Revaluation of the CA - PA system

[Raptor Longe]

Hello everyone, I'm Leandro and I'm an Italian Football Manager researcher.

For a couple of years, I'm thinking of a new system for evaluating a player's potential. I think that the current system based on the evaluation of a PA is limitative. 

I think that in the growth of a player, talent is not enough, and that all depends on other factors. For example, structures, professionalism, injuries, games played in a career. And talent is only one of these values and not the one. All these values in the game have a value from 1 to 20. While the talent has only one value expressed by a score of 1 to 200 Potential Ability (PA). 

Why do not we make the game to establish the maximum CA achievable by a player?

My proposal is to eliminate the PA.

 

The game already has everything it takes to determine a player's growth. Setting a limit on the growth of a player, a limit that could not even be reached, is limiting for such a complex game.
Establish a mental value to add to the other "secrets". A value from 1 to 20. "Natural Talent".

 

The value of "Natural Talent": Indicates the natural ability of a player to excel.

A player with a "Natural Talent" value at 1, despite the absence of injuries, the excellent facilities, the games play, and his professionalism. It will have a smaller growth compared to a player with the "Natural Talent" value of 5 or 10.
While a player with the "Natural Talent" value 20, he will have a faster natural growth with equal injuries, structures, played games, and professionalism.
Obviously, the value of 170/180 CAs is achieved, growth will be much more difficult and the speed of improvement will be reduced by 1/5 of the previous one.

Basically, our research will no longer rely on establishing a fixed and unsurpassed potential, but to establish the basic possibilities for a player's growth, and it will be the game through those values, and what happens within the same game, to establish the maximum value of CA. As is the case in reality, where not always the talented players become champions, while players of normal talent, with hardwork and experience can become great players.

 

What do you think of this proposal?

[Maaka]

6 hours ago, Raptor Longe said:

Why do not we make the game to establish the maximum CA achievable by a player?

My proposal is to eliminate the PA.

 

[Maaka]

(Somehow I couldn't write anything after I quoted the above post )

 

But the "maximum CA achievable by a player" is exactly what the PA is today, so if I understand you correctly, you wish to get rid of the PA, and instead have a maximum CA. What's the difference?

[Raptor Longe]

I think I've explained it all.

PA is currently a limit. A player reaches a maximum of CA, established by the value of PA, a value that is decided by the researchers and that CA can not in any way be overcome. By deleting this limit, and by inserting another basic value that interacts with the improvement of a soccer player. Real situations will be possible in the game, which are not possible at this time, because PA does not allow it to happen. Type players that become strong only after a certain age, developing an ability that was not thought to be able to reach, or young players who quickly become strong, but then for professional or physical limitations (injuries), do not become as strong as they thought they could become.

Also at the Arcade level, we allow an FM player, starting from lower categories, to bring players he knows well (in higher categories or in other teams), as is currently the case in reality, which can improve to be at least useful in a different reality, having better facilities, or playing in more competitive categories, without a PA limit that does not allow them better.

Example: Leandro, in Italian Serie C, is the coach of Sicula Leonzio. In this team there is an "X" player I like and makes in my tactical schemes, but with CA 95 and PA 98 (it happens too often) at just 23 years. If I go to Serie B, this player will be useless, as the average CA is 110 and with 98 maximum, he can never be a valid player as he was in C.

Without the limit given by PA, and with a value of "Natural Talent" of 10, this player takes me to Serie B, and with better facilities, facing stronger players, though not very fast, this player arrives during that season (playing him in the first team) to 103/104 CA at 24 years. During the second season of Serie B, he is still growing, reaching 111 CA at 25 years. 

The next year I bring him to Serie A in another team (Chievo Verona, for example). With better facilities, and playing (not always) in a better competition, he comes during the season to a value of 117 of CAs at 26 years. I stay in Serie A for years. He has a minor upgrades due to age and few games played (though they improve him in a bigger way than those in Serie B because opponents have a CA from 125 to 180). But finally he reaches a peak of 128 CAs at 30 years. 

With the current system, all this is impossible, because the PA limit is invaluable, and for me it is wrong.

A real example? Vardy of Leicester.

 

[Maaka]

So, basically you're saying that instead of setting the PA manually, like today, you'd like for the game to generate that value (or a similar value)? But in order to do this, the game would need some manual input by researchers or others to calculate the correct "PA" (or another name for it), so I do not see what difference it really would make. Besides, the CA alone does not make a player great or a failure, it's combined with many other factors (teammates, tactics, man-management etc.), so a Vardy could still happen in-game.

[Simon Tipple]

I think we already have what you are trying to achieve. A players PA is not the CA they will achieve it is what they could achieve and it already takes into account their mental attributes, bad luck with injuries, game time and so on. 

[Raptor Longe]

The game must not generate any PA value! PA is a value! It's a limit. It is the maximum CA limit that can be reached by a player. The game does not have to generate any PA value, the game already makes players better, and we give a "limit" called PA. You understand it?

We take off this limit, this value. And we incorporate a mental value, "Natural Talent", which together with Professionalism, and all the factors that already exist in the game, interact with the growth or decrease of a player. Without the limits we impose at the beginning. 

We give the player, instead of a limit, the starting values that will affect his own growth (as we already do) and the rest will be decided by his career. If he stays in low rank he will never grow beyond a limit, if the structures are not at its maximum, his growth will be slow, if he will always get injured, his growth will stop, or even there may be some deterioration. But we take away an unsurpassed limit, like the PA.

[faber83]

I agree with Raptor Longe.

I've been playing FM since a little boy, when it was called "Scudetto". Now I've been an official researcher for a few years.

I know Raptor Longe as THE real expert of PA, so please don't come and tell him what PA is...

I think that PA is THE real bug and dodgy value of the whole lovely FM architecture. But actually is the second most important value of the whole thing!! How can we leave it to the complete subjective discretion of every tom, dick and harry!? How can we leave it as a Nostradamus thing!?

Actually it's the value that causes most problems and disagreement between researchers, causing epic fails in previsions, both for a positive or for a negative prevision... Causing mistakes and forgetfulness in the research (e.g.: CA 95 with PA 98, etc.).

I think the concept here is, at least, to reduce the discretion of the researcher, and to reduce the strictness of the PA value, so giving it more of a flexible and unpredictable range:

- to allow some more realistic progressions in careers and explosive jumps in higher leagues for talented young and lower league players;

- to limit the growth of hard working players and team leaders of medium leagues, that however have some physical and technical limits to not allow them for higher leagues;

- to avoid explosive growth in young higher league players, which in the real world we are not so sure they will explode.

[CFuller]

You need to cut SI's researchers come slack. Back in 2012, how could they possibly have known that Jamie Vardy and N'Golo Kanté would become championship-winning beasts, or that Dele Alli would become more than a decent Football League prospect?

Replacing PA with 'Natural Talent' makes no sense to me. For starters, natural talent means little as far as potential growth is concerned. Also, could Vardy be described as a natural talent, or just someone who reached the top through hard graft and (to some extent) being at the right club in the right system with the right manager?

As Simon says, having high PA is no guarantee that a player will be great. Being an ambitious model pro who gets regular first-team football from a young age helps. If your attitude's not right and/or you keep getting injured, though, you might well waste your potential.

