Praise (and criticism) for training

[phnompenhandy]

I find I spend an inordinate amount of time clicking down the 'interaction' tree to praise or criticise training. I wish there was a quicker, one click shortcut, but that's not my issue here.

I feel that with a very young, impressionable squad, my boys need the feedback, so I choose not to simply ignore it.

BUT - is that right? Has anyone done any tests (in FM23 or previous) to measure what effect (if ANY) feedback on training has? I mean, yeah it affects morale a bit, but does that in turn affect performances on the pitch? Does praise or criticism actually motivate players to play better, or can praise make some complacent? What - if any - difference does it make?

[fc.cadoni]

It helps to build a connection with your youngs players, to become favorite personel; which gonna affect their decisions if they want to stay at your club or not. Also, helps to increase your Working with Youngsters attribute.

[SergeiG]

I dot it too, it helps build morale and relationship with your players.

I also wish there was some kind of "mass praise" or "mass criticism" on training feedback, it takes loads of time and clicks.

[priority76]

12 minutes ago, SergeiG said:

I also wish there was some kind of "mass praise" or "mass criticism" on training feedback, it takes loads of time and clicks.

There are some skins which make it a bit more easy, like one less click per interaction.  Every little helps.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

It literally does nothing. Ok that might not be technically true. I am sure it increases some counter somewhere in the game. 

But does it have any significant influence on the game? Absolutely not. Remember so called dynamic youth. Yeah the counter changes but causes 0 impact to the game. Same thing with dynamic tv money. Counter increases 0 impact. 

In fm23 I raised Hungary to #5 league played until 2050s. I had ZERO player interaction.  I declined or dismissed every single request. Did it stop me from upsetting huge teams and winning champions leagues. NOPE. 

FM24 I started in Andorra 1 spot up from San Marino. In 2030 I made the champions final against man city I got obliterated. I mean my squad if in England probably would be top half certainly not top 5 in Prem based on player quality. I have 0 elite players. 

Did zero interaction prevent anything? Nope. My entire starting squad wants to be transferred non stop. They want more money non stop. All my 3rd stringers want to be regular starters. Umm the answer is NO to everyone. 

Problem in most cases is reputation. Getting to finals mean nothing cause league is only #60 and team is only 2.5 stars. PSG literally makes offers onplayers I've bought for 5 million while offering like 50k. Player why didn't yih let me go? BEAT IT. GO POUND SAND. 

Honestly I am a firm believer morale dynamics and interactions are completely overrated by the community and developers. 

I'm sure some kind of back end numbers change. But not enough to effect the majority of FM players saves. 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

10 hours ago, fc.cadoni said:

It helps to build a connection with your youngs players, to become favorite personel; which gonna affect their decisions if they want to stay at your club or not. Also, helps to increase your Working with Youngsters attribute.

I'm going to need hard evidence. How much does it help?

How much faster is it then what would normally happen?

You will become their favorite just by starting them. You will increase working with youngsters just by buying and playing them in 1st team. 

So for interactions to be worth thousands of clicks a season it would significantly have to improve the speed of these events over what normally occurs. 

And I'm calling BS. Absolutely no way it speeds it up enough or perhaps even at all to be worth thousands of clicks. 

Fm community spouts off a lot of info with Jo hard evidence or tests or even anecdotal evidence. 

1 person says it. It gets on YouTube and then regurgitated on every fm community for years. 

If SI is saying it's important and it effects the game. Then they should be proving it with evidence. I want to see tests. I want to see bar charts. I want to see a universe 10-50 years in the future. 

If not it's BS. It's like dynamic youth rating. Sure it changes now run your game 200 years and it has ZERO impact. 

We as a community should honestly not settle for changes that don't have accompanying evidence with it to prove the new mechanics actually work and actually impact the game  universe 

 

[Rashidi]

I am only interested in my morale and happiness, so i ignore praising players and it has never harmed my clubs morale or player performances.

[fc.cadoni]

3 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

I'm going to need hard evidence. How much does it help?

How much faster is it then what would normally happen?

You will become their favorite just by starting them. You will increase working with youngsters just by buying and playing them in 1st team. 

So for interactions to be worth thousands of clicks a season it would significantly have to improve the speed of these events over what normally occurs. 

And I'm calling BS. Absolutely no way it speeds it up enough or perhaps even at all to be worth thousands of clicks. 

Fm community spouts off a lot of info with Jo hard evidence or tests or even anecdotal evidence. 

1 person says it. It gets on YouTube and then regurgitated on every fm community for years. 

