(new) scouting system - something just doesn't feel right

[tts0]

Hi everyone!

I've recently purchased FM 18 and managed to play 4 seasons with farly big club(AC MIlan), yet couldn't find any decent players for my team via new scouting system. So, I ran some tests, both for non-league clubs and top clubs with diferent types of my in-game alter-ego, just to figure out what the new system is all about, and results "amazed" me pretty much.

Basically I found all things related to your club scouting system USELESS...a t least for first few months(years?) in the game, as all the knowledge about database comes from your in-game alter-ego scouting atributes, not from the scouting system your current club has. This is ridiculous! You could start new game at  Manchester United with sundayleague experienced manager and you wouldn be able to see/know much/anything about wellknown wolrdwide(big reputaiton) players(f.e. Ribery or even CR7) despite your clubs scouting system is perfect! 

So whats the point of scouting system anyways? 

[TioPatinhax]

Is it really how it works currently?

[tts0]

Im afraid its been like that for years, but this year its more obvious as SI decided to cut down scouts' abilities to search for many players at the same time. I had my scout at AC Milan searching for players in Italy for 4 seasons and he came back with like 10-15 reports in general! I myself could find more names after one weekend roadtrip through my hometown area watching some lower leagues games. But thats not the case anyway. The worst part is that you dont know anything or barely anything about players with top reputation unless your ingame alter-ego has good scouting atributes or you send your scout to watch tem. Really? is there anyone related to football that would have to scout f.e. CR7 to know his skills(atributes) or star rating in relation to your own players? i dont think so. 

[TioPatinhax]

cant you just go to the Player Search screen and see for example which players are transfer listed?

[tts0]

ypu can filter out player search screen however you want, but it doesnt help when you cant see players atributes and/or star rating; players that should be all well known and "prescouted" somehow from day one at the club. 

[HUNT3R]

6 hours ago, tts0 said:

Im afraid its been like that for years, but this year its more obvious as SI decided to cut down scouts' abilities to search for many players at the same time. I had my scout at AC Milan searching for players in Italy for 4 seasons and he came back with like 10-15 reports in general! I myself could find more names after one weekend roadtrip through my hometown area watching some lower leagues games. But thats not the case anyway. The worst part is that you dont know anything or barely anything about players with top reputation unless your ingame alter-ego has good scouting atributes or you send your scout to watch tem. Really? is there anyone related to football that would have to scout f.e. CR7 to know his skills(atributes) or star rating in relation to your own players? i dont think so. 

They wouldn't have done that unless your search restrictions are amazingly strict.

1 - buy scouting packages to reveal more attributes by default.

2 - players found will land on your scouting centre screen. I get about 30 or so every couple of weeks.

3 - there's an entire scouting section in the FAQ: https://community.sigames.com/faq/football-manager-2018/156_gameplay/

[tts0]

HUNT3R, thanks for replying, but thats not etirely what my problem is. I already know how to use and navigate new scouting system, but it just lacks something, which is prescouting at the start of new save game. 

I always thought thats wrong(its been the case for years), but i really didnt bother that much as: 1. I couldnt compare it to any other scouting systems in other manager-type games; 2. I could easly workaround it and get ridiculous amount of reports within few days or so. Now its impossible(which is a good thing) plus I got really hyped by OOTP games recently and actually could compare the mechanics of those games. Obviously FM is far more superior, and always been, yet with OOTP games the prescouting aspects at the start of the new save game is a one thing FM could adopt, because right now its just pure nonsense when you have to scout players like Messi etc. to get scouting report on them. 

[Wap92]

I have to admit, despite playing FM for years and being moderately successful at it, I still know very little about the scouting itself. I like to be a min-maxer, I like to control everything and have a clear vision of what and why I'm doing it, but when it comes to scouting, even after all these years I still have no clue what the best procedure for finding transfer targets is.

I imagine that in real life a manager identifies what kind of a player he needs and then asks his scouting team to find him. Great, we can do just that in FM too, but what confuses me is the Player Search screen. Do I use scouts for individual instructions such as finding specific kind of players, or just send them on very general missions in hope that they gain as much knowledge as possible? Should I be signing scouts with vast knowledge of unknown countries, so that I expand that list as much as possible or the ones with good JCA/JPA attributes and just rely on Scouting Packages when it comes to database depth?