And to add to what @Maaka said, Vardy-esque cases can happen in FM. To give you an example from my FM13 career, there was this striker who generated at non-league Crawley and went unnoticed by big clubs for a long time. He steadily rose up the leagues, scoring plenty of goals in the process, though he didn't reach the Premier League until he was in his late 20s. He has just topped 20 goals in a PL season for the first time, at the age of 32.

[Raptor Longe]

We must not confuse Regen with real players. The Regen have a PA from the game, and therefore to reach those abilities, that player had a high PA. 

Vardy did not have a high potential. Could not have it, in Conference it's hard to find -5, figure it a -8. This is the example of Vardy's talent, because he certainly has a great natural talent and is a professional player, his Natural Talent has enabled him to improve fast and adapt quickly to more competitive championships, enabling him to climb the categories thanks to his dozens of goals.

But there is not just the example of Vardy, I can give you an Italian example. 

In the Italian national team that has just been eliminated from Sweden, there is a player called Marco Parolo. Parolo is a player with a normal Natural Talent. He is not a phenomenon, it is technically average, but is an hardworker. His career is quite anonymous, youthful of a Serie C team, 5 years of professional in Serie C, and a year in Serie B. The Serie B team is promoted to Serie A, and he makes the Serie A debut at 25 years old. That same year he made his debut in National Team, in March 2011. In the last seven years of Serie A, he has put together 249 appearances, 38 goals and 23 assists, from Cesena, Parma and finally to Lazio. By improving every season its performance, even now, at 32 years old. As a young man, no one would have expected such a career, and nobody gave him a big potential. 

That is why I think the PA is a simple limit. And I would prefer it to be removed, and include a parameter like "Natural Talent", which fits like the others in a player's growth, and I would do everything to the video game that already works fine.

Such a change would introduce enormous opportunities during careers. They could also be totally different among them. Players would not be obliged to always buy the usual known names, they could also use lesser-known players (Natural Talent 8-12) who are already in the team, especially in careers where they start from the minor league to get into the principal league.

In Italy often happens the "double jump", a Serie C team, arrives in Serie B, wins the championship, and goes up to Serie A. And this team in these two years does not change many players. And among these players there is a "Parolo". A guy with years of Serie C behind, which unexpectedly makes good in Serie A (other example: Gianluca Lapadula).

[santy001]

"Natural talent" is just PA by another name. It still has to have a hard limit. 

There has to be realisation that this is a game, and that the shackles just can't be taken off. It does and will always struggle to emulate, with real players done by researchers, the late career step-up.

Unless it becomes pure RNG and therefore the entire development arc for these real, lower league players, is at random and superficial it becomes something that is entirely malleable by players.

If there is a way to take a middling lower league 50CA player up to 200CA in 5 years in game, players will eventually deduce the combination of things you need to do to achieve it - if as I said - its not entirely randomised. FM hasn't really been about just letting the numbers fall where they fall. 

What happens is you don't get the "usual known names" you buy right now, but you get a new set of "usual known names" who are maybe 20-24 in lower leagues with high "natural talent" and can be bought cheaply. It doesn't fix the problem, if anything it just dramatically widens the size of player-shortlists with your youth prodigies and your lower league prodigies.

[Haiku]

I'm all for removing PA. I've said this numerous times during the years. There's no need to add another hidden attribute like "Natural Talent" as well. The game already has everything. Natural talent is in fact the CA compared to others at the same age. In other words a 16 years old with 120 CA is obviously a better talent than another 16 years old with 100 CA. Everything that determines how good and how fast the player will become is his Professionalism, Ambition, Determination, Matches played, Competition raking, Coaches, Training facilities, Injury proneness, Tutoring etc. 

[Raptor Longe]

55 minutes ago, santy001 said:

"Natural talent" is just PA by another name. It still has to have a hard limit. 

There has to be realisation that this is a game, and that the shackles just can't be taken off. It does and will always struggle to emulate, with real players done by researchers, the late career step-up.

Unless it becomes pure RNG and therefore the entire development arc for these real, lower league players, is at random and superficial it becomes something that is entirely malleable by players.

If there is a way to take a middling lower league 50CA player up to 200CA in 5 years in game, players will eventually deduce the combination of things you need to do to achieve it - if as I said - its not entirely randomised. FM hasn't really been about just letting the numbers fall where they fall. 

What happens is you don't get the "usual known names" you buy right now, but you get a new set of "usual known names" who are maybe 20-24 in lower leagues with high "natural talent" and can be bought cheaply. It doesn't fix the problem, if anything it just dramatically widens the size of player-shortlists with your youth prodigies and your lower league prodigies.

Absolutely not. They are not the same thing, and to repeat it, I'm tired of repeating it. PA is a limit. Maximum limit of CA that can reach a player. While "Natural Talent" is a mental parameter to be included in the game, it would function as the "Professionalism" parameter. In fact, its function is to regulate the speed of a player's growth.

And just to prevent a player with 50 CAs starting to become a 200 CA, I proposed a growth limiter when reaching 170 CAs. Once the CA scores 170 points, a player's growth will be halved, reaching 180 points (excellence), growth will be reduced to 1/4 or 1/5, so only those really talented and professional, can grow over 180 CAs. In addition, an 50 CA, even just to get to 150 CA, will have "Professionalism" and "Natural Talent" at least 14 or 15, playing practically always, without injuries, with better training structures, and will take years in every case. 

I tell you, that a good part of the player and researcher I've been discussing with this proposal told me that it would be great to remove PA and the insertion of another mental regulation parameter. And I'm talking about people who have been playing or doing research for a decade. Because objectively the PA is not just the limit of CA, for me it's just a limit to this game.

Other example? Luca Toni.

 

 

 

[perpetua]

So what you're essentially proposing is to boil down multiple attributes which affect growth into one?  This part I don't agree.

As for players being limited because of PA, they actually aren't.  You or any other researcher can always give a higher PA than his current ability justifies, as long as the countless others that don't actually have potential are also correctly identified.

You give the Luca Toni example. 

There was nothing stopping the Italian researchers from identifying Luca Toni as being able to break out later in his career because he had the capacity to learn to be an effective striker without needing speed (ie. mental attributes).

What doesn't make sense is making it possible for 2948578274 other players to develop like Luca Toni did because his potential was missed when he was being researched in Serie B.

If Luca Toni wasn't identified as having potential, what makes you think he would be identified as having high 'natural ability'?

[Raptor Longe]

8 minutes ago, Haiku said:

I'm all for removing PA. I've said this numerous times during the years. There's no need to add another hidden attribute like "Natural Talent" as well. The game already has everything. Natural talent is in fact the CA compared to others at the same age. In other words a 16 years old with 120 CA is obviously a better talent than another 16 years old with 100 CA. Everything that determines how good and how fast the player will become is his Professionalism, Ambition, Determination, Matches played, Competition raking, Coaches, Training facilities, Injury proneness etc. 

Yes, I also thought the same thing. But I was thinking about the existence of players such as Cassano and Balotelli, who only with professionalism would not have gone over 80 CAs. XD
So for me it would serve a second parameter that also makes these non-professional players up to a certain point, and then they can not go beyond because they lack professionalism.

