Cheats
 

Group,

I love this game and its fantastic statistic collecting, but I am sorry to say, it is a little too difficult for me to play . In addition I am a computer novice, with no programming skills. Are there any cheats for this game, during game play files that can be modified/manipulated/etcetera? Anthing where I can get an edge? I looked at the resource thread, but everything there seems to be listings not the ability to change data.

I am getting tired of running out of cap room, not being able to make advantageous trades, not being able to improve my team or wins. I am getting a little frustarted. I hate to ask for the help (cheats), but I need it. Thanks in advance for your help.

Warmest Regards,

John

:banghead:

Up, up, down, down, left, right...oh, wait. Nevermind ;)

Seriously, there are no "cheats" per say that I know of, but peruse the boards for advice and you'll get tons of usable tidbits.

One thing that you might find to be a really big help is to use an offensive gameplan posted on this board. SkyDog posted a library of them, and pretty much any among them might prove to be a big help to someone new to the game or otherwise struggling.

I don't think the real ticket in this game is to find a cheat to artificially turn your players into supermen, I think the real path is just to play the game better. An improved gameplan can help on that front a good deal, and possibly help you get more out of the players that you do have.

+1

Skydog's libraray was a massive help to me when I first got started almost a year ago and to this day and, almost a year later, he still has his stamp all over my offense, which is now a hybrid of three of his plans with adjustments to passing distances based on my QB's stengths.

Improving your gameplan is the only way to win in MP. It't not easy, especially on defense, but with patience and the help of the reference thread topics, it's enitrely possible. Four seasons ago, I was crap, but due to better gameplanning, I just won my conference in MP with a 13-3 record.

The three pieces of advice I can offer as theories to my sucess are #1 cut back on the aggressiveness, #2 maintain cohesion, #3 draft the best available player.

And most importantly, be patient. :)

Hi!

I agree with most of the previous replys.

I don't play MP leagues, so I cannot hint you on that.
In SP you can do a lot with the easiest difficulty level to learn the basics.

There are tons of good posts in this forum, but my "key to winning" in SP are always
- renegotiate your best players in the last year of their contract
- stay away from FA bidding wars unless you really want/need a player
- let the AI call plays
- trust Skydogs gameplans
- trade players on the decline for draft picks (the player tracker on the reference thread is a great tool)
- draft wisely (don't ask me how - I still sometimes have bust or two :banghead: )

Just try it, but beware, this game causes addictions :devil:

Thanks
 

Community,

Thank you very much for your suggestions/insight/clarifications. Thank you for taking the time to help me. I am going to try these and see where I get.

While I am doing this, I would hope that one of the community's programming aces will develop some file editors for us that are technically challenged. I personally play a strict cop on myself when it comes to using these types of tools. I don't want to go 16-0 ten years in a row, or create supermen. I only use them to get enough of an edge to keep from going 0-16 ten years in a row.

If all this fails, I guess I will be stuck with going to Football Mogul, an inferior product, but at least with its modability, I have a chance at being somewhat successful.

Once again, thanks for listening.

Warmest Regards,

John

You could also try playing on the easiest level.

Is there a link to this gameplan library that has been mentioned?

FOFC OFFENSIVE GAME PLAN LIBRARY - Front Office Football Central

W00t...new euphemism!

Send a PM to Samdari. He could probably help you out.

For SP games you really don't need any cheats, the AI is very easy to beat once you get all the nuances of the game down so I'd say just stick with it and you'll start to dominate. When I first tried 2k4 I had a 12 yr SP career which resulted in 10 losing seasons, I was frustrated and gave up on the game, went back to playing Madden franchise mode. What a waste, I eventually came back to this game looking for something more challenging and am VERY glad I did.

Some tips on player managment from someone who was a noob not very long ago:

1. The most exploitive way of getting better players is to trade your draft picks to the computer for future draft picks. If you have a very high selection, especially a top3 the computer will sell their soul for it, you can get their next 2 years of picks and start to build a stockpile of picks. Just play with trading draft picks, I find trying to trade for players is pointless, the AI is very prude in that way.
2. For cap management purposes always try to give players an even distribution of cash. Players value first-year money and bonus more than anything so if you sign a contract that's cheap this year but costs huge in yr 4 you will run into trouble. Signing a deal that pays evenly for each year will save you tons of money in the long-run.
3. Another thing that will affect cap room greatly is signing veteran players to long-term deals. One of the hardest things for me to get used to was how quickly players can crash in ratings. Players may start to decline rapidly as early as their 7th year so do not sign long contracts past that point. I usually sign a player to a contract that will expire after their 7th year so that I can evaluate his worth after the yr7 training camp and maybe give him a new deal. And at that point I will only offer 2 or 3 year deals because a player can go from an 80overall to a 60 in as little as 2 training camps.
4. Renegotiate contracts after training camp because this is where older players will drop if they're going to. There's nothing worse than signing a vet to a new deal then he drops 10pts in TC and you've got a cancer on your cap.
5. Something that is absolutely HUGE for gameplanning and is a little bit hard to discover when first starting is that your offense will be limited by your QB's formation knowledge. A QB can ONLY use the formations he knows, so if you have a young QB you may be very limited in what formations you can run. This causes you to over use the formations he does know and nothing will put your offense in the shitter like doing one thing too much, the CPU defense will eat you alive. This doesn't happen half as much with running so I would recommend going with a rushing based offense until you get your feet under you. Use the Smashmouth O and take it from there. Make sure you go to the offensive adjustments screen and use the recommended values instead of the blank slate that will be there when you load his gameplan.

If you really want to have some god abilities over your team you could set up a MP league with you as the only human team... then you can force trades, give yourself whatever draft picks you want, etc. I do this for testing so I can put whatever players I want on my team. Also know that you can re-run stages in SP or MP if you don't like the results. Like if you see your QB drop 10pts in TC then you can just re-load your game and re-run TC, the results will most likely be different.

All in all I would say just stick with it, and ask lots of questions here. There is a steep learning curve to this game but when you start to master it you will pulverize the AI. There's just so many little things that need to be considered that sometimes as a new player it's very hard to tell why your team is perenially losing.

I just want to thank you for this.

I took over the Detroit Lions in a new career and spent about 10 years de-Millenizing them. About 8 years in, I started using these game plans. I ran West Coast for a while because that's what I could get the personnel for, but drafted the pieces for a "Greatest Show on Turf" team. I was competitive, but not great until I finally drafted a top QB. I took my time with him, let him wait a year with a position mentor and a summer in Europe, and then started him in year 2.

It came together brilliantly in year 3 of his career, and while my defense was mediocre, I was hanging 30-40 points up on the board just about every week. 13-3, and homefield thru the playoffs.

But my QB blew his ACL in the last game of the season.

My backup choices were his aging mentor (Andrew Walter - rofl) who didn't have much of anything left skill-wise, and an undrafted rookie that was never going to amount to more than a clipboard stand and ballcap model.

Fortunately, I had built a solid O-line and had a very good running back. So, figuring there was no way I was going to air it out, I loaded the "smash mouth" gameplan for the playoffs.

I averaged over 200 yards rushing each game, and won the Super Bowl.