Version 8.3 is out.
 

Version 8.3

Released February 1, 2020

- Added player and other data files for 2019 season
- Added chooser, to allow start in 2016, 2017, 2018 or 2019
- fixed crash with viewing draftable players who have both potential conflicts and affinities
- tweaked passing game to reduce synergy (slightly) between very good receivers and defensive recognition of these events. This is not a dramatic change, more intended to see its effects, long-term, and evaluate from there. Reports of passing games with 75% increases in yardage over normal - do we want to eliminate that? Difficult question. Always a balance between allowing people freedom to create and see their creations flourish and getting too far away from what would be a realistic outcome in today's game.
- made change to defensive play-calling when the offense is in a situation (almost always two-minute drill) where the defense can't pick an appropriate response. It then goes to a dime or nickel package, but chooses a hybrid man-to-man with unassigned players dropping into deep coverage, then reports it as a goal-line defense of sorts (that part was cosmetic only). The fix should ensure an appropriate pass coverage. It's unlikely this would have affected any game where the AI is creating game plans.

it does what it says it does to the passing game.

i did some very quick tests, and the sim became more predictable to me

Great work Jim. Appreciate the time an effort spent to giving us a more realistic game.

Beyond the call of duty at this point.

What does this mean?

tweaked passing game to reduce synergy (slightly) between very good receivers and defensive recognition of these events

Do defenses tilt towards better receivers a priori?

I have noticed that crossing about 10 targets per game leads to unexplainable results like a 30% drop rate or something.

My initial thoughts, bearing in mind I don't play SP and have only simmed for 30 minutes so stand to be corrected.

It appears passing in general has been given a nerf. Simmed a few SP seasons all teams on AI and it isn't uncommon for no QB to break 100 QBR. Early 100s to late 90s is a typical max.

I never play SP but I have a gut feeling this wasn't the case before. I don't expect these stats to play out in MP this way, but we may all be pulled back some in passing efficiency.

110 QBR could be the new 120 for MP. Lower Avg Att perhaps the cause of this?

I think this may actually rebalance the entire game in that WRs will become somewhat less valuable. This could actually kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Not only are unrealistic gameplans going to be less viable, but WRs will not be as overpowered as they once were which is a God send for the games realism as a whole.

Don't play SP either, my interest is in understanding the mechanism described.

Also most of my leagues have a few 100+ QBR guys per season no more, unsure what is meant by the "cheesy" or "unrealistic" game plans by some posters but do generally agree that WRs were the most valuable players.

It is referring to all pass gameplans. The familiar system wasn't working as intended. This is intended to improve realism somewhat.

I passed for 9000 yards in a SP season and posted details on the OOTP site and at the RZB site. 8000+ yards was put up in MP I understand. I guess it depends how full the leagues you play in are and how good the GMs are at producing gameplans. Whether there are dominant passing teams put together talent wise. 120+ passer ratings were also relatively common, 130+ possible but rare.

Jim historically doesn't discuss inside the game mechanics in too much depth, so I would be surprised if that changed. But who knows.

Ok thanks Hammer, so in basic terms...famialarity increased. Btw, never seen anything close to those numbers I. My MP leagues, even 4k seasons are quite rare.

I am really not sure what Jim has done inside the game. It sounds like he has found a way to get the job done. But whether that is by way sorting familiarity or by other means I don't know. The terms used don't make any sense to me, but I imagine they are well thought out. Probably not meant to give the game away. The reference to multiple good receivers may be significant. We have talked for some time about QBx1 WRx2. Having that second great WR was huge. Maybe that has been lessened. But I don't see how defensive recognition would apply.

Early days, as we play I am sure it will become clearer. Ultimately playing the game will spell it out.

Is this the tzach release?

Meet the Big Cheese

What a jerk that guy!

I look forward to these changes and finding new ways to be annoying, I'm glad Jim was able to get a fix/tweak out relatively quickly as I assume the all-pass gameplan was only going to get more common. Just about to re-run some of my SP test leagues and see what interesting differences pop up.

It looks like it's going to play out as a general nerf of passing. Just load up an 8.2 long-term test career and run a few seasons in 8.3. Pass numbers will be wayyyyyy down. Did a quick 5-year add-on to a long-term 8.2 sim and had the 5 lowest league-wide qb ratings and ypa by wide margins--upper 80s down to 81ish, 7.0ish down to 6.4ish.

Meh, never even broke a 95 QBR once.

Tzach's guy passed for 7680 yards with a 121.5 rating. Over 8000 for the team.

I never played in that way. The best I achieved over a season in the last version was 5475 with a 131.5 rating.


I don't have much of a problem with a guy who passes for 6000 yards with a 90 rating. The problem comes when you pass for massive yardage totals AND a sky high rating total. Changes the dynamic of the game and thus forces everyone to take that approach if they want to compete.

