Bug? Players seem unable to learn new positions

[Fragnat]

Whatever play I try to retrain to a different position my backroom staff tell me that he cant progress more then Accomplished. Now some of the players it made sense for when they are in their late 20s, however some of the players I tried to retrain are 16-17

[KUBI]

If you think this is a bug, please start a thread in the bugs forum.

[HUNT3R]

7 hours ago, Fragnat said:

Whatever play I try to retrain to a different position my backroom staff tell me that he cant progress more then Accomplished. Now some of the players it made sense for when they are in their late 20s, however some of the players I tried to retrain are 16-17

Nothing wrong with a player being Accomplished in a position.

See here, that it's very difficult for a player to become Natural : 

 

[Miravlix]

They have to do something about this system, I have perfect wingers, that refuses to learn AMLR and that is when they start out as AMC and acomplished in LR, but no dice in finishing it to natural. I think the staff said he could learn striker, but he has crappy finishing (10), so it's completely divorced from attributes,

 

non-DL player that is the perfect CWB, gone because they can rarely learn the position... I bet all the bad CD's you could convert into good DM's is gone too.

[DP]

38 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

Nothing wrong with a player being Accomplished in a position.

See here, that it's very difficult for a player to become Natural : 

 

It also goes against how SI treat real life players that have adapted. Valencia is a natural right back in the game now. Would that have been possible if you look at him in FM10 and retrained him?

[HUNT3R]

2 minutes ago, DP said:

It also goes against how SI treat real life players that have adapted. Valencia is a natural right back in the game now. Would that have been possible if you look at him in FM10 and retrained him?

SI didn't say it was impossible, just difficult. Some players will have an upper limit, some will be able to be Natural. Tbf, I think the Valencia case isn't something that very many would have been able to predict.

[DP]

How about Ashley Young? Alan Smith moving to midfield? Mascherano at centre back? Delph as a left back?

There are lots of examples where it’s a bit more fluid in real life and the researchers are then quick to set that as a natural position. 

[HUNT3R]

16 minutes ago, DP said:

How about Ashley Young? Alan Smith moving to midfield? Mascherano at centre back? Delph as a left back?

I'd say the same for most of those, if they're listed as Natural!  

You have a point, but is this a training thing or researchers assigning Natural positions too easily? Or a bit of both? In the OP's case, we don't know what their Versatility is, for one thing.

[tajj7]

'Players have an upper limit to how adept they can become in a position'

That IMO is silly and unrealistic. Please fix this SI, I understand players taking longer to adapt to a position, but not being able to get above a certain level is just silly as players IRL clearly can completely change position over time and become known as natural in that position. 

[Mons]

1 hour ago, tajj7 said:

'Players have an upper limit to how adept they can become in a position'

That IMO is silly and unrealistic. Please fix this SI, I understand players taking longer to adapt to a position, but not being able to get above a certain level is just silly as players IRL clearly can completely change position over time and become known as natural in that position. 

If you had read more than the first sentence, it would have been clear that it's a little less straight-forward than that.

 

This is Seb's paragraph in full: "Players have an upper limit to how adept they can become in a position. Havertz upper limit for MC may be Accomplished. Achieving Natural is correctly very difficult."

 

A few players will be able to reach Natural in a new position, but most others won't, which is very reasonably imo.

[ZoDiAC_]

Natural to me implies, like it says - it's there already. You're born with it.

And you'd think in 90% of cases, if you're a natural position, and you're getting into professional football, somebody would find it. (And I'm sure it happens with players who only find their true role out later - like in life! You might be a natural pianist, but if you never try, you won't know!)

I think it's only right you can't fake being born with something - but not to say that someone who has grafted, continues to graft, at an "Accomplished" level isn't as good or even superior. (The difference may indeed be the effort; unless you're hung up on pure numbers, in FM I think you can train an Accomplished player to be one of the greats)

I find no problem with Natural not being something you can work towards - as long as Accomplished has high ceilings. I don't think, with the right training, approach, and ability, there would be much difference between Natural and Accomplished at all. Certainly, when I use an Accomplished player I find it is possible to get top-drawer performances out of them. 

Accomplished isn't nothing. I tend to think it's just a different route to the same place.
 

