[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

4 minutes ago, francis#17 said:

Each player has different "key development years", which will determine the ages a player will develop most. For most players this is their teens and early 20s for other players it includes their mid and later 20s. This is hidden from us so we cant see it and because this you cant make this type of comparison.

Yes, that's the point of what I am saying, that the hidden hard-coded development pattern dominates development over match experience and match performance.

7 minutes ago, francis#17 said:

On top of that at 24 years old you can have a very good idea on the level a player will reach for the vast majority of players. Players that reach much higher levels later in their career are a rare exception

That's not what the issue is. The issue is that players after age 24 pretty much stagnate. It's not about players reaching much higher levels, it's about reaching just higher levels. Right now I can give you 10 players off the top of my head that are/were noticeably better at or after age 27/28/29 than at 24: Suarez, Modric, Pirlo, Van Dijk, Mane, Lewandowski, Xavi, De Bruyne, Sneijder, Robben. If you go from club to club you'll find plenty of players that were/are better at 27 than at 24.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

1 hour ago, bowieinspace said:

But you’re talking about two different players who will develop in different ways at different times, with different ceilings. If the game was so simple that players developed exactly as you expected them to it would be very boring 

But the development is very boring and they do develop as expected (as I would expect the game to develop them, not how I would expect players IRL to develop). Players will max out at 24ish and already at 19/20 I pretty much know how a player will turn out. The DLP in my example above I already know won't ever be good enough for my squad, and I knew since he was 19. Coaches are still reporting that he's a 4 yellow star talent, but I know that as soon as he hits 22/23 they'll very likely re-evaluate down to 3-3.5 stars. If you play the game long enough, you'll even start picking up on the underlying starting attribute patterns of newgens.

The point of that example was to show that first-team experience and match performance doesn't strongly influence the development. The player only has to get first-team experience, and they don't even have to get a lot of it. It's essentially a 1 or a 0 with match experience and performance, there's not a lot of nuance to it. Because if match experience and performance does strongly influence development, then there's no reason why BPD with more than double the minutes, 10x the international experience etc. shouldn't develop at least at approx the same rate as the DLP, given that everything else is the same (age, personality, morale, coaches, facilities etc.). But in fact he has been developing at a slower rate over the past 3.5 years. Hence it is the underlying pattern that is dominating the development.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

11 hours ago, WeePaul said:

Isn't that realistic though? When discussing that particular kind of development curve, everyone talks about Vardy. He's the go-to example. And that's because there are very, very few players with the kind of development curve like he's had. 

Yes, it's completely realistic, I'm not saying it isn't. However players generally reaching their peak at 24ish is not.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Otherwise I'm going to stick with the assumption that the valuable information about player development from the ME can be reduced to 'are they playing enough at the right level', which additionally incorporates the assumption players can 'learn from their mistakes' and not just from unexpectedly good outcomes.

I gave an example above in which two players, of same age (21), training the same amount of time with the first-team (18-21), of the same personality (Fairly Professional), in the same unit (defensive), except one has more than double the minutes of the other, more than 10x the international experience, and performed better on average by far. Intuitively, the one with more experience should improve at least at the same rate as the other, yet with only the "are they playing enough at the right level" we the get counter-intuitive result that the player with less experience, less minutes, less pretty much everything improved more. According to that information, and at least in that example, the ME has little to no impact on development, and the predetermined hard-coded development curve completely dominates whichever development information the ME outputs.

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if we take Person A who has never cooked before and Person B who has cooked a lot in their own kitchen before, but never in a professional kitchen, do we assume both have an equal probability of impressing the judges in the first round Masterchef?

Yes, you can assume that, because "cooking a lot" doesn't give you information about anything except that B was in the kitchen a lot. You don't know if Person B was cooking a lot badly. There is an expectation that a person spending more time cooking will do better than a person that has never cooked, but expectation is not the same as probability. Person A might as well just read the recipe and make better scrambled eggs than B who maybe spent years improvising on the recipe and picked up bad habits because nobody else was tasting their food. Just look up all the X-Factor/Idol/whatever auditions with people saying oh I've been singing for thousands of years, I'm a vocal coach bla bla only to completely bomb.

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Confirmation bias from in-match events is literally the attribute update mechanism you have been proposing. See a player convert and assume he will be better at converting in future. See them miss a series of chances and assume they will become worse in future.

No, it's not, because you have all the information across all the period of time the player was with you. Confirmation bias is about having some of the information about some of the period of time. You not only see a player convert, you also see him fail. If someone fails at a much greater rate than they succeed in a skill (in relative terms for the skill that they're undertaking), they generally will not become better in the future.

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

I'm glad you specified it V*(training performance) + W*(match performance), as this means that where v /= 0 training performance alone (i.e. where an individual has zero match performance score from playing in zero matches) can have an impact (where coefficient on V is not zero).  This makes your protracted insistence above that SI and I am wrong to suggest it should do all the more perplexing...

As I've said, this is a very rudimentary model with flaws, I didn't spend more than 2 minutes thinking about it. Insisting that this is actually how I want it implemented just shows that you're arguing in bad faith. You're right, where V != 0 and W = 0, training performance alone has impact. So then V=0 if #matches=0 at any level. The end. I'm glad that you are glad about finding mistakes in your own assumptions, as I've never assumed that V is non-zero. One other way to easily account for your assumption is to change the + to a *, so when either are 0, development is 0. Maybe you want to use negative weights, so (-1)^p for some odd or even power p has to be put in front. There are many ways to account for your assumptions.

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

If we correctly weight them all for difficulty (likely possible for someone with access to the ME code that produces the actions) the attributes don't change, because players do not perform them 'above their capability' in a match engine.

Again, you can have a correct weighing that does not have to correlate with how the ME produces actions. The point is to simulate development, not to carbon-copy the probabilities in the ME. For example, there are several types of difficult passes, each has their own probabilities assigned in the ME. For the purposes of development, you could group them all in a single group and assign a single score to that group.

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

The only way you get growth is to assign scores which overestimate the difficulty of performing the action. If you set small values of X and heavy weighting on rare goals you get free kick taking jumps by a point each few weeks a player scores in, which feels a bit artificial and predictable, if you set high values of X and more weighting on just performing the expected good:bad free kick ratio you get steadier and easier improvement. Neither appears to describe a more realistic development curve especially since its far from clear designated set piece takers actually improve their set piece taking broadly proportionately to the number they take (and/or number they score) over the course of their career. 

