Unlimited Potential

[Matthew Le God]

Even if a player has a limit, it does not necessarily make sense to model this limit. It would be like modeling the maximum scoreline of a game, or limiting the number of points a team can get in a league, or calculating the maximum number of injuries suffered throughout a player's lifetime.

Genetic potential indeed has limitations, but these are purely physical - take, for example, the density of twitch-muscles which is greater in black people, which is why we see a lot more black sprinters at the highest level. It is disingenuous to stretch this to some abstract concept of "talent" where physical attributes make up just a small part of a football player - how about skill, creativity and technique?

There is no need to model the potential limit - without a limit, it does not mean everyone will hit infinite ability. You do not see players in-game getting an infinite number of injuries - and injuries are likely not limited in a way that PA is.

Finally someone on my side haha

Skill, creativity and technique are all influenced by genetics. Yes, nurture does play a part, but some people have genes which enable them to have better skill, creativity and technique than others.

[Wiitastic]

It would be easy to have FM2011 have unlimited potential, just remove PA and its figures all together. They added them in, so it would be easy to remove them. but with removing the PA, how would this affect the players attributes ? how high could those numbers go ?

[x42bn6]

Skill, creativity and technique are all influenced by genetics. Yes, nurture does play a part, but some people have genes which enable them to have better skill, creativity and technique than others.

As far as I know, there is nothing in scientific literature that suggests that "nature" implies immutability - i.e. a limit. The whole nature vs. nurture debate has no conclusive evidence to suggest either is a pure cause of how good a person can be in terms of ability. By suggesting that potential is determined at birth, this implies that "nature" is the conclusive factor, which is incorrect.

Here's a quote:

This article introduces the notion of genetic essentialist biases: cognitive biases associated with essentialist thinking that are elicited when people encounter arguments that genes are relevant for a behavior, condition, or social group. Learning about genetic attributions for various human conditions leads to a particular set of thoughts regarding those conditions: they are more likely to be perceived as (a) immutable and determined, (b) having a specific etiology, © homogeneous and discrete, and (d) natural, which can lead to the naturalistic fallacy. There are rare cases of “strong genetic explanation” when such responses to genetic attributions may be appropriate; however, people tend to overweigh genetic attributions compared with competing attributions even in cases of “weak genetic explanation,” which are far more common. The authors reviewed research on people's understanding of race, gender, sexual orientation, criminality, mental illness, and obesity through a genetic essentialism lens, highlighting attitudinal, cognitive, and behavioral changes that stem from consideration of genetic attributions as bases of these categories. Scientific and media portrayals of genetic discoveries are discussed with respect to genetic essentialism, as is the role that genetic essentialism has played (and continues to play) in various public policies, legislation, scientific endeavors, and ideological movements in recent history. Last, moderating factors and interventions to reduce the magnitude of genetic essentialism, which identify promising directions to explore in order to reduce these biases, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record © 2010 APA, all rights reserved)

http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2010-25598-001

Nobody doubts that having good genes helps, but it does not imply that they are immediately superior.

"Genetics" (nature) is deterministic, although difficult to measure; the environment (nurture), however, is non-deterministic and will vary over time. Because nature and nurture influence how good a person will become in terms of ability, and because one is non-deterministic, it therefore suggests that the "ultimate ability" of a person must also be non-deterministic. The genetics will simply influence the non-determinism in some way - perhaps, for example, allowing naturally-talented people to develop certain skills quicker.

[Cougar2010]

There is no need to model the potential limit - without a limit, it does not mean everyone will hit infinite ability. You do not see players in-game getting an infinite number of injuries - and injuries are likely not limited in a way that PA is.

I know we've had this discussion many times and I know we'll have to agree to disagree but in general the games needs limits. Its a piece of software that uses numbers for everything and because of that it needs a framework to work in. There is no way PA can be modelled the way it is in RL but the way FM does it now is more than acceptable providing you play the game in the manner it was designed and don't use 3rd party software to influence your decisions.

As has been said many times many of your ideas are not to do with PA but how CA evolves over time and that is an area where I agree improvements can be made. The most important of those is that a very low % of players should ever reach their *PA within the game. Once that happens all the discussions of PA will cease to exist.

EDIT

*Corrected error - Changed CA to PA

[x42bn6]

It would be easy to have FM2011 have unlimited potential, just remove PA and its figures all together. They added them in, so it would be easy to remove them. but with removing the PA, how would this affect the players attributes ? how high could those numbers go ?

You would have to introduce some genetic component in place of PA - I advocate a talent level. In rough terms, it suggests that more-talented players are more likely to develop more, rather like having a better engine in your car in a racing game than your opponent. So players with zero talent will always find it hard to develop well - although one can never rule it out.

If you removed PA, you would seriously consider removing CA too, because PA is limited CA. As a result, there would be none of this nonsense where "physical attributes or weaker feet eat up too many CA points". Each attribute would therefore develop separately. This perhaps poses a problem because it means that you could target certain attributes more heavily in training and produce players that are "extreme" - i.e. very high good attributes and very low useless attributes, posing an additional requirement that perhaps higher attributes need to be a lot harder to reach (i.e. the jump from 1-2 is much easier than 18-19).

How high could they go? It doesn't really matter. The real question is: Can this be balanced? And I guess this is where software development comes in...

[Matthew Le God]

As far as I know, there is nothing in scientific literature that suggests that "nature" implies immutability - i.e. a limit. The whole nature vs. nurture debate has no conclusive evidence to suggest either is a pure cause of how good a person can be in terms of ability. By suggesting that potential is determined at birth, this implies that "nature" is the conclusive factor, which is incorrect.

I have said that it is a combination of nature and nurture. At no point have I said either is the "pure cause" as you put it.

It is nonsense to suggest that everyone has the genes allowing them to potentially reach the same level of skill, technique and creativity. If you take things to an extreme, someone born with significant parts of the brain damaged due to a genetical condition they will be unable to control their body as well as some with these parts of the brain working correctly. It is just the differences between an average footballer and a world star like Messi for example are less noticeable genetically, but doesn't mean they still aren't there. What nurture does is either aid or damage your ability your fulfil your genetic potential that nature gave you.

[x42bn6]

I know we've had this discussion many times and I know we'll have to agree to disagree but in general the games needs limits. Its a piece of software that uses numbers for everything and because of that it needs a framework to work in. There is no way PA can be modelled the way it is in RL but the way FM does it now is more than acceptable providing you play the game in the manner it was designed and don't use 3rd party software to influence your decisions.

Right now yes, in the future perhaps not.

There are corner cases (i.e. Pedro - no-hoper at 20, world-beater at 22) where this doesn't work. Surprising development is indeed possible - if PA is high enough to begin with. If not, then it is not possible - a low PA cannot compensate Pedro a few years back.

As has been said many times many of your ideas are not to do with PA but how CA evolves over time and that is an area where I agree improvements can be made. The most important of those is that a very low % of players should ever reach their CA within the game. Once that happens all the discussions of PA will cease to exist.

I don't think so, for the reason stated above. A PA limit implies the game knows deterministically how a player's career will pan out in terms of environmental development. It doesn't know the future. It's acceptable if PA is high, but difficult to justify if PA is low.

I don't understand why you keep saying my ideas are to do with player development, because player development improvements can be made in the PA model and the no-PA model - in other words, it's tangential and irrelevant to what I say.

One day, CA will vanish because it is a weighted average and weighted averages are not necessary to be stored, and abolishing CA allows the silliness of physical attributes consuming too much CA to be removed. Once CA is gone, PA will seriously be considered to be removed, because PA is peak CA. Once that goes, then the game will have to consider the "nature" part of development by introducing some factor that distinguishes talented players from less talented players - which is why I suggest an "attribute" called "talent" which models this. Over time, this feature will be broken down too into what determines talent, and over time those will vanish too.

[Matthew Le God]

There are corner cases (i.e. Pedro - no-hoper at 20, world-beater at 22) where this doesn't work.

I don't understand what point you are trying to make with Pedro?

[ArranoBeltza]

I liked what nev147 said and agree, though I don't necessarily dislike the current system.

I will say that player development on FIFA Manager, while more difficult and overall less realistic, is more realistic in the fact that any player can improve anywhere, as that game seems to be more based on overall attributes than a points system that restricts things.

Still, the system in FM I believe is more than adequate. Most players, I feel, are fairly rated and it is much easier to develop young players into stars. Also, the points system I feel is overrated- in FM10 I had a newgen right-winger with a PA of 150 or so (lower than much of my team) who was almost fully developed and was a key fixture of my Athletic Bilbao first-team for a very long time and even was a star for the national team until, after maybe 5-7 seasons of him with my team, a better newgen with a higher PA unseated him. Even though players may have a ceiling on attributes, I think that if a manager plays his team correctly tactically then they can perform better than their attributes/CA/PA may suggest.

