Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work

50 minutes ago, StatboySpurs said:

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.

I guess the other point I would make about guys not showing up if they aren't interested. Well...they might not be interested now, but what if they just signed a new contract and are interested a year later? What if I go on to qualify for Europe or get promoted in six months? They'd possibly be interested then, but I don't know they exist, because my scouts didn't report them.

So yes, it's probably right to say scouting isn't "broken" because yes, it is working the way SI designed it. But whether it should be designed that way is highly debatable. That's my take, seven pages into this thread.

1 hour ago, garndogg said:

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.

Yes, this is another thing that hasn't been mentioned enough... it seems to be working for some and not for others even if you do the exact same things. 

3 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

The 1 Star CA ability rating is compared to your current squad so if you’re Arsenal that will be elite players.

Is a one-star player in the default Arsenal squad really considered an "elite" player by CA? I haven't managed a truly elite team in this year's FM so I legitimately do not know the answer. What is that in terms of a number for CA? 

I also want to point out that I have definitely had scouting reports for U18 players and players who were not interested in joining. So either I have a different version of the game that has this enabled, or no one truly knows how this is supposed to work.  

Edited March 7 by DavutOzkan

1 hour ago, DavutOzkan said:

Yes, this is another thing that hasn't been mentioned enough... it seems to be working for some and not for others even if you do the exact same things. 

Is a one-star player in the default Arsenal squad really considered an "elite" player by CA? I haven't managed a truly elite team in this year's FM so I legitimately do not know the answer. What is that in terms of a number for CA? 

I also want to point out that I have definitely had scouting reports for U18 players and players who were not interested in joining. So either I have a different version of the game that has this enabled, or no one truly knows how this is supposed to work.  

Have you definitely had reports for overseas U18 players who aren't interested? I can get reports for players aged 16-18 from my own country because they're allowed to transfer, but with 30+ scouts assigned to look for players aged 15-18 with minimum half a silver star CA and PA over the course of four or five years, I have not had one single report for an overseas player aged 15-17.

9 hours ago, Zachary Whyte said:

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.

I don't disagree with this idea but there's a vast difference between not knowing a player exists at all and having perfect scouting knowledge of a player. Besides the people who are interested in gaming the system won't use scouting. They'll just use the player search in scouting, set a criteria, and sign the best players. For my 2 cents I don't think its worth trying to stop those people from doing that via scouting limitations.

This reads to me that the idea behind whatever tweaks were made between 23 and 24 was to slow the human player scouting efficiency down. The chief effect being you can't sign all the best young players before the AI even realises they're good. I don't have a problem with that in theory because it's going to be basically impossible to mimic the transfer market perfectly. I think we'd also run the risk of making the AI so preferential towards young players you can't sell anyone over the age of 24.

Just an unsolicited suggestion for upcoming iterations of the game. If this is a major factor in changing the difficulty of the game why not make the fog of war effect stronger? I don't know if it has to be as extreme as something like the attributes shown are based on a scout or coaches judgement abilities. I think a happier middle ground here for many of us here and those who question what has happened to scouting in the general discussion thread is this idea - our scouts know of a player but attributes have much wider ranges and take longer to get a single value. I'd even go so far to hide personality for quite a while until you get to something like extensive or complete knowledge of a player. Personally, I'd much prefer a system where scouts tell me they think they've found a potentially useful player who meets the critera of their focus and asks me if I want to scout them further or not. The system basically does this already so I don't think its a drastic change on that end. Right now though, the "fog of war" for scouting is just around if you even know a player exists.

I'll end on this note in a Chelsea save I've been testing/play for this issue the top 50 "wonderkids" news article showed up in my game. I had zero knowledge of most of them. I can understand an obscure country with a player I don't have info on but we're talking about the top young players in the game world and I dont know any of them exist at all according to my scouts anyway.

 

Edited March 8 by wazzaflow10
grammar

9 hours 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? 

I find it very bizarre that a player has to be interested at the moment you scouted a region in order for a scouting report to be filed. Especially considering that there is a a transfer and loan filter in the player scouted tab that will filter out players who are interested between none and extremely interested. It's like they put the criteria for top priority scouting where you're interested in making an immediate signing and applied that to standard and ongoing even though the point of the latter two is to gather a good database of players regardless of status.

