Hello all,
This is a very exciting moment in our project when we reveal what we’ve been working on for some time and that we think will elevate long-term saves in a way it wasn’t possible in FM24 before. Today we present our brand new file – a total overhaul of the training system. This will be a long post so please bear with us because this needs a deep dive alongside pictures that will help you understand what we’ve done and what you can expect.
THE BEFORE
Let me ask you, how many times did you actually tinkered the training schedule for your team? Honestly, how many times? Of course there are players like me that will always change, modify and adapt the training schedules during a month just… well, just because we think it makes sense although it is more of a placebo effect than having an actual effect in-game. SI has promised, has said, that training is fundamental in FM but truth be told it is not. Anyone can go to the SI forums or do a quick Reddit search to find the posts that show how big is the disappointment that training is, basically, useless. Let’s add to this the following image:
This is the image of the game breaking training schedule that came from China that shattered any kind of positive image of the training system in FM or even any hope that training could be useful in some way. This kind of game breaking exploits look to produce physical monsters in game to break the game even more by exploiting the high dependance on physical attributes. Which in turn would make FM a very weird game that it is very far from what it is supposed to be – a realistic simulation of football but with elements of fun that means it is not too hard or not too easy (but never perfect because that doesn’t exist).
That led to videos (who doesn’t remember Zealand’s video about Training being broken) that showcased how the original system is useless, does not do what is advertised to do and it needs a complete overhaul. Here we have limitations because there’s parts of the training that are hardcoded and because of that we didn’t change the following topics because only SI can do it:
- Individual training.
- Additional focus.
- The system that determines how and how much regens are spawned with each youth intake, player regeneration.
With this in mind we decided to go full bonkers and since the public available code regarding training is extensive we decided to give it a go and change it with the following goals in mind:
- Nerf, as best as possible, game exploits of the training system just like the screenshot above;
- Training being able to offer a different path to develop tactical systems, players and young players;
- Making sure long-term saves and very long-term saves can be fun, engaging and successful;
- Allowing for a better distribution of attributes that meant more available PA for other attributes to grow and not only the usual physical ones.
OUR WORK
With the above goals as our focus we started by doing a deep dive into the code and studying it. We found some stuff that surprised us such as spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, syntax errors and so on that baffled us. What was worst was that even some parameters that needed to communicate with other parameters located in different training files weren’t doing that because the code was not following the instruction on top of the file. I mean… How come a company like SI could let this happen and release a game with this kind of issues that show a very problematic lack of quality assurance methods. But we moved on and we decided to not stop until we managed to achieve what we wanted.
We looked to some of the training sessions and we decided they needed an overhaul as well so we could achieve the results we wanted. Sessions such as the general training sessions, “Defence”, “Possession”, “Attacking”, among others; technical sessions such as “Ball Retention”, “Transition – Restrict”, among others; all, all of them were overhauled in such a way that would allows us to make training useful once and for all.
We added attributes to some training sessions; we overhauled the organisation of the training templates and we added or removed training sessions from every training template; we redistributed attributes all over the training sessions; we redistributed the weighting of the physical sessions diluting their effects and increasing the penalties for using them too much; we worked really hard to make sure that any template, any training session would have actual in-game effects. Those effects can be seen after 2/3 seasons but they will be more noticeable the longer you play. Here are some examples of the new training template:
As you can see, our work was basically overhauling all the training systems that we had access, ergo, what is public available. But this is not all… We wanted to make sure that the long term effects of our changes would have real in-game effects in terms of how regens develop decades after the beginning of a season. This meant running the heaviest and most comprehensive tests that we could and the results were… astonishing to say the least. Here’s four examples of attributes and their evolution:
What do you see in the above pictures? Let’s take acceleration as the example. At the start of the save, players with CA130+, out of 2159 players there are 514 players with acceleration at least 15 (out of 20) and using the vanilla files (vanilla ME file, vanilla player ratings file, vanilla AI file, vanilla training file), on 2040 where there’s a total of 2192 players with a CA130+ and 920 out of those 2192 players have acceleration at least 15 (out of 20) which is an increase of 78,99%. But using our files (most updated ME file, player ratings file, AI file and training file), what we see is just an increase of 2,33%, 526 players out of 2073 players. What we see here… a drop in physical monsters keeping it similar to what you find in the beginning of a save. And we have here examples for pace, crossing and finishing that shows the deep effects of our changes. And this some examples of players in 2048:
As you can see from this screenshots this is what the AI can do using our revamped and overhauled training templates. These are the type of player and player development you can expect. A more balanced distribution of attributes which means a better use of the available space between CA (when the player is created by the game) and it’s PA (hardcoded by the game when it is created), and incidentally a lesser prevalence of physical monsters. And if this is what the AI can create, what can you as a human manager create?
