Actually Testing Scouting in Football Manager

I have wanted to do this for a very long time. I blocked off a day and absolutely went for it to try and figure out if region scouting still works, and what contributes to knowledge accumulation while scouting in FM. I wanted to bring you all along for the process of my tests because I like that stuff to be transparent, there are often so many factors in Football Manager that can affect something that tests are never 100% accurate. I was also so floored by the results of my first test so I just needed to share.

This will greatly impact how I look for my next wonderkid on Football Manager going forward. I am aware that it is not statistically significant, but the thick veil of secrecy that FM uses to cover these aspects of their game (that I usually like) does prevent us from isolating particular things and providing particular answers. It is all shades of gray and a giant collection of personal experience. Unless, of course, you have the time to sit down and create ideal scouting scenarios then make a video about it. I don’t know who could possibly do that.

Much Love,
FM Senpai

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[putiferio]

Maybe the problem is scouts are hardcoded to focus more on matches than anything else. It would be interesting to see the outcome of a regions scouting vs competitions scouting test

[paddypower]

This is indicative of SI's biggest problem since they started releasing public BETAs, they just don't seem to do in depth testing of their own. I'm a software engineer so I'm familiar with testing code, Zealand has actually done a pretty good job here of creating tests with his control groups. I can guarantee that is not happening with the testers in SI. If it was happening they would have implemented quality of life changes, such as being able to save your scouting assignments, so you only need to assign scouts not create from scratch each time.

Honestly it just screams of doing things on the cheap/being lazy. I've reported loads of bugs, and being a developer myself as mentioned, gave a very detailed steps to reproduce each time. Most of the time I'm lucky to be acknowledged, and if I am it's someone asking for an exact save file with all the work done for them. You don't need the file it's present in every save file, and you have a detailed steps to reproduce. Do your job!

They focus on rushing out garbage that doesn't impact/change how we play the game, just so they can have talking points for new "features". In doing so they are breaking existing functionality and not catching it in their testing. They should have a regression test suite that runs every time code get pushed passed a certain level. If they did they'd have known straight away what new code commit broke the region scouting. It's incredibly amateurish that they don't seem to have this, every system I have ever worked on has. It's standard practice.

[NoDirtyVids]

So quickest way to gain knowledge is signing a local scout.

[Burpingtogheter]

This tells us what needs to be added to next year's fm in terms of scouting:
-scouts need to be able to actually learn about the region they're in based on adaptability and ability in the region's main language
-we need to be able to make staff learn different languages

[kieronparr]

This is why my knowledge has gone up 4% after 3 years and adding 6 scouts

[jb]

Saw this on the SI forum.
It depends of few factors.

1. If you have load the nation, league and what's your setting in "Detail Level".
2. If you scout Brazil, I am strongly advice to hire Brazilian Scouter.
3. Recruitment Package affects the total players being showing in your scouting center.
4. 4 Matches is enough time to unveil all attributes and have the "prons - cons".
5. A scouter which has no knowledge of a nation, have to be set "Until Finished", not "Ongoing

[jasonthomas]

This is mindboggling.If i was sent to scout in Western Africa for 2 years, i would not only gain good knowledge of the region, i would have bloody learned some of the language also 😆😆

[jonssonftw]

That almost seems like a glitch. My guess would be that if a league isn't playable no significant match reports are accumulated which in turn means that no significant data can be taken from games by the scouts.

[thegrumpyraccoon]

Back to checking the U19 and U21 teams in non-league nations. Feels like old times.

[frederikhutters]

Thank you! This explains, at least some, of my scouting problems this year 👍

[alexandrenaud]

In my save I had this problem with not gaining much knowledge over the years, but when I deciced to stop scouting regions and focus on each country individually, knowledge of those countries went up to 100% in a few months, once My scout had enough knowledge of multiples countries in the same region I send him scouting the whole region

[Andrew-dkrl]

I’ve had issues with the scouting since it was changed. The entire focus is placed upon watching matches in playable tournaments.

[ABomb_Plays]

Something I picked up from Second Yellow Card:
When I set up my databases, I always use the custom setup to add players from every continent. Players with national reputation and players from the top division clubs. Otherwise you'll only get to see players from the leagues you've turned on. As the base game only has South Africa playable in the continent I don't think you're going to get many players from Africa. The custom setup allows you to load players from countries like Ivory Coast without loading the leagues.
This may have been the reason you found so few players in Africa. Because you used the default large database on the first test, your game didn't have any players from West Africa unless they played in Europe or another league that was turned on.

[Skacemzokna]

a theory - I have seen one of my scouts obtain around 20% scouting knowledge of a country but over time it deteriorated down to 0% because he was not active in that country. Once a scout managed to accumulate 100% I never seen it deteriorate. Using regional scouting makes the scout to switch between countries/competitions fairly often. Might this be the reason why they are struggling to accumulate the knowledge on regional scouting assignments?

[zombo]

I'm so happy you made this. Because I was sure my scouts in fm21 have been on the assignment for 8(ish) years. And pretty much none of them got any scouting knowledge. Now I understand why.

[winsingtoniii]

I'm glad you made this, I've been feeling like something is off with region and nation scouting for a while. You just get so few players resulting from these assignments it seems like, and sometimes the players you get aren't even playing in the region you've assigned them to scout. I'm guessing this is maybe because they also scout the national and youth national teams of those regions when you assign a region assignment. So you will get recommended players who have the nationality of a nation within that region but who play for a club based in a totally different region. Personally, I've had much more luck just manually telling my scouts to get scout reports on players called up for youth national teams when searching for young prospects. Seems to be a much more reliable way to find good players since the region and nation scouting approaches just result in so few scout reports these days.

[seongthongchuah]

Nation scouting is good imo because sometimes you just know which nations you specifically want in a certain region so you don't have to waste time scouting places like San Marino (sorry if anyone of you are from San Marino). Just choose those nations that you know are good.

[chesssse]

I have long concluded with myself that the best way to gain scouting knowledge is get myself to the point of being able to choose affiliate, and just pick the country in the region I wanted to scout as the big club

[Samuel-qrzc]

Thanks for doing this video Zealand, I did some region scouting in my save and noticed I wasn't getting any reports, switched back to general scouting and voila we were finding players again.

[johannesborchgrevink]

What this has taught me is that the FM creators need to revamp and improve scouting in FM 23!