Is dynamic youth ratings for nations working how it should be?

[fc.cadoni]

2 minutes ago, RealSmokePL said:

Yes you have missed something since you can easily view it with the ige. 

Where? Can you post a screenshot?

[RealSmokePL]

7 minutes ago, fc.cadoni said:

Where? Can you post a screenshot?

Can't since I'm at school, but ircc then on the Nation's page click the pen and edit nation details sum like that and there's a section for youth rating. 

[fc.cadoni]

1 minute ago, RealSmokePL said:

Can't since I'm at school, but ircc then on the Nation's page click the pen and edit nation details sum like that and there's a section for youth rating. 

Found it. Thank you!

[kjarus1]

Good thread, very interesting comments and discussion since we all love these kind of long-term/challenging FM saves.

My personal intake:

- As someone mentioned, just because you won the World Cup out of nowhere shouldn't push your youth rating immediately because, realistically, it will inspire the kids age 5-10 to play football and, thus, it would take another 5-10 years to see them coming through youth academy. Also, given that you are sustaining the international/club success (otherwise these kids would loose the interest)

- Some very small nations should just never reach high youth rating due to their limitation in population/economical resources etc. No offence to some of you, but San Marino and Andorra have population of 30k and 78k respectively, it would be considered as a big village in some countries. The population is just not big enough to produce a full squad that is able to compete in World Cup or/and, arguably, even Euro Cup. Your best bet should be the naturalization of foreigners and a 'one-off' decent player/s coming through youth.

- For 'bigger but not so big' countries like, Belarus/Hungary/Latvia, the dynamic youth rating should grow exponentially with every generation and be driven by a sustained international and club success. And the word 'sustained' is very important here. For example, let's say in 2030 you win Champions League or World Cup, the kids get more interested in football and then you win Champions League for another 10 years. The youth intake 2035 (+1 to youth rating), youth intake 2036 (+2), youth intake 2037 (+3) and etc. until you turn a nation into a football-obsessed one. On the other hand, if you are not able to sustain the success the youth rating should only probably grow a little as only some kids will continue playing football since your 2030 win, others will drop and loose the interest, and the new generation won't be interested to try as much.

I think it would be interesting to test whether this exponential growth happens/at what ratio and, if yes, in my eyes SI has correctly implemented the dynamic youth rating.

Edited November 26, 2021 by kjarus1

[forameuss]

2 hours ago, kjarus1 said:

Good thread, very interesting comments and discussion since we all love these kind of long-term/challenging FM saves.

My personal intake:

- As someone mentioned, just because you won the World Cup out of nowhere shouldn't push your youth rating immediately because, realistically, it will inspire the kids age 5-10 to play football and, thus, it would take another 5-10 years to see them coming through youth academy. Also, given that you are sustaining the international/club success (otherwise these kids would loose the interest)

- Some very small nations should just never reach high youth rating due to their limitation in population/economical resources etc. No offence to some of you, but San Marino and Andorra have population of 30k and 78k respectively, it would be considered as a big village in some countries. The population is just not big enough to produce a full squad that is able to compete in World Cup or/and, arguably, even Euro Cup. Your best bet should be the naturalization of foreigners and a 'one-off' decent player/s coming through youth.

- For 'bigger but not so big' countries like, Belarus/Hungary/Latvia, the dynamic youth rating should grow exponentially with every generation and be driven by a sustained international and club success. And the word 'sustained' is very important here. For example, let's say in 2030 you win Champions League or World Cup, the kids get more interested in football and then you win Champions League for another 10 years. The youth intake 2035 (+1 to youth rating), youth intake 2036 (+2), youth intake 2037 (+3) and etc. until you turn a nation into a football-obsessed one. On the other hand, if you are not able to sustain the success the youth rating should only probably grow a little as only some kids will continue playing football since your 2030 win, others will drop and loose the interest, and the new generation won't be interested to try as much.

I think it would be interesting to test whether this exponential growth happens/at what ratio and, if yes, in my eyes SI has correctly implemented the dynamic youth rating.

I posted in another similar thread somewhere along these lines, so completely agree with pretty much everything here, particularly the bolded part.  This should've been a feature that was left to be discovered on its own.  Personally I think it's probably working close to how it should be, but people were seeing Miles talk about it and imagine that without 20 years San Marino would be winning a World Cup.

[duesouth]

Excellent posts above.  Of course, if SI are producing a 100% realistic game - then there's no question that this has to be the way forward.  However, in game, it is difficult - but possible to win the Champions League with a San Marino League team.  People have done it as part of the San Marino Challenge (I won the Europa League with San Giovanni),  In game, it is difficult - but possible to win the World Cup with San Marino - I've done it.  So, given that, I think the dynamic youth ratings are something to make the youth element a lot less than it has been.

I've just gone into my old FM19 save, with the old San Marino Calcio Serie A title winners 13 years in a row.  Facilities all maxed out, top HOYD and youth intake after youth intake which is garbage.  Now, I do know this is probably more realistic - but my point is that San Marino Calcio winning Serie A 13 times in a row is not realistic at all.  It's "gamey" - and therefore, for me, Dynamic Youth Rankings at least needs to have some element of "gamey" otherwise a long term save like this (and tons of people do them) become way less enjoyable if your youth intakes aren't "connected" to what you are achieving as a club side/nation.  There were so many poor youth intakes in this save, I nearly gave it up - but kept going because I didn't click with FM20 and went back to the save.  I'm not saying every single intake should be full of 5* PA players - but something needed to change given the long term dominance of the club and growth of the nation from a game standpoint.

