Rex Vs. Human Game Planning In FOF8 MP--A Philosophical Discussion

[Ben E Lou]

This has already come up in the big thread and I've seen it being discussed in some MP leagues. It's definitely worth its own dedicated thread here. How good is too good for the game-planning AI? People who don't want to get into that level of detail want Rex to be very good so as not to be hamstrung because the amount of fine-tuning available in FOF8 isn't their cup of tea, while those who'd prefer MP success to be more about who is willing to maximize every single detail of a game plan will want their effort to make a significant difference, and if the AI is too good, it won't. I don't know what the proper middle ground should be there, but this release definitely puts this question front and center. I'll be copying and pasting some stuff I've seen here and elsewhere into this thread, then opening it up for further discussion momentarily.

[Ben E Lou]

Rex is fine, Rex can make all your plays for you if you don't wanna do it. You can also rename the plays you create. You can also create half the plays and let Rex do the rest. There aren't any "cheeser" plays from what I have seen, because there is a way to defend everything. These plays are about using your personnel how you want to use them, that's all. If I have a guy who is great at getting downfield, now I can use him on slants and screens and things like that. I love that. If I have a guy who tears the top off a defense, I can send him on 9 routes a lot.

From the other thread...Julio, yeah, that sounds good in theory, but I wonder how it will play out. I'll be interested in hearing about it, for sure.

I mean, if I have a big play receiver, then I expect him to get used on deep routes. If I have a slot receiver, I expect him to get used in YAC type situations. I don't think I should have to dig into the minutiae to make sure that all this is being maximized. That seems like a chore. And in the MP environment especially, I'm skeptical that this won't lead to a large gap between those willing to work on 200 plays and those who just Rex it, as a result.
Rex can build a good playbook. Its actually fun to build plays though.. Kinda surprised you're not that into it, heh. As far as I can tell there is no exploitation involved though. Its all about how you plan for your opponent anyway, the playbook just gives you different options for attacking them.

Oh, I think it sounds great for the game, and at one time I would've probably lived for the in-depth coaching stuff. As I've grown lazier and lazier about it, I almost just want the game to play itself and then comment on the scores, ha! :D

I mean, I do think there's always been this sort of macro/micro, Coaching vs GMing friction. And I've been on different sides of that spectrum as well.


+1. The gap between rex and human play calling design, or even lack thereof, is going to be huge. This strikes me as a risky release from a MP standpoint. Is this going to lead to massive stat analysis in the way the draft has? Could potentially be a problem. We will see.We don't know that yet. It's quite possible to code it in such a way that Rex is a solid B+ and that humans can't gain a big advantage over that. (There are some signs already that on offense at least, that could well be the case.)

Those are the posts from here. I think that's a good start. Others, feel free to chime in (and copy/paste your comments from elsewhere if you'd like).

[aston217]

We don't know that yet. It's quite possible to code it in such a way that Rex is a solid B+ and that humans can't gain a big advantage over that. (There are some signs already that on offense at least, that could well be the case.)

I think it'd be preferable for Rex to be more than capable in this regard. I suppose my question is, if Rex *is* that capable, why create such a substantial set of open-ended inputs for the player? Because then the game might reduce to scrutinizing all possible permutations trying to get from a B+ to an A.

If that's meaningful to do, the game becomes complex. It would be about figuring out the secrets to the puzzle of the FOF8 playbook engine. That *might* well be the point, and I think many people would really enjoy this level of playing the coach.

If there's not a real advantage to be gained, why give any player such a wide array of options? Either they'd be poring over documentation and putting in hours of work for nothing, or they'd be hurting their teams trying to play the game when Rex would suffice.

In short, the presence of these inputs /seems/ like a signal that they are important, and this is the big feature of the game. I.e, "FOF8: Learn the Playbook", which seems like a more intricate version of "FOF: Learn the little percentage screens". Plus points for meaningfulness of the exercise, maybe minus points for complexity but in fairness, everyone's got a different threshold.

I apologize if it comes off as I'm cracking on the game. Just chatting about what the new features might mean. A lot of them sound very exciting and exactly what we've been asking for. 2 QBs, hooray! And participation grades, that's such a nice touch.

