Player interaction to "Persuade to accept reduced playing time" seems broken

[Broetchenholer]

So, i am having a problem with my good players demanding a lot of playing time that i cannot give them due to the need of rotation. So, at the start of this season, i tried to reduce the playing time of all my top players, as i thought that my higher reputation should maybe be able to handle it, not pissing them off too much. I put a safepoint before i did it, so that a mechanic i had never tried would not bite me in the back and talked to my best players.

As i have a lot of credit from the players, it worked with all of them:

But strangely enough, the playing time is not actually set when you do that, so next thing i did was actually decreasing the playing time

And expected this to work, with a happy player because we talked about this. Instead:

The players eventually got over this  and the conserned or slightly unhappy was remopved again, but, something else stayed. This was the reaction to being offered out before:

And this is after:

But of course you say, he is now promised to not play as muich, he is a less important player in the club. To this i say, do the same thing the other way around:

+

He didn't even want reason, and:

I assumed that when they were okay with the reduction after the dialog option, i could do it. Instead, i suddenly had 8 of my most important players sightly unhappy, and suddenly everyone of them started to become unsettled. Every single one of them suddenly shifted towards wanting a move, being incredibly interested.

I am not sure if this is a bug, but the idea of asking the player if he is okay with a reduction in playing time is great, it should avoid exactly that behaviour, that players get unhappy because you changed it thinking they would be okay.

[2feet]

The players see how you treated that player, and then they wanted the same for themselves through talking amongst eachother.

You need to nip this sort of thing in the bud quickly before it spreads. Talk to the the unhappy player quickly before it spreads too much.

You can talk to the player through Criticise Conduct to do this.

Edited August 26, 2022 by 2feet

[Broetchenholer]

Yes, sure, i can understand why having 8 players slightly unhappy for 2 weeks in the club is really bad, which is why i am saying players (us, not my players) should avoid using the dialog to persuade to accept their playing time. Because despite the game claimingthey will not be unhappy, they will be.

[kepz]

I wonder if you hadn't changed the agreed playing time and just instead rotated them as you had planned if that would have changed things for you.

If they clearly recognize and accept your terms for reduced playing time, then theoretically they wouldn't be upset when they aren't played as stars and thus wouldn't be mad that you've reduce their playing time.

Just a guess though, as player interactions are always difficult. 

Edited August 28, 2022 by kepz