retired_may0gan

I was converted - those posts in GPG were before cm 03/04.

When I say I make a few changes, I don't do anything that I percieve as unrealistic. I don't look at attributes, use the quick search, get players on the basis of prior experience and so on

creative36

Praise the llama! etc etc

On a slightly more topic-related note: in my current game, I noticed that my scouts were not bringing me news of ANY freebies at all during their youth scouting trips, despite having large database chosen. Especially curious since Brazil has a pretty large player pool. After about 4 months of none showing up at all, and not having heard anything about a 'feature' returning to the game, I decided to investigate.
After doing a Quick Search (steady, lads) for 'Players', 'Brazil' and 'No Club', and then choosing names at random, I realised that ~95% of the players (about 75% were staff anyway) were retiring this season. So, in other words, lots of regens should be showing their hairless chins fairly soon.

I'm doubtful how typical this is, since I'm playing with Random Players, but it has put my mind at rest on that issue. And, in fact, regens are already turning up.
[beat]
And turning me down.

And as regards the Quick Search: No, I did not shortlist, sign or sing to anyone in my random sample.

retired_sara maria

There are plenty of free yutes (or rather schoolboys) in Scotland playing on large DB. Rejuvinated my old tired last place bunch.

retired_jmeshew

I am also seeing a fair amount of Utes in Scotland with large db. Just as with CM4, the medium DB was horrible for LLMing. The large DB adds all the non-league sides which is critical imho, because thats where I tend to scrounge up players from.

On a side note, the scouting in 03/04 seems to return far fewer results than it did in CM4. And it does weird things too. I got a report on an Antiguan international who had no palyer history, no UK country as a second nationality, yet he came from an England scout. Scouting Scotland yielded me 2 Canucks, a Kiwi and Belgian and a Dutchman, none of whom had UK as a second nationality or had played for a UK team that season or the previous season. Sort of strange. The Belgian was acutally on a French side at the time.

I am not sure whats going on, since the boards don't seem rife with reports about this as an issue, so the jury's out. Still, between the odd selections of players and the very small number of guys being scouted it seems worse than CM4 to me.

retired_jmeshew

It's weird. Obviously something in the scouting code is broken sometimes. There are times when I feel like I can make a scenario in my mind where it is okay, but...

Ah well, that is really the only grief I have had with 03/04, and it doesn't upset the game very much for me. I have had other scouting missions that went off like they should have. Still, I would like it tweaked, especially when I get messages that other teams in my division are signing players and I am left wondering if I might have seen them first