[Suggestion] Dynamic PA

[jack18883]

PA should at least be slightly dynamic ie a PA of 160 could change to 150 or 170.

Before someone says this is how it is now - it's not.

PA currently has a fixed ceiling and yes not all players will reach their PA.

PA should become fixed when a player reaches his peak age.

How it is now:

Assuming a player reaches his peak at age 30:

START - AGE 18, CA = 110, PA = 150

 

SEASON 1 - AGE 19, CA = 120, PA = 152 (Player has played above his expectations for his age - increase PA)

SEASON 2 AGE 20, CA = 135, PA = 160 (Player scores at world cup, increase PA)

SEASON 3 AGE 21, CA = 145, PA = 160 (Consistent) 

SEASON 4 AGE 22, CA = 152, PA = 160 (Consistent) 

SEASON 5 AGE 23, CA = 153, PA = 158 (Injured for 6 months, slight PA decrease)

SEASON 6 AGE 24, CA = 156, PA = 160 (Plays all league games, consistent)

SEASON 7 AGE 25, CA = 156, PA = 160 (Consistent)

SEASON 8 AGE 26, CA = 150, PA = 155 (Bad injury - misses most of season)

SEASON 9 AGE 27, CA = 155, PA = 160 (Very good season)

SEASON 10 AGE 28, CA = 158, PA = 165 ( Best seson of career, gets a move to a better league, better team, better facilities - increase PA)

SEASON 11 AGE 29, CA = 165, PA = 167 (Increase in CA due to good season in big league, slight PA increase as he nears his peak age)

SEASON 12 AGE 30, CA = 165, PA = 167 (Player has peaked, PA is now fixed until he retires, had an ok season - no increase to CA)

Now if this player above had a fixed PA, he would have never increased his CA based on his late career form - see Jamie Vardy amongst many others.

Jamie Vardy on older FMs would have had a fixed PA of 100? - how can we account for players who develop later in their careers.

In my opinion, having a dynamic PA will include for late career flourishers.

Not every player's PA should change - only those who pick up moves later in the career to a better team/league/facilities/teammates or exceed their CA in performances.

 

Any thoughts?

[CFuller]

I don't really want to copy and paste everything I've posted in this thread, but I feel PA should not be dynamic. It is impossible to be better than your absolute best. Your maximum potential is your maximum potential.

You'll always see people mentioning Vardy and (to a lesser extent) N'Golo Kanté when arguing for dynamic PA. I'd say that a strong case against it would be Jon Stead, who flourished as a youngster at fourth-tier Huddersfield and got a big break at Blackburn, but ultimately proved to be incapable of scoring regularly at the top level. Only once in his career did he score 10+ goals in a season in either of the top two divisions (Ipswich, 2008/2009). One could argue that Stead peaked very young and was never any more than a decent Championship striker.

I know you've said that your dynamic PA system would only change a player's base PA by -10/+10 at most, but what's the difference between 150 CA  and 170 CA, in all honesty? Using a more radical dynamic PA system, who's to stay that a player like Stead wouldn't have got better and better until this 'decent Championship player' was getting 50+ goals a season and winning Champions Leagues?

As for FM not accounting for players who develop later in their career? Trust me, they do exist in FM. The screenshot below is the career history of a player I came across in my FM13 save. Having started out at Crawley, he progressed steadily through the leagues before coming second in the Premier League Golden Boot race aged 32, in just his fourth top-flight season. That's all down to the AI; no involvement from me whatsoever.

[jack18883]

21 minutes ago, CFuller said:

I don't really want to copy and paste everything I've posted in this thread, but I feel PA should not be dynamic. It is impossible to be better than your absolute best. Your maximum potential is your maximum potential.

You'll always see people mentioning Vardy and (to a lesser extent) N'Golo Kanté when arguing for dynamic PA. I'd say that a strong case against it would be Jon Stead, who flourished as a youngster at fourth-tier Huddersfield and got a big break at Blackburn, but ultimately proved to be incapable of scoring regularly at the top level. Only once in his career did he score 10+ goals in a season in either of the top two divisions (Ipswich, 2008/2009). One could argue that Stead peaked very young and was never any more than a decent Championship striker.

I know you've said that your dynamic PA system would only change a player's base PA by -10/+10 at most, but what's the difference between 150 CA  and 170 CA, in all honesty? Using a more radical dynamic PA system, who's to stay that a player like Stead wouldn't have got better and better until this 'decent Championship player' was getting 50+ goals a season and winning Champions Leagues?

As for FM not accounting for players who develop later in their career? Trust me, they do exist in FM. The screenshot below is the career history of a player I came across in my FM13 save. Having started out at Crawley, he progressed steadily through the leagues before coming second in the Premier League Golden Boot race aged 32, in just his fourth top-flight season. That's all down to the AI; no involvement from me whatsoever.

 

Thanks for the reply CFuller.

In the case of Jon Stead - if he had a dynamic PA, his career would have looked something like this;

 

Huddersfield CA 80, PA - 120

Blackburn - CA -130, PA -140

Ipswich, Bristol  - CA 110, PA - 120 

 

I've probably missed his high and low career points but you get what I mean.

20 points in CA is quite a big difference and I think its at least half/1 star on most player reports if the attributes go to the right place.

I get what you mean with having a player peak early, but having a dynamic PA allows a player to drop his potential which was evident with John Stead after a few seasons in the Championship.

 

Thanks for the screenshot but I'll be honest when I say it's the first example I've seen in game of the AI taking a player from lower league/someone who develops later in their career.

[CFuller]

What's the rationale behind increasing a player's potential, exactly?

Accrington's Billy Kee was the top scorer in League Two last season, aged 27. If he kept that up in League One and Burnley took a chance on him in January, I wouldn't expect his PA to increase significantly just because he'd wound up at a better club. The better facilities and coaching would help Kee get closer to the top of his game; it wouldn't move his ceiling any higher.

Another case against dynamic PA would probably be Danny Drinkwater. He was always a decent midfield prospect at Manchester United, but it took him a while to reach his potential, and it wasn't until that incredible season with Leicester (aged 25/26) that we started to see him at his best. Though he can't get in the Chelsea squad these days, he's still an adequate top-flight midfielder. I wouldn't say that Drinkwater's PA has necessarily increased or decreased over the last decade or so.

[jack18883]

2 minutes ago, CFuller said:

What's the rationale behind increasing a player's potential, exactly?

Accrington's Billy Kee was the top scorer in League Two last season, aged 27. If he kept that up in League One and Burnley took a chance on him in January, I wouldn't expect his PA to increase significantly just because he'd wound up at a better club. The better facilities and coaching would help Kee get closer to the top of his game; it wouldn't move his ceiling any higher.

Another case against dynamic PA would probably be Danny Drinkwater. He was always a decent midfield prospect at Manchester United, but it took him a while to reach his potential, and it wasn't until that incredible season with Leicester (aged 25/26) that we started to see him at his best. Though he can't get in the Chelsea squad these days, he's still an adequate top-flight midfielder. I wouldn't say that Drinkwater's PA has necessarily increased or decreased over the last decade or so.

I'd disagree with those two though.

I'll bet Drinkwaters PA in FM 15 before the league win was less than his PA in FM 16.

https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-2014/player/29006726/danny-drinkwater

https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-2015/player/29006726/danny-drinkwater

I know this isn't accurate but it shows his PA was increased over 2 versions of FM.

 

Surely changing PA between versions is an argument for a dynamic PA?