Then don't do it like that. In the realm of all possibilities for development models, saying that this is the only way to be done requires some evidence.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

1 hour ago, bowieinspace said:

The DLP may have played less but if he’s still getting good training experiences and some match experience why couldn’t he improve more?

Because the BPD is getting the same good training experiences, with the same coaches. They are in the same "defensive unit" so a lot of the time they train the same things, yet the DLP improved more, particularly in Mentals. They both have the same personality, Fairly Professional. So everything is the same or mostly the same, except the BPD playing more than double the minutes of the DLP, yet the DLP progresses more in training - so what can we conclude here? That the first-team match experience, at least in this example, didn't carry much weight with respect to development rate. This is why I say that it is either a 1 or a 0 and not nuanced enough. Both have match experience, but the comparable lack minutes played doesn't seem to hurt DLP's development rate.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

13 hours ago, enigmatic said:

It's not an 'extreme worse case scenario', it's the norm for long shots, the example attribute you chose. Number of long shots scored is low for nearly all players and hence both that and the conversion rate are volatile, with a single event changing the values significantly. A conversion rate changing from 0.03 to 0.06 for the season is quite a considerable change in terms of long shot conversion statistics relative to other players, and yet can be a single in-match event not reflective of any development of a player's shooting ability. 

Ok, if the IRL stats are like that, then don't put a strong weight on conversion rate, it's as simple as that. There are other tools IRL and in the game that can indicate improvement, for example xG and performance relative to xG. Again, if the conversion rate is doubled, but the number of shots it took to achieve it was huge, so account for that.

13 hours ago, enigmatic said:

So we remove the noise and the ease of opportunity we're left with... the impact of the original attributes. So players don't develop at all! 

Well you started talking about noise. We have the impact of original attributes, we have the impact of 10 other players, we have the impact of the opposition, we have the impact of playing conditions. We don't have to add or subtract anything that's not already in the ME.

13 hours ago, enigmatic said:

You are arguing that 'us[ing] long shots in a match succesfully at an above average capacity (relative to his previous ability)' should be a prerequisite for player improvement, and I am observing that this will actually make it more difficult for players to improve an attribute, both because long shots specifically are rare, and because the 'previous ability' is actually the capacity the match engine uses to determine how the long shots turn out

I never said it was the only prerequisite. I keep saying that it should be a factor, not the factor.

13 hours ago, enigmatic said:

No, it's how attribute-driven simulation works: an attribute gives the player a probability of executing an action in the simulation, so incrementing the attribute improves their ability to perform those actions in match. Therefore a development model to affect players' long term ability to perform operates on the principle that attribute improvements drive greater capacity to perform. It's how cause and effect works. This is entirely compatible with directly (and indirectly through the effect of morale on training performances) restricting players' ability to improve the ability to perform in future matches if they do not have enough experience in a match environment and boosting their development speed when they get more game time at a suitable level, which already occurs.

Again, you're explaining the game mechanics as they are now. No one is arguing that the game doesn't work like that.

13 hours ago, enigmatic said:

More generally I find it strange that you apparently do not believe people can reflect and learn from training <BLINK>alone</BLINK>.

This is not belief, this is how improvement works in general. People get better at stuff by doing stuff. Training is necessary, but not sufficient for improvement. Footballers get better at football by playing football. Competitive athletes get better by competing. Competitive environments are where a competitors skills and limits are tested, not the training ground. You can have the greatest professional in training, but if that doesn't translate into match performance for some reason or other, that player isn't getting better at playing football, they're just training well. On the other hand, you can have someone who isn't dedicated that much to training, but still excels at playing (e.g. Hazard, if the gossip is to be believed), so all the managers still pick him because they know he will perform, even if training was sub-par.

13 hours ago, enigmatic said:

I don't believe that the hours RL footballers spend at training grounds practising free kicks have no effect on their ability to take free kicks (as modelled in game by an attribute called Free Kicks) until after a crowd has seen one go in

How else do you judge if the effort put into something was worthwhile, especially in a competitive environment? If someone dedicates a significant amount of time to training FK's, but doesn't translate it into match performance for some reason (maybe nervousness, maybe predictability etc.), any sensible coach will ask the player to stop wasting training time and ask someone else to take them.

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and I'm not sure why anyone would even earn the right to take a free kicks in a match if teammates and coaches didn't believe they already had learned to do so up to the relevant ability level.

Because of confirmation bias. The majority of the time you are only seeing those players that are training FK's and can convert them in a match. You're not seeing all the ones that have trained FK's but failed to convert them, because the coaches/managers have already seen them fail and designated someone who can convert a free kick in match to take it.

13 hours ago, enigmatic said:

As for chefs,  I'm pretty certain that your average Masterchef contestant does a much better job than I would do the first time they enter a professional kitchen to cook for connoisseurs precisely because they spend so much time testing recipes and practising cooking.

Contestant being key here. They are cooking for other, more knowledgeable people and are open to criticism from more capable chef's who can pinpoint their mistakes and weaknesses, so that they know what to work on for the next contest. Hence it was necessary for the contestants to undertake the experience first, and the correction and improvement comes after that. Had they've done it in their own kitchen, there would be no one to pinpoint the mistakes and what can be improved.

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If you tell me 'something else' but persistently refuse to specify what it is (whilst apparently being quite happy to spend all year telling people what it isn't!) it's difficult to draw any positive conclusions about there being a more realistic representation of player development hidden in the delta between the outcomes ME calculates a player's existing attributes are capable of and some other specification of their expected output.

If I told you 'something else', I've said what it is, so you can quote it - I'm not sure again what are you referring to here. The majority of our arguments have the pattern of you saying something isn't like that but rather like that, and me replying that it doesn't have to be how you are suggesting (see e.g. conversation about pass completion), so it's natural that I'm going to be talking about "what it isn't".

It's not difficult to come up with a very rudimentary model that would account for match performance (that certainly has it flaws):  suppose we isolated a single attribute, say FK. Develop it according to V*(training performance) + W*(match performance), where V and W are some weights, training performance is a score dictated by Professionalism, Work Rate, Facilities, Coaches or whatever plus a random factor, and match performance is a score dictated by whatever happened in the match. It might as well be that V and W are functions of time, so very early on in a player's career we have V(t) > W(t), but later in a player's career it might be V(t)<W(t). Maybe V(t) is also a function of training facility quality, and W(t) is maybe also a function of opposition difficulty etc.

