Did the April Update break Recruitment Focuses?

[Jellico73]

I am not sure what is going on with these. 

I have a save I started after the April update was pushed out, and I cannot get any of my recruitment focuses to return results anything like they were pre update.

As a comparison, I have a save started well before the April update, and my recruitment focus's there are returning 20-25 in progress, with more than a few recommendations.  This new save, same setup, similar (or better scouts), and nothing. 

I have  Brazil Focus, with a very good scout, and am getting 1 recommendation that' s an A-, and 11 in progress, 7 of which are D and below, and that because I lowered my minimum current to 1 1/2 stars.  I raise it to anything above 2 stars, I get no results. 

At All. 

In Brazil. 

Really?

I haven't changed the basic setup of my focuses fro some time now, how can the same setup up in two different games with similar databases be getting such different results?

Jellico

[StatboySpurs]

Some of us have had issues with scouting for several months now. You can check out the bug forums for more detail. Things are working as designed by SI, but the debate on the bugs forum is whether or not things should be designed that way. Personally, I don't do many recruiting focuses. I'm having a lot of success assigning my scouts to individual games each day, but I understand that's a big chore for people who have large numbers of scouts (I have just 4). But you'll get a lot more results that way, and also your knowledge of each player will be "extensive" immediately, whereas with the recruitment focuses you have to wait several weeks.

[wazzaflow10]

11 hours ago, Jellico73 said:

I am not sure what is going on with these. 

I have a save I started after the April update was pushed out, and I cannot get any of my recruitment focuses to return results anything like they were pre update.

As a comparison, I have a save started well before the April update, and my recruitment focus's there are returning 20-25 in progress, with more than a few recommendations.  This new save, same setup, similar (or better scouts), and nothing. 

I have  Brazil Focus, with a very good scout, and am getting 1 recommendation that' s an A-, and 11 in progress, 7 of which are D and below, and that because I lowered my minimum current to 1 1/2 stars.  I raise it to anything above 2 stars, I get no results. 

At All. 

In Brazil. 

Really?

I haven't changed the basic setup of my focuses fro some time now, how can the same setup up in two different games with similar databases be getting such different results?

Jellico

Been "broken" at least since december patch. Its okay-ish if you're a small club but according to them the game will automatically filter out players who are wholly uninterested in joining your or players it deems not good enough for your squad. So the game simultaneously scouts and doesn't scout players. 

Its fine if they don't have anyone to recommend based on your criteria (i.e. you only want a striker thats 3* CA and 5* PA and plays in Africa) but there should still be players that you can see were scouted and said doesn't fit for whatever reason.

It seemed that they didn't want to give you the view to everyone for fear that people would abuse it and only scout for wonderkids and beat the AI to every signing. I get their point but its very frustrating to only view a fraction of the actual players in the game when you're a big club. Its my main dissatisfaction with the game. Hoping 25 gets tweaked a bit.

 

[StatboySpurs]

2 hours ago, wazzaflow10 said:

Been "broken" at least since december patch. Its okay-ish if you're a small club but according to them the game will automatically filter out players who are wholly uninterested in joining your or players it deems not good enough for your squad. So the game simultaneously scouts and doesn't scout players. 

Its fine if they don't have anyone to recommend based on your criteria (i.e. you only want a striker thats 3* CA and 5* PA and plays in Africa) but there should still be players that you can see were scouted and said doesn't fit for whatever reason.

It seemed that they didn't want to give you the view to everyone for fear that people would abuse it and only scout for wonderkids and beat the AI to every signing. I get their point but its very frustrating to only view a fraction of the actual players in the game when you're a big club. Its my main dissatisfaction with the game. Hoping 25 gets tweaked a bit.

 

The part that doesn't make sense is that when I scout individual games, the scouts still come back with reports on some players who aren't interested. I guess I shouldn't say that out loud, or maybe they'll take that feature away, haha. I do agree with their overall goal of making scouting a bit harder, though. There's a happy medium that I think can be achieved. The fact that I can scout one game and have "extensive" reports on a bunch of players from that one game is too extreme to the opposite end, IMO.