Of course, we will be surprised by what the human mind will create. Naturally someone out there will try and find a game breaking exploit of this new training regime and we are comfortable with that. Even with our changes and even with our best efforts to try and nerf game breaking training regimes, those will continue to exist but now with added penalties. We are agnostic about the way players play this game we all love, we are just offering a different option and it is our hope that this would encourage people to give it a go and try to do training themselves instead of delegating to the ass man. This leads me to add the following important point:
- The new training templates apply equally to the AI manager and human manager. This means both will see the full effects across several seasons;
- Our best results, and the way we do testing, is by using the most updated files, which means the most updated ME file (the one currently in our website that includes the updated AI changes, and player ratings changes) and Daveincid’s full list of files of his realism mod;
- We are offering a full package of mods (ME file that includes the AI changes and player ratings changes + new training file) that work together seamlessly in order to offer to players a more realistic FM experience and if you combine that with Daveincid’s full list of files your game will be even better; harder yes, but we believe it is a challenge that will make you a better player overall.
That’s it, this is the deep dive in what we did and what you can expect. Because of the changes we made it was needed to write a longer blog post. In today’s world that attention spans are so diminished it is a risk doing this, but we believe that information can be very helpful to all of you so it is my hope is that you were able to read the post in its entirety.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment to this blog post or, if. you prefer visually, check our YouTube video (also a deep dive and longer video, about 30 minutes of constant information to help you), or join our Discord server where we have a dedicated channel to discuss the new training file.
Thank you so much for all your support and feedback. This project only exists because of you – the FM community.
Cheers,
The FM Match Lab team
Awesome work. Would it be possible to add these to my already existing save?
Yes all of our files are fully compatible with existing saves.
como lo descargo
hi…how do I install these with the 1.4 version? thanks for the very good job
Hello,
Installation instructions of the training file can be found in the FM Match Lab Mods page of the website. The instructions are above the button to download the training file.
Cheers
I can find no button or instructions on installing the training mod. Can you post a link to it? Thanks for all your work.
Hello and thank you for your comment.
It is really easy to find the spot you are looking for. Just click the page that is named “FM Match Lab Mods” and you will need to scroll down and you will find the training file and just above the button to download you will find the instructions to download.
You just need to read the top bar menus of the website. Is that easy.
Thank you for using our modded files and supporting our work.
Cheers
我打了这个补丁以后，在训练-日程里面再也无法导入别的训练计划了， 是否不兼容
Hello and thank you for your comment.
If you could write your comment in English that would be very helpful.
Cheers
Hello, after using the training patch you developed, I encountered an issue where I was unable to save the custom training plan when importing it. Is there an incompatibility issue with this.
Hello, since you have installed our training file that means the templates are different. This means you will have to create your own new custom training plan and save it. Since our training file is different this can be a good opportunity for you to update your custom training schedule so that you can see the full effects of our changes. Cheers
Thank you, but custom training plans cannot be saved in the future. Only tactical style (variant) can be used
Received, please reply. Thank you
Hello, after using the training patch you developed, I encountered an issue where I was unable to save the custom training plan when importing it. Is there an incompatibility issue with this.
Hey, I have a question:
It has been said by many coaches for the last few years that fitness training for professional sports in general has been improving significantly. We don’t even have to take their word for it; we can see that the intensity achieved by world-class teams is far superior then what we would’ve expected 10,15 years ago. Is it possible to do something that would reflect this constant development of technology that is available to us, or is the best we can do simply is to pretend to ourselves that there is a change over time (e.g we have to pretend to ourselves that 10 stamina in 2050 is superior to 10 stamina in 2025, and because everyone has the same distribution of attributes it doesn’t actually matter)?
Hello and thank you for your comment,
We agree with you but unfortunately we have to pretend and imagine that’s the case, until SI decides to mimic that evolution. Which will not be easy at all to try and recreate because it is not a given that for the next 50 years the curve of progression will be the same. We can only speculate. But for now this is the best we can do. FM has a game it also has limitation in what can simulate so we have to just accept that for the time being and focus on what we can actually change for the better.
Cheers
Hello, I would like to know if the May 21st update of the game has any impact on the use of engine patches and training patches.
