Question on Multiplayer Leagues

[danimal]

Hi, I've just started a multiplayer league at my office, and I have a quick question on the settings.

Half of the players want to be able to manage every aspect of their team (e.g., depth charts, game plans), while the other half would prefer to let their coaches handle those aspects. My understanding is that all players in the league have to use the commissioner's settings, so I've set the global game options to give the players the maximum flexibility in managing their teams.

Is there a way to let each player set this individually? The players who rely on their coaches are getting tired of clicking recommend 20 times before every game. Is there a recommend all button they could press?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by danimal

Hi, I've just started a multiplayer league at my office, and I have a quick question on the settings.

Half of the players want to be able to manage every aspect of their team (e.g., depth charts, game plans), while the other half would prefer to let their coaches handle those aspects. My understanding is that all players in the league have to use the commissioner's settings, so I've set the global game options to give the players the maximum flexibility in managing their teams.

Is there a way to let each player set this individually? The players who rely on their coaches are getting tired of clicking recommend 20 times before every game. Is there a recommend all button they could press?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Welcome to the board, you danimal.

No, there's not a global recommend button. For some screens, it doesn't change anything once it has been set once. (For example, it always will recommend that you use your top skill position players in the offensive formation usage screens). The recommend button is dynamic on the following screens:

• the 6 depth chart screens (only change in the preseason, due to injuries, and very late in the season)
• starters' playing time (although I'd recommend using maximum every week, unless you've got a specific reason to use a platoon)
• Basic Offensive Game Plan (doesn't change a ton once it has been set early in the season)
• Misc. Offensive Settings (ditto the above)
• Game Plan--Misc settings only changes significantly if you make changes in your starting linebackers (blitz percentages will change)--otherwise, you don't need to mess with this one more than once a season
• Basic Defensive Game Plan
• Defensive Personnel Choices (doesn't make big changes, either)
• the 6 pass coverage screens

So, there are 7 screens that do make significant changes from week to week (assuming you're not playing against two consecutive teams with similar capabilities), 11 that need to be set early in the year, but usually don't need much attention during the season for that type of player. The rest (14, by my count) can be set once at the beginning of the career, and will never be changed by the recommend button.

None of that is to say that it's *optimal* to use the recommend button on all 32 screens, but that's their choice. Hopefully, at least this post will narrow it down to the ones that are most important.

[danimal]

SkyDog, thanks for the quick response! That's a very helpful breakdown of each of the screens and how often you can expect them to change throughout the season.

I hear you on this approach not being optimal. I get the feeling that the players that take the time to set their game plans manually every week will have an edge in our league.

A couple questions on game planning.

On offense, I'm trying to replicate the Ravens' ball control philosophy for the virtual Ravens I am playing in my league. Is it as simple as weighting the game plan toward running and short passes and jacking up the run % as soon as I am leading by 1 or 2 touchdowns?

On defense, I'm favoring the cover-2 B&R in most situations with just a little bit of cover-1 B&R (is this the 46 defense?) in extreme running situations and some 3-deep zone in extreme passing situations. I'm staying away from the 4-deep zone because it just seems that I'm exposing myself way too much to the run and the short pass. I'm also shading my defensive game plan slightly toward the pass - my front 7's run defense skills are fairly good to very good across the board, so I'm counting on them to defend against the run even when I'm expecting the pass. Basically, I'm trying to go for a low-risk defense that might give up yards but won't give up the big plays and the touchdowns. Is this the right way to approach it?

I guess a broader question I have is this - does the game do a good enough job simulating the real NFL that I can think about this the way I would think about a real NFL game? Or does the game have quirks or idiosyncracies that I should be aware of?

Thanks!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by danimal

I hear you on this approach not being optimal. I get the feeling that the players that take the time to set their game plans manually every week will have an edge in our league.

Once they learn the game, yes. It's like any well-done computer game: the AI does a pretty solid job, but a good human player will always do a better one. (As opposed to a poorly-done computer game where the AI makes horrible decisions.)

On offense, I'm trying to replicate the Ravens' ball control philosophy for the virtual Ravens I am playing in my league. Is it as simple as weighting the game plan toward running and short passes and jacking up the run % as soon as I am leading by 1 or 2 touchdowns?

I've done a lot of playing with ball-control stuff lately, because my single-player team has a sub-optimal QB and not-so-great receivers. My #1 bit of advice if you're going to use a lot of short passing is to really think through what you want to do on every down, and pay attention to how the screens interact and the limitations of the system. For example, one of those limitations is that you can't specify by down and distance the specific length of your passes. You can generalize it, sure, but it may be that you *never* want to throw a 0-4 yard pass on 3rd and 9, but if you use those as a significant part of your "short" package (Misc Offensive Settings), and you choose some short passing in that situation, the game won't automatically use the longer "short" passes there, if that makes sense.

So, if you go with 25% screen, 25% 0-4, 50% 5-8 for your short passing, remember that if you use, say, 30% short passing on 3rd and 8-10, you'll get a fair number of too-short completions in those situations. The best way I've found to avoid this in a ball-control offense is to go with heavy "Long" passing on 3rd and 8-10, but shorten the "Long" passing on the "Misc Offensive Settings" screen to stay in the 9-12 and 13-18 yard ranges the great majority of the time.