If SI is saying it's important and it effects the game. Then they should be proving it with evidence. I want to see tests. I want to see bar charts. I want to see a universe 10-50 years in the future. 

If not it's BS. It's like dynamic youth rating. Sure it changes now run your game 200 years and it has ZERO impact. 

We as a community should honestly not settle for changes that don't have accompanying evidence with it to prove the new mechanics actually work and actually impact the game  universe 

 

Calm down.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

11 minutes ago, fc.cadoni said:

Calm down.

Calm down? Sorry I wasn't out of line or aggressive at all. 

 

I'm just stating that as a community we have a complete lack of hard evidence morale and dynamics actually do anything meaningful. 

While we have a ton of anecdotal evidence proving the opposite. 

Clubs could never win the league if a fm player holidayed the entire season. It makes every player request fail and tanks morale. 

But it doesn't stop the teams from winning. 

As a community we should be demanding 100x better communication from Si and proof of new mechanics actually working in game. 

Imagine this being a huge AAA hyped game and having that J league failure. There wouod be class action lawsuits forming. 

SI likes to pretend to get this Indy dev but they are owned by Sega a huge public traded company. SI has roots in the small Indy scene but they haven't truly been that company in over a decade. 

If SI wants to run with the big dogs then they gotta act like it. 

Estimated number of employees is 250-300. Those are Larian and Bethesda employee levels. 

They should have 6-12 employees where all they do is communicate to their player base. 

Most modern developed video games have an insane amount of communication not just during development but the entire life cycle. 

I've seen Indy students with less then a handful of employees better at communicating than Si. 

I've seen tons of Indy games where devs are I there replying to tgreads on a plethora of forums. 

We be looking to see 12-24 responses per year from Si and if they do it's only here. No other communities. Besides random Twitter advertising type statements. 

 

[herne79]

6 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

While we have a ton of anecdotal evidence proving the opposite

Anecdotal evidence, by its very nature, doesn’t “prove” anything.  Anecdotal means nothing more than something based on personal experience rather than hard facts, experimentation or research.  It’s not definitive proof.  You say things get regurgitated on YouTube and in the wider FM community yet by this statement you are doing just that.  It goes both ways.

Anyway, in terms of this topic I’ll relate some information given to me by an SI employee when I was one of the Tactics and Training Forum Moderators.  Aspects such as Morale and happiness are fed into something under the hood called Team Blend.  Team Blend is a Match Engine modifier.  In other words it can have influence on how matches play out.  However, there are many many aspects which can have an influence on the ME - it’s a very complex mechanic.  This means that just because something may be lacking (lets say Morale drops) that does not necessarily mean team performance during a match will take a hit because other aspects being fed into the calculations can hide or even make up for areas that might lack.

This is why us mere mortals may not notice any (or much) difference, leading us to our anecdotal “evidence” that it does nothing.  Now, SI are not about to (and nor should they) tell us what those calculations are or how much influence certain aspects have that feed into Team Blend or the ME.  The bottom line is we’re the club’s manager and as such if we see there may be an issue somewhere, such as with talking to a player because he may have had a good or bad week in training, we absolutely can.  That level of conversation isn’t about how much it might affect something under the hood - it’s about pretending we’re a club manager and talking to one of our players.  Does such conversations have an impact on ME calculations?  Absolutely yes.  Will it always have any significant or even noticeable impact?  Absolutely not, for the reasons mentioned above.

TL;DR if we can do something in game which may have a positive impact on something (eg., praising a player for their training and getting a positive reply from them) it might help, in probably a minor way, our matches and player relationships.  What we can’t do is definitively quantify the degree to which that something might help (because of all the other aforementioned influencing factors) and, to be frank, imo nor should we.

SI can certainly make improvements to their communication, but telling us exactly how much or little something we say to our players actually influences under the hood calculations isn’t one of them - if for no other reason that it’s practically impossible to quantify it due to all the other influencing factors and how they interact with each other.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

1 hour ago, herne79 said:

Anecdotal evidence, by its very nature, doesn’t “prove” anything.  Anecdotal means nothing more than something based on personal experience rather than hard facts, experimentation or research.  It’s not definitive proof.  You say things get regurgitated on YouTube and in the wider FM community yet by this statement you are doing just that.  It goes both ways.

