Useful weights for Draft Analyzer

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by Templar

Robert James Fischer wanted to fight against the best and finally beat everyone and be the best.
Fischer had to learn from books. However, most of the best books on chess were in Russian. So Fischer then learned Russian - no whining.

Fischer was an ambitious and high competitive fighter.

What kind of competitiveness do you speak?

I don't think there is any need for any more people to pile on and bully the guy. Not everyone who plays this game is an IT nerd. Some of us are sports fans who don't want to get into an IT battle for supremacy. It is a sports sim! Sure we might be in the minority but all the same we are entitled to our opinion. There are a fair few people out there who feel the same, but being Ben's board and all, don't put themselves forward. Mobarak's reaction was far from unique when all this came to his attention. As he said I am sure he will get his head around this in time. When he beats people who invest time and energy writing programs for themselves he will probably get a lot of satisfaction from that. When you have been really enjoying a game for a while and investing time, and you find out IT guys are using their skills outside of the game it is perfectly understandable to be a little taken aback.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Hammer

Not everyone who plays this game is an IT nerd.

I'm not an IT guy. I haven't taken any classes whatsoever in coding/IT/computers since 1987 (my Senior year in high school.) People like primelord and Celeval had a leg up on me because they were IT guys who had used their skills to study the game. So rather than complaining about it when primelord parsed 10,000 game logs and shortly thereafter became the first person to go 19-0 in IHOF, or when Celeval was in my division in one league and in my conference in another and out-drafting me season after season, instead I put in some time teaching myself enough about coding to better examine the things I felt I needed to be more competitive.

There are a fair few people out there who feel the same, but being Ben's board and all, don't put themselves forward.

If this is true, then they're just snowflakes who can't take someone disagreeing with them. No one has ever been disciplined here for offering a different opinion than mine.

Sure we might be in the minority but all the same we are entitled to our opinion.

Yes, you are entitled to your opinions, and I am also entitled to mine. They differ. Big deal. People disagree. Mine is related to this...

When you have been really enjoying a game for a while and investing time, and you find out IT guys are using their skills outside of the game it is perfectly understandable to be a little taken aback.

Because of my own experience, no I do not find it perfectly understandable when people are taken aback and whine about what someone else can do. I find it to be just.....whining. In my opinion, either invest the time to figure out how to compete in that way or other ways, or stfu with the whining about others doing so. But I find whining about how someone else is finding success to be the polar opposite of being competitive.

[Abe Sargent]

I don't use any tools, I lean on my own experiences, and we do fine. I have had strong success in mp leagues, challenges here, and more. And I have a slightly different take on who to draft than some fold here as well (I prefer showers to growers as an example. I'm more comfortable taking the 40/70 guy who slides to 55/55 than the 23/30 guy with high combines who may wind up anywhere, and often at 30/30). But it works.

[Julio Riddols]

This is an older crowd too, so the patience for things that sound like whining is probably far less here than it might be at a place like the Madden forums. Most of us are dudes in their 40's or older that just don't have the time, energy or patience to put up with such things.

It's nothing personal, I'm certain of that. People just take things a lot more harshly than they should sometimes, or they assume things and instead of considering that there is likely a reason why they are being responded to sternly, they get offended. It's nobodies fault really, but there have been countless guys who have come in here and had similar complaints and been generally confrontational when they aren't met with the warmest of greetings.

We've got some curmudgeonly bastards around here and a lot of unique and strong personalities and many of us talk to each other like old men bickering over the fiber content of breakfast foods sometimes. Generally, people who approach things without being assumptive or sounding whiny receive a far warmer reception.

As I get older I find that life runs smoother that way. There's the old phrase, when you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.

Its the wild west out here, and the fastest gun wins. You gotta work on that technique and hone your skills.. Either that, or you better hope you're lucky when you meet up at high noon with a real gunslinger.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

Generally, people who approach things without being assumptive or sounding whiny receive a far warmer reception.

I don't think that the "generally" is needed there as the qualifier, but yeah.

[zbuckley]

Seems to me the FOF community as a whole as basically shared 95% of knowledge surrounding FOF. I'm guessing Ben hasn't shared everything but he's easily shared more than then anyone else it's it's probably not even close.

[Say Helu Wave Goodbye]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

Ah, the man behind the mask..

