Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work

Just for a comparison, I went back to fm23 (albeit demo version) to compare recruitment focuses to 24.

Here's the focus details for 23 and the results after a month. 1 Recommendation and 33 near matches with reasons why they weren't recommended.

This definitely does not occur in 24.

@SI team if you want the save I can send it.

 

 

 

 

On 13/01/2024 at 12:23, Lam3r said:

Update - I've culled all my recruitment focuses and handed scouting decisions back to the chief scout, and reports are now coming in thick and fast on the ones he's set up. Sadly, they are all pretty naff focuses!

Even if I setup a recruitment focus for a first team player now I get loads of reports and a good list, whereas before when I asked for a first team mezzala I got nothing. So it seems like the key is to have chief scout (or maybe DOF) in charge of scouting or it breaks. 

Exactly the same issue. Even tried searching for 5 grey ca and 1 gold pa. Nothing comes up. Just 18 scouts saying that there's no one in the world they would recommend. Playing Hvidovre in Denmark. Trust me there are players that could improve the team.

Temporary work around would be to look at "in progress" tab and manually scout them, effort I know but it seems to do more good than the current one. 

Scouting is defintely not working as intended, In the demo, I had several players in the broader and specific criterias and now im barely getting 1 or 2, pretty much unplayable for a top end team until this is fixed. 

I don't know if this belongs in the same issue, but I have just signed five new scouts, best possible attributes, totally different nationalities, scouting knowledge, little to nothing in common other than attributes. When I ask them to recommend a player they all recommend the exact same player who keeps on coming up in my recommendations even though he's not a once in a lifetime player.

4 hours ago, TheHuss said:

I don't know if this belongs in the same issue, but I have just signed five new scouts, best possible attributes, totally different nationalities, scouting knowledge, little to nothing in common other than attributes. When I ask them to recommend a player they all recommend the exact same player who keeps on coming up in my recommendations even though he's not a once in a lifetime player.

Not the same issue so it might be wise making a seperate post (if you haven't done already), it'll also most likely be looked at and be told from an SI staff member they've seen it, if you did a seperate post, given our current issue from the thread is under review. 

Edited January 20 by BigV

On 16/01/2024 at 15:38, Lam3r said:

Even if I setup a recruitment focus for a first team player now I get loads of reports and a good list, whereas before when I asked for a first team mezzala I got nothing. So it seems like the key is to have chief scout (or maybe DOF) in charge of scouting or it breaks. 

I've tried this and made no difference for me. Scouts would still go on assignments and not even have a single player in progress. I've also noticed though that having a narrow area focus (i.e. a nation or even a single region) would result in next to no scouting taking place, even if the rest of the criteria were quite broad. In exasperation, I took control of scouting back from my chief scout, deleted all existing assignments, then created this one:

I duplicated this for every single one of my scouts. Obviously with the minimum PA at 4.5 stars this is a very restrictive focus, so I don't expect many, if any, recommendations from most of the scouts, but I do at least expect them to look at people. I have 22 of these assignments - one for each scout. Currently eight of them have zero reports in progress, near matches, or recommendations. The others have 1, 15, 15, 13, 11, 22, 13, 28, 18, 7, 14, 8, 13, 9, and 16 in progress. They are at least looking at players now, but it's far from an ideal setup.

It might help SI understand the nature of the bug if we lay out expectations for how our focuses would work to see whether it matches with intended functionality within the game. For this setup, I would expect the scout to follow a process something like this:

1. Look at players he already has scouting knowledge of
2. Look at players he doesn't have prior knowledge of in the most reputable clubs in countries he has knowledge of (in decreasing order of country knowledge)
3. Given the age range is low, look at clubs in countries he has knowledge of and which have an academy rating of (e.g.) 3 stars and up
4. Look at all other clubs in countries he has knowledge of
5. Repeat steps 2-4 but in countries he doesn't have knowledge of
6. Repeat

It would be understandable if step 5 was missed out and he instead repeated steps 1-4 in an infinite loop given it's an ongoing assignment. What isn't acceptable (indeed should be sackable behaviour) is not looking at any players in any clubs at all. In the case of Toninho Cruz, he has extensive knowledge of Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Spain, and Angola, and very good knowledge of Belgium, Cameroon, and Colombia, has no other active assignments, but has zero in progress reports. If I look at Porto, the most reputable club in his home country, they have 12 players aged 20 and under who we have no knowledge of, which begs the question, what the hell is he doing? Why isn't he scouting these guys? With a little snooping, I can see one of them is a 19 year old with CA 133 and PA 172. Toninho should be raving about this guy but he isn't even looking! In a recruitment focus like this, what should I expect my scout to actually be doing that could convince me that the behaviour i'm seeing isn't a bug? 