Maybe a FK is scored in 1 try, maybe in 3 takes none are scored but are taken well (go past the wall, are shots on goal), maybe 10 free kicks are attempted and all are badly converted, i.e. they all hit the wall. Assign appropriate scores to those outcomes. Now over X weeks average out (to some mean, not necessarily arithmetic) all the V*(training performance) + W*(match performance) scores - if it hits above a certain threshold by say 0.1, improve the attribute by 0.1. If it hits below the threshold by 0.4, decrease the attribute by maybe 0.2 (the increases and the decreases don't have to be linear functions corresponding to the distance of the score from the threshold - even the threshold doesn't have to be fixed) and notify the manager that over the past X weeks the player hasn't really been converting training into performance and it might be better to focus training elsewhere. This would also automatically clarify those vague "player doesn't feel the additional training focus is having any effect" messages that we're getting in-game.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

12 hours ago, francis#17 said:

And as you already acknowledged not many players turn into much better players after they are 25, so this is something that should be rare. I dont have the numbers on how many players this happens to in game but from what Seb has said it sounds realistic.

Players improving past age 24/25 shouldn't be that rare as it is in the game. I'm not talking about massive improvements here, but consistent improvement that's seen with a lot of well performing players in the high tiers.

11 hours ago, herne79 said:

Just because we might not notice it or something might seem odd doesn't mean it isn't happening.

However it is noticeable that players' development stagnates or is very slow past 24, at least in the highest tier. This can be verified with in-game tools in the development tab - I gave a typical example in one of my posts above where this is very visible.

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I'm afraid you are mistaken.  The rate of development can be directly influenced by such factors as player performance during matches and the amount of time played during matches.  For example a player who plays well for a whole 90 minutes may benefit from more development than a player who gets subbed on at 60 minutes and plays well.  It is very far from being a 1 or a 0. 

It's not really that far. I have never had any issues with the development rate of players who I'd use more as subs than as first-choice players. A player who starts 70% of my total matches would develop at approx the same rate as the one starting 30% of my total matches. Players doing okayish develop at approx the same rate as the ones doing good or doing great. In the last couple of iterations of FM I had no problem developing two players of same or similar age in the same position, in parallel, and maxing them out by age 24. Both then request a €300k p/w contract, so I sell one, get another prospect in the same position, develop him, by the time he's 24 the original player is 30-32 and starts declining physically, I sell him, rinse and repeat.

Here is an example of the development of two players since age 18. Currently both are 21, one was bought at age 18, one was promoted to the first team at age 18 with no prior first-team experience. Approx 3.5 seasons elapsed and approx 200 games were played in that time. One is a ball playing defender, the other is a deep lying playmaker.

The BPD: 2 year of previous first-team experience with Gremio (32 starts, 8 subs, he's 17 at the time); with me 58 starts, 17 subs; 19 caps for Brazil; by far a better average rating than the DLP

The DLP:  with me since age 16 (maxed out training/youth facilities), no first-team experience before age 18; 28 starts, 54 subs; 2 caps for Belgium; worse performance than the BPD

The BPD sometimes starts knock-out games in UCL, and rival league games. The DLP mostly starts unimportant cup games, group stage UCL games when I've already progressed, and league games when I've already won it. The BPD by all accounts should at least match the development rate of the DLP, given that he's played much more minutes, played better and at a higher level, even if his starting CA at age 18 I estimate to be higher by some amount, could be anything between 10-30 (I don't know what their CA is or was 4 seasons ago). But the difference is dramatic, in favor of the DLP who has much less minutes, worse average performance, less international experience etc. Technicals: +6 vs. +5 for DLP. Mentals: +14 vs +8 for DLP. Physicals: +13 vs +6 for DLP. Total gains: +33 vs. +19 in favour of DLP.

EDIT: original screenshot for the DLP was incorrect (it was development since 16 y/o, not 18), this is the correct one

 

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

2 minutes ago, francis#17 said:

Are you saying that in the game no players develop much after 24? Or are you saying its rare?

At the highest level, where players get the most development bonus, they in general don't improve much after 24 because they hit their PA too quickly. If you haven't already, after playing 10 to 20 seasons of top tier management, you'll start observing that. You can verify in-game with the development tab that most of your players won't develop much past 24. I am yet to see a Vardy - in FM20 I attempted to recreate a Vardy by stumbling on a player with 200 PA but only 120ish CA at age 23. He reached a certain CA by age 26, far from the 200 PA, and then stagnated for the rest of his career. I'm not saying which CA to not spoil Vardy's hidden attributes, but he wasn't at Vardy's level despite me doing everything possible to improve him. I'm not saying that development curves like Vardy's don't happen in the game, but they seem very rare and hard to recreate.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

8 hours ago, WizbaII said:

goranm, you're a terrible communicator and you don't even know it. You shouldn't have a discussion with someone if you don't even know what you yourself are saying. I read your post and you are spewing nonsense and not allowing people to tell you why it's nonsense. That means you're also a terrible listener. I'm not going into specifics because others have already done that to no avail. It's one thing to disagree, but if you can't even communicate properly, then you should leave people in peace.

"not going into specifics" like you are here, is terrible communication. Saying that I am "spewing nonsense" without referring to anything is terrible communication. Not even @ me when you're calling me out is terrible communication. I know what I am saying and I always respond to other people with exact quotes. However the same courtesy is not always extended to me, for example like you haven't done here, and instead of replying to what I've said, other users sometime reply to what they think I've said (which is a form of logical fallacy, but lets not go into that). 

Here are some silly metrics: I have been upvoted 126 times in 196 posts, you have been upvoted 26 times in 349 posts. In this thread alone I was upvoted at least 10 times, so someone is agreeing with some of the things I'm saying.

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you should leave people in peace.

You see, this is a sign of bad communication. It is just plain rude to say that I am disturbing people when (i) this is a public forum (ii) I am not forcing anyone to do anything (iii) am following the rules and guidelines (on the other hand I was called stupid and a troll) and (iv) everyone is here by choice and you have the option of blocking me, in which case I believe that you won't see my replies, and I strongly urge you to do that.

