This info is valid for FM24, and mostly valid for FM26.
My sources are mainly HarvestGreen22/playGM forum, EBFM, 'FM with Data Science', Zippo's attribute tests here, and my own testing/thoughts. Kudos to 'FMProjects' too, who sent me down the path of reading training_sessions.jsb with a hexadecimal editor, which I wouldn't have known about otherwise.
Aims of this post:
HarvestGreen22's findings show us that the ideal player is a player with 20 pace and flair 1. Problem is, there is not a single player in the database with those 2 stats. And there are also other things to consider, such as that attributes have different CA costs.
HarvestGreen22's training regimes have two prime options: sacrifice mental/technical attributes for fast physical growth with minimal CA gain, or broader and greater overall growth but at the cost of significant CA gain. Both training regimes feature 'rest' predominantly. But once you get into the nitty gritty of it, you'll find that its much easier to find players with more than sufficient CA-PA gaps than to get back those lost mental/technical stats, and all that 'rest' can easily lead to poor performance through low match sharpness.
So I'm trying to do a few things here, some of which are:
- clarifying the relative value of visible and hidden attributes - tie together all the assorted findings to describe the optimal player development method - adjusting relative attribute values according to CA weightings across different positions and taking into account squad composition (i.e. 1 player with high flair is good, whereas 4 in a team is bad) - providing realistic shortlist filters where at least a few players will match it - theorize the potential 'perfect' squad of players
The thing is with this kind of work is that if you explain everything, you end up having to explain everything. If I say injury proneness is fairly insignificant, it isn't satisfying. It's only satisfying when you do the math and realize that you're not actually losing a 140 CA player, you're subbing a 140 CA player to give a 120 CA backup/youth player a few games you'd have to give him somehow anyway. Unfortunately this kind of explanation just can't be put across in the condensed summary.
Ideal growth:
High PA (130-160 ideal) High CA to PA difference (11/11 > 20/20 Pace/Acc = +28 CA. ~50 is typical wonderkid CA-PA gap) 20 training facilities (17 ideal) 25-30 matches/season (28 ideal. 30 safe. 36 max. 15 min. 2520 min exactly. 36matches@70min.) 10+ ambition (16 max. 10-13 ideal. 6 min.) 10+ determination (6 min. 13 ideal. 18 max.) 20 professionalism (15 ideal. 13 min)
Training:
Quick + Attack + Quick Focus + Recovery/Rest mix to max match fitness & condition
Do not do the pure rest thing. Yes it works, but you'll never get those lost technicals back, which includes some key attributes such as dribbling. Even the above schedule suffers some decline on technicals, particularly set pieces, but it's a necessary compromise. Wonderkids also have an adequate CA to PA buffer, so you don't need to crawl towards it at ~6 CA/year.
I did some rough tests with training and found HarvestGreen22's training is indeed superior in just about every way. Go for one that is high pace/acc gain, and low decisions/technique gain, as the latter has highest CA cost relative to its performance gain.
Attribute importance:
1 position proficiency = ~1 pace 1 determination = 0.625 pace 1 dribbling = 0.525 pace 1 professionalism = 0.5 pace 1 dirtiness = NEGATIVE 0.19 pace 1 consistency = 0.06 pace 1 penalty taking = 0.045 pace 1 injury proneness = NEGATIVE 0.02 pace 1 important matches = 0.02 pace 1 temperament = 0.02 pace 1 adaptability = 0.02 pace (foreign players only) 1 versatility = 0.015 pace
1 pace = 2 dribbling/professionalism = -5 dirtiness = 16 consistency = Penaldo = -20 injury proneness on extreme physical training regime = all inferior to 20 AMR vs 18 AMR
Small caveat: 'Important matches' value may be erroneous. From memory, EBFM in one of his videos showed evidence that important matches is more impactful than I realized, and I'm not sure if I updated my calculations. 0.02 pace is at least a minimum value.
Ideal player:
Physicals ~8-20 (8-14 before training) 20 Pace/Acc 14 Bal 12 Jump (20 DC/PF-ST?) 12 Sta (14 DL/DR/DM) 11 Agil (18 DL/DR/DM) 9 Nat 8 Strength
12 Pro 6 Amb 5 Loyal 5 Temper 5 Pressure 1 Sport 15< Controversy 1 adapt (12 for foreign player)
This takes into account performance + weighting + availability (20 professionalism is great.. but hardly anyone has it), and some other things like slight skew towards meta tactic and 'feels'.
Example of existing in-game player that would constitute a potential ideal player:
Template ideal by position:
GK (tentative)
DL/DR Low (~140 PA)
DL/DR High (~200 PA)
DC Low (~140 PA)
DC High (~200 PA)
DM Low (~140 PA)
DM High (~200 PA)
AML/AMR Low (~140 PA)
AML/AMR High (~200 PA)
ST Low (~140 PA)
ST High (~200 PA)
I have these templates written down more accurately and comprehensively, but the point here is just to give you an idea of what attributes to favor/disfavor and to what extent.
Single-sample test results (English Premier League):
More samples are needed, but it would seem optimizing player attribute distribution beyond just selecting for the 4 main attributes does make a difference, I would guesstimate ~10% extra performance in typical play.
HarvestGreen22 training boosts pace/acc +11, other physicals +4, mentals +4, technicals 0 or negative. BULK UP on technicals and pace/acc at age 13.
Shortlist filter:
GK - Age 31 max, Agility/Leadership 12 min, Professionalism 10 min, Pace/Vision/Technique/Determination/Reflexes/Aerial Reach/Anticipation/Concentration/Consistency/Jumping Reach 8 min, Work Rate 6 min, Acceleration/Decisions/Handling/Rushing Out 15 max, Injury Proneness 10 max DL/DR - Same as ST except Agility/Stamina 8 min, no Dribbling 8 min DC - Same as ST except Jumping Reach 12 min, no Decisions 12 max, no Dribbling 8 min DM - Same as ST except no Decisions 12 max, no Dribbling 8 min AML/AMR - Same as ST ST - Age 22 max, 100 PA min, Acceleration/Pace 12 min, Professionalism 10 min, Anticipation/Concentration/Consistency/Dribbling 8 min, Determination/Work Rate 6 min, Decisions/Injury Proneness 12 max
No suitable results? Reduce Acc/Pace (Agil/Lead for GK)
In depth filter:
I will post this sometime later.
Meta tactic (4-2-4) adjustments:
12+ Drib AML/AMR 8+ Drib DC/PF-ST 8+ Cross DL/DR 8+ OffBall/Tack/Aggro/Ant/Pass/Tech/Dec/Team/Vis/Con/Brave/Work/Bal/Strength all outfield <8 Dirt all positions
Tactic familiarity matters little, but tactics matter greatly. So switch up tactics whenever.
Exploits:
Dual position exploit - Train 2nd position up to '12' for 0 CA cost, i.e. ST20/DM12 with ST stats. Useful emergency sub but 5%< use. DM20/ST12 with ST stats to get 130 CA instead of 150 CA WILL NOT WORK, not even with min-max. It will become ST when you hit 131 CA ST role. You've gone too far when it shows 'DM/ST' instead of 'DM'. Only do with existing DM20/ST8, or DM20/ST1 with 15+ versatility, due to training opportunity cost. Do not do ST+DC/DL/DR (+8 CA) nor 3 positions (+3 CA) but up to ~10-12 proficiency is fine.
