Series Improving the regen system

[Dec]

"How predictable, boring and easy is the regen system after a few seasons? Very! The system is so obvious even the inclusion of beards to them wouldn't give them some depth! It needs a total revamp." - A FMH player

Many fans of the FMH series have questioned the regeneration system for players since it has been cracked many can identify a player easily and the attributes have made it somewhat easier to snap up players for cheaper than before who are young and obviously gifted. This makes the game quite simple to master even when in the lower regions due to players often regenerating at empty clubs (the lowest division promoted clubs).

I believe there is an answer or two in order to combat the system that may be easy to implement, however could work really well.

Randomise dates:

Most know 2 months after a player retires another one will appear, so a simple change of putting it between 0-24 months then players randomly appear over the time in order to prevent a massive influx during August.

Positions:

Everyone knows the main thing is positions in order to tell a players' regen but is there a way to stop it? Of course! Having a base position such as Beckham (M R/C) turning into a MR then having competent in M L/C in order to give variety. A bit of randomness and having the player based around one or two positions instead of his whole set would do wonders for the system.

Nationalities:

Personally I believe there are two things to this section - nationality of the player and where they appear.

Firstly, nationality of a player does change but I believe it doesn't do it enough - even if it is adding a second nationality to the player such as English/Irish from English. This along with the one above may help identifying players harder to do.

Another gripe for me is that English players only appear in English clubs where as we know players like Patrick Van Aanholt (Dutch) have appeared at Chelsea in real life so why can they not do this in game? I will leave you to draw your on conclusion on this one.

Attributes:

Again there are two problems with this - overpowering attributes and predictability.

Overpowering attributes at a young age can give you an unfair advantage if you scout and utilise it correctly. Players to the standard of Messi and Ronaldo can be picked up at 18 for a measly £250k where as the AI isn't smart enough to do this due to the club's they often play for. There's a few ways to combat this in my opinion with one being capping CA at a certain age for regens with a degree of randomisation but a bias towards the lower-middle section (say 0-130 and 40-70 is common).

The other option is of course to link CA/PA with club size, obviously there's a few exceptions as in real life but at the moment it is highly unrealistic for Dover to produce Champions League standard players consistently so limiting them according to their reputation would help vastly improve this section of the game.

The other main concern I have is predictability as if you see an Italian player with pace in SC it is Del Piero, it is too obvious! Now I am not saying randomise every attribute totally as then you can have a striker who's not a striker by attributes and that will be silly. What I propose though is keeping certain attributes marked such as randomising certain attributes but giving a bias so for a striker shooting is always high and then if they're given strength their favoured position is a TM, certain bias' but allowing randomisation will combat the obvious predictability the system is currently giving the game while allowing it to be realistic.

On a deeper issue it could allow trends in the market that may not be meant but will improve the game a lot - lots of DLPs for example lead to a passing game throughout the world for a decade or so.

What do you think about the regen system? Post below!

[Sunny]

Dec, you mean van Aanholt? Not Bertrand?

I don't really mind the points mentioned above, but sometimes finding the regens of legends is pretty fun

[Dec]

Yes I do, oops .

Each to their own, I just believe after doing it so many times it gets too predictable/boring.

[TheStandardful]

good content dec i think newgen could be good for vita

[Dec]

Thanks. Not sure if I have missed it but where is the news that SI are working on a Vita game? Also if they are I doubt it it as revolutionary and far greater in terms of style than the iOS/Android versions.

[Chelsea8]

Nice work Dec I don't bother looking for Regens personally.

[samhardy]

I like the ideas Newgens would be epic, but I can't see it happening.

[Mysterion]

Why do you guys not like regens I think that they are easier to play with than newgens would be

[samhardy]

Regens make the game too easy.

[TheStandardful]

Yes regens make the game too easy.Btw Dec,we've got no idea about fmh in vita.If it would,then it would be awesome.

[rafa]

Great article Dec

[Dec]

Thanks guys, let me know what you think about my ideas and also feel free to share your own .

[rayjayokocha]

I think it is too easy, i agree.

I managed to get Beckham's regen on a free in my Clyde save, i've signed that many Becks regens that i knew it was his once his positions were the same.

I think adding some twists would make it more interesting and challenging Maybe they could make it an option in the "preferences" bit as an unlockable, that gives people the option to use it or not?

[JumpeRz]

I think that regens appear with a very high CA and they grow up their attributes very fast, if you find the Beckham's regen at 17 and you sign him, in one month he will have most of the attributes green... This is my opinion

[rayjayokocha]

I think that regens appear with a very high CA and they grow up their attributes very fast, if you find the Beckham's regen at 17 and you sign him, in one month he will have most of the attributes green... This is my opinion

I got Xavi's regen at 16 (on loan originally, agreed to sign him on a free in the summer) and with IT he was a monster, by 17 he had most attributes green with only about 2/3 not green.

[Ceirdiff]

My feedback:

Some background

At the moment in FMH all players which are generated are "regens". This means the player has all of his stats based off a previous, retired player. Unfortunately this adds a layer of predictability to the game and removes some of the fun. For this reason the game should include newgens not regens.

However, with the small amount of processing power in a handheld device then it would be very clunky to generate stats for every single new player in the game, this would slow things down too much.

The solution

It's quite simple, as in Dr. Who the computer made everyone identical to save space, the game does not need stats for players that are not used or interacted with.

A newly generates player needs no stats, they are not being interacted with at all by anyone. It should not be until they're stats are first interacted with that they are generated, for instance when involved in a match (most players will not go straight into the team).

