Guys I have frustrations in some of these same areas as well. However it does appear that Norbert is sincerely trying to address the faults of the last engine and he has given us a schedule of when he expects it to be implemented. While I agree with everyone about the frustration of the randomness of this engine I for one feel Norbert has been straight forward and am willing to see how his new engine turns out. I dont think name calling or insults will get the engine fixed any faster and I do agree it would be better to roll out a tested superior engine that addresses most if not all of the faults in this engine than doing peacemeal fixes. 

Just my two cents feel free to criticize me !  

As sammyboy said, I also feel that many of the frustrations felt by the coaches in this forum sum up why they game needs to be changed. I feel that the game is not "random", but watered down by attribute averaging, too many decision points, and formating that produces minimal changes from top to bottom teams (form IQ) to name a few. Norbert has stated (if I remember) that he was involved in the ORIGINAL construction of GD (the one which some of the longer lasting coaches liked), but I really feel that JCONTE had his hands (LOL) all over the last revision. Norberts changes were an attempt to bring a rusted hulk back from the dead, but we know from the big mess of fall 2010 that his was not gonna happen. Norbert's presence started in fall of 2011 and his postings in the forums at least indicates he has read some of the coaches bust-ups of the cuirrent engine and I currently have (don't dissappoint me Norbert) faith that the new version will address the concerns. The open beta will give we the coaches much determination into how we want to proceed, rather than JConte's beta tests on completely SIM worlds.

Threads in the forum like this one are necessary at this stage. The more eyes we have dissecting what is wrong with this game we play, the more points we we can evaluate when allowed to dig into the new game. But please, if accusations are to be made, make them towards the appropriate target.

You can have it fast or you can have it good - which one do you want? (JConte picked fast )

Posted by grindi on 6/18/2012 8:29:00 PM (view original):
OK I'm the dummy here.  I would think that in order to CATCH the ball, Hands would be the ONLY thing that mattered on the WRs end.  MAYBE Athleticism as he may have to go up or down for the ball or stretch out.  But for catching the ball Hands should be the end all.  As for how OPEN a WR gets....that should have to do with Speed, Elusiveness, Game Instinct and Technique.  As to running with the ball after the catch it should be Elusiveness, Strength, and Speed.  As to whether or not the ball gets to an area that can be caught should be on the QBs shoulders.  Since 100 is the top and 0 is the bottem, it seems to me that a guy with 100 should catch 100% of the catchable balls a QB throws and a guy with 0 shouldn't catch it if you handed it to him.  So first thing first is the QB has to throw the ball.  IF he has to scramble then the WRs GI should play a huge part in his getting open for him.  But let's just say it is a normal play.  The QB has time to throw and goes through all the calculations and delivers the ball on target.  IF he can thread the needle then a WR with a 100 hands, open or not as it is on the QBs ability to make the throw, will catch it.  If he has a Hands of 30 and the QB makes the same throw he should have a 30% chance of catching it.  The game needs to look at 1) the QBs ability to make the throw.  2) the ability of the WR to get open which is directly related to the QBs ability to put the ball in a catchable place.  3) The WRs ability to catch (Hands)  I don't care how open or how well the QB can throw, if a WR can't catch the ball then it shouldn't be caught.  Since 100 is best and 0 is worst, the numbers should be directly proportional to the percentage of catchable balls caught.  AND THEY ARE NOT.  If a WR with 30 Hands has 10 balls thrown to him 7 should be dropped.  Which means we need another stat to tell us how many catchable balls he has had thrown to him.  Right now a WR with 30 can have 10 balls thrown his way, catch 8 and the other 2 were really throw aways with no drops.

Sorry but I agree the old game was better and could have been ideal with a few tweaks and this game is FAR behind it.  I am probably one of the few here that thinks Conte just changed his name to Norbert as it seems we are getting the same run around as before.  Sorry Norbert if it isn't true but that is how it is coming acrossed to me.  Your answers are not much different than Contes were as far as explanations.  To me it looks like the same Circus but just a different tent.  I'll probably get deleted and banned for saying that.

grindi, this looks reasonable on the surface, but where does the DB fit into it? Not defending the whole 30 hands thing (visual image of a WR with little T-Rex hands...), but just trying to get my mind around the mechanics.

