[Discussion] How many trial players can any team have at any time? Limited roster size (by Board)?

[rristola]

OK, I play mostly lower leagues, but I think that the same thing goes with bigger teams, too.

Many times I have chosen a team with limited resources. Not that many scouts. I have tried to "go around" this problem with asking A LOT OF players to come to a trial.

 

Fact number two. I would like FM to be a simulation. I know that the Board has some limit there can "come in" new players into a trial (per day?), but...

Should there be a (Board set) limit fot the number of trials? And/or for the number of players in your team roster - your own or trials? How this works in real life?

 

That number (of trials) could be effected by the resources of that team. Like - some given number of players per coach in training. And some plus and minus effects.

- Bigger teams have more scouts for early work. They won't take many players per coach to be effective. They get that info (of a player) really fast. And they don't have to take many trials, they know what thay want.

- The smaller team, the fewer coaches. They could take MORE players per coach, but then they get info (of players) more slowly. And they should throw out immediately those players that won't fit...

- Lower leagues. Maybe only a manager and an assistant. Getting info is slow, but they see a lot of players (maybe) wanting to play in this team. Still there has to be a limit for trials, right?

[Gabriponte22]

You can't have more than 30 trials at once from what i know

[rristola]

8 hours ago, Gabriponte22 said:

more than 30 trials at once

Yes, but, as far as I know, when you have pushed the "Continue" button, the next possibility for new 30 trials opens.

It's more like the Board is limiting the number of invitations, not the actual number of trials.

[zeeb]

On 13/10/2023 at 12:52, rristola said:

Yes, but, as far as I know, when you have pushed the "Continue" button, the next possibility for new 30 trials opens.

It's more like the Board is limiting the number of invitations, not the actual number of trials.

This is true, I can end up with more than 500 players in my Reserve/Youth team at times when I really go hard on trials.

Sometimes it takes 30 seconds just to open the squad view on my Reserve or Youth team.

Edited October 20, 2023 by zeeb

[rristola]

1 hour ago, zeeb said:

...more than 500 players...

Not that much room for everyone.

 

Do you, or anyone else reading this, know how much these trial players cost to the team? Or do those players have to pay for everything themselves? Something between these two?

If a team, which has mostly non-contract players and staff and pretty low budget, invites a dozen trial players, and that team would have to offer at least bed&breakfast, it has to cost something... Could this be added into game?

[zeeb]

6 hours ago, rristola said:

Not that much room for everyone.

 

Do you, or anyone else reading this, know how much these trial players cost to the team? Or do those players have to pay for everything themselves? Something between these two?

If a team, which has mostly non-contract players and staff and pretty low budget, invites a dozen trial players, and that team would have to offer at least bed&breakfast, it has to cost something... Could this be added into game?

I guess it could, but it isn't part of the game as of now. Trialists costs nothing, unless they changed it in FM23 or FM24.
Either they enforce the 30 limit to total trials at club instead of invites only, or they remove the invite limit. It's just weird and annoying to have one and not the other.
I would be cool with either.

Edited October 20, 2023 by zeeb

[rristola]

3 hours ago, zeeb said:

...I would be cool with either.

I would like FM to be a simulation - how things go IRL.

And if they (SI) says it's too much work to add these trials limits, then how can they decide ticket prices for all these teams...?

[zeeb]

10 hours ago, rristola said:

I would like FM to be a simulation - how things go IRL.

And if they (SI) says it's too much work to add these trials limits, then how can they decide ticket prices for all these teams...?

Honestly, I don't think they're aware of this bug that you can have more than 30 trialists at the club, at least to me it seems to be the case since they do have an invite limit.

I think the purpose for it was to actually limit all trialists at a club, which is the message you get by the board when you try and invite more, but they missed some variable so it only affects invites and not actual club limit.

I'm sure that if they're made aware, they will most likely enforce the 30 trialist limit.

I rather have them fix this bug than leave it as is, but how they go about doing that doesn't interest me, I'm confident I will be happy with the end result.

 

Another way to view is that you don't actually pay for the trialists, their own club does or if they're frees then they pay for it themselves for a shot to get into a club.

Being a trialist at a club means that the club doesn't know what you can do, so you're there to show your skills. That's why so many high end players refuse trials when you invite them because they believe you as a club should know what they're capable of and they're not interested in paying for their own hotel rooms or meals. That's why you scout these players instead of trial them.

Erling Haaland for example wouldn't be trialled, he would be scouted.

Edited October 21, 2023 by zeeb

[rristola]

2 hours ago, zeeb said:

I'm sure that if they're made aware, they will most likely enforce the 30 trialist limit.

Yeah, could be. BTW, this is the Request forum, so SI Staff will - some day - read all these new requests. Nowadays they might be busy with some new product...

