Research - How Deep Do Regens Go?

I never used to pay any attentions to regens, but in recent careers I've become more and more fascinated by how they work.

A turning point was when I recently noticed that I was getting regens in my youth academy players. John Terry, Ashley Cole, Joe Cole, Andy Carroll and Gareth Barry all were reborn into my Newcastle youth team. And they were only the ones I noticed...

I started wondering: What if all my youth players are regens of someone? And further: Is it possible that all new players in the game are actually regens, even those players in the lower leagues?

Anyway, I set out with a very brief, not too scientific, test to see whether lesser retired players came back as regens. I fired up FMM 2018 in the Nox emulator on my PC (no way am I risking overwriting my 1KC with this test) and scouted out 3 players who were in their mid 30s and didn't have a club, so were likely to retire quickly. Then I holidayed through a year.

2 of the 3 players retired within the first month. The other got picked up by a club and didn't retire at all. Of the 2 that retired, both came back as regens. Neither were true lower lower league players (I couldn't find any suitable candidates quickly), but they weren't weren't exactly top drawer either. Without further ado, I give you:

Darius Henderson, who played for Watford and Sheffield United. He spent one season in the Premier League, the rest of his career was in the Championship and League 1. 

Although he was mostly a lower league player in real life, he's come back via Man City's youth team. I can't check it, but I believe that the true PA will be the same in both players, so I expect he wouldn't make it at Man City if I kept going. 

Next, we have Carl Baker, who never made it to the Premier League. He played in the Championship, League One and League Two for teams such as Coventry and MK Dons.

He came back through the Southampton youth team, but was cut at the start of the season. 

Both players were re-spawned some time in the first season, although I didn't start looking for them until the new season. Well I did check after the first month (when I noticed that they'd retired), but they hadn't appeared yet, so I went through to the end of the year. I have noticed some almost instant re-spawns in my 1KC though. And of course Ashley Cole seemed to retire a couple of seasons before he re-appeared in my youth team.

I also find it interesting that although many attributes vary somewhat, the Leadership and Aggression ones always seem to be the same. Stamina and Strength are the same as well in the screenshots, but I think that's just coincidence, as those values will change more based on age and development etc.

So there you go. I think that most, if not all, new players in the game are actually regens of someone else. It probably would be a good idea to test with some lower league players, but I think it will be the same.

I could see how that would make sense to the game developers, as it would help keep the balance of the game. If new player generation were truly random, then things could get weird very quickly. By basing most new players in a country on the retired players from that country, it keeps roughly the same level of talent, the same number of players in each position, etc. I say roughly, because it's not always exactly the same. I've seen Kaka's regen's regen turn Argentinian, Ibrahimovic come back as an AML, ST instead of an ST, etc.

 Maybe some of you out there are going "uh, duh...", but I'd never considered how this worked and I found it interesting, so I figured I'd share in case it interests any of you.  

Edited August 13, 2018 by scratch99
Original said I'd seen Messi turn Argentinian ?. I meant Kaka's regen's regen

[Peely]

Yup, all retiring players come back as regens (or Evogens as I think SI tend to call them these days) and all new players that pop up are regens of old players. I did a big study of this back in 2014, when they first brought in the Evogen system, since it mixed stuff up a bit and meant that the regens were not necessarily quite the same as the player that they spawned from, but my limited experience of 2018 suggests that they've developed this a bit further since then (not in a particularly good way, as far as I can tell).

This is my original study, should you be interested:

 

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Peely said:

Yup, all retiring players come back as regens (or Evogens as I think SI tend to call them these days) and all new players that pop up are regens of old players. I did a big study of this back in 2014, when they first brought in the Evogen system, since it mixed stuff up a bit and meant that the regens were not necessarily quite the same as the player that they spawned from, but my limited experience of 2018 suggests that they've developed this a bit further since then (not in a particularly good way, as far as I can tell).

Oh, wow, just spent 30 minutes reading that. Puts this article to shame! Such great research mate, absolute kudos to you.

Wish I'd seen it before. Almost all of it rings absolutely true with my experience in 2018, except for maybe the position changes - it feels like they happen less often for me than in your tests. But everything I've noticed or suspected is covered in there. 

The biggest thing that I had no clue about was how the Gigg's syndrome worked. I've heard that explained before as 'evogens' - with normal respawns still being called regens (although now I know they are all evogens) - but not the specifics of how it worked.

I guess you can never know whether a regen is going to be the real deal or some sort of cardboard cutout version. Adds some spice to using them I guess! I tend to just use them as a starting point and see how they pan out anyway, so if they had a low PA I'd probably work that out from their performances and turf them.

Actually, I wouldn't mind having a hard mode, where regens were more disguised somehow (maybe with the PA swapped around for all players) and also the 'wage budget rollover' feature prevented. I sorta love both those features, but the game would be much harder and realistic without them. Wouldn't want them to disappear entirely though, just an option to turn them off. 

Anyway, thanks so much for your comment and also for that research! 💯

[Peely]

Glad you found it useful

It would be interesting to do something similar to look at the current regen/evogen system, since there are definitely a few differences these days. Technique seems to be far more variable and I'm already noticing a lot of terrible players with very high technique. Stamina seems to be even more likely to be rubbish for regens than before - it seems very rare to find a good regen without cripplingly low stamina.