Hello, the latest SI official update rewrites our files. The procedure is very simple: you just have to download our files and reinstall them again. As simple as that.
Cheers
Hi and thanks for all your great work guys. I’m just starting a new game and would like to use your Training overhaul as it sounds a big improvement. However I’m managing Weymouth who are semi-professional so less training slots possible overall. Can I go ahead and use it anyway with my semi-pros? Thanks!
Hello and thank you for your comment.
Yes you can use it. Hopefully you will be professional in no time.
Cheers
Hi and thanks for your mod! I have the same question for semiprofessional teams. I play in German Lower League per league extension mod. I commented on YT with the same question but not sure if that was posted or not. Anyway for my team the weekly schedules can be loaded but display only one or max 2 sessions per day. That is more than the vanilla schedule with (I forgot 4 training sessions on 2 days + Focus before match?). So I need to change the the weekly schedule as they only display the first daily session usually (like the all individual slot). But when I replace such a slot with what I want It deletes most of the days (not available slots) despite maybe the slots which are allowed (I guess). But because of the focus day before the match it keeps this training session above the focus which is not ideal one day before the match. So that is the only culprit maybe for me + it is a bit cheating when I keep the weekly schedule with more sessions than allowed (and do not change anything there). Shall I better skip the training-file until I am professional? Cheers
We know about this semi-pro bug. We are planning to launch a patch that will solve this. That patch is being worked. You still can use the training mod while we work on fixing this because the effects in-game will still be there.
Cheers
After installing the mod, do i have to do something in perticular?
Do I have to somehow select or “activate” the revised training plans myself?
Hello and thank you for your comment.
You don’t need to do anything else after putting the file in the right place. You just open the game and you play the usual way. The difference will be in the training tab. The templates are different and then it is up to you what to do: to do training yourself or to let your staff taking care of that.
Cheers
“Is it beneficial to assign a positional training in the individual training menu, or is it better to leave it unassigned?”
Hello there,
You should always assign a positional training, it is more beneficial to your player.
Cheers
Hi, i want to try out this new training file. But is it recommended only using this training file without the other ME files (player ratings)?
Hello and thank you for your comment. For the best results you should use all of our mods together – the match engine mod and the training mod. And for even more realistic effects you should also use Daveincid’s realism mod.
Cheers
Hi, i wanna try using this new training. Is it recommended to use this new training file without the other ME files?? or does it need to be full package ME file to be able to work?
Hello and thank you for your comment. For the best results you should use all of our mods together – the match engine mod and the training mod. And for even more realistic effects you should also use Daveincid’s realism mod.
Cheers
How does this affect Network saves?
The effect in network saves is a simple one but with long-term effects. If a network game has two players and one uses our mod, and it is a long-term save, that means that the player with our mod will see the regens developing differently. Versus the player with the original training file. This means that the player with our training mod will see the effects of our changes, therefore, a more balanced distribution of attributes.
Cheers
Thanks for the response, this means i can use this training file continuously rather than having to match my friends training file yes? In comparison to the Match engine file where they have to match.
Yes that’s right. You can have your own training system separate from them. The funny part is that your players will develop in a different way so don’t be surprised to see big differences. We think you will be the one that will benefit.
Cheers
how is this balanced? I tried it on second bundesliga(with hertha bsc) and youth player dont improve much on pysical stats (with good pa for solid first division players), testet over 3 years fast foward, so if 10 or below on these stats you can dismiss them, cause they will never rly improve, even if they should even without training, cause of growing up. I think the playing league and professionalism has too much influence on these(physical). But maybe its a vanilla thing, and with changing the weights with your mod, it makes high rating division and high professionalism players more balanced, but shift lower rating/ not top tier divisions and mediocre professionalism players to the bottom. Maybe something can be done about it? Divisions and professionalism should only affect max Pa(so capped until you play against better players) and speed of development(mental and technical).
Sry for my english
Hello and thank you for your comment.
It was a big confusing to understand but I think I understand what you mean.
If you read the blog post you will notice that one of our goals is to stop the development of physical monsters that in turn would mean the player could exploit the game in a very unrealistic way.
Therefore the way we overhauled the training system was to drop the weighting around the excess of prevalence for physical attributes and to rebalance the system in order to have more balanced players. While also opening the opportunity for regens to develop in areas that in the vanilla they would never such as crossing for example.
In summary, what our internal tests showed – and we included some of those results here – is that we managed to create a training system that is useful and allows regens to be more balanced and also allows players to have more options in what tactics and roles they can use during very long-term saves.
