How bad is the youth development bug right now?

[oblongata21]

@Pompeyboyzyoure a genuine mythbuster, that post needs to be pinned somewhere for anyone else that thinks youth development is bugged or doesnt work

Great job  

[CARRERA]

Great work by @Pompeyboyz and I appreciate that SI made changes to youth development progressen even though it still might need some balance. 

[Moonshine]

 

It’s the active regression of those with poor facilities that concerns me, @Pompeyboyz. If we look at @Makoto Nakamura most recent save, his top AML regressed from 16 to 21. Realism dictates that, even with the worst training facilities in the world, you’re going to improve with game time and naturally between those age…

 

I like that there has been some changes at basic and above, but a decently determined 16/52 player at 16, with poor facilities and 15-20 games minimum per season, still ought to be averaging a 10-15 CA increase over 5 years - not staying still, or actively regressing…

[Mars_Blackmon]

6 minutes ago, Moonshine said:

 

 

It’s the active regression of those with poor facilities that concerns me, @Pompeyboyz. If we look at @Makoto Nakamura most recent save, his top AML regressed from 16 to 21. Realism dictates that, even with the worst training facilities in the world, you’re going to improve with game time and naturally between those age…

 

I like that there has been some changes at basic and above, but a decently determined 16/52 player at 16, with poor facilities and 15-20 games minimum per season, still ought to be averaging a 10-15 CA increase over 5 years - not staying still, or actively regressing…

I think level of competition would play a role in that too. Not saying that is what’s happening here but that is usually what happens in the real world.

[Pompeyboyz]

12 minutes ago, Moonshine said:

 

 

It’s the active regression of those with poor facilities that concerns me, @Pompeyboyz. If we look at @Makoto Nakamura most recent save, his top AML regressed from 16 to 21. Realism dictates that, even with the worst training facilities in the world, you’re going to improve with game time and naturally between those age…

 

I like that there has been some changes at basic and above, but a decently determined 16/52 player at 16, with poor facilities and 15-20 games minimum per season, still ought to be averaging a 10-15 CA increase over 5 years - not staying still, or actively regressing…

I see another test coming up to see whether you are right or wrong. 

[Scoham]

1 hour ago, Moonshine said:

 

 

It’s the active regression of those with poor facilities that concerns me, @Pompeyboyz. If we look at @Makoto Nakamura most recent save, his top AML regressed from 16 to 21. Realism dictates that, even with the worst training facilities in the world, you’re going to improve with game time and naturally between those age…

 

I like that there has been some changes at basic and above, but a decently determined 16/52 player at 16, with poor facilities and 15-20 games minimum per season, still ought to be averaging a 10-15 CA increase over 5 years - not staying still, or actively regressing…

Don’t know the story of that player but not everyone IRL gets better every year from age 16 onwards. Injuries, attitude, facilities, how they fit with he manager/coaches/club/team mates, life outside of football etc can all have an impact.

There are plenty of examples of players who were very promising but never made it. Some don’t improve, some get worse and fall down the leagues - it may be that they didn’t keep themselves fit (physical decline) and that led to them not maintaining their technical and mental attributes.

[Prepper_Jack]

37 minutes ago, Moonshine said:

Realism dictates that, even with the worst training facilities in the world, you’re going to improve with game time and naturally between those age…

That's not really true, though. Most of the activity that humans (or all biological organisms really) do is more or less cyclical in nature. It may be headed in a particular direction, but there are ups, downs, and plateaus along the way as adjustments are made. This is particularly true when you are attempting to push a complex biological system like the human body to extremes, which is what competition is all about.

Take weight training, as an example. They have found that you need to go through a bulking period and a cutting period while developing. Bulking is where you eat a ton while training, so your body can generate the most muscle it can from your training sessions. Cutting is when you eat less, or even just go on a water fast, in order to get rid of the side effects of such an endeavor, and you train minimally or not at all during that period. It was originally done so that bodybuilders could look good on stage at 4% body fat, but then through this process they discovered that it had rather extreme hidden benefits. The body uses periods of fasting to consume scarred muscle tissue, which is pretty useless overall, and to regenerate and reinforce to some extent neural pathways and expand vascular systems. Where a weight trainer found they had a plateau they could not push beyond (literally), they suddenly found themselves able to push beyond that.

