For FM17 - Could SI change the production system of newgens?

[brenosantos]

First of all, sorry for my poor english.

I know that there's a topic to discuss features that we want to see in the next Football Manager, but I think that this is a very important question, so I've decided to create a topic instead of posting there.

Nowadays, we have a fixed system designating one day every year to produce new players in our youth system. That's a cool system, but I was playing Manager Mode in FIFA 16 and their system of new players represents more the reality, despite being a infinitely inferior mode.

In FIFA, you need to sign with some scouts only to look for new players (I don't think that this is really necessary), and then you can choose for which country will send each scout. They go to the selected country and one month after they show you a report with all the players that he found. In this report, you can choose to sign the player, keep scouting (taking the risk of other team sign him) or just say that you don't want the player. In FIFA, every player has his overall, who goes between 1 and 99. When you see the report of a young player, it shows the current ability (43~49, for example) and the potential ability (73~80, for example).

Football Manager could easily use this system, sending scouts to anywhere covered by scouting range or scouting feeder clubs, even if they aren't in the scouting range. Their atributes would be hidden and with some scouting reports you could discover more about the player. Obviously, in some cases a team won't have funds to set a scout, specially in small/town clubs or with financial problems, but in this cases, they could organize games between young players of the town/local region/country, and the best players would sign with the club.

I know that the actual system is simple, easy and cool, but Football Manager is developing day after day, so I think that we need to discuss this important point, because the production system of newgens is pretty much the same since the year I started playing, in 2008.

[HUNT3R]

Excuse me for being thick this morning, but what is the change you're proposing? Your scouts will uncover newgens already. Attributes will be hidden initially already. Then you'll get a range and then finally, when you have enough knowledge of the player, it'll be exact. This already happens, except scouts cannot go outside of the scouting range.

[Fond Foat]

I think what you are saying is that new players should only be generated as you scout them? Do you mean the AI can only scout players you have discovered? If that is the case, I don't see how that could possibly be a good idea.

As for your ideas about scouting systems FM already has the ability to send scouts where you have the resources to do so. You also get new kids trying out for the club every year, and you can go watch trials. I do not see anything in your post that improves on the current structure.

I am reasonably happy with how scouting is set up, I just think too many attributes are given to the player. I would love an option to remove all attributes from the game and use the polygon only which group attributes into a skill sets and we never know exactly how well we know that players skill set until we have had a lot of knowledge and experience of them.

[Gishi]

I didn't play fm15 enough to see how the intake worked there, and have yet to test it in fm16, so I might be wrong. But what I think he's saying is that he don't want just a batch of 20 or so youth players to be presented to him once a year. He wants to send a scout on missions to find youth; not the youth players that already exists in the game as belonging to another club, but scouting a nation, area, city or whatever for 'schoolboys' who have not yet been picked up by clubs. I.e. players who are generated as youth players as you scout them.

That way you could build a youth squad more to your liking. If, say you play 3-4-3 without using full backs or wing backs, you wouldn't want to look for players for those positions. It would allow you to immerse yourself more with the youth system of the club.

If that's realistic though - I dunno.

[Fond Foat]

Okay. So you think the suggestion was for schoolboy scouting. Maybe. You would think schoolboy scouting would be very hit and miss anyway. How do you choose between 180 kids with 2 star potential as an example. The PA would have to be extremely blurred otherwise the game would become easier..

I would go the opposite way in some cases and make it harder to judge any players PA and have a players PA randomly adjust by 10-15% at the start of every new save. Might make some of those wonder kid lists a bit less useful

[Gishi]

Personally I would like it if we could scout schoolboys for our youth system, but, as you say, the unknowns should be vast.

The way it works now is a bit too random for my liking, particularly as it takes a lot of effort to train someone for a new position (which imo should be easier, many players should be a lot more versatile). An added scouting option would give you a bit more control.

But I agree, it shouldn't be made easier to produce the next Mason, Kane or Messi, you should just be given a little bit more control in the matter - if you want, it should be optional of course.

