A newbie's thoughts on player creation

[Haramcha]

A beginning has a reason

When I first decided to create my first player here on SSL just a few days ago, it was mostly out of a desire to just give the whole thing a shot, and to see how it all works: what was the community like? How does one earn points to improve their player? How about the teams; do managers communicate much with their players, and how much do they manage the tactical side of the game? Are they just there for show? How much time must one invest? And finally, how active is the whole thing?

...and a reason may change

I will refrain from going down the road of “and once I learned more, it all turned out to be just so wonderful”, because frankly, I have yet to find out much about how things work around these parts. Work beckons, and there’s also a girlfriend with whom I would like to spend time. Rather, what I would like to write about is how quickly I went from “let’s find out what this thing is” to “wow, this is just so nostalgic! It feels just like the things I saw the older kids doing back in the 00’s, except much further developed!”

And so, I went from having made a throwaway player with a silly name of Joe Mormor (people from my part of the world will know what I mean – don’t worry, it’s nothing bad) to finding myself increasingly invested in the whole idea and wanting a proper interesting player. That’s the matter I actually wish to discuss here: what constitutes an “interesting player”, and how may it differ from person to person?
 
Optimisation and entertainment

Back in the olden days, video games were often played fairly intuitively. Not intuitively as in “the game had an intuitive path that I followed”, but rather “this seemed cool, so I tried it out”. Guides were not so easily accessible, and people tended to just go with their gut feelings. For the most part, players had no idea what was good and what wasn’t. Those days are long gone, and many a gamer now opts for whatever constitutes the meta at the time. 
Many other aspects of life follow a similar pattern: if one person, company, or even country, does something in a particularly effective manner, everybody else must follow suit or risk being left behind, no matter how boring (or even destructive) it might be. This is very much also the case in both football and video games. Most of us are now aware that pace and acceleration are massively important in Football Manager (to be fair, isn’t that also the case in real life? It’s just that the difference between 20 and 10 pace in game is probably much larger than in real life, and much harder to deal with tactically), and if 5 players in a community game like SSL max out those attributes, as must the rest of us (or at least get close enough to not have our players get outmatched completely), or risk being left behind.

The user woog wrote a post the other day discussing the idea of lowering the max attributes, or making them much harder to acquire, especially at the higher end of things, and I am inclined to agree that this would make for more interesting gameplay, perhaps with certain attributes being pricier than others (physicals could be 3x that of technical/mental attributes, for example), but even that would not completely solve the problem, only widen the gap between the most active players and the rest (or between those who first solve the equation of most valuable attributes relative to their price on SSL). 

So what did I want for Joe Mormor?

This really got me thinking about just what I want to do here: create an ultimate player with the strongest set of attributes available? Replicate a world class player, being the new Messi/Ronaldo/whomever? Remake a classic player?
For me, the solution was something else: I would go with a regen I had managed in FM. In fact, my next player (assuming I ever get that far) will likely be so inspired by a former favourite regen that I will name him after said regen (if I can decide which one that is to be!). But now we return to the beginning of this now-lengthy freestyle essay: I have already gone with a throwaway name, and set the attributes in such a fashion that the player would definitely not be too weak, in a position that is quite popular (although there seemed to be a lack of AMLs on here for some reason, if I understood the website correctly). So recreating a regen and giving him a brighter career is not quite on the cards for now. Instead, I will opt for a mix of a few favourites, and try to spice it up with a bit of a tale for anybody on here who might possess the patience to work their way through my lengthy writings based on my fictional character’s life. And then that crazy two-footed inverted wing back I got in a youth intake in Latvia on FM24 will have to wait for some other time. 

And how about you?

We need not have a discussion about it here (although I would be delighted to hear about other player's experiences), but even if you choose not to post a response here, I hope that this post at least makes some of you out there reflect back on what motivated your player's profile, or to perhaps consider your next player's profile from a different perspective.

[roquefort]

Nice essay, I enjoyed reading. Welcome to the SSL!

[rrf_1]

This is a great read! It is definitely easy to feel pressure to fit the mold, especially if you are trying to stray from what's "cool". I feel inspired by this to continue trying to stick to my vision.

[Metafiction]

This is a really thoughtful and well-written piece!

I think my basis for making players in sim leagues is based on what I personally want to see in a player—usually something a little offbeat. When I made my first player, I was enamored with the idea of making an attacking fullback who could ping crosses into the box and get a ton of assists. I think that came through well, as Jude Greer recorded over 100 assists in his career. I initially planned for him to eventually transition up to winger, much like Gareth Bale, and become a full-time raumdeuter—a position I’ve admittedly never been able to get working in Football Manager—but that didn’t really happen until his final season. I do wonder what would’ve happened if he’d spent most of his career as a raumdeuter as I’d originally envisioned.

