Player Personalities and the Press

[Double Dribble]

I would like this to be a bit more dynamic. I have a player who has been on a tear and I decided to praise him and his attitude went up (fine) but his effort went down(not fine)

because on his playing card

his motivation is very high, consistency high and work ethic is good.

I think players that have certainly personalities should do better when praised in the press.

If his motivation was low and work ethic low then I could see how praising him could have bad effects.

Anyway, I would like player personality to have more of a dynamic effect on our interaction with the press.

[Sweed]

I suppose one could argue that during this phase of play he was outperforming his "good" work ethic? Your praise may have allowed him to relax the effort (one could argue in real life this wouldn't be a conscious decision) thinking he had reached a new higher level? In other words your praise that was meant to motivate him even more actually had the opposite effect? Of course this is all just speculation on my part. I would think this is a hard thing to get right in a game. You don't want an easy automatic way to build up your players but then you don't want it to be total guesswork either.

I think FM (football manager) is a good example of having to try to guess what will work for motivating players though, I haven't played the last few versions so maybe that's not the case anymore? I do recall visiting their boards a few years ago and reading similar issues, IE I told player A "xyz about his performance" expecting a good result but instead his play, attitude, effort etc. went down. Not sure it's applicable, just speculating.

[Gary Gorski]

I can work to make it a little more dynamic but there does have to be tradeoffs - for example you can't just have outcomes where everything that happens is good because it would be a total cheat code to always just select the good options. If you praise a player, even a good player who is a hard worker and good in the locker room kind of guy can let that praise go to his head and relax a little and by the same token a guy who was basically a total machine and wouldn't relax because you praised him probably then would not experience a boost in attitude because if that's how he is he probably could care less what anyone thinks about him.

[jbergey]

A self motivated player that you praise would probably have zero effect in his play IMO. Self motivated individuals tend to not care what others think as they are driven within. Jordan would look for slights to try and motivate him because he needed something extra.

A player that might perform better being praised in the press would probably be a lower confidence individual. Likely a person whos work ethic is average to below and motivation is average to below.

[daltontr]

I can work to make it a little more dynamic but there does have to be tradeoffs - for example you can't just have outcomes where everything that happens is good because it would be a total cheat code to always just select the good options. If you praise a player, even a good player who is a hard worker and good in the locker room kind of guy can let that praise go to his head and relax a little and by the same token a guy who was basically a total machine and wouldn't relax because you praised him probably then would not experience a boost in attitude because if that's how he is he probably could care less what anyone thinks about him.

In my limited experience (2 Seasons) every response to the request for a quote is detrimental. Praise a player and their attitude goes up, but effort goes down. No comment a player and their effort goes down, because they wanted you to praise them. Maybe I'm just unlikely, but in two full seasons I've never had a positive result.

Granted I've never chosen "Downplay", mostly because I don't understand what the upside could be if your basically taking a dump on someone's good performance.

[Tim Moungey]

I personally just ignore those emails and don't respond to them. Haven't noticed any effect either way to doing that.