wazzaflow10

Maybe we'll get a philosophy slider next year like we did for team fluidity that lets you go between positional and relational!

Sounds like it makes perfect sense. You left out someone because your squad is too big and they got upset. He might be close with a few influential players and they want to know why you left him out instead of someone else. The squad isn't always going to act rationally or agree with everything you say/do. Its part of being the manager. It's a decent suggestion though to have them suggest who you should leave out if it can still be changed. Moral of the story though is don't have so many players that you're leaving them out. Very few squads have players who aren't registered unless they're trying to get rid of them.

I'd be shocked if they left the module broken after this. I really would. I can see how you miss it initially, especially during the summer window when lots of agent offers appear. Its very strange to me that when a player "becomes available" you have 100% knowledge of them but they don't show up as scouted until that event occurs. Something is definitely happening on the back end that doesn't make it through to the UI parts of the game.

I haven't touched a long term save I had. Just been doing random saves. Actually went back to 21 for a while. @zeza Turns out all my optimism was for nothing. Most of the increase in scouted players was from my director of football scouting agent offers it seems. Almost instantaneous too. Such a strange, strange bug.

@Zachary Whyte Hey Zachary, Could you explain to me why the DOF is filing scouting reports? I don't have a focus set up for Italy but Osimen shows up in my players scouted due to Winstanley scouting him. Is there a secondary scouting mechanic?

Ok so here's a crazy thing. I went and re-verified the game files in steam. Everything came back clean though. Started a brand new game with Chelsea again. No added files or anything. Deleted all the original recruiting focuses. Set up my own in the same way you said to and I got 100 new players in a month of scouting from just two focuses in England and Spain. This is bizarre.

In the 15 odd years I've been playing via steam I don't think I've ever really seen a true gameplay hotfix. I have a hard time believing that this isn't in everyone's game. I was playing pure vanilla version and it broke. Given the number of people who come into the general discussion forum and say something I'm inclined to believe that if you pay attention to scouting you'd notice.

Makes sense. I still play 21 a lot an CMs are definitely used there. The only annoying thing is getting players who only have positional ability at CM. Not that they won't be affective at AM or DM but I feel like if a player plays CM they should either have positional abilities at either AM or DM as well depending on how they play.

There was a change in 22 or 23 I forget which where the engine required using DMs instead of CMs. So that's what the AI is doing. I don't know all of the reasons why the change was made but the tactics forum would be able to help you explain the differences. It's a single player game you play how you want. I don't use anything but formations the game comes with with minor exceptions of being down late and I'm just trying to hoof the ball up the field. But there's no single right way to play unless you're playing with others.

Last I heard the AI won't use asymmetric ones unless they are part of the selectable formations, that is correct. They don't use the off the shelf tactics presets unless it perfectly fits their style though. They'll create their own style or use a style that a researcher has given them.

typo make should be maybe

Yeah not sure this is entirely working as it should even with these adjustments. It's definitely "better" in the sense of it make works 10% of the way. None of the players that are in progress in the focus are listed in the scout priority screen. So that seems super odd to me. I also did a manual search and that returns some players. Seems like 4 a week is what they can handle when manually selecting. The whole core function just seems broken right now.

This actually makes perfect sense to me. I have a save in 21 where I have Wan-Bissaka and Hakimi (Hakimi wanted to leave PSG and I had cash to burn). I definitely ask them to play different roles. Wan-Bissaka is more of a basic FB-s, mark opponent winger, recycle possession back to a playmaker. Hakimi plays a CWB/WB-a and asked run wide, dribble more, cross more often, more direct passing, take more risks. I had a good run in that save of being completely untouchable for about 15 matches. I assume you're asking your RB to play as an IWB-a just based on his goals/assist tally and being a creative force. He's actually got attribute values that are in the world class area 17+ so that makes sense to me why he's so good and impossible to replace like for like. Maybe it's just a personal preference I'd like to see the players that are elite/world class talents or have elite/world class abilities in the game be a more dominant force. Not to the extent that no matter what role you pick they'll give you 8 or 9s out of 10 every week. But just show that extra little bit of quality. It's probably completely anecdotal and if I analyzed it I'd find they do actually provide appropriate separation from the rest of the pack. This is a fair point though. Not so much in a FB position. In central midfield though it sometimes seems very difficult to get the best out of world class players. I struggled for a long time in 23 to get Bruno Fernandes going. He's maybe a step/half step down from the best of the best but I've had much more success with other players playing similar roles. I probably didn't craft the right tactic for him to shine initially. But I suppose that's a real life problem too. Anyway thanks for the clarifications.

