RBKalle

September 29, 2018

The specific sub-training routines are a TERRIBLE idea that should have never been brought back... It was one of the huge factors that drove me away from early FM releases, and I maintain it's overkill at best and completely absurdity at worst.

That kind of stuff should be kept under the hood, taken care of by Tactical Training accordingly with tactics and playing styles (e.g. if I play a tiki-taka style, the focus is automatically on possession, attacking movement etc, instead of on, say, long balls or crosses).

One of the few straightforward and not-so-joblike features has now become a tedious chore, with potentially save-killing consequences (that you'll find out when it's too late).

Il 27/9/2018 in 14:21 , Lucas ha scritto:

Bring back Pig in the Middle

Urgh!

I thought those days were behind us for good...

Il 27/9/2018 in 17:31 , jayahr ha scritto:

Is it cool that this new feature resembles something that was there already 20 years ago so much? Not sure.

IMO it's not cool, not in the slightest.

Anstoss was ok, but the training part was a bit of a mess, and it was in a game that didn't have 1/10 of the insane micromanagement FM has. So a rather cumbersome training mode in Anstoss was a plus, as it separated the game from the other "click and play" football management games of the era.

But do FM need an extra layer of life-consuming immersion in 2019? Don't we have enough stuff to attend to?

The new Tactical Interface made me want to preorder now. The Training module has cooled off my interest immediately.

I see I'm in the minority here, but to me it's a dismal choice.

September 29, 2018

YES! YES! YES!

Finally the long-awaited, and long-overdue, "basic mentalities" (tiki-taka, wing play, route one) with what is hopefully a less abstract Mentality (I liked "Cautious" instead of whatever label it was used last year).
I'd wish for the while Fluidity thing to go away too, but if those changes to TI are as good as they look, I'm completely sold on FM already.

September 16, 2018

16 ore fa, Barside ha scritto:

So exactly what SI are doing now. All that has changed is the naming convention.

I don't remember "972 new features" being promoted from CM2 to CM97-98 though...

Clearly the game has evolved so much it'd be difficult to justify, from a PR standpoint, the release of a crude data update with a handful of minor changes, but I maintain it'd benefit the franchise in the long run, provided the New and Improved game isn't a complete mess. But with a much longer time to develop it (assuming it's not started from Line 1 the day after the release of the FM 2019-20 Data Update) it's a feasible task.

All is fine and good, FM is still playable and enjoyable, but for how many years have we been complaining about the same(ish) stuff? There's a point where you can't just remodel the same thing over and over again anymore...

September 15, 2018

33 minuti fa, ..Valhalla.. ha scritto:

I'd say you're not far wrong. It's all fluff and filler, that much is true. SI probably have obligations from the publisher to make a "new" game every year, which includes a certain amount of minimum new content to justify a full price game being released annually.

I've seen it mentioned many times that SI should just "skip a year and release a major update this year rather than a new full game", but that's never going to happen. Not ever.

They don't need to skip a year though.

They could just do what they did with the old "Season xx/xx" editions in the early CM days. A database update, a couple of fixes to the most prominent issues reported for the previous iteration, while they keep the bulk of their workforce on a 20-something-months project to FINALLY redo from scratch (or from a very low-level point) some of the key features that have clearly run their course already and/or are in need of an actual overhaul.

Instead, we get a few marketing gimmicks... Like a shaky Jenga tower you keep on adding blocks to, despite it being clear it's going to topple sooner than later. Or, best case scenario, it's still standing for a while but it's the gaming equivalent of the lovecraftian Whateley farmhouse...

September 11, 2018

It's pretty clear the press conferences are a chore and the repetitiveness, the irrelevance and, often, the potential detrimental effects of some answers make them a boring but unavoidable necessity.

I understand media interactions are a daily feature for most managers in real life, but for entertainment's sake, some of the realistic stuff should be kept out of FM, which, after all, is still a game.

Contextual questions need to be much better: it's absurd to keep receiving questions about Player of the Year when you're the newly appointed manager in Finnish 2nd division... Or, for that matter, to get long and tedious press conferences as if you were a top EPL manager.

