I've read that the optimal match rating for growth is not too low, not too high. So ~6.7-6.9 supposedly.
I was about to do a test to find out, but then I realized we can deduce pretty much everything we need to know from EBFM's data.
Age 21 player:
Ambition 1 > 20 = 12 > 13 CA Determination 1 > 20 = 10 > 13.5 CA Professionalism 1 > 20 = 5.5 > 17.5 CA Staff attributes 1 > 10 > 20 = 9 > 12 > 12.5 CA Training facilities 1 > 10 > 20 = 9 > 12 > 12.5 CA League Rep 1 > 100 > 200 = 9 > 11 > 12 CA
Active league = 12.5 CA View only = 16 CA Inactive league = 20 CA
0 games > 41+ games = 0 > 14.5 CA All friendlies > 20-30 games = 4 > 12.5 CA
Loaned out vs not (all other factors equal) = No difference Win rate/Relative strength of opposition = No difference Player morale Perfect > Okay > Abysmal = 17 > 17.04 > 17.29 CA
Since win rate and morale make no difference, I think it's reasonable to assume match rating in and of itself makes no difference.
Match/league reputation does matter, but not that much. The main thing is minutes played in competitive matches, preferably in inactive leagues (though they may have readjusted this again since FM23).
Rough comparison:
21 year old playing 25 first team matches (Div 1), 6.5 match rating, great facilities = +13 CA 21 year old staying at Div 1 team and playing in reserves, 7.4 match rating, great facilities = +4 CA Loaned to Div 3 (active), 25 matches, 6.7 rating, good facilities = +11.5 CA Loaned to Foreign Div 2 (view-only), 25 matches, 6.8 rating, good facilities = +14.5 CA Loaned to Div 5 (active), 35 matches, 7.0 rating, average facilities = +12.5 CA Loaned to Div 6 (inactive), 35 matches, 7.1 rating, crap facilities = +15.5 CA
So overall match rating means nothing for growth, because of the inactive/view-only growth bonuses. But if we're just assessing active leagues and assume roughly +0.15 match rating per division drop, then +0.1 match rating = -0.25 CA/season (-2% growth rate). 6.5 match rating -> 7.4 match rating = -18% growth. This isn't causative of course, just a correlation from which you can infer what's going on.
keithb said: Good to see you've not lost that world class irony haha.
No one in their right mind is paying for a file which doesn't have Mbappe in the top 20 players. And you say other people have ego's. Expand We all have egos, and I'm saying we can fall for the trap of pumping it up on the praise (positive appraisals) of those who wouldn't have a clue. It also makes you vulnerable to being torn down later on by the same people. He successfully requested his own FM24 megapack thread to be closed because one of his patreon subscribers shattered his ego.
Honestly, what he's doing isn't that difficult, I could do it. And I reckon I'd do it better. And as a point of comparison, I've said that EBFM is just next level to me, I can't really do (or be bothered to do at least) my testing as good as he did.
If it was $50/month, I wouldn't bother. All it would do is compromise your integrity. $2500/month though? Not gonna lie, that's pretty tempting. Even Judas sold out Jesus for less than that.
lossantos said: What do you think about daveincid realism mod for fm24? Expand Coincidentally just a week ago I was about to cite him specifically as the example of what I don't want to be.
I was going to say that I know how frustrating it is when certain people make big claims but don't actually do the testing. And it seems what happens is that because these people are the few bold enough to make these claims (since nobody is bothered to do testing), the ordinary users assume they must be an expert on the matter, and this feeds into their ego where - often with years of reinforcement of this - they actually come to believe they are the experts, and they will start lying in order to maintain their status if challenged.
That is the story of many SI staff/mods and users like BusttheNet.
With daveincid, my beef with him goes back to years ago. It was something like he had claimed he had fixed up FM's youth generation, but I took a look at it and could see that he did not understand how the newgen factors work and was therefore applying them as one would play a game of chess if you believed the pieces move like in checkers. He was just making the same assumptions as other people before him who also didn't know any better.
But I guess that was around his beginning, so I thought I'd investigate a file of his now.
I looked at his SI forums page, and in the side bio it said:
I had a rough start when I opened my eyes for the first time. Struggling through life since 28 years. Finally I know the reason. FM gave me so much hold through the years. I accept my dissabilities and will always have a smile on my face
So then I felt sorry for the guy, and decided I wouldn't attempt to put a hole in what gives his life meaning. Then I ended up on his patreon, where he paywalls his files, and saw he's making $2500/month. I thought blimey, maybe I should have monetized those Genie Scout rating files! And the sob story unraveled for me, as it turned out he was using it for moneygrubbing. You see, he isn't 'able to work' (and instead needs you to make monthly payments to him) because:
My life has not always been easy. I was born three months too early
Struggled for many years with...anxiety and the feeling that something was different
at the age of 28, I was diagnosed with autism
Ok I know it sounds like I'm obsessed with the guy, but you asked me what I think about his realism mod, and my instinctive response is I don't trust him, and I wanted to paint the full picture for you as to why. I ended up not writing all this a week ago, because I decided to omit the rant, and instead just do comparison tests of the genie scout files and post the results.
Now addressing his file pack directly, I glanced at recent explanations by him saying that he adjusts edits until they produce the results he wants. I'm skeptical, but in theory this could work, and it would be too great an undertaking by me to investigate it adequately.
The files with names that promise a lot are the first to pique my interest. One is 'Daveincid's PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS'. How can an editor file, improve FM performance exactly? I already guessed correctly before I opened it, it seems to be mostly deleted entries in the database. But I've tested this before, deleting entries has no effect on FM performance.
I was ready to unleash on the rest of the files, but after examining a few, I can't find anything else disagreeable apart from the newgen changes obviously.