Ongoing is the english variant. The white colored focus is what you mean I think. not Blue (standard) or Yellow (Top)

yeah deleted all that. but did open the menu. but left the any analyst checked. This is what I have in progress so far after a few days. Got assigned to an analyst after the fact. Certainly better I guess. I'll be curious if any of them actually show up in the players scouted. I don't know if I'd call it fixed but I'll try another one.

Yeah this hasn't worked for me. I've gotten a couple reports but nothing like the volume I'd expect. When you say you didn't select an analyst you mean you just left it on Any?

Ok that's what I expected. Thanks. Right I've actually switched a lot of player comparison to the radar chart when deciding who the better player is or if they're a better fit for what I want to do. Its crude in the sense of understanding all aspects of a player but much easier than trying to figure it out attribute by attribute the style of player. To that end though the attributes that make a player world class or complete donkey in some aspect should stand out. Maybe I don't know enough of the real player attribute spread and the difference the game actually perceives between Leo Messi and Rory Delap (crude example). I don't think there's anything wrong with the game having the right spread of attributes overcome a lack of overall CA. The overarching point I'm trying to make is I think its fine if attributes are relatively close between certain values in the game. That's pretty reflective of what is in real life. There's less of a difference between a League One Player and a Championship player than there is between a yo-yo PL club and Man City or Liverpool. I don't think the game should allow your player to perform consistently at the same level as this guy. Not offensively anyway. I don't think you're claiming that. But the game should recognize there's replaceable players, serviceable players and then there's elite players and make much more of a distinction between the sets imo. The tactics absolutely matter. Getting more out of players than their attributes is part of the game and your duty as manager but that should only take you so far. You don't have to have world class players at every position but certainly players that meet the minimum threshold of what's considered league standard. Maybe what I expect the standard to be is too high. It's not that your guy is a bad player, just one I would expect to be exposed at a certain level. Please tell me if I'm completely off base though. Its just a perception I have that the talent is too squished - there's a difference but not nearly enough that you can't overcome it with average players and a solid tactic at the highest level.

Question about this - when doing research for Stoke are there guidelines (in a similar vein as jumping reach) for where attributes should fit in based on league level? Obviously some physical attributes would be unbounded. Also along those lines though - it seems somewhat counterproductive for the difference between values to be so minuscule. I think this is where maybe some people feel that attributes don't matter. I'd be curious if SI implements any sort of system where the jump from 1 to 2 is greater than the jump from 2 to 3 and 2 to 3 is greater than 3 to 4 etc. Then between say 5 to 15 the jumps are relatively small but noticeable enough that there is a difference between 5 and 15. Finally the jump from 19 to 20 is larger than the jump from 18 to 19 and so on down to 15. I think that would give you more of a sense of elite players are capable of elite things while still giving you a squishy interchangeable/replaceable middle class of players. If 20 isn't all that different to 1 then there's bound to be no difference between 20 and 15 when in reality having a world class attribute should be very distinctive even from the upper echelon of players. It doesn't have to be for every attribute. Some could be more linear like physicals while others could be more pronounced like technicals.

Its untenable with a team like Man Utd who have ~30 scouts. I think the game limit is upper teens for everyone else (another thing that makes me laugh is you can't replace scouts as they retire at Man Utd). I want to play the game not spend 20 minutes figuring out where to send scouts before I press continue every time. That's what recruiting focuses are for. Outside of just experimenting with the ME and different teams and play styles there's nothing to play for beyond 1 season because you can't possibly build a team with what gets returned organically. I'm having fun doing it b/c I wouldn't do it otherwise but I've had to put any long term ideas on hold because I've only got so much time and I don't want to spend it micromanaging scouts to that degree. It's already tedious enough assigning them manually to focuses to set and forget for a while.

