Anybody here played both games?

I have a long way to go before i learn the majority of the nuances in gridiron, but so far, here are my observations when comparing it to HBD. Some of the below is my own experience. Some of it is from reading the boards or watching community videos. Bjschumacher, keep me honest here, please.

1. Gridiron is way less of a grind. I suppose if I had nine gridiron teams like I have hbd teams, I might feel different;
2. While there is definitely some fun to be had with clever ways to build a team in gridiron. It seems that it is extremely difficult to win consistently in the playoffs, at the highest levels, unless you have a top line senior or red shirt senior QB. Whereas, in HBD, there is no requirement. You can consistently win with pitching heavy or hitting heavy teams;
3. No tanking in Gridiron. You must win if you want to make it to the elite levels. I like this a lot. Not a huge fan of the tanking that goes on in HBD. This is a double edged sword, though. Because you need to win all your games, you are nearly trapped into playing all your games against sim teams unless real life people are in your conference. If you take the risk and play other elite teams in non conference play, you risk losing games and this affects your recruiting vision;
4. Due to item 2 above, it can seem like there is a lot of cookie cutter teams -- great QB, pass nearly every play.
5. It can really seem like you're a long way away from contention when playing with a D3 team. I won my conference in my first season, but got absolutely swatted in the first round of the playoffs. Im looking at the team that beat me in the playoffs and his team is just so much better than mine. In HBD, you can look at a good team, see what makes them good, then target similar players. In gridiron, you can't even see those players and recruit them until you have increased your vision. Even once your vision is improved, you still have to fight for those players because lots of elite coaches will likely want them. In HBD, you can run a run a low budget team for a few seasons and hopefully nab a few great players. None of that in Gridiron. Find ways to win every game with the players you have or sit in mediocrity for the foreseeable future.
6. Sim AI. Another double edged sword. Playing against sim AI is not as fun, but World schedules are more smooth and predictable. If you played against human controlled players, there would definitely be a natural class of haves and have-nots.

I think you have a pretty good handle on GD. I have found it hard to leave both games, so I'm still here with teams in both games (plus HD now).

One big difference to me is similar to what you mentioned up there about 'cookie cutter' teams - too many teams in GD that are extremely pass heavy.
Why? Because with a QB with a high Formation IQ he'll never throw an INT. If you run, you might fumble, but with a passing game you'll almost never turn it over.
I don't see HBD with a flaw like that which can be exploited to the degree it is, and that has been around as long as it has. There's too many moving parts in HBD, which I think helps to minimize any coding oddities.

I've found it fun to read those experimental forum posts where a team runs shotgun with a running QB, no RBs, no WRs, but just a bunch of TEs. Those are fun. However, they seem to give up on it so quickly because they just can't contend with a team that has an elite passing QB. I also enjoy how deep Majique gets in his videos with some of the other GD users. I guess my main concern is my own long term interest. Im already looking to try out clever things as opposed to just emulating the successful owners. If I try what im looking to try and it also fails in the playoffs, I wonder if I'll have the interest to just try to build a cookie cutter pass heavy team. You know, the whole -- it's one thing to read about it, it's another thing to do it -- type of thing. Just to prove that I can do it, too.

One thing that's similar between the games is the tinkering. I enjoy the tinkering and learning aspects of each game. Position changes, niches/specialties, etc.

I like the tinkering too. GD could be improved there by allowing us to do more with Formations, imo - like creating your own and stuff like that.
If each formation was just a grid of squares, and you populated them, for example.

Most def. If it would allow even more tinkering, it would be even better. I still find myself tinkering in HBD despite 100+ seasons.

The other thing I would add is so much is concentrated into a couple of days in recruiting. There are not a lot of days in HBD that couldn't zone out for a little bit and be ok. You have multiple days to do almost any important activity. From what I remember, the first day of recruiting requires a ton of attention, and missing it is almost a death sentence.

I actually won one of the first D-III titles when the game first came out, Bryant season 2. I think I got a fullback with really high blocking ratings or something just as an experiment and my running game went crazy. I don't remember exactly, this was what, 20 years ago? Made it all the way to LSU and couldn't hack it, I guess.

All in all, the intricacies of running a multi level pro baseball franchise and seeing the players develop long term holds more interest for me than managing the formations, etc in GD. I went back maybe 5 years ago and pretty quickly remembered why I didn't really care for it much. The recruiting was probably my favorite part, like the draft is in HD.

Posted by pray4pro on 1/5/2023 4:20:00 PM (view original):
The other thing I would add is so much is concentrated into a couple of days in recruiting. There are not a lot of days in HBD that couldn't zone out for a little bit and be ok. You have multiple days to do almost any important activity. From what I remember, the first day of recruiting requires a ton of attention, and missing it is almost a death sentence.

This could be a reason that I like it so far -- I don't have to login and do a bunch of work multiple times a day like I do in HBD. While I like that HBD has a boatload of nuance. Sometimes the day to day management can really feel grindy.

