Quote:
Originally posted by Ackter:
Time for my annual dusting off of a few threads. Here's the first one:
There seems to be a bit of work needed on this part of the game. Currently, an AI manager identifies a target, makes an enquirey or a bid, you reject it, they never come back. This is clearly wrong.
Look at Essien at Chelsea - it took them months of negotiating to get him. They put in bid after bid until it got silly. Now, I'm not saying everyone should make silly bids, but each manager knows how much he wants a player*, he should do as much as he can to get his top priorities.
(*do AI managers actually know how much they want a player? or do they simply know they want him? eg. if an AI manager has 5 people on his shortlist, are they treated exactly the same? if so, then this is also a problem. I will go into this at the end of the thread).
Another thing you rarely see in FM is desperate teams coming in at the last minute. Look at Owen and Newcastle. Newcastle desperately needed a striker and Souness desperately needed to save his neck from the chopping block. They saw that Owen was available, with offers of around £9m being talked about. Newcastle and Souness were so damn desperate that they came in with a £16m bid, hoping to price everyone else out of the market - and it worked.
The closest you come to this in FM is when you bid for a player, say £2.5m, and then a bunch of AI teams come in with £6m. Unfortunately, although it appears to be, this isn't what I'm talking about. This just shows that the AI know the 'magic number' for a player. The AI managers seem to know that no less than a £6m bid will be accepted, so they bid £6m. Now while this has been improved in FM08, I feel there's still a lot to be done.
What I want to see is someone (whether you or the AI) making a £6m bid, and then someone else coming in at £10m because they can't afford to lose out on this player.
Now for my proposed system:
We (and the AI) need to be able to set priority to our targets. For example, my shortlist is currently:
Joaquin - medium
Andrea Pirlo - very high
Daniel de Rossi - high
Jermaine Defoe - high
Pablo Aimar - medium
Diego - medium
Rafael van der Vaart - low
Nando Rafael - low
Chris Kirkland - high
Ibrahim Afellay - very low
this shows the players I'm interested, but also how much I feel i need them. When we shortlist a player, we need to be able to specify the priority of capturing that player. We also need to be able to update this at any time.
Now, how would this be used? Using this system (based on their current squad and tactics+) the AI can identify their top targets, and will be more willing to go all-out to try and sign them. If one of your players is on their shortlist, then you can expect to receive several different offers for his services. eg They may come in at £2.5m, which you reject, so they come back at £3.8m, which you think is decent, but want to see if they'll offer more so reject it, they come back with £5m, you decide to try and take them for all you can so you reject it, then the AI decide they can't afford him and tell you so "We have decided to end our interest in Player X at the current time as he is too expensive", at which point we kick ourselves for being greedy buggers. I also believe that most transfer negotiations should start with an enquiry.
(+ example. Ai manager has 4 first team DCs, one of which is clearly a backup player, the others being squad players. From this he would look for a DC to be a key player. After shortlisting several possible DC targets (say, Steven Taylor, John O'Shea and David Weir) they set the one they want most, not necissarily the highest CA/PA, as their top priority (eg Steven Taylor). This means that the AI will do everything he can to get that player before moving on to the next priority target.)
On to the priorities.
Very High - will go all-out to sign
High - will try to sign if possible
Medium - will try to sign for around his current value (default for human managers)
Low - will try to sign at a lesser value
Very Low - will try to sign if he becomes transfer listed or available on a free
Now, we should not be able to see the AI's priorities, and we should only know of their interest if they are listed as medium priority or higher - you're not really going to know if a team has a slight interest in one of your players.
So, how would this effect human managers? - Simple.
This will be your way of telling the Chairman which players you want. If you have a very high priority, and try to sign him, the Chairman is likely to give you more transfer money and a bigger wage structure to try and get him^. (obviously if you're a new manager, he may not trust you and therefor not give you much extra, however if you're a manager he has high hopes for then he could make a lot more available - real life example is when Newcastle went in for Wayne Rooney). Again, if you made everyone on your shortlist a high priority to try and take advantage of this, then your chairman will realise you think he's a mug and will not give you anything extra to spend on him.
(^ with FM2008 we can now adjust our budgets as we see fit, but I still believe this should be linked to the player you're interested in, rather than just a general adjustment.)
