FOF8: More Detailed Discussions On How To Game Plan

[Dutch]

BEN EDIT--I've split off the detailed game plan discussion from the philosophical one. For those interested in the details, here's the place to get into that.

I think this goes here...

The Defensive Gameplanning is really cool. You only get 12 "plays". Once you select those, easy to create a run stopping playbook, anti-pass happy playbook, lots of focus on "spying" which I think we need to determine if that's for marking scrambling QB's or even RB's (because some plays have up to 3 QB Spies(!).

Anyway, for starters, I just focus on a balanced set of 12 plays then REX the normal and red zone gameplans and see where they all fill in.

Which is really nice for getting started. Gives you an idea of what plays are "supposed" to go where then you can adjust from there.

[Hammer]

I was thinking along the same lines Malc. This is an opportunity to have more fine control over distibution of targets. Not quite sure how route running will fit in with all this (I haven't even downloaded the game yet). I understand high RR has a slight positive impact on the passing game, but perhaps the targets side of the bar can be less influential now? I would welcome that. No FB passing plays in my playbook!!! Therefore his huge RR bar doesn't wreck my offensive gameplan, kind of thing.

If there are obvious king plays that kick ass, bugs if you like, I imagine Jim will sort it out going by past history. For me if we can simply fine tune distances and targets in the passing game all will be well.

I imagine the passing game will be more critical than the running game on the offensive side.

Defensively I don't really have any concerns. It just appears we have a more detailed playbook available. One which gives us the opportunity to really mesh with our personnel strengths, and change tact for each opponent as we wish.

[dunkem]

Finally starting playing this version after many years and it's quite an adjustment as an almost "new" player. In terms of the defensive gameplan, I think the Rexing needs to build a bit more depth in each situation. Particular formations/situations may have 3 plays while others have just 1. Theoretically, once you figure out what that one defensive play is for the particular formation/situation, you might be able to exploit it. IF you're calling your own plays, more so since you could possibly exploit it.

Perhaps the rexing might need at least two defensive plays per situation. I haven't tested enough, but I'd figure it would help with predictability.

In a multi-player environment, I pretty sure people who work on their gameplanning a little more will be able to maximize their output by running plays to their strengths. Simply gameplanning to run towards your stronger linemen would be an advantage over a rex'd "balanced" gameplan. Even using TE's and FB's to compensate for weaknesses in that side of the line would help as well.

As others have said, only time and experience will tell though.

[Sef0r]

I've only generated a few and ended up going with 1 in particular, mainly because it made my QB play well and efficient. But I just noticed my TE was targetted 150 times, with 1400 yards. Rolled over the next season and draft a TE to see if the GP would give the rookie as many targets as it did the veteran....yup

...he got 153 targets for 1200 yards - MY TE got all that

Obviously it is a very small sample size, though other things remained the same. My RB from the previous season rushed for 3 YPC. I picked up a very good RB in the off season, he also ran for about 3 YPC. The Oline in both years = GOOD.

[Front Office Midget]

Originally Posted by Julio Riddols

I mean, the complaint in MP has always been "So and so knows how to game plan better so his teams are generally better" - Well now the playing field is being leveled. No more ambiguous numbers to fuss with trying to achieve a specific result. A lot of people that are talking about the potential differences wouldn't rex much of anything in FOF 7 because they have game plans that just seem to work better than other people's game plans. See Cheyenne in the CFL for an example. In AI sims that team is routinely 8-8 or worse. Yet every season they end up 13-3 or 14-2, and theyre always a favorite for the super bowl. GMs like that are somehow able to maximize their talent, or even seemingly lack thereof, which surely came from no small amount of tweaking and playing with the numbers involved. Why all of a sudden is the time spent doing that not something you want to spend in the new game? Why is real football strategy such a weird idea to get into when playing a football simulation?

From my perspective, I feel like I used to be able to just simply tweak some numbers to get the results I want. An offensive gameplan would take 5-10 minutes and I could change things that I understood in FOF terms. Run more, short pass more, long pass more, change formations to get the #3 WR or keep the TE on the field more.

Now, I have to sort through 60 potential plays, try to figure out which player they will target. Through 3 games of calling my plays, I lead my SP league with 1097 passing yards but I've only targeted my main WR 25 times. Why? Because when I rex the gameplan, he is not very often the #1 target WR, despite being the X. So he's doing great, at 13.52 yards per attempt, but there are many situations that come up where he's not even a 1 or 2 target on any of the plays that Rex gave me. I NEVER had to worry with FOF7 that my top WRs wouldn't be able to get targets.