This is true within the mind as well. While athletes love to compete and strain their bodies for the endorphin rush, they can take it to an extreme where the body just says STOP. Endorphin rushes slow, and an athlete suddenly can't help but be disinterested in sports, even if they are compelled for other reasons to continue on. This is a form of depression, and quite a lot of top athletes can get serious bouts of depression, particularly after being pushed to the limit for extended periods. I presume this is what the game is trying to model with "jadedness".

A lot of athletics is about pushing the towards the peak, and managing the lows as best as possible. It is quite possible, with poor guidance and training, that athletes do stagnate, even regress. They can even become undisciplined shambles of their former selves, perhaps turning to alcohol and drug abuse. It's the responsibility of the people around them, particularly those managing athletes, to help them get back on course. It doesn't always happen, though. I wonder how often people who play this game take a player who is under-performing and just tosses them aside without comment, other that perhaps a "well, that guy's worthless" to themselves after running them ragged in 8 matches in a month. How many work with them in private chats to get them performing again?

So, yeah, some players should stagnate or regress, given their situation, and I find it a good thing the game attempts to model this in some fashion.

[Pompeyboyz]

1 hour ago, Moonshine said:

Realism dictates that, even with the worst training facilities in the world, you’re going to improve with game time and naturally between those age…

I think we need to have a step back at what poor facilities will be like!.  To me, poor would be your parks football when you are at the lowest levels. Quite often at those levels, you don't train during the week and turn up for a match at the weekend and see how it goes.  If you play at that level all your life, you are probably not going to improve much at all if ever, but the better players will not be doing that forever, as the scouts for the teams at levels above will take those better player to better clubs with better facilities and they will make improvements and then cycle will then repeat for the players that shine there and so on.  

So if a player remains at the lowest levels with the lowest facilities possible, then they will not probably improve much and that's what FM should be showing. Past Youth Only challenges, while fun to read, were a little unrealistic in the speedy nature of progress.  If a club tried to do a Youth only challenge in real life, they would not succeed. 

[Pompeyboyz]

Running a new test right now with Dover again and set all their facilities to 1 in the editor.

Let me tell you.....even the first seasons given a bit of food for thought and is giving result that raise more questions about how progression is now working  

[Nacaw]

13 hours ago, Prepper_Jack said:

This kind of thing is pretty damaging to player development, considering how costly learning a new position of play is in terms of ability points

This part you don't have to worry about. Position familiarity costs close to nothing until a certain threshold. Red dots won't inflate CA.

[Pompeyboyz]

OK boys and girls, are you ready for another little storytime with Pompeyboyz??

So, according to the prevailing rumour circulating that I feel I previously debunked, players at clubs with poor facilities are not progressing at all and generally regressing.

I have run another test at Dover where I reduced all their facilities to 1 and picked up 5 players all around the same age and looked at what occurred. 

Player 1 - Alex Green - Aged 17

Our old friend Alex Green returns for more testing fun and as we can see from the start, his CA is 46 and PA is 87.  Nothing special for a level 5 youth player. He spends 2 season in the Dover youth ranks with only 3 sub appearances in the first team and his CA doesn't move and his attributes have a small increase and then decrease.  He then moves to Concord who have better facilities, which are all one grade(i.e poor to fairly poor etc.) up from Dover and he makes a handful of appearances where his CA goes up 1 point and his attributes have a small increase to bring back to the level of his start.  After a season with Concord, he is off to Hornchurch whose facilities are back down to poor even though in numerical value they are slightly better than Dover. He makes a handful of appearances again in his first season with Hornchurch which has completely no effect on his CA or attributes .  Over the course of his next 3 seasons he is a first team regular making 40+ appearances and his CA rises by 1 point, then 7 points and then 3 points, while his attributes also make steady increases.  So it is at about 22 years old and at poor facilities when Alex Green starts to improve.   

