[SUGGESTION] Revamp/addition to current/potential star ratings

[Weston]

The number one frustration I have with (the otherwise brilliant) Football Manager is how the only star rating system for player ability/potential is relative and fluctuates. I feel the game needs a star rating that is static and does not become obsolete or updates with the relativity. It is very disheartening to 100% scout a player who has a certain star level, and then they arrive, and the star level is somehow suddenly different, presumably because of a team shift or other unforeseen issue.

For example, if a player leaves/joins, and suddenly other players appear to become better/worse relative to the new team average used to calculate this, it can throw off my whole plan, and suddenly all my scouting reports are useless as they based their ratings on that old team stature. During the transition between seasons this is especially difficult to read: Did a player get better, or do they just seem better cos a better player left and the average dipped? Did a player age and get worse, or are they just dipping in form over break, or did the better player I sign just make them seem worse off comparatively? Does my transfer target now seem better/worse because THEY changed, or WE changed? Etc.

To conclude, if I could get one thing changed it would be to have a separate sort of general, maybe league average-based rating, or have those snapshot relative ratings in reports evolve in real time somehow (if what was a 3 star rating when the report was filed last week is now a 2.5, have that reflected retroactively in our records to keep time with the changing levels of the squad). It drives me insane trying to sort out the quality I’m dealing with to make transfer plans, even when I have staff with 20/20 judging ability, and I shouldn’t have to re-scout a player every time my roster is altered, nor should a player arrive with a different rating than the 20/20 scouts with 100% knowledge of him reported.

[Ross Ingersoll]

Just throwing this out there but seeing as some hate how stars are done, why not give two separate options in regards to the star ratings. One how it is currently, with star ratings done to reflect who is on your squad and another that judges players against all the players at that position in the game world. 

[Cougar2010]

Would never work.

Every player who plays not just for Barca, Real, Man Utd, Chelsea but those that play for mid-table top league clubs as well would all be 5* while all the players that play for a club in the lowest divisions would all be 0.5*.

 

So basically you would take over a club and virtually every first team player at your club would have the same star rating whatever level you were at.  How would you know who the better players were?  How would you decide which players to sign when all your potential targets have the same amount of stars?

[Weston]

I discuss this in my suggestion regarding the same topic as well. I think many of the main problems could be solved by either having a set of stars for your club and a set of stars for your current league and/or having scout reports' ratings change retroactively to represent the new equivalent value they uncovered based on the new average scale so that they don't constantly become obsolete over time (especially in transfer windows / periods of high turnover). Stars are the biggest frustration I have in FM, and it should be relatively simple to tweak them in a way that is far more intuitive and far less ambiguous and unstable.

[Tiozaa]

This is an issue real life teams are faced with. It would be unrealistic if you could scout a player and immeditaley learn his exact ability, potential, personality and other traits. If you look on the scout report it usually says what the stars are based on. No scout in the world could give you the information you are after, at the end of the day every transfer has some element of risk involved.

[Weston]

1 hour ago, Tiozaa said:

This is an issue real life teams are faced with. It would be unrealistic if you could scout a player and immeditaley learn his exact ability, potential, personality and other traits. If you look on the scout report it usually says what the stars are based on. No scout in the world could give you the information you are after, at the end of the day every transfer has some element of risk involved.

It's not that I want the actual information given to be better so much as I don't want the scale with which it's measured to fluctuate so often and ambiguously. If I get a 3 star rating I want to know what it means regardless of how accurate it is - I don't want that 3 stars to turn into 2 stars because I sign another better player without it being reflected in the reports.

[Ross Ingersoll]

On 8/10/2016 at 10:22, Cougar2010 said:

Would never work.

Every player who plays not just for Barca, Real, Man Utd, Chelsea but those that play for mid-table top league clubs as well would all be 5* while all the players that play for a club in the lowest divisions would all be 0.5*.

 

So basically you would take over a club and virtually every first team player at your club would have the same star rating whatever level you were at.  How would you know who the better players were?  How would you decide which players to sign when all your potential targets have the same amount of stars?

its pretty much like that now, I was a lower league team and just about every guy i scouted was 5 stars. come to find out they were all garbage, they just happened to be much better then the garbage i already had. Westons idea is good, ratings for the current league you are in. At this point only the newer people prob even look at star ratings because they dont actually mean much

I dont actually mind it the way it is, would just be nice if you had a second option for those who wanted it. But i see the point about the stars. you only have 1-5 to work with, so would be all jumbled together

[Cougar2010]

24 minutes ago, Ross Ingersoll said:

its pretty much like that now, I was a lower league team and just about every guy i scouted was 5 stars. come to find out they were all garbage, they just happened to be much better then the garbage i already had. Westons idea is good, ratings for the current league you are in. At this point only the newer people prob even look at star ratings because they dont actually mean much

I dont actually mind it the way it is, would just be nice if you had a second option for those who wanted it. But i see the point about the stars. you only have 1-5 to work with, so would be all jumbled together

It already kinda takes into account the level of the league.