It just slightly breaks immersion for me down the line - how do I know how good my player really is if I can't see what the best player looks like even from a far distance.

I just remember prior to one of the iterations of this game (it seems like 24.2 to me) there used to be 99+ scouting cards or recommendations playing as Man Utd. that I'd have to sort through. Now? I don't even think the email even registers on my radar as something to do. I don't need an admission that something is broken from them but something definitely changed somewhere along the lines for my games.

Edited March 8 by wazzaflow10

14 hours ago, Undy said:

Have you definitely had reports for overseas U18 players who aren't interested? I can get reports for players aged 16-18 from my own country because they're allowed to transfer, but with 30+ scouts assigned to look for players aged 15-18 with minimum half a silver star CA and PA over the course of four or five years, I have not had one single report for an overseas player aged 15-17.

Yes, granted it has been a while, but my scouts found a newgen U18 wonderkid bloke from Romania playing in either Sweden or Norway and this was in year two or three of my save, so he had to be U18 at the time. I couldn't sign him right away obviously, but once I could, I hit the release clause and he joined. 

The scouts also found some veterans in Serbia (~age 28 or so) who had no interest because I was in the second tier or because our standing in the league was too low. I saw the A+ on the scouting screen and lit up, but was disappointed I couldn't sign them. 

Granted, all of this happened when I had my scouts set to auto because of the issues of this thread... 

Edited March 8 by DavutOzkan

@Zachary Whyte

Would you be able to either share a save or a bunch of screenshots of how your test games play out with the recruiting focuses at a top club over periods of time (6 months, 1 year, 2 years etc)? I don't have much of an issue with a team like Derby County because there's tons of available players. It would be helpful for me at least to see what the intention of the developers are when setting up focuses as well as what results you get back and compare it to what I am getting.

On 07/03/2024 at 17:56, Undy said:

Have you definitely had reports for overseas U18 players who aren't interested? I can get reports for players aged 16-18 from my own country because they're allowed to transfer, but with 30+ scouts assigned to look for players aged 15-18 with minimum half a silver star CA and PA over the course of four or five years, I have not had one single report for an overseas player aged 15-17.

Here is a 17-year-old from Denmark being recommended to me. I am managing in Germany. 

1 hour ago, DavutOzkan said:

Here is a 17-year-old from Denmark being recommended to me. I am managing in Germany. 

Interesting, what does it say about his level of interest? Is he one of the very few U18s interested in a move abroad before his 18th birthday or is he completely uninterested? I guess maybe the latter since there's no max wage demand listed? 

@Zachary Whyte

So I did a test starting with a quick start save from 23 because I only have the demo version. Only England is technically loaded as a playable nation. I took that save and ported it over to 24 to run concurrently with 24 to compare results. Everything between the two saves is identical except for the version.

First attempt I was Derby County I had four focuses League One, League Two Championship and England. They have about 5 scouts total. I saw no differences in the number of players scouted between versions. In six month time I have about 515 and 525 players scouted between both FM 23 and FM24. That's a reassuring result to me. 

The second attempt I was Man Utd. They have 30+ scouts. When the game boots up not all of them are utilized in a recruitment focus initially. I delegated the assignments to the Chief Scout so all 36 scouts should be utilized. Now this next part is very perplexing to me.

In FM 23 I have 738 players scouted. Great! More scouts results in more reports. I could argue that it should be much higher given the number of scouts Man Utd has is 7x higher but its at least in the right direction. Could be that there's just not a lot of players loaded because its a quick start game, not overly concerned at this point with that. The next point is what is most concerning to me.

In FM 24 I received 515.  Why does a team of 5 scouts return the same amount of reports in the same amount of time as a team with 36 scouts? Especially when the previous version of the game shows 200 more players scouted?

I really don't understand why a team, especially a world renown level team, is not allowed to flex its muscles and scout significantly more players than a League One team.

I've uploaded both sets of saves to the server. 

