Dynamic Potential in FM?

[WizbaII]

On 02/12/2020 at 05:58, Tom 99 said:

Without evidence? So I have just train every day and someday I am so good like Messi and C. Ronaldo? Awesome. Why aren't all the other professional football player so good like Messi and C. Ronaldo? Are they just too lazy? Answer: We all have a performance ceiling. The concept of PA is a simplification of this ceiling (I could only train acceleration and pace in FM to become so fast like Mbappe which isn't possible in real life. In real life there is a PA for every skill).

Absolutely correct. However, since researchers have no way to know the PA for every skill, SI generalizes by creating a PA for the player in general. I do not code for FM, so I cannot say for certain that FM has the ability to replicate every development arc that has ever been witnessed IRL. But I suspect the development of players, in general, is more nuanced and accurate than some forum posters would like to believe.

Now about the Dynamic Potential Ability idea...it is quite silly, isn't it? If Potential Ability is dynamic, then there is no use for Current Ability, is there? Lol.

Also silly...the idea that Potential Ability does not exist in the real world. I want to take you on a trip down memory lane, for a bit of fun. Go back 15 years and watch a Barca game when Messi was just starting out.

• Listen to the commentators talk about Messi when he was just starting out. It is obvious that everyone thought Messi was going to be a Very big deal.
• If you go back 15 years, I can give you another name...Freddy Adu! Does anyone remember him? People thought he was going to be a Very big deal as well. The difference between Messi and Adu? Messi had the correct training facilities, hard-working and humble environment, and mental determination to reach his potential, and Adu lacked at least two of those things.

Now let's look at a player from today:

• Ansu Fati, who is only 18, has been playing for Barca's first team for at least a year now.  That's about the same age Messi started playing for the first team as well. However, you will not find a single person who thinks Ansu Fati is going to be the next Messi.

What is my point? My point is that it is possible for coaches, scouts, and researchers to know the general potential of a player, as long as enough time and effort is put into observing the player. If you look at a player and you don't know their potential, it only means that you haven't observed them long enough. That is why young players are given PAs with a gap of 30, because it takes time to truly know a player's potential. However, we know from my example of Messi and Adu that: just because you know the potential of a player, it doesn't mean the player will reach that potential.

[santy001]

It's well worth mentioning that in years gone by, the FM series will have reduced the PA of Adu over time as a reflection of the chances of him ever living up to it got smaller and smaller - but the development of players in the game was not nuanced enough to prevent him from reaching it if it remained high.

Now, we would leave the potential high because we have more room for doing so without the player being as likely to attain it. Yet the right manager, at the right time of his career could have potentially still seen him making it. 

[Birdman10piyu]

On 30/12/2020 at 11:24, WizbaII said:

Absolutely correct. However, since researchers have no way to know the PA for every skill, SI generalizes by creating a PA for the player in general. I do not code for FM, so I cannot say for certain that FM has the ability to replicate every development arc that has ever been witnessed IRL. But I suspect the development of players, in general, is more nuanced and accurate than some forum posters would like to believe.

Now about the Dynamic Potential Ability idea...it is quite silly, isn't it? If Potential Ability is dynamic, then there is no use for Current Ability, is there? Lol.

Also silly...the idea that Potential Ability does not exist in the real world. I want to take you on a trip down memory lane, for a bit of fun. Go back 15 years and watch a Barca game when Messi was just starting out.

• Listen to the commentators talk about Messi when he was just starting out. It is obvious that everyone thought Messi was going to be a Very big deal.
• If you go back 15 years, I can give you another name...Freddy Adu! Does anyone remember him? People thought he was going to be a Very big deal as well. The difference between Messi and Adu? Messi had the correct training facilities, hard-working and humble environment, and mental determination to reach his potential, and Adu lacked at least two of those things.

Now let's look at a player from today:

• Ansu Fati, who is only 18, has been playing for Barca's first team for at least a year now.  That's about the same age Messi started playing for the first team as well. However, you will not find a single person who thinks Ansu Fati is going to be the next Messi.

What is my point? My point is that it is possible for coaches, scouts, and researchers to know the general potential of a player, as long as enough time and effort is put into observing the player. If you look at a player and you don't know their potential, it only means that you haven't observed them long enough. That is why young players are given PAs with a gap of 30, because it takes time to truly know a player's potential. However, we know from my example of Messi and Adu that: just because you know the potential of a player, it doesn't mean the player will reach that potential.

I'm going to revive this because I've always thought of this 

I'm all for "dynamic PA" and here's my argument. 

If I have a 23 yo winger with 100 CA and 130 PA, with perfect mental and hidden attributes and I place him on the best team in the world, with the best training facilities, best coaches, best mentors. And he plays occasionally, gaining first team experience.

If I used an editor to keep that player 23 for the span of 1000 seasons and he keeps playing for those all those seasons.

He still wouldn't get to Messi level, probably wouldn't even be a world class player because the system in place, no matter what, would not allow him to exceed his PA of 130

That's where we have a problem with the current system. Everyone knows mastery over a skill takes time and if players had countless lifetimes to practice and play football, you'd expect they'd be at a GOAT level of skill.

 

Instead of PA. I think we should have potential growth rating.

Let's say a player is CA of 100. Instead of A PA, have a PG, potential growth. So a player can continue to grow but his PG will determine how fast he grows and just like real life, some players grow faster than others. And some even deteriorate

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Birdman10piyu

[wazzaflow10]

22 minutes ago, Birdman10piyu said:

I'm going to revive this because I've always thought of this 

I'm all for "dynamic PA" and here's my argument. 

If I have a 23 yo winger with 100 CA and 130 PA, with perfect mental and hidden attributes and I place him on the best team in the world, with the best training facilities, best coaches, best mentors. And he plays occasionally, gaining first team experience.

If I used an editor to keep that player 23 for the span of 1000 seasons and he keeps playing for those all those seasons.

He still wouldn't get to Messi level, probably wouldn't even be a world class player because the system in place, no matter what, would not allow him to exceed his PA of 130

That's where we have a problem with the current system. Everyone knows mastery over a skill takes time and if players had countless lifetimes to practice and play football, you'd expect they'd be at a GOAT level of skill.

 

Instead of PA. I think we should have potential growth rating.

Let's say a player is CA of 100. Instead of A PA, have a PG, potential growth. So a player can continue to grow but his PG will determine how fast he grows and just like real life, some players grow faster than others. And some even deteriorate

 

I like the PG but not in place of PA. Over the past 10 years we've seen editions of newgens growing too fast and too slow. It should be a "fairly simple" task to figure out the appropriate distribution of PG based on how CA has increased over time for real players and give them a growth rating. you can even give the aged 27-32 guys a negative score that changes the PG value for decline based on each save like they do for wonderkids PA.

But PA should be static and only ever go down due to injury. No amount of training is going to make everyone world beaters. Its unrealistic to assume that just because you're in a world class facility with world class coaches you should eventually become Leo Messi. How many kids went through La Masia? thousands? There's only one Leo Messi. Not every kid there should have the potential to do that. 

[Birdman10piyu]

14 minutes ago, wazzaflow10 said:

I like the PG but not in place of PA. Over the past 10 years we've seen editions of newgens growing too fast and too slow. It should be a "fairly simple" task to figure out the appropriate distribution of PG based on how CA has increased over time for real players and give them a growth rating. you can even give the aged 27-32 guys a negative score that changes the PG value for decline based on each save like they do for wonderkids PA.

But PA should be static and only ever go down due to injury. No amount of training is going to make everyone world beaters. Its unrealistic to assume that just because you're in a world class facility with world class coaches you should eventually become Leo Messi. How many kids went through La Masia? thousands? There's only one Leo Messi. Not every kid there should have the potential to do that. 