[dannyfc]

Indeed. Pedro wouldn't have been limited by a low PA, he's just a slower developer than the likes of Messi, Rooney etc.

FM already well replicates late bloomers. I've picked up a player in his early 20s who's not developed much only to experience rapid growth once he's given match exp. into his mid 20s.

[Cougar2010]

I've edited my post as I meant to say PA not CA in the last sentence.

I don't think so, for the reason stated above. A PA limit implies the game knows deterministically how a player's career will pan out in terms of environmental development. It doesn't know the future. It's acceptable if PA is high, but difficult to justify if PA is low.

You seem to miss the point that the game is god and therefore should know how a player's career will pan out.

I don't understand why you keep saying my ideas are to do with player development, because player development improvements can be made in the PA model and the no-PA model - in other words, it's tangential and irrelevant to what I say.

No, your ideas are more relevant to how CA evolves and develops over time.

One day, CA will vanish because it is a weighted average and weighted averages are not necessary to be stored, and abolishing CA allows the silliness of physical attributes consuming too much CA to be removed. Once CA is gone, PA will seriously be considered to be removed, because PA is peak CA. Once that goes, then the game will have to consider the "nature" part of development by introducing some factor that distinguishes talented players from less talented players - which is why I suggest an "attribute" called "talent" which models this. Over time, this feature will be broken down too into what determines talent, and over time those will vanish too.

In your last paragraph are you not simply swopping one set of numbers (CA) for another (Talent)?

[FM1000]

You would have to introduce some genetic component in place of PA - I advocate a talent level. In rough terms, it suggests that more-talented players are more likely to develop more, rather like having a better engine in your car in a racing game than your opponent. So players with zero talent will always find it hard to develop well - although one can never rule it out.

If you removed PA, you would seriously consider removing CA too, because PA is limited CA. As a result, there would be none of this nonsense where "physical attributes or weaker feet eat up too many CA points". Each attribute would therefore develop separately. This perhaps poses a problem because it means that you could target certain attributes more heavily in training and produce players that are "extreme" - i.e. very high good attributes and very low useless attributes, posing an additional requirement that perhaps higher attributes need to be a lot harder to reach (i.e. the jump from 1-2 is much easier than 18-19).

How high could they go? It doesn't really matter. The real question is: Can this be balanced? And I guess this is where software development comes in...

+ 9001 ..........

[x42bn6]

I have said that it is a combination of nature and nurture. At no point have I said either is the "pure cause" as you put it.

This contradicts what you say below:

What nurture does is either aid or damage your ability your fulfil your genetic potential that nature gave you.

So tell me, is the limit really determined by nature alone?

But new science suggests the source of abilities is much more interesting and improvisational. It turns out that everything we are is a developmental process and this includes what we get from our genes.

This means that everything about us - our personalities, our intelligence, our abilities - are actually determined by the lives we lead. The very notion of "innate" no longer holds together.

In fact, the whole article is worth reading: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12140064

It is nonsense to suggest that everyone has the genes allowing them to potentially reach the same level of skill, technique and creativity.

The issue here is that you are imposing a "never" condition which is too strong. The true word is "unlikely". Which I will speak about below...

If you take things to an extreme, someone born with significant parts of the brain damaged due to a genetical condition they will be unable to control their body as well as some with these parts of the brain working correctly.

This just basically suggests a person with low talent is probably not going to make it onto the world stage. Can you ever rule it out? It is highly unlikely, but you can never rule it out.

Take it a few steps back - is there a certain level of "retardation" where if you damage the brain beyond, say, x%, then you can rule out the person becoming the next Messi in a certain career area? Beyond that point, does it suddenly level off and hit zero? Or does it simply get less-and-less likely as the percentage of damage increases?

My belief is the latter, because there is no evidence to suggest nature implies a limit. Of course, "difficult nature" will make it harder for this limit to be high, but this does not imply a limit.

[Matthew Le God]

This contradicts what you say below:

It doesn't contradict it at all. The PA is set by nature and your ability to reach the PA from whatever CA you have is determined by nature and nurture.

So tell me, is the limit really determined by nature alone?

Yes, as explained above.

[Matthew Le God]

My belief is the latter, because there is no evidence to suggest nature implies a limit. Of course, "difficult nature" will make it harder for this limit to be high, but this does not imply a limit.

There is plenty of evidence. For example my cousin has cerebral palsy and can't walk, there is a limit stopping him breaking the 10 second barrier for the 100m. No amount of world class coaching etc is going to change that. This is an extreme example, but the underlying concept explains why an average Premier League player couldn't be as good as Messi no matter what he had in the way of nurture.

[x42bn6]

I don't understand what point you are trying to make with Pedro?

A few years back, Pedro had a low PA in Football Manager. At around 19-20, Pedro's career wasn't really heading anywhere. His low PA prevented him from exploding into the world-class player he is today. What happened in real-life was that his PA had to be revised a few times over research phases until it was "correct".

The question is: Why did the PA model fail Pedro here? It failed him because the researcher assumed he would not suddenly fit perfectly into Barcelona's formation and have a level of consistency he never had previously. The researcher was unfortunate enough to be unable to predict the future - he/she was forced to rate Pedro on the basis of prior information - information available right then.

What happened was that the real circumstances were extremely different from the prior information, and the game, with a hard-coded PA limit, couldn't mask real-life. If Pedro got his chances exactly as Pep gave him, and he performed exactly as how he performed in real-life, then FM-Pedro would still never be as good as real-life-Pedro because of the PA limitation.

You are a researcher and I'm sure you've tinkered with player PAs over the years. As more information is gained from watching Southampton matches, news, ITKs, agents, contacts and YouTube, you are able to improve on your guesstimates for PA. You see a young player blossoming into a brilliant player and you raise his PA; in the game you see a young player blossoming into a brilliant player and his PA... stays stagnant. The only way you can kludge the PA model into "behaving" is that if the player has a high-enough PA to begin with.

The abstract reason why it failed is because a player's limit is influenced by many factors, including how he develops and how talented he is. And this limit should be able to go down and up as the variable factors go down and up.

If you like, "known (talent) + unknown (development) = unknown" - but PA is solid - known!

Indeed. Pedro wouldn't have been limited by a low PA, he's just a slower developer than the likes of Messi, Rooney etc.

FM already well replicates late bloomers. I've picked up a player in his early 20s who's not developed much only to experience rapid growth once he's given match exp. into his mid 20s.

He will only be a late-bloomer if is PA is high enough.

If a researcher doesn't believe a player will be a late-bloomer, his CA-PA difference will be low and being a late-bloomer becomes pretty much impossible.

You seem to miss the point that the game is god and therefore should know how a player's career will pan out.

But it doesn't know how the game will pan out. It cannot know how the user will influence the game.

If the game is god, why was it not possible for FM07 Pedro to become real-life Pedro 4 years down the line? The game is fallible. Researchers mess around with CAs and PAs all the time - it really is just garbage in, garbage out in this sense - the game is only as good as its input data. "God" acts on the data and generates a feasible scenario - which is almost surely incorrect.

If I took a player who had CA/PA 90/160, the computer could not know without actually simulating the game how good that player would become. And it would almost surely be wrong if a user was playing the game, because I could develop this player well or destroy his career.

No, your ideas are more relevant to how CA evolves and develops over time.

Then why do I conclude that players should be allowed to exceed their PA?

The ideas behind better development lead me to conclude that the PA model is insufficient. But the player development module needs improving anyway, even if PA stays.

In your last paragraph are you not simply swopping one set of numbers (CA) for another (Talent)?

I am swapping PA for talent where talent is just one part that determines how good a player is.

It is based on this "recipe":

Talent + Coaches' abilities + Training facilities + Injury-proneness + Attitude + Luck + (lots of other variables here) = How good a player will truly be

If you like, Messi pretty much had all of these, Ben Arfa lacks attitude and plenty of "forgotten wonderkids" had bad luck or too many injuries.

Let's get rid of some of the variables for simplicity. The conclusion is the same. Let's just use Talent (T), coaches and training facilities (F), attitude (A) and luck (L), and let the "How good a player will truly be" be H.

Strictly speaking, it's not really addition either - things like coaching ability and training facilities are correlated - the best coaches are at the clubs with the best training facilities. Treat "+" as "combination" rather than "addition". In addition, some factors are more important than others - adaptability is sort-of important, but probably not as much as, say, talent.

T + F + A + L = H

I'll use "size" to reflect how "good" that variable is. If "T" is in big font, I mean the player is extremely talented.

Now, if all these are "good", then you can say that H is good:

T + F + A + L = H

This is Lionel Messi.

T + F + A + L = H

This could be Ben Arfa. A bad attitude and attitude plays a big part in development - H falls a lot as a result.

T + F + A + L = H

This is the least-talented player at Barcelona who happens to have a fantastic attitude and be very lucky (i.e. Messi gets injured, he ends up starting). Unfortunately, talent is a big part of how you turn out, and therefore this really hurts H.