I understand that you can use Player Search to filter players out by attributes and all that, but what is that supposed to represent in real life? I understand that it becomes very powerful if you disable Attribute Masking, since you can obviously filter out thousands of players and constantly make the best available signings with very little effort, but I don't understand the point of it with attribute masking enabled. Why does it display hundreds and hundreds of players with very little knowledge or non at all, even when you own Scouting Packages? Scouting Packages also do a poor job of representing realism - I assume that clubs can buy various data packages in real life and that's what Scouting/Analytics Packages should be, they should have nothing to do with attributes.

For example, let's say that I'm looking for a CB that's good aerially. I bought a Central Europe Scouting/Analytics Package and now I can filter out all kinds of statistics for players in that region on the Player Search screen. I narrow it down to a few CBs with good heading statistics and ask my scout for a quick Scout Report on them. That shows me more attributes and I can then narrow it down to a few that I want to scout fully and sign. That would represent real life more accurately in my opinion.

[mrbrownsays]

This is an advantage of attribute masking, that you can't just produce a list of the fastest strikers in the world immediately on day 1. In my opinion I like that the player search is very limited at the start of the game as for me that should represent the managers knowledge and not the clubs knowledge. 

Club knowledge is shared through scouting, DoF recommendations, affiliates etc. I think it is more realistic and more difficult this way.

[m@rk]

Personally I'm a big fan of the scouting centre, scouts have found some really interesting young players for the level I'm at in game. 

Also the level of interest filter is a useful tool for loan players to lower leagues as well

[mbabbs]

I found that the quality of my scouting improved immensely when I set the assignments myself. If I left it to my Chief Scout or DOF then I just got reports the same players over and over.

[pdstanbridge]

One thing to consider here: as you progress in your campaign do your manager stats improve too?

[jujigatame]

I find scouting in FM18 to be very frustrating.  My scouts find surprisingly few players to recommend, and the vast majority are world-class players who I can't even remotely afford.  It seems much more difficult to find hidden gems than it used to be.

How do folks here generally handle scouting?  Do you use short-term scouting to force your scouts to be more targeted?

[mbabbs]

Mine did that too so I took control myself to find hot prospects in each league.

[jujigatame]

How do you go about it?  It seems like it would be a lot of work but maybe I'm missing some clever shortcuts.

[mbabbs]

You hand the responsibility of giving assignments to the manager (you). Then the way I went about it was;

- Keep asking the board for as many scouts as possible. As West Ham I have 22 scouts.

- Ensure you have the World Packages. I think you also need a larger scouting budget than the 720k specified, but I haven't been able to prove that yet. Nevertheless I allocate >1million.

- Have one scout permanently with the assignment of scouting the opposition in the next match.

- Have one scout with a high judging potential (I used my chief scout) free of assignments so that he is free to scout players that you decide need a scout report.

- Have a scout for each major league; England, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Brazil and Argentina and set them to look for hot prospects until finished. They need to have 100% knowledge of their respective league. You can queue these assignments too, so if a scout has 100% knowledge in more than one nation then they can move onto the other automatically when they finish.

- For other important leagues; Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, Scandinavia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Greece, Ivory Coast, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, USA, Japan, South Korea, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Northern Ireland ....... try to find scouts that have knowledge of more than one of these and then do the same. Set them to find hot prospects in each country they are familiar with until finished.

- If you can't find a scout with prior knowledge of a country, then find a scout with very high adaptability and use him instead. All scouts need a high judging potential. I only compromise on this where a scout has knowledge of a bundle of countries. This is more of a compromise for scouting the less important leagues, because you just don't have enough scouts.

- You can set a scout to scout a region instead of a nation, but I believe they will be less effective. I tend to do this with South West America, Central America, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Again the scout needs high adaptability.

 

 

The result of this for me is that I now have 5 good wonderkids in my first team and scouting reports on quite a few others. It took a few seasons though.

Edit: A DOF of football helps too. Set him to make offers for young players and you may well be surprised. You can always walk away from the one's you don't want.

Edit2: Yes it is a bit of work initially, but once you have set it up then it's easy to maintain.

 

[Hovis Dexter]

Interesting comments. If you set up all of your scouts to look for hot prospects how do you to find more established players?

[mbabbs]

I don't buy anyone over 24 years old. A hot prospect search is for anyone under 25. If you wanted to include established players then you'd just tweak the search criteria.

[Hovis Dexter]

Thanks

[MeMyself2k13]

Quick question about scouting.

I usually use my best JCA/JPP staff to scout specific players that I'm about to sign - is there any difference if I'm asking my Assistant Manager to scout a few players until full knowledge, rather than an actual scout? Can scouts maybe scout more players at the same time / scout quicker or is there no difference?