NineCloudNine

This is a very interesting point. Pace and acceleration are very much genetics-driven and while you might expect top flight players to be fitter and therefore more likely to reach their potential, there are for sure super fast players in all leagues. As these attributes are set by volunteer researchers, I assume they are operating within guidelines that limit outlier scores relative to the player’s level (whether that is their team, their league or their CA).

This is all in your head. You’re playing alone, against an AI. You can do nor not do exactly what you want. You don’t “need” to build a pacy team unless you want to. Your shouty demand for SI “to address this” will be ignored. If it “kills the game” for you, that’s something you’re doing to yourself.

No-one has argued that, you’re making a strawman. Bolt didn’t even have 1s in his technical and mental skills. It’s been pointed out many times that 1-20 in FM is 1-20 *for a pro footballer*. A player with ~100 CA (such as those in this experiment) is an extremely good player, even if they are below Premier League standard. Bolt wasn’t even good enough to play semi-pro; his short attempt to be a pro was a publicity stunt for the club, no matter what footballing fantasies he may have possessed.

No need to be rude mate, you basically agreed with everything I wrote apart from that one part

Pace in football always confers a relative advantage. Hence my reference to a speedy park team winger as well. And pace can get a player a long way without having equivalent technical and mental skills - Ousmane Dembele, Timo Werner and any number of players for example. So it’s not weird that pace is powerful, the question is how much. So when you say “improve the game” or “things that can be broken” what is it that you think needs to be improved or is broken? It’s not at all clear from this test what the problem is, as all we have is an outcome from an entirely unrealistic and artificial scenario. Is the problem pace?, or poor AI reactive tactics?, or the weak impact of mentals?, or something specific to the club or league? Exactly where should the club have finished (over a lot of seasons, not one)?. And even then, who cares when the scenario is so unrealistic? You have already decided that pace needs to be de-powered and you are latching on to evidence that you think confirms your pre-existing view. In fact this test offers nothing new, it’s not realistic and it’s not obvious that it is even demonstrates what you think it does.

Speed and acceleration have been overpowered in FM for years. SI know this, which is why those attributes have extreme CA multipliers. It is reasonable to assume that the potency of pace in the ME has been extensively explored by the devs over the years and either they think it’s fine or (more likely IMO) the creaking ancient nature of the code means they can’t do any more about it. That said, some other points. Pace is a killer attribute in football. The havoc caused by Vinicius or Mbappe, or the speedy guy on the wing in your park team, make that obvious. A whole team of speedsters would be devastating, even if they did lack badly in other areas. What would actually happen to a team of sprinters is that the opposition manager would adapt, sitting deep, holding the ball, pressing hard, fouling, whatever. There is no tactic or attribute in football that does not have a counter, none at all. So IMO this test doesn’t tell us anything new or interesting about the potency of pace in FM or in football. It tells us that the manager AI is limited in its ability to adapt to opposition tactics and completely fails to do so when faced with an entirely unrealistic scenario which cannot have been tested for because there is zero reason to test for it. This is where “X is broken, fix it” threads and claims go wrong so often. There seems to be an assumption that fixing these things is easy because (for example) there’s a metaphorical dial in the code where the impact of pace can be dialled down from 9 to 7 and the problem would go away. In fact it’s often not clear exactly what the problem is and ‘fixing’ it might require really significant time and end up changing something which none of us might have realised was the root cause. I see no reason to expect devs to do this when faced with an entirely unrealistic scenario which would never be encountered in normal play and where it’s not at all clear what, exactly, causes the outcome.

I’m sure your two screenshots with no context and no explanation are, in your head, communicating a very profound point. I have no idea what that point is though.

Since the OP himself seems to have won the CL with Man U the year before, I'm guessing that screenshot isn't coming. The presented evidence is some results from 2029 showing Porto beating Milan and Benfica beating Barcelona. Nothing weird about either result, now or in the future. The other evidence is a screenshot from early in the 2023 season showing that despite losing their first match in the group, Benfica are considered slight favourites agaist an Arsenal team who drew their first match. I have no idea why the OP considers this to be proof of the grand theory he seems to have cooked up.

It's worth clarifying exactly what it is you think SI need to do here. I'd suggest that you already have the tools to manage this - don't have anyone on Important or Star player. I don't and I have never had playing time complaints unless I really had dropped a player. in Brazil the regional competitions do compact the season somewhat, but in general terms the need to juggle the squad between league, continent and cup is the same everywhere for top teams (some countries also have a second cup, or a two-round supercup as well). Weds-Sat and Thu-Sun weeks are the norm for successful teams. I do agree that it would be nice to have the option to explain upfront and in player discussions what your focus is and thus why a player might find themselves playing less in one competition and more in another. This could also come in the form of an edict from the Board, or a demand from fans. I'm less convinced there is a need for a Brazil-specific tuning of the player time module. The different emphases you describe can be introduced in the form of expectations and additional player interaction options.

More than that, he seems to have gone down a tinfoil hat rabbit hole by deciding that the reason for the success of two smaller clubs (Benfica & Porto, which are not small clubs but nvm) is that SI are testing special AI code on them .

