Tutoring (Mentoring)

[tajj7]

Might be a silly question but how do I add U18 and U23 players to a mentoring group? I only see first team players, do those players have to be moved to the first team squad? 

[Seb Wassell]

3 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

Might be a silly question but how do I add U18 and U23 players to a mentoring group? I only see first team players, do those players have to be moved to the first team squad? 

Spot on.

[tajj7]

1 minute ago, Seb Wassell said:

Spot on.

Ok, bit annoying cos I don't like big scrolling first team squads but it makes logical sense I suppose. 

[Seb Wassell]

Just now, tajj7 said:

Ok, bit annoying cos I don't like big scrolling first team squads but it makes logical sense I suppose. 

Don't put all your U18/U23s in the Senior squad then

The intention is for select youngsters to be promoted and mentored, not the entire team. Mentoring is a slower process than tutoring was, it is designed for hand-picking those special youngsters.

[SD]

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

If few of those players had 4-5 PPMs at the start (some researchers do really like giving PPMs) this sounds like something for the bug forum.

Pretty sure learning PPMs from another player they train with should be a rare and (mostly) intended consequence of the mentoring groups (with a few traits like 'wind up opponents' infrequently picked up over time whether the manager wants it or not). The idea all the forwards organically start to play with their back to goal because they have an influential teammate who does is more than a little unlikely...

 

I'm still not convinced the likelihood to pick up a PPM doesn't need to be toned down.

@Seb Wassell @Cleon Below is a 2026 Sergej Milinkovic-Savic with a total of 11 PPMs, which is definitely the most I've seen on a player on any edition of FM. And we are talking about a player who's already 23 at the start of the game, so for most of the save mentoring should have had reduced influence on him.

 

Spoiler

 

[Seb Wassell]

2 minutes ago, SD said:

I'm still not convinced the likelihood to pick up a PPM doesn't need to be toned down.

@Seb Wassell @Cleon Below is a 2026 Sergej Milinkovic-Savic with a total of 11 PPMs, which is definitely the most I've seen on a player on any edition of FM. And we are talking about a player who's already 23 at the start of the game, so for most of the save mentoring should have had reduced influence on him.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

How many does he start with? 11 is certainly more than I would expect. There is a (flexible) limit on how many a player can learn, it is not infinite.

[SD]

2 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

How many does he start with? 11 is certainly more than I would expect. There is a (flexible) limit on how many a player can learn, it is not infinite.

Four, uploaded a screenshot at the start of the game.

 

Spoiler

 

[Seb Wassell]

3 minutes ago, SD said:

Four, uploaded a screenshot at the start of the game.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Cheers. Could you open a post in here please, attaching those screenshots and uploading your save -

https://community.sigames.com/forum/643-training-and-medical-centre/

[SD]

10 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

Cheers. Could you open a post in here please, attaching those screenshots and uploading your save -

https://community.sigames.com/forum/643-training-and-medical-centre/

Done, thanks for taking the time to look into this.

[Seb Wassell]

1 minute ago, SD said:

Done, thanks for taking the time to look into this.

Cheers 

[enigmatic]

@Seb Wassell can you do some statistical testing across all simulated players on the latest version of the game too please? If everyone's picking up PPMs left right and centre if they're even vaguely appropriate that's probably a bigger issue than one highly skilled player picking up 7.

[Seb Wassell]

1 minute ago, enigmatic said:

@Seb Wassell can you do some statistical testing across all simulated players on the latest version of the game too please? If everyone's picking up PPMs left right and centre if they're even vaguely appropriate that's probably a bigger issue than one highly skilled player picking up 7.

We run tests regularly.

I disagree with that being a bigger issue.

[herne79]

@enigmatic  This is something I've discussed with @Seb Wassell.  There are restrictions around transferring Traits during Mentoring, for example the players need to be getting on well and the player himself needs to meet certain criteria to be able to learn the Trait(s) such as position and relevant attributes.

I agreed with Seb to ask people to monitor in their Beta saves how Trait learning (via Mentoring) goes and to report any odd looking ones in the Training Issues Forum.  As @SD has already opened a new thread there now with his example, probably a good place to put any further examples we find .

 

[mhaffy]

On 19/10/2018 at 13:36, SD said:

Also, one of the loading tooltips says that mentoring has reduced effects once the player is over 24.

If this is accurate, and taking influence into account, it probably means we shouldn't get worried our model citizen captain in his thirties will be affected whatsoever by being around two unprofessional youngsters still in their teens.

It would be good to if SI could confirm that over a certain age your model citizen captain, say, will not see his personality affected by youngsters

[Rashidi]

17 hours ago, SD said:

Oh wow, now this is a game changer, as I've seen this floating around the tactics forum so much I never gave it a second thought.

