Video: Talking about chemistry and FOF strategy with QuikSand
 

So QuikSand and I just spoke for an hour or so about chemistry and FOF strategy, and we recorded it in case others in the FOF community might find it interesting.

Our first focus was chemistry given that he is the master of that...but we ended up ranging more widely into FOF strategy and how he thinks about the game. Really interesting stuff.

Doing this was a real treat for me and big thanks to Quik for doing it. Just love listening to him talk about playing the game. Hope others do too.

Youtube link here:

QuikSand on chemistry and strategy in MP FOF - YouTube

legendary.

It was great.. I’m a little unclear on how the chemistry color groups, have different “personality traits”... I saw that Tzach even had a chart up that listed “standard deviations”.. ? I’ve heard that some color groups are better to go after, but am unclear what the differences are...

Could you or Quilk or Tzach comment on that in this thread?

Great Video, very well done.. thank you—

Here's the URL referenced in the video:
https://sites.google.com/view/tzach/personality-traits

Bottom line - not all players are created equally, believe it or not. For whatever cosmic reason, players in each triad of the chemistry world clearly have some different dice being rolled for some of their traits.

So, if you really value intelligence, frex... the 3-4/5-6/10-11 group is a GOLDMINE. And the 2-3/4-5/6-7 group is a desert.

There are exceptions to every rule - you see the averages posted there, but if you do a large sample you could calculate a standard deviation as an indication of how tight/wide the distribution of the ratings is. If you're not facile with that term, just skip it.

enjoyed this, feels like a FOF podcast is a natural next step. i had no idea different groups had different traits. it's amazing how there's always new things to learn in this game.

i'd love to hear more from experts on game planning, drafting, and cap management

and i really liked the ending where you guys brainstormed on unexplored avenues in the game. it kind of shows how far off these forums have fallen (whether because forums are becoming outdated, the users are splintered across multiple boards, or other).

speaking of, i was aware of RZB but not too familiar. very cool to see a full league thriving (trades every day! amazing). i was surprised to see threads on exploits and game advantage discussions that never made their way over here, or to other leagues.

Great chat, thanks for sharing this.

100 views... who are these people?

As would I! I'm tempted to do some more of these. I had a great time doing this

thank you.. i never knew this......

another question I've had.... when you get the chemistry setup you like...

do your leaders have to be active in games, to take advantage of chemistry effects?

Don't think so

no, active/inactive doesn't matter

they just need to have enough starts to turn their chemistry effects on (typically 8, but there's something weird there too)

118 now - and perennial losers like me! :)

Thx guys.. appreciate you sharing

great video guys... love the discussion and you guys sound very professional! I have never been into chemistry and still not fully sold on it.

Very simple and stupid questions for a newbie:

- Does chemistry/affinity improve a player or a position group?

The game docs all point toward the overall chemistry of a group affecting the whole group. So, when I sign an affinity bum WR with 95 personality to sit on my bench all year, it's not to make him better, it's to make my WR1 and TE1 better on-field. That's deeply connected to my whole idea of getting value from each and every roster slot.

QS - total paradigm shift here. I was always trying, and failing, to get them on the field and not looking at them holistically. I think I may need to invest some more time going back over the game doc. I was lost at looking at others rosters and seeing these players with terrible ratings and did not understand the relationship. Beginning to see!

In the video you mentioned using the tool on the league site for your MP league, any tips to make it easier to find chemistry fits in SP?

Yes, I wish I had gotten into that on the video. Not a silver bullet, but...

In-game, the key page is obviously (I think obviously) the roster page labeled "Personality." That reveals the leadership and personality strength for each player, including rookies post-draft (even though it's not shown on the player card).

The "Attitude Advisory" includes the simplest summary of where you are with chemistry at the moment, and can be a useful sandbox to mess around with - in single-player, save your game and then see what happens if you cut your lousy OL group leader, of if you move that DB leader safety up to play as a coverage linebacker...whatever. Then reload from the save game if you don't like how it looks.

The biggest bit of advice I have, for someone dipping his toe into the pool here, is... the key rating is personality. Not leadership. So... if you're trying to make chemistry good enough to help your team, then you want to get a lot of chemistry benefit from each roster slot you commit to it.

So...already have most of the WR/TE group settled, but now you want to add a guy to help the happy factor? If he's just sitting on the bench, then a guy rated 23/23 vs. 6/19 is immaterial, as long as he has the starts to click. So, get the guy with the 93 personality, rather than the guy with the 34. And with your leaders... if you are building... don't build around leadership guys, build around personality guys who are strong enough as leaders to take the reins. 99Ldr/99Pers is the gold standard, but if I have to choose between 99/80 and 80/99, I'd rather work with the 80/99 guy who will MAX CLICK, and I'll suffer with the occasional too-high-leadership guy he rules out from being an asset for us.

