Hello,
Everyone has been talking for months and years about the end of NG99 & Co. We're not there yet, but we're getting there, slowly and surely.

But A45, have you prepared the new generation gap that will last for the next xx years?

The youngsters coming out of our CDFs have fewer points ahead of them and less stamina. The 87-90s versus the 78-82s? 🫠

I was hoping for a small increase in the coefficient so that we could try to do 90ng 20 25 endu, but I should have kept my mouth shut....
We've had a drop and, on top of that, a drop in the number of young people coming through the cdf.
It's getting very complicated, to say the least....

There's a bright side though. Those who complained about cheat players can continue to do so for a while, it passes the time and entertains :D

The players who are currently coming out of the cdf have indeed dropped slightly, but there will be less of a gap between the '99 generation and the players who were there a few seasons ago.

In 10 seasons we'll be playing with 73ng 5 endu at this rate. 😂

That's what VF is all about, and that's the way it's managed by its creator: adding another problem to the previous one rather than solving the problem itself.

And every time, the "fucked" count yourselves!

In fact, it wasn't the level of the old NG 99s coming out of the CDF that turned them into monsters, it was only the training efficiency coefficients that boosted them. And it took half a dozen seasons for these coefficients to be corrected.

And their superiority is further amplified by the fact that the weekly regressions have become symbolic, whereas a few seasons ago it was at least 2 every week. Until they die, they will remain far superior to players who are 5 or 7 years younger.

In short, you can never manage in the long term: it's always a case of shifting the bar to the left to correct an excess, then shifting it to the right because the correction for the excess was excessive, and so on... And that's not even counting the changes made to correct the loopholes that the clever ones jump into as soon as an incompletely tested new feature is put online.

You have to make the best of it, because that's the way it's always been, and accept the game as it is.

So, I'm going to take a look at the current state of training and the level of the players, as the recent updates mean that we've reached a turning point. The idea is that everyone should be able to make up their own minds.
The conclusion will be that, as things stand, we've never been so close to a 'pay to win' situation.

Warning, Caesar's pavé. And no, Avé, I see you Romans!

To start with, I'm going to put things into context, and present each generation on the current game, which will be our point of comparison.

I'm going to talk about points, and the number of points is the total accumulated by a player, all stats included. The number mentioned corresponds to very good players of their age around 24 (end of training).

• In the second half of 2023 (at the end of the year itself) Aymeric opens the floodgates on training gains, a big generation is getting ready, and it's a race for youngsters. Coupled with the fact that high potentials (over 87) are accessible to the training centre, whether it's a recruiter or detection.

At the end of their training, players reach a total of 250-260 points for the top of the range. This generation is known as the '99NG'.

This generation is now 32-33 years old, and is unrivalled. Some turbo cracks can even reach 300 points+ (style players + endu + 99NG).
The blind players are a notch below, whatever the pot.

• June 2024: Aymeric realises that the opening of the floodgates has created monsters, the first significant drop of 10%+ on training winnings. There has also been a drop in the number of high potentials, and the 90+ in training centres are no longer possible, or only in very rare cases.
  This generation remains very solid, the best 29/30 year olds in the world today. The 99NG are not tough, or the 90NG are tough. We're on 235 points for the end of training.

• August 2024: Another drop in training, slightly above 5%, with gains still slightly above the theoretical gain (commonly known as the coef).
  But there's also a drop in the maximum potential of the training centre, from 87 to 85 for the biggest pot obtainable, notably via the recruiter. There will be a wave of U17s with 89s in the autumn, but this is marginal. It seems clear that getting 99s at the end of training will no longer be possible this time, or only in rare cases.
  We'll be looking at around 215-20 points at the end of the course. These are the current 25-28 year-olds.

• From August 2024 to August 2025, Aymeric will keep a low profile, with changes to XP, but he will lower the maximum potential in the training centre in January 2025.
  From 85 via scouts, we're down to 82. 83 points in detection and 84 points in U17 tournaments.
  The U17 tournament means a scarcity of 'big profiles'.
  The 24-year-olds will score around 210 points.

• August 2025: Another change in training, and a drop in XP too. Under-22s get a bit of a slap in the face. Some training gains on the big coef are lower than the theoretical gain.
  We're talking about 200 points (90 NG 13) for this generation.

• December 2025: A small change in the level of players when they leave the training centre, with between 1 and 2 less stamina depending on their age (17-19). The calculation indicates that they should be around 192-5 points at the end of their training for top prospects (84 of potential who are becoming very rare).

• February 2026: Aymeric changes the output level of young players again. A drop of 1 point, again, and above all 3 to 4 points less than the previous season.
  The best 84s are calculated at 190... The average level is around 185 points.

A number of problems have arisen:

• First of all, there was a huge delta between the 99 generation and the 25-28 generation. Mathematically, we're going to feel the same thing between the 23+ generation and today's young people. This will generate even more frustration, and rightly so.