• Man Utd 23 to 24 Port Scoutinging Test.fm
• Derby Comparison to 23.fm
• Man Utd 23 to 24 Port Scouting Test fm23.fm
• Derby 23 to 24 Port Scouting Test fm23.fm

20 hours ago, Undy said:

Interesting, what does it say about his level of interest? Is he one of the very few U18s interested in a move abroad before his 18th birthday or is he completely uninterested? I guess maybe the latter since there's no max wage demand listed? 

Says he has no interest right now. 

46 minutes ago, DavutOzkan said:

Says he has no interest right now. 

So this completely contradicts the official explanation. This company, which has grown massively since they were the makers of the game I played in the 90s and has a corporation of Sega's resources behind them, really needs to communicate better. 

I appreciate @Zachary Whyteengaging with the community, but some of the communication is really diminishing their credibility. First it's the customers fault, then it's working as intended, and now we have clear evidence that it is not working as the customers would like it to work, logically think it should work, or even how the developers allegedly intend it to work. 

At this point a clear, unambiguous statement from Zachary that this is the game we've been given and no further work will be done on this aspect of it, would probably be for the best. Otherwise SI is wasting the time and effort of community members who are uploading save games, posting screenshots, and in good faith trying to understand how this aspect of the game works. 

1 hour ago, DavutOzkan said:

Says he has no interest right now. 

I'd guess its because he's interested in a loan but he can't be loaned either as far as I know.

I'm fine with SI saying players have no interested in being sold until they're 18 as a form of short-cutting to mimic more realistic behavior from the game and to stop people from signing every talented 16 year old when they appear in game.

We should still be able to scout them though. The current guidelines would make it seem like the only club in the world who knew who Leo Messi was at 17 was Barcelona. Or more recently the only club who knows who Endrick is was Palmeires and then magically at 18 he just appears on everyone's radar.

I'd rather SI use the tools they have built like playing pathways and current squad depth and reputation and historical transfer patterns as a guide to determine which contract a player will accept. Using Endrick again,  I know he's already signed with Madrid but hypothetically, given how often Brazilian players move to Spain v England would make it more likely he'd accept a transfer to a Spanish club than an English club all else equal.

I also will say that I have had seemingly better luck when I switched to region scouting, which to be fair, was mentioned by the dev in an earlier comment. Why it suddenly works better than nation scouting I have no clue, but that has been the case for me at least, although I haven't run any specific tests or anything about it, and it could just be placebo. 

It's still not perfect, but I am at leats more satisfied with it now than I was before. 

6 hours ago, DavutOzkan said:

I also will say that I have had seemingly better luck when I switched to region scouting, which to be fair, was mentioned by the dev in an earlier comment. Why it suddenly works better than nation scouting I have no clue, but that has been the case for me at least, although I haven't run any specific tests or anything about it, and it could just be placebo. 

It's still not perfect, but I am at leats more satisfied with it now than I was before. 

There's just more players to scout and therefore more possible recommendations. Hypothetically lets say there's 100 players in German, 100 players in Belgium, 100 in holland etc etc. If you scout each nation individually of those 100 players maybe only 5 fit the criteria of "being interested", "good enough", "not above market value", then you'll only see 5 recommendations in each of those focuses. But if you group them all together you'll get 5 (assuming there's 5 in each) times the number of nations in central europe. So it automatically looks like its "working better" just because you've expanded the pool so broadly.

What I think is not correct (I won't say broken), is that if you did scout each nation individually with different scouts you should have significantly more scouted players than if you assigned one scout to an entire region. More players scouted = more recommendations in theory. But to me the issue is simply every team seems to have the same number of players scouted regardless of number of scouts the have or the focuses they select.

I have been following this thread since the main data update and there are so many things that goes on that I am very surprised hearing about both .

 

1. SI has always been telling us they talk to scouts (and other people within pro football clubs) to make the game more realistic!

So you would think they have a good understanding of how scouts look for players.

using player's interest as a way to filter away recommendations as they don't bother to file reports until they hits a certain age is beyond ludacris. Here they are trying to tell us how we shall play the game and limit our freedom to play it how we want.

I would hardly believe a scout go to the sgent or player to ask about whether they want to join the team before they start scouting him...