 

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

10 hours ago, herne79 said:

Players develop their attributes by having effective Training schedules and gaining match experience at a relevant level.  Both of these factors are important for player development, however for players aged 18 and over match experience takes precedence.  For player below this age Training takes precedence.  As you can see, increasing an attribute isn't really down to training "alone".  (SI have told us this is how it works, that's not just speculation).

The issue is that the match experience is not nuanced enough, it is either 1 or a 0.

10 hours ago, herne79 said:

I'm not sure where you're getting this from as it is not correct.

Development takes place as players play matches and their performance in those matches, not before.  Gains from individual matches will however tend to be negligible and thus we wouldn't notice them - we'd only start to notice gains after several matches have been played - but players don't develop "before" experience is gained.  Their development is based on their experience gained.

I am talking about matches influencing individual attributes. As it is currently stands, this is not how development works in the game, it is following some hard-coded patterns. A player with a 7.4 average rating develops at approx the same pace as the one with 6.9 assuming both have the same number of matches and minutes played. Some players might score 20 goals in a season, but due to the hard-coded pattern they are following, we might not see their finishing increase as much as a player scoring 8 goals in a season that is on a different hard-coded pattern. In FM21 this is particularly visible since it allows AI managed players with 12 finishing to score 30 or more goals per season (w/o penalties).

7 hours ago, francis#17 said:

On average most players in the real world don't have massive improvements after 25 and some even get worse. There are of course players that do massively improve but an example of 1 player that hasnt improved doesn't prove that it doesnt happen in-game. 

There's more than 1 example, but it's impractical to add them all on a forum post. This is a general observation that in the game players stop developing after ages 23/24. I'm not arguing for massive improvements, I'm arguing for improvements, that in-game don't happen after 23/24. Maybe one or two attributes improves to some extent, but others fluctuate around a given value. I disagree about your first statement - take just Liverpool for example. Van Dijk, Henderson, Mane, Wijnaldum or Firmino are all better than they were at 25.

 

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

16 hours ago, enigmatic said:

A player who attempted 50 long shots, scoring two would be entirely compatible with my example (a goal doubling his long shot goals and conversion rate implies two goals from an indeterminate number of chances) and fairly typical for an offensive player with unremarkable long range shooting.

This is such a weird criterion to base your argument on, for two things. First, there is only one situation in which a goal doubling long shot goals and the conversion rate works: 1 goal is scored in a large number of attempts and then an additional one is scored. When you do the maths and solve the system g/s=r and (g+1)/(s+1)=2r, here g being goals before the next one is scored, s being shots and r being the ratio, you end up with g=s/(s+2). The only way for g to be approximately an integer is when s is large.

Secondly, you still keep insisting that when N pieces of information are given, only some of those N will be used, when no one is preventing all of them being used. If all N pieces of information are used (#goals, #shots and conversion rate) as opposed to only some of them (#goals and conversion rate), it's too easy to account for your example: if a player scores 1/999 long shots and the 1000th shot is a goal doubling his conversion rate, the fact that he took 1000 shots to double his conversion rate will not result in his LS attribute increasing. If anything, it would be decreasing.

Again, you're painting a caricature with what I'm saying by thinking of extreme worst-case scenarios which are easily accounted for anyway.

 

16 hours ago, enigmatic said:

I thought your original desire was to see more attribute changes, but now you're insisting that players shouldn't be able to develop their long shots attribute in training, only through match performances

Please quote where exactly I'm insisting on that. You won't be able to, because what I've actually written is: "The point is you can train all you want, but if you don't deliver, then training alone shouldn't contribute to an increase in the long shot attribute." Do you see how this is different from what you claim I'm saying? Again, please do a better job at reading what I've written.

17 hours ago, enigmatic said:

ugh, we're back to explaining cause and effect again Let me help you out here.

The match and the training aren't real. The players are just a set of numbers in a database. You don't simulate the effects of training long shots by asking the numbers to take lots of shots in the hope they will be able to deliver the performances of different numbers, you simulate it by incrementing the Long Shots number. That way the ME simulation gets the input it needs to allow the player to perform better long shots in future. Otherwise it doesn't (and any apparent improvement in long shooting actually comes from easier long shots to execute or luck).

No one is arguing otherwise, so I'm not sure what you're explaining or helping me out with here.

17 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Therefore development bonuses in the form of attribute changes are the cause of better performance in the match engine, and it makes little sense to suggest they should also be an effect, and no sense to believe they should only be an effect.

Well, no, the way development is encoded now is non-sense because it happens before the experience is undertaken. It's the other way, people learn and develop skills when an experience is reflected upon. No one became a better chef by memorizing recepies and cooking for themselves, they had to actually cook something in a restaurant environment with coworkers and customers, react when things go wrong and/or when a customer is demanding. Similarly in football, not everything is learnt in training, some things happen in a match environment only.

17 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Why not all of them? Because, as we've been discussing for the last few posts, most of them are pure noise like wind, and others (like easier opportunities) appear to inversely related to a player's skill level and therefore have no logical relationship with future improvement in that skill.

 I keep giving examples and you keep telling me you mean something else. Seems reasonable for me to be asking what you do mean, but seriously, no obligation on you to continue this discussion.

If I'm telling you "something else", the better thing to do is to quote me exactly, rather than conjuring a scenario to which you expect (as a figure of speech) a detailed answer. As with other things, if certain things are noise, code them as noise. If easier opportunities shouldn't impact future improvement, code them like that. Give them little to no weight.

As to your first four paragraphs, I really don't understand what you are talking about, nor how it relates to anything I've said. You originally wrote "So let me get this straight, @goranm you think attributes should ... " without ever quoting me. There you've put words in my mouth, and now continue to argue something that I might have not even said. If I have, quote me exactly with the problematic parts, similarly to how I am quoting you.  For example:

17 hours ago, enigmatic said:

So if you weight the effect of the pass difficulty inputs on the pass completion outputs to negate the positive effects of pass simplicity on pass completion (e.g "completing a short simple pass would carry much less weight than completing a difficult pass") you're eliminating the effect of all pass difficulty factors on pass completion in your model which drives player development, including the effect of tactics on pass selection. Exactly as I said above.

If you weight pass difficulty in a way which doesn't eliminate the effect size of pass difficulty altogether, you do incorporate an effect of tactics on match performance into your development model, but in a way which either rewards less difficult passing circumstances or penalises superior completion rates. 