 

2 hours ago, zeeb said:

you don't actually pay for the trialists, their own club does    ...    if they're frees then they pay for it themselves

I think that if the players "old" team wants to get rid of him (could be in Transfer list), then it's obvious, that it could pay all expenses, but if that player just wants to leave, then maybe not.

And, if you as the Manager (and the Board agrees) really want this player, then it's more likely that you pay the costs. The more you want, the more likely you pay.

But, on the average, trial players pay for themselves... At least when they at that time have no contract at all.

 

2 hours ago, zeeb said:

Erling Haaland for example wouldn't be trialled, he would be scouted.

Haaland - of course. But, to be able to find "new Haalands" Man City Academy could invite 50-100 youngsters at a time. (This I DON'T know!)

Man City would have enough money, enough coaches, aso.

 

 

BTW, do you think, that the Board should limit be the number of trials OR the number of own players and trials together?

I think that any team MUST have trainings where all players, own or on trial, have to be on the same pitch. So, I vote for 'own and on trial'.

Should that number be 30 or something more...? Maybe when season is going on, then 30 could be OK, but on the pre-season it might be a bit more like 40.

 

(For lower leagues teams this the most effective way to 'scout' new players. BUT, there has to be limits.)

[zeeb]

On 21/10/2023 at 12:21, rristola said:

BTW, do you think, that the Board should limit be the number of trials OR the number of own players and trials together?

In the case that they decide to give the board a new function to limit the amount of trialists, I do hope they decide to only limit the number of trials and not account for players currently at the club.

If you have a club that's at the capacity limit, that just means you can't trial anyone. Trials are also basically just guests visiting, so I don't think they should count. They just show up for some training sessions to display their skills but aren't part of the club and doesn't necessarily share the facilities either except the pitch. I have no experience on this however and have no idea how trialists are treated in real life, but I'd suspect they get to share some of the facilities.

I'm used with having a ridiculous amount of trials, but I think the whole trial system should be remade. Currently they get "auto" scouted and I think this should be removed completely. Instead you can have a scout or coach dedicated to watching and assess trialists. Currently it's pretty unrealistic in the sense that I can have 500-1000+ trialists visiting the club and after 2 weeks they're fully scouted. It's just no way that would be even remotely possible in real life.

Currently trials are "free scouting" so I think that should be altered severely, there shouldn't be such a thing as free scouting. Trialists however, do need to stay, they just need to come up with a more realistic way of scouting them, maybe a way to use coaches instead of scouts for scouting trialists, that way you don't have to dedicate one of your precious scouts to the task. It's basically how it is right now, but the coaches are way too OP in their scouting of the trialists as it currently stands.

A way they can do this is to limit the amount of trialists at the club to 5~ per coach, or even better have the trial number dynamic depending on the skills of the coach but in that range. Maybe base it on People Management, Judgle Player Ability and Judge Player Potential somehow? Then you just add all your coaches together and their skills will dictate the limit of trialists the club can handle at one time.

I also think that only assistant managers and standard coaches should count towards this limit and not the other ones, mainly because the other ones are specialized.

Let's say you have an average assistant manager in the lower leagues with 10 people management, 10 judge player ability and 10 judge player potential, the math could then be for example:
((10 + 10 + 10) / 2) / 3 = 5 trialists

Or if you had a world class assistant manager with 20s in those attributes then it would be:
((20 + 20 + 20) / 2) / 3 = 10 trialists

And if you had an absolute garbage assistant manager with 1s:
((1 + 1 + 1) / 2) / 3 = 0.5 trialists (1 when rounded with another restriction that 1 is the minimum amount)

Then you have the common one with different attributes:
((14 + 11 + 13) / 2) / 3 = 6.33 trialists (6 when rounded)

Seems like pretty realistic numbers after all is said and done if they're to scout the trialists over the course of 2 weeks.
A world class coach should be able to accurately assess about 10 players during this time, an average coach about 5 and a rookie coach about 1.

They should also make it so you can't put trialists in the reserve team or youth team, that way they penalize the training, as they should. So this prevents us from circumventing that penalty.
It also doesn't make sense to put them into these teams.

As a final note on this, I do hope they make it so the AI also use trials after they've changed it, currently only the player does, which gives us a significant advantage in the scouting part of the game.

Edited October 23, 2023 by zeeb

[rristola]

5 hours ago, zeeb said:

the whole trial system should be remade

Exactly.

 

The number of players and/or trial players. IRL, are there teams that have 30 or more players in their roster and on the pitch at the same time? Or use a second team?

But, yes, every team should be able to take in about 10 trial players at any time.

