Are too many young players given an Unambitious personality?

[Nick]

After some brief discussions on Twitter it seems that opinion is split on this. Personally, I'm fed up with how many young players come through my youth intakes with an 'Unambitious' personality and, from reading everyone else's saves on the forum, I'm not alone in this. It's important to state at this point however:

I UNDERSTAND THAT YOUTH INTAKES NEED TO HAVE PLAYERS WITH NEGATIVE PERSONALITIES AND WE CAN'T HAVE A WORLD OF PLAYERS THAT ALL REACH THEIR POTENTIAL

I do however think there are too many 'Unambitious' players and, on a broader scale, too many negative personalities even with a HoYD with a positive personality, but that's another conversation. For the sake of this experiment, we'll focus on the Unambitious.

Lets first familiarise ourselves with the list of negative personalities listed in FM, just for clarity:

• Slack
• Low Self-Belief
• Unambitious
• Casual
• Spineless
• Low Determination
• Easily Discouraged
• Temperamental

I'm going to need some input from you guys on how we can make this a fair test? Or at least fair enough to the point that we can make statement on it!

We'll need to pick a country to do the experiment in. With each country having a 'Youth Rating' of between 0-20 would it make sense to choose a nation from 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20?

From within that country do we choose a random team? One with the best facilities? Or multiple teams?

From within the team, I am thinking of using a HoYD with a Positive personality (Professional), Neutral personality (Balanced) and a negative personality (Unambitious).

We'll then have to do the experiment multiple times. Is 5 enough? I personally think 10 times but I'm open to suggestions.

Are there any other ways we could do this? I'll do all the leg work, unless anyone else wants to get involved, but I want us to work together on how we'll do it.

[ttgb]

What you looking for?

How many with negative personalities v positive?

Will you use some sort of tool to show how those with negative progress?

[Dirk Nowitzki]

I agree that there seems to be a large amount of unambitious players, more than previous versions I think. Not really sure how you would test this properly though, since you would struggle with sample sizes. If you do this a few times with a few teams over a few years, you'd still struggle with the fact that you get a few hundred players with many possible personalities (about 20 I guess?), so it'll be hard to find anything significant.

You could perhaps just take some saves that got to the point where there are only regens, and filter for personality in the scouting tab, to see if there are unusual amounts of unambitious players. This may give a scewed result though, since they are probably more likely to "leave" the game early due to the fact that they don't improve much...

On a side note: youth rating of a country is 0-200 I believe, at least in the editor.

[Nick]

Jul 1, 2020 15:31:15 GMT ttgb said:

What you looking for?

How many with negative personalities v positive?

Will you use some sort of tool to show how those with negative progress?

I have a few issues with you intakes. I think:

1. There are too many negative personalities coming through your intake regardless of HoYD personality.
2. Of those negative personalities, too many are unambitious when there are seven other personalities which are considered negative.
3. The personality of your HoYD doesn't improve the 'average' of your intake personalities, just makes it more likely you get through someone with the same (particularly when they're Model Pro/Model Citizen etc.

I open to using any tool if needed, but I don't need to see how they progress, just the numbers of them. Other people have already proven that higher professionalism = higher development.

[ttgb]

I am happy to let me pc run a save to see what the intakes are. If you can create the save I will run it.

[hokster]

I agree that I think there are too many unambitious personalities relative to the other negative personalities. However, I don't think 5-10 tests is enough, particularly given the other relevant factors. It's just such a small sample size to be confident about anything in particular.

I will say that I don't seem to get as many Unambitious personalities in France (with Le Havre) as I did in Argentina (with Newell's, where they were endemic), and I got fewer for the couple of intakes I saw in Spain (with Athletic Bilbao) and the Netherlands (with Ajax). These are all clubs with great-to-elite youth setups (and I assume fairly high Youth Ratings and Game Importances), and it seemed like there was a lot of variability based on the nation/league. This may be a small sample size effect, but I wonder if there's still some type of underlying national preferences relating to personality (I think that used to be in the game, but SI claimed they got rid of it?).

To keep things controlled, it might be best to do a larger number of simulations with one year across a number of different clubs/nations. But even 20 simulations is pretty small given the complexity of the system...

[Dirk Nowitzki]

Did a quick test where I did my youth intake at Tromso 10 times. The training facilities are average and we have good youth facilities, although both of these are being upgraded (don't think that affects the current youth intake though). We have excellent youth coaching and exceptional youth recruitment, and my HOYD has a professional personality.

Out of the 160 players that came through these 10 intakes, 46 had an unambitious personality, a baffling percentage of 28.75%. In one of them we even had as many as 8 unambitious players, half of the intake!

[jawzy]

One russian intake at Torpedo Moscow

[hokster]

Jul 1, 2020 16:41:45 GMT Nick said:

I have a few issues with you intakes. I think:

1. There are too many negative personalities coming through your intake regardless of HoYD personality.
2. Of those negative personalities, too many are unambitious when there are seven other personalities which are considered negative.
3. The personality of your HoYD doesn't improve the 'average' of your intake personalities, just makes it more likely you get through someone with the same (particularly when they're Model Pro/Model Citizen etc.

I open to using any tool if needed, but I don't need to see how they progress, just the numbers of them. Other people have already proven that higher professionalism = higher development.

I suppose that I can understand 1: most youth players don't make it, after all, even many of those who seem like they have all the talent and potential in the world. 2 seems broken; there's no reason for this to just be due to a lack of ambition, as opposed to all of the other ways anyone can lack the ability to maximize their potential at anything. And the SI staff (at least at the forum) seem pretty open about 3, that your HoYD affects a few "freak" regens each intake, whether with personality, player template, or whatever else.

What they do claim is that your HoYD, as well as your facilities, coaching, and recruitment, affect the PA/CA of your regens across the board. 

[fmamerican]

5'2"....5'3"?!?!?!

[jawzy]

Jul 3, 2020 19:52:54 GMT fmamerican said:

5'2"....5'3"?!?!?!

indeed, quite small players by fm standards

[jawzy]

Another Torpedo intake

[dalenichol]

Taken a wee bit after intake, but you get the gist. 

 

[Nick]

[jawzy]

third Russian intake

We dont seem to be plagued with lots of unambitious players

[fmamerican]

Casual and Fickle isn't much better!