Recall that 87% for ST is 2.571 and 73% for ST is 6.111, and that positions other than ST appear to be consistently ~1 position lower.
Every position for the Knap 424 formation has been sampled now, and I'm satisfied that the same set of required attributes apply to all outfield positions in the same way.
I've done some readjustments to the weightings.
I've dropped Sterling the equivalent of ~1 position, but this means he should we should expect no worse than ~4 position, yet his average is 5.375 if we give +1 for not being ST. This is the best I've been able to do.
Non-ST positions seem more comparable to ST now (less unexplained position difference), and stamina is now a more reasonable 40 instead of 94 weight - stamina seemed to be the partial cause of Sterling's overrating. Quite a few players have pleasant coincidental changes, such as Maeda going higher and Gyokeres lower, which is more line with the real rankings.
However some changes had to go with it, such as Vlahovic dropping a little below Messi. I figure it's more likely that Sterling should drop 1 position, than Vlahovic should not drop 0.5 position. And given most players seem more to be more accurate now, I'm not too concerned about Vlahovic.
Next step is translating to Genie Scout weights, then I can upload the updated file. Main reason for updated file will be adding the new GK weights of course.
Rain said: What am I missing here why do you think Mbappe and Sterling should be closer in terms of results? I would assume the +5 Pace, +3 Acceleration, +3 Dribbling, and +5 Determination alone would speak for itself. Expand The method I use is that I compare two players in conjunction with a few others, to rule out most of the attributes.
So for instance, let's say Mbappe is better because he has 20 pace/acc, then why does Haaland actually perform better? Then we find someone with same pace/acc as Haaland, but performs significantly worse. This player has -5 ant, -3 det, -3 work, -7 tack. We can rule out tackling off the bat, but how do we know how the remaining 3 attributes contribute? We compare two other completely different players to each other and one has +4 ant -2 work and the other has -4 ant +2 work, and find the +4 ant -2 work one performs much better. So now we know it's likely ant is the key missing factor, or at least contributes that precise position difference. We then verify that this would line up the rankings more correctly instead of no change or worse.
So that process gets us to the final weights, which we know are close to valid because almost all the players line up well without contradictions, and according to the weights Sterling should be closer to Mbappe.
If you compare Sterling to Mbappe, it's no problem, but what if you compare Sterling (6.6) to Saka (2.75):
There are a few differences, but nothing major. We know all the technicals are useless, aside from dribbling. That leaves a handful of minor to moderate differences in mentals, balance, and pressure (hidden), as the possible causes.
And the thing is, he's pretty well rounded in every attribute, so there's not obvious non-linear threshold being crossed for a certain attribute. I thought perhaps composure, but my template says 11 is the minimum, and he has 12. Thinking perhaps pressure right now.
A4 said: There are some weird results in this video, I don't know the guy and how trusted his test is but it's way different than pretty much all the actual results I saw
Expand Coincidentally I just made a comment on this video before coming here and seeing this post.
I was actually going to bring him up in my response concerning traits to you, and I'm guessing you asked it perhaps because you saw his video on traits too.
The jist of my post was that either this guy has something seriously wrong with him, or I'm missing something. Hence, another reason to give traits another test.
I first came across him ages ago, about 3 years ago, in which he claimed to do a proper test that showed scout JPA has a strong effect on newgens, which I knew from my own testing to be absolutely false. I left a comment about this, but he didn't respond.
Fast forward to now, and these past few months he's supposedly running and pumping out all these in-depth controlled tests with a discord community to back him, but if you go to it, it's a ghost town. Strange. And the tests themselves, obviously fly in the face of the results derived by others doing similar testing.
But I realized today it could be that it's because he's assessing by goals conceded and goals scored, which is not an adequate measure. I keep forgetting myself that final season position is the only reliable measure, at least that I know of. Still.. the scout JPA result can't be explained by this, so I simply don't trust the guy on anything. Maybe when I do the trait test, I'll also check to see if it affects goals difference as he claims it does.
I decided to leave all this out of my post before in the end, because obviously it sounds obsessive and veering off from what you asked, but its what came to mind. Occasionally youtubers can be a source of fresh good info.
75% | Kurt Zouma (DC) - 7th, 5th, 6th, 3rd = 5.6 position 73% | Sean Goldberg (DC) - 5th, 16th (sacked), 8th (sacked), 5th = 8.5 position
Notes:
We see with Mbappe that the weightings give the same result, whether Mbappe is playing ST or AML (note: in each test he has been edited to have 20 proficiency in only 1 position).
Kurt Zouma is a player keithb's weightings has at rank 7th in world, even though he's playing at West Ham. So I thought it would be a good candidate to test, especially since Zouma has 20 strength, 18 jump, 17 heading, 15 tackling, 16 determination, and so on - everything that lines up with what has conventionally been thought to constitute a great central defender. The result says otherwise. He is equivalent to Malen or Glatzel at ST (4.666-6.111 position; 73-74%).
Goldberg I elected to test because he has 12 acc/pace/jump yet has a decent rating. We see here it is viable, though the position seems to have slipped ~2 places. Though this could also be just because the early sacking 16th position result.
Raheem Sterling's result is surprisingly low. We see from Mbappe that it is not a disparity caused by the position itself. And keep in mind that he is conventionally found not far from the top of GS ratings (keithb has him 11th for AMR). When assessing this kind of situation, I've come to find that it's about what specific attribute the player lacks, rather than what attribute or attributes are over-weighted. Comparing with Mbappe narrows it down to comp or det it would seem to me, but I wonder if it could also be that Sterling is playing on the right side with a right foot. I recall HarvestGreen found some stuff about this. So I will probably test to see if side matters.
lasko911 said: I'm curious to see the DC testing results because I've had some interesting anecdotal evidence across several of my saves.
First I was using DCs with as high Jumping (17+) as possible, but only decent Acc/Pace (13-14) and results were mixed. Then I switched to DCs with high Acc/Pace (16+), but completely ignored Jumping (sometimes it was as low as 5).
The second type of defenders performed much better, their speed seemingly made up for their complete lack of aerial presence. Expand That could actually be because pace/acc is as crucial, or not far off it, as it is for STs.
When I reduced DC jump to 13, it was fine so long as an ST had 17 jump. So I would have thought previously that these two factors together were obscuring the legitimate causes for you.
Now a test of a real player is showing that a team can do with just 13 jump max. But here's another thing - Kounde has 13 jump, but also only has 15 acc/14 pace/15 stamina. If you look at Kounde, it's most likely what's making up for his deficient jump is one or more of the following: anticipation, determination, work rate, agility, balance, stamina.
I guess an interesting next one to test will be 'Sean Goldberg', who has a fairly high rating but only 12 acc/pace/jump.
A4 said: I only heard that traits don’t really matter much in FM, but I’ve always noticed how good players with “tries tricks” are. I even started teaching it to everyone in my youth academy. Of course, it’s anecdotal evidence, but when youngsters learn it—or even just try to do it—their impact and match ratings seem to be so much higher.
I’ve also noticed the same thing with the Light-Hearted personality. Somehow, good players with that personality seem to perform so much better for me than players with other personalities.
Is this something anyone has ever tested before? Expand I tested traits briefly before and found that they had zero effect, though I've been wanting to give it a retest soon to be sure.
ZaZ said: You can block sacking with the in game editor. Expand I don't have the in-game editor either, because that also costs money.
I know testers seem to typically use it a lot, and I would buy it if I needed it, but I've never felt the need to freeze things and whatnot.
johnconnerson said: After your recent findings, do you think these individual training focuses are still the best ones to use? Expand The optimal training will indeed have to be reassessed at some point, but it shouldn't change that much. There's a chance it wouldn't change at all. The quickness focus certainly wouldn't change.