If SI want a 100% realistic game, then make it impossible to win the Champions League with a San Marino League team or a World Cup with San Marino.  If not, for me the dynamic youth ratings need to move beyond what is realistic in real life.

The above produces intakes like this:

In the meantime, my FM22 save is on hold as I don't know if I will need to start a new save to pick up any changes to DYR - so if anyone from SI could confirm this, I would be very, very grateful - as I was really enjoying the save, but don't want to waste time on it until any patch comes out if a new save will be needed.

[Invector]

If your club, no matter what club it is, is able to win 5 champions league every 10 years, should produce at least one very high potential player every 3-4 years, and produce decent players (you know those players, like, not quite Messi or Ronaldo, but kinda like Alexander-Arnold or Shaun Wright-Phillips, not world class but can play for top 10 clubs) in other years. If you got the top tier facilities that is.

[kjarus1]

On 27/11/2021 at 17:52, duesouth said:

Excellent posts above.  Of course, if SI are producing a 100% realistic game - then there's no question that this has to be the way forward.  However, in game, it is difficult - but possible to win the Champions League with a San Marino League team.  People have done it as part of the San Marino Challenge (I won the Europa League with San Giovanni),  In game, it is difficult - but possible to win the World Cup with San Marino - I've done it.  So, given that, I think the dynamic youth ratings are something to make the youth element a lot less than it has been.

I've just gone into my old FM19 save, with the old San Marino Calcio Serie A title winners 13 years in a row.  Facilities all maxed out, top HOYD and youth intake after youth intake which is garbage.  Now, I do know this is probably more realistic - but my point is that San Marino Calcio winning Serie A 13 times in a row is not realistic at all.  It's "gamey" - and therefore, for me, Dynamic Youth Rankings at least needs to have some element of "gamey" otherwise a long term save like this (and tons of people do them) become way less enjoyable if your youth intakes aren't "connected" to what you are achieving as a club side/nation.  There were so many poor youth intakes in this save, I nearly gave it up - but kept going because I didn't click with FM20 and went back to the save.  I'm not saying every single intake should be full of 5* PA players - but something needed to change given the long term dominance of the club and growth of the nation from a game standpoint.

If SI want a 100% realistic game, then make it impossible to win the Champions League with a San Marino League team or a World Cup with San Marino.  If not, for me the dynamic youth ratings need to move beyond what is realistic in real life.

The above produces intakes like this:

In the meantime, my FM22 save is on hold as I don't know if I will need to start a new save to pick up any changes to DYR - so if anyone from SI could confirm this, I would be very, very grateful - as I was really enjoying the save, but don't want to waste time on it until any patch comes out if a new save will be needed.

That's an interesting an argument and I see where are you coming from - I guess if you want to make it more 'gamey', SI has provided you with the in-game editor and the possibility to change Youth Rating based on your own rules/judgement right? At least that's the possibility from this year...

About San Marino, the way to make it more realistic would be that somehow by you winning all those world cups and CLs the San Marino population has started to grow, but then I would start questioning whether we are playing Football Manager or some sort of World's simulation.

I think the deep problem with this dynamic youth rating in the game is that for it to increase a lot - you need to win the biggest competitions and by the time you do that, you may as well loose interest in the save because you have already won everything multiple times. Not sure how interesting it is then to keep playin just for the sake of having insane New Gens, unless, of course you are interested in changing clubs but staying in the same country.

Edited November 30, 2021 by kjarus1

[duesouth]

16 hours ago, kjarus1 said:

That's an interesting an argument and I see where are you coming from - I guess if you want to make it more 'gamey', SI has provided you with the in-game editor and the possibility to change Youth Rating based on your own rules/judgement right? At least that's the possibility from this year...

About San Marino, the way to make it more realistic would be that somehow by you winning all those world cups and CLs the San Marino population has started to grow, but then I would start questioning whether we are playing Football Manager or some sort of World's simulation.

I think the deep problem with this dynamic youth rating in the game is that for it to increase a lot - you need to win the biggest competitions and by the time you do that, you may as well loose interest in the save because you have already won everything multiple times. Not sure how interesting it is then to keep playin just for the sake of having insane New Gens, unless, of course you are interested in changing clubs but staying in the same country.

I guess I could go in and change the youth rating in the in-game editor, although that might be a bit too "gamey" !

In game dynamic youth ratings given what you can achieve in FM and not real life seemed like a great move by SI - and indeed I was going to change my whole strategy.  In past San Marino Challenge saves, I got to Serie A ASAP using loans heavily - and then with the TV money improved the facilities.  This time, with DYR, my plan was to try to grow the national team and keep the club side in the Italian league system at or perhaps just above the level of my intakes.  That way, I could develop youth players as well as I possibly could, which would then hopefully breed even greater NT success.  I figured as the NT went up the world rankings, my intakes would very slowly improve over the length of the save.

Given in FM19, even after winning Serie A 13 years straight and winning the World Cup with the NT, most youth players were at Serie C level (and I felt were linked to the San Marino League's status more than anything - this was ranked 28th in the world in 2045), I wanted to avoid that "disconnection" in level of intakes.  Obviously, it's a different setup with a club from San Marino in the Italian league system, and perhaps the nation didn't benefit from this success as it was seen as Italian.  I would guess FC Andorra would be the same in the Spanish league system - but different for FC Vaduz in the Swiss League as there's no league in Liechtenstein, the intakes were Swiss League level and that challenge is therefore easier than the San Marino or Andorra version.