It's just hard to know quickly and easily what your team's gameplan is. In-game, I suddenly realized "Hey, this gameplan has a lot more screens than I want", but I had no idea going in. Before, that was obvious- there was a % for that.

To me that's the key difficulty. There is no way to know, at a glance, what the offense is doing. Run/short pass/long pass for down and distance gave us most the information we needed to know on 1 screen right in front of us. Now we need to click through play by play to have any idea what the offense is doing.

As a new player, it is almost impossible to figure out what is going on in the play names. Now I kinda get it... it seems to list the receivers in the order they would be targeted, followed by the routes they would be running. It took me 3 weeks to figure out what should probably be stated somewhere in the help file.

Defensively, again, I would look at the opponents numbers that year and make educated guesses on where to spend my defensive resources. Focus on stopping the run on this down, pass on this down, use these coverage schemes in these situations, etc. It was simple.



The problem isn't that we have more control, it's that it feels like we have less control, on average, because going into any particular game it's hard to understand what a gameplan will do. It used to be pretty clear.

[Front Office Midget]

Dola:

Also, wouldn't it be nice if when we clicked on a play, we could see the history or relative success of that play during the season? If we want to "simulate real football strategy", there is no way for us to watch the tape, as it were, or look back on what plays were successful and what plays were not.

As a Packer fan, I realize our McCarthy doesn't do that anyway, but I imagine some teams must.

[aston217]

As a Packer fan, I realize our McCarthy doesn't do that anyway

Oooooooooooh.

[garion333]

Originally Posted by Front Office Midget

Also, wouldn't it be nice if when we clicked on a play, we could see the history or relative success of that play during the season? If we want to "simulate real football strategy", there is no way for us to watch the tape, as it were, or look back on what plays were successful and what plays were not.

I expect Gameplay Analyzer will give us that look. Granted that's not an in-game utility, but GA does allow you to look and see how successful formations and plays called against the different defenses.

Allow me to be the first to mention in these new threads that a visualizer would now be a truly great addition to the game. Before it would've been cool, but wholly unnecessary. Now, however, it could be a great tool with actual impact.

[Front Office Midget]

My hope for a future is the possibility to play-call MP games, and also xo visualizers... does seem like he has added some possibility for that with the recent changes.

[Front Office Midget]

Dola:

On the Offensive Gameplan Screen, It would be nice to see, based on your personnel settings, who the targeted player is expected to be on any given play. I can't remember which RBs I have in which personnels so I don't know who would be getting the ball on any given play.

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by Front Office Midget

Dola:

Also, wouldn't it be nice if when we clicked on a play, we could see the history or relative success of that play during the season? If we want to "simulate real football strategy", there is no way for us to watch the tape, as it were, or look back on what plays were successful and what plays were not.

As a Packer fan, I realize our McCarthy doesn't do that anyway, but I imagine some teams must.

Great idea. If we don't have an in game way to do this we will have to do it the hard way. That will suck.

[Caligari]

My sense, with a small amount of time with this new version, is that Rex gives a good starting point, and I like that I can make adjustments to that and give Rex a chance to respond. I'm think of the depth charts here, in particular, but my sense is that by giving me a Rex that makes my coaching staff at least decent, I can put in my oar if I feel that they are off the mark, without having to do it all.

My feeling in 7 was that in order to work out a gameplan I'd really have to touch all the parts in order to have any impact, or enact any meaningful change. This feels different, at least to me. Is it? I don't know, yet.

[Firefly]

After all of one regular season game, I've reached the conclusion that the AI gameplanning sucks big time. It might seem rash, but I went into playcalling and the play selection was dismal. For my tastes, anyhow.

[cankles]

Originally Posted by Front Office Midget

From my perspective, I feel like I used to be able to just simply tweak some numbers to get the results I want. An offensive gameplan would take 5-10 minutes and I could change things that I understood in FOF terms. Run more, short pass more, long pass more, change formations to get the #3 WR or keep the TE on the field more.

Now, I have to sort through 60 potential plays, try to figure out which player they will target. Through 3 games of calling my plays, I lead my SP league with 1097 passing yards but I've only targeted my main WR 25 times. Why? Because when I rex the gameplan, he is not very often the #1 target WR, despite being the X. So he's doing great, at 13.52 yards per attempt, but there are many situations that come up where he's not even a 1 or 2 target on any of the plays that Rex gave me. I NEVER had to worry with FOF7 that my top WRs wouldn't be able to get targets.

It's just hard to know quickly and easily what your team's gameplan is. In-game, I suddenly realized "Hey, this gameplan has a lot more screens than I want", but I had no idea going in. Before, that was obvious- there was a % for that.