The whole "war of words" is probably the worst of the worst, as it's completely random and, again, it ignores the context. Hughton or Wagner wouldn't really rant about Mourinho or Pep, much less with a consistently losing record against top clubs. In FM instead you can have a "rival manager" insist he's still the better manager and that you got lucky, even though you've just thrashed his side 5-0, you're a CL winner while his only silverware is his grandma's cutlery set.

Then there's the horrific players interaction part... Players get upset a lot, by trivial stuff that usually shouldn't lead to huge falling-outs... I mean, if Beckham survived being hit by a football cleat, if Balotelli (of all people) can still work with Mancini after they had a physical altercation, I'm sure my LB can just live with the fact I dared slamming the team following a weak home draw against a relegation candidate.
Instead the thing escalates to the point I don't have a viable way out, so he's alienated and will even accept a mutual termination!

Same for fining a DM who got himself sent off early on during a key CL game... He's outraged and asks for an explaination...

And the best new addition to FM18... Players being upset I'm not offering a fringe player a new contract for no apparent reason. Or players siding with rivals for their own position. Or the core group being mad at me because I've decided we didn't need a 6th striker.
Again, all those conflicts should rarely, if ever, become big deals requiring a team meeting or else... Instead FM revels in the opportunity to "spice things up", no matter how forced those situations feel.

Sure, in older games it was too easy to keep everybody happy (like "I want a new challenge", "No, stay here", "Fine!") but as it has often been the case, SI overmedicated it and now players are more unstable and moody than an angsty teenage girl...

September 2, 2018

Frosinone have never won a competition at a national level. They won their Serie C2 (tier 4) group twice, and two youth competitions a few years back.

Then it depends on how what you consider "winning a trophy". If winning a lower division title counts as one, many clubs are out. Still, in Italian Serie B like half of the clubs have never won that either and can only claim victory in semi-pro competitions or in regional leagues.

Same goes for Norway, where most yo-yo (or recently created) clubs have only "won" the second tier on their way back to the top (Sandefjord, Haugesund, Sarpsborg). Then if you drop down one tier, most clubs have an empty trophy cabinet.

August 12, 2018

24 minuti fa, herne79 ha scritto:

I'm not saying it's a bug . All I'm saying is that SI keep a check on the database profile through lots of soak tests and if you're seeing something that seems odd it could be worth while uploading the data for SI to take a look at. RBKalle is saying "it's way too many and way too common" for example. And the best place to upload that data is the Bugs forum.

You know all too well it'll still be "anecdotal evidence" or something like "your findings are on par with the % of talented youngsters in the original db".

Besides, what's the ideal setup to run such a test anyway?

And in the end, as I've said countless times, not every objection MUST be a bug! The OP and I think there are many newgens who start "too ready" and develop too quickly regardless of the level they play at (a few seasons in Mexico/Colombia shouldn't be enough to turn a hot prospect into a Serie A top striker at age 19-21)

How many of them are there? How can I know that... I can only raise the question and provide a handful of screens and even some figures, but that'll still be a random peek into a random save.

Only SI know the % of top-end newgens and the way attributes are distributed when creating them...

August 12, 2018

Those players are TOO good, and the most worrying part is, IMO, that as you can see in their history, they were VERY GOOD already at 16-17...

Ok, some of them debuted very young in not-so-strong leagues, but they were apparently good enough to be first-squad regulars basically from their first year in the game. And this happens WAY TOO OFTEN in FM, even in professional leagues and in nations with high(ish) standards.

The OP may have spent a lot of time, effort and in-game money to hoard a couple of top prospects, which is a "problem" SI can't really solve, because human players have an inherent advantage over AI managers.
However the amount of ready-made youngsters who not just are competent starters at 16 but are also developing at an incremental rate, are way too many and way too common.

IRL, think of Ødegaard: he was touted as a sure-fire top player at 15, and he has since stalled brutally. In FM, he'd become a top star for Real within 1-2 seasons without requiring much effort because all the game needs to create a new Messi is enough PA and a high enough CA.

August 12, 2018

Let's hope this "new beginning" will see the long overdue demise of two confusing concepts like Mentality and Shape...

May 8, 2018

If I'm not mistaken, Youth Rating works in conjunction with Importance and Development.