It does, including the possibility that a good youth prospect will refuse to sign a youth-only contract and demand a pro pre-contract. That would actually add a neat new dynamic/dilemma.

I select individuals. That would seem to be the difference then. TBH having the DoF sign high-potential youth teamers to youth-only contracts via the ‘sign recommended players’ button, when they would normally demand pro pre-contracts, feels like a loophole rather than something working as intended. Only SI can confirm for sure what should be happening here though.

Is it the case that only league games count towards playing time satisfaction? That’s not been my experience, I think it is all first team games. I don’t get why prioritising the Copa Libertadores would cause players to be rested for so many league games that playing time concerns become a problem. Resting/rotating players before big continental games is common in Europe too - I do it all the time. I suspect you have too many players on Star and Important status, which makes them much more sensitive to not playing. Try to drop them down a tier over time, makes things much easier.

There may well be some difference in the teams we manage, responsibilities or something else, but that isn’t my experience. I just had a youth intake. I told the DoF to sign several of the better ones and I signed others myself. In both cases a future professional contract was agreed with a youth contract in the meantime. The DoF tended to offer more money than I did, which is annoying, but otherwise the outcome was the same. Less good intake players agreed to youth contracts with no future professional terms whether it was me or the DoF tasked with the negotiation.

Seems that the loan return is not properly registering. This menu depends on the 'non-playing history' part of a player's database (this is editable in the pre-game editor and is a hot mess for players with multiple loans or B team games). This is what is not properly updating. It seems unnecessarily complicated to have the milestone / achievments dependent on the non-playing history rather than just being an entry in themselves, but as you say the interface is a horrible monster of layered elements.

Only if someone has set it that way in the database. There's a field in advanced rules defining medal qualification criteria. It's possible it was set wrong in the competitions missing here.

Another thought - towards the top right of the player milestone screen there is a dropdown menu called ‘entire career’ within which you can tick/untick clubs from the player’s career. I have no idea how you might untick something accidentally, but if you have that would explain certain clubs not appearing.

This stuff matters a lot to me as well but I have not experienced the problem you describe here. If anything I find that achievement pages get cluttered with pointless things like team of the week and shortlists. Barcola only had 14 league appearances in his last year. Was he injured and left out of the squads? Those are all Cups so if he missed the final, he gets nothing.

The tinfoil hat vibe is strong with this one.

No way Jose ever had three attack duties! I don’t think he had any. I’d make Lukaku a TF-S to attract more of the ball and have him hold it up. Dybala never works as an AM in FM, he’s too small and doesn’t work hard enough. I’d play him as a DLF-S or F9 alongside Lukaku, drop both wingers to midfield and make Spinazzola a FB. You have faaaaaar too many instructions. That level of restriction prevents players making any decisions and Mourinho believed in training players to react to what happened in the game rather than being drilled Guardiola-style. That said, I don’t think anyone except perhaps a single playmaker would be allowed to ‘take more risks’. Why do your players need to be told what sort of crosses to make? Why pass into space when none of your attackers are fast? Mourinho never played a high defensive line. You’ve over-thought a lot of this. Too much micro-management. Mourinho’s Inter sacrificed possession for a suffocating defence and lightning counter-attacks. No risks, high workrate. No passengers. Let the players react.

I rarely play with any attack duties apart from my striker. I don’t find that this impedes goal scoring. My experience is that too many attack duties mean players running into dead-ends and trying low-quality chances. Wingers on attack are especially bad at this. They are supposed to be creators, but on attack tend to cut in, shoot more and dribble more. That might sound fun, but means they pass up good passing opportunities and run into dead ends. My second most used attack duty is for a central AP, as this makes them aggressively drive forward and try killer balls. I never put WB, FB or CWB on attack as the different behaviours you want can be achieved by changing the role. I love the HB. The movement dropping into a back three is great. It makes for a stable back line allowing WBs to push forward. The HB can be a great quarterback, constantly recycling the ball like peak Busquets.

Fun tactic but very aggressive. IFs on attack are all-out attackers doing basically no defending. Your DM on support will have a higher mentality even if you tell them to hold position. CWB is a gung-ho role. I suspect your IFs, F9 and CM-A are all tripping over each other on the edge of the box. You have no width on the right and are vulnerable to counters down both flanks and behind your midfield. Having that many PIs also greatly restricts your players’ ability to react to what is happening. They will do the same things over and over. Your front three shooting more often will mean lots of low quality attempts at goal rather than waiting for a better opportunity. I bet this is why it looks like you’re dominating games (high cumulative xG) but still losing.

At the end of the season City, Arsenal and one of the others will go down. The next season they will come back up. The season after that they will be back at the top of the league. It is possible all 5 will lose a few players, but not many. Why do you think it would be a mess?

It has always been the case that good youth intake players expect proper hot prospect contracts while average/poor ones ask for youth contracts. It’s not clear to me why you think there’s a difference between offering contracts individually or your DoF doing it. If you have previously had entire intakes willing to sign youth contracts then my guess is that none of them were any good.