Bored of press conferences yet? If not, you will be

Just starting my second season on the new game and I'm already sending my Assistant to all the press conferences.

While the variety of questions is acceptable, the limited, often incongruous response range is so restrictive it renders the whole process frustrating and repetitive.

Another factor is the lack of solid integration. SI have made a habit of introducing new features in recent years that sound good on the back of the box which add very little to the medium to long term quality of the game. Elements that have been aimed at making the game more immersive - media, player interaction, press conferences - are so superficially implemented as to quickly become a distracting annoyance.

It's a disappointing trend that detracts from what I think tends to be a steady improvement in the games year on year.

Got bored the first 5 games into the demo.

The same questions are asked the same answers are given.

Yeah the media is still hopelessly repetitive. Beginning of season 2 and it's just the same 10 questions or so every time.

Ah well. The media has always been really poor. Maybe one year they'll bother to code a sensible amount of them so you are in danger of actually seeing a new question now and again.

Asking who will win the league this year when you have already won it, then your players feel the pressure of being touted as champions but they have been champions for weeks.

No questions about unhappy players, problems in the team, real tactical questions - nothing what a real press conference makes interesting. It's just another gimmick that become boring after a few games. I did not use manager rivalry for ages and I guess I will not attend a press conference after the first season.

I actually got a few questions about unhappy players and me removing players from National Team friendlies.

Apart from that, the press conferences may be the boringest part of a great game.

Funny how this needless aspect of the game, hankered after by the kinda people who wanna pick the size of half time orange, is now finally seen as the needless pain in the ass that it is.

Same will come of the fecktards asking for Stadiums to be modelled in the game whilst failing to realise is offers nothing in terms of realism beyond the pointlessly cosmetic and will slow the game down whilst seriously ramping the minimum spec.

It's too repetitive indeed. If I can, I always send my assistant. Only the ones I must attend I answer myself.

Too limited set of questions, in some interview the same question is asked 3-4 times in slightly different words etc etc.

My opinion is that press conferences in next versions can be removed, unless its made a lot better and less-repetitive than it is in FM09.

it will aslso take up time si could spend fixing and improving things that matter

Been sending my assistant since week 3 of the league season I think. Can't be bothered with it.

it can be a rather interesting feature of the game, if addressed correctly next version, the content is poor, but with some work on it, could be interesting.

At the moment, it isn't.

I would prefer more arrows on the tactical board, than silly pre and post match conferences.

Cheers

I tend to attend the ones which I feel are for important games but mostly send my AM. It's a good feature it just need a lot more variety, like all the media.

your answers tho are not as limited as you may think as there are various trigger phrases and words you can type in. people have probably already noticed how some swearwords have an effect

Does it have any effect in the game or its just makeup?

Does it have any effect in the game or its just makeup?

I'm sure it has some kind of impact on the attributes of a manager's stats, such as media friendliness or whatever

I would be happy to volunteer my time to write some questions that could be included in a press conference. They are unfortunately far too repetitive

Remember, also in real live football a lot of managers don't like it an get bored too. So it's quite realistic,

Be careful about sending assistants though. I sent mine before a match against Wigan and he singled out Emile Heskey as a key man and a real threat. Obviously the big lump scored a header against me tow in the match for Wigan

The game is great, but I also stopped attending the press conferences after the third one I think. It's exactly the same as with all other media interaction in the game. Something just isn't right in that area of the game.

No questions about unhappy players, problems in the team, real tactical questions - nothing what a real press conference makes interesting. It's just another gimmick that become boring after a few games. I did not use manager rivalry for ages and I guess I will not attend a press conference after the first season.

I agree. If the questions were dynamic and in reaction to what you are doing on the pitch, such as, "Is there a reason player x hasn't played the last couple of matches?" or "Why haven't you pushed the attack more in light of your recent goal-scoring woes?" If the press conferences don't have this, then they are pretty pointless.

Im sure the real managers find them boring and a pointless waste of time also ;p

Ive just been sending my assman 99% of the time and only attend if something interesting happened that might be brought up ... big win, big loss etc Even then they do seem awfully generic.

