How does the controversy attribute work?

BlueLemming · 03-24-2025, 09:48 PM

I've been manually setting player controversy attributes to 0 as a workaround for team conflicts (I find them too frequent). My early findings in doing this was that it seems like a significant amount of players will have it at 15 or higher. But lately I've noticed it can also increase on its own, which maybe explains that? Is this expected? Does the stat ever go down?

For example: a player had an incident, I edited his controversy stat from 16 to 0, which then cleared the conflicts. 3 months later he had another incident and his controversy stat was back up to 16.

tomkmb · 03-25-2025, 05:48 AM

I've been wondering about this sort of thing too. Not in the way of the usual 'I don't like Team Conflicts' angle but more like...as I get into the future and more fictional players are generated, I feel like every scout report I read a player has a high controversy rating and is likely to cause trouble - I'm talking like, out of the top 50 players in a draft, you'd probably have 35/40 of them with some form of high controversy, which feels a bit crazy/depressing to me at times.

Not sure if that's intended or not, as largely the controversy team harmony system doesn't really get commented on too much by Jeff/the devs since it's introduction - so we will have to see.

That issue you're witnessing where it reverts back to it's previous number is very strange though, you'd think once it's reset then it's reset so I think they'd probably have to check that (might be worth posting that in the tech support forum as a bug report).

It would be interesting to look at something like this on a more macro scale but unfortunately the hidden player attributes are not available to users in the CSVs even with commissioner mode enabled, otherwise I'd find a % of the game world population (or NHL population) with Controversy >X just to see if any insights can be had from it.

northjersey · 03-27-2025, 11:35 AM

from what i've seen, players with low controversy value get more misconducts and suspensions.

JeffR · 04-01-2025, 06:02 AM

Set it to 1, not 0. 0 will just get reset. Higher is worse.

03-24-2025, 09:48 PM	#1
BlueLemming Minors (Double A) Join Date: Dec 2020 Posts: 103	How does the controversy attribute work? I've been manually setting player controversy attributes to 0 as a workaround for team conflicts (I find them too frequent). My early findings in doing this was that it seems like a significant amount of players will have it at 15 or higher. But lately I've noticed it can also increase on its own, which maybe explains that? Is this expected? Does the stat ever go down? For example: a player had an incident, I edited his controversy stat from 16 to 0, which then cleared the conflicts. 3 months later he had another incident and his controversy stat was back up to 16.

03-25-2025, 05:48 AM	#2
tomkmb All Star Starter Join Date: Jan 2021 Posts: 1,634	I've been wondering about this sort of thing too. Not in the way of the usual 'I don't like Team Conflicts' angle but more like...as I get into the future and more fictional players are generated, I feel like every scout report I read a player has a high controversy rating and is likely to cause trouble - I'm talking like, out of the top 50 players in a draft, you'd probably have 35/40 of them with some form of high controversy, which feels a bit crazy/depressing to me at times. Not sure if that's intended or not, as largely the controversy team harmony system doesn't really get commented on too much by Jeff/the devs since it's introduction - so we will have to see. That issue you're witnessing where it reverts back to it's previous number is very strange though, you'd think once it's reset then it's reset so I think they'd probably have to check that (might be worth posting that in the tech support forum as a bug report). It would be interesting to look at something like this on a more macro scale but unfortunately the hidden player attributes are not available to users in the CSVs even with commissioner mode enabled, otherwise I'd find a % of the game world population (or NHL population) with Controversy >X just to see if any insights can be had from it.

03-27-2025, 11:35 AM	#3
northjersey Minors (Triple A) Join Date: Oct 2022 Posts: 221	from what i've seen, players with low controversy value get more misconducts and suspensions.

04-01-2025, 06:02 AM	#4
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 17,418	Set it to 1, not 0. 0 will just get reset. Higher is worse.