Balanced Draft Pool

[Draghetto]

Hello Guys

I am a solo player since i am not that much into GamePlanning but I am more of a GM player, even tough i'd really love to play in a MP league but i'd be crushed in no time! :(

I have been trying to find a good resource for draft pools but i never found one that was nice

- FOF and TCY imported pools are not soo good since they are very deep and talented in some positions and light in others every year

- Historical files are more balanced but basically after the first 3rd is just scrubs, and this is too low

- I tried all the draft generator i could find but i never found one that was customizable and gave me a set that was usable for a SP career and that would not destroy the accuracy of the league (for good or worse) after a few years

So I decided to write my own generator that was based on other works i found here or on other sites (also not FOF related) on draft generation.

What i wanted to obtain was a way to generate pools that i could use every year without any problem, with a variety of depth/quality at the position that changed every season like for the NFL.

I based my work on the nice "Fictional Player Factory" that you can find online, but i changed a lot in order to improve the quality of the generated pool and being more customizable

To do that i collected data from different draft files from FOF, basically i imported faf files and extracted with Extractor 10 draft generated by FOF, TCY and Historical Files and tried to get patterns/distributions/values i really liked and that could be applied to this new generator

I also tought about generating automatically real draft files and i found that a great source for that would be Scouts Inc. Prospect page since they show all the information ( you must be a subscriber tough) but most their rating on all the football skills, that could be used as an input for the generate without much work!

I haven't finished yet, but i wanted to know if someone would be interested in helping me by testing the draft files (another opinion is always better!) and maybe sharing some ideas

Actually what i am trying to find out is if it is possible to "influence" the way development skill is calculated by the game, since this would be really nice and would add an extra level of info, since Sophmore and Juniors would be more talented but also less developed than Seniors for example

I think i went toooo long

Just drop me a line if this could draw some interest

Thanks for reading thus far :D
Max

[MIJB#19]

I am a solo player since i am not that much into GamePlanning but I am more of a GM player, even tough i'd really love to play in a MP league but i'd be crushed in no time! :(Really, game planning isn't the most important thing in MP, the roster building part is. Especially if you don't use any absurd or extreme settings.


On the rest of your post, good luck with your project!
The only thing I can think of is maintaining the balance that the game is built around.

[Draghetto]

Aboslutely, this has been my first idea since the beginning, and this is why i am starting by studying trends and distribution off the original draft produced by the game.

But i do think that this has some flaws and i'd like to improve in those areas in order for a SP experience to be more challenging and balanced

[Draghetto]

I am going on with my project, i am in the situation that i am able to generate a random class that is in line with the kind of class that TCY produces, but with a different distribution on the roles, so you will not get tons of QB and PN.

At the same time the same engine can be used to generate an historical draft, that takes as imput a formatted file that i am actually basing on ESPN draft ratings, but that could be adapted to use whatever NFL Draft resource

I am working on 2011 and 2010 as test, and the results so far are quite nice, but i still need some work. I also found a way to predict the development when the file is imported in the real game, but i am not sure about using this, since it could affect too much the game, and also it would be difficult since each tole has different ranges and impact from that value