In 'GEOGRAPHICS & LANGUAGES' I scrolled randomly to find Cairo had been changed from 0 > 223 (feet) elevation. Thought it was worth a check. Apparently Cairo is a city with a great variation in elevation, from 2m to 522m. Daveincid has given it 68m. I checked the stadium for a top team, which is Cairo International Stadium, and google says that is 23m but this is wrong. A topographic map website shows it to be ~104m. But this just shows the kind of dilemmas that can arise, it's not always clear cut what the data should be.
A few things raised an eyebrow. Indonesia is a developed state? Depression should be included as an injury? But these are minor quibbles, and there are always going to be mistakes with tens of thousands of changes.
I noticed that the attribute changes to players and clubs were modest and yet questionable. For instance, some club in Bumfuckistan get its youth coaching increased from 3 to 5, and this seems repeated thousands of times for no-name clubs across the world. I doubt this information can be accurately ascertained, but at least the changes are going to be pretty harmless in the case they are wrong or risk upsetting the balance of the game.
I think the upside of these files are mainly in their corrections of grossly inaccurate or inadequate data. For instance where hundreds of clubs have altitude of 0, founding date of 1800, and wrong nicknames. And it seems very comprehensive in this regard. And it's not just fluff either, because weather & altitude actually do have impacts on match performance, both in the game and in real life. And the data on these aspects seems researched rather than guesstimated.
So maybe my initial presumptions were too critical. Overall I would personally give the files a go, except for that which affects newgens, and probably transfers too.
Kriek said: To select the player for the national team, I'm doing the following: I'm first filtering the players based on the hidden attributes. For a national team, how important are the injury proneness and dirtiness?
Then I'm filtering on speed, selecting first the players with 15 speed and acceleration. Then, for the missing spots, I'm selecting the ones with at least 14 and the 13 and so on.
For the DC, I'm following the same logic but with 17 jump. Should I then look for 14 speed/acc and 16 jump or should I only pick players with 17 jump? I'm playing without targetman but with 3 DC.
Is this a good way to use your findings? Expand I would think the key thing to select for, especially for a national team, would be match fitness. Low match fitness increases losses and injuries drastically, and can't be fixed in a short amount of time either (i.e. even if you have 1 friendly in advance).
Injury proneness isn't such a huge deal, as it means you're playing a 67% player instead of a 70% one.
Dirtiness should be inversely proportional to aggression. Again it doesn't impact performance severely, because even if a player is red carded, the game doesn't count it as you fielding a 0% player.
In my 'essential' weights, I make the target man/DC 99 jump/61 pace. That's 1.62x for jump, or expressed another way, I would trade 1.62 pace for 1 jump on them. So I would choose 17 jump 13 pace over 16 jump 14 pace, but not 17 jump 12 pace over 16 jump 14 pace.
Premier League 1.0, Pure Performance overlap = 10/27 players Premier League 1.0, 'Essential' weights from further up this page overlap = 14/27 players
Pure Performance: Peak acc/pace/jump/drib = 18/18/19/14 Median acc/pace/jump/drib = 14/14/12/11
Prem 1.0: Peak acc/pace/jump/drib = 15/17/17/14 Median acc/pace/jump/drib = 13/13/13/11
BTW I didn't realize until just a few days ago that you can get the FM26 pre-game editor with the FM26 database for free without buying FM26. You can get it from the Microsoft store.
I forgot to mention something very important. With my GS Rating tests, I have removed all the problematic (bugged) attribute weightings - personality, consistency, important matches, dirtiness, natural fitness, injury proneness.
So for the Premier League 1.0 weightings, what you see is what you get. But for the test of my Pure Performance weightings, you will not get what you see in the test result. The intention here is to compare non-bugged weights between my files, to see which performs better, so that further deductions can be made.
This doesn't remove the GS bugs 100% either, but I think it should reduce it by a lot. If I wanted completely accurate comparison, I would use the weights in FM26 scoring system, but since the idea here is to continue using Genie Scout anyway.. one may as well test to see what does well using Genie Scout.
OpticFawn said: Can you do this against your max performance rating as I found that to be the best, I just removed injury proneness as I don’t require imo
I did 10 season test on fc Metz and that one out preformed the newest file set but might be some rng possibly please test. Expand FM24 Pure Performance results:
5th*, 6th*, 8th*, 6th, 4th, 10th = 6.5 average
Asterisked results are where I forgot to set injury proneness to 1 as control
Premier League 1.0 results:
6th, 9th, 7th = 7.33 average
I also tried a few alternative tactics with one of these squads, to see if something does better than the Knap EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC tactic I use. The first few did worse, but 424 Classic v164 got 3rd, 3rd, 9th, 5th. Maybe it's just circumstantial, but I'll be taking a closer look at it.
Exellent said: You were absolutely right, it was discovered in the new thread that Genie Scout indeed has bugs. For example, the higher the height, the higher the rating. Expand The thing is, that program isn't actually Genie Scout as far as I can tell..
The bug he encountered is valid though, but also it may be that he hasn't taken into account footedness and position proficiency which is the more likely cause if not ruled out.
I can't take credit for finding Genie Scout is bugged, LightningFlik clued me onto this.
Using the weights in the above post, I've done testing of my Genie Scout weights vs. Orion's weights.
I think it's the first time a results-based comparison of the Genie Scout rating files has been attempted.
Method:
- Luton in Premier League - Remove all players - Filter in Genie Scout for CA-PA gap of 0-3 and current reputation 0-6000 and green proficiency in relevant position - Take top 3-4 in each position - Move them to Luton - Change age, personality, natural fitness, consistency, important matches, nationality, height, weight, etc. so that there is control where there needs to be - Position proficiency is deliberately *not* controlled (this has pros and cons) - One season with Knap tactic and Blue routines (Premier League, FA Cup & Carabao Cup @ full detail)
Extra info:
Player overlap - 13 of 27 players Peak acc/pace/jump/drib (Orion) - 18/18/19/15 Peak acc/pace/jump/drib (My weights) - 18/18/19/13 Median acc/pace/jump/drib (Orion) - 14/14/13/12 Median acc/pace/jump/drib (My weights) - 14/14/14/11
The results:
My weights - 10th, 9th, 4th, 9th, 9th, 9th = 8.333th average Orion's weights - 18th, 12th, 16th, 10th, 10th, 13th = 13.166th average
Now I would caution against reading into these results too much at the moment, but I think it's safe to say at least that Orion's weights do not do significantly better than mine. To my mind, it's further suggestive evidence that all positions share the same necessary attributes; there are not position-specific attributes.
