How to manage morale?
 

Let me start by saying this is my first time playing the game and I'm hooked by the level of detail of this game.

On my current season, I'm getting a lot of complaints due to low morale in the dugout. How can I handle this? How can I identify the trouble makers?

Thanks in advance!

most important is to win.

but you also need someone or two who are "captains".

and if you click on each player, and then click on edit, on the left side under "personality" it should give something like "normal" captain" "hustler". If you find "slacker" or worse "cancer", those are good bets to try and unload.

but really, sometimes i've seen those complaints and no one is a stand out problem and i never did figure out a way to boost morale on those squads. so i just got rid of as many under performers as i could and waited for the next draft to change things ... it worked as often as not.

I was hoping to be able to sort by morale in one of the player views but saw no way to do it.

One by one is not efficient. Just wanted to know if someone knew a way.

I just hope the simulation is off or the Rangers will have an awful season this year :P

Sometimes hiring a coach that is good in the clubhouse works too. I had some issues in my clubhouse and made a change at Bench Coach to a guy that it said was very good in clubhouse, and it seemed to fix the problem.

Thanks for the tip!

It will generally help morale if you have players with high leadership ability. You can look at the BNN Page on a player's profile to see it. Too many players with low leadership, especially if they aren't offset by others with high leadership, tends to make your players upset.

This moral in the clubhouse is a pain. I can't control it everyone is unhappy and there is no cause. Reminds me of Football Manger where they get pissed off too easily.

Like Wolverinebball11 said, having players with high or very high leadership ability helps as well. You need to look at all those "intangibles". Things such as loyalty, intelligence, etc. since they all have some effect on the overall team chemistry.

Nah you can control it. There's always a cause, it's up to you to find out what it is!

OOTP17 Sherlock Edition
 

Detective game now too LOL

OK I let go or traded everyone with low leadership. Did the scan of their personalitys in commish mode (only looking at that, no cheating) and they are all normal. Sigh, now do i demote them one at a time to see if it's that person? Why don't they just say who it is?!

Thanks All for your help, but this problem is making my winning team loose!

Have you tried bringing in a coach who is good in the clubhouse? Not sure if you are using the real rosters of fictional, but I signed a coach with the last name Moran (not in front of the game) and it says he is great in the clubhouse, plus I just acquired Travis d'Arnaud and got the message that the players are excited for his addition because of his great leadership.

And if all else fails, you can turn off player morale. ;)

Tried all the suggestions and they all still hate each other. Removed ANYONE who isn't normal in all the categories. Guess I turn it off. What a silly feature.

How much time are you giving for things to improve? I does not happen over night, I think it too my team a couple of months to see any kind of improvement.

A few months after the purge nothing happened. At the end of the season I let a bunch go, including my star player $25 Mil 5 star center fielder, who was full of him self (I wonder why?), my coaches etc. Next season now with players who are leaders and aren't selfish. Still the same problem. I turned it off as it's just crazy. Am I a detective or a shrink? At least in Football Mogul they tell you who they hate.

I want to play with all the difficulty and options, we need more info on why they get mad. The AI deals with it quite nicely.

You can have problem players but you need leaders to balance the scale. if you have 3 guys with low/very low leadership/ethic/loyalty your gonna need guys with high/very high leadership to counter weight your clubhouse. Clubhouses don't fall apart overnight and they don't get fixed overnight. you need to keep an eye on stuff and fix it before it becomes a problem

Here is an example, it is kinda like a guy cutting a fart in the classroom, "The Smeller is the feller" On this NY Giants team I have a total of 3 players who have Team chemistry issues. In the picture below we see the problem child. Bottom left of his card " He is upset due to disruptive influences on the team" Two other guys have the same thing in that area, BUT This player is the only one who has anything negative in his "Personality"


http://i1348.photobucket.com/albums/...psxcaawowl.png


So my options are Get rid of McMichael, get rid of the two guys he's pissing off and hope he doesn't make more people mad, or I can try to get more leaders on my team and see if they can reign it in. Obviously the fastest, safest surest way to resolve this before it becomes a clubhouse wide problem is to get rid of McMichale


If you have a pissed off team, it's usually the guy complaining the loudest that is the issue, But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, you need to keep an eye on your players

Oh yeah, and winning can solve a lot of problems too :)

Everyone is angry face at me!
 

Well I've tried everything. Bad moral makes you loose too which makes it worse. I give up on moral!! I'm not stupid but I have no trouble makers, i have leaders, vet leadership, and everyone is massively unhappy no matter what I do. Spent 6 seasons trying to make people happy and that's IT! I've reset happiness a few times but 6-7 games in everyone is angry face at me.

If everyone is angry faced then you simply aren't paying enough attention to that area, so turning Moral off is probably the best solution. OOTP has a lot of depth and not all aspects are ideal for everyone's sim style and/or taste

True man!! I built a good team but they all hate each other. There must be a Yoko in there breaking them apart. I even hired 43 year old AJ Perzenski to add some grey fatherly love to the team but they hate him too. LOL

bah, I won a championship with a team that was all pissed off about one thing or another.

truth is, micromanaging it can cause as many issues as it solves. work on personality diversity when you are setting up your team in the off-season, then let the chips fall where they may.

I've got players sending me mail about bad morale in the clubhouse now... and I've only got like 4 players that are angry. Most of my players have normal - high leadership... we won almost 100 games last season, playing 500 ball this year which isn't helping matters. I have no idea what to do about this, as I purposely signed players with decent attributes :/

I just cheated by using commissioner mode ot check the player profiles for their "type" and I only have two outspoken players who both have excellent morale and are among the best players on the team right now. So if they're not unhappy, and everybody else is normal, and most people have normal - high leadership, what the heck do I do to fix it?

