Ben E Lou
12-24-2006, 07:49 AM
I did a good bit of testing prior to the Super League preference draft, and I know that at least one league (the OSFL) has a number of new-to-FOF people, and will be doing a preference draft in the next couple of weeks, so I thought I'd share some of what I've learned (or think I've learned). Some of this may be confusing, some might be a bit controversial or counter-intuitive, and some may even appear to contradict itself at times, because some things just depend on personal preferences. Feel free to ask for clarification on any of this stuff. This post is written with MP primarily in mind, although the general principles all apply to SP as well, with one key difference, which will be pointed out when I get there. (I also hope that sharing some of these principles doesn't come back to bite me like a big dog. WOOF!)
POSITION EMPHASIS
Use the Position Emphasis fields to set your team's emphasis on each position group when drafting. Use the lock buttons to lock a value in place while you move the other slider bars.
These values are balanced in relation to how the average professional team values players at each position. So, if you set Kickers to 55 and Quarterbacks to 50, you will not be drafting a top kicker ahead of a top quarterback. We promise.From what I've seen, position emphasis is the area of pref drafts that is most often misunderstood, and even brings cries of "it is broken" from some. I can assure you that it is not broken, and really works quite well as intended. Even when drafting against humans, I've now twice gotten pretty much exactly the type of team I was expecting and look for. A few info bits:
1. To emphasize a particular position more than normal, move the slider to the right.
Yes, this may seem elementary to some, but a certain Maassluis-dwelling experienced FOFer was still struggling a bit with this concept as recently as a few days ago. ;) Think of the Position Emphasis sliders as a number line: the farther to the right you move a slider, the more emphasis is placed on that position.
2. Pay attention to the help file: the sliders are MODIFIERS to drafting strategy, NOT absolutes.
This is the part where people really seem to get confused, and even claim that the feature doesn't work properly. The best way I know to describe this it seems that every player in the draft pool is given a value, and each position group has a different constant that multiplies the importance of that given position. (For those who used gstelmack's Draft Analyzer for FOF2K4, think of the positional constants in it.) Maybe a QB's ratings are multiplied by, say, 1.25, a safety's by, say, .85, or whatever. Obviously, I don't know the exacts here. However, what I can say with near-certainty is that what happens is that the baseline constants for each position are modified by the slider settings. In other words, if a QB starts with a 1.25, and you set the slider up to 9, maybe that translates to 1.4 or so. Please understand this point, though: pushing a slider high for a given position does NOT assure that that position will be drafted in the first or second round of the preference draft, especially if you push other positions high as well. That's the point that gets missed a LOT. Let me give you an example from the draft pool of a test league:
http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/fofc/draftpool.jpg
Let's say that you set your sliders with QBs as the highest-emphasis position, at 75, and DL second-highest, at 70, and got the draft pool above. You get pretty lucky, and get the #3 overall pick. However, QB Orlando Foley goes with the #1 overall, and the second-best QB, (who is rated 74/74) gets picked #2. It's your pick. The best QB left is A.J. Mattison, rated 69/69, and in his 13th season, and the AI has to choose between him versus a 93/93 DT, or a 90/90 DE. From what I can tell, the calculation (leaving out the modifiers for youth, loyalty and whatnot for now) is going to look something like this:
A.J.Mattisondraftrating= 69*(QBmodifierconstant*75*modifieremphasisconstant)
KennethWaltersdraftrating=93*(DTmodifierconstant*70*modifieremphasisconstant)
The second variable, called modifieremphasisconstant for these purposes, is the number that globally defines how much the impact the sliders have.
If the equations confuse you, don't worry about it, the bottom line is this: if you have your DL value high, and QB only a little higher, you're getting Kenneth Walters in the first round, not A.J. Mattison.