BaZuKa said: I am doing a Moneyball save with Brentford. I added your CB meta attributes to my scouting app and got these results. Are these fine, or do I need to tweak anything else? Expand
The templates will do well, but the latest weights based on the real player testing will change things a bit. For instance, jump reach 17 is no longer necessary. It's unlikely this is because 17 jump reach wasn't necessary for the template, but that its now being compensated in some other way (i.e. perhaps higher anticipation reduces the need for jump reach, which is just an example I'm making up to illustrate what I mean).
To clarify things, and I think people more broadly will benefit from being aware of this, it seems to have turned out that indeed only the attributes that were selected in the template matter. It's just that the exact distribution for those attributes will change somewhat.
So if I was highlighting it in the same way roles are highlighted, this is how to assess Maeda (or any player, in any position, except GK):
I've started testing DC. I've started with Jules Kounde, as he has the highest rating with 13 jumping reach and the first thing I want to know is high jump reach on DCs still a valid requirement. Then I did one of the highest rated natural proficiency DCs who did have pretty high jumping reach of 16, Araujo.
82% | Kim Min Jae - 3rd, 3rd, 6th, 6th, 3rd, 4th, 5th = 4.286 position 83% | Ronald Araujo - 4th, 8th, 3rd, 1st, 7th = 4.6 position 79% | Jules Kounde - 5th, 4th, 7th 5th, 3rd = 4.8 position
So it's looking like high jumping reach isn't strictly necessary, and that the same set of weights works for every position, but still need to do a few more players to adequately demonstrate the latter.
Does one position contribute more than another? Compared to the STs, it seems as though DC is roughly ~1 position off, and the same was true of DR. And it's even clearer that GKs contribute less than STs, to getting higher position at least. The most likely explanation to my mind is that defenders do contribute less to winning than STs, because their focus is on not losing (defending). It'll be interesting to see if wingers reflect this once I test them.
Purity said: Why don't you make yourself unsackable with fmrte to avoid this ? Expand I don't have paid FMRTE. I don't know if the trial version can do that.
I could redo my database edit to use Luton instead of Man City, but it's more work than it's worth. I'm not particularly concerned about the sackings and lower GK results at the moment. If I did rule out sackings as the cause, I would be left with the problem of elevating GKs with middling stats, which I can't think of an obvious solution to at the moment. Which means I'd have to spend a lot of time coming up with sophisticated formulas. So I don't want to go down that path right now.
I have limited time and energy, and of what remains to be done, I think it's more important to get jump on DC assessed next, and then verifying the hypothesis that all the positions share the same attribute requirements - and if not, finding those differences.
bf3metro said: FMST more accurate or just simpler for you? Expand FMSS someone has said you can add code to make it do the same calculations, so FMST is not less accurate, but FMST allows me to add some complexity more easily right now. I can some utilize some complex operations in FMST without research - with FMSS, I'd have to investigate how to program it.
90% | Alisson - 6th, 3rd, 4th, 4th, 3rd = 4 position 85% | Thibaut Courtois - 3rd, 7th, 2nd, 5th, 8th = 5 position 83% | Jan Oblak - 5th, 8th, 6th, 4th, 3rd = 5.2 position 83% | Walter Benitez - 4th, 9th, 4th, 6th, 5th = 5.6 position 83% | Ugurcan Cakir - 7th, 9th, 2nd = 6 position 80% | Ederson - 6th, 6th, 4th, 8th, 7th (sacked), 7th (sacked) = 6.333 position 82% | Marc-Andre ter Stegen - 10th, 11th, 4th, 4th, 3rd = 6.4 position 78% | Anatolii Trubin - 15th (sacked), 6th, 4th (sacked), 5th = 7.5 position 70% | Davy Roef - 13th (sacked), 4th, 14th (sacked), 6th (sacked), 1st = 7.6 position 61% | Jack Stevens - 13th (sacked), 4th, 9th (sacked), 8th (sacked), 8th (sacked) = 8.4 position 76% | Sinan Bolat - 4th, 2nd, 19th (sacked), 5th, 14th (sacked), 9th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 5th = 8.75 position 68% | Ben Winterbottom - 10th (sacked), 5th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 18th (sacked) = 11.25 position
Adjustments were made to accommodate Ederson, who has gone from 76% > 80%. Ederson is an interesting case, because he's at a top team (Man City), yet predicted to be relatively low, and is quite low in what has been considered the key 3 attributes (aer, ref, agil).
I wanted to know if you’ve had the chance to form a strong opinion on FMST vs FMSS. Which one seems more accurate to you, and generally speaking, which one do you think is the better tool to use? Expand I don't have an opinion of which is better, but I'm using FMST right now because I can put in more sophisticated weighting formulas easier
Angelski said: There are a lot of topics here, but I think managing newgens is the main focus to me. Do you have any deep-dive posts or research on newgens that I could read in the thread?
As I see it, there are two main development paths for promising newgens i use to follow:
Keep them in the first team: Use them as backups immediately. This gives you control over their setup, but you risk limiting their development if they don't get enough match context.
Send them out on loan: This gets them minutes, but you run the risk that the loan club won't play them enough or train them properly.
In rarest occassion, I've used the rest exploit combined with quickness individual training on youths while letting the U18 manager handle match time, and their attributes grew quickly. I read somewhere that a youth player's attributes can only grow by a maximum of 25 points per season, but when tracking some of my own wonderkids, I noticed their total attribute growth actually exceeded 25 points. It's not a single case, for a 10 season-long save i got like 4-5 players that became monsters in 2 season, even got first-team GK from youth team at age of 16 and at 18 i sold him to Chelsea. Expand So newgens are actually what I know best about.
My first thread here was actually about newgen mechanics, and I started looking deep into it many years ago now.
If you want to get really deep into it, I have explanations even of how newgens interact with geography in the game, and how that all of that complicated process is actually just superficial - it's all just in the end to set birth location and language and whatnot.
But you seem interested in specifically young player development. I have long posts that address in detail the questions you raise, but I'll just give a direct concise answer:
According to EBFM, and another youtuber who did data analysis of FM.. and I think HarvestGreen too.. CA growth is indeed capped at ~25 CA/season. You say you have exceeded that cap. It might be possible; we know there are exceptions that occur in regards to match fitness gains during matches, so CA growth could be the same. I'd doubt you got beyond say ~30 though.
The best way to handle young players is this: Keep at club until at least 19. 19-20, you can loan them out or keep them at club, both are fine. 21+ you have to loan out, or play at least 15 matches/season in first team. Matches are counted as 90 minutes, so a 80th minute substitution 15 times is going to count as less than 2 matches, not 15. It's best to loan to an inactive club if possible, because there is a coded bonus for it which just makes it superior, but the more important thing is that whatever club you loan to, you have to make sure they actually get matches. No matches, zero CA gain. Too low a league, and the CA gain will cap out at a certain CA level dependent on the league's reputation. Match rating makes no difference to their CA gain. So loans should be about playing at as high a level as possible, without risking them not starting matches.
Rather than read longwinded posts, you may be better off starting with, or simply viewing as an alternative, EBFM's youtube videos. There's a lot of great stuff there that largely remains valid and goes quite deep.
johnconnerson said: Do you plan to include these GK weightings into your latest Genie Scout file? Expand Yes, I'll be calling it Premier League 2.1
I'm thinking I might have a go at some further tests of players and adjustments first, particularly for players at the lower end, before I put it out in a day or two.