2. What it looks like for me, right now, is that the game doesn't take into account a scouts past experience, his reputation and all his prior knowledge he has gained from years of building an extensive knowledge in a country.

It doesn't even take into account the reputation of players under 18 and their ambitions to perhaps play for a bigger club.

It is not unlikely that top clubs pick up players under the age of 18...or perhaps newsflash - know about the best Wonderkids already from they are 14! So it's highly unrealistic and unreasonable that my top scout won't even consider scouting the best Wonderkids in the game.

3. then they talked about workload of scouts and the likelihood to get fewer reports..but isn't region scouting increasing a scouts workload. it will be harder to travel between x different nations in a year and visit matches. Would it not be better for the scout to visit two neighbouring countries and watch matches that are of higher profile that fits the club?

In this regard it seems to me that the game plays down the fact the number of scouts travelling the world and that they are often selecting to watch/scout 'the wrong players'.

4. they talk about limiting our abilities to purchase these wonderkids  ..but why did they remove the previous scouting knowledge levels? previously you had to scout a player multiple times to unlock new information. why couldn't they kept that but made the final hurdle to get extensive knowledge from perhaps 1 month to  e.g 2-3 months depending on where in the world he is and his reputation.

then, on the other hand i don't feel it's the scouts job to filter reports. here i feel it's the job of the director of football or whoever in charge of ongoing transfer to see what possibilities there are in the world.

If you think about how long processes are to get a player to pick between clubs in RL , I wish there where more focus on trying to get his attention by promises and facilities and reputation rather than a strict rule that says a player is most likely not wanting to join your club so he won't be known about until much later as you progress in the save

5. finally, what I don't understand if scouts really look only for players that can improve the team .. why did they scout players in the 3.div of Argentina when you are playing as Barcelona?

it's who they prioritize scouting that beats me

@Zachary Whyte said nothing had been changed from release to 24.2 in terms of how scouting works... this makes me even more confused as I felt there where two completely different worlds between beta and 24.2.

If a club with 5 scouts can find as many players as a club with 20 scouts then that's just unrealistic. Those 5 scouts would have limited resources and time available to create as many reports..

Sorry for the long post but lots of frustration that i want to vent out

 

43 minutes ago, Passion4FM said:

I have been following this thread since the main data update and there are so many things that goes on that I am very surprised hearing about both .

 

1. SI has always been telling us they talk to scouts (and other people within pro football clubs) to make the game more realistic!

So you would think they have a good understanding of how scouts look for players.

using player's interest as a way to filter away recommendations as they don't bother to file reports until they hits a certain age is beyond ludacris. Here they are trying to tell us how we shall play the game and limit our freedom to play it how we want.

I would hardly believe a scout go to the sgent or player to ask about whether they want to join the team before they start scouting him...

2. What it looks like for me, right now, is that the game doesn't take into account a scouts past experience, his reputation and all his prior knowledge he has gained from years of building an extensive knowledge in a country.

It doesn't even take into account the reputation of players under 18 and their ambitions to perhaps play for a bigger club.

It is not unlikely that top clubs pick up players under the age of 18...or perhaps newsflash - know about the best Wonderkids already from they are 14! So it's highly unrealistic and unreasonable that my top scout won't even consider scouting the best Wonderkids in the game.

3. then they talked about workload of scouts and the likelihood to get fewer reports..but isn't region scouting increasing a scouts workload. it will be harder to travel between x different nations in a year and visit matches. Would it not be better for the scout to visit two neighbouring countries and watch matches that are of higher profile that fits the club?

In this regard it seems to me that the game plays down the fact the number of scouts travelling the world and that they are often selecting to watch/scout 'the wrong players'.

4. they talk about limiting our abilities to purchase these wonderkids  ..but why did they remove the previous scouting knowledge levels? previously you had to scout a player multiple times to unlock new information. why couldn't they kept that but made the final hurdle to get extensive knowledge from perhaps 1 month to  e.g 2-3 months depending on where in the world he is and his reputation.

then, on the other hand i don't feel it's the scouts job to filter reports. here i feel it's the job of the director of football or whoever in charge of ongoing transfer to see what possibilities there are in the world.