Anyway, I'll take a look at how many of the >150PA players have developed into average top-league players (CA >130) to see if there really is an issue or it's just my perception

May 8, 2018

1 ora fa, a.panda ha scritto:

And, I was slightly disappointed that you didn't show other data to support for hypothesis that minnow countries making up a significant portion in EPL or Bundesliga etc. I would have thought you'd provide screenshots of many players settling well in these leagues without coming from, say, the English or German setup. It would be great to compare their career paths and see if they really come from the minnow countries, and how many of them are employed by the clubs. Because what we have seen is one Indonesian player at Inter.

Keep in mind it was a "spur of the moment" research based on a gameworld I had created for a whole different reason (whether the "gentleman" who has questioned my motifs a few posts above cares about it or not...).

It was just a slice of FM life with no agenda or no criteria set, which is both a weakness and a strength IMO. Had I willingly and precisely set a scenario up to investigate how newgen distribution works, it'd have been much easier to skew the results by design.

I have to admit I'm still intrigued by the idea of a more throughout and rigorous analysis, but I'm not sure about the setup... Active leagues do get an advantage, so maybe the best way is to create a game with only a marginal league active, while the rest of the world is simulated as inactive?

BTW, I can still follow some of the aforementioned prospects to see where they end up and how good they'll become, but it'll still be very anecdotal to many.

May 5, 2018

1 ora fa, Nacaw ha scritto:

Please, just stop. It's absolutely pointless to draw such wide conclusions from one game and you are just cherry picking numbers. Run 100, or better 1000 sims and show the average results.

When I'll be paid to do so, I'll gladly run 1000000 simulations.

Until then, that's all I'm willing to do, and I already feel it shouldn't come to random users having to "test" weird stuff that should have been picked up by the beta-testers already. (and this goes for plenty of other, more serious, problems we've had throughout the years).

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You need to compare the entire database at game start, with the entire database at 10 years into the future. That's what can really be compared, as that is the status quo we're trying to maintain with newgens. You need to look at CA in any proper comparison as well, PA is only half the story. PA alone says very little actually, and could probably be explained as easily as looking at the youth rating for each country.

For the Nth time, high PA is a problem in itself because the game's development dynamics makes it too easy for players with high enough potential to make it, to an extent. Let alone if it's the human manager the one scooping up talents from all corners of the world (and selling the failed ones for profit to an overly "gullible" AI)

And I feel the current comparison is still telling.

The Messis and the Ronaldos have been replaced by the original db wonderkids, while they have indeed been replaced by the plethora of >150 talents. Most from Argentina and Brasil...

Isn't it weird how, only 6 seasons into the game, Italy and Spain could have easily "skipped" a full generation of modest talents courtesy of a generous youth intake after another?

I mean, SPAIN has increased the amout of potential top-players LITERALLY BY TENFOLD! How does it make sense?

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In any case, there's certainly NOT wonderkid after wonderkid coming from India, Indonesia or China. And that's with their leagues loaded, which you obviously chose to do for inflated numbers to support your weak point. We're trying to replicate the gameworld most players experience, there will obviously be a larger impact when you manipulate it by adding nations no-one else uses. To further underline your inaccuracy, you make it seem like these are numbers for 5 years when it's actually 8 full youth intakes.

Oh give me a ****ing break!

I'm playing a Five Continents challenge and decided to start in Oceania, then moving to Asia... If that's the kind of mindset you're in, NOTHING will convince you I'm simply getting sidetracked by this topic while just playing a regular career.

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And again this hate against random small nations.. Cape Verde has recently enjoyed their best ever international form, qualifying for 2 ACONs and reaching an all-time high world ranking of 27th. Other than that, they have a rich history of supplying players to the Portuguese national team and others, chief amongst them dual nationality players Henrik Larsson and Patrick Viera. If anything, they are vastly underrepresented with only a single 150 PA player.

FFS, it's not "hate"... it's mild bemusement when I see nations that have rarely, if ever, produced decent players get a couple of hot prospects that will usually get signed by clubs at a high level, thus helping their development.

