I agree with Harris.  Something seems to have changed between Beta and this new live version in regards to deep passes.  My final season of Beta I threw deep fairly often.  I can't seem to get much off deep now and get intercepted much more frequently than I did in Beta.  Did something change?  It would be nice if the update thread included dates with each post to make it easier to keep track of progress and make sense of percieved changes in game.   

Posted by samson75 on 11/21/2013 11:45:00 PM (view original):
I agree with Harris.  Something seems to have changed between Beta and this new live version in regards to deep passes.  My final season of Beta I threw deep fairly often.  I can't seem to get much off deep now and get intercepted much more frequently than I did in Beta.  Did something change?  It would be nice if the update thread included dates with each post to make it easier to keep track of progress and make sense of percieved changes in game.   

Oriole nerfed pass comp % and yards per catch for the longer distances either at the end of beta or post beta.

He also nerfed very lopsided matchups to keep games close.  So instead of being throttled when the score becomes lopsided (his earlier attempt), you are throttled throughout the game if you have too big of a talent advantage.

Posted by slid64er on 11/22/2013 12:21:00 AM (view original):

Posted by samson75 on 11/21/2013 11:45:00 PM (view original):
I agree with Harris.  Something seems to have changed between Beta and this new live version in regards to deep passes.  My final season of Beta I threw deep fairly often.  I can't seem to get much off deep now and get intercepted much more frequently than I did in Beta.  Did something change?  It would be nice if the update thread included dates with each post to make it easier to keep track of progress and make sense of percieved changes in game.   

Oriole nerfed pass comp % and yards per catch for the longer distances either at the end of beta or post beta.

He also nerfed very lopsided matchups to keep games close.  So instead of being throttled when the score becomes lopsided (his earlier attempt), you are throttled throughout the game if you have too big of a talent advantage.

Again, I'll come back to fatigue - if it were working properly, and players were being forced to come out of games more frequently, then there would be no need to artificially throttle performance.

Several times in Yost I would drop 20+ points on my opponent in the first half, and barely hold on in the second, against SimAI teams (so I know they were not making any halftime adjustments).  Frustrating, because in this ever-shifting post-beta beta we have, I am unable to attempt to understand what does and doesn't work.

" Frustrating, because in this ever-shifting post-beta beta we have, I am unable to attempt to understand what does and doesn't work."

I thought that this is why we bumped up to 3.0 so we can understand the game and use more gameplanning to get our best players a better shot. Still the same mish-mash spread out watered down mess of secrets we were trying to overcome.

Posted by 0bigzeke0 on 11/22/2013 12:46:00 PM (view original):
" Frustrating, because in this ever-shifting post-beta beta we have, I am unable to attempt to understand what does and doesn't work."

I thought that this is why we bumped up to 3.0 so we can understand the game and use more gameplanning to get our best players a better shot. Still the same mish-mash spread out watered down mess of secrets we were trying to overcome.

I think 3.0 delivers on part of that pretty well - giving our best players a better shot.   

However, based on what I can see, part of the problem we have now is that symptoms are being fixed, not necessarily the root cause.   Too many deep passes being completed?  Let's adjust the base completion rate for deep passes.  But -- what if the problem isn't that the base completion rate was too high?  What if the REAL problem is DB ratings aren't properly utilized?     RB's have too many catches - we'll adjust the default pass distribution!  But -- what if that's only a minor part of the problem?  What if the bigger issue is QB's seldom throw to their first target, and check down to a RB too quickly? What if there's an error in the pass progression algorithm that never looks at a secondary target in the same passing zone?

I'm not casting aspersion's on oriole's skills; I know how difficult it can be to inherit some one else's code, and even more so when you're inheriting 3rd generation code - and the original coder isn't around to explain constructs or design questions. 

It has nothing with being bumped to 3.0.  It has everything to do with 3.0 not being ready to release.