[RBKalle]

The idea of having newgens produced in a non-stop assembly line for our scouts to find is intriguing, but I suspect it'd lead to an even more bloated in-game universe that the current CA/PA/Reputation system couldn't handle...

Already under the current fixed-date system, the game produces WAY MORE players than it needs, often completely useless (plenty of questionable templates, absurd role choices etc) or misused by the AI, so I doubt a neverending stream of newgens from all over the world can work without putting too much strain on the game, both in terms of coding and of needed resources.

We should remember how all the players we have in the game are those deemed as "good enough" to pursue a professional (or semi-professional, depending on the level they're at) career of in-game football. So I reckon the youth intakes have already done the preliminary selection, cutting the crappiest players.

I wouldn't mind a more flexible approach on newgens and youth players, but the current one is probably the best compromise between realism and usability. Although the templates and the early development would definitely need a revamp.

It'd be nice being given only the general position (D, M or A) and then undergoing more radical changes within the U18 team. Having players with roles already set in stone at age 16 is quite silly IMO. Especially at lower level, it's not unusual to have a kid completely re-adapt his playing style to better suit his skills or the needs of the new club.

Currently it's just impossible without sacrificing a huge chunk of CA points

[Sunstrikuuu]

One of the things I liked playing some of the EA Sports college football games was being able to recruit "athletes" in addition to players with positions. Athletes just came with a particular set of attributes and no position, and you could assign it when they signed. I'd really quite like being able to take a 15 year old newgen and just assign him as a ST/AMR if he's got the attributes for it. And then, as he develops, if I need to train new positions, then great.

[Mars_Blackmon]

Imo players from your team's youth intake (u15) should generate with positions relevant to your formation and tactics. These guys are already being tailor to fit into the system by time they move on from school boy.

I am not sure what the OP is suggesting since you can already send out scouts to find youth intake from other countries (most users go look for new youth intake themselves)

I guess he's talking about rather than a class of 15 year olds be presented to you, you send scouts out to look for them. Not familiar at all with FiFA but that doesn't sound realistic at all considering your youth intake are guys who were already in your system and are homegrown. Although you have the ability to get foreign players into your youth intake by hiring a more diverse staff. Also updgrading youth recruiment helps with the quality along with certain staff members having high attributes in certain areas. So from my understanding what the OP is asking is already there.

I do agree that scouting needs to be harder.

[frog-kvfb]

Would it help if instead of all the youths coming into the game in one batch. Spread them.out so they all come through at different dates. It should help prevent mass scouting nations and hoovering up all the best talent

[brenosantos]

I'm not wanting scouts to scout already existing newgens in the game, because I know that this is already possible. I'm saying that, if I'm playing with Luton Town, I would like to be able to send a scout to watch youth games in Luton, and after that, he will show me a report saying "Oh, we found that guy playing very well at the school, do you want to keep scouting him?" My idea is: this model of scouting should replace the actual system of newgens being produced into our youth intake in the same day every year.

And obviously, I'm talking about a local team, clubs like Barcelona and Real Madrid should be able to scout every part of the world if they want to, because they have money and structure to do that, but it will be more expensive for them and the number of young players will be reduced.

Gishi said partially what I'm wanting, we need to search for new talents and hope that they'll bring something good for us. And no, it won't be easier to find a top player because we'll need to rely on the scout report. If a scout has 3 for Judging Current Ability and 5 for Judging Potential Ability, the chance they give incorrect information about a young player is bigger.

And obviously, if there are 200 players in the town, your scout won't show you 200 players, he will show you only the players who he thinks can be useful for your team.

After all, I know this isn't 100% realistic, but if your scout shows you a player and you don't want him, they would go free agent until they are 16, and if nobody wants him, he'll retire. Or he can simply retire, what is unrealistic, because players like Leandro Damiao (Cruzeiro's striker who played for Brazil national team) only started in the football world with 19. But I understand that keeping all these useless newgens in the game wouldn't be good for the game size, so this is a considerable option.

Again, sorry for my poor english.

[Ackter]

Not going to happen as there's legalities that stop the inclusion of players below a certain age.

All of what you're suggesting is being "simulated" by the youth generation anyway, you just don't see it happening until the player turns up in your youth graduates.

