So...another reason to stick with a player beyond the first training camp?
 

The CCFL is in its 7th season of FOF7, so we've had the chance to see some guys develop all the way. Just noticed this one. Check out the ratings progression...

http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/...playerid=28774

And a year 1 bump isn't always so indicative of things to come. This guy ended up pretty much right where he started despite a +7/+15 initial camp: http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/...playerid=28979

-7 year one, -1 year 2, then he steadily crept upward:

http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/...playerid=27737

Well, shoot, I've been cutting guys left and right that look like this. I try to give them a couple of camps, but there are a lot of players and it's a matter of financials and playing percentages. This can't be the typical development arc....can it?

Also: how do you explain the 5-point jump from 41b to 42a?

Either a change in the league scout himself, or a change in the scout's ratings (I haven't checked FOF7, but staff definitely had a development curve as well in 2k7).

Or development during the season.

That happens all the time, at least by my scouts. I've always assumed that it's because of staffing changes. And in the CCFL, the league scout changed in 2041, 2042, and 2044.

Ah yeah. Pretty sure that they change in FOF7 like they did in FOF2K7.

I don't know that there is a "typical development arc" in FOF7. And I presume that's intentional. In FOF2K7, there were basically, what...3? (upward creeping...downward creeping...full development to cur=fut and then continuing upward). Just clicking through some CCFL player pages and the SP league I have on my local MySQL instance, things just look far more varied. It's funny: we now have an in-game ratings tracker that many have clamored for. But tracking ratings probably should just be more "for fun" than the primary element in decision-making that it used to be for many.

Yeah, that's a good breakdown of the simple peel-the-onion model of FOF2k7 :)

What I mean is that when you see a guy go -17, in most cases he's not going to have a miraculous comeback, at least that's what I'm assuming. But it may be flawed.

Volatility also seems to happen a lot more, so perhaps there's some wisdom in keeping guys with decent OVR around just in case they do a random jump.

I completely agree with you about the role of ratings tracking now. It's hands off and I love it. Figuring things out by being the guy who bothers to look up CSV charts was always so gamey.

Anyway, back to the player: he looks like, had the previous scout stayed constant in his ability, a 45 rated player by that estimation. So that does seem like a case of something you've described previously, where after one camp, the scout overreacts ("OMG! He's the worst! What a disappointment!") and then realizes he's overreacted slightly.

A significant part of this player ending up back over 50/50 appears solely due to a change in scout / scout ability, rather than an actual change in the player himself. Is that fair to say, do you think?

Unless I am missing something (in game that is), it is just too hard/time consuming to do through each player and check that each camp. It would be nice if it was a tab and you could look at all your players on your team or in FA at once. In game.

And I love it. This is one of the areas that I like mirroring the NFL. Higher drafted players get more chances than lower drafted or UDFA. Players bounce around teams sometimes until the stick with their third or fourth team and then become a starter. Way better than knowing a player sucked or not at TC.

I do miss Christmas come TC SIM.

The question to me now is what is the correlation to their combines, if any.

Also, what bars do these movements greatly effect? Does BPR or SR move less than END or Accuracy?

Correlation to combines depends on what you put that setting on.

I also believe based on my limited sample set with WOOF (i.e. may be completely wrong) that you'll see less of this movement with a good scout. I've got players in WOOF bouncing all over the place according to the league scout who have stayed very stable with my scouting staff. I haven't noticed (doesn't mean they are not there) players bouncing around according to my scout that are stable by the league scout).

It's less pronounced, but there's still some back and forth movement.

On that note, I saw something in CCFL Pre2 this morning that I don't think I've ever seen. The league scout had my 4th-year safety going 76/76-->59/59 today. My scouts? 67/67-->67/67.

League scouts: http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/...playerid=30002

My scouts:

42 64 56 (14) 66 (2) 68 (12) 68 (2) 68 (0) 68 (0) 66 (-2) 66 (-2) 67 (1) 67 (1) 67 (0) 67 (0) 67 (0) 67 (0) 25 3

I have the best scouting in the league: http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/...ead.php?t=6452 (avg rating =74).

So I guess to answer an earlier question: those changes probably weren't booms/busts/volatility; they were different views from different scouts.

Side note: I don't remember exactly when or what league, but one league that I'm in had a league scout rated in the 70s. Not surprisingly, the Pre2 changes were much less pronounced there.

Well, obviously, but I'm curious if combines and % developed play into the way the scouts see them differently.

Is there a correlation between a guy who has amazing combines, low bars and whether or not they jump all over the place?

Or is it simply all the dice roll involved in the scouts rating based on how the players is seen and that the player is what he's going to be, we just don't see it the same way. This sounds like the conclusion Ben is coming to.

