RFF's M17 Sim League USER v USER Sliders

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by ranta21

Good stuff. I am holding a madden tournament. Should we go by the season 1 or 3 sliders? Also, how is your substitutions and injuries? Thank you.

I'd lean toward S3 set there, only because user skill is across the board higher than it was early in S1 as people have learned the game. Also because EA has tuned the game a couple times which affected the run game in particular.

Keep in mind my set is tuned for longer quarters, specifically what I have listed (12 mins, 18s runoff). If your tournament is shorter 5-7 min quarters, you might want to think twice about using my sliders. Scoring could be super low. I'd also be a little worried about a tournament with custom sliders if the group isn't expecting them and doesn't have a few weeks to adjust into them, the way a CFM regular season allows for users to learn them. Good luck! Curious how it goes.

[ranta21]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aestis

I'd lean toward S3 set there, only because user skill is across the board higher than it was early in S1 as people have learned the game. Also because EA has tuned the game a couple times which affected the run game in particular. Keep in mind my set is tuned for longer quarters, specifically what I have listed (12 mins, 18s runoff). If your tournament is shorter 5-7 min quarters, you might want to think twice about using my sliders. Scoring could be super low. I'd also be a little worried about a tournament with custom sliders if the group isn't expecting them and doesn't have a few weeks to adjust into them, the way a CFM regular season allows for users to learn them. Good luck! Curious how it goes.

We are somewhat casual in the sense that we don't put many hours in Madden these days, but we are fans of true simulation. Yards per play is the way to go and the way you build sliders should be the base for slider development. I truly appreciate the work you've done.

Have you thought about running your passing numbers as:

AY/A - adjusted yards per passing attempt: (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) - 45*(interceptions thrown))/(passing attempts),

Or

NY/A - net yards per passing attempt: (pass yards - sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks)?

It would help you analyze the risk/reward balance of passing when compared to NFL. Like you said, Madden gamers are more aggressive.

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by ranta21

We are somewhat casual in the sense that we don't put many hours in Madden these days, but we are fans of true simulation. Yards per play is the way to go and the way you build sliders should be the base for slider development. I truly appreciate the work you've done. Have you thought about running your passing numbers as: AY/A - adjusted yards per passing attempt: (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) - 45*(interceptions thrown))/(passing attempts), Or NY/A - net yards per passing attempt: (pass yards - sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks)? It would help you analyze the risk/reward balance of passing when compared to NFL. Like you said, Madden gamers are more aggressive.

Thank you for the kind words--always appreciate another group that truly wants the best stab at realism (as opposed to what I find a lot of folks want, which is their version of what realism should feel like). Obviously it'll never be perfect, but offense should be difficult.

I initially did use the net passing yardage using the formula you listed second as a way to measure/balance the aggression trade-off vs the NFL. In theory, I thought, net passing should even out, but how guys achieved that (going deep with more incompletions/sacks vs safer with more completions & fewer sacks) could differ. I've done a lot of reading up on NFL research/studies since embarking on this stat/slider journey, and part of what I read mirrored what I found: that the more aggressively teams start passing, the higher their yards/att AND net yards/att tend to get (NFL study). That doesn't mean the offense improved necessarily--but this metric would rise. It didn't "even out," in other words. My theory on why this occurs is just the nature of offense & defense: in a given drive, to move the ball, the offense has to keep succeeding whereas the defense only has to succeed once, as it were. You could have higher net yards/att by throwing deeper, but that doesn't actually necessarily mean you're consistently converting 3rd downs any more often than a more conservative offense. For every 1st down you get that a safer offense may not, you probably also have more 2nd/3rd & longs that lead to punts. This was part of why I stopped looking for a single, aggregate passing success metric to balance against and instead accepted that I would need to look at the pieces that make up the whole: 'simple' yds/att, completion %, sack rate, int rate, yds through the air vs YAC, etc.

Most guys in our league are incredibly aggressive, by NFL standards. Half of them don't even realize they are, but Madden has trained us to look 15-20 yds down the middle of the field and if the pressure is coming, hey, give the throw a try anyway! This is, of course, in many ways the very definition of poor QB decision-making in the NFL. So our INTs are sky-high, but so is our yds through the air & yds per attempt. From everything I see, the primary reason our scoring is higher than the NFL is because we turn the ball over more, which gives offenses more short-field opportunities. Our 3rd down conversion % is *identical* to the NFL (39%), our rushing is in a very good place vs the NFL, our completion rate is lower, etc. Even just watching games with the eye test, a lot of our scoring is off takeaways. Much more than the NFL, because again, our players don't take care of the ball.

You understand what most do not--you can balance to force the stats you want, which can lead to unrealistic gameplay--or you can balance for the best version of an NFL-like risk/reward trade-off in gameplay and let the stats fall where they may, to a degree. I choose the latter. We do have 1-2 teams who are skilled enough & have the personnel to make a hyper-aggressive passing attack work. But one missed the playoffs & the other lost in the AFC Conf Championship on the back of 6 INTs when he finally faced a top-tier defense who knew what was coming. Everyone else who plays this way has some big games & some downright awful/ugly games. Most of our consistently best/balanced teams take care of the ball, generally don't force it, and throw at or even slightly below NFL-average INT rates. This is not an accident, and it reinforces my belief that these otherwise kinda brutal sliders reward playing like an NFL QB would play.