And of course the Cape Verdian players who were good chose to play for the stronger nation (hence, the "oh, you know he could have been eligible for Cape Verde too?" was a piece of football trivia)... Here, this single CV star hasn't opted for a second nationality, which is quite weird, but let's give him and FM the benefit of the doubt...

Also, Cape Verde was at best Vieira's THIRD nationality, so for all intents and purposes he's as French as Barthez or Blanc...

P.S. for what it's worth, I root for a smaller nation. One which, even in its Golden Generation, hasn't produced more than a handful of good EPL-players... So all your accusations of "football racism" are not only silly, but also baseless.
I'd find it equally off-putting had Norway been producing 10 Riise and 10 Solskjær per youth intake...

May 5, 2018

Ok, here are the result of my little research:

Season 2024-25
Large database
Leagues loaded at the time of the sampling: South Korea, China, South Africa (all tier 1 only).
Previously loaded and then removed: Australia, New Zealand, other Oceanian countries and India

Under 23 players from the original DB with PA >150, -9, -9.5 or -10 vs Under 23 newgens within the save with PA >150

NOT INCLUDED IN THE GRAPHS: 128 Newgens with dual nationality

Countries with at least 10 newgens >150 PA.

As you can see, with the exception of Germany (for whatever reason), all Top Nations have a ridiculously high rate of top-quality newgens. Brazil and Argentina alone have produced enough newgens to completely take over the whole Premier League.

BTW, France has 3 players with Basque 2nd nationality, and Spain has 18

For smaller nations it's more of a mixed bag, but still the vast majority of those nations still produce WAY TOO MANY prospects compared to the original DB

Incidentally, Egypt's top 2 players in the db are outside the age bracket, so we can consider the score a 7-2... Still, 7 top-shelf Egyptians are a bit too many anyway.

On the negative end of the spectrum, minor African nations seem to get the shaft, while traditional strong sides like Ivory Coast and Nigeria still churn out many more talents than the increasingly competitive neighbours.

While Iceland's golden generation is a distant memory already, usually irrelevant nations like China, Iraq and Saudi Arabia get their superstars. I'd rant about the Cape Verde one, but I guess he was also Portuguese.

You can make a case for smaller nations having older original players who will be "replaced" by the strong newgens, but still they have nothing in the current U23 database anyway, so we have to accept those countries are sort of skipping at least one generation. That is for places with actual semi-top players, while it's absolutely random and unexpected for places with no football tradition or legacy to speak of.

All in all I see TWO major flaws:

* Top nations churn out Agueros, Coutinhos or Griezmanns at an alarming rate
* Relatively obscure nations produce more Top League players in 5 in-game years than in one century of football
* Globally, the amount of high-potential players is ridiculous if compared to the starting point in the game.

April 27, 2018

No, it's not a nickname, it's part of his full name!

Dirtiness 1, I guess?

April 25, 2018

15 minuti fa, ryanlion28 ha scritto:

I believe the point below is referring to players in Inter Milans academy, regardless of their nationality, not that Inter Milan would pick Joe Bloggs up off the street and turn him into a Serie A player

Top-level, expensive academies can't even produce more than a handful of mid-level top-flight players per generation, so the theory is simply not true. Training and tutoring can only get ANY player that far, if the talent isn't there and another bunch of things don't go his way.

April 25, 2018

37 minuti fa, alanschu14 ha scritto:

It would seem to me that virtually anyone, assuming they had the right mentality and dedication to the sport, would have a chance at being an excellent footballer if they were a part of the Inter Milan program.

By that logic, any club in a Top League should produce new talents non-stop, provided they have enough dedication.

I don't think sports work like that... Mentality can help a lot (just like dumb luck), but if you're born with two left feet, there isn't enough high-profile training that can turn you into a good professional footballer.

37 minuti fa, alanschu14 ha scritto:

It was such an affront to you that you had to ensure that the player wouldn't actually become a star which makes no sense to me.

To me it's a matter of keeping a semblance of realism in an increasingly crazy gameworld... One where minnows get promoted into the top-flights and then get relegated with 10 points because the AI just can't build up a team up for the challenge. One where Belgium and England win every other World Cup...