It would be nice to track ratings by our own scout as well, and not only by the league scout

OK. I just found a guy who did a reversal by my (very good) scouting staff as well, and I'm not inclined to think that this was volatility. I'm pretty sure I've seen it happen fairly regularly; it's just that I haven't been tracking it until recently. It's this guy:

http://www.younglifenorthdekalb.com/...playerid=31024

LEAGUE SCOUTS:
Year 1: 33/56-->37/49
Year 2: 47/47-->52/58

MY SCOUTS:
Year 1: 33/56-->37/52
Year 2: 47/52-->52/56

League scout changed (though ratings roughly the same). My scouts did not. Same guys. It's a small change, but I'm pretty sure that I've seen bigger than that in multiple instances. Now that I'm tracking it in SP, I'll probably have quite a few more examples down the road.

I think there are issues of accuracy and precision. An explanation for the Patrick Southrey example above would be that the league scout ratings were accurate, but lacked precision, whereas Ben's scout was giving ratings that were accurate and precise.

I think other examples show ratings that lacked accuracy, either because of masking, or for some other reason.

[deleted paragraph comparing this to FOF2K7; a statement in this paragraph was what aston was referring to below.]

Changetracker read the screen, I believe, so it was pulling whatever numbers you yourself saw in the game, and compiling them into a spreadsheet for easy perusal.

Jim's kind of changed his tune on this, but more importantly he's changed the underlying game mechanic: there's no longer much of a point to poring over a changetracker.

I could be wrong about how changetracker worked. My underlying point though is that the FOF7 scouts are giving us information that lacks precision and sometimes also information that lacks accuracy.

I've been trying to pay more attention in the draft to combines vs bars and have come to this conclusion:

If your scouts scouting bars are very good to excellent, the players bars in the draft weigh much more in telling you if he's going to be good or not. What I've learned, and this may be common knowledge but I'm always a little late to the party anyway, is that your HC scouting and interviewing will give you and accurate measure in a players post interview bars. That is, how accurate those little orange bars become. You OC and DC scouting bars will dictate how high or low those bars will become in the future rating of the player. Irregardless of the players combine scores. This helps separate the real players from the workout warriors.

I've put this method into my last couple of drafts with very good scouts. I've set my weights for bars vs combines to 75% vs 25% in favor of bars. It will take a few seasons to know just what these players do and if this really works. OSFL just finished preseason and after drafting players based on bars and not so much the combine scores, it seems to have worked. Five of my seven draft picks went +/+ after PSWK2. One of the two that didn't went +5/-2. Not bad for a 6th round pick.

I've also seen similar moves in other draft where my scouting is very good. The leagues where my scouts aren't so good are a little trickier. I tend to lean more towards combines here.

I also think a players volatility plays a bigger part in the players movements in this version compared to last.

Now, I am far from a draft guru or even one of the better GM's around here. So take all this with a grain of salt. lol. I'm not going to be blamed if this blows up in your face.

I took your advice, sawblade, and now I have a rash, my dog ran away, the bread got moldy 2 days after I bought it, and my stove is on the fritz! WHAT GIVES!!

:jester: You were warned.

Just to make sure I understand, you are saying -

The HC's scouting has the most effect on what we see during the draft, and the OC and DC have the most effect on what we see during the season.

So, I have a weak scouting DC. During the season I know that I can't count on his view of FA defensive players, although I'm pretty happy with how we view offensive players.

I've been wondering whether I am likely to have the same problems during the draft, but your findings indicate that my view should be uniformly good or bad regardless of position during the draft, based largely on the scouting ability of my HC.

From a design perspective I can see why that might be the case - too many variables wouldn't make the game any better here, as there are enough layers of uncertainty in the future skills of rookies already.

Where does the AC fit in all of this, I wonder?

Thanks a lot for sharing these insights!

All my findings are predraft. Looking at draft picks. Your HC has the biggest effect on where and how accurate the (orange) bars are after interviewing a player. Your OC and DC have the biggest effect on where the bars are in general.

If your DC has a weak scouting bar, then your defensive players bars in general may be lower than when viewed by other GM's and their scouts. If you have a player who seems to play better than his bars indicate, this could be why.

Again, my findings are based on drafting. This helps find those players that hopefully will continue to develop and be starters on the team. It also helps weed out the workout warriors that bust.



AC is in charge of special teams when scouting.

Once again, I'm still testing this and it will take a few seasons to see how these guys I've drafted actually pan out. So far though, it seems pretty good and I'll continue to use this as long as my scouts are VG.

I have a confirmation on this for the benefit of anyone wondering. My HC's ratings in FOOL improved from last year to this year (age 53 to 54).