Perhaps I have misunderstood how much DYR are going to change (which is why I asked Neil/SI how they are intended to work, but sadly no response).  I looked at world rankings - and compared them to the starting youth rankings.  What I saw were definite bands.  San Marino actually have a very good YR compared to others in the world 180-210.  They belong more in the world 151-180 range.  However, I did feel if I could get San Marino into the top 150 in the world and keep them there (or push on), then the DYR would rise to the high 30's/low 40's - in line with teams in that "band".  I didn't think about population enough though, and was thinking too narrowly.

But essentially, I wasn't thinking you would need to win the World Cup for the DYR to change - but it would be a slow increase much as your world ranking takes a long time to go up, but with a delay to show that any increase is no flash in the pan.  Maybe I was wrong in that, and perhaps a nation like San Marino would be capped because of population - but would love to know for sure to plan my save (if I go back to it, haven't played it in a while).  They have to fix it first though!

[duesouth]

Patch is out - don't see Dynamic Youth Ratings in the change list - but it does say "including, and not limited to" - so maybe...

[Deego619]

I think the expectation of YR going up by 20 for winning one competition is a bit unrealistic, but some of the examples here where YR has dropped in these instances is really confusing.

SI needs to explain better what calculations go into the YR, as at the moment it just does not seem to work as intended at all, appears to be very RNG and is not taking into account successes on the pitch or facilities improvements. 

If after 30 years of a build a nation save, the YR barely moves, then it's a near useless new feature. 

[forameuss]

2 hours ago, Renyy said:

Where are you seeing that expectation?

It's clearly hyperbole, but in this thread there have been some pretty similar claims, talking about winning a few Champions Leagues and thinking there should be visible changes.  Changes to this field should be generational, not based on a few competition wins.

6 hours ago, Deego619 said:

I think the expectation of YR going up by 20 for winning one competition is a bit unrealistic, but some of the examples here where YR has dropped in these instances is really confusing.

If after 30 years of a build a nation save, the YR barely moves, then it's a near useless new feature. 

I agree with the first part, but not the 2nd.  If we're talking about keeping it "realistic", then changes should be generational, and you should only start seeing noticeable changes over 20-30 year periods.

However, the question becomes whether there should ever be "noticeable" changes at all with this.  Unless you're looking at the dynamic number with the editor - which is one part of the overall function - are you really going to notice much at all?  If you suddenly get a tremendous youth player, is that because of this improvement, or would have happened anyway?

Personally I'd not have mentioned this at all and left it as something that contributes to a wider notion of "youth development improved".  Mentioning it, and calling it big as Miles did, set it up for failure from the start.

[Deego619]

2 hours ago, forameuss said:

Personally I'd not have mentioned this at all and left it as something that contributes to a wider notion of "youth development improved".  Mentioning it, and calling it big as Miles did, set it up for failure from the start.

Agreed fully here and I think this is the bottom line here really. To make a dynamic youth rating something that's front and center promoted as a new feature, and then have it being a very miniscule impact for any gamers having success in smaller nations after 20/30/40 years of success is a bit disappointing. 

Even if that's realistic, from a gaming perspective it's quite disappointing to hype it as a front and center new feature only for it to not be noticeable at all for 30/40 year long saves, which are very much rarer in the community. 

[XaW]

6 hours ago, Deego619 said:

it's quite disappointing to hype it as a front and center new feature only for it to not be noticeable at all for 30/40 year long saves, which are very much rarer in the community. 

I'll just casually mention that the ONLY place it was mentioned was as a single tweet from Miles along with hundreds of other features. So it was never front nor center.

That said, I hope this will be a little more impacted than it seemingly has been. It should move a bit, but I still think you should look at 50 years to go from very low to very high even with max results.

[vikeologist]

14 minutes ago, XaW said:

I'll just casually mention that the ONLY place it was mentioned was as a single tweet from Miles along with hundreds of other features. So it was never front nor center.

That said, I hope this will be a little more impacted than it seemingly has been. It should move a bit, but I still think you should look at 50 years to go from very low to very high even with max results.

I'm not suggesting this is a huge deal, but when you have a feature that's going to be very popular with some players, even one tweet will seem big. I'm surprised it was just one tweet. To me subjectively this feature did seem front and centre. I'd suggest the implementation was ill judged. It's not the end of the world. We looked forward to it, and as it turns out, it's disappointing. 

There are some types of saves predicated on this feature. Hell, I even created and started a challenge based on it, but now we understand the limited extent of it.

 

[XaW]

1 minute ago, vikeologist said:

I'm not suggesting this is a huge deal, but when you have a feature that's going to be very popular with some players, even one tweet will seem big. I'm surprised it was just one tweet. To me subjectively this feature did seem front and centre. I'd suggest the implementation was ill judged. It's not the end of the world. We looked forward to it, and as it turns out, it's disappointing. 

There are some types of saves predicated on this feature. Hell, I even created and started a challenge based on it, but now we understand the limited extent of it.

 

Oh, I agree! I want this to work as I'm currently in a challenge that needs this to work! And for me as well, it was the biggest feature of FM22, but it was not announces "front and center", even if for some of us it was a key thing.

[vikeologist]

Again, not trying to make a bigger deal out of this than it is, but it wasn't just one tweet. SI staff have sort of said, hey there's this new feature, and we're going to keep it a secret exactly how it works. 