37 minuti fa, alanschu14 ha scritto:

But you'd be just fine with it if it was a Brazilian or an Englishman.

The wonderkids rate for those nations is questionable as well, but statistically I'm more willing to accept a top player being from a traditionally good country than from a place that has produced a bunch of decent low-EPL players at best.

Anyway, I've got some datas from FM18 I'll post later today for a better discussion based on figures and not on mere anecdotes.

April 24, 2018

9 ore fa, alanschu14 ha scritto:

Just so I'm clear here... but it really sounds like you're saying that Brazilian/English kids are just... more capable of becoming wonderkids?

In FM, they do, because they usually are generated as part of a top-division club (or 2nd tier at least) in a top-nation. So they "train" in a better setup, with more chances to get first team football or a loan move to a club in the same division or nation.

Regardless of nationality (as many clubs get foreign youth players), if Youngster 1 appears in Liverpool U19, he'll have much better chances to fulfill his potential than if he is generated at Hearts of Oak. CA, PA and mental traits will still be the same, but the time he's "born" in Ghana, he'll have to wait to be "found" by the scout of a good foreign club. Hoping it'll be, say, French or English, rather than Danish or Swiss, otherwise there will be more "wasted" years in a lesser league.

BTW, the Indonesian kid at Inter was likely a byproduct of the Thohir ownership. Born in Indonesia, generated at Inter, no dual-nationality when he was generated (otherwise Italy would have picked him for the NT before Indonesia could).

In the same save, I've found Iranians, Iraqis and even a KUWAITIAN good enough to play in EPL, Bundesliga etc, and all were not "second-gen" players produced by a good academy, but 100% result of a random club in their home nation.

Ok, it was 4 iterations ago, and maybe things have improved in FM18... I'd run a test, but my current save has a weird setup, so it'd be pointless.

9 ore fa, fmonit ha scritto:

Sounds like you don't really accept change. The fact is that there will be a lot more players from minnow countries coming through with dual nationalities IRL, and they may pick the lesser country to play for.

Again, those who pick the lesser country do so out of opportunism and only rarely out of "patriotism" or whatever (unless, like Kosovo, or the former Yugoslavian nations, it's a choice they didn't have before).

And this has nothing to do with me not accepting change. WHEN in real life we'll have top players who are actually from China, Qatar etc, I'll be more than happy to embrace the change in FM as well. But as long as those nations can't even produce a decent player, I'll still see that as one of those FM quirks...

P.S. Nainggolan was born in Antwerp and, from a football standpoint, he's 100% Belgian. I'm willing to bet dollar to donuts that he wouldn't have become the player he is now, had he spent his youth in Indonesia playing in the local league.

My whole point is: I don't have an issue with dual-nationality players in FM opting for the lesser one. I DO have a problem with Top-flight players being generated in countries that IRL have never produced a single decent player, or have a "once in a generation" top talent and nothing else.

April 23, 2018

7 minuti fa, ryanlion28 ha scritto:

I disagree with the idea that there's too many world beaters coming from smaller countries entirely. USA/China maybe, but these aren't footballing 'minnows' in comparison to others

For plenty of countries, "too many" could be as many as ONE

For others, it's more a matter of too many being better, on average, than their real-life counterpart.

In fairness, so far in FM18, I haven't noticed that being so prominent, but I'm only in 2025... I could take an in-depth look to an older save in my long FM14 career, but the game is too old...

April 23, 2018

2 ore fa, Nacaw ha scritto:

Disagree almost 100% with your points there Kalle. I'll pick out a few of them.

You were yourself complaining about FM producing too many "key players" in EPL or clubs like Sevilla. That's exactly what Mahrez is. He had one truly outstanding season, and two solid seasons. He's a key EPL player currently, and is likely to move to a top club this summer. This kind of player exist IRL, and when the game is able to reproduce that kind of talent in countries similar to Algeria, that's a good thing.

But in FM world, a player like Mahrez would have been:

a) potentially as good as he was in Leicester's title season, and thus he'd have had a much better career in the game than IRL
b) as mediocre as he was in France, so a second-tier player with little or no potential left to develop
c) as mediocre as he was in France, but with relatively high potential, but with a low CA that would have stumped his development anyway

The game is NOT able to reproduce actual Late Bloomers and One-Season Wonders at all. But that's even besides the point and my observation.