I've played both quite a long time. Had success in Gridiron a long time ago. Only got one title here in HBD. I love the baseball game way more than any of the other.Dynasty games.

It's interesting that everyone throws now. I played some GD years ago and everyone was running the wishbone back then. I hated the whole recruiting thing.

Posted by Arfy on 2/1/2023 6:06:00 PM (view original):
I've played both quite a long time. Had success in Gridiron a long time ago. Only got one title here in HBD. I love the baseball game way more than any of the other.Dynasty games.

Yep. I've been playing HBD longer than GD. I have yet to win a trophy in HBD, although I've gotten close a handful of times. But I've won 6 national championships in GD at Tennessee. Tennessee is one of the elite D1A teams in GD. So, tlowster, one of the draws in GD is trying to work your way to getting an elite team. Then you can ride it for quite awhile (which many people hate). But then again, a lot of people in GD like D2 the best. At that level, it's just a matter of accumulating the most wins over 3-5 seasons so you can see the better players. Then you can ride that for awhile, also. But when you get to that point in D2, learning game planning becomes very important if you want to win championships.

Sorry, I rambled.

Posted by bjschumacher on 2/1/2023 8:55:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Arfy on 2/1/2023 6:06:00 PM (view original):
I've played both quite a long time. Had success in Gridiron a long time ago. Only got one title here in HBD. I love the baseball game way more than any of the other.Dynasty games.

Yep. I've been playing HBD longer than GD. I have yet to win a trophy in HBD, although I've gotten close a handful of times. But I've won 6 national championships in GD at Tennessee. Tennessee is one of the elite D1A teams in GD. So, tlowster, one of the draws in GD is trying to work your way to getting an elite team. Then you can ride it for quite awhile (which many people hate). But then again, a lot of people in GD like D2 the best. At that level, it's just a matter of accumulating the most wins over 3-5 seasons so you can see the better players. Then you can ride that for awhile, also. But when you get to that point in D2, learning game planning becomes very important if you want to win championships.

Sorry, I rambled.

I'm slowly moving up the divisions. I have a team in two separate Worlds. One is staying in D3 for a bit to experiment. One is in D2 after a one and done in D3. Im actually the #5 overall team in D2 Leahy right now. Not sure how long that lasts, though. I don't feel that the team has the talent that the elite teams have so I don't think we'll win in the playoffs. Heck, we might not even win the conference.

Im still trying to determine what's better to do from a recruiting perspective. It seems that the elites just jump in and recruit immediately and they don't seem to care much about a player's potential rating. They just get the players with the best core ratings and if the players happen to have a H or VH, thats just a bonus. I, on the other hand, spend quite a bit of time and money on evaluating a player's potential. Maybe im putting too much emphasis on that?

Posted by tlowster on 2/9/2023 9:03:00 AM (view original):

Posted by bjschumacher on 2/1/2023 8:55:00 PM (view original):

Posted by Arfy on 2/1/2023 6:06:00 PM (view original):
I've played both quite a long time. Had success in Gridiron a long time ago. Only got one title here in HBD. I love the baseball game way more than any of the other.Dynasty games.

Yep. I've been playing HBD longer than GD. I have yet to win a trophy in HBD, although I've gotten close a handful of times. But I've won 6 national championships in GD at Tennessee. Tennessee is one of the elite D1A teams in GD. So, tlowster, one of the draws in GD is trying to work your way to getting an elite team. Then you can ride it for quite awhile (which many people hate). But then again, a lot of people in GD like D2 the best. At that level, it's just a matter of accumulating the most wins over 3-5 seasons so you can see the better players. Then you can ride that for awhile, also. But when you get to that point in D2, learning game planning becomes very important if you want to win championships.

Sorry, I rambled.

I'm slowly moving up the divisions. I have a team in two separate Worlds. One is staying in D3 for a bit to experiment. One is in D2 after a one and done in D3. Im actually the #5 overall team in D2 Leahy right now. Not sure how long that lasts, though. I don't feel that the team has the talent that the elite teams have so I don't think we'll win in the playoffs. Heck, we might not even win the conference.

Im still trying to determine what's better to do from a recruiting perspective. It seems that the elites just jump in and recruit immediately and they don't seem to care much about a player's potential rating. They just get the players with the best core ratings and if the players happen to have a H or VH, thats just a bonus. I, on the other hand, spend quite a bit of time and money on evaluating a player's potential. Maybe im putting too much emphasis on that?

Also, how important are the Guess REPORT ratings? My teams are usually in the triple digits because I recruit so many H and VH guys with lower current core ratings and then focus my main money on recruiting those one-level-up H and VH players.

Once, every four or five years, I will be hired as head coach of a GD D-III team, win the conference filled with AI teams, get smoked in playoffs against human teams, make poor recruiting moves, lose the conference filled with AI teams, fail to make playoffs, resign as head coach.