Gameplanning is Tedious

[Darkmatter]

So it's taken me a few days since starting my first playthrough, but I finally cranked out 100ish plays. All lovingly handcrafted from scratch. It was a ridiculously time consuming process, but the auto-gen plays just don't do anything for me.

Just as I was about to start my first first practice game I realized that a game plan needs to be setup as well. This is where the UI goes from "lovably obtuse" to "maddening." Why for the love of all that is holy can we only add 1 play to 1 category at a time? If I've made a set of 5 "base" runs that I want available in every situation I would literally have to click 200 times. That is insane. I should be able to highlight a certain # of plays on the left, and then click on a header to move them over.

The same issue exists for Defensive plays. While there may only be 12 plays, there are even more scenarios to add them to. I want to add a standard Press-2 play to every category? That'll take 15 minutes for a single play.

The "generate game plan" does nothing to help in these situations either. Nor does the option under controls that allows all plays to be available. The gameday interface only shows a small # of plays to choose from.

I've spent hundreds of hours on 7, and I'm really psyched about the additional details in 8, but I can't bring myself to spend 3 hours building a single game plan. Let alone customizing several plans based on an opponent. Please let us add multiple plays to multiple categories with as few clicks as possible.

[mrbyte]

100% agreed with the above
I think the game desperately needs an external play/playbook/gameplan design suite so they can prepare for the off season
MP games will have to stall before TC in order for teams to prepare playbooks and plans unless every team hits rex

[vatech24]

OK so this answers a lot of my fears when creating plays and game plans. Thank you for the heads up.

[Ben E Lou]

If I've made a set of 5 "base" runs that I want available in every situation I would literally have to click 200 times. Based on the help file, I'm reasonably certain that you don't want to do that. Each section is a script, and given that the AI rarely/never uses a play more than three times in one game, I'm guessing we don't want to do that either. (There's a warning somewhere in the help file that plays decline in success with each usage.)

[Ned Doolittle]

But in a real world football sense why wouldn't having 5 base runs work for most situations. The defense doesn't know you're going to run just because you line up in the same formation? Even if the defense knows you're running they don't know if you're going to run to the same side. If you pass enough out of the same formations you run out of there's no reason why you couldn't keep the defense guessing. Unless I'm misunderstanding this.

[QuikSand]

100% agreed with the above
I think the game desperately needs an external play/playbook/gameplan design suite so they can prepare for the off season
MP games will have to stall before TC in order for teams to prepare playbooks and plans unless every team hits rex

I certainly agree that access to the playbook and gameplan should be available during any part of the cycle, even if it's only "put into place" at that one stage. I've always found it curious that these elements are unavailable during, say, free agency.

However... let's not forget that we can save/load playbooks and gameplans. So, I just did a quick "Save As" to set aside one FOF 8 league at the pre-camp stage, just for this purpose. It's a manageable workaround unless you're starved for disk space or something like that. I can use that setup to develop a playbook, and then load it in to the career when I need it.

[Darkmatter]

I certainly agree that access to the playbook and gameplan should be available during any part of the cycle, even if it's only "put into place" at that one stage. I've always found it curious that these elements are unavailable during, say, free agency.

However... let's not forget that we can save/load playbooks and gameplans. So, I just did a quick "Save As" to set aside one FOF 8 league at the pre-camp stage, just for this purpose. It's a manageable workaround unless you're starved for disk space or something like that. I can use that setup to develop a playbook, and then load it in to the career when I need it.

The load/save functionality for the playbook is fine as it is, imo. It's a bit overwhelming but creating your own plays is about as straightforward as one can expect. I can only think of a few small suggestions. The first is in regards to the "Generate Plays" feature. Right now you can set the # of plays, and the Style threshold. But it'd be nice if we could specify what type of plays we want the system to generate. For instance if I knew squat about the run game and wanted the system to just generate me 40 run plays.

Another option for the playbook (I haven't had a chance to test this, so maybe it is already possible?) I should be able to create "parts" of a playbook and then load those plays ontop of the existing Playbook without erasing the entire thing.

For example, say I start out with a pair of stud TE and craft 15-20 plays that are built around abusing them and save them as "Stud_TE_Pass_Plays". Eventually they retire and I remove the plays from my book, as right now they're just taking up space. A decade or two later I luck out and grab another pair of Gronks and dust off the old "Stud_TE_Pass_Plays" and add them to my existing playbook. You could do a lot of mixing and matching as you acquire or lose offensive weapons if this were possible.

All that said, my original post, and the crux of my problem is with the Game Plan section. No matter how you go about building your plays, you're still having to make a massive # of clicks to set the game plan up in the first place unless you just generate it and hope that Rex doesn't stick a shit ton of long distance throws on 1st down and 10.

[Jstraub]

I'd contend game planning is tedious and ambiguous. I'd be more inclined to spend time game planning if I was more confident it mattered. In other words, I'm not confident what I am doing makes me more competitive than a rexed gameplan. I acknowledge my (and the community's knowledge) will grow in this area but right "out-of-the-box" this does feel overwhelming.

As one quick example, If I have receivers that are good at Route running and YAC but poor at Getting downfield and big plays, should I run a west coast (short passing) scheme? Also, if i'm defensive game planning against receivers with RR and YAC ability ( put poor at getting downfield) should I play more press-1 and press 2 coverages? I'm inclined to do these things but honestly haven't seen much evidence that my plans are workinging.

Lastly, my experience with prior versions of FOF is that having good players makes everything "work". I really like this because I think its very realistic. My question though remains, can I use bad players and SCHEME a win over better players? Can I even use bad players to SCHEME a win over the AI with better players? If not, then I feel like I'm wasting my time game-planning and I'll spend it on drafting and acquiring players (like I did in prior versions).

Regardless, I'm having fun with this new version and appreciate all the time that has gone into this and all the posts.

[SlyBelle1]

For me I have come to the conclusion that I simply want to be the GM of my team and want to count on the AI to manage the playbook/game planning just as coaches would have that responsibility, assuming the AI is doing this based on their styles, opponent, and team strengths.

So as long as the AI can sufficiently do this on my behalf over time, I will be happy and not look to really customize anything. And from what I can see so far, the AI does do a decent job representing the play style good enough for me.

However, if a more "simplistic" method was introduced for game planning (i.e. just answer a few basic questions and AI generates off that), I could certainly change my mind, but simply don't believe I could do a better job at the moment so I would rather spend my time giving my coach the tools he needs to succeed:)

[MattG]

I'd contend game planning is tedious and ambiguous. I'd be more inclined to spend time game planning if I was more confident it mattered. In other words, I'm not confident what I am doing makes me more competitive than a rexed gameplan. I acknowledge my (and the community's knowledge) will grow in this area but right "out-of-the-box" this does feel overwhelming.

This is my issue. I have quick simmed multiple seasons using as many different D gameplans as I can come up with...and my defensive numbers are usually the same.

I've gone with all Zone Cover 2, Cover 3, Cover 4. I've gone with all blitzes (zone and man). I've gone with all no pressure. I've gone with all Buzz plays with one Cover 4.

No matter what I do when I SIM my run defense is in the 26-32 for yards and YPC. I've simmed at least 15 seasons with each defensive game plan and 90% of the time I see the same results. Every now and then I have a great year and move up to the 21-25 range. It's very frustrating. Playing Buzz all year long with the SS moving up to the box should hamper the run but allow the pass. I see no different between 8 in the box and 7 in the box when in football there is a huge difference. I have decent DL and LB's against the run, and the SS I move up to the box is a run stopper as well.

It just makes me think it's all ratings and no scheme...which is a bummer.