known issue Youth Intake Broken Just Like Beta

[Andrew James]

34 minutes ago, Daveincid said:

Start db 110k, in 28 its 81k. It's "okay" if it stays like this, but I guess it will drop further.

So my thoughts are that in a inactive or view-only league, there is less transfer activity. So if a player from such a league outgrowns his Club, he will get released on a free (because he refuses to sign a new contract). But then he doesn't find a club, because the inactive and view-only leagues are lacking in transfer-activity. So he will retire at some point.  

I also realized there are arround 2300 newgens per year in total.  To keep the balance, there should be arround 4000. 

Yes unfortunately with this kind of setup it is likely to drop further. 

We are still trying to pin down exactly what's causing this decrease, as there is a long list of factors that impact the calculations behind all of these numbers. 

As you say, a standard game setup with the majority of the player count being in playable leagues will remain much more stable for much longer.

I appreciate this is a particularly frustrating issue for users who like to play longer term saves with custom databases, I can only thank you for your patience so far and the info you've provided, as well assure you we're still looking to resolve these issues with future updates. 

[blejdek]

8 minutes ago, Andrew James said:

Yes unfortunately with this kind of setup it is likely to drop further. 

We are still trying to pin down exactly what's causing this decrease, as there is a long list of factors that impact the calculations behind all of these numbers. 

As you say, a standard game setup with the majority of the player count being in playable leagues will remain much more stable for much longer.

I appreciate this is a particularly frustrating issue for users who like to play longer term saves with custom databases, I can only thank you for your patience so far and the info you've provided, as well assure you we're still looking to resolve these issues with future updates. 

As english is not my first language, I would like to you to confirm it if I got it right.

If I choose all leagues and all of those playable with large database which are included in game already, (I never use custom databases and never will), I shouldnt even notice the difference in youth intakes, or those changes (drop in newgens) will be so small, they wont or they should not impact my long term save ?

Edited December 18, 2020 by blejdek

[freddieos]

1 hour ago, Daveincid said:

- view-only and some leagues playable with custom db => still struggles massively. Start db 110k, in 28 its 81k. It's "okay" if it stays like this, but I guess it will drop further.

you a star @Daveincid thanks for the update. But i guess it's fine to start a new save with mix of playable and view-only leagues loaded, by the time I get to 2028 there will probably be a further fix along the way. Especially if it's something that sounds so relatively easy as cranking up transfer activity in non-playable leagues. 

[Daveincid]

Gerade eben schrieb freddieos:

you a star @Daveincid thanks for the update. But i guess it's fine to start a new save with mix of playable and view-only leagues loaded, by the time I get to 2028 there will probably be a further fix along the way. Especially if it's something that sounds so relatively easy as cranking up transfer activity in non-playable leagues. 

nope, I am a normal person as everybody else, with good days and bad days. Today it's a bad one I am just determinded to help to drive FM forward, this years version has really -10 potencial! (Fm'ers will know)

The problem seems to be not that easy, otherwise it won't be there anymore. SI have their own testing-team, and inside-view to the core-game. But the community has millions of eyes, ideas and maybe just some user, who just signed in in the forum will find a solution which haven't been mentioned yet, you never know

 

[freddieos]

 

1 minute ago, Daveincid said:

But the community has millions of eyes, ideas and maybe just some user, who just signed in in the forum will find a solution which haven't been mentioned yet, you never know

okay, I'm pretty smart. I'll start thinking 

[Daveincid]

Gerade eben schrieb freddieos:

 

okay, I'm pretty smart. I'll start thinking 

that's the effort we need

[Gee_Simpson]

Luckily I only run playable leagues (will be running 50) and don't use the custom database at all so I should be good to go.

[Guest]

Can someone please explain me what 'custom database' mean in this context ? I usually play like this:

Is this considered 'custom database' ? Under the approximate player count it says so, but i'm not sure anymore... 

