RFF's M17 Sim League USER v USER Sliders

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by 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.

That's certainly high. We are just finishing wk 17 and our sack leader will end up with 26.5 sacks and a few more will be in the 19-21 range. Our high in s1 was i think 24. Our sack #s run higher than the NFL, but as I said, we pass it deeper & more aggressively too. On top of that, just the way Madden works, individual #s tend to be too high even when team #s are balanced. Just the way Madden goes.

In yall's case, a few possibilities... keep in mind we're in s3 and it *definitely* took some time for guys to adjust to the sliders. Pass rush comes fast, you have to un-learn a lot of "Madden" habits which is... dropping back & throwing it 12-25 yds in the air nearly every time. NFL QBs simply do not do that. They can't, the pass rush comes too fast.

Unfortunately the nature of H2H is there IS no 'perfect' slider set that works for everyone. Our league may play differently, for one. Only like 2-3 guys in our entire league user DL which will definitely inflate the pass rush (though usering LBs inflates INT, so... something is getting inflated either way, ha). But if you feel you need to bump the PBK up, do it! My sliders may not work identically for every league, and moreover it does take time for guys to adjust.

Also have to ask: how many CPU games do you guys have? I only balance by measuring user games. I ignore all CPU & simmed games. In our simmed season, Khalil Mack had 37 sacks. So ya know. Individual stats are going to go crazy in non user games. Everything I measure is only for User v User games.

Ultimately I try to balance for a very NFL-like gameplay / trade-off. That will lead to different stats if users play differently than NFL teams play... which most do unless they are incentivized to play like the NFL does. Our pass rush comes fast & our coverage is tough. When our guys play with a slower pass rush or lesser coverage, passing #s go through the roof.

[howboutdat]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aestis

That's certainly high. We are just finishing wk 17 and our sack leader will end up with 26.5 sacks and a few more will be in the 19-21 range. Our high in s1 was i think 24. Our sack #s run higher than the NFL, but as I said, we pass it deeper & more aggressively too. On top of that, just the way Madden works, individual #s tend to be too high even when team #s are balanced. Just the way Madden goes. In yall's case, a few possibilities... keep in mind we're in s3 and it *definitely* took some time for guys to adjust to the sliders. Pass rush comes fast, you have to un-learn a lot of "Madden" habits which is... dropping back & throwing it 12-25 yds in the air nearly every time. NFL QBs simply do not do that. They can't, the pass rush comes too fast. Unfortunately the nature of H2H is there IS no 'perfect' slider set that works for everyone. Our league may play differently, for one. Only like 2-3 guys in our entire league user DL which will definitely inflate the pass rush (though usering LBs inflates INT, so... something is getting inflated either way, ha). But if you feel you need to bump the PBK up, do it! My sliders may not work identically for every league, and moreover it does take time for guys to adjust. Also have to ask: how many CPU games do you guys have? I only balance by measuring user games. I ignore all CPU & simmed games. In our simmed season, Khalil Mack had 37 sacks. So ya know. Individual stats are going to go crazy in non user games. Everything I measure is only for User v User games. Ultimately I try to balance for a very NFL-like gameplay / trade-off. That will lead to different stats if users play differently than NFL teams play... which most do unless they are incentivized to play like the NFL does. Our pass rush comes fast & our coverage is tough. When our guys play with a slower pass rush or lesser coverage, passing #s go through the roof.

Yeah not knocking your sliders at all, just asking a question. We only have 1 cpu team , and actually my own player ( who is a rookie) is the league leader in sacks. I dont user DL that much , but sometimes i do. We rarely have simmed games, but the guys leading in sacks have not played in simmed games and the 1 cpu game i played, i got only 1 sack in. So was just curious where you league was with that. Although it seems from your stats not much behind where we were probably going to end up , come the end of the season.


I totally understand how things may differ from league to league , was just curious how it was working out for you all. This is our 4th season this madden, 1st using these sliders. So we will see how it goes on down the road .

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by howboutdat

Yeah not knocking your sliders at all, just asking a question. We only have 1 cpu team , and actually my own player ( who is a rookie) is the league leader in sacks. I dont user DL that much , but sometimes i do. We rarely have simmed games, but the guys leading in sacks have not played in simmed games and the 1 cpu game i played, i got only 1 sack in. So was just curious where you league was with that. Although it seems from your stats not much behind where we were probably going to end up , come the end of the season. I totally understand how things may differ from league to league , was just curious how it was working out for you all. This is our 4th season this madden, 1st using these sliders. So we will see how it goes on down the road .

I do not take offense at all, I appreciate the feedback.

My bluntly honest suspicion is that guys are just used to holding onto the ball too long & being too aggressive in downfield passing. NFL avg yds through the air per completion is 6. We started our league at like 8 and are still around 7. If you balance for gameplay, that's gonna lead to sack #s being higher than NFL. If you balance for sack #s, that's gonna lead to downfield passing being too high.

In other words, my *bet* is something is high either way. But for 8m quarters, that may not be a bad thing. If your passing games are too strong, that may even out to about NFL level scores given you run far fewer plays. That's a meaningful difference, our 12m quarters and nearly 120 snaps vs the ~100-105 snaps it sounds like you guys get.

