Alternative to potential ability system?

[laurentius82]

For many iterations of the game I have thought that the potential ability (PA) system needs some re-thinking. For one, most of the time players develop way too fast, often reaching their PA by the time they're 21 or so (provided they are getting game time in a league that is suitable to their skill level). It's also highly unrealistic that it's impossible for them to develop after that (excluding minor redistribution of attributes). Moreover, 20-year-old world class players are a once-in-a-blue-moon-there's-a-Mbappe kind of thing, but in FM it becomes the norm after a few seasons. 

My suggestion is that PA would be replaced by an attribute for "ability to improve", removing the PA ceiling but setting the pace for development. As the player gets older, this attribute would of course be counteracted by the same senescence-related mechanics that currently cause the physical attributes of older players to decline. 

I realize that PA is supposed to be "under the hood", information not known to the player, but it is not hard to notice in-game when the PA has been reached even without looking at the PA. Even good scouts and coaches get it right a lot of the time in their reports. In real life, how often would a scout remark on a 20-year-old player that "yeah he's a good player but this is as good as he will ever be, it is impossible for the kid to improve at all no matter how hard he trains for the next 10 years"? 

Naturally some players really do hit their peak very early IRL too, but those are rare incidents and often due to factors like injuries, attitude problems, lack of game time etc. These would not be hard to incorporate into the revamped development system either.  

[HUNT3R]

19 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

For one, most of the time players develop way too fast, often reaching their PA by the time they're 21 or so

This point is about development of CA and I'm sure there's room for improvement there.

19 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

My suggestion is that PA would be replaced by an attribute for "ability to improve", removing the PA ceiling but setting the pace for development. As the player gets older, this attribute would of course be counteracted by the same senescence-related mechanics that currently cause the physical attributes of older players to decline. 

This already exists. Players naturally develop faster under the age of 24/25, generally. Generally, they develop slower after that.

19 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

I realize that PA is supposed to be "under the hood", information not known to the player,

This is why it's better not to look at the number. Then you won't be sure.

19 minutes ago, laurentius82 said:

Even good scouts and coaches get it right a lot of the time in their reports.

They don't. Often when young players have reached their peak, scouts/coaches still think there's more to come and that's likely what would happen IRL too.

Have a look here - was discussed recently and is still on the first page:

 

 

[laurentius82]

46 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

This point is about development of CA and I'm sure there's room for improvement there.

True, and I agree that just improving (in most cases slowing down) the dynamics of how CA develops would go a long way towards fixing the system.  

51 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

This already exists. Players naturally develop faster under the age of 24/25, generally. Generally, they develop slower after that.

In principle, yes.  In practice, they develop super fast until 21, reach their PA, and remain there until they start declining in their 30's. But why not make this "speed of development" -factor that now differentiates between young and older players a lot more dynamic in determining how individual players develop? I don't know how the mechanics of this factor work in the game, but I still wonder if PA could be made redundant by dramatically increasing both the importance and variability of the factor.

1 hour ago, HUNT3R said:

They don't. Often when young players have reached their peak, scouts/coaches still think there's more to come and that's likely what would happen IRL too.

Yes, they sometimes get it wrong both ways, as they should, no problem there. The data you showed in the other thread is also interesting. That's beside the point however; I don't think scouts should EVER be able to accurately report that a 20-year-old has no potential to improve as a footballer. 

[FlorianAlbert9]

Well. In my game I have often 4/5 'wonderkid' that I can sell without hesitation 'cause staff tell me they won't reach a better level.
In real world nobody sell of a young dubbed wonderkid so easily. 

Staff in game could be wrong sometimes, true, but they know PA (or a range of it). 

Take a look at Unde19 teams in game and then look at the same teams in real world (or at the star of game)
In game you could easily have a global young team (I often have 1/2 national player at max), while in real world the under19 are made almost all by nationals: cause in game you will buy all player with higher star in potentials even if they current rating is less than half star. While in real world there isn't sense to buy a player (at the same age of others) that is weaker of all your players 'cause no scout will tell you it will be the new pele.
There is no PA (nor variabile PA)  in real world.

 

(and I made I thread in future request about it)

Edited August 18, 2020 by FlorianAlbert9

[yolixeya]

8 hours ago, FlorianAlbert9 said:

Take a look at Unde19 teams in game and then look at the same teams in real world (or at the star of game)
In game you could easily have a global young team (I often have 1/2 national player at max), while in real world the under19 are made almost all by nationals: cause in game you will buy all player with higher star in potentials even if they current rating is less than half star. While in real world there isn't sense to buy a player (at the same age of others) that is weaker of all your players 'cause no scout will tell you it will be the new pele.
There is no PA (nor variabile PA)  in real world.