So the corollary is that a player with both the PPM and the PI active will do even more of that action - and possibly compound each other if the modifier is multiplicative.

You have to be careful with thinking there is a compound or a multiplicative effect. A player who gets further forward as a ppm and is playing an attacking duty is not going to move even further forward. As is the case of a player who is playing an attacking duty with the instruction Comes Deep to Get Ball. In the case of the former you probably won't see the difference, and in the case of the latter you may occasionally see this attacking duty drop deep into midfield and then attempt to get up the pitch. These modify behaviour.

[Seb Wassell]

14 minutes ago, mhaffy said:

It would be good to if SI could confirm that over a certain age your model citizen captain, say, will not see his personality affected by youngsters

There is no age cut-off, but the older they are the less likely they are to be affected, positively or negatively.

[enigmatic]

3 hours ago, herne79 said:

@enigmatic  This is something I've discussed with @Seb Wassell.  There are restrictions around transferring Traits during Mentoring, for example the players need to be getting on well and the player himself needs to meet certain criteria to be able to learn the Trait(s) such as position and relevant attributes.

I agreed with Seb to ask people to monitor in their Beta saves how Trait learning (via Mentoring) goes and to report any odd looking ones in the Training Issues Forum.  As @SD has already opened a new thread there now with his example, probably a good place to put any further examples we find .

 

Fundamentally I don't think most of the traits are likely to be transferred at all IRL without manager encouragement (with the possible exception of a couple of bad habits like winding up opponents). I get that in the new system some traits won't be passed if a player is incapable of learning them or unlikely to listen to the senior player, as has afaik always been the case. But the idea that if you ask a few forwards to train as a group with a couple of influential senior players and the result is most of them wind up tending to play with their back to goal, making late runs into the area and cutting inside after a season or two even though you brought them together for much more straightforward team bonding reasons is... frankly insane. 

At the moment mentoring sounds suspiciously like an overpowered and artificial but at least controllable tutoring system has been replaced by an overpowered and artificial total crapshoot  At least the total personality transplant was an intended consequence.

I've bought the game now, so I can test for myself  

[SD]

3 hours ago, Rashidi said:

A player who gets further forward as a ppm and is playing an attacking duty is not going to move even further forward.

Even further forward I'd imagine not, but isn't he going to make these forward runs even more often than a player without the PPM?

Granted, this newfound knowledge changes little to the way I'd employ the player in your example, but for me it opens a host of new possibilities for most other positions - say getting a WB(s) to make runs as aggressively as a WB(a), but without the increased dribbling and crossing of the latter.

On a similar note, am I correct to assume that TIs and PIs interact in a similar way, for instance would Run at Defence TI make a winger dribble even more? Until now, I thought it was just a team-wide version of the Dribble More PI, and that it did nothing for roles with the PI already active.

[y0lo]

I think it is probably the case that keeping mentoring groups down to a minimum of 3, or one tutor for every tutee in the group, will maximize your tutoring experience.

[SD]

33 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

But the idea that if you ask a few forwards to train as a group with a couple of influential senior players and the result is most of them wind up tending to play with their back to goal, making late runs into the area and cutting inside after a season or two even though you brought them together for much more straightforward team bonding reasons is... frankly insane. 

I think it's a good system at its core and certainly way more plausible than the old tutoring system, just that the numbers need some tweaking.

After this thread I'm very much sold on the new system, but I do have one concern left. I don't mind mentoring being limited to players within the same squad, but I'd be disappointed if the optimal way to develop your players was to move all your reserves players to the first team.

I'm going to do just that on my beta save and I'm hoping to find some downsides to doing it that are large enough to make the practice not worth it. This seems to me such an obvious workaround that I think it's likely the dev team considered it.

However, the argument about coaches workload is moot for English teams where first team and reserves train together. And even then, hiring some extra coaches may well be worth it, if it allows you to get more of your prospects involved in mentoring.

So far, my guess is that doing that would either mess up in some way the social dynamics of the first team or that players playing the reserves fixtures need to have their training schedule built around these fixtures rather than the ones of the first team.

 

[Seb Wassell]

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Fundamentally I don't think most of the traits are likely to be transferred at all IRL without manager encouragement (with the possible exception of a couple of bad habits like winding up opponents). I get that in the new system some traits won't be passed if a player is incapable of learning them or unlikely to listen to the senior player, as has afaik always been the case. But the idea that if you ask a few forwards to train as a group with a couple of influential senior players and the result is most of them wind up tending to play with their back to goal, making late runs into the area and cutting inside after a season or two even though you brought them together for much more straightforward team bonding reasons is... frankly insane. 