If you think about how long processes are to get a player to pick between clubs in RL , I wish there where more focus on trying to get his attention by promises and facilities and reputation rather than a strict rule that says a player is most likely not wanting to join your club so he won't be known about until much later as you progress in the save

5. finally, what I don't understand if scouts really look only for players that can improve the team .. why did they scout players in the 3.div of Argentina when you are playing as Barcelona?

it's who they prioritize scouting that beats me

@Zachary Whyte said nothing had been changed from release to 24.2 in terms of how scouting works... this makes me even more confused as I felt there where two completely different worlds between beta and 24.2.

If a club with 5 scouts can find as many players as a club with 20 scouts then that's just unrealistic. Those 5 scouts would have limited resources and time available to create as many reports..

Sorry for the long post but lots of frustration that i want to vent out

 

I think a lot of us have been overly polite and ingratiating in the hope that we would be taken seriously. However, @Zachary Whytehas just been insulting our intelligence and gaslighting the community into believing we're doing something wrong. I just asked my 20/20 scouts to watch every game of the U19 European championship. I have 35 scouts and all were unassigned. I constantly receive "assignment completed" messages from my Chief Scout and received zero reports. Manually scouting each player in the relevant U19 squads led to numerous 5 star (initial) potential players. That is insane. How can some of the best scouts in the game watch the best young players in Europe throughout a tournament and file zero reports and have zero knowledge of the players.

Scouting is broken, it's clear. Instead of insulting our intelligence SI should tell us that we've paid our money and we should wait to do so again with FM25 and hope that it works then. 

I can't believe that I have to say this again, but not finding players is not the problem. The scouts do find players, you can see them at the scouting tab on 'In Progress'. They find players with a good or perfect rating in that tab. But when the scouts are done scouting, the players don't move to the 'Recommended' tab, but just disappear. 

Keep giving us "tips" on how to improve our focuses is not the solution. 

It's not the only problem. The mad/maddening thing is that it seems to change randomly in my single save game. The problem you mention is constant, but there are also issues with scouts filing no reports from elite youth tournaments or assignments for areas that they are perfectly suited to scout and should recommend at least a dozen clearly world class potential players.

8 minutes ago, Thijsie said:

I can't believe that I have to say this again, but not finding players is not the problem. The scouts do find players, you can see them at the scouting tab on 'In Progress'. They find players with a good or perfect rating in that tab. But when the scouts are done scouting, the players don't move to the 'Recommended' tab, but just disappear. 

Keep giving us "tips" on how to improve our focuses is not the solution. 

 

Went a few days trying the game again, reinstalled it, tried to lower my standards even more and yeah, pretty disappointed about how they've handled this issue.

I think there's a misunderstanding on how we expect scouting to work and how it works in-game at least in the 24' Version.

In MY opinion we should have scouts providing an influx of players/knowledge about them regardless of their interest/price/if they are an improvement or not to our squad, that kind of decision should be up to us, not to the Algorithm behind scouting.

So if I make a focus searching for 1 Silver Star CA/PA in Italy (for example), my scouts should scout every player that matches those requirements, regardless of their interest/price/quality because WE AS THE MANAGERS OF THE TEAM asked for that focus and the scouts SHOULD follow what we've set up.

And I think @Zachary Whyte made a mistake when he said Transfer Interest was part of the process behind the player appearing or not to the Recommended tab, as we already have a filter on that, as some examples that we've set such as Endrick not appearing on a focus in this hypothetical world until he's 18, this is VERY unrealistic, as our scouts should have him scouted even though the game could say that he doesn't have interest but at least we know he exists and have a huge potential.

I still hope that this thread is being followed by the devs as a lot of us are frustated about this, and I don't think this area of the game is working as intended, as @wazzaflow10 tested comparing to older versions of the game.

17 horas atrás, Passion4FM disse:

If a club with 5 scouts can find as many players as a club with 20 scouts then that's just unrealistic. Those 5 scouts would have limited resources and time available to create as many reports..

I agree on that as well. If I have 25x 20/20 Scouts and 5x 1/1, the former should be better and get me more results and make my Scouting more specific and should return more results.

