Update News - Offense Formations/Playbooks Topic

Posted by harriswb3 on 12/14/2012 10:34:00 PM (view original):
I think this may require a number of brain cells that exceeds the number I have available for use.
LOL Well put. Here take an other shot of Jack to put the rest to sleep. ;-)
12/14/2012 10:51 PM
Change! I love it. Sign me up for another 10 pack. Is there anything on the brainstorm board for D game planning I.e: 4-3 set balanced DL, agg LB and conservative DB's on a 3rd down... Situational game planning by position.
Over all very excited with he Continued Process Improvement!Sign me up for the Betas.
12/15/2012 12:59 AM
Norbert this really looks great. Thank you!
12/15/2012 5:37 PM
A few questions

Can you have an H-Back type where a TE lines up like a full back, or can only running backs line up there?
If you have up tempo will it have more affect on fatigue and also limit substitutions?

I'm really excited for this update, looks completely worth the wait. Can't wait to mess around with it.
12/16/2012 11:58 AM
The possibilities of this update are looking good - HOWEVER - the basic component of why it was necessary still remains. What characteristics will determine outcome? What characteristics will make an effective outside rusher vs and inside rusher in this engine? What characteristics will differentiate the across the middle receiver vs the deep receiver (will hands matter?). What defensive characteristics will be needed to stop these players?

The truth will be in the beta - but I hope Norbert will be able to explain the best characteristics for these new positions.
12/18/2012 11:52 PM
In the offensive diagram you have OL 1, OL 2, etc from left to right. Is it fair to say that running left of the center will be stronger? I don't know about everyone else but I put my best OL first.
12/19/2012 6:19 AM
Posted by tigerpark135 on 12/19/2012 6:19:00 AM (view original):
In the offensive diagram you have OL 1, OL 2, etc from left to right. Is it fair to say that running left of the center will be stronger? I don't know about everyone else but I put my best OL first.
The OL work as a unit, it does not mater how you line them up. So now what determens the out come of run left wide, run right wide, or up the mid. The OL would stay the same no matter where the run goes.
12/19/2012 11:45 AM
On the new depth chart though, OL1 and 5 are set for runs outside and OL 2, 3, 4 are set for runs inside. Same questions go - what characteristics are needed for best outside blockers vs best inside blockers?
12/19/2012 6:48 PM
I stand corected. I saw that the other day but it did not click today.
12/20/2012 12:25 AM
Hmmmm  You getting close to making this more like work and less like fun.
12/20/2012 10:55 AM
Posted by pcf2007 on 12/20/2012 10:55:00 AM (view original):
Hmmmm  You getting close to making this more like work and less like fun.
It will take a little while to grasp every thing but once it is set up.  It should not be any harder than it is now.
12/20/2012 6:00 PM
Posted by pcf2007 on 12/20/2012 10:55:00 AM (view original):
Hmmmm  You getting close to making this more like work and less like fun.
Funny - this is opposite of the criticisms the GD coaches had when we changed from GD 1.0 to GD 2.0. The game under GD 1.0 required that you took time to assess your opponents strengths and weakness and actually design a specific gameplan for your offense and defense against that opponent. The better coaches took the time and effort to do the work and had very successful teams. GD 2.01 that JConte brought out made game planning worthless and all you needed was a decent QB to pass your opponent silly from the NDB. The illogical results made it possible for anyone with a team to recruit well, do little work to gameplan and come back in two weeks to see if the won a NC.  Some adjustments by JConte and Norbert have given us GD2.02 now, which improved from the original GD2.01, still hasn't revived the intricacies of gameplanning and logical player match-ups that GD1.0 gave us. (But even GD 1.0 with the hockey line changes had flaws). This roll-out seems to have possibilities to combine more reasonable depth chart set up and player roles. If Norbert can weave some good game planning into the mix we may have a great game. We'll see soon, I guess.
12/20/2012 8:58 PM (edited)
Hi guys, back from vacation, so I'll try to answer some of these questions.

Let me first try to address the complexity of these settings.  Basically every setting that went in to a 2.0 play will go in to a 3.0 play.  The split out of the drop downs to text boxes makes it look worse than it is, plus the addition of the "Inside Own" group of settings adds 1/3rd more settings to the mix.  

The formation settings are actually baked in to the 2.0 formation, but you can't see them or change them.  This exposes them.  If you don't touch any of the Formation Set settings, you essentially have what you have today.  You don't have to do anything with Formation Sets if you don't want to, so the complexity is only there if you want it.

The playbook settings are also what you currently have, only split out from the ambiguous drop down settings we have in 2.0.  The biggest difference, other than the "Inside Own" setting, is that rather than setting one preference for Style and Tendency and then checking it for "normal" or "red zone", you can adjust those settings for "normal" and "red zone" making it less likely you have to have a duplicate play in the list just to set those differences.  Again, we plan to have a nice selection of global playbooks that you can use, so you only need to set up playbooks once you want to move away from those.

