[Ridiculous Contract Requests / Needs Improvement w Interactions etc.]

On my Bayern save thats already uploaded because of the scouting problems, I repeatedly had youth players demanding 30/40K+ as their first contract at 15/16.

Admittedly they were always the very high potential newgens, but it did seem ridiculous for a 15 year old to be demanding 45k a week as a pre-contract agreement. 

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

1 hour ago, Thrane87 said:

Don't think it's related to ported saves. Mine isn't ported. Worked fine in the beginning and then stopped working.

No, mine was started early December. It's not even a beta save never mind an FM23 one.

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

13 hours ago, Passion4FM said:

It really needs investigation and a proper answer. If so many of us are doing it wrong, then they should tell us how it is supposed to work.

the result of the ALL TOP focus gave a decent result in around 1 month

Unless they've changed it for FM24 we aren't doing it wrong. I've done it this way since whatever version recruitment focuses came in, and nigh on every big YouTube content creator has a video on how to scout, and it's invariably like this.

I think it's only breaking in some saves or after so many seasons which is why there isn't a complete hammering of this thread from all and sundry.

Sadly it's killing my save now. I'm in 2033 managing Bayern having worked my way up from Viktoria Koln, and as its 9 years in my real world knowledge is at the point of being useless. At least half of the game are newgens by now. 

I asked my scouts to produce a list of 3* BPD as De Ligt has just gone to Saudi for £1m a week, and they told me they couldn't find one. I had a transfer budget of £190m and they had free reign. I had a look round the top teams in the CL and manually pressed scout on a few and they all came back at over 3*. I signed one from Dortmund for £60m - I end up playing them about 4 times a year, how did he not show up in the recruitment focus?

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

45 minutes ago, Undy said:

I've tried this and made no difference for me. Scouts would still go on assignments and not even have a single player in progress. I've also noticed though that having a narrow area focus (i.e. a nation or even a single region) would result in next to no scouting taking place, even if the rest of the criteria were quite broad. In exasperation, I took control of scouting back from my chief scout, deleted all existing assignments, then created this one:

I duplicated this for every single one of my scouts. Obviously with the minimum PA at 4.5 stars this is a very restrictive focus, so I don't expect many, if any, recommendations from most of the scouts, but I do at least expect them to look at people. I have 22 of these assignments - one for each scout. Currently eight of them have zero reports in progress, near matches, or recommendations. The others have 1, 15, 15, 13, 11, 22, 13, 28, 18, 7, 14, 8, 13, 9, and 16 in progress. They are at least looking at players now, but it's far from an ideal setup.

It might help SI understand the nature of the bug if we lay out expectations for how our focuses would work to see whether it matches with intended functionality within the game. For this setup, I would expect the scout to follow a process something like this:

1. Look at players he already has scouting knowledge of
2. Look at players he doesn't have prior knowledge of in the most reputable clubs in countries he has knowledge of (in decreasing order of country knowledge)
3. Given the age range is low, look at clubs in countries he has knowledge of and which have an academy rating of (e.g.) 3 stars and up
4. Look at all other clubs in countries he has knowledge of
5. Repeat steps 2-4 but in countries he doesn't have knowledge of
6. Repeat

It would be understandable if step 5 was missed out and he instead repeated steps 1-4 in an infinite loop given it's an ongoing assignment. What isn't acceptable (indeed should be sackable behaviour) is not looking at any players in any clubs at all. In the case of Toninho Cruz, he has extensive knowledge of Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Spain, and Angola, and very good knowledge of Belgium, Cameroon, and Colombia, has no other active assignments, but has zero in progress reports. If I look at Porto, the most reputable club in his home country, they have 12 players aged 20 and under who we have no knowledge of, which begs the question, what the hell is he doing? Why isn't he scouting these guys? With a little snooping, I can see one of them is a 19 year old with CA 133 and PA 172. Toninho should be raving about this guy but he isn't even looking! In a recruitment focus like this, what should I expect my scout to actually be doing that could convince me that the behaviour i'm seeing isn't a bug? 

Yeah things quickly went back to how they were after a while. A year later and im getting sod all reports again even with the chief scout running the show. Its 100% broken.

It must be random as to whether it breaks or it only breaks after so many years, thats the only explanation for how more aren't seeing this.

I'm having to resort to just manually scouting people now.

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

On 13/01/2024 at 12:23, Lam3r said:

Update - I've culled all my recruitment focuses and handed scouting decisions back to the chief scout, and reports are now coming in thick and fast on the ones he's set up. Sadly, they are all pretty naff focuses!

Even if I setup a recruitment focus for a first team player now I get loads of reports and a good list, whereas before when I asked for a first team mezzala I got nothing. So it seems like the key is to have chief scout (or maybe DOF) in charge of scouting or it breaks. 

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

5 hours ago, Undy said:

What are the focuses he's set up? I have scouts with full country knowledge scouting Sweden, Croatia, Brazil, Argentina, Japan and Paraguay in separate focuses, all ages 15-20, any position, min PA 3 gold stars, min CA 3 silver stars, and between them there are 5 reports in progress (3 of which are in Japan), zero near matches and zero recommendations. These focuses have been ongoing for a few years. 

I recently (a couple of game months ago) set up another focus ages 15-23, any position, min CA 1 silver star, min PA 4.5 gold stars(!), any region and ongoing with just one scout, and there is one recommendation (an 18 year old Cypriot midfielder) who I've already agreed to sign, and 50 in progress.

This definitely points towards a bug of some sort as there's no way the other focuses are too restrictive to even have reports in progress - a scout in Brazil for a mid-level European team (Rangers) should at least be able to find an under 21 player in any position to at least look into, if not recommended, who might have the potential (min 3 gold stars) to be a squad player at least. 

Hes sent scouts to countries with far more restrictive criteria than i had - min 2.5 star CA and 3 star PA 

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

Update - I've culled all my recruitment focuses and handed scouting decisions back to the chief scout, and reports are now coming in thick and fast on the ones he's set up. Sadly, they are all pretty naff focuses!

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

1 hour ago, steve.battisti said:

Just to add ammunition here...

I tend to play in lower leagues, so maybe the limited scouting range affects this. But my experience is this that if I create ANY position-specific recruitment focus, I'll get zero hits, even if it's as broad as:

"Find any fullback (anywhere, any age) with a strong left foot and at least 3 stars"

I have never managed to create a recruitment focus for a specific position that returned anything. Without fail they say "We're having trouble finding anyone." 

For example I created this focus to find an AML: https://imgur.com/a/VhFFdlj

It failed to find any players. Yet, my ongoing Vanarama National League North/South and "All of England" recruitment focuses found all of these guys:  https://imgur.com/mWEdtHn

Let me know if I can provide more information.

Also had this at Bayern where I asked them to find me a list of 3* Mazzala's from anywhere and they couldn't even compile a list of 1.

[Scouting (Recruitment focuses) doesn't work]

Uploaded 'Unemployed to Bayern.fm'

Having the same problems as per this thread - 

In summary I have various world class scouts at Bayern Munich looking for CA silver 2.5* to PA gold 2.5* in various countries in which they speak the language and have full scout knowledge. They seem to turn up between zero and 5 at best reports per annum. On FM23 this would have been way more. It's leading to really struggling to find any youth other than who's on the next gen email.