Recovery exploit - Go to training > schedules > new schedule > create new schedule > fill with 7 recovery sessions, then change one empty day to 'match' under 'match day' that appears as option. Now you can use more than 7 recovery sessions. Fill it with recovery sessions. Save schedule and apply it to your training calendar.
Rest exploit - Full day of rest (3 periods) + 'No pitch or gym work' for first 3 condition options in training > rest. Gives boosted rest effect.
Assistant manager exploit - Set up your training calendar for the season, then delegate 'general training' to a staff member. No more training unhappiness complaints.
More nuances:
Set pieces - Forget'em. High set piece attributes are near useless and are rare, especially for young players, so not worth getting for ANY player. Take penalties: 10 goals/season, ~3 goals lost due to '6' instead of '16' penalty taking, but 70% of ST age 20< have under 10 penalty taking. So sacrificing ~2-3 Acc/Pace (~12 goals) maybe for high penalty taking (~3 goals).
Captain - GK should be captain or vice captain. Your wonderkids will have low leadership and age/reputation, GK wonderkids are less likely, and GK is the only player that can be there 90min every match. High leadership is rare for all positions, but makes minimal performance difference, so if you select say ST captain you are likely sacrificing ST performance for it. DM, or to a lesser extent, DC, is a good captain/vice pairing option.
Get 1 decisions guy (DC), 1 flair guy (PF-ST?), one or two others I forgot. Basically 1 of these guys is good, too many is bad.
Jadedness doesn't matter much, but match sharpness is crucial. It's somewhere up there with tactic choice and pace/acc in terms of effect on performance. So don't discount 'natural fitness', don't overuse rest in your training, and make sure your players are 100% match fit through reserves matches or friendlies before playing them.
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: Quick + Attack + Quick Focus + Recovery/Rest mix to max match fitness & condition
Do not do the pure rest thing. Yes it works, but you'll never get those lost technicals back, which includes some key attributes such as dribbling. Even the above schedule suffers some decline on technicals, particularly set pieces, but it's a necessary compromise. Wonderkids also have an adequate CA to PA buffer, so you don't need to crawl towards it at ~6 CA/year. Expand
I just wanted to be crystal clear here... So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday... Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before) Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest Tues: match practice /recovery / rest Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct? Or is there something slightly different you're recommending for the schedule?
(I assume we're still individual training Quickness on double intensity, right?)
Bill W said: I just wanted to be crystal clear here... So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday... Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before) Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest Tues: match practice /recovery / rest Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct? Or is there something slightly different you're recommending for the schedule?
(I assume we're still individual training Quickness on double intensity, right?)
Just wanna be sure I'm not misunderstanding. 🤗 Expand I prefer having the 1st day after match with 3x rest and 2nd day after match with full recovery (or swap if you are travelling on day1) and only do quality sessions the last 4 days before the match if you use that kind of schedule. So in your example move quickness from monday to friday.
thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)? I used to love this game and had all these countless sweet narratives in my head of playmakers with high passing/technique & flair delivering those killer balls, of strikers with high off the ball moving into channels unlocking the opposition. etc. etc. .... now knowing that I just need pace/accelration and use this "plastic" lifeless training plan. So where I spent hours tinkering with training plans imagining everything in my head, I now know that everyhting is just a giant lie. My god, all that is so sad. How am I the only one feeling this way? Ah yes: of course I can already feel that I won't be playing this game for long now anymore - after having played thousand of happy hours before. It feels like getting handed the wrong colored pill in the film Matrix.
CryosFeron said: thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)? I used to love this game and had all these countless sweet narratives in my head of playmakers with high passing/technique & flair delivering those killer balls, of strikers with high off the ball moving into channels unlocking the opposition. etc. etc. .... now knowing that I just need pace/accelration and use this "plastic" lifeless training plan. So where I spent hours tinkering with training plans imagining everything in my head, I now know that everyhting is just a giant lie. My god, all that is so sad. How am I the only one feeling this way? Ah yes: of course I can already feel that I won't be playing this game for long now anymore - after having played thousand of happy hours before. It feels like getting handed the wrong colored pill in the film Matrix. Expand
You're not wrong mate. I've looked back on some old saves and seen how I had players (low pace etc) that I would never sign in my saves. For good or for ill, the testing has ruined that immersion part of the game which I cannot simply ignore.
To make it worse, it doesn't look like that's been fixed/tweaked/nerfed in FM26.
It's pushed me to restriction-type saves where the amount of players I can buy is much smaller. E.g doing a save with turkgucu munchen where I can only sign turks or turk-germans
you guys could simply not open fm-arena (or this topic really) if you didnt want to be spoiled.. however you are just like us that want to understand what is the best meta to play and here you are. Now dont complain. The beauty of FM is there's no wrong way to play it, so you choose if you want to learn all the nerdy meta data or not.
Gracolas said: you guys could simply not open fm-arena (or this topic really) if you didnt want to be spoiled.. however you are just like us that want to understand what is the best meta to play and here you are. Now dont complain. The beauty of FM is there's no wrong way to play it, so you choose if you want to learn all the nerdy meta data or not. Expand
I would if I had a time machine, but we both know that's not an option in 2025.
The point is that you can't just forget the info on meta stats once you've seen them (unless you have dementia)
Xeno94 said: I would if I had a time machine, but we both know that's not an option in 2025.
The point is that you can't just forget the info on meta stats once you've seen them (unless you have dementia) Expand
indeed, but with a new game you had a choice to either continue to look for meta or not.. i agree you cant erase what you learned from fm24, but you could decide to not look up for more info for fm26, yet here you are
Gracolas said: indeed, but with a new game you had a choice to either continue to look for meta or not.. i agree you cant erase what you learned from fm24, but you could decide to not look up for more info for fm26, yet here you are Expand
I've not played a single minute of FM26, and don't really intend to.
Yarema said: I prefer having the 1st day after match with 3x rest and 2nd day after match with full recovery (or swap if you are travelling on day1) and only do quality sessions the last 4 days before the match if you use that kind of schedule. So in your example move quickness from monday to friday. Expand
Ah, I hadn't thought of a full day of recovery. (By that, I assume you literally mean Recovery x3, eh?) I'll try moving Quickness and see how that goes along with adding in the recovery options! Thx!
Yarema said: I prefer having the 1st day after match with 3x rest and 2nd day after match with full recovery (or swap if you are travelling on day1) and only do quality sessions the last 4 days before the match if you use that kind of schedule. So in your example move quickness from monday to friday. Expand
This is kinda what I think I came up with...? (Assuming matches are on Saturdays)
Bill W said: I just wanted to be crystal clear here... So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday... Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before) Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest Tues: match practice /recovery / rest Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct? Expand
So I had to look into this again to jog my memory, and it appears recovery isn't simply interchangeable with rest when it comes to attribute gain from training. And I should have been more clearer too. I will have to do some more research on rest vs. recovery and edit my post.