There's no eliminating of the effect of all pass difficulty factors by weighing a pass. A pass is difficult or it isn't, how we weight its completion for development purposes doesn't affect that. We assign scores to each pass completed and you can do that however you want, it doesn't have to correlate with pass completion. Two players, both with the same X% pass completion rate under different tactical instructions can very well get different development scores if one was doing only simple passes but the other was not.

18 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Oh, and happy new year. Let's hope we're not still going in 2022.

Happy New Year! Let's hope not, but if we were to, there's nothing wrong with that. I have nothing against you and am not taking these arguments we're having personally or in a bad way.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

2 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

you think attributes should update based on outputs from the match engine to incorporate the effect of tactics and opponent quality on player development, but also you are definitely not saying that the effects of tactics on pass completion or opponent quality on challenges should be incorporated into player development.

Lol no, I'm saying different things carry different weights. I can even quote myself saying literally that: "Completing a short simple pass would carry much less weight than completing a difficult pass." For someone calling other people thick, you really are bad at reading.

10 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

That's... a little strange, but let's discuss the attribute you do say you want updated recursively based on match engine outputs: Long shots. Each shot is a function of existing long shot skill which is the input you wish to 'correct', plus other factors like where they're shooting from and whether they're under pressure, goalkeeper quality, random chance.  Which of these perturbations to a player's long shot accuracy for a given shot or season's worth if shots actually linked to the long term development of a player's shooting skill? Like the examples above, what actually improves ME shooting accuracy relative to a player's Long Shots is stuff associated with the chance being less testing to a player's skill, plus luck. 

I don't know, if I had a development model thought out to the level of detail you're expecting of me, I wouldn't be telling you anyway, I'd make a game. Why not all of them? The point is you can train all you want, but if you don't deliver, then training alone shouldn't contribute to an increase in the long shot attribute. The attributes, after all, are what a player can do in a match, not what they can do in training. If a player uses long shots in a match succesfully at an above average capacity (relative to his previous ability), he gets a development bonus for the long shot attribute.

8 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Seems far more plausible that a player with Long Shots 11 enhances his  ability to shoot from distance in future games from spending hours taking shots in training from a variety of distances rather than rare match events like one deflecting in from 19 yards to double his long shot goals and conversion rate for the season.

It does, but that's your statement, not mine. You are diluting what I'm saying down to non-sense. A player attempting 2 long shots and scoring 1 over the course of a season would obviously not carry much weight in the development of the long shot attribute.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

1 hour ago, francis#17 said:

Why do you think players cant make big improvements between the ages 23 to 30 and how long do you think this has been an issue for?

Player development has been an issue for a long time. Great strides have been made to improve it, however currently I'm talking about FM21, which is about the same as FM20. FM19 I did not play much - usually I play until newgens completely take over, but with players peaking at 23/24 this usually means that I know how the game world will look like after 7 or so seasons for the next 10 seasons due to predictability of development.

Most players at high level and with decent training facilities are already close to PA at ages 23/24, leaving little space for development after that age. This I've confirmed with the in-game editor in FM20, but don't want to do with FM21 yet as I don't want to spoil my game. I'm 9 seasons in in FM21 and haven't seen anything suggesting that development differs from FM20.

1 hour ago, francis#17 said:

My understanding is that this is not true and players can carry on having big attribute increases between 23 to 30 (even if it is less than there teenage years it can still be a significant amount that makes the player a much better player, for example there is the FM19 screenshot on the 2nd page).

From what I see in your screenshot, your player started as a league two player, one season as a league one player, then 5 seasons in championship and only then he starts playing at the highest level, at age 27. Match experience at higher levels will contribute more to development - had this player started playing regularly at the highest level at 19-23, you'd maybe see his development maxed out at 23/24ish. This is why one player doesn't really prove or disprove anything.

Here is an example @francis#17 : I won't say who the player is to not spoil it for others, but here are his attribute changes since age 22, age 23 and age 24. The player is now 28, will turn 29 at the end of the season. You can get this under Training - Development - Compare Attribute Changes Since Age X. I'm doing mentals only since there was almost no changes in technicals or physicals.

Now as you can see since age 22: major increase in Vision, Positioning, OTB, Anticipation, large increases in other attributes (straight up arrow).

Since age 23: slight increases, only OTB and Leadership increased by 1 (OTB was actually increased by 0.6-0.8), only other attribute with a straight up arrow is Vision

Age 24: Only Leadership has a straight up arrow, most arrows are yellow.

The last graphs shows this even more clearly: from ages 21 to 24.5 there is a lot of development and then stagnation. The stagnation occurs actually closer to 23, since only anticipation consistently increases (and leadership, the violet line around the middle), and other values fluctuate by what looks like 0.4-0.6 points with work rate jumping in increments of 1 (it used to be that we could see attributes to decimal places, if this can be enabled, I don't see where).

 

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

10 hours ago, enigmatic said:

huh, where did I say that? ah I didn't say that

What I did say is tactical instructions to play simple passes would tend to dramatically increase pass completion a player with a particular Passing attribute achieves in the ME. An example of the effect of tactics on ME outcomes, which you were keen to solicit my opinions on

Here: "Players might well achieve dramatically higher pass completion from being instructed to play simple passes, but it would be absurd for this to increase the attribute which improves their range of passing." Here "This" being simple passing leading to higher pass completion, so just extrapolate what that means if no risky passes are attempted. No one is suggesting that buffing the completion rate with simple passes should lead to an increase in the attribute which improves the range of passing. 

10 hours ago, enigmatic said:

huh, where did I say that? ah I didn't say that,

Here: "but clearly it would be absurd for playing mostly against midgets to improve the attribute which makes them better at soaring high into the air to head the ball away." Again, no one is suggesting that just completing easy headers should lead to an increase in jumping or strength or heading.

10 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Personally, I'd rather SI stuck to more sensible assumptions of assuming that Jumping would change largely in response to height, physical conditioning and dedicated training.

No one is arguing that jumping or physicals governed by genetics would change with match performance, unless injury is involved.

10 hours ago, enigmatic said:

And I believe you were also keen to see Ronaldo-esque late career jumps in long shot accuracy?

The Ronaldo example wasn't about his long shots, it was about his overall development between ages 23 and 30. Long shots were just one the attributes (and the most extreme one) in which he improved greatly between ages 23 and 30, which is something the game is not reflecting.