 

Not so good coaches should also be able to watch several trial players, but it should take more time for them to give any reviews. Now it is quite fast - player comes, and the next morning you have all the info...

Like, after a week OR 2-3 training sessions a coach (or a scout) with JPA 5-6 (normal in lower leagues (using mods)) could give value +-2  or +-3 for an attribute, while a normal JPA 11 coach could give value +-1. Like, Technique is 6-10 or 5-11, while the better coach gives 7-9. After one week or 2-3 training sessions.

But, this would be enough to be able to throw out players that are not as good as needed.

 

One thing more. SI likes, if you can suggest some pros and cons for every request you make.

Here it could be, that with "more" trial players that training session wouldn't give as much (or at all) advance for the whole team or players, that training slot could be named as "trials testing" automatically. Or, for the players, better fitness yes, better technical skills or team skills no.

This rule would make every Manager to think how many trials he can invite...

[zeeb]

13 minutes ago, rristola said:

Here it could be, that with "more" trial players that training session wouldn't give as much (or at all) advance for the whole team or players

This is already implemented as I stated in my previous post, no idea if you read all of it since it's quite lengthy.

It works in the way that the more players you have at the club the more load is put on the coaches and the less quality they produce during training (at least in my observation), this is currently circumvented by putting trialists in either the Reserve team or the Youth team. Which should be forbidden, in my opinion. After all, you're trialling to find members for your main squad primarily or potential wonder kids.

You want coaches to have Light load. None is when there are no players to train, Medium means quality is slightly reduced, Heavy means the quality is reduced and Very Heavy means it is severely reduced. You know you have coaching problems when players start to complain about the quality of training. If they complain and the loads are Light across the board, then the coaches skills are not up to standard for the league you're in.

Edited October 23, 2023 by zeeb

[phnompenhandy]

On 21/10/2023 at 17:21, rristola said:

Haaland - of course. But, to be able to find "new Haalands" Man City Academy could invite 50-100 youngsters at a time. (This I DON'T know!)

Man City would have enough money, enough coaches, aso.

I very much doubt real life works anything like you suggest. The chances of a completely unseen rando rocking up at a Premier League club and the manager who's been watching matches with 500 kids that day suddenly spotting 'the next Haaland' after 30 minutes sounds like fantasy to me. No manager would have the time to watch hundreds of triallists week in week out. He'd either send a team of scouts around parks and school playing fields and have them report back anything special, or he'd respond to approaches by intermediaries.

Similarly, in FM, bringing in hundreds of random triallists doesn't ensure you find every or even any diamond in the dungheap - unless your coaching staff are superhuman, they'd likely miss potential stars in one match; they/you would need to have them play 3 or 4 matches to gain any rough idea. In short, far from being an exploit, I'd say it would be a monumental waste of time, why is why SI are happy for you to do that, I reckon.

As an illustration, do you watch the match your staff schedule between your academy intakes and Under 18s? I do. Time and again a kid shines in that game, gets recommended to sign up and turns out to be rubbish. Similarly, a kid might have a very poor game but is actually the one who goes on to make the first team.

[rristola]

1 hour ago, zeeb said:

This is already implemented

I meant that your own players (team) wouldn't be in focus. All coaches and scouts would try to get a better picture of what these trials can do. There's not time to teach better Vision to your own player.

But, the same result, time goes to making those reviews. Own players are like extras helping out coaches.

That's why I think that training slot could be named "trials testing".

Edited October 23, 2023 by rristola

[rristola]

1 hour ago, phnompenhandy said:

I very much doubt real life works anything like you suggest.

Yes, and I wrote that teams like Man City would have resources to do that. Nothing else. I don't know how this goes IRL.

 

But, to my mind inviting trial players is too easy in FM. You can invite 30 at a time, but at the next moment 30 more, aso.

Also, you get player attributes too fast and too accurate. Especially in lower leagues.

 

If I remember correctly, you play FM with strict lower leagues rules. Is there something that would make trials inviting better in your opinion?

[phnompenhandy]

1 hour ago, rristola said:

Yes, and I wrote that teams like Man City would have resources to do that. Nothing else. I don't know how this goes IRL.

 

But, to my mind inviting trial players is too easy in FM. You can invite 30 at a time, but at the next moment 30 more, aso.

Also, you get player attributes too fast and too accurate. Especially in lower leagues.

 

If I remember correctly, you play FM with strict lower leagues rules. Is there something that would make trials inviting better in your opinion?

It's not something I use. I play Academy-Only challenges, so I'm stuck with whatever lummocks my HoYD brings me each year.

[zeeb]

7 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

It's not something I use. I play Academy-Only challenges, so I'm stuck with whatever lummocks my HoYD brings me each year.

Too bad I can't resist playing in Sweden, otherwise I would've tried that challenge.