[Platinum]

22 hours ago, Andrew James said:

The average youth intake size for a top active club is 5-8 players, and it can often be less than this for clubs with less established academies. If a team has virtual (greyed out) players in a youth side, this does not necessarily mean they aren’t generating enough youth players. For example, if a team doesn’t buy enough, or loans out too many U23 players, they will then need to promote some players from u18s as the more senior squad takes priority.

Historically in previous FM's youth teams have taken in 10 - 15 newgens each season, why has that now changed to 5 - 8 players?

A player is only available for the u18 team for 2 years once they sign a scholarship at 16, so taking in 5 - 8 players per year would mean the youth teams have a maximum size of 16 players, which isnt realistic. The side effect of this is that in the game it leads to youth teams having many grey players, and this is for playable leagues.

Edited December 18, 2020 by francis#17

[Platinum]

35 minutes ago, Gee_Simpson said:

Luckily I only run playable leagues (will be running 50) and don't use the custom database at all so I should be good to go.

Could your share your setup and also what are your specs?

[JordanMilly]

35 minutes ago, Bogdy26 said:

Is this considered 'custom database' ? Under the approximate player count it says so, but i'm not sure anymore... 

Yes, because you're adding players in continents and leagues that aren't active in the game (like South America, and all the players added in Europe that'll be in countries where their league isn't playable). A non-custom database would just be when you select small/medium/large database, with no custom set-up.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, JordanMillward_1 said:

Yes, because you're adding players in continents and leagues that aren't active in the game (like South America, and all the players added in Europe that'll be in countries where their league isn't playable). A non-custom database would just be when you select small/medium/large database, with no custom set-up.

I understand. So my setup is susceptible to this bug, I think it won't be such a dramatic decrease in player count over the years.

[Junkhead]

So I am about 12 seasons deep into a pretty basic test. I am in May 2032.  I am running ONLY the EPL on a small database, with no additional leagues on view only, and no advanced settings.

Player base seems relatively stable so far at between 6-8k, however youth teams are a complete waste of time already.  As @Andrew JamesJames said, the bigger clubs are getting 5-8 youth players per season. Smaller (relatively) clubs get 1-3. Newcastle currently have one youth player. Leicester have 3. Man United have 11 which is the highest. Assume this will be after the annual youth intake.

I find it pretty tough to believe that this is working as intended, unless I have massively misunderstood something.

And it is clear that this issue is not limited to unplayable or view only leagues. 

Gonna run the test more in the morning and can upload if required, but should be pretty simple to reproduce.

[Gee_Simpson]

12 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

So I am about 12 seasons deep into a pretty basic test. I am in May 2032.  I am running ONLY the EPL on a small database, with no additional leagues on view only, and no advanced settings.

Player base seems relatively stable so far at between 6-8k, however youth teams are a complete waste of time already.  As @Andrew JamesJames said, the bigger clubs are getting 5-8 youth players per season. Smaller (relatively) clubs get 1-3. Newcastle currently have one youth player. Leicester have 3. Man United have 11 which is the highest. Assume this will be after the annual youth intake.

I find it pretty tough to believe that this is working as intended, unless I have massively misunderstood something.

And it is clear that this issue is not limited to unplayable or view only leagues. 

Gonna run the test more in the morning and can upload if required, but should be pretty simple to reproduce.

Doesn't sound promising.

[ratio1618]

46 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

So I am about 12 seasons deep into a pretty basic test. I am in May 2032.  I am running ONLY the EPL on a small database, with no additional leagues on view only, and no advanced settings.

Player base seems relatively stable so far at between 6-8k, however youth teams are a complete waste of time already.  As @Andrew JamesJames said, the bigger clubs are getting 5-8 youth players per season. Smaller (relatively) clubs get 1-3. Newcastle currently have one youth player. Leicester have 3. Man United have 11 which is the highest. Assume this will be after the annual youth intake.

I find it pretty tough to believe that this is working as intended, unless I have massively misunderstood something.

And it is clear that this issue is not limited to unplayable or view only leagues. 

Gonna run the test more in the morning and can upload if required, but should be pretty simple to reproduce.