 I think everyone can be as great as Messi if the time was there. A an average player's playing career is what? 10-15 years?? 20 max. Messi was a rare specimen who was able to grow his footballing skills at a crazy rate. For the sake of argument, If you put a kid in a hyperbolical time chamber and he had 100s of years to train and play football and doesn't age. In that time frame, you don't believe that it's possible for that kid to achieve GOAT level playing ability??

If I had 100 years to play piano. I'd sure hope I'd be playing at Mozart levels.

My whole argument is that I don't think people have a cap on their abilit to achieve mastery at any subject. Some people grow faster than others.  We want FM to reflect that as well.

[wazzaflow10]

6 minutes ago, Birdman10piyu said:

 I think everyone can be as great as Messi if the time was there. A an average player's playing career is what? 10-15 years?? 20 max. Messi was a rare specimen who was able to grow his footballing skills at a crazy rate. For the sake of argument, If you put a kid in a hyperbolical time chamber and he had 100s of years to train and play football and doesn't age. In that time frame, you don't believe that it's possible for that kid to achieve GOAT level playing ability??

If I had 100 years to play piano. I'd sure hope I'd be playing at Mozart levels.

My whole argument is that I don't think people have a cap on their abilit to achieve mastery at any subject. Some people grow faster than others.  We want FM to reflect that as well.

Respectfully disagree. Mozart allegedly could copy full symphonies by heart as a 5 year old. What makes the best players the best is something you can't teach, only refine through guided intentional practice. I think you vastly underestimate how great someone like Messi or Mozart are with respect to their peers. I'd give anyone to the end of time to become leo messi and if they couldn't do in the normal career years then they wouldn't be able to do it no matter how long you gave them. 

There are limits to human physiology. Every person has their own limit. The reason players aren't as good as messi isn't because Messi had some crazy growth rate and they didn't or that messi was training with barcelona and they weren't. Iniesta and Xavi  and Pique and Fabregas all went through the same process. Do you think they weren't messi because they didn't have enough time? They were missing whatever it is that makes Messi Messi. 

 

[Wavelberry]

16 minutes ago, Birdman10piyu said:

 

If I had 100 years to play piano. I'd sure hope I'd be playing at Mozart levels.

 

This is where talent vs application comes into it though. I would argue that if you put someone who wasn't particularly musical they would get to a certain level, a good one even, but would they be as good as someone who had musical talent and innate understanding? Nope. I've taught the arts for over a decade and a half and I've seen kids of varying talent levels and they are always ranked the same

1. Innate talent and hard work

2. No innate talent and hard work

3. Innate talent and no work ethic

4. No innate talent and no work ethic.

[Wavelberry]

Of course the above is very reductive and there are areas of overlap within each category depending on the work ethic of the individual but an actor or musician who just 'gets it' is always easier to work with and develop than one who doesn't.

[Birdman10piyu]

2 hours ago, wazzaflow10 said:

Respectfully disagree. Mozart allegedly could copy full symphonies by heart as a 5 year old. What makes the best players the best is something you can't teach, only refine through guided intentional practice. I think you vastly underestimate how great someone like Messi or Mozart are with respect to their peers. I'd give anyone to the end of time to become leo messi and if they couldn't do in the normal career years then they wouldn't be able to do it no matter how long you gave them. 

There are limits to human physiology. Every person has their own limit. The reason players aren't as good as messi isn't because Messi had some crazy growth rate and they didn't or that messi was training with barcelona and they weren't. Iniesta and Xavi  and Pique and Fabregas all went through the same process. Do you think they weren't messi because they didn't have enough time? They were missing whatever it is that makes Messi Messi. 

 

2 hours ago, Wavelberry said:

Of course the above is very reductive and there are areas of overlap within each category depending on the work ethic of the individual but an actor or musician who just 'gets it' is always easier to work with and develop than one who doesn't.

 

 

You guys make a very good point. and I think I'm starting to understand where you guys are coming from.

I'm in the ladder that  I really think that any person has an ability to achieve a mastery level of skill if they are willing to put the work into it. I could spend 1000s of years striking a ball into with the goal of getting top corner every time. Should I be a better shooter??? absolutely. will I be able to dribble like Messi or have the vision like Messi? Maybe not, but in FM terms, you don't think my "long shots" shouldn't be 20?
 

[wazzaflow10]

9 hours ago, Birdman10piyu said:

 

 

You guys make a very good point. and I think I'm starting to understand where you guys are coming from.

I'm in the ladder that  I really think that any person has an ability to achieve a mastery level of skill if they are willing to put the work into it. I could spend 1000s of years striking a ball into with the goal of getting top corner every time. Should I be a better shooter??? absolutely. will I be able to dribble like Messi or have the vision like Messi? Maybe not, but in FM terms, you don't think my "long shots" shouldn't be 20?
 

You'd be a better shooter up to your natural limit, yes after 1000s of years you would probably hit that limit. But what makes you think those 1000s of hours would make you the best in the world at that skill when others with more natural aptitude have not been able to achieve it? Ignoring your technique rating at the very least would have to be high enough to allow you to pull it off. 

Here's a real world example using Messi. Do you think with infinite time Messi would be able to achieve the same Jumping Reach rating as Cristiano Ronaldo or is he naturally limited by the fact that he's 1.7m tall? 

[Birdman10piyu]

No, Messi wouldn't jump higher than Ronaldo. Would Messi jump higher though than he did before??? Absolutely. 

 But For shooting. You agree? that there would be growth none the less, even if incremental, whether you achieve world class shooting ability or not and regardless of any other attributes, you'd have improved your shot from year 0 to year  1000. 

That's the argument we're trying to make for dynamic PA. If I'm capped at 10 ability in shooting and I've already reached that cap, I can spend the next 1000 years practicing shooting and I would never exceed that hard coded number 10, no matter how much I practised.

Whether a player reaches Messi like status, we think its realistic when we know a player is able to improve his playing abilities, even if it's incremental growth VS the current system that stops players from growing past a certain stage

[santy001]

The biggest flaw with that argument though is by the time you emerge in football you've had 16/17 years. With all the other events of life influencing the current point you're at. From that point give or take you've got 5-15 years to hit your peak. Another tremendous flaw with the 1000 year argument is its presumably assuming you spend a 1000 years at your peak. You don't. For some players their "peak" will be a 3-4 month period where physically they're fine, mentally they're doing well and at the best of their ability. For other players their "peak" will be across years. 

When you take a step back to think about it, then it's a rather concerning assertion to make that the only reason the rest of us aren't as good as Messi is because we didn't work as hard or put as much time in. I also don't think the argument that the system needs to change because if humans weren't humans and could do these non-human things, you'd get different outcomes is the silver bullet that leaves PA with a mortal wound. 

[herne79]

1 hour ago, Birdman10piyu said:

That's the argument we're trying to make for dynamic PA. If I'm capped at 10 ability in shooting and I've already reached that cap, I can spend the next 1000 years practicing shooting and I would never exceed that hard coded number 10, no matter how much I practised.

That’s not how PA works.  PA doesn’t cap individual attributes, but they are limited to a maximum of 20 in each category through a different mechanic.  PA just sets an overall ceiling so that all attributes don’t increase to 20.

In principle any player in the database could increase their shooting (to carry on the example) to Messi levels, even if their PA is already maxed out.  They just wouldn’t be able to increase all of their other attributes to Messi levels at the same time because they’re not Messi and don’t have his overall innate ability.  Nobody in the history of the game has.  And yet you want pretty much any player to be able to do so.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if we played the game as intended PA essentially doesn’t exist and has no bearing on our gameplay.  It is nothing more than a mechanism in the game to a) stop players developing exponentially; and b) to maintain a good population of players throughout each level of the database.  It’s only us players who have discovered it buried in the Editor and decided to use it for an unintended purpose ie., a measure to gauge how good a player might become.  And the ironic thing is it doesn’t even do that.  So until someone comes up with a simpler alternative to maintain those two intended purposes above, PA is here to stay.