To me that's the key difficulty. There is no way to know, at a glance, what the offense is doing. Run/short pass/long pass for down and distance gave us most the information we needed to know on 1 screen right in front of us. Now we need to click through play by play to have any idea what the offense is doing.

As a new player, it is almost impossible to figure out what is going on in the play names. Now I kinda get it... it seems to list the receivers in the order they would be targeted, followed by the routes they would be running. It took me 3 weeks to figure out what should probably be stated somewhere in the help file.

Defensively, again, I would look at the opponents numbers that year and make educated guesses on where to spend my defensive resources. Focus on stopping the run on this down, pass on this down, use these coverage schemes in these situations, etc. It was simple.



The problem isn't that we have more control, it's that it feels like we have less control, on average, because going into any particular game it's hard to understand what a gameplan will do. It used to be pretty clear.

Yes, I agree. The process has been made more granular but all it means is a lot more work goes into getting the same results.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by cankles

I don't want to make any sweeping proclamations too early, but of course the beauty of FOF7 & 2007 is it was equally accessible to either extreme of player - the guy who wanted to spend 2 months tweaking his gameplan and getting it just right, and the more casual player like me who was comfortable leaving a lot of things in the A.I.'s hands even if it meant not maximizing my outcomes. But since the A.I. is now untrustworthy and the U.I. has added a lot of extra work, I feel like I'm toiling for marginal-at-best results. I guess the launch version of this game was not made for gamers like me.

32 competitive people are given the same tools to complete a task...who will win?

[Sharkn20]

Rex´s defensive gameplan is quite bad, offense is good enough to keep you rolling but the defensive bit needs tweaking if you want to go deep

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Front Office Midget

Dola:

On the Offensive Gameplan Screen, It would be nice to see, based on your personnel settings, who the targeted player is expected to be on any given play. I can't remember which RBs I have in which personnels so I don't know who would be getting the ball on any given play.

This x5000

I started a "who cares" career with Denver. In my first 4 games I'm 0-4. I don't care a bit about that. It doesn't matter to me at all. What does matter?

Allowing the AI to set up the gameplan has seen John Phillips get 43 targets and Demaryius Thomas 24 targets. Sanders has 37 targets. Bennie Fowler has 31 targets. Forget the "names of these guys" My mediocre TE and a WR with a route running of 7 are each being targeted more than two sensational receivers.


On defense, Von Miller has 1 sack and 1 hurry through the four weeks. He's had 11 passes caught on him and defensed 2 others. I want Von Miller to be rushing the QB on about 65 to 70% of the plays he's on the field. If he's doing that, he's going to create more pressure than 1 hurry in four games.

I would like the ability to see what % of #1 targets each receiver has and what the estimated % of my LB rushing the QB is going to be. I know that I can go through the game files and figure out which plays have which players blitz and which guys are targeted more, but as a fast simmer, I would feel a lot better if I could trust the AI to figure that out for me.

[TroyF]

A followup to the previous post. Started another career. Let the AI set up everything. First game against Carolina, Von had a sack and 3 QB hits in a 30-13 win. I went through the game log: He was on the field for 42 passing plays and rushed the QB 10 times.


This is a guy who my scouts rate as 84/92 in pass rush technique and strength.

It's VERY early and there might be issues with how REX is setting things up now, but I think it's going to be critical to become familiar with the playbooks, if for no other reason than to make sure your players are used appropriately.

[Dawgfan19]

Originally Posted by TroyF

A followup to the previous post. Started another career. Let the AI set up everything. First game against Carolina, Von had a sack and 3 QB hits in a 30-13 win. I went through the game log: He was on the field for 42 passing plays and rushed the QB 10 times.


This is a guy who my scouts rate as 84/92 in pass rush technique and strength.

It's VERY early and there might be issues with how REX is setting things up now, but I think it's going to be critical to become familiar with the playbooks, if for no other reason than to make sure your players are used appropriately.

There is a straightforward solution here which does not involve the complex playbook - check on the Game Plan Details screen.

Per the help file:

The Blitz Choice Based on Pass-Rush Ability setting determines how blitzers are chosen. The called defensive play indicates how many defensive players are blitzing the quarterback. This setting determines who blitzes. The more the choice is based on pass-rush ability, the more frequently your best blitzers will be included. However, that creates less variety in the defense, which means the offense will be less surprised by a blitz.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Dawgfan19

There is a straightforward solution here which does not involve the complex playbook - check on the Game Plan Details screen.

Per the help file:

The Blitz Choice Based on Pass-Rush Ability setting determines how blitzers are chosen. The called defensive play indicates how many defensive players are blitzing the quarterback. This setting determines who blitzes. The more the choice is based on pass-rush ability, the more frequently your best blitzers will be included. However, that creates less variety in the defense, which means the offense will be less surprised by a blitz.

