What to do with 21 year olds

[Nietherlands]

I really appreciate the mods taking the time to hear everyone’s thoughts on this topic. As someone who’s only been playing for the last two seasons, here’s my perspective:

Point 1. Player Timeline - what is the player timeline now as people see it?

I am fairly new and 3/4 of my teams are in Div 4, so I do not have a set player timeline right now. I tend to pick younger players as they are lower wage, are usable for my division, and can be sold for profit in the future. This may change in the future though at higher divisions where I will likely have to invest on older better players and will lose the charm of player loyalty.
For my NAT team I echo the sentiments of others where it is quite uniform where we end up picking players in the range of 28-31 more often than not that have followed a set training timeline.

Point 2. 21-24yo - What to do with them while we wait until they are 'better'?

I quite like the idea of having U25 competition or having player peak at different ages. I do not think implementing both is a good idea though as it will skew the game heavily in favour of players that peak early. If we plan to have the U25 competition I would not want YT20 to be scrapped as it is probably the easiest format comparatively for a newbie to climb up and get them glued to the game.

Alternatively, players peaking at different age is a solid idea and that will mean a good team can have a spread of young and old which makes it more realistic. Implementation-wise, I suggest showing each player’s potential peak range on their profile. For example:
“Youth peak: 17–19 years | Senior peak: 25–27 years.”
The actual peak age within the range would remain unknown to managers, creating some strategic uncertainty. Early peakers would train faster but decline sooner, while late peakers would train slower and last longer.

To keep youth balance fair, all players should graduate from the academy with roughly the same total skills. Some would reach milestones faster, others slower, but they’d end up around the same level by age 21. So, it would be the same way to reach 100 skills points at the age of 21 but some will reach 80 skill points at 17 years and then slow down to reach 100 at 21 years and others may reach 80 points at 19.8 years ending with 100 at 21 years. This change could begin with new youth recruits, while existing players could retain a standard youth peak at 21 and senior peak at 30. It would also make sense to remove physical training peaks around 25 and the “prodigy” talent under this system.

Another potential suggestion is younger players (16-18 and 21-25) are giving home ground advantage while playing at home if they are home grown players. This can offset skill difference with older players, and encourage managers to hang on to their players. The logic here being, the player has grown up playing in the conditions and is familiar with the surrounding. As they become more skilled and older/wiser they become good across conditions and lose the home ground benefit. Again, I wouldn't implement this together with the player peaks at different ages.

Point 3. Clone Builds - How do we not train the players the 'same' so there is more variety?

There are some great suggestions floating around for new skills and talents, but I think refining what we already have might be a better starting point. I would divide my ideas into short-term and long-term improvements:

Short term: Apart from players having inherent talents, there should be allowance to get them to train in passive and triggered talents. For example you may chose to train in Batting or get them to become a spin specialist or an accumulator. Obviously the time spent on training for the passive or triggered talent would be time lost in specialist training with the difficult part being maintaining the balance for both pathways. This will add some training diversity but overall skill aspect should stay the same.

Long term: I would love to see more depth in the skill system. For example, splitting Technique into separate Batting and Bowling components, or further breaking down Batting into performance vs. spin and vs. seam. A player with 8/20 vs. seam and 16/20 vs. spin could have an overall Batting rating of 12/20. Similar logic could apply to Bowling (new ball/old ball) and Fielding (catching/outfield).

Triggered talents could be expanded into a skill tree system (like Crusader Kings). For example, a spinner could choose the “Mystery Spinner” path (unlocking flipper and wrongun) or the “Accuracy” path (unlocking slower ball and arm ball). Again, choosing to train in this would limit how much they can train in specialist skills.

I didn't expect to write this much, but here we are. I am still new so completely understand if some of these have already been discussed and aren't doable. But having this discussion is a good start.

[GM-crowfan65]

Just moving this to suggestions as people drop in with their thoughts before we move it deeper

[Mike778]

Some more thoughts

I am leaning towards ingame talents being trained rather than from birth. This gives genuine training decisions, do you priority specialism over general skills training. You could allow multiple ingame talents to be trained eg a pacer could develop both swing and a bouncer (so 2 chances for one to be activated).