Looks like we are waiting for the summer transfer patch for this to get fixed then boiizz. Maybe we will get a playable out of the box game next year....

[Sharkn20]

1 hour ago, ratio1618 said:

Looks like we are waiting for the summer transfer patch for this to get fixed then boiizz. Maybe we will get a playable out of the box game next year....

That will never happen... They normally release the game full of bugs and incongruences and make it right (mostly,) by March. This version is enjoyable so far though, so I can't wait for all the mess to be cleared up in the next 3 months 

[Platinum]

@Andrew JamesI've loaded 6 leagues, 3 playable and 3 view only: Premier League, Serie A, Bundlesliga, La Liga, Liga NOS, Ligue 1 respectively. I'm only in 2024 and the highest number of players in the u18s of any Prem team is 8 and the rest of the players are greyed out, and for many of the teams in the Prem they only have grey players. The biggest teams in the Prem have about 8 players while the smaller ones have between 0 to about 6 players. 

I know you've been working hard on this and it's probably not an easy issue to fix but I cant hide my disappointment at this as this is a standard game setup with no advanced db options and it is unplayable if I ever want to develop my teams academy short term or if I want to play a long term save. This definitely didn't happen in previous editions of the game.

The player count at the beginning of the game was 17,680 and somehow this increased to an approximate player count of 21000 (when looking at the add/remove leagues screen). I was trying to find out how this was possible with the lack of youth players and saw that although there are still lots of cases in the other nations I loaded (those top leagues I mentioned above) where there are hardly any or 0 youth players there were some teams that were absolutely stacked with players in the youth teams and had 30+ players in the u18/u19 and this may have lead to the increase in player counts. England definitely seems to be worst affected by the lack of youth players though. This seems to be really broken right now and what I really don't understand is why SI said  that between between 5 - 8 youth players entering teams is expected when that just isn't sustainable and isnt what happened in previous years.

Am I missing something here? Even if I am this isn't how it works in real life as those grey players should be active players.

Edited December 19, 2020 by francis#17

[ratio1618]

4 hours ago, francis#17 said:

@Andrew JamesI've loaded 6 leagues, 3 playable and 3 view only: Premier League, Serie A, Bundlesliga, La Liga, Liga NOS, Ligue 1 respectively. I'm only in 2024 and the highest number of players in the u18s of any Prem team is 8 and the rest of the players are greyed out, and for many of the teams in the Prem they only have grey players. The biggest teams in the Prem have about 8 players while the smaller ones have between 0 to about 6 players. 

I know you've been working hard on this and it's probably not an easy issue to fix but I cant hide my disappointment at this as this is a standard game setup with no advanced db options and it is unplayable if I ever want to develop my teams academy short term or if I want to play a long term save. This definitely didn't happen in previous editions of the game.

The player count at the beginning of the game was 17,680 and somehow this increased to an approximate player count of 21000 (when looking at the add/remove leagues screen). I was trying to find out how this was possible with the lack of youth players and saw that although there are still lots of cases in the other nations I loaded (those top leagues I mentioned above) where there are hardly any or 0 youth players there were some teams that were absolutely stacked with players in the youth teams and had 30+ players in the u18/u19 and this may have lead to the increase in player counts. England definitely seems to be worst affected by the lack of youth players though. This seems to be really broken right now and what I really don't understand is why SI said  that between between 5 - 8 youth players entering teams is expected when that just isn't sustainable and isnt what happened in previous years.

Am I missing something here? Even if I am this isn't how it works in real life as those grey players should be active players.

Pretty sure the game is just a nice tasting lemon this year. Hopefully our money goes to making a better game next year......Just wish we could get refunds because of game breaking bugs.

[1891]

Still very much broken.

My game went from 206 980 players to 192 035 in 2½ seasons while simulating.

Many African countries still didn't generate more than 1-3 newgens per year. Asia was a little bit better, but not at the levels we've seen before.

