[Discussion] Improving the Youth Intake System

[YKW]

Bringing young players through into the first team is one of my favourite parts of my game, but it is an area that I don’t think has really become more fun after all this time.

I also feel that somebody who mainly enjoys bringing through or signing youth players may have found that their fun has decreased as the game has evolved, with changes like high asking prices, unwilling players, and dynamic dates of generation making things harder overall. While I agree with the philosophy behind these changes, particularly the dynamic dates of generation which makes reloading more difficult, I think there needs to be more fun brought into this area to counteract the increased difficulty.

I may have some misunderstandings, but these are the main factors influencing the nature of your newgens:

1. Junior Coaching – Affects the CA of your youth intake

2. Youth Training Facilities – Affects how fast CA improves

3. Youth Recruitment – Affects the PA. (I think location, nationality and club rep are tied into this)

4. Nation Youth Rating and other presets (hidden)  – Affects the relative chances of high PA newgens, e.g. more likely in Brazil than New Zealand. Also affects personality and hidden attributes according to presets for that nation.

5. Affiliate clubs with ‘youth link’ – causes newgens of the affiliate’s nation to be generated in your youth team.

6. HoYD (or ‘brings youth players to the club’ staff member – affects personalities of newgens. I believe it also influences their likely positions and attributes.

I think there is the opportunity to expand on some of these to make the whole process more compelling overall.

 

Club Academy

It would be great if there was a separate page for my academy that dealt with things like above. I am imagining it as very similar to the “Club” screen with an overview that had interesting information.

Legends, Icons and Favoured personnel would become “Alumni.” This would show the most successful players that came through your academy, whether they ended up playing for you or not.

The “Key Player, Captain, Hot Prospect” bit would become something like “Stars of the future,” and you would have two or three names who were due to come through in the next intake. They could perhaps be poached before they came through, but would certainly appear in the game at some point.

The graph that shows historical league position would become a graph showing the number of first team appearances made by academy graduates in each season. This would be fun to watch increase, and also it would be great if somehow young players (or their parents) could perceive this graph and have their choices influenced by it.

The “Rivals” section would become something like “Competitors” and show me which clubs I was vying with for local talent. I would also have an indication of whether I was “winning” or “losing” the battle overall, perhaps with an indication of why. This could be my relatively low standards of coaching, or due to a higher reputation rival, or because youth doesn’t get a chance at my club.

There could also be a section with other general information, like how many nationalities are represented in your academy, or how many international caps have gone to players from your academy in total, etc.

 

Academy Style/Focus/’DNA’

It would be nice if there was a way of trying to emulate Ajax and Barcelona and over time develop an academy that provided high quality players but also had a specific identity.

Assuming we are at the highest level of Academy quality and we also have total job security then we should be able to have control over the focus or style of the academy. In my opinion there should be controls that can influence player personality, positions and tactical awareness, attributes and preferred moves. To achieve this there could be 4 different categories of ‘focus:’ Physical, Mental, Technical and Tactical.

Using a physical focus you could try to bias your intake towards things like: tall players, fast players, naturally fit players, etc

Using a Mental Focus you could aim for things like: “Hungry” players (WR, TW, AG, BR,) Professional players,  or players with Flair and Vision, etc

Using a Technical Focus you could aim for things like: Players with good technique and first touch, ambidextrous players, or just well rounded technical players.

Using a Tactical focus you could aim for things like: Players with specific sets of positions, or players that have better ability at a specific role.  

For me the first three are quite general, and while you could specifically choose a bias towards tall or fast players, you could also just choose “Physical focus” to bias towards players who had some kind of notable physical advantage, whatever it was. Ditto for Mental focus and Technical Focus.

Tactical Focus would have the potential to be a bit more in depth. The simplest instruction would be a checkbox saying “Base Tactical Focus on Current First Team Tactics, which for example would make it less likely that you get players who only play WB when you don’t use WBs at all.