Yea I think nothing will please everyone but if Norbert can come out with an engine that specifically fixes most of the major issues and can be beta tested to prove it and maybe add a few more options to  better the game. If this comes out an overall success Norbert (and If I am speaking incorrectly for you let me know) Could focus on smaller tweaks and test new things to add that wont require an overhaul but can be fixed on the go once the big tasks are beta tested and approved. sure some feel they waisted money after the switch but some prospered. How about the majority of us give Norbert some helpful input and see what is rolled out in Sept/OCt which is only  a few months away and then we can pass judgement on the success or failure of Norbert's vision.

 ( I bet  the house on sucess Norbert so no pressure big boy)!     

Posted by scrodz on 6/18/2012 11:36:00 PM (view original):

Posted by grindi on 6/18/2012 8:29:00 PM (view original):
OK I'm the dummy here.  I would think that in order to CATCH the ball, Hands would be the ONLY thing that mattered on the WRs end.  MAYBE Athleticism as he may have to go up or down for the ball or stretch out.  But for catching the ball Hands should be the end all.  As for how OPEN a WR gets....that should have to do with Speed, Elusiveness, Game Instinct and Technique.  As to running with the ball after the catch it should be Elusiveness, Strength, and Speed.  As to whether or not the ball gets to an area that can be caught should be on the QBs shoulders.  Since 100 is the top and 0 is the bottem, it seems to me that a guy with 100 should catch 100% of the catchable balls a QB throws and a guy with 0 shouldn't catch it if you handed it to him.  So first thing first is the QB has to throw the ball.  IF he has to scramble then the WRs GI should play a huge part in his getting open for him.  But let's just say it is a normal play.  The QB has time to throw and goes through all the calculations and delivers the ball on target.  IF he can thread the needle then a WR with a 100 hands, open or not as it is on the QBs ability to make the throw, will catch it.  If he has a Hands of 30 and the QB makes the same throw he should have a 30% chance of catching it.  The game needs to look at 1) the QBs ability to make the throw.  2) the ability of the WR to get open which is directly related to the QBs ability to put the ball in a catchable place.  3) The WRs ability to catch (Hands)  I don't care how open or how well the QB can throw, if a WR can't catch the ball then it shouldn't be caught.  Since 100 is best and 0 is worst, the numbers should be directly proportional to the percentage of catchable balls caught.  AND THEY ARE NOT.  If a WR with 30 Hands has 10 balls thrown to him 7 should be dropped.  Which means we need another stat to tell us how many catchable balls he has had thrown to him.  Right now a WR with 30 can have 10 balls thrown his way, catch 8 and the other 2 were really throw aways with no drops.

Sorry but I agree the old game was better and could have been ideal with a few tweaks and this game is FAR behind it.  I am probably one of the few here that thinks Conte just changed his name to Norbert as it seems we are getting the same run around as before.  Sorry Norbert if it isn't true but that is how it is coming acrossed to me.  Your answers are not much different than Contes were as far as explanations.  To me it looks like the same Circus but just a different tent.  I'll probably get deleted and banned for saying that.

grindi, this looks reasonable on the surface, but where does the DB fit into it? Not defending the whole 30 hands thing (visual image of a WR with little T-Rex hands...), but just trying to get my mind around the mechanics.

I envisioned a WR unit full of Featherstone's...

Maybe this game is backwards and 30 means the WR will only drop the ball 3 out of 10 times. Throw logic out the window.

The old engine, GD 1.0, combined all the ratings from the teams and players to get one chance for completion or incompletion.  There wasn't a check to see why it was incomplete.  Which probably made it easier to get overall passing percentages, but didn't allow for anything like WR with poor Hands.

Apparently, GD 2.0, while it does break the pass down into smaller components, doesn't take Hands into account enough.  Looking at the chance for dropping a pass, Hands is half of the factor.  ATH, STR, and TECH are also factored in.  So HANDS does affect the receiver's catch ability most, but the chance of a drop is so narrow that low Hands and high Hands don't have that much effect on the general outcome.  Most of the success of the pass seems to come earlier in determining how successful the throw is and how successfully it is defended. I'm sure if we ran 1,000 games, you would see a difference between a WR with 80 Hands and one with 30 Hands, but we need it to be significant in a single game.