Player 2 - TJ Bramble - Aged 21

So TJ Bramble remains at Dover all the way through here and is 4 years older than Alex Green when we start. Despite being a first team regular and making 310 appearances for Dover, his CA remains solid at 71 and his attributes drop slightly over the 7 seasons run, but not by a huge amount.  At the start his attributes total 306 and by the end 292.  So a drop of 14 points over 7 season at the worst of the worst facilities is not too bad IMHO.

Player 3 - Ryan Hanson - Aged 20

Ryan Hanson here starts the trend of posing questions about what is actually going on? He starts 3 years older than Alex Green and with a CA of 67 and PA 90.  In his first season with Dover, he jumps up 9 points in CA after playing 42 times. Well Well Well, we have a player at a team with the worst facilities having a decent CA jump.  Was it his game time??  Well in the next 2 seasons he plays 47 times in each and makes no further CA progress slightly dropping in season 2 and then slightly increasing in season 3 .  So game time is not a factor then maybe? So what happens when he goes to a club with better facilities? After 3 season with Dover, he is signed by Grimsby whose facilities are par for a lower football league team.  He spends 2 seasons there making 30 appearances in total, but his CA doesn't change at all and his attributes decrease slightly in his first season there but then remain the same for the second. He is then off to Harrogate whose facilities are marginally better than Grimsby, but still massively better than Dover, but despite 55 appearances for them, his CA still stays the same while his attributes increase slightly, but only in the second season.

Player 4 - Marshall Wratten - Aged 21

This is the first of our players who did not make it to the end of testing.  He starts on a CA of 55 and PA of 90 and is 4 years older than Alex Green.  He makes 2 increases of 8 points and then 2 points in his first 2 seasons at Dover, but his attributes do slightly decrease in season 1 and remain the same in season 2 and despite playing regularly for the 5 seasons he is in the game, after season 2 he heads into decline with a 7 points drop in CA in season 4

Player 5 - Sonny Graham - Aged 19

Now with Sonny Graham, I slightly cheated as he did not start at Dover, but was a free agent and I transferred him in using the in game editor.  I needed to do this so that I had the 5 players of similar ages and abilities to track. Over the 3 seasons he remains in game at Dover, his CA goes up 1 point from 65 to 66 and his attributes make slight increases year on year. Him dropping out so fast was a disappointment as slight increase were interesting.

So out of this testing, I think it is safe to say the conclusion is, there is no conclusion.  1 player remains under poor facilities but changes clubs and does nothing before suddenly having a bit of a later burst. Another player is under poor facilities throughout at the same club and is stagnant, while another player has a sudden early burst and then does nothing, even after moving to clubs with far better facilities. And then we get a further player that has a sudden early burst, holds for a bit then suddenly declines.

There is far far more than just facilities now at play here and working out exactly what it is might be a gargantuan task.  One area I have considered is the player personality that I know some people focus on in their saves.  due to me not managing the players, I do not have access to them in this and might be telling of some of the results here. 

but I will hand it over to you all once more to dissect my results and see if you can make sense of it   

[XaW]

Interesting analysis, but based on my own anecdotal evidence, the personality is key for this, and especially professionalism. So perhaps you could do a similar test with the professionalism set at 1,10, and 20 for example for 3 players as controlled variables?

[Pompeyboyz]

3 minutes ago, XaW said:

Interesting analysis, but based on my own anecdotal evidence, the personality is key for this, and especially professionalism. So perhaps you could do a similar test with the professionalism set at 1,10, and 20 for example for 3 players as controlled variables?

That will be my job tomorrow then between doing my normal day job

I will look at the 3 remaining players professionalism before starting just as a guide too.

[Football Manager Australia]

My Striker/AM Aaron Sollis (Newgen) has CA 95 and PA 195 when he arrived at my club as a Newgen in March 2022

Just under 14 months later, he now has a CA of 125. An increase of 30, I am pretty happy with that. I forsee within 3 years (Aged 20), he will be 190+ in his Current ability.