[Scratch]

8 hours ago, Peely said:

Glad you found it useful

It would be interesting to do something similar to look at the current regen/evogen system, since there are definitely a few differences these days. Technique seems to be far more variable and I'm already noticing a lot of terrible players with very high technique. Stamina seems to be even more likely to be rubbish for regens than before - it seems very rare to find a good regen without cripplingly low stamina.

More than useful mate!

Yeah a refresh would be great. I have noticed some regens come back with low stamina, but also some with high stamina and some in between. Maybe it's just random now? I'd also be interested in noting whether their positional tendencies change ('plays thorough balls, dictates tempo, etc). I guess there's no save game editor these days, so hidden attributes would remain unknown, but maybe the staff report would highlight some of them (thrives in big matches, etc). 

Hmm... I'm tempted to dig into all of this, as I'm really interested in how it works. But I have a 1KC to keep going. I might come back to it (but also would be thrilled if you dug into it!  ).

[Fish18ish]

You've just binned my immersion 🤣

[FuddledFox]

Interesting stuff @scratch99 and not something I normally think about.

14 minutes ago, Fish18ish said:

You've just binned my immersion 🤣

Its not just me that try's to see them as new players then!

[Scratch]

@Fish18ish @Foxy Sorry lads, should have put this at the top:

I used to be the same and just took new players on face value, even when I knew some of them were likely to be regens. Same went for the rest of the game. I think I took the wrong pill though, as more and more I'm trying to work out how the game works... This probably won't end well...

[FuddledFox]

@Marc Vaughan commented on the Facebook post sharing this article and I'm sure it will be of interest to many of us.

[Meow]

I thought this was common knowledge? Every new player is a regen. Every last one of them.

I wouldn't suggest paying too much attention to it in saves, especially not in saves that you want to enjoy. It's inevitable when it comes to prominent regens, but your game will seriously be boring if you sit around looking out for the best retiring players of every position.

The best fun in the game comes out of random players you didn't expect were going to make it, regen or not. It's always better when a player you bought only to try plunge a recently relegated team to the 3rd tier makes it, compared to that player you got for 1.4m from Norwich knowing he is totally Gareth Barry's regen

[Meow]

33 minutes ago, Foxy said:

@Marc Vaughan commented on the Facebook post sharing this article and I'm sure it will be of interest to many of us.

I've definitely noticed it happen before in my save. Will Buckley in Sunderlnd suddenly becoming gold, his stats go up and I nabbed him cheap.

[Rob]

1 hour ago, Foxy said:

@Marc Vaughan commented on the Facebook post sharing this article and I'm sure it will be of interest to many of us.

Interesting. I think it’s a good system as long as they build in that variation.

I do think it sometimes ruins a game. I’ve said before, if my scout finds a young Polish or Swedish centre forward with a lot of potential then I know that they are likely Zlatan or Lewandowski. 

[FuddledFox]

11 minutes ago, Rob2017 said:

young Polish or Swedish centre forward

It would be good if they changed the nationality so that it is a little less obvious who they were in a previous life.

[Rob]

1 hour ago, Foxy said:

It would be good if they changed the nationality so that it is a little less obvious who they were in a previous life.

Spot on! I’m sure I’ve read that it sometimes happens? Never seen it in my saves though.

[Scratch]

17 hours ago, Foxy said:

@Marc Vaughan commented on the Facebook post sharing this article and I'm sure it will be of interest to many of us.

Thanks mate, that's really interesting. But I'm going to be super paranoid about injuries to my 1KC players while they are youngsters from now on! 😱

I would say that from what I've seen, most of the time the regens are fairly similar to the originals. Some of the attributes change, but in the majority of cases you'll get a world class player in the same position. I'd actually like it if they made it more different, so I can't identify them at all (although... )

 

[Scratch]

17 hours ago, Meow said:

I thought this was common knowledge? Every new player is a regen. Every last one of them.

I wouldn't suggest paying too much attention to it in saves, especially not in saves that you want to enjoy. It's inevitable when it comes to prominent regens, but your game will seriously be boring if you sit around looking out for the best retiring players of every position.

The best fun in the game comes out of random players you didn't expect were going to make it, regen or not. It's always better when a player you bought only to try plunge a recently relegated team to the 3rd tier makes it, compared to that player you got for 1.4m from Norwich knowing he is totally Gareth Barry's regen

It makes total sense for them to all be regens from a game balance perspective, but I'd never considered it before so didn't know! Might be common knowledge to everyone but me. 🙂

I didn't use to pay much attention to it, but hard to ignore now I've seen behind the curtain. I think this will be an ongoing battle for me from now, but I think you're right it's best to ignore it as it takes the fun out of the game.

[Scratch]

@Foxy @Rob2017 Yeah, they do change the nationality sometimes. The in-depth article by @Peely (linked to in his message above) explains how that works. 

In the article above I said "I've seen Messi turn Argentinian", which y'all must have thought was a bit weird. I actually meant I've seen Kaka's regen's regen turn Argentinian. I'm not sure why, but I think it may have been related to me managing Argentina and the game needing more Argentinians. Or maybe it was just random. Who knows...

The more I think about it, the more I wish they change the players more. They may need to keep the nationality to keep the balance (although I guess they could move them around if it balanced out), but they could tweak the positions (ie AMLC becomes AMLC/ST) more and change the footed-ness etc and maybe some of the attributes that don't tend to change, to make it harder to identify them.

Although it's sort of cool to find a regen you recognise, it does make it harder to enjoy the game once you know about this...