So at this point it’s worth pointing out that if we play the game as intended, dynamic PA is pretty much in the game already from 2 perspectives.  1) Coach opinions of young player’s potential changes frequently over time as they get to know the youngsters better and see how they progress.  It’s pretty common to see a young player who was initially believed to have low potential to actually have high potential, and vice versa.  That’s the very definition of dynamic PA right there if we just pay attention to our coach reports.  2) As players get older their attributes can fluctuate.  We can see increases in some areas while other attributes may decrease.  This can change the entire profile of a player so for example we could find where someone may start out as a poor playmaker type after a few seasons they actually become very good at the discipline.  Again, very dynamic 👍.

[XaW]

One of my biggest issues with dynamic PA is not the dynamic PA in itself, it's more of how do you balance it. If anyone can be a perfect player, what's stopping it? Both real life and in FM. Suggesting that the rest of the professional players aren't as good as Messi or Ronaldo simply because they didn't work hard enough isn't really cutting it for me. As someone who played at a high youth level (in my country), but never took the step over to professional senior football, I can say that for my own sake, I lost focus, but I know of several others who spent about 48 hours per day as model professionals exercising right, eating right, no social life what so ever, every minute, every hour, every day, but they were still WORSE than me, even after I lost the drive. So I don't agree that "will" or "application" or whatever word you would use could change that just falls flat to me.

As for the game, my biggest issue is how should the game prevent too many players at any given range of talent? Currently, the game makes sure that there are the correct amount of players at each tier of football (based on the loaded database) and that there will never be a moment where all players are too good for the VNL for example. So how would you stop that, mechanically, if anyone can improve past it? Sure, personality kicks in, but that can also be mentored to be good. Will there be no model professionals not at the top of the game? Currently PA is one of the factors that impacts how this is governed in the game, and if you remove it, how would you replace it? Or do we just say screw realism, make everyone capable of becoming Messi?

My suggestion, as I made years ago, is the same. Make sure that everyone has a higher ceiling than they do today, but also make it much much harder to obtain it, personality, training, match time at a fitting level, facilities, coaches, as well as a random factor to help govern the number who will reach it. Not saying it's perfect, but I think that would bring the best of both worlds.

[(sic)]

And there's the problem.

Current ability is the sum of all attributes (& traits as well I think), and it just wont go past the PA set. You could have player that's 25 years old with 140PA. He has 14 Positioning, and you'll never see him actually increase it past 14 because his CA is already at 140. This hard cap is too harsh and unrealistic.

 

Certain attributes absolutely can be improved by anyone, with hard work, time, and dedication. Though, they can't be improved to infinity obviously, since the cap is 20 in game, and in real life there's also some sort of a cap based on many, many factors. Some players will find it much harder and much more time consuming to improve certain attributes (lack of talent maybe), while others will find it much easier (and will actually start off with higher attributes than regular players - aka they're more talented).

 

Certain attributes have softer caps than others (I'm not talking about the game here). For example, it's much easier to improve Determination, Leadership, Teamwork (which for some reason is incredibly difficult to improve in game), most, if not all technical attributes, Stamina, Balance, etc. compared to attributes like Anticipation, Decisions, Composure, Concentration, which in turn are easier to improve than things like Flair, Natural Fitness, Bravery that are pretty much hard capped. 

1st group are attributes that can be improved in various ways, via coaching, training, etc.
2nd group are attributes that can be improved somewhat via training, but they also require playing experience at a certain level. These attributes are harder to improve, because they also rely on a player being smart enough to learn things, rather than just repeating certain things until you get better.
3rd group are attributes that are pretty much not going to change much, if at all, unless there's a bad injury or something (as it currently happens with Bravery).

 

Jumping reach for example, I'd put in first category, as you absolutely can improve it a lot by training. But if you have a player that's 160cm tall, and a player that's 185cm tall, and both work on improving their jumping reach, it's obvious which player will be better at it. Strength for example can also be improved a lot.

 

In my opinion, certain attributes being improved, absolutely shouldn't take away from the players PA. The problem is, improving in attributes obviously raises the player's CA, therefore it takes away from PA in a way, because it leaves less room for improvement in other areas. 

 

 

How to solve that issue? Change PA from a thing that encompasses attributes and traits as a whole, and instead use it on a more individual or group basis and/or maybe as suggested previously, PG (Potential Growth). 

How would that work? No idea.
But let's actually try to come up with something and give an example. 

Let's make an imaginary player that's 18 years old and play as a CF.

If he has 10s for all attributes, with hard work, dedication, a lot of training, and a lot of time, he can eventually get all 20s, right? Well not so fast. PA/PG in this case should affect the ceiling of his attributes, INDIVIDUALLY or in a group. 

So let's say he's a player that's determined that wants to improve and has a very good work ethic, his PA/PG should be pretty high, meaning he can improve a lot and the PG itself determines the rate of improvement.
However, not all attributes have the same level of PA/PG. Some attributes only have a margin of improvement of 1 or 2, meaning they can't improve by a lot, if at all. This is reserved for the attributes in the 3rd group that I mentioned previously. You either have these at the start, or you don't. Meaning, the player will likely keep 10s in those attributes, on some rare occasions it might improve to 11 or 12.

Then there are attributes from the 2nd group that can be improved via playing time, and less via training. These naturally have a higher PG than attributes from the 3rd group (which can't improve by much or if at all), but still below attributes from the 1st group. PG in this case is determined by player's personality and the level he's playing at, as well as the formation/system he's playing in (to a lesser extent maybe).
"In this players case, he has 10s for all attributes, so if we move him to a club like Man City, and give him enough playing time, he's gonna reach all 20s, is that what you're saying?", might be the first reply to this. The answer is no. The rate at which player learns and absorbs information is obviously not the same for everybody, in this example, the player is smart and dedicated, which is why I said PG is determined by player's personality (as well as the level he's playing at). In theory, he could improve his Composure from 10 to 20, but that's not gonna happen. Why? Diminishing returns, as well as lack of focus.

There should be diminishing returns, meaning the PG slows down the closer you get to 20, and the lack of focus is pretty simple to explain - you just can't focus on improving one single attribute like composure in isolation, while ignoring all other attributes. But, you can set an individual focus for a player (like you currently can) that will put a bit more emphasis on improving certain attributes. Also, not all attributes are going to be improving, and not all attributes will be improving at the same rate. Only those attributes that are useful for the position and the role of a player, and only those attributes you train (via training, position/role training) are actually gonna see noticeable improvement. For example, this imaginary player will see more improvements in Off The Ball movement, than Positioning, simply due to him playing as a Striker, and that attribute being more relevant for his position and utilizing that attribute more in his game. 

Here we finally reach the 1st group of attributes. These are the easiest to improve by simply working hard, training consistently. Time is key here. Other important factors are facilities and coaches.
Again, he can't reach 20s in all attributes in this group, because he can't focus on improving all attributes at the same time + the diminishing returns (If he had 1000 years, then he could theoretically do it - but only the attributes in this group). 