 

I'm at Liverpool by the way. So pretty damn good Youth Facilities and coaches. 

[phnompenhandy]

4 hours ago, XaW said:

Interesting analysis, but based on my own anecdotal evidence, the personality is key for this, and especially professionalism. So perhaps you could do a similar test with the professionalism set at 1,10, and 20 for example for 3 players as controlled variables?

Yes, and another test could be to keep the facilities the same at Dover, but increase the quality of the coaching staff to see if that makes a difference.

[zyfon5]

12 hours ago, Moonshine said:

 

 

It’s the active regression of those with poor facilities that concerns me, @Pompeyboyz. If we look at @Makoto Nakamura most recent save, his top AML regressed from 16 to 21. Realism dictates that, even with the worst training facilities in the world, you’re going to improve with game time and naturally between those age…

 

I like that there has been some changes at basic and above, but a decently determined 16/52 player at 16, with poor facilities and 15-20 games minimum per season, still ought to be averaging a 10-15 CA increase over 5 years - not staying still, or actively regressing…

Not every player improves with age even those with fairly high level of training playing at a high level of competition. The famous book 'Moneyball' talks about this a lot. Many promising young players did not improve with age because they peak early in their career and regress afterwards. And there are countless examples of this in every major sport young athletes that look really promising early on in their career and become mediocre afterwards.

[jcp1417]

On 13/11/2021 at 09:05, Mars_Blackmon said:

Just because you have the potential, playing time isn't enough to reach that. You need the right coaching and high end facilities to reach that potential IMO.

potential is a myth. The only reality is what a player is today. Potential is always measured by what the player can do now compared to what he might be able to do in the future

 

[Dbuk1]

The only thing that matters is what the creators intended. Is it working as it should?

[Pompeyboyz]

6 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

Yes, and another test could be to keep the facilities the same at Dover, but increase the quality of the coaching staff to see if that makes a difference.

I'll add that to my to do list 

[Pompeyboyz]

Just running a new test now with ideas from above and something I have never noticed before is that 3 of the 5 players are on Full Time contracts and the other 2 are Part Time(Alex Green and Marshall Wratten).  Now Dover are a Semi Pro club so AFAIK, they should not be offering FT contracts so this must be a hold over from when they might have been Professional before and the db has not updated the contract

[Pompeyboyz]

So, latest test results are in and I won't do all the excel stuff this time around. 

I have used the same 5 players and I reduced Dover down to the poor facilities once more.  I pulled in a number of top quality coaches and staff to the senior and U18 teams that were free agents and also tied the players to contracts till 2026 to try and stop them leaving 

The results were pretty much nothing changing from the above spreadsheets with some ups and some downs but nothing much different that shows the top class coaching made a difference here. 

I did note the professionalism of the players as suggested by @XaW and 2 of them had slight increases over time but that did not affect any seasonal changes that I could see. The 5 player all had fairly middle of the road professionalism stats between 9 and 14.  So on a later test I will test the extremes.

I am now going to see what happens if I make Dover professional and have everyone on full time contracts that's related to this test, i.e. the 5 players and the imported staff. 

[Dagenham_Dave]

Be careful though @Pompeyboyz, once you start messing about with unrealistic inputs, you may get an unrealistic output back. I think your first test with the details in the original game code will be the most accurate. 

Edited November 15, 2021 by Dagenham_Dave

[priority76]

My big take away from this, is that players no matter what training set up they have will never (or possibly rarely) get close to reaching their potential.  Which is a bit of a kick in the balls.

[DarJ]

23 minutes ago, priority76 said:

My big take away from this, is that players no matter what training set up they have will never (or possibly rarely) get close to reaching their potential.  Which is a bit of a kick in the balls.

You don't know that for sure. It's the AI doing the training in those tests and we know that human players do a way better job then the AI when it comes to youth development

[corn_onthecurb]

18 hours ago, Pompeyboyz said:

So out of this testing, I think it is safe to say the conclusion is, there is no conclusion.