Personally I would never buy a player with half star CA no matter what his potential is unless he is 15 years old. I always take into account his age, weather he will have time to develop, I count on few injuries along the way etc. I am not against PA, but I agree that scouts shouldn't be able to accurately estimate PA of very young players. That is already in the game but I think scout reports should be even more vague for very young players. 

8 hours ago, FlorianAlbert9 said:

Well. In my game I have often 4/5 'wonderkid' that I can sell without hesitation 'cause staff tell me they won't reach a better level.
In real world nobody sell of a young dubbed wonderkid so easily. 

This isn't really true, wonderkids are sold in real world all the time. Wenger built squads full of wonderkids. Or look how Milan sold Locatelli and Cutrone both at about 20 year old at the time. Surely they could think that they could get way better because they were still young nut they didn't and I am sure there are more examples like that.

[enigmatic]

An 'ability to improve' factor would effectively be PA (unless growth is infinite) but more deterministic in how the player improves and how accurate scout reports are and less intelligible to researchers guesstimating which players will make it in their club's first team and which won't.

 

'Ability to improve'-type factors would make more sense in addition to PA to bias the type of player growth given [e.g. a factor for physical maturity to reflect the likelihood one 18 year old is likely to grow in the next two years and the other isn't, a factor for 'experience' to determine whether players' rawest weaknesses are likely to get ironed out now they're at a better academy or develop more slowly and evenly etc]

[laurentius82]

23 hours ago, enigmatic said:

An 'ability to improve' factor would effectively be PA (unless growth is infinite)

I see no reason why growth could not in principle be infinite? Of course, in practice it would have to be adjusted so that we never actually see infinite growth (with other factors like age weighing in), but a hard ceiling for development makes no sense to me. 

[DementedHammer]

My personal opinion: I'm not a fan of unlimited potential, as I don't think it is realistic - bionic implants and some kind of matrix data dump aside, no matter what I do, I'll never be as fast as Usain Bolt or as smart as Albert Einstein. 

What I am in favour of is raising the PA ceiling a bit, but making it much harder for a player to reach that limit. This would avoid the issue of users that inspect the PA and CA values thinking that a player has peaked early. (Although, in my opinion those values aren't really meant to be known to the user in absolute terms anyway, even if they are absolute values under the hood.) 

Edited August 23, 2020 by DementedHammer

[FlorianAlbert9]

Il 19/8/2020 in 10:38 , yolixeya ha scritto:

Personally I would never buy a player with half star CA no matter what his potential is unless he is 15 years old. I always take into account his age, weather he will have time to develop, I count on few injuries along the way etc. I am not against PA, but I agree that scouts shouldn't be able to accurately estimate PA of very young players. That is already in the game but I think scout reports should be even more vague for very young players. 

This isn't really true, wonderkids are sold in real world all the time. Wenger built squads full of wonderkids. Or look how Milan sold Locatelli and Cutrone both at about 20 year old at the time. Surely they could think that they could get way better because they were still young nut they didn't and I am sure there are more examples like that.

As Milan fan, I don't believe to have read Locatelli/Cutrone and wonderkids in the same post

 

[Nikopol]

I think it's evident that it's still too easy to snatch up young talent. There's improvement as costs have risen quite significantly in comparison to older FMs, so often you do have to spend a lot of money on a player to get him, even if he's 16 or 17, but still it is way too easy to assemble a whole golden generation squad in 2-3 transfer windows. I don't think PA can be done away with, and I often have observed how other factors have made player development quite varied, so that even immensely talented players won't come close to their potential or start declining early, or blossom in their mid-twenties, but generally i think it's still true that there is a high amount, higher than realistic, of 19 to 21 year old regens that already can play superbly at champions league level. But this can be adjusted without radical changes i think.

The bigger problem is to me scouting, which is just too accurate, gives too much information and makes it very simple to identify and snatch up the best players. This could be mitigated by generally decreasing the amount of top-tier scouts. Once you have a little bit of money it is easily accomplished to assemble the best scouting section in your league, and if you have more than a little money you will collect 20 scouting geniuses in a single club. Also what would help would be to make even 100% scouting reports incomplete, leave ranges up, not give us a 100% image of the players attribute, plus increasing also the range of PA ratings. If i sign a player that has a range of 4.5 to 5 PA i know that if i develop him well, which is easy, he will become at the very least a very good player. If it was a PA range from 3 to 5 stars, with attribute ranges still there at 100% scouting, and also worse players being given a range up to 5 stars, thinks may turn out much more interesting. One of the prime examples that will not happen to the player if he understands the systems, is the story of Sinan Kurt. Who had been lauded as a wonderkid at Gladbach and attracted Bayerns interest, who in a somewhat shady manner and with great determination, made a move for him. He turned out to be a big flop, moved on a few steps down the ladder to Hertha BSC, where he also failed to make an impression, and now has seemingly settled down at WSG Tirol. While one may debate on the actual quality of Sinan Kurt, and whether it is comparable to an actual 5* PA youngster in FM, it is a situation that the player should experience in the course of his career. There are many other famous examples of wonderkid youngsters failing to make a dent in top leagues at all, being snatched up for expensive fees by top 20 clubs, only to disappear into nothingness.

