Smokey3957

good points.

in fm06, i started a FRED game in which the more expensive players had average to very poor stats for their positions, while players with good attributes were valued below 1M or much less. i'm sure after a season or two it would have sorted itself out, but it obviously made more sense to the AI if a player with poor stats valued at £5M+ had a high PA.

it should all be left to training and experience. no one could disagree that Cristiano Ronaldo had huge potential when he first came to england, but since he's bulked, adapted up and become a team player, he has improved even more. bad example, but other players have improved from nothingness to first team certs.

anon414

Since CM3 RCA has been introduced to put a limit on out of proportion attributes

Neb

a quick update, the goalkeeper I created is now first choice keeper for Derby. currently 7th in the EPL.

He has 4 for some of his goalkeeping attributes, 20 for eccentricity, 3 for agility and 3 for jumping. 2s and 1s for all the other GK attributes

he's now worth a million and in his 9 appearances for derby has an average rating of 7(?) and interestingly has made 40 fouls in his 9 games (Thats a fair bit for a GK!)

retired_Balanchinegal

It's certainly an interesting idea, and it makes sense.
I like your thoughts on player attitude/dedication and mentality all playing a part in his development, rather than a set PA.
Some players came onto the scene as "Outstanding Prospects" but then faded away due to not being dedicated enough.
Jermaine Pennant is a good example - once Britain's most expensive teenager (IIRC) when Arsenal signed him from Notts County, then he went a bit off the rails and faded away. This wouldn't happen in the game.
(Although now Pennant has "adjusted his attitude" at Liverpool and has again began to blossom)

So it's a good point Neb, just how could it be implemented into FM? And would players just dedicate their time turning hundreds of "Average" nobodies into world beaters? Could such a system be exploited? Perhaps that's why there is a Set PA.

alidog

But IRL do we know they have good PA, or do they just have high skills compared to others in their age group?

Let me put it this way. When you look at a group of young players IRL, perhaps your own team's U18 squad, do you think "Ah, now all these players are of the same standard but I think Player X has high potential."?

Or do you think "Player X is head and shoulders above the rest of these muppets, I think he'll go on to become a star."?

You see the difference between the 2 statements? IRL there's no such thing as PA. How much a player then improves depends on a number of factors, for example:

Age
Determination
Ambition
First team opportunitites
Personal life
Training facilities available
Like for the coaching staff / manager
Happiness at club
etc.

There's no such thing as PA, it's an artificial concept that's been created especially for FM.

It still serves a purpose at the moment, but I think we're rapidly getting to the point whereby PA can fall by the wayside (And CA with it) as we can just use the other attributes to judge a player's abilities and potential to improve.

At the moment all attributes are just about as easy to improve as the rest, but it shouldn't be the case. Some should be easier to improve than others, and the ease of which any or all can be improved should be deterimined by the factors listed above. It's an ambitious change to make, but IMO one that needs to be made sooner rather than later as the CA / PA thing has gone as far as it can go.

ddong78

"Current Ability" is necessary to exist, because it modulates the database attributes at the start of the game (once per career, that is). This is a good way to make sure that FM researchers have not gone over the top with their players (because if they have, the modulation engine cuts their attributes down at the very start of the game).
Also, as far as I know, CA takes into account the player's position when modulating his attributes. So a defender with Off the Ball 20 and Tackling 10 is going to have a smaller CA than a defender with Off the Ball 10 and Tackling 20. So this is pretty cool.

The above (current) system sounds very good actually. The only problem is that the "Attribute Modulation Engine" is independent of the "match engine". For example, the AME may rate Positioning very high for a defender, but the match engine difference for two defenders with different Positioning may be very small. Also, every time the match engine is tweaked, the relevant value of attributes changes for a given position. This is a problem that is never going to go away, but I can live with that.

I 'll give you that the AI should take Average Rating much-much more into account, beating the previous problem.

The discussion on Potentioal Ability is somewhat a different matter, and I don't really have an opion on it

alidog

Some managers spend their entire careers trying to do just that!

To stop exploits, it would have to be very difficult to turn a player into a world beater. For starters, you're unlikely to do this at Cheltenham Town. The quality of the opponents, coaching staff and training facilites would need to be a massive factor to stop people turning promising players into world beaters.

This would mean that little clubs could get a their share of highly skilled regens (Something which some say isn't happening at the moment), but would have to sell them to clubs that were able to develop them. Keep them yourself and they'll not get much better as you don't have the facilities or coaches to get the best out of them.

retired_w0lfpack1

A great example! Again, I think that's a problem with CA/PA being used to govern the feedback that you're getting, rather than with the system itself.

I'd really like to have better in-character feedback, as you have for your example text.

And, obviously, to give that, the assistant/coach/scout is going to have to look at something more than just CA.

I can see why it was computationally efficient for SI to use CA as an evaluation function, but I think the time for that has passed - especially as the "minimum requirements" computer for gaming has grown in such leaps and bounds since the initial CM release.

Neb

If we assume that there are some attributes that are fixed (well cannot be changed directly by the player) I think very few of the average nobodies could be turned into world beaters!

I guess the best way to do it would be almost identical to the way it is now, except make very very few players meet their PA (at the moment 90%+ do). set everyones PA to the max 200 and see what falls out of it. Then tweak it to make it realistic.

I can't see it being impossible. I think the biggest problem would be, how would the AI then compare players? The AI would need to know what type of players fit into their formation. they'd need to be smarter comparing different players for the same position. It wouldn't just be a case of comparing CAs (or PAs for matter!) The AI would need to be smartened up drastically, becoming tactically astute and also able to analyse every players attributes to get the best out of their team.

There's plenty of people on this forum who struggle with that already!! (myself included ) So I think it could be a bit much for the a computer at the moment. But whos to say for the future?

SI are the best in the business for this type of thing, so they must be able to come up with something less flawed than CA/PA!

KryptonSean

I just had to reply to this post.

In FM07, I sgned Adriano and Ibrahimovic from Inter for Chelsea. Drogba was then my fourth choice striker and the assiant agreed. However, Drogba out-performed both the others and became second choice of both myself and my ass man. So form is incorpratated to some extent.

(This was on an old save. I just checked on the genie, and Adriano and Ibrahimovic had higher CAs and PAs than Drogba.)