Whether or not a player wants to role-play something or gloss over it comes down to player priorities - which may be exposed by, but are not actually changed by, whether you only call for a roll when it matters or call for a roll repeatedly.
I think you're completely, and incorrectly, discounting how behavioral cues work.
I can say it. In fact, I have said it. You can disagree, but you can't tell me I can't have my own opinion.
Clearly, and I wouldn't. I was speaking to the correctness of saying so, not to the ability to say it, as clearly, I would be immediately wrong.
As a further caveat, please, have all of the opinions you want. And, please, express them as you wish. If I feel they are incorrect, or if I disagree, I will do the same.
I'm not talking about ignoring behavioral cues - I'm talking about not needing those cues because the players are already behaving how they would like to.
That's... what?
So, if I do not ever tell my players that an enemy is attacking them and they are taking damage from that enemy until I mention that they are dead, these cues have no impact because the player will behave the same way if I tell them or don't? Clearly, we're having some kind of major failure to communicate.
Unless we assume the players won't play their characters in interesting and enjoyable ways unless the DM is constantly tricking them into it, which is not an assumption I ever make - call me an optimist, but I assume players are equally interested in engaging the game relative to the DM.
Ah, the old "I'm assuming people play the best way, and, if you disagree with me, you are assuming people play poorly" argument. Not buying this one, either.
The players will react to how the DM presents the game because that's how social interactions work. If the DM notices that certain behaviors are keyed to certain ways of presenting things and wishes to change the way he presents them to achieve a different set of behaviors, what's the issue? Why would we assume that the players are doing it the best of all possible ways but the DM is choosing to make bad decisions by adjusting his cues to elicit different behavior?
Whether or not it is likely, however, has nothing at all to do with you, or with the fact of my points being challenged. It has everything to do with me and what I want out of the forum-going experience - just like how a player responds to the call for a die roll is entirely about what they are seeking out of the game-play experience.
Are you actually saying that you'd have responded to me whether or not I quoted you and challenged your post? Or are you saying that, regardless of the content of my post where I quoted you, you'd have responded exactly the same way? Because I'm not seeing how you're avoiding the admission that your response is directly because of my quote and post, and that the nature and content of your response is not also directly because of my quote and post. It seems that you've responded because I quoted you, and your response is because of the content of mine. Sure, you get to choose that content, and when you respond, and on what platform, but it's impossible to say that you are not responding to and because of the cues I left in my post. This seems to completely refute your claim that asking for rolls cannot affect player behavior because players behave how they wish irregardless of such things.
Or is you point that a player choose how they respond to all stimulus, so it doesn't matter what they respond to, they're still picking their own responses? Because that's treating the trivial as profound -- of course people pick how they respond to cues (unless you're a 'no free will'er, but that's beside the point). The point was changing the information content of the cues so that players have more uncertainty when they choose.