• Increased management difficulties: Changes have always been on the decline over the last 2 years. That's not going to last forever, and some people are really going to feel aggrieved if entire generations have to be thrown out.

• Finally, the last problem I've noticed:
  Aymeric has often mentioned the balance between Store and trained players. I'm not one of those people who rejects the possibility of buying players via CB, and I thought the balance was pretty good up until now, even if there are still things to be criticised. The top prospects in the store are currently on a par with the best trained players in the game.

However, there are some things that I don't think our MDJ has seen:

• The 16-17-18 year olds in the store, apart from their huge potential, are mostly very average. Where the young people in the centre leave with a head start that allows them to have a good level NG, those in the blind leave at +1-+2. With the same potential, a youngster from the blind is bound to be inferior to a youngster who has been trained.

• The 23+ players have a significant endu, so at potential 85+86 a player from the blind has around 200-204 points. For example: O. Kökçü
  For the moment, the balance has been struck, with good 24-year-old store players at the average level of current 24-year-olds.

Problem: Today's youngsters will cap at 185 points.
If these 185-point players, trained for 6-8 months, find themselves up against 200-point Store players (the level of 84 potential players, very easily accessible on the Store), how can we justify a balance? Is Aymeric aware of this?

Voila, sorry for the pavlard and the probable spelling mistakes around.

Thank you, to those who have read. If Aymeric happens to drop by, I'll be happy to have a chat. But as it stands, we've reached a breaking point in the balance that you've managed to maintain for so long, in my opinion.

Thanks Sora. I even read the whole thing.
I add (another topic) that I had opened, it is added to a new drop in players that can be detected that you cited in your post. I finally found 1x 82. No 81. and 2x 80, that's not much.
In short, we'll adapt, I'm not too affected in the end, given my participation in this game's major competitions.

We should speed up the regression of the 99NG generation

As Pithiviers in the 7th company would say, don't touch that ( Ng 99 ) p'tit.... ^^

You have to know how to preach for your parish!

There's only one solution: regression

An RTG first? Well done champion! That's our boy for sure!

The difference is that Ligue 1 isn't 14 games ....nous every mistake costs the title ....on would be on the same format as the real Ligue 1 it's always possible to make up for losing 2 games against the run of play, whereas on VF two defeats is the end of the season.

Lunar

@Sora02
As it sometimes happens that A45 misses certain interesting subjects on the forum, I invited him to read your contribution.
It makes a real point, with the necessary hindsight on training.
Maybe he'll read it, maybe he won't, and maybe he'll give his opinion or not.
But in any case, I thought it would be interesting for him to read it.

Thank you Socrate,

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that there has been a second drop today, after the one on Wednesday.

After a drop of 1 d'endu on 18-year-olds on Thursday, another drop today.

L. Millecamps 3 d'endu
H. Marchena 4 d'endu, released last night.

You were looking forward to the end of the 99s?
See you at the end of 2027, you'll be looking forward to the end of the 90NG.

Solving a problem? That's overrated!
Accentuating a problem; that's fun.

Thank you @Sora02 for sharing.

As a reminder, the main objective to achieve in terms of balancing the game, since the creation of progression profiles is that the best players reach an overall score equal to their potential at their maturity, then that this score remains relatively the same throughout their maturity range. A secondary objective was added to this later on: to ensure that there is no longer too great a gap between the state of progression and the overall rating during the progression phase.

There are several ways of achieving these objectives, but the main difficulty lies in the uncertainty induced by the freedom given to managers to influence the level of their players, and in the distribution of stamina. That's why it's not possible to create a formula that traces a 'line of progression' for players in a straight line to their maximum level at maturity, and then leave it at that. That's why I've resorted to rebalancing. Most often when I see that a significant number of players are exceeding their potential.

The latest change is designed to eliminate a flaw in the current balancing: the advance on progression for players coming out of the training centre should not be generalised, but only targeted at certain players to favour certain profiles or promotion periods. I have transformed this systematic advance on leaving the CDF into a 2.7% boost to the effectiveness of collective training. I've also changed the system for allocating characteristics by default, which particularly affects Special and Recovery Programme players, by reducing the endurance level to 20% of the overall score. I'm aware that this isn't a perfect solution because of the transition phase that this measure entails. That's why these adjustments are always relatively minimal in the figures.

Really tiring...

Thank you Sora and Aymeric, very interesting and much clearer.

In short, stop training it's rotten?

Perhaps we should consider having potential players higher up? The trick is to find a balance, without changing things up in 5 seasons' time.

We've been looking for balance and transition for 20 years now....we're no longer 29 years old.