I actually quite like that there is an element of randomness. As long as it's by design and there isn't a massive discrepancy in talent in 20 years of game time. 

[corn_onthecurb]

18 hours ago, Pompeyboyz said:

So out of this testing, I think it is safe to say the conclusion is, there is no conclusion.

I actually quite like that there is an element of randomness. As long as it's by design and there isn't a massive discrepancy in talent in 20 years of game time. 

[Pompeyboyz]

1 hour ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

Be careful though @Pompeyboyz, once you start messing about with unrealistic inputs, you may get an unrealistic output back. I think your first test with the details in the original game code will be the most accurate. 

Fully understand this.  Wanting to look at extremes and see what impact if any comes from it. 

current testing is returning some interesting results. 

I do have a further question for @Neil Brock.  If I make changes to an attribute within the in game editor i.e. Professionalism, that should reflect in results I'm getting after a couple of season.  Or should I tinker at the start only to get the maximum impact?

 

25 minutes ago, priority76 said:

My big take away from this, is that players no matter what training set up they have will never (or possibly rarely) get close to reaching their potential.  Which is a bit of a kick in the balls.

I think that what I am delivering does show a realistic view of football. A high PA player who remains at a low facilities club will be limited to how high his CA can go, but the better than club and facilities, the better the Ca can go. But I think there are stages in a players career where he needs to be at a good club to maximise his CA against the PA or his CA will be limited anyway.  

For example, a player with a PA of 190 and CA of 50 comes through at Dover with poor facilities will probably improve but if he stays there too long, it will be limited even if he then moves to Man Utd at about 22, whereas if he moves to say Man Utd before hitting 18 maybe, he has a better chance of maximising his CA against his PA.

I believe that there are so many factors at play here in player development, that I could test various permutations for months and still not come to a concrete answer. 

[Pompeyboyz]

8 minutes ago, DarJ said:

You don't know that for sure. It's the AI doing the training in those tests and we know that human players do a way better job then the AI when it comes to youth development

This is very true as I am purely an outside observer. 

In many of the tests, Dover swap managers once a season and that will probably impact settled players. 

[Miek]

18 hours ago, Pompeyboyz said:

 

So out of this testing, I think it is safe to say the conclusion is, there is no conclusion.  1 player remains under poor facilities but changes clubs and does nothing before suddenly having a bit of a later burst. Another player is under poor facilities throughout at the same club and is stagnant, while another player has a sudden early burst and then does nothing, even after moving to clubs with far better facilities. And then we get a further player that has a sudden early burst, holds for a bit then suddenly declines.

This is what I've been experiencing as well. I've only managed a semi-professional club in Northern Ireland and the youth development has been very wonky.
Some youngsters develop like FM21 (considering my facilities coaching and their attributes of course) while others are slowly declining from the ages of 16-21. 

I'm still not sure if it's a bug or some more randomness was added. It would make sense that lower level teams experience more volatility regarding their youth development although I always figured this was captured in the determination and professionalism attribute a player has. The under the hood mechanics behind youth development have definitely been tweaked compared to FM21. 

[Pompeyboyz]

With the latest testing I am doing, I think Professionalism isn't a single factor as I've pumped it up to 20 and down to 1 and seen little to no effect on the players.  There is far more randomness, or other factors interconnected that affect how a player progresses.

27 minutes ago, Miek said:

It would make sense that lower level teams experience more volatility regarding their youth development

I would say that is a very fair statement and something that has changed enough from FM21 into FM22 that people think its a bug rather than a feature. 

As an aside on comments about high potential too.  Look back at past issues of The Guardian ones to watch yearly lists and out of the 50 or so on that list, how many actually made it? You might recognise a name as a player, but did they hit the heights their potential warrants?

[HUNT3R]

It's worth noting that Determination, Professionalism and Ambition all have equal weight in terms of development. 

Then, there's the quality of the training facilities, coaches, the amount of (first team, especially) football and the level they're playing at.