How can we say that a players potential is x in 2014 and y in 2015?

Surely each update to PA is showing that PA is in fact dynamic between versions?

All I'm asking for is this to happen within the one version of a  game over seasons.

 

 

[Haiku]

1 hour ago, CFuller said:

I don't really want to copy and paste everything I've posted in this thread, but I feel PA should not be dynamic. It is impossible to be better than your absolute best.

What is your absolute best, please describe it with one number?

[CFuller]

2 minutes ago, Haiku said:

What is your absolute best, please describe it with one number?

In terms of footballing ability, out of 200, I'd give myself a very generous 2. 

The pros and cons of dynamic PA have been discussed to death, so I'm not going to discuss this any further, for fear of losing my sanity. Instead, I'll just link to another thread, and a specific post by santy001.

[HUNT3R]

No, just no. If developing CA was more difficult in general, especially for us, researchers could be a little more lenient with assigned PAs. The definition of PA is that it's the best you could possibly be, so that shouldn't be able to change.

Researchers misjudging real players is just that - a misjudgment. Scouts IRL and FM do that all the time.

[jack18883]

57 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

No, just no. If developing CA was more difficult in general, especially for us, researchers could be a little more lenient with assigned PAs. The definition of PA is that it's the best you could possibly be, so that shouldn't be able to change.

Researchers misjudging real players is just that - a misjudgment. Scouts IRL and FM do that all the time.

I understand and to be honest no sane researcher would have given Vardy a high potential when he was in the lower leagues.

But why not keep the submitted PAs that you guys suggest before release time/updates and the game can dynamicaly change this by 10-15 in either direction as the game progresses?

That way there is no burden on the researcher?

[HUNT3R]

Just now, jack18883 said:

I understand and to be honest no sane researcher would have given Vardy a high potential when he was in the lower leagues.

But why not keep the submitted PAs that you guys suggest before release time/updates and the game can dynamicaly change this by 10-15 in either direction as the game progresses?

That way there is no burden on the researcher?

I'm not a researcher and I don't work for SI, so I don't know. What I do know is that PA isn't the issue here. It's development and their likelihood of reaching their PA.

[Haiku]

PA is indeed the issue. I don't think dynamic PA will fix anything. I think PA should be removed from FM.

[CFuller]

1 minute ago, Haiku said:

PA is indeed the issue. I don't think dynamic PA will fix anything. I think PA should be simply removed from FM.

What would you replace PA with then?

[Haiku]

9 hours ago, CFuller said:

What would you replace PA with then?

Nothing. The game has everything needed to go without PA, but it would require a lot of changes to the formulas which determine player development to make it work properly. It will make the game a lot more realistic and unpredictable. You see, we already have Personalities which are defined by Ambition, Determination, Professionalism and other hidden attributes. We also have training facilities, coaches, tutoring, injuries, level of competition, games played, morale etc etc... All these + CA are the core elements which should realistically determine player development. It doesn't need to be limited to any number. What makes Cristiano Ronaldo great is indeed his personality and strive to improve every single day. You said people can't go better beyond their absolute best. That is not true. There is no limit in sports. You can push further and further and you'll only get better before your body starts to decline at some point which is unpredictable for everyone but generally when you hit 30 you can expect a drop in the physical department, but you can still improve in other areas since you're so much more experienced already. In olympic sports we frequently see new world records. Why is that happening? If you believe everyone has absolute limit, then by assumption there should be absolute limit to humanity and this will mean if Messi is the absolute maximum, then we will never see a better player than him forever. Is Messi the absolute maximum, because currently he has 200PA? Currently he might be, but does it mean there will never be anyone better than him? - Certainly Not! Humanity is advancing rapidly every single day due to many people exceeding their personal best and the absolute best of the people who lived before them.

[herne79]

I think there's a bit of a misconception about what PA actually is.

PA is just a cap placed on players so that their attributes don't increase exponentially.  The CA then "adds up" their attributes (an over simplification there) and compares that CA to PA to ensure the cap isn't exceeded.  A balance also needs to be maintained within the database across a range of PAs, to ensure we don't have 50,000 Messis and CR7s but we do have suitable players across all leagues.  This is why PA and CA are hidden, because they're there for database purposes (submitted by Researchers and/or AI generated youngsters) and capping attributes.

It's the player base that have discovered the existence of PA and decided to use it to help them identify "good" and "bad" players.

It's also worth remembering we already have a dynamic "player potential" system - the star ratings.  Star ratings change over time - as players develop (or not); as your squad profile develops; as your coaches become better acquainted with your players; and as players peak early/develop late/or however else they develop.

TL;DR - the hidden PA value should always remain constant as that's used by the game for attribute capping and database profile purposes.  It's only really the user base that uses it for it's unintended purpose of seeing which players are good or bad.

[Haiku]

4 hours ago, herne79 said:

I think there's a bit of a misconception about what PA actually is.

PA is just a cap placed on players so that their attributes don't increase exponentially.  The CA then "adds up" their attributes (an over simplification there) and compares that CA to PA to ensure the cap isn't exceeded.  A balance also needs to be maintained within the database across a range of PAs, to ensure we don't have 50,000 Messis and CR7s but we do have suitable players across all leagues.  This is why PA and CA are hidden, because they're there for database purposes (submitted by Researchers and/or AI generated youngsters) and capping attributes.

It's the player base that have discovered the existence of PA and decided to use it to help them identify "good" and "bad" players.

It's also worth remembering we already have a dynamic "player potential" system - the star ratings.  Star ratings change over time - as players develop (or not); as your squad profile develops; as your coaches become better acquainted with your players; and as players peak early/develop late/or however else they develop.

TL;DR - the hidden PA value should always remain constant as that's used by the game for attribute capping and database profile purposes.  It's only really the user base that uses it for it's unintended purpose of seeing which players are good or bad.

I understand that PA is needed for balance within the database, but certainly that doesn't makes it realistic. Hidden or not, PA is restricting player's development to a specific point, which is wrong. You are encouraging researchers to judge an unpredictable element in football universe. If anyone at Chelsea could guess that Salah will score 40 goals for Liverpool in 2017, and De Bruyne will become the best playmaker in the world, they would never let them go. Do you expect any football fan can do better than Chelsea's top employees? That said on FM15 De Bruyne and Salah are bang average on every single save no matter what. That's the difference between FM and real world. FM lacks that unpredictability and is repetitive, because there are the very same wonderkids who become world beaters in every new save game despite dynamic PA, which is still very restrictive. Someone said FM is realistically simulating the football world to the point when you click 'Continue' for the first time. And it should be like that. No one can simulate the future, so I would rather let the game add that unpredictable moment of some kid at my Angers team becoming the best young striker in 2022 despite the odds, and Moise Kean fail to justify the huge expectations, which in real life is as likely to happen as the other way around. Of course there should be a balance, so we don't have Messis and CR7s all around the world, but I believe PA is hindering the fun to some extent once you get to know the DB and already know who's the cheapest bargain wonderkid who will become a beast in two seasons time and that's guaranteed. At the same time once you've played with your favourite club, you already know who at your academy is going to improve and who won't, so why bother keeping all these existing 16-17 y/o stealing minutes from your 5 star recently born regens in your new save? There's 0% chance that any of them will overcome their defined by PA miserable destiny.

[itay.bing]

the whole "let them improve if they play better look at vardy" arguments seems like a real slippery slope.