The main reason for caution is that it could simply be that my weights ended up having a higher jumping reach player on the field. The Orion team did start their 19 jump DC most games though, and if my weights are selecting more frequently for high jumping reach players who win then that's a feature not a bug. When I do this test with my Premier League 1.0 weights and one or two others, that will shed more light on this more conclusively.
Kriek said: I would like to be able to make the good decision myself, how should I select the players? Is 12 speed and acceleration ok if the rest of attributes is high? I thought that speed and acceleration was the only things that matters Expand Here are the necessary attributes
For Premier League you can get away with 14 pace/acc. If the player has very high stamina, then as low as 12 is viable.
For winning the Premier League, or tough international competition, you'd need 18+ pace/acc. You also need someone with very high jumping reach on the field, and at least decent levels of jumping reach across the team in general.
I'm currently doing some testing using the following personal estimations of how 'essential' attributes are:
Jumping reach 100% essential - 17 min ST/DC, 13 min rest of team = 99, 63 weight Acceleration/Pace 85% essential - 14 min = 61 Dribbling 45% essential - 13 min = 28 Anticipation 35% essential - 13 min = 22 Concentration 35% essential - 13 min = 22 Determination 25% essential - 14 min = 18 Work Rate 15% essential - 11 min = 7 Agility 15% essential - 10 min = 5 Balance 20% essential - 12 min = 11 Stamina 25% essential - 13 min = 16 Strength 2% essential - 8 min = 1 Finishing 2% essential - 7 min = 1 (ST only) Vision 2% essential - 7 min = 1
How 'essential' they are is just based on my intuitive feel for the data. So for instance, jumping reach is 100% essential because going below the requirement quickly gets you relegated. Acc/Pace I know can go down to ~12 in certain circumstances (i.e. Harry Kane), so a little leeway there. Work Rate, we know is ok down to 6, and the requirement of 11 isn't high to begin with, so you don't even really need to put it in your weights much (as most players will be 8+ anyway).
Kriek said: If I'm managing a national team, what are the hard filters I should use appart the hidden ones? Also 15 Speed and Acc?
So if I'm compairing those 3 MDC/MC, I shouldn't take Kimmich?
Of should I use another value as hard limit for speed and acceleration? Expand Kimmich is superior to those other two in all aspects except pace/acc/jump, and even then he has 20 natural fitness + 17 stamina + 3 injury proneness to mostly offset this downside.
keithb said: Using their test results and others before them I made my own weightings and these consistently produce the best results in genie scout. Expand You could go ahead and share these Genie Scout weightings of yours for the benefit of the people here
keithb said: Who knew eh?!?! Once again we thank you for groundbreaking research(which was initially wrong. As always!!!) Expand What you don't realize is that I stated this before HarvestGreen said anything about pressure.
HarvestGreen's post was 29 March 2026.
15 December 2025:
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: I was surprised and intrigued by this finding by Orion in FM22 that pressure 1 supposedly results in 47% less performance than pressure 10.
That's a 32% drop in performance. It is important to note though that Orion found the difference between 10 pressure and 20 pressure to only be 10%, but even that is significant. Expand 19 December 2025:
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: I would guess that ~8 is not too bad either, based on how work rate matters a great deal up to just 6 then it tails off. Expand Both in this very thread.
Not that I discovered the effect of pressure of course, I've always credited Orion for that from the get go. My point is that I have long hypothesized that pressure functions as work rate does, and also I think it's fair to say that Orion's findings had been largely ignored and forgotten, so I think I will give myself a pat on the back for breathing fresh life into this piece of knowledge.
Or is keithb going to claim that, as with everything else, everybody already knew pressure was the most important personality attribute?
Nozdormu said: 1. If pressure has a weight 52, then it is super important, it is as important as acceleration and pace, isn't it? how much pressure is good? probably at least 15?
2. Are there any other attributes (just as pressure) which are important but you are not putting them into Genie Scout's calculations? I mean what else attributes (besides pressure) we need to manually filter them?
3. You use two ST with jump 17 to do the test, not DC, Did you ever use two DC with jumping 17 or 18 to test it?
4. Why give so much weight to balance and dribbling for DC? Expand Yes, pressure is important. I first saw this when I came across Orion's FM22 test on it, and I think HarvestGreen has recently posted data for this for FM24 too. It's not as critical as pace/acc, because it seems that 10 or a bit even lower can be sufficient. I would speculate that it's going to be like work rate where 6 is the point beyond which returns start to tail off. But as we can see from the chart, pressure 10 > 20 is a 10% boost which is still highly significant (equivalent to 1 > 10 consistency or determination).
The weights are simply their values x 4 right now. So pressure 52/4 = 13. I'm actually yet to test pressure less than 13 yet, I suspect it could drop a point or two. You haven't asked about how weightings should be derived from attribute levels that work, but it touches on the matter. I don't want to get into this anyway, but let's just say there's no one way of approaching it. At the moment, I'm going for a transparent, simple approach, and I will be giving this more thought later. To give you a straightforward example of what I mean, consider pace/acc. 14-15 is necessary to finish ~5th, but a team of 13 will get you relegated. So perhaps one would say let's make that 56 weighting 100 instead, just to ensure you get at least 14 pace/acc. And for pressure, it's 52 weighting, but you only *really* need say ~6-10, with little benefit for 14+, so maybe let's make that 45 instead of 52. In a way that produces better results, but the formula is more opaque and perhaps more whimsical, and yet there are also other downsides/trade-offs too when you start thinking about this deeply.
I think I have accidentally used 4xDC 17 with 2xST (out of 4) 17 and the result wasn't noticeably different (hence I didn't realize until a bit later).