It's also worth noting that even players with exactly the same attributes and match time, could end up on different scales of the progression score, so could end up developing (that's not to say that they won't develop) quite different from each other.

In short, it's something that's difficult to properly test for, if you can't see the progression scores under the hood, BUT imo, you've done a fantastic job of testing so far and you've at least calmed the hysteria.  

[Pompeyboyz]

2 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

It's worth noting that Determination, Professionalism and Determination all have equal weight in terms of development.

Is Determination twice as important as Professionalism 

[HUNT3R]

1 minute ago, Pompeyboyz said:

Is Determination twice as important as Professionalism 

 Corrected now. It's been a looooong day, as you can see!

[priority76]

1 hour ago, Pompeyboyz said:

For example, a player with a PA of 190 and CA of 50 comes through at Dover with poor facilities will probably improve but if he stays there too long, it will be limited even if he then moves to Man Utd at about 22, whereas if he moves to say Man Utd before hitting 18 maybe, he has a better chance of maximising his CA against his PA.

I would hope your test would show this.  I would like to think that if you had, say five high potential players at a big team with high determination, professionalism and ambition at least one of them would reach at least 80% of their potential.

[priority76]

1 hour ago, DarJ said:

You don't know that for sure. It's the AI doing the training in those tests and we know that human players do a way better job then the AI when it comes to youth development

I would like to think the human has a bit of an advantage in this.  However, throughout a game the AI is responsible for the development of the vast majority of players so i would hope it's somewhat capable of nurturing potential.

[Pompeyboyz]

Tests I have mentioned above have proven nothing conclusive once more so won't bother with the full details I recorded. Still the same slight ups and downs and nothing to pinpoint the cause.

I have one final set of tests to run before I take a break and get back to actually playing the game 

Based on a few comments, I am going to try and be as hands on with the players as I can without actually playing the game.  

Setup is with Dover once more.  I am not touching the facilities but will set the team as Professional.  I have selected a specific tactic and put the focused players in the tactic.  I have also set the players to individual training to match the position and role they "should" play. I have set them training schedules through to April(as the game won't let me do May even though there are matches).  I will add the good coaches as well and ask the AssMan to set their coaching. 

I will then go on holiday in 6 month spurts, and assuming I am not sacked check in.  Now I hope while I holiday that everything I have setup remains the same as I know the match tactic and players in positions can be set as part of it, but not sure what happens to training sets.

Once I have a few seasons of data I will rerun, but without the good coaches and Professional club status as that will effect my training schedules, and see what I get back after another few seasons.

[Pompeyboyz]

22 minutes ago, priority76 said:

I would hope your test would show this.  I would like to think that if you had, say five high potential players at a big team with high determination, professionalism and ambition at least one of them would reach at least 80% of their potential.

If you do the percentage maths on my first big test, Only 1 player failed to hit 75% of his PA in CA value and he barely made it over 60% while a three made it over 80% with two of those being over 85% and the big standout Dover Regen actually making it to 88% by the end.  I could drop back in and see what the determination, professionalism and ambition attributes are, but those % figures are much higher than I thought that they would be. 

[priority76]

Just now, Pompeyboyz said:

If you do the percentage maths on my first big test, Only 1 player failed to hit 75% of his PA in CA value and he barely made it over 60% while a three made it over 80% with two of those being over 85% and the big standout Dover Regen actually making it to 88% by the end.  I could drop back in and see what the determination, professionalism and ambition attributes are, but those % figures are much higher than I thought that they would be. 

I see, that is promising news.  Thanks!  I wonder why people were complaining that all their players were regressing, because that clearly is not the case.  Have you done any tests where you took over as manager then holidayed?

Edited November 15, 2021 by priority76

[Pompeyboyz]

23 minutes ago, priority76 said:

I see, that is promising news.  Thanks!  I wonder why people were complaining that all their players were regressing, because that clearly is not the case.  Have you done any tests where you took over as manager then holidayed?

Doing it right now and the results after just 1 season are impressive.  4 out of 5 players increased CA while the one that didn't is at about 97% PA from the start anyway. 