"let them improve if they play at better level,have a good personality and train with good facilities, you can't block their progress, look at vardy!"

"why does personality inhibits growth? ronaldinho wasn't very professional, didn't stop him from becoming the best (or one of the best, not the point) in the world at his time."

"why do players only improve with good facilities? drogba was amateur until he was 21, do you imply he didn't improve at that time?"

"why is playing level factored to calculate growth? i have a neighbor, used to be at barca's u15, retired because he thought he'd hate the traveling. at 5 a side he leaves us gasping for air without even sweating, he can play as good as any of those multimillioners prem players!" 

"why can't players with bad attributes play like players with better ones? i mean, it's like the rules of physics stop a 5 finishing player from hitting the top corner every time, do they?"

 

just like nothing stops a 5 finishing player from hitting the top corner almost every time, nothing stops a 110 PA player from becoming a 200 CA player. he can. but he won't. one in 10000 guys can. but not this guy.

now, assuming what we are trying to achieve is a more realistic FM game, and not a game that will trigger our dopamin releasers more often at the sight of a cheap player we bought turning out to be a great purchase, one needs to remember that these are professional footballers we our talking about. a 5 point increase in something could mean that on average every hit of the ball of that type goes 15 cm more accurate than before. those things are hardcoded into our muscle memory, our balance, our reflexes. it isn't like a 25 years old professional striker was just needed to be taught that he should lean forward when he shoots. 

making players less likely to and more randomly reach their potential, and as a result, allowing researchers have larger margins when allocating PA to a player seems like a good solution to the "same wonderkids every save".

no system will be able to replicate real life exactly, much less predict the future. a system that allows 50 players to overachieve in order to avoid one player from underachieving is a step in the wrong direction.   

 

 

[Maaka]

I'd go for a dynamic PA, sure. Buuut, maybe in a different way. I'd take the PA of the players in the database (excluding those with already "randomized" PA, the negative ones), and then, upon creating a game, mulitply that number with something between 0.95 and 1.05, so that the PA of a player in one save might differ from the same player in another save. But not dynamic within one saved game, no.

(The range 0.95-1.05 could be expanded, of course, for even greater diversity between saved games)

[autohoratio]

4 hours ago, Maaka said:

I'd go for a dynamic PA, sure. Buuut, maybe in a different way. I'd take the PA of the players in the database (excluding those with already "randomized" PA, the negative ones), and then, upon creating a game, mulitply that number with something between 0.95 and 1.05, so that the PA of a player in one save might differ from the same player in another save. But not dynamic within one saved game, no.

(The range 0.95-1.05 could be expanded, of course, for even greater diversity between saved games)

I think that this is the best alternative to how it is currently while not changing the system too drastically. A 0.9-1.1 modifier sounds preferable to me (especially for lower PA players), or perhaps the modifier can change with the player's age? i.e. 16 year old can have a 0.9-1.1 range when the database is loaded, 0.95-1.05 for a 20 year old and 0.98-1.02 for a 23 year old

 

[ale1969]

I'm strongly in favor to remove PA. It's an unrealistic cap that have to be reviewed every year (and sometimes every 6 months) to keep in touch with the dynamics of real life football.

The PA cap should be the hardcoded 200 limit. End. 

But to avoid to end up with a world full of Messi and Ronaldo there should be an "average (or statistically more correct "median") PA" which is the the PA a full-delevop player can keep consistently during its game years UNLESS there are events that cause a drop in form (injuries, being  constantly a reserve, bad luck, wrong career move, etc...) or , on reverse, events that bring out its unforseeable qualities like constant good performances (not just ratings, but also technical gestures like takles for a defender, dribbles, % of passes and so on), a manager who believes in him and keep him in the first team, etc 

We all witnessed cases where an unnoticeable player suddenly came under the spots, even at not so young age, or a someone who played 2-3 great seasons just to go down after some event or also without a well known reason.

In practice for most of the players for most of their prime years CA and median Ability should be pretty close and median ability should be in any case inferior than the actual PA but without being a hard cap. Basically events will move CA over or under the median ability, with median ability as an "attractor" so if a player with CA over MA has a drop in form CA would tend to move back to its MA, and even under it if his bad run continues.

I know it would be a hell to code, but it could bring a real dynamical system into the game that would also make scouting and squad building really a world apart from now and really give the manager the ability to "develop" a player thanks to his tactics and style of playing.

Another huge, and I mean huge, improvement would be that while PA is a guess, educated guess but guess anyway, Median Ability would be based on reality except for the young players, and anyway it would be less of a guess for them also.

 

Another less complicated way to add some dynamic to the system would be to have dynamic PA just like in the editor the negative values. Instead to have a fixed PA at time of save creation you can have a dynamic PA, and CA moving within the range of the negative number (e.g. -9 150-180) depending on the already coded events.

[月光下告白]

13 小时前, ale1969说:

I'm strongly in favor to remove PA. It's an unrealistic cap that have to be reviewed every year (and sometimes every 6 months) to keep in touch with the dynamics of real life football.

The PA cap should be the hardcoded 200 limit. End. 

But to avoid to end up with a world full of Messi and Ronaldo there should be an "average (or statistically more correct "median") PA" which is the the PA a full-delevop player can keep consistently during its game years UNLESS there are events that cause a drop in form (injuries, being  constantly a reserve, bad luck, wrong career move, etc...) or , on reverse, events that bring out its unforseeable qualities like constant good performances (not just ratings, but also technical gestures like takles for a defender, dribbles, % of passes and so on), a manager who believes in him and keep him in the first team, etc 

We all witnessed cases where an unnoticeable player suddenly came under the spots, even at not so young age, or a someone who played 2-3 great seasons just to go down after some event or also without a well known reason.

In practice for most of the players for most of their prime years CA and median Ability should be pretty close and median ability should be in any case inferior than the actual PA but without being a hard cap. Basically events will move CA over or under the median ability, with median ability as an "attractor" so if a player with CA over MA has a drop in form CA would tend to move back to its MA, and even under it if his bad run continues.

I know it would be a hell to code, but it could bring a real dynamical system into the game that would also make scouting and squad building really a world apart from now and really give the manager the ability to "develop" a player thanks to his tactics and style of playing.

Another huge, and I mean huge, improvement would be that while PA is a guess, educated guess but guess anyway, Median Ability would be based on reality except for the young players, and anyway it would be less of a guess for them also.

 

Another less complicated way to add some dynamic to the system would be to have dynamic PA just like in the editor the negative values. Instead to have a fixed PA at time of save creation you can have a dynamic PA, and CA moving within the range of the negative number (e.g. -9 150-180) depending on the already coded events.

good idea

[santy001]

If there were no human players of FM, if it was just a simulation being run by the AI and never involving a human you could make an argument for some kind of dynamic PA or limits off PA with other systems supporting it.

However, FM has a very committed, very curious player base who spend all their time pushing the game to its limits. They would break the system within weeks, if not days, of its inclusion in an FM game.

The only way you absolutely cannot game any such system is by replacing the checks and balances, the criteria or thresholds with complete pure RNG. That is a horrible system to sit there and then say well a random number generator decides if this player will be good or not. People test different stuff all the time with the game, absurd things that most of us never get to see but if something positive (in terms of the testing players desired outcome) and repeatable happens it spreads like wildfire. Hence the diablo tactics, hence the player position training manipulation, hence the -8/-9/-10 shortlists every year. 

