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About promises


tacticsdude

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The promise engine is really hurting my enjoyment of this game. A few key points:

(BTW, I've been playing FM since 2008, have logged thousands of hours and would consider myself a top player.)

1. There really should be a marker somewhere when you are about to make a promise via conversation. Sometimes I'm trying to have a "discussion" with an unhappy player and end up making an absurd promise that I had absolutely no intention to make and if the game had been clear that I was about to make a promise I would not have used that option.

2. Conversation pathways that lead to promises should have a sensible way to back out. In previous versions (say 2011), even during a heated argument you could end a conversation by saying "I feel we should leave this topic to another time" and then the player would say "I should leave before I say something I regret". Then we could try to give some time to cool things off, or allow time for events to unfold, or try the conversation again hoping for a better outcome.

3. Also, and this requires much more discussion, I frankly cannot get on the same page with your dialog options. I feel they make little or sometimes no sense at all, and I seldom can find a way to say what I actually mean and feel in any scenario. I'm starting a separate thread for that topic.

 

 

 

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Also,

4. Promises should not appear under the negative side if they are early on and/or are currently being met. I understand that after a while they shift to the left, but they start on the right and stay there for a long while which is weird when, IRL, I feel that if I make a promise to a player (and I'm well known for keeping my promises) then immediately my player would feel he is getting what he wants, and as soon as the promise starts being delivered, the issue should essentially be solved until proven otherwise.

In the same vein, I had a really weird situation with a player that asked for first team chances. The promise was "I'll start you in a few games over the coming month", but the player expectation looked to have been to play every single game (is that what "a few" means?). Anyway, I wanted the player on the team regardless so he played every single minute even during friendlies, except for a game that he was injured. But for the entire month the promise was on the right side and read "feels time is running out" on the fulfillment of the promise, which is BS. I feel IRL after the second back-to-back game, the player would have been static of getting his way and this promise would have been a huge morale boost for him. And even if the game doesn't see it that way, How come he plays 100% of every minute for almost the entire month but until the last game or so of the period he felt I wasn't coming through with my promise.

You may think I'm splitting hairs, but it is disconcerting to see that the engine thinks I'm not delivering a promise, I feel I'm dealing with a bug or I have misunderstood something in the promise instead of thinking that the promise is going well and the player is becoming satisfied. It is particularly annoying when I'm wondering if something is going to back-fire and I'm going to have a disgruntled primadonna capable of unraveling my team's morale with this engine's virulent unhappiness system.

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I also feel that 'promises' in the game dont work as they should.

I had a player that wanted to leave to play champions league football.  Because I wanted him to stay I promised him that we would qualify for the champions league (even though I couldn't guarantee it).  At the end of the season I qualified for the champions league and his promise showed up as completed but 4 days after the season had finished he told me he wanted to leave as I had broken my promise and he wanted to play in the champions league.  I double checked and his promise was still shown as completed and my team would play in the champions league.

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I agree, it is very annoying to get a message from a player that they are angry at a promise that you didn't know you had given isn't kept. 

I think they also should take in consideration injuries or you should at least get a chance to defend why you didn't kept your promise for example saying in a new conversation "You became injured for 2 months, so I couldn't use you as I promised" or "I know I didn't keep my promise, but the xxx team mate stepped up more than expected and I had to adjust after that"  then he can either accept your reason and not be that angry or not accept it and keep being angry at you. 

I wouldn't mind an option "If you keep this attitude and impact the rest of the team with negativity I will have to put you down on the reserve team". Of course this could then spread as a negativity towards the rest of the team. But I miss possibilities to work towards problems created to solve them. 

It should be clearer when you give a promise and what the promise actually are, and also able to defend the reasoning behind not kept promises. 

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14 hours ago, 7omer said:

It should be clearer when you give a promise and what the promise actually are, and also able to defend the reasoning behind not kept promises. 