Edited March 12 by zeza

Can we expect another patch/fix or update on this, @Zachary Whyte? 

Edited March 15 by zeza

Hello @zeza

To answer your question, there will be no further changes made to scouting in FM24. As mentioned above, we’re happy with how the current system is working with the recent tweaks we made in our Main Data Update.

However, we will continue to log/monitor all the feedback that has been presented in this thread, this has been very useful and could help us with future game development. 

Also, you uploaded a save game recently and say you were struggling to find a striker for your Sunderland save. I loaded up that save and made an example recruitment focus for a striker and you can see the results with the screenshots below. 
 
Hope this was helpful, thank you.

1 hour ago, Zachary Whyte said:

Also, you uploaded a save game recently and say you were struggling to find a striker for your Sunderland save. I loaded up that save and made an example recruitment focus for a striker and you can see the results with the screenshots below. 

That is weird. I didn't get those results, Zach. Maybe it's something to do with the Priority (Ongoing/Normal). I'm used to using the Ongoing priority to get a more constant influx of results instead of something that will eventually end and I'd have to reset.

Can you tell me how much time you've waited for those results and if it had something to do with the priority that you've set up? This could be in my Direct Messages so that we don't spam this thread any longer! Thank you.

On 12/02/2024 at 08:01, Passion4FM said:

You have a rather tight search paramater in terms of minimum CA and max PA. In reality you are searching for players between 110-120 CA (depending on squads average ability and level) and 120-130 PA... (if we say for example that 1 golden star is 100 where 5 stars is 200.

Umm... Am I missing something big here or are you?

That says MINIMUM potential ability. You directly said max PA. So what the search says is min current ability of 110 in your example with at least 130 pa but no ceiling on it. 
 

Edited March 16 by corrynation

On 15/03/2024 at 08:16, Zachary Whyte said:

Hello @zeza

To answer your question, there will be no further changes made to scouting in FM24. As mentioned above, we’re happy with how the current system is working with the recent tweaks we made in our Main Data Update.

However, we will continue to log/monitor all the feedback that has been presented in this thread, this has been very useful and could help us with future game development. 

Also, you uploaded a save game recently and say you were struggling to find a striker for your Sunderland save. I loaded up that save and made an example recruitment focus for a striker and you can see the results with the screenshots below. 
 
Hope this was helpful, thank you.

Hi @Zachary Whyte,

Thank you for the example screenshots.

I appreciate you stating that you're looking into ways to modify the scouting module based on feedback here.

I did want to point out one thing here that doesn't make logical sense to me as a player. In this focus it looks like you are effectively scouting the world with the areas dropdown set to "any". Based on results it would appear that scouts have more or less picked to scout exclusively in England despite this instruction. I don't think anything is wrong with that result given that Sunderland is likely only going to be recommended players that are able to pass the work permit criteria. However, if you're scouting "any" (again meaning world - or in Sunderland's case all available regions board allows you to scout) area, I would expect a significant number of players in the "near matches" category with a designation of may not pass WP requirements or definitely will not pass WP requirements etc.. It would be an opportunity to show us players who we could shortlist and track or possibly use an ESC slot (if available).

In my opinion part of the challenge of scouting should be allocating your scouts to competitions, nations, regions that yield results that match what your team needs. As sunderland, it doesn't make much sense to scout Brazil. You can (provided the board allows it) and your scouts will find and scout players but your recommendations will be few. The cost of sending a scout there wouldn't be worth the price in that scenario. Compared to a team like Real Madrid who is very much interested in scouting Brazil, I'd expect a scout to find lots of players but only a few will have the real potential to make the jump. But if you're a team like that, is it better to let other clubs bring them to Europe and focus more on covering the top leagues where there is less uncertainty? Or do you hope you can uncover a player that can make an immediate impact for a much cheaper fee? If the goal is to prevent the human player from gobbling up all the best wonderkids I'd very much welcome more uncertainty or ambiguity from scouts for players under 18 all the way up to under 24 rather than partially obscuring the world behind you don't see player X because they aren't interested. I think the transfer window would be much more entertaining if you had to go through agents to find out interest levels or wages it would take to get them to sign rather than have it all sorted for you already.