Anyway, in terms of this topic I’ll relate some information given to me by an SI employee when I was one of the Tactics and Training Forum Moderators.  Aspects such as Morale and happiness are fed into something under the hood called Team Blend.  Team Blend is a Match Engine modifier.  In other words it can have influence on how matches play out.  However, there are many many aspects which can have an influence on the ME - it’s a very complex mechanic.  This means that just because something may be lacking (lets say Morale drops) that does not necessarily mean team performance during a match will take a hit because other aspects being fed into the calculations can hide or even make up for areas that might lack.

This is why us mere mortals may not notice any (or much) difference, leading us to our anecdotal “evidence” that it does nothing.  Now, SI are not about to (and nor should they) tell us what those calculations are or how much influence certain aspects have that feed into Team Blend or the ME.  The bottom line is we’re the club’s manager and as such if we see there may be an issue somewhere, such as with talking to a player because he may have had a good or bad week in training, we absolutely can.  That level of conversation isn’t about how much it might affect something under the hood - it’s about pretending we’re a club manager and talking to one of our players.  Does such conversations have an impact on ME calculations?  Absolutely yes.  Will it always have any significant or even noticeable impact?  Absolutely not, for the reasons mentioned above.

TL;DR if we can do something in game which may have a positive impact on something (eg., praising a player for their training and getting a positive reply from them) it might help, in probably a minor way, our matches and player relationships.  What we can’t do is definitively quantify the degree to which that something might help (because of all the other aforementioned influencing factors) and, to be frank, imo nor should we.

SI can certainly make improvements to their communication, but telling us exactly how much or little something we say to our players actually influences under the hood calculations isn’t one of them - if for no other reason that it’s practically impossible to quantify it due to all the other influencing factors and how they interact with each other.

Honestly I'm going to have to say that is a bad take. SI says lots of things. Like hey we have full j league licensing. Well incorrect here is an apology. Back track. 

Hey we have dynamic youth rating. Well hey sorry it's not what you think guys our bad back track. 

Why shouldn't they prove what's under the hood? Every other video games had to prove there game mechanics. Is fm not a video game? Do they get special dispensation from parliament?

SI just tells us hey we got this new mechanic. Umm does it actually work? If by working does it actually impact the universe.?

You literally didn't state anything that I didn't state. You just rearranged it. 

I said I'm sure there is a morale/happiness/dynamics counter in game. I'm sure it's there dynamically counting it's things. 

But I severely doubt it's impact is at all meaningful. Or holidaying would always fail if dynamics was weighted to be vastly important like it's portrayed to be. 

And you said yeah an employee told you it's there but there's all this other stuff that might make it kess important. 

The only difference in how we both stated the same thing is I took the side of the consumer and you took the side of a 259-300 employee developer owned by a multi billion dollar company. SI isn't the small Indy underdog anymore and they haven't been for nearly a decade. 

The impact dynamics has on the universe is severely overstated by the community and Si. You are basically saying that with all of the other factors in the match engine algorithms that the employee of SI stated to you. 

When it comes to game mechanics that literally requires thousands of clicks per season I say the community deserves to know what it does, how much impact it has and does it actually work. 

Or is it a giant waste of clicks and real time? Cause I'm leaning towards the giant waste of time. Until some can prove it. 

I'm not wasting thousands of clicks a season for a 30+ year save for mechanics that might do something useful or might not. 

 

[SergeiG]

On 25/11/2023 at 15:12, priority76 said:

There are some skins which make it a bit more easy, like one less click per interaction.  Every little helps.

Cool. Can you recommend one please?

[priority76]

2 hours ago, SergeiG said:

Cool. Can you recommend one please?

I recommend this one: 

If you select multiple players in individual training it looks like this:

[Kickballz]

I recommend that skin as well. The praise/criticise is very nice. Although to be honest I have never been convinced that it is worth bothering about. If there is any effect, it is impossible to know because there is not enough feedback.

Also, Sorry Jimmy, but tbh I find your posts hard to read. Why are you double spacing everything?

Edited November 26, 2023 by Kickballz

[Dagenham_Dave]

11 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Honestly I'm going to have to say that is a bad take.

 

It's not a bad take, it's 100% spot on. 

Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you. I know you won't, because you do nothing on here but rant and rave, so we'll just leave it at that. 

Edited November 26, 2023 by Dagenham_Dave

[JimmysTheBestCop]

23 minutes ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

It's not a bad take, it's 100% spot on. 

Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you. I know you won't, because you do nothing on here but rant and rave, so we'll just leave it at that. 

Of course you comment. You literally think fm and SI can do no wrong. You literally never take the side of the consumer. 