Angelski said: I won't comment on your manifesto—I really don't care about the nonsense. I shared my opinion, you shared yours, and that's it. I'm here for the game, so I'll stop the debate here. Tell me, what is the most optimal way of playing FM26? Let's discuss the actual game. Some people test C++ code and get results, others build tools like FM Super Scout, and you do research—everyone has their results. After 21 pages, I assume you've found the proper way FM26 should actually be played? (It's not irony, I'm not being rude, not trying to ruin the thread) Expand How you choose to play the game is up to you.
What I can tell you is:
1) What attributes to look for (what works, what doesnt) 2) What training to use 3) What leagues to load 4) What to do about loans 5) How to manage squad fitness 6) How to get the most out of newgens 7) How to manage morale 8) What weights to use in GS/FMST/FMSS
Most of it is in the OP.
I've also done some pretty deep research into the game that I can share - history, misc info, quirks of the game, etc. from Masonic ties the game has, to the state of Israel putting out a statement condemning Miles' politics-based decision of removing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel from the game, to the 3D newgen face modeler which you can download a usable demo of (they don't use an in-house program), to SI's inclusion of racist data and subsequent cover up, to somewhat obscure features such as searching for 'faceinthegame' to find all the newgens taking their details from SI staff/volunteers/etc in real life. Probably only a few people like me care about this extra stuff though.
Walter plays GK without reflexes. Nice one Walter.
I've got the GKs lining up quite nicely now, but there are some issues at the bottom end. Could be because of the sackings messing up the data, could be for other reasons.
I picked Walter Benitez to test because he had a high % score but only 15 reflexes, and he slots in between Oblak and ter Stegen, which is exactly what my draft set of new GK weightings predicted.
90% | Alisson - 6th, 3rd, 4th, 4th, 3rd = 4 position 87% | Thibaut Courtois - 3rd, 7th, 2nd, 5th, 8th = 5 position 85% | Jan Oblak - 5th, 8th, 6th, 4th, 3rd = 5.2 position 84% | Walter Benitez - 4th, 9th, 4th, 6th, 5th = 5.6 position 85% | Ugurcan Cakir GK - 7th, 9th, 2nd = 6 position 82% | Marc-Andre ter Stegen - 10th, 11th, 4th, 4th, 3rd = 6.4 position 80% | Anatolii Trubin - 15th (sacked), 6th, 4th (sacked), 5th = 7.5 position 61% | Jack Stevens - 13th (sacked), 4th, 9th (sacked), 8th (sacked), 8th (sacked) = 8.4 position 77% | Sinan Bolat - 4th, 2nd, 19th (sacked), 5th, 14th (sacked), 9th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 5th = 8.75 position 70% | Ben Winterbottom - 10th (sacked), 5th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 18th (sacked) = 11.25 position
To be honest though, reflexes seem to be making something of a comeback. As you'll see in my weightings below, I've had to set it very high to align the positions. Also surprising was that flair might possibly be an important attribute for GK. I derived this from player comparison, and was more willing to try it out because I know that technique is important for GK but not outfield. Concentration and determination also appear to be more critical than first thought. It could all just be confusion of attributes though, I'm just satisfied at the moment that I've got something that seems to line up most players well - it correctly predicted 2 goalkeepers I tested afterwards, which is promising.
Back to the reflexes matter though, what seems to be going on is this: Aerial Reach is crucial at the mid-high level. But once have the 15 aerial reach or around that, then reflexes become the pre-eminant consideration at the very high level (so 15 vs. 19 reflexes). As Benitez shows, you can still do very well without green reflexes, but the extra reflexes will push a player above and beyond to the very top if they have everything else that's required at a mid-high level. That's my reading of it. HarvestGreen's data also makes more sense in light of this hypothesis, because what that showed is that having all attributes at 20, and reducing an attribute to 1, reflexes showed a 12.8% difference.. which is what we see here is the difference between Benitez and Alisson (if we surmise the range is 4 to 11 position, then Alisson is 23% better than Benitez). Note that it remains true that green reflexes alone aren't sufficient for a GK, as evidenced by Bolat (16 ref) & ter Stegen (18 ref).
Angelski said: Giving advice on how to tweak FM26 files when you explicitly admit you don't even play or test the game makes zero sense. I wouldn't lecture someone on FC 26 based on secondhand findings from someone else. If you don't like FM26, just ignore it and let people who actively play and put thousands of hours into testing the current engine give proper feedback — like HarvestGreen does. Expand I think you're painting an inaccurate picture.
You mentioned in a post previously that I should do something actually useful, such as find the ultimate tactic. I actually have had a go at doing that once this year, and found that I couldn't beat Knap's tactic. I did test some other top FM24 tactics though, and found one or two that seemingly do better. I also had a go at set pieces. But I don't talk much about tactics at all really, because I have no real insight into it. So I don't just profess to know things willy nilly.
The specific areas I concentrate on are:
- Attributes - Training - Newgen generation
I can profess to know to a large extent about how attributes work in FM26 because it's clear nothing has changed fundamentally. The biggest difference is something like long shots going from completely useless to near useless. Sure, secondhand findings can be wrong, but based on doing a lot of testing myself, I have a reasonable amount of faith in HarvestGreen's findings because usually it aligns what what I find. And it depends on what it is - if HarvestGreen's talking about outfield attributes, I'll take his word. If it's GK, I'll ignore it because I know his methodology on GK is no good.
I could have chosen to simply put out FM26 files out there without mentioning that I can't verify the weightings. Who would be able to tell the difference?
The accurate picture is that I test FM24, and FM26 is largely the same to FM24 when it comes to attributes, and that I have always cautioned people that if I offer a FM26 file, it is the FM24 findings with perhaps some tweaks based on other's FM26 data added.
Angelski said: Every FM engine has its ups and downs, but systems evolve. SI has to try new mechanics for the game to move forward, even if people like you dismiss it as "garbage." Expand Another trigger point for me.
SI is an absolute disgrace, and I won't let this regurgitated marketing spiel get past me. If you choose to blow money on the broken game that is FM26, that's your problem. And my condolences to those who pre-ordered.
But I'm not going to sit here and listen to someone say SI is 'trying new mechanics' or that the game is simply going through 'ups and downs'. FM26 debuted as the 7th worst rated steam game in history and lost half of its users after the first month for a reason.
There are no new mechanics. I don't count OOP as a new mechanic, because it's placebo. The underlying match engine has simply been transposed with only the usual yearly tweaks of 'lets make long shots a little more important, and that a little less important'. That's why exploit tactics continue to destroy FM. Literally everything is the exact same, even the 3D graphics to me look roughly the same even though some people see it as some great improvement for whatever reason. The only substantive change has been the UI, and it's ruined the game.
The actual enjoyable parts of the game - newgen crafting, immersive narrative, attention to detail - have been methodically disassembled over the years, and FM26 represents a new low that is so bad it's literally intolerable to play for many to most. They replaced % with vague heart icons. Press conferences.. nuff said. They made transfer dealing a pain in the ass with Brexit before Brexit even happened in real life, and tedious agent, club and players interactions where they're not happy with anything - not even what sounds sensible to a reasonable person. We all know what happened to newgen faces. And they changed newgen generation so if you want to reload them, you have to go back months, and now in FM26 my initial impression having glanced through the demo is that the youth team is hidden behind so many mouse clicks that don't even want to bother dealing with newgens at all anymore - I heard that when FM26 was released, you literally couldn't even access the youth team properly!
And the heart of the game turns out to be a lie. For years we've been playing like some complex interplay between passing, decisions, vision, etc. is going on.. when in fact all of that is placebo not even taken into account by the match engine, and actually SI have deliberately been misleading its users - we know this because the players in the starting db have sets of attributes that just so happen to align perfectly with the reduced set of effectual attributes in my template. Exploit tactics put a stopper to much of the game's enjoyment years ago. The challenge is gone. I moved on to newgens, and discovered that a lot of the factors here are baloney too - for instance SI claim youth facilities affect PA; they simply don't. I still enjoy FM24 when I do play, mainly because I can raise up newgens from Div 7 to Div 1, but that seems pretty much dead now with FM26.
