Alright Boyz, Here We Go!!! Front Office Football 9 Impressions

[Mike Lowe]

Originally Posted by markdub2

I really dont think the new FOF9 interface is much more difficult than OOTPs. I dont understand where all the complaints for FOF9 come from when OOTPs UI is just as dense and click-demanding but its praised as a shining example of good sports sim UI...

The average person under the age of 40 is not interacting with anything that looks remotely like FOF 9, be it the interface or the design. That's the miss, IMO. Add in the modern attention span, and this is why we're seeing negative reviews. It's unfortunate, but it should not be surprising.

The game is good, even without MP, but I'm 44 and have played the game for close to 25 years. Most new people to the series won't give it a chance, and certainly not many in a younger demographic (although that could be said about most sport sims today, I would imagine).

To use an example that a lot of us are probably familiar with outside of sports sims...look at TurboTax. Taxes suck, are super boring, and just a bunch of numbers. But the interface makes sense. It flow. It's actually a bit pretty even in places.

[cupofjoe]

I agree that it's not an attractive UI. However, I am under 40 by a decent margin and I don't actually mind the UI haha. It takes a bit to get used to and I still haven't found everything, but I'm hooked on this game.

[Mike Lowe]

Yeah, I hear you. I guess I see how crazy popular mock draft simulators are, and I'm like, "Why don't these people just play FOF!?"

There's more to it, like how busy those people are, their interest in only the RL draft, but that disconnect drives me crazy. There's a lot to that, far more than an interface, but it's a puzzle I want to solve.

[molson]

I'm curious how people are playing this game, since we don't really have people doing dynasties anymore. Are you just fucking around with it like a simulator, or getting vested in one team and career and playing it like a game - and if so, are you calling every play, making every move, acting from the "front office" only?

I haven't been able to connect with a sim as a fun game I'm vested in years, not sure whether I'm older, or if the games are just to overwhelming and I haven't figured out the best way to set AI for stuff and control what's fun to control.

I pretty much only want to have early-era FOF level of control - transactions, maybe depth charts (but not to the level the modern games let me), very light game planning (basically just broad categories of running v. passing, going for it on 4th down, etc.) and following along.

[AlexB]

The depth charts are what are killing me on this game. I keep switching between an FOF7 career and FOF9…

Everything in FOF9 is better other than:

The draft process - the fact you can’t see the live draft board dwindling as players picked is a biggie for me

Trading, but I can cope with this. FOF7 is better in this regard, but it’s not a dealbreaker

Edit: the game day experience is much better in FOF7 too - just having gameday leaders, players of the week, etc, breathes some life into the universe. FOF9 is a bit dead in that reagrd: it’s very easy to have no clue what is happening with the rest of the league

What is becoming a dealbreaker though are the depth charts in FOF9 (and was a big issue for me in FOF8 too) - it takes too long to adjust for injuries, and trying to keep players from getting tired by switching formation usage, not really knowing what penalties having a player in red actually means, not having backups, all just frustrates me

In most regards FOF9 is better, but TBH I’m finding that FOF7 is just more fun

[AlexB]

Dola, but to answer your question , I’m trying to play the same as I always do:

I have no interest in playbooks or game planning, so leave that to the AI. Same with play calling.

I pretty much want to do everything else though, and watch the games play out, rather than just quick sim and see the box scores afterwards

[james17]

I play all my team's games out and I think the ability to call plays in the game is handled very well. It's neat to get the OC and DC recommended formation and plays but then have the ability to override them.



I just wish I knew more about the intricacies of calling defenses. I need to go to the help file in more depth.

[canuxrok]

Originally Posted by molson

I'm curious how people are playing this game, since we don't really have people doing dynasties anymore. Are you just fucking around with it like a simulator, or getting vested in one team and career and playing it like a game - and if so, are you calling every play, making every move, acting from the "front office" only?

I haven't been able to connect with a sim as a fun game I'm vested in years, not sure whether I'm older, or if the games are just to overwhelming and I haven't figured out the best way to set AI for stuff and control what's fun to control.

I pretty much only want to have early-era FOF level of control - transactions, maybe depth charts (but not to the level the modern games let me), very light game planning (basically just broad categories of running v. passing, going for it on 4th down, etc.) and following along.