[DP]

49 minutes ago, Mons said:

If you had read more than the first sentence, it would have been clear that it's a little less straight-forward than that.

 

This is Seb's paragraph in full: "Players have an upper limit to how adept they can become in a position. Havertz upper limit for MC may be Accomplished. Achieving Natural is correctly very difficult."

 

A few players will be able to reach Natural in a new position, but most others won't, which is very reasonably imo.

Fair enough but then maybe researchers should think twice before allocating players a 'natural' position just because they've been playing there IRL for several years.

[ZoDiAC_]

1 minute ago, DP said:

Fair enough but then maybe researchers should think twice before allocating players a 'natural' position just because they've been playing there IRL for several years.

How would you determine somebody's "natural" ability, out of interest? With the caveat you can only observe, not change anything....

[DP]

4 minutes ago, ZoDiAC_ said:

How would you determine somebody's "natural" ability, out of interest?

You'd have to go with the position that they have came into the first team to play maybe? Raises interesting questions though. I don't think players are 'born' with anything. Ashley Cole started as a striker - should he have be 'natural' there and 'accomplished' for left back? Same with Rio Ferdinand and Jamie Carragher.

I'm not sure there really is a good implementation of 'natural' in the game. It's something that is learned over many years in playing the position really, rather than inherent. 

Maybe no young player should be 'natural' in any position until a few years down the line when they have experience of it? (possibly with the exception of goalkeepers).

[HUNT3R]

Just now, DP said:

Fair enough but then maybe researchers should think twice before allocating players a 'natural' position just because they've been playing there IRL for several years.

Tbf, after a few years of consistently playing there, the position should feel natural for that player. It's an old example, but Thierry Henry started as a winger before getting moved to a striker position. I'm sure after a few years he started to feel quite natural in that position.

[DP]

1 minute ago, HUNT3R said:

Tbf, after a few years of consistently playing there, the position should feel natural for that player. It's an old example, but Thierry Henry started as a winger before getting moved to a striker position. I'm sure after a few years he started to feel quite natural in that position.

Agreed, and I'm sort of contradicting my thoughts a little. The whole system feels like a needs a little tweak. Possibly not everyone should start with a 'natural' position and this is cemented more as they become experienced and actually play there.

[private pyle]

Yeah also finding it very difficult to retrain positions in this years fm

[Seb Wassell]

Along with being responsible for training & player progression I am also the Leeds United researcher.

Each researcher will have their own personal approach to how they judge a player's position, within the guidelines that we and their head researchers provide. I try to keep my research both realistic and in line with how FM works, but then I of course have the privilege of actually knowing how FM works. For the most part researchers are tasked with presenting their data as realistically as possible, without necessarily catering for gameplay mechanics. There is then sometimes a natural course of compromise where a player may need some slight tweaking by the researcher in order to have him perform in FM how he does in reality.

When someone like Antonio Valencia becomes a DR in real life, playing 30+ games in that position season after season, the researcher will adjust his positions accordingly. However, what I have failed to see mentioned above is that the researcher also massively adjusted his attributes. Compare the AMR Valencia in previous FMs to the DR Valencia in more recent FMs. Even with his age taken into account, his profile is quite different. For every position attributes are weighted differently. If we allowed this same monumental shift within FM it would be raised as a bug, probably correctly. For the sanity of the game we are not as liberal with positions and attributes as researchers have the luxury of being. One of, but not the only, reason that some players have upper limits on positions is that for them to progress further there would have to be large attribute adjustments. We allow younger players more wiggle room here for both realism and the fact that they have more flexible attributes at that age, so can accommodate this change. We have in fact introduced a feature this year that means a player can 'forget' an old position in order to help him learn a new one. We are constantly looking to improve this system and that change is another small step in that direction.

But this is without even considering the Match Engine, Team Selector and AI Managers. Real life managers are able to be considerably more fluid in how they view player positions, but until our AI is at sentient levels of intelligence we need rules to help govern this in game. Sometimes these rules mean a researcher may deem it necessary to give a player more ability in a position than might be the case in reality in order to ensure the AI considers them an option for that position, which is a small concession for a bigger overall gain in realism. As you can see from the Leeds thread in the DB forum, my own research leans towards realism, and for that reason Kalvin Phillips is unlikely to be picked at DC in FM even though he is a (very) outside option there in reality. Again though, this is for sanity. If we loosened it the knock-ons would be immense.