[aston217]

My apologies, Ben :D I didn't see this thread!

Great OP -- I think you've summarized the question very succinctly, and it's certainly a really interesting one, from a game design perspective.

[Ben E Lou]

I think it'd be preferable for Rex to be more than capable in this regard. I suppose my question is, if Rex *is* that capable, why create such a substantial set of open-ended inputs for the player? Because then the game might reduce to scrutinizing all possible permutations trying to get from a B+ to an A.

If that's meaningful to do, the game becomes complex. It would be about figuring out the secrets to the puzzle of the FOF8 playbook engine. That *might* well be the point, and I think many people would really enjoy this level of playing the coach.

If there's not a real advantage to be gained, why give any player such a wide array of options? Either they'd be poring over documentation and putting in hours of work for nothing, or they'd be hurting their teams trying to play the game when Rex would suffice.

In short, the presence of these inputs /seems/ like a signal that they are important, and this is the big feature of the game. I.e, "FOF8: Learn the Playbook", which seems like a more intricate version of "FOF: Learn the little percentage screens". Plus points for meaningfulness of the exercise, maybe minus points for complexity but in fairness, everyone's got a different threshold.

I apologize if it comes off as I'm cracking on the game. Just chatting about what the new features might mean. A lot of them sound very exciting and exactly what we've been asking for. 2 QBs, hooray! And participation grades, that's such a nice touch.See, I'm not convinced that it's an either/or (at least not yet, perhaps this discussion might sway me one way or the other). Right now I'm looking at a stud RB from a 50-year quick-sim who had a crazy outlier receiving season, obviously using an AI game plan: 116 targets, 90 catches, 995 yads, 8.58 ypt. What if the optimal number of targets before he started hitting diminishing returns from familiarity was 130, and a human owner got him that many? You and I are fine with the guy getting the 116; that's a lot, but not the RB max I've seen in SP (several seasons in the 130s and 140s in this career). But the guy who wants to customize his game plan gets him 130, and he only drops from 8.58 ypt to 8.35ypt or whatever. The human gets a better performance, but with Rex we get "good enough" that we can overcome by focusing on smarter signings, more favorable contracts, better drafting, etc.

Or what if that 6'3" WR could take 15 targets in a game against that short CB, rather than the 13 that the AI gets him?

That sort of stuff. IF Rex is targeting weaknesses and getting the ball to the right people with very-good-but-not-optimal efficiency, then I'd be fine with sitting in the CEO seat of my team and have my competent-but-not-perfect cube-dwelling employees figure out the details rather than having to get involved in the sort of minutiae that FOF8 allows, fully comfortable with the knowledge that my competitor's cube-dwellers are savants.

[MalcPow]

I've definitely tried to think in both directions on this one. At the moment, I've basically come out at the point that we just don't know the game well enough to have a sense for where we are on the AI too good/too vulnerable scale of things. I personally think the biggest impact factor here will be more control over who gets touches in your offense. The gymnastics required to really try to get the ball to your TE or get more targets to a guy who had low route running were a definite chore in the past. I'm guessing the biggest effect here is just that I can try to allocate those targets or touches.

Time will tell obviously, there have always been quirks or imbalances that get exposed over a lot of play. In that regard I expect there to be some stuff that we find, but I'm more fascinated by such a seemingly vast new part of the game to mess with than worried about future issues.

[aston217]

I think I'd Rex where necessary, too, but it'd be awful hard to escape the feeling that I'm not doing all the "playing the game" things.

The counter being that those missing layers aren't adding much, but if so, shouldn't *nobody* spend so much time on window dressing? If this is a vastness to explore, it makes sense that the results are both tangible and worthwhile. Though I certainly agree, it's way early to quantify where Rex stands.

To me, if it's true that Rex provides close-but-not-max performance, that's a strong argument for a very limited interface that presents users with full range of meaning (i.e, pick an offense style at the start of the year, pick a player or two to be focal points and leave it roughly there) instead of a vast possibility of inputs. The existence of the latter says "Please dive into all this because it will be worth it."