At the moment mentoring sounds suspiciously like an overpowered and artificial but at least controllable tutoring system has been replaced by an overpowered and artificial total crapshoot  At least the total personality transplant was an intended consequence.

I've bought the game now, so I can test for myself  

Mentoring is also about sharing player traits amongst players, not just personality adjustments. In fact, inheriting on-pitch habits is much more likely than fundamentally changing ones personality when spending time with another player in training.

[Seb Wassell]

2 hours ago, SD said:

So far, my guess is that doing that would either mess up in some way the social dynamics of the first team or that players playing the reserves fixtures need to have their training schedule built around these fixtures rather than the ones of the first team.

[Seb Wassell]

Just to acknowledge that we are indeed investigating if too many player traits can be passed on too easily.

However, it should remain the case that, on average, passing on a playing trait is easier than affecting someone's personality.

[SD]

4 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

Feels good to see you hinting there are indeed drawbacks, but I'm still going to give it a try to see how big they are.

I noticed the personalities of many first team players have been revamped and many of them were re-evaluated towards the top end of the spectrum. This didn't seem to happen to reserves or youth players, though - I don't think it's even possible in the first place, for practical reasons.

Where I'm getting at is that even if the new system is a lot less sure-fire than tutoring, there's a lot to gain by "fixing" the personalities of your prospects, so it's not enough that there are drawbacks to gaming the same-squad limitation, but that these drawbacks need to be large enough to make up for the gains.

[westy8chimp]

@enigmatic in your savic example, was he actively put in mentoring groups? Or did he pick up all those ppms from general squad behaviours? (in the way a highly driven side could have a positive effect, without tutoring, in fm17... And more so determination consistently dropping in 18 because of one bad apple)

As long as it is via mentoring groups it shouldnt be a huge issue... Assuming AI is sensible at choosing relevat group.

Savic is probably a bad example too as he has high determination, great personality and i assume good professionalism...so whilst being 23, still more maleable than your average player let alone ravel morrison types...

Its 100% better than tutoring (altho i will miss that exploit!) but i do share some of your concerns. 

Seb made a great point tho, that learning traits tranferrable to the pitch is far more realistic than changing personality over night. 

Im guessing its going to be magnificent when used in the right circumstance i. E. Chuck phil foden and brahim diaz in with david ailva and de bruyne so they learn to curl the ball, try kiler balls and switch flank etc. But more detrimental too if used unwisely i. E asking a classic TM to mentor a poacher so they end up back to goal etc

[tyro]

My newest attempt resulted from my hot prospect Brazilian being in no core social group and mentioning that he thought it might be easier to fit in than it is (paraphrasing).

So I set up a group of just Brazilians to maybe get him used to the club. Help him out. Show him the Brazilian shops and community in the area? Sounds logical to me. Let's see if it works and he gets integrated faster. Now I'm not expecting him maximize his football mentoring but with fellow countrymen and some guidance he should become part of a social group or form a new one and then he can learn the technical parts. 

[herne79]

10 hours ago, SD said:

However, the argument about coaches workload is moot for English teams where first team and reserves train together. And even then, hiring some extra coaches may well be worth it, if it allows you to get more of your prospects involved in mentoring.

So far, my guess is that doing that would either mess up in some way the social dynamics of the first team or that players playing the reserves fixtures need to have their training schedule built around these fixtures rather than the ones of the first team.

Great observation for people who want to try putting loads of youngsters into the senior squad to "get around" mentoring players in the same squad only .

[Seb Wassell]

1 hour ago, tyro said:

My newest attempt resulted from my hot prospect Brazilian being in no core social group and mentioning that he thought it might be easier to fit in than it is (paraphrasing).

So I set up a group of just Brazilians to maybe get him used to the club. Help him out. Show him the Brazilian shops and community in the area? Sounds logical to me. Let's see if it works and he gets integrated faster. Now I'm not expecting him maximize his football mentoring but with fellow countrymen and some guidance he should become part of a social group or form a new one and then he can learn the technical parts. 

To add this, when signing a new player using the "Welcome to club" interaction sets up a short period of one-on-one mentoring between two players that can help the new guy both settle and potentially influence his personality.

[fmFutbolManager]

Something I’ve not seen mentioned is the size of the mentoring groups. Avoiding any magic numbers, but is there a benefit to having 1 pro and 2 youth players in a group of say 5 pros and 2 youth players?

Mentoring, I see it as asking senior players to keep an eye on this/these kid(s), give them advice, keep their head focussed, help them learn and develop etc. and a result of this is the passing on if personality and traits etc. However, in my mind I don’t see it as some extra curricular activity where they sit in a circle and share their feelings. 