I could write a whole book on it. I basically already have here, but there's just so many bad things. The short of it is that the game has devolved into a mess that is too tedious to play, and in all likelihood could very well go broke and die off in the next year or two. But we'll see what FM27 looks like. Personally I expect a rehash of FM26 and further 'product diversification' as we see with the much more polished FMDB Pro they've evidently been spending a lot more of their time on, and I think shows their level of respect for you.
Angelski said: And as for your "undeniable superiority" and "dominating the field" — you admitted yourself in Post #21 that you took HarvestGreen's data, fed it into ChatGPT, and had AI output an "approximation" of attribute distributions. Taking other people's hard work, running it through an AI engine and exporting a custom GS file for a game you don't even play isn't "dominating" anything. It's just prompt engineering. Expand I assume you are talking about a recent post, in which case I did not use HarvestGreen's data, but my own. And I ended up discarding what ChatGPT had to say, as I was getting better results alone.
If you're talking about something months ago, I can't recall, but sometimes I do use ChatGPT to do calculations. It often has errors with complicated calculations though, so usually I use it as one would a calculator - say I want to quickly calculate 15 rows of calculations instead of manually doing '(3x3.68)x110' myself.
So a dud argument from you here. Even if it was valid, say I used AI to get half of my insights.. would that even be a problem, if it was producing valid results? AI is obviously being used a lot now, even by big companies who pay people to do work for them. Overall I think you've chosen to make a very weak point to stand on.
I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the work you're sharing here. I enjoy reading your results and testing your FM24 files (even if I'm using FM26), and I've found your contributions very useful.
Not everyone will agree with every method or conclusion, but I don't see the point of repeatedly criticizing something they could simply choose not to follow. If people don't enjoy the thread, they can always ignore it.
Please keep sharing your findings. There are definitely readers like me who appreciate the time and effort you put into this.
Quite a few people here seem to be having trouble communicating with me. I'm not particularly upset or dismayed. In fact I rather relish the opportunities to demonstrate my undeniable superiority. But I do somewhat wish there were more productive debates, which I know have occurred before at times and are therefore possible.
Here are a few suggestions I have for communicating with me:
1) Don't call me retarded, or praise those who call me retarded, if you want me to be pleasant instead of terse towards you. I enjoy 'FM Arena' living up to its name, but expect me to respond in kind, rather than expect me to submit to passive-aggressive shenanigans and the like.
2) Actually comprehend my claims before saying 'you're wrong'. I know I write a lot, I don't expect people to read everything, but you should at least have some awareness of what I'm actually claiming before attempting to prove it wrong. Sometimes people mischaracterize my ideas. I understand, naivety is innocent - if a person is initially polite to me, I give them 4 or 5 or 6 chances to take on board what I'm saying. If they persist with cherry picking or moving on to new points while ignoring the bulk of what I say, I generally start to assume they are being deliberately passive-aggressive and either have ill intent or are simply boneheaded. I have to draw the line somewhere.
3) Maybe, just maybe, do some actual testing yourself and come up with something to say of substance. I can think of two or three people in this thread who have so far. If nobody else is coming up with anything to show, how can you blame me for dominating the field?
Angelski said: You literally said yourself in previous posts that FM26 is "hot garbage" and that you don't even play it. I'll just leave that there so anyone reading this can decide for themselves how much weight to give your advice. Expand This shouldn't be news to anyone who has been following my posts here.
People have asked me for FM26 GS files over time, and I have to tell them that I don't really do FM26 files because I can't test FM26 and can only provide at best some sort of adjustment based on what HarvestGreen's findings are (now there are also FM Arena test results to go by). It does work though, I'm quite sure, because attributes/the match engine in FM26 hasn't really changed much. I just can't say anything with the same certainty in regards to FM26.
Pretty sure I've always made it clear that I test in FM24 only.
You've just rocked up and are claiming I'm wrong without reading anything I've actually written. I mean what kind of response from me did you expect?
Angelski said: And one more thing: if there's already a well-known attribute table showing how the match engine weighs everything, and the engine hasn't even changed, why are we even having this discussion? Expand That table refers to the CA weights. In this thread recently, we are talking about attribute weightings. They are two different things. CA weights largely determine the cost of an attribute in CA; attribute weightings reflect the importance of a particular attribute in terms of performance.
Angelski said: I came here hoping to actually learn something useful, but watching someone obsessively test a "garbage game" they claim not to play is certainly a choice. Expand There's plenty here that's useful, and much of it is derived from the extensive testing you deride. I test FM24, not FM26. I didn't say FM24 is a garbage game, even though it does have its shortcomings, I said FM26 is.
Angelski said: I was trying to be friendly and share a genuine player's perspective Expand Perhaps that was your intention, but I can't help but feel a bit miffed when I'm mischaracterized. Especially when you start by saying the guy who has been harassing me and lying about me for months on end, is 'totally right'. Hope you understand, if you ever do come back to read this.
Angelski said: A few quick points because you're completely contradicting yourself here:
FM26 & OOP Roles: You explicitly stated "I don't test FM26" and "I don't play FM26 because it's hot garbage." Calling the in-possession and out-of-possession mechanics "placebo" based on FM24 assumptions and second-hand opinions isn't data—it's guesswork. In FM26, if a player lacks positional discipline during phase transitions, they break the team's defensive structure, regardless of speed. Expand You don't trust FM Arena's testing on this? That's not a contradiction on my part, that's a disagreement between us.
Angelski said: "Roles Don't Exist": Claiming roles don't exist in FM ignores how the match engine assigns spatial duties, pressing triggers, and movement patterns. Attributes are processed through those role instructions—they don't operate in a vacuum. Expand Yes.. as you can see by the last edit time of the post you're responding to, I had a change of mind about which I submitted the same time you posted your response.
So I don't expect you to have seen it yet of course, but I'll restate the clarification I wish to make: Roles do exist as tactical differences, but you were denoting attributes which better fit roles, which is a different kettle of fish. Attributes do not fit certain roles better. I know this from experience testing, but I believe FM Arena has also tested this and I could dig it up if you like.
Angelski said: Off the Ball & CA Exploits: Calling Off the Ball "completely useless" and boasting about winning the Premier League with a 1 CA / 90 CA team proves @keithb's point: your setup is exploiting match engine pathfinding via broken tactics. When a tactic does 95% of the heavy lifting, claiming your changing attribute weights caused the win is pure confirmation bias. Expand You seem to have just completely ignored the first line of my response to you.
I'll state it again: It has been tested with default tactics.
..and to a precision of just 2% GS rating difference!
Angelski said: Templates & Balance: My point about CA balance still stands. My striker had 13–14 Pace/Acc and dominated in Europe because his high Mentals fit my tactic. Swapping him for a 19–20 Pace player with lower Off the Ball/Composure dropped performance—because raw physicals without tactical fit don't magically win matches in dynamic play. Expand And how do you that it was off the ball or composure specifically? Was the player identical, or even similar in every other respect?
I can tell you now that off the ball, or even composure, is not going to account for a 20 pace/acc player being worse than 13 pace/acc player.
But putting that aside, you're not proving anything. You're talking as though I have said 13-14 pace/acc players can't be near perfect players. I have stated the opposite of that, and if you actually took the time read the last 2 pages of this thread, you'd see I've been trying to make the specific point that I think the established narrative that pace/acc is everything should be regarded as outdated.
You've just barged in here and started yelling about how I'm wrong on the basis of claims I'm not even making. That's the part that gets me, not so much the naivety around the attributes, but castigating me when you clearly haven't even read what I've written. Bizarre!