Is it some magical combination of lots of performance, economic, geographic correlations incorporating all the manifold club and national team happenings? Something that future generations are going to win the Nobel Prize for Mathematics for figuring out.

No. If a national team rockets up the rankings, their Youth rating will go up by 1; eventually.

Not just one tweet.

[duesouth]

37 minutes ago, vikeologist said:

To me subjectively this feature did seem front and centre.

It was for me as well.  I was plotting my save based on it now being in the game.  SI have acknowledged there's an issue with DYR for smaller nations.  Hey, it's a new feature and they might not have tested it for San Marino or Andorra - I get it when time is tight and the game is so huge.

A fix doesn't appear to have made it to the patch yesterday (I did ask for confirmation, but radio silence) - again, such is life - I'll just change my cunning plan in my save to a non-DYR plan.  A little disappointing, but maybe the fix isn't straight forward and they of course have other bugs, so that's life.

But one point I would make on DYR - which is a potentially excellent addition for smaller nation saves - the communication from SI could be much better on it.  How is it supposed to work?  What factors that I can control in a save will improve my youth rating?  We've clearly got people here who have tested for SI - and that's fine - but hard for them to test without knowing how it should work.  I know this forum can sometimes be rather toxic - but there are also passionate and knowledgeable FM players on here who want to understand how the game works and are happy to work with SI in terms of testing and the like.  I'm not asking for someone from SI to spend half a day on here talking to us - but to take 5 or 10 minutes to explain this new feature would be cool.

For now, I'm not going to expect a fix for FM22 and play the game as I did before.  I don't know how much it would have changed my save - perhaps very little anyway.  It's not the end of the world in the scheme of things - bugs happen with new features, but I do think better communication would have reduced the frustration.

[vikeologist]

I mean, the feature is basically a month old, not counting the beta, and can be adjusted. Pretty certain to be save game compatible I'd have thought. Perhaps it has already been adjusted. The update only came out yesterday, I think. 

It's also important to bear in mind how important 'realism' is for some players. The major football nations today are the same as they were 50 years ago. No African, N American or Asian nation has emerged. No nation has started producing a much higher number of top footballers than 50 years ago. Maybe Africa as a whole.

It probably shouldn't be adjusted too much.

My main disappointment isn't the speed. It's the lack of complexity in the way it works, (seemingly), and probably incorporating lots of different factors into the dynamics won't happen this year.

But, it's a new feature. Have to start somewhere.

[duesouth]

1 hour ago, vikeologist said:

Perhaps it has already been adjusted. The update only came out yesterday, I think.

Yeah, update was yesterday.  It's not on the change list, but could still have been tweaked.  I did ask SI, but no reply - so maybe if someone has some spare time and a fast PC, they can repeat the test?

[rogerdoger]

Whether or not the feature is front and centre or not is not really that relevant, it's a feature and its current implementation seems dodgy at best, especially when looking at what current tests show. Even if it was just some small thing, I can't really imagine that it is working as intended right now, and its effects is almost the opposite of what my expectations were. As of now, the only countries that seem to have an improvement are the already dominant ones, where already fully "developed" footballing nations like England can relatively quickly grow from ~130 to max.

Now, football is already well established in these nations, what realistically can the English FA do to consistently create new Messis and Ronaldos on a yearly basis that they haven't already been trying to do for the last 10/20/30/... years that would suddenly have such a strong effect? Whereas the job of fostering talent should be much easier for a smaller nation that simply decides to do even just a fraction of what the top nations have been doing for decades; investing in academies, building infrastructure, etc. I understand that population is one factor, and that it should be essentially more difficult for microstates like San Marino or Gibraltar to produce the raw talent, but I see no reason why nations such as Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Austria shouldn't show a much greater growth in a shorter time than the big nations have. Football is already well established here, and given the resources and investments necessary to "match" the big boys they should be closing the gap, not making it larger.

I guess my point is that if "time-frame" was the problem here, we would see smaller nations approach the larger ones at a slow pace, not the big dogs shooting ahead. What we have now is the completely opposite situation; nations that have lived and breathed football for decades suddenly figure out how to breed super-humans on a consistent basis, while populations of other nations essentially are depicted as having no raw talent at all, regardless of domestic football opportunities or "hype".

In real life, an english kid with high raw footballing talent would be snapped up at the age of 10 in the blink of an eye by some huge academy system and have every opportunity to develop and succeed. England winning the world championship would probably have little effect on this. A natural born footballer in Finland would have much more to gain if there was a similar system in place there, and Finland winning the world championship would have a huge impact on the state of the game domestically and for convincing children/adolescents to really commit to football as a career.

TL;DR:
The current dynamic youth rating seems to be an inversion of how it really should be. It should be fundamentally easier to make low rating nations catch up than high rating nations to shoot ahead, especially given the kind of consistent over-performance that is possible in a game such as FM.

Edited December 8, 2021 by rogerdoger

[rogerdoger]

1 hour ago, vikeologist said:

It's also important to bear in mind how important 'realism' is for some players. The major football nations today are the same as they were 50 years ago. No African, N American or Asian nation has emerged. No nation has started producing a much higher number of top footballers than 50 years ago. Maybe Africa as a whole.