[enigmatic]

Regulating the speed of a player's growth imposes an effective limit on their growth, for a given age and starting ability. It's just that if researchers aren't provided with an up to date calculation in the research tool, they don't know what that limit is. Which is hardly an improvement in the research process. And involves much more guesswork than how good they might become, because players' rate of improvement isn't steady IRL (and the whole reason why players like Vardy or Toni burst onto the scene later in their careers is that they actually improved very slowly as youngsters and weren't obviously talented, they just carried on getting better after most players had peaked)

A game in which people still playing a five year old version are amused to find that NGolo Kante has turned into a mediocre striker rather than a world class midfielder sounds a lot less problematic than a game where a pretty much any young Serie C or above player can become an Italy international if they have top class training facilities and regular starts, and talented 21 year olds continue improving until they're godlike geniuses unless they get injured. Because missing the occasional Kante is a lot less silly than it being pretty much inevitable that Jordan Pickford ends up better than Buffon and Harry Winks better than Pirlo.

How many of Marco Parolo's Como teammates made the jump from playing in Serie C in their early twenties to become Italy internationals? Is it not possible the reason is that Parolo did and they stayed in Serie C is not because they were unlucky with injuries and not being signed by a club with better training facilities, but because he had the potential to be a very good player and most of them didn't?

[legend_killer82]

I agree with Raptor Longe and i think it would be a great addiction to the game. In fact PA is indeed kinda limiting and too hard to evaluate simply because no one of us is Nostradamus. And i agree with Toni example, it was just impossible at least since his 24's to foresee a 170 CA as he became at Bayern times. A value like "natural talent" or however else you wanna call it, could create infinite possibilities in game. Of course taking into account other values, he's not saying that giving 20 in natural talent would mean that the player is gonna become a 200 CA, so it doesn't mean there would be too many of them(by the way regens with 180+ PA fill the game already after 9 months in game)

[Seb Wassell]

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what PA represents and how progression works in game, with perhaps not enough credit given to the latter.

PA is the natural upper limit on how good a player can become. Think of it as genetics. No matter how well trained I am and how much luck I have I will never be better at football than Lionel Messi. If both myself and Messi went through the exact same footballing upbringing, education and experiences, including injuries etc., he would still turn out better than me. This is PA. This is the "natural talent" that has been mentioned.

Progression is how CA turns into PA, or not as the case so often is. Progression relies on a huge number of factors, some of which are; Determination, Professionlism, Ambition, Training Facilities, Morale, injuries, coaching, exposure to match experience, luck and so on. Mario Balotelli is the classic example used so often in this conversation. His footballing genetics, or PA, are clearly superb, however throughout his career he has lacked the tools to actually make the most of this, often touted as a lack of professionalism, meaning his CA is not near and will never be near his PA. Of course this opens up a second question of how PA is researched and how that research changes over time, but that is a separate conversation. This is the "growth regulator" that has been mentioned.

With the above in mind, I thoroughly disagree with removing PA.

 

[Raptor Longe]

7 minutes ago, perpetua said:

So what you're essentially proposing is to boil down multiple attributes which affect growth into one?  This part I don't agree.

As for players being limited because of PA, they actually aren't.  You or any other researcher can always give a higher PA than his current ability justifies, as long as the countless others that don't actually have potential are also correctly identified.

You give the Luca Toni example. 

There was nothing stopping the Italian researchers from identifying Luca Toni as being able to break out later in his career because he had the capacity to learn to be an effective striker without needing speed (ie. mental attributes).

What doesn't make sense is making it possible for 2948578274 other players to develop like Luca Toni did because his potential was missed when he was being researched in Serie B.

If Luca Toni wasn't identified as having potential, what makes you think he would be identified as having high 'natural ability'?

You know very well that is not so. We are given some limits on the PA of the young. And of course we do not give big PAs to players who at the age of 21 had scored maximum 5 goals in Serie C.
Luca Toni had a normal talent (Natural Talent 8-12) but is a hyper professional, and with the commitment he exalted his natural physical qualities by improving technically.

I can also make a present example. Petagna. In the past, he had a high PA, but because he physically overshadowed his teammates at a youth level, not because he was looking for natural talent (8 -12 NT). When he came to play as a professional, he had great difficulty because with the physicist he did not go ahead. And then, he started working, one year he trained on the basic technique (which was poor), the next year he trained on dribbling, the year he still lost 10 kg. He has worked on himself, and now he is a better player and can potentially get to higher levels.

Natural Talent does not decide on future CA, but interacts with all other factors, it will be the game to decide who will grow to a certain level. There will not be hundreds of strangers who become champions, but it will be possible for someone to become a good player even if he does not promise, Natural Talent will only be one of the factors that will determine this growth but will have the same importance as professionalism, injury, of structures, etc.

 

[santy001]

8 minutes ago, legend_killer82 said:

I agree with Raptor Longe and i think it would be a great addiction to the game. In fact PA is indeed kinda limiting and too hard to evaluate simply because no one of us is Nostradamus. And i agree with Toni example, it was just impossible at least since his 24's to foresee a 170 CA as he became at Bayern times. A value like "natural talent" or however else you wanna call it, could create infinite possibilities in game. Of course taking into account other values, he's not saying that giving 20 in natural talent would mean that the player is gonna become a 200 CA, so it doesn't mean there would be too many of them(by the way regens with 180+ PA fill the game already after 9 months in game)

But you're still then requiring us to foresee a players natural talent. 

Instead of being able to foresee a players potential on a scale of 1-200, we have to foresee a players natural ability on a scale of 1-20. Or we can call it flobbadob and do it on a scale of 1-50, call it progressional ability as a footballer and do it on a scale of 1-100. 

Seems to be just a case of trying to reinvent the wheel, but instead of it being a standard size wheel, its a slightly smaller wheel.

It still requires us to get it perfectly right in the first place, and if that were to happen then PA would still just be fine.

- - -

Also what I'm saying is, you're removing the human element from this. If in any way at all its possible to extract more with a certain combination of mentoring, training, game time, loans etc - players will work it out and it will become a definitive guide. 

Alternatively, its a very unrealistic, arbitrary, purely-by-luck development model for players.

[legend_killer82]

I think many people on here are not open for a change, probably satisfied with what they have already or to what they got used for decades. But what he's offering is not a random development of players, nothing to do with luck, unrealism or abitrary.

Since you like PA's so much, just try to imagine, see it as a variable PA instead of a fixed PA. Wouldn't it be an evolution? So we wouldn't be forced to say that a 21 years old player will be a 150 PA rather than 170 or viceversa. And don't tell me that for this there are negative PA's cause it's just not the same. You decide at which range it will be, ok, but once the game generates it, and that yes, it is random indeed, and it will stay so. While he's offering like a variable PA in game, depending on many other values and factors, so this exclude luck or randomness at all

[Raptor Longe]

21 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Regulating the speed of a player's growth imposes an effective limit on their growth, for a given age and starting ability. It's just that if researchers aren't provided with an up to date calculation in the research tool, they don't know what that limit is. Which is hardly an improvement in the research process. And involves much more guesswork than how good they might become, because players' rate of improvement isn't steady IRL (and the whole reason why players like Vardy or Toni burst onto the scene later in their careers is that they actually improved very slowly as youngsters and weren't obviously talented, they just carried on getting better after most players had peaked)

A game in which people still playing a five year old version are amused to find that NGolo Kante has turned into a mediocre striker rather than a world class midfielder sounds a lot less problematic than a game where a pretty much any young Serie C or above player can become an Italy international if they have top class training facilities and regular starts, and talented 21 year olds continue improving until they're godlike geniuses unless they get injured. Because missing the occasional Kante is a lot less silly than it being pretty much inevitable that Jordan Pickford ends up better than Buffon and Harry Winks better than Pirlo.

