Personalities - A Deep Dive

We are all aware that players can have personalities and those personalities can influence team chemistry, player development and contract negotiations. I'm not going to go into how each personality can effect these parts of the game, but you can read more about that here if you are interested here. There are nine (really ten if you included normal) personality classes a player can have: captain, disruptive, fan favorite, humble, outspoken, prankster, selfish, sparkplug and unmotivated. Each of these personality classes are determined by a combination of ratings given to a player in each of twelve personality categories: leadership ability, desire for winner, loyalty, greed, work ethic, intelligence, adaptability, controversy, handle success, handle failure, handle critics and local popularity (you'll see why I'm considering this one a personality category later). For each category a player is given a value on a scale of 0-200. The higher the value, the higher a player expresses that trait. So if a player is a 200 in greed, he's one greedy S.O.B. However, we cannot see these value in our online league. Well... sort of. We can see if a player has a high of low grade in a given attribute, such as high leader or low loyalty, while we will never have an idea of what others may be, such as desire to win, controversy, or handle success, failure and critic. Combinations of these attributes can result in a given personality class and although we cannot see these values, there is some value in determining the parameters that make up a personality class.

I stumbled across a OOTP forum post in 2018 (OOTP 19), when someone had discovered the combinations and personality category values that made up each of the nine personality classes. This was very interesting information, but I'd imagine this has changed to some degree between OOTP 19 and 21. So, I decided to do my own testing. I set up a single-player franchise in commissioner mode in order to manually change personality category values in player editor. I used the forum post values as starting points and tried every different combination for each personality class. It took some time... but I was able to define the parameters that made up each personality class. Unsurprisingly, several had changed since OOTP 19:

In summary, a captain is made up of high leader ability, loyalty and work ethic. Disruptive personalities require, low leader ability, loyalty, work ethic and controversy, as well as high greed. Fan favorite cannot have high leader ability, but will have high loyalty and work ethic with low greed. The reason a fan favorite cannot also have a high leader rating is because that would allow him to fall into the captain personality class, which would show over the fan favorite. The final category that is needed is a local popularity of popular or higher. A player will not be deemed a fan favorite without it. We know that popularity can grow and is based on things like performance, ratings and how long a player has been in the organization. Humble would include high loyalty and work ethic, with low greed and desire to win. Outspoken requires a low intelligence and handles critic rating, but also a high controversy rating. Prankster requires a higher leader rating and higher ratings in three hidden categories: handle success, handle failure and handle critics. Selfish requires lows in leader ability, loyalty and work ethic with a high rating in greed. Sparkplug takes a higher value in work ethic and adaptability, but lower values in controversy and loyalty. Finally, unmotivated requires a low leader ability, work ethic, intelligence, adaptability and controversy. I also decided to find the parameters for what makes up a "high", "normal" or "low" designation that we see for leader ability, loyalty, greed, work ethic, intelligence and adaptability. For each rating to be low, the value must be between 0 and 59. For normal, the value lies between 60 and 139 and high between 140 and 200.

So, what can we take from all of this? Firstly, we can see a little deeper into what the personality class tells us about the individual personality categories. Let's say a player is high leader ability, loyalty and work ethic, but is not labeled a captain. Since high has to be 140 or greater, based on our chart the only category he could not meet and still be labeled "high" in is leader ability. That must mean his leader ability rating is between 141 and 149. Since we know that these ratings fluctuate and dev over time, this player could certainly still become a captain. Here is a retro example of personality ratings that have changed/dev'd, which impacted a personality class. One of my relievers, Eric Darden (R.I.P.) was a captain last season. This year, he is now a sparkplug. Knowing that leader ability, loyalty and work ethic are required for a captain, I looked at his high personality traits. I see highs in leader ability, work ethic and adaptability. Since we know captain trumps all other classes, Darden must have seen a decrease in loyalty (below 100) or his leader ability now sits between 141 and 149. Some personality classes also tell us about hidden categories. For instance, a prankster must have highs in handle success, handle failure and handle critics. So if you have a prankster that is struggling, you can feel more comfortable that he will handle that better than some other players. On the other side, if a player is disruptive, he will not handle controversy well so rebuilding teams may want to avoid these player types.

We can also learn about young players that have "unknown" personalities. Most young prospects will take time to develop a personality. However, since our high and low indicators give us insight into ratings, we may be able to glean what a prospect's personality may become. For instance, if we look at Blue Jays SP prospect Kyle Moore. His personality class is currently unknown. However, we see that he is high in loyalty and work ethic, as well as low in greed. This means, he has a rating of 140 or greater in both loyalty and work ethic. He also has a greed rating that must be between 0 and 59. This lines him up to be on track to become a "fan favorite" personality if he develops popular or greater local popularity. So although these parameters do not give us complete insight into what a player is, it does give us some useful information.