I disagree with this, I'd say that football quality has never been this consistently high throughout the world, and there are plenty of examples where "smaller" nations that have decided to invest and commit have grown in stature quite quickly. Internationally, there are significantly less "easy" games for major nations now. Serbia comes out ahead of Portugal in the WC qualifiers, Sweden/Denmark consistently reach championship playoffs, Italy are edged out by Switzerland and are close to not qualifying to yet AGAIN, Wales appears to have become an international powerhouse, the Netherlands barely scrape by in front of Turkey and Norway, North Macedonia make a good showing against the likes of Germany... This is only numbers from the current WC qualifiers, and there are similar stories the last couple of years.
These examples are all EU, but that only shows that the largest factor in domestic improvement is what FM defines as GAME IMPORTANCE; what is the stature of football inside a given country. If it is the dominant sport, which it is in most of these, the skill-gap is more prone to closing than increasing, given investment and time.

We can also take a look at Asia and world cup statistics:
Before 1990, a total of EIGHT (8) Asian nations had qualified for WC. Since 1990, that number has grown to 38.
Before 1994, ONE (1) Asian nation had made playoffs, while NINE (9) more have achieved that since.
South Korea and Japan consistently qualify and perform better than many established European footballing nations.

Africa:
Before 1990, EIGHT (8) African nations qualified for WC, since then we've had another 36.
No African nation made playoffs before 1986, since then we've had 13.
Cameroon has made WC 7 out of 10 times since 1982, never before that.
Nigeria has made WC 6 out of 7 times since 1994, never before that.

How many times has England won the World Cup since 1990?
How much relatively "better" have they gotten in this time-frame?

To me it looks like the big nations are mostly delivering at the same level, with some occasional spells of dominance, while other nations are consistently catching up. This comes down to the accessibility of- and investment into the game of football in "the rest of the world", which does much more to even out the playing field than spreading it out. One can argue that a big reason for increased performance of these national teams are the fact that big leagues throw a wide net and fetch talent globally, but to me this just means that potential exists everywhere and the nations that create infrastructure to exploit this will eventually catch up.

In FM-terms; if Hungary wins the world cup in 2026, and the top Hungarian domestic side invests 1b pounds into training facilities, recruitment and youth coaching (and keep at it for a decade or two), OF COURSE they would produce an entirely different calibre of footballers in 2040. This stuff should happen quicker at lower youth rating than higher.

 

[vikeologist]

SI have hinted that financial / infrastructure element might come into play, and in the editor there is a thing called State of Development. If that changed at some point during the game, and if it had a big effect, it could be an interesting part of this feature, but I'm not at all sure it's linked.

If anybody has gone quite a few seasons into a save, does China at some point become a Developed state, and does that have any obvious effect, especially on the generated players youth rating of 60.

State of Development must do something, otherwise it wouldn't be in there, but I've no idea if it's dynamic. I don't even know whether it's new as it's years since I've bought the IGE, and only bought it this time to check out this (Youth rating) feature, which as it turns out was pointless.

[fc.cadoni]

I think the State of Development, Economic Factor, Attraction, Game Importance is playing a ball with Youth Rating - it's connected. So, while that stats remain the same and it's not fluid; that tells me that Youth Rating alone is only half of the half of story about "Dynamic Youth Rating". I think we need a more clear insight from SI about this.

[vikeologist]

 

[properdisco]

On 16/11/2021 at 04:51, rusty217 said:

Why would that affect the dynamic rating? If it affected anything it would have already affected the game start 2021 rating since it's already happened. But IIRC youth ratings only affect players of that nationality, so them potentially getting less youth players from the EU shouldn't affect it anyway.

Bit of a galaxy brain thought but could it be they've factored in a probable decline in migration to the UK? A large amount of the current England NT were not born here.

[vikeologist]

So, my take is that this is working in precisely the opposite way many of us would want it to. We'd like to be able to improve the rating for the nation through having club success via youth or just national players, but the way to improve it is to bring in loads of top foreigners like China is doing.

[CFuller]

2 hours ago, properdisco said:

A large amount of the current England NT were not born here.

England's national team is more culturally diverse than it has been, but of all the players called up this year, only Fikayo Tomori and Raheem Sterling were actually born outside England.

I know this isn't strictly on topic, but I thought this statement needed to be clarified.

Edited December 9, 2021 by CFuller

[rusty217]

2 hours ago, properdisco said:

Bit of a galaxy brain thought but could it be they've factored in a probable decline in migration to the UK? A large amount of the current England NT were not born here.

How many England players from EU countries (other than Ireland) have there ever been? Very very few I'd imagine. Most of the England players not born in England are typically from current or former British colonies. The UK leaving the EU doesn't undo the British colonial empire.

[Belgrave]

Hi All,

Following the DYR "reveal" in the bugs thread yesterday, I've been running a holiday save on FM22.2 in Latvia as follows -

Large Database

Latvia as the only league

I took Latvia's existing SoD/EF/FAFP/GI (Developing/14/10/Important) and increased them to the max level across the board, I have then tracked the NYR to see what development there is.

I have made no adjustments at club level regarding Training facilities/Youth Facilities/Coaching/Youth Recruitment.

I have also added a few other countries to the spreadsheet after 15 years (it didn't occur to me prior to this truthfully - but thought it may direct me as to why the increases have occurred), 

As we can see Latvia have improved at a similar rate to the 2 other major developers and overall a couple of rises but no drops on the other countries I've reviewed. I've also added the results of the WC & Euros since 2020.

SI advised it wasn't relevant to National Team Ranking, Holland who have had prolonged success on the international scene are still 100 NYR which indicates to me this is true (not that I believed them to be lying).