Regardless, the schedule is still:
[Quickness]+[Match Practice]+[Attacking]+[Double Intensity]+[Addtional Focus Quickness] I do 'no pitch or gym work' for first 3 health icons, and 'double intensity' for last 2
What I meant with rest/recovery mix was that you should mix it according to the condition & match fitness needs of your players. Match fitness is more important than condition, so I would lean towards more recovery sessions, or otherwise schedule more friendlies.
If you do use rest, I would try and make full days of rest where possible for the double rest effect, and have that rest immediately after the last match.
CryosFeron said: thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)? Expand
I 100% agree, and you've explained the problem with the game more succinctly than I've thought up. I don't bother posting that thought; I think it's better to just stick the SI simps and sycophants with the truth, which they'd rather silence and gloss over.
Really what motivates me though is that I enjoy much more working out the underlying mechanics than playing the game now. I started doing this with FM19, when I reverse-engineered the newgen mechanics. It turned out SI staff had been giving out a lot of false, even self-contradicting, information over the years, and their attitude when you try to share the data was 'I couldn't replicate that. Did you do 10,000 samples? You did? Well do you have a data science degree, otherwise how do you know what 'average' and 'mean' means?', etc., before closing the thread with 'If you think you've found something, you should email your save to our team for them to look at'.
Brexit rules, press conferences, horrendous newgen faces, health icons, and obfuscating newgen-maxxing in various ways ruined FM19-FM24 for me, but you could get around 90% of it with ~12 hours of custom editing and prep before playing. With knap tactics and now EBFM + HarvestGreen22's info, the game has lost a fair bit of its lustre, but its still playable. FM26 appears to have screwed the pooch.
I think what we need right now is a backport of the FM26 database to FM24. I'm not a believer in those projects that try to fix up the training system or match engine or even those 3rd-party DB updates, I think a big part of the enjoyment is in knowing other people are playing the exact same game as you. As custom skins show, the UI isn't really a necessary part of this shared enjoyment. And FM26 is even largely the same under the hood, so you could play FM26 database on FM24 and legitimately feel you're playing FM26 just with the old UI.
I don’t even know why I still play this sh*t. The game is completely stuck at this point. Gegenpress is not only op but almost all tactics other than Gegenpress don't simply work. It's like in a multi-class RPG where only the Warrior class is playable.
When you play defensively with Manchester City against some second-tier Serbian league, you simply lose or the team just plays poorly at best.
Attributes don’t matter at all, and the training system doesn’t do what the in-game explanations say it does. In fact, 90% of the in-game explanations are wrong. We’ve been playing essentially the same game for the past 15 years, and the company that makes it doesn’t care, and they openly show us that every time. They simply says: "we don't care, go play something else" and we're still playing it.
Mods that claim to fix the game engine or some bugs (FM Match Lab, DaveIncid Realism, etc.) haven’t fixed anything; if anything, they’ve added new bugs. That’s because SI has hidden all the code behind closed doors and thick walls as if they’re trying to hide the fact that they release the same game every year so modding the game is almost impossible.
Yes, unfortunately there is no alternative, but after all, this is a "video game," and there are hundreds of video games in the world that respect their consumers. Honestly, I'm giving up
For those who are interested, I'll add some more detail about my methodology and thoughts.
I didn't just guess the ideal combo of attributes for each position, although it is very much just an approximation. Essentially what I did is I took HarvestGreen22's attribute performance data, the CA weightings for each position, and used ChatGPT to help me distribute attributes accordingly given a certain PA (for instance, 'long shots' is often high because its also often cheap yet performs well). This is a bit of an oversimplification though, because I have also taken into account the availability of attributes to some extent, and some squad-level adjustments (i.e. there should be a captain and ~2 backups). So for instance you will note that even in my 200 PA players, decisions is kept to just 12. This is because decisions does hardly anything (especially in situations where you already have 1 good decision maker it is suggested), yet it has very high CA cost for all positions. So I biased against 'decisions' specifically, and yet you will also notice that it isn't lower than 6 in the lower PA players - this is because few players will actually have decisions lower than 6. In fact in my filter you can see I suggest setting max 12<. The general idea is pick a player with high pace/acc/jump, and ~10 decisions, and then let the training get 'decisions' down closer to the ideal; maybe it will drop to 8 say. This frees up CA for more pace/acc/jump/drib, etc.
Some things need extra context
If you dig into HarvestGreen22's posts there are some things that turn up that aren't immediately obvious. For instance, it seemed that flair was a pure negative, but in another post he noted flair and certain other attributes can be positive, and what its about seems to be whether you have 1 high flair player (good) or 3 (ok) or 10 (bad).
Another trait that needs extra context is aggression. High aggression is good so long as there is low dirtiness, or if it is position where neither come much into play anyway (i.e. AMR). And this one isn't really a nothingburger either, as dirtiness is 10x more important than injury proneness. It can lead to conceded penalty or one man down with no sub which is worse than a mid-match injury.
Some attributes interact, such as finishing & composure, whereas others such as positioning & tackling don't. Pace/acc/drib/finish scale linearly; work rate scales massively from 1-6 but above 6 it doesn't matter so much.
At the end of the day, the main thing to keep in mind is that you want to look for players with decent starting pace/acc/jump/drib, but 5 'decisions' should also look like 20 pace to you because that's what its enabling you to get.
I would reiterate that position proficiency is a very important attribute, so pick players that have 20 natural proficiency, don't get one with '18' or try and train them into it from another position. Another reason not to do the latter is that there's very little leeway in tricking the CA weighting system. That is, you can't have your DC have high finishing and play them as 18 ST, it doesn't work that way. At best you can give your players a 12 proficiency for 'free', which is useful for saving a sub perhaps, but even this isn't really free because you're spending training time building it up to 12.
A few more tips/info I could have included:
Do not set a 'role' for position training of player, leave as default player position (i.e. AMR). Otherwise it will funnel CA gain to role attributes instead of proven winning attributes such as pace and acceleration. For example, DM 'enganche' role has no focus on physicals at all except agility. Assigning roles weight highlighted attributes a further ~3%. Roles reduce the training efficacy by ~3%.
Train weaker foot if it is 'very weak' (1-4 rating). This can get it up to 9, which is worth it in terms of CA cost/performance tradeoff. The performance/CA tradeoff is best at about ~6 I'd say (so proper dual-foot is a bit bad and certainly a waste of time to train).
CA gain cap per year is ~12.5 CA without matches. ~25.5 CA with matches.
CryosFeron said: ... now knowing that I just need pace/accelration and use this "plastic" lifeless training plan... Expand Actually a great part of video games has a set of meta attributes making most of game concepts worthless, nobody blames them for that, and I mean top games with universal acclaim, FM24 is not the only one here, so just deal with it instead of complaining. By the way we have the same trend in real life where players are more and more phycical.
I would reiterate that position proficiency is a very important attribute, so pick players that have 20 natural proficiency, don't get one with '18' or try and train them into it from another position. Another reason not to do the latter is that there's very little leeway in tricking the CA weighting system. That is, you can't have your DC have high finishing and play them as 18 ST, it doesn't work that way. At best you can give your players a 12 proficiency for 'free', which is useful for saving a sub perhaps, but even this isn't really free because you're spending training time building it up to 12.
...
CA gain cap per year is ~12.5 CA without matches. ~25.5 CA with matches. [/quote]
Regarding the first bit there, since I think a lot of people are going to use tactics where players change positions (DMs <> CMs, AMC<>Strikers, etc), what's the recommendation?
