PNF: Sitting in a gold mine or just an annoyance?

It’s been almost a season with the new special events, and one of the most discussed change is the new Powerful Normal Forward (PNF). How valuable is he? Should I buy or train one for my team or will it be just a hole in the water?

Let’s summarise the rules for the PNF again. You need a powerful forward with high playmaking and scoring. For any such a player, the higher your odds of creating such an event. In specific:

– With only one PNF, you have 10% chances of letting your players try to score like that.
– With two PNFs, the probability increases to 16%
– And finally, with three PNFs, you have 20%.

When does your team have that opportunity? Right after a missing, normal chance, the probabilities above get into the game. If you are lucky, then the playmaking skill of the chosen PNF is compared against the sum of the defending skill of the central defenders. All side effects (form, stamina, experience, health, loyalty, homegrown bonus) take their part in the calculations. If your opponent doesn’t have any central defenders, then no one is there to stop you reaching the goalkeeper.

If you pass the defenders, and only then, it will be decided if your event is a success or a failure. At this point, the scoring skill of your PNF is compared with the goalkeeping skill of the opponent keeper. Again, all the side effects are applied here too.

We know how much you love statistics, and that’s why we will give you a taste of PNF.

We ran a few simulations with real matches. In every case, the ratings of home and away team were identical. Same with all the players’ attributes. The home team was the one with the powerful players. The Powerful Forward had titanic (15) playmaking and scoring skill. The opponent defender had titanic (15) defending skill and the keeper had extra-terrestrial (16) goalkeeping skill. In every match type (with 1 or 2 PNFs against 0 to 3 central defenders), we ran 3000 simulations and got the following stats:

– Win/Tie chances.
– Average home goals.
– Chances to get at least 1 PNF event.

And what about the case with 3 PNFs? We are aware how much you love the stats and transparency, but we also know how much you love to do your own researches. That’s why we left the last case out of our blog post to let you find more about it. Good luck and see you on our next dev post 🙂

HT-Tasos