Yes the consumer is always wrong. The sub division of a multi billion dollar conglomerate is never wrong. All hail Sega and Si. 

If you think morale matters so much. Then prove it. If you want to talk the talk then walk the walk man. 

Be the big shot. Prove to the entire community how much dynamics impacts games. 

Cause I've stated you can holiday and see how little impact it has. That's my evidence. I've seen it have bare minimum impact not worthy of my time or millions of clicks. 

So come up with a test scenario and prove how Si morale mechanic actually works. 

Go on ill wait here for you to come up with a test scenario and prove it makes a meaningful impact To gameplay. 

I know you can talk the talk. Now try walking the walk or perhaps you don't have anything to offer

 

[Kickballz]

8 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Of course you comment. You literally think fm and SI can do no wrong. You literally never take the side of the consumer. 

Yes the consumer is always wrong. The sub division of a multi billion dollar conglomerate is never wrong. All hail Sega and Si. 

 

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a corporate shill. You are clearly walking on thin ice here and maybe you don't care.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

6 minutes ago, Kickballz said:

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a corporate shill. You are clearly walking on thin ice here and maybe you don't care.

I'm sorry did I call anyone a shill? Or is that something you inferred because there is a difference. 

He literally only commented on this thread because I did. He posted a completely of topic reply to my comment. 

Now we are all posting off topic because of what he started. 

[Dagenham_Dave]

26 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Of course you comment. You literally think fm and SI can do no wrong. You literally never take the side of the consumer. 

Yes the consumer is always wrong. The sub division of a multi billion dollar conglomerate is never wrong. All hail Sega and Si. 

If you think morale matters so much. Then prove it. If you want to talk the talk then walk the walk man. 

Be the big shot. Prove to the entire community how much dynamics impacts games. 

Cause I've stated you can holiday and see how little impact it has. That's my evidence. I've seen it have bare minimum impact not worthy of my time or millions of clicks. 

So come up with a test scenario and prove how Si morale mechanic actually works. 

Go on ill wait here for you to come up with a test scenario and prove it makes a meaningful impact To gameplay. 

I know you can talk the talk. Now try walking the walk or perhaps you don't have anything to offer

 

Why are you so angry? 

[JimmysTheBestCop]

2 minutes ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

Why are you so angry? 

Why are you following me in every thread harassing me.

You derailed this thread completely off topic. Please leave me alone. 

You had nothing of value to add to the youth intake discussion and replied to my post with the sole intent of attacking me or giving me a jab or insult. 

Either make a post pertaining to youth intake. Or stop following me into every thread harassing me. 

[Kickballz]

12 minutes ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

I'm sorry did I call anyone a shill? Or is that something you inferred because there is a difference. 

He literally only commented on this thread because I did. He posted a completely of topic reply to my comment. 

Now we are all posting off topic because of what he started. 

I'm not going to argue with you Jimmy - Just refer back to what you posted.

 

[SergeiG]

17 hours ago, priority76 said:

I recommend this one: 

If you select multiple players in individual training it looks like this:

Thanks!

[SaintEtienne]

Every Friday in game, my heart sinks a little as I know I will be spending the next five minutes praising every player who achieved 8+ in their training rating that week, and criticising anyone who trained below a 6. I do this across all teams (currently, Borussia Dortmund II, the U19s, as well as the first team). In a typical week, probably about 40 players get my praise, and 0–2 get criticised by me. I kind of don’t mind that it’s a chore: I’m putting the effort in, and I don’t think there should always be shortcuts with this sort of thing.

I do it partly from a role-playing perspective. Praising and criticising performance is something a manager is likely to do IRL, and it’s certainly what I would do, so it’s something I do in the game. And, true to the DNA of Borussia Dortmund, player development is central to what I want to achieve, and particularly youth development (my first act as BVB manager was to reappoint the legendary Lars Ricken as HOYD, who in 2032 in my universe had amazingly been unemployed for the previous five years). So, I like to be closely involved in developing my players, which means noticing what they do and showing them that I notice it – in other words, making them feel cared about and valued.

Now, I typically get through 4–6 weeks of game time each day, which means that in each actual day of my real life I’m spending 20–30 minutes just clicking away to praise/criticise my players’ training. It would be easy to describe me as a loser…

BUT across eleven seasons and four clubs (starting as unemployed and without any coaching badges) I have never had any problems with club atmosphere. My relations with my players are almost always excellent (my coaching team often tell me in staff meetings how my “personable” nature means that the players get on well with me), I don’t think I’ve ever had a single squad meltdown (the couple of times where there was a squad issue, I managed to resolve it very quickly), and player and team morale, as well as their development, are always very good. I like to think that the time I spend interacting with players to discuss their training performance contributes in some small part to this – that it does indeed have an effect.