On a European front, from a quick look Latvian clubs have progressively done worse in Europe from qualifying yearly for Europa League/Conference League to not progressed beyond qualifying for either the Champions League or Europa League, with few ventures into the Conference League, and have seen minimal increases in training/youth facilities & youth recruitment (+1 on all over the 20 years for the most successful club).

But given the success on Spanish teams on the European stage (4 in the top 10 European Coefficients) I'd presume Club European/International performance isn't affecting anything either.

I've considered running a control version but I expect there would be no or minimal changes to NYR in Latvia.

As the changes I have made are, AFAIK, fixed values that do not change during the game, (all countries SoD/EF/FAFP/GI are the same on a new game as they are in 2041) do we have any other ideas where the "decision" is made aside RNG.

Hope this helps, even if it just shows what we want to improve to create "our" realistic DYR.

 

Edit - "Improved" English.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Belgrave

[Belgrave]

5 minutes ago, Renyy said:

I'm currently in 2039 in Latvia so that might as well be your control. NYR has gone up to 65, but hasn't changed in a few years now and I just won Champions League. I suspect the minimal increase is due to me signing a bunch of foreigners over the last 10 years, which I haven't done lately as my scouting has gotten more accurate. Might as well give it a go and just sign 40-50 wonderkids next off-season to see whether it does anything. Seeing as I'm required to have half my squad be Latvian though Latvia looks kinda doomed for developing youth rating. 

Thanks, you've saved me and my slow as laptop about 7 hours of staring at the progression screen.

I think, what "we" hoped/anticipated the DYR was going to be and what it is are opposite ends of the same street.

I think that a majority of people are satisfied with the YR system in historical versions of FM and this is a step into the unknown for SI, hence the seeming glacial rate of change to NYR.

I'd say we know more than we knew yesterday, and although one swallow does not a summer make, we can seemingly force NYR improvement for our countries of choice by making the changes I have, albeit by changing fixed stats that I'm unsure what affect this would have in game truthfully.

If we can find a way to "supercharge" this increase, i.e double it by creating a perfect set of circumstances, then it would perhaps mean we can take more enjoyment from committing to the longer saves we are either already doing or planning.

I guess there needs to be a finite number of NYR points to go around, SI don't want every country with 200 NYR but perhaps performances on the international stage could have more of an impact over the next 5 year period say.

I would say for a young person to be captivated by international success, the change in interest is more in the 10-14 age group rather than 6-9 (captivated yes, likely to retain interest - probably not) or 15-18 (again captivated yes, but a reduce difference in potential ability vs 10-14 year olds), meaning a progressive growth from the start of international success (relative to the countries current success levels) would be interesting.

For any country to win the WC/Euro's is a massive achievement and should generate a boost in YR, for a smaller nation (San Marino/Latvia/Scotland) to win their Nations League, Qualify for a Major Tournament should trigger some additional YR, then it just needs to be adjusted/pro-rata'd depending on current NYR rating and implemented over a 5 or so year period. I realise this is talking implementation on an idea that I have rather than an SI idea but just seems this would be the best solution to the question at hand.

Plus for every successful country there is a country that underachieves and could see the reverse.

[Sunstrikuuu]

48 minutes ago, Belgrave said:

Plus for every successful country there is a country that underachieves and could see the reverse.

Yes, but not as a zero-sum.  Generally France isn't competing with Algeria for players (I mean, they are, but that's already sort of modeled in-game).  It's football competing with rugby, handball, basketball and other domestic activities. So increases in Country A don't necessarily need to be linked to decreases in Country B -- in fact, increases in Country A could theoretically lead to increases in nations associated with Country A.  French success could lead to an increase in French Guiana, Dutch success as a boost for Suriname...  A rising tide might not lift all boats, but maybe some of them!

[Belgrave]

59 minutes ago, Sunstrikuuu said:

Yes, but not as a zero-sum.  Generally France isn't competing with Algeria for players (I mean, they are, but that's already sort of modeled in-game).  It's football competing with rugby, handball, basketball and other domestic activities. So increases in Country A don't necessarily need to be linked to decreases in Country B -- in fact, increases in Country A could theoretically lead to increases in nations associated with Country A.  French success could lead to an increase in French Guiana, Dutch success as a boost for Suriname...  A rising tide might not lift all boats, but maybe some of them!

Oh I agree, just as English success may lead to other home nation children becoming determined to see their country prevent that (or some such).

I was caught between explaining an idea and trying to prevent my post becoming too long.

Its attempting to tread the line between reality and the game. i.e FM doesn't consider length of time passed alongside the development of countries/or the potential fluidity of economic factor and rather has fixed values, for instance under./over achievement on the international stage could trigger an international FA investing into grassroots (increasing FA Financial Power) to somewhat counteract the reduction in NYR or boost it further, or vice versa and reducing funding.
Game Importance increasing if a country does progressively better as more people tune in.

Its truthfully all hypothetical, just different ways to look at the problem.

[GoldenGoal]

The discussion so far has been really good. I don't have much to add but I'd like to just point out a simulation video made by Iollujo, who did a 100 year holiday video and then another 100 year follow up.

It looks like China and Bulgaria (first world cup win at 2046) became dominant world nations, with Belarus also becoming somewhat strong. I wonder if anyone would be interested in maybe analyzing his save for anything interesting? Sure, it's quite a long time (I doubt anyone would legit play this long) but maybe there could be some insight as to why China and Bulgaria became so dominant.