10 hours ago, enigmatic said:

how do you get either of those from average rating 7.32? 

Why would you look at average rating only? Where am I saying that? If you have a player who is training long shots, to whom you give creative freedom to do long shots, and who then attempts long shots in actual match environment and not just the training ground, the development system should account for how well he is actually using that skill. Training means nothing if a player can't convert it to match performance.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

2 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

What I actually said was that they are important factors for player development not incorporated into SI's model. Not sure how that bit eluded you bearing in mind you even quote my next post about how opponent quality is - loosely - factored into SI's development model.

I know what you said, I'm asking if that is what your opinion is. I'm not sure how the question mark "?" indicating a question, eluded you.

9 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Players might well achieve dramatically higher pass completion from being instructed to play simple passes, but it would be absurd for this to increase the attribute which improves their range of passing. Players might win a higher percentage of headers against short opponents, but clearly it would be absurd for playing mostly against midgets to improve the attribute which makes them better at soaring high into the air to head the ball away. Players might well score more goals if their teammates are really good at putting them through on goal. Having teammates that can't hit a barn door with a banjo will reduce your assists, but is unlikely to actually impair your crossing ability.

Clearly the game already tracks key passes, pass directness, risk of completing a difficult pass etc. so why would only short simple passes have to be accounted for? Completing a short simple pass would carry much less weight than completing a difficult pass. Similarly, the game tracks key headers, player height/jumping reach etc. so why should headers only against short opponents be accounted for? The game already works in this way - players completing more difficult tasks such as key passes, headers, chance creation etc. are rewarded with a much better rating than those playing it safe. The only thing absurd here is that it seems like you're not playing the game at all.

21 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Fortunately, we have development boosts for match experience at a suitable higher level, the ability to learn skills and become more mentally resilient from teammates and role-specific training to incorporate the effect of tactics on attribute distribution anyway, so we don't need to clumsily kludge side effects 

And yet the end result is an inflexible and predictable development system past ages 23/24.

5 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

There's plenty wrong with feeding the outputs back into the input to drive player progression in FM, as already explained.

Again, there's nothing wrong with reinforced recursive systems. Some state-of-the-art AI works on that principle. FM is not special, there's nothing in FM that would prevent incorporating a well thought out reinforcement system.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

4 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Well if you're back for the victory lap - because you're really not trolling

 

You keep replying as well, as well as calling me stupid, but you're not a troll and I am? You are doing the same things that you're accusing me for. But I am the troll here.

14 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Yes, other factors affect match outcomes: the CAs of teammates and opponents, tactics and tactical changes, fitness fatigue and morale on match day, referees, weather, home and away status and luck. Even altitude is simulated, I believe. None of these sound like important factors for player development currently missing from SI's model

So let me get this right - your opinion is that the quality of teammates, the quality of opponents, and in-match experience (as in carrying out the tactical instructions and adapting to changes) do not sound as important factors for player development?

18 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

(I mean, opponent ability is - broadly - taken into account inasmuch as getting more game time at suitable higher levels helps improve players anyway. Revising it so players benefited more from the sort of outcomes they'd get playing easier opponents certainly wouldn't be a step forward.)

Obviously performances in lower levels wouldn't have as much impact as in higher levels.

7 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Except it's not an ML model updating an estimate to converge on a true (or optimal) value.

I never said it was. I said that there's nothing wrong with outputs being fed back into the input, since you've said that it's a "quite another [thing] to keep insisting the real problem is that the effect isn't also the cause". There's nothing "quite another" about it.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

3 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Because as several people including me have pointed out, his Current Ability is what made him score those current goals or miss those current chances, so it's clearly at exactly the right level for those performances.

Well, no, it's not clearly at the right level since scoring 30 goals and scoring 5 goals are not the same levels of performance, they are opposite extremes, hence factors other than CA had a far greater influence on those stats than CA did. The first season might have been a freak season (or the second one might have been a freak season), but the game will not recognise that since it wont take into consideration that random factors had more effect than the attributes.

3 hours ago, enigmatic said:

For some reason this triggered you to repeatedly insist that I was wrong because researchers "don't have access to the game for which they are doing the research", which is going to come as a particular shock to those working on the mid season database update at the moment.

I wasn't triggered. If anyone was triggered it was you, since you felt the need to call me a troll and stupid without ever apologising, and if anyone was insisting that they were right, it was you - if I remember correctly, and I do, you were the one who @ a researcher to confirm what you were saying.

3 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Apparently even a researcher confirming he plays the game, considers in game impact in his research and has even been directly asked to made specific changes to a player solely due to an individual match engine quirk won't convince you otherwise, so I'll leave you claim your definitely-not-trolling Internet victory if it makes you happy.

I know it's hard for you to admit your description of how research works was not correct and that you'd want to spin it your way, so I'll just quote what the researcher said: "How players perform in the match engine isn't a huge part of it on the front end, but there is always a consideration." Which is what I was saying all along, I can even quote what I wrote before the researcher responded: "What I've also said is that the predominant driver of attribute changes is IRL performance, and not corrections to ME." I'm literally saying that the ME "isn't a huge part of it", without dismissing that in some circumstances it will be taken into consideration. You don't have to spend a second in the Data Issues forum to figure out that, you just have to play the game.

3 hours ago, enigmatic said:

But attributes cause performances. So it doesn't make any sense for performances to also be the main cause of attributes.

Attributes are not the only thing that cause performances. The whole point of the game is to make 11 players work together according to some instructions. Sometimes players are played in different position which causes them to use different skills that they previously didn't, so they'll lose the sharp edge on some skills and gain a better understanding of some other skills. It makes complete sense for other circumstances to affect attributes.