I do sort of like opening up the sandbox more, but I think some things are just best handled with rigorous control. Openness *is* great for window dressing (i.e, flex size leagues! Arbitrary start years!), but for example, look at the contracts model. You can enter any combination of numbers at any point in the season, and counterintuitive "best practices" eventually develop. It's part of the game, yes, but also one where closing it down as in-season renegs have been are to the benefit of the overall experience.

[Julio Riddols]

I'm honestly confused as to why this is such a big deal to people now that you have the OPTION to get as in depth as you want with your planning for a given season. Rex does a fine job as can be seen. If you want, rex things. Have the AI do your stuff. Automate it. If you want to dig in and go for things to be the exact way you want them, do that. Why is there any questioning of it? It is clearly the best of both worlds from what I have seen and all this hand wringing over it is really bizarre to me.

[Sef0r]

I'm honestly confused as to why this is such a big deal to people now that you have the OPTION to get as in depth as you want with your planning for a given season. Rex does a fine job as can be seen. If you want, rex things. Have the AI do your stuff. Automate it. If you want to dig in and go for things to be the exact way you want them, do that. Why is there any questioning of it? It is clearly the best of both worlds from what I have seen and all this hand wringing over it is really bizarre to me.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and since they are paying the money they should be able to discuss it.

I for one don't care either way, as long as there isn't exploitable I'm good. And even if there is an exploit I'm sure it will be patched.

[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?

[Julio Riddols]

Sorry if I ruffled anyones feathers with that pair of rantish posts, but I'm probably in a little bit of a mood having to work on Thanksgiving, heh.

I'm gonna go take a breather.

[Sef0r]

oh I see...

Well I have 1 gameplan in FOF7 that I now use and it took 2 months to get to it. It is used with whatever personnel I have and for the most part is okay.

What I have noticed in this game is that the REX gameplans (like the one that gave my TEs over 150 targets in 2 seasons) seem to be a lot better without me playing with it. Once I touch it...it just goes bonkers lol.

[Nemesis]

I'd be fine with sitting in the CEO seat of my team and have my competent-but-not-perfect cube-dwelling employees figure out the details rather than having to get involved in the sort of minutiae that FOF8 allows, fully comfortable with the knowledge that my competitor's cube-dwellers are savants.

I'm happy with this as well.

There's a possibility that there could end up being some "money plays" that exceed results they "should". It's possible that a run-n-stun can be made. You can still run 50/50 run/long pass on 2nd and 1, which presents problems (which I like). I don't think those things will ever change.

Meeting the challenge from Jim's perspective to allow people who put in large amounts of time and effort to succeed, but not create such a large gap between the haves and have nots that the game isn't fun for the have nots, is a difficult one.

Having said that, I am in the court of being ok with AI being a B+ and the human player who chooses to put in all their spare time to achieve an A. That's coming from someone who has put in alot of time as well, and feeling like I got a C. ;)

[aston217]

Well now the playing field is being leveled.

I'm not sure that it is.

I think knowing what numbers to put in was odd, but of course you give me those screens and I'll do it and read up on how. Sort of like the old 2k7 masked pairs, etc. Interesting that that was the game, but that kind of complexity was what I thought we were talking about going away from in speaking of leveling the field.

I think Ben described it best in the OP. There is a clear design tension here, right? You don't want to go through all that work only to reap negligible benefit. Playbook wars (which probably accurately describes real football, as well as why most of us love the sport so much) will either leave some people very behind, or be FOF8's version of the little things that people mostly decide to ignore entirely (which doesn't do justice to the idea of putting the player in the coach's chair).

So I *think* I'm being consistent here? Sorry. Not trying to dump on the game. I just like these sorts of philosophical discussions, coach vs GM, macro/micro, etc. I think it was Ben who made the observation that FOF was originally a macro game that was increasingly played at a micro level, and this does seem like a step in that direction?

[Hammer]

On reflection I think Julio is right, his points have clarified my thinking.

I have done well with Cheyenne because I spend more time than most others on each game, tweaking. Ben and Malc have spent more time on the draft than me no doubt, so are better at it.

I don't think anything has changed. You put the time in, it will help. If there are any obvious king plays, or work arounds, I expect Jim will patch it.

[Squirrel]

I want to play the game a lot more before I come to a firm view, but I think I agree with both Julio and Aston here.