[duduric]

He's talking about newgens though, fictional people. How could there be legal problems with that???

[brenosantos]

He's talking about newgens though, fictional people. How could there be legal problems with that???

Exactly.

And I know that this is already being simulated, but this system gives us no power of choice, I would prefer choose some players scouted to go to my youth teams instead of just receive them directly, without any choice and with some randomness.

[michaeltmurrayuk]

Exactly.

And I know that this is already being simulated, but this system gives us no power of choice, I would prefer choose some players scouted to go to my youth teams instead of just receive them directly, without any choice and with some randomness.

You do get choice though, youth players come through on trial so you can freely sign and discard who you want.

The game already does what you want it is just simulated in the background - due to processing resources and a lack of U15 teams or competitions to actually scout - the newgens that come into your youth team are from three sources - players who have been with your academy from an early age, if your youth system is developed enough you'll also get players 'poached' from other academies and with certain feeders you also get the 'illegal' foreign youth players that real teams manage to get agains the rules. Your staff and various facilities also affect the kind of players you get generated, whilst your Head of Youth affects their positions.

Even if a feature was introduced it would be severally limited, there are FIFA/EU regulations regarding the international transfer of U18 and U16 players which limits your scouting to your own country first off anyway, whilst England limits where in the country you can get players from depending on your facilities, so in your example Luton would be limited to scouting schools/clubs in their area so is the game then suposed to generate schools/clubs/youth competitions for every city/town in the game for you to scout, then its going to have to populate each of them with 20/30 players (otherwise the game would just be generating the youth intake news item several times a season with just a slightly different wording) just for you to find one or two players who might be good enough for your academy, then do this several times a season to get an intake of ~15 players only for a handful to even make it to a youth contract and one or two to turn pro, leaving the game continuly creating and then discarding hundreds of kids slowing games down to a crawl.

The other issue is most players will join academies between 9-13 years old, so what is the point of being able to scout these players as you won't be able to use them for several years, unless you want teams to have an extra five years worth of youth players added to them, which is again going to vastly inflate the game database and is likely to cause issues with the development of them aswell.

[corridos]

the way i've seen it work IRL (at first or second division clubs) is people in the teams' youth system get promoted from several teams ("filiales") to the academy once they are 16. so you have 40 or so players in the under 16s. before that, there is a few youth teams from different regions or city sections. and you either get promoted and start playing, or if they dont choose you you can go to the u-16s reserves, which means you train with the team but you wont play or you get "cut". which is pretty much what happens in fm and more realistic than getting one new player every 2 weeks.

[Mrughani01]

Could you please add Financial Fair Play into the mobile version of the game. I had a career where Real Madrid, Chelsea and Man City all bought in excess of £100 million without selling any players, and next season they just continued. They also never won the trophies to finance such activity without constant cash injections from billionaire owners. This was unfair to other clubs, including myself as all of our regen stars were priced out.

To implement this the game can let a club have losses like the comp version, otherwise they get banned from competitions or transfer windows, which ever is easier to implement.

I understand that this may be hard to work into the mobile system, but it's worth a good attempt, and will make the game more realistic, and it's already in the comp version, so there's a working model ready there.

[HUNT3R]

Could you please add Financial Fair Play into the mobile version of the game. I had a career where Real Madrid, Chelsea and Man City all bought in excess of £100 million without selling any players, and next season they just continued. They also never won the trophies to finance such activity without constant cash injections from billionaire owners. This was unfair to other clubs, including myself as all of our regen stars were priced out.

To implement this the game can let a club have losses like the comp version, otherwise they get banned from competitions or transfer windows, which ever is easier to implement.

I understand that this may be hard to work into the mobile system, but it's worth a good attempt, and will make the game more realistic, and it's already in the comp version, so there's a working model ready there.

If you mean FM Touch, which available on tablets, the wishlist thread is here: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/405989-FMC-FMT-Wishlist-Thread

Otherwise, FM Mobile is here : http://community.sigames.com/forumdisplay.php/30-Football-Manager-Mobile-General-Discussion