"We have a disloyal group of players"

[Tade Shakar]

Arrrrgh. In my long-term save I have kept the team very stable in order to pump up the loyalty rating in the team dynamics.

It goes about the same for all players: after a time between 6 months at best and 4 seasons at worst, they begin to slightly influence the team loyalty rating positively, provided they have Influential or Team Leader status.

Then they can pass 10 more years at the club, they will never influence the team loyalty rating more than this tiny bit. So the rating basically depends of how many Influencial/Team Leaders I have, and until recently with 6-7 leaders +6-7 influs in the group, the rating was stuck at B for years, briefly reaching A once.

But recently I have less players with influence overall (not sure why), and the rating has fallen back to C.  But there is worse: the team report now tells me, much to my dismay, that "we have a disloyal group of players". Yet none of them is listed as having a negative influence.

So... I have two problems here:

The first is that player's influence on this team rating doesn't seem to improve over time. I mean, it does, since this influence doesn't appear right away (even with Influential status), wich is good. But then it doesn't matter if the player has been here for 2 or 10 years, none of them will ever improve the rating more than a tiny bit. I think it should keep improving over time: I have an extremely stable group, my manager profile has been showing a loyalty rating of 20 for years, I believe the team's attitude should reflect this a little more BOOOHOO NO ONE LUVES ME. So, even players who have a quite low loyalty hidden value should, imo, have an impact on the team rating that keeps growing over time more than it does now. Because 3 seasons at a club are one thing, and 10 another, even for someone who's not very loyal by nature.

Second problem is that I have zero clue wich of them have a natural tendency to be loyal (so, the individual hidden loyalty rating) and wich don't. It would be great if, just like the player report sometimes says "has a tendency to bend the rules" when they have low sportsmanship, we could have a "not the most loyal player"/"rather loyal player" mention. Because now we're very much kept in the dark about it, unless they have Loyal personality.

Ah, also it doesn't seem that having our club as their favorite one makes any difference at all, but I can't be sure about this.

Edited March 21, 2022 by Tade Shakar
edited typos

[StephenCronin]

Some very good points in there. I've never watched this closely, so can't comment on all of that, but I don't *think* the Loyalty value changes at all (could be wrong), except if they inherit their mentor's Loyalty. I think it would be great if it increased with time at the club etc as you outlined, would love to see that.

I certainly think it would be useful to have more hints that a player is loyal in the coach report etc.

There is a message "Wants to help <the club> succeed" in the Training screen, but I think that's related to Favourite club, not Loyalty. It's showing on a player that has the club as a Favourite but only Loyalty of 13, where as players with Loyalty of 18 but without the the club as a favourite don't show that. 

As for the impact on the squad, I think the Relationship page is key to that. My player with Loyalty of 18 doesn't have green there because he's not influential. I have another player who's influential, who has Loyalty of 14, who has dull green (not bright green). Anyway, that lines up with that you said above - but one thing that I've found *can* (but not always) be important is squad status on their contract.

I typically keep the status as low as possible so they don't get upset about playing time, but I found that giving the right players a status of First Team or Key Player can actually be helpful here. I had one player who had pretty much no greens on the Relationship page and I gave him a new contract, taking him to First Team (from rotation) and all of a sudden he had bright green. Doesn't happen all the time, it seems it considers a player's ability, their age, their reputation, maybe Leadership?, etc in working out if they are influential and if they get the bright green on the relationship page, but if you aren't getting many team leaders, then maybe hand pick some people and give them new contracts with a higher status. Could be worth a try.

With all that said, I generally don't worry about Loyalty, I really only worry about Professionalism and Work Rate and also Morale if it gets right out of control. 

Anyway, thanks for highlighting this, I'd love to see them make some improvements here.

[Marc Vaughan]

I think those are fair points - there is a hidden 'loyalty' value for players at a club which is part of their underlying personality ... I think that in the circumstances perhaps I should make this more flexible (so it's artificially higher if a player is at a club for a while and lower if he's moved recently before he 'takes roots').

PS - Stephen is correct regarding the squad status etc. affecting how much influence players have on the squad overall.

[Tade Shakar]

Thank you both for the replies.

Il y a 14 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I don't *think* the Loyalty value changes at all (could be wrong), except if they inherit their mentor's Loyalty.

My understanding so far was this: 

1) Players have an individual hidden loyalty rating wich is part of the player's personality (and as you said does not change except from tutoring).

2) The effect a player will have on the team's loyalty rating in the dynamics depends on a) his hidden loyalty rating b) his hierarchy status c) the time he has spent at the club.

