I know there have been some threads on this over the months, and at the moment there is a particularly good one about having variable PA or no PA at all.

However my view on this is different so thought I'd add a new thread.

Firstly, I firmly believe that the PA should exist mainly as it currently does in the game. I firmly believe that PA exists in real life (i.e. every person has a point where even with the best coaching etc in the world they are as good as they're ever going to be). Many people believe that young players in the game should not have a set PA but again I disagree. I do agree that a persons potential is shaped by both a genetic natural ability and their surroundings and experiences as they're growing up. But with this in mind I believe that by the time the majority of people reach 15 (the point at which they enter the FM game world) there potential is pretty much 'set' and experiences from that point on will not affect their potential but will just affect the speed in which they fulfil that potential. And this is what I want to focus on here.

So please, no arguments with the above view that potential does exist in real life, I don't want this thread to be another thread that just argues whether PA does or does not exist in real life, and therefore should or should not exist in the game. I want it to be a thread that accepts that PA is in the game and discusses the ways in which a players development can be improved if this remains to be the case.

What I would like to see is more variation in the speed at which players reach their potential, and a lot more factors to have an effect on this. Firstly I'd like certain mental attributes to have more of an effect on a players development:

Determination - I think this should be the main mental attribute that will have an effect. For me a more determined player will be more willing to put in the effort in training and therefore reach their potential at a faster rate.

Hidden attributes such as Professionalism - Again I think these should have more of an effect on how players develop, more professional and determined players should improve at a noticeably faster rate than unprofessional, non-determined players.

However, instead of players who have low determination and professionalism just having to be written off, tutoring should be even more important for these players. A professional and determined tutor may be able to influence the attitude of a young player making him more determined and professional himself (of course this shouldn't work every time). This would certainly add another exciting element to the tutoring system, instead of just looking to get young players to learn PPM's.

Other factors that affect the actual speed in which a player develops towards their PA should also be more important. A long term injury should be a massive setback, and in some cases should prevent a player from reaching their potential altogether. This is one area where I'd like other peoples feedback. What other events do you feel should slow down or speed up development?

All in all what I'd like to see the above ideas achieve is a much more varied development system. No longer would top class facilities and coaches be enough to guarantee a player reaching their potential. The players own attitude and outside factors would matter and mean that the development model would be much more fluid and realistic. What this would also mean was that there could be a lot more players generated in the game with higher PA's (this would remove the problem that some people have of conference players never being able to improve if suddenly thrust into a top class club) but the likelihood of these players actually reaching those PA's would be a lot lower as a their development would depend on many more factors than it does currently.

In the next section I'll discuss how I think the three areas that make up a players attributes; technical, mental and physical, should develop.

I feel that within the new development model the three different sets of attributes should develop slightly differently than they do now, well actually just one of the attribute sets - mental.

I believe Technical and Physical attributes should continue to develop as they do and be tied in with CA. I also think the following mental attributes should continue to be tied in with CA and developed through training alone:

Composure.
Off The Ball.

However I feel the following mental attributes should not change at all through training but should be set when the player enters the game and only increase/decrease through tutoring from older players (if at all):

Aggression.
Anticipation.
Determination.
Work Rate.
Creativity.
Flair.
Bravery.

The main point I have is about the rest of the attributes. These I feel should only increase depending on a players experience. I feel this would be an excellent addition to the game, in real life the experience of a player who has played in champions league campaigns, world cups etc is vital to teams, and clubs will buy players because of this experience. In FM at the moment older players with a lot of experience are under-rated and not as useful as they are in real life. So these are the attributes I'd like to see develop solely through experience:

Concentration - I feel a player who has had years of experience playing at the top level would have improved their concentration, particularly in the big matches.
Decisions - Again experience helps a player to make better decisions in most cases.
Influence - This should definitely be affected by experience. A player who's seen and done it all could make a better leader than a les experienced player. I'm not saying every time, a player with a low influence attribute and the wrong personality to start with is never going to make a good captain. But I do think influence should increase solely based on experience and a player who starts with a decent influence attribute should become a very good captain given the right experience.
Team-work - I think this should increase based on experience but in a slightly different way than the other attributes. I think it would be great if this depended in some way on how long a player was at a club. A player playing with the same group of players for a long time may increase their team-work attribute at a faster rate than a player playing in a lot of different clubs with a lot of different players.
Positioning - Again I feel an experienced player would have better knowledge of positional play and this attribute should increase solely depending on the players career experience.

The level and rate of these increase would depend on the type of experience a player has had. As mentioned before, a seasoned Champions League or World cup campaigner should see a very noticeable increase in certain mental attributes that you just can't get simple from training.

So what do other people think of these ideas, do you think they'd improve the game?

You can change personality via tutoring, actually it happens about 50% of the time for me depending on their original personalities. 2 of my most promising young players were both balanced/fairly determined to begin with, i got diego and lulinha to tutor them, now they are spirited and improving faster. Stange things have happened sometimes, i had a player who was unambitious and got someone who was fairly determined to tutor him, now he is temperamental. I think it all depends on which tutoring option you use.

As for the rest of your post, i do agree that the development needs to be changed significantly. Its far to slow and basic. Although maybe its basic as to not slow down game too much

You can change their personality to some extent but you can't change a players determination attribute through tutoring, which is what I was getting at mainly here.

Sorry misread your post. yeah agree if you can change the presonality then why not the determination attribute. As for professionalism, are you sure that the hidden stats are not changed by tutoring?

Actually yes I think they are now that you mention it. I don't use things like Genie scout so haven't been able to moniter changes in hidden attributes. So if that is a case then its a start, if it was expanded on and combined with development then the tutoring would become much more important and an excellent game feature.

good writing I must say.

Come to think about it, it must be very hard to significantly change someones determination, whereas professionalism i would have thought could be easily changed depending on the general personality of the squad.

I think that the personality of the most expeienced, most successfull and most popular players in a squad would very likely have a bigger effect on the young players than single player tutoring.

I thought about starting a similar thread and thought i had som much to say but writing this i have realised how compelx this subject is IRL. Its based on the whole nature or nuture debate where are humans born a certain way or do they learn to be a certain. It would seem to be a bit of both, but by the time they are 15 it might not be.

Great idea, i think also that captaincy and playing for his home club might increase this.

Another thing that needs to be changed in development but is often overlooked is the end of the players carear. It is far to systematic, all the players seem to decrease and become unplayable at almost the same time. It seems like it is impossible for a player to play his best football at the age of 32/33 which does sometimes happen (beardsley at newcastle) and also forgets the players which decrease in ability before the age of 30 (owen perhaps?)

You can change their personality to some extent but you can't change a players determination attribute through tutoring, which is what I was getting at mainly here. </BLOCKQUOTE>


Actually Determination is one of the attributes that changes the most by tutoring. In many cases the tutee ends up with the same determination of the tutor. In fact if you chose a tutor with a lower determination the tutee's will decrease. I had players improve determination by 6 or 7 points with the right tutor.