Jazzrack has the right idea....I once traded a late developing prospect (27yrs) that my scout said was going to be a superstar....he was rated a selfish douche....I got a decent starter back for him....I thought I was clever.... 5 MVPs and 8 all star appearances later the joke was on me

While I don't ignore personality traits they certainly don't trump talent....your team's nosedive would probably be pretty frustrating in real life testing the mettle of all your players....nothing a 10 game winning streak couldn't fix!

A loose team is a winning team most of the time.:p

Totally agree with this especially the bold.

Find the worst culprit
 

You don't have to replace all the problem guys necessarily. Just see if you can find one who might be triggering the others. If not, at least get rid of the scrubs who are bad apples. When I draft I take more of the personality into consideration than I would later on. In the 12th round you aren't getting a gem so better if he is a hard worker.

Very good to know and thank you for this post. My question is... When you shop a player, does that impact their morale? I am not sure if shopping a player is a mangement thing behind the scenes or if players know they are being shopped.

I ask this because JJ HArdy of the Orioles I was shopping and he seemed to get angry. I dont feel it SHOULD impact a player as shopping someone is a management action.

Thanks in advance if you know the answer. If not ill keep playing with it. I just dont want to shop players and piss off my lineup! lol :D

It does indeed effect morale.

I understand your argument....but I believe the game treats your shopping him to the other teams as something that would get back to the player being shopped ie: MLB Trade Rumors, teammates, management etc....it is an attempt by the game to simulate this common scenario....all just my opinion!

My lowest level Single A team surprised me this year with horrible morale. First time I've had this in my system. I've traded/released what I hope are the bad apples. Does anyone know if this bad morale is contagious to my other minor league teams?

I take it you should turn on Personality during the off season? I did it during the season and every player on every team had a horrible work ethic.

Giving this post a bump as I struggled with the same issue. Started out with a historic league as the 1980's Mets. Team was a mess. No matter what I tried, morale was always garbage and came out dead last. It was isolated to my pitchers at one point so I tried a new pitching coach. Helped for 7 or 8 games but all went downhill quickly. Became so frustrated I let AI manage a whole season. Players still had bad morale. By the 4th season, a few of my early drafted players started to peak and I grabbed a very young Roger Clemens. What do you know, went on a 10 game winning streak and morale couldn't be better.

In short; Winning Matters!

Funny how most other poster here say how perfect FM is.:crying:

soccer manager... c'mon, get it right :p and you gotta let your wrist flop around limply as you say it, too... it's a formality so that the write message is communicated.

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prelude: lol written after "first,..." so, i just want to mention you can turn this feature off. same with personalities. basically everyone will have "100's" for each of these traits and morale would be "normal" so, you lose the negative effects, but also any positive ones as well. it's all neutral.

first, put things in proper perspective... those angry red faces aren't nearly as bad as they look. you are not being admonished, and no one is voting you worst gm ever.

morale is not likely haveing as severe an effect as you are attributing to it. so, if they are lingering in unhappy times... it's not too big of a deal for a better team... and if you are a worse team it doesn't really matter if you win 70 or 75 games, because you still miss the playoffs.

(totally guessing on a 5 game swing, but i doubt it's that large - 5/162 is pretty large percentage for a small thing.. even in a terrible environment, players still play for their next contract, so i hope the ddidn't rationalize too large of an effect)

a middling team it can be a concern... if you are on the edge of making hte playoffs, it may be worth your effort to do something - but smaller is better than bigger still, because morale isn't a switch that turns on and off. imo limping into the playoffs to play decidedly better teams is worse than losing a few more games and getting a better draft pick next year... worry about morale after the season in that situation.

the "current" state of morale a calculated value that changes dynamically over time due to numerous factors that you can easily guess through the ui and what metrics are availiable and displayed to you. so, it takes time for it to +1 or +2 it's way back upto "normal" (=0) or "happy" (greater than some value higher than 0 but less than 5000 because ecstatic is another tier above happy)

if the net effect on the team is negative, it will never recover in that instance, but you shouldn't assume that after just a few months of a previous change. if moral is "-5000" (scale isn't important, made up number) and your 'improvement(s)' are only adding up slowly per calculation (daily? weekly? not sure when it does these computations, but it's continuous and predictable as to when), then it could take a very long time to "fix" it.

only way to know if your cahnge has an effect is to simulate ahead then restore... bit like cheating though... i'm willing to do something like that if it's only during the learning process... i've never bothered with this specifically, but i have learned a thing or two about how the game works by doing similar things.

e.g. i'd suggest everyone plays at least one 100% accurate scouting league at least a few years - fictional or real, but if real yo uneed to know how things change after real players are replaced, too. so that takes more seasons to learn. you start to see how things muddle things up - even turn off the side stuff like personality, coaches, etc... only on-field modeled stuff. you start to understand how innacuracy is applied, how much morale and personality actually effects development etc ... if you see roughly the same results.. guess how much those tihngs are really changing things - i'm not saying ignore them, just put in proper perspective relative to the importance of actual talent (the real skill ratings, like contact, power etc).

bottom line: do not give away good talent unless you have a suitable / equivalent replacment... it is likely better for you to deal with a bit of a morale problem than reducing talent by any noticeable amount even in only one everyday player.

accumulating enough good players for a 3-5+ year window of success is the most difficult and most important task. casting off good talent is very rarely the right thing to do.

Did you have the groundskeeper check the water for contaminents? I find if they drink contaminated water eventually one of them turns into the Thing and kills everyone else in the clubhouse :)

i bet he can hit the ball out of the park, though.

what're his slash numbers? might still be worth it.