Angelski said: Honestly, I came here hoping to learn something, but reading through all of this has completely killed my desire to stay in this thread or engage with the forum. It's exhausting trying to discuss normal, proper gameplay when someone running 50,000 automated holiday sims insists you're playing the wrong way unless you intentionally break the match engine. Expand Aw.. you poor thing.
Maybe I suggest r/footballmanagergames? Or perhaps more up your alley of falsehoods, sensitivity and low effort, the SI forums?
But if you do decide to stick around here, perhaps don't just go in bullheaded saying 'YOU'RE WRONG' with nothing to back up it but confabulations to the person you're choosing to address?
73% | Andrian Kraev (DM) = 9th, 8th, 5th, 5th = 6.75 position
Recall that 87% for ST is 2.571 and 73% for ST is 6.111, and that positions other than ST appear to be consistently ~1 position lower.
Every position for the Knap 424 formation has been sampled now, and I'm satisfied that the same set of required attributes apply to all outfield positions in the same way.
I've done some readjustments to the weightings.
I've dropped Sterling the equivalent of ~1 position, but this means he should we should expect no worse than ~4 position, yet his average is 5.375 if we give +1 for not being ST. This is the best I've been able to do.
Non-ST positions seem more comparable to ST now (less unexplained position difference), and stamina is now a more reasonable 40 instead of 94 weight - stamina seemed to be the partial cause of Sterling's overrating. Quite a few players have pleasant coincidental changes, such as Maeda going higher and Gyokeres lower, which is more line with the real rankings.
However some changes had to go with it, such as Vlahovic dropping a little below Messi. I figure it's more likely that Sterling should drop 1 position, than Vlahovic should not drop 0.5 position. And given most players seem more to be more accurate now, I'm not too concerned about Vlahovic.
Next step is translating to Genie Scout weights, then I can upload the updated file. Main reason for updated file will be adding the new GK weights of course.
The method I use is that I compare two players in conjunction with a few others, to rule out most of the attributes.
So for instance, let's say Mbappe is better because he has 20 pace/acc, then why does Haaland actually perform better? Then we find someone with same pace/acc as Haaland, but performs significantly worse. This player has -5 ant, -3 det, -3 work, -7 tack. We can rule out tackling off the bat, but how do we know how the remaining 3 attributes contribute? We compare two other completely different players to each other and one has +4 ant -2 work and the other has -4 ant +2 work, and find the +4 ant -2 work one performs much better. So now we know it's likely ant is the key missing factor, or at least contributes that precise position difference. We then verify that this would line up the rankings more correctly instead of no change or worse.
So that process gets us to the final weights, which we know are close to valid because almost all the players line up well without contradictions, and according to the weights Sterling should be closer to Mbappe.
If you compare Sterling to Mbappe, it's no problem, but what if you compare Sterling (6.6) to Saka (2.75):
There are a few differences, but nothing major. We know all the technicals are useless, aside from dribbling. That leaves a handful of minor to moderate differences in mentals, balance, and pressure (hidden), as the possible causes.
And the thing is, he's pretty well rounded in every attribute, so there's not obvious non-linear threshold being crossed for a certain attribute. I thought perhaps composure, but my template says 11 is the minimum, and he has 12. Thinking perhaps pressure right now.
Coincidentally I just made a comment on this video before coming here and seeing this post.
I was actually going to bring him up in my response concerning traits to you, and I'm guessing you asked it perhaps because you saw his video on traits too.
The jist of my post was that either this guy has something seriously wrong with him, or I'm missing something. Hence, another reason to give traits another test.
I first came across him ages ago, about 3 years ago, in which he claimed to do a proper test that showed scout JPA has a strong effect on newgens, which I knew from my own testing to be absolutely false. I left a comment about this, but he didn't respond.
Fast forward to now, and these past few months he's supposedly running and pumping out all these in-depth controlled tests with a discord community to back him, but if you go to it, it's a ghost town. Strange. And the tests themselves, obviously fly in the face of the results derived by others doing similar testing.
But I realized today it could be that it's because he's assessing by goals conceded and goals scored, which is not an adequate measure. I keep forgetting myself that final season position is the only reliable measure, at least that I know of. Still.. the scout JPA result can't be explained by this, so I simply don't trust the guy on anything. Maybe when I do the trait test, I'll also check to see if it affects goals difference as he claims it does.
I decided to leave all this out of my post before in the end, because obviously it sounds obsessive and veering off from what you asked, but its what came to mind. Occasionally youtubers can be a source of fresh good info.
So it's not the footedness
83% | Bukayo Saka (AMR) - 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 3rd = 2.75 position
So it does seem something specific to Sterling
84% | Raheem Sterling (AMR) - 6th, 7th, 7th, 7th, 6th = 6.6 position
75% | Kurt Zouma (DC) - 7th, 5th, 6th, 3rd = 5.6 position
73% | Sean Goldberg (DC) - 5th, 16th (sacked), 8th (sacked), 5th = 8.5 position
Notes:
We see with Mbappe that the weightings give the same result, whether Mbappe is playing ST or AML (note: in each test he has been edited to have 20 proficiency in only 1 position).
Kurt Zouma is a player keithb's weightings has at rank 7th in world, even though he's playing at West Ham. So I thought it would be a good candidate to test, especially since Zouma has 20 strength, 18 jump, 17 heading, 15 tackling, 16 determination, and so on - everything that lines up with what has conventionally been thought to constitute a great central defender. The result says otherwise. He is equivalent to Malen or Glatzel at ST (4.666-6.111 position; 73-74%).
Goldberg I elected to test because he has 12 acc/pace/jump yet has a decent rating. We see here it is viable, though the position seems to have slipped ~2 places. Though this could also be just because the early sacking 16th position result.
Raheem Sterling's result is surprisingly low. We see from Mbappe that it is not a disparity caused by the position itself. And keep in mind that he is conventionally found not far from the top of GS ratings (keithb has him 11th for AMR). When assessing this kind of situation, I've come to find that it's about what specific attribute the player lacks, rather than what attribute or attributes are over-weighted. Comparing with Mbappe narrows it down to comp or det it would seem to me, but I wonder if it could also be that Sterling is playing on the right side with a right foot. I recall HarvestGreen found some stuff about this. So I will probably test to see if side matters.
First I was using DCs with as high Jumping (17+) as possible, but only decent Acc/Pace (13-14) and results were mixed.
Then I switched to DCs with high Acc/Pace (16+), but completely ignored Jumping (sometimes it was as low as 5).
The second type of defenders performed much better, their speed seemingly made up for their complete lack of aerial presence.
That could actually be because pace/acc is as crucial, or not far off it, as it is for STs.
When I reduced DC jump to 13, it was fine so long as an ST had 17 jump. So I would have thought previously that these two factors together were obscuring the legitimate causes for you.
Now a test of a real player is showing that a team can do with just 13 jump max. But here's another thing - Kounde has 13 jump, but also only has 15 acc/14 pace/15 stamina. If you look at Kounde, it's most likely what's making up for his deficient jump is one or more of the following: anticipation, determination, work rate, agility, balance, stamina.
I guess an interesting next one to test will be 'Sean Goldberg', who has a fairly high rating but only 12 acc/pace/jump.
A4 said: I only heard that traits don’t really matter much in FM, but I’ve always noticed how good players with “tries tricks” are. I even started teaching it to everyone in my youth academy. Of course, it’s anecdotal evidence, but when youngsters learn it—or even just try to do it—their impact and match ratings seem to be so much higher.
I’ve also noticed the same thing with the Light-Hearted personality. Somehow, good players with that personality seem to perform so much better for me than players with other personalities.