I'm onto you tzach. My Aces await their revenge.

My personal feelings on drafting now are largely undeveloped. I only used Draft Analyzer for the first time with FOF8 this past draft in the CFL, and it appears to have been a strong draft at first glance.. Waiting for PS 2 to get a true feel for it, but I think it went well.

My rule of thumb had previously been to avoid guys who have mixed "good" (red/blue) and "bad" (green) combines. Sometimes this isn't an issue with certain things like intelligence or bench reps for offensive linemen, but if both are bad I will avoid a guy.

My tiers of choice are as follows:

1: Top end bars across the board and combines that are believable.

2: Good to great bars and combines that suggest they could be even higher - My round 1 RB in CFL is an example of this that I think might be a solid pick if not a spectacular one. DA loved him on my end, ranked him 9th overall in the draft class. I don't think he will end up the best back in the class, but I think he was a very safe pick who might outperform his bars.

3: The old static bars combined with specific other bars and supporting evidence.. I.E. Man coverage with punishing hitter and interception bars for a CB that has combines to match, RB's with speed outside and power inside, or Sense Rush and Accuracy for a QB with combines to match. The rest is not necessarily negligible, but I have seen enough of these guys that they seem to be developing a pattern in my mind, which leads me to believe there is something there. DA tends to support this. The 3rd QB taken in CFL was one of these guys with his accuracy bar.

4: Offensive linemen with good technique bars and believable combines. The 5th round T I took was one of those. He is weak as hell, but I have seen enough of these wimpy guys with killer technique that I have become a believer.

5: Guys with less than 2 bad combines and a static bar that is good or better - WR's with BPR, DB's with PH, Blockers and Pass rushers with Strength bars, RBs with Power Inside or Speed Outside.

6: Special Teams studs with other functional bars. These guys are usually my middle round and late round picks unless I think there is a guy worth taking a chance on.

7: Guys with less than 2 bad combines who have one high bar supported by combines.. Run stuffing LBs with great agility, DL with great agility or great speed.

8: Return men, kickers and punters

9: long snappers.

Hi, long term lurker, first time poster here. Really like this post, it firmed up a number of concepts I was already going with.

There was just the odd guy that didn't quite fit in - decent bars, decent combines all within the constraints but nothing special at all. Depth guys that don't have the potential upsides of guys in pot 5 but aren't going to bust. Do you just leave these alone because enough of the riskier picks will work out and have higher upside?

[Hammer]

My 1.12 LB had great bars and great combines in the CFL Julio. Yet he didn't come out that well. Did you see anything bad in him?

[Mobarak]

[quote=Julio Riddols;3158791]This is an older crowd too, so the patience for things that sound like whining is probably far less here than it might be at a place like the Madden forums. Most of us are dudes in their 40's or older that just don't have the time, energy or patience to put up with such things.


This explains so much.

It's nothing personal, I'm certain of that. People just take things a lot more harshly than they should sometimes, or they assume things and instead of considering that there is likely a reason why they are being responded to sternly, they get offended. It's nobodies fault really, but there have been countless guys who have come in here and had similar complaints and been generally confrontational when they aren't met with the warmest of greetings.

We've got some curmudgeonly bastards around here and a lot of unique and strong personalities and many of us talk to each other like old men bickering over the fiber content of breakfast foods sometimes. Generally, people who approach things without being assumptive or sounding whiny receive a far warmer reception.


I asked a question and got a three word answer from Ben, it didn't match what I saw in the game logs so I asked again. Slightly different answer with a few more words, still didn't match the game logs so I asked again. This went on for awhile. I guess the "thoroughly answer question" bar must be low due to age. If you don't know the answer, just say you don't know the answer. If you do and are willing to provide it, do so in a full and complete manner to prevent further agitation for yourself if the other person doesn't immediately understand your answer.

[Mobarak]

Asshats and snowflakes, maybe this is why people don't want to speak up.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Mobarak

I asked a question and got a three word answer from Ben, it didn't match what I saw in the game logs so I asked again. Slightly different answer with a few more words, still didn't match the game logs so I asked again. This went on for awhile. I guess the "thoroughly answer question" bar must be low due to age. If you don't know the answer, just say you don't know the answer. If you do and are willing to provide it, do so in a full and complete manner to prevent further agitation for yourself if the other person doesn't immediately understand your answer.