Ensure they're natural in both tactical positions? Ensure they're natural in at least the IP tactic? The OoP tactic? Break the above rule and ensure they're like 18 in both instead of 20 in one?
...
Also. In that last line, what's considered the minimum conditions to hit the 12.5 and 25.5 CA gains in a year?
Bill W said: Regarding the first bit there, since I think a lot of people are going to use tactics where players change positions (DMs <> CMs, AMC<>Strikers, etc), what's the recommendation?
Ensure they're natural in both tactical positions? Ensure they're natural in at least the IP tactic? The OoP tactic? Break the above rule and ensure they're like 18 in both instead of 20 in one?
Also. In that last line, what's considered the minimum conditions to hit the 12.5 and 25.5 CA gains in a year? Expand
As someone said in another thread, it may be that having IP and OoP tactic be the same will be the meta due to the player proficiency downside. But who knows at this point.
Roughly speaking, 18 vs 20 proficiency is around -1.5 pace.
For hitting the yearly CA cap, see my 'ideal growth' details. You won't need all of them to hit the cap. High professionalism can largely make up for lack of game time. Professionalism and game time are the two main contributors to growth. From memory, friendlies/youth matches will count as game time to some extent (maybe even 100% up to age 18, I can't recall exactly now), but after 18 proper first team matches is really whats needed. And the game measures the minutes rather than appearances, so putting on the player for last 10 minutes will count as 10 minutes towards the full 2520 minutes that's optimal. How many games will be 'adequate', once they're age 20 say? About half the optimum, say 15 full games. This is why loaning out at that age is so important if they can't get first team games, even if its at crappy clubs.
tam1236 said: Actually a great part of video games has a set of meta attributes making most of game concepts worthless, nobody blames them for that, and I mean top games with universal acclaim, FM24 is not the only one here, so just deal with it instead of complaining. By the way we have the same trend in real life where players are more and more phycical. Expand
I don’t want to derail the topic, but this isn’t exactly off-topic either, because what we’re talking about is FM26, a game that’s been delayed for two years, ending up being practically identical to FM24 (with bugs, meta, and all that). And honestly, I’m tired of seeing people like you in every FM community deliberately missing the main point just to defend the game out of pure fanboyism. So, I want to respond properly.
Yes, every game has meta, nobody is criticizing FM because it has one. But in FM, what we’re dealing with isn’t just a “meta”; it’s a broken code system.
1- It’s the fact that the game’s coding is fundamentally flawed. Training sessions that claim to improve certain attributes don’t actually train those attributes at all.
2- SI is straight up lying about this. The real issue is that SI has been using the same underlying match and competition engine since FM10, and for 15 years they’ve been marketing it every year as a “brand new match engine.” FM is basically a 15 year-old, rotten, moldy apple being sold as “fresh and new.
3- In most games with a meta, if you use the meta, you win; if you go against it, you struggle but still win. But FM isn’t like that. In FM, even top tier clubs like Man City or Real Madrid perform terribly with defensive tactics. The game forces you to play the meta if you want to succeed, any deviation from it is punished.
4- Yes, physical strength matters in real football too, but if a physically strong player has poor passing, he’ll still make bad passes. In FM, though, a player with 1 Passing and 20 Pace can play like Modric or Messi, making brilliant key passes and through balls. That clearly shows attributes have little to no real effect on the match engine. The match outcomes are basically pre calculated using mathematical formulas. And the worst part? Those formulas are broken. Players with high Pace and Acceleration perform perfectly in every aspect (movement, shooting, passing) regardless of their other attributes.
5- Everyone can play whatever game they want however they want, but at the same time, everyone should also be free to criticize the games they play however they want. The problem is, we’re not even allowed to criticize FM, because the FM fanboys won’t let us. Do you think that’s "normal"?
And for the love of God, or whatever you believe in, PLEASE stop using the “SI is not a huge company, FM is not a AAA game” argument. According to official revenue data, SI makes about $145 million per year, That's almost the same as CD Projekt, the studio behind The Witcher 3.
No, I will eventually but they're not very useful anyway; it would give you a better idea of what attributes are realistic I guess. It would be basically an in-between of the shortlist filter and the template ideals.
The Genie Scout ratings I posted in the other thread would be a more useful method, as it accounts for all the attributes in its rating system, but doesn't rule out anyone.
The problem with shortlist filters is that the more attributes requirements you add, exponentially fewer players match them. To make this more concrete, here are a few stats in my data:
~20% of players have 8+ long shots ~17% of players have 10+ dribbling ~27% of STs have 12+ finishing ~25% of AMRs have 10+ finishing ~5.4% of STs have 12+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots ~12.8% of AMRs have 10+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots ~4.5% of CBs have 8+ long shots, 8+ dribbling
You can see the problem here with my ~140 DC 'ideal template' having 14 long shots; this would be reduced to say ~6-8 in my 'in depth filter', whereas my 'shortlist filter' doesn't set a minimum on long shots at all.
Gracolas said: you guys could simply not open fm-arena (or this topic really) if you didnt want to be spoiled.. however you are just like us that want to understand what is the best meta to play and here you are. Now dont complain. The beauty of FM is there's no wrong way to play it, so you choose if you want to learn all the nerdy meta data or not. Expand
well there is a difference between finding out about certain attributes being more effective in the match engine, and finding out that pretty much every narrative the game tells you about the mental and technical attributes is nothing but a fairy tale. And don't even get me started on the whole training farce.
This info is valid for FM24, and mostly valid for FM26.
My sources are mainly HarvestGreen22/playGM forum, EBFM, 'FM with Data Science', Zippo's attribute tests here, and my own testing/thoughts. Kudos to 'FMProjects' too, who sent me down the path of reading training_sessions.jsb with a hexadecimal editor, which I wouldn't have known about otherwise.
Aims of this post:
HarvestGreen22's findings show us that the ideal player is a player with 20 pace and flair 1. Problem is, there is not a single player in the database with those 2 stats. And there are also other things to consider, such as that attributes have different CA costs.
HarvestGreen22's training regimes have two prime options: sacrifice mental/technical attributes for fast physical growth with minimal CA gain, or broader and greater overall growth but at the cost of significant CA gain. Both training regimes feature 'rest' predominantly. But once you get into the nitty gritty of it, you'll find that its much easier to find players with more than sufficient CA-PA gaps than to get back those lost mental/technical stats, and all that 'rest' can easily lead to poor performance through low match sharpness.
So I'm trying to do a few things here, some of which are:
- clarifying the relative value of visible and hidden attributes
- tie together all the assorted findings to describe the optimal player development method
- adjusting relative attribute values according to CA weightings across different positions and taking into account squad composition (i.e. 1 player with high flair is good, whereas 4 in a team is bad)
- providing realistic shortlist filters where at least a few players will match it
- theorize the potential 'perfect' squad of players
The thing is with this kind of work is that if you explain everything, you end up having to explain everything. If I say injury proneness is fairly insignificant, it isn't satisfying. It's only satisfying when you do the math and realize that you're not actually losing a 140 CA player, you're subbing a 140 CA player to give a 120 CA backup/youth player a few games you'd have to give him somehow anyway. Unfortunately this kind of explanation just can't be put across in the condensed summary.