 

Now the PG absolutely will depend on the players age as well. At younger age, players have a higher PG rating in those 2 groups that actually can improve. But, this also won't stop a player from improving in certain attributes if he's 25+ (because there isn't a PA cap). Sure, attributes from the 1st group might not see much growth, but you could still see noticeable improvement in attributes from the 2nd group. For example: A 26 years old player that's considered at or near his peak, finally makes a move to a bigger club, with world class facilities and coaches, and a manager that uses a system that aligns well with the player's attributes and position he's playing in. Provided he gets enough game time, you could see some decent improvements in certain attributes (something that doesn't seem to be the case currently in game, at that age). On the other hand, if the system doesn't suit him at all, and plays in a league that's not really a challenge for him (aka he doesn't move "up" to play against better opponents), he's likely to stay at the same level without seeing any improvement.

Anyways, I've rambled for too long, and this is just writing my thoughts down as they come, but this is just an example of how things might work with a different system.

There obviously are flaws with this system, when it comes to real-life players, but for players generated by the game, it absolutely can work.

Edited June 15, 2023 by (sic)

[forameuss]

The change to the system doesn't need anything fundamental or particularly ground-breaking, just needs tweaking to whatever is there.  PA is an artificial construct that the game needs to function, but there's a parallel with real life, albeit not something you can measure with a number between 1 and 200.  It represents the best someone can ever possibly be, and I don't think it's particularly controversial to suggest that absolutely everyone has that absolute ceiling (theoretically, again, it isn't measurable).  That value should stay.  The only change I would argue making to it would be to properly hide the value (as most of the issues come in looking at a value that no-one was ever really supposed to see anyway, but that's another issue).

Now the improvements could be made not in the destination of the development process, but the journey.  I expect there's a lot more variation than is immediately apparent, but there's no issues with there being more.  Every single model or example that people like to bring up could be achieved through changing the progression to a fixed PA.  There has never been a valid and sensible reason put forward for why dynamic PA needs to be a thing.  And I doubt there ever will be.  

[Daveincid]

PA defines the highest possible CA a player is able to achieve. If a player has a PA of 200 and he reaches it, then he has a CA of 200.

Does that mean he's a CA200-player all the time?

No, hidden attributes like consistency has a major impact how likely it is that a player is capable of playing at his actual CA-level.

This is why I think it's better to not know both of these values when you're playing this game. (Which is why they are hidden anyway)

So there is already much more dynamics included in the current model as some may think. It's just something which you can't get displayed on an excel sheet because it's within the game-code.

So down to my logic, CA is actually dynamic even when the number is the same, which makes PA also kinda dynamic

[herne79]

50 minutes ago, (sic) said:

Current ability is the sum of all attributes (& traits as well I think)

It isn’t.  Traits are not included and there are many attributes which also aren’t.  Determination for example and all hidden attributes.

51 minutes ago, (sic) said:

You could have player that's 25 years old with 140PA. He has 14 Positioning, and you'll never see him actually increase it past 14 because his CA is already at 140

Again I’m afraid this is incorrect.  He still can increase past 14 but other attributes would need to decrease accordingly to compensate and keep within the CA limit.  However that is nowhere near as dramatic as it sounds because increasing Positioning from say 14 to 15 would see minute (and therefore a negligible impact) decreases across pretty much all other attributes (say a 0.1 drop) rather than a larger hit against one or two attributes.

But CA is not (and never has been) a measure of how good a player is because as mentioned above there are many attributes not included in the calculation, all of which can have a pretty dramatic effect on a player’s ability.

[(sic)]

13 minutes ago, herne79 said:

It isn’t.  Traits are not included and there are many attributes which also aren’t.  Determination for example and all hidden attributes.

I'm fairly sure whenever I added player traits via editor, it would follow up with an overall decrease to players attributes, if the player was already at the CA limit or his CA increasing. But I admit I might be wrong on this one.

13 minutes ago, herne79 said:

Again I’m afraid this is incorrect.  He still can increase past 14 but other attributes would need to decrease accordingly to compensate and keep within the CA limit.  However that is nowhere near as dramatic as it sounds because increasing Positioning from say 14 to 15 would see minute (and therefore a negligible impact) decreases across pretty much all other attributes (say a 0.1 drop) rather than a larger hit against one or two attributes.

But CA is not (and never has been) a measure of how good a player is because as mentioned above there are many attributes not included in the calculation, all of which can have a pretty dramatic effect on a player’s ability.

I'm very much aware of that, but that's rarely going to happen in game, which is why I didn't include it in my post. Sure if you use the editor and change an attribute from 13 to 20, you'll see other attributes decrease to compensate for it.

CA isn't a measure of how good a player is, instead his attributes are, most of which won't be seeing any significant changes after the players hits the cap.

Edited June 15, 2023 by (sic)

[RiverReveal666]

I am not sure what the answer would be, but I would love to see a more dynamic game world in general. If I go back to FM 20 so many players have progressed differently than the particular snapshot in time their CA and PA were captured in.

[fc.cadoni]

CA number (1-200) does not being affected by traits and some attributes is cost free in CA (eg. Aggression, Determination, Flair). Hidden attributes like Pressure, Professionalism etc does not impact the CA number as well, but affect the player performance which is something different.

What we already have is half-dynamic, because not all players reach PA number, and an old player (eg. 33) must have high Natural Fitness in order to keep up - otherwise he lose physical attributes which directly affect performance as well. 

[enigmatic]

4 hours ago, forameuss said:

but there's a parallel with real life, albeit not something you can measure with a number between 1 and 200.

Which is, of course, also true of football manager attributes in general  

 

4 hours ago, (sic) said:

I'm very much aware of that, but that's rarely going to happen in game, which is why I didn't include it in my post. Sure if you use the editor and change an attribute from 13 to 20, you'll see other attributes decrease to compensate for it.

Players at their peak increasing one attribute due to training whilst others decrease happens quite a bit in game. 

And frankly, players at or near their peak aren't randomly getting better balance from training IRL anyway

 

4 hours ago, Daveincid said:

PA defines the highest possible CA a player is able to achieve. If a player has a PA of 200 and he reaches it, then he has a CA of 200.

Does that mean he's a CA200-player all the time?

No, hidden attributes like consistency has a major impact how likely it is that a player is capable of playing at his actual CA-level.

This is why I think it's better to not know both of these values when you're playing this game. (Which is why they are hidden anyway)

So there is already much more dynamics included in the current model as some may think. It's just something which you can't get displayed on an excel sheet because it's within the game-code.

So down to my logic, CA is actually dynamic even when the number is the same, which makes PA also kinda dynamic

Also, for anyone playing the game without editors, the concept of "dynamic PA" is completely meaningless, and coaches' impression of players' potential changes all the time due to their performances, age and development rate...

[Birdman10piyu]

I still think we should use a Growth Rate or Potential Growth system, like I mentioned.

I'll explain what I have in mind:

Growth Rate would be a number from -10 to +10 that represents how fast a player's CA (Current Ability) can increase or decrease. A +10 Growth Rate means the player has a very high chance of reaching his maximum potential, while a -10 Growth Rate means the player is losing his skills, maybe due to an injury or age.

For example, Mbappe might have a CA of 170 and a Growth Rate of +10, meaning he can easily reach 200 CA before he retires. But if he suffers a serious injury or has a bad season, his Growth Rate might drop to +5 or lower, slowing down his progress.

On the other hand, a player with a CA of 100 and a Growth Rate of 3 might still improve, but not as much as Mbappe. He might never reach 200 CA in his career, but he could still become a decent player. And if he has a great season or trains hard, his Growth Rate might go up to 5 or higher, giving him a boost.

The advantage of this system is that it allows more flexibility and realism in the game. It doesn't cap anyone's potential, but it also doesn't make everyone a superstar. It takes into account factors like form, training, mentoring, etc. that can affect a player's development. It also creates more surprises and diversity in the game, as you might discover some late bloomers or hidden gems that have high Growth Rates. It also wouldn't be impossible for the game to re-create these Jamie Vardie situations.