So, with how this feels in my mind, I’d probably look to introduce maybe 3 players from the youth team to my first team, the best of breed for each area and ask a few pros to look after them. So would it be better to create one big group or three smaller groups?

[Rashidi]

6 minutes ago, fmFutbolManager said:

So, with how this feels in my mind, I’d probably look to introduce maybe 3 players from the youth team to my first team, the best of breed for each area and ask a few pros to look after them. So would it be better to create one big group or three smaller groups?

It's not them sitting together singing songs at a campfire :-) More like them being in the same training squad and picking up habits. So you could do both, its entirely up to you. The best rule of thumb is not making the group too big

[Cleon]

13 minutes ago, fmFutbolManager said:

Something I’ve not seen mentioned is the size of the mentoring groups. Avoiding any magic numbers, but is there a benefit to having 1 pro and 2 youth players in a group of say 5 pros and 2 youth players?

Mentoring, I see it as asking senior players to keep an eye on this/these kid(s), give them advice, keep their head focussed, help them learn and develop etc. and a result of this is the passing on if personality and traits etc. However, in my mind I don’t see it as some extra curricular activity where they sit in a circle and share their feelings. 

So, with how this feels in my mind, I’d probably look to introduce maybe 3 players from the youth team to my first team, the best of breed for each area and ask a few pros to look after them. So would it be better to create one big group or three smaller groups?

It makes sense that 1 pro with a few youths have less individual time to spend with each individual compared to a couple of pro's with 2 youths. It's also not about what's 'best'. It's more about how do you think it should work for you. If you think something feels right and should work a specific way, then that's how you should set up. The game is moving towards getting the user to think more along these lines that previous editions of the game. SI want us to make more organic/natural decisions that suit us.

[anagain]

Interesting read. I've been grumbling a bit on the main forum this morning because I was struggling to see how this change benefitted the game.

I've tutored a lot in past FMs and never really considered a gamey side to it. I manage mostly at the lowest levels and my saves rarely last more than 5 seasons so I haven't seen any unantural gains on youngsters.

If indeed it was too easy to boost youngster in the old system then I see more positively the reasons for this change.

However, as someone who has never been too up on the deepest parts of FM, I still have some questions.

 

1. Is there a significant enough downside to just moving a good number of young players to the first team so you can have them mentored? They have their own hierarchy, so is there strong enough negatives to removing them from that hierarchy and placing them in the first team one? I can imagine a lot of managers just doing that.

As someone said above, a huge list of players to have to scroll through is one, but is it enough?

 

2. Why does training with the first team squad not count as enough to allow the player to take part in mentoring groups?

It can be argued that just training with the first team is not enough, because they're still going off playing with the U23s, and probably socialising with the U23s.

But I'd counter that if they're in the first team squad, but still playing regularly for the development squad, then are they not detached from the first team environment just as much? We see it said a lot that not playing youngsters can stunt their development, so if you avoid playing them in the U23s can that be the case? Especially if they're not quite ready to be playing first team games.

 

3. I'm a Bournemouth fan and watch a lot of website videos on training sessions. A lot of development squad players train regularly with the first team, and can be seen in bonding session videos that are also posted. They still play regularly for the development squad but rarely feature in first team plans, yet are they not in some sort of mentoring group? The real world equivalent, if you like.

Is there a case to allow adding of U23 or U18 players to mentoring squads with perhaps a penalty for a splitting of groups around match time? For intstance they train with the first team throughout the week, working with and learning from experienced pros, then at weekends/around matchdays they split into squads.

In many ways it seems counter intuitive to me to have to move players, who are obviously suited to be in U23 or U18 squads, to the first team just so they can learn. I feel that because surely they're already learning if they're training with pros.

 

4. Can U18s players be moved to U23 squads and gain benefits from mentoring groups in the U23s that they might not get from the U18s. I see it that there could be a process where by youngsters move through the squads, and sometimes there is a particularly gifted or promising youngster that moves up a category early to learn from a higher group. So is there a case for creating mentoring groups in the U23s that you can occaisonally add a promising U18s player to to improve him? I suppose you could occaisonally have an ageing pro in the U23s that they further learn from.

 

I'm seeing benefits more now than I did earlier today, but there's still factors I'm not loving, or am just unsure about. I admit I'm used to the tutoring system, but as I doubt I ever gamed it to any high degree I'm not keen to lose that possibility to have a pro tutor a youngster. Saying that, reading this thread has opened my eyes to how the gaminess I wasn't so aware of made things too easy.

Thanks to @westy8chimpfor directing me here. I hope you guys that reside here don't find my questions too ignorant. I must say my question 4 has me really intrigued at setting up a proper system of advancement for my youth. In the past I've always nicknamed players with the year of their arrival at the club and with stars etc for ability. I've promoted some and sent others out on frees, but I never felt like there was really a system in place. In many ways this new system seems much more realistic, but I'm still confused why training with the first team doesn't count as learning from the first team. That's my main point of confusion really.

