Make city pages accessible to view, like clubs and stadiums are currently

[Jamaicaman90]

Being able to click on the name of a city to view a page of information offers an opportunity to add a bit more depth to the game world, by allowing you to get a better understanding of how the geography of a nation works.

Information boxes on a city page could then include:

• A list of clubs within the city, sortable by reputation/trophies won.
• A list of stadiums within the city, sortable by size.
• Local language (particularly useful for those in multilingual nations like Switerland or Belgium).
• An appropriate 'media description' of the 0-20 attraction rating, perhaps also influenced by the inhabitants range (creating a distinction between for example Rome and Capri, without it being just a matter of comparing numbers).

Assuming that the local language and attraction ratings impact a) the likelihood of players being interested in a club and b) how well they settle in, having some sort of access to this information helps the player make informed decisions in a way that makes sense in a real life way, as discussions always exist in real life punditry about how a player may or may not want to live in some cities over others. With all other things being equal, a player would likely rather play for a club in London rather than Carlisle due to the attractiveness rating, and it would make sense for the game to give a small indication of that. Likewise, the game currently doesn't tell you what the local language of your chosen Belgian club will be until you sign a player and get offered the chance to send them for language training - this doesn't reflect the understanding a manager would have before taking on a job and making their first signing.

The additional benefit of this system would be to allow players building up smaller clubs to get a sense of local standing even without having a number of derbies in place for their club. For example, a Dulwich Hamlet player who takes them to the top flight isn't going to have any local rivalries with their London-based peers, but they can still get a feel for the rivalry in the area by seeing where their reputation stands in relation to their closest neighbours. It also opens the door for news items to appear when you become the highest reputation team in a city, as well perhaps as offering the chance for news items to say 'the first club from [city] to win [trophy]', as was the case when London had it's first Champions League winner back in 2012.

Taking this a step further (perhaps a step too ambitious to start with, so consider this an extension to the above rather than a core part of it), the game could also find a way to track each cities comparitively, with occasional news articles discussing which city is the 'footballing capital' of a nation, as you'd expect in England between London/Manchester/Liverpool. How this would be weighted wouldn't be for me to say, but news articles could pop up to point out when, as an example, Manchester clubs start dominating all the trophies, ending a previous spell of winners being primarily from London.

Edited February 16, 2022 by Jamaicaman90

[Michael Sant]

It's interesting - this would be a lot of information though to add to the game and maintain. Would your expectation be that researchers for clubs in their cities are working on keeping this up to date and maintained from edition to edition?

What would be the benefits for smaller places, there are far more single club cities/towns/villages and wonder how much of this would be relevant/beneficial on those pages.

[Jamaicaman90]

On 22/02/2022 at 20:55, Michael Sant said:

It's interesting - this would be a lot of information though to add to the game and maintain. Would your expectation be that researchers for clubs in their cities are working on keeping this up to date and maintained from edition to edition?

What would be the benefits for smaller places, there are far more single club cities/towns/villages and wonder how much of this would be relevant/beneficial on those pages.

My understanding is that there are 'regional heads' of research, am I right on that? I feel like the main information to track would simply be to make sure clubs are properly assigned to locations - the other information is mostly already in the database even if not visible to the player (attraction rating, inhabitants, local language) and is simply taking more benefit from what is already there, while the other things would be generated based on game data rather than manually updated (for example, once the forumula is implemented, researchers wouldn't need to state the capital of English football - the game would work it out based on the reputations/silverware of the relevant teams, likewise the media descriptions).

Smaller places can benefit too. There'd need to be a certain level of editorial decision-making as to, for example, what defines a 'London' club (Luton? Watford?). If smaller towns and villages have a club rise to prominence then, perhaps the game can treat them as an anomoly based on their location - for example, it would be realistic for the game's media to note Hoffenheim or even Forest Green are punching above their weight considering their humble locations. In those instances, players would still get value from this system, as they'd be able to identify not only the jostling for position in the main cities of a country, but also those areas that have a club or clubs far exceeding their expectations (and likewise major population hubs that have little going on, like Wakefield).

Edited February 24, 2022 by Jamaicaman90

[Señor Dan]

What Jamaicaman requests is not complicated, it is all information that IS ALREADY inside the game's database, it is just a matter of ordering it.
And what he requests is that the user can see it in the game.

Another important feature on that page could be that it includes distances from other cities in the country (a map would be nice, but I know that's too much to ask).