 

Technically you have 10 levels (0.5* to 5.0*) but in practice your players will generally rate between about 2* & 4*.  Anyone lower than 2* is often not good enough unless they have a very good attribute split while those above 4* will attract quick interest from better clubs.

IMO it works well if you use the scouts effectively and I never see the swings that some people claim to happen, I only ever see maybe 0.5* difference from scouts to coaches after signing + the usual degradation that happens over time. 

In terms of your issue (Everyone rated 5*) I have seen it mentioned on the forums before and it was linked to something but I can't remember what - maybe lack of a AM? or something.

[Weston]

6 hours ago, Cougar2010 said:

It already kinda takes into account the level of the league.

How? Juventus and Palermo, for example, seem to have wildly different scales - how does that work?

Could you maybe go into deeper detail on exactly how the stars are calculated? If I see a player A with stats that look better than player B but player B has a star rating better than player A, how do I weigh those two indicators? I usually trust the stars as I feel like I should put more faith in a 20/20 scout made by the game's reading of the game than my own interpretation of the numbers on the screen, but that could be naive? I just assume they know something I don't and see a bigger picture. I didn't realize people put so little stock in the stars. If I have two goalkeepers and one is 3.5 at the keeper role and the other is 3, then the 3.5 is simply, overall on average, better, no..?

I also am thrown in turmoil by recently reading somewhere that playing a player out of position merely lowers their decision making but doesn't really hurt their ability in any other way. This would mean that while a 4 star LB may only have .5 stars at RB truly they really more capable than that abysmal indicator seems to show? Since this is a game after all it's hard for me to know when I oversimplify things. Who would I play in that situation, the 1 star youth player or the 4 star player out of position with a supposed but maybe not actually weak .5..?

[Cougar2010]

9 hours ago, Weston said:

How? Juventus and Palermo, for example, seem to have wildly different scales - how does that work?

Thinking about it more maybe its the club rep more that has the effect which would explain the minor fluctuations.

If I use my save as an example and take Juventus & Palermo. 

As a League Serie A is currently rated as a 4* league but the teams competing in it have reps rating from 4.5* to 3* so a difference of 1.5* with the league rep more or less in the middle of the range.  Its a little larger than I often see and in my experience the club reps usually only fluctuate about 0.5* either way of the league rep.

Juventus have a 4.5* rep while Palermo have a 4* rep.  This will lead to some slight differences in the star ratings of the players with the same player at Juventus having a slightly lower rating than he would have at Palermo.  In actual stars the difference may or may not be enough to trigger a visible difference.  Its difficult to estimate but at most you would see a drop of 0.5* if any on a visible level for the same player at Juventus.

 

9 hours ago, Weston said:

Could you maybe go into deeper detail on exactly how the stars are calculated? If I see a player A with stats that look better than player B but player B has a star rating better than player A, how do I weigh those two indicators? I usually trust the stars as I feel like I should put more faith in a 20/20 scout made by the game's reading of the game than my own interpretation of the numbers on the screen, but that could be naive? I just assume they know something I don't and see a bigger picture. I didn't realize people put so little stock in the stars. If I have two goalkeepers and one is 3.5 at the keeper role and the other is 3, then the 3.5 is simply, overall on average, better, no..?

Stars on the main player screen are that staff member's opinion as to the overall skill of the player in terms of CA/PA.

There are also other stars as well which go a little deeper which are star ratings for position.  This is still your staff member's opinion but this time he is also looking at how familiar the player is at that position and the key skills required for that position (Which you can see for yourself by highlighting the role on the player's attributes screen).  How familiar a player is in the position probably causes too much of a drop in stars IMO once you get below accomplished.  I find the best use here is where you have a player accomplished/natural in several positions you can get an idea of which is his strongest/weakest.

In terms of your GK example the 3.5* player probably has a higher overall CA but his spread of attributes might not be as good as the 3* keeper.  So he might have slightly higher attributes in all the key skills except say handling where it might be much lower.  So in the actual matches this might lead him to dropping the ball a lot which might cost you goals.

You also have to consider the hidden attributes which stars don't.  Things like consistency control how often a player plays to his actual attributes while pressure, professionalism & others affect how he reacts on the pitch to different situations.

 

 

9 hours ago, Weston said:

I also am thrown in turmoil by recently reading somewhere that playing a player out of position merely lowers their decision making but doesn't really hurt their ability in any other way. This would mean that while a 4 star LB may only have .5 stars at RB truly they really more capable than that abysmal indicator seems to show? Since this is a game after all it's hard for me to know when I oversimplify things. Who would I play in that situation, the 1 star youth player or the 4 star player out of position with a supposed but maybe not actually weak .5..?

The important bit you need to get your head around is that the stars are an overall guide but in the ME they mean nothing.  The ME uses the actual attributes to make calculations.

Decisions making is important within the ME and I tend to not play players in a position they have no familiarity in unless I'm forced to.  But I will train them in a position I think they will be good at and that I will use them in.  Once they get to around competent familiarity I will play them there as well.

