ok so I know this has been beaten to death but I have to ask..

Has ANYONE any definative proof, not opinion on whether or not spending your points on formation iq has any benefits? My experience is no.. I have watched several teams still not put anything into formation iq and it appears they play as well or better than the flip side. The benefits are clear.. the teams I am watching have higher than average growth on their players and it pays off with good production. I thought WIS was going to address this several seasons ago but I dont think I have seen enough..

right now I choose no more than 2 offensive and 3 defensive formations and roughly 12 points in each..or 60 points that could be added to individual attributes..

I agree I see no correlation in all my teams between Formation IQ and Player attributes. In fact I've run a season or two with no formation IQ practice opther than special teams and Find that the growth isn't that much more for player attributes its like 1 point or no difference but the Loss of IQ didn't affect me in a negative way.

I put time into formation practice but I can not say that it matters either way. I will say this. When I have the better players. Things get done. No matter how my game plan is set up.  When I don't have the better players. I can bust my butt doing a game plan and no matter what I do things do not get done.  So it has stayed about the same for my teams. Same as be for the up date as after the up date.  I have always practiced formations.

it "appears" to affect fumbles but that may have been my sim recruited RB lol.   Thing I see is that at some point the diminishing returns on the player practice slots make it so you might as well throw something on a couple formations or special teams.   Special team practice seems to have a good link to punt and kick returns.

Posted by jfootball88 on 12/2/2012 7:35:00 PM (view original):
I agree I see no correlation in all my teams between Formation IQ and Player attributes. In fact I've run a season or two with no formation IQ practice opther than special teams and Find that the growth isn't that much more for player attributes its like 1 point or no difference but the Loss of IQ didn't affect me in a negative way.

Formation IQ doesn't change player attributes directly. Instead, it's a modifer to attributed during the game simulation.  The previous developer (whose information has proven to be suspect, at times) said it was a maximum of +/- 5%.

So for a player with a score of 75 on whatever stat, formation IQ would figure in somewhere along +/- 3.75 points.

For a player with a score of 40, that modifier becomes +/- 2.00

At least that's how I understand it - and if true, it means practicing formations at D3 or D2 is a total waste of time.

I cant say ive really noticed an impact of form IQ
i mainly run SG but will use other formations too.
defensively i mainly use 3-4 but lots of 4-4 and some other formations too.
i only train SG and 3-4 FORMIQ for both is in the 40's typically, and havent seen anything that i can point my finger to as a negative impact of using any other formation on O or D (FORMIQ usually around 10-ish)

moreover, i dont seem to notice anything overly positive coming for SG or 3-4, i still get gashed for big plays on D or bled by lots of little ones.
on O just earlier this year I had a stretch of games where i think i threw 13 INT in 3 games, moslt all of them were me out of my SG with high FORMIQ and usualkly going against D/N for them with a relative low FORMIQ.

so i am not prepared to completely give up training formations all togetehr but i seriously doubt it has very much impact after you consider personelle differences first and gameplan second.
i suppose it could come into play as a distant tiebreaker but for the most part i think an outcome of a game is decided:
60% talent
25% gameplan
10% luck
5% FORMIQ

if it's true that formiq is a modifier of player attributes, of which we know little about their effects on the game, then it is even further removed from our understanding.  might as well throw some time in there unless you want to go overkill on positional practices.