[metal_guitarist]

10 hours ago, Junkhead said:

So I am about 12 seasons deep into a pretty basic test. I am in May 2032.  I am running ONLY the EPL on a small database, with no additional leagues on view only, and no advanced settings.

Player base seems relatively stable so far at between 6-8k, however youth teams are a complete waste of time already.  As @Andrew JamesJames said, the bigger clubs are getting 5-8 youth players per season. Smaller (relatively) clubs get 1-3. Newcastle currently have one youth player. Leicester have 3. Man United have 11 which is the highest. Assume this will be after the annual youth intake.

I find it pretty tough to believe that this is working as intended, unless I have massively misunderstood something.

And it is clear that this issue is not limited to unplayable or view only leagues. 

Gonna run the test more in the morning and can upload if required, but should be pretty simple to reproduce.

5-8 a season is still miles too low. Man Utd's intake off the top of my head this year was 13 players for first year scholars + 1 second year with 27 players eligible to play U18s football this season. Of that 27, only 5 have been promoted early to the U23s full time early and at least 2 of those still play the bigger U18s games. A further 3 make the odd U23 appearance but are primarily with the U18s still. We usually average around 10-12 players a year for first year intake with a squad size of usually 22-25 players, whether that's players who have come through the younger age groups or whom we've signed from other clubs. The maximum you can offer are 30 scholarships across a two-year period in the UK. Most of the bigger Premier League clubs have similar intake numbers although Chelsea in particular tend to supplement their U18s with U16s a lot because a number of their U18s get promoted to the U23s quite early on as a lot of their young pros get sent out on loan. Think we've only had 2 games where U16s have been required to fill out the matchday squad.

Average for other English clubs tends to be 8-10 first year U18s and then they sign the 2nd year scholars or young pros who were released from bigger clubs to fill out their U23s/reserves/B teams. 

[ratio1618]

5 minutes ago, metal_guitarist said:

5-8 a season is still miles too low. Man Utd's intake off the top of my head this year was 13 players for first year scholars + 1 second year with 27 players eligible to play U18s football this season. Of that 27, only 5 have been promoted early to the U23s full time early and at least 2 of those still play the bigger U18s games. A further 3 make the odd U23 appearance but are primarily with the U18s still. We usually average around 10-12 players a year for first year intake with a squad size of usually 22-25 players, whether that's players who have come through the younger age groups or whom we've signed from other clubs. The maximum you can offer are 30 scholarships across a two-year period in the UK. Most of the bigger Premier League clubs have similar intake numbers although Chelsea in particular tend to supplement their U18s with U16s a lot because a number of their U18s get promoted to the U23s quite early on as a lot of their young pros get sent out on loan. Think we've only had 2 games where U16s have been required to fill out the matchday squad.

Average for other English clubs tends to be 8-10 first year U18s and then they sign the 2nd year scholars or young pros who were released from bigger clubs to fill out their U23s/reserves/B teams. 

That started with me being angry at the game and eneded with me learning aobut elite development IRL. Good post dude, hers hoping it gets fixed sooner rather than later. Im off to play a functioning game. Wake me up when this **** is working again.

 

Sidenote: are we gunna have to wait  for a big Youtuber to make notice of this bug before anything happens in any reasonable time?

[wicksyFM]

5 minutes ago, ratio1618 said:

That started with me being angry at the game and eneded with me learning aobut elite development IRL. Good post dude, hers hoping it gets fixed sooner rather than later. Im off to play a functioning game. Wake me up when this **** is working again.

 

Sidenote: are we gunna have to wait  for a big Youtuber to make notice of this bug before anything happens in any reasonable time?

I have seen some you tubers names at the bottom where it shows who is viewing the post. So they do know about it. I don’t think that would mean anything would get resolved any quicker though 

[ratio1618]

1 minute ago, wicksyFM said:

I have seen some you tubers names at the bottom where it shows who is viewing the post. So they do know about it. I don’t think that would mean anything would get resolved any quicker though 

It will put the heat on. Si might think its just us nerds with advanced Dbs who are affected and they can focus on making sure columns work better or whatever. But if Kev or Benjy have a series ruined because of this bug then it puts the screws on 100%

 

[jib]

I decided to run a sim on a smaller database as and I'm guessing here the majority of people dont want to run all the leagues as playable.