Thank you Jim.

There is a bug in the game when you create 12 new plays in the season in multiplayer that it doesn't save the plays unless the commissioner restores the playbook after the game was played.

I believe this wasn't an issue in the first game release.

Genuine LOL at this which had somehow passed me by

alright, i did some tests and i found similar results to ben's in terms of ypa (6.5ish), comp pct (61% ish) and qb ratings (82% ish). so for most people this version will be throwback football. you will have to go back to the early 2000s to find those numbers.

NFL Season By Season Passing | Pro-Football-Reference.com

i like the new challenge and now the question is, would a team be successful in those days if they passed the ball most of the time? i guess we will have an answer soon.

Love the update! Glad to see Jim still refreshing the game. Even more excited to see a minor glimpse into what to expect from the OOTP partnership with the multiple season start ability with different rosters and coaches. Love FOF and this was a great surprise update and absolutely has me even more excited for FOF/ OOTP!

I would take it a bit further and say it's throwback to the 90's football era of passing.

i agree -- i love the new version, and this is a free update.

Starting Year
 

- Added chooser, to allow start in 2016, 2017, 2018 or 2019

I only can get 2019

Agreed regarding the 1990s style football. I'm not a big fan of the patch. Perhaps Jim should take us back to the 1950s and really nerf the passing game.

Would you rather unrealistic passing silliness or this? Not that "this" squashes that. Just helps some.

What we need is an ever tightening algorithm for teams who don't run the ball. But to expect Jim to write that up in a patch is too much to ask IMO.

What we have is a fair compromise IMO. My initial impression was 2005 NFL at the earliest.

That's the problem - the issue was not resolved. I am in 4 leagues with only 1 GM "gaming the game". But the GM plans to continue until there is a hard stop. So, we have a nerfed passing game by 2020 standards with little benefit.

You are speculating that a hard stop would be difficult to deploy. It very well could be that he is on the fence with regard to how much latitude to allow in gimmicky game plans. After all, he did express this, correct?

"Reports of passing games with 75% increases in yardage over normal - do we want to eliminate that? Difficult question. Always a balance between allowing people freedom to create and see their creations flourish and getting too far away from what would be a realistic outcome in today's game."

Yes I am speculating. I was thinking along the lines of the familiarity system being tightened up, which would have implications for Rex. Resulting in a big project and a lot of work. Perhaps Jim could code in a lack of rushing to slow the passing game in another way, but I just can't see it as being easy to implement. Could be wrong.

I agree with you that the difference 8.3 will make is fairly small. But it is a step in the right direction. Plus it is good to see Jim jumping in to take action.

Apart from the realism issue, teams employing this strategy are also able to benefit from a cap workaround as they don't need a decent RB or run blocking on the OL. That saved $ can be invested elsewhere. I see it as trying to exploit the engine. But plenty don't see it that way at all. I understand why your commish may hesitate to wipe this stuff out with house rules.

I just appreciate 8.3 coming along when it did as it encourages people to run the ball more. So far so good in the RZB. The lowest carry count in the RZB was 15 carries in a 16-30 loss. Fantastic to see in my opinion, no problem with that. Not in the slightest bit personal to the guys that run the Offense, everyone enjoys the game in different ways. For me realism is a key attraction of FOF.

I have been watching the game since the 80s. In fact the 80s was favourite era. Players could hit and there were various ways to win. Defensive players didn't have their hands tied. So I don't see going back in time as a bad thing, just the opposite. But I appreciate opinions may vary.

Another method to attack the problem would be to force at least a few run plays in the early slots of the common down and distance scenarios. And that's not too big of a stretch from an already existing requirement - Jim forces a minimum of 25 run plays in the playbook.

On a side note, the GM who is running the all pass GP was scout picked in a recent draft. The draft utility picked an RB in round 1. I didn't previously realize the draft utility has a snarky sense of humor. ;)

I like the idea of forcing a minimum amount of run plays in to the gameplan. Make them runs by a RB and ensure they will actually be used. That would punish the RB-OL cap workaround and produce more realistic stats.

Huge ask for a patch, but a good idea.

In the short term I think all it would take is 1 brave commish to step in and say enough. House rule this stuff out of a league. Minor waves no doubt, but a good chance GMs who are irritated by the tactic would join that league to replace those that leave. Once one league does it, I think others would follow.