Going in to more depth you could influence your tactical focus on a screen that looked a bit like the tactics screen, whereby you could set some tactical elements to be a part of your philosophy, for example a specific formation, ‘Fluid’ play, ‘Much More’ Closing Down etc, or you could go further and create “Archetypes” for each role within the team. This could be done for example by selecting roles for every position in your chosen formation, which would increase the chances that newgen players would have skills related to this role and also understand how to play it in your system.

You could also set other preferences for example on your LB position you activate “Left foot.” This would make it less likely that you generate a LB who is ‘right only’ and who has no ability at RB. One that I would use would be on my CB position where I would activate ‘above 6 foot’ or ‘jumping above 10.” These selections wouldn’t guarantee anything but they could influence the chances of short CBs also having familiarity with RB or DM (because they haven’t been playing at CD at your academy.)

 

Even More Dynamic Intake Dates

I think it would be better if the option to sign academy players who were turning 15/16 would happen all season long, at ANY time. This would definitely contribute to my compulsive clicking of continue.

As mentioned in the previous section, the Academy Overview screen would have a list of 2 or 3 players who were ‘due’ to enter the game world within the next year or so. They would have the little ‘I’ icon next to their names, and hovering over it would show a drastically diminished profile page. Personally I would limit it to 2 ‘Pros’ and 2 ‘Cons’ in the scout report style, along with their Name, Age, City of Birth, and date that they can join the youth team (their birthday.)

This way, all year round I have specific dates I can look forward to when I know a young newgen will arrive, and as well as that I have the thrill of a newgen arriving at ANY time (because they weren’t one of the pre-generated ‘future stars.’)

 

Better Newgen Relationships

Firstly it would be great to see more brothers. They do happen, but I’ve been looking out for them for the past 3 versions of the game and they are way too rare imo. For example I would like to see my HoYD come to me and say “You might be interested to hear that the brother of Player X has just joined our academy – and he looks pretty good/but I don’t think he will make the grade.” At some point the brother either comes through into your youth team or ends up somewhere else.

Similarly, when the rare ‘Son’ event happens it would be great to know about it even earlier through a similar message from the HoYD. If I am managing a low rep team at this time then there is the chance that my HoYD will come to me later and say “I’m just letting you know that we have received confirmation that your son has chosen to join Chelsea’s academy.” Then in a couple of years he comes through at Chelsea.

Outside of family relations it would be great to see more (Idol)s in newgens that come through. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it, which doesn’t really make sense. It would be especially good if newgens could have the preferred moves of their Idol, and also perhaps have similar strengths. I would also like to see young players have an idol of their own nation more often, for example if I get a South-Korean newgen in my intake he may be more likely to have Son (Idol) in his favoured personnel. Why not also add a higher chance of any newgen coming through with a previous Ballon D’or winner as their (idol)?

A new relationship type could be added which would be (Mentor.) This could arise as a result of tutoring but some newgens could come through with a Mentor relationship already there. These relationships could be even more powerful in terms of signing or retaining young players.

 

Pokeball

Allowing me to ‘catch’ a newgen player from my game and add him to a squad for Versus play. It would also be cool to be able to catch a newgen from one game and then add him to another, but that seems unlikely to happen. Even less likely would be the ability to auto-convert a captured player into FIFA or PES attributes to use him in a career mode or something.

 

Custom Newgens

There is advice floating around on here that allows you to edit a file pre-game which then makes specific newgens enter the game in the future. If this was made easier to do it would be really awesome. I would rather it was just present as an option within the game and once a save had been created, but “upcoming future newgen” could  be an option that might fit in with the RTE.

Either way, I like to create myself as a youngster in the game before I holiday into the future and then manage as a fictional character. The problem is that the player version of me doesn’t have a newgen face, which sucks. If something like this was added then I could create myself and all my friends in a way where they would pop up in my game as newgens with realistic appearances and preferences etc.

