Undercover: Judging Potential Revisited

Editors Note: The following is subject to change, v1.4 is still in the early stages of beta testing, nothing is set in stone and beta testers have only recently been given permission to publicly discuss these changes. The changes detailed here are only a small part of what looks likely a major reworking of the way that the youth system works in FML that will extend far beyond the version 1.4.

Judging Potential; you either love it or loath it, and if you fall into the former category then you are a big pansy girl who should stick to playing Barbie Horse Adventures and leave this football management lark to the real men!

After what seems endless seasons watching the transfer market for youth team players spiral ever further out of control -- largely due to the propagation of the Judging Potential skill -- the powers that be have finally commenced a long overdue refactoring of the skill to coincide with the introduction of a formal Youth Academy system.

If you have a JP skill, then you would either need to have them in your squad, or add them to your assessment list, of which there is a limit to how many you can add before it starts taking longer to learn the potential of each player.

Either way their potential will then become apparent over time.

So to decide which free agents to bid on you would either go on their attributes as they are now and take a gamble, or use JP to assess them before bidding.

My hope is that this means more youths actually get signed-up because people take a gamble on more players without instant judging potential narrowing the focus on a smaller group of players and leading to their wages rising.

- Ov Collyer

In terms of bids happening before assessments are completed, I don't mind if this new JP becomes a more reactive system, ie people gamble more on a wider number of players and then chop and change as they assess players.

I think it will make for a more interesting youth market.

- Ov Collyer

As I've said earlier, I don't mind if JP becomes something used mainly after you've signed a player, or to assess players at other clubs who you might want to make a bid for, as opposed to something used in advance on free agents.

It's still a useful tool, but not something that can be used to monopolise the free agent market.

- Ov Collyer

That's right folks, everything the anti-JP-bandwagon has been saying for the past year has been fully taken on board by SI and there is genuine reason for optimism. Now contain your excitement and read on.

Here's summary of the current proposals as I understand them:

• All managers will recieve a skill points refund for the current Judging Potential skill, which they may reinvest in the new version of the skill or in any other skill they choose. A new skill will take it's place, which for the sake of clarity I will call "Assessment" rather than "Judging Potential" to make it clear from this point when I am referring to the old skill and the new skill.

  Yes there would be a refund and the chance to learn it again for fewer points.
  

  - Ov Collyer

• The "Assessment" skill will not grant a manager instant knowledge of the potential of every player on the planet under the age of 25 as the current Judging Potential skill does. Instead it will take a number of days, dependant on the level of your Assessment skill to reach an accuracy comparable to Judging Potential. Currently this ranges from 7 (level 5) to 28 days (level 1).
  
• In addition to your Shortlist each club now has an Assessment List. Adding players to your assessment list begins an assessment process for the player.
  • Whilst under assessment you will gain knowledge of the player's potential, as you continue to assess a player the accuracy of the potential you see for that player will increase up to the maximum accuracy possible for your current level of the Assessment skill.
  • To begin with each club can assess up to 10 players at once.
    
  • You may add more than ten players to your assessment list, however this will slow down the rate at which all assessments progress. Thus if you add 20 players to your assessment list you will complete assessment of all 20 players in the same time that you would have if you had first assessed 10 of them and then assessed the other 10 afterwards. There are advantages to both approaches; with the former, at the halfway stage you will have a rough assessment of all 20 players available, with the latter approach you would have a complete assessment of half the players, but no information at all about the other 10.
• Players in your squad (excluding out on-loan, including in on-loan ) will automatically be assessed without you having to do anything (if you have the Assessment skill obviously).
• At any time you'll be able to see the % of the assessment that is complete, if you stop assessing a player the progress you have made in the assessment is saved.
• You'll start getting a reading when the accuracy reaches 25%, but it'll fluctuate regularly until gradually settling down on a final value as you reach 100% completion on the assessment.
  
• The new Assessment skill is more accurate than Judging Potential:
  • Level 1 is accurate to +/-30 PA
    
  • Level 2 is accurate to +/-25 PA
  • Level 3 is accurate to +/-20 PA
  • Level 4 is accurate to +/-15 PA
  • Level 5 is accurate to +/-10 PA
• Remember, this is the just the beginning; there are many more changes coming to the game that affect the market for under-21 players. As and when the other elements become more defined I will bring you an update.
  

Regarding assessment duration:

I have a question I have JP4 at the moment and to assess a player it will take ten days to get a result of the old JP4.If i was to have JP5 would it still take 10 days to get an assessment of the old JP5 or would it be quicker.

JP5 will take 7 days to complete the assessment - as soon as you have JP5 it'll start increasing the % more quickly on any partially assessed players.

- Ov Collyer

Assessment lists:

If you go above 10 players on your assessment list (excluding any on the list who might be in your squad) then it'll start slowing down. E.g. 20 players would make it take twice as long, 30 players three-times as long etc.

Players loaned-out take twice as long to assess (for the loaning out team), but normal speed for the team who has loaned them in.

You'll get a news item when you reach 25% assessed with a ball-park potential 'reading', and a final one at 100%.

- Ov Collyer

Assessment/Judging Potential accuracy, of course we still don't know exactly how PA maps to the star ratings used in game, which makes this knowledge mostly useless:

Under the old system JP was accurate to within *+/- 10 of a player's PA for JP5, down to an accuracy of +/- 50 of a player's PA for JP1.

The new system is accurate to within +/- 10 at JP5, and +/- 30 at JP1, once fully assessed.

To get more technical, at the start of the assessment it generates two values:

- random final offset (in the range +/- 30) and this is what will be used for the 100% assessed figure
- random rough offset (in the range +/- 40)

At 0% assessed, you see (or you would if we didn't conceal it until 25% assessed) purely the rough offset.

As the assessment continues, it mixes the rough and final offsets according to how much of the assessment has completed until at 100% it's purely the final offset you can see.

All converted to stars of course.

*At least, this is what I thought it was, until I discovered at the start of writing the assessment stuff that it was actually +/- 8 at JP5 going to +/- 43 at JP1 due to, shall we say, a "discrepancy".

- Ov Collyer

Reminder: Everything discussed above is subject to change, v1.4 is still in the early stages of beta testing, nothing is set in stone and beta testers have only recently been given permission to publicly discuss these changes. The changes detailed here are only a small part of what looks likely a major reworking of the way that the youth system works in FML that will extend far beyond the version 1.4.