SI Games regen/recycle players?

[spleen1015]

I read this over at OOTP and wanted to get the take from the crowd over here.

I don't play any of the SI games. I have tried the demos, but the sports they have don't appeal to me. So, I have no idea how this effects gameplay.

Apparently, SI doesn't randomly generate players. Instead they regen/recycle the players back into the game they retire with a new name. Something about stats eventually get out of whack and they have been unable to resolve the issue.

Does anyone know more about this?

I assume FOF doesn't do this right?

The OOTP thread if you're interested. (http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/board/showthread.php?t=88561)

[Easy Mac]

They've done it for as long as I've played the games. Basically, the players aren't necesarily regenerated exactly as before. They have a few attributes that remain the same and the same potential, but its essentially different. They keep the same general position and such. Players from lesser nations can come back from different nations, but an England Left-midfielder generally comes back the same.

Its done to make sure that certain countries or positions become too loaded. They don't want just random players being made, because perhaps England will suddenly not create good players for a generation, or San Marino could have a golden age. They also don't want too many players created at one position and not another.



I generally don't have a problem with it. I look at it like, FM has something like a hundred thousand players or something crazy like that, while FOF has maybe 2000. I think the algorithms would have to be far more complex to create an accurate universe of 100000 players rather than 2000.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Apparently, SI doesn't randomly generate players.
Maybe someone can correct me, but I'm pretty sure this no longer the case with regards to Football Manager. I've been following the issue for a long time on the SI boards. As far as I understand it:

Before CM 03/04, players were regenerated: when one player retired, the same player would get added back into the database but with a different name, age, etc.

Starting with CM 03/04, SI has used random player creation when they add young players to the game.

I'm not sure how things work with EHM.

[Lucky Jim]

Firing from the hip here so this might be unreliable but I think that in its current state the only constant is potential ability for regens. I think almost everything else is randomized (except perhaps position), even country. To put it simply though there is no easy way to plug in a search and know that some unknown youngster is the second coming of Zidane, not without use of an editor at least. And frankly isn't that the issue here? People are worried that finding future stars is some blatantly easy process? It isn't. And without cheating I'm sure it will be the same in the next OOTP.

[Critch]

I'm not sure if they still do it or not, haven't played long enough in FM to notice. Not that I would notice anyway.

Never had any problem with the regen system, except that engine wouldnt always clear out the regen's preferences. I'd end up with 17yo Scottish youths coming through who were fans of Polish teams and hated a no-name coach in the Polish league.

One thing I didn't like that I hope they've fixed is that players would develop better in league's that are being played in foreground. If I was playing with the Scottish and English leagues in foreground, after 16 seasons world football would be dominated by players who started in those nations. Scotland v England in the World Cup Final. How unrealistic can that be? England will never reach a final again.

[BreizhManu]

One thing I didn't like that I hope they've fixed is that players would develop better in league's that are being played in foreground. If I was playing with the Scottish and English leagues in foreground, after 16 seasons world football would be dominated by players who started in those nations. Scotland v England in the World Cup Final. How unrealistic can that be? England will never reach a final again.
Well the problem is that the database depends on the leagues you choose, so if you select just 2 leagues with normal database (lets say 30,000 players overall, I have no idea) you'll have 20,000 players from those 2 leagues and 10,000 players from the rest of the world. so with a regen you'll have 2 chances out of 3 of him being from one of those 2 countries.

Before CM4 the talent pool remained the same in every country, now there is randomness but the overall talent pool in nthe game remains the same.

[scooter]

Back in the old days of CM3, you could track regens by giving them a nickname. Then when they retired, the regen would have the same nickname. Fortunately, I believe that cheat has been removed.

[BreizhManu]

Back in the old days of CM3, you could track regens by giving them a nickname. Then when they retired, the regen would have the same nickname. Fortunately, I believe that cheat has been removed.
they also kept the same nationality and position.

That's why it was easy to find some of them, my favorite was Japhet N'Doram (former Nantes and Monaco star), since he was the only tchadian player in the database :)

[Desnudo]

From what I understand they still use the retiring player model, but, like was mentioned before, it completely randomizes position and stats.

I played to 2014 in a game and I can safely say you can't tell who is who. However, there is currently a bug with the generation of technical stats that basically gives the next generation of superstars great mental and physical stats and horrible technical stats. I've also noticed a problem where stats don't match the player's position well. Like you'll have a supposed superstar attacking midfielder with horrible dribbling, first touch, and passing, but great heading and positioning. It's supposedly being fixed in the next patch.

[JonInMiddleGA]

It's supposedly being fixed in the next patch.

As I've found myself doing quite a bit when reading threads on this current edition, I'm once again wondering "How in the heck did something like that slip past in the testing phase?"