Personally, I haven't been calling plays or even gameplanning, not because I don't find those features very cool and in depth but just because it takes much longer. I may go back to doing that at some point but for now I've just been simming and reading the play by play afterwards.



I am doing a dynasty that I just started but I've been running it on the main OS forums instead of here. At the time I started it there was like no active NFL content in the football dynasty forum and I also thought it might be good visibility for the game.

[molson]

Originally Posted by canuxrok

I am doing a dynasty that I just started but I've been running it on the main OS forums instead of here. At the time I started it there was like no active NFL content in the football dynasty forum and I also thought it might be good visibility for the game.

Cool, I'll check that out.

[Passacaglia]

Just got the game over the weekend and loving it so far. But..I don't get why it's gone from a weekly model to a daily model, but didn't take advantage of that in terms of scheduling. No Thursday night and Monday night games? I'm playing as the Lions...no Thanksgiving games? No Saturday games late in the season? We've got maps telling me what the weather is in every city on every day, but we can't make some of the games 1 PM Eastern and some of them 4 PM Eastern? European cities are included in the game, so even they could be used to host NFL games, just like what's happening now. It feels like this is getting really close to immersion as if this is a real league, and adding little wrinkles like that would help.

[Passacaglia]

I wasn't planning on putting the franchise tag on my long snapper, but it's weird that if I did, the game is saying it would be over 5M. When I look at all the long snappers on rosters, the highest on the list says his comp is 2.85M. And when I click on him, his contract says his salary is 1.4M for this year, and his bonus is 200K. I'm sure there's a bunch of stuff going on in calculating franchise salaries, and I tried to see if I could verify something is wrong for safeties. That didn't seem right either, but in a way that could be correct for all I know. But that 5M for a long snapper is really showing that something is off.

[Passacaglia]

I really love the stage where you can sign players with expired contracts before the rest of free agency. That feels like a great compromise between the different ways things have been handled before. I really had trouble getting into FOF 8 partially because I felt like I needed to extend a player's contract before his last season starts if I wanted to avoid him hitting FA. But now I can let his current contract play out, then still talk to him before other teams do at the beginning of the next season. That's huge. Before it was either "you can't extend him in the last season" or "you can extend him in the last season, but you have to hope your cap situation allows it this year, even though you're doing it for next year" -- big improvement imo.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Just got the game over the weekend and loving it so far. But..I don't get why it's gone from a weekly model to a daily model, but didn't take advantage of that in terms of scheduling. No Thursday night and Monday night games? I'm playing as the Lions...no Thanksgiving games? No Saturday games late in the season? We've got maps telling me what the weather is in every city on every day, but we can't make some of the games 1 PM Eastern and some of them 4 PM Eastern? European cities are included in the game, so even they could be used to host NFL games, just like what's happening now. It feels like this is getting really close to immersion as if this is a real league, and adding little wrinkles like that would help.

I was poking around the 2023 schedule file when I saw a bunch of dates that games would be played, and thought, "oh maybe I can make this happen with some modding at least, although it'd be a pain to set that up each year" but then I saw in the schedules file

DAY - The calendar day (1-31) when the game is played. Note that all games in Front Office Football Nine must be scheduled to be played on a Sunday.

Blah.

[AlexB]

Perservering with it... Just had a game where my QB threw 71 times, a WR had 32 targets and 22 catches, both of which would be NFL records

If it had been a different team, i would be completely oblivious to the fact: it would help bring the game to life if there were notifications of milestone events such as this on the Manage screen after they happen

[KingZal]

Originally Posted by AlexB

Perservering with it... Just had a game where my QB threw 71 times, a WR had 32 targets and 22 catches, both of which would be NFL records

If it had been a different team, i would be completely oblivious to the fact: it would help bring the game to life if there were notifications of milestone events such as this on the Manage screen after they happen

Those notifications do exist, but the game doesn't account for real life records. Also you have to run the save file for a few years for those notifications to appear.

[Olsson]

Some of the stories this game creates are crazy.

