norway is quite narrow, switching  ‘Norway’ to ‘Northen Europe’ gave me much more recommendations.

 

Yep, I've tried that before as well, and still don't get the type of results I got in FM23. I guess my main question is this...when I manually send scouts to watch specific games in Norway, lots of players show up in my scouting center that do not show up when I set the recruitment focus to that particular league in Norway. I can manually scout for six weeks and get plenty of options...but with a recruitment focus for six weeks, I get pretty much no options. When I manually scout specific games, there is obviously no input from me as to CA/PA, age, etc. It seems to be open-ended, and players show up in the recruitment center from the games my scouts watch. If they didn't find anybody at a certain game, I get an email from the scout telling me that they didn't find anyone suitable. So, what exactly are they looking for when I manually assign them? And why don't those same players show up when I do a recruitment focus in the same league with a low (1 or 1.5-stars) CA?

3 minutes ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello everyone, to reply to your recent comments I wanted to say a few things.

First off, to reiterate we do not think that Scouting is ‘Broken’. We have done substantial testing and have not found, nor believe there is any ‘Bugs’ to fix. That’s why we said we ‘tweaked’ the current scouting system in our latest update instead of ‘fixed’. 

The current system is working as intended, as it was in FM23 when scouting was revamped and recruitment focuses were introduced. The intention of the revamp was to make scouting less speculative and more streamlined towards players that are of the required standard to make an impact on your first team either now or in the future.

The recent update we put out increased the average the number of recommendations and near matches.

As I mentioned before you really need to factor in what team you are playing as.

To go through some recent examples, @garndogg

Arsenal is a very big club with an excellent first team squad. The Recruitment Focuses you’ve setup have you looking for under 22s with 2.5 star minimum PA in Scandinavia and South America.

Given you are Arsenal that's basically a player of the same standard as someone like Emile Smith-Rowe or Eddie Nketiah that is interested/available to move. So, it’s not surprising that results are limited. The 1 Star CA ability rating is compared to your current squad so if you’re Arsenal that will be elite players.

In your Brighton example you say you got 8 recommendations when searching in Brazil. We feel that is a good amount of recommendations for a club like Brighton.

@StatboySpurs in your example, searching for just Norway is quite narrow, switching  ‘Norway’ to ‘Northen Europe’ gave me much more recommendations.

Another important thing to note is that Scouts won’t give every player available right away, it will be a gradual process, otherwise the game would be too easy.

So, in conclusion, our main advice would be:
1.    Factor in what team you’re playing and current ability of your squad.
2.    Make sure your focus is broad and don't overwork your scouts.
3.    Ensure the scouts who are assigned to your focuses have an extensive knowledge of the area you’re sending them to.
4.    Have ‘include results found in other recruitment focuses’ tick box selected.
5.    When creating recruitment focuses for high potential players ensure the CA criteria is set very low and that you are setting them too ongoing. (You shouldn’t anticipate a huge number of recommendations to be returned for these focuses as only a select few players in the whole database will ever match this criteria when playing as an elite club.)

Thanks for the detailed explanation. The sentence "Given you are Arsenal that's basically a player of the same standard as someone like Emile Smith-Rowe or Eddie Nketiah that is interested/available to move" is interesting. Can you confirm please whether interest / availability affects the binary factor of whether or not a player appears in the focus at all rather than the recommendation grade the scout gives them? This may point towards why some people think scouting is "broken" when it is working per SI's expectations. If this is the case, it effectively excludes non-domestic U18 players appearing in recruitment focuses, which would be against the expectations of many FM players. I have never had a single non-domestic U18 player appear in a scouting focus even with min CA/PA set to half a silver star. 

It would also be useful to get just the slightest peek at how this works under the hood - is player interest already "known" to the scouts even at zero player knowledge, therefore they will not begin to produce reports, or will they get up to a certain low-percentages knowledge to determine interest before abandoning the player? 

9 minutes ago, Undy said:

Thanks for the detailed explanation. The sentence "Given you are Arsenal that's basically a player of the same standard as someone like Emile Smith-Rowe or Eddie Nketiah that is interested/available to move" is interesting. Can you confirm please whether interest / availability affects the binary factor of whether or not a player appears in the focus at all rather than the recommendation grade the scout gives them? This may point towards why some people think scouting is "broken" when it is working per SI's expectations. If this is the case, it effectively excludes non-domestic U18 players appearing in recruitment focuses, which would be against the expectations of many FM players. I have never had a single non-domestic U18 player appear in a scouting focus even with min CA/PA set to half a silver star. 

It would also be useful to get just the slightest peek at how this works under the hood - is player interest already "known" to the scouts even at zero player knowledge, therefore they will not begin to produce reports, or will they get up to a certain low-percentages knowledge to determine interest before abandoning the player? 

This is what makes little to no sense. If your Brazil scout come across the next Pele, he'll watch him play, note the once in a century level of ability and potential, but because the player is 16, he won't file a scout report because for some reason all your scouts are walking around knowing that 16 year olds, no matter where they are have no interest in joining a world class club with world class facilities and for a signing on fee which would potentially lift generations of his family out of poverty.

 

If this is truly what SI intended, how the scouting system is meant to work, they've simultaneously destroyed a big aspect of roleplaying, game enjoyment, and realism. If this is the case, then the bigger thing to do would be admit that a big mistake was made, tweaks are not necessary, and the system will be rolled backed to whenever it last made sense. 

59 minutes ago, TheHuss said:

This is what makes little to no sense. If your Brazil scout come across the next Pele, he'll watch him play, note the once in a century level of ability and potential, but because the player is 16, he won't file a scout report because for some reason all your scouts are walking around knowing that 16 year olds, no matter where they are have no interest in joining a world class club with world class facilities and for a signing on fee which would potentially lift generations of his family out of poverty.

Right. So Endrick wouldn't show up in an FM scouting report because he's U18, basically. Or Spurs wouldn't have been able to sign 16-year old Luka Vuskovi this past summer. He wouldn't have even shown up on their scouting report because he wasn't interested because he wasn't 18.

I think maybe the interested/not interested thing is what is holding things back here.

Right I've edited because I've calmed down a tiny bit from reading your joke of a reply.

 

Explain this one to me then.

 

How can I do a scouting assignment in Europe and in Italy for a full season and not pick up the likes of Scalvini, Baldanzi, Schjelderup etc when doing a 1 star CA 2.5 star PA but then I can go and manually scout them and they are 3Star CA 5star PA and interested in loan and transfer moves but not show up on any search what so every?????

 

Just admit you've changed it from it being fine on FM23 like everyone having issues has said and ****ed it up in the process. Revert that mistake so we can all enjoy the game.

 

You're explaining to us how to do reports and in the process picking out the odd obscure search to confirm your argument.

 

I've literally copied my friends searches and ones streamers have done with worse scouts and similar level teams and their results and my results are literally worlds apart.

 

I've tried half silver stars for both abilities in all parts of the world etc and I'm still getting hardly anything. I appreciate I got 8 in Brazil but not gonna lie I probably already manually scouted them by gathering team reports from different teams and then scouting decent potential players. Obviously when the box is checked is shares those reports.

 

I'm not having the excuse I'm too stupid to use scout focuses when I've literally played the game years and used them successfully before. And then even copied evidently successful searches to nothing. 

 

Stop patronising us.

Edited March 7 by garndogg