Spot on. There should be a popup that explains the promise according to the engine, like "expects the team to achieve continental qualification by the end of the current season". It may seem obvious, but with this engine there's a lot of obscurity so better definitions will help people understand and keep promises.

Also, defending promises is essential. I have a 22y/o player that I made captain in the last season when we were fighting for promotion from Serie B. But the next year in Serie A his skills did not grow as anticipated, and after upgrading my squad he simply wasn't good enough to be captain or even be on the team. Whatever promises are made, there should be a way to talk reason with the players, because the team comes first, circumstances change, and also because very often the players are a part of the promise. Like when you offer first team chances, but the player makes a mess of it and is costing the team points so you have to remove him, he can't then complain wholeheartedly that he didn't get his chances acting like he has no fault in it.

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2 hours ago, tacticsdude said:

Spot on. There should be a popup that explains the promise according to the engine, like "expects the team to achieve continental qualification by the end of the current season". It may seem obvious, but with this engine there's a lot of obscurity so better definitions will help people understand and keep promises.

Also, defending promises is essential. I have a 22y/o player that I made captain in the last season when we were fighting for promotion from Serie B. But the next year in Serie A his skills did not grow as anticipated, and after upgrading my squad he simply wasn't good enough to be captain or even be on the team. Whatever promises are made, there should be a way to talk reason with the players, because the team comes first, circumstances change, and also because very often the players are a part of the promise. Like when you offer first team chances, but the player makes a mess of it and is costing the team points so you have to remove him, he can't then complain wholeheartedly that he didn't get his chances acting like he has no fault in it.

Agree 100% 

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Also agree 100% with this.
 

On 11/17/2017 at 15:30, dazoctaron said:

I also feel that 'promises' in the game dont work as they should.

I had a player that wanted to leave to play champions league football.  Because I wanted him to stay I promised him that we would qualify for the champions league (even though I couldn't guarantee it).  At the end of the season I qualified for the champions league and his promise showed up as completed but 4 days after the season had finished he told me he wanted to leave as I had broken my promise and he wanted to play in the champions league.  I double checked and his promise was still shown as completed and my team would play in the champions league.

I believe the engine is calculating things once "you are there". For example, although you have qualified for Champions League Group Stage, it isn't calculating the €12.7m (or whatever amount) you are about to receive from entering that phase, until the last Wednesday of August (when the message is received). That's why your Projected Balanced isn't showing that 100% guaranteed amount (even if you are in the new season, let's say July).
In the same fashion, you may have qualified for Ch.League, thus fulfilling your promise, but the engine has to wait till later in the new season, when "you are already there".
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I think that's one reason for your player wanting to leave. Yes, it's a bug and has to be addressed.

Also, sometimes, when you make a promise to give more matches to an unhappy player, it fails because of this (and the bug report, but I guess they didn't fix it?).
Please address it (if not already).

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11 hours ago, ilkork said:

Also agree 100% with this.
 

I believe the engine is calculating things once "you are there". For example, although you have qualified for Champions League Group Stage, it isn't calculating the €12.7m (or whatever amount) you are about to receive from entering that phase, until the last Wednesday of August (when the message is received). That's why your Projected Balanced isn't showing that 100% guaranteed amount (even if you are in the new season, let's say July).
In the same fashion, you may have qualified for Ch.League, thus fulfilling your promise, but the engine has to wait till later in the new season, when "you are already there".
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I think that's one reason for your player wanting to leave. Yes, it's a bug and has to be addressed.

Also, sometimes, when you make a promise to give more matches to an unhappy player, it fails because of this (and the bug report, but I guess they didn't fix it?).
Please address it (if not already).

I get what you mean here, and the creators of FM has improved this in the latest version I think. Take for example securing a promotion a few games before the league ended you couldn't really start the actually planning or preparation for the next season in a league above before the league system was resetting itself (At earlier time it didn't help that the league was finished, it had to be resat for a new season), and first then you was seen as a team that was in a league above. Now you can do that right after you secured the promotion, and become much more realistic and work more seamless that way. 

