Whatifsports.com - Forums: Planned Update

2/29/2012 9:48 PM

fermor332002

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 1248 (1)

GD - 66

Posted by fermor332002 on 2/29/2012 7:12:00 PM (view original):
Posted by fermor332002 on 2/29/2012 2:29:00 AM (view original):
Posted by fermor332002 on 2/28/2012 6:36:00 PM (view original):
Why not just put the old Depth Charts and Distrbution back in?
+1
+1

+1

2/29/2012 10:01 PM

ddingo

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 254 (0)

MLB - 1 HD - 70 GD - 333 HBD - 13 FCD - 11

I don't understand all this new-fangled technology.

2/29/2012 10:25 PM

katzphang88

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 748 (0)

HD - 10 GD - 141 HBD - 2 FCD - 3

Posted by fermor332002 on 2/29/2012 9:36:00 PM (view original):
Befor your time. Just befor the new engine came out. You could make a basic depth chart and use it for each formation or you could set each formation with its own depth chart with what ever players that you wanted for each formation. Distrbution % for each player for each formation. I do think that it worked better than what we have now. 100% better. I felt like I was at least coaching the team and not the team coaching me. I knew what was going on and I could correct things a lot better than I can now.

When this new engine came out. No one was asking for a new one. Just tweek the old one to make it better. That is why GD lost a vast amount of custemers. The new engine..... Well we will just leave it at that. Why am I staying? Not sure. Just like I am not really sure about how to go about and really play this game after 6 years. I knew befor the new engine but not now.

The big problem was that the old game engine was written in a rapidly aging computer language. It was updated in fall of 2010 to allow expansion of the game platform in the future. What was lost between these games (GDI and GDII) was a level of control of line-ups, distribution of play and of reliability of results. Player ratings (cores primarily) then produced predictable superiority (even with fatigue factors). The problems of GDI were that it was heavily run skewed due to the OL line change substitution patterns.

GD II allowed more realistic depth chart and substitution patterns, but was initially very skewed so that formation settings allowed NDB and wishbone to throw all over the place. Player values had been "normalized" and game engine reliability for player vs player, and team vs team match-ups became more ambiguous (DIII teams could beat D1A teams as the larger the discrepency in ratings the closer the normalization placed the results - still happens - you are less likely to get upset by a team 25 points below you than 100 points below you). Random occurances such as INT, fumbles and penalties were way out of control and RB now had difficulty making it to the line of scrimmage if they weren't scoring on 80 yd runs. This was tweaked and smoothed by JConte and by Norbert to the current game engine as we see it now. But it still has obvious faults in is mathematical design.

The hope for all the coaches who have been here for those years is that we regain some control over our teams, players and formations. We would like to know the reason a play occured, not just a decision point when it was time to create an event to replicate some pre-set % for expected fumbles, penalties etc. Please don't discount the improvement this will make in the game if you have not experienced it. Also, to state that you do not want to change your team to accomodate an update, please remember that most of the veteran coaches have had to make changes in their teams 3 - 4 times over the last year and a half.

The recommendations of the long term coaches in this thread has been from experience garnered over years of game play in GD. The coaches who have stayed have a large investment in time and $$$ (with the decreased awards) in this game. They should be trusted to make recommendations to make this game better.

POPULATE HEISMAN!

2/29/2012 11:13 PM

fermor332002

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 1248 (1)

GD - 66

Posted by katzphang88 on 2/29/2012 10:25:00 PM (view original):
Posted by fermor332002 on 2/29/2012 9:36:00 PM (view original):
Befor your time. Just befor the new engine came out. You could make a basic depth chart and use it for each formation or you could set each formation with its own depth chart with what ever players that you wanted for each formation. Distrbution % for each player for each formation. I do think that it worked better than what we have now. 100% better. I felt like I was at least coaching the team and not the team coaching me. I knew what was going on and I could correct things a lot better than I can now.

When this new engine came out. No one was asking for a new one. Just tweek the old one to make it better. That is why GD lost a vast amount of custemers. The new engine..... Well we will just leave it at that. Why am I staying? Not sure. Just like I am not really sure about how to go about and really play this game after 6 years. I knew befor the new engine but not now.