45 minutes ago, Undy said:

I've tried this and made no difference for me. Scouts would still go on assignments and not even have a single player in progress. I've also noticed though that having a narrow area focus (i.e. a nation or even a single region) would result in next to no scouting taking place, even if the rest of the criteria were quite broad. In exasperation, I took control of scouting back from my chief scout, deleted all existing assignments, then created this one:

I duplicated this for every single one of my scouts. Obviously with the minimum PA at 4.5 stars this is a very restrictive focus, so I don't expect many, if any, recommendations from most of the scouts, but I do at least expect them to look at people. I have 22 of these assignments - one for each scout. Currently eight of them have zero reports in progress, near matches, or recommendations. The others have 1, 15, 15, 13, 11, 22, 13, 28, 18, 7, 14, 8, 13, 9, and 16 in progress. They are at least looking at players now, but it's far from an ideal setup.

It might help SI understand the nature of the bug if we lay out expectations for how our focuses would work to see whether it matches with intended functionality within the game. For this setup, I would expect the scout to follow a process something like this:

1. Look at players he already has scouting knowledge of
2. Look at players he doesn't have prior knowledge of in the most reputable clubs in countries he has knowledge of (in decreasing order of country knowledge)
3. Given the age range is low, look at clubs in countries he has knowledge of and which have an academy rating of (e.g.) 3 stars and up
4. Look at all other clubs in countries he has knowledge of
5. Repeat steps 2-4 but in countries he doesn't have knowledge of
6. Repeat

It would be understandable if step 5 was missed out and he instead repeated steps 1-4 in an infinite loop given it's an ongoing assignment. What isn't acceptable (indeed should be sackable behaviour) is not looking at any players in any clubs at all. In the case of Toninho Cruz, he has extensive knowledge of Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Spain, and Angola, and very good knowledge of Belgium, Cameroon, and Colombia, has no other active assignments, but has zero in progress reports. If I look at Porto, the most reputable club in his home country, they have 12 players aged 20 and under who we have no knowledge of, which begs the question, what the hell is he doing? Why isn't he scouting these guys? With a little snooping, I can see one of them is a 19 year old with CA 133 and PA 172. Toninho should be raving about this guy but he isn't even looking! In a recruitment focus like this, what should I expect my scout to actually be doing that could convince me that the behaviour i'm seeing isn't a bug? 

Yeah things quickly went back to how they were after a while. A year later and im getting sod all reports again even with the chief scout running the show. Its 100% broken.

It must be random as to whether it breaks or it only breaks after so many years, thats the only explanation for how more aren't seeing this.

I'm having to resort to just manually scouting people now.

2 horas atrás, Lam3r disse:

Yeah things quickly went back to how they were after a while. A year later and im getting sod all reports again even with the chief scout running the show. Its 100% broken.

It must be random as to whether it breaks or it only breaks after so many years, thats the only explanation for how more aren't seeing this.

I'm having to resort to just manually scouting people now.

It breaks after some years I guess. It happened in a couple of saves and I didn't touch the game ever since. Almost a month without any hotfix/updates about this issue, just a message saying that our scouting is not broad enough.

Feels so bad.

I have a similar issue with scouting. Almost none players gets highly recommended or found!

For instance, I have asked Trezeguet (ADA - 19, JPA - 18 and JPP 19) to scout France.

From August to April he has found a maximum of 52 players (!)  (Scouted Players - Based in France)

However, he must be very lazy as only 2 reports are kept within the Reports section under his staff profile. What's funny is that it says 56 reports.

Let's say he has managed to scout 56 players - that's not a lot considering the number of matches he could have watched throughout that year. 1 match with 22 players per weekend would make the tally higher.. Watch U19 matches on Wednesday plus Cup matches....