[Darth Rob]

To make it really clear to anyone glancing at this. This information already exists in the database, it's just not visible anywhere in game right now.

All clubs (and stadiums) are assigned to Cities and each City is an individual record with existing attributes that belongs to a "Local Region" which has Population and Language info.

 

[Michael Sant]

On 24/02/2022 at 17:03, Jamaicaman90 said:

My understanding is that there are 'regional heads' of research, am I right on that?

There is variance within the different research teams around the world. However, there isn't anything like this in the UK research team. I'm the Stoke Researcher as well, and I report directly to the EFL Head Researcher.

It's a lot of information to pull together, so just an example of putting together some information for Stoke where I live.

You get 2 professional clubs, Stoke City & Port Vale. You've then got Newcastle Town (maybe falls under Newcastle-under-Lyme), Eastwood Hanley FC, Hanley Town and formerly, Norton United. It's possible other clubs are around too I don't even know the existence of that are in the FM DB somewhere. There are more football grounds in the city of Stoke (or potential football grounds) than are currently in use. So should we only be including the bet365 Stadium, Vale Park, Trentmill Road (also Northwood Stadium), Potteries Park and Norton Cricket Club? 

Not all of this information is currently in the database. Eastwood Hanley FC have it claimed their Trentmill Road "ground" is a 5,000 capacity ground. Here's a picture:

This is the example of things you can run into when you start getting away from the well established, professional clubs. There did actually used to be some terraced stands around the side of the ground, regularly had a kick around on the pitch in the picture above as a child. They look to be in a serious state of deterioration now and barely in tact 25 years later.

Should there be cut-offs to how far down something like this does go? The question of who is accountable for fact checking and keeping it up to date remains as well. It's not to pour cold water or shoot down the idea, because it's an interesting concept. But there are limiting factors like how much can reasonably be asked of voluntary researchers which is an important consideration for an idea like this. Maybe its just a presentation of what is in the DB as it is, and if its wrong so be it let that be raised at the time in data issues for those who do view this? It's genuinely a case of wanting to understand how this can be best relayed to developers for consideration with potential issues I can see as someone involved in the research side. 

[Jamaicaman90]

5 hours ago, Michael Sant said:

Should there be cut-offs to how far down something like this does go? The question of who is accountable for fact checking and keeping it up to date remains as well. It's not to pour cold water or shoot down the idea, because it's an interesting concept. But there are limiting factors like how much can reasonably be asked of voluntary researchers which is an important consideration for an idea like this. Maybe its just a presentation of what is in the DB as it is, and if its wrong so be it let that be raised at the time in data issues for those who do view this? It's genuinely a case of wanting to understand how this can be best relayed to developers for consideration with potential issues I can see as someone involved in the research side. 

In my opinion, that's how I see it - let the data feed the UI, and then update the data when inconsistencies and inaccuracies are found.

Should there be a cut-off? I think it depends on the context. For the city pages themselves, probably not - much like how, for example, if you view the 'clubs' tab within a nation you can see every single club listed, even when that list features a number of inaccuracies (for example, in Wales I can see a number of clubs that no longer exist, a number of clubs missing, and a few incorrectly named). This doesn't make the game worse for it; it adds to the richness, and I've reported many of the issues I've found.

For news articles though, contextually yes. In my example article where the game declares a 'capital of football' for a country, if it's based on reputation and trophies you will have an issue if it uses both grand totals or mean averages, because a city like London will be either overly negatively or overly positively impacted  (in a way that doesn't make sense to the point) by the large number of clubs within it. In those cases, perhaps they consider only teams in the top/top few divisions, depending on what would work best when tested.

[Señor Dan]

La limitación es la misma que en la pantalla del país, nunca están todos los clubes que realmente existen en el país, es un límite sobre qué datos hay y cuáles no, que lo da el propio investigador. Igual que con la pantalla de país.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Señor Dan

[Jamaicaman90]

5 minutes ago, Señor Dan said:

La limitación es la misma que en la pantalla del país, nunca están todos los clubes que realmente existen en el país, es un límite sobre qué datos hay y cuáles no, que lo da el propio investigador. Igual que con la pantalla de país.

En este caso, puede decir que si funciona para los paises, puede funcionar para las ciudades, no? Y quizás habrá algunas problemas con los datos en el primer ano, pero con el apoyo de la comunidad puede convirtir mejor, no?

In that case, you could say that if it functions for nations, it can function for cities too right? And while perhaps there will be a few issues with the data in the initial year, with the support of the community it can be made better, right?