QuikSand
09-14-2005, 12:00 PM
So, What Good Is Team Chemistry Anyway?
For the last couple of versions of Front Office Football, there has been a “team chemistry” function that assigns affinities and conflicts among the players.
In the basic sense, each position group has a leader, and each player within that group (plus each QB for the offensive player groups) are tested for compatibility with that group leader. The results of these compatibility tests are the affinities and conflicts that appear on the “Attitude Advisory” tab of your “View Rosters” screen.
For some background on this system, here are some links that may be useful:
Initial Discussion thread on Team Chemistry (http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16893) – Warning, this may be a “spoiler” thread for those who don’t want to understand how this stuff works, as it explains with some detail how team chemistry is generated.
Anything new with affinities/conflicts? (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?t=40929) – some continued discussion on what it takes to generate an affinity or conflict
There are probably more discussions on this subject that shed some light, their omission here is unintended, I just did a quick search to find the threads that I remembered on the matter.
- - -
With that, the remaining question seems to be: Even if we understand how to build affinities and avoid conflicts…How big a deal is this stuff anyway?
I recently had a single player career that afforded a great opportunity to put this concept to the test. I had played a team that, for various reasons (though not the initial or primary idea behind the career), ended up becoming an extreme case of high-affinity. In fact, at the point of this testing, the team roster included an affinity with every possible player on the team save one (whose personality score was apparently just a shade too low to register). That seemed like an interesting platform for some experimentation.
THE EXPERIMENT
A single player FOF 2004 team has been assembled, with very high affinity levels. As indicated above, the nominal team has position leaders in every group who maintain an affinity with every player on the roster (only one exception, at DE). Each quarterback, as well, has an affinity with at least one offensive position leader.
I saved this high-affinity team, which was also a very cohesive unit with many players who had played together for a substantial time period. To determine a basis for expected results, I ran a full season with that team in a league with injuries set to zero. From fifteen such full season trials, I excerpted some basic outcomes from the team, focusing on its offense in particular. For each season, I gathered the following data:
Regular Season Wins
Rushing Yards
Yards per Carry
Passing Yards
Yards per Attempt
Points per Game
For the experiment, I made modest changes to the team’s roster, only on offense. For each position group, I released or traded the incumbent position leader. In each of the three cases, this player was neither a starter, nor did he play a significant role in the depth chart. In each case, I acquired a new player to become the position leader – and in each case that new position leader had a substantially poor chemistry with the neatly-assembled position group. I do not have details readily accessible, but there were at least one or two conflicts within each group. In short, the affinity summary went from an absolute extreme positive (every single offensive player having an affinity) to a fairly extreme negative (where there were no affinities at all, and several conflicts).
The entire defense was unchanged – the strong positive affinity structure was left in place.
So, the change of these offensive leadership roles, nominally, should have the following effects on the team:
-no meaningful effect on the ratings of on-field personnel
-some (presumably modest) loss of team cohesion resulting in loss of veteran player
-substantial loss of affinity from position leadership change
This, to me, yielded the best possible contrast in player productivity – presumably with enough trials, the difference in outcome between these two teams should be almost exclusively attributable to the affinity differences. (The loss here of three non-starting veterans, replaced with new veterans, simply can’t amount to a huge swing in cohesion in my judgment)
So, I made these adjustments to the FOF team, and recorded the same outcomes from each of 15 seasons using the modified team. Again, no injuries and no gameplan adjustments – so the same players would be present in roughly the same roles on both sides of the experiment – just to reduce the number of variables as best we can.
I am fairly confident that any differences observed between the all-affinity team and the non-affinity team in this controlled environment is largely, or nearly entirely, attributable to the difference in team chemistry. This chemistry difference is about as pronounced as can be orchestrated, so if there’s anything at all to be found, it ought to show up here.
THE RESULTS
BROKEN OFFENSE AFFINITY AVG StDev
Wins 10.5 1.76
Rushing Yards 1816 124
Yards per Carry 3.78 0.17
Passing Yards 3762 198
Yards per Attempt 7.50 0.51
Points per Game 20.5 1.80
WITH FULL AFFINITY AVG StDev
Wins 13.2 1.21
Rushing Yards 2204 180
Yards per Carry 4.15 0.24
Passing Yards 3776 246
Yards per Attempt 7.93 0.54
Points per Game 25.6 1.53
Clinical Observations:
Wow.
Continued Observations:
With the exact same personnel on the field, and largely everything held constant, the high affinity offense team was substantially better than the poor affinity offense team in pretty much every meaningful way. They ran better, they passed better, they scored more points, and they won more games.