Meet Jon McBride. Signed as a UDFA 5 years ago. He's had a total of 114 attempts over those 5 years and then he goes off in the 2030 playoffs and lead the Bears to a Super Bowl.

[cupofjoe]

One thing that I wish could be adapted is the trade value for studs on their 5th year option. For some reason, I never get good value if I trade them.

I get that it’s following the logic of giving up picks + new contract. But in real life, some of these players would get multiple 1sts.

But as I’ve said before, I know realistic trade logic is an extremely hard thing to get down in these types of games.

[Colly]

First off, I enjoy the game. So what I write next is not a criticism because it does not affect my enjoyment of the game but it's just an observation.

Depth Charts are not really depth charts, are they?

They are more about assigning starters to positions on the play structure, i.e. 113, 014 etc. From what I see, and admittedly I've only got a few hundred hours in the game the AI is taking control of actual "depth". Maybe I'm missing it but I don't know if the player can affect that choice anywhere in the game other than in the substitution screen while in play-calling mode.

I've got a few thousand hours in both College and Pro games of the DDS franchise and those are true depth and package editors.

[KingZal]

Does anybody know how the positional scores are calculated in this game? In League->Reports and Info->Positional Rankings.

I have a monster front seven, with three DTs rated 79 and above and two starting DEs rated in the 60s, but my positional score for the defensive line is 52/100. The linebacker group, meanwhile, is 100/100.

My theory is that it has to do with scheme fit. I currently run a 43 defensive scheme but most of my linemen have a 34DE or 34NT fit. Not sure whether that's affected my defense for the worse, to be honest.

[Passacaglia]

Does this happen to anyone else? My starting QB is injured, but not out. He's a franchise-type QB, so I keep him in. But he only plays a couple drives, then the backup comes in. There's no message in the play-by-play that he's hurt again, and he's not more injured than before when the game is done, it's just like his injury makes him only able to play for a little while? It happens even when he's at 97%.

[KingZal]

That's happened to me before. My starting quarterback suffered a strained abdominal muscle in Week 14, and in consecutive weeks he started before being pulled. In Week 15 he got pulled mid drive, going into the second quarter; in Week 16 he started the first two drives and my backup took over the rest of the way.

I don't remember what his effectiveness was, but I ended up benching him until he was 100% healthy, which didn't happen until the Front Office Bowl.

[AlexB]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

Does this happen to anyone else? My starting QB is injured, but not out. He's a franchise-type QB, so I keep him in. But he only plays a couple drives, then the backup comes in. There's no message in the play-by-play that he's hurt again, and he's not more injured than before when the game is done, it's just like his injury makes him only able to play for a little while? It happens even when he's at 97%.

The whole injury thing is frustrating - it looks to me like the game overrides roster decisions for any injury other than Probable: if a player has a Questionable or Doubtful designation he doesn’t play even if he’s on your depth chart

I feel like I’m but the depth charts and ability to get the players on the field that you want on the field were so much better (and quicker to adjust) in FOF7

[garion333]

Originally Posted by Colly

First off, I enjoy the game. So what I write next is not a criticism because it does not affect my enjoyment of the game but it's just an observation.

Depth Charts are not really depth charts, are they?

They are more about assigning starters to positions on the play structure, i.e. 113, 014 etc. From what I see, and admittedly I've only got a few hundred hours in the game the AI is taking control of actual "depth". Maybe I'm missing it but I don't know if the player can affect that choice anywhere in the game other than in the substitution screen while in play-calling mode.

I've got a few thousand hours in both College and Pro games of the DDS franchise and those are true depth and package editors.

You are correct. The game moved to this model with FOF8, if my memory serves. It's rubbed a number of people the wrong way (see Alex's post above this post), but in some ways it feels like it made Endurance actually important rather than just a question of whether a player played tired or not.

[SgtTomorrow]

https://www.frontofficegames.com/
Jim's link on X appears to have been hijacked if someone can pass it on...

[Unimaginative]

A thought I'm having as I really get into FoF9 for the first time: it would be nice to be able to see stats over a range of seasons. Say I want to see who leads the league in Receiving yards since I drafted my stud #1 in 2032, or make an All-Decade Team for the 2030s.