3 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Since you seem particularly hellbent on not believing me, try believing one of the other people who have made this point in this thread. As I've said more bluntly above, I'm finding it hard to believe that cause and effect is genuinely too complex for you to grasp. It's one thing to conclude that the balance of player development isn't quite right which is a pretty common opinion sometimes even acknowledged by SI, quite another to keep insisting the real problem is that the effect isn't also the cause

I'm not hellbent on not believing you, you keep misinterpreting and misunderstanding what I'm saying and I'm making a wasted effort in clarifying since in the end you just keep calling me a stupid troll. Jervaj got what I was saying on first try. There's nothing wrong with effect feeding back into the cause, that's the basis of all recursive frameworks like reinforced machine learning and essentially the foundational principle behind DeepMind.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

6 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Fine, let's skip over the fact you keep saying things like  a player might score 30 goals at age 22, reach peak CA, and then score 8 goals in each of the next 5 seasons and his CA won't take much of a hit, if any at all.   then, because it's 'toxic' of me to assume you were maintaining a consistent argument, and maybe you don't think players should take a CA hit for not scoring goals in the ME now. Great, perhaps we'll end up agreeing  

Do you not see that in the highlighted part I'm pretty much saying that the same set of attributes allows a player to score 30 and to score 5? Please understand that the "not scoring goals in current season" is tied to "scoring many goals in previous season" - I am not saying that a player should take a hit to CA if he doesn't score much, I'm saying that if his performance drops relative to previous season, his CA should take a hit (and vice-versa, overperforming relative to previous season should see a CA gain). CA is Current Ability (yes, I know it is a weighted sum of attributes), so why should a player who previously scored 30, but now is scoring 5, have the same Current ability, assuming nothing else changed? Also, the toxicity was calling me a troll and stupid, not assuming I was maintaining a consistent argument.

Quote

a player's performance in the ME is therefore categorically not evidence the wrong values have been set in the database. 

I never said it was. What I said was that how a team/player performs in the ME is not a major driver for attribute changes in subsequent FM's, which I think santy001 confirmed in one of his posts here.

Quote

Are we in agreement yet?

For some things yes, for some no. The point isn't that player development should mimic the subjective changes made by researchers, it's that it should be performance based. The gist of it is that good performances should accelerate development, average performances keep it at some constant pace, and bad performances negatively impact development. The way development is currently set-up is that the quality of performing doesn't rally matter, as long as a player is getting match time in a good league, they'll generally develop by the age 23/24.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

1 hour ago, Jervaj said:

Im unsure why you insist so much on this. As in, what would this achieve in game?

It would better reflect player development, as in players wouldn't be so static and predictable in development after age 23/24.

1 hour ago, Jervaj said:

but no matter if the performances were good or bad the rating was never "wrong" because the ME doesn't really understand about right or wrong. It doesn't need to adjust the attributes just because of performances. As you yoruself said, performances can vary a lot for the same attributes, and that for me is an achievement of the ME, as long as overall it sill stands true that better attributes will lead to better results if everything else is kept the same. 

The game its supposed to simulate organic growth and decline based on reasonable factors, not the subjective changes on the assesment of a player's skill by researchers that may happen between versions of the game.

The rating is never wrong, but that doesn't mean that the player can not improve or decline due to: injuries, training, or match experience. The issue is about development - as it is currently in-game, players generally develop until 23/24 and then stagnate. A player is already pretty much defined at that age and there is little flexibility on how his profile will look like in the future. In reality player development isn't so static, players adapt to new circumstances and change their game often - it's not that the game should necessarily mimic the subjective changes made by the researchers, it is that these subjective changes are evidence that players develop differently to how the game is developing them.

 

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

*yawns*

come on, you're surely just trolling now.

I simply refuse to believe that someone capable of understanding concepts like regression to the mean is genuinely too thick to understand that if match engine calculations based on a player's attributes cause a player score few goals in a season, the attributes do not need to be lowered to permit them to not score many goals.

Surely you can converse in a civilized manner without calling me stupid and a troll? A common thread in your replies is that you're replying only to parts of statements and omitting others; this time you are intentionally omitting key parts of what I'm saying  just so you can be toxic - it's not that "if the ME causes a player to score few goals in a season, then the attributes need to be lowered further" (which I've never said), it's that "the ME allows the same set of attributes to score 30 and to score 5 goals". Do you understand how wildly different those two statements are?

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

I'm lost now, the first part of your attempts to insist I'm wrong involved insisting researchers were making huge changes all the time, and now to try to contradict me on another point you're insisting it is easy to prove they don't change them enough? 

Uh, no. First of all, please quote where I'm "insisting researchers were making huge changes all the time". You can't because that's not what I said anywhere, you're creating a strawman of what I'm saying. Second, I'm not saying that "they don't change them enough", I'm saying that if the changes are to correct in-game performance, then the changes are not working properly because in consecutive versions we see the same teams under/overperforming. You understand the premise and the conclusion and how they differ from what you say that I'm saying? What I've also said is that the predominant driver of attribute changes is IRL performance, and not corrections to ME. Pay attention to adjectives.

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

So instead of conducting some bizarre empirical experiment on whether the data matches what you think it should be, you could just ask a friendly researcher who's popped in:

You mean the bizarre empirical experiment of playing the game? The game is literally advertised as a simulation, so it's not that I think the data should match IRL, it's how the people in SI/SEGA are selling it.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

15 minutes ago, santy001 said:

If a player is performing badly, with his current attributes in the game, that doesn't mean he needs to have a CA collapse to further perform badly. That just makes no sense, he's already performing badly, so why does he need to get worse to keep performing badly?

The opposite is true, if a player scores 50 goals a season with the attributes he has, why do they need to get better? He's already playing well, that doesn't mean he suddenly needs to get better defensively, or faster, or stronger. He's already performing well and his attributes are sufficient enough to enable that. 

A point is that the same player will not take a significant hit or a significant gain to his CA if he is playing badly or if he's having a dream season relative to his norm. If a player has an average season 1, but a very good season 2, I'd expect a progression from the norm. If a player has a very good season 1, but an average season 2, I'd expect a regression to the norm. However, in-game after a certain age this doesn't seem to matter (and if it is actually doing this, it is not telling us). The same player with the same attributes can play both above and below the norm, and his attributes will be pretty much kept static.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

46 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

OK, you know best and all the researchers and SI employees posting in the Data Issues forum are the ones who don't know how the process works. 

I doubt the process is how you're describing it. It is easy to generate empirical data that shows how changes in the attributes between versions of FM did not correct in-game performance to a significant amount, since the game will not only fail massively at predicting IRL (which is a huge task), it will keep making the same teams or players over/underpowered for several versions in a row (which is not as huge of a task to correct, but still challenging).

46 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Sure. He's not what you're talking about because his example is one of many which contradicts the idea that someone with a high natural ability and potential for their age like Bastoni gets radical overhauls of CA and PA every time he has a good season. If I was a betting man I'd put money on him not radically changing between 25 and 29 either.