I think the idea that depth of engagement and immersion should lead to success has to be right, so long as the amount of time involved is not totally impractical and as long as the time being taken feels like it has something to do with football and not just a protracted statistical analysis exercise. Jim has got this right in the past with the draft so I'm confident that he will have struck the balance on game planning also.

I think FOF is an unbelievably good GM simulator. It looks like this new game might also be an amazing coaching simulator and I'll give that a go with an open mind too, though it isn't really what I'm into so much. I play my MP FOF in the GML for that reason.

I wonder if eventually the coach and GM roles will bifurcate and we will see two-man FOF teams in MP? I'd be interested in playing alongside someone who was really into Solevision, the playbook and other teams strengths etc and gave me precise, detailed feedback on what to look for in the draft and free agency. That could be really cool

[Nemesis]

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.

You don't feel like it's just a matter of it being brand new and seemingly overwelming? Sef0r mentioned it took him 2 months to get his FOF7 (or was it 2k7 that he fit into FOF7? either way :D ) gameplan that he uses for the most part now, do you guys feel that in 2 months of playing around with this set up that it'll be pretty much second nature to just plug and play quickly the same way he did?

[cankles]

You don't feel like it's just a matter of it being brand new and seemingly overwelming? Sef0r mentioned it took him 2 months to get his FOF7 (or was it 2k7 that he fit into FOF7? either way :D ) gameplan that he uses for the most part now, do you guys feel that in 2 months of playing around with this set up that it'll be pretty much second nature to just plug and play quickly the same way he did?

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.

[Nemesis]

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

Nick probably.

:D

But more to the point. It's a healthy discussion for sure, and in the long run, we'll all find out how possible it is to run 13-19 yard Ins on "Gained 1st Downs" in the same gameplan over the course of a season. Gonna be fun finding out.

[aston217]

I have done well with Cheyenne because I spend more time than most others on each game, tweaking. Ben and Malc have spent more time on the draft than me no doubt, so are better at it.

I don't think anything has changed. You put the time in, it will help.

I think this is both the great and the bad. I was one of the ones who accumulated a fair amount of expertise about the draft in the 2k7 days. That was great fun, to be sure, and it's how FOF made its mark with me. At the same time, I feel the people who resent this and the fact that the game at least appeared to be "broken" by the people who knew the little mechanical ins and outs.

I think the mechanics being more intuitive and meaningful is a step in the right direction. I don't know how to feel about the more permutations part, though. This isn't an easy balance to perfect.

Perhaps as a comparison, in FOF7 gameplanning Rex is regarded as a big leap forward from 2k7. All the numbers in boxes, this was overwhelming for a lot of people, and so they Rexxed...sometimes to good effect, but largely, I feel like, they missed out. If we were to assign a letter grade, FOF7 GP Rex probably gets a solid B, but they're also never the Cy's Cheyenne. Which, while a great credit to folks like Nick, I do sort of agree this is an area where game philosophy can just level the field and prevent the landscape from being the dominion of a few elite-tier wonks. From everything I hear, OOTP is able to nail this, and I want FOF to break into that mold, too. At least I want that more than I want to out-compete fellow GMs towards wonk status, with the full acknowledgment that historically this is has been one of FOF's draws for players like me.

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

I think the answer here is "the ones who develop the most expertise with the tools and wield them to their fullest extent". Right?

[QuikSand]

The problem with these early assessments is that in this complex system, it's really hard to trace success/failure to something as specific as the gameplan.

I played a casual SP career starting with the Browns. Hopeless at QB, but solid OL, two decent young WR, and a few rookies on D who are better than they should be (the ever present curse with real rosters).

After two terrible-at-QB seasons, we drafted a young stud and signed Le'Veon Bell, and by the QB's soph season we were a 13-3, +180pts power team.

Does that mean the gameplan was excellent? Beats me, I haven't touched it. I haven't invested the time to see what "technique" guys I should be drafting, or anything like that. Rex depth chart, rex gameplans.

