Scouting & Attribute Masking

[Wap92]

I'm about to start a new save and for the first time ever I'm contemplating turning the attribute masking off. How many of you play with it disabled? I almost feel "dirty", but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to keep attributes masked.

I'm all for realism, but attribute masking adds nothing to making the game more realistic in my opinion. The way I see it is, you either rely on your scouts to find you players (use assignments for the type of players that you need) or you look for players yourself through the Player Search. I don't think that using the latter with masked attributes adds any realism, how is it realistic for any manager to have a database of thousands of players that he knows have First Touch, Composure and Finishing between 10-15, for example, but yet he knows nothing else about them?

Or another example, agent offers - agents keep offering me players, but yet I get no information about them whatsoever (0% attributes revealed). Surely if an agent offers me a player, he'd at least give me some kind of brief information or a highlights package? How can I make a decision about whether he's worth scouting or not, if I get absolutely no information about him? 

Honestly, the whole system of revealing attributes is nothing but a hassle at the moment. Let's say that you filter out a few players by attributes, you already know their span and approximate numbers, but you still have to send out a scout who can magically reveal all of them in a week - even if they play no games in that time. And then you have the trialing system, which is widely used in the LLM - you can invite hundreds of Free Agents on a 4-week trial and fully reveal their attributes by the time they leave the club - for free. You don't even have to pay for the poor lads' meals or traveling costs, but yet you can keep them at the club for weeks just to reveal their attributes. How is that any more realistic than disabling the attribute masking altogether and instead inviting just a few, to get their Scout Report before making a final decision on who to sign?

The problem that I have with relying on scouts in the current system is that they simply don't find enough players. I'd love to be able to make signings in a more realistic manner and rely on the assignments, but I just had an example today when I set a 2-week Short Term assignment for a 2-star ability DM (I specifically lowered it in hope of getting more results) and my best scout with full knowledge of the country that he was scouting came back with no results - none whatsoever. So that pretty much forces you to only use scouts to increase the clubs' Scouting Knowledge and look for players yourself. Where's the point in attribute masking then, if I spend time to look for players myself?

I really hope that scouting system will be refined in the next version of the game. If you want to make that aspect more realistic, Data Analysts need to play a bigger part in scouting - you should be able to filter through players based on their statistics, not their attributes. That is how I imagine Scouting Packages work in real life - clubs buy all kinds of player stats from companies that collect them, to help them with their scouting. Based on that they can then create their shortlist and thoroughly scout players that fit their playing style (e.g. strikers with good Headers Won Ratio, if they need one for the playing style with a lot of crosses). 

In my opinion you should only ever see the attributes of your own players and the ones that you previously played against, watched live (finally attending matches would actually serve a purpose) or trained (in case you switch a club) - for the rest you should have to fully rely on your scouts or take a blind punt.

[onionbag]

12 hours ago, Wap92 said:

 

I'm all for realism, but attribute masking adds nothing to making the game more realistic in my opinion.

I'd suggest keeping it on, as playing with attribute masking off reveals TOO much info, in my view. The quote above though suggests you've decided. But if you are soliciting opinions, not just seeking justification, I'd vote for keeping it on. Ultimately it's your save, play it however you want. I agree that the system could use refinement, but it works well enough that I wouldn't feel the need to disable.

[Steewen]

Seems like you aleady made up your mind. 

No doubt that knowing exacly how good a player is, without having to follow him at all, is madly unrealistic.

 

But go ahead, each to his own.

[Wap92]

How is this allowed? There should be a downside to trialing players, your finances should at least cover their traveling expenses or food. There should be a limit of players that can be on trial at the same time or at least Squad Dynamics should take a huge hit with such a big number of unknown players pouring into the club - even if just on trial.

This is what I mean with uncovering attributes being nothing but a hassle, that's 300+ players fully scouted at zero cost. With attribute masking disabled at least you don't have to go through the effort of inviting all of them on trial.

[Hovis Dexter]

Good point. There should be financial cost for trialing players. The only downside of which I am aware is that the coaches all have heavy workloads and players complain that they are not receiving enough coaching.

[michaeltmurrayuk]

The downside of trialling is that the player has to accept your trial request and in the meantime could be getting real offers from other clubs, and whilst they are on trial they can be poached by other teams (and if you are playing them whilst on trial they can attract the attention of other teams) and in the last couple of versions the attributes are no longer instantly revealed for trialists so it takes time to check them out and you also need a staff member with good judging to get accurate star ratings.

If you also have the mentioned coaching issues, it over works your coaches, and will likely limit your match cohesion and match fitness of your main players if you are also using the trialists.

Having 300 trialists is a little overblown but teams that run open days would probably see close to that amount (well not for 30 days - but how many of those 300 did you keep for the full 30 days), also not sure it's that unheard of for teams to have a dozen or more trialists especially further down the pyramid (where it likely doesn't get any press) - Bolton this season fielded an entire team of trialists and they were a Championship side.

Also the game is a (mainly) single player game so there is nothing stopping you from limiting your amount of trialists if you wanted and as long as the AI isn't going overboard with it I'm not sure the game should be putting in artificial limits without a good reason.

[kingjericho]

Bring in a big number of trialists is fairly common. Some years ago Vitória de Setúbal in Portugal had a trial period in the summer where the new manager had almost 30 players on trial for a couple of weeks.

Attribute masking is logical, albeight as I've said in other similar threads, some players should be fully visible regardless of the team the user is maanging. For example, even a team in Bulgaria wouldn't need to scout Ronaldo or Bale to know his attributes and preferred moves. The top reputation players should be fully known by virtually everyone.

[Shi Xiansheng]

Piggybacking on this topic just because.

I'm playing FM 16 and I did NOT select "Disable Attribute Masking" when I started my save.  However, unless disabling gives even more info, it IS disabled.  I've never seen these attribute ranges.  Every player I encounter has his attributes tattooed on his face.  What gives?  Is this a bug?  Did I do something wrong?  Is it possible to mask mid-save, or is it just a setting chosen when creating a save?