Thank you for using our mod and I hope that you keep using it.
Cheers
yea, the weight thing i understand, and training plans aswell, these i rly like much more, thx
but how do i improve physical stats at all now? For example, i have a youth player 15 years old, physical stats around 9 to 10, professionialism around 10, pa around 140/CA 60. With 18 i got him to around 11 on his physical stats(training all by the Co Trainer, i played jobless and compared the stats, cause i wondered about the slow growth, 2 of my 25years even lost 1 stat on almost every mental and technical stat in half a year played). So should i simulate more until the age of 21/23, to see what happens?
When i want my youth to focus on physical stats, do weekly physical schedules still help?cause i feel the weight changes are rly hurting(can I edit the weights back to vanilla, and just take the schedule changes?)
What i learned from the exploit thing, https://fm-arena.com/thread/13508-training-is-fake-it-just-assigns-attributes-not-grows-attributes-results-based-on-a-large-number-of-tests/page-5/ , more played games only increase the available CA for training, not the weight. Same as double intensity.
And the physical stat development is capped around 5/season. And development is higher/faster if there is a bigger range between CA and PA. Professionalism 20 has max development around 25 CA, 10 the half of it. So should the focus not be on the max growth per physical stat instead the weights, so not 5 per season for all stats(with it, if you focus on Pace, you can get to 20 easily), but focus on max growth for each stat by 1/2. Or the nerf(change) physical stat growth with no training. But maybe thats hardcoded.
So in the end. The main question is, can i edit the lab training file to just use the schedules, but not the weight changes? And if so, could you point me to the right direction. Thx
I think the weight changes rly hurt not top tier/league players and clubs, cause the development depends on reputation, professionalism, training ratings aswell, so while the better players are more balanced with it when they reach their peak, the “weaker ones” are nerfed into oblivion in terms of physical attributes
Hello and thank you for your comment.
You still can improve their physicals the same way you can improve other attributes. For example, the player you mention that has a professionalism of 10 that’s a low number so according to that hidden attribute he will not develop as well as a player with a higher professionalism regardless of its PA.
The way the training system works is very complex and the sum of thousand of variables. Editing the weights back to vanilla will not help you and it will defeat the whole purpose of this overhaul – to make a useful and balanced training system that does not prioritise a certain number of attributes instead of the whole list of attributes that a player will need to perform a certain role.
Finally the game breaking training schedule you shared is one of the main reasons we wanted to do this mod. To make it almost impossible to use that schedule and if you use that schedule you will basically break your players and they will fatigued and injured. Exactly like real life.
The goal of this mod is to stop the emergence of physical beasts that dominate the game in a very unrealistic way. The goal of this mod is to increase realism in the game which means the players still can grow their physical attributes but not by much. And not only that, by not growing that much the regen can develop the attributes they need to perform a certain role because they will more space for those attributes to grow.
Your premise is wrong for the following reasons. Although we changed and nerfed the overweighting of physical development, your players even in lower leagues can also improve their physical attributes with our mod. They will do it in a realistic way that will mimic the reality of where they play – lower leagues – but it will also help them grow with increased game time and better training facilities.
Finally, our training mod is the result of countless hours of testing, trying new methods, etc and it is designed to increase realism and not for game breaking exploits. And we’ve seen plenty of evidence already from our discord community that even lower league players can and will benefit with our changes. We have a large number of people that play in lower leagues and they see the biggest effects. Which means you cannot edit the training file just to use the schedules because that will not work. And it will not work because the system is complex and if you change one thing you have to change everything so all the changes match. It is a tedious, long, boring and very cumbersome job because it involves tens of thousands of lines of code that have to be manually changed one by one until all makes sense. This is why we took almost 2 months plus a team of 20 people working 24/7 on this mod.
I hope this helps and above all else using our mods is a choice for realism. And this realism was based on real life data, not just our personal and subjective opinions. Your players will still increase their physicals, but now you have to create new and tailored schedules and the one you shared will not work. But you also need to understand that training is just one part. Game time, ratings during a game, ratings during training, the training facilities, youth facilities, the reputation of the league, etc, there’s a lot of variables that come into play and all of them matter for the development of a player.
Cheers
Também constatei isso.
allright, thx, i dont want to use the vanilla exploit at all. I just want to even out some hard weaknesses for my good youth players, or otherwise they are not usable. And your schedules buffs Ai match game preparation and are more logical. Whats rly good.
