Soulseeker

I submitted another ticket about this earlier, hopefully they'll look into it, but, you know...

I agree that it's better than it was in 22 and 23, but still worse than before eg FM19 (kinda speculative, but I never noticed this issue in earlier versions so it's either wasn't there to a noticeable extent or I just never realised that it was).

This has been a problem at least since FM22, unfortunately.

I see what you mean. Looks like I made a pretty stupid assumption that subs not working correctly is a current bug in the game because I keep hearing so much about it and also saw tickets in the bug tracker, but now that I went through my games (both 1 and 10 seasons old) I can see that AI managers use subs more or less as I would expect them so I take that back and apologise for confusion. However, this doesn't address the main concern that I have, which is what I outlined in this bug report I would be very surprised to find out that actually the average age of the first teams after 10 years is comparable to 1 year across thousands of clubs and not just a couple dozen that I selected for my spreadsheet and even more surprised to find some extra high CA players (eg 175+) within those U25 (basically regens) players who became a part of the future first teams in 10 years. I now feel kinda bad for choosing U25 to be the threshold because if I went with 24 (so, the second generation of regens in 2034), it would be very unpleasant stats from what I can see

Not only I read the response from the developer, I replied to it in that very thread several hours ago. I also posted this here Does this satisfy your requirements for the post weirdness check now? Still don't understand your point. If you think there is no issue here - great, why bother even reacting? Leave it to SI to double check. If there is? Cool, let's work on resolving it. I genuinely don't understand what is this about.

Do you suspect me in having a hidden anti-SI agenda or something? Another weird reply, where the point eludes me completely.

Like I said, I suspect that the discrepancy is mostly because AI is not using younger players enough in the game, particularly because of lack of subs and not rotating the squad enough between the game, which is seen by it using unfit players in the games. Good thing is, the bug tracker is full of the reports about it and so I expect SI to fix this issue and that would be about it for the development discrepancy.

I don't even understand the point that you are making. I reiterate for the third time that I merely want SI to follow through on their promised for two features that they specifically promised and we can clearly see that one of them (rotations and subs) are straight up not working at all right now. They clearly changed something in the engine, but it yielded the exactly opposite outcome in the game. Bug tracker is full of the reports that there are no subs or rotations unless players get injured or suspended. Are you denying this or what? And in turn, are you denying that this by the nature of the issue is hampering the development of young players?

Exactly. if they just do what they promised - better rotations and longer development periods for players, it would fix this issue. I'm actually kinda optimistic about this. Surely they can't promise something and just do exactly the opposite (no subs/no rotations) and release the game like it's nothing. I honestly expect them to fix this bug in the full game release and we'll see a great improvement immediately.

I'm basically making two points there: 1. If you guys fix AI not using subs and not rotating players this would probably more or less fix the discrepancy. I literally say that in my conclusions there. Surely this isn't too much to ask given that it was presented as one of the features of the game? I'm sure you are aware of the problems with this part of the game given how many people mention this and how many bug tickets are there. I would be shocked to see it not addressed before the full game release. 2. AI is unable to fully develop very high PA players, I talking top of the top. No more Hollands, Camavingas, Messis etc with fully realised PA. I'm fairly confident that a natural striker who has 1 strong foot and has attributes like finishing, first touch, off the ball etc around 14-15, this is not 170 let alone 180-200 CA. You can brush this off as much as you like, I'm pretty confident in my ability of "reading" CA from attributes given that I've been doing this since CM 00-01 with pretty reliable precision. I'm not saying it's a new issue - I don't think I've ever seen a fully developed 190+ PA player in 15 years save unless it's me who's playing him since he turns 18 or better ever sooner. I assumed that another announced feature of FM24, which is players having longer period of development, would be what finally addresses this properly for the first time in the series. So in other words, just do what you promise and the game is golden in this regard. I've never stipulated that this is a deep dive or I find the numbers catastrophic, not sure where this came from. In fact I was pretty pleased with results of my admittedly surface level test. So PLEASE just fix stuff that you directly promised to fix.

Ok so I ran the simulation (1 season vs 10 seasons) is here are my findings. I focused on comparing average ages of arbitrary clubs and national teams and U25 players. Why U25? Because in 2033 this is the age of the first wave of newgens. Here are the caveats: 1. U25 in 2024 and 2033 are very different thing. There will be many more players in the range between 18 and 24 in U25 in 2024, while in 2025 U25 will be comprised at least by 75% by 25 years old players. 2. AI does very bad job at developing players. Obviously it's speculative without the in-game editor but at a glance, even the starts of the future like the top Madrid striker would have stats that I would give 160-170 CA at most. Not terrible at all, but definitely not world start level. You can also see that in the media descriptions. Qualifiers like "elite" or "world class" are very rare and they usually tell the story about CA. 3. I expect the numbers to be somewhat better once this stupid issue of the AI completely ignoring the fitness of the players and therefore not making subs or rotations based on that. Even if it would yield 10-15% improvement between the game's results and the real world's, it would essentially fix the issue. 4. National teams seem to hand call ups out to pretty clearly underserving players. Like a third of Brazil in 2033 consists of players who barely play in their teams, which makes no sense and inflates the stats in favour of the game when it comes to the national teams. So what can be done to improve this still leaving a lot to be desired situation: 1. As mentioned before, fix the damn rotations and subs. This was literally presented as a feature of the new game and it's worse than ever before. What are you doing SI?.. 2. Make AI managers play high PA players from time to time just for the sake of their development, literally starting from them being fresh out of the youth intake. 3. Make players force their way out of the club if they are blatantly underutilised. Everyone's favourite example is Mukouko for a good reason - he never gets any play time in Dortmund except when he needs to come out as a substitution for an injured player. Even in a well functioning game engine (that it's not right now), this sort of situation would happen occasionally as they are a part of football. Great - just make it so that the players like that would leave, simple as. Transfer request etc. If you truly implemented the new "smarter" managers who buy people that they actually need, this would play very nicely into that improvement as well. 4. Finally, if everything else fails, just make players' attributes to grow faster from training and playing in lower divisions on loans. Like literally take the current rate and multiply it by 1.5 (at least). Everyone would like that, no one playing FM likes the current rate of player development and this is surely one of the issues at play here.

Yeah, I wish people who ran those simulations for 10-15 years and compared how many NT worthy players the game generated versus how many were generated in real life and the average age comparisons would do this again for 24. If it's still that bad, it's time to refund. Edit: in fact nothing's stopping me from running some simulations myself given that I have the early access so let's see how it works in 24.

If you really want to have Russian clubs and players playing internationally you can just imagine some sort of fantasy scenario where the war is over, Russia lost and now is a part of the new state with Kyiv being its capital so you can just move everything from Russia to Ukraine and now you have a new European league that will challenge Dutch, Portuguese and French clubs (except PSG) in the continental competitions regularly. That what I do anyway.

I guess I misremember this then. Anyway, if there is a way to make it available a bit earlier than on the full game release date it would be great.