Game time for young players?

[mikelfc8]

I think we all know that game time is essential for young players to develop.

I have a couple of questions though -

Is it number of appearances or minutes on the pitch that matters? Logically I assume it is minutes on the pitch but you never know.

Secondly, as I don't know how the equation between playing and developing works, does the quality of a young player's performance make any difference? For example if he plays 60 minutes and has an 8 rating is that better for his development than 90 minutes and a 5 rating?

Hope that makes sense.

[Gooner SJ]

The more minutes the better. Match performance does also dictate the benefits they will gain from the time on the pitch.

[Cleon]

It's minutes what counts. Also a player needs the right kind of personality to develop fully too.

There is a massive myth that goes around these forums that a player must play well to develop when he does play. This is not accurate, he'll still develop even if your side don't play too good. It's personality what it vital here and not how he performs.

You might want to have a read of this about player development;

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/343043-Ajax-Youth-Development-%E2%80%93-When-The-Real-World-Meets-Football-Manager

[Gooner SJ]

There is a massive myth that goes around these forums that a player must play well to develop when he does play. This is not accurate, he'll still develop even if your side don't play too good. It's personality what it vital here and not how he performs.

Really, I swear I got that from your thread? :o Good to have that cleared up anyway.

[Cleon]

Really, I swear I got that from your thread? :o Good to have that cleared up anyway.

There are certain things in the game that can help with certain attributes, they are event based development. You might have a striker who scores a hattrick when he normally only scores 1 goal a game. He can see an increase in his finishing, otb and composure. Or it might be a defender who gets more interceptions than he normally does, then he might see his tackling, marking or anticipation rise and so on.

But how well a player develops and at what rate is all down to personality. A lot of people assume good ratings means better development. It's actually what a player actually does during a game that counts.

If it was how well a player performed on the pitch then keepers in top sides would never develop as they don't tend to have much to do, the same with defenders. They always get low ratings when aren't doing much

[Gooner SJ]

There are certain things in the game that can help with certain attributes, they are event based development. You might have a striker who scores a hattrick when he normally only scores 1 goal a game. He can see an increase in his finishing, otb and composure. Or it might be a defender who gets more interceptions than he normally does, then he might see his tackling, marking or anticipation rise and so on.

But how well a player develops and at what rate is all down to personality. A lot of people assume good ratings means better development. It's actually what a player actually does during a game that counts.

If it was how well a player performed on the pitch then keepers in top sides would never develop as they don't tend to have much to do, the same with defenders. They always get low ratings when aren't doing much

I like that a lot better actually, now that you've explained it. It makes more sense that way anyway.

[KevMaaan]

Another benefit to giving your youth a chance, is that if they perform badly you can give them a warning and/or fine them. This has a good chance of raising the hidden attributes necessary for good development

[mikelfc8]

Cheers Gooner and Cleon, that clears it up nicely.

I've already read all your stuff on player development Cleon, in fact, the Ajax thread is pretty much forming the core of my current, and hugely enjoyable, Liverpool save. Let me take this opportunity to say a great big thanks.

Kevmaan - Interesting, I've never really done much warning or fining (sometimes for a particularly bad sending-off), what can be achieved if if it does correctly?

[KevMaaan]

Cheers Gooner and Cleon, that clears it up nicely.

I've already read all your stuff on player development Cleon, in fact, the Ajax thread is pretty much forming the core of my current, and hugely enjoyable, Liverpool save. Let me take this opportunity to say a great big thanks.

Kevmaan - Interesting, I've never really done much warning or fining (sometimes for a particularly bad sending-off), what can be achieved if if it does correctly?

If a player accepts his warning and/or fine, there is a chance it increases his sportsmanship and professionalism(?) and reduces his dirtiness and possibly controversy.

[mikelfc8]

If a player accepts his warning and/or fine, there is a chance it increases his sportsmanship and professionalism(?) and reduces his dirtiness and possibly controversy.

Well, well, did not know that. I am about to become a bit more of a disciplinarian - thanks.

[Cleon]

Another benefit to giving your youth a chance, is that if they perform badly you can give them a warning and/or fine them. This has a good chance of raising the hidden attributes necessary for good development

If a player accepts his warning and/or fine, there is a chance it increases his sportsmanship and professionalism(?) and reduces his dirtiness and possibly controversy.

This isn't true. If you fine someone for a poor performance the attributes that can change are concentration, determination, influence and work rate. No hidden ones get changes for poor performances.

[NoChance]

There is a massive myth that goes around these forums that a player must play well to develop when he does play.

I've assumed that morale is significant to how well players train - including how much benefit they gain from matches. To the extent that given the choice between two youths for a match, I'll pick the one with the better morale. Is this also a red herring?

[Cleon]

I've assumed that morale is significant to how well players train - including how much benefit they gain from matches. To the extent that given the choice between two youths for a match, I'll pick the one with the better morale. Is this also a red herring?

Morale is more about performance and not development

Another reason why people shouldn't solely focus on ratings is also due to the fact you can have a player who has been poor all game. Then he might score right at the end of a game and he'd get a massive boost to his match ratings because the game favours goals/assist.

So if you had 2 identical player where everything was same, attributes, personality and so on. One of them got a 7.2 and was involved in play, yet you had a striker who was poor all game but scored a goal and got a 8.5 rating. The player with 7.2 rating would develop better over the season if this carried on happening.

People think ratings are important when really there not. People need to focus on the context of how they got the rating rather than looking at the actual number.

[NoChance]

Morale is more about performance and not development

...

People think ratings are important when really there not. People need to focus on the context of how they got the rating rather than looking at the actual number.

Thanks for that, much appreciated. Am I right in assuming morale does affect the players training development (i.e. the off-pitch) development, or am I barking up the wrong tree there as well?

Also, for the event based development you mentioned above, are there any cues when such an event has occurred in a match? I'm thinking of those lines of commentary like "... knows instinctively when to get forward", but perhaps there's something else to look out for?

[Gooner SJ]

Thanks for that, much appreciated. Am I right in assuming morale does affect the players training development (i.e. the off-pitch) development, or am I barking up the wrong tree there as well?

Also, for the event based development you mentioned above, are there any cues when such an event has occurred in a match? I'm thinking of those lines of commentary like "... knows instinctively when to get forward", but perhaps there's something else to look out for?

I'll make a stretch and say that my interpretation is that a player's rate of development is based upon his personality, tutoring, and injuries (if any). Also, the facilities and coaching staff obviously have an effect, but I don't think that a player's morale affects training. That's my guess, but we'll see what Cleon says.

[Cleon]

Thanks for that, much appreciated. Am I right in assuming morale does affect the players training development (i.e. the off-pitch) development, or am I barking up the wrong tree there as well?

