[Suggestion] More obscure scouting of PA, particularly for young players with less professional experience

[russianorphan7]

For some time now, the scouting of potential ability has been far too precise IMO, particularly for younger players with less game experience. This translates to forward thinking FM players just scouting the hell out of young players and buying guaranteed future stars for pennies on the dollar in terms of their actual value. This is an incredibly OP strategy since developing players to their PAs is a pretty sure thing (this is an issue I've critiqued in another PA-related thread). I mean, think if this was the case in real life: if you knew a 16-18 year old player had the guaranteed potential to become world class if only given enough playing time, pretty much every big club would come running looking to purchase them and so his price would more closely reflect that of a world class player, albeit less since there is still risk of setbacks and time needed for development. I mean, sometimes this is indeed the case in FM, but I'd argue that they are often under-priced given the relatively unambiguous PA and certainty of growth.

Nonetheless, this isn't how it works in real life at all. Even the best scouts and coaches can't predict who is going to be world class and who isn't. Sure, some of the more precocious players have expectations of future greatness, but even then there is a lot of variability as to which players actually realize that potential. Hence, why there are still players who become busts and many unknown players go on to be world class.

So, what would a more realistic, challenging system look like? I think the solution is to have a system where scouting of PA is far less precise in general, and the degree of precision be more a function of age and game experience (which can be viewed by scouts) than it is now. This would mean that scouting young players only gives a very crude approximation of their potential; and that approximation can be only be honed gradually as a player grows (both in age and ability) and/or plays more games that can be scouted (the more competitive the game, the better). As a player matures and starts to reach that potential through professional experience, then you might be able to hone in on a more accurate PA assessment, perhaps within a star or so. This contrasts with the current system where you can predict within a star whether a player will be a 4-5 star player pretty much from the time he enters the game. That's just not how it works in real life and it results in abuse.

The final result would be that it becomes very hard to just pluck young, world class talent, and attempts at doing so would result in far more "busts" than the current system (where that is pretty rare). At the end of the day, the focus should be on developing (or scouting) a player's CA, with only a vague idea of their true potential. This more shrouded PA scouting system would allow for young players with low initial CA and high PA to be "discovered" or just be late-bloomers, and inversely players with high initial CA and lower PA might have high expectations but ultimately become relative busts. That is ideally how the system would work, at least until they scrap the hard PA cap for a more flexible, organic growth system (my personal wish).

P.S. if anyone suggests good ideas, tweaks, or refinements to this concept, I'll try my best to add them to this initial post (with credit, of course) for a more convenient, summarized view. I know it's easy for good discussion and fleshed out ideas to become buried deep in threads.

[jazzyboy]

I replied to the other thread regarding PA. I agree with you buying youngsters with high potential is an OP strategy and that is literally what my FM career has been all about lol.

I would prefer PA being completely invisible to user and AI though.. I haven't completely figured out how the scout's attributes would be like

27 minutes ago, jazzyboy said:

How about PA being fixed but unknown to user and ai ? The idea is to be more like real life where pa exists but no one knows the value. So when you scout a player, the scout will focus more on the intangibles (work ethics, ambition, etc) and will rate the player based on how likely he is to achieve certain level of attributes, lets say 15 for epl (i.e if he needs 150 att points to be decent then the scout will say something like 'Based on the player's age and progression history I dont think he will be a decent player', but then since the scout doesnt know the PA, the player might progress a lot next season and he will have different opinion).

TL,DR : no one in game knows the PA values, scouts rate wonderkids like they do in real life by comparing their current abilities with other players in the same age group and how far along they have to improve to be considered decent players. And of course hidden attributes still play important role.

 

[russianorphan7]

Yes, jazzyboy essentially has the right idea with basing scout reports on CA, personality, and character traits. I don't necessarily think they need to scrap the PA star system entirely, just make it far more imprecise and unreliable. Right now, if you get a good scout to get 100% knowledge on a young player, you can be pretty confident that player will turn out as expected. Under my proposal, that PA star system would, on average, have something like 2 stars blacked out to indicate uncertainty, and the number of stars would vary more or less based on the number of games they played and how competitive those games are. In addition, the personality/character traits would maybe dictate how likely that player is to reach his potential, or at least be one of the major factors in his ability to grow. 

Regarding the competitiveness of games, how much knowledge of a player's real potential do you get when he's playing against mediocre youth talent? Not a ton IMO. Plenty of players tear it up at lower levels only to become average when they play against real professional competition. Even if a player plays well in a mildly competitive pro league, it's still not certain that their ability will translate to stiffer competition. This should be reflected more in scouting.

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.