 

[Spurs08]

On 8/10/2016 at 15:22, Cougar2010 said:

Would never work.

Every player who plays not just for Barca, Real, Man Utd, Chelsea but those that play for mid-table top league clubs as well would all be 5* while all the players that play for a club in the lowest divisions would all be 0.5*.

 

So basically you would take over a club and virtually every first team player at your club would have the same star rating whatever level you were at.  How would you know who the better players were?  How would you decide which players to sign when all your potential targets have the same amount of stars?

I disagree. It'd be at 20 point CA intervals so only a tiny handful of players worldwide would be 5*. Most of the top teams' first XI would be 4.5*. Mid-table prem clubs would be 3.5* or 4* mostly, perhaps with a star player at 4.5* or a weaker one at 3*.

[Cougar2010]

15 minutes ago, Spurs08 said:

I disagree. It'd be at 20 point CA intervals so only a tiny handful of players worldwide would be 5*. Most of the top teams' first XI would be 4.5*. Mid-table prem clubs would be 3.5* or 4* mostly, perhaps with a star player at 4.5* or a weaker one at 3*.

I don't look at CAs but by definition 5* would be 180-200CA, 4.5* = 160-180CA, 4* = 140-160CA.

As I said I'm not totally familiar with actual CAs but my understanding is pretty much all Premiership players are over 140CA.  Therefore for a Premiership club you would only have three different "descriptions" to separate players as opposed to the ten options we have now.

For a team likes Spurs how many of their 25 man Premiership squad are over 180CA? how many are under 160CA? at the start of the game.

 

EDIT

Out of interest I loaded up the FM14 Editor which is the only one I have installed.  Taking the 25 highest CA Spurs players it would give you the following:

2 fall into the 160-180 range = 4.5*

18 fall into the 140-160 range = 4*

5 fall into the 120-140 range = 3.5* (All between 133 & 140CA)

How would that be an improvement on the current setup?

[Guest]

Might has well just remove the stars & show people the true CA/PA values, the current system works for FM because the game is designed to have uncertainty & intangibles as part of the gameplay & any system that comes closer to revealing the actual underlying ability values just moves the game closer to the FIFA style of clearly defined abilities.

It's not as if the FM approach is a difficult concept to grasp & the help text describing the star ratings is one of the clearer explanations in the game so even less reason to not understand the system.

[Weston]

4 hours ago, Barside said:

It's not as if the FM approach is a difficult concept to grasp & the help text describing the star ratings is one of the clearer explanations in the game so even less reason to not understand the system.

I thought so too but after the nth time of them abruptly changing for no discernible reason and therefore rendering all recent scout reports I was using mid transfer window obsolete for relative comparison I began to doubt everything I knew and overthink the system.

For example, even if you did completely understand what the stars mean it would be annoying if, say, an old scout report from when you were in Serie C still shows a player at 3 stars when you're now in Serie A. Clearly that player is no longer 3 stars for your since vastly improved club, but it would be nice if the relative value updated and showed him at an equivalent 1 star or whatever to understand what that determined quality now translates to in terms of your current average level (understanding, of course, that it would also be out of date). I like how reports say "so and so would be an above average Serie B player." Well, okay, but does that mean he would be an average Serie A player, or what?

Maybe FM should think of it less as an issue with stars and more as an issue of the retroactive usability of scouting in general as the game progresses. In other words, it would be nice to look back at reports from two seasons or two weeks ago and understand not just the quality of that player in terms of your squad at the time, but in general, so that you can better utilize that information in the future in different contexts. Obviously you would want to scout again, but I amass SO MANY reports, and after a big growth I want to know which ones are worth revisiting.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Weston said:

For example, even if you did completely understand what the stars mean it would be annoying if, say, an old scout report from when you were in Serie C still shows a player at 3 stars when you're now in Serie A. Clearly that player is no longer 3 stars for your since vastly improved club, but it would be nice if the relative value updated and showed him at an equivalent 1 star or whatever to understand what that determined quality now translates to in terms of your current average level (understanding, of course, that it would also be out of date). I like how reports say "so and so would be an above average Serie B player." Well, okay, but does that mean he would be an average Serie A player, or what?

That can only happen in a very narrow window as scout reports that are more that 375 days old are automatically deleted & the report card will still refer to the player's ability in respect to Serie. It's also a poor managerial decision to sign a player on a year old report that you do not have another read of before making a transfer decision, personally if a report is more than 90 days old when considering a transfer bid I will ask my scouts to take one final look which is what I suspect happens in real life too.

[Weston]

1 hour ago, Barside said:

That can only happen in a very narrow window as scout reports that are more that 375 days old are automatically deleted & the report card will still refer to the player's ability in respect to Serie. It's also a poor managerial decision to sign a player on a year old report that you do not have another read of before making a transfer decision, personally if a report is more than 90 days old when considering a transfer bid I will ask my scouts to take one final look which is what I suspect happens in real life too.

