Is this an intended tell, a bug, or what?
 

I've had a small amount of success doing this in leagues, and thought I'd share to add to the collective body of knowledge. I'm also not convinced that it's not a plain ol' bug, either.

1. Sort by a specific category's current rating in the FA screen.
2. See rookie who appears to be a near-void in said category showing up much higher on the list than he belongs by his bars.
3. Sign him, thinking there might be a mask there.

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed it and has teased out something more than I have. A great example just showed up in IHOF:




When I sorted the FA list by current kickoff distance, this guy showed up at like #4 or so. In need of a kicker anyway, I signed him. Now that he shows up on my roster, it's even more interesting. When I sort by kickoff distance for all kickers on rosters, he is slotted right between a guy who is a 40 and another guy who is a 43. Clearly, that 41 or 42 that FOF is giving me for him is above his blue-bar range. And again, that's *current*, not future.

I haven't found this to be the case in *all* situations, but it seems to me that a disproportionate number of guys with this anomaly turn out to be better than advertised.

Has anyone else noticed this, or have a take on it?

(TC is Thursday, so I'll update his bars in this thread probably during lunchtime.)

What does the guy look like post-TC? This looks like the sort is not taking into account the blue bars but rather the red bars you'll see once he gets through TC. In which case I'd argue bug in the sort screens.

It would be interesting to see what this guy looks like by going to "Trade Information" pre-tc and right clicking him. Could we get screencaps of that and post tc?

Heh. I had no idea about this. Here it is:

Wow...I had no idea about that either.

Here's my 3rd round QB. I sure hope something happens in camp to get him off of those 0s, considering the understood bug/feature where guys who are on 0 never move from 0, no matter what the green says. If not, he's absolutely screwed.

good stuff, it appears the sorting was dead on. This will surely help me in dominating FOWL :)

Well, this particular data point (the pre-camp red/green) is entirely new to me, so I'm not sure what to make of it just yet. I don't know what, if anything, it means.

That the screen got missed when the blue bars went in?

That chinaski has been holding out on us?

That once a guy is on your roster the blue bars should go away?

Oh, it also means the red bar is already well outside the blue bar and our scouts are even dummer than we thought they were...

Keep up the good work! :)

innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnteresting

This is my guess at this point.

haha yes that too. I dont take much out of the trade information sneak peek (but it is very interesting to see), since this is all pre-tc, which can manipulate the player in many random ways. Im led to believe the trade sneak peek is a true view of the player without any scout involved, but thats just a gut feeling, probably wrong :)

It's wrong :) I compared the players popup (doubleclick) playercard to the rightclick and they are the same for not fully developed players.

...thus lending a little bit more credence to the theory that this is just a place where Jim forgot to apply the blue-bar mask for rookies.

I have to confess I have been doing this for a while with UDFA's. I don't think its generally of massive use as the players combine will tend to mean you will have a good idea who will be at the top of the list. In this example though, its clearly more useful as its a no combine guy. As we are talking about UDFA's the players don't tend to be anything special as a rule, so I have never really fell upon a stud using this method.

I have always found RBs tougher to predict than most. I found a hole recognition sort for example, quite useful to up a half decent back.

The search part I've known about for a while. This was an unusual case, though, where a rookie had a higher current bar than a bunch of veterans. Usually I'm comparing rookies to rookies and don't see anything as obvious as this one.

Which isn't a big deal (IMO) since you can only see it if they are signed to a contract.

Obviously search has to comapare SOMETHING, but thought it would be the scout prediction preTC rather than postTC value.

now, can we use this to predict TC movement...

which I'm seeing as a yes right now...

On the surface, I agree. However, I wouldn't be one bit surprised if, with a little observation of past players, you could use this to get a much more exact bead on where the bars of your players are headed, maybe even without TC.

is there a tool to type in values for ratings to give you an overall rating? i.e. has anyone figured out how the overall rating is gotten to?

Right. That's what I would assume, too. I'm thinking that this is doing exactly that.