The big problem was that the old game engine was written in a rapidly aging computer language. It was updated in fall of 2010 to allow expansion of the game platform in the future. What was lost between these games (GDI and GDII) was a level of control of line-ups, distribution of play and of reliability of results. Player ratings (cores primarily) then produced predictable superiority (even with fatigue factors). The problems of GDI were that it was heavily run skewed due to the OL line change substitution patterns.

GD II allowed more realistic depth chart and substitution patterns, but was initially very skewed so that formation settings allowed NDB and wishbone to throw all over the place. Player values had been "normalized" and game engine reliability for player vs player, and team vs team match-ups became more ambiguous (DIII teams could beat D1A teams as the larger the discrepency in ratings the closer the normalization placed the results - still happens - you are less likely to get upset by a team 25 points below you than 100 points below you). Random occurances such as INT, fumbles and penalties were way out of control and RB now had difficulty making it to the line of scrimmage if they weren't scoring on 80 yd runs. This was tweaked and smoothed by JConte and by Norbert to the current game engine as we see it now. But it still has obvious faults in is mathematical design.

The hope for all the coaches who have been here for those years is that we regain some control over our teams, players and formations. We would like to know the reason a play occured, not just a decision point when it was time to create an event to replicate some pre-set % for expected fumbles, penalties etc. Please don't discount the improvement this will make in the game if you have not experienced it. Also, to state that you do not want to change your team to accomodate an update, please remember that most of the veteran coaches have had to make changes in their teams 3 - 4 times over the last year and a half.

The recommendations of the long term coaches in this thread has been from experience garnered over years of game play in GD. The coaches who have stayed have a large investment in time and $$$ (with the decreased awards) in this game. They should be trusted to make recommendations to make this game better.

POPULATE HEISMAN!

Well put.

POPULATE WILK!!!!!

3/1/2012 12:11 PM

norbert

Site Staff

Posts: 1241 (0)

MLB - 6 NBA - 1 NFL - 15 NHL - 12 HD - 77 GD - 30 HBD - 11 FCD - 11

Well, lots of things to comment here, which is why I wanted to throw this out for discussion in the first place. For those worried about making the game too complicated, we can always dial things back and best to do that on paper than in code. So the feedback is appreciated. As far as games changing, I think it's a necessary thing when looking at a game like ours. But it shouldn't be change for the sake of change, and I hope it isn't.

I think there are some mis-recollections of the GDI engine, at least in some cases. One of the biggest problems was that everything was put into the grinder at a team level and there was no way to split out individual contributions. Coupled with some issues on the technical side and design side of the engine, and it was time for a new engine. Where the new engine, or GDII, failed, in my opinion, is that we kept the same philosophy of determining results with probability calculations and random rolls. That serves us well in our other sports where you have 162 games or 80+ games in a season, but after working on our football products for 10 years, I've come to the conclusion that that model doesn't quite fit for football with the 13-16 game seasons. We need a new way to evaluate the possible results and outcome of plays for football. This is changing quite a bit which is why it is scheduled for several months of development, and we will have a beta period to shake out as many issues as we can.

I know it's tough to take change in a game like this, but this update shouldn't drastically change how you play the game. It should just allow you to have more control over your team and make your team play how you want them to. How you recruit shouldn't change at all. What may change is the effectiveness of certain combinations of play settings, like passing out of the Wishbone.

There are always risks of "glitch" plays and combinations that people will find to perform much greater than they should. That's something we will constantly battle. Certainly the more complicated and the more options you have, the more difficult it is to fix these issues. It's best to start simple and then layer in options. So we may not go full bore with the setting individual routes and customization, but it's something to discuss now so we know if it's something we would want the engine to support later. However, the way routes currently work is that each player has a certain chance to be in a certain part of the field, so Player A might have 20% chance to be where the QB is targeting and Player B might have a 40% chance, so Player B has twice as much chance to be the target as Player A in that area of the field. Then Pass Aggressiveness determines the chance that the QB targets a certain part of the field, which again is determined randomly. When looking at all the randomness of how a play unfolds in just the decisions of what happens, there's no way to tell that a WR is your deep threat or your WR running into traffic across the middle, and in turn there's no way to get your best deep WR deep and your best in-traffic WR in traffic.

