In the Editor there are tens of thousands of players and they all have Current and Potential Abilities. These two attributes can define a player and most of the times they give you an accurate description of how good a player is. We will call Current Ability: CA and Potential Ability: PA
CA is an indicator of how good a player is at the moment. Usually at the beginning of the game CA will be less than PA (example CA of 160 and PA of 190). Both attributes range from 0 - 200.
Notes on CA:
The CA can improve by correct guidance and correct amount of games until the maximum figure, which is PA, at the correct time. If you use players who are under 19 too much then he is going to reach his PA too fast and therefore, it causes "burn out." Usually CA will drop when the player gets older or at some moment after he reaches his PA.
Potential Ability Defintion:
is an attribute for players in Football Manager games. It dictates the maximum that a person's CA attribute can ever rise to, and therefore how good they can possibly become. It can be a value between 1 and 200 (with 200 being the best).
The value of this attribute can also be a value between -10 and 0 (in the pre-game database) which tells the game to assign a random Potential Ability value within a certain range when creating a new game. For example, a player with PA set to -10 (the best rating), tells the game to use a random value between 170 and 200 for that player's Potential Ability.
We also need to know that PA’s have two types as well:
Fixed
Negative
Players with fixed potential:
These players have a fixed PA of say 184 (instead of the negative rating of -10) A high fixed PA is set to players like Pato, Aguero and Bolatelli due to the fact that they are already playing at the top of their games and in competive leagues, this ensures that these types of players will (most of the time) reach their PA instead of having a random PA.
Players with negative potential:
These types of players are assigned negative PA scores in the editor so that the game can randomly generate their potential each game (so it will most of the time always be different)
Now this is done so that they will either become World Stars or they will fade away (the developers cannot assume that Areola is going to become the next Buffon)
Actual PA’s which can be generated by the negative numbers:
-10 = 170-200
-9 = 150-180
-8 = 130-160
-7 = 110-140
-6 = 90-120
-5 = 70-100
-4 = 50-80
-3 = 30-60
-2 = 10-40
-1 = 0-30
Notes on PA:
The age in which a player reaches his full potential is up to different influencing factors. We need to take in consideration the standard of your facilities, your training schedules, the standard of your coaches, the amount of first team football the respective players gets and of course the actual difference between the CA and the PA. If he can improve a lot, then there is a high chance that he will.
Unlike CA, PA is generally a static figure that does not change once a game has been started. However if a player has a serious injury in the game their CA can decrease so much that they will never potentially be the player that they they could have been. PA is the maximum CA that a player can achieve and it is not possible for a player’s CA to ever surpass his PA. This system reflects well on real life, as a player who can be promising in real life may never reach his potential. It also helps to maintain a relative balance of player quality throughout the gameworld as time progresses.