On defense, I'm favoring the cover-2 B&R in most situations with just a little bit of cover-1 B&R (is this the 46 defense?) in extreme running situations and some 3-deep zone in extreme passing situations. I'm staying away from the 4-deep zone because it just seems that I'm exposing myself way too much to the run and the short pass. I'm also shading my defensive game plan slightly toward the pass - my front 7's run defense skills are fairly good to very good across the board, so I'm counting on them to defend against the run even when I'm expecting the pass. Basically, I'm trying to go for a low-risk defense that might give up yards but won't give up the big plays and the touchdowns. Is this the right way to approach it?

One important thing to remember on defensive game planning is that there appears to be a game mechanism (similar to real life) where using the same defense too often will cause the offense to adjust in-game, and you'll be hurt.

I guess a broader question I have is this - does the game do a good enough job simulating the real NFL that I can think about this the way I would think about a real NFL game? Or does the game have quirks or idiosyncracies that I should be aware of?

My impression is that if you do things within the realm of "how the real NFL works," you'll be fine. The "problem" is that the game allows you to do things quite a bit outside of how any real-life team would ever do them--but they might be the way we *think* teams do things in the NFL. For example, I think I recall reading somewhere that the range of first-down running in real life is rather narrow--something like all teams are in the 40-55% range (those numbers may not be completely accurate...but roll with me for a bit). It appears to me that FOF2K7 models this sort of thing, and getting outside of real-life ranges can cause problems (such as the "defense was familiar with that play" messages) for your team. (This wasn't nearly as much the case with the last version.)

[danimal]

These are all great tips! Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

One more question - this one is about offensive formations.

I was reading an interesting data mining thread on this board (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/...d.php?t=60130), and most of the data primelord discovered was intuitive, except for TE Pair formations in passing plays. For some odd reason, TE Pair formations were doing better on passing plays than any of the other formations, even though TE Pairs usually favor the run.

I'm guessing this could be attributed to 1 of 2 things, or perhaps a combination of both:

1. This could be a situational artifact. On most of the TE Pair plays, the ball could have been in a position where both the offense and the defense would normally favor the run (e.g., 3rd & short). So the offense comes out in a TE Pair formation (as determined by the Formation Use screen) and the defense comes out expecting the run (as determined by their defensive game plan). Though these situations will usually result in a run (as determined by the offensive game plan), occasionally the team will go with a passing play. Since the defense would usually be expecting a run in these situations, a passing play in this situation could be abnormally successful.

2. Maybe defenses in this game playcall partially based on formation as well as on the game plan? So if the defense sees an obvious running formation, it could shade the game plan percentages slightly toward the run. Is this how the game works? It would make sense, since in the real NFL a defense might decide to play closer to the line of scrimmage if they see the offense come out in an obvious running formation.

Some practical takeaways if one or both of the above is true:
1. If the former is true, maybe it makes sense to increase the passing % in 3rd & short situations because most defensive game plans would be expecting the run.

2. If the latter is true, then we should be running more passing plays out of running formations and vice versa!

I'd love to hear what you think.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by danimal

These are all great tips! Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.

One more question - this one is about offensive formations.

I was reading an interesting data mining thread on this board (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=60130), and most of the data primelord discovered was intuitive, except for TE Pair formations in passing plays. For some odd reason, TE Pair formations were doing better on passing plays than any of the other formations, even though TE Pairs usually favor the run.

I'm guessing this could be attributed to 1 of 2 things, or perhaps a combination of both:

1. This could be a situational artifact. On most of the TE Pair plays, the ball could have been in a position where both the offense and the defense would normally favor the run (e.g., 3rd & short). So the offense comes out in a TE Pair formation (as determined by the Formation Use screen) and the defense comes out expecting the run (as determined by their defensive game plan). Though these situations will usually result in a run (as determined by the offensive game plan), occasionally the team will go with a passing play. Since the defense would usually be expecting a run in these situations, a passing play in this situation could be abnormally successful.

Yes yes. That's my very strong suspicion there. I was the one who compiled that data for primelord, so I can tell you that it was done with all teams letting the AI handle the game plan--which means that the 2 TE settings were extreme rarities in obvious pass situations. There's only a combined 1.3% chance of any 2 TE for "extreme passing" and 2.2% for "passing" in that data (and both of those are exclusively single-back, 2 TE, which isn't known by many QBs), and only a 10.5% combined chance in "Slight Passing." So, yeah, 2 TE with default game plans shows up in running situations, so the rare passes thrown there were more successful, no doubt.

2. Maybe defenses in this game playcall partially based on formation as well as on the game plan? So if the defense sees an obvious running formation, it could shade the game plan percentages slightly toward the run. Is this how the game works? It would make sense, since in the real NFL a defense might decide to play closer to the line of scrimmage if they see the offense come out in an obvious running formation.