The dilemma is that you have to set your playbooks before the game plays and hope it is enough to tell you team to play how you want them to play. If game plans are too simple or too random, then it's difficult to actually control your team. If they are too specific, then you have to have way too many settings. What will most likely come out of this process is something between the current settings and the Madden/EA type individual play settings.

The core focus of this update will be breaking down the plays a little more to allow us to work on match ups a little more. I'd have to get into the technical aspects of the simulation to really explain why this is needed, so I won't bore you to death with that. I'm sure I'm already writing too much as it is. But let's just say it is what will help us with SPD 30 guys running 90 yards without anyone touching him, or DLs getting more sacks than LBs. It will also help us in evaluating how a play plays out and allow us to tell if a certain player helped or hindered the play.

3/1/2012 12:35 PM

starfinder77

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 245 (0)

HD - 2 GD - 51

Posted by norbert on 3/1/2012 12:11:00 PM (view original):
Well, lots of things to comment here, which is why I wanted to throw this out for discussion in the first place. For those worried about making the game too complicated, we can always dial things back and best to do that on paper than in code. So the feedback is appreciated. As far as games changing, I think it's a necessary thing when looking at a game like ours. But it shouldn't be change for the sake of change, and I hope it isn't.

I think there are some mis-recollections of the GDI engine, at least in some cases. One of the biggest problems was that everything was put into the grinder at a team level and there was no way to split out individual contributions. Coupled with some issues on the technical side and design side of the engine, and it was time for a new engine. Where the new engine, or GDII, failed, in my opinion, is that we kept the same philosophy of determining results with probability calculations and random rolls. That serves us well in our other sports where you have 162 games or 80+ games in a season, but after working on our football products for 10 years, I've come to the conclusion that that model doesn't quite fit for football with the 13-16 game seasons. We need a new way to evaluate the possible results and outcome of plays for football. This is changing quite a bit which is why it is scheduled for several months of development, and we will have a beta period to shake out as many issues as we can.

I know it's tough to take change in a game like this, but this update shouldn't drastically change how you play the game. It should just allow you to have more control over your team and make your team play how you want them to. How you recruit shouldn't change at all. What may change is the effectiveness of certain combinations of play settings, like passing out of the Wishbone.

There are always risks of "glitch" plays and combinations that people will find to perform much greater than they should. That's something we will constantly battle. Certainly the more complicated and the more options you have, the more difficult it is to fix these issues. It's best to start simple and then layer in options. So we may not go full bore with the setting individual routes and customization, but it's something to discuss now so we know if it's something we would want the engine to support later. However, the way routes currently work is that each player has a certain chance to be in a certain part of the field, so Player A might have 20% chance to be where the QB is targeting and Player B might have a 40% chance, so Player B has twice as much chance to be the target as Player A in that area of the field. Then Pass Aggressiveness determines the chance that the QB targets a certain part of the field, which again is determined randomly. When looking at all the randomness of how a play unfolds in just the decisions of what happens, there's no way to tell that a WR is your deep threat or your WR running into traffic across the middle, and in turn there's no way to get your best deep WR deep and your best in-traffic WR in traffic.

The dilemma is that you have to set your playbooks before the game plays and hope it is enough to tell you team to play how you want them to play. If game plans are too simple or too random, then it's difficult to actually control your team. If they are too specific, then you have to have way too many settings. What will most likely come out of this process is something between the current settings and the Madden/EA type individual play settings.

The core focus of this update will be breaking down the plays a little more to allow us to work on match ups a little more. I'd have to get into the technical aspects of the simulation to really explain why this is needed, so I won't bore you to death with that. I'm sure I'm already writing too much as it is. But let's just say it is what will help us with SPD 30 guys running 90 yards without anyone touching him, or DLs getting more sacks than LBs. It will also help us in evaluating how a play plays out and allow us to tell if a certain player helped or hindered the play.