TL;DR - Use the personality screen, and do your sort by clicking Leadership-then-Personality... that's your home base to screen for players to target in free agency, etc.

Also, if you're looking for a specific leader in one group in free agency... I think the easiest way to do that is to sort by birthdate, and then open up older players who you know are in the right range. If I need a 5-6 OL leader, I sort by the oldest players in the league, sorted by birthdate not experience, and work my way down... looking at both OL and also switchable positions like TE, LS, and FB in that order.

This was really cool. Great job guys.

more dumb questions:

- how does the position group pick a leader? is it all leadership?

- young leaders.. when do they get picked as a leader? year 5 i think?

- young affinities.. how does a player go from "potential affinity" to affinity?

Okay, this stuff is around here and there, but a quick catchup:

-Chemistry works among your 5 position groups: RB/FB, WR/TE, OL, D7, DB
-There's one leader per group, other group members interact with him
-Your QBs all interact with the three offensive group leaders

-It's all based on zodiac, three groupings, each sign has 2x good and 1x bad
-Leaders assigned based on a combination of total experience and leadership
-The precise formula for who leads is unknown, but exp counts up to 8 yrs
-Players don't activate chemistry until they have starts, typically 8 games
-Rookies from rounds 1-4 are the exception, they get it for free for a year
-In a redraft league, looks like everyone counts for year one, no matter what

-The strength of the affinity is a function of leader+follower personality
-A "potential affinity" means the player hasn't gotten his starts yet to click
-Affinities affect the performance of the position group, not just the individual
-Everything about affinities, presumably, is reversed with conflicts

-The overall magnitude of this effect is very hard to measure
-One study a long time ago suggested it's more than 1 win/yr on a good team
-There's anecdotal evidence saying it's valuable, not much rigorous testing

Longer discussions here: FOF 8 Chemistry Thread

Some of that stuff weaves through just-after-release revelations, and then changes with patches, and so forth... but most of what "we" know is posted in that thread.

Quicksand you mentioned how the pink group is the "best" affinity group around the 47 minute mark. What makes that group better than others that seem to have higher personality or intelligence ratings? Are you able to expand on this at all?

I just signed a MLB and he became the defensive front leader with a personality of 34. He has 8 years experience. I have an outside LB with 9 years of experience and 90 personality. Why is he the leader?

leadership is what mostly matters for leaders (!)

Haven't watched the video yet, but I see lots of mentions by quick about personality like this one:

The biggest bit of advice I have, for someone dipping his toe into the pool here, is... the key rating is personality. Not leadership. So... if you're trying to make chemistry good enough to help your team, then you want to get a lot of chemistry benefit from each roster slot you commit to it.

Does that make it a "Strong Affinity"

oh sorry, what i mean is that LEA is what mostly matters for setting who the leader is. you will want high PER from your leaders to maximize affs as quik mentions, but if a player has low LEA, it will be difficult to make said player a leader in the first place

This has turned out to be ... very much against my self-interest.

In my MP leagues, all manner of people are now "focusing on chemistry" which for me means more bidders for my beloved high-leadership/high-personality players, and the like. I hate it.



Not really, I'm glad some people have gotten a kick out of a new angle in an increasingly old game.



Just stay out of my signs, show some fucken respect.

I stayed out of your lane in IHOF, but the purple group is crowded over there.

One thing I like about going "all in" on chemistry is it focuses the group of players that I need to consider.

Interesting. According to FOF, smart people (purple group) are not very loyal or popular.

We wanted to make MP FOF a bit harder, right!?

I just found this thread and the YouTube videos. I have been playing this game for a few years and quite honestly I am horrible at drafting, never figured out how to use Draft Analyzer.

I've done plenty of searching on this forum and tried to understand what you guys are talking about with all your maths speak like "standard deviations" and I never really figured it out.

I took a break from FOF and then saw these videos and WOW! I watched all of them (a few twice) and learned more about this game in those 9 hrs than I could imagine.

Thank you so much for doing these! Big shout out to Squirrel, Ben, MalcPow and Quiksand. Ivery much appreciate the time you took away from life to help the idiots, like me, out.

glad to hear, they were fun to do, and I'm glad they have connected

I have a question I don't think has been asked yet. Do we believe the affinity is being represented by a number behind the scenes and described as mild, exceptional etc as a way to express it or is an exceptional affinity equal to any exceptional affinity across the board.

IE, if my leader and a 75 PER make an exceptional affinity pairing, is that going to be different than my leader and an 85 PER exceptional affinity.