Also, for the event based development you mentioned above, are there any cues when such an event has occurred in a match? I'm thinking of those lines of commentary like "... knows instinctively when to get forward", but perhaps there's something else to look out for?

What do you mean by off the pitch development? Training etc? If so then no not really all that matters is the player is injury free, he is happy (general happiness and not morale) and that he has the right personality to begin with (professionalism and ambition).

And you'll know if an event has occured because the attribute changes straight away once you come out of the game

[NoChance]

What do you mean by off the pitch development? Training etc? If so then no not really all that matters is the player is injury free, he is happy (general happiness and not morale) and that he has the right personality to begin with (professionalism and ambition).

And you'll know if an event has occured because the attribute changes straight away once you come out of the game

Thanks again, that was exactly what I was meaning by off the pitch development.

I was hoping there would be some sign I should go and check a players attributes closely: I suspect many, like me, don't check player attribute development after every match :-)

[Cleon]

Thanks again, that was exactly what I was meaning by off the pitch development.

I was hoping there would be some sign I should go and check a players attributes closely: I suspect many, like me, don't check player attribute development after every match :-)

Well on a players profile page you can select it so you can see arrows next to the attributes, so if you see an upward green arrow then that means the attribute has changed.

[NoChance]

Well on a players profile page you can select it so you can see arrows next to the attributes, so if you see an upward green arrow then that means the attribute has changed.

True, but since I've followed a lot of the advice on this forum, especially your own, there's generally quite a few green arrows to begin with Still, I'll give it a bit more attention and see if I notice anything. Thanks again for the help

[Cleon]

True, but since I've followed a lot of the advice on this forum, especially your own, there's generally quite a few green arrows to begin with Still, I'll give it a bit more attention and see if I notice anything. Thanks again for the help

It's rare you'll actually see a green arrow pointing straight up though, so is more noticeable

[Jean-Luc]

Actually, making attribute development more easier to follow up would be one of my very high "wish list" points for FM2014 or any of those FM following.

Let's be honest, for a lot of us gamers, player development is one of the most fascinating and fun issues. Hardly surprising, as there are quite a lot of games which get their main playing drive from "development" (I am thinking of RPGs and MMORPGs here...). Seeing an attribute rising by +1 is, from my side, just as exciting, as watching my team shooting a goal.

But you have to be very, very careful and very meticulous to actually realize how often and when attributes are rising. Even the green arrows are sometimes misleading, as (if I get that right?) they only show you the most recent changes, and ignore changes that might have been much bigger but date from a few days/weeks back.

In fact, I am just playing a save where 3-4 different people are playing exactly the same team, and after certain "milestones", we post pictures and compare what has happened. After the first half of the season, we compared a few of our players and their development. The differences were absolutely stunning. There was a young guy who got, in total 20 attribute points more while playing for the team of a friend than playing for me. Even more surprising, he had been on the pitch in my team for 700 minutes and on the pitch for my friedn for only about 400 minutes. I wasn't even aware of the fact that his attributes had risen. Same for a few other players.

There is so much going on in terms of attribute development, and as a player who might not take notes or use a pen or really click on the graphs of every single player every single weekenend, you certainly miss most of the stuff.

I really hope for a much better way to follow up those player developments.

[Jean-Luc]

Here's the guy I am talking about...

This is him playing half a season for me:

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917510

And here's his game time: Minutes on pitch - 702

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917513

Here's the same guy playing for the team of a friend:

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917109

And that's his game time there: Minutes on pitch - 447

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917108

Despite playing 250 minutes less, he has:

Corner +1

Crossing +1

Dribbling +1

Finishing +1

First Touch +1

Heading (-1!)

Throwing +1

Passing +1

Penalty +1

Technique +1

Anticipation +1

Composure +1

Concentration +1

Decision +1

Determination +2

Flair +1

Positioning +2

Work Rate +1

Agility +1

Pace +1

Stamina +1

All within 5 months playing time from August 2012 to December 2012

[Cleon]

Actually, making attribute development more easier to follow up would be one of my very high "wish list" points for FM2014 or any of those FM following.

Let's be honest, for a lot of us gamers, player development is one of the most fascinating and fun issues. Hardly surprising, as there are quite a lot of games which get their main playing drive from "development" (I am thinking of RPGs and MMORPGs here...). Seeing an attribute rising by +1 is, from my side, just as exciting, as watching my team shooting a goal.

But you have to be very, very careful and very meticulous to actually realize how often and when attributes are rising. Even the green arrows are sometimes misleading, as (if I get that right?) they only show you the most recent changes, and ignore changes that might have been much bigger but date from a few days/weeks back.

In fact, I am just playing a save where 3-4 different people are playing exactly the same team, and after certain "milestones", we post pictures and compare what has happened. After the first half of the season, we compared a few of our players and their development. The differences were absolutely stunning. There was a young guy who got, in total 20 attribute points more while playing for the team of a friend than playing for me. Even more surprising, he had been on the pitch in my team for 700 minutes and on the pitch for my friedn for only about 400 minutes. I wasn't even aware of the fact that his attributes had risen. Same for a few other players.

There is so much going on in terms of attribute development, and as a player who might not take notes or use a pen or really click on the graphs of every single player every single weekenend, you certainly miss most of the stuff.

I really hope for a much better way to follow up those player developments.

The information is already in the game though, you just choose to either not use it or ignore it. SI can't change that mentality because its a user issue.

You don't have to click the player to see the development for a player either, you can view all this on a quick overview when visiting the training screen. If you want to keep track of the attributes more closely then this already exists too and you can do it by viewing the graphs on each players profile.

Every single thing you want is already in the game. You say you want it to be easier to check development, but how? The graphs are the best way of don't really use it. You can ask the assistant to send you weekly reports, fortnightly, monthly etc. You can check any time you want of the progression, I'm not sure how easier it could actually be?

There is a lot of things that could be improved on the development side but attribute tracking is the easiest thing ever, you can even set up custom views to give you a better oversight.

[Cleon]

Here's the guy I am talking about...

This is him playing half a season for me:

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917510

And here's his game time: Minutes on pitch - 702

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917513

Here's the same guy playing for the team of a friend:

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917109

And that's his game time there: Minutes on pitch - 447

http://www.civforum.de/attachment.php?attachmentid=917108

Despite playing 250 minutes less, he has:

Corner +1

Crossing +1

Dribbling +1

Finishing +1

First Touch +1

Heading (-1!)

Throwing +1

Passing +1

Penalty +1

Technique +1

Anticipation +1

Composure +1

Concentration +1

Decision +1

Determination +2

Flair +1

Positioning +2

Work Rate +1

Agility +1

Pace +1

Stamina +1

All within 5 months playing time from August 2012 to December 2012

That proves nothing though, not sure what the issue is? Players can be different on each game and from what I see, this player has a random potential ability meaning he might be better on your friends than your game. It also looks like your friend is training him different to you. Your friend has also tutored him and gave him a better personality judging by the screenshot, something you haven't done.

