Press conferences: how can we improve them?

Press conferences may be happening in real life, but in the game they get boring very quikly and just take time which could be better used for more important and fun stuff like tactics, training and the matches. I know you can let your assistant manager handle them, but I rather handle things myself. Press conferences in this way just aren't fun enough. The idea itself isn't bad, because I found myself interviewing myself when I played FM in the past. It was nuts, but hey it was fun. And I have never worn a suit for a cup final, so other people are even more nuts. So it can be a fun thing to have press conferences. The problem is, implemented in this way they get repetitive and irritating instead of fun. Besides the question of how they can get improved, it is not fun enough. If it were possible I'd say tune them down or get them out until there is a more fun way to have them in the game. But to be realistic, SI won't do that as they build upon what they implemented. That seems logical, but there is not much fun in repetitive press conference questions after almost every match.

I do wonder if the solution is to have more and better suited answers, because they still get repetitive. Maybe the technology just isn't there to have them in a fun way in a game at this moment. For now the best and most simple solution would be to tune them down and have them occur less often and/or with less questions.

Does anyone have an idea how to improve this feature in future versions?

It needs to be more interactive, with a greater diversity of question and more of a cause and effect scenario than there is now. I dont think theres anyway of implementing that though :S

1) 4,5 years ago i played ea sports's total football manager 2005 ...at the Press conferences it gave you 7 or 8 answers 2 good, 2 bad, but 2 or 3 in between. at times you really have to think about the answer !! i still remember this. i was asked about drogba's good form, and stead of saying "its great but i want more and i know he can give more" i said "i think right now he is one of the best players in the world" or something like that.... the next day drogba laughed at me !! and mutu was MAD that i practically sucked drogba's c**k and not his !!!! FM still dont have that in the press conf

more Q's and more A's please !!!!

"We" can't improve them.

Only SI can, and I think they will be loathe to do so.

make it so we can turn them off

Press Conferences are also boring in real life, so maybe the right thing to do is to remove them, we could have the option to turn them off like Dicko99 said .. sending our assistant manager can have negative effetcs .. i don't know, this feature is boring by nature, there's not a lot to be done in my opinion.

The idea itself isn't bad, because I found myself interviewing myself when I played FM in the past. It was nuts, but hey it was fun.

thank christ, i thought maybe i was the only one. Sometimes i even read the commentary with motson-esque inflections...and i never liked john motson tbh.

There might be a different approach possible, say a "media room" which would have team formations and tactics on it, and how you select the tactics on yours and your opponents screen (who you would close down, mark tightly etc) would outline your tactical decisions which they could then comment on "I dont like how he's leaving Ronaldinho exposed on the wing, but this formation does give them some extra attacking options and creates a bigger threat down the wings". This, coupled with the multiple choice Q&A might give a more tailored feeling.

There needs to be more random questions, a sense of intelligence by the AI whereby questions are generated based on a particualr answer. Its always the same thing, "you play your x game, how will you play" or "do you feel you can win the title". There needs to be a little more imagination. Eg. "I plan to play attacking football" and the next question being "do you feel that striker x is good enough to adapt to this request". Those kind of things would help. Also questions on rumours would help, so far they are on players I have never even shortlisted. I like the new signing press conference but this needs to be enhanced.

Definitely don't want them to be got rid of, it's great that they were put in the game and I've found that in this year's FM a few of the big conferences are actually quite good, such as the start and end of season ones and conferences before the rival games but obviously all the others before regular games are tedious and there are some situations where I have to not answer because the answer I want to give just isn't there.

So in FM11 there has to be a better choice of answers (9 or 10 perhaps) and just a bigger question bank for the regular conferences. Something else that drives me mad is the news report after the conference which too often says it was a "cagey" press conference when I don't think it was tbh.

I'm with 2Pacalypse! Press Conference are boring in real life and exist for one thing to create scandals that the papers would sell more or is managers always saying the the opponents played well and complementing stuff or saying the referee was crap and stole the team the victory and so on and so on.

To be honest is one of the things that ruins football in any scale. So I'm in favor in just remove them!

The only way I can see this side improving is by having thousands of potential questions and answers. However I just cannot see SI investing that much time into creating the required amount of questions/answers. The only solution around this that I could see would be for SI to open this up to the community like graphics and skins can be added. Maybe implemented in a database of questions with several potential answers for each question. I'm sure if it was possible to do this a project could be setup to create such a database and probably within several weeks we'd end up enough questions and answers to stop the repetiveness.

I can understand why people want to switch them off though but Football Manger has always been marketed by SI as being close to realism and well irl Press Confrences do happen.