The save is available for download in the description of the second video.

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by GoldenGoal

[Belgrave]

Am assuming SI 

2 hours ago, GoldenGoal said:

The discussion so far has been really good. I don't have much to add but I'd like to just point out a simulation video made by Iollujo, who did a 100 year holiday video and then another 100 year follow up.

It looks like China and Bulgaria (first world cup win at 2046) became dominant world nations, with Belarus also becoming somewhat strong. I wonder if anyone would be interested in maybe analyzing his save for anything interesting? Sure, it's quite a long time (I doubt anyone would legit play this long) but maybe there could be some insight as to why China and Bulgaria became so dominant.

The save is available for download in the description of the second video.

 

Very quick review of the file - 

Small Database

England as only League

Picked a random selection of international teams.

Latvia & San Marino haven't moved NYR either.

Think its clear that the DYR system isn't designed for 200 Year saves, couldn't find a single country with a lower rating than their 2021 DYR.

Belarus appear to be a flash in the pan, regarding any recent success.

Bulgaria have over 120 players with PA rating in excess of 170, China 62, England 22, Spain 14, Brazil 5, France 4 & Germany 2. 

I propose its an extreme scenario in terms of player nationality distribution, but I have no idea how the game decides this (I'm assuming RNG)

As much as I believe DYR could be an incredible feature, whatever the implementation is currently, seems broken, as to have no country that has severely reduced NYR in the same period seems crazy.

[Strokke]

Bumping this thread - the more focus we bring to the issue, the more likely devs spend time improving it. I really hope we don't have to wait until FM23 because it's clear to me how excited many of us are over the potential.

The system as described is honestly overly complex and misses what should have been the design goals:

1) give players an opportunity to impact the world landscape slowly overtime (in a realistic way)

2) create a more dynamic and unique macro situation from save to save.

 

Seems to me that we're not there just yet.

[Strokke]

On 08/12/2021 at 23:46, vikeologist said:

So, my take is that this is working in precisely the opposite way many of us would want it to. We'd like to be able to improve the rating for the nation through having club success via youth or just national players, but the way to improve it is to bring in loads of top foreigners like China is doing.

Well said - there's a lot of use cases to solve for but I think the simplest and most popular would be the "country becomes a powerhouse mostly from their own nation's players" situation. Imagine if that happened in the US - it wouldn't be overnight, but we'd eventually see HUGE changes. Given how few of our top athletes currently go the soccer route.

[vikeologist]

Most of the discussion is happening in the bugs' forum, and it's all one-way traffic. This thread would obviously be better. because it's not a bug.

I think we're going to have to be patient. 2 things need to happen.SI have to want to change it, and then they need to introduce changes and make sure it doesn't make things silly, which would be time consuming. 

No guarantee even the first thing will happen.

[vikeologist]

We can't expect them to respond to the bug forum, because it's not a bug, but it is disappointing that nobody from SI is 'following' this thread.

I don't think what happens after 200 years is relevant. People running those kinds of experiments is interesting, but I think SI's responsibility for 'realism' to the extent it actually exists, only runs to the first 50-100 years of a save at most, and frankly I'd put it at 30-40 seasons really, because that's the longest that most people will play.

I think we can encourage changes to be made for FM23. We just need to help SI understand what's happening so they can weigh their options as to how to progress the feature. 

I hope that the decision makers at SI are reading this thread.

 

[HUNT3R]

47 minutes ago, vikeologist said:

We can't expect them to respond to the bug forum, because it's not a bug

If something isn't working as it should, it needs to be in the bugs tracker. That's where testers/devs reports.

[vikeologist]

13 minutes ago, HUNT3R said:

If something isn't working as it should, it needs to be in the bugs tracker. That's where testers/devs reports.

I see what you mean.

SI's response in the bug's thread suggests that it's basically working as they intended and is a deliberate feature, although I agree that there's an extent to which  I agree it might not be working entirely as intended, but it's unclear to what extent it is seen in that way by SI.

@Andrew Jamesdid take the time for a detailed response, on that bugs thread. It's just that discussion is ongoing in 2 different places now.

Perhaps that's fair enough. If people run tests and see problems with the balance of youth intakes a hundred years in, that's a bug. 

If people simply want the feature to be changed, there's this thread.

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by vikeologist

[HUNT3R]

5 minutes ago, Renyy said:

And if their philosophy is at odds with their player base? 

If it's working as intended, you mean? I haven't followed this 100%, so I'm not sure what the 'philosophy' of either side is. If SI says it's working as intended, then there's probably not much you can do. Might be worth a detailed feature suggestion.

All I am saying is that if there's something that's not working correctly - please report it. Don't expect the relevant SI testers or devs to scan GD. Their main area is the bug tracker.

[duesouth]

It is a weird one.  On Talc25's bug thread SI initially acknowledged there was an issue - the bug thread was set to "known issue" and Andrew James' comment was "we are aware of an issue where smaller nations in extreme periods of growth are not seeing their NYR grow as might be expected."

Nothing was changed for the patch last week.  Then he came back with "We've looked at a couple of the examples of smaller nations not improving where it seems like they might, but actually due to the way this system works, increases here are always going to be very unlikely."

To me, it seems like there is an issue still - but the fix won't be the one many users anticipated.  So, it is a bug - but also the way SI think it should work doesn't match what many want.

Given this thread is more visible than the bug thread - I say keep posting in here - more forum members are likely to see/contribute and hopefully SI will check in with enough posts/views.