Ideal growth:
High PA (130-160 ideal)
High CA to PA difference (11/11 > 20/20 Pace/Acc = +28 CA. ~50 is typical wonderkid CA-PA gap)
20 training facilities (17 ideal)
25-30 matches/season (28 ideal. 30 safe. 36 max. 15 min. 2520 min exactly. 36matches@70min.)
10+ ambition (16 max. 10-13 ideal. 6 min.)
10+ determination (6 min. 13 ideal. 18 max.)
20 professionalism (15 ideal. 13 min)
Training:
Quick + Attack + Quick Focus + Recovery/Rest mix to max match fitness & condition
Do not do the pure rest thing. Yes it works, but you'll never get those lost technicals back, which includes some key attributes such as dribbling. Even the above schedule suffers some decline on technicals, particularly set pieces, but it's a necessary compromise. Wonderkids also have an adequate CA to PA buffer, so you don't need to crawl towards it at ~6 CA/year.
I did some rough tests with training and found HarvestGreen22's training is indeed superior in just about every way. Go for one that is high pace/acc gain, and low decisions/technique gain, as the latter has highest CA cost relative to its performance gain.
Attribute importance:
1 position proficiency = ~1 pace
1 determination = 0.625 pace
1 dribbling = 0.525 pace
1 professionalism = 0.5 pace
1 dirtiness = NEGATIVE 0.19 pace
1 consistency = 0.06 pace
1 penalty taking = 0.045 pace
1 injury proneness = NEGATIVE 0.02 pace
1 important matches = 0.02 pace
1 temperament = 0.02 pace
1 adaptability = 0.02 pace (foreign players only)
1 versatility = 0.015 pace
1 pace = 2 dribbling/professionalism = -5 dirtiness = 16 consistency = Penaldo = -20 injury proneness on extreme physical training regime = all inferior to 20 AMR vs 18 AMR
Small caveat: 'Important matches' value may be erroneous. From memory, EBFM in one of his videos showed evidence that important matches is more impactful than I realized, and I'm not sure if I updated my calculations. 0.02 pace is at least a minimum value.
Ideal player:
Physicals ~8-20 (8-14 before training)
20 Pace/Acc
14 Bal
12 Jump (20 DC/PF-ST?)
12 Sta (14 DL/DR/DM)
11 Agil (18 DL/DR/DM)
9 Nat
8 Strength
Mentals ~8-13 (8-12 before training)
13 Ant/Con
12 Comp/OffBall/Work/Det/Aggro
12 Brave (8 DL/DR/DM)
10 Vis/Team/Dec
8 Pos
Technicals ~8-12 (8-14 before training)
12 Drib/Tech/Touch
12 Fin AML/AMR/ST (6 DL/DR/DC/DM)
12 Head (6 DL/DR/DM)
10 Long
10 Pass (6 DL/DR)
9 Cross
8 Tack (12 DC)
8 Mark (6 DL/DR/DM)
Hiddens & Misc ~1-12
6 Pen
6 Corner
4 Free Kick
5 Lead (15 DC/DM)
8 Flair (12 PF-ST?)
9< Dirt
9< Injury
12 Consist
1 Versatility
12 Pro
6 Amb
5 Loyal
5 Temper
5 Pressure
1 Sport
15< Controversy
1 adapt (12 for foreign player)
This takes into account performance + weighting + availability (20 professionalism is great.. but hardly anyone has it), and some other things like slight skew towards meta tactic and 'feels'.
Example of existing in-game player that would constitute a potential ideal player:
Template ideal by position:
GK (tentative)
DL/DR Low (~140 PA)
DL/DR High (~200 PA)
DC Low (~140 PA)
DC High (~200 PA)
DM Low (~140 PA)
DM High (~200 PA)
AML/AMR Low (~140 PA)
AML/AMR High (~200 PA)
ST Low (~140 PA)
ST High (~200 PA)
I have these templates written down more accurately and comprehensively, but the point here is just to give you an idea of what attributes to favor/disfavor and to what extent.
Single-sample test results (English Premier League):
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 8 rest (~100 CA) - 1st, 86 Points, +82
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 12 rest (~150 CA) - 1st, 107 points, +151
Low (~140 CA) Ideal Template - 1st, 108 points, +132
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 14 rest (~180 CA) - 1st, 109 points, +162
20 pace/acc/jump/drib, 16 rest (~200 CA) - 1st, 112 points, +214
High (~200 CA) Ideal Template - 1st, 114 points, +268
More samples are needed, but it would seem optimizing player attribute distribution beyond just selecting for the 4 main attributes does make a difference, I would guesstimate ~10% extra performance in typical play.
Glance filter:
8+ Pace/Acc
10+ mentals
12+ relevant technicals (drib, long, tack, cross, fin, etc.)
HarvestGreen22 training boosts pace/acc +11, other physicals +4, mentals +4, technicals 0 or negative. BULK UP on technicals and pace/acc at age 13.
Shortlist filter:
GK - Age 31 max, Agility/Leadership 12 min, Professionalism 10 min, Pace/Vision/Technique/Determination/Reflexes/Aerial Reach/Anticipation/Concentration/Consistency/Jumping Reach 8 min, Work Rate 6 min, Acceleration/Decisions/Handling/Rushing Out 15 max, Injury Proneness 10 max
DL/DR - Same as ST except Agility/Stamina 8 min, no Dribbling 8 min
DC - Same as ST except Jumping Reach 12 min, no Decisions 12 max, no Dribbling 8 min
DM - Same as ST except no Decisions 12 max, no Dribbling 8 min
AML/AMR - Same as ST
ST - Age 22 max, 100 PA min, Acceleration/Pace 12 min, Professionalism 10 min, Anticipation/Concentration/Consistency/Dribbling 8 min, Determination/Work Rate 6 min, Decisions/Injury Proneness 12 max
No suitable results? Reduce Acc/Pace (Agil/Lead for GK)
In depth filter:
I will post this sometime later.
Meta tactic (4-2-4) adjustments:
12+ Drib AML/AMR
8+ Drib DC/PF-ST
8+ Cross DL/DR
8+ OffBall/Tack/Aggro/Ant/Pass/Tech/Dec/Team/Vis/Con/Brave/Work/Bal/Strength all outfield
<8 Dirt all positions
Tactic familiarity matters little, but tactics matter greatly. So switch up tactics whenever.
Exploits:
Dual position exploit - Train 2nd position up to '12' for 0 CA cost, i.e. ST20/DM12 with ST stats. Useful emergency sub but 5%< use. DM20/ST12 with ST stats to get 130 CA instead of 150 CA WILL NOT WORK, not even with min-max. It will become ST when you hit 131 CA ST role. You've gone too far when it shows 'DM/ST' instead of 'DM'. Only do with existing DM20/ST8, or DM20/ST1 with 15+ versatility, due to training opportunity cost. Do not do ST+DC/DL/DR (+8 CA) nor 3 positions (+3 CA) but up to ~10-12 proficiency is fine.
Recovery exploit - Go to training > schedules > new schedule > create new schedule > fill with 7 recovery sessions, then change one empty day to 'match' under 'match day' that appears as option. Now you can use more than 7 recovery sessions. Fill it with recovery sessions. Save schedule and apply it to your training calendar.