[jcp1417]

On 14/11/2021 at 08:32, Scoham said:

Don’t know the story of that player but not everyone IRL gets better every year from age 16 onwards. Injuries, attitude, facilities, how they fit with he manager/coaches/club/team mates, life outside of football etc can all have an impact.

There are plenty of examples of players who were very promising but never made it. Some don’t improve, some get worse and fall down the leagues - it may be that they didn’t keep themselves fit (physical decline) and that led to them not maintaining their technical and mental attributes.

Nice badge!!!

[enigmatic]

20 hours ago, Pompeyboyz said:

That will be my job tomorrow then between doing my normal day job

I will look at the 3 remaining players professionalism before starting just as a guide too.

Specifically, set the professionalism, determination and ambition. SI have said they each play a roughly equal role in making players more likely to develop/regress

[Pompeyboyz]

I ran the test I mention above for a few seasons and gained results which showed that implementing my own tactics and training schedules did impact on the players attributes associated to the position and role I set.  I think we would all agree this is to be expected. After about a season and a half the impact was lessened and results started to look pretty much the same as other tests have returned.  With a night to think about it, I made a few too many tweaks though to make it less then realistic as @Dagenham_Dave mentioned.

So, I am going to implement a similar testing scenario but do less tweaking.  As one of the more vocal proponents of the "bug" I have started a new test bed save at Yxhults which @Moonshine used for his save.  I have made myself the manager, recruited(not added, so they are only realistic appointments) a few staff to missing roles(I have tweaked the contracts to ensure they stick around though), added the tactic I want and gone on holiday for a season to get a new youth intake.  The facilities at Yxhults are poor and the players that have joined are pretty bad .  I was going to use 5 youth players, but only 4 are viable and even those are not all that good. I will tweak their contracts too, to try and ensure they remain at the club and in the game long term. 

As Yxhults are Semi Pro, I cannot implement my training schedules, but I can dictate the positional/role training.

I shall report back once I have some numbers. 

 

[fc.cadoni]

Bravo @Pompeyboyz! Community need people and gamers like you, mate! 🤙

[Mr U Rosler]

Anecdotally, in my youth only challenge my 2 highest potential players have all gone backwards, and that is after 4 seasons and 2 seasons respectively as FIRST CHOICE, FIRST TEAM players, 100+ first team games. I have a 3rd high potential player making zero progress with first team exposure. Anyone left in the youth squads makes zero progress.

Yes, my facilities are rubbish, but playing in the first team would normally be enough for players to progress. Not saying this is realistic or right, but it makes youth challenges largely unviable this year imo (unless your a sadist!). 

Appreciate only a tiny minority play the game this way, not sure if there are implications for the game world in longer saves, probably not as youth products coming from big clubs with good facilities will no doubt succeed.

Guess i'll have to come up with a new challenge.      

[Mars_Blackmon]

25 minutes ago, Mr U Rosler said:

Anecdotally, in my youth only challenge my 2 highest potential players have all gone backwards, and that is after 4 seasons and 2 seasons respectively as FIRST CHOICE, FIRST TEAM players, 100+ first team games. I have a 3rd high potential player making zero progress with first team exposure. Anyone left in the youth squads makes zero progress.

Yes, my facilities are rubbish, but playing in the first team would normally be enough for players to progress. Not saying this is realistic or right, but it makes youth challenges largely unviable this year imo (unless your a sadist!). 

Appreciate only a tiny minority play the game this way, not sure if there are implications for the game world in longer saves, probably not as youth products coming from big clubs with good facilities will no doubt succeed.

Guess i'll have to come up with a new challenge.      

Playing first team football in a poor league normally won’t realize full potential. If anything. I think it makes youth challenge more “challenging” and heavy reliance on winning, good coaching and upgrading facilities. 