Let's see how we determine each of these variables.

- T: This allows me to say that Lionel Messi is more talented than Jon Walters (of Stoke). This is perhaps nature or genetic - it doesn't have to be. Is probably constant (but doesn't have to be).

- F: This is basically how good the training facilities are. Is not constant - training facilities change all the time, and the player may move to a new club which has different training facilities.

- A: This is the difference between Ronaldo and Ben Arfa - one has a good attitude, and one is in danger of following Quaresma. Is not constant - it can be moulded over time with tutoring.

- L: You need a fair bit of luck arguably to succeed. As for whether it is constant or not, nobody knows...

The combination of all these variables, therefore, is not constant. Over time, these variables F, A and possibly L change, and they affect how H changes.

In other words, how good a player will become, H, is not constant, and every time these variables change, we should recalculate H.

There is, of course, things we know now - T. T can be put into the database for real players, or generated at random (just how PA is generated now) for regens. So on a scale of 1-20, we could have:

- Ravel Morrison: T=17, F=18, A=4, L=10

- Lionel Messi at 16: T=20, F=13, A=14, L=8

- Emile Heskey at 16: T=8, F=13, A=18, L=13

Then let's move forward a year. Ravel Morrison crashes his car and his career starts drifting away, Lionel Messi moves to Barcelona and Emile Heskey... continues his development.

- Ravel Morrison one year on: T=17, F=18, A=1, L=14

- Lionel Messi at 17: T=20, F=18, A=15, L=14

- Emile Heskey at 17: T=8, F=13, A=18, L=4

We see that because these variables have changed a little, H will have changed - possibly dramatically, depending on how this model is developed.

It should be noted that an arbitrary number of variables can be introduced here - things like current ability (possibly extremely talented, but largely rubbish at the moment, for example), adaptability (will only be a factor when a player moves), how good he plays (Lionel Messi didn't average 3.00 as a youngster), and so on. Some are constant, some are not.

However, ask yourself - you are the computer. What good does H do? Knowing H could help you in knowing which player is likely to turn out better. So do you need to store H? No. Should H be constant? No!

Therefore H is really irrelevant. As players develop, all that matters is T, F, A and L.

So how do I find the next Messi? Well, the important variables in this case are T and A. And I believe this reflects reality - you don't really care about F or L - you want the most talented youngsters (T) with preferably good attitudes (A). T won't change, and you can fix A via tutoring. You can provide them with first-team football (new variable R), better training facilities (F), a foreign language tutor (new variable P - adaPtability), and so on... It is your job to make sure that these variables are as high as possible to give your youngsters the best chance of success. So when scouting, all you look for are players with high values for T and A - you might be interested in things like P, but that is really up to you. But what you don't care about is H - because H is determined by the variables F, L, R and P right now - in the future, F, L, R and P could well change.

Going back to my model:

- T = talent

- New variable C = "CA"

- H = "variable PA"

So in that quote above, all am saying is that in some future model, T could be broken down further, so T = U + Z + O where U, Z and O are things determining talent. And U, Z and O can be broken down further. And so on and so on and so on.

That's my model - I'm not swapping talent for CA.

It doesn't contradict it at all. The PA is set by nature and your ability to reach the PA from whatever CA you have is determined by nature and nurture.

When you said:

I have said that it is a combination of nature and nurture. At no point have I said either is the "pure cause" as you put it.

I was referring to the limit, coloured in red below:

What nurture does is either aid or damage your ability your fulfil your genetic potential that nature gave you.

You are talking about "genetic potential" determining an upper-bound for how good a player will be.

Nothing in scientific literature states that this is the case - from the articles I've linked, there is no such thing as immutable nor determined ability limits obtained through genetic information.

Nature and nurture determine how high this limit is.

Nature and nurture determine how close you get to it.

There is plenty of evidence. For example my cousin has cerebral palsy and can't walk, there is a limit stopping him breaking the 10 second barrier for the 100m. No amount of world class coaching etc is going to change that. This is an extreme version, but the underlying concept explains why an average Premier League player couldn't be as good as Messi no matter what he had in the way of nurture.

Sorry to hear about your cousin.

However, this is different. If Mozart lost his hands in an accident, he would still be a brilliant pianist and musician - although it would be difficult for him to show it, certainly. If you like, Mozart post-accident took a huge CA-hit through injury, but his PA was always high. And it so-happens that the CA-PA difference is now so high Mozart will never fulfill his potential.

He was extremely talented ("high nature") and co-factors between how he developed (love for music, strict teaching, etc. - nurture), combined with his talent, suggested a "PA" that was high for Mozart's music.

So for the average Premier League player, they have the chance to become as good as Messi - but the chances are, they will have to work ridiculously-hard and will need tons of luck to get there. But for the likes of Ronaldo and Messi, development comes easy to them - they're just "good" at it and won't need to work so hard. But as you gradually reduce the talent, the difficulty shoots up - at some point, it may become zero, for example, CA 1, PA 200 is probably never going to result in CA 200. There could well be some minimum value c such that CA c, PA 200 can result in CA 200, but there is no point in computing it. All that matters really is the CA part - talented players perhaps develop better, while less-talented players perhaps develop slowly.

[Sir Alex 99]

x42bn6 take a bow

[Ackter]

Nature vs nurture:

Nature = the absolute limit a player can reach

Nurture = the attempt to make that player reach his natural potential.

[Ackter]

If anyone can be the best player in the world, why did Sir Alex Ferguson (possibly the most consistent person in the UK for bringing through quality players?) spend so much money on players like Ronaldo, Rooney and Berbatov? Why not just pick 3 youth players and make them brilliant? He did it with Gary Neville after all...

[x42bn6]

Nature vs nurture:

Nature = the absolute limit a player can reach

Nurture = the attempt to make that player reach his natural potential.

I provided a BBC link that suggested this wasn't the case - nature and nurture determine the upper limit, and that they determine how it is reached.

If you like, the very concept of "innate" is not always correct.

If anyone can be the best player in the world, why did Sir Alex Ferguson (possibly the most consistent person in the UK for bringing through quality players?) spend so much money on players like Ronaldo, Rooney and Berbatov? Why not just pick 3 youth players and make them brilliant? He did it with Gary Neville after all...

If you want to cut vegetables up nicely, you will prefer using a sharp knife.

The same applies here. No PA does not imply you will pick anyone off the street and turn them into Lionel Messi. You will want to work with better tools - i.e. more promising players. Picking the local paper boy and developing him will likely take lots and lots of work, plenty of luck and you will likely harm the rest of the team in the process. For example, they will need first-team football immediately, will need to perform extremely well and they need to be beaten into being tutored by a ambitious professional player. And they can't suffer any injuries, and you will need bucketloads of luck. And the team as a whole can't suffer while you shoehorn these rubbish kids into your first-team.

So yes, it's possible, but in practice, this is so unlikely to happen it's really not worth it. It is simply a much better decision to pick the most talented players with the best attitudes and see where you go from there.

I guess another way of saying it is "never say never, but why go through the path of most resistance?"

I would also argue that if you pick three rubbish players and turn them into Lionel Messi, then you are a genius manager anyway - you really have defied the odds, in the same way that Fergie's Fledglings defied all the odds by breaking through pretty much all at the same time and doing the Treble. How talented the Fledglings were is actually immaterial - if Butt was the paperboy off the street, but was able to contribute a great deal to the Treble-winning side, Butt's talent largely doesn't matter anyway - what matters is that he defied the odds.

[Wiitastic]

Removing CA/PA would be a revolutionary change and a 1st for FM/Sports Interactive considering CM/FM has always been about attributes/ca-pa. I still havent read anywhere in this thread how removing that would indeed affect the player attributes.

At the end of the day, by removing the ca & pa, it would have to have a knockon effect on the player attributes.

[x42bn6]

Removing CA/PA would be a revolutionary change and a 1st for FM/Sports Interactive considering CM/FM has always been about attributes/ca-pa. I still havent read anywhere in this thread how removing that would indeed affect the player attributes.

At the end of the day, by removing the ca & pa, it would have to have a knockon effect on the player attributes.

It will. It will remove the silliness that is physical attributes eating up CA points, for example. Attributes will develop independently of the now-removed CA. This does have implications because you can now more easily target certain attributes to train, suggesting it may need to be harder to reach extremely high attributes, such as 17-onwards.

[Matthew Le God]

I was going to write a long rebuttal point by point to #66 by x42bn6, but then I noticed "luck" was used as one of the variables in a "scientific" equation and I feel that destroys any credibility it had.

[x42bn6]

I was going to write a long rebuttal point by point to #66 by x42bn6, but then I noticed "luck" was used as one of the variables in a "scientific" equation and I feel that destroys any credibility it had.

