I intially commented on this here. But thought that due to the fact PPMs were a nice feature and they were quite neglected, i felt it warranted its own thread in which people could discuss how they feel they could/should be included.

As it stands in FM08:

- PPMS are only transferable through tutoring.
The problems with this are several;

1/ Tutoring carries risks, players become unhappy etc, so it's not something you want to be forced to do.

2/ Tutoring, if done properly, is a quite time consuming practice, especially as 8/10 times the youth player in question turns out to be a bit toss.

3/ The AI makes minimal use of tutoring, making any efforts on your behalf almost useless.

- The net effect of all this, is that by around 2025 there are no players that have PPMs (or an insignificatn number of 35 year olds anyway).

Why is this a problem:

No doubt some people don't really care about PPMs. Personally i think they are a nice idea, and work very well, hence seeing them disappear is a bit of a let down.

I think they provide more depth to human-player interaction and provide much more of a man management challenge when trying to coach them. They also give the players a certain degree of character, which due to the nature of regens (samey, random etc) i feel is quite vital to keep the human bothered about his regen players.

What should SI do then?

I would like to see PPMs generated by a combination of human interaction and the players individual stats, let me explain.

I feel that with certain combinations of stats and tactics, a human (or AI) manager should be able to promote the appearance of PPMs within a player. I feel this would add a great deal to youth development as you would be able (to some extent) to be leave your imprint on a player, much like wenger no doubt does with the arsenal players. As it stands, the human-youth player interaction is minimal and all young players tend to turn out much the same, regardless of what club they are at.

My thinking here is that what players learn during their formative years (say 16-21) is quite often apparent throughout their career. I don't want to be able to change the way frank lampard plays, but i feel that U18 players should be moldable (if that's even a word...) and that i should be able to encourage them to play in a certain way.

Examples:

I appreciate a ramble on and may have not expressed myself clearly so i will lay out several examples of how i feel PPMs could be generated (ppm in italic and description follows):

1/ Takes long shots. I'll start with something simple - if a player has a high long shots stat, and is played in a tactic that encourages him to take shots frequently then he should develop this PPM.

2/ Tries Through Balls Often. Very similar to the above - high passing, high creativity, and played with appropriate tactics, the player should have a chance to develop this PPM.

3/ Likes to lob GK. This is where i feel things should get a little more complex. IRL the best finishers in the world (henry, ruud etc) don't tend to chip that much. I feel PPMs like this should be reserved for the rooneys of the world. OK finishers, high flair, high creativity and played with a large amount of creative freedom.

4/ Places Shots. The opposite of the above - finishing 20, composure 18+ - the model finisher.

5/ Argues with Officials & winds up OPs. SShould appear in players with low professionalism.

6/ Hugs line & assorted wide player PPMs. The appearance of PPMs such as these should be determined by the width of the players formation - a player who plays in a narrow formation should not tend to hug the line.

7/ Tries Tricks & beat man repeatedly. High flair and high dribbling stat played with high creative freedom.

8/ Tries to play way out of trouble. Possible relating to high composure (keeping his head under pressure) with relatively low decisions (why not just clear it?).

9/ Dives into tackles/doesn't. A player that dives into tackles should require high aggression. Similarly a not so aggressive player should avoid doing this. Tackling ability and decisions should determine how effective the tackle is, i don't feel they should influence the PPM.

10/ Plays short simple passes. Determined primarily by tactics - if a player spends his first 5 years of football playing like arsenal, he should shy away from playing long ball later in his career.

That's all i'm going to give as examples - i don't claim all of those to be correct, nor do i claim to have all the answers (dictates tempo??), the purpose of this thread is to discuss those aspects.

Supressing PPMs & their relative frequencies.

If we have a mechanism to promote PPMs, it seems only fair that we should be able to try and batter the bad habits out of players and that there should be factors that control how often PPMs appear, as we don't want every player in your team to have the same PPMs.

Removing them - Dropping creative freedom to 0 should stop players trying what they wany - the success of this should be determined by player personality - e.g. a temperamental player may be more inclined to do what he wants.

Similarly, PPMs such as "argues with officials" could perhaps be attached to a media section - for example "manager Ched believes drogba should stop sulking when free kicks are given against him" etc - with the results being treated similar to form comments in the current FM.

Chances of a player gaining a PPM

Despite how my above examples sound, i don't want every player to end up with PPMs. They are currently a nice feature because of their rarity, and i think a subtle touch is needed in adding this feature.

For example - high team work should be a vital stat for incorporating tactics based PPMs. Ditto high versatility.

How i would hope SI develop this:

I know it is too late to incorporate this into FM09. I also appreciate this may require a quite large amount of work (which may be better spent in other areas i've previsouly commented on - transfers!) so i would happily accept some sort of random PPM generation for FM09 and FM10.

I do feel that this sort of player development is what SI should be aiming for, and would hope to see something along these lines for FM11 onwards.

This may just be highlighting my ignorance regarding the games industry - i don't claim to know what is possible, just what i'd like to see.

Thanks for reading this, it took a fair while to write so please comment as i'll be rightly miffed if it drops off the boards to be replaces by a throng of "superkeeper" threads lol.

Cheers,

Ched

:thup:

wont give a long post, i just generally agree. nice one. i also think players from certain country develops certain ppms. like brazilians would develop skil based ppms, englsh players would play the game a lot quicker(not an existing ppms) italians also play more defensivley(not currently a ppm.)

As you know this is one of the things I dislike about my long term games so :thup: to another excellent thread.

My first thought was that position specific PPM's should be randomly assigned to certain players. So a young striker could end up being generated with the 'Places Shots' PPM amongst others. This player can then learn other PPM's through tutoring as normal meaning that the pool of PPM's should not dry up as players are being generated with PPM's and when they're old enough teaching these to other players.

Having said that I really like Ched's idea of having more control over the development of youngsters, and PPM's is an excellent way to achieve this.

Once again Ched provides an excellent, well thought out post with lots of suggestions and good ideas.

:thup:

I'd like to see young players pick up PPMs from more experienced players in their squad without the need for tutoring. This could be based on a player's favoured personnel among other things.

Definately

If a youth player has a senior striker as a favoured personnel, why wouldn't he try to mimic him?

I didn't read the whole post, but surely regens would have a certain number of perhaps undeveloped PPMs anyway. If they come through at 16, they will have been playing football for many years before that anyway, surely they have preferred moves?

Definately something that needs chaging IMO.

great post mate, well thought out and explained :thup:

Oh get over the stereotypes!!!

Good post, Ched. This has been a problem in other games with nifty "training" features: if the AI isn't taking advantage of them, then they become an imbalance in favour of the human player.

In lieu of your detailed example, maybe we could see some other items done?

1. AI takes advantage of tutoring, etc, to impart PPMs to their youth players.

2. PPMs moved into training module? E.g., much like learning a new position, we could set our coaches to train players to try specific PPMs - but of course, it would "consume" CA growth which might have been applied to attribute increases if we hadn't done so.

3. Coaches remember PPMs from their playing career? - by this, I mean, if I wind up signing as a coach a former player .. maybe that coach should still "know" his PPMs and natural position(s), and would have a chance of imparting his PPMs to players of his original position. This might be particularly influential for managers and assistant managers - providing a halfway decent reason for high-reputation former players to get those jobs!