We also need to consider that football is incredibly subjective. Some may think Alan Smith became a 'natural' midfielder, some may not. The researcher needs to make a judgement call here and the game needs to then operate within a set of rules that allow this to function in the best way possible. Rules, unfortunately, are not subjective. In my own research, true-natural (i.e. 20) is reserved for players that are 'born' to that position. Other researchers may operate differently. The game considers Natural as very hard to obtain, partially for the attribute weighting reasons mentioned above, but Accomplished is almost as good when it comes to on-field performance. Of course this then opens the debate of what 'natural' is, but for the purposes of this conversation it is 18,19 and 20 in positional ability. Some players, such as Antonio Valencia, may be given this after proving that they are both a) basically natural there and b) need to be set to natural in that position in order for the AI manager to recognise that as their best/preferred position and use them accordingly.

If the AI had started playing Mascherano at DC in his Liverpool days, with his low strength, below average height and lack of any real aerial prowess or previous experience, would that have been considered realistic or a bug? In FM a player like him may be considered unsuitable, which in 99% of cases would be correct. We are slowly working our way towards our goal of a perfect system, which includes those exceptions, but small smart steps are much sensible than big stupid leaps.

If anyone is spotting instances that do not agree with the above or look like they may be issues with position learning, then please raise them here - https://community.sigames.com/forum/643-training-and-medical-centre/ - with accompanying save and appropriate screenshots. We will investigate from there.

[Mons]

Great post. And that's without even taking into consideration variables such as manager tendencies, injuries, body type, player personality/character etc. Would any AI manager ever have tried training Young as a left full-back, for example? I doubt it.

[Miravlix]

31 minutes ago, Mons said:

Great post. And that's without even taking into consideration variables such as manager tendencies, injuries, body type, player personality/character etc. Would any AI manager ever have tried training Young as a left full-back, for example? I doubt it.

If you can make monkeys type out Shakespears collected works, I'm pretty sure that if the AI has a random chance of re-training players, then it's possible for them to do it.

 

Only question is whatever the chance is 1 in a billion or 1 in 10, but no matter the odds it still make it possible.

[Seb Wassell]

31 minutes ago, Miravlix said:

If you can make monkeys type out Shakespears collected works, I'm pretty sure that if the AI has a random chance of re-training players, then it's possible for them to do it.

 

Only question is whatever the chance is 1 in a billion or 1 in 10, but no matter the odds it still make it possible.

The AI doesn't make training decisions based on random. 

[tajj7]

On 23/10/2018 at 09:52, Mons said:

If you had read more than the first sentence, it would have been clear that it's a little less straight-forward than that.

 

This is Seb's paragraph in full: "Players have an upper limit to how adept they can become in a position. Havertz upper limit for MC may be Accomplished. Achieving Natural is correctly very difficult."

 

A few players will be able to reach Natural in a new position, but most others won't, which is very reasonably imo.

Don't think that is particularly relevant, it still seems silly IMO.

'Natural' is also largely irrelevant, it's just a name given to a number, 20, for positional familiarity, all players IMO should be able to reach 20 in a trained and played new position, because they can in real life.

SI probably shouldn't call it natural, players don't really have a 'natural' position anyway IRL, they are all coached from a young age, no professional footballer is born to a position, they are just more suited to a position than others and are then taught to play in those positions. 

As people exampled above, by SI's logic, players who have been performing at the top level in positions they didn't initially start in, like Valencia, potentially could not happen in game and that is silly. 

If a player has the attributes, trains the position and plays the position, they should all be able to hit 20 for that position.  Call it something else from natural if you want to differentiate from their original positions to new learned positions, but the familiarity should be able to reach the same level IMO. 

Takes a lot away from re-training and identifying players IMO, that is part of the fun of the game and its also just not realistic. 

If it aint broke, don't fix it, this area of the game did not need changing. 

 

 

[Seb Wassell]

33 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

Natural' is also largely irrelevant, it's just a name given to a number, 20, for positional familiarity, all players IMO should be able to reach 20 in a trained and played new position, because they can in real life.

Natural is 18-20. I disagree that all players can reach 20 in any position in real life. Neymar isn't going to reach 20 at DC.