[StatboySpurs]

I think my solution to this would be to make it harder to know a player's attributes. For example, if I scout a player for three matches and he doesn't score, how should I know that his finishing is a 15? If I never see him take a penalty, how should I know that his penalty rating is a 14? I've always found that aspect of the game to be inaccurate. There are certain physical skills that should should be able to get a good read on. Speed, strength, jumping, heading, passing, etc. Even most of the mentals. But in real life, a club doesn't really know what they have in a player 100% until they sign him and he starts training with the team and playing in games. Only them should the full scope of his abilities be known, I think. Either that, or you scout him for a full season, or most of it, and he scores 16 goals and you've got a pretty good idea that he's a good finisher. I think that would accomplish the goal of making scouting harder without needing the changes that have been made to recruitment focuses.

I get around this in my saves by using the Just Skin Attributeless skin. But I'm tempted to go back to a skin that shows the attributes just because so few guys come through the recruitment focuses.

[Jellico73]

57 minutes ago, StatboySpurs said:

I think my solution to this would be to make it harder to know a player's attributes. For example, if I scout a player for three matches and he doesn't score, how should I know that his finishing is a 15? If I never see him take a penalty, how should I know that his penalty rating is a 14? I've always found that aspect of the game to be inaccurate. There are certain physical skills that should should be able to get a good read on. Speed, strength, jumping, heading, passing, etc. Even most of the mentals. But in real life, a club doesn't really know what they have in a player 100% until they sign him and he starts training with the team and playing in games. Only them should the full scope of his abilities be known, I think. Either that, or you scout him for a full season, or most of it, and he scores 16 goals and you've got a pretty good idea that he's a good finisher. I think that would accomplish the goal of making scouting harder without needing the changes that have been made to recruitment focuses.

I get around this in my saves by using the Just Skin Attributeless skin. But I'm tempted to go back to a skin that shows the attributes just because so few guys come through the recruitment focuses.

I've been using screenflow and filters a lot more. It can get tedious, but I am finding players my scouts should be finding, and some they wouldn't.

[wazzaflow10]

22 hours ago, StatboySpurs said:

I think my solution to this would be to make it harder to know a player's attributes. For example, if I scout a player for three matches and he doesn't score, how should I know that his finishing is a 15? If I never see him take a penalty, how should I know that his penalty rating is a 14? I've always found that aspect of the game to be inaccurate. There are certain physical skills that should should be able to get a good read on. Speed, strength, jumping, heading, passing, etc. Even most of the mentals. But in real life, a club doesn't really know what they have in a player 100% until they sign him and he starts training with the team and playing in games. Only them should the full scope of his abilities be known, I think. Either that, or you scout him for a full season, or most of it, and he scores 16 goals and you've got a pretty good idea that he's a good finisher. I think that would accomplish the goal of making scouting harder without needing the changes that have been made to recruitment focuses.

I get around this in my saves by using the Just Skin Attributeless skin. But I'm tempted to go back to a skin that shows the attributes just because so few guys come through the recruitment focuses.

Agreed. I'd be fine if they just showed a range (so long as it isn't always the middle number) or even inaccuracies unless you were tracking them for a long time (and I mean like 6 months maybe a year), akin to declaring someone as a top target. I don't have an issue with the concept of the focuses. It should only show you players that are interested or meet the criteria. And if that's 0 players or 100 players that's fine. But somewhere along the way they've conflated the point of recruitment focuses and scouting so now there's just one module that doesn't really serve the purpose of either very well.

I don't understand the point of the CA/PA stars in the focus set up if the focus won't return players who aren't equal to your team's CA. I'm asking for the scout to find players with 1/2 silver CA star and 1/2 silver PA stars  and up and I get 0 results half the time. I should be inundated with reports. So much so it should be impossible to dig through them. This isn't to say setting 1/2 CA stars and 3 PA stars should be a automatic wonderkid finder. there should be a sufficient number of players and unknown PA and CA attributes that you have to track players for a very long time (long enough for other AI teams to find them and sign them before you) that its inefficient to cast such a wide net. They can also make wonderkids incredibly unlikely to sign for clubs that either have a ton of first team and/or youth players at their position or are not one of the bigger teams in the world. Players should also evaluate playing time pathways much more and demand a certain pathway if they are that highly rated along with pay increases such that we have to make a serious commitment to them or risk the player causing a fuss and the agent developing a bad relationship and not wanting to work with us.

I know that's easier said than done from a programming perspective but I'm hopeful the module can be improved in the  future.