What I meant is in (older?) FM third-rate countries produce many good players who can easily turn into solid EPL players, while IRL they are few and far between.

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Ghoulam is another key player from a top league. This guy called Zidane also had a bit of an impact...

Zidane is French.

I'll give you Ghoulam, but it's 2 solid EL-level players in a generation.

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Total nonsense, Ronaldo is well known for being lanky and lacking physicality in his early years, if anything he's a prime example of the dramatic development that can happen when you join a top academy.

I mean talent-wise.

The dramatic development was possible because CR was immensely talented. Also notice how big the turnover at top academies is, and how low success rate they have, despite investing millions in recruitment, infrastructures etc.

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Forgive me, but have you played much FM in 6+ season saves ?

My FM14 save is now in its 32nd season, so yeah, I've enough experience in long saves...

BTW, in that very save, Inter Milan had an INDONESIAN wonderkid in their youth intake whose CA/PA was likely in the 160 region as he was a first-team regular and was winning awards. It bothered me so much I had to lower him to 130 and it still irked me.

Indonesia... Really?

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What you are describing is a rarity, a non-factor in the game world. If anything, it should happen more often than it does. The main issue with regens currently is the complete opposite - big nations can recycle almost their complete national team within 5-6 years. This leads us to the real "issue" here; FM creates too many high PA players compared to the starting data. There are many reasons for this, all of which would be futile to cover here. A big one, however, is that the AI fails to develop quite a lot of high PA players. There's inequality here, because the high PA player in Sudan is less likely to make it than the high PA player in EU. Actually, the best league for such a player is probably either the Argentinian or Brazilian league, not because of having the best facilities, but because the CA required to be a starter is much less than in bigger leagues, and their rep is still fairly high. A talent in those leagues will get a chance to play, and as we all know, that's the biggest factor in maxing out their growth potential long term. This is where you get killer regens coming to Europe straight in to top teams, because they can develop to 150-160 PA before making the move. The Sudan player will often get stuck in his local league, and never reach a high enough CA to get sold on to a bigger club.

160+ PA players from the nations you mention are exceedingly rare. And even if they are generated, there's a high chance they won't fully develop, as I've already explained.

You're describing two separate issues...

1) It's true, top nations produce way too many "ready-made" newgens who can walk into almost any Starting XI at age 17 or 18, and by 21 they're NT regulars as well.
1b) Provided the starting CA is high enough, they'll easily break into the first team or, at worst, will be sold to a slightly worse club where they'll still be able to grow a lot

2) Top newgens from smaller nations can be quite flawed or have low CA, thus they'll NOT fulfill their potential and rot in their home country or flounder around Europe's lower leagues.

2b) BUT sometimes they get a high enough CA, with equally good PA, and then they'll follow the same development curve of Brazialian or English wonderkids

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This is the key point. The game world is set up to produce a realistic outcome with AI managers. When you throw a human into the mix, of course you can develop more talent from fringe nations. If I spot a good player with many flaws (70 CA / 150 PA), for example from Luxembourg, I'll often buy him and develop him, loan him out so he grows, because I think that's a lot of fun. The AI doesn't have a concept of fun built in, and would ignore this player for better options. And yes, when he reaches 22-23, I can sell him for good profit. That's not a flaw in the regen system, it's just a human with a way of playing that the AI isn't capable of. The players you mention would not develop without your intervention.

Again, my case refers to players with high enough starting CA. Which is the crux of the matter.

IMO the game produces too "many" newgens from random countries with high starting CA if compared to real-life. They may be 3 or 4, but they're still twice as many as the real world, without human intervention.
Of course if a human manager takes action, the figures could be even higher.

April 23, 2018

4 ore fa, fmonit ha scritto:

I disagree with you there. Mahrez and Salah (PFA winners) are perfect example of fantastic players at the highest level that play for a minnow nation. Maybe not overall, but in my opinion, we'll see more of these in the future for 2 reasons:

Mahrez was more or less a one-year wonder, and, off the top of my head, the only half-relevant Algerian player at an international level since, well, Rabah Madjer scored that famous goal in the 1987 Champions Cup final.