You have to remember that PA is reflecting something that is ultimately unknowable. It's the limit of an individual human beings potential. It's not ideal, but this is a game and there has to be limits otherwise insane things will happen. The whole reason the attributes are on a 1-20 scale is because there has to be an upper limit. There always has to be a limit to reflect that human potential inherently always has its limit. Whether its the capacity of a person to lift weight, or the time it takes someone to run 100m each of these things have a limit, that varies from person to person, how well they can excel at it. 

- - -

Perhaps one argument should be that each attribute has its own potential set, but that would enormously increase the size/scope of the research project and would furthermore widen the margin of error. Once upon a time I didn't see Ronaldo becoming as physically capable as he  ultimately became. Messi neither, but then I'm not those players researchers, so others may have seen it differently... which in turn leads to the next problem - the impossibility of being able to have a discussion over such a wide spread of potential attributes. I think Ronaldo should have 18 potential pace and 19 potential finishing... good lord that would be a tedious set of conversations to go through in the data forums.

- - -

The biggest problem I see, that many will never realise, is that any kind of dynamic system brings the enormous potential of Player X no longer representing Player X. As Stoke researcher, for a number of years I've had players who were on their PA limits, that were below the "average" or the "typical band" of an equivalent premier league player or similar status in their squad CA. Bear in mind SI are great, they provide us with a ton of support every year, general guidance, answer questions, get us answers from coders on how to replicate X/Y/Z and indulge any queries we have. This helped me to create the Tony Pulis Stoke team in FM quite well. Players who were around the 120CA point and below who could play in the premier league well. If you start taking the shackles off these players potential then you're going to get very unrealistic players. There are very good odds on some of the Stoke team from around 2011/2012 if you were to give them an extra 15PA to grow into, and they acquired it you were going to have some of the leagues best players on your hands. 

The reason for this is because these technically limited players had brilliant mental attributes that embodied their mindset. Glenn Whelan was never the best passer, the best tackler nor had the best vision - but he grafted hard. Give him 15 more PA to grow into and all of a sudden you've got a midfielder at around 140CA who would've been one of the best in the game. However, give some players even 30 more PA to grow into, and have them grow into it, and it won't do all that much for them. Ravel Morrison in FM's gone by being a perfect example.

CA and PA are largely meaningless to me because they say nothing about a player. I've had this discussion many times, the best example was in a debate on the Man City/Man Utd data issue posts. Mangala was about 10-15CA higher than Smalling. But he was by far a worse defender. Furthermore Managala had a higher PA (around 170) and Smalling was around 150. This was the main cause of controversy - "Oh god how is Mangala a 20PA better player than Smalling!" [insert rage here] posts. I went through that issue in such meticulous detail to demonstrate how as an actual defender, when you strip out the physical attributes, Smalling was a better defender by about 30CA. Even if Mangala hit his PA of 170 he couldn't be as good a defender as Smalling at the start of the game in that edition somewhere around the 140CA mark. Of course physical attributes matter, but Mangala was on the extremes, and this always throws it out much like it has historically for Agbonlahor and Walcott. 

My point still stands that the PA system works better if you don't know the number. The reality isn't that people don't have limits on their potential, the reality is we don't know what the limits that people have on their potential are - unless you take it to extremes. We know its impossible for a person to fly like a bird does, we know its impossible for someone to lift 2000kg above their head or running 100m in 4 seconds. 

[ale1969]

56 minuti fa, santy001 ha scritto:

The reason for this is because these technically limited players had brilliant mental attributes that embodied their mindset. Glenn Whelan was never the best passer, the best tackler nor had the best vision - but he grafted hard. Give him 15 more PA to grow into and all of a sudden you've got a midfielder at around 140CA who would've been one of the best in the game. However, give some players even 30 more PA to grow into, and have them grow into it, and it won't do all that much for them. Ravel Morrison in FM's gone by being a perfect example.

Sorry but PA creates exactly the problem you fear. As I posted above there shouldn't be any irrealistic PA, which is a wild guess for most of the players and need rebalancing at every DB update, you have to use a "median" (call it average if you want to use a simpler word) ability, alas the ability of the player in his prime years in a "neutral" situation. Then Whelan would not have 30 more PA to grow into, probably he would have 120 CA and 100-110 MA, alas a player that is playing over its level because of the right situation he is at Stoke. Put him on the bench as a reserve in a bigger club, with a manager who doesn't use it in games and its CA should decrease to MA or even below. But let's say that he continues to play well at Stokes, being an unmovable first teamer, get some good ratings, high % passing and tackles and so on, I don't see why his CA should not grow, obviously the most CA grows far from his MA the more the growth should be slow, but it won't have a hard cap at 120 that is completely unrealistic.

It's just harder to code and balance but neither unrealistic, exploitable and it would make also researcher job a lot easier as they shouldn't make so much wild guesses.

 

[santy001]

On 11/10/2018 at 00:34, ale1969 said:

But to avoid to end up with a world full of Messi and Ronaldo there should be an "average (or statistically more correct "median") PA" which is the the PA a full-delevop player can keep consistently during its game years UNLESS there are events that cause a drop in form (injuries, being  constantly a reserve, bad luck, wrong career move, etc...) or , on reverse, events that bring out its unforseeable qualities like constant good performances (not just ratings, but also technical gestures like takles for a defender, dribbles, % of passes and so on), a manager who believes in him and keep him in the first team, etc 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the only fleshing out of this "median PA" concept.

At no point do you say where the "MA" as it were comes from. This is where the big problem is. Who decides the median? It's a statistical term, but it seems as though you're either suggesting the researcher offers up this median value (which then just means its potential ability under another guise, and still as good a guess as the researcher can make with extra steps) or you're averaging it from the team the player plays for (which would be subject to player manipulation) or the division the player plays in (which would be horribly subject to player manipulation).

One thing that many people forget is how many systems are now built upon the PA foundation. PA is simple because its basically the tree trunk that supports all these other different branches in the game that are largely unnoticed in the game. Much to SI's credit by the way. 

[ale1969]

2 ore fa, santy001 ha scritto:

At no point do you say where the "MA" as it were comes from. This is where the big problem is. Who decides the median? It's a statistical term, but it seems as though you're either suggesting the researcher offers up this median value (which then just means its potential ability under another guise, and still as good a guess as the researcher can make with extra steps)

Median Ability as I wrote it's the ability a player has shown on average during its prime years and of course it is "decided" by the same people who decides on PA, with the difference that PA is hypothetical while MA is based on the actual ability.

Of course for young players not completely developed MA is pretty the same than PA but more conservative, since it can be surpassed by CA, but for established players is far more realistic than PA. For example you have a Premiere player who usually get its 6-6,5 rating every week. His MA could be around 130 with CA pretty the same. Let's say that he have a great season, his CA could raise till 140, then next season he got a serious injury and once back fail to go back into the first team. His CA could drop back to 130 or even 120. He get sold to another team, get first team football again and he recovers to CA 125-130... etc etc

If you inspect players of 24-28 age in game you usually have them with CA about 90-100% of PA depending of various factors. With MA it's pretty the same but if the player plays consistently well it could raise to 105-110% of MA giving some dynamic to the player abilities. You won't get a Messi out of an average player but you can get a Vardy.

[santy001]

But there lies the big problem. You can't know when a players peak years were until after the end of their career. The PA system doesn't have this glaring flaw, because it's supposed to be the fact that the PA represents their best - whenever their best happens to come.