Keep in mind that even without the benefits of affinity, this is a pretty good team. The “broken affinity” experimental version still was winning 10 or 11 games most of the time, frequently a top seed in the playoffs. A swing from 10-11 wins to 13 wins might better be viewed as a reduction in losses. The broken affinity team only lost 5 or 6 games a year – but the full affinity team reduced those losses from 5-6 to about 3 per year, essentially eliminating about half their expected losses.
A few more tidbits from the data:
- The broken affinity team managed to win 13 games twice in 15 trials. Again, this was a good team already, with solid players and very high cohesion. With the broken affinity, though, the team did miss the playoffs in several trials – with three seasons of eight wins, and two more with only nine wins. The full affinity team, however, won at least 12 games in every single trial, had two seasons of 15 wins and one unbeaten season.
- The broken affinity offense managed to top 2,000 rushing yards once in 15 trials. The full affinity offense failed to rush for 2,000 yards only once in 15 trials. This is presumably a function both of rushing effectiveness and overall team success, but the difference here was marked.
- Passing efficiency, which seems like it might have a higher variance, still showed a marked split. Only three of the broken affinity trials yielded a yards per attempt that matched the average of the full affinity team.
- - -
CONCLUSIONS
It is still far too early to do any pinpointing. I cannot isolate the value of a single affinity, or the impediment posed by a single conflict. The system we’re dealing with is probably too complex to ever be able to isolate such detail – we’ll probably never know.
But, if your general concern is “does this stuff matter at all?” the answer has to be a resounding yes.
A team with chemistry working against it (on one side of the ball, anyway) honestly didn’t have a great deal of room to improve – this was not a team where a small boost could turn a few tough losses into wins, and make an easy swing from 6-10 to 10-6. But reversing its chemistry problems and building strong affinities – and essentially no other change at all -- made a marked difference in the team. That team became more effective at all its offensive endeavors, and far more consistent in winning games – even with all the same players on the field.
This is, admittedly, an extreme example. The swing in chemistry from something like 20 offensive affinities to six or eight conflicts is pronounced and artificial. It’s on a scale larger than anything you’re likely to consider in any FOF team you manage. That’s deliberate, of course.
But the magnitude of the effect is pretty great, in my judgment. If you are playing FOF, either in single player or multi player, and you haven’t been paying attention to team chemistry – you are missing out on a potentially meaningful element to this game. It takes work to build a team this way, but it’s possible that this is a way to better your team that doesn’t necessarily require a huge investment in top-skilled players (the sort who require high draft picks and/or big money contracts).
Feel free to use this information as you see fit.
For the last couple of versions of Front Office Football, there has been a “team chemistry” function that assigns affinities and conflicts among the players.
In the basic sense, each position group has a leader, and each player within that group (plus each QB for the offensive player groups) are tested for compatibility with that group leader. The results of these compatibility tests are the affinities and conflicts that appear on the “Attitude Advisory” tab of your “View Rosters” screen.
For some background on this system, here are some links that may be useful:
Initial Discussion thread on Team Chemistry (http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16893) – Warning, this may be a “spoiler” thread for those who don’t want to understand how this stuff works, as it explains with some detail how team chemistry is generated.
Anything new with affinities/conflicts? (http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?t=40929) – some continued discussion on what it takes to generate an affinity or conflict
There are probably more discussions on this subject that shed some light, their omission here is unintended, I just did a quick search to find the threads that I remembered on the matter.
- - -
With that, the remaining question seems to be: Even if we understand how to build affinities and avoid conflicts…How big a deal is this stuff anyway?
I recently had a single player career that afforded a great opportunity to put this concept to the test. I had played a team that, for various reasons (though not the initial or primary idea behind the career), ended up becoming an extreme case of high-affinity. In fact, at the point of this testing, the team roster included an affinity with every possible player on the team save one (whose personality score was apparently just a shade too low to register). That seemed like an interesting platform for some experimentation.
THE EXPERIMENT
A single player FOF 2004 team has been assembled, with very high affinity levels. As indicated above, the nominal team has position leaders in every group who maintain an affinity with every player on the roster (only one exception, at DE). Each quarterback, as well, has an affinity with at least one offensive position leader.
I saved this high-affinity team, which was also a very cohesive unit with many players who had played together for a substantial time period. To determine a basis for expected results, I ran a full season with that team in a league with injuries set to zero. From fifteen such full season trials, I excerpted some basic outcomes from the team, focusing on its offense in particular. For each season, I gathered the following data:
Regular Season Wins
Rushing Yards
Yards per Carry
Passing Yards
Yards per Attempt
Points per Game
For the experiment, I made modest changes to the team’s roster, only on offense. For each position group, I released or traded the incumbent position leader. In each of the three cases, this player was neither a starter, nor did he play a significant role in the depth chart. In each case, I acquired a new player to become the position leader – and in each case that new position leader had a substantially poor chemistry with the neatly-assembled position group. I do not have details readily accessible, but there were at least one or two conflicts within each group. In short, the affinity summary went from an absolute extreme positive (every single offensive player having an affinity) to a fairly extreme negative (where there were no affinities at all, and several conflicts).