With all respect, it looks like your friend understands the training side of the game and knows what he is doing were as you seem to approach it differently.

[Jean-Luc]

You don't have to click the player to see the development for a player either, you can view all this on a quick overview when visiting the training screen. If you want to keep track of the attributes more closely then this already exists too and you can do it by viewing the graphs on each players profile.

Not sure, if I made myself clear enough or if we both have different perceptions on what's a clear overview.

The graphs have basically three problems:

1) You can't see them all at once, because there are too many attributes, and if you have several ones within the same range (say 10-12), then they all are on top of each other, which makes it difficult to follow. My solution normally is to check them in groups of 4-5. That's a lot of clicking and checking and changing.

2) As far as I can see, and correct me if I am wrong, you can't choose the date range that the graphs show. If I want to know how a player developed within the last 6 months, I have to find the correct starting point within the graph, I can't just tell the graph "show me 6 months" / "1 year", etc. Especially if a player stays with you for several years, the graph becomes incredible long and hard to follow. It also gets, obviously, smaller, because there's more and more months to show, so it's even harder to easily find an exact date.

3) The arrows are sometimes misleading. They are green, when the advance has been actually very small, say from "10,2" to "10,4", but they don't show you that a few weeks back, an attribute jumped from 11 to 12. I haven't really figured out the logic here, but basically, if you want to stay really well informed, you not only have to click the arrows, you also have to double-check those attributes which don't have arrows, and sometimes you get surprised. My assumption is that the arrows operate after a quite narrow logic, so in theory, you'd have to check the training screens every week or even every day to sometimes realize what has changed. Assuming you have a squad of 20-30 players, and a promising youth squad of 10 talented players, that's a lot of micro management to check on developments. I am not sure if I want to call this an "easy overview".

My wish would be a screen where you have full control over the attributes, not in terms of graphs but in full numbers, and which actually shows you, if you click "6 months", "1 year" or "5 years" the exact points a player has gained or lost (+1 / +7 / -3, and so on). That would give you a much easier, quicker and better to handle way to assess development. You could even include this in the custom made big overviews, and have a full screen of +1, +1, +2, and so on for the whole squad. That I would also call helpful.

Every single thing you want is already in the game. You say you want it to be easier to check development, but how? The graphs are the best way of don't really use it. You can ask the assistant to send you weekly reports, fortnightly, monthly etc. You can check any time you want of the progression, I'm not sure how easier it could actually be?

There is a lot of things that could be improved on the development side but attribute tracking is the easiest thing ever, you can even set up custom views to give you a better oversight.

Not sure what you mean with the custom view, so maybe I am missing something.

But I sense a certain part of annoyance from your side, reacting to a player who apparently complained without understanding the game settings. I hope by describing you more in detail I have shown you that I did know all those things that you mentioned, and I still am not too happy about it. You can still disagree with me, that's fine, but please don't tell me that I am ignoring the solutions which are there. As far as I am aware of, I am not ignoring them.

edit:

[Doublepost]

That proves nothing though, not sure what the issue is? Players can be different on each game and from what I see, this player has a random potential ability meaning he might be better on your friends than your game. It also looks like your friend is training him different to you. Your friend has also tutored him and gave him a better personality judging by the screenshot, something you haven't done.

With all respect, it looks like your friend understands the training side of the game and knows what he is doing were as you seem to approach it differently.

The random potential ability might be an answer I hadn't thought of and would explain a lot.

Apart from that, I find 20+ attributes changes within 6 months with half the game time on the pitch quite an amazing thing, and I am surprised that you, as somebody, who loves to delve into training aspects, would brush it aside so easily. If anything, it proves at least that game time clearly is not everything, maybe not even the most important part of player development.

I am not sure if I was tutoring him, I have to check that. The team we are playing is Metz, and Metz FC have an incredible amount of young talented players with very high potential, and you had to make a choice in the beginning of the game on who to focus on (and, sadly, you don't have too many 23+ aged players who are actually capable of doing the tutoring for all those young talents). That being said, I was always under the impression that tutoring does NOT have a big effect on attributes. I thought the effect was on personality and PPMs. That was, if I remember correctly, one of the things you were stressing in your threads. If, say, the changed personality AFTER tutoring has an effect (a newly turned "professional" player developing faster), then it can't really be a factor here, as the tutoring obviously takes around 6 months to be finished, and that's just the space we are talking here. I would assume that both players have more or less still the same hidden attributes, as they had at the start of the season.

And thank you for putting it so nicely that my friend apparently understands the training side and knows what he is doing whereas my approach is "differently" (which is a sly way of saying that I must have no clue of what I am doing). I don't exactly know how deep his knowledge of training issues is. He certainly is a passionate FM player, the same as I am. I at least can say that I followed your threads. I did not use the assistant engine to plan my training. I trained my whole team manually, and I actually do believe I have at least an incling of what I am doing, as, I repeat, I have played quite a bit of FM2013 within the last months, and I am reading a lot here on the forums, and most of your threads and insights have been very helpful.

So maybe again you got this all wrong.

My point was not to complain and whine about the game engine or whatever or to say: "Look! Look! I have proof that this and that does not work, because I have ONE example!!!". Far from it. My point was to share with you (and others) an observation I made. A quite curious one in my perspective. This observation must have a reason somewhere. Assuming that our handling of training was more or less similar and attentive and I am not the dumb and completely clueless person you are so nicely describing above, I am wondering what this reason could be.

The tutoring? Really? That would make tutoring even stronger than I expected it?

The training intensity? I have all of my manual attribute training on "heavy" and the weekly team training on "average" or sometimes, depending on the schedule, on "light", and I think I remember that was also something you were advertising for, but I might be wrong about that.

Or is it in this case, indeed, simply the matter of a random PA?

There is one other thing I realized as a difference between me and my friend: I was training a PPM to the guy. Is that effect so big on attributes? Gaining a PPM means to slow down you attributes developement by such a big factor?

Again, whatever the reason is, in my opinion it is (at least for me) a warning sign that "game time" (which is the topic of this thread and thus our discussion) is not everything, and you can destroy the effects of game time with wrong (?) training.

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts, but only if you might be willing to assume that I am not a complete idiot, because if you do, our discussion becomes more or less worthless.

[Cleon]

The graphs have basically three problems:

1) You can't see them all at once, because there are too many attributes, and if you have several ones within the same range (say 10-12), then they all are on top of each other, which makes it difficult to follow. My solution normally is to check them in groups of 4-5. That's a lot of clicking and checking and changing.