Now, after the first round is where it gets REALLY interesting (and where people really get pissed off because they don't understand what is going on). In this particular draft pool, there are only 8 QBs with current ratings above 50, and only three others outside that list with high future potential. It is VERY reasonable to assume that by the time your pick comes up in the second round, all 11 of the better QBs will already be gone. Let's assume that you had the forethought to go after some receivers to help your hoped-for stud QB, and set that slider up to 60. There are 11 WRs rated 60 or better current, in this pool, and also WRs rated 59/82, 54/76, 54/80, 51/70, 53/69, 45/76 and 50/70. Point being, odds are pretty good that one of those 18 guys WILL be available when your 2nd-round pick comes up (and that the top 11 QBs are all gone). The AI is then facing the decision of drafting the next-best QB, 48/48 K.C Tayoun, or a WR with ratings in the 60s or 70s. There's a decent chance that it takes the WR in that instance, and then the QB pool gets thinned even more. The bottom line of this train of thought is this: if you absolutely want to get a player at a certain position early in the draft, then emphasize that position MUCH more highly than any other, but doing so is a VERY risky and pretty bad strategy, imho. Because you don't know where you're going to pick, or how thin the pool will be at a given position, your best bet is to emphasize all position groups that are important to you, and let the chips fall where they may.
3. If you choose the right settings elsewhere, you can easily get away with going quite low on some positions.
When doing a preference draft, it is crucial to remember that the ratings are distributed logarithmically. There are a whole bunch of guys out there rated from the upper 30s to low 50s who can be decent starters. Don't think that if you set the DL down to 20 that you'll be starting a bunch of 20/20 players. If you want to build your team a particular way, say with very good linebackers and DBs, and can stomach a mediocre DL, then my advice would be to go 0-75-75 on those three settings (and borrow some additional points for your LBs and DBs from the kickers and from somewhere on offense), as opposed to 40-55-55 or something like that. The former will usually get you what you're after. The latter makes it too dependent on who is available when it comes your time to pick.
4. Make sure to think through what position groups need other position groups to do well in order to function well.
A stud QB won't perform like a stud without decent receivers. If you're gonna emphasize one, then emphasize the other.
The best DB's in the world will struggle without a decent pass rush.
A solid DL doesn't do you much good if your LBs and secondary suck.
ADDITIONAL TRAITS
RESERVES<<<>>>STARTERS
Reserves/Starters - your preferences for more or less depth in your roster. A high starter preference may give you an excellent set of linebackers, but a lousy second quarterback, for example. The reverse may give you a deep wide receiver crew, but you may have talent troubles in the starting offensive line.I can't think of any good reason to set this slider anywhere but all the way to the right. You want your first 22 draftees to be your 22 primary starters. If you need three wide receivers, you're better off doing what I did in the Super League: trade for the third one. As far as a backup QB, you're not very likely to get one rated above around 40 current no matter what you do, and you're not very likely to get one rated below 30, unless you emphasize youth too much.
POTENTIAL<<<>>>EXPERIENCE
Potential/Experience - your preferences for players who are young, and may develop into stars. Or players who are established, but may not remain solid forever.Here's where personal preference is big, and where my opinion may be a bit controversial. In my opinion, in MP you should ALWAYS emphasize experience more than potential. This is a departure from FOF2K4. The reason is that FOF2K7 is more like FOF4 than FOF2K4 in one crucial (and I think better) way: young guys with high potential ratings don't necessarily live up to that potential, even if it doesn't go down. The conventional (and accurate) wisdom in FOF2K4 was that if you had a 33/88 QB, he was gonna turn into at least an 80/80 QB in a few years. In FOF2K7, there's at least a decent chance that he's gonna get no better than 40-50 in current rating. In FOF2K7 MP, I'd take a 60/60 10th-year guy over a 33/88 2nd-year guy every day, and twice on Sundays, and then find the 60/60 guy's heir apparent through the rookie draft. This thought does not apply to single player. Yeah, it's a big difference to draft a guy in SP, and find out over the course of the next few days real-time that he's a stiff, as opposed to wasting more than a year real-time on a stiff. If you could pick experience position-by-position, then I'd change this opinion, but given that it is a global setting, give me George Allen and his Over The Hill Gang.
LOYALTY
Loyalty - your preference for players who seem to be more loyal to their current team, making resigning a little easier.I'm finding cap management easier in this version (probably due to having fewer highly-rated players) than in FOF2K4, which is a big reason why my advice is just to zero this out. It's not something that I feel a need to take into account at all, and I certainly don't want it drafting a 55/55 player over a 60/60 one because the former is more loyal.
RUN DEFENSE<<<>>>PASS DEFENSE
Run Defense/Pass Defense - your preference for defenders who can stop the run or pass.I'm careful about setting this one too far in either direction. It really depends on what kind of team I'm trying to put together. In the example I've given below of my Super League team, I figured my offense would be able to score, and that people would be throwing to catch up, so I set it to value pass defense a little more. Still, I have no interest in a SS or LB's who are rated 15 against the run, so I don't push it too far either way.