But the thing is I scout A LOT of players and those star ratings remain, and when a transfer season is approaching and I need to start researching potential buys in certain positions what I'll do is sort the world's crop of players by that position and sort by CA/PA and then re-scout everyone I've ever found to be possibly good at one point in time to see where they are now. Obviously I don't sign players based off of old reports, but I use those old reports to decide who is worth re-scouting to get new reports to potentially bid off of.

And again, I've seen stars change drastically over the course of weeks as my team fluctuates in the summer - I would scout players that looked like 3 stars but then all my loaned players left and the next day suddenly those 3 star players are now 3.5-4 star players, and everything I thought I knew was now wrong as the seemingly squad-based relative scale by which my scouts measured potential buys had changed and I had no way of really understanding the shift short of just re-scouting everyone all over again a week later because I had to - a colossal waste of time.

[HUNT3R]

27 minutes ago, Weston said:

But the thing is I scout A LOT of players and those star ratings remain, and when a transfer season is approaching and I need to start researching potential buys in certain positions what I'll do is sort the world's crop of players by that position and sort by CA/PA and then re-scout everyone I've ever found to be possibly good at one point in time to see where they are now. Obviously I don't sign players based off of old reports, but I use those old reports to decide who is worth re-scouting to get new reports to potentially bid off of.

And again, I've seen stars change drastically over the course of weeks as my team fluctuates in the summer - I would scout players that looked like 3 stars but then all my loaned players left and the next day suddenly those 3 star players are now 3.5-4 star players, and everything I thought I knew was now wrong as the seemingly squad-based relative scale by which my scouts measured potential buys had changed and I had no way of really understanding the shift short of just re-scouting everyone all over again a week later because I had to - a colossal waste of time.

You said in the previous post that stars changed for no discernible reason. You just identified why they change. Your squad has changed a lot, so where the players were either slightly better or equal to what you had, they will now improve your team as the better loan players left.

That's why it's important to re-scout to assess whether players will or won't improve the team.

[Gangor]

Not liking the OP, but what if you had the option to calibrate the star ratings against either your team (as per currently) or against players in specific competitions that your team competes in. It might be nice to see how your 5 star player matches up to the best in the champions league, for example.

[Weston]

10 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

You said in the previous post that stars changed for no discernible reason. You just identified why they change. Your squad has changed a lot, so where the players were either slightly better or equal to what you had, they will now improve your team as the better loan players left.

That's why it's important to re-scout to assess whether players will or won't improve the team.

That's one example of them changing that is most easily identifiable, though the reasons behind the shifts are not always that readily apparent. And knowing why they change doesn't make it any less annoying that you have to re-scout someone you had 100% knowledge of two days ago because you can no longer interpret that data in a truly meaningful way - especially if it's deadline day!

[HUNT3R]

Just now, Weston said:

That's one example of them changing that is most easily identifiable, though the reasons behind the shifts are not always that readily apparent. And knowing why they change doesn't make it any less annoying that you have to re-scout someone you had 100% knowledge of two days ago because you can no longer interpret that data in a truly meaningful way - especially if it's deadline day!

2 days won't make any difference. A player cannot change in that short a space of time.

[Weston]

Except it happens. On July 1, for example, when you can have a massive amount of players coming in and out, I've had star reports change drastically. It's not necessarily the player changing, it's the scale that I base my readings on, though if it were the player actually changing I'd have no way of knowing which makes it all the more frustrating. If a player decreases .5 star over the offseason is it because he got worse, or because I signed someone new who pulled the average up? I can barely tell besides guessing from attribute fluctuations.

Alternately, say it's deadline day and I have 3 CBs: a 3.5, a 3, and a 2.5. I sign a new 3.5, and now the original 3.5 is a 3, the 3 stays a 3, and the 2.5 is a 2 now. If I'm currently in the market for yet another CB all those scout reports I was simultaneously accruing that show other players at 2.5-4 stars, how do I compare those to my now current squad? I can't, I have to start over because those relative ratings are now obsolete as they were based off of my previous squad scale - I now have no idea what they would appear as if I signed them today even if I had 100% knowledge of the player previously, because that data does not update to show whatever quality was determined then on the current scale. Surely I'm not the only one this happens to..?

[HUNT3R]

2 minutes ago, Weston said:

Except it happens. On July 1, for example, when you can have a massive amount of players coming in and out, I've had star reports change drastically. It's not necessarily the player changing, it's the scale that I base my readings on, though if it were the player actually changing I'd have no way of knowing which makes it all the more frustrating. If a player decreases .5 star over the offseason is it because he got worse, or because I signed someone new who pulled the average up? I can barely tell besides guessing from attribute fluctuations.