The real test is going to be after the initial hubbub settles down, and people dig into it -- and use what the learn in multi player. If, over time, a handcrafted gameplan turns out to be, say, 30% more effective than a Rex gameplan... then this won't "level the playing field" at all. If it turns out that the handcrafted gameplan is only a shade better (and sometimes worse if in the wrong hands) then sure, this will prove to be a wonderful advance for the hands-off types. There is no way to know yet how this will work itself out, no matter how much time you've had thus far to fiddle around with it.

[QuikSand]

I have already moved to the point with FOF8 where I feel what I "need" to do is start tinkering with gameplans and doing serious testing. But, that's not really how I want to spend big chunks of my time -- I used to enjoy that sort of thing somewhat, but not really much any longer.

I took a stab at a defensive gameplan to be similar to what I usually ran in FOF 7 (just selected the 12 formations and let Rex fill in their usage) and it seems to be two or three clicks worse than just putting Rex in charge.

While I really appreciate the depth that comes with the new game, I am starting to catch the scent of the haves/havenots being a function of "putting lots of time into tiny details and testing" and I'm saddened to know which side I'll fall on there.

[Ben E Lou]

This has gone far away from the high-level big-picture discussion I specifically laid out in the first post, and I'm going to split those posts off into another thread for game plan detail discussions. I suspect that some of you are having difficulty in this discussion because you don't understand the other side's viewpoint fully. In order to help those who aren't understanding what we're getting at here, though, I'll frame the tension in MP* thusly.

Broadly speaking, because of the great amount of detail available to us now, two general schools of thought are going to emerge (and I'm already seeing signs of them) and they will be/are at odds with one another.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT ONE (the "GM"): "I don't have the time and/or interest to get into that level of detail, and I don't want someone else to gain a big advantage over me just because they have the time and interest to do that." Therefore, it is my hope that Rex is creating near-optimal game plans so that from a competitiveness standpoint, creating play books and game plans from scratch is largely a waste of time because if they pass it to their stud receiver or give it to their RB or blitz just one or two more times per game than Rex would, their overall performance will suffer because of the familiar mechanism."

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT TWO (The "Coach"): "I am thrilled that I can get into this level of detail. I'd love to have to spend 30-90 minutes game planning for every single matchup. However, the effort I put into game planning would be a waste of my time if the people who aren't doing that can simply hit a Rex button and their game plan will perform just about as good as mine. Therefore, it is a problem if Rex is too good. I want to have a lot of wiggle room within the familiar mechanism between what Rex would do and what is 'too much of a good thing.'"


*--And to be 100% clear, as it says in the title, this is *purely* a MP discussion. It has no bearing whatsoever on SP. You're playing against 31 Rexed game plans in SP.

[Pyser]

I think leagues like the gml (all AI game plans) are about to be more popular.

I'm not saying this playbook is a bad idea - it's just daunting and I want to feel like everyone in the league is somewhat on the same level. It's just no fun playing against people who you know have put it hundred hours tweaking, and can get worse teams to consistently outperform better ones.

[Ben E Lou]

What I have noticed in this game is that the REX gameplans (like the one that gave my TEs over 150 targets in 2 seasons) seem to be a lot better without me playing with it. Once I touch it...it just goes bonkers lol....and to circle this back to my post from a few minutes ago, this is precisely what those who are 100% in the "GM" bucket in MP would *want* to happen.

[Hammer]

I think leagues like the gml (all AI game plans) are about to be more popular.

I'm not saying this playbook is a bad idea - it's just daunting and I want to feel like everyone in the league is somewhat on the same level. It's just no fun playing against people who you know have put it hundred hours tweaking, and can get worse teams to consistently outperform better ones.

But this is already happening in FOF7. It isn't new to FOF8.

By the same token you could say exactly the same about the draft. You don't put the time in you won't see the results. The game is about both regular season and off season. You should be rewarded for investing time in both. Then everyone is happy.

For the moment I think we are worrying over nothing. Until we firmly establish how much improvement a human GM can have over the AI this thread is all just guess work isn't it?

[Pyser]

Well that's the split, isn't it?

GM's have to be able to draft well. You can't avoid the draft. They don't have to game plan. Different strokes for different folks.

[Ben E Lou]

For the moment I think we are worrying over nothing.

Well I'm not worrying, and that's not why I started the thread. I've always found this to be a fascinating point of tension in MP, and the level of detail available in this release escalates that tension, so I find it to be a worthy discussion.