Salah is slightly better overall (while he never had such a season before), but again, name me three more Egyptian top players. Elneny and... Mido?

I'm not saying relatively smaller nations (that are still big players in their area or even confederations) shouldn't produce a handful of decent top-league players, at best, but FM, at least in the past, was literally filled with wonderkids from all kinds of African and even Asian nations. Plus enough Americans to turn the US Soccer NT into a credible threat.

4 ore fa, fmonit ha scritto:

1. Football is getting more international and there are more opportunities for players from minnow nations to be detected in their own nation, and sports infrastructure is getting better in these nations as well.

It depends.

Some countries may improve the average level of their players because better infrastructures mean they can develop more. But an Akinbiyi will never become a Ronaldo, no matter how early he joins a top academy.
Also, many FM nations that produce good youngsters are far from having adequate facilities anyway, so the best chances for the local prospects is moving to developed football countries, with huge chances of being lost in the shuffle.

4 ore fa, fmonit ha scritto:

2. People in general are more international. Dad is from x country, mum from y country, but born in z country. Suddenly the player can pick to represent 1 out of 3 nations. Adnan Januzaj springs to mind: Born in Belgium, Kosovar-Albanian parents. He could have easily played for minnow countries Albania or Kosovo, but he picked Belgium.

Let's be fair though, those who choose the smaller nation often do so because they know they'd have almost no chance to play regularly for the big nation.

And even in the few cases when the smaller nation wins, it's still not a proof of said nation being a talent-producing one. A guy born and raised in England by Vietnamese parents who then choses to represent Vietnam is NOT an indicator of Vietnamese football being on the rise, isn't he?

My original point was that FM produces too many players from small countries who are able to walk into an EPL starting XI by age 19, basically as soon as they're off the plane. The development dymanics for high PA players works too well if the starting CA is high enough, and as soon as a decent player with ok potential is at a good club playing regularly, the sky is the limit.
I'd be fine with decent prospects failing to get spotted until later (or ever), or not developing so well. That'd keep the chance for a couple of "unusual" talents, but it'd not create a huge inbalance where suddenly you get top players from Libya, China, Granada and plenty of other nations that have maybe produced one half-decent player in all their history.

April 19, 2018

I think the rate of Wonderkids or at least of top-level newgens from awful football nations has been a bit of an issue in FM for years.

Maybe the new scouting system has made it a bit harder, but in the past it was too easy to spot incredibly talented young players in a random U19 national team. From there, you'd sign him for peanuts and nurture him into a world-beater almost with a 100% success rate.

Sure, most had horrible flaws (mentally, technically or physically) but nothing that a human manager couldn't bypass. And if anything failed, you'd still lure AI top clubs into forking out good money for them once they got exposure and the AI staff was blinded by a high PPA.

But back to my original point, I think the Youth Rating for some countries is too generous, based more on population (and thus of sheer statistical chance of a big country producing a top player) than on actual real-life figures.
I cringe whenever I see a Chinese player being a key player for a top EPL club, or a Saudi Arabian with attributes >15 holding his own at PSG or even at the likes of Sevilla etc.

Variety and unpredictability are fine, but just look at how few "outsiders" we've had over the years at the highest level...

April 8, 2018

Close enough...

But there's an "I" missing and I'd say some extra Vision points

February 25, 2018

3 ore fa, russell9 ha scritto:

Nope. From my experience of 20++ saves from LLM to highest level league, 4231 is actually rather weak.

In my Italy save Benevento have managed comfortable mid-table finishes by playing that 4-2-3-1 Wide, often beating much stronger teams and generally being a tough side to play against. Way, way, way past a level justified by the quality of the players.

And that goes for AI v AI, where I had no input on the matches, so it's not a case "you struggle because you suck".

February 24, 2018

1 ora fa, ermant ha scritto:

I am talking about something else here. Worthless players exceeding their limits and they never can in any other tactic except this one. Also my passing gets ridiculous for no reason. When i watch the full match, my players are like paralysed and they seem like they don't know what to do, making wrong decisions unlike against any other tactic. I totally dominate all but not this one.