Now I understand better what you mean

The issue with this part is you want to micro manage the attributes yet don't want the hassle of micro managing the attributes. I'm not sure how this part could be made easier and you retain the same level of information. Highlighting all the attributes in one go would help in some ways but as you already mentioned it can get messy following the graph when 4 or more attributes are active.

How do you suggest it worked out of interest?

2) As far as I can see, and correct me if I am wrong, you can't choose the date range that the graphs show. If I want to know how a player developed within the last 6 months, I have to find the correct starting point within the graph, I can't just tell the graph "show me 6 months" / "1 year", etc. Especially if a player stays with you for several years, the graph becomes incredible long and hard to follow. It also gets, obviously, smaller, because there's more and more months to show, so it's even harder to easily find an exact date.

This part I kind of agree with and it does make sense.

But there is something you can currently do about this. You can get a training report every week off your assistant and then save it as a note and then you can always refer back to it.

3) The arrows are sometimes misleading. They are green, when the advance has been actually very small, say from "10,2" to "10,4", but they don't show you that a few weeks back, an attribute jumped from 11 to 12. I haven't really figured out the logic here, but basically, if you want to stay really well informed, you not only have to click the arrows, you also have to double-check those attributes which don't have arrows, and sometimes you get surprised. My assumption is that the arrows operate after a quite narrow logic, so in theory, you'd have to check the training screens every week or even every day to sometimes realize what has changed. Assuming you have a squad of 20-30 players, and a promising youth squad of 10 talented players, that's a lot of micro management to check on developments. I am not sure if I want to call this an "easy overview".

Actually there are different types of arrows. A straight up green arrow indicates an immediate attribute change, a diagonal upwards arrow indicates a small change in the attribute range somewhere. If an attribute has made an actual visible change then that will show on the profile for a month afterwards. So you can indeed see a few weeks back.

For more indepth references this is exactly what the graph is for.

For a more quick overview either request feedback every week/fortnight or month. Or you can get a quick training report for each player you'd wish to check to get a quick overview of how he's developing. This will tell you if the staff think he's developed over the last few months, what he has improved in and what he needs improvements on. It'll also let you know if the current schedule he is on is actually working for him.

I do agree though that more control over the actual periods of time would be a good addition. But this would add another dimension to micro managing and make it more in depth.

Not sure what you mean with the custom view, so maybe I am missing something.

On your squad overview screen you can create a custom one. It might take several minutes to set it up but once it's set up it'll be there on every game. You don't lose your current overview you add additional ones. On this you can have almost everything on it. You can set it up so it shows your players attributes, training, performances etc and you can keep better track of attribute improvements for the whole team in 1 simple click. If you do a search for threads created by me, you'll find a post highlighting how you can create them as I did a big thread about them.

But I sense a certain part of annoyance from your side, reacting to a player who apparently complained without understanding the game settings. I hope by describing you more in detail I have shown you that I did know all those things that you mentioned, and I still am not too happy about it. You can still disagree with me, that's fine, but please don't tell me that I am ignoring the solutions which are there. As far as I am aware of, I am not ignoring them.

There is no annoyance at all. I just find it strange that you don't want to micro manage yet are pushing for game changes that will do exactly this and mean more micro managing from your side. And some of the things you do want, can still be obtained like I've highlighted above. There is no annoyance from me though as it makes no difference to my life how you play the game

The random potential ability might be an answer I hadn't thought of and would explain a lot.

Apart from that, I find 20+ attributes changes within 6 months with half the game time on the pitch quite an amazing thing, and I am surprised that you, as somebody, who loves to delve into training aspects, would brush it aside so easily. If anything, it proves at least that game time clearly is not everything, maybe not even the most important part of player development.

Erm I didn't brush it aside at all. I told you the reasons why.

The biggest difference from you and your friend is he tutored the player you didn't. Personality is the biggest factor in player development because if the player doesn't have the right personality he is limited to how far he can go.

I am not sure if I was tutoring him, I have to check that. The team we are playing is Metz, and Metz FC have an incredible amount of young talented players with very high potential, and you had to make a choice in the beginning of the game on who to focus on (and, sadly, you don't have too many 23+ aged players who are actually capable of doing the tutoring for all those young talents). That being said, I was always under the impression that tutoring does NOT have a big effect on attributes. I thought the effect was on personality and PPMs. That was, if I remember correctly, one of the things you were stressing in your threads. If, say, the changed personality AFTER tutoring has an effect (a newly turned "professional" player developing faster), then it can't really be a factor here, as the tutoring obviously takes around 6 months to be finished, and that's just the space we are talking here. I would assume that both players have more or less still the same hidden attributes, as they had at the start of the season.

Changes in personality happen all the way through tutoring not just at the end of it. I take it you've read my development thread because you mentioned I stressed tutoring doesn't have a big effect on attributes. This is true, however you should have also read in the same part of the thread that if a player sees a rise in his ambition and professionalism then this is what really makes a player develop. The higher these two attributes the more likely the player is to improve. These are the 2 most important things about player development, more important that game time.

And thank you for putting it so nicely that my friend apparently understands the training side and knows what he is doing whereas my approach is "differently" (which is a sly way of saying that I must have no clue of what I am doing). I don't exactly know how deep his knowledge of training issues is. He certainly is a passionate FM player, the same as I am. I at least can say that I followed your threads. I did not use the assistant engine to plan my training. I trained my whole team manually, and I actually do believe I have at least an incling of what I am doing, as, I repeat, I have played quite a bit of FM2013 within the last months, and I am reading a lot here on the forums, and most of your threads and insights have been very helpful.

You say you've been them manually but that doesn't mean you've been doing it correctly though. What did you have the general training set to? What intensity was it? What about the bar at the top of the training screen, was the focus more on general or match training? What was the exact percentage it was set on? Also what about the role you gave the player, what did you set him to train to? What was the intensity of that too?

I think this is where your issue might lie in all honesty, If these aren't set up right and your friend has got it right then the differences in development will differ quite a lot.

So maybe again you got this all wrong.

Maybe I am. But I'm only going on things you've told me. The fact you and your friend are the same team though and developing the same players yet one of you sees massive improvements and the other one doesn't, is normally a clear indication that one of you is getting training wrong. So maybe I am right maybe I'm not.

My point was not to complain and whine about the game engine or whatever or to say: "Look! Look! I have proof that this and that does not work, because I have ONE example!!!". Far from it. My point was to share with you (and others) an observation I made. A quite curious one in my perspective. This observation must have a reason somewhere. Assuming that our handling of training was more or less similar and attentive and I am not the dumb and completely clueless person you are so nicely describing above, I am wondering what this reason could be.

I didn't call you dumb at all. Saying one of you seems to understand training better than the other was a fact. I'm not going to sugar coat it for you and lie and say you're doing everything correct when from what you've posted and shown isn't correct.