Thanks in advance from a tactical novice.

[enigmatic]

10 hours ago, Seb Wassell said:

Mentoring is also about sharing player traits amongst players, not just personality adjustments. In fact, inheriting on-pitch habits is much more likely than fundamentally changing ones personality when spending time with another player in training.

The name and group sizes seems to imply mentoring should be mostly about social groups than anything else. Zlatan was noted for playing an important role in mentoring United's younger forwards, possibly helped their actual skill/movement very slightly as well as their self confidence, but none of them started hitting shots with power as a result, though I'm sure he could have taught them to strike the ball harder if that had been the intent. Lukaku still talks to his former mentor Drogba every day, but hasn't developed the trait of playing with his back to goal despite clearly having the physique to do so.

-

Separately and more importantly, I'm happy that elimination of old style tutoring means less radical personality adjustment magic, but I think for long term playability of youth-focused saves that's going to need to be balanced out by making personalities of newgens more like the starting database (relatively few nutcases, most players with most of the development attributes around or slightly above the middle) than previous issues. There was a time when seeing a bunch of obviously bad for development personalities amongst your better youth players meant "most of them will learn the errors of their ways"; now it seems to be "that group will drag everyone else in the youth team down before they get close to being ready for the first team"

[Rashidi]

56 minutes ago, anagain said:

1. Is there a significant enough downside to just moving a good number of young players to the first team so you can have them mentored? They have their own hierarchy, so is there strong enough negatives to removing them from that hierarchy and placing them in the first team one? I can imagine a lot of managers just doing that.

As someone said above, a huge list of players to have to scroll through is one, but is it enough?

 

Coaches workload increase, and the quality of training suffers. Its a cost that you will need to pay, hence the need to be qualitative about your selection instead of being quantitative.

56 minutes ago, anagain said:

2. Why does training with the first team squad not count as enough to allow the player to take part in mentoring groups?

It can be argued that just training with the first team is not enough, because they're still going off playing with the U23s, and probably socialising with the U23s.

But I'd counter that if they're in the first team squad, but still playing regularly for the development squad, then are they not detached from the first team environment just as much? We see it said a lot that not playing youngsters can stunt their development, so if you avoid playing them in the U23s can that be the case? Especially if they're not quite ready to be playing first team games.

SI based these on their need for realism after discussions with real clubs and coaches. And they found that this would be the ideal setup. I like it because there is less chance of it being abusive.

56 minutes ago, anagain said:

3. I'm a Bournemouth fan and watch a lot of website videos on training sessions. A lot of development squad players train regularly with the first team, and can be seen in bonding session videos that are also posted. They still play regularly for the development squad but rarely feature in first team plans, yet are they not in some sort of mentoring group? The real world equivalent, if you like.

Is there a case to allow adding of U23 or U18 players to mentoring squads with perhaps a penalty for a splitting of groups around match time? For intstance they train with the first team throughout the week, working with and learning from experienced pros, then at weekends/around matchdays they split into squads.

In many ways it seems counter intuitive to me to have to move players, who are obviously suited to be in U23 or U18 squads, to the first team just so they can learn. I feel that because surely they're already learning if they're training with pros.

Interesting point, cos thats exactly what i am doing. I am adding only 3-4 top players i think are worthy of being tracked and not the whole team and then i make these same players available for U-19 matches.  The issue you are trying to point out is that you conceivably want all of them exposed to mentoring. I do think that would somehow reduce the quality of sessions. And tbh there is nothing to stop you from doing it in preseason. You can put all of them in the first team if you want and make all of them available  to  the U19s.  You just need to think of the coaches workload and how you are going to solve that issue.

If a player is already 18 years old and he is still at the club he needs to be in my first team already. If he is not good enough for the first team, why is he even in the club? He needs competitive matches cos at that age, game time starts becoming very important. 

 

 

[Rashidi]

56 minutes ago, anagain said:

Can U18s players be moved to U23 squads and gain benefits from mentoring groups in the U23s that they might not get from the U18s. I see it that there could be a process where by youngsters move through the squads, and sometimes there is a particularly gifted or promising youngster that moves up a category early to learn from a higher group. So is there a case for creating mentoring groups in the U23s that you can occaisonally add a promising U18s player to to improve him? I suppose you could occaisonally have an ageing pro in the U23s that they further learn from.

 

This is interesting, personally my U23 squad is made of players who never made it and no one wants them. If a player is 18 years old he is either out on loan, or in the first team squad. If he is poor then he is in the U23 waiting to go on loan or to be sold off. 