TLDR - if you like saves past a couple of seasons and use a custom database, you're going to be disappointed and going back to fm20

Here's the setup:

Under custom database I have these options selected for UK & Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Russia, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, Nigeria, Japan, USA & South Korea

Here are the player count results per year

2020 = 50313

2021 = 51744

2022 = 51947

2023 = 51496

2024 = 50640

2025 = 49512

2026 = 48029

2027 = 46909

2028 = 45884

2029 = 44975

2030 = 43717

2035 = 37739

 

Personally for how I like to play the game this is not fixed at all and makes it unplayable. I really hope this is still the top priority of things they are working on and they are not considering it pretty much fixed

[ratio1618]

2 minutes ago, jib said:

I decided to run a sim on a smaller database as and I'm guessing here the majority of people dont want to run all the leagues as playable.

TLDR - if you like saves past a couple of seasons and use a custom database, you're going to be disappointed and going back to fm20

Here's the setup:

Under custom database I have these options selected for UK & Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Russia, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, Nigeria, Japan, USA & South Korea

Here are the player count results per year

2020 = 50313

2021 = 51744

2022 = 51947

2023 = 51496

2024 = 50640

2025 = 49512

2026 = 48029

2027 = 46909

2028 = 45884

2029 = 44975

2030 = 43717

2035 = 37739

 

Personally for how I like to play the game this is not fixed at all and makes it unplayable. I really hope this is still the top priority of things they are working on and they are not considering it pretty much fixed

Jesus christ......


Who else is gunna wait for the Jan transfer patch to buy Fm next year?  This feels like the longest beta period ever. I get COVID or whatever but im sure most people would have been fine waiting for a later release than throwing 70 NZD at something that wont function for 5 months.

Edited December 19, 2020 by ratio1618

[Daveincid]

vor 1 Minute schrieb jib:

I decided to run a sim on a smaller database as and I'm guessing here the majority of people dont want to run all the leagues as playable.

TLDR - if you like saves past a couple of seasons and use a custom database, you're going to be disappointed and going back to fm20

Here's the setup:

Under custom database I have these options selected for UK & Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Russia, Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Egypt, Turkey, Nigeria, Japan, USA & South Korea

Here are the player count results per year

2020 = 50313

2021 = 51744

2022 = 51947

2023 = 51496

2024 = 50640

2025 = 49512

2026 = 48029

2027 = 46909

2028 = 45884

2029 = 44975

2030 = 43717

2035 = 37739

 

Personally for how I like to play the game this is not fixed at all and makes it unplayable. I really hope this is still the top priority of things they are working on and they are not considering it pretty much fixed

nice test! Can you compare the numbers of active players in loaded leagues vs start save? This is something which really interests me! Player search, all players -> advanced filter -> active in league

Cheers

Daveincid

[wicksyFM]

2 minutes ago, ratio1618 said:

Jesus christ......


Who else is gunna wait for the Jan transfer patch to buy Fm next year? 

Be lucky if I buy it next year. Last few years I have played less and less. This year feels like the final nail in the coffin. Seeing youth squads in playable leagues with hardly any players drives me mad 

[ratio1618]

4 minutes ago, wicksyFM said:

Be lucky if I buy it next year. Last few years I have played less and less. This year feels like the final nail in the coffin. Seeing youth squads in playable leagues with hardly any players drives me mad 

Big mood though. I might be doing the same tbh. You know its a dodgy release when i play more Rocket league than i do FM

[jib]

13 minutes ago, Daveincid said:

nice test! Can you compare the numbers of active players in loaded leagues vs start save? This is something which really interests me! Player search, all players -> advanced filter -> active in league