[FBPro]

I bought the game on day one and have played off and on since. I have created about 3 universes I believe and it has been about a month since I've played. I say all that to say, I opened it just now and only have one league file and am wondering if anyone besides me has seen this and no I really haven't done anything unusual like deleting a bunch of files etc.

[cupofjoe]

Originally Posted by FBPro

I bought the game on day one and have played off and on since. I have created about 3 universes I believe and it has been about a month since I've played. I say all that to say, I opened it just now and only have one league file and am wondering if anyone besides me has seen this and no I really haven't done anything unusual like deleting a bunch of files etc.

I've seen a couple of complaints about saved files being deleted. But I haven't experienced it

[NYC13]

Originally Posted by AlexB

The whole injury thing is frustrating - it looks to me like the game overrides roster decisions for any injury other than Probable: if a player has a Questionable or Doubtful designation he doesn’t play even if he’s on your depth chart

I feel like I’m but the depth charts and ability to get the players on the field that you want on the field were so much better (and quicker to adjust) in FOF7

Fpr the injuries, I discovered if you go into the Settings section of the Strategy page you can adjust how aggressively the AI will play an injured player. I have questionable injured players playing when I want them to by turning up that setting.

But agreed on your depth chart comments overall. It's particularly frustrating with the offensive line. If my left tackle is tired, I want to decide who steps in for him. Maybe I have a swing tackle that is effective at both. Maybe I have one guy who is a better LT with better pass protection ratings I'd want there as a backup. Maybe I want to have my young backup Center also get some experience at Guard by getting subbed in when the starting Guards need a rest. It seems like I could do this within the game itself maybe, via the Examine Lineup page, but that's kind of a pain to have to do individually for each formation type during a game

[nfg22]

Last year I bought and refunded the game. The UI seemed like huge regression. The flow of everything seemed worse. My eyes hurt just searching for information.

Then I had an inkling to try again, maybe I was too harsh.

Again I cannot get into this and I feel like I am being gaslit. There is no possible way people think this is better than old versions of FOF. Its either cope or blind fanboyism. Jim has a great legacy but this is not it. He obviously failed to adapt with the times and refuses to learn a modern(even semi modern) UI framework.

Maybe the engine is better than ever, idk. But I cant even go between menus without wanting to shoot someone. Maybe its because when I played this game 10-25 years ago I was not a programmer myself. But I cannot see this as anything other than poor decisions all around.

I know im screaming into the void because no one has posted in this thread for almost 8 months, even though it is supposedly the best FOF game by far. Anyways Im sure I will try in another year See you then.

[Haiku]

Originally Posted by nfg22

Last year I bought and refunded the game. The UI seemed like huge regression. The flow of everything seemed worse. My eyes hurt just searching for information.

Then I had an inkling to try again, maybe I was too harsh.

Again I cannot get into this and I feel like I am being gaslit. There is no possible way people think this is better than old versions of FOF. Its either cope or blind fanboyism. Jim has a great legacy but this is not it. He obviously failed to adapt with the times and refuses to learn a modern(even semi modern) UI framework.

Maybe the engine is better than ever, idk. But I cant even go between menus without wanting to shoot someone. Maybe its because when I played this game 10-25 years ago I was not a programmer myself. But I cannot see this as anything other than poor decisions all around.

I know im screaming into the void because no one has posted in this thread for almost 8 months, even though it is supposedly the best FOF game by far. Anyways Im sure I will try in another year See you then.

The UI of FOF8 is only better for you because you are used to it. For new players, it's atrocious. The new navigation system, although not great, is actually much more similar to the OOTP franchise, which is beloved by many.

[nfg22]

Originally Posted by Haiku

The UI of FOF8 is only better for you because you are used to it. For new players, it's atrocious. The new navigation system, although not great, is actually much more similar to the OOTP franchise, which is beloved by many.

That's funny because I have thousands of hours in ootp as well. Never had an issue with UI. Maybe I'm just a hater I don't know.

Jim has admitted in the past he doesn't want to experiment with new UI libraries. Maybe his time at ootp migrated him towards ootp but it definitely doesn't seem as intuitive to me in fof 9.