Has anybody made a thread yet of the possible answers you can type or words that give a different media or team response? I'm sure someone will if not already, this could make it more interesting. I've added a few myself but not really seen an affect.

No matter what SI does, it will always be repetitive. Even if they put in 10 more responses, eventually those 10 will get boring too, just take longer.

I think it's a nice feature which makes the game more realistic. I attend the ones I feel important but otherwise my AM does it.

It´s possible to implement such things in a interesting way, but you need hundreds of possible questions and a very good interaction with the rest of the game. As an example it should interact with player interaction. Players should make comments to the press, the manager should react to the player but also be asked by the press. The approach to the press and to the player should be different and so on.

press conferences definitely need some serious complexi-fying. the number of questions that boil down to responses like "i totally disagree, i disagree somewhat, no comment, i agree somewhat, i totally agree" is irritating and ruins any immersion factor. the sorts of things i think need to be added:

- more insightful tactical discussion, particularly in response to what your changing and doing ("over the past few games you've been playing a lot of attacking football but scored very few goals, is this a problem that you plan to address?")

- questions about your squad selections, signings and happiness more often ("maxi rodriguez was a big signing for you in the summer but he's only made a couple of sub-appearances so far, was it a mistake to sign him?" "henri saivet has been making some promising showings for the reserves since his signing last year, when do you think he'll be ready to make the step up to the first team?")

- the ability to start discussion as opposed to just respond ("i believe it's time for robbie keane to step up to the plate and show his worth in the upcoming fixture" "theo walcott's progress this season has suprised us all, and he should be knocking on the door of national selection soon")

- press conferences at other periods during the year (season start, mid season, season end, after being ejected from the champions league, after a bad run of results)

- questions that respond to your actions in the game ("a source from your squad has said that you've been working your players like dogs during training, any truth to it?" "you said last week that you through sergio aguero was future star, any plans to sign him?" "rumours are suggesting that hargreaves has been offered out to clubs, does he still have a place in your team?")

I like the media in FM09 because it comes around less often than in FM08. If it worked as it might it would be great. But it doesn't and it isn't. It is however a very small step in the right direction.

I think it is terribly repetitive. But then again at least SI are trying something new. I'm sure that within a few releases it will be a lot more...interesting at the very least

It really doesn't feel like it takes your circumstances into account. That and the generic Agree/Disagree answers are my biggest dislikes of the feature.

That is exactly what I thought about the Teamtalk function after a while. Si really have failed on the media interaction front, time and time again. They may sound good on the box but in reality, they're rubbish. For instance, in the teamtalks you cannot express anything other than anger when a player has mad a mistake to get your point across. But even then they have to have a low rating for them to actually accept that. The variation in responses is just ridiculously small. If a referee makes a stupid decision, can you complain about it? No, not unless a player finds it controversial. The media interaction on all Football Manager games is poor. They need to fix it and quick. But I guess they'd prefer to focus on putting in more useless and gimmicky features in, instead of developing the crap features.

It's far from perfect but I do like the Q&A session when joining a new club.

It is pretty awful. It's like a bloody survey. I totally agree/I somewhat agree/No comment/I somewhat disagree/I totally disagree. Rinse and repeat.

Press conferences seem to treat the manager exactly the same whether he's managing Barcelona to if he's managing Forest Green Rovers. There's no recognition of the quite different nature of managing at the top or at the bottom. And anyway, how often, in real life, does a Forest Green manager actually go to a press conference? I would assume he just gets approached by local papers from time to time.

I also agree with pretty much all the criticisms I've read in this thread so far. However, I will say that press conferences aren't exactly ruining my game. I'm choosing to be optimistic that future versions will see a greater variety of questions, possible answers and with recognition of the differences between managing at different clubs.

It's far from perfect but I do like the Q&A session when joining a new club.

Yeah, those "new job"-press conferences are OK.

Unfortunately, most others aren't in my opinion, too much repetition.