And the thing about having said tension is that no matter *where* the AI lands on this, it's going to be just about impossible to please everyone. If the game plan AI is merely "decent", the people on the far "GM" end of the spectrum aren't going to be happy. And if the AI is so good that someone can just hit the Rex button and just about optimize performance, can you honestly say that you'll be ok with putting in all that time only to come up with something that's the same as what others spent half a second doing? And maybe you'd be ok with it, but I'm sure that some of the game planners would be put off by such a thing.

[Ned Doolittle]

Few points:

At the end of the day, the game is called "Front Office Football", not "Xs and Os Football". I would want the play designing/playbook mechanism AI to be as adequate as a decent human. I want to put the team together, scout players and decide who stays and who goes. Front office stuff. So someone like me is going to want AI that isn't going to hamper my efforts. I'm gonna want AI that can fill in the blanks really well so that my success in putting a championship caliber team together isn't wasted because I hit "Rex" and the game plan is crap.

The way I have always played FOF is to pretty much Rex everything and then over the years I tweak. Setting up an initial FOF career can take a little while so I Rex a lot of stuff to start and then once everything is set up I take it from there and twist knobs and push buttons over the course of a season and repeat as needed. "We're not going for it on 4th down nearly enough as id like it seems, let me increase that going forward." But I don't want to lose seasons upon seasons as I tweak, I want something that will be adequate right out of the box. Rex seems to allow that.

[gstelmack]

My problem is not so much the time investment to figure things out as it is the time investment to actually carry out what you want to do. Once you decide what you want your gameplan to be, how long does it take to set it up, and how long does it take to adjust it week-to-week for your opponent?

If I decide I want to run a bit more against his opponent, and run more to the left, how long does it take me to enter that information into the game?

If I decide I want to take away their #1 receiver, double-covering him every play, man-up everywhere else, and keep one safety deep, how long does it take me to enter that information into the game?

That's what I hated about the last version - entering numbers each game to adjust for the opponent took too long. I'm fine if it takes digging for me to figure out how often I should play zone vs man or run left vs right, but I don't want it to take 20 minutes of poking around to make that adjustment. I just don't have that kind of time.

That's why I used Rex so much in the last version - Rex most of the screens, have a couple set and don't touch, tweak a few boxes, and move on. I was annoyed enough that I had to go into 6 screens to play less 3 and 4 deep zone to worry about having to adjust even MORE boxes.

[Hammer]

I thought the balance in FOF7 was pretty good. From what I understood you don't bother much with the regular season Ben, and do very well. I am average in the off season, but can still do very well.

We are pretty much polar opposites yet are both successful. I don't see why the GM camp should be at war with the Coach camp. It doesn't strike my as very helpful if people are going to throw their toys out of their prams at the prospect of getting out gameplanned. Hopefully Jim will find a similar ground in FOF8. If he doesn't the game will suffer. He has done a great job up till now, so I think we should try and stay positive.

[TroyF]

Few points:

At the end of the day, the game is called "Front Office Football", not "Xs and Os Football". I would want the play designing/playbook mechanism AI to be as adequate as a decent human. I want to put the team together, scout players and decide who stays and who goes. Front office stuff. So someone like me is going to want AI that isn't going to hamper my efforts. I'm gonna want AI that can fill in the blanks really well so that my success in putting a championship caliber team together isn't wasted because I hit "Rex" and the game plan is crap.

The way I have always played FOF is to pretty much Rex everything and then over the years I tweak. Setting up an initial FOF career can take a little while so I Rex a lot of stuff to start and then once everything is set up I take it from there and twist knobs and push buttons over the course of a season and repeat as needed. "We're not going for it on 4th down nearly enough as id like it seems, let me increase that going forward." But I don't want to lose seasons upon seasons as I tweak, I want something that will be adequate right out of the box. Rex seems to allow that.



And this is where the single player aspect comes in Sky. I think this discussion goes beyond multiplayer. If I sign an "Air Coryell" coach and have a stud WR, I expect him to get a boatload of targets. If REX doesn't do a good job, that's a problem. (note: I'm not saying Rex doesn't yet, there needs to be a lot more time playing it to figure that out.)