This time I wanted to make a player that could mostly serve as a goalscorer from midfield, because I like midfielders who can weigh in with exciting goals (and, preferably, a lot of them). So that’s what inspired Juliette. Fingers crossed she’s as much fun to watch as Jude was in his prime.

In any case, welcome to the league! We’re excited to have you.

[Rancidbudgie]

Great article, and one that easily prompts discussion! 

I think a lot of sim leagues, no matter the sport, are having discussions like this. I know over in the SHL, the only other sim league I've participated in beside the SSL, are having some serious growing pains in regard to player builds and having some semblance of parity. 

From an SHL perspective, physicals are once again the highlight for any build, and speed-related stats have become so paramount to success that players are simply left in the dust without them. Even "quirky" builds like defensive forwards or enforcers just don't work. Instead of being a goon and racking up penalty minutes and fights, you instead become a liability on the ice that actually doesn't get any more penalty minutes or fights than the next player. Defensive defenseman are either fast defenseman (who can keep up with the speedsters and then also score a silly amount of points on a good team) or you just end up as a bad defensemen, with any defensive attributes made useless without speed as your higher attribute. It's started to make the league really stale, and it looks like there are some users who have hyper-leaned into this meta, and are blowing the competition out of the water (this season in the junior league of the SHL, there is a player who absolutely shattered the goal scoring record, which was their own record from the year previously when they didn't even have a capped TPE juniors build). It is definitely something to focus on, because it really sucks the enjoyment out for players engaged in the role playing/stat generation side of things, at the expense of the more intense gamers/coaches. I feel like my SHL player will have their career fully defined by my GMs/coaches, no matter what I do with them. It's a disappointing feeling, since I've been in that community for almost 10 IRL years. 

Like others have commented here before me, I also like making a player that is a bit offbeat. Since I haven't played an SSL player since S0-S1 (been a little while!) I decided making a keeper would be "safer". There appear to be clear builds for keepers without being too "meta" or not, and I can get back into the league in a lower pressure way while figuring out the meta here, and then armed with that perspective later down the line for my next player, hoping to build something that isn't a liability but isn't something overdone/saturated in a meta.

[Haramcha]

Thank you very much for the warm welcome!

It's been really cool being here for the first week's time, seeing all the effort other players have put into their articles and forum posts, whether it be the deep dives, or the stories and developments of their own player characters, and it's been nice seeing the lively Discord, even if a lot of the activity occurs during the night for me.

[...]

After reading that, I had to go and look up Jude Greer, and what a career that seems to have been!
Raumdeuter’s a position I’ve tended to ignore in FM, mostly out of fear for a lack of defensive work (perhaps that’s me not fully grasping the role!). I mean, I did try it out a few times – and managed to get it to work once. Funnily enough, also for just about a season, before the player got a long-term injury and just never returned to his previous level.

I’m going to have to keep an eye out for Juliette’s goals this season; I see that she and rrf_1’s Ekon Ayo were among the standout prospects from last season’s academy, so here’s hoping you can both keep it up in the pro leagues.

[...]

Thank you for sharing! It’s really interesting to hear how this is playing out in a similar league operated in a different game. I now can’t help but wonder how much one can work around these issues through a combination of oriented player development and very specifically optimised tactics; is part of the reason why pace/acceleration are so overpowered in FM down to the tendency towards tactics that utilise these attributes to a larger degree than what might be necessary? For example, if you are using “pass into space”, have ticked “counter”, and are counter-pressing (or really just have a (moderately) high line and press), this could make speed more important than if you were to sit back when out of possession, and then play short passes, slowly progressing up the pitch. Similarly, perhaps a team with just a couple of speed demons could theoretically thrive, if one were to sit back and play on the counter. It just seems a lot harder to get this to work consistently in FM, and so most of us will experience pace/acceleration as absolute necessities.

I think we’re seeing something similar in real world football, at least in the Premier League, where the top teams have been moving towards big, strong, athletic (and fast) lads over the past several seasons. It feels as though a player must either be massive, lightning fast, or ideally both, to really make it at the highest level, because a smaller, more skilful player will likely just get shoved out of the way. On one of The Athletic’s podcasts, they were talking about how a return to man-marking has played a big part in teams now relying more on set-pieces, and I think it also would explain both why managers complain so much about the number of fixtures (their players run more than before, and we’re then back to one of the themes I mentioned in the original post: if one team does it, the rest must follow suit or be left behind), and why it has become more important to fill your team with world-class athletes.

So perhaps pace/acceleration being overpowered is the result of the tactics we’re seeing most utilised presently, and while that might eventually change in the real world (tactics seem to me to work somewhat in cycles), in an FM-context, it might just be a matter of how the game is coded – and the players now knowing a little bit too much about how the sausage is made.

And finally, I believe you're my new teammate at the academy for VFE. Can't wait to tear up the league with you!