Impossible promises

[Areolys]

What's up with that?

So, I've got a player that complained about his first team playtime. I told him, I would start him in the next few matches.

Now, our current league only has 16 games total. With that limited amount of games there are not too many games available.

Nevertheless, I played him in every single game from the day we had our talk to the end of the promise. Still, the player is unhappy and I've got a broken promise. That's just stupid.

What if the player is the absolute worse on the pitch? Am I still obliged to keep him on because I "promised him he'll get his chance"? It's stupid that if the guy doesn't perform it's my fault and I will break my promise to him, if it's the player who didn't take his chance.

 

Is there any way to see the progression of the promise and as to when it'll be considered fulfilled?

What can I do if a Backup player comes to me and complains? I don't want to promise stuff I can't keep and I don't want him to start the next 5 games. Yes, he can have 1-2 games but that'll be it, because he's just the backup guy. Any way to prevent this from happening or how to keep them quiet for when I actually need them?

[mack4ever]

6 minutes ago, Areolys said:

What's up with that?

So, I've got a player that complained about his first team playtime. I told him, I would start him in the next few matches.

Now, our current league only has 16 games total. With that limited amount of games there are not too many games available.

Nevertheless, I played him in every single game from the day we had our talk to the end of the promise. Still, the player is unhappy and I've got a broken promise. That's just stupid.

What if the player is the absolute worse on the pitch? Am I still obliged to keep him on because I "promised him he'll get his chance"? It's stupid that if the guy doesn't perform it's my fault and I will break my promise to him, if it's the player who didn't take his chance.

 

Is there any way to see the progression of the promise and as to when it'll be considered fulfilled?

What can I do if a Backup player comes to me and complains? I don't want to promise stuff I can't keep and I don't want him to start the next 5 games. Yes, he can have 1-2 games but that'll be it, because he's just the backup guy. Any way to prevent this from happening or how to keep them quiet for when I actually need them?

Simple, if a player comes to you wanting you to promise them more game time but they're not good enough to warrant it then don't promise them more game time!

[Areolys]

1 hour ago, mack4ever said:

Simple, if a player comes to you wanting you to promise them more game time but they're not good enough to warrant it then don't promise them more game time!

Not so simple. What if he's a promising youngster that I want to keep for the future but we're currently in a tight spot and need to best 11 to start?

What if I agree he should get his chance, but my schedule is just so empty that I've got no chance to satisfy him?

What if I tell him he'll get a run in the cup games but we get kicked out in the next game and there's no more cup games to be played this season? He'll still be pissed that he didn't get to play cup games even if we didn't have any more cup games.

The system as it is now is just crap, so I'm looking for solutions to keep them happy without promising stuff I can't hold, even if I'd start them for all the games possible. I don't want to lose all my players because the system is flawed.

[Weston]

We've been discussing how broken the promises feature is at great length here: 

 

[Sunstrikuuu]

1 hour ago, Areolys said:

 

What if the player is the absolute worse on the pitch? Am I still obliged to keep him on because I "promised him he'll get his chance"?

If he complains again, you can then tell him you gave him a chance and he didn't take it.

[HUNT3R]

2 hours ago, Areolys said:

What can I do if a Backup player comes to me and complains? I don't want to promise stuff I can't keep and I don't want him to start the next 5 games. Yes, he can have 1-2 games but that'll be it, because he's just the backup guy. Any way to prevent this from happening or how to keep them quiet for when I actually need them?

So if you don't want to promise him game time, tell him that? Why is this not an option?

[Neil Brock]

1 hour ago, Areolys said:

Not so simple. What if he's a promising youngster that I want to keep for the future but we're currently in a tight spot and need to best 11 to start?

What if I agree he should get his chance, but my schedule is just so empty that I've got no chance to satisfy him?

What if I tell him he'll get a run in the cup games but we get kicked out in the next game and there's no more cup games to be played this season? He'll still be pissed that he didn't get to play cup games even if we didn't have any more cup games.

The system as it is now is just crap, so I'm looking for solutions to keep them happy without promising stuff I can't hold, even if I'd start them for all the games possible. I don't want to lose all my players because the system is flawed.

Well the issue from your first post just sounds like a bug, assuming you started him in all those games as opposed to bringing him on as a sub.

The rest of it is dependent on squad management. How long will a hot prospect be expected to sit in the background waiting for their chance? They're more likely to kick off if they see themselves as better than the squad role you've given them. Look at Pogba when he was first at Man Utd for instance. Was seen by Sir Alex essentially as a 'hot prospect' whilst the player thought they should be involved in the first team, so realistically you could say 'squad rotation'. Got fed up, let his contract run down and left.

Some of those things would be new to the game (ie an option to say to a player 'we need to play our best players so wait for your chance' type text) so probably worth raising on the features forum.

Fundamentally though, it's squad management. If you can't satisfy a player without promising something you know you can't hold you either have too large a squad or don't rotate enough. 

It's been discussed a fair bit on these forums but a balance squad would have somewhere between 1-3 key players, around 4-5 first teamers then another say 5-6 rotational players. Then the rest would be backups or hot prospects. That way you can constantly rotate without players getting upset. 

[eriktous]

1 hour ago, Neil Brock said:

It's been discussed a fair bit on these forums but a balance squad would have somewhere between 1-3 key players, around 4-5 first teamers then another say 5-6 rotational players. Then the rest would be backups or hot prospects. That way you can constantly rotate without players getting upset.

That's the way I try to set up my squad, but I've been looking at some teams in the starting database and I haven't been able to find one that is set up with a balanced squad according to this advice. Generally they have 1-3 key players, 10-13 first team players and 5-7 rotation players (I noticed Pescara have 40! backups, but it seems the majority of their youth players have backup status for some reason). Looking at the other teams in my current save, where I'm in February 2017, the AI managers don't seem to change these set-ups, but I haven't noticed any melt-downs caused by mass squad unhappiness, so if they can do it, we should be able to as well, right?