Player interaction - opposing players

[januszpa]

I haven't seen a thread devoted to this topic, so I thought I'd do it. The following is based on my experience with FM 2010, so if anyone is willing to try it on FM 2012 and see if it still works, I would appreciate it.

Interacting with opposing players prior to a match against their team can cause said players to perform poorly, thus granting you a significant advantage - but it can also backfire on you. Here's how to do it while minimizing the risk of firing up your opposition:

1. A few days (preferably, just one day) before a match, go to the opposing team's squad page and sort the opposing players according to performance in the last five games.

2. See if any players have a rating of 6.6x or lower over the past five games. These will be the targets for interaction.

3. Of the players you identified, focus on those who will actually play against you (you can't be 100% sure, but if a player has started/been subbed into a large number of games and is fit, then chances are he'll be playing against you).

4. Finally, check the DET of those players. Avoid interacting with players with DET > 14. These interactions often backfire. Additionally, avoid veteran players who are professional, reserved or level-headed - I've also had these backfire, but it's more random.

5. Once you have vetted your targets, use the lowest criticism (or lowest praise for attacking players) possible - just to be on the safe side; if you over-criticize/praise, that can also backfire.

It may sound complicated, but quickly becomes second nature. There are no guarantees, of course, but if you follow the above method, you should see success in about 95-98% of the cases. The beneficial result will be a drop in the opposing player's morale and a drop in confidence during the match.

Of course, there will be more "targets" in poor-performing teams than in teams that are doing very well. This decreases the utility of the above method, but I still find it useful, because after all every season points are lost to theoretically inferior teams.

One final word of warning - be careful with interacting with opposing goalkeepers. A backfire here can really cost you. Nothing is more frustrating than an unbeatable goalkeeper. I tend to stick to trying to undermine defenders and leave goalkeepers well alone. Recently, I managed to unsettle a goalkeeper prior to a match (he was on a 6.20 rating for the prior five games, had DET < 10, so I thought I was safe), he did begin the game without confidence, but still ended with an 8.9 rating and cost me precious points. Maybe trying to upset him had no effect, but maybe it did, and I jinxed it.

[furiousuk]

There's a couple of good threads detailing the dark side of player manipulation

Heath's excellent post on it http://bit.ly/zOT7qY

and

My own take on things http://bit.ly/yEgpon

Assessing the player personality (this is just another way an intensive scout network helps) is pretty crucial here for trying to gauge the professionalism and pressure attributes of the players you're targeting but form and morale are also very important. There don't seem to be any hard rules for this in FM either, you have to just get a feel for which type of player will react the way you expect.

[januszpa]

Hey furiousuk,

Thanks for the links. The first one actually brought back memories - I now remember reading heathxxx's post, trying it out, and having it backfire repeatedly, costing me games and points. It was that experience which got me started investigating this. In my experience (FM 2010), composure, bravery, and current morale don't matter - only determination, and performance over the past five matches.

Maybe things changed in FM 2011, but I would be interested what results people get using heathxxx's method from the first link (that is, analyzing composure, bravery, determination and morale) versus my method (analyzing only the rating from last five games, with a correction for determination, and possibly some correction for the player's age/experience, professionalism etc.) and see who gets better results in FM 2012.

From reading your take, it seems that you also analyzed Schelotto's recent performance before targeting him. I never knew that also targeting the target's buddies can have an effect - I'll try it out. Does it ever backfire for you? If so, roughly how often?

In general, I view the negative comments about opponents as the mirror image of positive comments about my own players. Positive comments about my players are 100% based on their rating in the past five matches, and they almost always work. Conversely, negative comments about opponents are also based on their rating over the past five games, but corrected primarily for DET (because trial and error have shown DET to matter).

EDIT: btw, in your screenshots, the press actually 100% agreed with you. If the press believe a player is set for a "team performance", that means your comment got to him - he'll perform within himself. I always experience 100% correspondence between what the press say about my comment, and the player's reaction to my comment.

[januszpa]

Okay, so I did some further testing on this (FM 2010). Basically, I targeted 18 players that were picked for the next game by my next opponent. I ran the test six times - twice for each level of interaction. This obviously involved saving and re-loading the game. Here are my observations:

1. The type of interaction you can have with a player depends on whether the game considers him an offensive or defensive player. Defensive players can be targeted as "weak links," or similar whereas offensive players can be targeted as "threats." In my test, an opposing DM/MC was considered an offensive player, so what you have to pay attention to is what kind of an interaction the game allows you to make. In general, each interaction can have three levels - from weakest (I'll call it 1st), such as "could be a weak link" to strongest (I'll call it 3rd) such as "must be stopped". It does not matter that comments on offensive players sound "positive" since you are calling them threats - all interaction is intended to unsettle, so I'll just call it 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level of interaction.

