Remove unrealistic restrictions related to semi-pro-football

[Vänsterback]

I feel that contract types are an unnecessary detail (or restriction) in the game. Whether a job is considered full time, part time or amateur should only be defined by the salary in relation to certain database values of the nation in question (rich/poor country, are there competition rules regarding minimum wages etc). Maybe there is a need to add that kind of value in the database also, call it 'Minimum acceptable full time salary for an adult' or something. In lower divisions of big countries in Football Manager you can sometimes offer salaries that are several times a normal workers salary but you may be restricted to the contract type 'part time' which makes no sense to me.

A related restriction that makes little sense is the amount of training sessions you can arrange in an amateur or semi-pro club. That status shouldn't really put a cap on training. The manager should be in full control of that. Obviously players that only make a fraction of a 'Minimum acceptable full time salary for an adult' would be furious (and likely ask to break the contract) if you schedule too much training. The amount of training sessions could also be something to add to contract talks. Four or five afternoon team sessions in a week is not uncommon for an ambitious semi-professional side in real life. But a important players in such teams should be able to have contract clauses allowing them to not attend every session.

Also the labeling of clubs as 'professional', 'semi-professional' or 'amateur' should just be a function of its current contract situation. Like the example below.

• Professional: 80% or more of the senior players earn at least the country's 'Minimum acceptable full time salary for an adult'.
• Semi-professional: 50% or more of the senior players have a salary but not enough to be considered a 'professional' team.
• Amateur: Less than 50% of the senior players have a salary

[janmagn]

On 03/01/2023 at 17:38, Vänsterback said:

I feel that contract types are an unnecessary detail (or restriction) in the game. Whether a job is considered full time, part time or amateur should only be defined by the salary in relation to certain database values of the nation in question (rich/poor country, are there competition rules regarding minimum wages etc). Maybe there is a need to add that kind of value in the database also, call it 'Minimum acceptable full time salary for an adult' or something. In lower divisions of big countries in Football Manager you can sometimes offer salaries that are several times a normal workers salary but you may be restricted to the contract type 'part time' which makes no sense to me.

A related restriction that makes little sense is the amount of training sessions you can arrange in an amateur or semi-pro club. That status shouldn't really put a cap on training. The manager should be in full control of that. Obviously players that only make a fraction of a 'Minimum acceptable full time salary for an adult' would be furious (and likely ask to break the contract) if you schedule too much training. The amount of training sessions could also be something to add to contract talks. Four or five afternoon team sessions in a week is not uncommon for an ambitious semi-professional side in real life. But a important players in such teams should be able to have contract clauses allowing them to not attend every session.

Also the labeling of clubs as 'professional', 'semi-professional' or 'amateur' should just be a function of its current contract situation. Like the example below.

• Professional: 80% or more of the senior players earn at least the country's 'Minimum acceptable full time salary for an adult'.
• Semi-professional: 50% or more of the senior players have a salary but not enough to be considered a 'professional' team.
• Amateur: Less than 50% of the senior players have a salary

This could be a great addition with my idea of making semi-professional and amateur players actually stay where they last played. As an example, I think it would be very unrealistic for a player from Stockholm just randomly move to Gällivare to play semi-pro football (used Sweden as an example as I saw you are a researcher there)

[Vänsterback]

17 hours ago, janmagn said:

This could be a great addition with my idea of making semi-professional and amateur players actually stay where they last played. As an example, I think it would be very unrealistic for a player from Stockholm just randomly move to Gällivare to play semi-pro football (used Sweden as an example as I saw you are a researcher there)

Yes, I agree that distance should impact the likelihood of a player moving to another club where he will earn less than a full time salary. However, it would not be unrealistic for a player to move the opposite way (from Gällivare to Stockholm) and play in a lower division because the main driver behind the move might be studying. But since a city's coordinates and attraction are already in the database that should be doable to improve.

[janmagn]

On 24/01/2023 at 18:20, Vänsterback said:

Yes, I agree that distance should impact the likelihood of a player moving to another club where he will earn less than a full time salary. However, it would not be unrealistic for a player to move the opposite way (from Gällivare to Stockholm) and play in a lower division because the main driver behind the move might be studying. But since a city's coordinates and attraction are already in the database that should be doable to improve.

Yeah it's not unrealistic but it's not that common either

[lelujka]

I think you just have different definition of the training session, and mix it with exercises. The session usually consists of several exercises and they can be combined (shooting, passing, movement, defending + attacking) in a single 1-2 hour session. FM have sessions, not exercises.

If you accept the definition based on FM, it is unrealistic to make 4 sessions a day (full professional have maximum 3 sessions now and 4 is unrealistic because of physiology). Therefore for semi-pro or amateur club, 4 sessions a week + match is still quite optimistic. Amateur teams usually have just 2 session after job and match. Semi-pro the same as most players work or study.

[Vänsterback]

2 hours ago, lelujka said:

I think you just have different definition of the training session, and mix it with exercises. The session usually consists of several exercises and they can be combined (shooting, passing, movement, defending + attacking) in a single 1-2 hour session. FM have sessions, not exercises.

If you accept the definition based on FM, it is unrealistic to make 4 sessions a day (full professional have maximum 3 sessions now and 4 is unrealistic because of physiology). Therefore for semi-pro or amateur club, 4 sessions a week + match is still quite optimistic. Amateur teams usually have just 2 session after job and match. Semi-pro the same as most players work or study.

Well, I don't really accept the LIMITATIONS of training sessions in FM. It's very weird as a manager to only have access to the players two days in a week, even if it's not a fully professional team. And also, currently you can't even choose the days yourself. You are limited to tuesdays and thursdays for some reason. That's perhaps the strangest and most arbitrary limitation in the game. Scheduling a friendly is doable though because that makes sense, or does it?

A reasonable limitation however, related to what you are bringing up, would be to just have 1 available session per day for teams where a significant part of the squad don't reach the 'Minimum acceptable full time salary for an adult'. Because that is realistic and makes sense.

[Zachary Whyte]

Thank you for the suggestion. The developers will put this under consideration.