+1

3/1/2012 12:45 PM

norbert

Site Staff

Posts: 1241 (0)

MLB - 6 NBA - 1 NFL - 15 NHL - 12 HD - 77 GD - 30 HBD - 11 FCD - 11

Posted by mr_automatic on 2/29/2012 2:58:00 PM (view original):
Posted by bhouska on 2/29/2012 2:05:00 PM (view original):
But that's my whole point, I would like the engine to have actually checked on a player's attributes to decide whether they blocked the punt, or made a tackle, or whatever for that matter. It seems to me that the random die generator came up with blocked punt and didn't use any players' attributes to decide that. Right?

I hope that's not what's happening.

I hope that the engine is using kicking team's ST IQ and defensive team's ST IQ and coming up with the percentage chance of a block and then "flipping the coin" to see what happens.

It does look at the team's ratings in determining the chance of blocking. But this is sort of the whole randomness discussion in a bottle. Let's say the chance for one team to block another team's punt is 0.04 or 4%. Let's then look at a higher rated team that improves that chance to 5%. Flipping the imaginary 100-sided coin 100 times might give significance to that 1% bump, but when deciding a play, you only flip it once. So on a roll of 1-4 in one case results in a blocked punt and a roll of 1-5 in the other results in a blocked punt. That's not that much difference. We use these types of checks all throughout the game, and in some cases you come up with these very small modifications unless you are looking at the very far ends of the rating scale. Which is why I've said before we need to look at new ways to determine outcomes versus these types of checks.

A lot of feedback we get is that you'd like to know why a certain play happened. You can only go so far with "why?" in answering why a play resulted in a certain outcome. Take, for instance, a play where a RB gets 2 yards on the play and is tackled by a LB. Let's look at an identical play where the RB gets 20 yards because the LB did not tackle him. Why did he tackle him on one play and not the other? Both of their ratings remain the same and both situations are identical. Sometimes the only answer is that in one case he tackled him and in the other he didn't. I don't know how much detail anyone would want so far in wanting to know that he didn't wrap him up properly versus he was just out of reach. Even if you go to that much detail it still boils down to some random chance at some point. I think there is at least more we can give on plays to help evaluate your team and players. If it's something that can help identify weak links on the team or see the effects of your star player, I think that would be great. With the engine changes, we should be able to provide a little more analysis like that.

3/1/2012 1:12 PM

zharkins

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 97 (0)

GD - 85

I don't think we need detail as to why he missed a tackle, but if you see your ILB misses more tackles over the course of several games, you might rethink your choice of player or the attributes you are focusing on.

3/1/2012 3:19 PM (edited)

bhouska

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 1684 (0)

GD - 320

I'd have to get into the technical aspects of the simulation to really explain why this is needed, so I won't bore you to death with that. I'm sure I'm already writing too much as it is.

Honestly, Norbert, when talking about your plans for the new engine, I assume I speak for everyone in saying you can never say too much. We are a captive audience, wanting you to succeed.

3/1/2012 1:49 PM

bhouska

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 1684 (0)

GD - 320

A lot of feedback we get is that you'd like to know why a certain play happened. You can only go so far with "why?" in answering why a play resulted in a certain outcome. Take, for instance, a play where a RB gets 2 yards on the play and is tackled by a LB. Let's look at an identical play where the RB gets 20 yards because the LB did not tackle him. Why did he tackle him on one play and not the other? Both of their ratings remain the same and both situations are identical. Sometimes the only answer is that in one case he tackled him and in the other he didn't. I don't know how much detail anyone would want so far in wanting to know that he didn't wrap him up properly versus he was just out of reach. Even if you go to that much detail it still boils down to some random chance at some point. I think there is at least more we can give on plays to help evaluate your team and players. If it's something that can help identify weak links on the team or see the effects of your star player, I think that would be great. With the engine changes, we should be able to provide a little more analysis like that.