Now I'm unsure if the time he has spent at the club matters at all. I thought it had an effect, just too small for my taste, now I'm confused.

Il y a 14 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

There is a message "Wants to help <the club> succeed" in the Training screen, but I think that's related to Favourite club, not Loyalty. It's showing on a player that has the club as a Favourite but only Loyalty of 13, where as players with Loyalty of 18 but without the the club as a favourite don't show that. 

Very interesting but that raises a question for me: how do you lifted the hood on their individual hidden loyalty rating? I have the editor but I guess I missed the option to see it.

About the "Wants to help the club succeed" mention yes it's tied to the favorite club but I noted that some players who have another club as their favorite can sometimes show this mention too.

And I think in this case there should be, in the "Personal" page, some mention of it. It could be a second-favorite club listed beside the first (if there is room), or they could just have the regular "glad to be part of the <my club> setup". Or a differently worded mention.

In any case I think the "Training" page isn't the right place for this bit of info.

Il y a 14 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I typically keep the status as low as possible so they don't get upset about playing time, but I found that giving the right players a status of First Team or Key Player can actually be helpful here.

Hahah so I'm not the only one! You are right that it matters I think, I found it out recently. We keep the status low so they stay happy with their playing time, and as a result the players who are objectively key players get "first team" status, those who are objectively first team are called "rotation" and so on. But since, as you said, a high status very much tends to push them up the hierarchy, we end up with too few Influential/Leaders and it hurts the dynamics. Lesson learned for me too.

Il y a 9 heures, Marc Vaughan a dit :

I think that in the circumstances perhaps I should make this more flexible (so it's artificially higher if a player is at a club for a while and lower if he's moved recently before he 'takes roots').

Yes, very much. My two cents are that the artificial loyalty bonus should be tied to a) his attachment to the club (favorite club or not, etc...) b) overall time spent at the club c) if he's happy to be here or not so much (like, "happy to stay at club"/"willing to remain presently" etc..)

I'm not sure how it exactly works currently so what I'm saying might not be really relevant. But my central idea is that the loyalty we get from the players should reflect our loyalty toward them: if we keep throwing them away as soon as we get a slightly better replacement, we should never get much loyalty back. It should take squad stability over years, and to achieve this the "roots" could grow very slowly at first, but exponentially. After all, spending 2-3 seasons at a club is normal business, 5-6 is a different thing, and 8+ a completely different thing.

By the way Marc Vaughan, last time I reported a glitch (the "becoming more pro under senior guidance" mention not showing), you fixed it in a record time, so I wanted to thank you for that. So... expect some more looong feedback threads from me in the future! xD

[StephenCronin]

3 hours ago, Tade Shakar said:

Very interesting but that raises a question for me: how do you lifted the hood on their individual hidden loyalty rating? I have the editor but I guess I missed the option to see it.

It's not shown in the editor unfortunately, but I have a separate tool (that I built), that shows the hidden attributes, etc.

3 hours ago, Tade Shakar said:

About the "Wants to help the club succeed" mention yes it's tied to the favorite club but I noted that some players who have another club as their favorite can sometimes show this mention too.

A player can have multiple favourite clubs stored in the save file, each with a strength value, but the game can only ever show one. I'm guessing, but I'd say in those case, it's still working based on the fact that your club is one of their favourite clubs, just it's not quite their favourite favourite club so it's showing the other club in the game.  

3 hours ago, Tade Shakar said:

And I think in this case there should be, in the "Personal" page, some mention of it. It could be a second-favorite club listed beside the first (if there is room)

Yeah, I'd love them to overhaul this so it could show multiple liked clubs. And multiple liked people (although maybe that's superseded by the relationship page.

[Tade Shakar]

 

Il y a 19 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I have a separate tool (that I built), that shows the hidden attributes

One more sign that I need to become smarter with digital stuff. Just diving a bit into the game folders and files could be a good start.

Il y a 19 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I'd love them to overhaul this so it could show multiple liked clubs. And multiple liked peopl

Agreed, this page could use some love.

[Marc Vaughan]

On 22/03/2022 at 23:21, StephenCronin said:

Yeah, I'd love them to overhaul this so it could show multiple liked clubs. And multiple liked people (although maybe that's superseded by the relationship page.

Yeah the idea is that the 'personal' page shows a quick 'overview/info dump' and the relationship page shows things in more depth for those who are interested in a deep dive ...

(I'll think about potentially adding relationships to clubs onto that in some fashion in the future)