[enigmatic]

On 20/08/2020 at 12:50, laurentius82 said:

I see no reason why growth could not in principle be infinite? Of course, in practice it would have to be adjusted so that we never actually see infinite growth (with other factors like age weighing in), but a hard ceiling for development makes no sense to me. 

Since growth of footballers isn't infinite, and most players hit a hard ceiling, it makes no sense to develop a game based on the assumption the opposite is true, particularly since the fixed potential is also very useful in making research and the in-game transfer market a bit more convincing.

 

On 20/08/2020 at 21:41, DementedHammer said:

What I am in favour of is raising the PA ceiling a bit, but making it much harder for a player to reach that limit. This would avoid the issue of users that inspect the PA and CA values thinking that a player has peaked early. (Although, in my opinion those values aren't really meant to be known to the user in absolute terms anyway, even if they are absolute values under the hood.) 

If users want to look at hidden values but have a problem with actually knowing them, that's their own issue, not SI's and it has a much simpler solution...

[yolixeya]

On 26/08/2020 at 20:51, FlorianAlbert9 said:

As Milan fan, I don't believe to have read Locatelli/Cutrone and wonderkids in the same post

Well, they both are/were on FM and they were called wonderkids in real life too.

[r0x0r]

On 27/08/2020 at 12:09, Nikopol said:

One of the prime examples that will not happen to the player if he understands the systems, is the story of Sinan Kurt. Who had been lauded as a wonderkid at Gladbach and attracted Bayerns interest, who in a somewhat shady manner and with great determination, made a move for him. He turned out to be a big flop, moved on a few steps down the ladder to Hertha BSC, where he also failed to make an impression, and now has seemingly settled down at WSG Tirol. While one may debate on the actual quality of Sinan Kurt, and whether it is comparable to an actual 5* PA youngster in FM, it is a situation that the player should experience in the course of his career. There are many other famous examples of wonderkid youngsters failing to make a dent in top leagues at all, being snatched up for expensive fees by top 20 clubs, only to disappear into nothingness.

I've had similar situations in FM20. Young players who my scouts rave about, the coaches seem to think has potential, only for them to not make it and fall down the leagues. 

 

As long as you don't look under the hood, CA/PA works. I've had players I expected to be average turn out amazing, and players who I expected to be amazing fail to deliver. And of course some absolute gems who just got better and better.

[Smurf]

I've had players with PA of 148 win World Player of the Year (Balon D'Or) on a few occasions. 

I only knew their PA when they went to retire, I checked and surprised to see 148 - the player as a right back. 

It's not all CA and PA that makes a good player, he just had the right attributes for his position and the tactics, and he killed it every single game. 

 

I rarely sign a young player unless their team work and work rate are 12 or above. I think this is crucial in them reaching their PA. 

And  Team Player is best suited for my tactics. 

 

I've championed for a variable PA before. But it is always shot down but the upper echelons of the forum folk. 

I think it's a great idea - especially when a player hits  their CA and PA at an early age, to bump their PA up a little bit and let them exceed for a short period. 

 

If a player were to get to within 5 of their PA by 28 years of age - say they are 165 CA then why not give the PA a small boost from 170 to 180 if they are on consistent form.

At least their CA could go up to 171+ for a short period when on form.

If they are not on Form/playing badly/injured etc. their PA would go back to the natural spectrum of 170. 

 

All this means is that for a short period in their career they can exceed the CA 170+ and have a slightly higher ceiling under certain conditions. 

 

 

This would happen at lower scales too.

Say a player on CA of 120 and PA of 130 - why not let their PA go up to 150 for the right conditions. 

And as they get older, get injuries, don't play as often, form etc. then they could naturally come back down to 130.

Or stay in a higher medium of between 130-150 for their PA. 

But it would be harder for their CA to excel 130 - they would need be correct conditions to exceed.

[Sloak]

I think if personality had a bigger impact on performance the PA issues wouldn’t be as bad, personally. If model citizens actually looked like they were giving it all on the pitch every game while players with awful mentales would rarely perform to their attributes standards. I think this would help the 19-21 year old situation as often players in that range playing in the CL are comparable to their more veteran counterparts physically and technically, but lack the intangibles like experience and dedication the older players possess.