In the base game, you could open the profile of almost any footballer in the world and see nearly all the information about them, except for some details. This allowed you to directly buy a footballer from the club, bypassing transfers.
On one hand, access to such information provides great opportunities. On the other hand, we wanted scouting in the game to be more interesting and a bit closer to reality. Therefore, we have significantly redesigned it.
By default, footballers' profiles are hidden
Now you will fully "see" the profiles of the following footballers who do not belong to your club:
- Those you are playing a match against today;
- Those who are on the transfer lists (they are visible until the next transfer window opens);
- Those who are on your watchlist (you can only add a footballer's profile to this list if it is already visible to you);
- All footballers from the country where you are the national team coach.
Footballers whose profiles are not available to you are displayed with question marks. Such a footballer cannot be bought because you do not have enough information about them.
In the screenshot, I am viewing a foreign club. Before this, I sent my scouts to gather transfer lists in England, so I could see the profiles of those footballers who are up for transfers:
Scouts allow you to see footballers' profiles
You will also have access to the profiles of those footballers in your country whose Giftedness is equal to or less than the average level of your scouts. For example, if one of your scouts has a level of 3 stars and another has a level of 1 star, then the average level is 2 stars. Thus, you will see the profiles of all footballers with Giftedness of 0, 1, and 2.
Therefore, scouts will now be even more important, just as they are in real life.
For example, in the screenshot below, I am viewing a club from my country. Since the average level of my scouts is 3 stars, I do not see footballers with a Talent level above three stars:
You can hire agents
What should you do if you don't want or can't improve scouts, but still need to gather information about footballers? For this, we have introduced a new mechanic: the ability to hire agents for a certain period.
Now on the Club Improvements screen next to the Scout Centre, there is a button that allows you to open the agent hiring screen:
There you can select the level of Giftedness of the footballers you want to see and the duration for which you want to hire agents. This will cost money, but it might be a more affordable option than spending Glory on improving scouts:
Thus, you can completely avoid improving scouts by spending Glory on, for example, the Youth Academy. And when you need to find a footballer, hire agents for 1-2 months.
You can hire agents abroad
If you upgrade both scouts to 5 stars, you will see all the footballers playing in your country. However, you still won't see footballers in other countries.
In previous versions of the game, you could go to any foreign club of your continent playing in the Premier League and buy a footballer there. Now, by default, this option will be unavailable.
You can still send scouts to other countries and hope that the foreign transfer lists will include the footballers you need. But if you don't want to rely on luck, you can use the new mechanic: Establishing a foreign agent network. However, you will need to learn the corresponding coach skill. Without it, this option will be unavailable:
Next to the Scout Centre, there will be a button that opens the Foreign Agent Network screen. There you can hire agents abroad. However, the level of agents is limited by the average level of your scouts. So, if the average level of your scouts is 3 stars, then the maximum level of foreign agents can also only be 3 stars. This means that in the selected country, you will be able to see all footballers with a Giftedness level equal to or less than 3 stars.
Establishing a foreign agent network is not a cheap pleasure. But you will spend Money and Glory only once. You will not need to spend money constantly. And if, for example, you like a certain foreign football culture (e.g., you want to constantly buy technical footballers from Brazil), you can easily do this in any league of that country, not just in the top league as it was before:
Watchlist
Previously, it was just a list that improved game comfort. It did not affect the gameplay. However, now the Watchlist is a full-fledged element of the new scouting system.
Imagine a situation where you see an interesting footballer in one of the transfer lists. You will see their profile for another six months. In the next transfer window, if the club no longer lists them for transfer, their profile will be closed to you. You will not be able to buy them directly from the club.
However, footballers you have added to the Watchlist always have their profiles open. So, if you add an interesting footballer to the list when you first see them, you can buy them directly from the club even six months or a year later because the information about them will be available to you.
If you have a club without scouts, your list allows you to add only 3 footballers. With each scout improvement, the list increases by 1. So, you can increase it to 23 items. There is also a coach skill that increases the list by 3. This skill can be improved three times, so the total capacity of the list can be increased by another 9 items.
Importance of transfer lists
Despite the fact that the cost of footballers on the transfer lists was significantly lower than when you buy a footballer directly, many players did not use the extended transfer list. The first disadvantage is the cost of sending scouts to gather the list. The other disadvantage is that it is not often that you can find exactly the footballer you need there.
We have resolved the first disadvantage - the cost of sending scouts to gather information for the Extended List has been reduced by 5 times.
The second disadvantage still remains because this is the essence of transfer lists: you see who is available on the market and decide whether to use the available footballers or take the initiative and search for footballers elsewhere.
But if you have weak scouts, transfer lists are an important source of information about footballers. Even if you see someone interesting who you cannot buy, you can add them to the Watchlist so that the information about them remains available.
Footballer Search
And now we come to perhaps the most interesting part - the footballer search screen.
Previously, you could open the screen of any club, browse all the footballers, and buy the one that suited you. I liked this mechanic because you got to know the clubs and footballers better. But the problem was that if a player was focused on efficiency, they would sift through all available clubs to find the exact footballer they needed.
The search for a footballer was a routine process. However, we could not allow an automated search for footballers, as it would make transfers much less interesting.
One of the reasons we created the new scouting system is to prevent automated footballer searches from making the game less engaging.
So, now we give you the ability to search for a footballer according to various criteria: cost, level, age, Giftedness, presence of certain skills, attributes, class, etc. You can combine the necessary characteristics to find exactly the footballer you need:
But there is one catch. You can only search among those footballers whose profiles are available to you. This means that if you have undeveloped scouts and only have access to your personal transfer list, the Search screen will only look among all the footballers in your country with Giftedness 0 and those who are on the transfer list.
You will not see footballers from other countries. You will not see more gifted footballers. And in order for the Search to include as many footballers as possible, you need to develop scouts, establish a foreign agent network, gather transfer lists, etc.
Final Words
I like how all the new mechanics harmoniously interact with each other, creating a new, interesting scouting system. You can completely ignore scouting and develop your club through, for example, youth. But you can also create powerful foreign agent networks and find exactly the footballers you need. This adds a whole new layer of possibilities that allow you to find the footballers you need without breaking the game.
At first glance, it may seem very complicated, but the whole system was created comprehensively so that each element is logical and interacts well with other game mechanics.
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