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This topic has been inspired by a Football Manager Fanboys thread started by Skacel a couple of days ago, posing the question should we now be seeing a dynamic potential ability attribute for young players within Football Manager? There is probably two things that Football Manager has fallen behind on in the development of their games and that is player development especially of regenerated players, and also training. So is it time to see a dynamic PA in FM2011?
What is a Dynamic Potential Ability
Potential ability is a statistic that is hidden from us the gamers and but its affects determine how good a player can be. The only problem with this number is that it is mainly a static number, so if you know the right players and the right way to train them you can find the superstars in the game. Some do have a little bit more of a random attribute but this still will be between two numbers. Therefore what is meant by a dynamic ability is that the ability of a player is determined on a range of factors and you could truly make a poor player into something special, for example Sir Alex Ferguson’s love child Darren Fletcher.
How this could be useful for Football Manager player development?
This gives Football Manager another dimension, the best players lists will be useless in forums, because for a young player to be a wonderkid in the future it will be all down to the hard work of you the manager and coaches, obviously this would then rely on the players mental attributes such as determination and work rate as well to get the player to a position where they could make it as a professional footballer. Therefore making the game more like a simulation instead of a ‘guess the best players in the database’ and allowing more work to go into the development of players.
But the real world arguement, is being a great athlete in the genes or can it be learned and developed? The current system obviously takes the view that each player that is in the database only have a certain amount of potential available, set at the start and it is just up to the coaching staff and the manager to coax this potential out of them, but there will be a certain point that they will ever be possible to get to pre set from the begining. If an athlete was never destined to be a footballer then we will see this occur in the game represent with a lower potential ability and these players will dwindle or settle in the lower down in the leagues.
Can it be done?
Well this is the million dollar question, I think if SI could have done it already we would have seen training, coaches and a players mental attributes already take more of an affect on whether a player would make it or not in the world of professional football. But building all these interactions within the game and allowing them to work seamlessly is a difficult process indeed especially when you consider how much is also down to luck.
But then you have got the chance of turning the game into a mathematical formula, if determination is x, coaches are y and you (a+b) then you will definitely get an amazing player and a team of world beaters no matter who the player is. This is too easy to game and unrealistic for players as this obviously isn’t the case in real football, football history is littered with promising talent that have never made it for a number of reasons. Zola Mouloko and Freddy Adu just two promising Football Manager players that have never reached the heights they were expected too in real life. Professional football is that much of an advanced sport that each player needs to be the best of the best to get through and the time when you could change an average player into a great player is a rarity if they don’t show some sort of potential already, obviously the likes of Lampard and Fletcher showned some sort of promise that attracted the likes of Sir Alex and Jose to stick with them.
Does it need to be done?
Does Football Manager need to change the way it deals with personal development? I feel it needs to do something to improve it even if it stick with the more static PA’s it has now. But being able to compare players and give suggestions of new players gives Football Manager something that few games hold, the chance to build a talking point, share quick knowledge and tips of players to buy, this has been something that has been a staple of the Football Manager community and gamers throughout the focal talking point, if we remove set potentials from the game at the start would this affect that social interaction that the game actually feeds off?
Comments are Free, take advantage of this and tell me what you think below.
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If they could nail this it would be unbelievable. Ali posted in that thread that it would see more people use the training and it really would. It would add such a real new dynamic to a lot of features like training, player interaction, player development, etc
It would also make every game different and unique which is a huge bonus.
True it would make everyone game unique as well. But then again what would people talk about down the pub, at work today some guy who hasn’t playing FM/CM since CM4 was having a nostalgic moment about some of the players that he had in his side would you get this sort of shared nostalgic moment by having different abilities of managers deciding how good players would become.
Also how would the scouting system work? Potential ability would become something so hard to measure, how would we know which players would be worth bringing on to be better players?
I think it would lead to a lot more banter between players, especially when it comes to creating future world beaters. Where one manager has failed in making a wonderkid live up to his rep others may have succeeded and that addition of competition in player development could be a right laugh \o/
I think the scouting would become even more realistic, as people would have to really scout players, it would take a few games for a scout to get a really clear picture of a player and not just an odd report. This is where the scouts could go into more detail about the players personality and how he would fit into the club and how the player would adapt to the current tactics and maybe even training regimes.