The tricky thing (from design) would be balancing the training cost. You dont want a meta training model that everyone follows.

So talents could be

1. Everyone gets one net zero personality trait (eg prefers home, consistent, inconsistent, early developer, late developer).

2. Everyone gets one training preference to try and encourage different training tendencies.

3. Ingame talents are trained.

Obviously the other problem is integrating existing players and aware many peoplr wouod rather prefer the status quo and development time may mean its unrealistic.

[vietd]

Some really interesting discussions here!

I'm interested in what people think the end goal should look like. Figuring out what the player timeline should look like will help inform the other points.

What do we want the timeline to be like?

Do we want the variety of RL cricket where players peak/perform well at different ages? Currently, they all peak and degrade conistently.
Do we want to see some 21-24 yos able to compete against the older players?

[eagles123]

One change I would like to see is in regards to experience. At the moment (as far as I'm aware) players only gain experience through playing matches. I.e. if a 16 year old was drafted with atrocious experience and never played a game, they would still have atrocious experience at age 30. Whilst game time SHOULD be the main factor behind experience growth, I also think people naturally mature and gain "life experience" as they age. The average 21 year old is more mature than the average 16 year old. The average 26 year old is more mature than the average 21 year old. etc etc. Therefore I think players should naturally increase experience as they age, even without playing. Maybe 1/4 of a skill level per season just passive experience growth.

[GA-James018]

I've always been a little bit uncertain about the idea of training talents because as it is, talents are completely on and off: a player either has a talent or they don't. So I'm never too sure what people actually mean by training them.

1. Would a player start with a mini-version of the talent and does training it make it more effective? E.g. trigger talents occurring more often, skilled talents contributing a higher percentage? How would this be measured/displayed?
2. Would talent training be a part of the existing training system or separate?
3. Would you be only able to train a talent a player already has, or would you be able to choose a new one? If the latter, would the player keep their existing talent(s) or would the new one replace an old one?

[GA-James018]

Always found it odd that power for youths is trained at a slower rate.

When young players are allowed and supposed to be in the gym the rate at which their power increases does so at a faster rate than that of a 25 year old. Even without the gym and specific training young athletes develop their power really quickly from the age of 13 and above.

My feeling is that:

1. Ash was probably not an expert in athletes' physical development when he wrote the game, and/or sports science was not as well developed 20 years ago.
2. It was an attempt to encourage player diversity since it would mean younger players are stronger in skill and technique but lacking in power and endurance, while older players would start to tend towards the reverse. (As we can see today, it didn't turn out that way, but I suspect that was the hope.)

I don't mind the idea of making power follow the same fastest-at-16-then-slows-down pattern as other skills, but not sure that will solve anything on its own.

[CoachKnapovic]

My feeling is that:

1. Ash was probably not an expert in athletes' physical development when he wrote the game, and/or sports science was not as well developed 20 years ago.
2. It was an attempt to encourage player diversity since it would mean younger players are stronger in skill and technique but lacking in power and endurance, while older players would start to tend towards the reverse. (As we can see today, it didn't turn out that way, but I suspect that was the hope.)

I don't mind the idea of making power follow the same fastest-at-16-then-slows-down pattern as other skills, but not sure that will solve anything on its own.

I was studying Sports Science when I first joined FTP so I would assume Ash wanted more player diversity/variety but also, I think it made sense having players peak in power training in roughly the middle of their FTP career.

Males generally reach physical maturity around 18 but some may hit it earlier or a bit later depending on variables like testosterone. Naturally as that falls off as we get older so does the ability to maintain or produce more power/muscular strength.

I'm not quite sure how we could implement that from 16 onwards in FTP. Perhaps it would train fastest between the age of 16 to 21 and then slowly tapers off with power being made to be the one skill that the older players lose the fastest. Perhaps it could peak at 18 and 19.