All I've done is pointed out the reasoning why. But yet again someone posts something and feels like they are been attacked. If you post, then you have to expect people to pick it apart and counter it and point out possible flaws in something you are doing. If you are not open to that then myself or no-one else can help you.

I get nothing out of posting you know, I am actually trying to help you.

The tutoring? Really? That would make tutoring even stronger than I expected it?

The training intensity? I have all of my manual attribute training on "heavy" and the weekly team training on "average" or sometimes, depending on the schedule, on "light", and I think I remember that was also something you were advertising for, but I might be wrong about that.

Yes really tutoring. Tutoring is powerful, I even did a big part about it in my development thread and told what personalities make for better focus on player development.

I actually asked what training you was using further up as I was replying to the thread at the same time of reading it, so apologies for that. You are partly right I guess about the intensity. I go for heavy on the player attribute/role focus and light for the general intensity. However all this means very little if you've got the match training/general training ratio wrong. What percentage is it set too? Depending on what the answer is, this could be a massive factor as it determines how much time a player can actually spend on his focus.

Or is it in this case, indeed, simply the matter of a random PA?

It's possible but I don't think this is the issue. You should have still seen better improvements. The personality change that your friend seems to be working on via tutoring though is a big deciding factor as its a powerful tool.

There is one other thing I realized as a difference between me and my friend: I was training a PPM to the guy. Is that effect so big on attributes? Gaining a PPM means to slow down you attributes developement by such a big factor?

Ah, now we are getting to the root of the issue. Yes learning a PPM takes away from training time. It tells you how much on the players training screen.

Again, whatever the reason is, in my opinion it is (at least for me) a warning sign that "game time" (which is the topic of this thread and thus our discussion) is not everything, and you can destroy the effects of game time with wrong (?) training.

In terms of importance its personality what is the most important factor. Then game time. If a player has low ambition and professionalism then it won't matter how much game time he gets in all honesty as he doesn't have the right hidden attributes to fulfill his potential.

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts, but only if you might be willing to assume that I am not a complete idiot, because if you do, our discussion becomes more or less worthless.

I'm truly sorry you feel like this but I am only trying to help you. I don't think you are a complete idiot at all but I do think you don't understand the training side of things as well as you think you do. That is different to being called an idiot or thinking you are.

You have to be open to what you are doing is the issue, or I also am wasting my time trying to help you or the discussion is meaningless.

Sorry if I've offended you but not many people understand the training aspects of the game like I do, so when someone posts about a training issue and shows screenshots I can normally pin point if its a user error or something because training works a specific way and will always give similar results. Some might be on a greater scale than others but all player development follows a pattern so for me its easy to see glaring flaws

[ModernLefty]

Players can be different on each game and from what I see, this player has a random potential ability meaning he might be better on your friends than your game.

Cleon how can you tell the player has a random potential ability? Was it just that in your game he wasn't as good or was it from the screenshots? I'm intrigued.

[Cleon]

Cleon how can you tell the player has a random potential ability? Was it just that in your game he wasn't as good or was it from the screenshots? I'm intrigued.

From various saved games I have.

[ModernLefty]

Ahh, fair enough, why do some players have random potential abilities? I can think of a few reasons.

[Cleon]

Ahh, fair enough, why do some players have random potential abilities? I can think of a few reasons.

probably for the reasons you can think of

[ModernLefty]

Haha, very good, yeah I just guess it stops certain players always becoming must buys in every FMers game.

[NoChance]

Some very long - and interesting - posts in this thread. I kind of agree with Jean-Luc that there are things that could be improved in the training feedback, so I'm going to stick my oar in as well, because I think Cleon is so close to providing a great answer to one of his own questions:

The issue with this part is you want to micro manage the attributes yet don't want the hassle of micro managing the attributes. I'm not sure how this part could be made easier and you retain the same level of information. Highlighting all the attributes in one go would help in some ways but as you already mentioned it can get messy following the graph when 4 or more attributes are active.

How do you suggest it worked out of interest?

...

On your squad overview screen you can create a custom one. It might take several minutes to set it up but once it's set up it'll be there on every game. You don't lose your current overview you add additional ones. On this you can have almost everything on it. You can set it up so it shows your players attributes, training, performances etc and you can keep better track of attribute improvements for the whole team in 1 simple click. If you do a search for threads created by me, you'll find a post highlighting how you can create them as I did a big thread about them.

Wouldn't it help if we could create custom views of which attributes were grouped on the attribute development graph? As it stands you can select either attributes one at a time, or pre-defined groups based on positions. If I were to want to e.g. see how creativity, flair, and technique were progressing for my squad at the moment, it means selecting those three attributes individually for each player. I'd prefer it if the custom view functionality from the squad overview screen could be recycled on the player training graph screen so I could define groups of attributes to show there. Further, how about additional pre-defined groups based on each of the team training categories, or the areas each type of coaching covers?

I suspect this isn't possible with the way the training is done, and isn't connected to the ongoing discussion beyond being an idea to improve the presentation of training, but it would also be nice to be able to see what contributed to attribute changes. If a player gains 1.0 passing, for example, would be good to see that 0.2 came from the coaches, 0.2 from the training facilities, 0.3 from personality, 0.2 from matches and 0.1 from individual training - if nothing else, would allow people to see what was working well, and what needs more attention.

[Jean-Luc]

Cleon,

thanks a lot for your thoughtful and in-depth reply.

Now I understand better what you mean

The issue with this part is you want to micro manage the attributes yet don't want the hassle of micro managing the attributes. I'm not sure how this part could be made easier and you retain the same level of information. Highlighting all the attributes in one go would help in some ways but as you already mentioned it can get messy following the graph when 4 or more attributes are active.

How do you suggest it worked out of interest?

Well, first I'd say it is not illogical at all that if you are interested in micro management to look for a way on how the management could be made easier. You are interested in MM because you want to have control over everything. Not necessarily because you love to click, click, click.

Basically, I guess, I don't mind the graph and letting the graph giving me a visualization of something, especially if I am interested in pursuing what has changed over a long range of period. That's fine, and in that case, I might be only interested in certain attributes anyway. At the same time, I'd like to be informed more easily about what exactly happened in the last 3 months or the last 6 months. The coaches reports are only summarizes ("has developed a lot in speed"). As mentioned before, I'd probably prefer a system that shows you with "+0,2" or "+1" behind the attributes what exactly has changed within a certain period of time. You'd probably get a much better handle on how fast a young player has developed like this, and where he has develped and if those are the exat attributes you wanted him to develop.

This part I kind of agree with and it does make sense.

But there is something you can currently do about this. You can get a training report every week off your assistant and then save it as a note and then you can always refer back to it.