[anagain]

3 minutes ago, Rashidi said:

Coaches workload increase, and the quality of training suffers. Its a cost that you will need to pay, hence the need to be qualitative about your selection instead of being quantitative.

SI based these on their need for realism after discussions with real clubs and coaches. And they found that this would be the ideal setup. I like it because there is less chance of it being abusive.

Interesting point, cos thats exactly what i am doing. I am adding only 3-4 top players i think are worthy of being tracked and not the whole team and then i make these same players available for U-19 matches.  The issue you are trying to point out is that you conceivably want all of them exposed to mentoring. I do think that would somehow reduce the quality of sessions. And tbh there is nothing to stop you from doing it in preseason. You can put all of them in the first team if you want and make all of them available  to  the U19s.  You just need to think of the coaches workload and how you are going to solve that issue.

If a player is already 18 years old and he is still at the club he needs to be in my first team already. If he is not good enough for the first team, why is he even in the club? He needs competitive matches cos at that age, game time starts becoming very important. 

 

Thanks for the answers. Good points. I admit I hadn't considered the coach workload.

I do have a tendency to hang on to youngsters in the hope that they'll come good. Something I know I've needed to change.

I can learn to like this. Certainly willing to give it a good go.

[Rashidi]

8 minutes ago, anagain said:

I do have a tendency to hang on to youngsters in the hope that they'll come good. Something I know I've needed to change.

We all do, but i will share with you one of my best examples. I once had a striker who was in the club till he was 19 and showed low levels of improvement, but he was a 5 star potential, went to my first team and hardly performed. So I got fed up, cos i was keeping him and coddling him like a baby. I then told him that it was time for him to go on loan, and make a statement and hopefully when he got back he would be good enough for the first team. Two seasons later he came back and he was unbelievably good. It was perfect cos the main striker was getting older, and the one on loan was ripe to start.

Sometimes coddling isn't the right thing to do even with those you think are top players. If you can't play them loan them out. They need the game time otherwise you are actually retarding their development. U23 is my retirement squad or purgatory zone. And one other thing, you need to manage the U23 schedule too, sometimes they hardly play enough games as it is. The only squad I care about is the U19 and senior side.

[Seb Wassell]

33 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Separately and more importantly, I'm happy that elimination of old style tutoring means less radical personality adjustment magic, but I think for long term playability of youth-focused saves that's going to need to be balanced out by making personalities of newgens more like the starting database (relatively few nutcases, most players with most of the development attributes around or slightly above the middle) than previous issues. There was a time when seeing a bunch of obviously bad for development personalities amongst your better youth players meant "most of them will learn the errors of their ways"; now it seems to be "that group will drag everyone else in the youth team down before they get close to being ready for the first team"

Actually in FM18 and before we had a chronic issue with newgens too often developing into ideal personalities. The fact that the human could and did exploit the tutoring system only compounded that, giving the User a significant advantage over the AI when it came to developing young players.

[Anuth]

16 minutes ago, Rashidi said:

This is interesting, personally my U23 squad is made of players who never made it and no one wants them. If a player is 18 years old he is either out on loan, or in the first team squad. If he is poor then he is in the U23 waiting to go on loan or to be sold off. 

It's similar to Spurs setup now.  U23 is for players who are not good enough for first team + some best players from U18.  While players like Kyle Walker-Peters, Foyth, Georgiou, Amos and sometimes Skipps are exclusively to First team squad and not allowed to play for U23 anymore. 

[Seb Wassell]

Also worth pointing out that if you want a player to be playing for team X it is best to have him training with team X, otherwise he'll be on a completely separate training schedule and along with not peaking correctly for matches will struggle to gain tactical familiarity. Of course, when it comes to your exceptional youngster that is good enough to spend time with/be mentored by the seniors this may be an acceptable trade-off, especially if he is earmarked for senior football soon.

[anagain]

10 minutes ago, Rashidi said:

We all do, but i will share with you one of my best examples. I once had a striker who was in the club till he was 19 and showed low levels of improvement, but he was a 5 star potential, went to my first team and hardly performed. So I got fed up, cos i was keeping him and coddling him like a baby. I then told him that it was time for him to go on loan, and make a statement and hopefully when he got back he would be good enough for the first team. Two seasons later he came back and he was unbelievably good. It was perfect cos the main striker was getting older, and the one on loan was ripe to start.

Sometimes coddling isn't the right thing to do even with those you think are top players. If you can't play them loan them out. They need the game time otherwise you are actually retarding their development. U23 is my retirement squad or purgatory zone. And one other thing, you need to manage the U23 schedule too, sometimes they hardly play enough games as it is. The only squad I care about is the U19 and senior side.