Alternately, say it's deadline day and I have 3 CBs: a 3.5, a 3, and a 2.5. I sign a new 3.5, and now the original 3.5 is a 3, the 3 stays a 3, and the 2.5 is a 2 now. If I'm currently in the market for yet another CB all those scout reports I was simultaneously accruing that show other players at 2.5-4 stars, how do I compare those to my now current squad? I can't, I have to start over because those relative ratings are now obsolete as they were based off of my previous squad scale - I now have no idea what they would appear as if I signed them today even if I had 100% knowledge of the player previously, because that data does not update to show whatever quality was determined then on the current scale. Surely I'm not the only one this happens to..?

Now you're just changing the story. July 1 isn't anywhere close to the transfer deadline. You have 2 whole months to get sorted, scout and sign replacements based on the current squad's needs.

 

And star ratings isn't everything. Surely you're looking at attributes too and comparing them to the current players in the squad?

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, Weston said:

That's one example of them changing that is most easily identifiable, though the reasons behind the shifts are not always that readily apparent. And knowing why they change doesn't make it any less annoying that you have to re-scout someone you had 100% knowledge of two days ago because you can no longer interpret that data in a truly meaningful way - especially if it's deadline day!

There's an easy solution to that & one I hope SI introduce, the knowledge level needs to reduce the longer it's been since the player was last watched by a scout.

[Weston]

2 hours ago, HUNT3R said:

Now you're just changing the story. July 1 isn't anywhere close to the transfer deadline. You have 2 whole months to get sorted, scout and sign replacements based on the current squad's needs.

 

And star ratings isn't everything. Surely you're looking at attributes too and comparing them to the current players in the squad?

Those are two different examples that illustrate my point - I don't understand the disconnect in communication here. Of course I look at other things, but when I see a player with better attributes than another player, but that other player has a better star rating from a 20/20 scout with 100% knowledge I assume they've seen something I don't so I start to wonder...

[Weston]

1 hour ago, Barside said:

There's an easy solution to that & one I hope SI introduce, the knowledge level needs to reduce the longer it's been since the player was last watched by a scout.

Of course, but that's not really an issue as it's clearly understood that reports become outdated. Plus, it's nice to look back and know that that report was 100% at the time. Again, what bothers me is that the older reports are graded on a completely different scale that is now impossible to understand.

[Cougar2010]

40 minutes ago, Weston said:

Of course, but that's not really an issue as it's clearly understood that reports become outdated. Plus, it's nice to look back and know that that report was 100% at the time. Again, what bothers me is that the older reports are graded on a completely different scale that is now impossible to understand.

Rubbish, all the reports have dates on them, you know when they are from.

You are just being obtuse and trying to make an issue where there isn't one.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Weston said:

Those are two different examples that illustrate my point - I don't understand the disconnect in communication here. Of course I look at other things, but when I see a player with better attributes than another player, but that other player has a better star rating from a 20/20 scout with 100% knowledge I assume they've seen something I don't so I start to wonder...

Even a 20/20 scout is not always perfect in their judgement, if a player they've rated at 3.5 stars has better attributes (visible & hidden) for what I need than a player rated at 5 stars then I will always sign the 3.5 star player.

It looks like you just want the report to adjust to factors that apply at that moment in time & there is a feature of scouting that already allows that, just ask for a new report card & so long as your scouts are not overworked an updated & relevant report card with any required star rating is provided within a couple of continues.

[Weston]

3 hours ago, Cougar2010 said:

Rubbish, all the reports have dates on them, you know when they are from.

You are just being obtuse and trying to make an issue where there isn't one.

I know reports have dates on them... really not sure how you still cannot understand my point, nor why you're resorting to insults...

[Weston]

1 hour ago, Barside said:

Even a 20/20 scout is not always perfect in their judgement, if a player they've rated at 3.5 stars has better attributes (visible & hidden) for what I need than a player rated at 5 stars then I will always sign the 3.5 star player.

It looks like you just want the report to adjust to factors that apply at that moment in time & there is a feature of scouting that already allows that, just ask for a new report card & so long as your scouts are not overworked an updated & relevant report card with any required star rating is provided within a couple of continues.

Okay, well this definitely influences my opinions on the weight of attribute ratings v stars, thank you for sharing your strategy.

As for the report cards, that's right, that is what I want, but I often play with lower league teams with very restrictive limits on the amount of scouts allowed so I often have each scout assigned like 50 players to scout at a time so they are very overworked, meaning that that's exactly the problem, I wish I didn't have to constantly get new report cards in the waning days of the transfer window because the "old" recent one is now on a different scale due to me just having signed or sold players, I wish I could just better understand the last reports.

[Guest]

That's  part & parcel of managing in the lower leagues, you have limited resources which need closer management than if you were managing a top division side. As an LLM zealot I've only used scouts to identify transfer targets for almost a decade of FM'ing so Im'm acutely aware of what resources I have at a lower league side & I  do not overload my scouts with too many player assignments as hat rightly means it takes much longer to get a full report for a player

[Cougar2010]

7 hours ago, Weston said:

I know reports have dates on them... really not sure how you still cannot understand my point, nor why you're resorting to insults...

Because you don't have a point or rather because your point is no different to what people face in the real world.