Which helps you how tho? You're going to see this with camp anyways...

If it *can* be divined, I can think of two very pretty obvious things to do with it immediately, and there are probably more...

1. Those 25/41 types who change very little in camp can still go significantly either way. But with extra data, you might be able to *know* what's happening with them immediately, so the one who's gonna just be a 39 gets cut immediately, instead of holding a spot for him for 2-3 years, and the one who's gonna be a 50 gets to play immediately.

2. Use every stage of FA2 to sign a buttload of players to no-bonus contracts and cut the ones who are gonna be useless. Depending on the makeup of your team and the rules of your league, you could cycle through as many as 100 rookies this way with no risk at all.

I'm trying to look for position change benefits at the moment. I have to load up a SP career since I don't have Dewacht signed...

Heh. Now there's one I hadn't thought about, either. Do the pre-switch, look, and see what's there. If bad, do not export.

This is what I was thinking.

Unsigned you can't trade them tho so they don't show on that screen...

Yup. This gives you an efficient look-in into the big play receiving bar.

hm. This could really take away that Christmas Eve feel of training camp, darn it.

I'm talking about signed ones. It *might* (again, we don't know the true nature of it yet) be able to tell you whether or not you should switch one of your rookies pre-camp.

I doubt it. The more I think about it, the more I'm in the camp that this is very likely Jim having forgotten to apply the blue-bar fog of war *before* training camp. I'm thinking more and more about position switches...

I have been doing this a while myself... the last year or so.

For backups I generally want specific bars, so in PDFA I would search for specific bars and noticed this, honestly never really thought that much of it.

to me the right-click thing is WAY more interesting... but back to the original point.

Ben, i think that's been 'known' to some degree for a while, though i think looking in the 'void' categories you're taking it a step farther than I ever had. I remember chatting with at least one IHOF owner in the past though about using the search by X rating feature to be able to sort of zero in on useful players by getting them to come up in conjunction with 2+ year guys. Obviously when you get them to fall between guys rated 50 and 55 in kickoff distance.... you know where there actual red or green lies.

Can someone give me a quick run down of this right click thing and the trade thing? Actually, I'm trying to understand what is being talked about aside from a rating that appears to be nothing actually being something when compared to veterans.

Go to the trade info screen and right-click a rookie on your roster. You'll see his red/green bars. Go to your roster and click him. You'll see blue bars.

omg are you serious? lol, ftw, bling bling :D

Very Interesting, lets break the game so Jim makes us a new one!

I think the game is broken in some areas and people are just shedding more light on it. Hopefully, Jim fixes a lot of these areas with the new one - out by September, plzkthx.

I think that this is just one area that got missed. The bars sure are not set in stone. They can change quite a bit after camp, especially for high volatility players.

More gravedigging -- I don't know how I stumbled on this old thread but it's something I had been looking at and been meaning to comment on. Plus, I don't think enough people know about the right click trick, or the weird immediately unmasked bars phenomenon!


What is weird is that this happens to a lot of bars, but not for all rookies. It just happens sometimes. I guess what you guys mean when you say Jim forgot something is, it is happening *all the time* for certain *types* of masks.

This seems to happen quite often for a number of bars, and I've been keeping a running list:
-Elusiveness
-INTs
-Endurance
-Get Downfield
-Man? (I can't remember or confirm right now)
-ST? (again, can't confirm)
-Kick Power (confirmed for Punters, not sure about K's)
-3rd down passing
-Kick Returning
-Hole Recognition

It may just be that it is possible for this to happen with any non-static bar, but I see this all the time with bars like Get Downfield and Endurance, and have never, ever seen it with say, Run Defense or Play Diag or the blocking skills bars, to name a few...

Note that a player can still go either way in camp and this doesn't have anything to do with camp movement. Yeah, I'm three years behind y'all, anyway...


This of course is not relevant here, as we are talking about pre-camp bar reveals.

I have and the difference was as large as the blue bar being 0-20ish and the pre camp run defense bar being 30/80ish.

I can confirm a similar case with ST