"Luck" represents a random noise factor, which is scientific. Not that the equation is scientific - I have abused lots of notation and not written a hypothesis down.

It's not "luck" in the sense that there's, say, a 20% chance he will turn into Lionel Messi and an 80% chance he won't.

[woody2goody]

I reckon pretty much anyone can become a reasonable lower league player with the right training and attitude, however not everyone can become a world class player. I bet there are many lower league players with fairly low levels of natural talent, but have improved a lot by applying themselves to getting better.

For example, I have played Tenpin Bowling for Yorkshire at Under 18 level. Now I started at the age of 8 and was no good at all, even for an 8-year-old, but as I got older, the amount of practice I put in coupled with learning the techniques involved in the game helped me improve massively. I think my attention to detail and ability to study a sport from a technical standpoint has enabled me to achieve much more than my potential would have been when I was 8 for instance.

I have a friend who has played for England at the under-18 level, and he is the complete opposite of myself in that he can play ANY sport for the first time and pick it up instantly. This is what I would call natural talent, maybe even potential. He is technically gifted as a result and therefore has a much better skills base to work from than I do.

I'm of the belief that people can overachieve massively just from hard work and dedication to the craft.

Although, you could come to the conclusion that in football, as in life, potential actually diminishes as one gets older, i.e. nearly any child can in theory become a world class player, and it is only as they get older that chances of being a world beater are quashed.

One of the more interesting debates in sport I think is this.

[dafuge]

I think the only arguments for getting rid of PA are based on the fact that some people are looking at it via third party software, which ruins it. If you are oblivious to it and play the game as it was intended then you get a decent development model. Without knowing the exact PA you get the chance to find the unlikely heros (Neville) or the flops (Ricketts).

[Wavelberry]

I think the only arguments for getting rid of PA are based on the fact that some people are looking at it via third party software, which ruins it. If you are oblivious to it and play the game as it was intended then you get a decent development model. Without knowing the exact PA you get the chance to find the unlikely heros (Neville) or the flops (Ricketts).

Agreed. There are tweaks that could be made to the system (we've talked about in the past trying to extract the physical attribute point allocation from the mental and the technical), but overall if you play the game without looking under the hood it can still surprise you.

I remember playing a couple of years ago as Dagenham and Mark Janney took us all the way into the Championship and was pretty darn good. Imagine my surprise when I looked under the hood and his PA was 90 and CA 87. I think we can obsess about the numbers too much sometimes (as the data forums will attest).

[Cydver]

Agreed. There are tweaks that could be made to the system (we've talked about in the past trying to extract the physical attribute point allocation from the mental and the technical), but overall if you play the game without looking under the hood it can still surprise you.

I remember playing a couple of years ago as Dagenham and Mark Janney took us all the way into the Championship and was pretty darn good. Imagine my surprise when I looked under the hood and his PA was 90 and CA 87. I think we can obsess about the numbers too much sometimes (as the data forums will attest).

I think the only arguments for getting rid of PA are based on the fact that some people are looking at it via third party software, which ruins it. If you are oblivious to it and play the game as it was intended then you get a decent development model. Without knowing the exact PA you get the chance to find the unlikely heros (Neville) or the flops (Ricketts).

Exactly. And for people who continue to stress about numbers and attributes and CA and PA, well, play a season picking players based on their form and buying/scouting players who have good average ratings for the last 5 games. You will be surprised by the number of gems you can pick up for cheap who are also able to punch above their weight, and in then in some extreme cases, take you all the way to the top.

[RBKalle]

@ x42bn6

You're new "recipe" for a more dynamic "PA" definition is interesting but you're overlooking one little thing (maybe two...)

How is T (Talent) different from current PA?

In 2007 or 2008 would you have given Pedro a "Talent" higher than 5 or 6? (on a 1-10 scale) All the reservations you, rightfully, have about "predicting a semi-unknown player's potential" can still apply to Talent.

So, be it a Negative PA of -6 (as in FM2008) or a Talent Level of 5, just three years ago we would have predicted a career of absolute mediocrity for Pedro... And that would have been a reasonable educated guess back then...

What has changed for him? Would you give Luck such a huge role, almost implying "Pedro is still barely ok but he's playing alongside World Class players".?

To use your formula on Pedro... It's fairly obvious the Facilities are as good as they were (same club, samey staff), Pedro's attitude hasn't changed as far as we know, so...

Pedro 2008: F=18, A=15

Pedro 2011: F=18, A=15

Then it's either Luck, or you'll have to concede Pedro is much more talented than I, you, the Spanish researchers and probably some Barça coaches thought.

That, or Talent is indeed a variable, that meaning anyone can become anything in a matter of a few years for whatever reason..

On the other hand, take Amauri... Which is his actual Talent level? The 0.5 GPG scoring machine he was in Palermo, the laughing stock he has now become after two years of hilarious awfulness, or the mediocre target man he was from age 18-26?

Once again, is it Luck? Or are Training Facilitis at Juventus worse than they were at Palermo?

Call it what you want... PA, Talent or Bocktrumb, you can't run away from the fact we'll ALWAYS have to "guess" how good a player will/could be in the future.

P.S. once again, in FM it's totally possible turning a barely decent player into a Top Player, even though he won't "look like Messi" in terms of attributes and octagon. The sooner we stop focusing on "but he's only 139CA and has 14 Passing! How can he be good?!" the better.

P.P.S. CA development needs a revamp so it can move UP AND DOWN. Also there should be different "CAs" for Physical, Technical and Mental skills, but as a weighed average it could still be worse than what it is now.

[9sublime]

I don't even know why this argument is still ongoing.

It is a LOGICAL FALLACY to try and argue for unlimited potential. The INTRINSIC meaning of the word potential means that one can NEVER exceed it. By the age of 16 (when most players enter the game as newgens), no-one in the world has UNLIMITED POTENTIAL.

[Ackter]

CA/PA should effect both physical and technical attributes.

Mental attributes should be effected by experience.

People really need to differentiate potential as a real world mystery and potential as an in-game mechanic to make the game work.

[milnerpoint]

do people really think every player in FM should have an unlimited PA??!! That would make scouting kids pointless, you could sign anyone for a big team and they would become a world class player, thats nowhere near what real life is like.

[x42bn6]

@ x42bn6

You're new "recipe" for a more dynamic "PA" definition is interesting but you're overlooking one little thing (maybe two...)

How is T (Talent) different from current PA?

H is somewhat like PA, whilst T is talent.

It is based on the fact that how good a player will eventually turn out is partly-dependent on talent, in the same way that a salad's tastiness is partly-dependent on the quality of tomatoes going in.

I argue that a prediction of how good a player will become should be exactly that - a prediction - that can be right or wrong, but in both directions.

In 2007 or 2008 would you have given Pedro a "Talent" higher than 5 or 6? (on a 1-10 scale) All the reservations you, rightfully, have about "predicting a semi-unknown player's potential" can still apply to Talent.

I didn't watch Pedro back then but let's say we gave him a 6. Now this is still clearly wrong, but since he won't be constrained by PA, he can still "exceed" expectations. If you like, if Pedro had a PA of 140, then he could become a CA/PA player of "160/140", say.

If you like, if you threw Pedro into the first-team like Pep did, and he performed exactly as how he turned out in real-life, then FM-Pedro should turn out exactly like real-life Pedro in an ideal game. I just think dynamic PAs are more optimal because even if you get Pedro's attributes wrong at the start, the game can compensate, possibly drastically, to overcome this.

You spoke in a previous thread about reevaluating PA year-on-year. This is roughly similar - you take new information - i.e. how they performed this year - and reevaluate PA. Mine, if you like, "reevaluates" it "daily" (or whenever the FM development module kicks in). But I argue the H variable is meaningless, really - it's useful if you are the game and want to design a scouting module, because it's a stored, concrete value that doesn't require computational power to recalculate, but it really isn't needed. We know that talent is nothing if you don't show it - what really matters is how a player develops over time, and as more information comes in our opinion of H will change - but in reality, you only really care about the variables T, A, F and so on. Fergie doesn't see a youngster as having a limit - he sees a talented youngster with a good attitude, although perhaps with adaptability issues.

So, be it a Negative PA of -6 (as in FM2008) or a Talent Level of 5, just three years ago we would have predicted a career of absolute mediocrity for Pedro... And that would have been a reasonable educated guess back then...

What has changed for him? Would you give Luck such a huge role, almost implying "Pedro is still barely ok but he's playing alongside World Class players".?

That's a good question really and it applies to any player who pretty much defies the odds, like Luca Toni's sudden rebirth, or Drogba's move to Chelsea, or in the opposite direction, Verón's move to England.

However, factors like first-team football (did I assign this somewhere? Let's say first-team fOotball) and how good a player plays (how Good a player plays) are clearly two other things that affect development. Kieran Richardson got tons of first-team football at Manchester United - probably too much - but never played well, and hence stagnated. Dani Pacheco always played well when given chances at Liverpool, but Rafa didn't play him as much as he should have, although it's too early to say whether this has affected him much.