Not sure how profound the problem is or anything like that, but it honestly feels like just another nail in the coffin of interest in this game to me.

[Desnudo]

As I've found myself doing quite a bit when reading threads on this current edition, I'm once again wondering "How in the heck did something like that slip past in the testing phase?"

Not sure how profound the problem is or anything like that, but it honestly feels like just another nail in the coffin of interest in this game to me.

It's a complicated question, because I'm not sure exactly how testing works at SI. My best guess is they looked at stats generated from a DB to determine if it was working and never bothered to actually look at a game screen. The problem doesn't really become prevalent until 6-7 seasons into the game so it's easy to see how the beta testers would have missed it.

The game is still very enjoyable, and it takes a long time for this problem to really become an issue. I'd wager most players won't even encounter it. It takes a long amount of game time to play that many seasons.

[JonInMiddleGA]

The problem doesn't really become prevalent until 6-7 seasons into the game so it's easy to see how the beta testers would have missed it.

???

I'd wager most players won't even encounter it. It takes a long amount of game time to play that many seasons.

Well, I guess that kinda answers my puzzlement from above, if 6-7 seasons is considered "going deep" into CM. I guess it kinda explains why I've always thought there were a lot of really great things about it but never really got obsessive about it either. Anything less than 10 seasons deep, sometimes 20 or beyond, really doesn't grab me all that much. Just dif'rent strokes I guess.

[Desnudo]

???

Given the complexity of the game, and the size of it, it's not hard to see how they could have missed this. Regens come in slowly, and it doesn't become really clear they suck until near to my point in the game. Anyway, what's done is done, and it's all second guessing at this point anyway. It's incredibly easy to second guess software testing, it's not so easy to get it right, especially if you're a small development shop. There's almost always at least a few "WTF?" bugs in games these days.

Well, I guess that kinda answers my puzzlement from above, if 6-7 seasons is considered "going deep" into CM. I guess it kinda explains why I've always thought there were a lot of really great things about it but never really got obsessive about it either. Anything less than 10 seasons deep, sometimes 20 or beyond, really doesn't grab me all that much. Just dif'rent strokes I guess.

The focus of FM is on in-depth season to season management. One season with a large DB takes a long time to play (say 20-30 hours). In real life soccer is not a very stats centric game unlike football or baseball. There are plenty of stats in the game, but the focus is on player acquisition and development and tactics. So people generally have little incentive to "fast" sim through a lot of seasons. Just a different game from any other sim, although it is widely recognized as the benchmark as well. I'd recommend at least trying the demo out before passing judgement on it.

[JonInMiddleGA]

The focus of FM is on in-depth season to season management. One season with a large DB takes a long time to play (say 20-30 hours). In real life soccer is not a very stats centric game unlike football or baseball. There are plenty of stats in the game, but the focus is on player acquisition and development and tactics. So people generally have little incentive to "fast" sim through a lot of seasons. Just a different game from any other sim, although it is widely recognized as the benchmark as well. I'd recommend at least trying the demo out before passing judgement on it.

Oh, I've tried the current demo, and own two previous incarnations of the game. That's where I got the "never really gotten obsessive about it" comment from, my own personal experiences.

Now, I don't think I've ever played with anything more than a medium(?) db size, just due to the demands of the game on pc hardware, but a typical CM session for me would go 4-8 hours at a sitting, so really 20-30 hours for a season doesn't seem like all that much to me.

I guess I was just surprised (probably shouldn't have been, but I was) that
my "time spent gaming" with those CM's might not be so far behind some of the people who really seem to be heavily into it. If I've made it through 4,5,6 year careers, I guess I just kinda figured that the mega-fans were going much deeper than that on a regular basis.

Then again, now that you've brought it up, I don't believe I've seen very many dynasty reports that covered more than 2-4 years, so maybe I should have figured differently.

[Marc Vaughan]

I guess I was just surprised (probably shouldn't have been, but I was) that
my "time spent gaming" with those CM's might not be so far behind some of the people who really seem to be heavily into it. If I've made it through 4,5,6 year careers, I guess I just kinda figured that the mega-fans were going much deeper than that on a regular basis.

I find that people play in different ways, I know people who will repeatedly play the first two or three seasons of FM because they hate the idea of not playing with 'real' players in their favourite team.

I personally tend to play 2-3 long games each iteration, generally they are around 15-20 seasons* in length ... by the end of that we've usually finished the next version when it all kicks off again ;)

*Longest I've done in CM is around 38 seasons in CM01-02 if I'm remembering right ...

[JonInMiddleGA]

38 seasons ... now THAT'S what I'm talking about. That whole 15-20 seasons thing is kinda what I figured was fairly "normal".