I might have dismissed the training reports as something too vague, and maybe they are more accurate than I give them credit for, so I will explore that option again. Then again, I am also not sure if I want everything distributed via inbox. I find the inbox a very nice tool, but it looses its value if you get too many messages every day. There again, I actually try to micro manage my messages quite carefully to really get those that are of value, and dismiss those that might distract me. In my opinion, the training report is something valuable to give you a general idea; for example to alert you that a certain player is not progressing in a certain field. (I also have the "training progress arrow" as a standard in my tactics screen, so whenever I put together the team, I am checking on a routine basis if players are showing some bad training results.) But to fine tune the training or get a fast, quick overview, I'd rather not rely on the inbox.

Actually there are different types of arrows. A straight up green arrow indicates an immediate attribute change, a diagonal upwards arrow indicates a small change in the attribute range somewhere. If an attribute has made an actual visible change then that will show on the profile for a month afterwards. So you can indeed see a few weeks back.

I "knew" this by interpreting the arrows and looking at them on a regular basis, but did not know the exact mechanism behind it, so thank you for claring that up.

On your squad overview screen you can create a custom one. It might take several minutes to set it up but once it's set up it'll be there on every game. You don't lose your current overview you add additional ones. On this you can have almost everything on it. You can set it up so it shows your players attributes, training, performances etc and you can keep better track of attribute improvements for the whole team in 1 simple click. If you do a search for threads created by me, you'll find a post highlighting how you can create them as I did a big thread about them.

Yes, I know about those custom views as well and was actually especially delighted to find out that you can also customize the "opposition team preparation screen" (although, strangely, I always fail to be able to import those whenever I have to reinstall the game, whereas importing the custom views in the tactic or squad screen works just fine).

I also know about the arrows (as mentioned above), but it's still, as far as I can see, a rather general tool.

Let me give you an example: For the last months, I played the game quite intensely, and if a player new to FM would have asked me how fast the attributes of players develop, I would have said "Well, maybe 5-6 points in six months, depends of course a lot on different factors...". When I started tracking the attributes, making tables and comparing the development, I was dumbstruck to see that, yes, indeed, a player can sometimes gain 20, 30 or more points within half a season. I saw all those arrows, and I obviously realized the "big changes" (determination going up here, pace going up there...), and I saw that around a dozen lines on the graphs would point "upwards", but I completely failed to realize the small bits and pieces all over the place which add up to some quite speedy development.

There is no annoyance at all. I just find it strange that you don't want to micro manage yet are pushing for game changes that will do exactly this and mean more micro managing from your side.

As mentioned above, yes, I do want to micro manage in the sense that I want to be able to understand the mechanism as detailed as possible and use my brain, my planning and my tactics to use that to my advantage. And if that means concentrating for 1 hour on figuring out how to plan the next corner against Barcelona, then yes, so be it. What I don't want is to be forced to do tedious steps of checking things without actually knowing what I find out in the end.

The biggest difference from you and your friend is he tutored the player you didn't. Personality is the biggest factor in player development because if the player doesn't have the right personality he is limited to how far he can go.

I was aware of how important tutoring is in the long run, I do admit I am surprised on how big a difference it might make in 6 months.That being said, as mentioned, there was a tactical decision behind this, as well: The number of good tutors was limited. I chose to tutor other players, which I saw more important to the development of the team. In the end, that might have been a tactical mistake, taken into consideration that the young guy ended up playing quite a lot for the team. That was of course also influenced by other things such as injuries and changing tactics, and so on. The usual stuff.

[...] if a player sees a rise in his ambition and professionalism then this is what really makes a player develop. The higher these two attributes the more likely the player is to improve. These are the 2 most important things about player development, more important that game time.

That's an interesting sentence there as well. I would have thought both important, but that game time is the key to set a certain development into motion.

You say you've been them manually but that doesn't mean you've been doing it correctly though.

That's certainly true.

What did you have the general training set to? What intensity was it? What about the bar at the top of the training screen, was the focus more on general or match training? What was the exact percentage it was set on? Also what about the role you gave the player, what did you set him to train to? What was the intensity of that too?

I think this is where your issue might lie in all honesty, If these aren't set up right and your friend has got it right then the differences in development will differ quite a lot.

General training was, as mentioned, average to light, while maintaining heavy training on the individual attribute training. This being a 3rd Division team, it was not possible to raise the general training without overloading the players.

Match training was 20%. Focus of the weekly training was a mixture of fitness, tactics and attacking movement. This being a team with a lot of very young players, I focused quite a bit on fitness, as I thought that this is the exact period of age to get results. Training facilities are average. Coaches workload is "light", coaches star rating ranges from 2,5 (attacking, shooting) to 4 (ball control, fitness).

Focus of the individual player is "Tackling" at "Heavy". Workload is Very Heavy, player is pleased. Tackling has improved from 9 to 10. Not sure if I had a different focus before, to be honest. I might have had the focus on "Strenght" for the first 2 months and then switched it to Tackling. The graph of Tackling only started to go upwards recently.

New Preferred Move is "Comes Deep to get Ball" on 57%, time on Focus is 43%. Indeed, as mentioned later, this might also be one of the crucial explanations.

Maybe I am. But I'm only going on things you've told me. The fact you and your friend are the same team though and developing the same players yet one of you sees massive improvements and the other one doesn't, is normally a clear indication that one of you is getting training wrong. So maybe I am right maybe I'm not.

Yes, I can see that as well. And again, maybe I was not clear enough in the beginning. There was obviously a reason why 3-4 friends chose to play the same team: We wanted exactly that sort of comparism to learn from each other, but also to find out things that we were not aware of. This thread talking about game time, I thought the difference to be quite striking to mention, and indeed, I find your sentence that training is more important than game time, a quite central one.

That does not mean that ALL my players were lacking improvements. There have been players on the team which developed better than on my friend's team.

I didn't call you dumb at all. Saying one of you seems to understand training better than the other was a fact. I'm not going to sugar coat it for you and lie and say you're doing everything correct when from what you've posted and shown isn't correct.

I don't want to be sugar coated at all, so thanks for your honesty and your help. Point is, if the two main factors here are Tutoring and teaching a PPM, then the decision was, in the end, a tactical one ("who to tutor" and "do you want a certain PPM or not"). I admit, I wasn't aware of how strongly the PPM training takes away the chance to develop attributes, so that's a lesson learned. I am not sure if this single case alone means that my friend has a much deeper understanding of training. Maybe, yes. Maybe it just means that he also for some completely different reasons chose to tutor THIS guy (and not another one).

All I've done is pointed out the reasoning why. But yet again someone posts something and feels like they are been attacked. If you post, then you have to expect people to pick it apart and counter it and point out possible flaws in something you are doing. If you are not open to that then myself or no-one else can help you.