Under this situation it's always going to be the question of "do we think this player has peaked?" and as I said, you only know that with hindsight after the career - or at least when a player is pushing their mid 30's. What most of your post then goes onto is changes in CA, rather than anything tangible about PA. An injury in the middle of your career, unless truly devastating, doesn't affect your potential. But it can put you back a bit where you're at right now. And if you fail to get back into the team after the injury and only play reserve football you can end up a bit worse off. Then if the player moves and is playing well and getting regular, competitive game time again it will go back up. This stuff is all in the game already. You're making the mistake of development and sustaining a level of performance as a footballer with their overall potential. 

The last part still comes back to an impossible line of thinking for what the game is representing in whatever guise you want to call it. The game is aiming to represent a human beings genetic limitations on what they can achieve. So if a player can lift 100kg at his absolute best, and that's all he has the genetics to be capable of achieving... Whether he's currently only lifting 50kg or if he's lifting 99kg playing consistently well doesn't give him the potential to lift an extra 5-10kg the potential to do that was either never on the table for this player, or it was lost before his professional football career began. 

- - -

Again it has to be pointed out that this does nothing to help bring through the Jamie Vardy type player. Because at age 25/26 you would assume the bulk of his development is behind him. Under this MA situation he would never be close to even becoming a league one striker. Mainly because the CA level he likely had with Fleetwood town and prior was so low that this system would never allow the acquisition of what was presumably going from around 80CA to around 150CA by raising potential. Further to this, the thing that makes Jamie Vardy in FM is not his CA or his PA. It's the spread of his attributes that aim at replicating Jamie Vardy in FM. The argument is very much valid that if it takes X amount of CA to replicate the player in the game, then that's the amount of CA he should have. There being mechanisms in the game that allow for random fluctuations on this mean that it's very easy to diverge away from as accurate a representation as we can offer the game. 

EA do a wonderful job already of being able to offer players through ultimate team's team of the week/team of the season that are nothing like the player that they are based upon. I'd rather that we weren't actively pursuing the same with FM. 

[ale1969]

7 ore fa, santy001 ha scritto:

But there lies the big problem. You can't know when a players peak years were until after the end of their career. The PA system doesn't have this glaring flaw, because it's supposed to be the fact that the PA represents their best - whenever their best happens to come.

Under this situation it's always going to be the question of "do we think this player has peaked?" and as I said, you only know that with hindsight after the career - or at least when a player is pushing their mid 30's. What most of your post then goes onto is changes in CA, rather than anything tangible about PA. An injury in the middle of your career, unless truly devastating, doesn't affect your potential. But it can put you back a bit where you're at right now. And if you fail to get back into the team after the injury and only play reserve football you can end up a bit worse off. Then if the player moves and is playing well and getting regular, competitive game time again it will go back up. This stuff is all in the game already. You're making the mistake of development and sustaining a level of performance as a footballer with their overall potential. 

Sorry, but this is exactly the strongest argument against a fixed PA: you cannot know when a players peaks and at which ability level the peak is!  It's unrealistic and make the game very boring scouting wise. The star rating is far more important that game stats, ratings, etc that in the real world are the bread and butter of scouting. How many times you buy a 5 stars striker from a lower division instead than buying the 3 stars top scorer of the same division?

With CA without a hard cap (beside the hard coded 200 limit) you let the game decide, resulting in a more realistic and dynamic gameplay. And if you noticed the star system already takes in account player performance, so why not increasing its CA also without having a hard limit like PA?

The MA (median ability) will work just like an "attractor" to avoid CA to move too far too easily as we don't want a world full of Ronaldos just because they were the top scorer for years in League1. But again if a player manages to be the top scorer for years in League1 and in the actual system would have a 110 CA 110 PA I strongly believe it would be far more realistic to have a system where its CA raises to 120 with a MA of 110. 120 not 180, because it's Legue1, if it were the World Cup you can have it till 130-135 CA. But a wrong season, an injury, lot of bench could bring him back to 110 again in time.

I'd like to have ratings and playing stats recover their real life importance, not PA and meaningless stars. If I want to buy a good winger I want to search players with good cross % not someone with a 4 stars rating based on PA. There already is some code that moves player attributes depending on events: the players manage to score from range and there's a chance long shots increase, he tackles well and tackling can increase. But once he hits the PA wall it's done.

Expand that code and take out PA and gamers will finally have to worry about playing performances and not meaningless numbers in the editor.

[santy001]

PA is unrealistic only because we don't happen to be gods on the FM research team with omniscience. Don't get me wrong, it's a major problem that we all wish were different. However, it represents something very, very real - the limits of a humans potential. We all have a potential, this is not infinite, this is not malleable. We either achieve the potential, or we do not. Usain Bolt had the potential to run 100m in 9.58 seconds from the day of his birth, no one knew it at the time, no one knew it 18 years later. But the potential was always there and eventually he fulfilled it. Maybe he had the potential to run it in 9.55 or 9.52 - we don't know for certain but our role in FM, if we were to be setting some kind of "Potential 100m sprint speed" would look carefully at it all and offer our best educated guess.

Yes, it's always going to be somewhat unsatisfying that there are people who are ultimately judge, jury and executioner for a players potential, especially when the view on what someones potential is comes down to a personal opinion. There's going to be variance, there's going to be disagreement. But ultimately it's needed. That is the very essence of what SI brings researchers on for though. It literally says somewhere in the welcoming pack that we are to consider ourselves the definitive authority on our club.

- - -

That aside, you're conflating form with ability. A player can be in good form and not be any better a player and a player can be out of form without being any worse. Just because someone is in good form in league 1 doesn't suddenly mean the shackles come off and their muscle density starts increasing to become stronger. Essentially the argument you'd be making is "Jamie Vardy has scored goals in league one, so his biceps should be one inch bigger" because bear in mind strength is a part of what weighs in CA and forms a part of CA. 

- - -

Coming onto the last part, you can learn an enormous amount from a players stats. Taking the time to actually take a look at some of them can be enormously beneficial. As can the scout reports descriptions about players. It's not perfect, if anything, scout reports making it a little too easy to know a bad player when you scout one at a young age but that's a separate issue entirely. PA genuinely makes no difference to what you can know about a players ability to play in a certain role in your team. However, we come back to the biggest problem at all. The fact you know the PA. If you don't know the PA then it will feel like in game that the player has just hit an organic limit somewhere along the line.

The star rating system is nothing more than a guide for players who struggle to actually look at the stats they want to check, for players who don't know how to better work out what they want. The star system is of little importance to me. Perhaps say identifying where there might be bargains to be had, because players pulling 2 star ratings that look very good for what I'm after tend to come much cheaper than the 4 star rated yet similar player.

FM in general works a lot better when you don't know how it works. I know this because I do know the PA's for a lot of players going into FM each year, I know the attribute combinations that guarantee an extremely deadly forward. I know how to inspect players for certain things that are as close as a guarantee you can get on player development. Sadly SI don't send us a pill that erases our memory of everything we learn as researchers so we can go back to playing the game normally. I imagine it must be even worse for those who work on developing the game and know in significantly greater deal the inner workings of FM. 