Rest exploit - Full day of rest (3 periods) + 'No pitch or gym work' for first 3 condition options in training > rest. Gives boosted rest effect.
Assistant manager exploit - Set up your training calendar for the season, then delegate 'general training' to a staff member. No more training unhappiness complaints.
More nuances:
Set pieces - Forget'em. High set piece attributes are near useless and are rare, especially for young players, so not worth getting for ANY player. Take penalties: 10 goals/season, ~3 goals lost due to '6' instead of '16' penalty taking, but 70% of ST age 20< have under 10 penalty taking. So sacrificing ~2-3 Acc/Pace (~12 goals) maybe for high penalty taking (~3 goals).
Captain - GK should be captain or vice captain. Your wonderkids will have low leadership and age/reputation, GK wonderkids are less likely, and GK is the only player that can be there 90min every match. High leadership is rare for all positions, but makes minimal performance difference, so if you select say ST captain you are likely sacrificing ST performance for it. DM, or to a lesser extent, DC, is a good captain/vice pairing option.
Get 1 decisions guy (DC), 1 flair guy (PF-ST?), one or two others I forgot. Basically 1 of these guys is good, too many is bad.
Jadedness doesn't matter much, but match sharpness is crucial. It's somewhere up there with tactic choice and pace/acc in terms of effect on performance. So don't discount 'natural fitness', don't overuse rest in your training, and make sure your players are 100% match fit through reserves matches or friendlies before playing them.
I don't think "GeorgeFloydOverdosed" is a particularly acceptable name for a Football Manager forum, do you?
Steelwood said: I don't think "GeorgeFloydOverdosed" is a particularly acceptable name for a Football Manager forum, do you?
It's certainly different. And I agree with you
Steelwood said: I don't think "GeorgeFloydOverdosed" is a particularly acceptable name for a Football Manager forum, do you?
I don't see anything wrong with nickname like that
Steelwood said: I don't think "GeorgeFloydOverdosed" is a particularly acceptable name for a Football Manager forum, do you?
I agree with you, but i kinda liked his post, tbh
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: Quick + Attack + Quick Focus + Recovery/Rest mix to max match fitness & condition
Do not do the pure rest thing. Yes it works, but you'll never get those lost technicals back, which includes some key attributes such as dribbling. Even the above schedule suffers some decline on technicals, particularly set pieces, but it's a necessary compromise. Wonderkids also have an adequate CA to PA buffer, so you don't need to crawl towards it at ~6 CA/year.
I just wanted to be crystal clear here...
So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday...
Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before)
Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest
Tues: match practice /recovery / rest
Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest
Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest
Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus
Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct?
Or is there something slightly different you're recommending for the schedule?
(I assume we're still individual training Quickness on double intensity, right?)
Just wanna be sure I'm not misunderstanding. 🤗
White Europe said: I don't see anything wrong with nickname like that
Yes but the mother of your children is also your sister so
Bill W said: I just wanted to be crystal clear here...
So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday...
Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before)
Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest
Tues: match practice /recovery / rest
Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest
Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest
Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus
Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct?
Or is there something slightly different you're recommending for the schedule?
(I assume we're still individual training Quickness on double intensity, right?)
Just wanna be sure I'm not misunderstanding. 🤗
I prefer having the 1st day after match with 3x rest and 2nd day after match with full recovery (or swap if you are travelling on day1) and only do quality sessions the last 4 days before the match if you use that kind of schedule. So in your example move quickness from monday to friday.
keithb said: Yes but the mother of your children is also your sister so
ya wanker.
at least i'm able to have kids
thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)?
I used to love this game and had all these countless sweet narratives in my head of playmakers with high passing/technique & flair delivering those killer balls, of strikers with high off the ball moving into channels unlocking the opposition. etc. etc.
.... now knowing that I just need pace/accelration and use this "plastic" lifeless training plan. So where I spent hours tinkering with training plans imagining everything in my head, I now know that everyhting is just a giant lie. My god, all that is so sad. How am I the only one feeling this way?
Ah yes: of course I can already feel that I won't be playing this game for long now anymore - after having played thousand of happy hours before.
It feels like getting handed the wrong colored pill in the film Matrix.
CryosFeron said: thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)?
I used to love this game and had all these countless sweet narratives in my head of playmakers with high passing/technique & flair delivering those killer balls, of strikers with high off the ball moving into channels unlocking the opposition. etc. etc.
.... now knowing that I just need pace/accelration and use this "plastic" lifeless training plan. So where I spent hours tinkering with training plans imagining everything in my head, I now know that everyhting is just a giant lie. My god, all that is so sad. How am I the only one feeling this way?
Ah yes: of course I can already feel that I won't be playing this game for long now anymore - after having played thousand of happy hours before.
It feels like getting handed the wrong colored pill in the film Matrix.
You're not wrong mate. I've looked back on some old saves and seen how I had players (low pace etc) that I would never sign in my saves. For good or for ill, the testing has ruined that immersion part of the game which I cannot simply ignore.
To make it worse, it doesn't look like that's been fixed/tweaked/nerfed in FM26.
It's pushed me to restriction-type saves where the amount of players I can buy is much smaller. E.g doing a save with turkgucu munchen where I can only sign turks or turk-germans
you guys could simply not open fm-arena (or this topic really) if you didnt want to be spoiled.. however you are just like us that want to understand what is the best meta to play and here you are. Now dont complain. The beauty of FM is there's no wrong way to play it, so you choose if you want to learn all the nerdy meta data or not.
Gracolas said: you guys could simply not open fm-arena (or this topic really) if you didnt want to be spoiled.. however you are just like us that want to understand what is the best meta to play and here you are. Now dont complain. The beauty of FM is there's no wrong way to play it, so you choose if you want to learn all the nerdy meta data or not.
I would if I had a time machine, but we both know that's not an option in 2025.
The point is that you can't just forget the info on meta stats once you've seen them (unless you have dementia)
Xeno94 said: I would if I had a time machine, but we both know that's not an option in 2025.
The point is that you can't just forget the info on meta stats once you've seen them (unless you have dementia)
indeed, but with a new game you had a choice to either continue to look for meta or not.. i agree you cant erase what you learned from fm24, but you could decide to not look up for more info for fm26, yet here you are
Gracolas said: indeed, but with a new game you had a choice to either continue to look for meta or not.. i agree you cant erase what you learned from fm24, but you could decide to not look up for more info for fm26, yet here you are
I've not played a single minute of FM26, and don't really intend to.
Yarema said: I prefer having the 1st day after match with 3x rest and 2nd day after match with full recovery (or swap if you are travelling on day1) and only do quality sessions the last 4 days before the match if you use that kind of schedule. So in your example move quickness from monday to friday.
Ah, I hadn't thought of a full day of recovery. (By that, I assume you literally mean Recovery x3, eh?)
I'll try moving Quickness and see how that goes along with adding in the recovery options!
Thx!
Xeno94 said: I've not played a single minute of FM26, and don't really intend to.
Honestly, mate... Good.
No one cares about your negativity.
Enjoy Rocket League!