Personally, I think people are asking for "why" a play turned out as it did because of the apparent utter randomness of the new engine. If I recall correctly, we never had this complaint with GDI, it could be easily gathered by looking at the attributes why something happened the way it did. I don't ever remember being flabbergasted by a game with GDI like I have been many times with GDII. So, people are reaching for answers, hoping that a better breakdown of the play will help them understand why something happened the way it did. From what I am gathering that you're saying is that really can't be done, that more info about a play won't really tell us anything, to which I say more cause/effect in GDIII is what we want/need. Right?

Here's what I believe 95% of us as coaches would like to see in a simulation-based football game....if one team's OL is head and shoulders above their opponent's DL and they have good RB's they should be able to break off chunks of yards at a time. If that game averages over the "average" of 4.321 yards per carry or whatever the number is that GDII engine tries to get each game to, so be it.
If one team's WR's are head and shoulders above their opponent's DB's, they should be open all day. As long as they have a quality QB, they should be able to put up monster numbers against inferior teams.
It all boils down to cause and effect. We want to be able to see it and react to it.

3/1/2012 2:43 PM

norbert

Site Staff

Posts: 1241 (0)

MLB - 6 NBA - 1 NFL - 15 NHL - 12 HD - 77 GD - 30 HBD - 11 FCD - 11

Posted by bhouska on 3/1/2012 1:49:00 PM (view original):

A lot of feedback we get is that you'd like to know why a certain play happened. You can only go so far with "why?" in answering why a play resulted in a certain outcome. Take, for instance, a play where a RB gets 2 yards on the play and is tackled by a LB. Let's look at an identical play where the RB gets 20 yards because the LB did not tackle him. Why did he tackle him on one play and not the other? Both of their ratings remain the same and both situations are identical. Sometimes the only answer is that in one case he tackled him and in the other he didn't. I don't know how much detail anyone would want so far in wanting to know that he didn't wrap him up properly versus he was just out of reach. Even if you go to that much detail it still boils down to some random chance at some point. I think there is at least more we can give on plays to help evaluate your team and players. If it's something that can help identify weak links on the team or see the effects of your star player, I think that would be great. With the engine changes, we should be able to provide a little more analysis like that.

Personally, I think people are asking for "why" a play turned out as it did because of the apparent utter randomness of the new engine. If I recall correctly, we never had this complaint with GDI, it could be easily gathered by looking at the attributes why something happened the way it did. I don't ever remember being flabbergasted by a game with GDI like I have been many times with GDII. So, people are reaching for answers, hoping that a better breakdown of the play will help them understand why something happened the way it did. From what I am gathering that you're saying is that really can't be done, that more info about a play won't really tell us anything, to which I say more cause/effect in GDIII is what we want/need. Right?

Here's what I believe 95% of us as coaches would like to see in a simulation-based football game....if one team's OL is head and shoulders above their opponent's DL and they have good RB's they should be able to break off chunks of yards at a time. If that game averages over the "average" of 4.321 yards per carry or whatever the number is that GDII engine tries to get each game to, so be it.
If one team's WR's are head and shoulders above their opponent's DB's, they should be open all day. As long as they have a quality QB, they should be able to put up monster numbers against inferior teams.
It all boils down to cause and effect. We want to be able to see it and react to it.

Again, one misconception about the current engine is that it tries to force results to some number. It doesn't. Where the average numbers come in, like 4.321 YPC, is when checking an average team playing an average team 1,000 times. The average results should be average real life results. But in each game, the engine doesn't try to force a team to meet those averages, so if you are trending above 4.321, it doesn't start pulling your rushing down.

Why a team that is head-and-shoulders above another team ends up not running all over the team is because each individual check allows for all possibilities. So let's say the chance the RB is stuffed goes from 10% to 6%, which in real life would be average versus very good. If you look at 10 plays strung together, with a random 6% chance each play, it can still end up that more than 1 play results in a stuff. So the idea that a RB would get over the 4.321 YPC is left up to pure chance. A great RB has a much higher chance to get above the average, but he still has a chance to get below average.