How many of Marco Parolo's Como teammates made the jump from playing in Serie C in their early twenties to become Italy internationals? Is it not possible the reason is that Parolo did and they stayed in Serie C is not because they were unlucky with injuries and not being signed by a club with better training facilities, but because he had the potential to be a very good player and most of them didn't?

But none of his companions had his professionalism. Parolo was a player who worked on himself. Just do not put random values!

One averages 8 to 12 in NT and Professionalism, while setting higher or lower values if a player is gifted or professional or the opposite. One with average values, regardless of facilities, can grow by 1/2/3/4/5 points a year. Always without injuries and always playing.

 

10 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what PA represents and how progression works in game.

PA is the natural upper limit on how good a player can become. Think of it as genetics. No matter how well trained I am and how much luck I have I will never be better at football than Lionel Messi. If both myself and Messi went through the exact same footballing upbringing, education and experiences, including injuries etc., he would still turn out better than me. This is PA. This is the "natural talent" that has been mentioned.

Progression is how CA turns into PA, or not as the case so often is. Progression relies on a huge number of factors, some of which are; Determination, Professionlism, Ambition, Training Facilities, Morale, injuries (halt and even reduce CA gain), coaching, exposure to match experience, and so on. Mario Balotelli is the classic example used so often in this conversation. His footballing genetics, or PA, are clearly superb, however throughout his career he has lacked the tools to actually make the most of this, often touted as a lack of professionalism, meaning his CA is not near and will never be near his PA. Of course this opens up a second question of how PA is researched and how that research changes over time, but that is a separate conversation.

With the above in mind, I thoroughly disagree with removing PA.

 

Sorry, but I can not understand. PA values are given by people. And they can not change in the game. So any wrong decision is wrong until it is changed with a patch, and it is still wrong in the games that have already begun. 

Inserting a parameter that says to the game "This player here, he has more chances to become strong," and that thus works as the value of professionalism, is just an addition, a better variable. Why put a limit to improving a talented or honest worker? Let it be the game to establish it. Already the game does, we are researchers who set the starting limits. In reality, there are coaches that give players a chance, and sometimes they are rewarded. Let's make it possible.

We have to give the players a way to have fun.

Currently the only real variable of this game is just the Regen.

 

 

[perpetua]

34 minutes ago, Raptor Longe said:

You know very well that is not so. We are given some limits on the PA of the young. And of course we do not give big PAs to players who at the age of 21 had scored maximum 5 goals in Serie C.
Luca Toni had a normal talent (Natural Talent 8-12) but is a hyper professional, and with the commitment he exalted his natural physical qualities by improving technically.

I can also make a present example. Petagna. In the past, he had a high PA, but because he physically overshadowed his teammates at a youth level, not because he was looking for natural talent (8 -12 NT). When he came to play as a professional, he had great difficulty because with the physicist he did not go ahead. And then, he started working, one year he trained on the basic technique (which was poor), the next year he trained on dribbling, the year he still lost 10 kg. He has worked on himself, and now he is a better player and can potentially get to higher levels.

Natural Talent does not decide on future CA, but interacts with all other factors, it will be the game to decide who will grow to a certain level. There will not be hundreds of strangers who become champions, but it will be possible for someone to become a good player even if he does not promise, Natural Talent will only be one of the factors that will determine this growth but will have the same importance as professionalism, injury, of structures, etc.

 

I'm trying to explain that they are not hard limits like you interpret them.  If anything, the PA system really isn't too different from what you are suggesting.

This is getting a bit technical so perhaps we should continue such a discussion in a researcher area.  

[Seb Wassell]

1 hour ago, Raptor Longe said:

But none of his companions had his professionalism. Parolo was a player who worked on himself. Just do not put random values!

One averages 8 to 12 in NT and Professionalism, while setting higher or lower values if a player is gifted or professional or the opposite. One with average values, regardless of facilities, can grow by 1/2/3/4/5 points a year. Always without injuries and always playing.

 

Sorry, but I can not understand. PA values are given by people. And they can not change in the game. So any wrong decision is wrong until it is changed with a patch, and it is still wrong in the games that have already begun. 

Inserting a parameter that says to the game "This player here, he has more chances to become strong," and that thus works as the value of professionalism, is just an addition, a better variable. Why put a limit to improving a talented or honest worker? Let it be the game to establish it. Already the game does, we are researchers who set the starting limits. In reality, there are coaches that give players a chance, and sometimes they are rewarded. Let's make it possible.

We have to give the players a way to have fun.

Currently the only real variable of this game is just the Regen.

 

 

If your issue is human error then that applies to the entirety of the research, not just PA. If the researcher gets it wrong we have to wait for an update to correct this. Essentially the game relies on good research for PA as it does for every aspect of a player's profile, from Finishing to Injury History. If you have an issue here it sounds as if it may be with the research, not the function of PA.

[Haiku]

5 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

If your issue is human error then that applies to the entirety of the research, not just PA. If the researcher gets it wrong we have to wait for an update to correct this. Essentially the game relies on good research for PA as it does for every aspect of a player's profile, from Finishing to Injury History. If you have an issue here it sounds as if it may be with the research, not the function of PA.

It's not that researchers get wrong, but rather it's the one and the only fictional parameter that no one can predict. Players are judged by their CA. You can imagine one can become world class player only if he stands out at younger age, but you can never know what could happen. That said for me it's much more realistic PA to be removed and let the game decide which of the quality youngsters will become golden boot winners. Though, all this requires improved algorithm, which makes things hard to implement, but it's possible and I believe it would be a step forward in realism and will be much more fun, because players development will vary at certain boundaries from save to save.  It will be the end of the "Get Tielemans and watch him beat the world in a few years" era and the beginning of the "Get Tielemans as he has bright future and chances are he'll set the world on fire, but that's not guaranteed" era.

[faber83]

I also agree with Haiku, supporting Raptor Longe's thesis: I was thinking that the whole algorithm of the growth of players must be improved, that's another implication of this thing!

And the other thing is to soften the indiscriminate "wighted" criteria that cuts the player's values going down through the leagues, thus softening the differences a little bit.... or at least there should be some exceptions to this rule! Even if I became a researcher, I still find it a too sharp criteria, and unrealistic on a large scale...

Why a player that goes down down from Serie A to Serie B, must automatically be "killed" in his values during the research, regardless of the reason?? Does he become a "brocco" in just three months of summer???...

And why shouldn't we have some great potential players (young or middle aged) in Serie B or Serie C that can be just ready for the above league, maybe growing right away? (e.g.: when they are purchased by a bigger club during the mid season transfer market)

And why shouldn't we have players in Serie A, in the smaller clubs, that are not really ready for that league, so leaving them with Serie B values, without forcing us to increase them just for the rule?

So there should be much more coherency in the player's "biography", regardless of the league, because there can be a lot of factors that determine in which team one player plays!

Really, some really good players don't accept to go to bigger clubs, just because they like the city where they are living and their wives force them to stay there!

Or maybe some good players get out of the "upper circle" just because they argue with their prosecutor or their manager, or they **** up with newspapers or some out-of-football behaviours!...

... So can we say that FOOTBALL MANAGER NEEDS SOME REFORM???