So, who’s the loser now…?

[phnompenhandy]

8 hours ago, SaintEtienne said:

So, who’s the loser now…?

As you say, TIME is the loser. If SI would just add a right-click option to 'praise training effort' and 'criticise training effort', it would save you a ton of time. And for me, if it was a quick one-click option, whether or not it's effective or a placebo wouldn't be quite such an issue.

[enigmatic]

I won a load of stuff without buying players once.

I DEMAND EVIDENCE BUYING PLAYERS DOES ANYTHING!

ACTUALLY DON'T PROVIDE ME WITH EVIDENCE OR I WILL ACCUSE YOU OF TAKING THE SIDE OF THE BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATION AGAINST THE CONSUMER

 

For people that actually know that anecdotes about winning stuff are just anecdotes, not evidence to the contrary:

Praising training usually increases morale by one notch, how much they like you by a few percentage points and has a tiny impact on this week's training rating. You can see all this stuff though you need to peak at an editor to see the second.

The fairly cynical people testing the ME to breaking point in third party websites like FM Arena agree that fixing morale at a higher level across a team has is worth a few extra points per season. (Though of course, other ways to improve morale exist. like winning).  So the effect of periodically morale boosting players whose morale isn't perfect isn't zero.

Its entirely possible to do fine without players liking you, but players liking you keep the board happier and they're less likely to respond negatively to your actions, and more likely to stay or follow you to other clubs. And actually, there are surprisingly few ways of getting players to like you.

The training effect is hard to see because age and random number generators have a huge impact on attribute changes (as does fitness and... morale) but it is supposed to be there. Whether it matters if an attribute is 14 or 15 probably depends a lot on your style of play and the competitiveness of the league though.

It is entirely possible to win without doing this stuff at all, and far from guaranteed that doing it relentlessly will save your season.

But Its also possible to win stuff without ever picking the team, and I'm not sure anybody's ever demanded evidence that team selection has any effect

 

 

I think @phnompenhandy's suggestion of an easier right click option might be worth a feature request.

You can already one click praise/criticise lots of players in the individual training module though.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

The amount of real life time and thousands upon thousands of clicks player interaction, morale, praisu training takes better actually have more then a bare minimum impact to the game. 

If not it's completely pointless to have it in game. It just becomes busy work for the gamer. Not sure about you but my school days are long over and I don't need busy work. 

So yeah I think the amount of time overall dynamics takes as well as endless mouse clicks that these mechanics should actually be proven to have more then bare minimum impact. 

Which is what I said from the start. I'm sure there is morale counter that is counting away but the impact it has on our season is absolutely bare minimum. 

Theoretically if it was 5 points for season that is an astronomical amount of real life time and mouse clicks; well 90% of the time then I'll be skipping it. 

Interactions are totally out of control it's relentless clicking. This game targets adults who have family life's. So yeah the mechanics better be dang important or I'll skip.

Just like media. Even if you delegate. You get non stop media emails you have to dismiss or click over. 

Either strengthen the mechanics, show us making significant meaning to the club or completely streamline the game and get rid of useless clicks. 

 

Ask yourselves:

Did media Make the game better?

Did media increase your enjoyment level?

Does player interaction make fm better?

Does player interaction increase your joy, fun or entertainment?

Now envision what the majority of users would say. I think the safe bet is in its current implementation the answer would be No all around. 

 

Edited November 29, 2023 by JimmysTheBestCop

[SaintEtienne]

8 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

The amount of real life time and thousands upon thousands of clicks player interaction, morale, praisu training takes better actually have more then a bare minimum impact to the game. 

If not it's completely pointless to have it in game. It just becomes busy work for the gamer. Not sure about you but my school days are long over and I don't need busy work. 

So yeah I think the amount of time overall dynamics takes as well as endless mouse clicks that these mechanics should actually be proven to have more then bare minimum impact. 

Which is what I said from the start. I'm sure there is morale counter that is counting away but the impact it has on our season is absolutely bare minimum. 

Theoretically if it was 5 points for season that is an astronomical amount of real life time and mouse clicks; well 90% of the time then I'll be skipping it. 

Interactions are totally out of control it's relentless clicking. This game targets adults who have family life's. So yeah the mechanics better be dang important or I'll skip.