What is the point of one cherry-picked example though? There are examples of players that DO get radical overhauls after good seasons (and one could argue that Rashford is such an example with two of his attributes getting a +6 bump and one getting a +3 bump). The point is that generally the game doesn't represent this well.

46 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Except that 

[i] if Bastoni has a similar career to Pique in an FM21 save, he will improve his attributes by a similar modest amount to hit a similar PA. Hell, I've even got an FM21 save with a 33 year old Bastoni whose attribute profile looks like Pique's current one, partly because of the significant ball playing increases and partly because he signed for Barcelona  . Pretty sure Pique didn't improve much in his late 20s in FM research either...

[ii] if Bastoni performs well in FM, this is not evidence his attributes were set too low in FM. Therefore attribute bumps because a player just had a good season is something the game doesn't need to do.

I don't see how this is an "except that", since I'm talking about what would happen in the next FM if certain events IRL transpired, and you're talking only about what would happen in FM.

46 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Why would it need to? The 8 goals they scored are not evidence the attributes may have been set incorrectly, they are the direct consequence of the attributes a player had at the time he was [not] scoring.

The point is that they'll have the same attributes when scoring 30 and when scoring 8. This would not happen IRL between versions of FM (e.g. Morata).

46 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

The causality works the opposite way round: in game natural development improves key attributes which allows players to perform better.  I'm not sure why people are so determined to argue this should be reversed.

Because (1) it's not only the attributes that contribute to a better performance, and (2) the development is too static. After a certain age there is no regression or progression around the norm after neither a bad nor a good season.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

5 hours ago, enigmatic said:

But the original purpose of the thread was arguing that a one or two point improvement in one particular key attribute over a period of sustained excellence wasn't enough. Now apparently we're in agreement that despite progressing from having his place in a mid table side under question to captaining a record breaking side, a one point attribute increase in most key areas to hit a hard PA cap of 159 is absolutely fine for Jordan Henderson.

The purpose isn't just that a one point improvement in one attribute isn't enough, it's also that it will happen up to ages 23/24 and stagnate afterwards (see point 3 of OP). Henderson is an example of someone whose non-physical attributes increased across the board by 2 points after age of 25. This is something that the game doesn't replicate well enough.

5 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Because, shockingly, games with millions of data points and many possible outcomes do not produce exactly the results people who like to complain about games on the internet expect. Of course it's also clear from these complaints that researchers are not increasing Bayern's attributes by a few points as a reward for winning a title

Hence changes in player attributes aren't made to correct in-game performance or to work better with the ME. They're judged subjectively on IRL and then the ME is made around them to try and simulate IRL.

5 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Agree or disagree with the outcome, it's not true that researchers do not consider match engine performance when assessing players.

I never said that they don't do that at all, but that the change in attributes is driven predominantly by IRL as they cannot know how the changes will be interpreted by the new ME that they don't have access to.

5 hours ago, enigmatic said:

You missed, presumably deliberately, the example of Rashford as a player who had a fine season and did not change by much, because scoring more goals did not convince the researcher that he had developed new areas of his game or that a previous attribute was a mistake.

How about we don't presume that you can read my mind? I didn't comment on Rashford because his example is not what we are talking about. He is younger than 23 and his attributes between FM20 and FM21 have been increased in the amount in which the game would do it after a good season.

Actually, now that I took a better look at Rashford between FM20 and FM21, technicals are the same except for a 2 point bump in Passing and 1 point bump in Technique, phyisicals are pretty much the same, slight bump in Agility, Balance, Stamina and Strength (and apparently he lost 7kg of weight) that the game also does, Mentals however

Anticipation: +2

Bravery: +6

Composure, Decisions: +1

Leadership: +6

Off The Ball: +1

Vision: +3

While I might see Composure, Anticipation, Decisions  and OTB increased by 1 after a good season, I have never seen a +3 increase in Vision or a +6 increase in Bravery over 1 season in a player who is 21 over the course of a single season. I've never seen a +6 increase in Bravery over the course of one season in any player.

Quote

but a great season in game is definitely not evidence that a player's attributes are too low, because the attributes cause the performance

That's not what the argument is. The original argument is that PA is too rigid and that peak CA is hit too quickly and then stagnates, and the supporting argument is that if a player had a great (or a bad) season IRL, that would be reflected in the change of attributes. Going by OP's example of Bastoni, if the scenario he is describing happened IRL, his CA, PA and attributes would get bumped up.  This is something that the game doesn't do. The game also doesn't do the opposite, a player might score 30 goals at age 22, reach peak CA, and then score 8 goals in each of the next 5 seasons and his CA won't take much of a hit, if any at all. There's no regression to the norm. In-game there's little difference between players in mid 20's who fully developed to the same peak CA by age 23/24 but afterwards one had mediocre seasons and the other had great seasons.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

33 minutes ago, rp1966 said:

The argument that attribute changes don't reflect the way players develop IRL is a completely valid one, but trying to use FM version to version attribute changes to justify it is not that useful because they can often reflect changes in the game calibration or the research rather than in the player.

I don't think that you can dismiss using FM version to version attribute changes as justification because those attribute changes are mostly driven by IRL performances, not by game calibration or changes in mechanics. I don't even see how a researcher might justify a change in attributes based on game calibration since they don't have access to the engine for which they are doing the research. Even if we assume that they do, we still have players and teams whose in-game counterparts aren't calibrated to replicate their IRL performances to some respectable degree of accuracy, and sometimes they're way off in replicating the previous or predicting the current form.

Quote

 You can make the broad argument that changes in attributes between version is reflective of the player's development, but it could just be that the researcher has had to change them because the player is getting played differently which brings different attributes to the fore (a defensive midfielder shifted to central defence or full-back converted to winger). 

This is a separate thing, and there is no reason why the game shouldn't also replicate this, which currently it doesn't, unless you start retraining a player early on. If it is possible to have such a variation IRL that would make the researchers change some number of attributes significantly, it should also be possible to do that in-game.

[Player development makes zero sense to me in this game.]

31 minutes ago, rp1966 said:

I'm really not sure why all the discussion about attributes of players between FM versions - that is a research issue.  The OP was about how a player develops during their career in game during a single FM version.

Because an argument was that some players haven't seen an increase in some of their attributes since they were in their early 20's, so we shouldn't be surprised that we don't see such improvements in-game. Which is countered by giving examples of players which did see an increase in some of their attributes between early 20's and late 20's.