Lets look at it in more detail you are a relatively small club with say three scouts.  In September I start considering what players I'll need the following summer but my focus is on those I might sign in January.  Between Sep & Jan the three scouts are out looking for players scouting countries leagues whilst also having a better look at players I find interesting which is those I have potential to maybe sign on a bosman in January + any that I might be looking to looking to sign in the transfer window. 

Ok window closes and I start focusing on the summer, I identify I'll need at least one DC maybe two along with some other positions.  As well as scouting countries the three scouts are out between Feb & the summer putting together scout reports on those players I'm considering signing so I have a shortlist for each position come June/July. 

Come the summer I have a shortlist of say six potential DCs and I need two.  I put offers in for two but only manage to sign one, so far so good.  The one I sign is a 4* player and I now return to my shortlist to sign another.  I know the reports are between one month & say three months old & I also know they were from before I signed the 4* defender.  The dates are on the report and the scout rates the player compared to my squad at the time down the right hand side.  I'm now looking at that report and considering the player but at the same time I'm aware that I've signed a 4* player.  I'm judging where the next potential signing fits into my squad and going from there.  So if that next signing is rated 3.5* by my scout I know when he joins the club he could be rated 3*, 3.5* or 4* for a number of reasons.  That doesn't change his attributes though or how good he is.

[Weston]

6 hours ago, Cougar2010 said:

Because you don't have a point or rather because your point is no different to what people face in the real world.

Lets look at it in more detail you are a relatively small club with say three scouts.  In September I start considering what players I'll need the following summer but my focus is on those I might sign in January.  Between Sep & Jan the three scouts are out looking for players scouting countries leagues whilst also having a better look at players I find interesting which is those I have potential to maybe sign on a bosman in January + any that I might be looking to looking to sign in the transfer window. 

Ok window closes and I start focusing on the summer, I identify I'll need at least one DC maybe two along with some other positions.  As well as scouting countries the three scouts are out between Feb & the summer putting together scout reports on those players I'm considering signing so I have a shortlist for each position come June/July. 

Come the summer I have a shortlist of say six potential DCs and I need two.  I put offers in for two but only manage to sign one, so far so good.  The one I sign is a 4* player and I now return to my shortlist to sign another.  I know the reports are between one month & say three months old & I also know they were from before I signed the 4* defender.  The dates are on the report and the scout rates the player compared to my squad at the time down the right hand side.  I'm now looking at that report and considering the player but at the same time I'm aware that I've signed a 4* player.  I'm judging where the next potential signing fits into my squad and going from there.  So if that next signing is rated 3.5* by my scout I know when he joins the club he could be rated 3*, 3.5* or 4* for a number of reasons.  That doesn't change his attributes though or how good he is.

I'm aware of how to play the game. Literally my only point is that it would make the game more intuitive and cohesive if that old report's rating updated to reflect the new relative rating like you said so you don't have to guess if it's now a 3, 3.5, or 4 star rating. That's it. In real life you can look back at a report you made in the recent past and think to yourself, okay he was a 4 star then, now in my updated squad that would translate to only 3.5, because you understand what that value meant at the time and how things have changed. I want the game to give me the tools to make those comparisons like I would be able to in real life, not require me to make guesses and/or arbitrarily re-scout someone when the player's ability hasn't changed, like you said.

[HUNT3R]

Just now, Weston said:

I'm aware of how to play the game. Literally my only point is that it would make the game more intuitive and cohesive if that old report's rating updated to reflect the new relative rating like you said so you don't have to guess if it's now a 3, 3.5, or 4 star rating. That's it. In real life you can look back at a report you made in the recent past and think to yourself, okay he was a 4 star then, now in my updated squad that would translate to only 3.5, because you understand what that value meant at the time and how things have changed. I want the game to give me the tools to make those comparisons like I would be able to in real life, not require me to make guesses and/or arbitrarily re-scout someone when the player's ability hasn't changed, like you said.

At best, you can hope for a new report and still be able to see the old one. That may be worthwhile. A report written in the past shouldn't be able to update itself.

[Weston]

This is also why I think a very clear league-based rating would be great, because, for the most part, regardless of how much your squad shifts during summer window turnover you always have a standard benchmark of the quality you should be aspiring to relative to your level of competition.

[Weston]

1 minute ago, HUNT3R said:

At best, you can hope for a new report and still be able to see the old one. That may be worthwhile. A report written in the past shouldn't be able to update itself.

I don't want the report to update in a sense of the values changing, but in the sense of the scale on which that value is ranked to update. If the scout determines whatever number quality that player is, the stars are different in the way they portray that based on the relative scale you have (Rooney is as good as he is whether you're Barcelona or Accrington Stanley, but he would have different star ratings for those two clubs). So I still want the report to show whatever value was determined at that time, but I want the star scale on which it is portrayed to update. If Accrington Stanley were to reach the level of Barcelona the reports would update to reflect their change in perspective of players' skill levels.

[Danziel]

I think the whole idea of the star/level system is outdated.