Just like media. Even if you delegate. You get non stop media emails you have to dismiss or click over. 

Either strengthen the mechanics, show us making significant meaning to the club or completely streamline the game and get rid of useless clicks. 

 

Ask yourselves:

Did media Make the game better?

Did media increase your enjoyment level?

Does player interaction make fm better?

Does player interaction increase your joy, fun or entertainment?

Now envision what the majority of users would say. I think the safe bet is in its current implementation the sbswr would be No all around. 

 

I asked myself your questions, and to each my answer is a (qualified) yes. And, more generally, I don’t agree that interactions are “completely pointless”.

Interactions (and many other things too) are often poorly implemented – in some cases, they are downright awful – and they have less-than-ideal mechanics (this is the qualification to my answers to your questions). But they are an important part of FM because they contribute to the creation of a vast universe that different players can explore and engage with in different ways.

And that’s the point: there are different ways to play the game. My son also plays FM. He delegates almost everything apart from transfers, he watches matches on key highlights, and he gets through a season in the time it takes me to get through 6–8 matches. And he wins a lot more trophies than I do. It is entirely possible to be successful at FM without bothering with interactions (or media or training or many other things).

I play in a different, much slower, way. I like to explore the wider world in which my character is part. Essentially, I like the role-playing element of the game. I’m not spending all that time on interactions because I’m chasing after a few extra league points. I’m doing it because, in addition to points and on-field success, other objectives are important to me, such as creating a club with a good professional ethos, ensuring the club has a happy atmosphere, developing a great youth set up, and providing the best possible environment for my players to flourish in their careers. A lot of what I do in the game is driven by that. For example, I schedule regular Community Outreach sessions, particularly for the youth players, simply because I think football clubs and their players should engage with and understand the importance of their local communities.

And I do these things because, for me (and it is possible I am mad…), a lot of the game is in my head rather than in the numbers on the screen. I play one save per year: I create a plausible backstory for an unemployed managerial wannabe without qualifications and playing experience, set up as many interesting leagues as I can, and then see what story will emerge over the next few months of my real life. So, the way I play is not about figuring out the fastest and most efficient way to accumulate points and win trophies; it’s about playing a character in a story. Interacting with players is part of that story.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

3 hours ago, SaintEtienne said:

...

I think it's mad lol but I respect it. I still think that a vast majority of FM users don't want to be bothered with it cause the minimal impact to game. 

I think SI is getting into the problem of trying to innovate but instead just recreating the same mechanics in a different way with more clicks. 

Example agent interactions and intermediaries. These mechanics while interesting have added a ton of clicks. To find the estimated value takes like 4 clicks per person. Same thing with salary. 

These need to be abstracted more like click a player and have a staff member automatically question the agent about transfer and salary. We are talking about saving astronomical clicks. 

Also there should be an option to hire a Head of Dynamics. I would be more then happy to have him sim dynamics for the entire season and live with him promising new contracts or pissing someone off. Not transfers. 

Even delegating all media isn't 100% effective because we still get emails. Let our press administrator handle that. 

I think Si has added a bunch of stuff the last 10 years but they haven't gone back and trimmed it up. It's gotten bloated with thousands of extra clicks. 

I'm trying to say either make our clicks impactful or have options that we don't even get bothered with it. 

Maybe fm25 will be streamlined ? Who knows. But it's getting bogged down in extra clicks each version

 

[Mike J]

On 26/11/2023 at 11:10, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Why shouldn't they prove what's under the hood? Every other video games had to prove there game mechanics.

Do they? I don't think I've ever seen any developer prove anything of the sort. You'd literally be asking most developers to reveal the secrets to what makes their games work. SI aren't going to give away the secrets of how parts of the engine work since that's the thing making them money and having people be able to copy it would potentially be corporate suicide.

While I think interactions could use some work, especially around communicating the effects a little better, I've not had any real problems with praising players for training well. Not sure how much difference it makes to the engine, but it feels like praising the top trainer that week is something managers would do and it's never hurt me to do it, as far as I know, so why not?

[phnompenhandy]

19 minutes ago, Mike J said:

Do they? I don't think I've ever seen any developer prove anything of the sort. You'd literally be asking most developers to reveal the secrets to what makes their games work. SI aren't going to give away the secrets of how parts of the engine work since that's the thing making them money and having people be able to copy it would potentially be corporate suicide.

While I think interactions could use some work, especially around communicating the effects a little better, I've not had any real problems with praising players for training well. Not sure how much difference it makes to the engine, but it feels like praising the top trainer that week is something managers would do and it's never hurt me to do it, as far as I know, so why not?

