MP Staff Draft

[IrishGuy65]

Absolute worst idea in this game. A terrible, terrible addition to an otherwise spectacular game. Staff has too great an impact on the game to take away your ability to make an informed decision.

A lot of people didn't like the FOF2K7 version of how staffing worked, but it was still better than the latest addition.

Since I'm not the type of person to complain without offering a possible solution, I offer two here. I would like to see this thread turn into a discussion on the best way to work in staffing in FOF7, not an indictment on individuals or ideas, but instead offering up ways to make this very important part of the game more effective.

First idea is simple... The problem with the way the game was, was that there was no financial model, and that affected the bidding process. Well, simply add a financial model. The best way to implement this, in my opinion, is use the previous year's revenue as a base. Maybe up to 2% of a team's revenue can be used for Head Coach. 1.5% for OC and DC. 1.25% for Assistant Coach, and 1% for strength and conditioning. This makes the financial model of the team more important, creating two new aspects of strategy that have meaning... finding the right staff AND financial responsibility with your team.

If you don't like that, and I am sure with the current meta strategy in the game, most people won't, here's another idea. Like the players, give staff some various attributes like Want Winner. For example, staff will have want winner, will look for good players at their position of expertise, good offensive roster, good defensive roster, good financial performance, good stadium, good city (city close to his hometown), or other ideas. Then, during the 3 stages of staff hiring, teams submit offers (no cash value, just submit an offer), and the staff, based on their attributes (hidden or not), accept the best offer for them. Teams that fail to sign staff will try again next time. If, teams have open positions after the 3 staff hiring phases, the staff that best fits their situation (team matches the most criteria of the staff), is signed. This gives teams a little more hands on and direct control of hiring staff. Given this, I also believe staff can quit due to changes within the team, making them want very different things than the team is offering. So, if a teams gets the best head coach in the league, maybe in 8-10 years things will change with the team to a point where the coach quits to look for work in a better environment.

The difference in the strategy needed between MP and SP is big. But, in SP you have some control of the staff, where you have much less control in MP. In multi player leagues, more control in your strategic choices should be as high, if not higher, than single player mode.

[aston217]

My idea would be to take control out of the owner's hands. You get who you get. Sometimes coaches leave or get replaced. It's much easier to write AI logic that handles ALL of that in a balanced way, rather than try to create a balanced system.

Here's the biggest flaw with the current system: winning begets winning. Win and you fill your super stadiums and dominate the finances, giving you annual access to all the best coaches. This is how it's always been in FOF and it is not good for balance.

Instead, just create situations where sometimes teams that have had great coaches for a while, end up with bad coaches. Sometimes teams that struggle turn around and assemble an all-star staff. It's up to the player to see what he has and deal with it every year.

[thenewchuckd]

If you want fairness, how about remove coaching altogether? Or maybe reduce or eliminate their impact on winning. Personally I would not like the prospect of randomly being assigned a crap coach.

[garion333]

I think Ben's utility has removed just about any problem I had with staff draft in mp. You don't get to pick your EXACT coach, but you can still get a damn good idea ahead of time who will be available when you pick.

It's not perfect but much better than the seeming blind lottery of the in-game mp staff draft function.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by aston217

Here's the biggest flaw with the current system: winning begets winning. Win and you fill your super stadiums and dominate the finances, giving you annual access to all the best coaches.

This widely-held myth simply isn't true. Anyone who thinks has a very limited understanding of how finances work in FOF7 and of what makes coaches amenable.

First off, the finances. Here are 8 MP league, and how many of the top 10 picks in the most recent staff draft belonged to teams with winning records:


GML: 4 out of 10
CCFL: 7 out of 10
IHOF: 6 out of 10
FOOL: 6 out of 10
FOFL: 4 out of 10
RNFL: 4 out of 10
CyFL: 5 out of 10
NAFL: 4 out of 10

40 out of the 80 teams in the top 10 in the staff draft in 8 leagues had winning records. Yup. *Exactly* half. The team with the #1 seed that wins in the division round has a clear advantage, yes, because it gets 2 home playoff games. If that team isn't in the top 10, it's usually because it's paying for a stadium upgrade. Apart from home playoff games, there's a *slight* advantage--typically because of less spending--to teams with losing records in terms of placement.