What it reflects to me is something like there is no internet and no TV and you have to deal with values of other teams and players in comparison to your own.

That is real to some extent but except we know which is the highest level of football now.

So the real stars/levels should come first, comparisons second.

 

[Weston]

 

9 hours ago, Danziel said:

I think the whole idea of the star/level system is outdated.

What it reflects to me is something like there is no internet and no TV and you have to deal with values of other teams and players in comparison to your own.

That is real to some extent but except we know which is the highest level of football now.

So the real stars/levels should come first, comparisons second.

 

 Exactly, it creates a weird sort of shifty tunnel vision. We discussed this issue a lot here as well but still never really reached any satisfying conclusion...

[Guest]

Best to keep conversations on this subject to that thread so I'll merge this one to your first one.

[aditya]

The star rating is to judge the players ability in the team and league. If you are Joey Barton in a bottom league, your star will be 5. That simple. 

I think where you are going with is like FIFA? where ratings are Ronaldo 97, Messi 98. I think there should at least be an overall rating in the game, but that will really change the whole aspect of players fees, wages, reputation and etc.

[Danziel]

 

33 minutes ago, aditya said:

The star rating is to judge the players ability in the team and league. If you are Joey Barton in a bottom league, your star will be 5. That simple. 

I think where you are going with is like FIFA? where ratings are Ronaldo 97, Messi 98. I think there should at least be an overall rating in the game, but that will really change the whole aspect of players fees, wages, reputation and etc.

How about this, we talk about Joey Barton as above and I am bottom league and I think he is 5 star rating because Football Manager tells just that.

And then we thing to ourselves that reality is that,

Joey Barton is a 3 star, 15 or 75 level, a C or an Established Footballer.

And that Cristiano Ronaldo is the 5 star, 20 or 99 level, an A or a Legendary Player.

I agree, FM has to implement it right if they do decide to do it.

I believe that the range of reputation, wages and fees should be determined by the player's overall rating, character, qualities for a certain position or for more.

Say a player can vary even up to 40% in value (just a thought)

You may buy a player that has good character traits has been playing constantly for his team for three years in a Top 3 league

And then you have another one, who is the worst character to work with and is a rising star in a top 10 league

Level/star rating/Mark/Status would be same but the price won't be the same.

[Cougar2010]

15 minutes ago, Danziel said:

 

How about this, we talk about Joey Barton as above and I am bottom league and I think he is 5 star rating because Football Manager tells just that.

This bit is wrong and the reason some users have an issue with stars.

He has a five star ratings for your team which means he would be a star player for your team and significantly better than an average member of your squad.  Nothing more, nothing less, it really isn't rocket science.

[Danziel]

42 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

This bit is wrong and the reason some users have an issue with stars.

He has a five star ratings for your team which means he would be a star player for your team and significantly better than an average member of your squad.  Nothing more, nothing less, it really isn't rocket science.

I want to know what his star rating is, not what his star rating is in comparison to others.

[Weston]

6 hours ago, Danziel said:

I want to know what his star rating is, not what his star rating is in comparison to others.

Agreed. If you manage Accrington Stanley you aren't limited to ONLY EVER perceiving footballers relative to JUST your club. You don't watch TV and say ah yes, Ronaldo would be a 5 star recruit for us - then flip the channel and say ah yes, Joey Barton would also be a 5 star recruit for us. You are able to see them and understand that Ronaldo is better than Barton in a worldly context separate from your league and current squad. Obviously attributes, stats, etc, allow us to do this in the game as well, but still.

And again, the biggest issue is truly the way those star values change with squad alterations and become outdated in even very recent reports with no graspable scale or notifier to add context and comprehension to the value presented through that lens; I really don't know how many times I can explain this. If you scout Barton you would know how good he would be for your current squad that day. If you sign Ronaldo the next day, your squad's relative star scale would change, and looking back at that Barton report from the day before you would only be able to see how he would fit in to your past team - you wouldn't be able to understand or extrapolate that value to what it would be today. In real life you wouldn't have to scout him again a day later to get a new value for your team, you would simply look at the past report and think ok, he would have been this useful yesterday, now I know that value is this instead today, which could easily be represented by that star value updating in the game as your scale fluctuates. It's important to note the report's values themselves would not be updating as the you wouldn't have more up to date information on the player, but simply that the scale on which that frozen-in-time value is represented would change appropriately so as to not render the data obsolete in your new perspective.

[Maaka]

But then, if you manage in tier 8 in England, to scale things, you'd need a system with much more options than today's. As of now, the stars are five in total, allowing for ten "steps" (full and half stars). What you'd need, to see the difference between Ronaldo, Barton and your players would be a scale of, say 50, where the greatest players are 50 "stars", Barton around 35, Ronaldo 10-15 (or lower, since he hasn't played professionally since 2011), and your players at 5-10.

That would be a large scale.

[Cannes]

On 10. august 2016 at 16:22, Cougar2010 said:

Would never work.

