Orange Crush

I've been avoiding this for a while because I reckon anyone who actually reads my blog will already know all of this, but seen as the orange arrows of doom debate rages onwards I thought I may as well.

Short Version

Does your player have orange arrows ? Ignore them, there is no problem here.

Long Version
(yeah i'm copying and pasting some bits of this from what i've wrote before)

Lets talk about player development first and how it works.

Potential Ability (PA) – Every player in the database has PA between 1-200 and a Current Ability (CA) between 1 and their PA level. PA does not change and if a player’s CA hits their PA then they will have become as good as they possibly can. As an example, Cristiano Ronaldo will have a PA around 195 and his CA will be around 190 as he is a world class player at his peak. On the other hand a player like Toni Kroos may have a PA of 170-190 but a CA of 145 because he has not hit his peak yet.

As attributes increase so does a player's CA, once all the PA points are used up then a player will have peaked and no more progression is possible.

Once a player has reached neared CA, this is when you usually start to see orange arrows. Players on FML are actually on training schedules behind the scenes. I don't know how these are set up but I suspect they are set to be conservative and generic and don't shape players as well as you can on the FM series.

So even when a player has reached his potential ability, he will continue to 'develop', so a striker is probably still training something like passing in the background and one day he's learnt to pass a bit better so passing increases. But he doesn't have any ability points left to learn this new passing ability, so something else goes down a little bit to free up the points.

This is known as attribute bounce. Now, I can understand why people might be a little bit confused why a striker is losing something such as composure to get better at dribbling. But the attribute change is tiny ! It's NOT going to change how that player performs on the pitch to any noticeable extent. If you have a striker with 16 finishing and it's gone down by 0.04, he has lost 0.25% of his finishing ability. Think about that, how is that going to change his performance ? erm, it's not ! Things such as morale, home advantage, tactics and about a dozen other things influence how these attributes interact with the ME to a much larger extent.

Orange arrows are one of the most useful tools you have as a manager. Once you see them starting to appear you know your player isn't going to get much better so you can make a decision on whether you want to keep him, knowing he wont get much better, or whether you want to move him on and bring someone better in. It looks like we are actually going to lose this knowledge due to people moaning about arrows now.

Before we had orange arrows and just red arrows, it used to work like this:

Attributes are displayed in the 1-20 range on the screen they are actually stored in the 1-10,000 range behind the scenes to give extra accuracy during progression. Because they are rounded down to be displayed a small change behind the scenes can manifest itself as a fairly big change on the screen. For example a player with 19 for finishing on the screen may have 9,050 behind the scenes. If they then drop to 8,950 during processing this is only a drop of 1 or 2% however on the screen it is the difference between 18 and 19 and so a red arrow is displayed and it looks like a drop of 5%. Rest assured though that for all processing the 'real' figure is used.

The skills have a 5% bonus per level, so Coaching 5 will boost positive changes by 25% - what this means is that if, behind the scenes in the 1-10,000 range, a player's finishing increases by 400 points it will actually increase by 500 points (the 400 plus the 25% boost.) If the player doesn't improve though the skill won't make him improve.

So when orange arrows were introduced we started to see these micro changes instead.

The other thing people are usually whining about is how strikers are losing something like finishing to gain tackling. This is not what is happening. He is losing finishing to bounce other attributes around maybe, but not to gain attributes like tackling.

The most important thing to understand is attributes are weighted so an important attribute costs more CA points than an unimportant one and some don’t cost anything at all!

Put simply physical attributes are generally the most costly. Pace and acceleration are the biggest cost for most players. Every wondered why so many medium potential youth players with high pace and acceleration are rubbish or not developing? The answer is because they have used up all their potential by having high pace because it is such a costly attribute to possess. So if you see a low potential player who has very high physical attributes then his career is over – that’s it folks, he has nothing left in him, he will not get much better. Most physical attributes are very costly because they are important to just about every position on the pitch.

The next thing to realise is that attributes are weighted depending on a player’s position. So it will cost a lot of CA points for a striker to increase his finishing, it might not cost as much for a winger to gain finishing and for a defender ? It’s free!

If a player gains an attribute which is not linked to his position then it doesn’t cost anything, no CA points, nothing!

I can’t confirm the accurate of this page but I reckon it’s about right:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/fmr2008/freeattributes.html

So what about high potential youths with orange arrows ? I'd need to see the players really, but there could be numerous reasons. The most likely is your JP is wrong or you are over estimating it. A 4* player might not actually have that high a PA, i'm not sure what the ranges are in all honesty but i'd guess what you see as a 4* could easily weigh in at about 130CA. Now if he has high physical attributes, he's used a crap load of PA points just by having those - pace, acceleration, jumping etc... So, he can't get any better!!

There's very very few super world class players in the database that have enough PA to sustain mega attributes all round. I think there are only 10 players in the FM10 database who are -10s. (170-200) CA. Think about this, we know the integrity of the database is maintained, so it will only ever generate enough high potential players to remain in line with what it started with, and then you have to wait for those to retire.

There's other factors too like, if you come across a youth player who is competent in several different positions you need to be wary again. It actually uses up CA points just to be able to play in all those positions!

If these points have been used up by being able to play many positions, it may mean less green arrows. There is a second huge impact to this too because you are losing lots of free attribute potential. Crossing for a MC is free, Crossing for a ML/R is not free. So if you find a player who can play MC RLC and you intend to use him in MC, bear in mind he has to use CA points for ‘pay’ for his crossing ability which may mean less potential to develop something such as passing.

Do you really think all 5* players are superstars ? Dream on. They are probably players you would associate with mid table Premier League teams in the majority of cases.

Finally, why is this a problem now ? It has always happened ! Ever since FML has existed, this has happened. It is not new.