In the end, we're all in the same boat. It rulls

Why not unleash the potential of youngsters now during the CDF/U17 tournament? It's the logical evolution that potential = +/- NG but restricting CDF potential to 84 max will only frustrate those who want to train. It was OK to set this limit when the players were body-built, but I think we can relax on this now. At the moment, apart from vfstore or university graduates, it's impossible to have a potential of >84.

@aymeric, it's understandable that the calculations are complicated and that you need to step back each time to refine them, but couldn't some members of the community help you?
There are managers who are Excel experts, very good at training and who love this game who could help you calculate all this?

Why do you still want to have NG99 players?
Is it nostalgia?
If you have 10 NG99 players but your opponent in the match also has 10 almost identical ones, I don't really see the point.

If the standard for very good players becomes NG 85 with the rare exception of 90 players, I say bravo and it will be much more differentiating and the .matches will be more interesting.
Sumo battles between 10 NG 99 players against 10 other NG 99 players aren't very exciting and the randomness of the outcome is even more important.

What's more, I don't see how the importance of training would be diminished if you had to row to get to NG85 compared to a situation where anyone could train an NG99 player.
In fact, it would be exactly the opposite.

Now the problem is really the generational transitions, because if the level is gradually reduced and the older players join in, it won't be tomorrow morning that what has been announced will come into effect.

Reset the game and we'll all be back with potential 10s!

What better way to see who's got the big one?

The new generation of lazy youngsters is therefore going to ask us for salaries that are x2 to x3 more expensive than before in order to cap at 84 of NG 🤣

You can see that vf is getting closer to the real thing!

Lokomotiv CCCP salutes the Vefian conformism that is gradually taking root in our ranks... it promises to be a jubilant new generation of players!
image](https://i.imgur.com/YS0V0Sn.gif)

There's still the big problem of injuries, which completely ruin a player if he's in his best formative year. Personally, I don't dare take a player out before he's 22, thinking that's one less year he could be injured. I'll try again, but I'm sceptical.

I didn't specify that the collective training boost only applies to players who have been promoted after their lead at the end of the CDF has been reduced. So it shouldn't be combined with players who have a significant lead.

I'm thinking about bringing back players with higher potential to the game, but keeping this kind of profile rare.

One area where VF can improve is the end-game. A lot of clubs have level 10 CDFs, and at this stage there's no real way of progressing or standing out from other clubs in terms of training. That's why I'd like to make sure we don't see matches where teams of 11 potential 87s play teams of 11 potential 87s at the highest level.

As far as injuries are concerned, there is a system in place to limit their impact on progress #forum?topic=161707 But in absolute terms, injuries are a mechanism designed to slow down a player's progress. Not all players are destined to reach their full potential.

What would make the difference is not so much that there are potential 87s instead of 85s, that's a bit of a detail, but what would make the difference between the players and add spice is :

1. the return of logarithmic curves, exponential curves, etc... The reality of real football players is that they don't all progress in the same way, and this combined with the fact that players finish their training between the ages of 21 and 24.

2. Maturity periods that are not completely flat.
   At the moment, once a player has reached maturity, there's virtually nothing happening, or at least nothing unpredictable.
   There should be players who can progress a little at 26, for example, and on the other hand players who can regress a little at 26, which wouldn't prevent their curves from changing the following season, and we'd have maturity levels that could be a bit of a rollercoaster, which would also be more in line with reality: there are mature players who have a good season and the following season they regress and vice versa.
   For example, a progression/regression coefficient of 1 to 3% could be randomly assigned to players in the maturity zone and vary at the start of each season.

3. that the XP awarded be slightly weighted according to the importance of the matches: you don't get exactly the same number of XP in friendlies as you do in league, cup or IE matches.
   That would also break the monotony.

In short, all this would make training a little less 'robotic' and sanitised.
At the moment, the only thing that disturbs the robotisation of training is injuries, and only very slightly, otherwise without injuries, when you take a young player out, and as long as you respect the principles that just about everyone knows (and practices), you can predict to within +/- 1 point what the player's grade will be at the end of training, but also what his grade will be at the end of the maturity period: it's not much fun.

Curves were good 💯

The curves already exist. For example, a young person coming out of the blind follows a loga curve. Exponentials are another type of player. They're just invisible, but the coefficients indicate it.

And another point (this one is not directly linked to progression), are there any plans to review the management of characteristics and how they are taken into account in the ng?
For example, since marking has been restricted, no-one puts players with this characteristic on the pitch any more. If it was taken into account in the ng, it would become interesting again (otherwise you might as well blow it up).
In reality, full-backs are very good at attacking, but this characteristic is not taken into account and a full-back never scores.
Apart from in direct attack, power has little effect, and a powerful mdc should recover the ball more easily.
Moles could help in defence
Technical players could have an advantage at free-kicks.
In short, there are plenty of ways to have fewer stereotypical players, which would spice things up a bit.

And we should be able to influence these characteristics from the training centre.