[Raptor Longe]

2 hours ago, Haiku said:

It's not that researchers get wrong, but rather it's the one and the only fictional parameter that no one can predict. Players are judged by their CA. You can imagine one can become world class player only if he stands out at younger age, but you can never know what could happen. That said for me it's much more realistic PA to be removed and let the game decide which of the quality youngsters will become golden boot winners. Though, all this requires improved algorithm, which makes things hard to implement, but it's possible and I believe it would be a step forward in realism and will be much more fun, because players development will vary at certain boundaries from save to save.  It will be the end of the "Get Tielemans and watch him beat the world in a few years" era and the beginning of the "Get Tielemans as he has bright future and chances are he'll set the world on fire, but that's not guaranteed" era.

This is exactly the point.
I'm considering solutions, but of course I'm not a technician.

But why not evaluate them? Why not even ask FM players what they think?
I think it's a chance that a lot of players would accept with enthusiasm.

The only thing for me is certain, is that the "PA" system is a limit that should be overcome.

[DiasV]

I agree with this, and will try to explain why by using an example.

 

Lets take a player like Eric Bailly.

Starts off in Espanyol. A bit talented youngster with great physique. Typical in FM he gets like CA 80 PA-7. Goes to Villarreal playes well, the researcher ups him to CA 135 - PA 149   Gets bought by ManU - the researcher sees that he is good enough for EPL but also sees that he has not even got the potential to be a first team regular at ManU - ups him again - this time to something like CA 147 PA: 164

 

In stead of this limitation on the first versions on the player a more open stat like "natural talent" or whatever could have allready on the versions where Bailly was in Espanyol made him a first team regular in EPL if he had a good "game", while now we had to wait 3 versions of the game before he got the PA to be a world class CD. Its not like that a person needs to actually be in a top club to have the potential to end up there, but now I find that most players are raised to their real life potential when they actually are at a big club. A more open setting like natural talent 14 and other good mental attributes for a physical strong central defender youth that works hard, he could have had that carrier in earlier games by having luck in a save game beeing to clubs with manager that had faith in him, good coaches etc.

It more or less becomes like cutting PA as a whole but more gives mental attributes (and a bit of coincidence) to make how a player  will become. Of course CA will make a great base for the development, but the PA wont limit it as today.

 

[enigmatic]

4 hours ago, Haiku said:

It's not that researchers get wrong, but rather it's the one and the only fictional parameter that no one can predict.

Nobody knows what the "professionalism" or "ambition" or "natural talent" or "injury proneness" of a 17 year old is either. Indeed it's usually much easier and more accurate to judge that a player is (i) your best prospect (ii) still has a fair bit of growing to do (iii) probably isn't going to cut it at the next level up because none of those clubs are interested and stick them in the appropriate minus bracket than it is to rate a 17 year old's professionalism and ambition on a scale of 1 to 20.

Replacing researchers' good and usually fairly accurate guesstimate of how good a player might become with a complicated function of multiple other variables which are even bigger guesses and also supposed to have other completely different in-game effects isn't going to lead to a more plausible game world

For every Jamie Vardy or Luca Toni, there are tens of thousands of players in the lower leagues that the research team correctly predicted would not become internationals. It'd be ridiculous to reengineer the game so they all could be if their attitude was good enough (in which case Jamie Vardy with his criminal record and drink problem could be about the only former Halifax player not in contention for the England team!)

As for Tielemans, a 20 year old with top division ability, reputation to attract the best clubs and excellent personality is going to usually end up world class regardless of what algorithm you use (actually, the current semi-random PA system which gives him a chance of his potential maxing out at 150 is probably the system most likely to make him fail to become world class).

[Raptor Longe]

1 hour ago, enigmatic said:

Nobody knows what the "professionalism" or "ambition" or "natural talent" or "injury proneness" of a 17 year old is either. Indeed it's usually much easier and more accurate to judge that a player is (i) your best prospect (ii) still has a fair bit of growing to do (iii) probably isn't going to cut it at the next level up because none of those clubs are interested and stick them in the appropriate minus bracket than it is to rate a 17 year old's professionalism and ambition on a scale of 1 to 20.

Replacing researchers' good and usually fairly accurate guesstimate of how good a player might become with a complicated function of multiple other variables which are even bigger guesses and also supposed to have other completely different in-game effects isn't going to lead to a more plausible game world

For every Jamie Vardy or Luca Toni, there are tens of thousands of players in the lower leagues that the research team correctly predicted would not become internationals. It'd be ridiculous to reengineer the game so they all could be if their attitude was good enough (in which case Jamie Vardy with his criminal record and drink problem could be about the only former Halifax player not in contention for the England team!)

As for Tielemans, a 20 year old with top division ability, reputation to attract the best clubs and excellent personality is going to usually end up world class regardless of what algorithm you use (actually, the current semi-random PA system which gives him a chance of his potential maxing out at 150 is probably the system most likely to make him fail to become world class).

You still seem to miss the point.
Here, you are not criticizing the search system. I'm a researcher, how can I criticize our research? I did some examples of "late growth" to explain the speech, but they were not the point.

Players with high CA youth and with the right mental abilities do not reach PA, because that was established by the researcher. They reach it because that is the limit of ability they can reach (and sometimes they do not reach it at all due to injuries or other situations of the game). The game already has a growth system that works regardless of PA. PA is a limit to this growth!

Is this clear to everyone?

Now, for this limit that we impose on a player's growth, when players reach him, they do not grow anymore, even if they are only 21 years old. It often happens that in the game this limit is reached well before the maturation of a player. 

My idea is to remove this limit. Because of this, and adding more discriminating to a player's growth. One of these was the "Natural Talent" that serves to preserve the growth of the talented players, to give the opportunity for the Tielemans 9 to 10 to become champions. And this parameter, along with professionalism, and all the other things in the game, will in fact hardly bring a non-promising player to be a champion.
And introducing a decrease in growth, reaching 170 CA (because it is objectively a CA for champions) is another way to avoid it.

Removing this limit, however, will allow the "Parolo or Vardy" cases inside the game, but not because the game will allow it (if not rarely, for a series of coincidences), but why will football players manager to allow him, for one reason or another, to take on during their career, players who may not be promising or strong, but who can improve them to make them decent.

And it's just the first example I did:

Quote

Example: Leandro, in Italian Serie C, is the coach of Sicula Leonzio. In this team there is an "X" player I like and makes in my tactical schemes, but with CA 95 and PA 98 (it happens too often) at just 23 years. If I go to Serie B, this player will be useless, as the average CA is 110 and with 98 maximum, he can never be a valid player as he was in C.

Without the limit given by PA, and with a value of "Natural Talent" of 10, this player takes me to Serie B, and with better facilities, facing stronger players, though not very fast, this player arrives during that season (playing him in the first team) to 103/104 CA at 24 years. During the second season of Serie B, he is still growing, reaching 111 CA at 25 years. 

The next year I bring him to Serie A in another team (Chievo Verona, for example). With better facilities, and playing (not always) in a better competition, he comes during the season to a value of 117 of CAs at 26 years. I stay in Serie A for years. He has a minor upgrades due to age and few games played (though they improve him in a bigger way than those in Serie B because opponents have a CA from 125 to 180). But finally he reaches a peak of 128 CAs at 30 years. 

With the current system, all this is impossible, because the PA limit is invaluable, and for me it is wrong.