2. The responses to your interaction depend entirely on the type of player - thus, only offensive players can "feel pressure", and only defensive players can "be a burden." This is important, because it obviously means that even though the game tells you that a player "feels pressure" this in fact tells you absolutely nothing about his PRES attribute. A defensive player will never be described as "feeling pressure", regardless of how low his PRES attribute is.

3. The responses can be classed into two categories - successes (such as "set for team performance") and backfires (such as "could pose threat").

4. There is perhaps an element of chance involved - I had the same player respond differently to the same exact level of interaction.

As to results: of the 18 players involved, only 4 ever backfired. Of those, three backfired in 4 out of 6 interactions, and one backfired 5 out of 6 interactions. So, as stated above, there does seem to be some level of chance - but not much. Those players who crumble, crumble every time. Those who resist, resist most of the time. The 1st level of interaction produced a total of 5 backfires, the 2nd level - 7 backfires, and the 3rd level - 4 backfires. Now for some tentative conclusions:

1. The average performance over the past five games (AVG5) is the single best predictor of success. ALL interactions, of any level, with opposing players whose AVG5 = 6.7x or less were successful. Of the players whose AVG5 = 6.9x or more (there were eight), 50% backfired at least once. Of the 48 total interactions with these six players, there were 16 backfires and 32 successes. Of those players with AVG5 = 7.2x or more (there were three), 100% backfired at least once. Out of 18 total interactions with this group, there were only 4 successes.

2. The morale of targeted player DOES NOT MATTER much, if at all. I've had players with Very Poor morale backfire, and I've had successes with players with Very Good morale.

3. Bravery DOES NOT MATTER. I've had guys with BRA 18 or 17 crumple, whereas a guy with BRA 9 (and Very Poor morale) consistently backfired. Of the four players who consistently backfired, only one had BRA = 15.

4. Composure DOES NOT MATTER. A player with COM 16 (but AVG5 = 5.98) routinely crumpled. A player with COM 10 (but AVG5 = 7.24) backfired 4/6 times. Of the four players who consistently backfired, only one had COM = 15.

5. Determination DOES SEEM TO MATTER, at least some of the time, but can be overcome. The one player among the AVG5 = 6.9x crowd that consistently backfired (4/6 backfires) had DET = 15, but also PRES = 13. At the same time, a player with DET = 17, BRA = 16, COMP = 16, PRES = 13, Good morale, but AVG5 = 5.98, crumbled every time. Two of the consistently resisting players had DET = 15.

6. Pressure DOES SEEM TO MATTER, at least some of the time, but can be overcome. Among my 18 test subjects, the highest PRES was 13, and five guys had it. Of the four guys who backfired, three had PRES = 13 and one had PRES = 10. The remaining two players with PRES = 13 crumbled 100% of the time, but they had AVG5 = 5.98 and 6.41, respectively.

7. Ambition DOES NOT MATTER. No one that I know of had mentioned it before as a factor, but I thought I'd check as to whether ambitious guys were more likely to want to prove themselves. Nope.

8. Professionalism DOES NOT SEEM TO MATTER much. Among those who backfired, three had 15+ in PROF. However, there was also a cohort of four guys with AVG5=6.7x or thereabouts, with PROF = 15 or more, and they all crumbled every time.

9. Temperament DOES NOT SEEM TO MATTER much. A player with TEMP = 20, DET = 14, but AVG5 = 6.96 crumbled every time. A player with TEMP = 14, DET = 12, but AVG5 = 7.56 backfired 5/6 times.

So, in summary: if you want to successfully unsettle opposing players, pay attention to their performance over the past five games. The game conveniently provides this information to you as a single number. If that number is roughly 6.7x or below, interact away. If that number is 6.9x or above, proceed with caution. If you see DET = 15 or higher AND AVG5 = 6.9x or higher, stay away. You can't really check PROF, PRES, or TEMP without cheating, and personality description won't always give you an answer, so stick to the two numbers you can see, AVG5 and DET, and you should be successful close to 100% of the time. Enjoy!

[Blinkenlights Faxlore]

I have a problem with this approach. If you're supposed to target players who aren't on form... well, aren't those the players that are the least likely to play well against you anyway, which would make them just the players not worth the trouble of unsettling? An approach that would help me unsettle the on-form players would surely be more useful.

[januszpa]

Well, all I'm saying here is that trying to unsettle in-form players through the press interaction option is a risky business likely to backfire.

On the other hand, targeting players who are around 6.6x or 6.7x can still yield benefits - these could still be very dangerous players whose lower ratings are due to the rest of the team not performing. Furthermore, although this is much more difficult to establish empirically, it could be the case that unsettling only 2-3 players has a knock-on effect on the rest of the opposing team.

