FOF2K5: newby questions on leaders, etc...

[badger ken]

hi everybody, just got FOF2K5, and have waded through many a forum post trying to grok this thing, am so far enjoying the game a lot, but have a few questions I can't find answered anywhere, would appreciate help:

1) Leaders. Can/does a leader lose their leader role, or do they stay the leader as long as they are on the team? I have some leaders who are both young and bad, I would hate to have to carry these guys forever just because of the morale impact.

2) Transaction log pruning. I'm in the exhibition season, and want to scan the waiver wire each week for people to sign (my team is HORRIBLE :-(). Is there a quicker way to do this than to open "view transaction log" and then scroll all the way to the bottom, trying to remember where the bottom was last week?

3) trading. I did one trade, and it was a painful process. Is there a quick way to say to a team "I want to trade you this guy, make me an offer as to what you will give me?", or at the least "ok, you rejected this trade, make me a counter-offer"? The "float" button only tells you which teams are interested.

4) bad player or bad scout or bad luck? On my team, my starting LT has a current estimate of "2" and a future estimate of "6"! Run blocking is 1/6, pass blocking is 2/7, blocking strength is 0/0. ouch. I believe I mentioned that my team is horrible :-). The odd thing is, looks like he was my teams _first round draft pick_ last year, with a 3-year $2M contract. Is this a sign that I have a bad scouting/coaching staff, or just bad luck (training camp "bust"), or is this just the breaks of the random team generator?

Thanks to all,

[Ben E Lou]

First off, welcome to the board. Hope you enjoy your stay and find it helpful.

On to the questions...

1) Leaders. Can/does a leader lose their leader role, or do they stay the leader as long as they are on the team? I have some leaders who are both young and bad, I would hate to have to carry these guys forever just because of the morale impact.There are times that new guys will take over as leader. My observation is that being a leader comes from a combination of Leadership and Experience. At times, a younger guy with higher leadership will take over as position leader over time, or if a veteran FA is signed, he may become the leader as well.

2) Transaction log pruning. I'm in the exhibition season, and want to scan the waiver wire each week for people to sign (my team is HORRIBLE :-(). Is there a quicker way to do this than to open "view transaction log" and then scroll all the way to the bottom, trying to remember where the bottom was last week?Rather than opening the log, I'd just do a "Recommend Player" search on the position you're looking for.

3) trading. I did one trade, and it was a painful process. Is there a quick way to say to a team "I want to trade you this guy, make me an offer as to what you will give me?", or at the least "ok, you rejected this trade, make me a counter-offer"? The "float" button only tells you which teams are interested.The "Shop Player" button is the most help you'll get in this area. Also, the list of needs can be helpful.

4) bad player or bad scout or bad luck? On my team, my starting LT has a current estimate of "2" and a future estimate of "6"! Run blocking is 1/6, pass blocking is 2/7, blocking strength is 0/0. ouch. I believe I mentioned that my team is horrible :-). The odd thing is, looks like he was my teams _first round draft pick_ last year, with a 3-year $2M contract. Is this a sign that I have a bad scouting/coaching staff, or just bad luck (training camp "bust"), or is this just the breaks of the random team generator?"Ouch" is right. I take it that this was a generated team. If so, I'm not sure why you'd get a guy that bad.

Check the reference thread up top, and the strategy forum for more stuff, if you haven't already.

--Ben

[badger ken]

thanks for the quick and helpful response. Just a few follow-ons, for anyone else who ever comes across this message in a bottle:

1) re leaders. I found a way to ease my bad-young-leader out (he is 15 current/23 future!). Off the waiver wire, I got a 19 year veteran WR with very high intelligence/leadership, he was universally acclaimed as the new leader, I will let him gracefully retire at the end of the season and in the meantime cut the bad-young-leader. bwa ha ha.

2) re free agents. I just found out by random playing around that on the "roster" screen, one of the "teams" is "free agents". This makes it very fast to quickly scan free agents across a number of positions.

3) I do have one requrest for a future feature - is there a forum for this? I would like my weekly email to include an email called "waiver wire", or some such, which simply notifies whenever anyone has been put on the waiver wire whose current potential is > than that of someone on my current roster.

all for now, thanks again,

[Maple Leafs]

As far as leaders: remember, leaders don't always help you. If the player is a leader but everyone else on the team hates him, he may be doing more than harm good. On your roster screen, go to the last tab (I think it's called "Attitude" or "Conflict" or something similar) and sort by current attitude. It's a quick way to see if your leaders are popular or not.

I've never hesitated to cut a "leader" if he didn't deserve a spot on the team. The only time I'd keep the guy around is if he had many, many "affinity" links with other players.

[badger ken]

thanks for the advice - this guy does in fact have 2 affinities, no conflicts.

[Pyser]

well, ill go ahead and be the dick.

"where'd you get fof2k5?!"

welcome.

[jbmagic]

does conflicts affect only the players that have conflcits with the leader?

or does it also affect the leader too if there conflcit with him?


how much of a performance hit will players with conflict have? a lot or just a little?


and if players have affinities does it give them a performance boost a lot or just a little?

thanks

[maximus]

Welcome badger ken. Fof2004 is one kick-ass football sim. I just bought it about 3 weeks ago and I can't put it down. :)

[flere-imsaho]

jbmagic: I don't think those have ever been quantified, but there's a lot of anecdotal evidence floating around to indicate that you don't want conflicts.

[badger ken]

This is only a guess, but I guess that chemistry affects your team performance _overall_. If Al hates Bob, it doesn't just make Al and Bob play worse (if it did, you could just sit Al on the bench), but makes that entire portion of the team play worse - they are "poisoning the locker room".

My (slim) evidence for this is that the "team cohesion" screen gives an overall judgement by area (backfield, line, etc.). Why do this if there are just a series of individual tiffs? Also prevents you from skating around conflicts by simply not playing the offending party.

After a few more years of play, I've come to find that the issue with changing leaders is just the uncertainty caused by change - it can take you years to set things up so that everybody is content, if you switch leaders you don't know how things will shake out.