RUN BLOCKING<<<>>>PASS BLOCKING
Run Blocking/Pass Blocking - your preference for linemen who can run block or pass block.This one can be pushed pretty far either way, and really is a great way to customize your team. A team that runs the ball well and complements it with a solid passing game can go heavy on RB emphasis, low on OL, solid on QB and WR, and then pump up the run blocking using this slider. There are plenty of 40/40 guys who excel at one function or the other.
FAN POPULARITY
Fan Popularity - your preference for players who are popular with the fans, which may increase attendance.Like loyalty, I push this one down near the bottom. If you win, they will come.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
I hesitate to even post this for a couple of reasons, but here are the ones I used for the Super League preference draft, and the type of team that resulted from it:
http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/fofc/prefdraft.JPG
My roster strength ratings....
QB: 69 (4th in the league)
RB: 34 (21st in the league, but starter is an Avg/Good rookie)
FB: 93 (2nd)
TE: 100 (1st)
WR: 100 (1st)
C: 73 (7th)
G: 54 (12th)
T: 35 (22nd)
P: 100 (1st)
K: 12 (28th)
DE: 75 (4th)
DT: 53 (11th)
ILB: 72 (8th)
OLB: 45 (20th)
CB: 48 (15th)
S: 43 (20th)
So the offense looks very strong, as would be expected from the slider settings I chose, but what is probably surprising is my defense looking pretty decent. It's because while other teams were drafting 23/60 defensive players, the AI was drafting 43/43 ones for me, based on my slider settings. Indeed, 7 of my 11 defensive starters have current ratings ranging from 37-49. Three are above that range, and only one, a 32/50 FS drafted in Round 20, is below it.
Now, the other reason I hesitated to post my exact slider settings is that if EVERYONE starts choosing the exact sliders I have pictured here (or ones close to it), your team will look vastly different from mine. The results of MP slider choosing are very much dependent on what is chosen by others. My Super League defense is quite a bit better than the ones I was getting during my SP testing, I presume because the AI seems to draft more flatly. Several humans in the Super League obviously made the mistake (in my opinion) of heavily emphasizing youth. Division rival Hartford has 39 rookies on its 60-man roster, and a total of 42 players with current rating below 30, and they're not even the worst team in the league. There are a total of 10 teams in the Super League with an average age less than 24.0. (Mine is 26.9, second-highest in the league.)
POSITION EMPHASIS
Use the Position Emphasis fields to set your team's emphasis on each position group when drafting. Use the lock buttons to lock a value in place while you move the other slider bars.
These values are balanced in relation to how the average professional team values players at each position. So, if you set Kickers to 55 and Quarterbacks to 50, you will not be drafting a top kicker ahead of a top quarterback. We promise.From what I've seen, position emphasis is the area of pref drafts that is most often misunderstood, and even brings cries of "it is broken" from some. I can assure you that it is not broken, and really works quite well as intended. Even when drafting against humans, I've now twice gotten pretty much exactly the type of team I was expecting and look for. A few info bits:
1. To emphasize a particular position more than normal, move the slider to the right.
Yes, this may seem elementary to some, but a certain Maassluis-dwelling experienced FOFer was still struggling a bit with this concept as recently as a few days ago. ;) Think of the Position Emphasis sliders as a number line: the farther to the right you move a slider, the more emphasis is placed on that position.