 

If I had a bit more patience and some time on my hands, this might even be something that can mod into the same currently (Adjust player PA in the editor based on their form, training etc)

Edited June 15, 2023 by Birdman10piyu

[wazzaflow10]

1 hour ago, Birdman10piyu said:

For example, Mbappe might have a CA of 170 and a Growth Rate of +10, meaning he can easily reach 200 CA before he retires. But if he suffers a serious injury or has a bad season, his Growth Rate might drop to +5 or lower, slowing down his progress.

On the other hand, a player with a CA of 100 and a Growth Rate of 3 might still improve, but not as much as Mbappe. He might never reach 200 CA in his career, but he could still become a decent player. And if he has a great season or trains hard, his Growth Rate might go up to 5 or higher, giving him a boost.

This already happens in the game though. Young players who perform well in high reputation leagues than they previously played in can grow very quickly. Ones who struggle or play in lower tiers or with poor facilities grow slower usually. But there are always more than a few players in every game who have the potential to be leading PL/La Liga/Serie A players but never do because they either never got the chance, had too low a CA to be considered, or injury. Your scouts just don't tell you the players who have low CA have high potential when they're 21+ or 24+ because the probability that they're actually capable of growing that much is miniscule. 

Quote

 A +10 Growth Rate means the player has a very high chance of reaching his maximum potential,

Ironically you say this. A player's maximum potential is something that is unknown without an editor. So for all intents and purposes every player on your team is capable its only until you lift the lid off that you see who is and who isn't. There's loads of "bad players" who are capable of playing in higher leagues in the game but have low star ratings so people dismiss them. 

Quote

The advantage of this system is that it allows more flexibility and realism in the game. It doesn't cap anyone's potential, but it also doesn't make everyone a superstar. It takes into account factors like form, training, mentoring, etc. that can affect a player's development. It also creates more surprises and diversity in the game, as you might discover some late bloomers or hidden gems that have high Growth Rates. It also wouldn't be impossible for the game to re-create these Jamie Vardie situations.

I don't know how you would control this. Simply put you're saying everyone on a big club should and will turn into a player capable of playing at that level. More young players wash out of top level teams because they're simply not good enough. If everyone was capable why doesn't Man City buy every young player and let them train with the first team? They'd never have to spend more than a few million on transfers and then could turn around and sell everyone at massive profits! 

Additionally, the game at its core (maybe not the past couple due to weird development bugs) is perfectly capable of producing a Jamie Vardy style of player. The problem is Jamie Vardy himself is such an outlier you can't expect to get one every year with every save. How many Jamie Vardy's are there in the world currently (besides himself obviously). 

[Wavelberry]

9 hours ago, wazzaflow10 said:

 

Ironically you say this. A player's maximum potential is something that is unknown without an editor. So for all intents and purposes every player on your team is capable its only until you lift the lid off that you see who is and who isn't. There's loads of "bad players" who are capable of playing in higher leagues in the game but have low star ratings so people dismiss them. 

I think this gets to the crux of the issues we always have when chat about PA happens. You only know it if you go out and seek it. Doing youth only saves you have to work with what you've got and let me tell you I've had two star players perform well for seasons or 5 star players who never live up and when you check the PA/CA those consistent players or good ones for you might be some of the lower CA/PA players on the team. Discussion about PA is always so mono-focussed on  the number rather than how that intersects with all the different things going on under the hood and people never really move the conversation on from that so we never really get anywhere.

[Brother Ben]

34 minutes ago, Wavelberry said:

I think this gets to the crux of the issues we always have when chat about PA happens. You only know it if you go out and seek it. Doing youth only saves you have to work with what you've got and let me tell you I've had two star players perform well for seasons or 5 star players who never live up and when you check the PA/CA those consistent players or good ones for you might be some of the lower CA/PA players on the team. Discussion about PA is always so mono-focussed on  the number rather than how that intersects with all the different things going on under the hood and people never really move the conversation on from that so we never really get anywhere.

Exactly, there are so many things that make a player perform well, sometimes they just fit the system, have a great spread of attributes in vital areas, sometimes you can't even explain it which is what makes the game so great in my opinion.

[WizbaII]

On 15/06/2023 at 15:00, Birdman10piyu said:

I still think we should use a Growth Rate or Potential Growth system, like I mentioned.

I'll explain what I have in mind:

The game already has a growth rate for each player. That rate just isn't shown to you as a single number because it is affected by many factors and therefore always changing. This is similar to how, when you play the game normally, PA isn't shown to you, either (well, at least not in a direct way).

The primary problem with all of your arguments is that you are arguing about a number that is not available in the main game. You're having an argument about a value that only people who use the Editor would even understand. Whereas in the main game, the game makes it clear that the PA of each player is not exactly known, and even if it is known, it may not be reached. This is why the game shows you stars instead of a number, and why there is CA as well as PA.

The second problem with your argument is that you don't seem to truly understand what PA means. This is weird, because my guess is you understand exactly what the word "potential" means, yet you don't understand what Potential Ability means. As far as I can tell, you understand PA better now than when you first posted. But the fact that you are trying to advance a Growth Rate idea shows that you really don't understand what PA actually is. PA is completely different issue from PG (or GR as you sometimes call it) and talking about PG does nothing to explain why PA should not exist. Even though, yes, they are both topics that are related to a player's ability. Even players that have a high growth rate still have a limit. What you're really attempting to say, when you talk about PG, is that you think PA should be dynamic. But you've already been given reasons by others for why dynamic PA doesn't work and you just haven't truly accepted them. If Messi didn't have a limit, then he would be scoring 200 goals a season by now.

Once you can address these two problems in your argument, only then will you understand why static PA hasn't been removed in years and never will be.

If you want to have a discussion about whether FM accurately models player development over time, that's valid. For example, you can argue about how Jamie Vardy's unusual development could be replicated in the game. Or maybe you can argue that 35-year-olds (Messi, Benzema, Lewandowski) are deteriorating too quickly in game whereas in real life they are shining.

But you cannot argue that players don't have limits. That argument is doomed to fail, because it contradicts real life. It is wrong. In real life, players have limits, and that is why clubs spend 100 million to buy that special player from another club even though they already have 50 players of their own.

[Dotsworthy]

Having went back and forth on this the only arguments I can really see here for dynamic PA are:

1. Players with fantastic growth rate having a lower PA than desirable.

2. Players like Jamie Vardy not really represented in the game.

For point 1, ultimately some players do hit a wall. They get to a certain level of ability and then plateau, even if they are a hard worker. As mentioned also, it's actually very hard for a player to actually reach his PA in FM23, so plenty of players end up being dynamic in that sense. Knowing the exact PA value of a player isn't actually that helpful.

Point 2 is a trickier issue to solve. Jamie Vardy is an anomaly in football terms, leaving Sheff Wed at 16 to go non-league, all the way up to the prem. Dynamic PA doesn't solve that issue, and considering how rare a player like Vardy is, it's whether it is worth the hassle creating the conditions needed.

[Marko1989]

It is simple: 

Benefits of dynamic PA ( finite, but PA that is changing during the save )

- More players actually develop after the age of 23, which is closer to reality, which also makes the game more interesting.
- Possibility of late bloomers. ( Vardy is not the only example, there are many )
- Every save game would be different
- The game would not be anymore "just buy as many known talents in the game and eventually you will win everything"

Benefits of fixed PA:

Zero. NONE.