The update I am working on is trying to fix this.  To do this, I pretty much have to strip most of the engine out and replace it which is why it will take more time than usual.  The part of the GD 2.0 engine I worked on was more technical, like how the engine moves from play to play and how play-by-play is structured to save in the database and retrieve for display, and some of the end of game logic (which also needs some work, and probably always will  ).  How the engine calculates the results of plays is mostly new to me as well.  But I'm not new to WIS or our football simulations.  I've been here 10 years and I wrote most of the SLF engine which was later used for our projections and the base for the GD 1.0 engine.  I understand what JConte was trying to do with the 2.0 engine, but I think there was a string of bad decisions that led to it not working out the way it was intended.  So yes the update is changing the engine once again, but I think the problems we have with the engine can't be tweaked out of the game.  Plus I hope to open up the game plans a little more.  This is a pretty long update and is keeping me busy every minute of the day, but it should pay off by allowing us to make less major updates down the road to improve the game.

I dont Consider MOST of the posts on here as being deragatory(sp) toward Norbert . I see tham as being deragatory toward the Game and the Engine.... Which is fine and well placed. Norbert shouldnt be personally attacked in any of this< even if 3.0 is utter crap none of us have the right to attak him< what we do have the right to do is STOP paying for the game thats pretty much it. As the game stands its worse than crap its week old diseased crap. That being said i Believe Norbert is working on it and we shuld have faith and patience. im still new and i was completely surprised to go 9-4 in one world and 10-3 in the other in my 1st 2 seasons...thats senseless  i had just recruited probably the WORST HS players to ever take a football field cuz i didnt know what i was doing , my teams were filled with SIMAI recruits < and i mean totally full, and yet i was reeling of wins against wayyyy better teams.... i expected to go at best 4-9 And in the 8 or so seasons since then ive never Finished worse that 9-4 EVER but i shuld have lots of times... so if even the NEW coaches are confused and angry at the engine then i do think its broken          I dont WANT the engine to "EVEN" the playing field i want to get CRUSHED by Human teams with many years at that school and maybe eek out an upset once a year not 5 times a year... And the WHole HANDs thing makes my effin brain hurt i agree with Grindi and Flex... 21 hands shuld mean if the Frakkin ball is made of Stick um and hits ur hands ur still gona drop it 21=StoneHands or SHULD i dont care if his ATH ELU SPD and TECH are all 100 that shuld have no reflection of his pass catching ability that shuld be Governed by Hands nothing else. Ill stick around and wait hopeful that Norbert will right the ship but ill prob only field one team till then when my current ones run out....

norbert. What is the diference between the NFL engine that is used to predict the out come of NFL games and the GD engine?  Is the big difference between the two is that the NFL engine is ran 1001 times and the GD is ran once?  Are the componets of the two engins close to being the same and can you use one for the other?

Posted by iamthetwo__2 on 6/18/2012 5:48:00 PM (view original):
So, please overlook the more irritating comments of my fellow coaches----I think this is a very valid request, and some of us hope you have a thick skin so this doesn't get to you.  Defending yourself is acceptable, explanations are welcomed.  Keep up the postings so we can enjoy the ride. 

+1

Posted by fermor332002 on 6/19/2012 11:04:00 AM (view original):
norbert. What is the diference between the NFL engine that is used to predict the out come of NFL games and the GD engine?  Is the big difference between the two is that the NFL engine is ran 1001 times and the GD is ran once?  Are the componets of the two engins close to being the same and can you use one for the other?

Much bigger differences than that.  GD 1.0 pretty much took the NFL engine and converted it to use GD ratings and had been tweaked along the way even before GD 2.0.  For SLF and predictions all we have for players and teams are stats.  In GD, we have ratings that represent a player, so the engine had to be converted from using stats inputs to using ratings inputs.  There are a lot of similarities between the current NFL engine and the GD 1.0 engine, but they definitely are not interchangeable.  In those engines, most of the checks for results are team based with a few looking at individual players, like the QB for passing or the WR for YAC, but in general it's team based.  I think one of the driving forces for coming up with GD 2.0 was to try to get the individual players into the results more, breaking plays into smaller components.  I think the problem with GD 2.0 is that it broke plays down to smaller components, but kept the 0.0 to 1.0 type checks.  I'm sure that didn't seem like a bad thing to do at the time as that's how we handle our other simulations, but after looking at it, I really think that's the key to our results issues.