For the MP part of this discussion, this is a massive thing. Were I to start playing multiplayer, I would have ZERO interest in the game plans and individual plays. If I'm in a league where 25 guys are putting in that time and it makes a huge difference? What's the point? As someone said above, as a GM, I have to worry about the draft, I don't have to worry about scripting plays.

As someone not actively involved in MP leagues right now, I want to watch how this plays out before I ever put my toes in the water.

[Sharkn20]

As far as I see at this point you wil have to spend even more time now doing these things, as you will need a new playbook for every thing you stated here as you don't have the double coverage box anymore, or where to run % anymore. Now you have the plays to select which ones you want to run.

It will be hard to start, but once you have the different gameplans should be better and quicker, but as I said, initially will take you longer.

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[aston217]

I think leagues like the gml (all AI game plans) are about to be more popular.

I'm not saying this playbook is a bad idea - it's just daunting and I want to feel like everyone in the league is somewhat on the same level. It's just no fun playing against people who you know have put it hundred hours tweaking, and can get worse teams to consistently outperform better ones.

I think this captures my sentiments. As Hammer points out, skilled players already consistently outperform their talent. It's really cool that they can do this and I don't begrudge them that -- at the same time, I think it's a valid criticism of the game and something I think should be "designed out".

The same is true of the draft. I loved being fairly knowledgeable at it, but FOF *has* been moving in the opposite direction there in response to similar criticisms.

On both the GM game and Coach game fronts, I think what I'd prefer is high-level strategy and transparent, simple mechanics. For example, you draft this player because you know that in his first camp, the game will roll the dice and turn out an average player 50% of the time, a great player 10% of the time, and a poor player 40% of the time. All GMs take strategic risks, and it's not a matter of which ones can crack the draft puzzle better than others. Similarly, you could perhaps push some general GP levers for your team, because you don't know if the team you've assembled will do better in one scheme or another, or if targeting one player will help you win or just pad his stats to the detriment of everyone else -- without it being a question of installing plays and routes at such a granular level.

My problem is not so much the time investment to figure things out as it is the time investment to actually carry out what you want to do. Once you decide what you want your gameplan to be, how long does it take to set it up, and how long does it take to adjust it week-to-week for your opponent?

And that's my concern as well. I completely love the idea of a game that lets you focus on your opponent's star WR if you choose, or try to get your pass-catching RB lots of touches, etc. The difference is if that's literally clicking buttons named "Feature ____", versus knowing how many plays your guy needs to be running certain routes on, roughly speaking.

In FOF7 and 2k7, absolutely, these things took a long time across different screens to change. If you read up enough and started to understand how all the screens worked together, that was great...but it was something that needed to add meaning while removing input time.

I'm not being negative about Jim, really, but I don't know if the FOF7 balance was good, exactly. The existence of experts who consistently dominate points to balance issues I think are almost inevitable if the game presents puzzles to be cracked and solved, and makes them hard for most people to do so but not so hard for several to become elite.

[MalcPow]

My guess is that once I start digging into this stuff I'll start to save some GPs that make the process quicker and easier. I'll be honest and say I still don't have a great sense for all of the interlocking FOF7 effects of formations, pass distances, expectation percentages, etc. The new game is unfamiliar, but I don't want to pretend that my comfortable semi-ignorance after years of numbers in boxes actually offered me more control. My gut is it'll still largely come down to snagging a good QB and putting some other talent around them. Trying to push as many of the other cohesion/gp/etc levers in the right direction are going to help you sustain and go from good to great, but I still think the big picture stuff is the thrust of the game.

All caveated by the fact that I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about yet... :D

[Antmeister]

This has gone far away from the high-level big-picture discussion I specifically laid out in the first post, and I'm going to split those posts off into another thread for game plan detail discussions. I suspect that some of you are having difficulty in this discussion because you don't understand the other side's viewpoint fully. In order to help those who aren't understanding what we're getting at here, though, I'll frame the tension in MP* thusly.