(It's also very possible that because yall are a season ahead of us, that over time the generated OL isn't as good as the generated pass rushers, and this is a sign that we'll need to bump our own PBK for our next season... we had to bump it for s3 compared to s1, after all.)

[SyncereBlackout]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aestis

I do not take offense at all, I appreciate the feedback. My bluntly honest suspicion is that guys are just used to holding onto the ball too long & being too aggressive in downfield passing. NFL avg yds through the air per completion is 6. We started our league at like 8 and are still around 7. If you balance for gameplay, that's gonna lead to sack #s being higher than NFL. If you balance for sack #s, that's gonna lead to downfield passing being too high. In other words, my *bet* is something is high either way. But for 8m quarters, that may not be a bad thing. If your passing games are too strong, that may even out to about NFL level scores given you run far fewer plays. That's a meaningful difference, our 12m quarters and nearly 120 snaps vs the ~100-105 snaps it sounds like you guys get. (It's also very possible that because yall are a season ahead of us, that over time the generated OL isn't as good as the generated pass rushers, and this is a sign that we'll need to bump our own PBK for our next season... we had to bump it for s3 compared to s1, after all.)

Xp sliders also have an impact on slider sets, gameplay habits aside, would be interesting to see the team or OL overalls and their impact on slider sets.

I know you didn't deviate much from base, but I went the other direction and use xp sliders as a multiplier to things that came easy in my league (passing)

[howboutdat]

Well , i know this will go against what some may think to be true about sliders but , speaking on the sack issue we was having such high numbers.


I had used a cpu sliders setting from this site ( dont recall which one) for cpu sliders, since we do have 1 cpu team. Before when we was getting so many sacks, it was at like 40 for cpu pass blocking but 53 for human pass blocking. When i went to look at something to adjust to effect the high number of sacks, i noticed the cpu pass block setting at 40 . I thought, it shouldnt, but let me adjust that and see. So i moved ONLY cpu pass blocking slider up to 54. It slowed down the high numbers in sacks. My DE who had 12 in 6 games couldnt get 1 in 4 games with it at 54.Also noticed all the guys listed in top 5 for sacks were not getting any or maybe 1 in 4 games. So i moved it back down to 46 i believe and now we are getting sacks but not as high a level.


This leads me to believe that CPU pass and run blocking sliders effect human teams. Maybe because we cant even user them?? Maybe they are all considered cpu reguardless because they can not be usered. But this is what i found in our league , and i adjusted nothing else in that time period. Which is what leads me to think that the cpu pass and run blocking slider effects even user teams.

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by SyncereBlackout

Xp sliders also have an impact on slider sets, gameplay habits aside, would be interesting to see the team or OL overalls and their impact on slider sets. I know you didn't deviate much from base, but I went the other direction and use xp sliders as a multiplier to things that came easy in my league (passing)

Excellent point and very true. XP sliders by season 3+ will absolutely have a significant impact on gameplay. I would even say draft classes, which we can't control, has a slight impact. We've had historically awful CB drafts every year thus far. That could make our coverage settings a bit too harsh for a league with 2-3 awesome CB drafts. Ditto for OL/DL and sacks, rushing, etc.

Big picture, all these things are why there simply is no 'best' user slider set. It's going to differ league to league by s3+ as ratings & user skill levels & tendencies diverge. Even within the same league, the same slider set won't play the same in season 5 as it did in season 1.

So I present here our set, based on my detailed analysis of our league gameplay which leads to some really nice realistic trade-offs in the pass & run game, as a strong jumping-off point. In our s3 SB which we just finished, the #1 offense in the league who averaged like 38 ppg in the regular season lost 15-10 to a defense that caught fire in the playoffs...and that's a 12min quarter / ~120 snap game.

Unfortunately I can't make snake-oil promises that one size fits all or that adjusting sliders will fix every Madden issue. But I do feel strongly that our set will work better than any other set I've seen posted which are geared toward CPU games. All of you who post your experiences & how you're addressing challenges only strengthen the USER CFM SLIDER discussion, which is often so overlooked around here, so I thank you all for the feedback.

[Aestis]

Will make a big S3 summary post soon, as we recently finished our S3 Super Bowl.

But I do want to say that in a season where at times scoring got a little higher vs the NFL than I want it to be, the playoffs were defensive slugfests. The adage that offense wins games but defense wins championships in the NFL, at least so far, is proving true in this slider set.

Case in point: the offensive juggernaut who led the league at 38.9 ppg in user games (only one other team surpassed 33.2 ppg) ended up losing in the Super Bowl 15-10 to the 6th-ranked regular season defense who caught fire in the playoffs. This defense (again, not even the #1 D in the league in the reg season) held the #4 offense to 19 pts in the wildcard rd, forced 6 picks vs the #2 offense in the div rd, held the #11 offense (me, actually) to 3 pts in the afc conf championship, and then as mentioned held the #1 offense to 10 pts in the Super Bowl. Keep in mind these are ~118 snap games, nearly NFL length.

So, some total scoring #s were higher than I liked at times during the reg season, but end of the day... to win it all here, you play defense.

[rspencer86]

Any update on these, Aestis?