Thanks norbert.

Posted by norbert on 6/19/2012 10:47:00 AM (view original):
The old engine, GD 1.0, combined all the ratings from the teams and players to get one chance for completion or incompletion.  There wasn't a check to see why it was incomplete.  Which probably made it easier to get overall passing percentages, but didn't allow for anything like WR with poor Hands.

Apparently, GD 2.0, while it does break the pass down into smaller components, doesn't take Hands into account enough.  Looking at the chance for dropping a pass, Hands is half of the factor.  ATH, STR, and TECH are also factored in.  So HANDS does affect the receiver's catch ability most, but the chance of a drop is so narrow that low Hands and high Hands don't have that much effect on the general outcome.  Most of the success of the pass seems to come earlier in determining how successful the throw is and how successfully it is defended. I'm sure if we ran 1,000 games, you would see a difference between a WR with 80 Hands and one with 30 Hands, but we need it to be significant in a single game.

The update I am working on is trying to fix this.  To do this, I pretty much have to strip most of the engine out and replace it which is why it will take more time than usual.  The part of the GD 2.0 engine I worked on was more technical, like how the engine moves from play to play and how play-by-play is structured to save in the database and retrieve for display, and some of the end of game logic (which also needs some work, and probably always will  ).  How the engine calculates the results of plays is mostly new to me as well.  But I'm not new to WIS or our football simulations.  I've been here 10 years and I wrote most of the SLF engine which was later used for our projections and the base for the GD 1.0 engine.  I understand what JConte was trying to do with the 2.0 engine, but I think there was a string of bad decisions that led to it not working out the way it was intended.  So yes the update is changing the engine once again, but I think the problems we have with the engine can't be tweaked out of the game.  Plus I hope to open up the game plans a little more.  This is a pretty long update and is keeping me busy every minute of the day, but it should pay off by allowing us to make less major updates down the road to improve the game.

Nice to know that TECH matters for WR's, considering the FAQ indicates TECH as being meaningless...

Posted by mal247 on 6/19/2012 12:43:00 PM (view original):

Posted by norbert on 6/19/2012 10:47:00 AM (view original):
The old engine, GD 1.0, combined all the ratings from the teams and players to get one chance for completion or incompletion.  There wasn't a check to see why it was incomplete.  Which probably made it easier to get overall passing percentages, but didn't allow for anything like WR with poor Hands.

Apparently, GD 2.0, while it does break the pass down into smaller components, doesn't take Hands into account enough.  Looking at the chance for dropping a pass, Hands is half of the factor.  ATH, STR, and TECH are also factored in.  So HANDS does affect the receiver's catch ability most, but the chance of a drop is so narrow that low Hands and high Hands don't have that much effect on the general outcome.  Most of the success of the pass seems to come earlier in determining how successful the throw is and how successfully it is defended. I'm sure if we ran 1,000 games, you would see a difference between a WR with 80 Hands and one with 30 Hands, but we need it to be significant in a single game.

The update I am working on is trying to fix this.  To do this, I pretty much have to strip most of the engine out and replace it which is why it will take more time than usual.  The part of the GD 2.0 engine I worked on was more technical, like how the engine moves from play to play and how play-by-play is structured to save in the database and retrieve for display, and some of the end of game logic (which also needs some work, and probably always will  ).  How the engine calculates the results of plays is mostly new to me as well.  But I'm not new to WIS or our football simulations.  I've been here 10 years and I wrote most of the SLF engine which was later used for our projections and the base for the GD 1.0 engine.  I understand what JConte was trying to do with the 2.0 engine, but I think there was a string of bad decisions that led to it not working out the way it was intended.  So yes the update is changing the engine once again, but I think the problems we have with the engine can't be tweaked out of the game.  Plus I hope to open up the game plans a little more.  This is a pretty long update and is keeping me busy every minute of the day, but it should pay off by allowing us to make less major updates down the road to improve the game.

Nice to know that TECH matters for WR's, considering the FAQ indicates TECH as being meaningless...

remember the FAQ has nothing to do with norbert, he inherited it