Before I get to the game, I think I solved the pass catching issue. I basically reduced the pass velocity a little bit, and compensated by reducing the gravity. Since I only use gravity for ball flight trajectory, there’s not other impact on the game. By messing around with this for a while, I found that it’s really the gravity that was causing the issue. The ball was falling to the ground too fast near the end of its flight, causing the player AI to miss the catch opportunity, and causing a ton of incomplete passes that had nothing to do with player ratings.
Once I fixed that up, I fired up the game against the Pinks.
Score: Greens win 56-7 with 79 plays.
Frankly, the Pinks are atrocious. The offense has a little success running to the right, because my DE2 is terrible. Other than that, they couldn’t do a thing on offense or special teams. Their defense was fairly stout, except for trying to contain WR1 Jarmon. He’s just on another level. 6 receptions on 6 targets for 169 and a TD. Jarmon also took an Int back for a TD.
The Pinks special teams coverage is flat out embarrassing. Urquhart had 1 KR for 90 and a TD, followed by 3 PR for 74 yds before I took him out. He almost housed all 3 PR, but the last guy caught him. I put Sturgeon in and he managed 2 PR for 169 and 2 TD, despite being rated 28 in KR.
You’d think that KR and PR are broken by the stats, but nobody else seems to be able to get solid returns on the Greens. I’ll start looking at the blocking and coverage over the next few games, to see what the difference is. It can’t just be returner speed. (maybe overall team speed?)
With the newly implemented pancakes, the current pancake leader is DE1 Acker with 12. He dominated the LT of the Pinks every play, which is why they had to run right exclusively.
Notes:
I’m starting to feel like the top end speed is a little too fast. Guys who run in the 410+ range for speed are looking a little out of place. It’s hard to describe, but it doesn’t look quite right. I’ll have to start taking note of the weird looking speed for future adjustments.
The QB reading for open WRs is off. If they have the time, the QB almost always correctly identifies a wide open WR. It’s the guys in traffic that often get thrown to when they shouldn’t.
Huge plays are starting to annoy me. Nothing looks out of place during the play, but I’m getting frustrated with every scoring play being a 20+ gain. I’m wondering if my defense AI is too aggressive. It’s like one missed tackle and the guy is gone. I should see if there’s a way to be a little more conservative.
Eventually I’m going to have to tighten up how I control the game situation. Now that I’m paying attention, I’m seeing there is too much chance of going “off script” and making the game flow weird. (like calling kickoff on 2nd and short)
The list:
To be attempted before the next game- QB reading the openness of WRs update
- Address huge gain plays somehow. (more conservative defense?)
- Fix the kick return catching glitch
- [DONE] Really look into the QB scrambling system
- [DONE] Dig into the dropped passes
- [DONE] Track pancakes
- In-game interface for down/dis/score
- [DONE] Add more running plays
For later:
- Start to narrow down what the right top-end speed limit is
- Figure out why the Greens special teams rock so much and everyone else sucks
- Tighten up game situation control
- Depth chart refresh
- New camera control
- Figure out what to do about blocks being too effective. (guys not breaking free of blocks)
- Look at shrinking the field size to reduce the breakaway running time.