Interesting. I do often play at levels at which I find it hard to find loans for players. Hopefully that is something I can find improved in FM19. Then again, I bet someone could argue if they can't find a loan then they're maybe not good enough. I spent many years at Nybro in the lowest Swedish league for FM18 and can't recall a significant loan deal for any of my youth.

It's a little easier for me at Eastleigh in my FM19 save. I currently only have one player in my U23s and U18s. Might make it sound like I'm spouting nonsense based on that, but I know a time will come when my squads get fleshed out better.

Things for me to consider though. Glad I was directed here. Has really helped me see why this is a better way. Got to go now, but I'll be have to check up here later.

[enigmatic]

24 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

Actually in FM18 and before we had a chronic issue with newgens too often developing into ideal personalities. The fact that the human could and did exploit the tutoring system only compounded that, giving the User a significant advantage over the AI when it came to developing young players.

You're obviously more familiar with trends in save data and SI's ideal parameters than I am, but IRL top division players more likely have very good personalities than not.

Looking at "Premier League standard" (CA130+) players in the FM17 db:

- Over 500 have a professionalism of 16 or greater, and only 170 have professionalism of 1-9

- 458 have an ambition of 16 or greater and only 74 have an ambition of 1-9

- Over 500 have a determination of 17 or greater vs under 500 with a determination of 1-9, most of which were 8 or 9

The ratio gets slightly less favourable when looking at players with Premier League potential, but it's still very much skewed towards potentially good players having mostly good development factors behind their personalities, and excellent ratings being more common than below average ones. 

Whereas the distribution of newgen personality attributes historically hasn't seemed to have this very positive skew - it seems much closer to a pure random number dragged up or down by nationality and staff personality factors, and having several of the better players in a cohort with Low Determination or Slack isn't uncommon even with a good senior squad personality and OK coach/HOYD personalities. So unless newgen personality distribution has changed it seems quite plausible that the current set up will tend towards a youth team having poorer personalities than senior teams, and without any effective mechanism to address that (especially if organic personality changes are more likely to trend to the youth team middle than to the median senior player unless and until they break into the first team).

-

Much as I agree the "tutoring" was overpowered and unrealistic because the personality changes were too big. I'd have thought something niche, marginal and micromanagement intensive like working on player personalities is where the human manager should have an advantage over the AI anyway, whether that's in the form of a something that's similar to tutoring or mentoring or completely new training options aimed at personal improvement and discipline. The AI doesn't micromanage as well, but its doesn't try to do "youth only" saves like human players do.

-

On something of a tangent since we're talking about ideal personalities, I've noticed a lot more Model Citizens. Have the parameters for this been lowered again? If so, good move.

[Seb Wassell]

You can't really compare established Premier League players with 16 yr old newgens. The former have already done their developing/mentoring, the latter have not.

As mentioned above, the AI was far-outperformed by the human in the previous tutoring system. Mentoring should balance this playing field, both between AI/human and original DB/future DBs.

Personalities do change outside of Mentoring, through squad personality, in-game events, progression, etc., Mentoring is simply a focused method.

8 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Much as I agree the "tutoring" was overpowered and unrealistic because the personality changes were too big. I'd have thought something niche, marginal and micromanagement intensive like working on player personalities is where the human manager should have an advantage over the AI anyway, whether that's in the form of a something that's similar to tutoring or mentoring or completely new training options aimed at personal improvement and discipline. The AI doesn't micromanage as well, but its doesn't try to do "youth only" saves like human players do.

I categorically disagree with this. We should strive for human and AI being equal.

[SD]

23 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

I'd have thought something niche, marginal and micromanagement intensive like working on player personalities is where the human manager should have an advantage over the AI anyway, whether that's in the form of a something that's similar to tutoring or mentoring or completely new training options aimed at personal improvement and discipline.

The human player still has plenty of advantages over the AI when it comes to development. Even if you do not engage in "unethical" practices like scouting programs or wonderkid shortlists, it's impossible to mentally block out of your head that Lautaro Martinez always became a world-beater in your other saves or that everyone talks about Matthijs de Ligt IRL, and this is all info that the AI doesn't have.

[bangkonggedek]

Just an observation from my saves, I found that the game now seems to be skewed on producing a large amount of newgens with "problematic" personalities compared to the rather positive ones in regards to their development. Just an example in my current Dynamo Dresden save, out of the 13437 under 17 players found on my Europe youth package scouting, the majority (6660) are Balanced which is fine and quite realistic I suppose. But the next most common personality are Unambitious (2301), followed by Low Determination (689). Adding the factor that the gradual personality change does seem to be at a much slower pace than it was before, I suspect that by the time the save has reaching the point where it is fully populated by newgens, the game will be inundated by footballers with negative personalities.