Cheers

Daveincid

Hey, I'd like to help, but I cant see where that option is...Im still drinking my morning coffee so I'll say that's why rather than I'm an idiot. I'm probably looking in the wrong place

[Junkhead]

36 minutes ago, metal_guitarist said:

5-8 a season is still miles too low. Man Utd's intake off the top of my head this year was 13 players for first year scholars + 1 second year with 27 players eligible to play U18s football this season. Of that 27, only 5 have been promoted early to the U23s full time early and at least 2 of those still play the bigger U18s games. A further 3 make the odd U23 appearance but are primarily with the U18s still. We usually average around 10-12 players a year for first year intake with a squad size of usually 22-25 players, whether that's players who have come through the younger age groups or whom we've signed from other clubs. The maximum you can offer are 30 scholarships across a two-year period in the UK. Most of the bigger Premier League clubs have similar intake numbers although Chelsea in particular tend to supplement their U18s with U16s a lot because a number of their U18s get promoted to the U23s quite early on as a lot of their young pros get sent out on loan. Think we've only had 2 games where U16s have been required to fill out the matchday squad.

Average for other English clubs tends to be 8-10 first year U18s and then they sign the 2nd year scholars or young pros who were released from bigger clubs to fill out their U23s/reserves/B teams. 

Yeah, I agree it's too low, and the in game affect is that teams have 5-11 players in their u18s, approx.

I think I would be ok if this was inactive or view only leagues. I generally have all available leagues active anyway plus some community creates ones. 60 odd countries would be enough, and with a starting database of towards 200,000 players, I doubt I would ever notice an effect.

However my current tests are running with a single division or country active on full detail with nothing in view only or no advanced settings.  The player database numbers are not dropping in the same ways as the bigger tests are, but I am getting u18 squads with 4-5 players in them as standard.

A stupidly high player number dropping is less of an issue to me, but AI youth teams being near empty is clearly a problem. 

I've seen a couple of people playing youth only saves and they seem to be getting intakes in line with past FM's whereas I am just running the game with no active manager. Maybe that makes a difference, but if AI teams are getting miniscule intakes then it is going to be unbelievably easy for human managers to nurture youth players and have a major long term advantage over the AI.

[Daveincid]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb jib:

Hey, I'd like to help, but I cant see where that option is...Im still drinking my morning coffee so I'll say that's why rather than I'm an idiot. I'm probably looking in the wrong place

lol You need to quit as a manager, then you see on the top right "Shortlist", go to "New Seach", "Advanced". "Club", "Division". With this we can see how many players are missing in the future in playable leagues. I really haven't figured out yet, what players are missing exactly....

[Captain Krakatoa]

If the custom database is bugged and one of the problem is because many players outside playable leagues,

Maybe playing with "medium" database could work as a little workaround? As with that size of database generate less players outside the playable leagues.

Idk just throwing out ideas man. Sadly i don't have a computer capability to simulate like 5 or 10 years forward with respectable speed

[jib]

@Daveincid Apologies if this isn't what you were asking for, but I think it is. The number of players in just the leagues I have selected as playable. This has actually made me more sad as it looks like a long save even with all leagues selected as playable wont work.

As you can see Germany and Spain seem to have more players but England, France and Italy have significantly less

AFK for a while but if there's a possibly helpful sim someone would like me to run later today and maybe overnight tonight, let me know and I'll see what I can do

[RetraC]

14 minutes ago, jib said:

@Daveincid Apologies if this isn't what you were asking for, but I think it is. The number of players in just the leagues I have selected as playable. This has actually made me more sad as it looks like a long save even with all leagues selected as playable wont work.

As you can see Germany and Spain seem to have more players but England, France and Italy have significantly less

AFK for a while but if there's a possibly helpful sim someone would like me to run later today and maybe overnight tonight, let me know and I'll see what I can do

i've had similar results in the english premier league. starting players in the division was 1401 which has dropped to 840 player in the division after 10 years, even though total player count is up 1000 players

[LeoFM]

Seems like the issue with unplayable leagues has somehow got worse after the update. I loaded Sweden as the only playable league and all players from top division clubs from all continents. At the start of the save, the player count was 90 000. Five years in it stands at 80 000. 