[wkdsoul]

The academy style is a great idea, 

[CFuller]

51 minutes ago, YKW said:

Better Newgen Relationships

Firstly it would be great to see more brothers. They do happen, but I’ve been looking out for them for the past 3 versions of the game and they are way too rare imo. For example I would like to see my HoYD come to me and say “You might be interested to hear that the brother of Player X has just joined our academy – and he looks pretty good/but I don’t think he will make the grade.” At some point the brother either comes through into your youth team or ends up somewhere else.

Similarly, when the rare ‘Son’ event happens it would be great to know about it even earlier through a similar message from the HoYD. If I am managing a low rep team at this time then there is the chance that my HoYD will come to me later and say “I’m just letting you know that we have received confirmation that your son has chosen to join Chelsea’s academy.” Then in a couple of years he comes through at Chelsea.

Outside of family relations it would be great to see more (Idol)s in newgens that come through. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it, which doesn’t really make sense. It would be especially good if newgens could have the preferred moves of their Idol, and also perhaps have similar strengths. I would also like to see young players have an idol of their own nation more often, for example if I get a South-Korean newgen in my intake he may be more likely to have Son (Idol) in his favoured personnel. Why not also add a higher chance of any newgen coming through with a previous Ballon D’or winner as their (idol)?

A new relationship type could be added which would be (Mentor.) This could arise as a result of tutoring but some newgens could come through with a Mentor relationship already there. These relationships could be even more powerful in terms of signing or retaining young players.

I quite like this idea. In my opinion, there really aren't enough newgen brothers/sons generated in FM, certainly not in comparison to real life. I'm also hoping to see 'family members' (these could be uncles/nephews, cousins, or maybe even grandfathers/grandsons).

Idols are criminally underused in newgens. In my FM13 universe, there's a Spanish striker who's basically taken world football by storm with his unstoppable goalscoring. It would be great to see someone like him become idolised by future newgens.

On a similar note, I'd like to see more newgens have world-, continentally- or even just nationally-renowned clubs listed among their favourite clubs. For instance, you should expect to see loads of Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea fans (etc) cropping up across annual youth intakes in England, even if they're not based locally.

There should also be a higher number of newgens supporting world-famous clubs in the most reputable leagues (i.e. a Nigerian supporting Man Utd, a Colombian supporting Real Madrid, an Indonesian wonderkid supporting Ross County ) and maybe having a club icon as an idol. I seem to remember the former being present in FM11, but strangely not in any version of FM since.

[YKW]

@CFuller Brilliant ideas! It would be good if all these things applied to Newgen staff as well. For example a Newgen manager coming through with his idol being my character. Even better if his preferences reflect mine in some way.

[jambos1990]

Class idea with the academy page. I find the academy at current lacks depth you can't create an philosophy of the players coming into the under 19's.  Best suggestion I've seen!

[gunner86]

The one point I tend to disagree with is the Intake dates. The current system just feels more realistic to me.

That being said, maybe a middle ground, where one of the hottest prospects can every so often get promoted ahead of time every so often might be a way of doing it

[DragonAndLance]

This is an amazing idea!

 

I feel like theres so much they could do.. I just tried to see the youth my HoD brought in before; and I can't seem to find it anywhere.

[qDizzy]

yea...

(in agreement to the ideas and stuff shared here)

[Hovis Dexter]

Really good ideas

[kbarrett2316]

On 08/07/2017 at 17:00, YKW said:

Custom Newgens

There is advice floating around on here that allows you to edit a file pre-game which then makes specific newgens enter the game in the future. If this was made easier to do it would be really awesome. I would rather it was just present as an option within the game and once a save had been created, but “upcoming future newgen” could  be an option that might fit in with the RTE.

First of all I'd like to say everything suggested would be a quality idea. Big fan of bringing youngsters through so this'd be something I'd personally be really interested in, yeah.