I've answered the balance & dribbling for DC question, it's because the key attributes turn out to be equally essential for all outfield positions.
keithb said: Yamal with a potential of only 75. He isn't the best rw in the game, but really 75?? Thomas Muller is rated higher than him for rw. How can this be serious? Kante is rated 74!!! Surely Yamal reaching his potential is better than those two?
How do you not understand this? Do you actually play the game? Expand
why give so much weight to balance and dribbling for DC?
Why the "pressure = 0", you said pressure is an important attribute in your previous post I remember...
In your opinion, how much difference between jump 18 and jump 16 for DC? How important for "high jump" to help DC to have more goals in corner kicks? Expand Marking, tackling, heading, positioning have zero or close to zero effect for all positions
Pressure is important (52), but is not included in the Genie Scout weightings because it really stuffs up Genie Scout's calculations if you put it in. I recommend instead using a filter of 8 and then manually assessing.
The key attributes turn out to be equally essential for all outfield positions. There may be some positional differences, but so far I haven't found any. And as you can see from my old files, I was strongly inclined to believe in positional differences, so this isn't my laziness or what I want to believe, I'm just going by the results I see.
I will say that of all the positions, based on testing I've done in the past, the position most likely to have differences is DM (and probably by extension, MC and AMC).
Results I had regarding jumping reach differences:
DC 16 - 5th, 8th DC 15 - 8th, 10th 2xST 17, DC 13 - 4th Normal at the time (DC 17) was ~4th-5th
Can't find the 15< results, but from the above you can see that 17 > 16 is drop of ~2 positions, 17 > 15 is drop of ~5 positions. If you extrapolate, 14 would be bottom table, and 13 would be relegated. Maybe 13 survives, I can't remember, but I know it's bad in any case.
keithb said: Do you not think the clubs are too closely matched? The gap should be a bit bigger down to the bottom of that page. And why are they rated so lowly? Do you use weight in genie scout? Its really useful. Genie scout is not bugged, it works as intended. But it does rate players and therefore teams too low.
Then we have Mbappe only rated 78/80 which is crazy and Yamal with a potential of only 75. He isn't the best rw in the game, but really 75?? Thomas Muller is rated higher than him for rw. How can this be serious? Kante is rated 74!!! Surely Yamal reaching his potential is better than those two?
How do you not understand this? Do you actually play the game? Expand Club rating and potential rating in Genie Scout is rubbish. Genie Scout is bugged, as was first pointed out not by me, but by LightningFlik on page 7.
Nozdormu said: 1. I play FM26 so I use this file "r5xm3t.grf", in this file, GK setting is reflex=57, acc=1, could you check it please?
2. I also find in this file "r5xm3t.grf", DR(L) and WBR(L) have exactly same settings, why?
3. Is there a latest version of rating file for FM26?
4. I use 4 defenders tactics, and both my two DC are jumping reach =18, and both their pace are 15, Is this ideal? or should I choose one DC's jumping=18 pace=15, the other DC is jumping=15 but pace=20?
So "two high jumping DC" (pace relatively slow, pace=15), or "one high jump DC+ one fast pace DC", which case gives the best defending? Expand You should use the new zhf2yl.grf file, it's the best for both FM24 and FM26. It hasn't been adjusted for FM26, but it wouldn't be much different.
In the old r5xm3t.grf file, DR is same as WBR because I didn't care about WBR, MC, AMC position as I used 424 Knap tactic and those extra positions would be double the work. This is still the case, however it turns out that all outfield positions share almost identical attribute requirements anyway.
I don't know if 2 jump would be better than 1 jump + 1 pace, but I would assume the former because if you have one jump player what happens when he gets substituted, injured, rested or whatnot. In fact, it's probably best to have 3-4 to be on the safe side.. but of course you're not going to have 4x 17 jump. A realistic outcome may end up like this: 16, 15, 15, 14.
For the Premier League, the pace/acc cutoff is ~14, and if you really need to, you can utilize the game's allowance for one player lacking this. So specifically your DC roster might look like this:
16 jump, 14 pace/acc (key player) - 29/38 league apps, 4/8 cup 15 jump, 15 pace/acc (first team) - 25/38 league, 4/8 cup 15 jump, 11 pace/14 acc (rotation) - 14/38 league, 4/8 cup 14 jump, 12 pace/acc (backup) - 6/38 league, 2/8 cup 12 jump, 10 pace/acc (youth hot prospect) - 2/38 league, 2/8 cup
Nozdormu said: Hi, George, thank you for your great work! I have a question about Jumping reach, I read your post and you said it is a 1 or 0 thing, so if I understand correctly, Jumping needs to be greater or equal to 17, otherwise it is equivalent to zero, for example 16=0, is that right?
Another issue is about GK, I download your rating file from your OP, is that the latest one? (I assume you didn't put the latest one in those replies...), for GK, the file is to set reflex=57, acc=1, is that true?
I remember you said for GK, the most important attributes are reflex and agility, followed by acceleration, but why the reflex=57 rather than 99? why acceleration =1 for GK? Thank you! Expand Jumping reach isn't quite all or nothing, but there will be a steep drop off if you don't have what I suppose is the tallest player on the field. I'm not sure if it's one or two players you need, since I almost always use 2x 17 in my tests. They don't have to be both DC, but I think probably having 1 being DC is best (I think I vaguely remember testing 2x DC 17 vs 2x ST 17..). You can only get the best you can get, so if you can't get 17 unless it's some 36-year-old with 7 pace/acc, then go for 16.. 15.. etc.
I don't think you have loaded the correct file. I double checked, and the file in the OP (zhf2yl.grf) has 44 reflexes, 52 acceleration.
That info for GK is outdated. What I found is that reflexes hit diminishing returns after ~10-11. And there were some other surprises too. HarvestGreen found that reflexes is the most important attribute, but if you look at his test conditions, he is setting all attributes to 20 then reducing reflexes to 1. My inference is that this means reflexes requires a certain minimum to function properly, but it doesn't mean his data contradicts mine.
