Recently, I talked about the new scouting system in FTGW. In short, from now on you will only see the profiles of those footballers whose Giftedness is equal to or less than the average level of your scouts.

However, you will always be able to see all the footballers of your next opponent.

Players who consider themselves experts of the FTG series feel that the game is quite easy. One of the reasons for this "ease" is the ability to see the opponent's formation and footballers and adjust your tactics accordingly to exploit the opponent's weaknesses. Experienced players know that the fate of the match is decided 60-70% on the match preparation screen.

For such players, we have added a new option that can be enabled before starting a new campaign. This option does the following:

• You will not see the opponent's formation before the match;
  
• You will only see those footballers of the next opponent whose Giftedness is equal to or less than the average level of your scouts;
  
• If the next match is important to you, you can pay Glory to see the formation (this is analogous to spending your time studying your opponent thoroughly, attending their matches, etc.).

With this option, it will be harder to play because you will now have to guess how the opponent's footballers are positioned. As a result, matches will be more unpredictable, and you will have to adapt to the situation during the match.

In fact, guessing how the opponent has positioned their footballers is not very difficult because you will see which classes will participate in the match. For example, if you see that the opponent has a Right Forward and a Central Forward in attack, it is obvious that the Right Forward is in his right flank position, and the Central Forward is in one of the three central attacking cells. But there will be situations where the positioning of footballers will be less obvious and a bit more unpredictable. This is especially true for defence.

In this video playthrough of the beta version, you can see how match preparation happens when you do not see the opponent's formation (starting from 7 minutes 9 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/live/CL02x19bCQQ?si=1wUO75lcjZjo0_3i&t=429


Once you start the match, you will see the opponent's formation. If it turns out to be different from what you thought, you will want to change your formation to adapt.

For players for whom constant formation changes on the field are an important element of tactics, changing the position of some footballers is a common practice. As soon as the game stops (goal, corner, or free kick) your changes will be applied.

But if constant formation changes are not critical for you, and you want to make the game even more challenging, you can use an additional option that allows you to make formation changes during the match ONLY at halftime. On the substitution screen, other field cells will be blocked, as shown in the screenshot:

So, if you did not prepare correctly for the match against the opponent, you will have to wait until the end of the half to correct the mistake.

This option can make the Premier League more interesting if you have won all possible tournaments and want to maintain tension in at least some matches. Of course, you will have enough Glory to review the opponent's formation before the match. But the more prestigious the tournament, the more it will cost.

By the way, this option can be used separately from hiding the opponent's formation. Although, personally, I see the point only in the simultaneous use of these options.

I have previously written about options that make the game more difficult, making it more interesting for experienced players. With the new two options that hide the opponent's formation and prohibit changing your formation during the match, you will have more opportunities to adjust the campaign difficulty to your liking.

During game testing, I personally enjoy playing with the new options. I hope that many of you will also like these options.

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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.

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:

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

First and foremost, visit the game's page and add it to your wishlist. This way, you will receive an email from Steam when the game goes into Early Access or Full Release.

Secondly, click "Follow" to be notified whenever we publish news on Steam.
The great place to get notified about news and discuss them is our Discord[discord.gg].
Also, to follow our news, you can subscribe to our mailing list: Email subscription[eepurl.com].