[SD]

1 hour ago, bangkonggedek said:

Just an observation from my saves, I found that the game now seems to be skewed on producing a large amount of newgens with "problematic" personalities compared to the rather positive ones in regards to their development. Just an example in my current Dynamo Dresden save, out of the 13437 under 17 players found on my Europe youth package scouting, the majority (6660) are Balanced which is fine and quite realistic I suppose. But the next most common personality are Unambitious (2301), followed by Low Determination (689). Adding the factor that the gradual personality change does seem to be at a much slower pace than it was before, I suspect that by the time the save has reaching the point where it is fully populated by newgens, the game will be inundated by footballers with negative personalities.

One of the things I noticed, is that mentoring aside, coaches seem to report a lot more often that the team's character had a positive effect on a player. I'm not sure if this was made more likely in FM19 or now that tutoring is gone I'm simply paying more attention to these smaller inputs, but the point is that there are alternative ways build character on a youngster.

On 21/10/2018 at 08:51, Seb Wassell said:

in-game events, progression

Plus, Seb mentioned events and progression earlier this thread. Events, he's probably referring to formal warnings and the likes, those were in FM18 as well and they may have been expanded for 19, I haven't played enough into a save to tell the difference yet.  

Progression, I'm not sure if it's something new meant to represent the natural development of a human's personality, which of course doesn't stop when he turns 16 - or come to think of it, it may not even be a feature new to FM19, but just like squad character changes we didn't notice the effects because tutoring was so quick, powerful and reliable.

Last, we need to face the reality that some players will simply turn out to be irredeemable. As frustrating as may be, the football world is full of such stories.

[Miravlix]

On 21/10/2018 at 10:47, Seb Wassell said:

To add this, when signing a new player using the "Welcome to club" interaction sets up a short period of one-on-one mentoring between two players that can help the new guy both settle and potentially influence his personality.

And this is absolutely awful.

 

Pogba welcomed Paul Dybala, now Dybala has Dwells on ball PPM, but  Dybala is a high decission player so it's a awful PPM to inherit over a cup of coffee. (Edit: Thought I remembered the PPM's, but after checking I can see that Dybala is born with Dwells on ball. Still think it's awful that that welcoming a  player can influence Personality as I have no control over who get's chosen. I also realize that no one has said PPM's can be learned over the welcome cup of covfefe.)

 

1: I have no control over what player gets to welcome the new player.

2: I have to do another one of those annoying click fests, because I need to go check both players to see if it's bad for them to great each other, every freaking time I sign players.

 

This game DOES NOT need more idiotic repeated clicking!

 

[Seb Wassell]

38 minutes ago, Miravlix said:

Pogba welcomed Paul Dybala, now Dybala has Dwells on ball PPM, but  Dybala is a high decission player so it's a awful PPM to inherit over a cup of coffee.

That sounds like it is worth investigating. Could you post here please - https://community.sigames.com/forum/643-training-and-medical-centre/ - along with uploading your save. 

[ajt]

Great thread cheers

[enigmatic]

On 21/10/2018 at 13:51, Seb Wassell said:

You can't really compare established Premier League players with 16 yr old newgens. The former have already done their developing/mentoring, the latter have not.

That's kind of the point though, if the main mentoring system is skills training with other 16 year olds with mostly rubbish personalities rather than by senior squad members, those differences do matter, and need some means of addressing, whether it's automatic trend improvement or special training or players being more influenced by the good guys than vice versa etc.

Anyway, having actually simmed a longish term save I'm reasonably confident that

(i) starting personalities are often terrible, if not more terrible per @bangkonggedek's comments

(ii) the mentoring and other personality improvements work well (too well?) when there's the right influential players around (check out AI Man Utd' U23s clone army, whose PPMs are fine fwiw).

This is in line with the frequent positive messages @SD seems to be getting

Then again, I'm looking at Newcastle U23's basket cases and thinking it might not always be the case...

 

I'm guessing choose your U18/U23 captain carefully might be a big deal here, which is probably a good thing.

 

btw, a 30something Lewis Cook has 13 PPMs, but that seems to be a rare thing. Is there something he and Milenkovic Savic have in common personality wise?

 

On 21/10/2018 at 13:51, Seb Wassell said:

I categorically disagree with this. We should strive for human and AI being equal.

Bit meta this, but isn't the whole aim of the game to be better than AI teams at things you care about?! Which doesn't mean it should be easy (like blatant ME exploits), or unrealistic (like tutoring personality changes) , but does mean if you want to take a Graham Potter like interest in the social development of your players you probably should be able to do better than the average six month manager and not be entirely beholden to luck