Just now I played a game vs. Everton, a close, nervy affair. I ended up winning 1-0. I only targeted two of their players for negative comments - the others had too high form for me to risk it. Nevertheless, about 5-6 Everton players spent much of the game "playing without confidence." Was it due to me unsettling their teammates? Their coach's poor team talk? Some other factor? Who knows, but in a close game like that, I'll take any advantage I can get.

[Smac]

I've recently been using these before difficult matches and although it takes a little planning ahead and research, is quite satisfying to see in practice. You can usually see immediately that an "okay" morale has plunged to "terrible" when you've hit them well. I do 2-3 players at most and try to hit the weak links.

I had been using bravery as a key indicator for OI hard tackling, and morale + personality + "# of mistakes made" + determination to gauge media targets, but its going to be very useful to have your research to go by januszpa. Thanks!

I still don't really know when to use each of the 3 levels of media interaction, particularly against attacking players. The wording puts me off. I'd rather say "Dzeko couldn't find his boots, let alone the net" or whatever.

[furiousuk]

Does it ever backfire for you? If so, roughly how often?

I don't do it often (as in, hardly at all actually) simply because my squad is very professional and they don't like it - I've got to a stage where I'm generally the favourites so I just need to get my guys playing as well as they can in order to beat the opponent rather than lower the performance of the opponent to get a result. That said, there's still a place for it in big games, particularly if you had a different squad (but then it might be hard to find a poor form target).

Interesting that you find form so important, I do consider form when picking a target but always assumed their personality and attributes would be more important, I'll maybe look at it a little differently now and see what happens. I think it's also important that you tackle them tactically as well - either by tactical instruction or OIs. If I've unsettled a player (even a little) but then give him loads of space on the ball to regain his confidence then it doesn't make much sense, I want to drill home his insecurity by making life as difficult as possible (specific man-marking maybe, hard tackling, enclosing the space etc.).

I think you have to be careful with your test, it's a nice little example of how form was important in that situation but every situation is different. Those players might react differently in bigger/smaller games. They'll react different if they are favourites or underdogs. There's probably more as well.

[januszpa]

@Smac,

I don't really think you need to worry too much about the words you use in the interaction. I know that it sounds funny to be telling the press that Dzeko rocks, but if you convince yourself that at the game level all it is is just an attempt to unsettle him, you're good to go.

@furiousuk

There is definitely more to it than just form. Form, if low enough, basically guarantees success, which is why it is the most important thing to look at if all you want is a safe, close-to-100% success rate. However, it definitely IS possible to unsettle high-form players, and it does not appear to be random. I have a game with Bayern Munich coming up, they are a huge team in my game, so I might run more tests, but as you indicate, it could be very complicated. It could be a combination of factors that plays a part, it could be the IMP MATCH attribute as you suggest, at this point I'm simply not sure.

However, if it turns out that to accurately predict the success of interaction with high-form players you need to know their hidden attributes (which are not always knowable unless you cheat) then that would mean that it's always a gamble in those situations. If it turns out that it's a stand-alone attribute, such as very low IMP MATCHES, then scouting could solve the problem sometimes. We'll see.

EDIT:

I just looked more closely at a few other attributes. I checked them only for the eight players who had AVG5 = 6.92 or higher, since this group contained all four of the players who backfired.

I looked up the following attributes: BRAvery, COMPosure, DETermination, PRESsure, AMBition, PROFessionalism, TEMPerament, CONTroversy and IMPortant MATCHes.

Based on this small sample, here are the results:

Of the four players who consistently backfired, ALL of the above attributes were at 10 or higher, with one exception - one player had BRA of 9.

Of the four players who NEVER backfired, ALL had at least one of the above attributes at 9 or lower.

It's difficult to say beyond that with the few numbers.

The four resistors had either DET = 15 or higher, or PROF = 15 or higher. As written above, no one had PRES above 13 (but then PRES is a tough attribute to have).

IMP MATCH was almost identically distributed: the four who crumbled had it at 10, 14, 17 and 17, the four who backfired had it at 11, 14, 17, 17.

Two guys with CONT = 10 backfired, whereas two guys with CONT = 13 crumbled. One player who had CONT = 9, with all other stats 10 or higher, but with IMP MATCH = 17 as his only stat that was 15 or higher, crumbled.

So, for now, it seems that you need high DET or PROF (or both) and you need to not be low with at least some other stats (PRES? CONT?).

One final bit of info: PSV in my game has a rep of 7,410, and they were playing an away game in the Champions League against me, having already lost 3:0 at home in the first leg. My team rep is 9,851.

[qqq]

Warning Never do it to a goal keeper, it makes their hands bigger and their arms longer. I used to do it to a real obvious weak link but stopped for the same reasons as Furious, it can annoy your own players. But it is fun...