After investigating the issue, I have discovered that my ONGOING Recruitment Focuses are completed after a little over 1 month.. I'm certain that some of these focuses has been completed without me editing the focus (simply because I have simulated the game)

IMAGE OF COMPLETED RECRUITMENT FOCUSES

https://imgur.com/a/wEdgzz1

Trezeguet completed one 12/12-23 and then 07/01-24 - later 01.03.24 and 17.03.24

It looks like the recruitment focus is completed whenever I make a slight edit to it... that's allright if it's supposed to be that way, but I don't get why nothing works unless you select the default recruitment focus age: 15 to 50
If it's completed, why won't the Reports be kept on the profile of the scout?

I have SO many questions about this matter as I struggle to understand why my scouts can't even find or recommend top players or Under-23 that the entire world knows of... I understand Reputation is a matter but when you sign the best scouts and only Aurelio Pereira delivers - he has made 144 reports) - however, it doesn't look like that if I visit the Recuitment focus he has been on - U21 Wonderkids

When creating an ALL Top priority recruitment focus - I quickly get 20 recommendations, 25 near matches and 12 in progress... Those who isn't recommended has C+ or lower recommendation grade - bust most often they have C- to E!

When you set up a similar U21 Wonderkids focus from 5-star grey stars to 2.5 minimum PA and the 8 scouts on that assignment ONLY finds C- to E - such as William Rashidi, Matej Sakota, Ayman el Wafi I start to question how they scout for players... does they wander willy nilly around like a blind person who has no knowledge of football europe and consider which clubs and matches to watch?

I saw one of the moderators talking about having a very restrictive recruitment focus but if you aren't supposed to scout within an age range or for players in a particular position (not role), how is the recruitment focus meant to be working?

It's really sad that one of the core features of Football Manager isn't likely to work until March.... If we think about all the new features and changes coming to FM25...it could potentially become a disaster ...

Edited January 23 by Passion4FM

22 hours ago, Undy said:

I've tried this and made no difference for me. Scouts would still go on assignments and not even have a single player in progress. I've also noticed though that having a narrow area focus (i.e. a nation or even a single region) would result in next to no scouting taking place, even if the rest of the criteria were quite broad. In exasperation, I took control of scouting back from my chief scout, deleted all existing assignments, then created this one:

I duplicated this for every single one of my scouts. Obviously with the minimum PA at 4.5 stars this is a very restrictive focus, so I don't expect many, if any, recommendations from most of the scouts, but I do at least expect them to look at people. I have 22 of these assignments - one for each scout. Currently eight of them have zero reports in progress, near matches, or recommendations. The others have 1, 15, 15, 13, 11, 22, 13, 28, 18, 7, 14, 8, 13, 9, and 16 in progress. They are at least looking at players now, but it's far from an ideal setup.

It might help SI understand the nature of the bug if we lay out expectations for how our focuses would work to see whether it matches with intended functionality within the game. For this setup, I would expect the scout to follow a process something like this:

1. Look at players he already has scouting knowledge of
2. Look at players he doesn't have prior knowledge of in the most reputable clubs in countries he has knowledge of (in decreasing order of country knowledge)
3. Given the age range is low, look at clubs in countries he has knowledge of and which have an academy rating of (e.g.) 3 stars and up
4. Look at all other clubs in countries he has knowledge of
5. Repeat steps 2-4 but in countries he doesn't have knowledge of
6. Repeat

It would be understandable if step 5 was missed out and he instead repeated steps 1-4 in an infinite loop given it's an ongoing assignment. What isn't acceptable (indeed should be sackable behaviour) is not looking at any players in any clubs at all. In the case of Toninho Cruz, he has extensive knowledge of Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Spain, and Angola, and very good knowledge of Belgium, Cameroon, and Colombia, has no other active assignments, but has zero in progress reports. If I look at Porto, the most reputable club in his home country, they have 12 players aged 20 and under who we have no knowledge of, which begs the question, what the hell is he doing? Why isn't he scouting these guys? With a little snooping, I can see one of them is a 19 year old with CA 133 and PA 172. Toninho should be raving about this guy but he isn't even looking! In a recruitment focus like this, what should I expect my scout to actually be doing that could convince me that the behaviour i'm seeing isn't a bug? 

Interesting update - I played through to the next recruitment focus update and Toninho is now looking at 11 players in progress, from 10 different countries / 3 continents. He is doing his job, albeit in a pretty haphazard fashion, and ~11 players in a week is a good rate to be scouting at. What this doesn't explain though is why it drops to consistently zero in progress when I restrict his scouting area to a nation or even a region.