Total amount of players generating from youth intakes:

Year		Pre update	After update		

2020		3349		3412
2021		7982		6252
2022		4559		4588
2023		3677		2605
2024		2440		2101
2025		2205		2046

Avg 		4842		4200

Obviously there is a lot more testing to be done but these numbers do not look promising to me. 

Edited December 19, 2020 by LeoFM

[Junkhead]

I am running a 1 country test with all four divisions of Scotland on full detail on a small database with no additional files or advanced settings.  I have looked at 8 clubs in particular who are all at different levels with a decent variation of player numbers, rep & youth recruitment.  Table below, but this is generally what I am seeing in Dec 2025;

- Rangers' player numbers have almost halved. Celtic's drop has not been as severe, currently 55 players vs 65 at game start.  I think the game thinks Rangers simply had too many players at game start.

- Some club's player numbers have almost doubled (Dundee/Cove)

- Number of players joining clubs on the last intake day is between 2-5 for all 8 teams. 

- Total number of players across those 8 clubs has gone up by approx 5 each on average, although Rangers have had their squad almost halved.

- Average number of u18's per squad is 9.

- Small sample size & looks better than it did with the Prem only one I ran, but I haven't ran it for as long yet.

[ratio1618]

If you can check if some of the missing players are South American or Asian because one of the Si dudes said they were problematic still post patch

[Junkhead]

16 minutes ago, ratio1618 said:

If you can check if some of the missing players are South American or Asian because one of the Si dudes said they were problematic still post patch

394 in asia in Feb 2026, 281 in South America.  I'm not sure how many players would be there to start with starting with a small database & only Scotland running, so nothing to compare to. 

I am more interested in active leagues as SI have said they are aware of a problem in South America & Asia which means I am sure they will resolve it.  I want to understand if there is an issue in playable leagues.

Edited December 19, 2020 by Junkhead
further info

[swangin]

Are you kidding me? They didn't fix this with the latest patch?

 

 

[gibbo11]

Finding

10 hours ago, francis#17 said:

@Andrew JamesI've loaded 6 leagues, 3 playable and 3 view only: Premier League, Serie A, Bundlesliga, La Liga, Liga NOS, Ligue 1 respectively. I'm only in 2024 and the highest number of players in the u18s of any Prem team is 8 and the rest of the players are greyed out, and for many of the teams in the Prem they only have grey players. The biggest teams in the Prem have about 8 players while the smaller ones have between 0 to about 6 players. 

I know you've been working hard on this and it's probably not an easy issue to fix but I cant hide my disappointment at this as this is a standard game setup with no advanced db options and it is unplayable if I ever want to develop my teams academy short term or if I want to play a long term save. This definitely didn't happen in previous editions of the game.

The player count at the beginning of the game was 17,680 and somehow this increased to an approximate player count of 21000 (when looking at the add/remove leagues screen). I was trying to find out how this was possible with the lack of youth players and saw that although there are still lots of cases in the other nations I loaded (those top leagues I mentioned above) where there are hardly any or 0 youth players there were some teams that were absolutely stacked with players in the youth teams and had 30+ players in the u18/u19 and this may have lead to the increase in player counts. England definitely seems to be worst affected by the lack of youth players though. This seems to be really broken right now and what I really don't understand is why SI said  that between between 5 - 8 youth players entering teams is expected when that just isn't sustainable and isnt what happened in previous years.

Am I missing something here? Even if I am this isn't how it works in real life as those grey players should be active players.

Echoing this. Feels like I am missing something but 5-8 players in an intake (which seems like an absolute maximum) isn’t sustainable. Teams are littered with grey players in playable regions on my game, it’s not how previous editions worked and if this is a change then it’s a step backwards in my opinion of course.