Thank you. Completely missed this screen. That will help out a lot. I guess the default setting is "some" That's an easy fix.

[AlexB]

Originally Posted by Firefly

After all of one regular season game, I've reached the conclusion that the AI gameplanning sucks big time. It might seem rash, but I went into playcalling and the play selection was dismal. For my tastes, anyhow.

Don't know about such a strong statement, but I don't understand it that's for sure!

As there are a few teething issues ATM, just playing around to see what's what, so rexed a gameplan to see if I could work anything out and see what it did compared to previous game. For reference he upped run percentage from 38% in previous game to 46% for upcoming game.

Out of interest rexed again, run percentage dropped to 36%. After hitting generated gameplan a number of times for the same game, run percentage varied between 34-51%.

This was for a MIA team with a good running back, decent receivers, average O-Line but poor QB (Tannehill injured GW1, so an even worse UDFA will be starting). Playing against a NE team who seem to be weaker against the run.

OC has >75% playcalling, but wants to run a spread offence, which is not ideal given personnel.

So I wonder what are the criteria the game uses to generate a game plan, and why would the run % vary by 50% (from 34 to 51% of total plays)?

[SlyBelle1]

Originally Posted by AlexB

Don't know about such a strong statement, but I don't understand it that's for sure!

As there are a few teething issues ATM, just playing around to see what's what, so rexed a gameplan to see if I could work anything out and see what it did compared to previous game. For reference he upped run percentage from 38% in previous game to 46% for upcoming game.

Out of interest rexed again, run percentage dropped to 36%. After hitting generated gameplan a number of times for the same game, run percentage varied between 34-51%.

This was for a MIA team with a good running back, decent receivers, average O-Line but poor QB (Tannehill injured GW1, so an even worse UDFA will be starting). Playing against a NE team who seem to be weaker against the run.

OC has >75% playcalling, but wants to run a spread offence, which is not ideal given personnel.

So I wonder what are the criteria the game uses to generate a game plan, and why would the run % vary by 50% (from 34 to 51% of total plays)?

This may give some clues from the help...seems intentional.

There is quite a lot of variety in how a game plan will be constructed. The AI sets up a chart of what percentages of different types of plays it will run in different situations against the next opponent, then samples that chart randomly. If you try to generate many different game plans, you will see many different results. If you know you want to run a certain percentage of the time against this opponent, no matter what, you'll want to construct your plan by hand.

[Dutch]

Building my first game plan to accommodate for a Spread offense. Easy to do but it takes a while. Im curious now about all the choices now that could make "a defense familiar"...

Formation variance? Run vs Pass? Formations where I have only assigned pass plays? Target a receiver too much? Run direction? So many ways this could have been coded.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Dutch

Building my first game plan to accommodate for a Spread offense. Easy to do but it takes a while. Im curious now about all the choices now that could make "a defense familiar"...

Formation variance? Run vs Pass? Formations where I have only assigned pass plays? Target a receiver too much? Run direction? So many ways this could have been coded.

post moved to appropriate thread

[Dutch]

Thank you.

[nilodor]

Is there anyway to set a focus, say get the ball to player X, when rexing a gameplan? I'd like something like the focus setting from NBA 2K where you can pick 3 players and the game focuses more on getting them involved.

[WilleB]

btw, Happy Birthday nilodor! Enjoy

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by nilodor

Is there anyway to set a focus, say get the ball to player X, when rexing a gameplan? I'd like something like the focus setting from NBA 2K where you can pick 3 players and the game focuses more on getting them involved.

The only setting I'm aware of is the how much weight do you want to apply to your coaches primary philosophy.

The best option is to sort by Primary Play to see a ratio then adjust from their by going into individual plays and changing the focus. After that, you'll have to go into your formation depth charts to ensure the player you want is assigned to the right slots.

[garion333]

I would love for the game to have some basic playbooks for each offensive style, selectable from a drop down menu. I get that Rex effectively does that (and maybe more), but could be super useful for (new) people.

[AlexB]

Originally Posted by nilodor

Is there anyway to set a focus, say get the ball to player X, when rexing a gameplan? I'd like something like the focus setting from NBA 2K where you can pick 3 players and the game focuses more on getting them involved.

I suggested something similar on the Steam forum: Jim said he had considered it for FOF8 but felt that it wasn't in line with how he wanted to set the game up, but could be in a virtual suggestion box for FOF9 if it ever comes to pass.

Game plan generator? :: Front Office Football Eight General Discussions