2. Pay attention to the help file: the sliders are MODIFIERS to drafting strategy, NOT absolutes.
This is the part where people really seem to get confused, and even claim that the feature doesn't work properly. The best way I know to describe this it seems that every player in the draft pool is given a value, and each position group has a different constant that multiplies the importance of that given position. (For those who used gstelmack's Draft Analyzer for FOF2K4, think of the positional constants in it.) Maybe a QB's ratings are multiplied by, say, 1.25, a safety's by, say, .85, or whatever. Obviously, I don't know the exacts here. However, what I can say with near-certainty is that what happens is that the baseline constants for each position are modified by the slider settings. In other words, if a QB starts with a 1.25, and you set the slider up to 9, maybe that translates to 1.4 or so. Please understand this point, though: pushing a slider high for a given position does NOT assure that that position will be drafted in the first or second round of the preference draft, especially if you push other positions high as well. That's the point that gets missed a LOT. Let me give you an example from the draft pool of a test league:
http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/fofc/draftpool.jpg
Let's say that you set your sliders with QBs as the highest-emphasis position, at 75, and DL second-highest, at 70, and got the draft pool above. You get pretty lucky, and get the #3 overall pick. However, QB Orlando Foley goes with the #1 overall, and the second-best QB, (who is rated 74/74) gets picked #2. It's your pick. The best QB left is A.J. Mattison, rated 69/69, and in his 13th season, and the AI has to choose between him versus a 93/93 DT, or a 90/90 DE. From what I can tell, the calculation (leaving out the modifiers for youth, loyalty and whatnot for now) is going to look something like this:
A.J.Mattisondraftrating= 69*(QBmodifierconstant*75*modifieremphasisconstant)
KennethWaltersdraftrating=93*(DTmodifierconstant*70*modifieremphasisconstant)
The second variable, called modifieremphasisconstant for these purposes, is the number that globally defines how much the impact the sliders have.
If the equations confuse you, don't worry about it, the bottom line is this: if you have your DL value high, and QB only a little higher, you're getting Kenneth Walters in the first round, not A.J. Mattison.
Now, after the first round is where it gets REALLY interesting (and where people really get pissed off because they don't understand what is going on). In this particular draft pool, there are only 8 QBs with current ratings above 50, and only three others outside that list with high future potential. It is VERY reasonable to assume that by the time your pick comes up in the second round, all 11 of the better QBs will already be gone. Let's assume that you had the forethought to go after some receivers to help your hoped-for stud QB, and set that slider up to 60. There are 11 WRs rated 60 or better current, in this pool, and also WRs rated 59/82, 54/76, 54/80, 51/70, 53/69, 45/76 and 50/70. Point being, odds are pretty good that one of those 18 guys WILL be available when your 2nd-round pick comes up (and that the top 11 QBs are all gone). The AI is then facing the decision of drafting the next-best QB, 48/48 K.C Tayoun, or a WR with ratings in the 60s or 70s. There's a decent chance that it takes the WR in that instance, and then the QB pool gets thinned even more. The bottom line of this train of thought is this: if you absolutely want to get a player at a certain position early in the draft, then emphasize that position MUCH more highly than any other, but doing so is a VERY risky and pretty bad strategy, imho. Because you don't know where you're going to pick, or how thin the pool will be at a given position, your best bet is to emphasize all position groups that are important to you, and let the chips fall where they may.
3. If you choose the right settings elsewhere, you can easily get away with going quite low on some positions.
When doing a preference draft, it is crucial to remember that the ratings are distributed logarithmically. There are a whole bunch of guys out there rated from the upper 30s to low 50s who can be decent starters. Don't think that if you set the DL down to 20 that you'll be starting a bunch of 20/20 players. If you want to build your team a particular way, say with very good linebackers and DBs, and can stomach a mediocre DL, then my advice would be to go 0-75-75 on those three settings (and borrow some additional points for your LBs and DBs from the kickers and from somewhere on offense), as opposed to 40-55-55 or something like that. The former will usually get you what you're after. The latter makes it too dependent on who is available when it comes your time to pick.
4. Make sure to think through what position groups need other position groups to do well in order to function well.
A stud QB won't perform like a stud without decent receivers. If you're gonna emphasize one, then emphasize the other.
The best DB's in the world will struggle without a decent pass rush.
A solid DL doesn't do you much good if your LBs and secondary suck.
ADDITIONAL TRAITS
RESERVES<<<>>>STARTERS
Reserves/Starters - your preferences for more or less depth in your roster. A high starter preference may give you an excellent set of linebackers, but a lousy second quarterback, for example. The reverse may give you a deep wide receiver crew, but you may have talent troubles in the starting offensive line.I can't think of any good reason to set this slider anywhere but all the way to the right. You want your first 22 draftees to be your 22 primary starters. If you need three wide receivers, you're better off doing what I did in the Super League: trade for the third one. As far as a backup QB, you're not very likely to get one rated above around 40 current no matter what you do, and you're not very likely to get one rated below 30, unless you emphasize youth too much.