That's why I send my assistant manager to them

That's why I send my assistant manager to them

I don't trust my assistant manager not to completely demotivate my players.

But then again, I barely trust myself not to do that, either!

They should hire a few more people to work exclusively on the media side of the game. It needs much more variety

I don't hold out much hope for improvement in future versions.

When media was first introduced it got rubbished but hasn't really improved in all the years since.

When team talks came in and were stupidly restrictive (you basically say the same thing every single game) we hoped they would improve with time but they haven't moved on at all.

Surely we're at a point with the series now where there isn't a great call for anything completely new. Wouldn't it be great to spend the year working on top to bottom revamps of things like team talks, transfer negotiations, media interaction.

Well implemented versions of those would be much more useful than another 'new feature' that adds nothing to the game.

I think this would be a great area for some work of the FM community. I think it would be best to provide only basic media text like it is now, but make a decent editor available for the community. It should only give you the task of typing in the text for the answer and give you lots of effects to chose from. I would take some time to give lots of effects as they should come from all areas of the game and also the effects should not be static. I mean every answer should have 3 possbible effects, that have a 1/3 change (perhaps it could even be made available to make chances differ) to happen.

Even if a decent editor like this would take some work, the community could make an absolute gem out of this and SI wouldnt have to spend any resources in the future on media.

I have to agree with the original post.

SI - hire some experienced game designers please.

Thanks.

Yeah, I just send the AssMan now. Did the conference thing in the demo, didn't bother in the full game at all.

Press conferences are very boring for me... Whatever I do, whatever answer I give, I got all the time the same conclusion (Or almost) : "Lots of people think that the {team} players won't appreciate the way {manager} has answered the question"

(PS : I hope you will find the right expression, since I don't use an english version of FM2009 and english isn't my natural language. It should be a good thing if the english language was in every version of the game, for issues feedbacks...)

The technology required to get these things working properly is at least a decade off (probably quite a bit more). The only way to stop media interaction from being anything other than a repetitive series of multiple choice questions and feeling like the "real" world would require an AI that can pass the Turing Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test). This ain't gonna happen any time soon.

I appreciate that it sounded good as a concept when someone said "it would be really cool to have media interaction". But I think the idea itself is better than the current means of implementing the idea. I really think these things should be made optional (as in turn them off completely; and not just send your ass man to do it for you, as he might make a complete hash of it).

The Derby match questions are ok as i am sheff wed and was playing sheff u

but u do always get teh feeling it was rushed especially the 3d match engine i mean how hard would it be to have some nice smooth renderd 3d players and a nice looking stand behind the pitch i have seen 3d java games looking better

I would be happy to volunteer my time to write some questions that could be included in a press conference. They are unfortunately far too repetitive

And that's what we should do I haven't noticed if there is any thread for that, but there should be. In a year (til the next FM) they would have plenty of media questions to choose from if something like this was made as a sticky

i say remove media from game. doesnt add anything and only takes time from important important manager simulation wich this game is about

to be fair at least you are all playing the game!! i can't get mine to work so just be happy your playing it

It's less repetitive then previous versions and one step in the right direction, but yes I agree it isn't the most fun part of the game.

Just starting my second season on the new game and I'm already sending my Assistant to all the press conferences.

While the variety of questions is acceptable, the limited, often incongruous response range is so restrictive it renders the whole process frustrating and repetitive.

Another factor is the lack of solid integration. SI have made a habit of introducing new features in recent years that sound good on the back of the box which add very little to the medium to long term quality of the game. Elements that have been aimed at making the game more immersive - media, player interaction, press conferences - are so superficially implemented as to quickly become a distracting annoyance.

It's a disappointing trend that detracts from what I think tends to be a steady improvement in the games year on year.

Agree- once again we get a game with no real substance added to the gameplay.

Woo- we have an ok 3D engine albeit one that only highlights the flaws in the match engine even more, thats no excuse to tack it onto what is essentially an update of FM08.

Wheres the player interaction? Wheres an improved tactical interface?