I also dont know how you can compare these two. One is outdated custom shite from 1999 and one is probably closer to 2018-2020 with more modern libraries. Likely QT4? Not sure.

Rounded Buttons? Nope. Spacing used? Nope. So much wasted space. The text in FOF is near unreadable, all so we can have a bunch of blank space.
Oh but you say Jim isn't a UI guy, he is a true engineer with great logic. I agree, which is why people have created modern frameworks which do progressive spacing for you, instead of custom coding every single space and text.

Its like coding a website in base HTML. You do not have to use tailwind, but maybe consider bootstrap?

[Solecismic]

What I wrote was quite different. Please quote me directly and in context.

I would be curious, since you say you're a programmer, to see something you've done professionally.

Earlier, you had claimed that you could redo the entire FOF interface using Chat GPT in just a few hours. I'd also like to see that. Not just a screen mockup, but an actual interface.

By the way, one tip with the interface that's in the documentation, in case you're honestly interested in playing the game. I thought it would be good, in the long run, for people to choose their own font families and sizes. I made this choice because the font I like best is not necessarily on every computer and I don't have the rights to distribute it.

If text is too small to read and there's too much blank space, you can use a larger font and the screen will adjust all the elements that use text. I went small with the default because different Windows versions are tricky about reporting sizes - it's not always cut and dried - trying to detect and decide probably works with Windows 10 and 11 quite well, maybe not so much on earlier versions. So my default is set to work with the smallest screen size I support.

You've mentioned Qt a few times. OOTP-FOF was in Qt - I'm pretty sure it was Qt5 - we had the same base as FHM. I used it for a long time. I didn't like the List Control - it was too rigid an architecture, too slow, and didn't have all the display functionality I needed. That's why I switched. I still haven't found anything, after many years of doing this, as fast and versatile as the ListCtrl I've created on the MFC base. And for this type of game, a good ListCtrl is far more important than any other widget. The downside of my approach is that it can't be ported to Mac.

[nfg22]

Originally Posted by nfg22

That's funny because I have thousands of hours in ootp as well. Never had an issue with UI. Maybe I'm just a hater I don't know.

Jim has admitted in the past he doesn't want to experiment with new UI libraries. Maybe his time at ootp migrated him towards ootp but it definitely doesn't seem as intuitive to me in fof 9.

I also dont know how you can compare these two. One is outdated custom shite from 1999 and one is probably closer to 2018-2020 with more modern libraries. Likely QT4? Not sure.

Rounded Buttons? Nope. Spacing used? Nope. So much wasted space. The text in FOF is near unreadable, all so we can have a bunch of blank space.
Oh but you say Jim isn't a UI guy, he is a true engineer with great logic. I agree, which is why people have created modern frameworks which do progressive spacing for you, instead of custom coding every single space and text.

Its like coding a website in base HTML. You do not have to use tailwind, but maybe consider bootstrap?

Originally Posted by Solecismic

What I wrote was quite different. Please quote me directly and in context.

I would be curious, since you say you're a programmer, to see something you've done professionally.

Earlier, you had claimed that you could redo the entire FOF interface using Chat GPT in just a few hours. I'd also like to see that. Not just a screen mockup, but an actual interface.

By the way, one tip with the interface that's in the documentation, in case you're honestly interested in playing the game. I thought it would be good, in the long run, for people to choose their own font families and sizes. I made this choice because the font I like best is not necessarily on every computer and I don't have the rights to distribute it.

If text is too small to read and there's too much blank space, you can use a larger font and the screen will adjust all the elements that use text. I went small with the default because different Windows versions are tricky about reporting sizes - it's not always cut and dried - trying to detect and decide probably works with Windows 10 and 11 quite well, maybe not so much on earlier versions. So my default is set to work with the smallest screen size I support.

You've mentioned Qt a few times. OOTP-FOF was in Qt - I'm pretty sure it was Qt5 - we had the same base as FHM. I used it for a long time. I didn't like the List Control - it was too rigid an architecture, too slow, and didn't have all the display functionality I needed. That's why I switched. I still haven't found anything, after many years of doing this, as fast and versatile as the ListCtrl I've created on the MFC base. And for this type of game, a good ListCtrl is far more important than any other widget. The downside of my approach is that it can't be ported to Mac.