Ancient, limited, boring system of development, which makes every save game the same because you can easily learn what are the players with high PA, and when you know that your 16y old does not have high PA, already at 16y of age you know there is no point of playing him because his PA will not change it during the game. 
( you don't need any tools or editor to learn which players have high PA and to know if your youngster has high PA at the start of the game )

[enigmatic]

4 minutes ago, Marko1989 said:

It is simple: 

Benefits of dynamic PA ( finite, but PA that is changing during the save )

- More players actually develop after the age of 23, which is closer to reality, which also makes the game more interesting.
- Possibility of late bloomers. ( Vardy is not the only example, there are many )
- Every save game would be different
- The game would not be anymore "just buy as many known talents in the game and eventually you will win everything"

Benefits of fixed PA:

Zero. NONE.

Ancient, limited, boring system of development, which makes every save game the same because you can easily learn what are the players with high PA, and when you know that your 16y old does not have high PA, already at 16y of age you know there is no point of playing him because his PA will not change it during the game. 
( you don't need any tools or editor to learn which players have high PA and to know if your youngster has high PA at the start of the game )

No, it's simple  

Benefits of fixed PA

- the transfer market reflects a reality where there is a limited supply of top talents and big clubs pay high prices for them

- the scouting system works. scouts appraisals of a player's potential actually are dynamic, but they're not based on nothing and the better scouts actually are more accurate in their predictions

- researchers can make common sense judgements like "X looks like he might be good enough to be a squad player in 2 or 3 years; y will play at a higher level, z is unlikely to ever be good enough" rather than trying to balance half a dozen abstract variables to try to prevent the likes of Scott McTominay being worldbeaters. 

- the game doesn't become "don't bother signing known talents, any youngster whose starting attributes you like will surpass them with the right coaching setup and enough game time"

Benefits of Dynamic PA

- NONE (player development speed after 23 has nothing to do with whether PA is fixed, and late bloomers are actually less likely in a game which tries to balance player growth using speed variables rather than a cap which might be well above players' ability at 23, and being able to turn any League One 20 year old with a decent attitude into the next Vardy is much easier and less realistic than having to compete with richer clubs for a limited number of top talents)

 

 

 

 

 

[forameuss]

1 hour ago, Marko1989 said:

The game would not be anymore "just buy as many known talents in the game and eventually you will win everything"

Why didn't you tell us this before?!  I was never convinced by dynamic PA and thought it was a terrible idea, but now that you've pointed out that there is absolutely no choice but to play in such an unimaginative and insipid manner, I'm totally convin...

Nah, can't do it.  It remains a terrible idea, and in all the years it gets brought up, no-one has put forward a reason you can't dispute as to why it's a good idea.  Probably because it isn't.

[NRZ]

OOTP has dynamic potential and it's great if you start a new save, don't know what everyone is yapping about with it being fixed. Same stuff over and over. How is that fun? I want to grow my players with the right training. Make their performance based on how they play.

[Haiku]

1 minute ago, NRZ said:

OOTP has dynamic potential and it's great if you start a new save, don't know what everyone is yapping about with it being fixed. Same stuff over and over. How is that fun? I want to grow my players with the right training. Make their performance based on how they play.

They could really learn from Out of the Park Baseball in this regard. They have a system that not only uses dynamic potential but also dynamic CA. Late bloomers and failed talents are a common occurrence in OOTP. You may witness a world-class superstar who suddenly loses his mojo and transforms into an overpaid veteran. Such things never happen in FM.

[Vänsterback]

So the perceived problem is that the game is boring because you quickly learn which players will be world class and that makes every new save predictable. How about not starting so many new saves and instead stick to one for multiple seasons until you have mostly newgens populating the squads? Or start each save with a small club because that will make a huge number of players (that you have never heard of) attractive to your club?

Of course a very finite number of players in the starting database will be potentially useful for you if you want to play with Man City for 5 to 10 seasons. And if you start multiple saves with that objective it will get boring and repetative (duh!). But that is not a problem with the game mechanics. That's a problem with your imagination.

[XaW]

2 hours ago, NRZ said:

OOTP has dynamic potential and it's great if you start a new save, don't know what everyone is yapping about with it being fixed. Same stuff over and over. How is that fun? I want to grow my players with the right training. Make their performance based on how they play.

I'll use a quote from the designers of Civilization to answer this:

Quote

Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game; therefore, One of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.

People will try to find the optimal way of developing players, as many are doing already, and someone will make a youtube video of it, and then everyone will follow it and eventually you'll see people winning the CL with the original squad of Weymouth and all realism goes out the window.

I've said before, my main issue with a dynamic PA is how would the game as a whole make sure there wouldn't be an inflation of too many good players? Because that is essentially what the current system does. Keeping x% of players in each bracket to balance the game world. How would a dynamic PA achieve that? Also, if you don't know the PA of anyone, the game will _function_ as if it has (at least partially) dynamic PA, since coaches can be wrong, and development will vary, as well as where players end up careerwise. And therein lies one of the aspects that seems to be missed by those who want dynamic PA; it's hidden for a reason and you actively looking it up, either in the editor or on some list on the internet is essentially you spoiling your own fun in discovering the game...

But each to their own, I can never understand anyone wanting to take over a top club and just win leagues and CLs over and over again, but some people love it and do it every year. So spoiling by using an editor actively to look up these things is the same for me, I can't understand why one would do it, especially if it ruins the game for you by knowing when a player has reached their ceiling. I much prefer to be surprised by it, as I had a talk with @Johnny Ace a while back as to a magically good defender I got in my youth intake and he was amazing for me for a few years, but..... he never really got better, and after a few years he was not good enough for me, and the coaches suddenly rated him much lower in potential division. So eventually I had to get rid of him. For me that is something I like, he was a mirage who had peaked very early and then never got better. Even if I know he probably generated close to his PA, it still _felt_ like he was a wonderful talent that failed. If I had known his PA this story that immersed the game so much for me would be lost and never had happened.

So while anyone certainly can do whatever they want, I would advise those who think that dynamic PA is the way to go, to actually play the game without looking at CA or PA, or any hidden attribute, just play the game without peaking behind the curtain and see if it feels more like you want it to and if the stories happen as you'd like to.

[enigmatic]

23 minutes ago, XaW said:

Keeping x% of players in each bracket to balance the game world. How would a dynamic PA achieve that?

The amusing thing is the answer to that is always by having some other combination of attributes limit growth of some players, so you end up with PA anyway, it's just that neither the researchers nor the in-game clubs know what it is (but a guy on YouTube figures it all out and makes player lists anyway...) and it probably has side effects like affecting player behaviour

 

Edited July 14, 2023 by enigmatic

[santy001]

I don't understand the argument that knowing which players are good in the starting database means there should be an alternative system under which all players you sign as the human will become good. 

While there isn't much worry that the content creators figure out a dynamic PA system as they focus far too much on single season results, even on aspects which require at least 5+ years to demonstrate such as Head of Youth Development. The wider community whether he, on Reddit or someone committed to putting together serious numbers would. Any dynamic PA system that isn't just randomised (and that would be truly dreadful) would be figured out by players within months. 

There is already too many people who focus solely on personality, on CA/PA and on specific training regimes. People dislike playing a game sub-optimally and to introduce extra vectors where players think this is the case is only a negative. 

[Haiku]

5 hours ago, XaW said:

I've said before, my main issue with a dynamic PA is how would the game as a whole make sure there wouldn't be an inflation of too many good players? Because that is essentially what the current system does. Keeping x% of players in each bracket to balance the game world. How would a dynamic PA achieve that? Also, if you don't know the PA of anyone, the game will _function_ as if it has (at least partially) dynamic PA, since coaches can be wrong, and development will vary, as well as where players end up careerwise. And therein lies one of the aspects that seems to be missed by those who want dynamic PA; it's hidden for a reason and you actively looking it up, either in the editor or on some list on the internet is essentially you spoiling your own fun in discovering the game...