 

 

[Haiku]

2 hours ago, enigmatic said:

Nobody knows what the "professionalism" or "ambition" or "natural talent" or "injury proneness" of a 17 year old is either. Indeed it's usually much easier and more accurate to judge that a player is (i) your best prospect (ii) still has a fair bit of growing to do (iii) probably isn't going to cut it at the next level up because none of those clubs are interested and stick them in the appropriate minus bracket than it is to rate a 17 year old's professionalism and ambition on a scale of 1 to 20.

And is that your explanation of PA existence? Major attribute that nobody knows, while the others are still in place and are heavily impacting player's growth? Having 19 year old rising star already fulfilled his PA, because researcher has it wrong on other attributes... Much easier, yes, more accurate, not.  

[Longhorn]

11 hours ago, Seb Wassell said:

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what PA represents and how progression works in game, with perhaps not enough credit given to the latter.

PA is the natural upper limit on how good a player can become. Think of it as genetics. No matter how well trained I am and how much luck I have I will never be better at football than Lionel Messi. If both myself and Messi went through the exact same footballing upbringing, education and experiences, including injuries etc., he would still turn out better than me. This is PA. This is the "natural talent" that has been mentioned.

Progression is how CA turns into PA, or not as the case so often is. Progression relies on a huge number of factors, some of which are; Determination, Professionlism, Ambition, Training Facilities, Morale, injuries, coaching, exposure to match experience, luck and so on. Mario Balotelli is the classic example used so often in this conversation. His footballing genetics, or PA, are clearly superb, however throughout his career he has lacked the tools to actually make the most of this, often touted as a lack of professionalism, meaning his CA is not near and will never be near his PA. Of course this opens up a second question of how PA is researched and how that research changes over time, but that is a separate conversation. This is the "growth regulator" that has been mentioned.

With the above in mind, I thoroughly disagree with removing PA.

 

The problem with the current PA, as you have described it ("think of it as genetics"), is essentially racist.  I would argue that all nations should generate players with the same "bell curve" of PA and let the nation's facilities, staff, etc. determine how well a player develops.  If I had the patience I would start all of my saves by setting the youth regen value for all nations to be identical.  Now you could persuade me that each nation has a third value that influences players developed in that country, which might be described as "soccer culture".  For example here in the US I see a lot of money being put into youth facilities, academies, etc. and nobody could argue that the intellectual and athletic potential of American youth is somehow lower than in other countries, yet I see a lot of our young players lacking the technical and tactical sophistication that I have seen in the youth of some other countries.  Watching young American baseball players I notice that by their early teens they automatically do the right tactical thing in baseball games because they have been nurtured in a culture that is now sophisticated in  baseball.  Based on my own experiences as a youth coach I have explained this difference as a soccer culture that is not mature enough to nurture young players as well as in other countries.  Now if I take that same young player and send him abroad to develop in the youth system of another country his PA should not be limited by his nation of birth.  In fact, some American players are born and raised in other countries so their "soccer culture" should reflect that country, even if they are American citizens.  As it is, a nation like the US starts with a limiting PA of about 110 for its young players which doesn't change no matter how many years a save runs, so the US national team and players will simply never be competitive with countries like Germany or Brazil or Argentina.  This is not reality.

[Maaka]

I wouldn't say that the current CA/PA system is perfect, but if it were to be changed, then it would have to be for a better and improved system. What's being suggested here is pretty much the same system as today, just with a different set of variables, so while you might avoid certain "irregularities" which arise as a consequence of the current system, other - different (not necessarily better or worse, just different) - "irregularities" would most likely arise with the suggested system.

A change for the better, yes, please, but a change simply for the sake of a change, no, thanks.

[enigmatic]

9 hours ago, Haiku said:

And is that your explanation of PA existence? Major attribute that nobody knows, while the others are still in place and are heavily impacting player's growth? Having 19 year old rising star already fulfilled his PA, because researcher has it wrong on other attributes... Much easier, yes, more accurate, not.  

Well yes, I think it's pretty clear that one of the major advantages of PA is that one relatively-easy-to-guesstimate attribute cancels out the likelihood of several hard-to-estimate and often random attributes ensuring that the national teams of the future are usually dominated by little known players from the lower leagues. 

And if you've never seen a 19 year old that doesn't get better, you haven't watched much football.

-

I think when we've reached arguments that PA is "racist" because the US national team isn't as good as Brazil's or Germany's it's probably where we start to realise that PA is a lot better than the lunacy we'd get if SI caved into demands to eliminate it...

[Longhorn]

15 minutes ago, enigmatic said:

Well yes, I think it's pretty clear that one of the major advantages of PA is that one relatively-easy-to-guesstimate attribute cancels out the likelihood of several hard-to-estimate and often random attributes ensuring that the national teams of the future are usually dominated by little known players from the lower leagues. 

And if you've never seen a 19 year old that doesn't get better, you haven't watched much football.

-

I think when we've reached arguments that PA is "racist" because the US national team isn't as good as Brazil's or Germany's it's probably where we start to realise that PA is a lot better than the lunacy we'd get if SI caved into demands to eliminate it...

I think your comment shows you simply (or willfully?) didn't understand the point.  The game sets the average PA of regens from many, many countries much lower than the average PA from a few countries, and it doesn't change, no matter what.  That is much closer to lunacy than a more rational and realistic system.

[Maaka]

8 minutes ago, Longhorn said:

The game sets the average PA of regens from many, many countries much lower than the average PA from a few countries, and it doesn't change, no matter what. 

I don't recall exactly how it works, but IMO it should be something like an average PA for a nation, linked to the nations reputation and other factors (meaning that if the rep. rises, the avg. PA would rise as well, in the future), and that a random amount of players would occasionally exceed (by far) the "national" PA. Thus, the number of players with higher PA would rise in the future if the nation gets better and better.

[Longhorn]

4 minutes ago, Maaka said:

I don't recall exactly how it works, but IMO it should be something like an average PA for a nation, linked to the nations reputation and other factors (meaning that if the rep. rises, the avg. PA would rise as well, in the future), and that a random amount of players would occasionally exceed (by far) the "national" PA. Thus, the number of players with higher PA would rise in the future if the nation gets better and better.

I agree with you on this.  For grins I did a long save managing a club team in Ireland, which has a very low average PA.  I used the editor to give the club excellent facilities and then focused on poaching a lot of young players.  The FA rules for Ireland allow this and by developing good youth players over time the club team was able to do reasonably well in the Champions League, although never matching the "big" teams with high reputations.  But, because this club team was successful, and because of the club's excellent facilities and staff, the PA of my regens got a bit better and the league's coefficient went up nicely.  Similarly, if the teams in a nation pump money into better facilities, better staffing, etc., and get better international results, the average PA for that nation should rise as well.  While I can affect the regen PA values somewhat for a particular club in the game, the values still seem to be heavily influenced by the static PA for the nation in which the club plays.  The nation's regen PA value should be dynamic as well, as long as we still have a PA value.

[enigmatic]

Most of the values governing generated players' PA are already dynamic, including but not limited to league standard, club reputation, clubs' facilities and national team current reputation. That's why people have been able to make the likes of San Marino competitive after playing FM for a very long time (indeed if anything the system is already far too generous:  a nation of 33,000 people is not going to produce many great players even if its club side dominates Serie A for a generation)

But it's pretty obvious that you can pump all the money in the world into the league of Ireland and Brazil with its 200 million football fanatics having skill-focused kickabouts on beaches is still going to have some advantages in the player pool.

It really isn't "racism" to acknowledge that.

[Seb Wassell]

8 hours ago, Longhorn said:

The problem with the current PA, as you have described it ("think of it as genetics"), is essentially racist.