Pedro did, however, fit into Barcelona's formation very well. I would argue a combination of him taking his chances well again and again, playing very well and possibly learning very quickly from first-team football made his development skyrocket. Take chances, get more chances, take those chances too, get even more chances... Almost exponential to the extent that his talent factor T gets dwarfed by the overwhelming fact that he is a youngster playing brilliantly. I'd argue nobody really worries about Pedro's talent any more, because the real thing that matters is end-product.

To use your formula on Pedro... It's fairly obvious the Facilities are as good as they were (same club, samey staff), Pedro's attitude hasn't changed as far as we know, so...

Pedro 2008: F=18, A=15

Pedro 2011: F=18, A=15

Then it's either Luck, or you'll have to concede Pedro is much more talented than I, you, the Spanish researchers and probably some Barça coaches thought.

That, or Talent is indeed a variable, that meaning anyone can become anything in a matter of a few years for whatever reason..

Agreed. I know my model isn't perfect, but I've spoken about Pedro's talent "now" above.

Take an extreme - take Lionel Messi. Does it really matter what his "talent level" is now, or does the fact he's the best player in the world pretty much overwhelm T? The fact that T is high and his age is young does suggest he can keep developing, which is frightening, but I guess it is hard to see how he can keep developing - what is his weakness?

On the other hand, take Amauri... Which is his actual Talent level? The 0.5 GPG scoring machine he was in Palermo, the laughing stock he has now become after two years of hilarious awfulness, or the mediocre target man he was from age 18-26?

Once again, is it Luck? Or are Training Facilitis at Juventus worse than they were at Palermo?

I'd say he is an untalented player who should have a decent talent level for Serie A who had a couple (or was it one?) good season as a targetman.

In my model, he would be a player who is playing well and therefore H would increase slightly (bearing in mind he's already fairly old).

But I'd argue the fact that he's a one-season wonder pretty much covers that - scores lots of goals, reputation flies up, Juventus snap him up, Juventus realise that he's not actually very good...

Call it what you want... PA, Talent or Bocktrumb, you can't run away from the fact we'll ALWAYS have to "guess" how good a player will/could be in the future.

I've never argued that. It is just that when scouting, we in reality don't look at the maximum level they can achieve, but how talented a player is (T), their attitude (A), how they perform on the pitch (G)... We know any guesstimate we make when they are 16 is almost surely going to be wrong, but you could be underestimating or overestimating. But I argue that all that matters is how you develop your young talents, and when they peak, nobody really cares about their talent - just how they got there. There's been a fair bit of talk about Gary Neville or Roy Keane being "overrated" - I personally believe it's really this sort of thing they are talking about - low T, but very high A to compensate for it. Nobody really cared about Roy Keane's talent - all they knew was that he was an excellent midfielder with mental attributes through the roof.

P.S. once again, in FM it's totally possible turning a barely decent player into a Top Player, even though he won't "look like Messi" in terms of attributes and octagon. The sooner we stop focusing on "but he's only 139CA and has 14 Passing! How can he be good?!" the better.

It's possible but you will be doing lots of awkward things around rebalancing attributes if their PA is low. A player that is 100/120 at 21 will pretty much never be world-class, but in my model it is possible, if unlikely - 100/120 suggests a fairly low talent level so that player will have to "do a Pedro" to develop.

P.P.S. CA development needs a revamp so it can move UP AND DOWN. Also there should be different "CAs" for Physical, Technical and Mental skills, but as a weighed average it could still be worse than what it is now.

But where do you stop? You can group attributes in any way possible, not just 3 ways, and have a weighted average for them. I argue that the best scenario is where attributes develop independently - almost like having a "CA" for each attribute, where the "balancing" ensures that players find it hard to develop extremely unbalanced attributes (i.e. all unnecessary attributes 1, all necessary attributes 20).

CA/PA should effect both physical and technical attributes.

Mental attributes should be effected by experience.

People really need to differentiate potential as a real world mystery and potential as an in-game mechanic to make the game work.

But the game would never work for Pedro a few years back.

The game should mimic real-life in an ideal world. If X, Y and Z happen in real-life, then X, Y and Z must be possible in the game. If X, Y and Z lead to consequence Q in real-life, then X, Y and Z must lead to consequence Q in the game. But in FM06/FM07, if Pedro got exactly the same chances as Pep gave him, and Pedro performed exactly as well, Pedro would never have turned out as good as he did in real-life due to a low PA.

do people really think every player in FM should have an unlimited PA??!! That would make scouting kids pointless, you could sign anyone for a big team and they would become a world class player, thats nowhere near what real life is like.

I answered this above - you will always want to work with better tools.

You can work with a blunt knife to cut your vegetables, but it's going to be hard work.

Youth development makes no guarantees anyway. A team could have snapped up Messi at 16 and ruined his career by turning him into Dirk Kuyt, for example. In reality, when teams sign young talent, it is because they want to maximise their chances of getting at least one through into the first-team. And to maximise your chances, you need to work with better tools.

You could work with Joe Average if you wanted to, but he is so much less likely to make it than Lionel Messi aged 16. But if you turn Joe Average into Lionel Messi, then I would argue that you are a brilliant manager and defied the odds - a bit like the Pedro scenario stated above. But it doesn't stop the fact that if you had done exactly the same with Lionel Messi aged 16, you would probably have had an even better result.

If you want to cut vegetables up nicely, you will prefer using a sharp knife.

The same applies here. No PA does not imply you will pick anyone off the street and turn them into Lionel Messi. You will want to work with better tools - i.e. more promising players. Picking the local paper boy and developing him will likely take lots and lots of work, plenty of luck and you will likely harm the rest of the team in the process. For example, they will need first-team football immediately, will need to perform extremely well and they need to be beaten into being tutored by a ambitious professional player. And they can't suffer any injuries, and you will need bucketloads of luck. And the team as a whole can't suffer while you shoehorn these rubbish kids into your first-team.

So yes, it's possible, but in practice, this is so unlikely to happen it's really not worth it. It is simply a much better decision to pick the most talented players with the best attitudes and see where you go from there.

I guess another way of saying it is "never say never, but why go through the path of most resistance?"

I would also argue that if you pick three rubbish players and turn them into Lionel Messi, then you are a genius manager anyway - you really have defied the odds, in the same way that Fergie's Fledglings defied all the odds by breaking through pretty much all at the same time and doing the Treble. How talented the Fledglings were is actually immaterial - if Butt was the paperboy off the street, but was able to contribute a great deal to the Treble-winning side, Butt's talent largely doesn't matter anyway - what matters is that he defied the odds.

[Ljuba82]

Good point SA. Having a fixed PA is wrong in the sense that it is not realistic, but as a footballing simulation I don't see how it could be achieved in-game. But the current points system does not do justice to a certain player called Messi, as basically he has to be toned down due to the restrictions of the current system, and even the Spanish researcher as said as such - that he cannot improve Messi in certain areas as there is no point left. So for that reason alone I do not like the current system.

Altough I don't agree that PA shouldn't be fixed, I too don't like that some players have to be downgraded because of 200 CA limit. I mean....I want to see player with allmost all 20's in attributes once in 200 years!!!

[Ackter]

It's the combination of attributes that's important.

Half a dozen 16s is better than someone with one or two 20s.

[aderow]

I don't even know why this argument is still ongoing.

It is a LOGICAL FALLACY to try and argue for unlimited potential. The INTRINSIC meaning of the word potential means that one can NEVER exceed it. By the age of 16 (when most players enter the game as newgens), no-one in the world has UNLIMITED POTENTIAL.

do people really think every player in FM should have an unlimited PA??!! That would make scouting kids pointless, you could sign anyone for a big team and they would become a world class player, thats nowhere near what real life is like.

I guess you didn't see the where the OP said that 'unlimited potential' was not the best way to word the idea he was getting across.....

The discussion now is more about whether or not a player's PA or numerical limit should be able to vary in-game and whether or not the CA/PA system should be removed altogether.

I've heard some interesting things from both sides...

[Sir Alex 99]

I'm sorry i know "Unlimited Potential" is a terrible way to explain it but surely the PA should be a variable like x42bn6 said. Surely if my PA is 120 at Colchester then if i transfer to Barcelona it has to rise.

[Giziar]

I'm sorry i know "Unlimited Potential" is a terrible way to explain it but surely the PA should be a variable like x42bn6 said. Surely if my PA is 120 at Colchester then if i transfer to Barcelona it has to rise.

So if a rubbish player gets hired by a well-known high reputation club someone's potential should rise?

errm. no.

He should be able to up his CA and reach his PA quicker but the PA should remain the same.