Is this something anyone has ever tested before?
I tested traits briefly before and found that they had zero effect, though I've been wanting to give it a retest soon to be sure.
I don't have the in-game editor either, because that also costs money.
I know testers seem to typically use it a lot, and I would buy it if I needed it, but I've never felt the need to freeze things and whatnot.
johnconnerson said: After your recent findings, do you think these individual training focuses are still the best ones to use?
The optimal training will indeed have to be reassessed at some point, but it shouldn't change that much. There's a chance it wouldn't change at all. The quickness focus certainly wouldn't change.
BaZuKa said: I am doing a Moneyball save with Brentford. I added your CB meta attributes to my scouting app and got these results. Are these fine, or do I need to tweak anything else?
The templates will do well, but the latest weights based on the real player testing will change things a bit. For instance, jump reach 17 is no longer necessary. It's unlikely this is because 17 jump reach wasn't necessary for the template, but that its now being compensated in some other way (i.e. perhaps higher anticipation reduces the need for jump reach, which is just an example I'm making up to illustrate what I mean).
To clarify things, and I think people more broadly will benefit from being aware of this, it seems to have turned out that indeed only the attributes that were selected in the template matter. It's just that the exact distribution for those attributes will change somewhat.
So if I was highlighting it in the same way roles are highlighted, this is how to assess Maeda (or any player, in any position, except GK):
82% | Kim Min Jae - 3rd, 3rd, 6th, 6th, 3rd, 4th, 5th = 4.286 position
83% | Ronald Araujo - 4th, 8th, 3rd, 1st, 7th = 4.6 position
79% | Jules Kounde - 5th, 4th, 7th 5th, 3rd = 4.8 position
So it's looking like high jumping reach isn't strictly necessary, and that the same set of weights works for every position, but still need to do a few more players to adequately demonstrate the latter.
Does one position contribute more than another? Compared to the STs, it seems as though DC is roughly ~1 position off, and the same was true of DR. And it's even clearer that GKs contribute less than STs, to getting higher position at least. The most likely explanation to my mind is that defenders do contribute less to winning than STs, because their focus is on not losing (defending). It'll be interesting to see if wingers reflect this once I test them.
I don't have paid FMRTE. I don't know if the trial version can do that.
I could redo my database edit to use Luton instead of Man City, but it's more work than it's worth. I'm not particularly concerned about the sackings and lower GK results at the moment. If I did rule out sackings as the cause, I would be left with the problem of elevating GKs with middling stats, which I can't think of an obvious solution to at the moment. Which means I'd have to spend a lot of time coming up with sophisticated formulas. So I don't want to go down that path right now.
I have limited time and energy, and of what remains to be done, I think it's more important to get jump on DC assessed next, and then verifying the hypothesis that all the positions share the same attribute requirements - and if not, finding those differences.
bf3metro said: FMST more accurate or just simpler for you?
FMSS someone has said you can add code to make it do the same calculations, so FMST is not less accurate, but FMST allows me to add some complexity more easily right now. I can some utilize some complex operations in FMST without research - with FMSS, I'd have to investigate how to program it.
85% | Thibaut Courtois - 3rd, 7th, 2nd, 5th, 8th = 5 position
83% | Jan Oblak - 5th, 8th, 6th, 4th, 3rd = 5.2 position
83% | Walter Benitez - 4th, 9th, 4th, 6th, 5th = 5.6 position
83% | Ugurcan Cakir - 7th, 9th, 2nd = 6 position
80% | Ederson - 6th, 6th, 4th, 8th, 7th (sacked), 7th (sacked) = 6.333 position
82% | Marc-Andre ter Stegen - 10th, 11th, 4th, 4th, 3rd = 6.4 position
78% | Anatolii Trubin - 15th (sacked), 6th, 4th (sacked), 5th = 7.5 position
70% | Davy Roef - 13th (sacked), 4th, 14th (sacked), 6th (sacked), 1st = 7.6 position
61% | Jack Stevens - 13th (sacked), 4th, 9th (sacked), 8th (sacked), 8th (sacked) = 8.4 position
76% | Sinan Bolat - 4th, 2nd, 19th (sacked), 5th, 14th (sacked), 9th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 5th = 8.75 position
68% | Ben Winterbottom - 10th (sacked), 5th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 18th (sacked) = 11.25 position
Adjustments were made to accommodate Ederson, who has gone from 76% > 80%. Ederson is an interesting case, because he's at a top team (Man City), yet predicted to be relatively low, and is quite low in what has been considered the key 3 attributes (aer, ref, agil).
I wanted to know if you’ve had the chance to form a strong opinion on FMST vs FMSS. Which one seems more accurate to you, and generally speaking, which one do you think is the better tool to use?
I don't have an opinion of which is better, but I'm using FMST right now because I can put in more sophisticated weighting formulas easier
As I see it, there are two main development paths for promising newgens i use to follow:
Keep them in the first team: Use them as backups immediately. This gives you control over their setup, but you risk limiting their development if they don't get enough match context.
Send them out on loan: This gets them minutes, but you run the risk that the loan club won't play them enough or train them properly.
In rarest occassion, I've used the rest exploit combined with quickness individual training on youths while letting the U18 manager handle match time, and their attributes grew quickly. I read somewhere that a youth player's attributes can only grow by a maximum of 25 points per season, but when tracking some of my own wonderkids, I noticed their total attribute growth actually exceeded 25 points. It's not a single case, for a 10 season-long save i got like 4-5 players that became monsters in 2 season, even got first-team GK from youth team at age of 16 and at 18 i sold him to Chelsea.
So newgens are actually what I know best about.
My first thread here was actually about newgen mechanics, and I started looking deep into it many years ago now.
If you want to get really deep into it, I have explanations even of how newgens interact with geography in the game, and how that all of that complicated process is actually just superficial - it's all just in the end to set birth location and language and whatnot.
But you seem interested in specifically young player development. I have long posts that address in detail the questions you raise, but I'll just give a direct concise answer:
According to EBFM, and another youtuber who did data analysis of FM.. and I think HarvestGreen too.. CA growth is indeed capped at ~25 CA/season. You say you have exceeded that cap. It might be possible; we know there are exceptions that occur in regards to match fitness gains during matches, so CA growth could be the same. I'd doubt you got beyond say ~30 though.
The best way to handle young players is this: Keep at club until at least 19. 19-20, you can loan them out or keep them at club, both are fine. 21+ you have to loan out, or play at least 15 matches/season in first team. Matches are counted as 90 minutes, so a 80th minute substitution 15 times is going to count as less than 2 matches, not 15. It's best to loan to an inactive club if possible, because there is a coded bonus for it which just makes it superior, but the more important thing is that whatever club you loan to, you have to make sure they actually get matches. No matches, zero CA gain. Too low a league, and the CA gain will cap out at a certain CA level dependent on the league's reputation. Match rating makes no difference to their CA gain. So loans should be about playing at as high a level as possible, without risking them not starting matches.
Rather than read longwinded posts, you may be better off starting with, or simply viewing as an alternative, EBFM's youtube videos. There's a lot of great stuff there that largely remains valid and goes quite deep.
Yes, I'll be calling it Premier League 2.1
I'm thinking I might have a go at some further tests of players and adjustments first, particularly for players at the lower end, before I put it out in a day or two.
Tell me, what is the most optimal way of playing FM26? Let's discuss the actual game. Some people test C++ code and get results, others build tools like FM Super Scout, and you do research—everyone has their results. After 21 pages, I assume you've found the proper way FM26 should actually be played? (It's not irony, I'm not being rude, not trying to ruin the thread)
How you choose to play the game is up to you.