I'm sorry but it is not and we don't need to throw such terms around so carelessly like that.

8 hours ago, Longhorn said:

Now if I take that same young player and send him abroad to develop in the youth system of another country his PA should not be limited by his nation of birth.  In fact, some American players are born and raised in other countries so their "soccer culture" should reflect that country, even if they are American citizens.  As it is, a nation like the US starts with a limiting PA of about 110 for its young players which doesn't change no matter how many years a save runs, so the US national team and players will simply never be competitive with countries like Germany or Brazil or Argentina.  This is not reality.

Again I think there is a misunderstanding of how the game works here. If a US youngster is generated in an English academy he uses the English values not the US ones. Factors do change throughout a save that can influence the quality of newgen coming through. There are two main values that advise what level of newgen a country should produce on average, which of course can be vastly exceeded depending on which club the newgen is produced at. One of these values governs the maximum possible quality of newgen were all conditions perfect, i.e. the country as a whole suddenly decides it wishes to dominate world football with home grown talent, how capable is it of actually carrying this out; the second is the importance of football in that nation, for example in the US soccer is much less important generally speaking than baseball or football, as such you would expect fewer of the nation's most talented youngsters to go into soccer, thus on average they have a smaller pool of quality soccer youngsters to pick from than say Germany.

It is also important to note that FM only deals with players at the age of 16 (or 15 depending on D.O.B.) and over. As such we are looking at players that have actually already completed a large part of their development and have most likely already established their "footballing identity", therefore the guidelines in place around nations and those biases do make a lot of sense.

[Haiku]

1 hour ago, enigmatic said:

Well yes, I think it's pretty clear that one of the major advantages of PA is that one relatively-easy-to-guesstimate attribute cancels out the likelihood of several hard-to-estimate and often random attributes ensuring that the national teams of the future are usually dominated by little known players from the lower leagues. 

And if you've never seen a 19 year old that doesn't get better, you haven't watched much football.

-

I think when we've reached arguments that PA is "racist" because the US national team isn't as good as Brazil's or Germany's it's probably where we start to realise that PA is a lot better than the lunacy we'd get if SI caved into demands to eliminate it...

Easy to guesstimate PA? Mate, we have had Balotelli, Depay and thousands of "great prospects" through the years who failed to live up expectations. PA is not at all easy to guess, not only in FM, but in the Football world. It's easier to guess CA, and you presume those with high CA at younger age have high PA, that's all you can do.

[enigmatic]

1 minute ago, Haiku said:

Easy to guesstimate PA? Mate, we have had Balotelli, Depay and thousands of "great prospects" through the years who failed to live up expectations. PA is not at all easy to guess, not only in FM, but in the Football world. It's easier to guess CA, and you presume those with high CA at younger age have high PA, that's all you can do.

The thing about PA is despite the assumption people in this thread keep wrongly basing their arguments on players don't have to reach it in game, and usually don't. Balotelli did have huge potential, he just didn't live up to it

And if you're irritated by Depay usually turning into a CA 160 player which is still quite plausible, just imagine how annoying it would be if they got rid of any upper limit, and his high level of "natural talent", starting ability and club meant he usually turned into a CA 190 player...

How good a player might be at their best is a whole lot easier to guess than a young player's "professionalism" and "ambition" and whether setting certain values of this will end up with the player usually becoming too good. And you don't have to introduce absurdities like making most players at lower division clubs unprofessional and unambitious to try to prevent most them from ending up playing at much higher levels.

Yes, CA is a large part of guessing PA, but we can also make reasonable assumptions that a 21 year old who's played top division football for three seasons and not improved is playing very close to their potential and one who's only just made the team might still have more room for growth, and an U17 star player who relies heavily on the fact that he's bigger than his teammates probably doesn't have particularly outstanding potential whereas the little skilful guy that the club has brought over from Eastern Europe  might get a lot better than he is now.

 

[Longhorn]

11 minutes ago, Seb Wassell said:

I'm sorry but it is not and we don't need to throw such terms around so carelessly like that.

Again I think there is a misunderstanding of how the game works here. If a US youngster is generated in an English academy he uses the English values not the US ones. Factors do change throughout a save that can influence the quality of newgen coming through. There are two main values that advise what level of newgen a country should produce on average, which of course can be vastly exceeded depending on which club the newgen is produced at. One of these values governs the maximum possible quality of newgen were all conditions perfect, i.e. the country as a whole suddenly decides it wishes to dominate world football with home grown talent, how capable is it of actually carrying this out; the second is the importance of football in that nation, for example in the US soccer is much less important generally speaking than baseball or football, as such you would expect fewer of the nation's most talented youngsters to go into soccer, thus on average they have a smaller pool of quality soccer youngsters to pick from than say Germany.

It is also important to note that FM only deals with players at the age of 16 (or 15 depending on D.O.B.) and over. As such we are looking at players that have actually already completed a large part of their development and have most likely already established their "footballing identity", therefore the guidelines in place around nations and those biases do make a lot of sense.

Seb, the factors you mention governing the PA for a nation are still static. That is what doesn't make sense as far as I am concerned.  By the way, I think your observations about the importance of soccer to American youth is a bit outdated.

[legend_killer82]

Guys i think you are going off topic...we were not discussing about Countries PA's or nations ratings, Raptor Longe made a very different proposal

[perpetua]

10 hours ago, Longhorn said:

I would argue that all nations should generate players with the same "bell curve" of PA and let the nation's facilities, staff, etc. determine how well a player develops.

I would argue that it's actually a half normal distribution (half of a bell curve).  The rating is nothing more than the amount of random numbers you're generating within that half curve. The more numbers you pick, the more likely you are to pick ones from the lower probability ranges.  Simply put, it's the law of large numbers.

[mersk]

To go back to the start of this discussion, instead of continuing the derailing, I'd say @Raptor Longe is definitely onto something here. The hard limit of a PA is not just a limit for how far a player can go, it really puts a limit on the game as a whole. Why? Because it's not realistic, obviously.

 

Being 100% realistic is neither possible nor desirable, there always has to be a balance between realism and plain old fun when it comes to games. I think everyone can agree to that. But the PA value is simply too unrealistic, but the reason it's there is because it's been the best and easiest solution for years. Obviously that won't be the case forever. So the question becomes, have we not already reached a point where there might be better alternatives available? A Natural Talent value could be one of those alternatives. And if you don't like that idea, then at least imagine a Dynamic PA where the PA value can change based on playing time, changes to personality (Professionalism, Ambition), training facilities, coaches, injuries etc.

 

Now you might be thinking "but that's already in place, players reach or don't reach their PA based on exactly those things". Yes, but the PA never moves an inch. It's a hard limit. And that's the issue here.

[Cint]

I have no opinion on wheter to keep PA or use the Natural Talent, but i believe that the idea Dynamic Nation Youth Rating is very popular in the FM scene in my country, However this disscussion is not on NYR I would like to use this thread to make a comment on NYR. Whenever I read discussion about what to improve in FM in my country i usually find the request to make NYR dynamic. I think that people who support this idea have lot of good arguments. If the country national team is doing good on international tournaments we can suppose that more young people will go to youth academies. If a country produces high profile player like Lewandowski, i believe that more young people start to play football wanting to be as their idol. If a club does well in Champions League i guess their youth academy will be full of candidates. If there are more people going to academies the probabilty of producing world class player is bigger. This is especially true for non top countries like Poland, because i think that in England, Italy, Germany, France, Brazil there will always be more or less the same young pepole going to football academies thus due to probabilty of world class talent will be the same. However after some time the hype due to succes of national team/player/club team will decrease so then NYR should start to slowly come back to its starting position. To resume, I think there could be some kind of dynamism in NYR but this should be limited to 5% maybe 10% changes from today NYR.