[dafuge]

I'm sorry i know "Unlimited Potential" is a terrible way to explain it but surely the PA should be a variable like x42bn6 said. Surely if my PA is 120 at Colchester then if i transfer to Barcelona it has to rise.

That's how CA works in the game. The PA itself doesn't rise, but the chances of reaching it should.

[gregt or smokey]

i agree that the player potential aspect could be improved but at the same time u dont need a team full of 190 potentials to be successful.

leigh griffiths for example, potential of 129, has been the best striker in the english PL for me, 40 goals a season. Same goes for fleck, potential of 149 or -8, yet he's bloody brilliant.

Im just saying that people shouldnt get too upset about this as you can still have a great game and win trophies without needing to worry about potentials

[RBKalle]

H is somewhat like PA, whilst T is talent.

It is based on the fact that how good a player will eventually turn out is partly-dependent on talent, in the same way that a salad's tastiness is partly-dependent on the quality of tomatoes going in.

I argue that a prediction of how good a player will become should be exactly that - a prediction - that can be right or wrong, but in both directions.

Indeed, but that being just partly possible under FM's current system doesn't change the fact the "prediction" is an assumption made here and now and just serves as a base for the game world.

Once you hit "continue" the first time, game world and real world take different paths...

That's the reason many have Babacar as top scorer while in real life he's barely playing...

Also, and I think you're underestimating this factor... Regardless of the visible attributes and the hidden ones, it's still possible for a player to "overachieve", it's just he won't become visually better, but any semi-serious FM manager should also learn to look past the vace value of a player.

I just think dynamic PAs are more optimal because even if you get Pedro's attributes wrong at the start, the game can compensate, possibly drastically, to overcome this.

You spoke in a previous thread about reevaluating PA year-on-year. This is roughly similar - you take new information - i.e. how they performed this year - and reevaluate PA.

And that's why I think we still need PA, just as a starting point... Then if the underrated guy turns out to be a consistent world-beater, FM will recalculate his "new potential", and in the same way the overrated One Year Wonders will go from Champions League prospect to Championship aficionados.

Mine, if you like, "reevaluates" it "daily" (or whenever the FM development module kicks in). But I argue the H variable is meaningless, really - it's useful if you are the game and want to design a scouting module, because it's a stored, concrete value that doesn't require computational power to recalculate, but it really isn't needed. We know that talent is nothing if you don't show it - what really matters is how a player develops over time, and as more information comes in our opinion of H will change - but in reality, you only really care about the variables T, A, F and so on. Fergie doesn't see a youngster as having a limit - he sees a talented youngster with a good attitude, although perhaps with adaptability issues.

But all those variables are already in the game, it's just we don't really see them operating, it's all done behind the scenes...

Training facilities and coaches' attributes dictate how quickly/well a player can improve, also depending on the training schedules.

Attitude is calculated with no less than 10 attributes or so.

Luck is luck... a broken leg or recurring strains and pulls can kill a promising career.

Again, the only part missing in the equation is the "PA can go up and not just down", but IMO there's no need to use complicated formulas when we could "just" get the game recalculate "Maximum attainable CA" (aka HCA, aka PA) every year.

That's a good question really and it applies to any player who pretty much defies the odds, like Luca Toni's sudden rebirth, or Drogba's move to Chelsea, or in the opposite direction, Verón's move to England.

However, factors like first-team football (did I assign this somewhere? Let's say first-team fOotball) and how good a player plays (how Good a player plays) are clearly two other things that affect development. Kieran Richardson got tons of first-team football at Manchester United - probably too much - but never played well, and hence stagnated. Dani Pacheco always played well when given chances at Liverpool, but Rafa didn't play him as much as he should have, although it's too early to say whether this has affected him much.

Pedro did, however, fit into Barcelona's formation very well. I would argue a combination of him taking his chances well again and again, playing very well and possibly learning very quickly from first-team football made his development skyrocket. Take chances, get more chances, take those chances too, get even more chances... Almost exponential to the extent that his talent factor T gets dwarfed by the overwhelming fact that he is a youngster playing brilliantly. I'd argue nobody really worries about Pedro's talent any more, because the real thing that matters is end-product.

Once more, First team football at a good level can already bring the best out of an otherwise unremarkable player. IF he has the right attitude...

In Pedro's case we'll just have to consider Barça are such a great team they could make a lot of players look like a million bucks... Just think of Messi and how different he looks like when playing for Barça and for Argentina.. And it's Messi!

So let's just say, while Pedro was indeed a bit underrated (because in truth there's no way to tell how great a youth player can be as long as he hasn't gotten enough first team football) in terms of potential, I'd still wait to see more of him under less stellar circumstances. Until then, he's 50% underrated but 50% "lucky" (in terms of "great club, great setup, great everything).

In a way he's like that promising stiker you field in a couple of FA Cup matches alongside experienced/top class players... How much of his brilliance is his own and how much is basking in his teammate's reflected glory?

Take an extreme - take Lionel Messi. Does it really matter what his "talent level" is now, or does the fact he's the best player in the world pretty much overwhelm T? The fact that T is high and his age is young does suggest he can keep developing, which is frightening, but I guess it is hard to see how he can keep developing - what is his weakness?

IMO Messi is as great as he'll never be... he can eventually be better mentally (especially with his national team), but technically where can he get better?

Personally I fear Messi's body will eventually get back at him one way or another (Ronaldo anyone?) but that's a different topic.

I'd say he is an untalented player who should have a decent talent level for Serie A who had a couple (or was it one?) good season as a targetman.

In my model, he would be a player who is playing well and therefore H would increase slightly (bearing in mind he's already fairly old).

But I'd argue the fact that he's a one-season wonder pretty much covers that - scores lots of goals, reputation flies up, Juventus snap him up, Juventus realise that he's not actually very good...

Well, Amauri is the posterboy of all the "late bloomers" and he was 27 when Juve signed him... So in a "PA-less" system he would have been given an INSANE attributes raise during his two successful seasons in Palermo, thus becoming indeed good enough for Juventus!

Then if a free-flowing PA (or Talent or no PA at all) we could have late bloomers, sudden bloomers and a whole lot of ever-improving players, but on the other hand we would never get Average EPL Joes anymore!

Think of it... if a Blackburn player signs for United and with the better facilities and playing standard he gets better, there wouldn't really be "backups" or "rejects" at Top Clubs...

Nobody really cared about Roy Keane's talent - all they knew was that he was an excellent midfielder with mental attributes through the roof.

See, he didn't need 16 Flair, 17 First Touch, 19 Passing and 18 Technique to be great... Strong mental stats, adequate stats for his ball-winning role and there you are...

Mind you, this is still possible for a "mediocre" 140/145 player!

It's possible but you will be doing lots of awkward things around rebalancing attributes if their PA is low. A player that is 100/120 at 21 will pretty much never be world-class, but in my model it is possible, if unlikely - 100/120 suggests a fairly low talent level so that player will have to "do a Pedro" to develop.

If he plays well, a 100/120 player at 21 can make "good use" of his remaining skill points and become adequate despite not being impressive at first glance.

As pointed out already, an unprofessional, inconsistent and lazy Trequartista is going to be a bigger liability then an hard-working but technically average guy... Or...I'd take a "Solskjær" over a "Balotelli" any day of the week...

You could work with Joe Average if you wanted to, but he is so much less likely to make it than Lionel Messi aged 16. But if you turn Joe Average into Lionel Messi, then I would argue that you are a brilliant manager and defied the odds - a bit like the Pedro scenario stated above. But it doesn't stop the fact that if you had done exactly the same with Lionel Messi aged 16, you would probably have had an even better result.

A square peg won't ever fit into a round hole, no matter how hard you try...

A basic idea of "PA" or "Talent" has to be retained.

If you take the 14 yo me, the 14 yo Ali Dia, the 14 yo Heskey and the 14 yo Rooney and put all of us at a year-long training camp with the best coaches in the world, do you think at the end of the year the gap in quality between us would be smaller or bigger?

Sure, I could become slightly better and I could learn a thing or two, but if my "talent level" is "kickabout with friends" there's no way I could make it to, say, a measly Tier 7 or 8 level. Bestest case scenario could be getting there due to sheer physical strength/resistence, aka "technically inept running machine".

All of that while Rooney could halfass it and still become a pro.

[Matthew Le God]

I'm sorry i know "Unlimited Potential" is a terrible way to explain it but surely the PA should be a variable like x42bn6 said. Surely if my PA is 120 at Colchester then if i transfer to Barcelona it has to rise.

Again, you are misunderstanding what the word "potential" means.

Your potential remains the same, no matter which club you are at (although can be reduced if you sustain a serious injury/illness). What would improve if you moved from Colchester to Barcelona is your chances of fulfilling your potential.

[x42bn6]

Indeed, but that being just partly possible under FM's current system doesn't change the fact the "prediction" is an assumption made here and now and just serves as a base for the game world.