I don't mind being picked apart and helped, but I do feel a little bit uneasy being told that a simple example shows that I don't understand the complex issue of training. That's all. I found your general tone a bit rude, but maybe that's also due to the general problem of misunderstanding on internet and communication via writing. Again, thanks a lot for the time it took you to write this very, very long answer.

In terms of importance its personality what is the most important factor. Then game time. If a player has low ambition and professionalism then it won't matter how much game time he gets in all honesty as he doesn't have the right hidden attributes to fulfill his potential.

Just as a sidenote: Even without being tutored, the guy on my team still ranks as "fairly professional".

Sorry if I've offended you but not many people understand the training aspects of the game like I do, so when someone posts about a training issue and shows screenshots I can normally pin point if its a user error or something because training works a specific way and will always give similar results. Some might be on a greater scale than others but all player development follows a pattern so for me its easy to see glaring flaws

Then I am curious to see if you think there have been more flaws in my training, or if it boils down to "tutoring" and "learning PPM". If it's just those two, I am still surprised to realize that this would or could make a difference in around 20-30 attribute points within 6 months, while spending double the time on the pitch. (Because he is, after all, "fairly professional"; he should make some use of his time on the pitch).

It would probably make me stop teaching PPM at all, or start to be very, very cautious with it.

There's not much I can change with my tutoring though, as I always tutor as much as possible. As I said, there are only 12 players on this team with age 23+, and only 3 of them are at least "fairly professional", whereas you have 40+ players from age 16-22 with a Four-Star-Potential or more.

There's just too much Youth quality in this squad.

[Cleon]

Wouldn't it help if we could create custom views of which attributes were grouped on the attribute development graph? As it stands you can select either attributes one at a time, or pre-defined groups based on positions. If I were to want to e.g. see how creativity, flair, and technique were progressing for my squad at the moment, it means selecting those three attributes individually for each player. I'd prefer it if the custom view functionality from the squad overview screen could be recycled on the player training graph screen so I could define groups of attributes to show there. Further, how about additional pre-defined groups based on each of the team training categories, or the areas each type of coaching covers?

You can set up the custom views to show any attribute you want and you only have to click it once to show it for the entire team, not individually. Unless I'm missing the point in which case I apologise as its 2 days without sleep and my mind isn't functioning yet.

Edit - Do you mean you'd like to be able to set up a custom screen that shows the attribute and how much it's changed all in one place? I don't really see how this differs from the graph that we already have. If you want to see the progress of attributes that are not part of the pre-defined roles or want to see a specific group then just click the attributes seperatly? I do think we should be able to save these though, if that's what you was getting at.

I suspect this isn't possible with the way the training is done, and isn't connected to the ongoing discussion beyond being an idea to improve the presentation of training, but it would also be nice to be able to see what contributed to attribute changes. If a player gains 1.0 passing, for example, would be good to see that 0.2 came from the coaches, 0.2 from the training facilities, 0.3 from personality, 0.2 from matches and 0.1 from individual training - if nothing else, would allow people to see what was working well, and what needs more attention.

Oh god no, I hope they never do this it's an horrible idea. People was asking for more feedback and less micro management, this would make it even more pigeon holed and make the game even more confusing for people. Training doesn't work like that in real life so I doubt it'll even work like that in the game as the reason the training module was changed, was to reflect more real life on goings.

[Cleon]

Well, first I'd say it is not illogical at all that if you are interested in micro management to look for a way on how the management could be made easier. You are interested in MM because you want to have control over everything. Not necessarily because you love to click, click, click.

My point was, you said you didn't want to micro manage yet the points you raised and mentioned would have made it so you had to micro manage worse than now. That was my point. I was/am confused because you are saying you don't want to MM then in the next sentence suggest something that makes it a lot more MM. And training now isn't really MM at all in honesty. It's simple. The only time you need to MM is if you want to be more specific with player development but even then there isn't really any MM as training is too easy now. Anyone can get a player to reach his PA before he's 22 with ease. But this is another issue.

Basically, I guess, I don't mind the graph and letting the graph giving me a visualization of something, especially if I am interested in pursuing what has changed over a long range of period. That's fine, and in that case, I might be only interested in certain attributes anyway. At the same time, I'd like to be informed more easily about what exactly happened in the last 3 months or the last 6 months. The coaches reports are only summarizes ("has developed a lot in speed"). As mentioned before,

While the coach reports might be summary's, they are accurate and as much detail as you need to know. If you want to be more specific with .02/.05 changes then you are asking to immerse yourself on the micro management aspects, something you originally didn't want for yourself.

As mentioned before, I'd probably prefer a system that shows you with "+0,2" or "+1" behind the attributes what exactly has changed within a certain period of time. You'd probably get a much better handle on how fast a young player has developed like this, and where he has develped and if those are the exat attributes you wanted him to develop.

Erm this is exactly what the graph shows you now in game already. It shows you every single change, no matter how small or big. So I'm confused that you are asking for something that already works like that :confused:

I might have dismissed the training reports as something too vague, and maybe they are more accurate than I give them credit for, so I will explore that option again. Then again, I am also not sure if I want everything distributed via inbox. I find the inbox a very nice tool, but it looses its value if you get too many messages every day. There again, I actually try to micro manage my messages quite carefully to really get those that are of value, and dismiss those that might distract me. In my opinion, the training report is something valuable to give you a general idea; for example to alert you that a certain player is not progressing in a certain field. (I also have the "training progress arrow" as a standard in my tactics screen, so whenever I put together the team, I am checking on a routine basis if players are showing some bad training results.) But to fine tune the training or get a fast, quick overview, I'd rather not rely on the inbox.

Again you got the answer and what you was asking for but this time it brings another problems, the inbox. Can you tell me how you'd get the feedback then without been notified of it? You say clicking each individual player is a burden and something you want to do, so if you get no message or can't view the feedback via a mail message reminding you, then you'll miss it sometimes or have to click a different screen every single time you want to check. Which, you can already do any single time you want.

If you want fast overview you'd go the training screen, click individual tab, then look at the tab labelled 'performance' and this gives you the overview of the entire squad and tells you how he is developing. If you want to be more specific then can alter the things on this screen and view more indepth if you wish too.

Also a green arrow on the attribute or a red arrow doesn't actually indicate bad training results either.

As mentioned above, yes, I do want to micro manage in the sense that I want to be able to understand the mechanism as detailed as possible and use my brain, my planning and my tactics to use that to my advantage. And if that means concentrating for 1 hour on figuring out how to plan the next corner against Barcelona, then yes, so be it. What I don't want is to be forced to do tedious steps of checking things without actually knowing what I find out in the end.

I totally understand this. But you can't really blame the game for the lack of a users knowledge. If you want to micro manage certain aspects then you'd either read up on what the things do. Or if you are the sort who likes to experiment themselves then you'd do your own tests and try and understand the results which you get at the end and work it out that way. But that doesn't mean something doesn't exists already in the game because you don't use it or don't understand the functionality of such things.

