the Beautiful Game
The game now has deeper logic on several logical layers to make it harder to master and prevent having too many of great players. Some were looking at main skill and secondary, others are using the colorize functionality and some people just sum the total of all the skills of a player and consider that as a sign of a great player. Whatever is your method of understanding the skill of a player, the above methods will get you only halfway, at most.
Here is what counts most. The player entity is a much more complex one than before. A great player is someone who is excellent on one or two things but also great at few more. An attacker with 100 shooting is useless if he is to move with the ball and score and his other skills are irrelevant.
1. Production rate
Goalkeepers production rate is based on 60% on keeping, 20% on control and 20% on speed.
Defenders will contribute in production by 50% tackling, and equaly much with control, heading and speed.
Midfielders produce by 50% passing, and equally much with control, heading and speed.
Attackers produce by 42.8% shooting, and equally much with control, heading and speed and dribble.
The production total of the 16 home players vs 16 away players is what will determine the chances of both teams. One last but very important part of this puzzle is the experience. The experience stands for the last 10% of total production rate for any player.
2. During match
The players play match, they pass, run, tackle, follow your instructions on offside trap, individual orders and use any of their attributes necesary for the event happening . For passing it would be the passing skill alone, for tackling, it would be the tackle skill alone. The players move up and down the field trying to gain control of the ball and win the game. How fast a player runs to move up or down the field based on the instruction of go forward/go back you have given, is based on the player's speed attribute. The heading attribute will be used when the player is challenging other players with headers. Also it's the personality of the player and his aggression that will trigger a retaliation if he is brought down. Aggressive players will more often retaliate if they are tackled hard thus earning them more disciplinary points.
3. The Goal event
When a goal scoring event is triggered, a shooter vs keeper chances are calculated. For the keeper and the shooter, what matters is depending on the situation. There are three situation where a shot on goal is triggered.
A. Regular finish, where a player has dribbled all the way and takes a shot to goal or receives a pass and shoot on goal. Keepers skills that matter in saving that particular shot is 75% keeping and the rest is speed, control and flair.
B. Head on goal, 70% keeping, 20% heading, 10% is speed and control.
C. Flair shots, where a player shoots randomly, 70% keeping, 20% flair, 10% is speed and control.
The player attempting to score could be a forward or any other player who is attempting to score and then depending on the event the different attributes of the shooter will be used to calculate a chance of scoring.
A. Regular finish, where a player has dribbled all the way and takes a shot to goal or receives a pass and shoot on goal. Attackers skill that are used to determine the chance of scoring is based on 50% shooting, 15% on speed, 15% on control, and rest on flair of the player attempting the shot.
B. Head on goal, 20% shooting, 50% heading, 10% speed, 10% on control and rest on flair.
C. Flair shots, 35% on shooting, 15% on speed, 10% on control and rest on flair.
By having these logical layers of player ability, we will see that some keepers are better at saving regular shots, while others are better against headers.
Likewise, goal scorers will not all be equally good at different ways of finishing. Some will be better at scoring by heading, others by a longshot. That in essence will make the comparing of two similar players a bit harder to master.