[Pompeyboyz]

20 minutes ago, Mr U Rosler said:

Anecdotally, in my youth only challenge my 2 highest potential players have all gone backwards, and that is after 4 seasons and 2 seasons respectively as FIRST CHOICE, FIRST TEAM players, 100+ first team games. I have a 3rd high potential player making zero progress with first team exposure. Anyone left in the youth squads makes zero progress.

Just as a point of interest, when you say gone backwards, do you mean attribute wise or CA wise looking under the hood?

With my current test, which is proving to be a bit of a PITA, looking at only the attributes, 2 players who I picked did go backwards in terms of attributes, but not CA over the first season or two.  Both the players were being re-trained so think that plays a large role in that happening.  Once they were retrained to natural, they settled to a more general slight up and down on various attributes. 

Also as an interesting point, out of my 4 players, one player had a sharp and sudden drop in Professionalism and Ambition from 11 and 10 to 7 and 5.  He was on that was being retrained and in the third season had a single point CA drop.  The other retrained player was the only other one to have an Ambition of 10 or over and he slow CA increases over time, although his Attribute decreases have not reverted back yet. 

[Mr U Rosler]

14 minutes ago, Pompeyboyz said:

Just as a point of interest, when you say gone backwards, do you mean attribute wise or CA wise looking under the hood?

With my current test, which is proving to be a bit of a PITA, looking at only the attributes, 2 players who I picked did go backwards in terms of attributes, but not CA over the first season or two.  Both the players were being re-trained so think that plays a large role in that happening.  Once they were retrained to natural, they settled to a more general slight up and down on various attributes. 

Also as an interesting point, out of my 4 players, one player had a sharp and sudden drop in Professionalism and Ambition from 11 and 10 to 7 and 5.  He was on that was being retrained and in the third season had a single point CA drop.  The other retrained player was the only other one to have an Ambition of 10 or over and he slow CA increases over time, although his Attribute decreases have not reverted back yet. 

This a good example. Lost 15 attribute points from age 16 to 18. Played over 100 first team games in this time. He lost more points the next season despite his personality changing to 'professional'.

 

 

Corners -1                           Composure +2                   Work rate -1

Crossing -2                          Concentration -1             Pace -1

Finishing -1                        Decisions -1                       Stamina +1

Longshot -2                         Determination -1

Marking -1                          Flair +1

Penalties -1                         Leadership - 1

Tackling -2                        Off the ball  +1

Technique -1                     Teamwork -1

 

Attribute Changes

Negative = -19

Positive = 4

NEGATIVE -15 CHANGE!!

 

[HUNT3R]

48 minutes ago, Mr U Rosler said:

Anecdotally, in my youth only challenge my 2 highest potential players have all gone backwards, and that is after 4 seasons and 2 seasons respectively as FIRST CHOICE, FIRST TEAM players, 100+ first team games. I have a 3rd high potential player making zero progress with first team exposure. Anyone left in the youth squads makes zero progress.

Yes, my facilities are rubbish, but playing in the first team would normally be enough for players to progress. Not saying this is realistic or right, but it makes youth challenges largely unviable this year imo (unless your a sadist!). 

Appreciate only a tiny minority play the game this way, not sure if there are implications for the game world in longer saves, probably not as youth products coming from big clubs with good facilities will no doubt succeed.

Guess i'll have to come up with a new challenge.      

Keep in mind that even though they are getting first team matches, it's at a low level, so while there may be initial improvements, they can only improve so much given where they're playing. For development, it's important that players play at a suitable level. Not saying that's definitely the case with your issue, but it could be a factor. I see you have reported it, but can you upload a save for the devs to look at, please? If you can, please update that thread with the name of the save and the problem players.

[Mojo_Pin]

On 12/11/2021 at 22:26, Yer Maw said:

Another Brutal game breaking bug, please get it sorted quickly.

That's annoying, FM21 had a regen/long save bug at launch, too.

[Mr U Rosler]

In the interest of balance, I have had a couple of players make decent progress.

I guess its the uncertainty of who will and who won't improve with seemingly no rhyme or reason, versus they pretty much all will improve in previous versions.

More realistic, not wholly against this change, might restart with a slightly higher reputation team.