You got me on the ChatGPT thing, I could not actually write the whole interface in a few hours. I actually don't remember saying that but its in the history so I did.

I shouldn't have to change the text to make the game readable. I understand you may have a preference but the base preference should be readily pleasant. I don't change text on other text sims to make them readable, but I may mess with color schemes and such to get it closer to my preferences.

On the issue of the UI. Your skill(as well as mine, if we are asking about professional project) lies in the game engine. It works well. If you use QT(or other styllable framework), it should be decently easy to contract out UI styling and get a much more pleasant experience at a pretty decent price. I've done it, because I'm not good at UI.

Even then I do not think the whole flow of the UI makes sense, but again maybe that's just because I have such a sour taste in my mouth from the initial experience and won't give it a chance to learn it.

[jolo240]

For me, my minor issue with the game is that there are certain game elements that isn't in the manual. Maybe for FOF veterans it would make sense but not for a total newbie. A better manual would help a lot, specially for total newbies.

Some terms are self-explanatory (red flag, mentors) but there are some game elements that aren't in the manual. Some elements like which coach attributes matter, positon specialty, which attributes matter more for defensive players, etc.

The UI is quite old school, but I've gotten the hang of it.

[Haiku]

Originally Posted by nfg22

That's funny because I have thousands of hours in ootp as well. Never had an issue with UI. Maybe I'm just a hater I don't know.

My point was that the navigation between screens is better, and the general layout - with the menu at the top and the calendar in the upper-right is very similar to OOTP. This alone is a big improvement over FOF8 imo, but of course everyone sees things differently.

[Solecismic]

There's a mouse-over for what the attributes control. Nothing's hidden. It's hard to say what mix of defensive attributes matter in what percentages - that's dependent on what you're trying to do. Even the AI teams look at them differently in some cases.

I think you're right that there should be more written about coaching attributes. The text files in the data folder are meant to be a manual supplement, but since the coach files do not include ratings, those are absent and it isn't as clear as it should be what matters for coordinators versus head coaches.

Going back to UI - I'd be interested, nfg22, if you could provide examples of your work as a programmer and how you found a Qt expert and how that integration worked.

Since I spent a lot of time with Qt and the styling is all configurable, the advantages of a well-programmed resizing algorithm are apparent, but its rigidity of architecture and slow speed drove me crazy. I initially wanted to stick with it, but when you're dealing with 200 screens - and the data modeling requirements mean so much extra work for anything that's built differently... I felt I was spending more time on the UI than rewriting the game. It saved a lot of time to finally scrap Qt and start over on the interface and I think, with proper use of threading, FOF9 is much faster.

I've written a lot about the difficulty in expanding my company to a second person, so I'm interested in your experience, given your strong opinions about how (expletive deleted) my work is, so I hope you read what I wrote at the time - it's on a couple of the items - and are specific about what you have done differently.

We can agree to disagree on the text issue. It is undoubtedly related to my choice of development platform and desire to keep the game working back to Windows 8, but it's so easy to change the font if you have a higher-resolution monitor that I don't think it's a huge deal. My philosophy of interface, such as that is, revolves around the ListCtrl. That's what makes sims like this possible. If you're going to play for hundreds of hours, you're going to get more benefit from being able to choose the font yourself from what you have on your computer. I could write thousands of lines more about this, but I think I made the right choice given that I don't have a UI programmer or a staff. Your response, however, makes me question whether I should try and run a detection specific to Windows 10/11 and increase font size for higher res monitors only on 10/11. If that's the main reason behind the (expletive deleted) commentary, at least.

[MizzouRah]

Are the cap numbers off on the 2024 rosters?

Denver is at the top + $82,670,000 and Cincinnati is at the bottom + $13,030,000.

[Solecismic]

I've never done cap adjustments on the data files. The situation with dead cap money and how teams work around that is more about its construction than any snapshot in time.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

I've never done cap adjustments on the data files. The situation with dead cap money and how teams work around that is more about its construction than any snapshot in time.

Thanks, it's just different in the 2024 file than it was in the 2023 file as far as teams cap room starting the initial season.

I'm sure it will normalize going into season 2.