[vikeologist]

As I've said before, I think 99% of players don't even know that this feature exists, so it's a small percentage of us that care.

I'm a bit more than 3 seasons into my save, and so far I think absolutely nothing has happened to the Youth ratings. 

SI have been responsive. By it's very nature the feature is something which is difficult to assess and measure.

Anyway @Andrew James how / where do you want us to progress this discussion? Is this issue on the board of things for SI to look into and consider. I appreciate that it won't be at the top.

 

 

[TIR669]

There's 4 pages of discussion in this thread yet absolutely no-one from SI side cared enough to jump in. Thread has been live for a whole month now. Only response, as vikeologist mentioned, is Andrew's note that 'they are aware of the issue in smaller nations', which is a nice way to say that dynamic rating does not have any effect to smaller nations unfortunately. But nothing apart from that.

[forameuss]

50 minutes ago, Renyy said:

If what they've intended isn't what us players want. It's fair to say it's not working as intended currently

...no, that isn't "fair to say".  It's SI's product, and it'll be very much in their image, their desires, and their design.  That isn't always going to mesh well with "what us players want", particularly when you can't speak for everyone.  If they say it's working as intended, they mean it's working exactly as they designed it.  As intended.

[forameuss]

Just now, Renyy said:

Why are you taking two unrelated sentences out of context and combining them as to make it say something else? 

Ok, enlighten me then, what context should I have taken from those pretty literal sentences?  "It's fair to say it's not working as intended currently" is pretty unequivocal, even if you try and backtrack it after.  the point is that it doesn't matter what you want, as that isn't always going to gel with what SI want.  And no comments on whether what SI want is right or wrong - they've made plenty of very poor design decisions alongside decent ones - but to suggest that just because you don't like it, it isn't working as intended is just plain wrong.

[vikeologist]

 

Quote

Some people are doing experiments, which are interesting, but what those experiments don't reveal is the effect on Youth Ratings of a smaller club becoming dominant. What effect will our doing really well have on Youth Ratings? Do other domestic clubs radically change their facilities to 'keep up'. In the short term, none basically, but we're all just a couple of months into our saves. 

In my save Celtic and Rangers facilities (and club reputation) have changed quite a lot over just 3 seasons. Not in one direction either. Celtic's has become better and Rangers slightly worse. This is relevant because we know that facilities affect Youth ratings. well, we don't know that, but that seems to be the objective, if I'm understanding it correctly.

It may be that Youth Ratings change so slowly, and maybe in a different direction than envisaged, because the development of AI controlled clubs is fluid and to some extent cancel each other out. 

However, this is only for active leagues. I don't think clubs in non-active leagues change their facilities at all. 

Or maybe not. I'm looking more at the details over a short period of time.

However, if only one nation has its facilities changing, and if that is one of the factors in Youth ratings, it could cause long term instability.

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by vikeologist

[kjarus1]

I can't help but wonder, maybe there is some business decision here made by SI... At the end of the day the more people are playing very long career saves, the less they are likely to buy the next year's game since those saves can turn into 2-3 actual years for people.

[Andrew James]

On 15/12/2021 at 09:30, vikeologist said:

Anyway @Andrew James how / where do you want us to progress this discussion?

I'd say the best place to progress the discussion is in a thread like this - and if you find specific examples of Dynamic National Youth Ratings not working as you'd expect, then to log a new post in our bug tracker outlining the change you'd expect to see and why (ideally with reference to comparable situations in real life, if possible!). We can then assess whether the example is a bug, or a situation not accounted for by the current system which may require a Feature Request. 

Something I'd again like to reiterate is that NYR is not the only factor that goes into the quality of newgens produced in a nation, and many of the other factors included in the calculations are themselves also dynamic, and so it is still possible to improve the quality of player coming through in a nation, even if their NYR growth is restricted by Financial Status. 

I think it's important in these discussions to correctly define exactly what National Youth Ratings quantify in game - they impact the quality of newgen generating at *every* club in that nation, so in real terms, can be thought of as along the lines of the nation's grass roots structure and youth football pyramid.

In the bug tracker thread I mentioned that we want to keep things realistic, and I think this was misunderstood slightly, so to clarify - we absolutely want it to be possible for users to achieve the "unrealistic" in game, but we want our game to then respond to those feats in a realistic manner. The issue here is that there is a lack of real world evidence for what the realistic impact would be from a smaller nation winning a World Cup - which is why these discussion threads are so useful, so thanks to everyone who's contributed. 

I think two of the most relevant examples of recent times to this debate are Zambia and Belgium. Zambia were surprise winners of AFCON 2012, and whilst that may have shone a spotlight on the nation as a potential talent pool, with more Zambians based in Europe than previously, nearly 10 years on from that tournament, their national ranking has actually decreased. Belgium are at the backend of a golden generation that seemed to appear from nowhere, have been a major force at several tournaments and spent a lot of time ranked number 1 in the world - and although they do have some good talent coming through, it seems likely that a period of regression lies ahead and that Lukakus, KDBs and Hazards won't be the new normal. 

Obviously the potential of this feature has captured the imagination for a lot of users, so if you disagree with any of the above then please (politely ) let me know. We're always looking for ways to improve the game and I agree this feature can still be improved (personally I like the idea of trying to tie national team performance and league reputation into a nation's Game Importance and Financial Status scores, which would then feed into NYR long-term - but I think, by definition, that all NYR changes should always be very gradual).

Hope that all made sense!