This really needs some further communication from SI. It seems that A. This doesn't affect all players. B For those of us who are affected by this issue it really ruins a major aspect of the game. I personally enjoy an interesting looking scout report amongst many, taking a look and deciding it requires further scouting, taking my time to get a number of scouts opinions, and then hopefully signing an unknown newgen gem. This is nigh on impossible at present. 

If we as a community take our time to log these bugs, upload save files and screenshots, provide as detailed information as possible, SI should reciprocate with relevant updates. "It's your search parameters" and then silence isn't fair for such a major issue and one that is being constructively documented by the community. 

Just my two cents... 

It really needs investigation and a proper answer. If so many of us are doing it wrong, then they should tell us how it is supposed to work.

the result of the ALL TOP focus gave a decent result in around 1 month

13 hours ago, Passion4FM said:

It really needs investigation and a proper answer. If so many of us are doing it wrong, then they should tell us how it is supposed to work.

the result of the ALL TOP focus gave a decent result in around 1 month

Unless they've changed it for FM24 we aren't doing it wrong. I've done it this way since whatever version recruitment focuses came in, and nigh on every big YouTube content creator has a video on how to scout, and it's invariably like this.

I think it's only breaking in some saves or after so many seasons which is why there isn't a complete hammering of this thread from all and sundry.

Sadly it's killing my save now. I'm in 2033 managing Bayern having worked my way up from Viktoria Koln, and as its 9 years in my real world knowledge is at the point of being useless. At least half of the game are newgens by now. 

I asked my scouts to produce a list of 3* BPD as De Ligt has just gone to Saudi for £1m a week, and they told me they couldn't find one. I had a transfer budget of £190m and they had free reign. I had a look round the top teams in the CL and manually pressed scout on a few and they all came back at over 3*. I signed one from Dortmund for £60m - I end up playing them about 4 times a year, how did he not show up in the recruitment focus?

Edited January 24 by Lam3r

Hello @Passion4FM

Can you please upload your save file to us so we can examine further. 

@Zachary Whyte Thanks for replying so quickly!

I have uploaded my game to the SI cloud and named it: 'passion4fm_recruitmentfocus_few_reports.fm'

I tested a similar approach on FM23 earlier today by managing Le Havre and I received 20 B to A+ recommendations on players between 15 and 22 reports within a week! 5-star silver stars and 2.5 gold star (PA Minimum) - this was done with a TOP priority report. But I also set up a ongoing report of players between 15 and 21 with 5 silver star Ca minimum and 3 star PA minimum and I have 42 players in progress.

The scouts had even watched some of the players by attending a match

It seems the scouts are very lazy in FM24 compared to FM23, or doesn't focus properly on the players with the highest reputation. When managing Barcelona, why would the scout bother to scout the third division of Portugal after players...

Throughout one season (May 24th 2024), my scouts at Barcelona has managed to scout 983 players (world range) - I have 9 scouts available. In the Arsenal simulation that I uploaded, I have 20 scouts available (max) and they have only been able to scout through 738 players in one season (May 29th 2024).

However in that save, they have scouted players in Peru without me not sending scouts there (sent to Brazil and Argentina). Weirdly they haven't spotted any of the big five Brazilian wonderkids - Estevao, Endrick, Luis Guilherme, Kaua Elias, Gabriel Moscardo or Matheus Goncalves. same goes for Argentina's Claudio Echeverri. Instead we have 'gems' like Mauricio di Gubio or Agustin Kahl - the latter in Serie C...

In FM23, with Le Havre with lesser scouting range (western Europe) and fewer scouts, the scouts has madde reports of 489 players (all scouted players) by October 10th 2022. That's not even half a year into the season..

Hope this helps to fix this for Winter Transfer Update... it takes away lots of the fun by scouting if you only needs to manual search for players rather than let your scouts to the heavy lifting.

Thank you for the save and detailed information,  we will investigate further. 

I just want to add my name into the basket. Imagine all the people experience this issue but dont write in here or any other part of the forum? I have multiple saves up and running but this scouting ineffeciency is killing almost all joy out of it.

 

Please, could you please give the dog a bone? Can you confirm the issue and perhas give a hint when this will be fixed?