POTENTIAL<<<>>>EXPERIENCE
Potential/Experience - your preferences for players who are young, and may develop into stars. Or players who are established, but may not remain solid forever.Here's where personal preference is big, and where my opinion may be a bit controversial. In my opinion, in MP you should ALWAYS emphasize experience more than potential. This is a departure from FOF2K4. The reason is that FOF2K7 is more like FOF4 than FOF2K4 in one crucial (and I think better) way: young guys with high potential ratings don't necessarily live up to that potential, even if it doesn't go down. The conventional (and accurate) wisdom in FOF2K4 was that if you had a 33/88 QB, he was gonna turn into at least an 80/80 QB in a few years. In FOF2K7, there's at least a decent chance that he's gonna get no better than 40-50 in current rating. In FOF2K7 MP, I'd take a 60/60 10th-year guy over a 33/88 2nd-year guy every day, and twice on Sundays, and then find the 60/60 guy's heir apparent through the rookie draft. This thought does not apply to single player. Yeah, it's a big difference to draft a guy in SP, and find out over the course of the next few days real-time that he's a stiff, as opposed to wasting more than a year real-time on a stiff. If you could pick experience position-by-position, then I'd change this opinion, but given that it is a global setting, give me George Allen and his Over The Hill Gang.
LOYALTY
Loyalty - your preference for players who seem to be more loyal to their current team, making resigning a little easier.I'm finding cap management easier in this version (probably due to having fewer highly-rated players) than in FOF2K4, which is a big reason why my advice is just to zero this out. It's not something that I feel a need to take into account at all, and I certainly don't want it drafting a 55/55 player over a 60/60 one because the former is more loyal.
RUN DEFENSE<<<>>>PASS DEFENSE
Run Defense/Pass Defense - your preference for defenders who can stop the run or pass.I'm careful about setting this one too far in either direction. It really depends on what kind of team I'm trying to put together. In the example I've given below of my Super League team, I figured my offense would be able to score, and that people would be throwing to catch up, so I set it to value pass defense a little more. Still, I have no interest in a SS or LB's who are rated 15 against the run, so I don't push it too far either way.
RUN BLOCKING<<<>>>PASS BLOCKING
Run Blocking/Pass Blocking - your preference for linemen who can run block or pass block.This one can be pushed pretty far either way, and really is a great way to customize your team. A team that runs the ball well and complements it with a solid passing game can go heavy on RB emphasis, low on OL, solid on QB and WR, and then pump up the run blocking using this slider. There are plenty of 40/40 guys who excel at one function or the other.
FAN POPULARITY
Fan Popularity - your preference for players who are popular with the fans, which may increase attendance.Like loyalty, I push this one down near the bottom. If you win, they will come.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
I hesitate to even post this for a couple of reasons, but here are the ones I used for the Super League preference draft, and the type of team that resulted from it:
http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/fofc/prefdraft.JPG
My roster strength ratings....
QB: 69 (4th in the league)
RB: 34 (21st in the league, but starter is an Avg/Good rookie)
FB: 93 (2nd)
TE: 100 (1st)
WR: 100 (1st)
C: 73 (7th)
G: 54 (12th)
T: 35 (22nd)
P: 100 (1st)
K: 12 (28th)
DE: 75 (4th)
DT: 53 (11th)
ILB: 72 (8th)
OLB: 45 (20th)
CB: 48 (15th)
S: 43 (20th)
So the offense looks very strong, as would be expected from the slider settings I chose, but what is probably surprising is my defense looking pretty decent. It's because while other teams were drafting 23/60 defensive players, the AI was drafting 43/43 ones for me, based on my slider settings. Indeed, 7 of my 11 defensive starters have current ratings ranging from 37-49. Three are above that range, and only one, a 32/50 FS drafted in Round 20, is below it.
Now, the other reason I hesitated to post my exact slider settings is that if EVERYONE starts choosing the exact sliders I have pictured here (or ones close to it), your team will look vastly different from mine. The results of MP slider choosing are very much dependent on what is chosen by others. My Super League defense is quite a bit better than the ones I was getting during my SP testing, I presume because the AI seems to draft more flatly. Several humans in the Super League obviously made the mistake (in my opinion) of heavily emphasizing youth. Division rival Hartford has 39 rookies on its 60-man roster, and a total of 42 players with current rating below 30, and they're not even the worst team in the league. There are a total of 10 teams in the Super League with an average age less than 24.0. (Mine is 26.9, second-highest in the league.)