In an effort to get more feedback on specifics of the update, I am going to start throwing out some more information about it as we get more concrete decisions on what will be in the update. These are pretty much decided to be in the update, so while I open it up to discussion, it's really more of a review. I've tried to take all the feedback from the main thread when looking at updating the settings. Of course, we can't satisfy everyone, but I hope we are moving in the right direction.
Just to keep the expectations reasonable, it looks like we might have the open beta in August and run it for maybe a month to get feedback and fix any bugs we run into during it, which means we probably won't see the update pushed out until September or later depending on how the beta goes.
We also will be staggering the new settings and new engine into worlds as they roll over seasons. How we're going to do this, I don't know, but we'll make it happen. So for the first look at one of the new settings, we're going to look at Position Roles and how they will affect the rest of the game.
Position Roles are a way for you as the coach to evaluate different players for different roles within the game. For instance, a RB that is a speedy runner to make the outside runs versus a RB that is a power back to run between the Tackles. If you've used any of the third party tools, then the concept should be pretty familiar. What we are going to have is a new rating, a Position Role Rating, that is a 1-100 rating made up from the other ratings. Each rating will factor in to the Position Role Rating as a certain percentage. Each Position Role will have default settings, but also allow the user to define their own breakdown.
We will also look at having Basic and Advanced settings. The Basic Position Roles will match the natural positions that you see listed for players - QB, RB, WR, TE, OL, DL, LB, DB, K, and P. So there will be a general Position Role Rating for each position. For Advanced settings, we will have predefined breakdowns for each of the natural positions. For instance, RB will have roles for Fullback, Power Back, and Possession Back, and possibly a few others. There will also be one or more User Defined slots to be used for whatever you want to use them for. We will look later at the idea of allowing a user to define and add new Position Roles.
How the Position Role is used is that there will be several places where you can look at players under a certain role, like depth charts and recruiting. Keep in mind that Position Role Rating is just a tool for you to use and does not affect the engine.
Depth Charts will change in that they will be one per Position Role. For Basic Depth Charts, there will one per each natural position, QB, RB, WR, etc. For Advanced Depth Charts, there will be one for each role within each position. How these Depth Charts will be used will be covered when we review formation and playbook settings. I know it might be tough to envision this without seeing something, so I hope to get some mocked up setting pages for you to see, but I hope this makes sense.
Players will be restricted to Depth Charts for roles for their natural position, so you still can't put a WR in a RB depth chart, but players can be in multiple depth charts now. One thing this affects that we have to figure out how best to handle is how we are currently determining starters.