Once you hit "continue" the first time, game world and real world take different paths...

That's the reason many have Babacar as top scorer while in real life he's barely playing...

Also, and I think you're underestimating this factor... Regardless of the visible attributes and the hidden ones, it's still possible for a player to "overachieve", it's just he won't become visually better, but any semi-serious FM manager should also learn to look past the vace value of a player.

This is true, but only for small variations about the PA value.

I try to ignore the actual effectiveness of a player in this aspect because it muddies the water and are more objective in nature. Attribute numbers are definite. Because of this, we can roughly compare two players in terms of CA. Indeed, one player may be vastly-better for the same level of PA, but I don't really think it's a good idea to throw "effectiveness" as another measure.

It serves as a base, yes, but what if this base is wrong and is underestimated? If it's overestimated, then it's fine, because the player can match reality in some way, if perhaps go beyond it; if it's underestimated, he lives with the "stigma" of this base and can only tip-toe his way round PA.

I believe the base needs to be reevaluated over time as more information flows in, because newer information indeed influences our opinion of a player - which is why researchers mess with PA values.

But all those variables are already in the game, it's just we don't really see them operating, it's all done behind the scenes...

There is no talent attribute. Talent is mashed up into PA. I say H = PA in some way but it's strictly not true because H moves around as the non-constant variables move around.

So yes, the attributes are there, but they do not affect PA. This I feel is wrong.

Again, the only part missing in the equation is the "PA can go up and not just down", but IMO there's no need to use complicated formulas when we could "just" get the game recalculate "Maximum attainable CA" (aka HCA, aka PA) every year.

I think where you and I differ in this part is that I believe PA is not really necessary from a computational perspective. The only part where PA is used is to "cap" development (which helps balancing the game by making it easy) and for scouting purposes.

For "capping" development (in the sense that a player can become more effective by reshaping attributes upon hitting PA), we can redesign the model such that it is simply more difficult to develop the further you move away from your intended peak. If you like, if you want to vastly exceed H, you will have to get a rating of 10.0 every single game - that's how hard it is. The difference here is that H is computed, not stored. Think of this like H being a peg in the ground and there's an elastic band attached to it and around your waist - it becomes harder to move the further away you are from this peg. And as the other attributes move around, the peg's location moves around too. This is like your recomputed PA idea except in your case PA is stored - in my case H is recomputed whenever the game decides to put green arrows on players, which could be monthly, weekly or even daily. In all cases, I believe PA is unnecessary.

For scouting purposes, instead of comparing PA, you compare talent and attitude, which I believe is closer to reality. You don't say, "Cor, this guy is brilliant, he'll never better than Messi" - you say, "Cor, this guy is brilliant, he'll be a solid Premier League player". So PA is unnecessary.

The only real reason to store PA or HCA is if it is used. I do not believe it really needs to be used because we can use other things besides essentially a weighted average.

Once more, First team football at a good level can already bring the best out of an otherwise unremarkable player. IF he has the right attitude...

In Pedro's case we'll just have to consider Barça are such a great team they could make a lot of players look like a million bucks... Just think of Messi and how different he looks like when playing for Barça and for Argentina.. And it's Messi!

So let's just say, while Pedro was indeed a bit underrated (because in truth there's no way to tell how great a youth player can be as long as he hasn't gotten enough first team football) in terms of potential, I'd still wait to see more of him under less stellar circumstances. Until then, he's 50% underrated but 50% "lucky" (in terms of "great club, great setup, great everything).

In a way he's like that promising stiker you field in a couple of FA Cup matches alongside experienced/top class players... How much of his brilliance is his own and how much is basking in his teammate's reflected glory?

Genuine questions and this applies to pretty much most of Barcelona's players - Jeffren, Busquets and Keita spring to mind. In the opposite direction, Chygrynskiy (or was he just rubbish?) and Mascherano step forward. I think this problem applies to pretty much every single player in the world, of course.

Pedro does well for Spain, which is a slightly-less stellar team because it lacks Messi.

I suppose it also ties into the ratings system where if the whole team is perceived to play well, then everyone's ratings are good. The worst performers in a 6-0 thrashing often get ratings of 6.5-7.0, regardless of how they actually played - the best performers in a 0-4 thrashing quite often never exceed 6, no matter how they played themselves.

But I would argue that for Pedro, we could see his development, and regardless of how good Barcelona is, Pedro can keep up with Villa's scoring rate and effectiveness, and the team doesn't carry him. To me, that is Pedro developing.

Well, Amauri is the posterboy of all the "late bloomers" and he was 27 when Juve signed him... So in a "PA-less" system he would have been given an INSANE attributes raise during his two successful seasons in Palermo, thus becoming indeed good enough for Juventus!

Then if a free-flowing PA (or Talent or no PA at all) we could have late bloomers, sudden bloomers and a whole lot of ever-improving players, but on the other hand we would never get Average EPL Joes anymore!

Think of it... if a Blackburn player signs for United and with the better facilities and playing standard he gets better, there wouldn't really be "backups" or "rejects" at Top Clubs...

It doesn't have to be so free-flowing such that one season becomes THE definition of ability. It can be a bent metal rod rather than a ribbon flowing in the wind. After all, the majority of performances in this world are merely "average" - and "average" performances suggest "average" development.

It is possible that a no-PA model will raise Amauri's H variable up several notches after one good season, but he fails to settle at Juventus and it falls down again.

I don't believe Amauri should be used as an exemplar example of the no-PA model, because he is a special case.

See, he didn't need 16 Flair, 17 First Touch, 19 Passing and 18 Technique to be great... Strong mental stats, adequate stats for his ball-winning role and there you are...

Mind you, this is still possible for a "mediocre" 140/145 player!

Possible, yes, but why do we not see Keane as a 140/145 player? Because PA contains things like his mental abilities. You wouldn't find a researcher refusing to raise Keane because he's not that "talented". The attributes fit his CA and if they don't, then his CA needs to go up.

If Keane were possible at CA 140, then I would expect all his "unnecessary" attributes (i.e. free-kicks) to be low. But Keane was a midfield dynamo, a box-to-box dominator - he would have had high attributes all over the place, and very few low ones.

If he plays well, a 100/120 player at 21 can make "good use" of his remaining skill points and become adequate despite not being impressive at first glance.

As pointed out already, an unprofessional, inconsistent and lazy Trequartista is going to be a bigger liability then an hard-working but technically average guy... Or...I'd take a "Solskjær" over a "Balotelli" any day of the week...

Yes, but how much can you work around with PA 120? I'd argue not much, maybe lower unnecessary attributes by a couple of points to raise the necessary ones, and this will be hard to do as well.

This is as opposed to promoting "natural" weighting of attributes by allowing players to exceed PA. PA becomes a marker, but it is not gospel.

A square peg won't ever fit into a round hole, no matter how hard you try...

A basic idea of "PA" or "Talent" has to be retained.

If you take the 14 yo me, the 14 yo Ali Dia, the 14 yo Heskey and the 14 yo Rooney and put all of us at a year-long training camp with the best coaches in the world, do you think at the end of the year the gap in quality between us would be smaller or bigger?

Sure, I could become slightly better and I could learn a thing or two, but if my "talent level" is "kickabout with friends" there's no way I could make it to, say, a measly Tier 7 or 8 level. Bestest case scenario could be getting there due to sheer physical strength/resistence, aka "technically inept running machine".

All of that while Rooney could halfass it and still become a pro.

I've never suggested removing some notion of talent, which is why I compare Joe Average and Lionel Messi here. The latter is clearly more talented.

But I believe "never" is too strong a notion. I believe it's more accurate to say, "Very unlikely".

You cannot really rule Joe Average out from becoming the next Lionel Messi. As a hypothetical player gets less and less talent, the chances of him becoming Lionel Messi decrease and decrease - it is possible, if extremely unlikely, that Joe Average gets only first-team football at 16, gets a rating of 10.00 in every game, suffers no injuries and develops an ultra-professional attitude, resulting in his development becoming that of Lionel Messi. Possible yes, plausible probably not.

Due to development limits, there may actually be an actual probability of zero somewhere (i.e. this "perfect scenario" plus a player of talent level x is impossible to result in Lionel Messi). I don't think this value x is really of any use, of course, because when rating Joe Average, you don't compare him to Lionel Messi and ensure that you pick a value less than x. If you are a researcher doing this, you don't really know what can happen in the future, and you don't really know the effects of the player doing this "perfect scenario" because it is simply not going to happen.

[santy001]

I think the potential needs breaking down into more areas, Messi can simply never become as strong a player as some of the 6'4/6'5 defenders in various teams defences. At the same time, they're never going to become as technical or agile as Messi is, yet you could have both set at the same PA and if they were both given the same PA and both available at 17/18 when most of this is already 'set in stone' with the body you could sap Lionel Messi's technical progress out of him and make him tiny and strong even though he just isn't built for it. For me it is the hope there will be the ability to implement a much more advanced set of potentials, Basic Skills, Technical Skills, Mental, Physical and Speed. The basic skills would cover your tackling, passing, finishing and a few others - abilities all players have to some extent, technical abilities would cover the first touch, technique, long shots etc.