Kriek said: Yes that was wat I meant, thank you. So we should use your latest ratings no matter what Expand Yes
First go at National League South. I'm guessing 11-12 pace/acc would get promotion, but wanted to see what all grey players (including jumping reach and hiddens) can do.
So it doesn't seem like leagues have their own unique set of requirements (i.e. maybe EPL requires speed, but Bundesliga requires technical ability). It seems like a certain set of attributes work, and some leagues are simply weaker, and that's it.
I guess it's also a decent measure of the quality of the league. Based on the positions, the rankings so far for league strength are:
Spain Div 1 England Div 1 power gap Germany Div 1 France Div 1 England Div 2
It could help in assessing players based on their average rating in a league, and making loan decisions - it's probably best to loan to France Div 1 rather than either Spain Div 1 or England Div 2.
I was about to do a test to find out, but then I realized we can deduce pretty much everything we need to know from EBFM's data.
Age 21 player:
Ambition 1 > 20 = 12 > 13 CA
Determination 1 > 20 = 10 > 13.5 CA
Professionalism 1 > 20 = 5.5 > 17.5 CA
Staff attributes 1 > 10 > 20 = 9 > 12 > 12.5 CA
Training facilities 1 > 10 > 20 = 9 > 12 > 12.5 CA
League Rep 1 > 100 > 200 = 9 > 11 > 12 CA
Active league = 12.5 CA
View only = 16 CA
Inactive league = 20 CA
0 games > 41+ games = 0 > 14.5 CA
All friendlies > 20-30 games = 4 > 12.5 CA
Loaned out vs not (all other factors equal) = No difference
Win rate/Relative strength of opposition = No difference
Player morale Perfect > Okay > Abysmal = 17 > 17.04 > 17.29 CA
Since win rate and morale make no difference, I think it's reasonable to assume match rating in and of itself makes no difference.
Match/league reputation does matter, but not that much. The main thing is minutes played in competitive matches, preferably in inactive leagues (though they may have readjusted this again since FM23).
Rough comparison:
21 year old playing 25 first team matches (Div 1), 6.5 match rating, great facilities = +13 CA
21 year old staying at Div 1 team and playing in reserves, 7.4 match rating, great facilities = +4 CA
Loaned to Div 3 (active), 25 matches, 6.7 rating, good facilities = +11.5 CA
Loaned to Foreign Div 2 (view-only), 25 matches, 6.8 rating, good facilities = +14.5 CA
Loaned to Div 5 (active), 35 matches, 7.0 rating, average facilities = +12.5 CA
Loaned to Div 6 (inactive), 35 matches, 7.1 rating, crap facilities = +15.5 CA
So overall match rating means nothing for growth, because of the inactive/view-only growth bonuses. But if we're just assessing active leagues and assume roughly +0.15 match rating per division drop, then +0.1 match rating = -0.25 CA/season (-2% growth rate). 6.5 match rating -> 7.4 match rating = -18% growth. This isn't causative of course, just a correlation from which you can infer what's going on.
No one in their right mind is paying for a file which doesn't have Mbappe in the top 20 players. And you say other people have ego's.
We all have egos, and I'm saying we can fall for the trap of pumping it up on the praise (positive appraisals) of those who wouldn't have a clue. It also makes you vulnerable to being torn down later on by the same people. He successfully requested his own FM24 megapack thread to be closed because one of his patreon subscribers shattered his ego.
Honestly, what he's doing isn't that difficult, I could do it. And I reckon I'd do it better. And as a point of comparison, I've said that EBFM is just next level to me, I can't really do (or be bothered to do at least) my testing as good as he did.
If it was $50/month, I wouldn't bother. All it would do is compromise your integrity. $2500/month though? Not gonna lie, that's pretty tempting. Even Judas sold out Jesus for less than that.
Coincidentally just a week ago I was about to cite him specifically as the example of what I don't want to be.
I was going to say that I know how frustrating it is when certain people make big claims but don't actually do the testing. And it seems what happens is that because these people are the few bold enough to make these claims (since nobody is bothered to do testing), the ordinary users assume they must be an expert on the matter, and this feeds into their ego where - often with years of reinforcement of this - they actually come to believe they are the experts, and they will start lying in order to maintain their status if challenged.
That is the story of many SI staff/mods and users like BusttheNet.
With daveincid, my beef with him goes back to years ago. It was something like he had claimed he had fixed up FM's youth generation, but I took a look at it and could see that he did not understand how the newgen factors work and was therefore applying them as one would play a game of chess if you believed the pieces move like in checkers. He was just making the same assumptions as other people before him who also didn't know any better.
But I guess that was around his beginning, so I thought I'd investigate a file of his now.
I looked at his SI forums page, and in the side bio it said:
I had a rough start when I opened my eyes for the first time. Struggling through life since 28 years. Finally I know the reason. FM gave me so much hold through the years. I accept my dissabilities and will always have a smile on my face
So then I felt sorry for the guy, and decided I wouldn't attempt to put a hole in what gives his life meaning. Then I ended up on his patreon, where he paywalls his files, and saw he's making $2500/month. I thought blimey, maybe I should have monetized those Genie Scout rating files! And the sob story unraveled for me, as it turned out he was using it for moneygrubbing. You see, he isn't 'able to work' (and instead needs you to make monthly payments to him) because:
My life has not always been easy. I was born three months too early
Struggled for many years with...anxiety and the feeling that something was different
at the age of 28, I was diagnosed with autism
Ok I know it sounds like I'm obsessed with the guy, but you asked me what I think about his realism mod, and my instinctive response is I don't trust him, and I wanted to paint the full picture for you as to why. I ended up not writing all this a week ago, because I decided to omit the rant, and instead just do comparison tests of the genie scout files and post the results.
Now addressing his file pack directly, I glanced at recent explanations by him saying that he adjusts edits until they produce the results he wants. I'm skeptical, but in theory this could work, and it would be too great an undertaking by me to investigate it adequately.