When a newgen is created it gets added onto a queue of starless players. These players can then be ranked on importance, which would be based off some polynomial judging they're reputation, player reputation, etc. to judge where in the queue they are added (quicksort is, as the name suggests, a fairly fast algorithm, with newgens you are unlikely to have a dataset too big to slow down the algorithm).

Then, as the game notices spare processing time, where it is not expected to do anything, for instance the player is looking at the news, then it will take the top player off the queue and generate stats for that player.

This should hopefully be a fast method of generating player stats, the main issue being in the importance vector taking up extra RAM, but the amount saved by players with no stats should displace this fact.

tl;dr newgens are nais.

[rafa]

I for one like the regen system, but agree that it might become boring/predictable after a while.

Randomise dates:

Most know 2 months after a player retires another one will appear, so a simple change of putting it between 0-24 months then players randomly appear over the time in order to prevent a massive influx during August.

An option would be avoiding regens to be created when the transfer window is open. This way, it would make harder for clubs to snap great players for a bargain.

Positions:

Everyone knows the main thing is positions in order to tell a players' regen but is there a way to stop it? Of course! Having a base position such as Beckham (M R/C) turning into a MR then having competent in M L/C in order to give variety. A bit of randomness and having the player based around one or two positions instead of his whole set would do wonders for the system.

This bit is a bit tricky, as the game as whole needs to be balanced. I think that a good idea would be swapping positions between retired players - e.g. Beckham and Shevchenko retires, and their regens swap positions.

Nationalities:

Personally I believe there are two things to this section - nationality of the player and where they appear.

Firstly, nationality of a player does change but I believe it doesn't do it enough - even if it is adding a second nationality to the player such as English/Irish from English. This along with the one above may help identifying players harder to do.

Another gripe for me is that English players only appear in English clubs where as we know players like Patrick Van Aanholt (Dutch) have appeared at Chelsea in real life so why can they not do this in game? I will leave you to draw your on conclusion on this one.

Nationalities is one of the trickiest things to mess around. If you complete randomize it, you will destroy the long-lasting balance in world football.

And I disagree on your point about English players. In real life, barely no English youngsters are developed outside UK, while many foreign kids come to England.

Attributes:

Again there are two problems with this - overpowering attributes and predictability.

Overpowering attributes at a young age can give you an unfair advantage if you scout and utilise it correctly. Players to the standard of Messi and Ronaldo can be picked up at 18 for a measly £250k where as the AI isn't smart enough to do this due to the club's they often play for. There's a few ways to combat this in my opinion with one being capping CA at a certain age for regens with a degree of randomisation but a bias towards the lower-middle section (say 0-130 and 40-70 is common).

The other option is of course to link CA/PA with club size, obviously there's a few exceptions as in real life but at the moment it is highly unrealistic for Dover to produce Champions League standard players consistently so limiting them according to their reputation would help vastly improve this section of the game.

The other main concern I have is predictability as if you see an Italian player with pace in SC it is Del Piero, it is too obvious! Now I am not saying randomise every attribute totally as then you can have a striker who's not a striker by attributes and that will be silly. What I propose though is keeping certain attributes marked such as randomising certain attributes but giving a bias so for a striker shooting is always high and then if they're given strength their favoured position is a TM, certain bias' but allowing randomisation will combat the obvious predictability the system is currently giving the game while allowing it to be realistic.

On a deeper issue it could allow trends in the market that may not be meant but will improve the game a lot - lots of DLPs for example lead to a passing game throughout the world for a decade or so.

What do you think about the regen system? Post below!

I wouldn't mess with attributes at all. My suggestion:

Improving fog of war

Make regen attributes invisible by default for at least a season. In order to see how the player looks like you need to scout him. That would make regen spotting much harder.

[Sean]

Very interesting... good work Dec.

The only query I have is that I actually have seen English players regenerate at a foreign club, well, in a game I had on iOS, Beckham and some other English centre-back regenerated at AC Milan - two years separating their regenerations.

So unless my iOS game was crazy, then there must be a small (probably extremely small) chance of English players regenerating abroad?

[Dec]

Rafa - Players do though, maybe not English but players like Macheda broke through at Man United.

Sean - Thanks, you must be right but I don't think it happens enough.

[FmGenius]

On ios I've played one full season and more than half of the regens appeared in countries other than their nationalities.. Alex (the A/SC one) appeared at Barca, so did Di Natale's and Mutu's.. Gudjonsen (spelt it wrong probably) was at Arsenal, Simao and Frings were at Man United.. And there were more that I didn't identify, like a French CB at Real.. So for me it's random enough.. Just makes them too expensive when managing a lower league team.. They regenerate with values around £5m..

[anfieldsquirrel]

David Beckham's regen appeared at Rangers in one of my careers :unsure:

And Gerrard, Carragher, Xavi and Casillas all appeared at Annan on my career :L

[Keraviln]

There is a simple solution to fixing the regen system:

A simple RNG which randomly produces a certain number of players at the start of transfer windows (kinda like youth players) as well as perhaps a youth system inside the club to uh... add to the 'dynamic' nature of finances in FMH... (hehe)

Basically delete the regen system if you don't like it and replace it with an RNG or some other random producer (probably keeping in mind that a certain number of talented players should be produced each year or else there could be some issues down the track, as well as varying preferences making it impossible for a big club like Real Madrid to snap up all the talent that could possibly be taken... I mean imagine having the top 72 players in Real Madrid/Castilla, it'd wreck the game)

[joeNFFCbull]

I have followed regens a lot in the previous games but this season i have refrained from looking up the lists of regens. I think the problem i found with them in previous games were as you say they were easy to spot. if the Regen system was made more random, so a complete change of nationality name etc and randomise the team they go into more, it would make it more fun trying to find these gems