Mental would finally be programmable in a way to actually increase properly as a player gets older, and not merely waiting for a drop in pace to free up some points to assign to improving the mentality of older players. Strikers competing at the top of the premiership/serie A etc scoring 30+ should be getting more composed for example, when you signed him as an 18 year old he may have only had 5 or 6, with training by the time he was 22/23 and several good seasons under his belt it was 10 or 11, but if come 28/29 he's been hitting 30+ goals a season for almost 10 years you'd have to say it would be fair for his composure to have kept improving to the point where he knew what shooting under pressure was all about.

With the Physical and Speed these are two things everyone is limited to, and whilst Speed declines as we get older people can continue to get stronger into their 30's, 40's and in some cases even 50's. Because of the current system of decline, whilst its not so harsh on the strength and stamina anymore it is still not reflective of how it really is, a lot of players who continue to play to their mid 30's and beyond do begin to put more effort into building some mass to help them cope without their speed. Splitting the two physical aspects of the game up so agility, pace etc were on one hand and then strength, stamina etc on the other would make it much better.

Potentials could be worked very diferently, some players can do the basics amazingly well but not the technical stuff, and I suspect in fear of too many Messi's developing etc things are kept toned down more than they should be.

[whilewolf2]

To anyone wanting to do away with fixed PA.

If you remove PA as a ceiling for CA you need to use something else to stop CA developing indefinitely.

The things you have been suggesting a combination of determination professionalism, the level of training and performances in games played would work but it has drawbacks of its own.

Firstly the time it will take processing. Every player in the database will need to have this calculation carried out each week or each month however often you want it done.

Secondly the Determination and Professionalism attributes are going to be vital and these are two of the harder attributes for researchers to allocate to young players as they both only reveal them selves once the player is established.

Professionalism in particular is often only learnt about second hand once the players in the first team and rumours about them going out drinking or spending extra time on the training ground start to leak out.

Just as you dislike the researchers taking an educated guess at a young players PA you will dislike their educated guesses at Determination and in particular Professionalism.

To those who start multiple games and don’t like to see the same players developing to the same level save after save.

A far easier solution the removing PA would be storing the minus values -1,-2 etc in an editable file and allowing the player to set the PA range they correspond to. By doing this you could set broader ranges and as a result have more diversity in your save games.

To those saying that players develop and decline in a predictable and unrealistic way.

I totally agree with you and have some ideas of my own on how that could be fixed but I wouldn’t start by abandoning PA which is an elegant and simple solution to a complex problem.

[Johnjo]

I think FM does a good job of replicating the Gary Neville phenomena, you are managing a club and a newgen comes along that seems to be pretty average but looks keen to improve his ability and is very good at deflecting blame onto other players, you chuck him in the first team and he does ok, the other lads seem to like him and you never realy get around to buying anyone better for 15 years.

[DivineOne]

Seems to me like a lot of people don't get the point of pa.

[milnerpoint]

everyone seems to be making out Gary Neville was a rubbish player who just worked hard, you dont get to play for Man U your entire career just by trying hard all the time, he was infact a very very good player and a top defender at his peak, easily one of the best English right backs for the past 15 years, he didnt develop late or slowly, and suddenly become good enough for the 1st team.

[Riz Remes]

There are corner cases (i.e. Pedro - no-hoper at 20, world-beater at 22) where this doesn't work. Surprising development is indeed possible - if PA is high enough to begin with. If not, then it is not possible - a low PA cannot compensate Pedro a few years back.

Just to chime in on this... it is perfectly possible to have a "Pedro" situation happen in the game with newgens (or even some real youth players, depending on how their research is done). But like has been said above a few times, it is only possible if you look at the game from within the gameworld with the tools available there, without using outside editors etc to take a peek into the raw data. You can have a newgen "Pedro" in the game, who at 20 is judged by your scouts to be a no-hoper, but at 22 has turned the page and your scouts then admit he can be a world-beater. So from the gameworld viewpoint, the perceived PA of the player has changed, even though the "raw PA" on the code/data level has remained the same all the time.

In theory, the situation is the same with the real players researched in the DB. The PA that gets set into the DB is just a perception of the player potential as judged by the researcher and just like in the game these perceptions can turn out to be wrong (up or down) when looking back at old DB's. The use of negative PA's make the perceived PA more unpredictable and more "variable", allowing the researchers to give a player the chance to get a higher PA and thus a chance for a suprising development. Maybe the system that converts the negative PA's into the exact raw PA at the start of the game could use a rare chance, where the PA would sometimes get even more randomly assigned outside of the expected random range defined by the negative PA ?

In the game, the actual code is on the "god" level and can set a fixed PA's for a newgen when creating one, but as far as the habitants of the gameworld (managers, coaches, scouts... and human users not using outside editors) are concerned there is no "fixed PA" that they know of, but only the perceived PA that can change over time. In real life, all evaluations of "PA" (or talent or maximum peak ability or whatever you want to call it) are "perceived PA", an interpretation that can be wrong. So technically the game already features "unlimited potential", just like real life

[x42bn6]

Just to chime in on this... it is perfectly possible to have a "Pedro" situation happen in the game with newgens (or even some real youth players, depending on how their research is done). But like has been said above a few times, it is only possible if you look at the game from within the gameworld with the tools available there, without using outside editors etc to take a peek into the raw data. You can have a newgen "Pedro" in the game, who at 20 is judged by your scouts to be a no-hoper, but at 22 has turned the page and your scouts then admit he can be a world-beater. So from the gameworld viewpoint, the perceived PA of the player has changed, even though the "raw PA" on the code/data level has remained the same all the time.

It's only possible to do a Pedro if the PA is high and the player is underestimated. Pedro previously would not have had a chance - he had a low PA and his "perceived" PA was low. If the Barcelona researcher had a crystal ball, Pedro would have had a high PA and a low "perceived" PA.

In theory, the situation is the same with the real players researched in the DB. The PA that gets set into the DB is just a perception of the player potential as judged by the researcher and just like in the game these perceptions can turn out to be wrong (up or down) when looking back at old DB's. The use of negative PA's make the perceived PA more unpredictable and more "variable", allowing the researchers to give a player the chance to get a higher PA and thus a chance for a suprising development. Maybe the system that converts the negative PA's into the exact raw PA at the start of the game could use a rare chance, where the PA would sometimes get even more randomly assigned outside of the expected random range defined by the negative PA ?

You are a software developer, no? Doesn't this feel very "kludgy" to you? From arbitrary negative PA ranges to an arbitrary percentage chance of being outside the range to some arbitrary tolerance? Negative PAs have the issue that it still implies some sort of guarantee (that the maximum falls below the upper bound of the range) which is wrong because it is impossible to predict the future.

In the game, the actual code is on the "god" level and can set a fixed PA's for a newgen when creating one, but as far as the habitants of the gameworld (managers, coaches, scouts... and human users not using outside editors) are concerned there is no "fixed PA" that they know of, but only the perceived PA that can change over time. In real life, all evaluations of "PA" (or talent or maximum peak ability or whatever you want to call it) are "perceived PA", an interpretation that can be wrong. So technically the game already features "unlimited potential", just like real life

It only allows for "unlimited" potential if the PA is "high". If a player's PA is high then he can have a whole range of values to choose from - if a player's PA is low then he can only fail.

While I see where you are coming from, the fact that a player can "succeed" or "fail" is purely based on PA rather than any "why". If a player with a low PA performs very well and has a good attitude, then I would still expect him to develop, if possibly a lot slower than perhaps more talented players.

A no-PA model will have limits (a player will peak - well - at his peak - but only at that peak time will a player know) and if anything is more "god" mode than PA, because things like talent are absolutely known but the future is not known - it won't try and hard-code in the future. Rather like amassing as much cash as possible for your retirement, you cannot set a hard upper-bound for the peak amount of money you have because you cannot rule out things like winning the lottery. But if I were to model your life, instead I would simply record the amount of cash you have, predict how your future cashflows will be and stick in a low probability of you winning the lottery. The actual peak value doesn't really matter to me right now. I can certainly estimate the average amount of peak cash you have, but my estimate could be right or wrong.

At the start of a player's creation, there will always exist some peak CA value (call it X), but by putting this ceiling in at the start, you may prevent future positive circumstances from influencing X if X is low. I've argued above that this is wrong, because researchers may increase PA over a research phase - newer information changes PA, which may influence X because now X may be higher than before.

If you like, P(X<x | Player is at semi-professional level at year zero) != P(X<x | Player is at semi-professional level at year zero AND Player moves to a top-tier side at year one).