The files with names that promise a lot are the first to pique my interest. One is 'Daveincid's PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS'. How can an editor file, improve FM performance exactly? I already guessed correctly before I opened it, it seems to be mostly deleted entries in the database. But I've tested this before, deleting entries has no effect on FM performance.
I was ready to unleash on the rest of the files, but after examining a few, I can't find anything else disagreeable apart from the newgen changes obviously.
In 'GEOGRAPHICS & LANGUAGES' I scrolled randomly to find Cairo had been changed from 0 > 223 (feet) elevation. Thought it was worth a check. Apparently Cairo is a city with a great variation in elevation, from 2m to 522m. Daveincid has given it 68m. I checked the stadium for a top team, which is Cairo International Stadium, and google says that is 23m but this is wrong. A topographic map website shows it to be ~104m. But this just shows the kind of dilemmas that can arise, it's not always clear cut what the data should be.
A few things raised an eyebrow. Indonesia is a developed state? Depression should be included as an injury? But these are minor quibbles, and there are always going to be mistakes with tens of thousands of changes.
I noticed that the attribute changes to players and clubs were modest and yet questionable. For instance, some club in Bumfuckistan get its youth coaching increased from 3 to 5, and this seems repeated thousands of times for no-name clubs across the world. I doubt this information can be accurately ascertained, but at least the changes are going to be pretty harmless in the case they are wrong or risk upsetting the balance of the game.
I think the upside of these files are mainly in their corrections of grossly inaccurate or inadequate data. For instance where hundreds of clubs have altitude of 0, founding date of 1800, and wrong nicknames. And it seems very comprehensive in this regard. And it's not just fluff either, because weather & altitude actually do have impacts on match performance, both in the game and in real life. And the data on these aspects seems researched rather than guesstimated.
So maybe my initial presumptions were too critical. Overall I would personally give the files a go, except for that which affects newgens, and probably transfers too.
I'm first filtering the players based on the hidden attributes.
For a national team, how important are the injury proneness and dirtiness?
Then I'm filtering on speed, selecting first the players with 15 speed and acceleration.
Then, for the missing spots, I'm selecting the ones with at least 14 and the 13 and so on.
For the DC, I'm following the same logic but with 17 jump.
Should I then look for 14 speed/acc and 16 jump or should I only pick players with 17 jump?
I'm playing without targetman but with 3 DC.
Is this a good way to use your findings?
I would think the key thing to select for, especially for a national team, would be match fitness. Low match fitness increases losses and injuries drastically, and can't be fixed in a short amount of time either (i.e. even if you have 1 friendly in advance).
Injury proneness isn't such a huge deal, as it means you're playing a 67% player instead of a 70% one.
Dirtiness should be inversely proportional to aggression. Again it doesn't impact performance severely, because even if a player is red carded, the game doesn't count it as you fielding a 0% player.
In my 'essential' weights, I make the target man/DC 99 jump/61 pace. That's 1.62x for jump, or expressed another way, I would trade 1.62 pace for 1 jump on them. So I would choose 17 jump 13 pace over 16 jump 14 pace, but not 17 jump 12 pace over 16 jump 14 pace.
Premier League 1.0, 'Essential' weights from further up this page overlap = 14/27 players
Pure Performance:
Peak acc/pace/jump/drib = 18/18/19/14
Median acc/pace/jump/drib = 14/14/12/11
Prem 1.0:
Peak acc/pace/jump/drib = 15/17/17/14
Median acc/pace/jump/drib = 13/13/13/11
BTW I didn't realize until just a few days ago that you can get the FM26 pre-game editor with the FM26 database for free without buying FM26. You can get it from the Microsoft store.
So for the Premier League 1.0 weightings, what you see is what you get. But for the test of my Pure Performance weightings, you will not get what you see in the test result. The intention here is to compare non-bugged weights between my files, to see which performs better, so that further deductions can be made.
This doesn't remove the GS bugs 100% either, but I think it should reduce it by a lot. If I wanted completely accurate comparison, I would use the weights in FM26 scoring system, but since the idea here is to continue using Genie Scout anyway.. one may as well test to see what does well using Genie Scout.
I did 10 season test on fc Metz and that one out preformed the newest file set but might be some rng possibly please test.
FM24 Pure Performance results:
5th*, 6th*, 8th*, 6th, 4th, 10th = 6.5 average
Asterisked results are where I forgot to set injury proneness to 1 as control
Premier League 1.0 results:
6th, 9th, 7th = 7.33 average
I also tried a few alternative tactics with one of these squads, to see if something does better than the Knap EF 424 IF HP V2 P101 AC tactic I use. The first few did worse, but 424 Classic v164 got 3rd, 3rd, 9th, 5th. Maybe it's just circumstantial, but I'll be taking a closer look at it.
Exellent said: You were absolutely right, it was discovered in the new thread that Genie Scout indeed has bugs. For example, the higher the height, the higher the rating.
The thing is, that program isn't actually Genie Scout as far as I can tell..
The bug he encountered is valid though, but also it may be that he hasn't taken into account footedness and position proficiency which is the more likely cause if not ruled out.
I can't take credit for finding Genie Scout is bugged, LightningFlik clued me onto this.
I think it's the first time a results-based comparison of the Genie Scout rating files has been attempted.
Method:
- Luton in Premier League
- Remove all players
- Filter in Genie Scout for CA-PA gap of 0-3 and current reputation 0-6000 and green proficiency in relevant position
- Take top 3-4 in each position
- Move them to Luton
- Change age, personality, natural fitness, consistency, important matches, nationality, height, weight, etc. so that there is control where there needs to be
- Position proficiency is deliberately *not* controlled (this has pros and cons)
- One season with Knap tactic and Blue routines (Premier League, FA Cup & Carabao Cup @ full detail)
Extra info:
Player overlap - 13 of 27 players
Peak acc/pace/jump/drib (Orion) - 18/18/19/15
Peak acc/pace/jump/drib (My weights) - 18/18/19/13
Median acc/pace/jump/drib (Orion) - 14/14/13/12
Median acc/pace/jump/drib (My weights) - 14/14/14/11
The results:
My weights - 10th, 9th, 4th, 9th, 9th, 9th = 8.333th average
Orion's weights - 18th, 12th, 16th, 10th, 10th, 13th = 13.166th average
Now I would caution against reading into these results too much at the moment, but I think it's safe to say at least that Orion's weights do not do significantly better than mine. To my mind, it's further suggestive evidence that all positions share the same necessary attributes; there are not position-specific attributes.
