This is the response I get when I asked why I ran out the clock in the first half. I was losing, had conserve clock if losing, was in FG range and had 2 TO's left. I ran a play with :45 to go for 2 yard on 3rd down and just ran out the clock. I have felt for a long time that the play-by-play was just fluff and filler and that the games were predetermined. I don't care what adjustments you make if the outcome has you losing you will lose. Total failure and a waste of time and money. I don't believe they even read my question because if they had they wouldn't respond with this. I EXPLAINED TO THEM I HAD CONSERVE THE CLOCK WHEN LOSING AND I WAS LOSING. Final score??? Lost by 3 points. Image that. To anyone new, I wouldn't recommend playing this game as it is. I've been here since 2005. I've stayed out of habit. Time to get a new hobby.


Hello Brian,


This situation occurs when you have a run the clock setting in place. The game does not differentiate the first half from the second half and treats them the same so when you have the settings to slow down, it will do this at the end of the first and second halves, depending on the specific situation.

Jordan

WhatIfSports Customer Experience Team

This gets better each time they respond. I can't believe they are really looking at this seriously. My response was then why didn't I run another play? Why no Timeout to call another play. They are grasping at straws trying to explain this away and it's not flying.

Apologies for my confusion. I checked your setting and the reason you didn't kick a field goal is due to the "very aggressive" setting. You do have the conserve time (this is my bad on the assumption) but you have it set to be very aggressive which tells the sims you want to try to score touchdowns whenever possible and not settle for less. The sim is going to take the aggressiveness into consideration over the field goal limit in this situation.

Jordan

WhatIfSports Customer Experience Team

Here is their latest response:

You didn't run another play because it was 4th down and the game determined running the rest of the clock vs trying a field goal with a FR kicker was the better route. There have been nuanced situations from time to time where the game opts to let the time run out instead of running another play. I will ping the devs to see if they can see anything else but honestly the decisions sometimes come down to some RNG by the engine and even if you try to steer the game towards a decision it doesn't always do what is expected.

Jordan

WhatIfSports Customer Experience Team

Just to recap, I had my setting sets to conserve clock when losing (I was), Very Aggressive, and the last play was 3rd and 3 with :45 left in the half. I gained 2 yards making it 4th and 1 and had two Timeouts left. If anyone is buying the " the game determined running the rest of the clock vs trying a field goal with a FR kicker was the better route" Explanation then you are out of your mind. The more they respond the more I believe the outcomes are predetermined by overall values and the play-by-play is put in to fit the outcome. Which means halftime adjustments mean nothing. What you think you are controlling, is not really being controlled. It will be interesting to see what the developers have to say.
I wanted to edit this and say when I checked the score at 3:30 AM I predicted I would lose. I've seen this kind of thing before.

the outcomes aren't predetermined, but the play by play stuff is essentially fluff/filler generated to explain what just happened. each play uses their engine to determine an outcome, and they have to come up with words to reflect the representations they are trying to draw between their sim and real life. their isn't a defensive line breaking through, or an offensive line getting a good first step. it's telling you the results of the sim in steps. it's more like here is the first part of this outcome, here is a little bit more, and this part completes it. it gives you most of the useful information, but it's not really what is happening. there is quite a bit going on for every play, and not all of it is useful information.

halftime adjustments definitely affect the outcome of a game, but sometimes it's not enough. or sometimes we can make adjustments based on biased information, and then we wonder why it didn't work? sometimes its means what we thought we were looking at wasn't actually happening. other times, the universe just liked the other guy that day. which happens in real life as well. sometimes theres no good reason, but app st beat michigan in the big house. for these reasons, and some others, halftime adjustments are rarely going to drastically change the game. and, they shouldn't. unless you can drastically change what players you are putting on the field, the game shouldn't flip on its head because of a couple of adjustments. thats not how it goes for real life either.

with all that said its seems like this jordan guy is the only one who answers these tickets, and who knows how many he gets per day. im not a fan of the new team in charge, but id hate to be the one having to always answer for not just your whole team, but the teams who came before you as well. there are a lot of moving parts here, and i doubt they or anyone else involved through the years ever fully understood all of it. even the guys who write this stuff are going to be finding new things all the time when there are so many factors to be decided to yield an outcome. if you have to take over someone else's stuff.. thats a task and a half. the thing about the fr kicker is wild. if its actually considering that... that changes some things about my understanding of the sim at least.

i dont doubt you are able to accurately predict the outcomes either. you have seen a lot of sims. when you see so many you start to get a feel for how its gonna go, and when you see so many more you start to be right with some regularity.

I've been here through the original engine and the many "upgrades" it took on right up to todays version. You had to relearn the engine after each upgrade. At one point I Was sure they were tweaking the engine without telling everyone. Now it's this unexplained stuff that absolutely should not happen. My last ticket to them was about my QB running the ball when I had the QB set to zero. There response was "We don't see any obvious reason for the QB to rush, but there are so many variables involved in a game that we can't always explain a play result after the fact. I am sorry for the inconvenience." If they admit they don't even know how the engine works then I have very little belief that it works the way they say it does and My belief that they just add the play by play to fit the score makes sense. Either way, my 21 year run here may be coming to an end. I was up 4 points with :41 to go when my opponent had a 40yd touchdown play. Lost by that 3 points. How many times have you seen that playing this game.

While I wait for the developers to give their theory I'll post some things I remember about the history of WIS. Papachooby do you remember J Conte? He was a top player in the very beginning of this engine. After a number of Seasons, he become a player everyone wanted to try and beat because he was not beat very often. Like once every 6 or 7 seasons. Turns out J conte was the developer of the game and was playing and beating paying customers. Back then when you won a Natty you received enough points for 2 free seasons. J Conte must have had a ton of points but wouldn't need them since he was the developer and most likely played for free. When this came to light, People were in an uproar because he was taking points away from the customers. I don't know if he was a ND grad or just a big fan but it was found out that there was an advantage built into the engine for whoever had ND. If I remember right he had ND. Back then there was only 1 or 2 worlds and they were full. Getting a team was a tough task. Does anyone remember that? By the way, Last time I asked, WIS employees are allowed to play the game. Any real old timers still here or am I the only dumb one?

i remember him, and i have heard about ND getting some super special advantage but never anything specific. i don't think you are crazy about secret engine tweaking back then either. i remember having conversations about that with multiple coaches back then. like, hey this doesn't seem to be working like it was.. i think they're MESSIN WITH STUFF. id bet money it happened here and there, though. i also remember a mass exodus when they rolled out a new engine one time because all the good teams were getting beat by sims and a bunch of worlds were in playoffs when they did it. but, then i think it was the next overhaul we were able to beta test the new engine for a period of time. that was very helpful lol.

Final answer: Fastec out! If the people who run this have no idea how the engine runs then it's time to leave. And Yes, I still believe it's all pre-determined.

The devs took a look at this and they think it's a situation where RNG didn't play out as expected. They do agree that a timeout would have been the more likely choice but the RNG went towards ending the half instead of opting for a timeout and a field goal. They did also confirm that the game is not pre-determined as you mentioned and each play is simulated. We acknowledge that these older games still have some flaws and are looking to shift focus onto the dynasty games once the SLB app on Android and live play are released. Sorry that this specific, rare and odd situation ended up being the difference in your game yesterday.

Jordan

WhatIfSports Customer Experience Team