Second, because of how Amenability and promotions work, it's not like team with the #1 pick ends up with the best staff members. The lists of staff available for different teams vary greatly (which is the main reason that Conscriptor isn't doing live drafts,) and inevitably sometimes good staff members will get fired later in a round.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by garion333

...the seeming blind lottery of the in-game mp staff draft function...

I think the biggest issue with the preference-driven draft that most MP leagues are using is that people don't have a good feel for the relative difference between Much More/More/Less/etc. Combine that with the fact that there's no transparency into how they're working (i.e. like the list that my tool generates) and it can very much feel like a blind lottery to a lot of people, though with some deeper looks, it's clear that it isn't at all. (I'm guessing that the only significant dice rolls involved in the in-game process are around whether it decides to fire all of your coaches.)

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by thenewchuckd

If you want fairness, how about remove coaching altogether?

This is what I want, but I have my doubts about it ever happening with FOF. Most (all?) people whose intellect I respect simply turn off coaches/scouts in their OOTP MP leagues. I want Jim to give us the option to simply eliminate it from MP entirely and have an environment where all human owners see all players identically and have identical player development and other impacts of staff. That way success is more about the decisions that we make about players, not about who is getting the best information, development boosts, and gameday success boosts from our staff.

[garion333]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I think the biggest issue with the preference-driven draft that most MP leagues are using is that people don't have a good feel for the relative difference between Much More/More/Less/etc. Combine that with the fact that there's no transparency into how they're working (i.e. like the list that my tool generates) and it can very much feel like a blind lottery to a lot of people, though with some deeper looks, it's clear that it isn't at all. (I'm guessing that the only significant dice rolls involved in the in-game process are around whether it decides to fire all of your coaches.)

Right, your utility removes some of the seeming randomness. The main thing is that you have individual settings for EACH position, which is super helpful. That right there helps to target the type of coach you want at each position.

[aston217]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

40 out of the 80 teams in the top 10 in the staff draft in 8 leagues had winning records. Yup. *Exactly* half. The team with the #1 seed that wins in the division round has a clear advantage, yes, because it gets 2 home playoff games. If that team isn't in the top 10, it's usually because it's paying for a stadium upgrade. Apart from home playoff games, there's a *slight* advantage--typically because of less spending--to teams with losing records in terms of placement.

I don't mean in a particular season, but how many of those teams are perennially good? How many of the bottom teams in the staff draft are perennial bottom feeders?

An extra home field playoff game has only a certain impact, I'm sure, but I'm thinking of stadium capacity. I was thinking that teams that have trouble filling their stadium get killed -- while regularly successful teams with max lux boxes have a phenomenal advantage in terms of staff draft placement. Is this wrong?

Second, because of how Amenability and promotions work, it's not like team with the #1 pick ends up with the best staff members. The lists of staff available for different teams vary greatly (which is the main reason that Conscriptor isn't doing live drafts,) and inevitably sometimes good staff members will get fired later in a round.

Is winning the staff draft slotting not a significant advantage? I thought it was. Having that moderated by these other factors that are out of the player's control doesn't really improve it, so much as make it weirder.

To win the staff draft lottery, you have to win the finances game. This is (evidently) poorly understood, and it's not even a sensible or well-developed part of the game. Here are the choices, if I'm not mistaken:

- Advance to a max capacity stadium. If you don't have it, you can choose to upgrade your stadium and suffer in Staff Draft position until it's complete. The allure of a new stadium is not an allure in this game.
- Know how to set the ticket prices (or now, know to Rex ticket prices?)
- Something to do with local population and wealth that is completely outside player control
- Improve your position by fielding a terrible team and leaving $100M in cap space on the table. High picks in the rookie AND the staff draft!

The "finances game" as it is, does not seem to be deep or interesting, and does not present the player with clear, intuitive, sensible decisions. Am I wrong that stadium capacity is often a significant difference maker in finances? I see a lot of posts here asking about how to fill up their stadium, and the answer invariably seems to be, "Be patient. Build a winner (or stop losing) and good things will come, eventually."

So, you can decide to do the things that will win the finances game, but maybe you shouldn't invest too much into that, because it might not matter anyway. But the staff is important. That's the weird thing -- right? So I can certainly agree with removing coaching altogether.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by aston217

- Advance to a max capacity stadium. If you don't have it, you can choose to upgrade your stadium and suffer in Staff Draft position until it's complete. The allure of a new stadium is not an allure in this game.

Not quite. You don't *have* to pay a dime to upgrade your stadium; you either have to win more and the city will pay, or just wait long enough and they'll pay.