What I can tell you is:
1) What attributes to look for (what works, what doesnt)
2) What training to use
3) What leagues to load
4) What to do about loans
5) How to manage squad fitness
6) How to get the most out of newgens
7) How to manage morale
8) What weights to use in GS/FMST/FMSS
Most of it is in the OP.
I've also done some pretty deep research into the game that I can share - history, misc info, quirks of the game, etc. from Masonic ties the game has, to the state of Israel putting out a statement condemning Miles' politics-based decision of removing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel from the game, to the 3D newgen face modeler which you can download a usable demo of (they don't use an in-house program), to SI's inclusion of racist data and subsequent cover up, to somewhat obscure features such as searching for 'faceinthegame' to find all the newgens taking their details from SI staff/volunteers/etc in real life. Probably only a few people like me care about this extra stuff though.
Walter plays GK without reflexes.
Nice one Walter.
I've got the GKs lining up quite nicely now, but there are some issues at the bottom end. Could be because of the sackings messing up the data, could be for other reasons.
I picked Walter Benitez to test because he had a high % score but only 15 reflexes, and he slots in between Oblak and ter Stegen, which is exactly what my draft set of new GK weightings predicted.
90% | Alisson - 6th, 3rd, 4th, 4th, 3rd = 4 position
87% | Thibaut Courtois - 3rd, 7th, 2nd, 5th, 8th = 5 position
85% | Jan Oblak - 5th, 8th, 6th, 4th, 3rd = 5.2 position
84% | Walter Benitez - 4th, 9th, 4th, 6th, 5th = 5.6 position
85% | Ugurcan Cakir GK - 7th, 9th, 2nd = 6 position
82% | Marc-Andre ter Stegen - 10th, 11th, 4th, 4th, 3rd = 6.4 position
80% | Anatolii Trubin - 15th (sacked), 6th, 4th (sacked), 5th = 7.5 position
61% | Jack Stevens - 13th (sacked), 4th, 9th (sacked), 8th (sacked), 8th (sacked) = 8.4 position
77% | Sinan Bolat - 4th, 2nd, 19th (sacked), 5th, 14th (sacked), 9th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 5th = 8.75 position
70% | Ben Winterbottom - 10th (sacked), 5th (sacked), 12th (sacked), 18th (sacked) = 11.25 position
To be honest though, reflexes seem to be making something of a comeback. As you'll see in my weightings below, I've had to set it very high to align the positions. Also surprising was that flair might possibly be an important attribute for GK. I derived this from player comparison, and was more willing to try it out because I know that technique is important for GK but not outfield. Concentration and determination also appear to be more critical than first thought. It could all just be confusion of attributes though, I'm just satisfied at the moment that I've got something that seems to line up most players well - it correctly predicted 2 goalkeepers I tested afterwards, which is promising.
Back to the reflexes matter though, what seems to be going on is this: Aerial Reach is crucial at the mid-high level. But once have the 15 aerial reach or around that, then reflexes become the pre-eminant consideration at the very high level (so 15 vs. 19 reflexes). As Benitez shows, you can still do very well without green reflexes, but the extra reflexes will push a player above and beyond to the very top if they have everything else that's required at a mid-high level. That's my reading of it. HarvestGreen's data also makes more sense in light of this hypothesis, because what that showed is that having all attributes at 20, and reducing an attribute to 1, reflexes showed a 12.8% difference.. which is what we see here is the difference between Benitez and Alisson (if we surmise the range is 4 to 11 position, then Alisson is 23% better than Benitez). Note that it remains true that green reflexes alone aren't sufficient for a GK, as evidenced by Bolat (16 ref) & ter Stegen (18 ref).
So here are the GK weightings for FMST26:
((aerial_reach * 100 + command_of_area * 48 + first_touch * 52 + passing * 32 + reflexes * 306 + concentration * 152 + determination * 172 + work_rate * 100 + acceleration * 46 + balance * 32 + agility * 100 + jumping_reach * 56 + natural_fitness * 32 + pace * 56 + stamina * 100 + strength * 32 + technique * 48 + pressure * 46 + professionalism * 30 + flair * 150 - injury_proneness * 150 - dirtiness * 50 - ca * 30)) / 214
I think you're painting an inaccurate picture.
You mentioned in a post previously that I should do something actually useful, such as find the ultimate tactic. I actually have had a go at doing that once this year, and found that I couldn't beat Knap's tactic. I did test some other top FM24 tactics though, and found one or two that seemingly do better. I also had a go at set pieces. But I don't talk much about tactics at all really, because I have no real insight into it. So I don't just profess to know things willy nilly.
The specific areas I concentrate on are:
- Attributes
- Training
- Newgen generation
I can profess to know to a large extent about how attributes work in FM26 because it's clear nothing has changed fundamentally. The biggest difference is something like long shots going from completely useless to near useless. Sure, secondhand findings can be wrong, but based on doing a lot of testing myself, I have a reasonable amount of faith in HarvestGreen's findings because usually it aligns what what I find. And it depends on what it is - if HarvestGreen's talking about outfield attributes, I'll take his word. If it's GK, I'll ignore it because I know his methodology on GK is no good.
I could have chosen to simply put out FM26 files out there without mentioning that I can't verify the weightings. Who would be able to tell the difference?
The accurate picture is that I test FM24, and FM26 is largely the same to FM24 when it comes to attributes, and that I have always cautioned people that if I offer a FM26 file, it is the FM24 findings with perhaps some tweaks based on other's FM26 data added.
Angelski said: Every FM engine has its ups and downs, but systems evolve. SI has to try new mechanics for the game to move forward, even if people like you dismiss it as "garbage."
Another trigger point for me.
SI is an absolute disgrace, and I won't let this regurgitated marketing spiel get past me. If you choose to blow money on the broken game that is FM26, that's your problem. And my condolences to those who pre-ordered.
But I'm not going to sit here and listen to someone say SI is 'trying new mechanics' or that the game is simply going through 'ups and downs'. FM26 debuted as the 7th worst rated steam game in history and lost half of its users after the first month for a reason.
There are no new mechanics. I don't count OOP as a new mechanic, because it's placebo. The underlying match engine has simply been transposed with only the usual yearly tweaks of 'lets make long shots a little more important, and that a little less important'. That's why exploit tactics continue to destroy FM. Literally everything is the exact same, even the 3D graphics to me look roughly the same even though some people see it as some great improvement for whatever reason. The only substantive change has been the UI, and it's ruined the game.
The actual enjoyable parts of the game - newgen crafting, immersive narrative, attention to detail - have been methodically disassembled over the years, and FM26 represents a new low that is so bad it's literally intolerable to play for many to most. They replaced % with vague heart icons. Press conferences.. nuff said. They made transfer dealing a pain in the ass with Brexit before Brexit even happened in real life, and tedious agent, club and players interactions where they're not happy with anything - not even what sounds sensible to a reasonable person. We all know what happened to newgen faces. And they changed newgen generation so if you want to reload them, you have to go back months, and now in FM26 my initial impression having glanced through the demo is that the youth team is hidden behind so many mouse clicks that don't even want to bother dealing with newgens at all anymore - I heard that when FM26 was released, you literally couldn't even access the youth team properly!
And the heart of the game turns out to be a lie. For years we've been playing like some complex interplay between passing, decisions, vision, etc. is going on.. when in fact all of that is placebo not even taken into account by the match engine, and actually SI have deliberately been misleading its users - we know this because the players in the starting db have sets of attributes that just so happen to align perfectly with the reduced set of effectual attributes in my template. Exploit tactics put a stopper to much of the game's enjoyment years ago. The challenge is gone. I moved on to newgens, and discovered that a lot of the factors here are baloney too - for instance SI claim youth facilities affect PA; they simply don't. I still enjoy FM24 when I do play, mainly because I can raise up newgens from Div 7 to Div 1, but that seems pretty much dead now with FM26.