 

[Platinum]

25 minutes ago, gibbo11 said:

Echoing this. Feels like I am missing something but 5-8 players in an intake (which seems like an absolute maximum) isn’t sustainable. Teams are littered with grey players in playable regions on my game, it’s not how previous editions worked and if this is a change then it’s a step backwards in my opinion of course.

 

The knock on effect of this 5-8 players cap per intake (with some teams having 0 per intake) is that the youth teams are filled with grey players so that the teams can actually have enough players to play matches.

To me that makes it  very clear that this isnt how it should be working. In every playable league each squad should be filled with active players.

I just did another test, all the same but this time with a large database and the results seemed to be worse in terms of the number of youth player. I still dont get where the increase in players is coming from

[Platinum]

I have a feeling the issue with playable leagues could be that the AI arent signing enough players from the intakes and those players become free agents.

So the actual number of players being generated is fine and that's why the player count increases, but those players are just free agents and the clubs didnt sign them on intake day. 

Edited December 19, 2020 by francis#17

[Leonbra]

Guys what did you think is it now playable? 

[jib]

2 minutes ago, Leonbra said:

Guys what did you think is it now playable? 

IMO if you're only going to play a few seasons its fine. If you want a long save then no

[TokyoWanderer]

hace 36 minutos, francis#17 dijo:

I have a feeling the issue with playable leagues could be that the AI arent signing enough players from the intakes and those players become free agents.

So the actual number of players being generated is fine and that's why the player count increases, but those players are just free agents and the clubs didnt sign them on intake day. 

I don't have the resources to test (crap laptop), but I've been thinking this may be an issue.  In my semi-pro team, I noticed that many intake players don't want to accept youth contracts (those who want to be "future prospect" instead of "youngster"), so you are forced to offer part-time or non-contracts, which count towards your wage budget. Maybe teams don't want to give contract to a lot of youth players if it is going to count towards the first team budget?

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, jib said:

IMO if you're only going to play a few seasons its fine. If you want a long save then no

Why not ? I mean even if there are low youth intake players the first team of any top division club would still be transfering players from all around the world, right ? So its not like you are going to face a team full of grey players in champions league in 2030 or 2040. 

On the other hand if you wanna play concentrating more (or only) on youth intake then yes. So it really depends of how you wanna play it i would say. Wouldn'd you agree ? 

[Huey Lewis]

4 hours ago, Junkhead said:

Yeah, I agree it's too low, and the in game affect is that teams have 5-11 players in their u18s, approx.

I think I would be ok if this was inactive or view only leagues. I generally have all available leagues active anyway plus some community creates ones. 60 odd countries would be enough, and with a starting database of towards 200,000 players, I doubt I would ever notice an effect.

However my current tests are running with a single division or country active on full detail with nothing in view only or no advanced settings.  The player database numbers are not dropping in the same ways as the bigger tests are, but I am getting u18 squads with 4-5 players in them as standard.

A stupidly high player number dropping is less of an issue to me, but AI youth teams being near empty is clearly a problem. 

I've seen a couple of people playing youth only saves and they seem to be getting intakes in line with past FM's whereas I am just running the game with no active manager. Maybe that makes a difference, but if AI teams are getting miniscule intakes then it is going to be unbelievably easy for human managers to nurture youth players and have a major long term advantage over the AI.

Was this the same in say FM20? Reckon it'd be really interested to see if this is something specific to FM21 or whether there has always behaved like this, it's just only the previous number drop issues have highlighted it. 

[Platinum]

4 minutes ago, Huey Lewis said:

Was this the same in say FM20? Reckon it'd be really interested to see if this is something specific to FM21 or whether there has always behaved like this, it's just only the previous number drop issues have highlighted it. 

I didnt have FM20 but in FM19 and the FMs  before the youth teams were always filled and there were no grey players.

[Leonbra]

I play many playable Leauges! 

 

Is the youth Bug in the playable Leauges too? 

[Junkhead]

3 minutes ago, Leonbra said:

I play many playable Leauges! 

 

Is the youth Bug in the playable Leauges too? 

Think so