I'm not sure about that. One thing that I've put on a list of things that I'd hope gets change at one point is that the defense seems to use its regular down-and-distance setting even when looking at the 5WR set. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't heavily adjust its expectation for that formation, so I have my doubt that it does for 2TE. That data anomaly is more a function of #1: the 2 TE sets just don't get called in passing situations in AI vs. AI situations.

Some practical takeaways if one or both of the above is true:
1. If the former is true, maybe it makes sense to increase the passing % in 3rd & short situations because most defensive game plans would be expecting the run.

Maybe slightly, but doing it too often will cause the in-game defensive AI to adjust to it, too.

[danimal]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I'm not sure about that. One thing that I've put on a list of things that I'd hope gets change at one point is that the defense seems to use its regular down-and-distance setting even when looking at the 5WR set. I'm pretty sure that it doesn't heavily adjust its expectation for that formation, so I have my doubt that it does for 2TE. That data anomaly is more a function of #1: the 2 TE sets just don't get called in passing situations in AI vs. AI situations.

It would definitely be nice to see the defense make game plan adjustments when faced with obvious passing (5 WR) and running (goal line) formations.

Thanks again for your helpful comments! One thing I've got to say about this board is that the quality of the posts here is off the charts when compared to most other message boards. I'm really glad I found this resource!

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by danimal

It would definitely be nice to see the defense make game plan adjustments when faced with obvious passing (5 WR) and running (goal line) formations.

Well, the usage of GL formation on offense is extremely rare with AI-run game plans. You rarely/never see settings of 86% (extreme running situations) or more for running--and "extreme running" is the only situation in which the AI will call for GL. In primelord's data mining reveals that the GL is called less than 2/10 of one percent of plays, and less than 1/2 of one percent of *run* plays even. That's roughly once every 580 plays overall, or once 5ish games by either team. 5WR, on the other hand, is called on 4.2% of pass plays, and 2.4% of overall plays. Point being, maybe the defense adjusts to it, maybe it doesn't, but either way, its usage is so rare than probably no one, other than the game's developer and maybe a few people who call their own plays, has any feel for it whatsoever.

But back to my original point: 5WR resulted in 15 runs and 5,475 passes (I believe primelord backed out the scrambles) in the data we have. That's 99.7% passes. This to me is a case where the defense should abandon the percentages and go into pass aggressive 100% of the time it sees that formation.

[danimal]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Yes yes. That's my very strong suspicion there. I was the one who compiled that data for primelord, so I can tell you that it was done with all teams letting the AI handle the game plan--which means that the 2 TE settings were extreme rarities in obvious pass situations. There's only a combined 1.3% chance of any 2 TE for "extreme passing" and 2.2% for "passing" in that data (and both of those are exclusively single-back, 2 TE, which isn't known by many QBs), and only a 10.5% combined chance in "Slight Passing." So, yeah, 2 TE with default game plans shows up in running situations, so the rare passes thrown there were more successful, no doubt.

I was just thinking...would it be possible to compile the data you and primelord gathered to show the stats on passing plays by formation ONLY when the defense was expecting a pass? If this is possible, it would eliminate the situational artifact and make clearer which formations truly favor the pass in this game.

Doing the same thing with running plays (showing formation stats only when the defense was expecting a run) would also show which formations are best, though I didn't see any obvious situational artifacts in your running formations data.

The reason I ask is that there is another possible explanation for why 2TE formations did so well in passing plays. Perhaps 2nd string TEs are on average better receivers than the #3 receivers you would play in 3WR formations. This is certainly the case with my virtual Ravens team, so now I'm wondering whether using some 2TE formations in passing situations wouldn't be such a bad idea.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by danimal

I was just thinking...would it be possible to compile the data you and primelord gathered to show the stats on passing plays by formation ONLY when the defense was expecting a pass? If this is possible, it would eliminate the situational artifact and make clearer which formations truly favor the pass in this game.

Doing the same thing with running plays (showing formation stats only when the defense was expecting a run) would also show which formations are best, though I didn't see any obvious situational artifacts in your running formations data.

It's certainly possible to run such data, if prime has the time to do it. I've contacted him about it.

The reason I ask is that there is another possible explanation for why 2TE formations did so well in passing plays. Perhaps 2nd string TEs are on average better receivers than the #3 receivers you would play in 3WR formations. This is certainly the case with my virtual Ravens team, so now I'm wondering whether using some 2TE formations in passing situations wouldn't be such a bad idea.

Lots in this game is personnel-dependent, so for your team, sure this might be the better option. However, my strong suspicion for the game in general is that it's purely situational.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by danimal

It would definitely be nice to see the defense make game plan adjustments when faced with obvious passing (5 WR) and running (goal line) formations.

Thanks again for your helpful comments! One thing I've got to say about this board is that the quality of the posts here is off the charts when compared to most other message boards. I'm really glad I found this resource!

Is this the danimal from the DS forums? Either way, welcome!

Ben (Skydog) is quite the FOF guru.

[danimal]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Is this the danimal from the DS forums? Either way, welcome!

Ben (Skydog) is quite the FOF guru.

Not the same danimal, but thank you for the welcome!

Ben has been very helpful and clearly knows a lot about this game.