34 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

As people exampled above, by SI's logic, players who have been performing at the top level in positions they didn't initially start in, like Valencia, potentially could not happen in game and that is silly. 

If a player has the attributes, trains the position and plays the position, they should all be able to hit 20 for that position.  Call it something else from natural if you want to differentiate from their original positions to new learned positions, but the familiarity should be able to reach the same level IMO. 

As noted above, Valencia explicitly did not have the attributes.

35 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

If it aint broke, don't fix it, this area of the game did not need changing. 

Nothing has changed from last year.

[tajj7]

6 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

Natural is 18-20. I disagree that all players can reach 20 in any position in real life. Neymar isn't going to reach 20 at DC.

As noted above, Valencia explicitly did not have the attributes.

Nothing has changed from last year.

Again whether its's 18, 19 or 20 is not really relevant, it's a name associated to a number. The name is meaningless in reality, the game is working from a number. 

And that is why I said with the attributes and we are talking about players with the attributes, I have a player who has all the attributes for inside forward and striker (he is actually better suited to those roles than his 'natural' position) but the game is telling me he can't reach beyond competent in either position. 

No previous version of FM has ever told me that players can't progress beyond a certain level and I never saw it happen either, so can't really believe that nothing has changed. 

[improvox]

15 hours ago, Seb Wassell said:

Along with being responsible for training & player progression I am also the Leeds United researcher.Each researcher will have their own personal approach to how they judge.... 

Again Seb responds with a very detailed and well written response on this forum. I find your posts really interesting and insightful, cheers. 

[improvox]

7 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

 

And that is why I said with the attributes and we are talking about players with the attributes, I have a player who has all the attributes for inside forward and striker (he is actually better suited to those roles than his 'natural' position) but the game is telling me he can't reach beyond competent in either position. 

 Maybe your player has low adaptability or other hidden attributes. Meaning that although he has the attributes for the position he lacks the ability or drive to actually adapt his game beyond being competent at it. 

8 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

 

No previous version of FM has ever told me that players can't progress beyond a certain level and I never saw it happen either, so can't really believe that nothing has changed. 

Just because it never told you doesn't mean it wasn't the case. Fm19 has loads of little extra like this that keep you better informed as a manager. That is a good thing in my opinion. 

[Seb Wassell]

8 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

No previous version of FM has ever told me that players can't progress beyond a certain level and I never saw it happen either, so can't really believe that nothing has changed. 

Nothing has changed under the hood, but we have added some advice on when a player has reached his highest possible rating in a new position. This was done to remove the frustration of training a player in a new position, not seeing it improve and not knowing why.

9 minutes ago, tajj7 said:

And that is why I said with the attributes and we are talking about players with the attributes, I have a player who has all the attributes for inside forward and striker (he is actually better suited to those roles than his 'natural' position) but the game is telling me he can't reach beyond competent in either position. 

Sounds like a good example for us to investigate. If you could open up a post in here - https://community.sigames.com/forum/643-training-and-medical-centre/ - and upload your save we'll take a look to see if it is working as expected.

[michaeltmurrayuk]

16 hours ago, Mons said:

Great post. And that's without even taking into consideration variables such as manager tendencies, injuries, body type, player personality/character etc. Would any AI manager ever have tried training Young as a left full-back, for example? I doubt it.

The AI can do major retraining of its players, this is a guy they trained into a Left Wing Back who had no positional rating when I had him from FM18 (they also improved his ability on the right):

[Fragnat]

11 minutes ago, michaeltmurrayuk said:

The AI can do major retraining of its players, this is a guy they trained into a Left Wing Back who had no positional rating when I had him from FM18 (they also improved his ability on the right):

Thing is though if he were to play LWB for the rest of his career would he become natural in it? I mean when he was young that is not when hes 32

[michaeltmurrayuk]

It depends on the player - I had a RB who became a Natural Right Wing Back within a couple of seasons, but another guy didn't get there after several seasons. But as Seb said it's not essential to get a player to a Natural rating, once you've got a player trained up so the position gets added to his short description (well assuming you don't have the Natural only option turned on) there's not really difference between that Natural that I've noticed over the years, you just generally want to avoid using anything from the lighter green downwards unless you are training the player in the position or are desperate.