Yarema said: I prefer having the 1st day after match with 3x rest and 2nd day after match with full recovery (or swap if you are travelling on day1) and only do quality sessions the last 4 days before the match if you use that kind of schedule. So in your example move quickness from monday to friday.
This is kinda what I think I came up with...? (Assuming matches are on Saturdays)
Look about right to everyone?
Bill W said: I just wanted to be crystal clear here...
So, if I'm filling in an average week of training with a game on Saturday...
Your recommendation is basically:
Sun: Rest/travel x3 (assuming game day before)
Mon: Quickness / recovery / rest
Tues: match practice /recovery / rest
Wed: Attacking / Recovery / Rest
Thurs: match practice /recovery /rest
Fri: rest / recovery/ match focus
Sat: Match / rest x 2
Is this correct?
So I had to look into this again to jog my memory, and it appears recovery isn't simply interchangeable with rest when it comes to attribute gain from training. And I should have been more clearer too. I will have to do some more research on rest vs. recovery and edit my post.
Regardless, the schedule is still:
[Quickness]+[Match Practice]+[Attacking]+[Double Intensity]+[Addtional Focus Quickness]
I do 'no pitch or gym work' for first 3 health icons, and 'double intensity' for last 2
What I meant with rest/recovery mix was that you should mix it according to the condition & match fitness needs of your players. Match fitness is more important than condition, so I would lean towards more recovery sessions, or otherwise schedule more friendlies.
If you do use rest, I would try and make full days of rest where possible for the double rest effect, and have that rest immediately after the last match.
CryosFeron said: thanks for all your hard work - but how is it that people here seem to be happy and thankful rather than disenchanted and sad (like I am)?
I 100% agree, and you've explained the problem with the game more succinctly than I've thought up. I don't bother posting that thought; I think it's better to just stick the SI simps and sycophants with the truth, which they'd rather silence and gloss over.
Really what motivates me though is that I enjoy much more working out the underlying mechanics than playing the game now. I started doing this with FM19, when I reverse-engineered the newgen mechanics. It turned out SI staff had been giving out a lot of false, even self-contradicting, information over the years, and their attitude when you try to share the data was 'I couldn't replicate that. Did you do 10,000 samples? You did? Well do you have a data science degree, otherwise how do you know what 'average' and 'mean' means?', etc., before closing the thread with 'If you think you've found something, you should email your save to our team for them to look at'.
Brexit rules, press conferences, horrendous newgen faces, health icons, and obfuscating newgen-maxxing in various ways ruined FM19-FM24 for me, but you could get around 90% of it with ~12 hours of custom editing and prep before playing. With knap tactics and now EBFM + HarvestGreen22's info, the game has lost a fair bit of its lustre, but its still playable. FM26 appears to have screwed the pooch.
I think what we need right now is a backport of the FM26 database to FM24. I'm not a believer in those projects that try to fix up the training system or match engine or even those 3rd-party DB updates, I think a big part of the enjoyment is in knowing other people are playing the exact same game as you. As custom skins show, the UI isn't really a necessary part of this shared enjoyment. And FM26 is even largely the same under the hood, so you could play FM26 database on FM24 and legitimately feel you're playing FM26 just with the old UI.
I don’t even know why I still play this sh*t. The game is completely stuck at this point. Gegenpress is not only op but almost all tactics other than Gegenpress don't simply work. It's like in a multi-class RPG where only the Warrior class is playable.
When you play defensively with Manchester City against some second-tier Serbian league, you simply lose or the team just plays poorly at best.
Attributes don’t matter at all, and the training system doesn’t do what the in-game explanations say it does. In fact, 90% of the in-game explanations are wrong. We’ve been playing essentially the same game for the past 15 years, and the company that makes it doesn’t care, and they openly show us that every time. They simply says: "we don't care, go play something else" and we're still playing it.
Mods that claim to fix the game engine or some bugs (FM Match Lab, DaveIncid Realism, etc.) haven’t fixed anything; if anything, they’ve added new bugs. That’s because SI has hidden all the code behind closed doors and thick walls as if they’re trying to hide the fact that they release the same game every year so modding the game is almost impossible.
Yes, unfortunately there is no alternative, but after all, this is a "video game," and there are hundreds of video games in the world that respect their consumers. Honestly, I'm giving up
For those who are interested, I'll add some more detail about my methodology and thoughts.
I didn't just guess the ideal combo of attributes for each position, although it is very much just an approximation. Essentially what I did is I took HarvestGreen22's attribute performance data, the CA weightings for each position, and used ChatGPT to help me distribute attributes accordingly given a certain PA (for instance, 'long shots' is often high because its also often cheap yet performs well). This is a bit of an oversimplification though, because I have also taken into account the availability of attributes to some extent, and some squad-level adjustments (i.e. there should be a captain and ~2 backups). So for instance you will note that even in my 200 PA players, decisions is kept to just 12. This is because decisions does hardly anything (especially in situations where you already have 1 good decision maker it is suggested), yet it has very high CA cost for all positions. So I biased against 'decisions' specifically, and yet you will also notice that it isn't lower than 6 in the lower PA players - this is because few players will actually have decisions lower than 6. In fact in my filter you can see I suggest setting max 12<. The general idea is pick a player with high pace/acc/jump, and ~10 decisions, and then let the training get 'decisions' down closer to the ideal; maybe it will drop to 8 say. This frees up CA for more pace/acc/jump/drib, etc.
Some things need extra context
If you dig into HarvestGreen22's posts there are some things that turn up that aren't immediately obvious. For instance, it seemed that flair was a pure negative, but in another post he noted flair and certain other attributes can be positive, and what its about seems to be whether you have 1 high flair player (good) or 3 (ok) or 10 (bad).
Another trait that needs extra context is aggression. High aggression is good so long as there is low dirtiness, or if it is position where neither come much into play anyway (i.e. AMR). And this one isn't really a nothingburger either, as dirtiness is 10x more important than injury proneness. It can lead to conceded penalty or one man down with no sub which is worse than a mid-match injury.
Some attributes interact, such as finishing & composure, whereas others such as positioning & tackling don't. Pace/acc/drib/finish scale linearly; work rate scales massively from 1-6 but above 6 it doesn't matter so much.
At the end of the day, the main thing to keep in mind is that you want to look for players with decent starting pace/acc/jump/drib, but 5 'decisions' should also look like 20 pace to you because that's what its enabling you to get.
I would reiterate that position proficiency is a very important attribute, so pick players that have 20 natural proficiency, don't get one with '18' or try and train them into it from another position. Another reason not to do the latter is that there's very little leeway in tricking the CA weighting system. That is, you can't have your DC have high finishing and play them as 18 ST, it doesn't work that way. At best you can give your players a 12 proficiency for 'free', which is useful for saving a sub perhaps, but even this isn't really free because you're spending training time building it up to 12.
A few more tips/info I could have included:
Do not set a 'role' for position training of player, leave as default player position (i.e. AMR). Otherwise it will funnel CA gain to role attributes instead of proven winning attributes such as pace and acceleration. For example, DM 'enganche' role has no focus on physicals at all except agility. Assigning roles weight highlighted attributes a further ~3%. Roles reduce the training efficacy by ~3%.
