Press Conference Questions

[Bojanbbz94]

There are still way too many questions that either

a) are totally unrealistic and would never be asked in real life.

or

b)  have no meaningful impact on the game.

Both increasingly feel like a legacy thing that are still in the game because that's just the way things have always been. They need to be re-considered.

a) includes things like being asked your opinion on a recent manager sacking, or (even more bizarrely) a rival manager in your division transfer-listing a player.

I genuinely cannot imagine a real-life press conference where a journalist would dare ask a fully-professional manager how they feel about a club he has nothing to do with transfer-listing their second-choice defensive midfielder, who barely ever plays and is obviously surplus to requirements.
The answer would be, at best, to deflect and say you "I don't want to talk about other clubs, its not my place" or, at worse, to criticise the question itself and say something like "What has it got to do with me and why should I care? Don't you have something more pertinent to ask me about my squad or the upcoming fixture?"

b) includes things like asking my opinion on VAR or how I feel about the league I manage in having a winter break / not having a winter break (delete as appropriate).

Yes, these are real-life talking points so I can understand why they are in the game from a realism perspective. But the difference is that in real life clubs and managers have a stake in the leagues they play in, and might have the power to change policies if enough of them ask for it. In FM, we can't. The league rules are hard-coded in and that's that. So why ask me?

Unless a question has the ability to change a metric in the game (the morale of one of my players, a rival manager's relationship with me, how a transfer target feels about me, if I'll be fined by the league for disparaging a referee, etc. etc.), I'm not sure it should be in the game. They're just bits of fluff I'm clicking through to get into the meaningful questions.

In one recent fixture, I lost 5-2 and in a post-match press conference with six questions in it, three of them were about VAR. They could have asked me about my CB who made a mistake, my striker who missed two clear-cut chances and got subbed with a 6.0 rating, my relationship with the AI manager, anything. But no, three questions about an in-game mechanic I cannot change making the right decision to disallow a goal.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Bojanbbz94

[jyny]

21 hours ago, Bojanbbz94 said:

There are still way too many questions that either

a) are totally unrealistic and would never be asked in real life.

or

b)  have no meaningful impact on the game.

Both increasingly feel like a legacy thing that are still in the game because that's just the way things have always been. They need to be re-considered.

a) includes things like being asked your opinion on a recent manager sacking, or (even more bizarrely) a rival manager in your division transfer-listing a player.

I genuinely cannot imagine a real-life press conference where a journalist would dare ask a fully-professional manager how they feel about a club he has nothing to do with transfer-listing their second-choice defensive midfielder, who barely ever plays and is obviously surplus to requirements.
The answer would be, at best, to deflect and say you "I don't want to talk about other clubs, its not my place" or, at worse, to criticise the question itself and say something like "What has it got to do with me and why should I care? Don't you have something more pertinent to ask me about my squad or the upcoming fixture?"

b) includes things like asking my opinion on VAR or how I feel about the league I manage in having a winter break / not having a winter break (delete as appropriate).

Yes, these are real-life talking points so I can understand why they are in the game from a realism perspective. But the difference is that in real life clubs and managers have a stake in the leagues they play in, and might have the power to change policies if enough of them ask for it. In FM, we can't. The league rules are hard-coded in and that's that. So why ask me?

Unless a question has the ability to change a metric in the game (the morale of one of my players, a rival manager's relationship with me, how a transfer target feels about me, if I'll be fined by the league for disparaging a referee, etc. etc.), I'm not sure it should be in the game. They're just bits of fluff I'm clicking through to get into the meaningful questions.

In one recent fixture, I lost 5-2 and in a post-match press conference with six questions in it, three of them were about VAR. They could have asked me about my CB who made a mistake, my striker who missed two clear-cut chances and got subbed with a 6.0 rating, my relationship with the AI manager, anything. But no, three questions about an in-game mechanic I cannot change making the right decision to disallow a goal.

I find the press conferences at times meaningless, repetitive and a waste of time. I just hand them over to my assistant now and ignore them.  I highly recommend doing the same.

[bigmattb28]

Least important part of the game, they do nothing, add nothing and just take up time. Even if you anger a player from doing them it literally does nothing Delegate to assistant and forget all about them

[NineCloudNine]

I’m reluctant to ignore them because I value the role-playing element. And I kinda don’t mind the repetition because I suspect that’s how it feels to RL managers.

But some of the questions are really dumb and the question choices can be jarring.

Some of the language also feels like a parody of 1970s MOTD. I still don’t know what “I’d be given pelters” means.

This is a module that’s well overdue for an overhaul. I suspect it’s a lot of work but it needs to move up the to-do list.