As I was saying on Fanboys; They could start with the FMLive manager settings, growth and achievements as a base for the abilities of a manager.
The manager influences the player and the players grow in a specific way due to the manager.
That would give every manager a different impact on a club and the players there. Wenger taking over Real Madrid with this concept would change the Galacticos mentality for a youth mentality. You’d see older stars being sold and young wonderkids being tapped up. Money wouldn’t be spent as much, transfers realistic and a nice scouting network.
In FM now, Wenger could go to Real Madrid and nothing would change. You’d see the generic purcahses from a new manager at a new club, but you’d most likely have players bought on PA/CA rather than if the team needs them – as always.
It’s a change that is necessciary and that will become more apparent down the line. They’ve done a great job now, the GUI is fantastic, it’s something that’s set a solid foundation for this decade of FM titles. Now they’ve got to build the back-end to be as magnificent as the front-end.
Your right, I would love to see the AI managers affect the game is played, much as you have pointed out. It would be amazing to see also that players that maybe have Wenger as a favoured personnel become managers effectively take the same role as that manager and that is how new AI managers were created, meaning that influence and interactions between managers and experience of coaches and players has much more of an affect within the game.
Also the same with coaches, they could bring certain aspects to your squad based on where they have been before.
I think you put it well in your own article which could be a whole different approach to the way of developing PA I outline above – http://tinyurl.com/y8sgnrb and one that does hold water in a real life context.
For a long time I’ve wanted to see more developed in terms of club academies as well. Currently it seems to me that if you have an academy you will get a better quality of youth player, but that’s about it. As you mention with Wenger/Madrid, I want to be able to say “ok, this is how I want to play, so this is how my academy is going to work”. So more influence on the type of players that come through.
I would foresee a new staff role of academy director who follows the lead that you set. Let’s remember that clubs now have youngsters from much younger ages, yet in FM 15 is the youngest you get to see, so you have no influence before this point.
The way I would tie this in with PA/CA (thinking in terms of what I would like rather than realistic in development terms) is to have the PA more changeable the younger a player is, and to have players able to change their natural position when very young. As players develop, these become more fixed, and the mental attributes become more important. So with the youngest youth players you can influence the PA, but you still have to have the man-management after that to bring out the potential.
The one caveat with this is that a new manager wouldn’t necessarily be given complete freedom with this straight away, but the club board would grant it once the manager is successful. The quicker you meet or exceed their expectations, the faster you get control.
I think that this is an excellent idea. I particular like the idea that the younger the player is the more flexible his PA is until they start growing into there late teens early 20′s so that your own skills as a manager should have more of an affect on how good the player is going to be.
But I am not sure about being able to change the natural position of young players, I think that they will often find that throughout a players playing career from even a young age there will be a pretty good idea of where they are going to play best most of the time. I think the current system of being able to retrain for different positions depending on their attributes would do that job pretty well.
I’ll just repeat what I said in my Fanboys post,
2nd Yellow – has presented a very good idea with the younger players being more suseptable to good and bad management. The one difference is that older players are sometimes better under other managers too though. Lampard didn’t become a world-beater until Mourinho arrived at Chelsea and Terry was the same too.
Maybe the one idea would be to impliment a bonus multiplier into the manager which would alter the players PA gradually over time. The CA would then be able to grow a little bit more as a result. This would stop the manager immediately taking over and giving a player big, unwarranted boosts but a more realistic boost which has a similar effect to a morale boost in real life.
Alright Levo, great article, on first reading I thought you had nailed it perfectly, like you say yourself though, Darren Fletcher is a special player because of the work Fergie put in, this was demonstrated with the likes of Nicky Butt once he left united!
But Fergie couldn’t take a player from League Two and make them Darren Fletcher, so therein lies the problem of making it too variable, like you say the coaching influence would then become the key chip, but that would still require a long term plan
Incidentally as you know I pretty much gave up with CM/FM for a long time, however on taking a bash with FM10 It is very good, however what the hell has happened to the scene?
Take care mate keep up the writing its good
Bates
PCM Forever
Hey Bates good to see you still visiting and giving the new generation of FM a chance.
What you say is exactly what I am arguing really, or more asking the question are players born great or are they made great?
The crux of the argument though is that FM needs to be improved in terms of player development, both on the impact of the managers decision but also how they naturally develop in terms of their attributes.