Praising the top guy and criticising the worst are both 2-click jobs. It's going down the list interacting with more that becomes an onerous and unrewarding task.

[Jimbokav1971]

I think we're going a little off-topic here and we have to remember what the original question was. 

@phnompenhandyasked specifically...

Quote

Has anyone done any tests (in FM23 or previous) to measure what effect (if ANY) feedback on training has? I mean, yeah it affects morale a bit, but does that in turn affect performances on the pitch? Does praise or criticism actually motivate players to play better, or can praise make some complacent? What - if any - difference does it make?

 1st. I must agree initially with the general point made by @JimmysTheBestCopin that just because SI say something doesn't make it true.

With respect though, just because you come on here and say you have won this and won that doesn't make your opinion any more valuable than anyone else's.

2nd I would again agree with @JimmysTheBestCop that you can just ignore just about everything and press forward again and again and as long as you get other things right, then it really doesn't matter. That being said I have noticed an increase in the significance of unhappy players in FM24 compared to previous versions of the game. So much so that last season I felt compelled to sell our 5 best players, and the improvement in performances was significant. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there is a tipping point with this, (as with everything), but my experience is certainly that teh tipping point has been moved, (and moved significantly). 

3rd. Having said that, I also agree in principle with the likes of @fc.cadoni @herne79 @Dagenham_Dave @SergeiG who suggest that there might be some merit in the "marginal gains" involved. I certainly don't agree at all that "it literally does nothing". 

It's just simply not true. 

I suppose for @phnompenhandyit's choice between effort and reward. Is it worth fiddling about with praising players training levels, and if so, to what end? 

Does praising training levels equate to an increase in future training levels? No, of course not. 
Does criticising training levels equate to an increase in future training levels? No, of course not. 
Does praising training already good training levels equate to an increase in future training levels? No, it still doesn't. 

So the question possibly should be... What does praising training levels do? In many cases the reward for praising training levels is increased morale. 

After that the question is... Does increased morale directly increase training levels? The answer to that is of course no, but as usual it's not that simple. 

If we instead ask the question... Does increased morale indirectly increase training levels? The answer would now be, yes possibly, (depending on other things).

I had a problem that I documented in my career thread recently, (I'm playing a Youth Only save in Colombia), and a player who I suspected of having decent PA was a regular bad trainer. I don't mean low 6's I mean regular red and often below 5.0. I had ask myself a few questions during the process that I tried, (and failed), to resolve this. 

Does his training performance directly impact to his player development. I think the answer to this is yes. While there are other significant drivers to player development, training is certainly a significant lever. I pick players players to play with a view to how good I think they can become rather than how good they are now, so having a player starting in my XI who was training poorly would seem to be a poor use of resources, (ie. playing time), to me. There was nothing wrong with his performances on the pitch, (in relation to his CA), but my issue is that I didn't want him for the player he was now. I wanted him for the player I hoped he would become. 

So his training was poor and his development struggled as a result, so because I'm playing a Youth Only save, what is usually a small problem is now a significant problem. Forget the actual training. That's not the problem. The problem is his lack of development, (despite 1st Team opportunities), and this is directly caused by his poor training performances. 

when his performances were initially poor I chose to criticize these poor levels, (and it didn't work at all). He took it badly, (because of his personality/hidden attributes). So now he hates me, despite the fact that I'm still playing him ahead of what his CA warrants, but neither praising his performances no criticizing his training levels seems to do anything other than rile him. 

It got to a stage where I decided to sell him because I simply couldn't build bridges with him and I couldn't improve his morale and therefore his training levels. 

I know this is looking at the original question raised by @phnompenhandyfrom the opposite direction, but I think it gives us the answer we need. 

Of course managing these "marginal gains" has an impact, (albeit small), and of course you can, (for the most part), refuse to play the game, just ignore it and power onwards to glory and success, (and this is exactly what I do for the most part because for example I can't remember the last time I spoke to the media), but it does mean that you are slightly, (albeit very slightly), less effective than otherwise might be the case, and sometimes these things snowball like they did in the case with my player. I was playing a Youth Only save and had to basically flog a player because although he appeared to have good PA, he simply wasn't going to reach it. I handled it poorly initially and it bit me on the bum. I can't remember ever seeing such a serious falling out as this in any version of the game previously. 