[ale1969]

4 ore fa, santy001 ha scritto:

PA is unrealistic only because we don't happen to be gods on the FM research team with omniscience. Don't get me wrong, it's a major problem that we all wish were different. However, it represents something very, very real - the limits of a humans potential. We all have a potential, this is not infinite, this is not malleable. We either achieve the potential, or we do not. Usain Bolt had the potential to run 100m in 9.58 seconds from the day of his birth, no one knew it at the time, no one knew it 18 years later. But the potential was always there and eventually he fulfilled it. Maybe he had the potential to run it in 9.55 or 9.52 - we don't know for certain but our role in FM, if we were to be setting some kind of "Potential 100m sprint speed" would look carefully at it all and offer our best educated guess.

 

Sorry but football is far far and I mean far more sophisticated than running 100 meters under 10 seconds.

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The star rating system is nothing more than a guide for players who struggle to actually look at the stats they want to check, for players who don't know how to better work out what they want. The star system is of little importance to me. Perhaps say identifying where there might be bargains to be had, because players pulling 2 star ratings that look very good for what I'm after tend to come much cheaper than the 4 star rated yet similar player.

Oh my, so PA, which is rigid, should be untouchable, but the star system, which is dynamic, is unuseful and can be skipped.  

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little importance to me

Don't assume it is of little importance to other people. And anyway it's a game feature for years.

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FM in general works a lot better when you don't know how it works.

 

Exactly the reason why there shouldn't be any fixed, hard coded stats that makes every save predictable. You want to have the players that always behave the same but without knowing how they behave, make peace with your mind sir.

[santy001]

Well I mean that was the whole point, it was aimed at being a subtle tool to help bridge the gap in the understanding/concept of potential ability that you have demonstrated and what it actually is in FM terms. 

Your response to this suggests that you still don't actually have a grasp on what PA is. Especially coupled with earlier responses under which the Median Ability system you propose would function the same as PA for anyone under the age of about 30 - but have all these extra steps put in place that make little sense.

[ale1969]

16 minuti fa, santy001 ha scritto:

Well I mean that was the whole point, it was aimed at being a subtle tool to help bridge the gap in the understanding/concept of potential ability that you have demonstrated and what it actually is in FM terms. 

Your response to this suggests that you still don't actually have a grasp on what PA is. Especially coupled with earlier responses under which the Median Ability system you propose would function the same as PA for anyone under the age of about 30 - but have all these extra steps put in place that make little sense.

Since I play FM when it was named CM I guess I have a good grasp of what PA is.

You still don't manage to get the point that a footballer is not someone who just have to run 100 meters under 10 seconds.

He is depicted in the game with a lot of stats that represent a lot of abilities, abilities that can grow through playing, experience, being trained well, being played into a tactic that makes his qualities shine while avoiding its defects not to hamper his performance too much.

PA is a CRUDE and I mean CRUDE system used for coding simplicity and convenience but that is nowhere near to the reality, so please, don't insist on that moot point.

MA is not PA, MA is not fixed, it's just a "suggestion" based on research and experience. Then CA will move through events and player ingame performances without wild swings in 99.9% of cases but it could let the surprise come in. What is really hard to understand?

If you say that it could be a programmer nightmare I'd agree with you. It would need a lot more coding and balancing to get it straight. But if you say that PA in actual terms is better, this magic number that needs to be revised at every DB update so much it correctly depicts the players' limits, come on... be serious... 

[CFuller]

16 minutes ago, ale1969 said:

You still don't manage to get the point that a footballer is not someone who just have to run 100 meters under 10 seconds.

That is NOT the point Santy is making. He was just giving an example of a sportsperson's maximum potential. If it had been me, I would have argued that I (6ft 4in tall, strong build) wouldn't have ever had much potential as a jockey. I wouldn't have had much hope of playing professional football, either, as my coordination was (and still is) quite poor.

If you are going to replace the PA system (a key part of the series for pretty much its entire existence), it will have to be with a system that is unquestionably an improvement. Your more convoluted proposal will almost certainly not be an improvement.

[santy001]

Believe it or not, I do get it. It's using an example of something that's simpler to comprehend but serves the same purpose. The reason for this is because despite having played the game since CM as you say - you don't actually seem to have a grasp on what PA represents - hence why you're then obsessing over this point about the analogy I made with the 100m sprint.

I too have played the game since it was under the CM title, in addition to this I've had 6 years of tremendous guidance from the head researchers at SI. I've had copious amounts of documentation sent to me. Just this year in fact SI have given researchers a 218 page, 103,000 word document. In addition to this there are numerous spreadsheets provided by SI and collated by other researchers, and there is even researcher forums in which researchers can discuss things further. 

 

17 minutes ago, ale1969 said:

If you say that it could be a programmer nightmare I'd agree with you. It would need a lot more coding and balancing to get it straight. But if you say that PA in actual terms is better, this magic number that needs to be revised at every DB update so much it correctly depicts the players' limits, come on... be serious... 

Here's the thing, you're massively demonstrating how you don't understand here because PA's hardly get touched. They get changed and refined for younger players, but in my Stoke team I haven't touched the PA of Charlie Adam, Ibrahim Affelay, Joe Allen, Badou Ndiaye, Moritz Bauer, Saido Berahino, Geoff Cameron, Coupo-Moting, Peter Crouch, Mame Diouf, Darren Fletcher, Lee Grant, Stephen Ireland, Glen Johnson, Martins Indi, Erik Pieters, Xherdan Shaqiri, Ryan Shawcross, Ramadan Sobhi, Jese, Kurt Zouma, Thibaud Verlinden, Oliver Shenton, and many others just in the last year of research that I still have the files for on my PC to check. I didn't include Butland because I don't recall with him, but I don't think his PA has been changed since prior to his injury in the friendly against Germany a couple years back. Even for youngsters, Oliver Shenton, Thibaud Verlinden and Julien Ngoy I haven't changed their PA's from the -7/-8 they have. The only players PA I remember changing in the last 12 months has been that of Tom Edwards, and that was up to a -6 from a -5. 

It's just hyperbole to suggest we're revising the PA of players every 6 months. It's utter, utter nonsense. Are there going to be PA changes? Absolutely, seasons finish at different times of the year and players are breaking through or falling away all the time. But from what Miles says there's over a thousand of us researchers contributing to many many thousands of footballers. I expect overall the volume of PA changes as a % of total players in the game is extremely small. 

What are we actually doing every data update then? Well we're making adjustments to represent their development. Not their potential but where they are at and have been over the last few months. We can reassess potential if the need is there, but a player needs to be close to that originally assigned potential before you start asking the question does the potential need altering further? Based on your posts in this thread you're confusing form and current ability (the whole thing with CA adjusting under this Median Ability if a player is playing well) and then confusing current ability and potential ability when declaring just what it is the research team does.

[ale1969]

In questo momento, CFuller ha scritto:

That is NOT the point Santy is making. He was just giving an example of a sportsperson's maximum potential. If it had been me, I would have argued that I (6ft 4in tall, strong build) wouldn't have ever had much potential as a jockey. I wouldn't have had much hope of playing professional football, either, as my coordination was (and still is) quite poor.

If you are going to replace the PA system (a key part of the series for pretty much its entire existence), it will have to be with a system that is unquestionably an improvement. Your more convoluted proposal will almost certainly not be an improvement.

Again with this moot point. If it existed something like "a sportsperson's maximum potential" there would be no need to change PA every 6 months for a lot of players. Maybe Ferguson was a dork because he didn't recognize Pogba's maximum potential (I should reinstall some old FM just to have a look at what his PA were once and laugh a bit). In reality no scout, manager or other professional can be 100% sure of what a player's maximum potential is, but in FM is inscribed in rock like Moses' Laws.

