Staff Hiring In MP Sports Games: is it even possible for it not to suck?

[Ben E Lou]

It sucks in FOF.

It sucks in OOTP.

It sucks in FBCB.

It sucks in BBCF.

And it's one of the few broken/annoying elements in my favorite games where I don't really even have a clue how it should be "fixed." Honestly, my best take is that OOTP has it right in that you can just turn it off completely. I'm starting to think the nature of the beast is that it's going to be tedious, annoying, or both unless you had some server-based process that ran at intervals for a while and then was first-come, first-served. It seems like the turn-based model just makes it doomed. Not every team is going to need staff, but every team needs to fill the slots, so either the AI is going to fill the slots for them (bad) or you have to keep running round after round until all slots are filled (worse).

Thoughts?

[cartman]

I would say that it has gotten drastically better in FBCB 2010 than in the original version. But yeah, I think it should be more organic than it is. Having it be turn-based and only at certain points of the season makes it feel tacked on rather than a core part of the game. I haven't played FM multiplayer, but in single-player they way the handle assistants seems to fit closer to what real-life is like.

[albionmoonlight]

At least from the FOF perspective, I wish that it would be replaced by the ability to allocate your budget to different areas. Instead of hiring a coach with ratings for things, you instead directly affect those things yourself. (If you want to keep it cosmetic, you could "hire" trainers to help injury avoidance. Or 'hire" a WR coach to help WR development, etc. But the point is that the actual person would not have ratings.)

If one did try to fix the staff hiring model instead of just scrap and replace it, I would prefer a focus on coaching styles more than coach ratings.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

At least from the FOF perspective, I wish that it would be replaced by the ability to allocate your budget to different areas. Instead of hiring a coach with ratings for things, you instead directly affect those things yourself. (If you want to keep it cosmetic, you could "hire" trainers to help injury avoidance. Or 'hire" a WR coach to help WR development, etc. But the point is that the actual person would not have ratings.)

I really like this model. It keeps the resource allocation aspect of these types of games in place, serves as a solid proxy for specific staff members, and eliminates the tedium. Jim, Markus, Brian, Arlie, etc., MAKE IT SO!!!

[Noop]

LOL. I think text sims have pretty much reached their peak as a one man operation.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by cartman

I would say that it has gotten drastically better in FBCB 2010 than in the original version. But yeah, I think it should be more organic than it is. Having it be turn-based and only at certain points of the season makes it feel tacked on rather than a core part of the game. I haven't played FM multiplayer, but in single-player they way the handle assistants seems to fit closer to what real-life is like.

Agreed. This is one (of many) items that FM has done a better job of than any other game has, and is one of the items that has destroyed immerson quality for me in sports sims. You should be able to hire and fire coaches whenever, however as in real life (with realistic benefits and penalties). FOF is the worst offender by far (having to sim the whole first season before you can even change your coaching staff kills that game for me, sad to say. Of course, how the coaches hiring is handled after that is pretty sucky as well).

Coaches are such an important element in sports, it just can't be completely ignored or glossed over. It needs to be one of the most dynamic and important parts of any true sim, but that is almost never the case. I'll say even FM is just below satisfactory on the coaching part, but that makes it about 1000 times better than every other game on the market.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Noop

LOL. I think text sims have pretty much reached their peak as a one man operation.

Sadly, you are probably right. But then, there are not millions of fans out there willing to spend $60 dollars a pop to pay for game that would really do justice with what could be done with this genre (outside of Europe and soccer). Heartbreaking, but true.

[gstelmack]

Isn't part of the issue here that the coaches are such a "minor" part of the sim that there is little focus on improving the process? You hire coaches, they have some minor effect on dice rolls, whoopdy-doo. We're willing to spend 12+ sims on free agency, but don't want to spend a few sims on coach hiring? Why? Because it's boring compared to free agency, and has a small perceived impact on the final game, so ANY work put into hiring them feels annoying.

Beef up how staff is actually handled in-game, and staff hiring doesn't feel so "in the way". Otherwise, do the "allocate dollars" scheme above and do away with staff altogether.

With FOF, handle staff just like you do FAs, with firings / hirings midseason, attach schemes to them (the DC should determine 4-3/3-4/how much nickel gets used, etc), and maybe add affinities between the players and staff in addition to among themselves. Imagine if your OC/DC determined most of the gameplanning screens, and all you did was change run/pass expectation based on the opponent coming up? You could improve the staff hiring and gameplanning processes in one swell foop!

[Big Fo]

FM does handle it the best but the roles of coaches in that game are less specific than what coaches do in American sports. In football where plays can be called by offensive and defensive coordinators (so they have a much bigger affect than just training the players), in college sports where several coaches all play a part in recruiting, in baseball where you need to handle hiring/firing staff for numerous farm teams in addition to the MLB team, it seems like it would be more difficult to make that aspect of a sports management sim satisfactory than it was for Sports Interactive when making FM. When I play FM the coaches are just there to train the squad and I use the assistant manager to help evaluate my talent and coach the reserves/youth team. I don't listen to what he has to say regarding tactics or anything.

But getting rid of staff hiring phases and being able to fire/hire coaches at any point during the year would be a nice addition to some of the SMSs for American sports.

[stevew]

Coaching matrices and systems would be awesome.

We need to have some way to emulate how a Holmgren goes and gets Seneca Wallace. Or how Parcells had his guys and coordinators.

Systems too. Say I want to throw the ball a ton. I'm probably not going to hire Tom Cable.

Your head coach prefers to play a true west coast scheme. Well you probably want to hire coordinators and players that can run it.

FOF would have to dramatically change to integrate coaching IMO. You can basically Daniel Snyder FOF now, but we see that probably doesn't work. in FOF am I the coach, or GM or owner?

[EagleFan]

The hell with MP sports games fixing that code, I wish the Eagles would get their hiring code fixed.

[Lathum]

I agree with everything Ben said. There is no "good" way to do it.

[QuikSand]

I know the timing is not realistic, but in FOF (admittedly thinking about MP mostly here), I think the best model would just be to toss staff hiring in with the free agency stages.

FA stages are already meaningful, so you're paying attention anyway. Each team has needs, makes bids, and eventually fills its slots. No reason why the staff hiring couldn't work the same way, during the same stages.

My biggest problem with staff hiring in FOF isn't that it's too simple (though it is) nor that it's tedious (it is), but that it's too fucking time consuming. Give up on making it fun or interesting, and just stop wasting our time.

[Dutch]

I would like to see it merged into other stages as well. I'd prefer to be able to hire/fire whenever, but confining it to FA works just as well.

[stevew]

During the playoff would be ideal. Emulate black monday. Would give 20 owners something to do.

Scouting should be more of a monetary allocation type thing.

[Young Drachma]

I'd like to see some system that lets you delegate. Where they are more important, you hire the coach and they do the work and you don't tinker unless you want to play both roles. I think each sport is different. FM forces you to be the coach and even when you delegate, it doesn't let you be a GM since soccer is different, so naturally it works the staff hiring best because a good staff in that game are an integral part of the success process.

OOTP tries it, but since you are GM it doesn't work as well and it's not turn based like FM. I think the best system would be the overhaul we all envision and know we won't get. I think the real issue is an assessment of what is really important with these roles and what their game function ought to be. I think depending on how you play, the answer would be different.