I'm not seeing this CPU vs CPU watching the games, stats look fine and are higher then what you are seeing.

there seems to be some confusion between realistic stats and realistic play calling.

proposing bizarre house rules will only lead to bizarre solutions in multi-player leagues, as long as players can still create.

in MP, in principle the goal is to win against human GMs that will throw at you something different than what the conservative AI does. i want to gameplan against people that run using 104, run everytime in 3rd and 6 (both NFL-unrealistic), and i want to find solutions to that.

if one wants plays called following conservative standards, and the goal is to not allow people to create, then it's easier and more pratical to not allow game planning at all. this can be easily enforced by the commish (put yes in 'Coaches reset game plan...' in multi player options). running into this or that gap, or passing to X or Z using route 3 or 4 makes very little difference to the outcome. not worth spending time with that if one cannot create something new.

if one really wants NFL-like realistic stats, either do the solution above (well, now one gets passing stats from 15 yrs ago), or produce a realistic MP or SP league. there's many wonderful leagues out there, but none are NFL-like replications. drafting is too certain, and injuries are too few. how can one expect stats to be realistic if the universe isn't?

replicate the nfl universe in MP (or SP) and you would get 2018 nfl stats with v8.2. it's pretty easy to do that -- just crank up the injury setting to 400, so one gets closer to realistic injuries such as 285 players on IR (8.9 IRs per team per season). never get a scouting bar above 50, put the combine correlation to 0, and the results from the draft will resemble much more NFL patterns. i guarantee that using those two settings, there will be no one able to consistently pass for 8000 yds with 8 ypa and qb rating 110.

Ultimately I think there will always be 2 schools of thought on this. I appreciate the game isn't without other flaws, and that we play on an unrealistic injury setting.

I think if written with time and care house rules could knock this on the head, but I agree it isn't an ideal solution. A fix from Jim will always be more universally accepted.

I would hope that you would accept that there is a flaw in the familiarity system within the game. For me trying to take advantage of flaws simply isnt a sporting way to play. The game is supposed to be fun for all, there is no money to be made in it any longer. I am also sure that it is apparent now that this method of playing bothers a lot of people. I don't understand why you or anyone else would want to persist trying to take advantage of problems in the game. I don't see how anyone could think the RB-OL cap workaround is a reasonable and sporting way to play.

The point has been proven. It was only the drafting and trades that held you back in the RZB, not the strategy itself. Certainly pre 8.3 I believe your system was superior to any standard approach. I would of followed your system and played that way myself if winning was the only concern. I would guess you will be the equal or better of anyone using this approach even post 8.3. You have nothing more to prove. I would of thought the decent thing to do now would be to see how you get on playing the game like the other 95% of us do. Guys like myself, Dawg and Ben could replicate what you do pretty easily. I just don't see that would be fun for anyone, winning just isn't that important is it?

I think maybe we just see things as polar opposites. For me the game is about having a laugh, and enjoying time over a shared interest with like minded people. Building a league in to a community. Creating divisions over grey area tactics seems completely alien to that.

I think once it became clear that zero-running worked this well there was a risk that everyone would start doing it and MP FOF would become a bit silly.

Doesn't mean it's a bad simulation of the NFL though. I'd love to see a NFL team with an 8-8 roster try passing every down and see if it gets them to 10-6 and the playoffs. Are we all totally sure it wouldn't work??? I'm not, although obviously I can see some of the pitfalls.

Anyway once tzach had figured out how to beat the engine reliably he had two options. First one was to sit quiet and pick up MP FOF titles in every league he played in for a while as everyone else gradually figured out what he was doing. Second one was to be open about it and that's led to the patch (I presume).

Fair enough to my mind and I'd say that's best way to help the MP FOF world. I haven't been playing this game nearly as long as others but as I understand it there's a solid tradition of elite players finding quirks in the game engine and then revealing them so as to improve the game, as opposed to just benefitting from them solely.

I suppose you could say he had a third option where he could have chosen to play 'more normally' but I'm not really sure how he is supposed to define that...to some extent perhaps some of us have been doing that sub-consciously, I don't know. I probably have, come to think of it. I do agree that exploits etc kill the fun of the game insofar as that's what they are.

I don't really know what the patch does but it's cool to think Jim has watched what we're doing over here and it has helped him refine the game for our benefit.

I am not sure Jim would think it is cool to have to write and patch due to a small minority.

The discovery itself is something. But replication is easy. That 9000 yard season I posted up took me less than an hour from opening the game.

Many of us could start playing like this, it would end up coming down to who could build the best team for the system. There isn't much skill to it once you have it up and running.

I doubt it would work in the NFL as play action would hold no weight, there would be nothing to slow the rush. Who knows. Hope we never find out. These guys are smarter than we are, if it were a good option I suspect we would see a team with a lower game carry rate than 20.

To me your key point was exploits kill the fun of the game Jamie. This is just a game and supposed to be fun after all.

Oh yeah, for sure. And I suppose good to get this ironed out before FOF 9

i appreciate your points, but i disagree with most of them (except that fof should be fun) :-)

I strongly disagree there's a flaw in passing the ball and the way its implemented in fof. for some reason, people have this assumption that a balanced run/pass approach *has* to be the most efficient. all research with real nfl data (ron yurko, josh hermsmeyer, chiefs analytics, warren sharp, football outsiders, etc) shows that this not necessarily holds -- if you can pass the ball, the passing efficiency will typically not decrease with the number of attempts. also, there's nothing like 'establishing the run'. so essentially what people find is that in normal game situations, if you can pass the ball you do, if you cannot you run. the game below is a good example.