Broadly speaking, because of the great amount of detail available to us now, two general schools of thought are going to emerge (and I'm already seeing signs of them) and they will be/are at odds with one another.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT ONE (the "GM"): "I don't have the time and/or interest to get into that level of detail, and I don't want someone else to gain a big advantage over me just because they have the time and interest to do that." Therefore, it is my hope that Rex is creating near-optimal game plans so that from a competitiveness standpoint, creating play books and game plans from scratch is largely a waste of time because if they pass it to their stud receiver or give it to their RB or blitz just one or two more times per game than Rex would, their overall performance will suffer because of the familiar mechanism."

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT TWO (The "Coach"): "I am thrilled that I can get into this level of detail. I'd love to have to spend 30-90 minutes game planning for every single matchup. However, the effort I put into game planning would be a waste of my time if the people who aren't doing that can simply hit a Rex button and their game plan will perform just about as good as mine. Therefore, it is a problem if Rex is too good. I want to have a lot of wiggle room within the familiar mechanism between what Rex would do and what is 'too much of a good thing.'"


*--And to be 100% clear, as it says in the title, this is *purely* a MP discussion. It has no bearing whatsoever on SP. You're playing against 31 Rexed game plans in SP.


I think this is largely correct but there are also people in the middle. Let call it the following:

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THREE (The "Assistant Coach/GM"): I want some level of control, but I want to rely heavily on the recommendations of the coaches/coordinators I hired to take advantage of the talent I currently have. I Rex my playbooks and game plans, but tweak them a bit to give specific players more or less touches depending on the opponent.

I fall into this camp. Since we are already hiring coaches/coordinators in this game, I feel that they need some more influence for decisions made on the field, even bone-headed plays where they have the wrong personnel. This is why I am hoping that the new decisions to allow less control over the personnel is because it will expose who the good and bad coaches are (the Intelligence rating that was mentioned in the previous version that was not utilized). However this is just hoping and currently the recommendations on the depth chart is a bit broken.

[Darren29]

I'll just throw this out there as well - just because someone spends a lot of time gameplanning doesn't guarantee their gameplans will be good. In my years of playing MP I've seen plenty of GM's who put a lot of time into their plans but underachieved when compared to their roster.

It will also come down to how much people enjoy putting a plan together and how much time they've got to do it. I used to put a lot of time into gameplanning but don't have the time to do so at the moment, so I'll have to try to find a happy medium and hope any changes I make to the AI plans don't screw things up.

[AlexB]

What would be great would be a GP creator that was half rex, half human input.

Limited choices such as (these are second thoughts, not exactly planned out, but also not straight off the top of my head)

Heavy run bias, slight run bias, balanced, slight pass bias, heavy pass bias
More runs right, balanced, more runs left
More runs with TE blocking, balanced, fewer runs with TE blocking
Feature RB1, RB committee

More screens, more short passess, more medium passes, more long passes
Choosing up to say three players to focus passes on (fewer or none if preferred)

QB stays in pocket, QB moves pocket, QB scrambles
Balanced QB position, QB mostly behind centre, QB mostly pistol, QB mostly shotgun

Backs mostly run routes, backs mostly pass protect, balanced
TE mostly runs routes, TE mostly pass protect, balanced

If you could provide a skeleton like this, then generate a GP where the AI puts the plays in the reflect the choices, I would use it even in SP: it would add control and make the process quicker.

Those who wanted to go into more detail can also then tweak from a better starting point, saving them a lot of time too.

Defensively it could work even easier:
Focus on stopping run, slight run stop bias, balanced, slight pass prevent bias, heavy pass protect
Mainly M2M, mainly BNR, mainly Zone, balanced
Blitz a lot, more blitzes, balanced, blitz less, very few blitzes
From zero to three players to focus on (which if the QB were selected would use a spy, or lead to double coverage on any others)

That's the general level of detail I personally would like - individual plays and playbooks are way too much for me, but if something like the above could make use of the existing method, would that suit a higher number of people?

[SlyBelle1]

+1. How you explained game planning was what I was hoping for....I want to have some general input to make a difference, but I don't necessarily want to create detailed playbooks or game situation charts.

[Sharkn20]

This would be good, only if the offensive side though. With just 12 plays to have in your deffensive play-book I don't think is that much of a big deal.

Then managers could tweak / add / quit plays to make it their "own" play-book to put into practice.

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