I've played with these attributeless skins before. It's a lot of fun, actually - it forces you to really get to know your players.
It's actually not necessarily "moneyball," since you're not going to be able to see the really fine differences between players. Remember that the difference between having a Pace rating of 19 and 16 is huge — but with the skins that just show you a general color to indicate the attribute level, both of those numbers would be green.
I recommend giving it a try. When I finally move up to FM24, I'm planning on going back to the attributeless "hardcore" mode. It's too easy to take advantage of the power of Pace and Acceleration otherwise.
I recommend the Evidence Based Football Manager schedule. You might want to take away one Defending session and replace it with Physical, and turn the Aerial Defense session into a Quickness session.
This has been my suspicion after playing FM for a number of years.
I'm hoping to see some testing done to different levels of consistency.
As it stands, I stay away from any players who have any level of inconsistency, especially since this attribute is so difficult to raise in game.
The same goes for players 22 and over who dislike big matches, which is pretty much just inconsistency under a different name.
I also stay away from any players who are injury prone, since this can have an adverse long term impact on their ability to develop.
Anyway, I'd love to see studies on this. If somebody shows that there is a certain level of inconsistency that is acceptable, I'll start signing those really fast young players who are extremely inconsistent.
Just saw your post on Reddit, OP. I stuck this response up a few minutes ago:
Regarding your first question — yes, this is what the tests showed. Note also that they're looking at a huge sample size of games to eliminate the impact of RNG. Passing doesn't mean anything, and the same is true for other attributes.
The problem with spamming quickness and physical training is that things like heading ability will deteriorate. You also don't want to create too many training sessions for your players, or they will be injured much more quickly. I recommend reviewing Evidence Based Football Manager's studies on these topics.
A player with a PA of 170 who has higher pace and acceleration than another player who also has a PA of 170 will generally perform better in the match engine over the long run. There are still a lot of short term fluctuations due to how strong the RNG is in the game engine.
Long story short: the correct way to min/max Football Manager is to pay close attention to pace and acceleration.
If you go back and read old posts, you'll learn that experienced players have known about this going back to the Championship Manager days. It's been contentious for a long time as well, by the way.
Note as well that the best way to advance quickly through the lower leagues is to get as many fast players as you can, whether it's through loans or whatever. Things like inconsistency and injury proneness won't matter as much at that level, since you're really only using the players for the time being to get from point A to point B.
Hope that helps! Apologies that there was no real discussion around your question. I think this is a very relevant topic that unfortunately seems to attract quite a deal of controversy.
Just wanted to thank you for taking the lead with this research.
I'll start using your schedule in my save and will let you know how things develop.
I'm playing in DarthFurion's World Super League, so there are two matches per week. I'll adjust accordingly.
Chances are that it's not going to be too far off EBFM's schedule in the end, though. I agree that game time is king — and I think Max (EBFM) said that in one of his videos.
I get the feeling that there might be a better way to weigh training sessions than what Max has set up in the EBFM schedule. I think he set it up to try to increase all attributes equally. However, now that we know for sure that not all attributes are created equal, we should be able to play the min and max game to get the ultimate results.
I've played with these attributeless skins before. It's a lot of fun, actually - it forces you to really get to know your players.
It's actually not necessarily "moneyball," since you're not going to be able to see the really fine differences between players. Remember that the difference between having a Pace rating of 19 and 16 is huge — but with the skins that just show you a general color to indicate the attribute level, both of those numbers would be green.
I recommend giving it a try. When I finally move up to FM24, I'm planning on going back to the attributeless "hardcore" mode. It's too easy to take advantage of the power of Pace and Acceleration otherwise.
I'm hoping to see some testing done to different levels of consistency.
As it stands, I stay away from any players who have any level of inconsistency, especially since this attribute is so difficult to raise in game.
The same goes for players 22 and over who dislike big matches, which is pretty much just inconsistency under a different name.
I also stay away from any players who are injury prone, since this can have an adverse long term impact on their ability to develop.
Anyway, I'd love to see studies on this. If somebody shows that there is a certain level of inconsistency that is acceptable, I'll start signing those really fast young players who are extremely inconsistent.
Regarding your first question — yes, this is what the tests showed. Note also that they're looking at a huge sample size of games to eliminate the impact of RNG. Passing doesn't mean anything, and the same is true for other attributes.
The problem with spamming quickness and physical training is that things like heading ability will deteriorate. You also don't want to create too many training sessions for your players, or they will be injured much more quickly. I recommend reviewing Evidence Based Football Manager's studies on these topics.
A player with a PA of 170 who has higher pace and acceleration than another player who also has a PA of 170 will generally perform better in the match engine over the long run. There are still a lot of short term fluctuations due to how strong the RNG is in the game engine.
Long story short: the correct way to min/max Football Manager is to pay close attention to pace and acceleration.
If you go back and read old posts, you'll learn that experienced players have known about this going back to the Championship Manager days. It's been contentious for a long time as well, by the way.
Note as well that the best way to advance quickly through the lower leagues is to get as many fast players as you can, whether it's through loans or whatever. Things like inconsistency and injury proneness won't matter as much at that level, since you're really only using the players for the time being to get from point A to point B.
Hope that helps! Apologies that there was no real discussion around your question. I think this is a very relevant topic that unfortunately seems to attract quite a deal of controversy.
I'll start using your schedule in my save and will let you know how things develop.
I'm playing in DarthFurion's World Super League, so there are two matches per week. I'll adjust accordingly.
Chances are that it's not going to be too far off EBFM's schedule in the end, though. I agree that game time is king — and I think Max (EBFM) said that in one of his videos.
At the moment, I'm really only interested in trying to max out Pace and Acceleration for as many players as possible.
There's got to be an even better way to min/max this.
Lol, sometimes I think the metagame behind the game is more interesting than the game itself...