The main reason for caution is that it could simply be that my weights ended up having a higher jumping reach player on the field. The Orion team did start their 19 jump DC most games though, and if my weights are selecting more frequently for high jumping reach players who win then that's a feature not a bug. When I do this test with my Premier League 1.0 weights and one or two others, that will shed more light on this more conclusively.
Is 12 speed and acceleration ok if the rest of attributes is high? I thought that speed and acceleration was the only things that matters
Here are the necessary attributes
For Premier League you can get away with 14 pace/acc. If the player has very high stamina, then as low as 12 is viable.
For winning the Premier League, or tough international competition, you'd need 18+ pace/acc. You also need someone with very high jumping reach on the field, and at least decent levels of jumping reach across the team in general.
I'm currently doing some testing using the following personal estimations of how 'essential' attributes are:
Jumping reach 100% essential - 17 min ST/DC, 13 min rest of team = 99, 63 weight
Acceleration/Pace 85% essential - 14 min = 61
Dribbling 45% essential - 13 min = 28
Anticipation 35% essential - 13 min = 22
Concentration 35% essential - 13 min = 22
Determination 25% essential - 14 min = 18
Work Rate 15% essential - 11 min = 7
Agility 15% essential - 10 min = 5
Balance 20% essential - 12 min = 11
Stamina 25% essential - 13 min = 16
Strength 2% essential - 8 min = 1
Finishing 2% essential - 7 min = 1 (ST only)
Vision 2% essential - 7 min = 1
How 'essential' they are is just based on my intuitive feel for the data. So for instance, jumping reach is 100% essential because going below the requirement quickly gets you relegated. Acc/Pace I know can go down to ~12 in certain circumstances (i.e. Harry Kane), so a little leeway there. Work Rate, we know is ok down to 6, and the requirement of 11 isn't high to begin with, so you don't even really need to put it in your weights much (as most players will be 8+ anyway).
Also 15 Speed and Acc?
So if I'm compairing those 3 MDC/MC, I shouldn't take Kimmich?
Of should I use another value as hard limit for speed and acceleration?
Kimmich is superior to those other two in all aspects except pace/acc/jump, and even then he has 20 natural fitness + 17 stamina + 3 injury proneness to mostly offset this downside.
You could go ahead and share these Genie Scout weightings of yours for the benefit of the people here
What you don't realize is that I stated this before HarvestGreen said anything about pressure.
HarvestGreen's post was 29 March 2026.
15 December 2025:
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: I was surprised and intrigued by this finding by Orion in FM22 that pressure 1 supposedly results in 47% less performance than pressure 10.
So I've tested it, and it really is important:
115 CA templates pressure 1 - 102, +127 | 105, +119
That's a 32% drop in performance. It is important to note though that Orion found the difference between 10 pressure and 20 pressure to only be 10%, but even that is significant.
19 December 2025:
GeorgeFloydOverdosed said: I would guess that ~8 is not too bad either, based on how work rate matters a great deal up to just 6 then it tails off.
Both in this very thread.
Not that I discovered the effect of pressure of course, I've always credited Orion for that from the get go. My point is that I have long hypothesized that pressure functions as work rate does, and also I think it's fair to say that Orion's findings had been largely ignored and forgotten, so I think I will give myself a pat on the back for breathing fresh life into this piece of knowledge.
Or is keithb going to claim that, as with everything else, everybody already knew pressure was the most important personality attribute?
2. Are there any other attributes (just as pressure) which are important but you are not putting them into Genie Scout's calculations? I mean what else attributes (besides pressure) we need to manually filter them?
3. You use two ST with jump 17 to do the test, not DC, Did you ever use two DC with jumping 17 or 18 to test it?
4. Why give so much weight to balance and dribbling for DC?
Yes, pressure is important. I first saw this when I came across Orion's FM22 test on it, and I think HarvestGreen has recently posted data for this for FM24 too. It's not as critical as pace/acc, because it seems that 10 or a bit even lower can be sufficient. I would speculate that it's going to be like work rate where 6 is the point beyond which returns start to tail off. But as we can see from the chart, pressure 10 > 20 is a 10% boost which is still highly significant (equivalent to 1 > 10 consistency or determination).
The weights are simply their values x 4 right now. So pressure 52/4 = 13. I'm actually yet to test pressure less than 13 yet, I suspect it could drop a point or two. You haven't asked about how weightings should be derived from attribute levels that work, but it touches on the matter. I don't want to get into this anyway, but let's just say there's no one way of approaching it. At the moment, I'm going for a transparent, simple approach, and I will be giving this more thought later. To give you a straightforward example of what I mean, consider pace/acc. 14-15 is necessary to finish ~5th, but a team of 13 will get you relegated. So perhaps one would say let's make that 56 weighting 100 instead, just to ensure you get at least 14 pace/acc. And for pressure, it's 52 weighting, but you only *really* need say ~6-10, with little benefit for 14+, so maybe let's make that 45 instead of 52. In a way that produces better results, but the formula is more opaque and perhaps more whimsical, and yet there are also other downsides/trade-offs too when you start thinking about this deeply.
I think I have accidentally used 4xDC 17 with 2xST (out of 4) 17 and the result wasn't noticeably different (hence I didn't realize until a bit later).
I've answered the balance & dribbling for DC question, it's because the key attributes turn out to be equally essential for all outfield positions.
