Chat Retraining A Player's Position To Natural (Mystery Solved)

[Scratch]

Retraining players in other positions is a great way to make your squad more flexible. Your left back has yellow for the left wing position? Why not retrain him so he can play there as well? 

Before the 8.1 update in FMM 2017, the best you could ever retrain a player to in a secondary position was dark green/Accomplished. Still worth doing, but personally I'd only play them there in an emergency. 

The 8.1 update changed that, so that for the first time you could retrain a player and get that sweet sweet bright green and a Natural rating. I was super surprised when after the update, I saw Marc Vaughan say this on Twitter:

Hang on, they just changed the game so you could retrain a player to Natural and Marc is saying it's not possible? Did his team change it without his knowledge? Surely he had to know about the change... But if so, what did he mean exactly? 

That always puzzled me and now I think I've found the answer when retraining Ben Chilwell to play as a left winger. After a lot of hard work on Ben's part, my staff finally told me he was comfortable with the position:

 

And sure enough, when I double check (can't trust your staff too much these days), I see that sweet bright green for the left wing position and 'Natural' under Current Ability:

Great! But when checking out the team report in the app I'm working on, I noticed that Ben only has 19 in the left wing position (in spoilers as CA/PA, etc is shown):

Spoiler

None of the other players I've retrained as left wingers have 20 for that position either, even though they all show up as bright green/Natural: Havertz, Osborn, Ritchie (Pavon was already bright green there). Barlaser only has dark green, so we can assume that bright green/Natural represents 19 or 20 in that position.

And I guess that solves the mystery... The game was changed in 8.1, either:

• a) so that players could be retrained to 19 in a position instead of 18; OR
• b) so that 19 displayed as bright green instead of dark green.

Either way, even though you can now retrain a player to be 'Natural', they can never actually get to a 20 rating in that position. Presumably that was what Marc Vaughan was saying...

Does it matter? Surely a player will perform a little better in a position where they have a 20 rating rather than a 19, but there is no way to know exactly how much of an effect it will have. The developers of the game have decided that the difference isn't big enough that it should matter to us, so maybe it's not a big deal?

I guess at the end of the day, if the player is performing well in the role and you are happy with them, it doesn't really matter.

 

[AndersJ]

Great write :)! And in the end of the Day i personally like that more players can replace eachother if injured

[FuddledFox]

Interesting this.

I am always happy to play someone in a position that they only have dark green in so long as they have the attributes but obviously I will also train them in .that position to get them natural. I’m not sure I have ever noticed that much difference in a players performance in a certain role whether they were dark green or light green but then I usually look at the teams performance before individuals performance. If I’m not happy with the teams overall performance then I start to look deeper for reasons why.

[Ian]

Makes perfect sense that as to why it’s become easier to retain players to natural in new positions. I’m wondering if maybe there is something behind the scenes which makes it impossible for players to develop to 20 in new positions so as you say they altered the display of 19 to show that as natural.

I’ve often wondered if retraining players from accomplished to natural was actually worth it based on how easy it’s become but at least now I know they are increasing a bit even it’s just from say 18 to 19.

Do you have any idea what the accomplished range is? Like say 16-18.

[Scratch]

7 hours ago, AndersJ said:

Great write :)! And in the end of the Day i personally like that more players can replace eachother if injured

Thanks mate - yep, I always retrain players to get better backups and better coverage off the bench, although these days I try to stick to similar positions if I can. I'll retrain a wing back as a winger for example because they use the same attributes. Or BPD as a DLP. etc etc.

I still do occasionally retrain players in positions that use different attributes (eg WB to CB or CM to Winger) but only if I don't think it's gonna take away from the development of their primary position attributes.

I'm working on the principle that they only have so much development and if I waste it on attributes that aren't important in their primary position, they won't be as good. Of course the top players can have enough development to cover more than one position...

[Scratch]

5 hours ago, Foxy said:

Interesting this.

I am always happy to play someone in a position that they only have dark green in so long as they have the attributes but obviously I will also train them in .that position to get them natural. I’m not sure I have ever noticed that much difference in a players performance in a certain role whether they were dark green or light green but then I usually look at the teams performance before individuals performance. If I’m not happy with the teams overall performance then I start to look deeper for reasons why.

Thanks. Yeah, I think suitable attributes are very important and go a long way. I think the difference between 19 and 20 is probably marginal, and a player with suitable attributes could be really great in that position. BUT maybe he'd be even better in the position he is a 20... It'd be too hard to ever test that because there are so many variables, but it makes sense to me. 

Realistically speaking though, I expect it's not worth worrying about...

I do worry about individual performance, especially around assists, etc. and I have to think that is more about attributes and the Teamwork attributes than this.

[Scratch]

1 hour ago, Ian said:

Makes perfect sense that as to why it’s become easier to retain players to natural in new positions. I’m wondering if maybe there is something behind the scenes which makes it impossible for players to develop to 20 in new positions so as you say they altered the display of 19 to show that as natural.

I’ve often wondered if retraining players from accomplished to natural was actually worth it based on how easy it’s become but at least now I know they are increasing a bit even it’s just from say 18 to 19.

Do you have any idea what the accomplished range is? Like say 16-18.

Thanks! Yeah, I think this won't change me much, I will still retrain them to Natural and keep playing them even if it is only the 19 version of Natural, as long as they are a good fit for it with attributes, footedness, etc.

I haven't worked out the different ranges yet, but I will be at some point, so I can include the terms in my app. I know how to work it out, just stopped at the 18/19 line and left the rest for later. I'll try to remember to update here when I get to that point.