Kansas City Chiefs at Los Angeles Rams - November 19th, 2018 | Pro-Football-Reference.com

what the people above found is that nfl teams don't do this more often because 1) injuries, 2) protect your main source of revenue (QB), 3) not having personnel.

trying to enforce low-efficiency passing is what is unrealistic according to the real data. so what you are asking me to do is to play a different game, and in the way that you imagine it should be played.

no one is taking advantage of a problem in the game fof. i find it cheap to frame it like that. unless you are referring to a problem in the game of football itself, where a pass is typically more efficient than a run. the answer for your question is in your first sentence. those of us who pass actually enjoy and have fun simulating seasons like this. i don't understand why people are bothered by this, and i don't know what i can do other than not playing in the same league as those that are bothered, and i respect that. that's why we don't play in the same league anymore. if ben asks me to stop passing or step down from his leagues, i will respect that.

everyone has a cap workaround in place by definition, except those who benefit from 99 scouting and the certainty of the draft. in this case, the cap workaround is to trade players that will soon become expensive. either don't pay OL-RB, or don't pay WR2/WR3/WR4/WR5, or don't pay the QB/TE, or don't pay the defense, etc. i don't see the difference.

i guess i'll keep being indecent.

why do you want me to play in the same way that you do? i don't understand that.

yep, we have to agree to disagree.

Single Player Sim Engine
 

So you guys are saying the sim engine is screwed up in regards to the passing game for single player games? or not?

Thanks

No it isn't screwed up. It is running roughly how the NFL did in 2005.

LOL I don't see that as yet for some reason through Week 6 in my single player game. I don't call plays.

Yeah we are at totally polar opposites on this Zach. The team with the least average carries in a game has been just over 20 for years and years. It has been solid and stable.

Not one team in all of those years (I have found stats back to 2003) have broken from that statistic. The greatest football brains on the planet, 32 teams in 17 years. If it was a realistic way of improving chances of winning they would of tried it by now. We have stats gurus throwing percentages at coaches play by play. It is beyond reasonable doubt for me.

Anyhow, I will drop it now as we will never find common ground on this one.

Try simming a few full seasons in different universes. You will then. Unless you haven't upgraded to the new patch of course.

I got the new patch. So it's less QB's with 100 or higher rating and less yards per pass attempt?

A drop of around 0.6 YPA, resulting in an average QBR reduction of around 6 points. This has resulted from a nerfing of WRs it appears.

Appears to me Jim was trying to fix what some of you guys were complaining about, maybe he will put it back, be careful what you ask for.

i've now done extensive tests, and what the sentence above seems to imply is that defenses are playing the pass better. one can see this more easily in obvious passing situations such as 3rd 10+. in v8.2, a top passing team would convert this 47% of the time, and it's down to 30% in v8.3.

here's what i found

- things like PD% increased by 7ish points. this is caused by more defended passes and slightly more INTs.
- increase in PR% by 1-2ish points. this comes from increased hurries, and sack % looks the same.
- no noticeable changes to familiarity, at least as reported in the log
- no noticeable nerfing of offensive positions. this can be seen e.g. with yards per catch and yards after catch (per catch) staying nearly the same. I also see no noticeable difference in offensive stats when passing from non-obvious situations such as 3rd-1.

so the causal order seems to be more that more defended passes and more hurries (increase in pd% and prct%) lead to more incompletions and a few more INTs. since ypc is nearly the same, this causes ypa to go down. lower ypa means lower number of TDs. more imcompletions, lower ypa and less TDs make QBR to go down to 82ish.

I know it is early days but I am not enjoying the new patch at all. It will take some time to get used to it and will certainly need to change my approach to games but games are not enjoyable to watch. Way too many 3 and outs. The pendulum has swung way too much in the other direction for me.

I see next to no difference in short passing, the difference being in the medium to long passing. Probably due to the targets being WRs. I see evidence WRs have declined stat wise.

3rd and long conversion rates down due to nerfing on medium and long passing to WRs would make sense.

Still room for doubt whether the nerfing is positional or distance related, but in line with what Jim said most likely positional you would think.

Avg Att is the critical stat to look at, not YAC or Avg C. The distances of receptions are samey as you say.

What is different is the percentage of completions to WRs. Less passes are being completed to them, more incomplete passes. If you look at Avg Att to WRs you will see a reduction in numbers. But only to WRs.

i looked, but that's not what i see in my data (10 seasons of AI-only plays)

I will say that I certainly do see the slight increase in hurries and passes defended that you also see.


Basically I think 8.3 is playing out exactly as described.