[Suggestion/Discussion] Improving Dynamic Youth Rating (realistically) with revamping International Management.

[MrDanMcD_FM]

For the last 3-5 years I probably have contributed to this forum space twice I believe with suggestions to revamp the international management side of Football Manager to make it more realistic. In the past this has included adding training, more detailed interactions with players, more realistic scouting system, ability to schedule pre-tournament camps and their location.

Recently, I have come across the discussions on the forum about the "new" dynamic youth rating. The discussion is linked here, while the bug report and response from SI is linked here.

For a quick summary, dynamic youth rating was tweeted by Miles as a new SI feature and described as a "HUGE" change for long-term saves. Upon community based experiments that demonstrated the lack of correlation between either club or international success with a significant change/increase in the country's youth ratings, SI, in the bug report discussion, better defined how dynamic youth rating worked. 

Here is what they said:

Quote

The main factors involved in these calculations are a nation's State of Development, Economic Factor, FA Financial Power and Game Importance. These fields are all fixed, meaning that the potential for changes to Youth Rating in some nations is immediately going to be lowered. 

A few areas that have been mentioned by some users as potential factors do not actually enter into these calculations, for example the national team ranking or financial status of clubs in the nation. 

NYR is not the only factor that determines the quality of youth players in a nation - and in cases where the other factors have already been improved, such as the youth facilities at top clubs, can actually make NYR less likely to increase. The reason for this is that NYR applies to *all* clubs in a nation, and is quite an abstract concept to actually define - but if a nation with low spending power is already seeing improvement in the quality of young players due to improvements and investments made by clubs, then the nation itself will deem further investments into grass roots structures less necessary, as the improvement in quality is already happening. 

In some nations, they will actually be more likely to see an improvement to NYR if the amount of foreign talent in their leagues starts to increase compared to domestic talent - assuming there is enough money and interest in the game to make those improvements. 

Their explanation, in my opinion, is realistic and logical. Youth rating is the investment by nation FAs to invest in grassroots outreach, infrastructure, youth coaching etc. It makes sense that the success of one club in a country does not automatically mean tons of money are thrown into grassroots systems that then result in more newgens with higher potentials. I also agree with those who state dynamic youth rating should not be overpowered. A simple champions league win for a club in Andorra does not mean the tiny nation all of a sudden.  

As others have done in the discussion (the first linked one), if we look at real-life examples of how the community understand dynamic youth rating and SI have explained it, its difficult to replicate in the game. Iceland's investment into youth training facilitates and widespread coaching education that accumulated into their National Teams ascend was NOT spurred by one of their clubs making a deep run into the CL or by their national team finding random success. Germany's recommitment to youth development was actually a result of their national team drastically underachieving compared to the nation's expectation. The USA can attribute a good deal of their recent success of players in the top 5 leagues mainly to their population and the the increase in game importance as a result of the MLS. You cannot create a league, or a new league, in a country to increase a youth rating in Football Manager. Neither of the previous two examples are either applicable to the functions and power within football manager. There are also IRL examples of smaller nations like Anguilla, Bahamas, Haiti, investing more into grassroots infrastructure and coaching that likely will not result in any of those countries doing more than maybe reaching a CONCACAF Gold Cup. As we see in this real life examples (or as close to IRL examples as youth rating is understood), the power is not with clubs, either their financial or sporting success, but with the nation's football association. And in Football Manager, with all its realism (which I love and want my suggestions to continue to promote realism) there is still one part that is not at all realistic, international management, which revamped COULD give users the power to influence the football association, who in real-life actually affect the youth rating, no matter the size, economic factor or development state of the country. 

Here are my suggestions to revamp international management AND dynamic youth rating TOGETHER in a realistic matter:

1. Training - Since SI implementation of the current training interface and feature, I still have no clue why you cannot set up sessions for the few days you have international players in your camp before matches. Indeed, IRL international managers struggle to find the time to really improve players in their short camps, its a unique challenge of being an international manager. But, IRL and as it should be in the game, those sessions can help increase tactical familiarity. This would also make the hiring of international staff actually meaningful. 
2. Player Interactions - Anyone who has managed a nation can tell you that the only time you use the chat feature with your players is every month when you repeatedly try to convince a dual nation player to play for your club. And even though they are 29-years old, play in the 3.Liga, they are sure they have a better chance of playing for Germany than your Namibia side where they'd slot in as your best player by far. Currently it seems this is based on nation reputation, your reputation increases therefore players will consider you, they do not calculate their chances of player for each eligible nation. This is one change. But player interactions can include a whole range of things, convincing dual nations to play for you since you want to build something long term or theres a specific target you have in mind, maybe to ask players about playing in a different position, or advice on who they want included in the squad, talk about their recent form more in-depth. I am sure others can expand on more possible topics, right now the few interactions get boring quick and the responses from players are typically illogical. 
3. Picking Camps - Especially before a major tournament, national teams spend a lot of time and money on where they want their training camp (rural, urban, small, big, which country etc). Its a selection that the coaching staff usually can influence and thus should be a feature in football manager. Example: I am managing Japan and we are preparing for a World Cup in Germany. I can choose out of 8 locations where to set up camp. I pick Schalke's facilitates because their team facilities are "excellent" and its a short travel to two of our group matches. Or maybe I choose Freiburg because I do not want the team to be in a city.
4. Club Vision - This feature is where the youth rating really comes into play. FAs have  visions for the progress of their teams, features already exists in FM for club management but should be used for international management too. When you sign a contract with, lets say Norway, they have a long term vision (based on tournament cycles). Maybe your contract renewable is based on qualifying for the new Euros. Or a Nation just underperformed at the last world cup and the FA want you to refresh the system so they ask you to select only players under 27 since anyone older would be too old for the next world cup. OR during contract negotiations (oh yeah, contracts should be a feature for Intl Teams too) you can ask the club to 'invest in grassroots set-up' and this would influence not only your youth rating, but also the game importance which should be DYNAMIC as well. Of course, as IRL, the money for the investment needs to come from somewhere. This brings me to the last suggestion:
5. Finances - Just like club vision, it already has existed and FAs have budgets! If you are Andorra and ask for grassroots investment but you budget is $5, well they laugh at you. Just as IRL and why certain countries have low youth ratings is because they dont have they money, increase, or population. But with finances as an option, as a national team manager, winning tournaments, increasing your nation reputation or increasing your FIFA ranking will earn you competition rewards and likely better sponsorships. These give your FA more money which then in turn you can ask your FA to invest in grassroots infrastructure and thus increase your youth rating. FAs also earn money from other means too, domestic league reputations, TV money from national team matches, I am sure club success can go to the FA through some type of tax. As your FA makes more money, another current factor for youth rating that is static but SHOULD be dynamic increases, FA financial power. Just as vision, finances for the FA can be more restricted by SI so it does not become overpowered and in every save beyond 5 years you have Chad, Bermuda, and Macau somehow dominating the world football scene.
6. Make 'FA Financial Power' and 'Game Importance' dynamic - I just wanted to give these two a separate bullet point, even though I already mentioned it. FAs can earn more money, and the important of football in a country can change, like USA, or even just from young kids watching their local club or national team find success at the CL or World Cup. (I get that SI do not want to, nor should they, have external factors or changes that change economic or nation development factors).

So...where does this leave us? I think in a situation that is a win-win for SI and the community. These suggestions preserve realism (even increase it IMO) and maintain a dynamic youth rating system that is what SI still define but also what the community wants when it undertakes a long-term club & country or rebuild a nation save. You want to take Malta (or Northern Ireland, or Somalia, or Aruba, or Laos, or Tonga) to the top of the footballing world (or at least significantly increase their youth rating/continental success), then you can! You can win 10 straight CLs that increases game importance in the country and therefore increases nation rating. You can increase a nations FIFA ranking from 170 to 100 which gets them sponsorships, increasing their FA financial power thus increasing their youth rating. Maybe its even a random event, "Breaking: Project GOAL builds new youth facilitates in *insert country*" and that increases youth rating by like +10. Yes, this dynamism should be more doable in some places than others, population can only take you so far for national team. Of course, none of this stops you from taking a club in any small nation to the top of the footballing world through transfers and foreign help, even with this route, your club will have the facilitates to make sure all the newgens can reach their potential, even if the nation youth rating has only increased from 50 to 56. But these changes above paves a path forward for more realism in international management that allows you to influence a nation's youth rating in a way that makes it truly dynamic!

 

 

Edited January 14, 2022 by MrDanMcD_FM

[Sharkn20]

I don't want my save in become a Liechestein infected wonderkids, as an example, in 30 years.

So no, I don't want this feature.

If You want to implement ot, give us a "No" switch for the ones that are not bothered.

[MrDanMcD_FM]

21 minutes ago, Sharkn20 said:

I don't want my save in become a Liechestein infected wonderkids, as an example, in 30 years.

So no, I don't want this feature.

If You want to implement ot, give us a "No" switch for the ones that are not bothered.

An AI-controlled Liechtenstein in your save would have the same chance of being "infected" with wonderkids in 30 years as is an AI-controlled FC Andorra winning 5 champions leagues in a row. The latter is possible, as many people have done, but in long-term saves how many times does the AI do it? Just as that is not a problem, neither would random nations all of a sudden being "infected" with wonderkids. SI obviously would not make it overpowered because the AI is not smart enough to know the factors that influence the DYR. 

[Abdullah Patel]

Thanks for the request we appreciate the detailed input and feedback. Some of the details are ideas that are already in our internal system. They may yet be rejected or, with further development, end up in a future FM.