But in terms of PA surely I think that if a player has a high potential in the game such as (I ain’t got an FM2010 example
) Kallstrom from the CM days,he is always going to be great doesnt matter what you do. I think that there also should be a way to make ordinary players greater then they should be with hard work and the right decision.
So for Fletcher for example he is giving one particular job to do, he has worked at doing this job for years and now he does it really well, if he went to another team and played differently in the centre of midfield he wouldn’t be as good. Although again this could be argued that player roles do this job in terms of tactics.
ee I totally agree with you and for this reason things like youth academies are purely redundant?
As if you have a tip top youth academy, does that mean you have a) a higher probability of getting future stars with each new influx or b) the ability to develop those youth payers faster or c) both
Either way though if a players future is so determined by PA then the facilities and quality of them would really make no difference
Well youth academies as far as I see them only determine the probability of having players with a higher PA, it would be nice to see a manager have more control of this as has already been suggested by 2ndYellow.
The training facilities at a club will more or less determine how fast a player will reach his PA and if they reach their full PA more or less. But as I said before if a player is going to be good, he will be no matter what you do, so sometimes you have to wonder is there much point in messing around with training etc…?
My thoughts…
Having one single hidden attribute (PA) is certainly not the right answer. However I do think that using hidden attributes is the key. However I also would take a completely different approach to displaying attributes in general, which is for another discussion completely.
I don’t play FM but I do play EHM and have been a pretty active member in the original freeware EHM community so my take is based more off of hockey but none-the-less sport is sport and athletes are athletes.
To me I’d look at a few key areas, namely athletic ability (natural talent), work ethic, personality, passion, performance and success. I feel that in a real world situation those are the most important areas in making a successful athlete.
I like looking at past NHL drafts as a guideline for potential (viewed) and success, or even players like Freddy Adu as you guys comented on. There is no denying his natural ability and if I were a team manager I would certainly try to draft or purchase a player with that gift and develop him. In the same sense what makes a player like that fail? Well in the current system a player like that dosen’t fail he lives up to his PA with minimal effort from the manager. However in real life this is not the case.
In real sport failure could be due to many reasons and thats where the sports sim genre falls short. Now obviously we don’t want to get into outside reasons like family life, poor off-field decision and the like but I think there is way more that we can do to generate a less predictable and truely rewarding system. Personality is something that I would implement as a hidden attribute, is Freddy Adu not reaching his potential because his manager doesn’t know how to get through to him? Players react to a certain coaches style in different ways and it can effect a players game in a very good way or a very bad way.
Passion is another one of those intagible attributes, maybe a player doesn’t have all the natural ability in the world but he loves the game, so he gives 100% everytime he’s on the pitch. This goes hand in hand with work ethic, he spends that extra time watching film or lifting weights. Having a great work ethic however could also negatively effect a player if his manager is having him train in the wrong areas.
Coaching staffs even at a young age should effect players attributes in a much bigger way. Not just the manager but every person in the organization.
Just some random thoughts but I think something simple like adding a few more variables into the mix and making coaches/managers training and handling effect players based upon those variables would go a long way.
FM or EHM I think that everything you talk about is brilliant.
In Football Manager it is just too easy to find a wonderkid buy him and just wait a few seasons until he is ready to play in the full squad and rip other teams apart. When in fact that it does take a lot of time and nurturing of players to make or break them.
Someone made an interesting comment to me the other day that can relate to this, Nani is what Ronaldo would have been if he didn’t try as hard. Personality, work rate and determination and many hidden attributes in terms of personality and professionalism have a small impact on training, these wouldn’t be new aspects, I just think new variables should be added to the coaches and tools to the managers so that you can take different approaches with different players depending on their personality etc… Tutoring for example could be a major way of changing a lazy wonderkid who looks like could go to waste into an inspired enthusiastic player who will make it in the big time. Giggs, Scholes and Neville are just key examples of how much value players within a club will have on the development of other players.
If I understand your question correctly, you cannot build it its pre-determined, and what levo is gett it if you mean grow it to its full potential is that this seems to be set off already with no influence possible as a manager by factors like determination etc
Sorry bates, I need a little more clarification on what you are replying too here.
At the moment the players development has little to do with what managers do, you can have an influence on making them a little better. But a manager as well as ourselves and the AI manager should have more influence on the way squads and players develop.
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