I've noticed that too in my Serie A save.

That tactic apparently works too well with otherwise quite limited players. Don't really know why.

I can see "it's your tactic" to an extent, but it's simply weird how weak sides on paper can be much more tricky to face compared to expectations and real-life comparisons. Maybe that 4-2-3-1 "exploits" some of the ME's weaknesses thus giving your opponents a chance they wouldn't have, say, with a 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1?

February 14, 2018

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2. Not really sure what is confusing about this - the game is adding up the attributes for the role and ranking the players best roles so you can see what his best role is, it is no different from what users have had to do in their heads or in a spreadsheet in the past. In your example above the game is telling you his best role is as a CMd followed by a DLPd (though as the DLPd is only rated at 80% I'd assume he has another role somewhere rated at 90% as the differences aren't that much) based on his attributes saving you the need to manually compare the roles. Nothing is stopping you playing him in the CMa role but he'd have a lower rating because of his attributes (poor finishing and long shots) which would be why he'd underperform in that role not because the game gave him a lower role rating.

Again you as the manager have to make the decision as to either play your best xi in their best roles or instead do you fit players into your tactic which may mean dropping players or playing them in roles they are not perfect for - if your four best players are all Poachers are you going to play four Poachers or drop a couple of them or move a couple to the wings to give you a balanced formation?

Yeah, but if the role indicators are a bit iffy AND I'm not told anywhere what the actual consequences of playing a 100% BWM as an 70% CM(auto) are, how am I supposed to choose?

Visually, the impact of the reddish circles and pitch zones is quite noticeable, so many human players will be tempted to rework a perfectly fine tactic to accomodate a player's "best role", only to unintentionally creating an unbalanced and inherently WORSE tactic. All that, while thinking it'll be an improvement because hey, 11 green circles!

It's at least questionable that a feature that is supposed to make things easier to the human manager (ie. a visual cue to replace a handmade spreadsheet, or a note about a player's best role according to key attributes) is creating a communication short-circuit of sorts, where what you see is "worse" than what you may end up getting in the ME.

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3. Not sure where you are getting this from - the role rating is a summary of a players attributes and is just a graphical representation of the attributes like the analyser polygon. Playing a player in a lower rated role just means his attributes aren't a perfect match for that role the game doesn't penalize you extra for it.

I assume you are getting confused with the positional rating system which is a separate thing. There is a slight link where the role ratings are lower for positions the player isn't familiar with - in your example the Wing Back position roles would get a lower rating than the same Full-Back position roles as he has a lower positional rating at WingBack, but as he is natural at both DM and MC the DLP role would be rated the same for both positions.

So hypothetically I'll have less negative consequences for playing Pirlo as a B2B (same position, completely unsuitable role due to lack of mobility and stamina) than for playing Robben as LM (less familiar role, but more overlapping attributes with his Natural position)?

It's another problem with too many cooks spoiling the broth.

If Attributes > Position (as it should be in the game and is, largely, in real life), Roles' colours should be weighed with more attention to the attributes. Hence, a Natural AMR Winger should be Accomplished as MR Winger (assuming he's decent at the defensive part of the game).

If Position > Attributes (as it is currently in FM, apparently) there's no reason for a player Natural in 2 or more positions to have at least 2 Natural roles, likely one per position... Otherwise, what is he Natural at exactly?

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Going back to your RPG example your guy might be rated 8/10 in Archery and 10/10 Wood Elf - So yes he is best at being a Wood Elf, but what happens if the rest of your party are only rated 2/10 in Archery and 8/10 in Wood Elf - do you use 4 Wood Elf's or do you use three 8/10 Wood Elf's and one 8/10 Archer or your 10/10 WE with two 8/10 and one 2/10 Archer - What you use depends on how important an Archer is to your party.

No, what I mean is that if my character's stats/skills are low in Archery, there should be NO WAY I could be almost as effective as another character whose best skill is Archery.

If I choose to build my avatar as a sword-wielding badass, I shouldn't be able to pick up bow and arrows and happily Wilhelm Tell my way through a dungeon... Regardless of what the rest of my party is best at.

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Posts posted by RBKalle