The entire defense was unchanged – the strong positive affinity structure was left in place.
So, the change of these offensive leadership roles, nominally, should have the following effects on the team:
-no meaningful effect on the ratings of on-field personnel
-some (presumably modest) loss of team cohesion resulting in loss of veteran player
-substantial loss of affinity from position leadership change
This, to me, yielded the best possible contrast in player productivity – presumably with enough trials, the difference in outcome between these two teams should be almost exclusively attributable to the affinity differences. (The loss here of three non-starting veterans, replaced with new veterans, simply can’t amount to a huge swing in cohesion in my judgment)
So, I made these adjustments to the FOF team, and recorded the same outcomes from each of 15 seasons using the modified team. Again, no injuries and no gameplan adjustments – so the same players would be present in roughly the same roles on both sides of the experiment – just to reduce the number of variables as best we can.
I am fairly confident that any differences observed between the all-affinity team and the non-affinity team in this controlled environment is largely, or nearly entirely, attributable to the difference in team chemistry. This chemistry difference is about as pronounced as can be orchestrated, so if there’s anything at all to be found, it ought to show up here.
THE RESULTS
BROKEN OFFENSE AFFINITY AVG StDev
Wins 10.5 1.76
Rushing Yards 1816 124
Yards per Carry 3.78 0.17
Passing Yards 3762 198
Yards per Attempt 7.50 0.51
Points per Game 20.5 1.80
WITH FULL AFFINITY AVG StDev
Wins 13.2 1.21
Rushing Yards 2204 180
Yards per Carry 4.15 0.24
Passing Yards 3776 246
Yards per Attempt 7.93 0.54
Points per Game 25.6 1.53
Clinical Observations:
Wow.
Continued Observations:
With the exact same personnel on the field, and largely everything held constant, the high affinity offense team was substantially better than the poor affinity offense team in pretty much every meaningful way. They ran better, they passed better, they scored more points, and they won more games.
Keep in mind that even without the benefits of affinity, this is a pretty good team. The “broken affinity” experimental version still was winning 10 or 11 games most of the time, frequently a top seed in the playoffs. A swing from 10-11 wins to 13 wins might better be viewed as a reduction in losses. The broken affinity team only lost 5 or 6 games a year – but the full affinity team reduced those losses from 5-6 to about 3 per year, essentially eliminating about half their expected losses.
A few more tidbits from the data:
- The broken affinity team managed to win 13 games twice in 15 trials. Again, this was a good team already, with solid players and very high cohesion. With the broken affinity, though, the team did miss the playoffs in several trials – with three seasons of eight wins, and two more with only nine wins. The full affinity team, however, won at least 12 games in every single trial, had two seasons of 15 wins and one unbeaten season.
- The broken affinity offense managed to top 2,000 rushing yards once in 15 trials. The full affinity offense failed to rush for 2,000 yards only once in 15 trials. This is presumably a function both of rushing effectiveness and overall team success, but the difference here was marked.
- Passing efficiency, which seems like it might have a higher variance, still showed a marked split. Only three of the broken affinity trials yielded a yards per attempt that matched the average of the full affinity team.
- - -
CONCLUSIONS
It is still far too early to do any pinpointing. I cannot isolate the value of a single affinity, or the impediment posed by a single conflict. The system we’re dealing with is probably too complex to ever be able to isolate such detail – we’ll probably never know.
But, if your general concern is “does this stuff matter at all?” the answer has to be a resounding yes.
A team with chemistry working against it (on one side of the ball, anyway) honestly didn’t have a great deal of room to improve – this was not a team where a small boost could turn a few tough losses into wins, and make an easy swing from 6-10 to 10-6. But reversing its chemistry problems and building strong affinities – and essentially no other change at all -- made a marked difference in the team. That team became more effective at all its offensive endeavors, and far more consistent in winning games – even with all the same players on the field.
This is, admittedly, an extreme example. The swing in chemistry from something like 20 offensive affinities to six or eight conflicts is pronounced and artificial. It’s on a scale larger than anything you’re likely to consider in any FOF team you manage. That’s deliberate, of course.
But the magnitude of the effect is pretty great, in my judgment. If you are playing FOF, either in single player or multi player, and you haven’t been paying attention to team chemistry – you are missing out on a potentially meaningful element to this game. It takes work to build a team this way, but it’s possible that this is a way to better your team that doesn’t necessarily require a huge investment in top-skilled players (the sort who require high draft picks and/or big money contracts).
Feel free to use this information as you see fit.