Train weaker foot if it is 'very weak' (1-4 rating). This can get it up to 9, which is worth it in terms of CA cost/performance tradeoff. The performance/CA tradeoff is best at about ~6 I'd say (so proper dual-foot is a bit bad and certainly a waste of time to train).
CA gain cap per year is ~12.5 CA without matches. ~25.5 CA with matches.
Bill W said: Honestly, mate... Good.
No one cares about your negativity.
Enjoy Rocket League!
Enjoy reskinned FM26 with extra bugs and missing features
CryosFeron said: ... now knowing that I just need pace/accelration and use this "plastic" lifeless training plan...
Actually a great part of video games has a set of meta attributes making most of game concepts worthless, nobody blames them for that, and I mean top games with universal acclaim, FM24 is not the only one here, so just deal with it instead of complaining.
By the way we have the same trend in real life where players are more and more phycical.
[quote]
I would reiterate that position proficiency is a very important attribute, so pick players that have 20 natural proficiency, don't get one with '18' or try and train them into it from another position. Another reason not to do the latter is that there's very little leeway in tricking the CA weighting system. That is, you can't have your DC have high finishing and play them as 18 ST, it doesn't work that way. At best you can give your players a 12 proficiency for 'free', which is useful for saving a sub perhaps, but even this isn't really free because you're spending training time building it up to 12.
...
CA gain cap per year is ~12.5 CA without matches. ~25.5 CA with matches.
[/quote]
Regarding the first bit there, since I think a lot of people are going to use tactics where players change positions (DMs <> CMs, AMC<>Strikers, etc), what's the recommendation?
Ensure they're natural in both tactical positions?
Ensure they're natural in at least the IP tactic? The OoP tactic?
Break the above rule and ensure they're like 18 in both instead of 20 in one?
...
Also. In that last line, what's considered the minimum conditions to hit the 12.5 and 25.5 CA gains in a year?
Bill W said: Regarding the first bit there, since I think a lot of people are going to use tactics where players change positions (DMs <> CMs, AMC<>Strikers, etc), what's the recommendation?
Ensure they're natural in both tactical positions?
Ensure they're natural in at least the IP tactic? The OoP tactic?
Break the above rule and ensure they're like 18 in both instead of 20 in one?
Also. In that last line, what's considered the minimum conditions to hit the 12.5 and 25.5 CA gains in a year?
As someone said in another thread, it may be that having IP and OoP tactic be the same will be the meta due to the player proficiency downside. But who knows at this point.
Roughly speaking, 18 vs 20 proficiency is around -1.5 pace.
For hitting the yearly CA cap, see my 'ideal growth' details. You won't need all of them to hit the cap. High professionalism can largely make up for lack of game time. Professionalism and game time are the two main contributors to growth. From memory, friendlies/youth matches will count as game time to some extent (maybe even 100% up to age 18, I can't recall exactly now), but after 18 proper first team matches is really whats needed. And the game measures the minutes rather than appearances, so putting on the player for last 10 minutes will count as 10 minutes towards the full 2520 minutes that's optimal. How many games will be 'adequate', once they're age 20 say? About half the optimum, say 15 full games. This is why loaning out at that age is so important if they can't get first team games, even if its at crappy clubs.
tam1236 said: Actually a great part of video games has a set of meta attributes making most of game concepts worthless, nobody blames them for that, and I mean top games with universal acclaim, FM24 is not the only one here, so just deal with it instead of complaining.
By the way we have the same trend in real life where players are more and more phycical.
I don’t want to derail the topic, but this isn’t exactly off-topic either, because what we’re talking about is FM26, a game that’s been delayed for two years, ending up being practically identical to FM24 (with bugs, meta, and all that).
And honestly, I’m tired of seeing people like you in every FM community deliberately missing the main point just to defend the game out of pure fanboyism. So, I want to respond properly.
Yes, every game has meta, nobody is criticizing FM because it has one.
But in FM, what we’re dealing with isn’t just a “meta”; it’s a broken code system.
1- It’s the fact that the game’s coding is fundamentally flawed. Training sessions that claim to improve certain attributes don’t actually train those attributes at all.
2- SI is straight up lying about this. The real issue is that SI has been using the same underlying match and competition engine since FM10, and for 15 years they’ve been marketing it every year as a “brand new match engine.” FM is basically a 15 year-old, rotten, moldy apple being sold as “fresh and new.
3- In most games with a meta, if you use the meta, you win; if you go against it, you struggle but still win. But FM isn’t like that. In FM, even top tier clubs like Man City or Real Madrid perform terribly with defensive tactics. The game forces you to play the meta if you want to succeed, any deviation from it is punished.
4- Yes, physical strength matters in real football too, but if a physically strong player has poor passing, he’ll still make bad passes. In FM, though, a player with 1 Passing and 20 Pace can play like Modric or Messi, making brilliant key passes and through balls. That clearly shows attributes have little to no real effect on the match engine. The match outcomes are basically pre calculated using mathematical formulas. And the worst part? Those formulas are broken. Players with high Pace and Acceleration perform perfectly in every aspect (movement, shooting, passing) regardless of their other attributes.
5- Everyone can play whatever game they want however they want, but at the same time, everyone should also be free to criticize the games they play however they want.
The problem is, we’re not even allowed to criticize FM, because the FM fanboys won’t let us.
Do you think that’s "normal"?
And for the love of God, or whatever you believe in, PLEASE stop using the “SI is not a huge company, FM is not a AAA game” argument. According to official revenue data, SI makes about $145 million per year, That's almost the same as CD Projekt, the studio behind The Witcher 3.
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: ........
No suitable results? Reduce Acc/Pace (Agil/Lead for GK)
In depth filter:
I will post this sometime later.
Meta tactic (4-2-4) adjustments:
........
have you posted these filters ?
doru228 said: have you posted these filters ?
No, I will eventually but they're not very useful anyway; it would give you a better idea of what attributes are realistic I guess. It would be basically an in-between of the shortlist filter and the template ideals.
The Genie Scout ratings I posted in the other thread would be a more useful method, as it accounts for all the attributes in its rating system, but doesn't rule out anyone.
The problem with shortlist filters is that the more attributes requirements you add, exponentially fewer players match them. To make this more concrete, here are a few stats in my data:
~20% of players have 8+ long shots
~17% of players have 10+ dribbling
~27% of STs have 12+ finishing
~25% of AMRs have 10+ finishing
~5.4% of STs have 12+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots
~12.8% of AMRs have 10+ finishing, 10+ dribbling, 8+ long shots
~4.5% of CBs have 8+ long shots, 8+ dribbling
You can see the problem here with my ~140 DC 'ideal template' having 14 long shots; this would be reduced to say ~6-8 in my 'in depth filter', whereas my 'shortlist filter' doesn't set a minimum on long shots at all.
Gracolas said: you guys could simply not open fm-arena (or this topic really) if you didnt want to be spoiled.. however you are just like us that want to understand what is the best meta to play and here you are. Now dont complain. The beauty of FM is there's no wrong way to play it, so you choose if you want to learn all the nerdy meta data or not.
well there is a difference between finding out about certain attributes being more effective in the match engine, and finding out that pretty much every narrative the game tells you about the mental and technical attributes is nothing but a fairy tale. And don't even get me started on the whole training farce.
Did you actually meant what you wrote?