What question are you talking about? I don't recall this. (It may have been before I recognized your user name...)

[Mobarak]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

What question are you talking about? I don't recall this. (It may have been before I recognized your user name...)

Was back in Feb I believe, about the double teaming. Our communication took a nose dive as your responses got more and more short/sarcastic because I kept pointing out the answers didn't match up with the game log. Since then everything has been pretty negative, I would really like to move past it.

And although I may have joined and dropped from leagues that sim every other day minus the GML, I don't think you would give me anything less than 100% participation with the CCFL and IHOF. Someone mentioned to me that this may have rubbed people the wrong way, I apologize for that, but I in no way left those teams any worse than they were, in fact I never dropped out in the season and I finished the season in one league before dropping so not to cause problems.

[Mobarak]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

What question are you talking about? I don't recall this. (It may have been before I recognized your user name...)

Was back in Feb I believe, about the double teaming. Our communication took a nose dive as your responses got more and more short/sarcastic because I kept pointing out the answers didn't match up with the game log. Since then everything has been pretty negative, I would really like to move past it.

And although I may have joined and dropped from leagues that sim every other day minus the GML, I don't think you would give me anything less than 100% participation with the CCFL and IHOF. Someone mentioned to me that this may have rubbed people the wrong way, I apologize for that, but I in no way left those teams any worse than they were, in fact I never dropped out in the season and I finished the season in one league before dropping so not to cause problems.

[gstelmack]

First off, DA IS a glorified spreadsheet. It was easier for me to code up something in C# than it was to create Excel macros, because I suck at Excel. That's all it is. It's never been an insult about DA.

Second, attached are the weights I use. I've shared them in the past, but I also continue to refine them. One note: PlayerTracker reads these weights and lets you look at players with their DA ratings from the draft, which is very useful to refining your ratings, once you've built up a history. You can tweak the weights in DA, load up PlayerTracker, and look at a batch of players to see how your DA weights correspond to player ratings, then loop on this to refine them. I'm still building up enough of a pool of FOF8 players to do this myself (IHOF is the only FOF8 I play, and I just about have enough seasons in it to start), but maybe these weights will give you a start. I am undervaluing combines here, but I also tend to have a pretty good scouting staff which helps.

Third, there's an issue in DA I'm trying to work through. It uses height / weight / bar pattern to determine if a player would be better rated at another position. This works great for defense, where positions are very interchangeable in FOF8. However, I think it's a gaping hole at O-Line right now, where an LT may have average LT combines but great C combines, and gets rated higher as a result. I'm not sure I should be calculating a combine score per position, but instead just using combines from their original position. I'm still analyzing and welcome opinions on this.

[Ushikawa]

pne of the first things i do after exporting from DA is reassign the OL positions and then just eyeball to see the coloring of the bars after the switches.

[Mobarak]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

First off, DA IS a glorified spreadsheet. It was easier for me to code up something in C# than it was to create Excel macros, because I suck at Excel. That's all it is. It's never been an insult about DA.

Second, attached are the weights I use. I've shared them in the past, but I also continue to refine them. One note: PlayerTracker reads these weights and lets you look at players with their DA ratings from the draft, which is very useful to refining your ratings, once you've built up a history. You can tweak the weights in DA, load up PlayerTracker, and look at a batch of players to see how your DA weights correspond to player ratings, then loop on this to refine them. I'm still building up enough of a pool of FOF8 players to do this myself (IHOF is the only FOF8 I play, and I just about have enough seasons in it to start), but maybe these weights will give you a start. I am undervaluing combines here, but I also tend to have a pretty good scouting staff which helps.

Third, there's an issue in DA I'm trying to work through. It uses height / weight / bar pattern to determine if a player would be better rated at another position. This works great for defense, where positions are very interchangeable in FOF8. However, I think it's a gaping hole at O-Line right now, where an LT may have average LT combines but great C combines, and gets rated higher as a result. I'm not sure I should be calculating a combine score per position, but instead just using combines from their original position. I'm still analyzing and welcome opinions on this.

Let's not get to caught up on how easy it was to make etc.. Angry Birds is a glorified Atari game. It's not how easy it was to make but the fact that it was shared.

