24/01/2014

Development Value, Match Experience and Average Form

Knowing about how the Development Value (or DV) works is an important part of the game, as being able to successfully train up your players allows you to improve the skill of your players and increase the value of your squad.

There are two factors that contribute to a player's DV (and ultimately, how they will progress at the end of the season) - match experience (ME) and average form (AF). Knowing a little bit about how these two factors combine to produce the final DV value will help when it comes to maximising your team's development.

Players gain experience for each minute that they play. Younger, lower skilled players learn more from older, better players, both on their own team and on the opposing side. That experience is converted into a percentage value, such that DV is then a percentage of AF. The more experience a player gains, the higher that percentage value. However, something unusual happens when a player reaches "100%" i.e. when DV is the same as AF. Further experience still contributes to a player's DV, but instead of being a percentage of their average form, it's a percentage of 20 (the maximum value for average form) - AF. This means that players on lower average form actually gain more than players on higher average form for extra time played.

It's worth noting that, the greater match experience a player has, the smaller the effect any additional experience will have - don't be surprise if DV rises quickly to start with but slows down as the season progresses. I got hold of some figures regarding match experience and its effect on DV and have managed to put them into a graph which should help illustrate how match experience and average form combine to produce the overall development value, and the effects of giving players more than "100%" match experience i.e. what happens when you start pushing DV above the average form. The term "standardised match experience" just means I've adjusted the figures so that 100 is the experience needed to get DV = AF (players getting the maximum experience out of a game need about 4/14 games to get "100%" usually), 200 is double that amount of experience and so on. Realistically, you'll not be able to get past around 300 without having a cup, as cup games provide bonus experience.

One thing to note is that average form is incredibly significant for players with lower amounts of match experience. It's why it's not always a concern if players appear to gain DV slowly at the start of a season (when you may be trying to build form up after a change report). It also shows that you can't rely solely on match experience for DV, you have to maintain form as well.


2 comments:

  1. Hi, I'm curious about your comment that a player would need to play 4/14 games for 100% ME, I have read somewhere that you need to player 2/3 of the matches for 100%ME where did you get the 4/14 games from? Many thanks.

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  2. Players getting maximum experience are typically the youngest and lowest skilled. In the olden days, when 100% ME was the limit, outfield players typically got 33% in a single game in the Xpert Leagues (which were 14 game seasons). So, 3/14 was the minimum (or thereabouts). This value could be used to work out the game time needed in leagues of different lengths e.g. in a season of 22 league games, you'd need around 5 matches as the minimum (approximately 4.7 rounded up).

    The values for ME gained and effects on DV changed when DV was introduced, and the youngest, lowest skilled players will now typically require four games in an Xpert league season to get DV=AF, hence 4/14. Note that this is based purely on league games, as cup games provide "free" match experience (i.e. they contribute to DV but are not included in the calculation that works out how much ME a player gets per game).

    Note that older, better players will need to play a larger proportion of games for DV to equal AF, and that players well into their 30s might not be able to get DV = AF at all.

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