[Maaka]

50 minutes ago, mersk said:

To go back to the start of this discussion, instead of continuing the derailing, I'd say @Raptor Longe is definitely onto something here. The hard limit of a PA is not just a limit for how far a player can go, it really puts a limit on the game as a whole. Why? Because it's not realistic, obviously.

 

Being 100% realistic is neither possible nor desirable, there always has to be a balance between realism and plain old fun when it comes to games. I think everyone can agree to that. But the PA value is simply too unrealistic, but the reason it's there is because it's been the best and easiest solution for years. Obviously that won't be the case forever. So the question becomes, have we not already reached a point where there might be better alternatives available? A Natural Talent value could be one of those alternatives. And if you don't like that idea, then at least imagine a Dynamic PA where the PA value can change based on playing time, changes to personality (Professionalism, Ambition), training facilities, coaches, injuries etc.

 

Now you might be thinking "but that's already in place, players reach or don't reach their PA based on exactly those things". Yes, but the PA never moves an inch. It's a hard limit. And that's the issue here.

But the PA is a MAXIMUM POTENTIAL for the CA, meaning it's already "dynamic" in that sense, just because a player has a PA of 190, doesn't mean he have to reach that ceiling. Most likely he won't, but most people here should know this by now.
Now, the problem isn't the PA, it seems the problem is the understanding of how the CA develops under the ceiling that the PA is, with the odd example of players developing so that their PA in later incarnations of FM suddenly are higher than in previous versions. But a dynamic PA really doesn't make a sense, because it is, and should be, a hard ceiling.

[Raptor Longe]

26 minutes ago, mersk said:

To go back to the start of this discussion, instead of continuing the derailing, I'd say @Raptor Longe is definitely onto something here. The hard limit of a PA is not just a limit for how far a player can go, it really puts a limit on the game as a whole. Why? Because it's not realistic, obviously.

 

Being 100% realistic is neither possible nor desirable, there always has to be a balance between realism and plain old fun when it comes to games. I think everyone can agree to that. But the PA value is simply too unrealistic, but the reason it's there is because it's been the best and easiest solution for years. Obviously that won't be the case forever. So the question becomes, have we not already reached a point where there might be better alternatives available? A Natural Talent value could be one of those alternatives. And if you don't like that idea, then at least imagine a Dynamic PA where the PA value can change based on playing time, changes to personality (Professionalism, Ambition), training facilities, coaches, injuries etc.

 

Now you might be thinking "but that's already in place, players reach or don't reach their PA based on exactly those things". Yes, but the PA never moves an inch. It's a hard limit. And that's the issue here.

 

25 minutes ago, Cint said:

I have no opinion on wheter to keep PA or use the Natural Talent, but i believe that the idea Dynamic Nation Youth Rating is very popular in the FM scene in my country, However this disscussion is not on NYR I would like to use this thread to make a comment on NYR. Whenever I read discussion about what to improve in FM in my country i usually find the request to make NYR dynamic. I think that people who support this idea have lot of good arguments. If the country national team is doing good on international tournaments we can suppose that more young people will go to youth academies. If a country produces high profile player like Lewandowski, i believe that more young people start to play football wanting to be as their idol. If a club does well in Champions League i guess their youth academy will be full of candidates. If there are more people going to academies the probabilty of producing world class player is bigger. This is especially true for non top countries like Poland, because i think that in England, Italy, Germany, France, Brazil there will always be more or less the same young pepole going to football academies thus due to probabilty of world class talent will be the same. However after some time the hype due to succes of national team/player/club team will decrease so then NYR should start to slowly come back to its starting position. To resume, I think there could be some kind of dynamism in NYR but this should be limited to 5% maybe 10% changes from today NYR.

 

 

I see there are people who have understood the point at last. I do not say, "Let's put Natural Talent," but in general there is a discussion on PA, if there are no better alternatives. In my opinion a dynamic PA could also be an alternative, although in my opinion you should just delete it completely.

 

My proposal is:

- Eliminate PA.
- Introducing one or more new growth parameters (Natural Talent), and a revaluation of existing ones (including the championships you play, playing with people all over the 110 CA does not allow you to improve much if you're already at that level, while if you play with stronger people, you can improve, and the same applies to youth teams).
- Decrease in growth rate reached 160, a further reduction reached 180, to make those that are only for elite players.

[mersk]

12 minutes ago, Maaka said:

But the PA is a MAXIMUM POTENTIAL for the CA, meaning it's already "dyanmic" in that sense, just because a player has a PA of 190, doesn't mean he have to reach that ceiling. Most likely he won't, but most people here should know this by now.
Now, the problem isn't the PA, it seems the problem is the understanding of how the CA develops under the ceiling that the PA is, with the odd example of players developing so that their PA in later incarnations of FM suddenly are higher than in previous versions. But a dynamic PA really doesn't make a sense, because it is, and should be, a hard ceiling.

 

I have to say, I find it baffling that you were the first person to respond to this thread, and here we are two days later and you still haven't grasped the basic argument that is being made. That, or you're wilfully ignoring it on the basis of conservatism.

 

PA is not dynamic. You even say so yourself in the last part of the above quote. It's hard for me to know which point to argue against when you're arguing against yourself.

[Maaka]

1 minute ago, mersk said:

 

I have to say, I find it baffling that you were the first person to respond to this thread, and here we are two days later and you still haven't grasped the basic argument that is being made. That, or you're wilfully ignoring it on the basis of conservatism.

 

PA is not dynamic. You even say so yourself in the last part of the above quote. It's hard for me to know which point to argue against when you're arguing against yourself.

 

16 minutes ago, Maaka said:

But the PA is a MAXIMUM POTENTIAL for the CA, meaning it's already "dynamic" in that sense, just because a player has a PA of 190, doesn't mean he have to reach that ceiling. Most likely he won't, but most people here should know this by now.
Now, the problem isn't the PA, it seems the problem is the understanding of how the CA develops under the ceiling that the PA is, with the odd example of players developing so that their PA in later incarnations of FM suddenly are higher than in previous versions. But a dynamic PA really doesn't make a sense, because it is, and should be, a hard ceiling.

I never said that it was dynamic, I just said it already was "dynamic" in the sense that it's a hard cap for the CA, meaning that the CA can fluctuate within those limits (that's why I put it in quotation marks.

For the first part of your post, please read my previous post again, I'm not advocating for the current PA-system to be the perfect solution, I'm just saying that it wouldn't make any sense to replace it with something that most likely will not be an improvement. "Change for the better is good, change for the sake of a change is not."

7 hours ago, Maaka said:

I wouldn't say that the current CA/PA system is perfect, but if it were to be changed, then it would have to be for a better and improved system. What's being suggested here is pretty much the same system as today, just with a different set of variables, so while you might avoid certain "irregularities" which arise as a consequence of the current system, other - different (not necessarily better or worse, just different) - "irregularities" would most likely arise with the suggested system.

A change for the better, yes, please, but a change simply for the sake of a change, no, thanks.