I probably will make a Basic and Advanced setting for playbooks.  What I think Basic will be is to remove the "Inside Own" settings, using the "Midfield" setting for those situations, and remove the "Inside Opp" yard-line textbox locking it in to the Opp 20, which is what it is today.  Then Advanced would open those up to what you see in the screenshots.
12/24/2012 11:37 AM
Now, as far as left/right designation and how ratings affect different positions...

Let me first say as much as I wish I could say I can build the new engine to truly simulate everything that goes into a real football play, I can't.  There have to be some assumptions made in simulating a play.  One of the biggest fuzzy parts of the game is the left/right designation.  These are both combined in to "outside", the same as it is in 2.0.  To make plays actually specify left or right would take an enormous amount of complexity and require us to open up even more settings.  I think it could fairly easily be accomplished in the offensive settings, but when you get to defensive settings, it gets more complicated, and on both offense and defense it would require much more detailed care with the depth charts and formation sets.  I don't think we are ready to open up that distinction.  What this means in the engine is that it has to account for all "outside" players in an outside rush without assuming it will be left or right.  Yes, this means that you don't really have a strong or weak side and you get credit for all of your outside blockers and defenders in each outside play, but the engine knows this and takes that into consideration.

This is the same as it works in 2.0, but the difference in 3.0 is that the match ups are calculated and used a little differently.  What I want to see is that faster, more elusive RBs are more successful on the outside and stronger RBs are more successful on the inside.  There should also be a different desirable mix of ratings for blockers and defenders inside versus outside.  I don't want to get too much into mechanics, but one things that helps this in the 3.0 engine over the 2.0 engine is that the blocking and the tackling is split into different checks.  In fact, even tackling is split into two parts - being able to get your hands on the ball carrier and then being able to bring him down.  With these checks being split out, we can treat inside and outside runs differently providing a different mix of ratings you want for those players involved.  This also holds true for different passing depths for the target and the defenders.

Also we have to keep in mind what it means to be "successful" when it comes to evaluating results.  I said I want a faster RB to be more successful on the outside, but players aren't FAST or NOT FAST, they have ratings which are all relative.  A stronger RB (higher STR than SPD) might still be successful on the outside depending on the defense he is facing and his blockers.  It's tough to say something like "this player would have X number more yards per rush if he had X more rating in SPD".  So while it might be tough to see the difference between ratings within a game, and certainly within one play, I hope that we see different players tend towards the stats you would expect within a season.  Though even the season are relatively short and could have some variance in results.  BUT I'm working really hard to have individual plays fall within certain ranged of expectations based on ratings and match ups and play calls, so that even though one play might hit the unexpected here and there, overall we will tend towards the expected better than what we have with 2.0.

Take for instance the Hands rating in the receiving results.  This is a good example of where looking at results over the season is going to tell you more than single plays or games.  The chance of dropping the ball should be more consistent based on the Hands rating so we should see more dropped passes with lower rated Hands players (sorry, DIII).  However, there are many other things that go into the chance of dropping a pass - how well the pass was thrown, how deep the pass was, and how well the player was covered.  There is still a random element to this drop - we can't say "Oh, the player has a 30 Hands so he drops this pass".  The goal would be to produce enough results where you want someone to say "hmm, I probably need to get someone with better Hands in that spot" without having a player be totally useless and drop every pass.

So this is probably another post where I'm rambling on and really doesn't add anything to the conversation and will probably be misinterpreted to launch a few rants, but I've been gone for a week, so give me a break.  Basic summary of what I'm trying to say is that the 3.0 engine isn't drastically changing how the games are played, but should be changing the results (hopefully within each game and certainly across the season) and control over your settings.  The goal being to provide more consistent expectations of how ratings affect the game and more strategy in building your team and your game plans.  The downside to the update is that in order to accomplish these seemingly incremental improvements, I need to rebuild the engine because the current structure won't allow for these changes, and in rewriting this code it takes a lot of work, rebalancing and testing to get the new engine to be in the same ball park of results as the old engine.
12/24/2012 12:33 PM
I think you are in the right direction Norbert, but here are some little questions I'm sure will get answered during the beta. IF (using your hands example - but would apply to many attributes) the ratings numbers don't hold up the way we expect - such as D1A WR with hands of 85 doing the expected, but DIII WR with hands of 40 not catching anything but a cold - will it be more common to see higher DIII hands values? Will the other factors of DBvsWR/QB/OLvsDL etc play more of a factor in evening things out? Will the less talented players in DIII cause more variation in the results vs closer match-ups at D1A (I mean poorer QB ratings + poorer WR numbers could cause some really bad passing performances).  Say for QB's - how would a D1A QB with tech of (best in D1A) compare in his D1A games to a DIII QB with a tech of (best in DIII) in his DIII games? I believe this is the question behind the dreaded "normalization' with JConte's GD.
12/24/2012 7:25 PM
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