So please, put the point aside.

My proposal to have a MA it's just because I understand Herne's concerns on not to have a world full of Messi and Ronaldo and to have a practical instrument to check the DB sanity.

But giving players a chance to expand (or reduce for the matter) their CA without no hard coded limit but depending on game events would make the game really enjoyable without no save be the same. Right, your young striker with CA 80 and MA 110 99.99% of times will never become Messi, but there should be the 0.01% chance.

I'm really puzzled you don't notice how much the game is "mechanic" save after save after save, you already know what the good player are, what the young talents are, you bought them, you develop some and don't give sh**t to other etc, you give up with young players with just 3 stars because you know that 90% of time their PA is mediocre regardless of their performances, etc... 

And please don't say "I played my 3 stars young player till he became mature and it played great also in CL finals". It won't happen, I never saw a game when it happened, if I browse all reknown players with their 20 years long save they don't have any 3 stars first teamer regen, so please, really, don't.

[CFuller]

4 minutes ago, ale1969 said:

And please don't say "I played my 3 stars young player till he became mature and it played great also in CL finals". It won't happen, I never saw a game when it happened, if I browse all reknown players with their 20 years long save they don't have any 3 stars first teamer regen, so please, really, don't.

What if I told you that I had a striker who came through my youth team in the Conference and then became a solid first-team squad member for the best part of the next 15 years? Though he was never rated any higher than a good League One striker, he was scoring Premier League goals and playing in a Champions League Final aged 33.

Then there's the trusty ball-winning midfielder who my assistant never rated above 3.5* PA, and who was apparently never any good enough for the Premier League. He still played consistently well for me whenever called upon and was even capped by England.

3* at the very top level is good, not mediocre. Even 2* is good. But this isn't a discussion about star ratings, is it?

[ale1969]

48 minuti fa, santy001 ha scritto:

It's just hyperbole to suggest we're revising the PA of players every 6 months. It's utter, utter nonsense. Are there going to be PA changes? Absolutely, seasons finish at different times of the year and players are breaking through or falling away all the time. But from what Miles says there's over a thousand of us researchers contributing to many many thousands of footballers. I expect overall the volume of PA changes as a % of total players in the game is extremely small. 

What are we actually doing every data update then? Well we're making adjustments to represent their development. Not their potential but where they are at and have been over the last few months. We can reassess potential if the need is there, but a player needs to be close to that originally assigned potential before you start asking the question does the potential need altering further? Based on your posts in this thread you're confusing form and current ability (the whole thing with CA adjusting under this Median Ability if a player is playing well) and then confusing current ability and potential ability when declaring just what it is the research team does.

No, you don't really get the point but since it's not a battle between me and you, and I don't really want to argue for the pleasure of it, I'd make an example based on a player I know well: Simone Verdi.

Here you have him in the last FM games https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-2018/player/43061356/simone-verdi

Notice how his CA and PA has been revised because in the last two seasons at Bologna he played at a completely different level than before thanks to a role change, from central AM to IF/Wide PM, and a manager who fully supported him.

He also managed to get some national team caps while just two years before Milan let him go for about 2ml € and with the unneeded player label. Last June Bologna sold him to Naples for 25ml €.

You'd say, ok, researchers aren't God, they can make mistakes, it's just a low probability occasion when the huge majority of other players have their PA correct.

Yeah, I agree with you, but it's not the point that you reaserchers made some mistake, Milan professionals made a mistake that costed the club millions of € and they are paid by thousands!

The point is that if in FM15 you bought Verdi, he was close to his full potential, he should be 125 CA 130 PA or something similar, and 3 season after he won't be at 150 CA like he is now in FM18! You could play him every match, find a new role like it happened in RL, train him better, no matter what, at best he won't decline from his 130/130 CA/PA. That's the point! That where I say that the game is too much mechanic and predictable!

I'm not saying that there should be incredible swings for every player in the DB, I'm just saying that CA should be linked more to game dynamics without having a hardcoded PA that cuts out every chance of it to happen! Let's say that players like Verdi are a 1% probability? Ok, but it's the 1% that helps making Football unpredictable.

[Haiku]

Stop it guys. Potential is nonsense. No one can predict his future, let alone the future of others. PA is a liability which fixes certain boundaries to the game world so that we always have the same wonderkids and future stars. When I start a save on FM18 and have 15m in the bank I almost immediately throw them for Mathijs De Ligt. Why? Because he will be a beast defender in no time, that happens in every single save I start. Sigh, I don't need scouts in my first seasons, because I know who to sign in order to make a team of future world beaters. That's what I don't like, PA is making the game repetitive.

[santy001]

@Haiku that's not an issue with potential itself though. The development side of the game is what leads to that. Thibaud Verlinden is a -8 in FM18. No one ever seems to post much about him on these forums, I recall one post a year or so back where someone had him at AC Milan but that wasn't the case. There's a player there who could potentially have 170PA when the game starts, young, fairly cheap to acquire (Stoke will often part with him for around £1-£2m) yet no one is lapping up this lad. 

I know the reason why, it's why no one has ever been raving about the high rated youngsters that have come from Stoke down the years. This is an area SI are constantly working on though. It still comes back to it though, if you don't want to know about these players and don't want the same experience... why do you know his PA? It is again the case that if you don't go out of your way to look up the PA, this isn't in your mind. I only found out de Ligt is a -9 when looking him up to make this post.

- - -

@ale1969 your post there just comes back to the point I was making earlier. Either it's something that players can manipulate (it's not guaranteed, but definitely something you can target), and trigger the cause of growth in players. Or it's pure RNG. Now you're also suggesting that this option you've put forth will allow a player to increase by 20PA. This brings me back to that point that if in years gone by when there was a younger Jon Walters, or a younger Glenn Whelan at Stoke, and they were in such a position an extra 20PA for them would've turned them into genuinely world class players.

If your criticism is it's unrealistic as it is because it limits Verdi, then your suggestion is also unrealistic because it will just instead create hundreds of others in the course of a game who are that Verdi type player but have no right being. 

There were enough complaints last year that Saido Berahino was scoring 10 goals in some peoples saves. The data issues thread on Stoke details some of the discussion, and I think there's a couple of posts on general discussion too somewhere lost in the ether. Imagine a situation in which Saido Berahino could be in the game, start playing well because an AI manager changes the formation that brings the best out of him and 2-3 years down the line Saido Berahino is a 185PA player with a CA coming in close on that rapidly. It'd be hilariously awful. You'd be screaming for the system to be changed.

[ale1969]

3 minuti fa, santy001 ha scritto:

If your criticism is it's unrealistic as it is because it limits Verdi, then your suggestion is also unrealistic because it will just instead create hundreds of others in the course of a game who are that Verdi type player but have no right being. 

There were enough complaints last year that Saido Berahino was scoring 10 goals in some peoples saves. The data issues thread on Stoke details some of the discussion, and I think there's a couple of posts on general discussion too somewhere lost in the ether. Imagine a situation in which Saido Berahino could be in the game, start playing well because an AI manager changes the formation that brings the best out of him and 2-3 years down the line Saido Berahino is a 185PA player with a CA coming in close on that rapidly. It'd be hilariously awful. You'd be screaming for the system to be changed.

This is a straw man argument: if there will be 10, 100, 1000 or 10000 "Verdi" depends on how the chances for a CA growth are coded and balanced, not something you can know today unless you are sure SI programmers and game supervisors aren't reliable people that don't know what they're doing. 