On 22/01/2024 at 18:05, zeza said:

It breaks after some years I guess. It happened in a couple of saves and I didn't touch the game ever since. Almost a month without any hotfix/updates about this issue, just a message saying that our scouting is not broad enough.

Feels so bad.

This is pretty unacceptable tbh. Scouting is a big part of the game. 

I am giving up on the game until there is a fix at this point. 

2 hours ago, DavutOzkan said:

This is pretty unacceptable tbh. Scouting is a big part of the game. 

I am giving up on the game until there is a fix at this point. 

I would give a lot just for a expected fix date. It's so frustrating. The worst part is that it's apperently not happening to everyone, so it didn't go to the top of the fix list as it should straight away.

I asked for a solution on reddit and was send this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiuDXLNbhs&ab_channel=Ironowl 

Seems to work decently, although quite manual. It does allow for playing, but is pretty cumbersome.

10 minutes ago, Thrane87 said:

I would give a lot just for a expected fix date. It's so frustrating. The worst part is that it's apperently not happening to everyone, so it didn't go to the top of the fix list as it should straight away.

I asked for a solution on reddit and was send this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiuDXLNbhs&ab_channel=Ironowl 

Seems to work decently, although quite manual. It does allow for playing, but is pretty cumbersome.

The thing is that it worked as expected when the game initially came out. From a certain point, it's sometimes worked (albeit not like it did in FM 23 as per one poster's reply above) and then sometimes I get nothing. 

I was managing a smaller team in The Netherlands and had my scouting package as The Netherlands only and my genius scouts couldn't find anyone. Truly flabbergasting. I was totally dumbstruck. 

Edited January 26 by DavutOzkan

Em 24/01/2024 em 14:16, Zachary Whyte disse:

Thank you for the save and detailed information,  we will investigate further. 

It's almost February and you're still going to investigate a problem that's been in the game since December. It's unbelievable.

1 hour ago, Nick_CB said:

It's almost February and you're still going to investigate a problem that's been in the game since December. It's unbelievable.

coding for FM isn't easy, yeah its a bug or so we think (there's not a lot out there suggesting it is apart from 2 or 3 threads), they need to look at all other factors leading it to wrong results and that means getting as much info and saves as possible. 

This isn't the place to criticise them, this is clearly a bug section meant for that alone. That's all I'll say on that note. 

16 minutes ago, BigV said:

coding for FM isn't easy, yeah its a bug or so we think (there's not a lot out there suggesting it is apart from 2 or 3 threads), they need to look at all other factors leading it to wrong results and that means getting as much info and saves as possible. 

This isn't the place to criticise them, this is clearly a bug section meant for that alone. That's all I'll say on that note. 

Well it's not unreasonable to get frustrated with the lack of communication. First message was that players had to narrow focuses and that it basically was self inflicted. As one of the affected player who have tried every focus you can imagine, it's a bit provocative. People get annoyed because they love the game and this bug has taken away a huge part of the enjoyment. Not being able to scout players without manually going through clubs and countries selecting all players is truly not enjoyable. 

So good on you for reminding about manners, but honestly the frustration is understandable at this point.

On 23/01/2024 at 18:55, Undy said:

Interesting update - I played through to the next recruitment focus update and Toninho is now looking at 11 players in progress, from 10 different countries / 3 continents. He is doing his job, albeit in a pretty haphazard fashion, and ~11 players in a week is a good rate to be scouting at. What this doesn't explain though is why it drops to consistently zero in progress when I restrict his scouting area to a nation or even a region.

After about one game year of this approach, it is working just about adequately for me. Across 23 scouts, I've signed two or three good signings based on their recommendations. I did decide to try narrowing the area focus again and changed one scout to look at just Colombia (which he has full knowledge of) rather than the whole world, leaving all other criteria the same, and he averages about one report every six weeks. Not one recommendation, but one player in progress every six weeks. I'm playing with max database settings so the players are there to scout, he's just being insanely slow about it and this reflects all my previous attempts at national or regional level focuses. Something is very broken there. On any rational information gathering or traveling logic you should expect a scout to produce more reports per unit time if his focus area is narrower, even if the players he's looking at are of a lower talent level. 

The tldr advice, set the focus area to any if you want to gather reports at any decent rate, then just like real life you need to hope the law of large numbers delivers someone worth signing.