In OOTP, there is a hidden coefficient called Talent Change Randomness. Its only purpose is to create unpredictability in player development. However, the effect is not evenly distributed and does not have the same effect for every player. It is still expected that the majority of talents will become top players, but this coefficient makes the difference between a player who is considered to have a potential of 160 to surpass expectations and reach 180, while a player with a potential of 180 to only reach 150. Additionally, although rare, extreme examples can occur, such as the emergence of late bloomers like Vardy or some players who have shown great talent and suddenly decline due to unknown reasons, like Dele for example. All of this is possible and happens completely randomly in OOTP with each loaded save. However, the randomness in potential are not so widely extreme that you can win the Champions League with the original Weymouth team. It is possible for one of their players to develop into a decent Premier League player, but that's the best you can hope for and it is unlikely to happen more than once in 50 different save games you start.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Haiku

[DMaster2]

Il 14/6/2023 in 16:52 , Birdman10piyu ha scritto:

I'm going to revive this because I've always thought of this 

I'm all for "dynamic PA" and here's my argument. 

If I have a 23 yo winger with 100 CA and 130 PA, with perfect mental and hidden attributes and I place him on the best team in the world, with the best training facilities, best coaches, best mentors. And he plays occasionally, gaining first team experience.

If I used an editor to keep that player 23 for the span of 1000 seasons and he keeps playing for those all those seasons.

He still wouldn't get to Messi level, probably wouldn't even be a world class player because the system in place, no matter what, would not allow him to exceed his PA of 130

That's where we have a problem with the current system. Everyone knows mastery over a skill takes time and if players had countless lifetimes to practice and play football, you'd expect they'd be at a GOAT level of skill.

 

Instead of PA. I think we should have potential growth rating.

Let's say a player is CA of 100. Instead of A PA, have a PG, potential growth. So a player can continue to grow but his PG will determine how fast he grows and just like real life, some players grow faster than others. And some even deteriorate

 

Completly disagree, talent is a gap you'll never cover even if you are an immortal being training for the rest of eternity.

[Brother Ben]

19 hours ago, Vänsterback said:

So the perceived problem is that the game is boring because you quickly learn which players will be world class and that makes every new save predictable. How about not starting so many new saves and instead stick to one for multiple seasons until you have mostly newgens populating the squads?

Amen!

This thread is comedy gold, i'm in my 34th season at the moment and it feels like people here are talking about an entirely different game.

The amount of conjecture is astounding.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Brother Ben

[DunneAndDusted]

On 16/06/2023 at 01:13, wazzaflow10 said:

If everyone was capable why doesn't Man City buy every young player and let them train with the first team? They'd never have to spend more than a few million on transfers and then could turn around and sell everyone at massive profits

Because its easier to improve better players? What's the point at starting with a lower floor level? To save a few quid? It's professional football, they're not penny pinchers.

If you had a team of '120 PA' players training at United for 3 years they would absolutely get past that barrier. They wouldn't do it obviously because they'd be relegated and managers sacked in the mean time. But why would you when you can buy the best? 

21 hours ago, santy001 said:

I don't understand the argument that knowing which players are good in the starting database means there should be an alternative system under which all players you sign as the human will become good. 

Nobody actually wants that. Not everyone should be Messi and thinking that's how DPA would be is resiging yourself to the idea of a FIFA style system which is silly. Introduce limiters on how far people can grow past their initial PA, more outside effects that lower and raise hidden attributes. Players think they've made it and their ambition goes down, family trauma and their determination goes down. There's some in the game now but quite rare to how it is in real life it feels.

I had a GK on FM21 who had 154 potential and at 21 he reached it. I had only noticed he hadn't been growing about a year later and checked his PA. Now, he was a top level goalkeeper at 21, was a Model Citizen, best facilities and coaches in the world and couldn't grow anymore. Its insanity to think he could get better at anything in his game that young. If there was a player who you rated 154 in the next FM at 21 with a good personality, there's zero chance the devs would then give him a 154 potential to go with it. He had all the assets necessary to progress and he didn't because he's hardcapped. 

[NRZ]

Yeah I'm talking about how OOTP makes your game world very customizable. SI should take notes on the amount of freedom you have to run the league(s) the way you want. Saves countless hours downloading and installing mods before some random update ruins things lol

4 hours ago, Brother Ben said:

Amen!

This thread is comedy gold, i'm in my 34th season at the moment and it feels like people here are talking about an entirely different game.

The amount of conjecture is astounding.

 

[enigmatic]

5 minutes ago, DunneAndDusted said:

Because its easier to improve better players? What's the point at starting with a lower floor level? To save a few quid? It's professional football, they're not penny pinchers.

If you had a team of '120 PA' players training at United for 3 years they would absolutely get past that barrier. They wouldn't do it obviously because they'd be relegated and managers sacked in the mean time. But why would you when you can buy the best? 

LOL. Manchester United have a youth setup which has nutured the unremarkable talents of loads of players with 120PA or less. Some of them got to train with the first team. Some of them got to play for the first team. You'll find them playing in League One now, or struggling to get games. Most of them didn't have attitude problems, they just weren't that good

Raise the bar to '135PA' or '140PA' and it's even more obvious. Man Utd gave an awful lot of game time to an awful lot of players, sometimes paying significant money for them first and many of them have never got better at all (if anything, FM probably understates how many players get worse after their early career peak). Dan James played 74 games for Man Utd at the beginning of his twenties, put in really good early performances, had a great attitude and no major injuries and.... ran very fast into a hard cap and didn't improve at all! 

Funny thing is, this was actually predicted by the FM researcher and yet the low PA that upset a few fans is probably still better than he'll ever reach and certainly better than he is now.

[DunneAndDusted]

5 hours ago, enigmatic said:

LOL. Manchester United have a youth setup which has nutured the unremarkable talents of loads of players with 120PA or less. Some of them got to train with the first team. Some of them got to play for the first team. You'll find them playing in League One now, or struggling to get games. 

So? They're professional footballers. That's the goal for the major academies is to create professionals. This isn't a diss. If you think that my comment said that these should all be world class, what's the point in the conversation because you're not listening.

 

5 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Raise the bar to '135PA' or '140PA' and it's even more obvious. Man Utd gave an awful lot of game time to an awful lot of players, sometimes paying significant money for them first and many of them have never got better at all (if anything, FM probably understates how many players get worse after their early career peak). Dan James played 74 games for Man Utd at the beginning of his twenties, put in really good early performances, had a great attitude and no major injuries and.... ran very fast into a hard cap and didn't improve at all! 

Giving certain players 'some' playing time. It's easy to give a youth player 'a chance' and then throw them away when they don't immediately meet expectations. Its not the same as a squad full of them getting top level coaching and experience. As I've said, there's another way the game can represent the slowing down of players once they reach the big time in a way that's not a hard cap. Dan James is a fine example, good player, limited technically but physical attributes make him better and terrified me as City fan with our slow defence in 2020. But United is not the place to grow as a young player that it used to be and he probably would have learned more at Leeds with Bielsa. 

[santy001]

15 hours ago, DunneAndDusted said:

Nobody actually wants that. Not everyone should be Messi and thinking that's how DPA would be is resiging yourself to the idea of a FIFA style system which is silly. Introduce limiters on how far people can grow past their initial PA, more outside effects that lower and raise hidden attributes. Players think they've made it and their ambition goes down, family trauma and their determination goes down. There's some in the game now but quite rare to how it is in real life it feels.

I had a GK on FM21 who had 154 potential and at 21 he reached it. I had only noticed he hadn't been growing about a year later and checked his PA. Now, he was a top level goalkeeper at 21, was a Model Citizen, best facilities and coaches in the world and couldn't grow anymore. Its insanity to think he could get better at anything in his game that young. If there was a player who you rated 154 in the next FM at 21 with a good personality, there's zero chance the devs would then give him a 154 potential to go with it. He had all the assets necessary to progress and he didn't because he's hardcapped. 