I was aware of how important tutoring is in the long run, I do admit I am surprised on how big a difference it might make in 6 months.That being said, as mentioned, there was a tactical decision behind this, as well: The number of good tutors was limited. I chose to tutor other players, which I saw more important to the development of the team. In the end, that might have been a tactical mistake, taken into consideration that the young guy ended up playing quite a lot for the team. That was of course also influenced by other things such as injuries and changing tactics, and so on. The usual stuff.

It makes a massive difference on players who have weak personalities to begin with as you are changing them to something better (hopefully). If you want to learn more about training then I'd give this a read as it explains everything and how it all works;

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/343043-Ajax-Youth-Development-%E2%80%93-When-The-Real-World-Meets-Football-Manager

That's an interesting sentence there as well. I would have thought both important, but that game time is the key to set a certain development into motion.

It is. But if a player doesn't have high ambition and professionalism then he'll never reach his PA or develop that good because he lacks the 2 main components required for player development. So game time then in this type of scenario would mean very little. However if he had the right personality then game time is really important as it will allow him to develop by releasing current ability etc.

General training was, as mentioned, average to light, while maintaining heavy training on the individual attribute training. This being a 3rd Division team, it was not possible to raise the general training without overloading the players.

Match training was 20%. Focus of the weekly training was a mixture of fitness, tactics and attacking movement. This being a team with a lot of very young players, I focused quite a bit on fitness, as I thought that this is the exact period of age to get results. Training facilities are average. Coaches workload is "light", coaches star rating ranges from 2,5 (attacking, shooting) to 4 (ball control, fitness).

Focus of the individual player is "Tackling" at "Heavy". Workload is Very Heavy, player is pleased. Tackling has improved from 9 to 10. Not sure if I had a different focus before, to be honest. I might have had the focus on "Strenght" for the first 2 months and then switched it to Tackling. The graph of Tackling only started to go upwards recently.

New Preferred Move is "Comes Deep to get Ball" on 57%, time on Focus is 43%. Indeed, as mentioned later, this might also be one of the crucial explanations.

If you are setting individual focuses then you should leave the general training on balanced because if not you'll be shifting the focus each time you change from fitness/tactics etc. This I wrote in my thread should sum this bit up nicely for you;

As I focus on pure player development for me match training isn't important. So for me its set on 10% throughout the season once tactic familiarity levels are all fluid. Now due to me trying to develop the player best I can everyone at the club is either learning a specific attribute or a specific role. This means that the general training is set to a low intensity alowing me to focus just on development with an heavy individual focus. If I wanted a more generic player instead of a specific bunch of players then I'd set general training to a high intensity and no individual training. This would mean development is spread evenly across all aspects rather than you shaping them into specific players.

Using this method some players might complain about training but ignore them because they'll be complaining because they have strong personalities. It's a good sign but you shouldn't listen to them because it has to be set this way to get them to develop the best you can. Any higher and you'd be taking away from his individual development.

Yes, I can see that as well. And again, maybe I was not clear enough in the beginning. There was obviously a reason why 3-4 friends chose to play the same team: We wanted exactly that sort of comparism to learn from each other, but also to find out things that we were not aware of. This thread talking about game time, I thought the difference to be quite striking to mention, and indeed, I find your sentence that training is more important than game time, a quite central one.

I've never said training is more important than game time because its not. Personality is more important but that isn't training.

I don't want to be sugar coated at all, so thanks for your honesty and your help. Point is, if the two main factors here are Tutoring and teaching a PPM, then the decision was, in the end, a tactical one ("who to tutor" and "do you want a certain PPM or not"). I admit, I wasn't aware of how strongly the PPM training takes away the chance to develop attributes, so that's a lesson learned. I am not sure if this single case alone means that my friend has a much deeper understanding of training. Maybe, yes. Maybe it just means that he also for some completely different reasons chose to tutor THIS guy (and not another one).

Believe it or not I actually think long term you've made the better choices. Despite what I've said above or in the other replies, this is what I do. If I can't tutor a player I tend to learn them PPM's because PPM's are a big part of how I play and get certain systems to work. While it might slow initial progress down, overall long term you can make the progression bit up. Plus your player will already have a PPM hopefully if its successful. Short term your friends development is really good but it doesn't mean its better. It's just another way of doing things. Real progression of a player shouldn't be judged before 12 months when it starts to even out because short term development is much easier to achieve and look like you're having good results. But that doesn't mean its the correct approach or the kind of development that he'll sustain over a larger period of time.

Just as a sidenote: Even without being tutored, the guy on my team still ranks as "fairly professional".

Which just means he had a personality made up of;

• Fairly Professional Pro 15-20, Det 1-14
  

Which doesn't give you a sign of his ambition levels

Then I am curious to see if you think there have been more flaws in my training, or if it boils down to "tutoring" and "learning PPM". If it's just those two, I am still surprised to realize that this would or could make a difference in around 20-30 attribute points within 6 months, while spending double the time on the pitch. (Because he is, after all, "fairly professional"; he should make some use of his time on the pitch).

Like you mention, one sample isn't enough to judge especially if you've seen good development changes in other players for the same time period. I was only basing what I wrote on what you put in this thread.

I'd put good money on the tutoring and PPM as the issue. But that doesn't mean you are wrong though, especially since my initial response because you've filled in a lot more blanks and gave a lot more detail (which I appreciate ty ). Teaching PPM's to players is a great way of building player characteristics and giving them traits. This will be useful and beneficial to you the instant its learnt, so I tend to do this between tutoring sessions for my players and teach them PPM's as early as I can.

I actually think you have a better grasp of training than I first though. It seems to be the tutoring side of things that is a bit confusing and I totally understand that as not everyone has gone into the same detail about that, like I have. It really is a confusing area at first especially if you are quite new to the game, its a lot to take in and the documentation for the game is really poor.

Overall I agree feedback in the game could be better and we could receive better information. I'm not sure how that can be achieved though and I can't begin to imagine. But that's an issue for SI and what they get paid for. Hopefully we'll get more feedback or more customization options, I think that would go a long way to solving some of the issues raised.

[NoChance]

I do think we should be able to save these though, if that's what you was getting at.

Yes, that was exactly what I was getting at For what it's worth, I think almost every screen should be customisable like that - it's an easy way to let the user decide how much information they want in each place.

[Cleon]

Yes, that was exactly what I was getting at For what it's worth, I think almost every screen should be customisable like that - it's an easy way to let the user decide how much information they want in each place.

I agree yeah

[Shevchenko]

Does it matter if a player plays much time for the main team, reserves or youth team? I have young 15-16yo talents in a German team but can't play them for the main team until they are 17.