What we know today it's that the actual system is unrealistic.

[Haiku]

57 minutes ago, santy001 said:

It still comes back to it though, if you don't want to know about these players and don't want the same experience... why do you know his PA? It is again the case that if you don't go out of your way to look up the PA, this isn't in your mind. I only found out de Ligt is a -9 when looking him up to make this post.

I don't know their PA, because I never use in-game editor and 3rd party tools. I just know from previous save games that De Ligt, Moise Kean etc. always develop into beasts. 

[Scoham]

Dynamic PA isn't what's needed, it's how players develop that needs to be improved. Get that right and researchers could then be more generous with PA and the game could be more unpredictable and feel more dynamic.

[ale1969]

I'm watching now Poland vs Italy with striker Kevin Lasagna entering as a substitute. Lasagna in 2013/14, aged 22, was playing in Cerea with amateurs then he was sold to Carpi in the Italian serie B legue, then serie A, then Udinese where finally he started to score regularly. If I go back to FM14 probably that player isn't even in the DB or, if he exists, he would have a ridiculous PA and with good reason because if one researcher could spot his talent he could work as a pro scout for every top club in Europe 😜

Or we can talk about Nainggolan who played for Piacenza U19 in Italian serie C before becoming a top class European midfielder. Also Hamsik played in Brescia U19 in serie B.

I'm sorry Santy, there are many stories like Verdi, Lasagna, Hamsik or Nainggolan as these are the first ones that I could recall without doing any research. There aren't probably thousands and thousands of them, but there are many and right now these stories are pretty impossibile to find in FM until regens finally put some unpredictably into the game.

[CFuller]

Are you seriously using Marek Hamsik as an example of why PA shouldn't be static? Wasn't it quite obvious at a young age (perhaps even while still playing for Brescia) that he was likely to develop into a fine player?

I still don't know why you're so hung up on this idea that a player with a lowish PA can never become a good player in a top league. Any player with strong attributes and a strong attribute spread in a system that suits him well can potentially overachieve (to some extent) - sometimes when managed by a human, but also when managed by the AI.

[ale1969]

4 minuti fa, CFuller ha scritto:

Are you seriously using Marek Hamsik as an example of why PA shouldn't be static? Wasn't it quite obvious at a young age (perhaps even while still playing for Brescia) that he was likely to develop into a fine player?

I still don't know why you're so hung up on this idea that a player with a lowish PA can never become a good player in a top league. Any player with strong attributes and a strong attribute spread in a system that suits him well can potentially overachieve (to some extent) - sometimes when managed by a human, but also when managed by the AI.

You can't find Hamsik in any wonderkid list for FM 05 but you can see in that game Freddy Adu becoming the new Pele as a fabulous example of how the PA system is realistic.

[CFuller]

7 minutes ago, ale1969 said:

You can't find Hamsik in any wonderkid list for FM 05 but you can see in that game Freddy Adu becoming the new Pele as a fabulous example of how the PA system is realistic.

You'll do well to find someone who WASN'T excited about a 15-year-old Freddy Adu in 2004. Plenty were excited about Cherno Samba and Valeri Bojinov too, not just in the CM/FM community.

The truth is that LOADS of players are tipped for huge things in reality and in the game, but most don't fulfil their supposed potential. For every Messi or Mbappé, there's a Serge Makofo or a Carlos Fierro. Why should that mean that pretty much any average mid-20s professional in FM could become the next Jamie Vardy, which is what you seem to be suggesting?

[ale1969]

1 minuto fa, CFuller ha scritto:

You'll do well to find someone who WASN'T excited about a 15-year-old Freddy Adu in 2004. Plenty were excited about Cherno Samba and Valeri Bojinov too, not just in the CM/FM community.

The truth is that LOADS of players are tipped for huge things in reality and in the game, but most don't fulfil their supposed potential. For every Messi or Mbappé, there's a Serge Makofo or a Carlos Fierro. Why should that mean that pretty much any average mid-20s professional in FM could become the next Jamie Vardy, which is what you seem to be suggesting?

It means that the PA system is just a useful and easy tool to keep things uncomplicated, but nowhere near any realistic simulation. It creates sure-shot wonderkids that are successful every save and the other while not allowing any surprise in many other players that aren't correctly guessed just because none of us is a prophet.

I told you, it's mechanical and if I start today a new career in FM18 I already know which players to buy, which players to sell, etc... boring! Most of the times I start from low legues or in some obscure country just to avoid the first years of complete predictability, then with regens you can have some fresh stuff because randomness kicks in even if randomness is a poor solution.

Of course it's something that makes people looks for some surprise coming out of FM19, so maybe it's also a marketing tool.  Don't know. It's just that IMHO the most important thing should be stats as in real life with everything else that should be hidden from players. Right now stats aren't even saved after the season end, except few ones because it would cram too much data in memory and saves.

 

[CFuller]

3 minutes ago, ale1969 said:

It means that the PA system is just a useful and easy tool to keep things uncomplicated, but nowhere near any realistic simulation. It creates sure-shot wonderkids that are successful every save and the other while not allowing any surprise in many other players that aren't correctly guessed just because none of us is a prophet.

I don't know about that. In one of my FM13 saves, Serge Gnabry became a regular starter for AC Milan. In another, I signed him on a free transfer for my local club in the Conference South.

6 minutes ago, ale1969 said:

I told you, it's mechanical and if I start today a new career in FM18 I already know which players to buy, which players to sell, etc... boring!

Here's a novel idea: don't sign them. 

[Haiku]

3 minutes ago, CFuller said:

Here's a novel idea: don't sign them. 

Wow, that's a great tip. I bet if that doesn't help, then don't play FM will do?

[santy001]

And then the conversation comes back to one where people are confusing development with potential ability. All the while insisting they know what potential ability is. 

Essentially, it boils down to you saying you have an issue with triangles, but then when you say anything in depth about it you're actually talking about rectangles. 

[wkdsoul]

Always thought of it as dynamic in my head.  The chances of him making that total PA is the dynamic factor.  A perfect career he will fulfill 100%

A lower league player or younger scouted player - > If he stays where he is injury free, at that level he might make 65% of his target PA.  Bet i can sign him up and get him to 80%.  

The fluctuation is just the more likely target given the new circumstances (sold/formation/team/training/management/age/performance), his full PA chances can change every game/week etc.

[ale1969]

2 ore fa, santy001 ha scritto:

And then the conversation comes back to one where people are confusing development with potential ability. All the while insisting they know what potential ability is. 

Essentially, it boils down to you saying you have an issue with triangles, but then when you say anything in depth about it you're actually talking about rectangles. 

Thanks for patronizing people,

I'm still waiting to know how you can get out the actual Lasagna with the PA the prophetical and infallible reaserchers gave him in 2014. https://sortitoutsi.net/football-manager-2014/player/43092927/kevin-lasagna

Ah yes, it was just development. 

Sure.

Development made a 2-2 stars player in 2014 (probably 90-100 CA/PA at max) into a 4 -4 1/2 stars one in 2018 (probably 140 CA150 PA). 

I'm waiting you to show me a 2-2 stars player who develops after 5 years into a 4 -4 1/2 stars one (same league and average squad level of course) in your FM18 save game. Not Lasagna, anyone with initial 2 stars potential would work. Since the actual system can mimic well what happens in real football it should be easy for you to find someone who developed this way.

It's because I don't know what PA is and need your guidance, thanks.