My advice to @phnompenhandyis to look at unhappiness in general rather than training levels and use response to training levels as a lever with which to impact morale... where you specifically feel you need to. I certainly wouldn't be going down praising every player every week. Hell, if I was going to do that I might as well start talking to the media, (and that aint happening). I particularly like the idea of a skin that makes this easier, (although don't know how that works), I assume you could drag to cover multiple players and then interact with them all in the same way, but the problem that raises, (in my head at least), is how do you respond to that when the players react differently, (as they are likely to). 

I've particularly had problems in FM24 with players with poor personalities training poorly and these players rarely respond well to criticism. Sometimes the answer is to write them off at the outset, (Unamb + L/.Det) is just a disaster waiting to happen and I don't bother anymore.

I suppose the answer is that once you've highlighted a problem trainer you know that the symptom is the poor training and the actual problem is the poor personality/hidden attrributes. 

[phnompenhandy]

Superb post @Jimbokav1971

You absolutely do understand where I'm coming from - in fact, more so than you realise. I kept my Op general as it's an issue that is relevant to everybody. But in fact, my situation is far more specific, being identical to yours. I mention too often that I'm a Lower League Manager, so avoided that (until now). I'm also an Academy-Only manager. I, therefore, too have young players with interesting PA but train very poorly. I try to give all my young players some first team experience over a season, but how much depends on various factors, such as their response when I gently criticise them. In order to give everyone a chance, I need to keep my squad size manageable, which means every time I get a new intake I have to cull players to make room. I have found myself releasing youths with real potential because of their poor training record, on the basis, as you say, that they are not going to improve fast enough if at all. What makes these decisions difficult in some cases is that when they do play, they play well, so I'm thinking, 'do I allow them to be an exception? In real life, some players put no effort into training yet still play a blinder on a Saturday.'I also wonder if I don't bother criticising bad trainers, will I lose respect from others in the squad?

 

So yeah, there are really two questions here, both of which you addressed. 1. is it worth the effort (clicking all the buttons), and 2. is it worth the effort (cajoling a player who won't train properly)?

[Jimbokav1971]

58 minutes ago, phnompenhandy said:

Superb post @Jimbokav1971

You absolutely do understand where I'm coming from - in fact, more so than you realise. I kept my Op general as it's an issue that is relevant to everybody. But in fact, my situation is far more specific, being identical to yours. I mention too often that I'm a Lower League Manager, so avoided that (until now). I'm also an Academy-Only manager. I, therefore, too have young players with interesting PA but train very poorly. I try to give all my young players some first team experience over a season, but how much depends on various factors, such as their response when I gently criticise them. In order to give everyone a chance, I need to keep my squad size manageable, which means every time I get a new intake I have to cull players to make room. I have found myself releasing youths with real potential because of their poor training record, on the basis, as you say, that they are not going to improve fast enough if at all. What makes these decisions difficult in some cases is that when they do play, they play well, so I'm thinking, 'do I allow them to be an exception? In real life, some players put no effort into training yet still play a blinder on a Saturday.'I also wonder if I don't bother criticising bad trainers, will I lose respect from others in the squad?

So yeah, there are really two questions here, both of which you addressed. 1. is it worth the effort (clicking all the buttons), and 2. is it worth the effort (cajoling a player who won't train properly)?

I know how you play so I did guess what was going on. 

I'm all for an easy life and I delegate absolutely loads of the game but when it comes to young player development, it does seem something significant that I should go the extra mile for. That being said, I still don't praise training levels for anyone other than the 3 at the top each week. In previous issues of the game I've had issues with praising players too regularly, and as a result for a while I changed weekly to monthly.

Even though I'm playing a Youth Only save, I refuse to sign some players from the intake based on their personality. Obviously Casual and Slack are the big no-no's but even Unamb + L.Det together is a nightmare. 1 of them on their own is fine(ish), but both together is just not worth the bother. 

The player I was dealing with in my thread was a.... Realist, (which I didn't have loads of experience with), and I think it's not as common as some of the others and it can cover a multitude of sins, (although he also had Outspoken and Confrontational as Media Handling styles), so the signs were there. 

If you're interested, my post detailing my failure to deal with him is about a quarter of the way down page 8. I just gave up in the end. I'm guessing that his Pro & Amb were both low. 

 

[Dagenham_Dave]

21 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Did media Make the game better?

Yes

21 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Did media increase your enjoyment level?

Yes

21 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Does player interaction make fm better?

100% yes

21 hours ago, JimmysTheBestCop said:

Does player interaction increase your joy, fun or entertainment?

When it works properly, again 100% yes.