Agree with this. I don't think the issue is the logic of what goes into a recommendation. The test save I was running only found 30 more players in England in 4+ months+ of scouting. Out of 500+ PL players my scouts have only found 30 players beyond whatever default players appeared despite there being roughly 180 games played in the PL between August and December. That can't be right. Not at least in the way the game has worked in the past with recruitment focuses. I can understand if there was a goal to tone down how effective a scout was at finding every player. But if that's the case someone turned the dial past 11 on this one. the toning down effectiveness argument doesn't hold up for me. Scouts will still work as they did before if you use player search, highlight some number of players, and ask for reports. It begs the question, if the intent of scouting is to do this - why even bother with focuses or assigning scouts to anything other than next opponent (As an aside that task alone should generate reports on players in your scouting center? I thought the purposes of focuses was to do this in an organic way. If playing with fog of war on how could you possibly known what player attributes are or filter effectively if players haven't been already scouted? There's something in between setting the focus parameters and the scout returning with scouted players that seems to be disconnected. I have to think that this was an unintended consequence of changing something else. And the reason there hasn't been a patch prior is due to the fact that they've had to untangle the desired change with this one rather than revert the code back to what it was prior to December. At least that's my hope. I'd take the 24.2.1 Match Engine with the 24.0 or 24.1 core gameplay if this can't be fixed in the upcoming series of patches rather than rely on gamey player searches to scout.

Part of the idea that high lines and intense pressing is OP seems to be in part of the really poor distribution of every keeper. Every punt, long hoof never seems to be near a player on his own team. There's the odd occasion where everyone falls asleep and it actually goes over the top but other than asking a keeper to do anything other than distribute to CB or FBs is almost an automatic giveaway. The crazy part to me is teams playing with a lone tall striker and keepers repeatedly trying to ask 5 foot tall wingers to compete in aerial duels. Keepers shouldn't be Xabi Alonso but the combination of decision making and seemingly untargeted hoofs I think plays into the problem.

There's currently a bug that's been logged. They've said there's going to be an update in the upcoming patch.

Apparently they don't use focuses I guess that makes sense. Seems weird to me that though that 3 months later no players have been added to the list of scouted players.

Interesting. I don't recall player interest being a factor in previous games. Is that new for 24 or a post December update feature? I could see players getting lower grades or not recommended in a focus at all due to lack of interest. I 100% agree with that thought process and decision. Makes perfect sense to me. I'd like to hone in on the Players Scouted tab and the criteria for players to appear in that space or at least my previous expectation of how it was working prior to December The Players Scouted tab should be showing that the team has scouted a player to a knowledge level of X% at a minimum. When a scout's basic impression is low ability relative to team or a player's interest is not sufficient enough to warrant a recommendation or further scouting at this time the knowledge level would remain low. The player can ask for more reports from this tab if they want further scouting on a set of players. Please correct me if I'm wrong as I know you all do extensive research into how clubs operate but I can't imagine real life Chelsea or Man Utd or Man City doesn't have at least a basic dossier on most of the first-team players in the PL. Certainly they're not going to have a lot of details about a player who they're not actively tracking but they're most certainly aware of them and their general ability level. Additionally, it would seem odd to me that a player like Endrick (prior to agreeing to Madrid) wouldn't show up on a team's scouting radar because he's not interested immediately in moving. It might explain why when I scout U18 players in England none of them appear because they're programmed to not be interested in moving until they are 18. The challenge for me is even if a player wasn't interested in moving until they were 18 not having any knowledge that a player exists creates a huge blind spot in future planning. I'm essentially waiting until a player turns 18 and then hoping there isn't an even better player right behind them coming next year. That isn't to say that better player should be immediately interested upon turning 18 but there's nothing I can do about it (either talk to agent or declare interest or shortlist) if I wanted to even attempt to sign them or persuade them. I hope this is clear. I appreciate you responding so quickly.

@Zachary Whyte Did an additional test where I took a snapshot after letting an AI manager run (I resigned completely from the team) the team and check scouting results at the same interval. It appears like there was absolutely no scouting done at all. Got what looks like the same 75 players based in England back as when I resigned. Is this normal behavior for the AI? Do they not scout like we do? If this isn't supposed to happen I have the save I can upload.