Quick question though regarding what I've highlighted in bold - how do I do that/where can I find a guide on how to do so? Would be useful for me personally with a save I'm experimented with, any pointers would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[BuryBlade]

Fantastic OP with some great suggestions. I love building my club using just youth players and developing them as best I can. Your ideas would make this way of playing so much better. 

[YKW]

2 hours ago, kbarrett2316 said:

First of all I'd like to say everything suggested would be a quality idea. Big fan of bringing youngsters through so this'd be something I'd personally be really interested in, yeah.

Quick question though regarding what I've highlighted in bold - how do I do that/where can I find a guide on how to do so? Would be useful for me personally with a save I'm experimented with, any pointers would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

Have a look at this thread:

It might be worth bumping and seeing if anyone can share how they got it to work on FM17.  

[Atarin]

On 7/8/2017 at 17:00, YKW said:

Bringing young players through into the first team is one of my favourite parts of my game, but it is an area that I don’t think has really become more fun after all this time.

I also feel that somebody who mainly enjoys bringing through or signing youth players may have found that their fun has decreased as the game has evolved, with changes like high asking prices, unwilling players, and dynamic dates of generation making things harder overall. While I agree with the philosophy behind these changes, particularly the dynamic dates of generation which makes reloading more difficult, I think there needs to be more fun brought into this area to counteract the increased difficulty.

I may have some misunderstandings, but these are the main factors influencing the nature of your newgens:

1. Junior Coaching – Affects the CA of your youth intake

2. Youth Training Facilities – Affects how fast CA improves

3. Youth Recruitment – Affects the PA. (I think location, nationality and club rep are tied into this)

4. Nation Youth Rating and other presets (hidden)  – Affects the relative chances of high PA newgens, e.g. more likely in Brazil than New Zealand. Also affects personality and hidden attributes according to presets for that nation.

5. Affiliate clubs with ‘youth link’ – causes newgens of the affiliate’s nation to be generated in your youth team.

6. HoYD (or ‘brings youth players to the club’ staff member – affects personalities of newgens. I believe it also influences their likely positions and attributes.

I think there is the opportunity to expand on some of these to make the whole process more compelling overall.

 

Club Academy

It would be great if there was a separate page for my academy that dealt with things like above. I am imagining it as very similar to the “Club” screen with an overview that had interesting information.

Legends, Icons and Favoured personnel would become “Alumni.” This would show the most successful players that came through your academy, whether they ended up playing for you or not.

The “Key Player, Captain, Hot Prospect” bit would become something like “Stars of the future,” and you would have two or three names who were due to come through in the next intake. They could perhaps be poached before they came through, but would certainly appear in the game at some point.

The graph that shows historical league position would become a graph showing the number of first team appearances made by academy graduates in each season. This would be fun to watch increase, and also it would be great if somehow young players (or their parents) could perceive this graph and have their choices influenced by it.

The “Rivals” section would become something like “Competitors” and show me which clubs I was vying with for local talent. I would also have an indication of whether I was “winning” or “losing” the battle overall, perhaps with an indication of why. This could be my relatively low standards of coaching, or due to a higher reputation rival, or because youth doesn’t get a chance at my club.

There could also be a section with other general information, like how many nationalities are represented in your academy, or how many international caps have gone to players from your academy in total, etc.

 

 

Academy Style/Focus/’DNA’

It would be nice if there was a way of trying to emulate Ajax and Barcelona and over time develop an academy that provided high quality players but also had a specific identity.

Assuming we are at the highest level of Academy quality and we also have total job security then we should be able to have control over the focus or style of the academy. In my opinion there should be controls that can influence player personality, positions and tactical awareness, attributes and preferred moves. To achieve this there could be 4 different categories of ‘focus:’ Physical, Mental, Technical and Tactical.

