Leveling the MP Playing Field? (AI Game Plans in MP)

[Pyser]

Brought this up in one of Ben's many other threads, but figured why not throw it out there here.

No custom game plans. You are a GM in the strictest sense of the word (though I suppose you can still set depth charts). The actual game plan is left to your coaches. So it's set on the commish side.

Could still handicap in other ways (3 year free agency rule or what have you), but I think leaving it up to the coaches could be a simple way to tone down the WR dominance, while making other positions fairly important too (like defense as a whole).

Thoughts?

[Gallifrey]

I like the idea of toning down the WR position. It is always good to me for the defense to play a major role (I like defensive games more than shootouts).

[Julio Riddols]

I feel like its mostly a balance issue right now. The big play receiving bar is too strong.

I do, however, like the idea of coaches having styles that they bring to a team. Maybe they have a set gameplan they come with that they adjust within a specific range each week, but then it becomes your job to assemble the proper personnel and coaching staff to maximize the production of your team on the field. This would also require the ability to re-sign your coaches before their contracts expire, and the ability to hire coordinators and position coaches away from other teams. Ideally teams would have to maintain a staff of at least 1 head coach, 1 OC, 1 DC, 1 ST coach, 7 position coaches, a trainer, and a team doctor for a minimum of 13 staff members.

I think players in a system should be rated according to their value in that system along with their basic ratings. Their experience level in the system should also be a factor. This would seemingly allow for vastly different scouting results from team to team, results you would have to weigh along with player production and 'ability to adapt' to new systems when considering free agent acquisitions. Player contract demands should then be related entirely to performance, where players who put up serious numbers ask for big wads of cash even if they are rated shitty.

I'm pretty sure something as simple as that would not only make the game a lot more fun and hard to pin down from a formula standpoint, but would cure a lot of the feeling that there is nothing you can do to beat certain owners.

Teams will constantly be trying to replace coaches and maintain, and there won't ever really be a system that truly stands out because there will be so many constantly changing coaching variables that affect the production of a team.

[Pyser]

i was more thinking a league that could be done now for mp, without needing anything from jim

[Julio Riddols]

Like if we made it so every team had a choice between 10-15 different mostly vanilla (not overpowered) game plans to use and if they didn't their export would be excluded?

[Subby]

Just have the mp setting checked that leaves gameplans up to the AI for every sim.

[Julio Riddols]

Just have the mp setting checked that leaves gameplans up to the AI for every sim.

Now that would be interesting.

[Julio Riddols]

So now someone needs to start a new league based around this idea.

[Pyser]

is that not what i proposed up top?

[Ben E Lou]

If you think this will work, try drafting a BPR team from scratch in the inaugural draft and the Rex game plans. You'll see very quickly that game plans aren't really the issue at all on the top end of things.

[Julio Riddols]

is that not what i proposed up top?

Yes indeed, but I am an idiot so it took a second statement with different words to wake my ass up.

[Julio Riddols]

If you think this will work, try drafting a BPR team from scratch in the inaugural draft and the Rex game plans. You'll see very quickly that game plans aren't really the issue at all on the top end of things.

So then it really is just a pure imbalance in the strength of the BPR bar? Couldn't that be tweaked real quick and fix this whole issue then?

[Pyser]

If you think this will work, try drafting a BPR team from scratch in the inaugural draft and the Rex game plans. You'll see very quickly that game plans aren't really the issue at all on the top end of things.

thats discouraging. i can't imagine the ai game plan would take the deep ball to the same extreme that most players have in custom game plans, though.

then again, i haven't tested it.

[Ben E Lou]

The AI doesn't throw as deep as *I* would, but it will throw deeper than many humans. Plus, keep in mind that BPR is now part of YAC as well, so the numbers can still get quite out of hand. I just ran a quick test season on a SP team of mine, turning on Rex game plans. The QB actually had the highest passer rating of his career (130.2 vs. previous high of 125.5). He "only" threw for 53 Tds (previous high was 64), but had 9.54ypa. Yards Per Completion was by a fair margin the lowest of his career (12.56 vs. a previous low of 14.12), but he did have 5,113 yards (roughly average for his career.)