[gstelmack]

Fine, I'll get involved in the sharing conversation.

Ben has shared a TON of stuff, as have many others. He has shared gameplans, much of the statistical data and analysis that has helped identify combine correlations, the original combine threshold bits, etc etc etc. The only thing he isn't sharing here is his very specific algorithms for evaluating draft talent. You might as well be asking him to share his draft list in a particular league.

As to the curmudgeonly bits, that comes out from all of us when someone either A) keeps picking at an answer they get or B) refuses to do any research on their own. It's like dealing with kids sometimes: they ask a question, you answer, and they (my daughter LOVES to do this to me) start lawyering the answer to death. Well, if you've thought about it that much, why ask? If you didn't want my opinion, why did you ask for it?

Lots of folks get ticked off when told it's in the help file and they should read it, in part because there's lots of other good info in there, too. That's not being unfriendly, it's trying to help them, but they don't want to learn to fish.

I don't know what the original topic was that got you all bothered, and I have no idea how much of what I'm about to say applies, so maybe I'm totally off base, but I've seen it happen time and time again where someone new comes in, doesn't want to read, doesn't want to search the forums, doesn't want to figure out the etiquette or what the history of the group is, doesn't want to feel their way around, they just want to come barging in and have all their answers handed to them thank-you-very-much. This group here puts A LOT of work into this game, supporting it with utilities, statistical analyses, web pages for multiplayer leagues, write-ups, or just fun stories. Maybe the folks who want to learn from that should be a bit more patient and willing to put a bit of effort in as well and they'll find the group far more accepting.

[Mobarak]

I'm not really sure why we are beating this dead horse again. Nobody has do anything for anyone. the game isn't sinking.. new players all time. Ton's of options for league's and they Dev is behind his game like no other.

This was all so trivial I feel silly for having brought it up, really. I'm just gonna play my three league till the wheels fall off and hope that's later rather than sooner.

[Ushikawa]

Originally Posted by gstelmack

Fine, I'll get involved in the sharing conversation.

Ben has shared a TON of stuff, as have many others. He has shared gameplans, much of the statistical data and analysis that has helped identify combine correlations, the original combine threshold bits, etc etc etc. The only thing he isn't sharing here is his very specific algorithms for evaluating draft talent. You might as well be asking him to share his draft list in a particular league.

As to the curmudgeonly bits, that comes out from all of us when someone either A) keeps picking at an answer they get or B) refuses to do any research on their own. It's like dealing with kids sometimes: they ask a question, you answer, and they (my daughter LOVES to do this to me) start lawyering the answer to death. Well, if you've thought about it that much, why ask? If you didn't want my opinion, why did you ask for it?


Lots of folks get ticked off when told it's in the help file and they should read it, in part because there's lots of other good info in there, too. That's not being unfriendly, it's trying to help them, but they don't want to learn to fish.

I don't know what the original topic was that got you all bothered, and I have no idea how much of what I'm about to say applies, so maybe I'm totally off base, but I've seen it happen time and time again where someone new comes in, doesn't want to read, doesn't want to search the forums, doesn't want to figure out the etiquette or what the history of the group is, doesn't want to feel their way around, they just want to come barging in and have all their answers handed to them thank-you-very-much. This group here puts A LOT of work into this game, supporting it with utilities, statistical analyses, web pages for multiplayer leagues, write-ups, or just fun stories. Maybe the folks who want to learn from that should be a bit more patient and willing to put a bit of effort in as well and they'll find the group far more accepting.

+1 as a freeloader

[trixter]

I want to get deeper into analytics but dont know anything about coding nor do i have the time to spend time individually sorting through the game logs. Any tips on what language to learn and where to start?

[Vill]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

how much to penalize for missing constraints in FOF8 Much less than previous versions. In FOF8, roughly 25% of 50+ players, 20% of 55+ players, and even 15% of 60+ players are misses on at least one constraint. Further, a *lot* more players (more than double, I think) are within the constraints, so it's no longer a case of just grabbing a constraints guy in the 7th round and there being a 25% or better chance that he's a starter-quality guy.

In short, there are quite a bit more constraint-missers who are starters, and quite a bit more constraint-hitters who are teh suk--enough of both that while I pay attention to them, they're not a major factor.

How many % of within constraint players come in under 50?