Using a physical focus you could try to bias your intake towards things like: tall players, fast players, naturally fit players, etc

Using a Mental Focus you could aim for things like: “Hungry” players (WR, TW, AG, BR,) Professional players,  or players with Flair and Vision, etc

Using a Technical Focus you could aim for things like: Players with good technique and first touch, ambidextrous players, or just well rounded technical players.

Using a Tactical focus you could aim for things like: Players with specific sets of positions, or players that have better ability at a specific role.  

For me the first three are quite general, and while you could specifically choose a bias towards tall or fast players, you could also just choose “Physical focus” to bias towards players who had some kind of notable physical advantage, whatever it was. Ditto for Mental focus and Technical Focus.

Tactical Focus would have the potential to be a bit more in depth. The simplest instruction would be a checkbox saying “Base Tactical Focus on Current First Team Tactics, which for example would make it less likely that you get players who only play WB when you don’t use WBs at all.

Going in to more depth you could influence your tactical focus on a screen that looked a bit like the tactics screen, whereby you could set some tactical elements to be a part of your philosophy, for example a specific formation, ‘Fluid’ play, ‘Much More’ Closing Down etc, or you could go further and create “Archetypes” for each role within the team. This could be done for example by selecting roles for every position in your chosen formation, which would increase the chances that newgen players would have skills related to this role and also understand how to play it in your system.

You could also set other preferences for example on your LB position you activate “Left foot.” This would make it less likely that you generate a LB who is ‘right only’ and who has no ability at RB. One that I would use would be on my CB position where I would activate ‘above 6 foot’ or ‘jumping above 10.” These selections wouldn’t guarantee anything but they could influence the chances of short CBs also having familiarity with RB or DM (because they haven’t been playing at CD at your academy.)

 

 

Even More Dynamic Intake Dates

I think it would be better if the option to sign academy players who were turning 15/16 would happen all season long, at ANY time. This would definitely contribute to my compulsive clicking of continue.

As mentioned in the previous section, the Academy Overview screen would have a list of 2 or 3 players who were ‘due’ to enter the game world within the next year or so. They would have the little ‘I’ icon next to their names, and hovering over it would show a drastically diminished profile page. Personally I would limit it to 2 ‘Pros’ and 2 ‘Cons’ in the scout report style, along with their Name, Age, City of Birth, and date that they can join the youth team (their birthday.)

This way, all year round I have specific dates I can look forward to when I know a young newgen will arrive, and as well as that I have the thrill of a newgen arriving at ANY time (because they weren’t one of the pre-generated ‘future stars.’)

 

 

Better Newgen Relationships

Firstly it would be great to see more brothers. They do happen, but I’ve been looking out for them for the past 3 versions of the game and they are way too rare imo. For example I would like to see my HoYD come to me and say “You might be interested to hear that the brother of Player X has just joined our academy – and he looks pretty good/but I don’t think he will make the grade.” At some point the brother either comes through into your youth team or ends up somewhere else.

Similarly, when the rare ‘Son’ event happens it would be great to know about it even earlier through a similar message from the HoYD. If I am managing a low rep team at this time then there is the chance that my HoYD will come to me later and say “I’m just letting you know that we have received confirmation that your son has chosen to join Chelsea’s academy.” Then in a couple of years he comes through at Chelsea.

Outside of family relations it would be great to see more (Idol)s in newgens that come through. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it, which doesn’t really make sense. It would be especially good if newgens could have the preferred moves of their Idol, and also perhaps have similar strengths. I would also like to see young players have an idol of their own nation more often, for example if I get a South-Korean newgen in my intake he may be more likely to have Son (Idol) in his favoured personnel. Why not also add a higher chance of any newgen coming through with a previous Ballon D’or winner as their (idol)?

A new relationship type could be added which would be (Mentor.) This could arise as a result of tutoring but some newgens could come through with a Mentor relationship already there. These relationships could be even more powerful in terms of signing or retaining young players.

 

 

I really like the ideas you outlined at the beginning of the post. The ones quotes I think would really enhance the game massively.

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.