[Mike778]

I've always been a little bit uncertain about the idea of training talents because as it is, talents are completely on and off: a player either has a talent or they don't. So I'm never too sure what people actually mean by training them.

1. Would a player start with a mini-version of the talent and does training it make it more effective? E.g. trigger talents occurring more often, skilled talents contributing a higher percentage? How would this be measured/displayed?
2. Would talent training be a part of the existing training system or separate?
3. Would you be only able to train a talent a player already has, or would you be able to choose a new one? If the latter, would the player keep their existing talent(s) or would the new one replace an old one?

I was thinking you literally train the talent from scratch. This would make sense realism wise as spinners learn to bowl a flipper and batsmen may gain the ability to bat at the death.

Really its about the game though and forcing you to make training decisions. Do you want to develop a flipper at the expense of 'normal skills'.

The current training plan for pretty much every player is train fielding, train primaries and technique so they balance with some fielding, then at 24 to 25 physicals. You could write a bot to do all your training for all your players. I've played a lot of these types of games and unfortunately the FTP has the weakest training/development models. There are very few meaningful training decisions you have to make, there are some tweaks but ultimately most players follow a similar path and end up pretty much the same.

Ultimately with these games, once a model is in place, its quite hard to make major changes without breaking everything and probably annoying a lot of existing users who may like it as it is. Without knowing or understanding the code, its impossible to say what is feasible (my coding doesn't go much beyond SQL and a bit of VBA). It also comes down to whether there is any appetite for change.

[GM-crowfan65]

As the owner I definitely am looking to make a change or changes as it may be.
I am using this to get some ideas together with some that I have.
It is something that will happen.

[Turbz]

what to do with the 21yos?
mostly just retire, or ought to retire. or sell at 18-19.
number of 21yos in the game? compared to 20yos? ages 18-23, normally I check but cannot.

the problem with 21-25yos are they are expensive to train, don't play many matches and lack the experience, and are not useful for teams with strong youth or senior squads.
expensive - over $1 million paid in wages 21-25, could introduce a retirement bonus based on the number of seasons at the club (+one club bonus), or a % based on the total wages saved in discounts. a recruit to age 30 can save over 250k in wages, if bought at 16 save about 125k and at 21 save about 60k. see more players over 30 retire rather than transfer listed, and incentive to keep the player to retirement.
not many matches - U25 competition, U25 Cup would not work with how the youth leagues deal with players ageing, eligible for entire tournament
lack experience - could reduce the experience of older players, cap club experience at world class with only internationals to reach legendary

different player types, first the ME would need several changes to make unique trained players to be consistently useful, though most things are largely random/irrelevant anyway. as mentioned, reduce or remove the penalty for technique and power gaps, skills more align with the game rather than summaries. introduce a runs distribution based on skills, differentiate hard runners and power hitters (far too many 3s, and dreadful power hitting spinners for 6). not have this sweetspot model, more training moves away from sweetspot.
have experience as conditional - experienced players more useful later in the match when close, lesser experienced players drop off. run outs are still a major problem, random selection, wrong player on strike.

Ash had previously floated ideas about potential skills and endurance training. capping skills on potential would give another issue in not keeping the player for long term. changes in endurance was to have younger players start with higher endurance and older players would need to train endurance to keep at the current level, which could lower the age where the player has peaked as more endurance training is required, and lengthen the peak period of a player.

[boscorp]

It doesn't surprise me that so many players are similar when all the advice given is to build identical players of an international standard rather than developing a player to suit the managers club. I've never seen any variation in advice.
Take a batting line up of 5 batsmen for example. Suggestions are normally Fielding has to be level x minimum on every player in the side, Technique must match bating level (used to be within 2 levels) to be effective and then talents help determine the order. You end up with 5 identical players. I never see any suggestions for training a batsmen for any role other than their talent. Such as top order bats perform better when they have a good amount of tech and endurance to keep them in the game. Middle order bats requiring more batting and strength than technique for building up an innings.