If you have a more hands-on chairman then he may take the issue into his own hands. In my case Mike Ashley may see a chance to sign Andrea Pirlo and go for it himself. In this case I'd get a message "Mike Ashley has found that Andrea Pirlo may be available for transfer. He is currently making enquiries". Then, if everything goes well, you'd either get the message "Mike Ashley has agreed a deal with Milan for Andrea Pirlo. He would like you to be present for the contract negotiations" (at which point you'd go to the normal contract negotiation screens) or you'd get the message "Mike Ashley is delighted to announce that he has secured the signature of top target Andrea Pirlo. The player will arrive at the club tomorrow."
I believe this type of system would greatly improve the AI's transfer outlook, and also give the human managers something more to play with.
Any thoughts?
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Good ideas but i have a couple of points :
1) Only AI manager need priority list cause for player it's good as it is now (unless people play the game while drunk
). Both AI and player have an amount of transfer funds (like now) and try using that money to buy the highest priority player (AI only) or the player needed/wanted (human manager). It can be really frustrating to set priority on every single player you try to sign (for me that i like to buy many youngster can be annoying).
2) The manager (both human and AI) shoul have an option to tell the board that he want a player badly and only need X amount of money/Y more max wage. It can be done with an option that tell your chairman that you need to buy a player (select with a scroll down menu that show your shortlist) and need more funds and/or max wage budget. Then your chairman/board depending on factor like chairman ambition,club finances,thrust/faith the board have in you,club reputation (the more reputation the club have, the more the chairman is willing to buy good/amazing/world class player),ecc...
Of course this is only exceptional (except maybe for top class teams) and cannot do every years for almost every clubs.
3)The priority should be set like this (only for AI):
First Pick - The manager probably will ask for money/wage budget (if they can't afford him now) and try to sign him ASAP (can only be one at time)
High Priority - If they fail to sign their First Pick then they try to sign one or more (if they have enough resource) of those player depending on what they need/want (mostly for cover field position)
Normal Priority - Mostly used for back-up player, the ones that need a low amount of money spent. This include back-up (mostly for injury or lack of depth) for the right price, loan,free-agent,contract-expiring player and youngster to fill (eventually) the U18. This is the category that require less money.
I think there should be another hidden stat for AI and it is Difficult.We all know that a player can be a chimera for a team and a easy target for another team. It depends mainly on reputation of the club and the player and on the offer that the AI make to that player.
Here are the different level of difficult (only for AI of course) :
Very Easy - the target is willing of go to AI club and there are no other clubs interested/bidding or the only club interest/bid have lower reputation/are in lower league (great chance of buy that player unless the AI offer a crappy contract)
Easy - the target is willing to go but other teams of the same league/same (more or less) reputation are also interested.
Normal - the target show some interest, but no one of the others clubs are interested and he woul accept a great contract (for him of course);
the player is willing to go but there are many (like players that have ten or more team interested) team after him and could be difficult to buy him.
Hard - the player show some interest but team with higher reputation/are in higher league show interest.
Very Hard - the player is unlikely to go to AI team but there are no others club interested in him and he could accept the contract of his life;
the player show some interest but there are many (ten or more) teams with higher reputation/league interested in him so he is unlikely to accept AI offer
Of course the two stat (priority and difficult) should be taken both in account when the AI clubs set the priorities.
There is no way that Newcastle for example set Aguero or Rooney as First Pick because even if the players are must buy for every club in the world they are unlikely to accept an offer to a lower reputation club like Newcastle. Of course things can change if players want to move and/or are transfer listed by the club.
Note that both priority and difficult must change over time depending on the event that happens in the game.
Important thing is that AI clubs must try to buy/scout/enquiry about First Pick,High Priority and normal priority AT THE SAME TIME (like they do IRL). For example a team can try to buy their first pick while offer loan contract to a left back that they need or make many offers to high prioritity players to see which of them will join and pick the most convenient one while buying that AMC to cover the injury of your star player (both transfer or free-agent for lower level clubs). This of course must take into account funds avaible and wage budget.
Two more things about transfer system for FM 2009:
- Maybe in the rich England no one cares but in many league (Italy is one example) the exchange of player (both straight and with compensation for one club) are very rare. They need to be more frequently cause they are often the only way to buy player IRL
- I have yet to see loan with a future transfer option, don't know why in the game they don't work but IRL they are very used.
- Low amount of co-own buy (in Italy of course).
IRL this is the first metod of buying player (to give you an idea, every year in Italy there are discussion of 300+ player in co-ownership between serie A and serie C2, so you can see how much important they are) yet in FM (except for top clubs buying young prospect, but this is another point) there are not enough co-ownership deal between clubs.
Hope you enjoy the reading,sorry for the english and hope anyone can discuss my ideas.
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