And I understand the reasons behind your mod. Last questions, in terms of playtime, does it affect youth players aswell? Cause in vanilla, playtime under age 17(i think) wasnt much important. And do my players decline in mental and technical stats, when I set a physical schedule. And the other way around? Cause i have to find out why some of my players are loosing stats by one after only 6 months/half season(and they are playing) in almost all mentals and technicals.
I have to question some of the logic on the training sessions. For example, why is “free kick taking” in so many sessions?
If I want my players focusing on “transition press” or “defending from the front” it makes no sense why time and weight would be given to this attribute.
I see similar things in the tactical sessions. If I choose a tactical session, I would expect the session to focus training on TACTICAL attributes.
But the list of attributes in “attacking shadow play” includes only 4 tactical attributes. The other 12 in primary focus are physical and technical.
I get that you were trying to re-balance things to make the AI less stupid, but this approach just seems to make the session selection far more arbitrary. I can’t even look at the name of the session to know what they are training.
Hello and thank you for your comment.
All of our choices were subject to a long study of the mechanics behind the scenes that make training useful or useless. That also meant making subjective choices that people will accept or not but those choices were done considering the limits of what we did and what we did pushed the limits of what can be done without access to the source code.
The results that we achieved in our internal testing that was done hundreds of times and using testing saves that run 50+ seasons, that allow us to very confidently say that we overhauled the system and that will benefit the players, were due to the choices we make and we are very comfortable with them.
You are wrong in saying that our goal was to make the AI less stupid. Our goal with overhauling the training files in FM24 was to make the training system useful in such a way that players don’t need to use game breaking exploits. AI being less stupid is a consequence of our changes, not a goal. Our goal was to make the training system more balanced, open up the system to new ways to train players and even tactical styles and all of the changes were made with this object in mind.
Nothing that we did was arbitrary, but the result of months of study, testing, discussions and choices based on the former. In our twitch stream, we are doing a youth only save and showcasing how people can use our training mod, and people can follow us and see how we use it as a guide. We will also publish soon a guide.
Thank you for using our mod and supporting us.
Cheers
como lo descargo no mesale nada
Thanks for all the work you all put into this. I’ve had what i feel like is a crazy amount of injuries on my playthrough. 27 by end of october. Its a lower league save, vanarama league north, so less staff, worse facilities, is that contributing? Otherwise any suggestions to lower that? move from 3 to 2 sessions a day? extra day off during week? It seems overall, physical, endurance, resistance and quickness are the most likely to cause injury, remove those? Based off your livestreams i thought injuries were toned down in general from vanilla.
Also your discord link seems broken, or maybe that was intentional 🙂
Hello and thank you for your comment.
FM24, and previous FM, have an abnormally lower number of injuries versus real life, about 20% lower and this was a decision made by SI for reasons they only know.
If you use our two mods plus Daveincid’s realism mod then you will see an increase in the rate of injuries which will mean that you will have a much closer to life number of injuries.
You can manage this by adapting yourself just a real life manager. Don’t use super high intensity tactics and super high intensity training schedules because those will create a fatigue snowball effect. Add to that the maniac schedule of games in the Vanarama League North.
My advice to you, so that you can enjoy the benefits of using our two mods plus Dave’s (if that’s the case), is to either drop the intensity of your tactic and training schedule, or drop the intensity of one: tactic or training. Rest and recovery are very important. Rotating as well.
The discord button is updated.
Cheers
Hello is it translated in french?
Best regards
Hello and thank you for your comment.
The game will automatically translate to French.
Cheers
so, i only starting taking training in fm21 im less than casual with this game but i just play now and then sometimes. the reason i started taking trainings was to avoid injuries and i just copied some schedules from the internet, but now with this ( i have more reasons than just training to download this mod ) i would need someone to help me are there are ready to go files to help me ?
Hello and thank you for your comment.
The important part you need to understand from our training mod is that you can rely on the game templates, the templates the game provides you, because we overhauled them all. The AI also applies the same templates so there’s an even playing field.
Therefore there’s no master schedule because our training mod was designed to let players choose freely and to avoid meta schedules.
But if you still want to do the training by yourself, which the mod encourages, then you can check our YouTube channel (link at the bottom of this blog post), we published two training tutorials. In those two training tutorials we share the schedules we used in our first twitch stream. It was specially designed for a youth only save so bear that in mind, meaning, you still need to adapt the schedule for what your team needs.
Thank you for using our mods and supporting us.
Cheers
When (approximately) is going to be released the next update to the training system?
Hello and thank you for your comment.
We aim to release the patch very soon, hopefully next week.
Cheers