So I guess what you saying here is that you feel they still have more of these milestones/fixed points in time that should be more smoothed over and seen all over the time line and not the dead line? In promises this isn't something I have notice, but I am not surprised if it is so, and I agree that thing should be seen more over the whole time period and not just the end of it. It might be a lot of coding to be able to do this though. 

But for me what I miss most is understanding that I given promises and be able to defend my decisions and also to follow them up. (I also expect the players to call my ******** if my defence is ******** and just get more angry at me) 

Maybe each time you given a promise you should have the option and possibility to talk about the promises to the player, where you can adjust the promise, retract it with a reasoning etc? If something changes in the team, lets say you buy a new player then you can go to the player you gave the promise and say "I am sorry, but now that we bought Peter Pan we need to split the time promised to you between you and him"  So maybe give more possibilities to follow up the promises as the situation changes?  How it is now you have the start of the promise with interaction with the player and then the end of the promise without any chance for interaction between the player and your promise, and would be better and more realistic if you could follow it up some way. 

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3 hours ago, 7omer said:

I get what you mean here, and the creators of FM has improved this in the latest version I think.

That's good :thup:.
 

3 hours ago, 7omer said:

So I guess what you saying here is that you feel they still have more of these milestones/fixed points in time that should be more smoothed over and seen all over the time line and not the dead line?

Yes. Make it just like real life.
For example, in FM, Club X will play in Champions League Group Stage the next season (that's 100%), but player Y doesn't want to join them because the engine reads something along the lines of "Waiting" (sorry for the choice of word, I'm Greek, I hope you understand what I mean). Now, once the last Wednesday of August comes, player Y is now willing to negotiate with that club, because the engine reads something along the lines of "Completed".
When irl, you would have been able to negotiate with player Y from May/June, when your league ended.

I've only played FM18 a little and that was the demo, is that situation fixed? Or the one with Projected Balance in my previous post?
 

3 hours ago, 7omer said:

But for me what I miss most is understanding that I given promises and be able to defend my decisions and also to follow them up.

Agree to that.

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5 hours ago, ilkork said:

For example, in FM, Club X will play in Champions League Group Stage the next season (that's 100%), but player Y doesn't want to join them because the engine reads something along the lines of "Waiting" (sorry for the choice of word, I'm Greek, I hope you understand what I mean). Now, once the last Wednesday of August comes, player Y is now willing to negotiate with that club, because the engine reads something along the lines of "Completed".
When irl, you would have been able to negotiate with player Y from May/June, when your league ended.

I've only played FM18 a little and that was the demo, is that situation fixed? Or the one with Projected Balance in my previous post?

I feel that they have done massive improvement in FM17  from previous version, but I also did experience these fixed points when I was trying to extend or loan players in FM17. That can be defended with the club lending out needs to see their situation and plan their own player logistic before they can accept these things, but it did feel much as a fixed point thing here as well. Too much unlocks itself by too many clubs for not being a fixed point, I assume AI managers have a fixed point to calculate their new plans for the new season, and that is why the changes inflicts who you can loan/buy/when players become listed and who you can't and changes just 1 day from each other. Maybe if SI had a randomness when the new season was calculated for AI managers it would seem little more seamless. Lets say from outcome of this season was final for team X the managers new season calculation had a random recalculating plan from that day to x weeks before next season started.  This way you wouldn't have a set day you could just check what had changed and would become more realistic.  How it is now is that if you are in lower division and want to loan the best Premier League reserves you just need to start to look from a set day to get the best, cause all are listed to loan/sell at the same date (The impression I have).

 

Since I only play multiplayer games  it goes little slower to complete seasons and I am still in the first half and haven't come to the 2nd transfer window yet. Because of that I haven't come into these situations in FM18, so I can't tell if it has been improved or not. But yeah, I would like most of these fix points in time lines are filled to smoothen the game and make is as seamless and natural as possible. 

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