I'm not "resigning" myself to anything. It's a rather objective realisation that the collective mass of the FM playerbase that engages with forums, engages with youtube content etc are incredibly well educated about the game. People probe the limits of systems.

One solution is a dynamic system is entirely random, and therefore completely devalued. Or it has underlying mechanics, rules and criteria which given enough time the playerbase will figure out. Maybe it stands the test of time for 1 or 2 editions of FM. Maybe people spreading misinformation claiming to have figured it out muddies the waters a bit. Maybe a youtuber gets it completely wrong by running 1 year tests with different starting points and misses how development works over multiple years. Given enough time though players will solve it and the game will not be able to stand up to what becomes a solved problem.

But this in turn is the problem, you've got a top goalkeeper, already playing well and in a fantastic position. So what if he cannot develop any further? At a 154 CA in any position you can be playing as one of the best in the world if your attribute spread permits it. 

As someone who rates players for the game, we do rate players differently to how the game generates players. There is something of an obvious reason behind this however. We are humans guessing to the best of our ability what a players potential is likely to be. The game, when it generates a new player, knows that players potential. 

[enigmatic]

9 hours ago, DunneAndDusted said:

So? They're professional footballers. That's the goal for the major academies is to create professionals. This isn't a diss. If you think that my comment said that these should all be world class, what's the point in the conversation because you're not listening.

I think your comment was that players "training at Man Utd for 3 years" should all "easily" get past 120PA. Yet the vast majority of them never do, and even players given starts in the Premier League get stuck below that level. If you're trying to defend that silliness by pretending I said they should all be world class instead, I'm not sure there's much point in this conversation because you're not even reading your own posts, never mind mine. 

 

9 hours ago, DunneAndDusted said:

Giving certain players 'some' playing time. It's easy to give a youth player 'a chance' and then throw them away when they don't immediately meet expectations. Its not the same as a squad full of them getting top level coaching and experience. 

Not sure giving the likes of Paddy McNair 27 games including a run of starts at the age of 19 is really throwing him away because he doesn't immediately meet expectations.

He's spent the rest of his career in the Championship because he's a pretty average player who hit his ceiling early on, not because he didn't get enough playing time (he got considerably more top level playing time than most 19 year olds)

cf Lingard, who hadn't even had a loan at that age because the club didn't think he was ready for it, but they were absolutely convinced he was one of the few with the potential to play for the first team, and sure enough he reached a higher level than McNair before making a first team start.

And less wealthy Premier League sides don't have the luxury of not playing their squad players with PA in the 120s, but amazingly they don't start looking like Premier League footballers, despite regular Premier League football and coaches who often go on to bigger and better things.

 

9 hours ago, DunneAndDusted said:

Dan James is a fine example, good player, limited technically but physical attributes make him better and terrified me as City fan with our slow defence in 2020. But United is not the place to grow as a young player that it used to be and he probably would have learned more at Leeds with Bielsa. 

Bit confused by how Man Utd has gone from being absolutely guaranteed to improve players potential over three seasons to being unable to improve their ability from around that level over two! Fact is, James was someone with a single season in the Championship given two seasons of regular game time in the Premier League in a club that had very successfully brought through other pacy wide players, and he didn't improve at all. Did even worse when Bielsa successfully signed him. 

That's actually pretty common, which is why clubs are willing to spend lots of money on the perceived potential of players that are worse than their starting XI, why they sometimes turn out to have overestimated that potential even when they try really hard to make it work, and why hard caps are a thing in FM.

[DunneAndDusted]

5 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Bit confused by how Man Utd has gone from being absolutely guaranteed to improve players potential over three seasons to being unable to improve their ability from around that level over two! Fact is, James was someone with a single season in the Championship given two seasons of regular game time in the Premier League in a club that had very successfully brought through other pacy wide players, and he didn't improve at all. Did even worse when Bielsa successfully signed him. 

That's actually pretty common, which is why clubs are willing to spend lots of money on the perceived potential of players that are worse than their starting XI, why they sometimes turn out to have overestimated that potential even when they try really hard to make it work.

It's from where you're starting as a base. James did improve, he looked Premier League quality which is why he has stayed in the Premier League since but didn't get to reach what they thought he might. I've not suggested that everyone reach their potential, just to make it possible to surpass. United hasn't been the club to turn good players to top ones for a while but they should be able to make bad players at least average. If you were to replace all United players with those of League 1 and 3 year transfer embargo. They'd improve because they have to. There's no other option.

James also got to work with Bielsa for 3 months when he was wanted 2 and a half years prior. Given Bielsa's record of improving players I wouldn't bet against him.

6 hours ago, santy001 said:

One solution is a dynamic system is entirely random, and therefore completely devalued. Or it has underlying mechanics, rules and criteria which given enough time the playerbase will figure out. Maybe it stands the test of time for 1 or 2 editions of FM. Maybe people spreading misinformation claiming to have figured it out muddies the waters a bit. Maybe a youtuber gets it completely wrong by running 1 year tests with different starting points and misses how development works over multiple years. Given enough time though players will solve it and the game will not be able to stand up to what becomes a solved problem.

Random generation isn't something that's unfamiliar to this game or something that will devalue the system. We already have random determination drops and we had the brexit deal so adding a few more things in that represent the off the pitch developments isn't that huge of a jump in my eyes. Randomness with the rules behind it will be enough to keep from being gamed obviously. But even if it ends up figured out, isn't the game already figures out anyway with the exploit tactics and the ability to search for the cheapest wonderkids online? A dynamic game makes a more interesting game.

[enigmatic]

30 minutes ago, DunneAndDusted said:

It's from where you're starting as a base. James did improve, he looked Premier League quality which is why he has stayed in the Premier League since but didn't get to reach what they thought he might. I've not suggested that everyone reach their potential, just to make it possible to surpass. United hasn't been the club to turn good players to top ones for a while but they should be able to make bad players at least average. If you were to replace all United players with those of League 1 and 3 year transfer embargo. They'd improve because they have to. There's no other option.

James didn't improve, his best games for Man Utd were in his first month and the Premier League clubs that signed him haven't been able to use him as anything more than a one dimensional pace merchant either. No attitude or serious injury problems, no lack of game time, he just hasn't been able to acquire the all round game to offer much more than he did when he first burst onto the scene in the Championship. Yes, players hit ceilings and some promising players at 21 are basically the same at 25 whilst others clearly are much, much better despite sometimes getting less game time.

If you were to replace all United players with those of League 1 and set a 3 year transfer embargo, the result would be Man Utd playing in League 1, not the League 1 players being close to Premier League level

[herne79]

45 minutes ago, DunneAndDusted said:

A dynamic game makes a more interesting game.

Both a dynamic game and dynamic potential are already in the game if people just stop looking at hidden values that have nothing to do with potential and focus more on the star ratings.

Example - below is a recent youth intake (for Man Utd).

Spoiler

And this is their actual hidden PA values:

Spoiler

Look how different it is. 

But more than that, those star ratings will change over time as coaches get to know players better and as players start to develop (or not).  Their star ratings for potential will increase or decrease as they progress.  That's the very essence of dynamism right there and it reflects real life - coach opinions change as players develop.

Now that's not to say the system is perfect but all we have to do if we want dynamic potential is to stop looking at meaningless (from a gameplay perspective) hidden values and start looking at the information which is right there in front of us.

[Johnny Ace]

Nail on the head right there 

I'm not saying to do it, but it would be interesting to see how all of those turned out and where they all ended up after 10 years