Morale is broken in STHS

[pioniere]

Simon,

I have read several posts on issues leagues have run into with the Morale settings in the simulator. The Morale setting continues to be a problem. Our league is using version 1.1.13. The MO settings appear to be having an unrealistic effect on player performance. The pattern we are seeing is as follows:

-- Defencemen overall seem to have the highest individual MO settings. This has resulted in some defencemen (Jeff Finger, Sami Salo for example) leading their teams in scoring, despite the presence of other skilled forwards.

-- Forwards overall have low MO ratings. This seems to correspond in most cases to lower offensive numbers for these players. Players that you might expect to normally have 30 or more goals are having seasons where they will be lucky to reach 20. Their MO ratings are in the low 30s or worse.

It seems that players who got off to hot starts had their MO ratings jump up, and never go down again despite the ups and downs of the season. The same goes for players who got off to slow starts. Even if they get hot, their MO never seems to increase, and they end up slumping more quickly than players with high MO ratings.

Players who have a low MO rating on a poor team, and then get traded to a better (e.g., 1st place team) never seem to improve. Their MO rating remains low, despite the fact that they are playing on a top line on a better team after the trade. In real life, the opposite would seem to be true. A player's morale would greatly increase when he's going from a basement dwelling team to the top line on a team that has a chance to win a Cup!!

Players who are sent to the Farm have their MO increase, but then after being brought back to the Pro team and being able to play a regular shift, their MO setting drops like a rock. I think it is safe to say that for the vast majority of players, their MO rating would go *down* initially after being sent to the farm, and would go *up* when being placed back on the pro roster. Instead, the opposite seems to happen.

In our league, I believe the MO slider is set to 10, and in testing when we turned it down to 1 it did not have an appreciable affect.

We started the season with every player's MO set to 50. Then the individual ratings went up or down, depending mostly on whether they were a defender or a forward.

These results are simply not realistic or consistent. Simon, you have even stated yourself in other posts that I have read that this is the rating that has given you the most trouble. I don't believe it is fixed yet.

Therefore, I would like to request that you add into the simulator the option to TURN OFF the MO setting for players. This is a great simulator, but the MO rating is clearly a feature that still has a lot of problems.

The number one thing I strive for in a fantasy hockey league like this is realism. I expect the majority of players to perform close to the way they do in real life. There will always be some players who are having 'down years' compared to what they did in real, but what I am seeing this season far exceeds that. There are far too many players who are not performing near to what can be reasonably expected, and in almost every case it corresponds to an unrealistically low MO rating.

If I am misinterpreting how the feature should work, then please enlighten me. It is not well explained in the manual either.

Thanks.

[SimonT]

Therefore, I would like to request that you add into the simulator the option to TURN OFF the MO setting for players. This is a great simulator, but the MO rating is clearly a feature that still has a lot of problems.

It's done in Version 2.

[pioniere]

That's great! What is the planned release date for version 2.0 ?

Thank you.

[SimonT]

Somewhere in 2009.

[mafiaboss]

do you suggest a setting or what to do about morale for the current version? Is there something I can tweak myself in player ratings or in the settings/sliders to lessen their influence (the morale effect/rating etc.)?

thanks

[SimonT]

If you want morale affect to the be at the minimum, drop the Morale Slider to 1 in the Game Option.