Here's the key here: human-created game plans do a MUCH better job than the AI of catering towards "specialty" situations like a stud RB/TE combo, one good WR and one good TE, 2-TE, or something like that. But when you have gazelles at WR/WR/TE, the game plan is more a matter of preference than performance. Yes, an optimal game plan does perform better overall...but not by a huge margin. I'm pretty certain that if I took, say, my IHOF Tucker team (ROSTER HERE (http://108.59.255.76/%7Ebenelou/ihof/ben/teampageroster.php?teamid=3)), and went Rex or some sort of custom short pass game plan, I'd end up with 70-75% completions, lower (but still quite high overall) ypa, and similar QB rating and yards.

Now, all that said, I DO suspect that many human game planners do themselves a disservice by their bad choices, so in that regard it might level the playing field a bit. (I particularly believe that people over-react to my offenses and end up hurting themselves.) In other words, doing this wouldn't make the best game planners particularly worse, but it would make the bad game planners better.

But to go back to the original post...but I think leaving it up to the coaches could be a simple way to tone down the WR dominance, while making other positions fairly important too (like defense as a whole).I wish it were not the case, but this simply isn't true. In fact, I suspect that going all Rex would make the WRs a little MORE important. One obvious place is that Rex does a pretty bad job of using the TE. Even high-endurance TEs would drop from being in on 475-550 pass plays per season down into the 300-375 range instantly and permanently. That alone would make getting two great WRs more important.

[Kozure]

In the category of bad choices. I see GMs making very poor decisions when determining the starting roster. Playing marginally talented rookies over a cohesion boosting but crappy rated veteran is one of the most common GM mistakes I see in this game.

[Yoda]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Look at the NFL this past season. We had 2 QBs break Dan Marino's passing record and a 3rd at the doorstep (Stafford 5,038). It was 4 seasons ago that Brees was 15 yards shy of breaking the record.

In 2007 Tom Brady had Randy Moss- what happened? 68.9% completions (highest of his career), 50 TD, 117.2 rating.

What would happen if Brady had Moss, Megatron, Fitzgerald, Gronkowski and Peterson?

To me, that's the issue, you don't see numbers like some people can generate in fof because teams don't get all those top players on one team. People don't trade those players.

Take an average team, where the receivers don't have GD bars and big BPR bars, put up insane numbers, then I'll agree there is a problem. Until then, I just see it as people getting a collection of talent that just doesn't happen in the NFL and the stats that will generate.

[gstelmack]

Isn't the problem more like adding Heyward-Bey to the Raiders suddenly makes them a 4000 yard passing team? Because speed is king over everything else in FOF.

[Antmeister]

I still like this idea for an MP league. If there was a strict cap and the QB and WR were nerfed like the BFL, I think a lot of these numbers would be toned down and you would probably get realistic results.

[Yoda]

You won't get realistic results unless you stop people from making unrealistic trades. And what do you mean by realistic? Show me an MP league where 3 QBs threw for over 5k yards. And how do you define what is realistic?

[Pyser]

i think it would work. i like the idea of strictly being a GM (maybe with setting depth charts). it could be frustrating not being able to set up your offense, but it would make you work harder to create the type of guys you want to run the offense you like, and have the AI reflect that in game plans.

i appreciate ben's input, but i would hope that if 31 other people are competitively trying to build teams, with everyone being rexed, things might be more even.

maybe.

[Pyser]

also, not that its a huge issue, but it would take care of little things like unrealistic running plays on 3rd down like other threads have brought up

[tarcone]

If you really wanted to do this, I think rexing the depth charts would be important as well. Not only would you really need to think of players you need to get to run that GP you hope rex incorporates.
Maybe ban changing positions. So if you have 2 stud SEs on your roster, only one will play.

[aston217]

I can see a niche league for this kind of thing. Like one of those leagues where you draft every weekend or something and just sim through an entire season all at once.

But I think this would take most of the fun out of it, for me. In most cases I actually like to play the game, instead of having all the in-game options taken away from me.

I agree completely with Julio when he says it's a balance thing. The BPR is too strong. Well - to an extent. The 80/80 WRs with top BPR are way too damn powerful (I played a team today with a pair of essentially 85+ guys. THAT was a laugh, let me tell you. Although I still won, making them 7-6 on the year).

I also agree with Yoda. In real life, who lets a team get Moss and Megatron on the same team? And I also agree with greg. If Megatron and Fitzgerald wound up on the same team with some ho-hum quarterback, would they dominate the league?

So I'm just a really agreeable guy, I guess. But IMO, there's no reason to jump through hoops in search for some mythical standard of "realism" - stnadards which may indeed, be not at all corresponding to actual reality.

The #1 way to level the MP playing field is raising awareness -- and that's something that the savvy vets on here and other places put a lot of commendable effort in doing.