We also can't allow your head-and-shoulders WRs to catch every pass. It would look ridiculous to see a QB hit 50 out of 50. So why would one of these passes be incomplete? We should be able to determine what the expected outcome should be. In this case, it should be a reception. It could be incomplete because the QB overthrows, or the WR runs the wrong route or drops the ball, or maybe the DB steps up and makes a great play. What we wouldn't be able to do is tell you why the WR dropped the ball or why the DB made the great play on that particular play, but we should be able to tell you why the ball was incomplete. But at what point is the number of dropped or overthrown balls unacceptable? Right now, you have to assume when you see a pass was incomplete that one of these things happened. Is it more acceptable to see these incompletions as a mix of these reasons than just a bunch of "incomplete pass" plays?

One of the challenges of the update will be to allow this sort of analysis of plays. The other challenge in trying to rein in the wide range of possible results, especially between a higher rated team playing a lower rated team, is in determining what the limits of the plays should be. Every pass can't be a reception and every run can't be a TD. We should also define what is "head-and-shoulders" above the other team. What rating difference is head-and-shoulders above and what is evenly matched? What is everything in between? I feel like there needs to be some constraints on the current randomness, but there will always need to be some randomness. The problem is how to make it acceptable.

3/1/2012 5:08 PM

da_goat

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 541 (0)

MLB - 2 GD - 73

Posted by bhouska on 3/1/2012 3:19:00 PM (view original):

I'd have to get into the technical aspects of the simulation to really explain why this is needed, so I won't bore you to death with that. I'm sure I'm already writing too much as it is.

Honestly, Norbert, when talking about your plans for the new engine, I assume I speak for everyone in saying you can never say too much. We are a captive audience, wanting you to succeed.

+1
Please keep feeding us as much detailed information on the update as you can.

3/1/2012 7:01 PM

katzphang88

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 748 (0)

HD - 10 GD - 141 HBD - 2 FCD - 3

Well page 15 has produced some good talk about some specific game directions. Norbert - YOU CANNOT SAY ENOUGH - so don't worry about how long your posts are.

Regarding bhouska's comments about head and shoulders differences producing wide mis-matches in game play. This is again, to quote " this is sort of the whole randomness discussion in a bottle." I do not believe we need randomness or percentage decisions. If A>B, A wins - always. The real question should be - How much does A win by? Given that A and B can be modified by other attributes such as FormIQ, fatigue, play settings etc, the true value of A and B may not be static. But when A>B, A wins. An Example: For pass play - OL block+strength = 100, DL strength+tech = 120. DL > OL by 20. What does 20 mean? Maybe 0 - 5 better means no advantage, 6 - 10 decreases chance of completion due to pressure, 11 - 15 - chance of sack 0 to 5 yds, 16 - 20 - chance of sack > 5 yds. Next level of determination would be play call, DB coverage, QB elus, DL tackle etc. BUT - because the DL > OL the OL ALWAYS loses and next level of play is in the Offensive backfield or decreased effectiveness of passing game. This mis-match would continue all game until modifiers change the relationship between OL vs DL. And of course the choice of reading an expanded play by play would tell us what the mis-matches were. Other factors in this play could be extreme differences for OL vs DL for penalties (OL - GI+TECH <> DL GI+ATH), Injuries (OL - DUR+STR <> DL DUR+STR) etc for as many comparisons as needed to complete a play.

We need to completely eliminate "random events". Using the above formulations - Notre Dame U will always beat up on Our Little Angels College with little effort and few mistakes. Evenly matched teams will see one area dominated by one team another area dominated by the other team. Make differences more precise for QB technique/GI vs DB GI/tech, punt returner hands or GI, hands of defense vs RB etc to make events occur, but do not make them randomly.

POPULATE HEISMAN!

3/1/2012 8:42 PM

mayottek

Game Rating: Hall of Famer Forum Rating: Prospect

Posts: 100 (0)

GD - 54 HBD - 5

norbert I really appreciate everything you are doing for the game, but I am against the specific plays selections. I would, however, like to see more control as has been mentioned.