I could write a whole book on it. I basically already have here, but there's just so many bad things. The short of it is that the game has devolved into a mess that is too tedious to play, and in all likelihood could very well go broke and die off in the next year or two. But we'll see what FM27 looks like. Personally I expect a rehash of FM26 and further 'product diversification' as we see with the much more polished FMDB Pro they've evidently been spending a lot more of their time on, and I think shows their level of respect for you.
Angelski said: And as for your "undeniable superiority" and "dominating the field" — you admitted yourself in Post #21 that you took HarvestGreen's data, fed it into ChatGPT, and had AI output an "approximation" of attribute distributions. Taking other people's hard work, running it through an AI engine and exporting a custom GS file for a game you don't even play isn't "dominating" anything. It's just prompt engineering.
I assume you are talking about a recent post, in which case I did not use HarvestGreen's data, but my own. And I ended up discarding what ChatGPT had to say, as I was getting better results alone.
If you're talking about something months ago, I can't recall, but sometimes I do use ChatGPT to do calculations. It often has errors with complicated calculations though, so usually I use it as one would a calculator - say I want to quickly calculate 15 rows of calculations instead of manually doing '(3x3.68)x110' myself.
So a dud argument from you here. Even if it was valid, say I used AI to get half of my insights.. would that even be a problem, if it was producing valid results? AI is obviously being used a lot now, even by big companies who pay people to do work for them. Overall I think you've chosen to make a very weak point to stand on.
Kriek said: Hi George,
I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the work you're sharing here. I enjoy reading your results and testing your FM24 files (even if I'm using FM26), and I've found your contributions very useful.
Not everyone will agree with every method or conclusion, but I don't see the point of repeatedly criticizing something they could simply choose not to follow. If people don't enjoy the thread, they can always ignore it.
Please keep sharing your findings. There are definitely readers like me who appreciate the time and effort you put into this.
Thanks!
Appreciate it
Here are a few suggestions I have for communicating with me:
1) Don't call me retarded, or praise those who call me retarded, if you want me to be pleasant instead of terse towards you. I enjoy 'FM Arena' living up to its name, but expect me to respond in kind, rather than expect me to submit to passive-aggressive shenanigans and the like.
2) Actually comprehend my claims before saying 'you're wrong'. I know I write a lot, I don't expect people to read everything, but you should at least have some awareness of what I'm actually claiming before attempting to prove it wrong. Sometimes people mischaracterize my ideas. I understand, naivety is innocent - if a person is initially polite to me, I give them 4 or 5 or 6 chances to take on board what I'm saying. If they persist with cherry picking or moving on to new points while ignoring the bulk of what I say, I generally start to assume they are being deliberately passive-aggressive and either have ill intent or are simply boneheaded. I have to draw the line somewhere.
3) Maybe, just maybe, do some actual testing yourself and come up with something to say of substance. I can think of two or three people in this thread who have so far. If nobody else is coming up with anything to show, how can you blame me for dominating the field?
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
This shouldn't be news to anyone who has been following my posts here.
People have asked me for FM26 GS files over time, and I have to tell them that I don't really do FM26 files because I can't test FM26 and can only provide at best some sort of adjustment based on what HarvestGreen's findings are (now there are also FM Arena test results to go by). It does work though, I'm quite sure, because attributes/the match engine in FM26 hasn't really changed much. I just can't say anything with the same certainty in regards to FM26.
Pretty sure I've always made it clear that I test in FM24 only.
You've just rocked up and are claiming I'm wrong without reading anything I've actually written. I mean what kind of response from me did you expect?
That table refers to the CA weights. In this thread recently, we are talking about attribute weightings. They are two different things. CA weights largely determine the cost of an attribute in CA; attribute weightings reflect the importance of a particular attribute in terms of performance.
Angelski said: I came here hoping to actually learn something useful, but watching someone obsessively test a "garbage game" they claim not to play is certainly a choice.
There's plenty here that's useful, and much of it is derived from the extensive testing you deride. I test FM24, not FM26. I didn't say FM24 is a garbage game, even though it does have its shortcomings, I said FM26 is.
Angelski said: I was trying to be friendly and share a genuine player's perspective
Perhaps that was your intention, but I can't help but feel a bit miffed when I'm mischaracterized. Especially when you start by saying the guy who has been harassing me and lying about me for months on end, is 'totally right'. Hope you understand, if you ever do come back to read this.
FM26 & OOP Roles: You explicitly stated "I don't test FM26" and "I don't play FM26 because it's hot garbage." Calling the in-possession and out-of-possession mechanics "placebo" based on FM24 assumptions and second-hand opinions isn't data—it's guesswork. In FM26, if a player lacks positional discipline during phase transitions, they break the team's defensive structure, regardless of speed.
You don't trust FM Arena's testing on this?
That's not a contradiction on my part, that's a disagreement between us.
Angelski said: "Roles Don't Exist": Claiming roles don't exist in FM ignores how the match engine assigns spatial duties, pressing triggers, and movement patterns. Attributes are processed through those role instructions—they don't operate in a vacuum.
Yes.. as you can see by the last edit time of the post you're responding to, I had a change of mind about which I submitted the same time you posted your response.
So I don't expect you to have seen it yet of course, but I'll restate the clarification I wish to make: Roles do exist as tactical differences, but you were denoting attributes which better fit roles, which is a different kettle of fish. Attributes do not fit certain roles better. I know this from experience testing, but I believe FM Arena has also tested this and I could dig it up if you like.
Angelski said: Off the Ball & CA Exploits: Calling Off the Ball "completely useless" and boasting about winning the Premier League with a 1 CA / 90 CA team proves @keithb's point: your setup is exploiting match engine pathfinding via broken tactics. When a tactic does 95% of the heavy lifting, claiming your changing attribute weights caused the win is pure confirmation bias.
You seem to have just completely ignored the first line of my response to you.
I'll state it again: It has been tested with default tactics.
..and to a precision of just 2% GS rating difference!
Angelski said: Templates & Balance: My point about CA balance still stands. My striker had 13–14 Pace/Acc and dominated in Europe because his high Mentals fit my tactic. Swapping him for a 19–20 Pace player with lower Off the Ball/Composure dropped performance—because raw physicals without tactical fit don't magically win matches in dynamic play.
And how do you that it was off the ball or composure specifically? Was the player identical, or even similar in every other respect?
I can tell you now that off the ball, or even composure, is not going to account for a 20 pace/acc player being worse than 13 pace/acc player.
But putting that aside, you're not proving anything. You're talking as though I have said 13-14 pace/acc players can't be near perfect players. I have stated the opposite of that, and if you actually took the time read the last 2 pages of this thread, you'd see I've been trying to make the specific point that I think the established narrative that pace/acc is everything should be regarded as outdated.
You've just barged in here and started yelling about how I'm wrong on the basis of claims I'm not even making. That's the part that gets me, not so much the naivety around the attributes, but castigating me when you clearly haven't even read what I've written. Bizarre!
Angelski said: Honestly, I came here hoping to learn something, but reading through all of this has completely killed my desire to stay in this thread or engage with the forum. It's exhausting trying to discuss normal, proper gameplay when someone running 50,000 automated holiday sims insists you're playing the wrong way unless you intentionally break the match engine.
Aw.. you poor thing.
Maybe I suggest r/footballmanagergames? Or perhaps more up your alley of falsehoods, sensitivity and low effort, the SI forums?
But if you do decide to stick around here, perhaps don't just go in bullheaded saying 'YOU'RE WRONG' with nothing to back up it but confabulations to the person you're choosing to address?