Posted by slid64er on 11/22/2013 12:21:00 AM (view original):

Posted by samson75 on 11/21/2013 11:45:00 PM (view original):
I agree with Harris.  Something seems to have changed between Beta and this new live version in regards to deep passes.  My final season of Beta I threw deep fairly often.  I can't seem to get much off deep now and get intercepted much more frequently than I did in Beta.  Did something change?  It would be nice if the update thread included dates with each post to make it easier to keep track of progress and make sense of percieved changes in game.   

Oriole nerfed pass comp % and yards per catch for the longer distances either at the end of beta or post beta.

He also nerfed very lopsided matchups to keep games close.  So instead of being throttled when the score becomes lopsided (his earlier attempt), you are throttled throughout the game if you have too big of a talent advantage.

Why?   If the WR can beat the coverage (either because the WR is more talented than the cb and/or the coverage (safeties) are short), and my QB has the arm strength to get it there, why are there restrictions on the %????  Should Calvin Johnson play with one arm?  Should Randy Moss have been blindfolded?  Sometimes there are special players who absolutely own the competition. 

Has the process of getting pressure on the QB changed?  Sacks seem a bit different now too.    

Again, I feel like changes are happening and I am not sure where to find info on it or how we are even supposed to verify them.  I like 3.0 much better than 2.0, but I just wish it was as easier to follow the evolution.      

At the point where Oriole "nerfed" completion percentages for deep/very deep passes these passes were being completed at the same clip that short/medium passes were. No matter how accurate/strong armed a QB is the percentages go down the further the ball is thrown. The longer the pass is, the longer it takes to develop which should increase sacks/pg.

If someone is throwing Very short against a cover long...that should lead to higher completion percentages. If someone is throwing deep/very deep against a cover short that should also increase completion percentages. But now that I (and the rest of us) can't just test out different settings to determine how much of the cause is settings based and how much might be engine based we rely on oriole to do the testing on his own.

My fear is that we complain about the comp% of running backs so much that the next unrealistic thing is setting cover short against running back passes leads them to not only be lower completions, but makes the whole part of the game irrelevant. That will in turn cause overall completion percentages to go down unrealistically, and then everyone will clamor for better comp% for QB's which will lead to medium/deep passes being too powerful.

I do not envy the Job Oriole_fan has now. I want to do the legwork for this like I have in the past, but while last I checked the beta site was still up, it is not under the same engine that is currently in the live game. I think I am seeing some of the throttling that slid64er is talking about too, but I'm just not sure.

Posted by noah23 on 11/22/2013 5:11:00 PM (view original):
At the point where Oriole "nerfed" completion percentages for deep/very deep passes these passes were being completed at the same clip that short/medium passes were. No matter how accurate/strong armed a QB is the percentages go down the further the ball is thrown. The longer the pass is, the longer it takes to develop which should increase sacks/pg.

If someone is throwing Very short against a cover long...that should lead to higher completion percentages. If someone is throwing deep/very deep against a cover short that should also increase completion percentages. But now that I (and the rest of us) can't just test out different settings to determine how much of the cause is settings based and how much might be engine based we rely on oriole to do the testing on his own.

My fear is that we complain about the comp% of running backs so much that the next unrealistic thing is setting cover short against running back passes leads them to not only be lower completions, but makes the whole part of the game irrelevant. That will in turn cause overall completion percentages to go down unrealistically, and then everyone will clamor for better comp% for QB's which will lead to medium/deep passes being too powerful.

I do not envy the Job Oriole_fan has now. I want to do the legwork for this like I have in the past, but while last I checked the beta site was still up, it is not under the same engine that is currently in the live game. I think I am seeing some of the throttling that slid64er is talking about too, but I'm just not sure.

The problem with fixing long/deep passes is the same with most of the other fixes.  They affect everyone the same.  There's no regard for talent, formation IQ, formation advantage or fatigue.  Instead of making the engine adaptable and playable with variances in the mentioned factors, everyone gets clipped to make the game "realistic".

There's little nuance anymore, you're stuck in one of the preset boxes.  If you're 5 points better, but it's within the same box as your opponent, you perform the same.  If you're 1 point better than that and that one point moves you into another box, you perform better.  It's a guessing game and no one knows where those boxes are and what is used to calculate the values in those boxes, especially since the took away the ability to see the debug pbp in beta.