For example: If I have depth at the OL and the team I am playing has a weak link along the DL I would like to have the ability to exploit it by either running outside left, inside left, inside right, or outside right. In terms of passing I am on board with the GDI type distribution, I thought that allowed for a lot of creativity in terms of setting up depth charts and tendencies for each formation.

If I have a stud LB and the other teams OL has bad GI I would like to be able to blitz inside causing confusion among the line giving my LB or DL a better chance of making a positive play for the D. If the O Tackle on my stud LBs side has no athleticism and bad technique I would like to be able to blitz him to the outside making it difficult on the tackle and thus raising the opportunity for my LB to make a positive play for the D.

Pass defense if your guys have good speed elu tech you can play tight man if your secondary is more GI driven than you will likely play zone.

I think this needs to be a "common sense" driven update. Nothing too drastic

3/2/2012 11:53 AM

norbert

Site Staff

Posts: 1241 (0)

MLB - 6 NBA - 1 NFL - 15 NHL - 12 HD - 77 GD - 30 HBD - 11 FCD - 11

Posted by katzphang88 on 3/1/2012 7:01:00 PM (view original):
Well page 15 has produced some good talk about some specific game directions. Norbert - YOU CANNOT SAY ENOUGH - so don't worry about how long your posts are.

Regarding bhouska's comments about head and shoulders differences producing wide mis-matches in game play. This is again, to quote " this is sort of the whole randomness discussion in a bottle." I do not believe we need randomness or percentage decisions. If A>B, A wins - always. The real question should be - How much does A win by? Given that A and B can be modified by other attributes such as FormIQ, fatigue, play settings etc, the true value of A and B may not be static. But when A>B, A wins. An Example: For pass play - OL block+strength = 100, DL strength+tech = 120. DL > OL by 20. What does 20 mean? Maybe 0 - 5 better means no advantage, 6 - 10 decreases chance of completion due to pressure, 11 - 15 - chance of sack 0 to 5 yds, 16 - 20 - chance of sack > 5 yds. Next level of determination would be play call, DB coverage, QB elus, DL tackle etc. BUT - because the DL > OL the OL ALWAYS loses and next level of play is in the Offensive backfield or decreased effectiveness of passing game. This mis-match would continue all game until modifiers change the relationship between OL vs DL. And of course the choice of reading an expanded play by play would tell us what the mis-matches were. Other factors in this play could be extreme differences for OL vs DL for penalties (OL - GI+TECH <> DL GI+ATH), Injuries (OL - DUR+STR <> DL DUR+STR) etc for as many comparisons as needed to complete a play.

We need to completely eliminate "random events". Using the above formulations - Notre Dame U will always beat up on Our Little Angels College with little effort and few mistakes. Evenly matched teams will see one area dominated by one team another area dominated by the other team. Make differences more precise for QB technique/GI vs DB GI/tech, punt returner hands or GI, hands of defense vs RB etc to make events occur, but do not make them randomly.

POPULATE HEISMAN!

I think there is some misconception about what random means. Random can still occur with other factors taken into consideration. The engine currently uses random checks with comparisons between player ratings. If it's not random, then all those factors you describe would be the same for basically every play, except fatigue, and the results would end up the same for each play. Every time your RB runs we have to decide how many yards he gets. If there's no randomness in determining that result then he's going to always get the same yardage on every play. You might say that different players would be involved in the play, but then how do you determine that? How do I know one defender is trying to tackle the RB on one play and a different one is trying to tackle him on the next? It is random, but based on the likelihood of each being in on the play. Once we decide the defender, or defenders, how do we know they stop the RB? If it's not random, then it will be the same result every play, they tackle or they don't. There HAS to be a chance that they tackle the RB, not a flat result. In the passing game, if the DL > OL and ALWAYS win and the DL > QB and ALWAYS sack him, then what kind of simulation would that be? 42 sacks in the game and another 30 tackles for loss? I'm not sure if this is what you are suggesting or if I am misinterpreting your suggestion.

We have to introduce more of what you are saying, and that is what I was getting to in my last post, to get to smaller ranges of what can happen randomly, but there has to be some amount of randomness in the result. There's no possible way to just add up the factors and spit out a result.