Every player who plays not just for Barca, Real, Man Utd, Chelsea but those that play for mid-table top league clubs as well would all be 5* while all the players that play for a club in the lowest divisions would all be 0.5*.

 

So basically you would take over a club and virtually every first team player at your club would have the same star rating whatever level you were at.  How would you know who the better players were?  How would you decide which players to sign when all your potential targets have the same amount of stars?

You have very limited imagination, I'm sorry to say. There are already two colours in use for the star ratings silver and gold, absolutely no reason why it could not be expanded upon one way or the other to give a good representation of quality across all possible levels.

[radosst]

the simplest solution would be to have both available : current system and star rating relative to all players. i would very much like such a change, as currently it is practically impossible to correctly assess someone's potential if you're a weaker team. a player with pa 130 may show as a 5 star and a player with pa 200 will show up as a 5 star. if you had both systems available at the same time you would know that they're both potentially great players for your current team, but you could also say that one of them could be the next messi. this is very important, especially when making decisions who to keep/sell and who to bring in and for how much... for example in my current save, when i was fiorentina, i brought one guy from canada and one from usa. both were rated 5 stars potential. but when i moved to a better club i turned out one of them was still rated 4,5 pa and 3 stars ca (pogba aged 29 is rated 4,5 now in my save relative to my team) and the other player is 1,5 ca and 2,5 pa - so a huge difference, isn't it? how would i know that one of them has the potential to be one of the world best players and the other one to only be decent? (well, actually i figured that out myself judging their progress, but still, it was not reflected in star ratings).

[Cougar2010]

9 hours ago, Cannes said:

You have very limited imagination, I'm sorry to say. There are already two colours in use for the star ratings silver and gold, absolutely no reason why it could not be expanded upon one way or the other to give a good representation of quality across all possible levels.

There are two basic ways to represent ability for this issue either in relation to your team or overall compared to every other player in the database.

I've explained earlier why the way SI chose a long time ago is better & of more use within the game compared to the alternative method.  If you add more colours and narrow the ranges even further you might as well not bother at all and just list the actual number for CA/PA.  This isn't the way to go and there is another thread on this forum discussing making the reports/attributes more "fuzzy" for the user as opposed to less.

In terms of limited imagination its quite the opposite, I'm prepared to look at the options & discuss the pros & cons of each but others that are raising the issue are very blinkered down one route and fail to understand the benefits of the alternate despite it being spelt out.

 

 

[Weston]

11 hours ago, Cougar2010 said:

I've explained earlier why the way SI chose a long time ago is better & of more use within the game compared to the alternative method.  If you add more colours and narrow the ranges even further you might as well not bother at all and just list the actual number for CA/PA.  This isn't the way to go and there is another thread on this forum discussing making the reports/attributes more "fuzzy" for the user as opposed to less.

In terms of limited imagination its quite the opposite, I'm prepared to look at the options & discuss the pros & cons of each but others that are raising the issue are very blinkered down one route and fail to understand the benefits of the alternate despite it being spelt out.

I get what you mean by this, but after much repetition we still can't even reach an agreement on simply having past reports' scales update to reflect the value found then in a way consistent with the perspective the squad has today. Surely that can be fixed with absolutely 0 negative implications? Surely that is 100% realistic and clearly articulated..?

[Guest]

That'll be because you cannot re-write a report without having another look at the subject matter which is essentially what you asked for, the game already gives you a function to quickly get a report redrafted based on new information through the 'Get Report Card' option, the fact that you're not prepared to wait a couple of continues for the scout to write up his new report is down to unreasonable expectation on your part.

If your boss asked to you redo a report you wrote 10 months ago based on where the business is at today would you provide it to him instantly or a few hours/days later depending on your workload?

[Weston]

13 hours ago, Barside said:

That'll be because you cannot re-write a report without having another look at the subject matter which is essentially what you asked for, the game already gives you a function to quickly get a report redrafted based on new information through the 'Get Report Card' option, the fact that you're not prepared to wait a couple of continues for the scout to write up his new report is down to unreasonable expectation on your part.

If your boss asked to you redo a report you wrote 10 months ago based on where the business is at today would you provide it to him instantly or a few hours/days later depending on your workload?

No, I'm referring to the problem that occurs when a report made yesterday is now completely unusable because a player you signed today changed the scale on which you judged that player less than 24 hours ago. In real life I wouldn't ask the scout to rewrite that report, because in real life there would be no new information to gain and I would still be able to understand what he meant and extrapolate that to the current situation. And yeah, if you're doing deadline deals as a small club with only one or two good scouts, it is unreasonable to need to entirely rescout someone because the game keeps you from viewing recently compiled information with an updated perspective.

Manchester United didn't suddenly have no clue how good Pogba was anymore because Ibrahimovic arrived, even if he increased the club average current ability, they could still look at the reports they had been making in the recent past and make sense of them. Clearly this is because in real life you aren't bound to an ambiguous star system, but since you are in the game, it would be nice if we could make them more natural, intuitive, and accurate to better reflect authentic understanding...