How do you not understand this? Do you actually play the game?
You were saying?
Do you actually watch the game?!??
This guy was beaten by 40-year-old goalkeeper!!!!
marking = 0
tackling = 0
heading = 0
position = 0
pressure = 0
balance = 48
dribbling = 52
Do I download the correct file?
why give so much weight to balance and dribbling for DC?
Why the "pressure = 0", you said pressure is an important attribute in your previous post I remember...
In your opinion, how much difference between jump 18 and jump 16 for DC? How important for "high jump" to help DC to have more goals in corner kicks?
Marking, tackling, heading, positioning have zero or close to zero effect for all positions
Pressure is important (52), but is not included in the Genie Scout weightings because it really stuffs up Genie Scout's calculations if you put it in. I recommend instead using a filter of 8 and then manually assessing.
The key attributes turn out to be equally essential for all outfield positions. There may be some positional differences, but so far I haven't found any. And as you can see from my old files, I was strongly inclined to believe in positional differences, so this isn't my laziness or what I want to believe, I'm just going by the results I see.
I will say that of all the positions, based on testing I've done in the past, the position most likely to have differences is DM (and probably by extension, MC and AMC).
Results I had regarding jumping reach differences:
DC 16 - 5th, 8th
DC 15 - 8th, 10th
2xST 17, DC 13 - 4th
Normal at the time (DC 17) was ~4th-5th
Can't find the 15< results, but from the above you can see that 17 > 16 is drop of ~2 positions, 17 > 15 is drop of ~5 positions. If you extrapolate, 14 would be bottom table, and 13 would be relegated. Maybe 13 survives, I can't remember, but I know it's bad in any case.
Then we have Mbappe only rated 78/80 which is crazy and Yamal with a potential of only 75. He isn't the best rw in the game, but really 75?? Thomas Muller is rated higher than him for rw. How can this be serious? Kante is rated 74!!! Surely Yamal reaching his potential is better than those two?
How do you not understand this? Do you actually play the game?
Club rating and potential rating in Genie Scout is rubbish. Genie Scout is bugged, as was first pointed out not by me, but by LightningFlik on page 7.
Your understanding is really outdated.
2. I also find in this file "r5xm3t.grf", DR(L) and WBR(L) have exactly same settings, why?
3. Is there a latest version of rating file for FM26?
4. I use 4 defenders tactics, and both my two DC are jumping reach =18, and both their pace are 15, Is this ideal? or should I choose one DC's jumping=18 pace=15, the other DC is jumping=15 but pace=20?
So "two high jumping DC" (pace relatively slow, pace=15), or "one high jump DC+ one fast pace DC", which case gives the best defending?
You should use the new zhf2yl.grf file, it's the best for both FM24 and FM26. It hasn't been adjusted for FM26, but it wouldn't be much different.
In the old r5xm3t.grf file, DR is same as WBR because I didn't care about WBR, MC, AMC position as I used 424 Knap tactic and those extra positions would be double the work. This is still the case, however it turns out that all outfield positions share almost identical attribute requirements anyway.
I don't know if 2 jump would be better than 1 jump + 1 pace, but I would assume the former because if you have one jump player what happens when he gets substituted, injured, rested or whatnot. In fact, it's probably best to have 3-4 to be on the safe side.. but of course you're not going to have 4x 17 jump. A realistic outcome may end up like this: 16, 15, 15, 14.
For the Premier League, the pace/acc cutoff is ~14, and if you really need to, you can utilize the game's allowance for one player lacking this. So specifically your DC roster might look like this:
16 jump, 14 pace/acc (key player) - 29/38 league apps, 4/8 cup
15 jump, 15 pace/acc (first team) - 25/38 league, 4/8 cup
15 jump, 11 pace/14 acc (rotation) - 14/38 league, 4/8 cup
14 jump, 12 pace/acc (backup) - 6/38 league, 2/8 cup
12 jump, 10 pace/acc (youth hot prospect) - 2/38 league, 2/8 cup
Another issue is about GK, I download your rating file from your OP, is that the latest one? (I assume you didn't put the latest one in those replies...), for GK, the file is to set reflex=57, acc=1, is that true?
I remember you said for GK, the most important attributes are reflex and agility, followed by acceleration, but why the reflex=57 rather than 99? why acceleration =1 for GK? Thank you!
Jumping reach isn't quite all or nothing, but there will be a steep drop off if you don't have what I suppose is the tallest player on the field. I'm not sure if it's one or two players you need, since I almost always use 2x 17 in my tests. They don't have to be both DC, but I think probably having 1 being DC is best (I think I vaguely remember testing 2x DC 17 vs 2x ST 17..). You can only get the best you can get, so if you can't get 17 unless it's some 36-year-old with 7 pace/acc, then go for 16.. 15.. etc.
I don't think you have loaded the correct file. I double checked, and the file in the OP (zhf2yl.grf) has 44 reflexes, 52 acceleration.
That info for GK is outdated. What I found is that reflexes hit diminishing returns after ~10-11. And there were some other surprises too. HarvestGreen found that reflexes is the most important attribute, but if you look at his test conditions, he is setting all attributes to 20 then reducing reflexes to 1. My inference is that this means reflexes requires a certain minimum to function properly, but it doesn't mean his data contradicts mine.
Kriek said: Yes that was wat I meant, thank you.
So we should use your latest ratings no matter what
Yes
Germany Div 1:
France Div 1:
Spain Div 1:
England Div 2:
So it doesn't seem like leagues have their own unique set of requirements (i.e. maybe EPL requires speed, but Bundesliga requires technical ability). It seems like a certain set of attributes work, and some leagues are simply weaker, and that's it.
I guess it's also a decent measure of the quality of the league. Based on the positions, the rankings so far for league strength are:
Spain Div 1
England Div 1
power gap
Germany Div 1
France Div 1
England Div 2
It could help in assessing players based on their average rating in a league, and making loan decisions - it's probably best to loan to France Div 1 rather than either Spain Div 1 or England Div 2.