FOF7 - Staff Draft and Staff Role Thoughts
 

It's probably the most controversial new feature, so I thought it deserved its own thread. I'm in my first staff draft in my SP league and I have one initial thought: Because you can steal coordinators and make them head coaches, maybe this isn't the imbalancer that I'd initially thought. Oakland finished #28 in finances and is therefore drafting #28. We couldn't get an experienced head coach. However, several solid-looking coordinators and assistants were very viable options. And it looks like you can't steal another team's coach unless he's in the final year of the contract.

I'm curious to hear others' thoughts on this from a strategic standpoint--something more than "ZOMFG IT'S NOT REALISTIC." I get that. Jim said that himself. I'm more curious if it "works," given that I've hated staff in every text sim I've ever played. At least what's in the help file regarding how staff members function looks very promising:

I'm curious to see how much more, if at all, coaches influence the games now. If Jim spent so much time developing this feature I have to imagine the coaches have a meaningful impact on the individual games.

I don't care if it is realistic, as long as it is engaging and fun as a game feature.

I agree with this, it seems like a near impossible task to create a realistic coaching model in a video game. So once we accept that, this way looks like it could be the *best* way to do it.

Yeah, history shows that even very successful teams can't keep all their coaching staff happy. This seems like it could model that, with coordinators joining crappy teams for a chance at head coaching, for instance, while also allowing the successful teams some advantage in the process.

Any idea if staff impacts chemistry? If you keep a staff together longer does that impact anything?

So no scouts any more or am I mssing that?

Looks like four different staff members are *all* involved in scouting. No dedicated scout, though.

"Your coaches and coordinators, with the exception of the strength coordinator, all develop players and scout players. The offensive coordinator plays a bigger role with offensive players. Your defensive coordinator plays a bigger role with defensive players and your assistant coach plays a bigger role with special teams players."

For quick reference. Here are the new look staff ratings and info.

In order to find quality staff, I previously would sort by salary request and work from there. Now coaches are rated by the "suitable" category for each round of the draft. Which works pretty well, I think.

That's straight from a data export? Very nice* (do coach records export too? :D )


* although from a data standpoint, I'm torn on whether it's good or not for the roles to be text rather than IDs for lookup values. I guess you do have to perform one less JOIN, but it might make querying more of a pain (say, if you want a screen with all HC, or all OC, etc)

Fantastic.

I see ya'll going nuts over the next few weeks/months. :)

Not completely nuts - like I'm saying to Ben in chat, I will probably export current data tables to csv, reordering columns to match the new exports, then upload back into reformulated tables. If the table and column names I set are the same, scripts should be minimally affected.

It sounds like there is more info available (like coach history), so that will really fix some old pages that were just to difficult to stock in FOF2k7. But there will be other things that have never been available that will make for great additions.

I use dbupdater, so I'll have more work to do to overcome that handy tool that is now (currently?) defunct. Sooo I guess I'll be going nuts over the coming weeks/months. :) (Especially since I'm not the authority on this stuff anyway.)

How are we going to handle this in mp? Wait for one of you to setup a Conscriptor to handle this?

It looks like you just request a names list from everybody for each round (or multiple rounds)...there is no negotiations involved in the drafting...you get who you ask for provided they are not drafted ahead of you.

That might be the easiest way to pull if off since there's no trading.

That said, post-draft, the commish just imports a csv with the results. So theoretically, leagues could implement whatever system they want for assigning staff to teams.

Is there a ranking of staffers for those lazy GMs that don't submit a list?

Or for AI teams?

Nevermind my question there - then they just wouldn't get anyone. I forgot you can skip :)

From Ben's post:


This is potentially the best news of all. :)

Very excited to see the coaching changes and interested in the combination of things people are going to do. However I am also curious to see how these ratings change over time. Because it would be cool to see a long time coordinator or assistant coach rise to the ranks of a head coach when he may not have started out with great ratings. Anyway, I guess I am reading the important ratings for each position as this:



It is cool to see how this will add another layer to the game in regards to team building and I am excited to play single player again. By the way, I am not 100% sure if the primary focus applies to coordinators. I only added it because it was in that same paragraph that mentions coaches and coordinators, however the last sentence makes it seem that it can just apply to the coach/assistant coach only.

Thanks for that, Ant.

I'm loving this so far. Got a couple great laughs, as the Redskins went with Kyle Shanahan as HC & the 49ers now have Mike Singletary.

Havent played FOF in a couple of years so i could be thinking of a different sim, but in past versions did retired players become coaches?

Yeah, that went well.

That sometimes happened in EHM (Eastside Hockey Manager) but I don't remember ever seeing it in FOF.

Actually yes, from what I can remember they did hire retired coaches. Aww and found this......
I just noticed - Front Office Football Central

In 2027, Tony Romo is the Offensive Coordinator for Arizona. He is 47 years old and his specialty is QBs. 41-year-old Michael Oher is the OC for Da Bears. Specialty is O-line. :thumbsup:

The attention to details like that in this version is just remarkable.

Very cool!

Do Romo's QBs throw lots of late game-on-the-line picks?

Just headed into the Staff Draft as the worst team financially, but with all staff members having multiple seasons left on their contracts. I think because of the multiple seasons, none of them got poached. By the time our pick came around, our guys were far and away the best options left at their respective staff positions. So basically so far it's looking like as long as you "Retain Staff," even if you're the worst team financially, your staff can only get poached if they get a promotion, but if you have a decent staff, it's not going to get any better at #32, either.

This part of the game is a Great Addition, it feels fresh to me. Love that you can promote coordinators and it works very well.. Thanks again Jim..

Do Coaches improved and get better?

Side note: A nice feature would be for the Assistant Coaches and Co-Ordinators to improve in areas that their HC is strong in and vice-versa.

i like that you can "draft" your own coordinators as head coach, essentially promoting them

also very gratifying to see "fired" in the transaction log for a head coach you are getting rid of

finally, the decision to change coaches to bar ratings to match the rest of the game was a GREAT idea. much more uniform. wish they had a change tracker too

I was fully prepared to hate this feature. I think I may get turned around. You need to clear your mind to get there, but I'm trying. This might be a good things after all.

Yep, same story here.

I was probably sold on it faster than most since I found the old system frustrating. I just wanted something different and I like the concepts here for sure.

I'm not sold on it quite yet, but am coming around for SP.

I'm still concerned about the "how to" part of it for MP, but maybe I'm overthinking that. It could be as simple as people submitting lists since there's no trading.

Me too because it was incredibly frustrating to not be able to reneg at the end of a contract.

Or maybe wheels modifies the conscriptor to handle both staff and amateur drafts.

....if that's even possible.

If this adds three terrible days to a MP season, I'll very quickly reset back to HATE.

I guess the problem for "quick sim" would be promotion. You look at your team, you're good...no need to create lists...and then suddenly, wham, your OC just go promoted to HC somewhere else in round 1.

I think you'd have to do it one batch at a time. Start with HC, finish that, move on to the next. It might be easier to do it on a forum thread.

It's a huge advantage to be the highest grossing team after the 1st season.

Because there are coaches at the start that are on 1 season contracts, so there is some quality coach talent available.

I'm gonna give it a shot. I completely changed it up for the Action PC Football game so it's possible. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet though.