That's NOT to say you can't take shots aggressively--none of the top teams are strictly dink & dunkers--but they/we pick our spots, we only go deep when it's there, we try our best not to force it, we take the 3-5 yd plays if that's what is there & put together drives. And when we do go deep it's not 20 yds down the middle of the field into the heart of 2-3 adjacent zones.

[El Generico]

I really like your sliders, but running is WAY too easy. We have several backs averaging 6.5+ yards per carry on over 100 carries so far this season.

We've dropped run block to 60, and upped tackling to 49 in hopes of slowing that down.

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by El Generico

I really like your sliders, but running is WAY too easy. We have several backs averaging 6.5+ yards per carry on over 100 carries so far this season. We've dropped run block to 60, and upped tackling to 49 in hopes of slowing that down.

Good stuff man--we will end the year with one back over 6 ypc & breaking the NFL single-season rushing record. And a couple more at 5.5+ ypc.

The reason this is tough to use as a balancing metric is three-fold:

1) If you balance for the average/median (which I do), then the top teams will always be better than the NFL's top teams, and the bottom teams will always be worse. Quite frankly online CFMs don't enjoy the same parity as the NFL. We've gotten better there, but it's systemic.

2) Beyond point #1, balancing for individual stats is very difficult. Fatigue isn't balanced properly in Madden & sliders can't fix the issue alone. So you have starting RBs getting a far higher % of total team carries than the NFL would.

3) The gap between a very good starting RB & an average RB is wider in Madden than the NFL. So you might have a player averaging 6 ypc atop the leaderboards, but that team's backups are averaging 3.3 ypc. This isn't super common in the NFL, a gap that wide. But since I balance for team success and not individual success, you can & will see some wonky individual #s even when team rushing is balanced fairly well for the average/middle of the league. I'm not saying that's definitely happening in your league, obviously I do not know, but throwing it out as something to consider! If you take those 6 ypc individual rushers down to say 5.3 ypc, you might be torpedoing most of the league.


Or it could just be your league is better at running the ball than we are, or worse at rush D. Are you in season 3, out of curiosity? We ran with a lower RBK slider in S1 when there were more stud OL vets. As an example, my team is 13-1 and my team average YPC is below 4 for the year. The best run-stuffing teams in our league just utterly obliterate run games, like too much so TBH. But it all evens out league-wide.

Appreciate the feedback!

[El Generico]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aestis

Good stuff man--we will end the year with one back over 6 ypc & breaking the NFL single-season rushing record. And a couple more at 5.5+ ypc. The reason this is tough to use as a balancing metric is three-fold: 1) If you balance for the average/median (which I do), then the top teams will always be better than the NFL's top teams, and the bottom teams will always be worse. Quite frankly online CFMs don't enjoy the same parity as the NFL. We've gotten better there, but it's systemic. 2) Beyond point #1, balancing for individual stats is very difficult. Fatigue isn't balanced properly in Madden & sliders can't fix the issue alone. So you have starting RBs getting a far higher % of total team carries than the NFL would. 3) The gap between a very good starting RB & an average RB is wider in Madden than the NFL. So you might have a player averaging 6 ypc atop the leaderboards, but that team's backups are averaging 3.3 ypc. This isn't super common in the NFL, a gap that wide. But since I balance for team success and not individual success, you can & will see some wonky individual #s even when team rushing is balanced fairly well for the average/middle of the league. I'm not saying that's definitely happening in your league, obviously I do not know, but throwing it out as something to consider! If you take those 6 ypc individual rushers down to say 5.3 ypc, you might be torpedoing most of the league. Or it could just be your league is better at running the ball than we are, or worse at rush D. Are you in season 3, out of curiosity? We ran with a lower RBK slider in S1 when there were more stud OL vets. As an example, my team is 13-1 and my team average YPC is below 4 for the year. The best run-stuffing teams in our league just utterly obliterate run games, like too much so TBH. But it all evens out league-wide. Appreciate the feedback!

We are in season 4. Currently we have more than 13 backs averaging over 6.4 yards per carry.

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by El Generico

We are in season 4. Currently we have more than 13 backs averaging over 6.4 yards per carry.

Wow! Yeah, that is crazy high. I wonder if we will experience that in our next user season (which will be season 5 of the file) & have to crank the RBK slider down as a result.

The only other thing I can think of is fatigue. I noticed as I crept fatigue upward, our run game struggled slightly. Perhaps OL getting more tired than DL. Unfortunately it didn't really solve the issue of RB1s getting too many carries.

[howboutdat]

So , im curious here, what are your sack leaders looking like in a full season, since you run much longer quarters?

We run 8 minute quarters, with no run off. Average about 48-55 plays per game per team , and we are only in week 5 our sack leaders numbers are 11,8,7,7,7 . If we continue on that track, it wil be about 33,24, and 21 for top 5 sack leaders. Seems a tad high. Just curious how thats going in your league. i ask because before , when we were just on all madden sliders at 50 for everything it was not as high for sacks, and now we have pass blocking at 53 and some reason we are getting more sacks.