Draft Day

[mrsimperless]

No, I'm not talking about Saturday April 26th, 2003. Ever since I wrote the code for and participated in the FOF Tecmo player allocation draft I've had the itch to write an online sports text sim. And now I am finally nearing the final stages of design on a sim that I am calling Draft Day. I wanted to post this message to gauge community interest in the game and decide if I should proceed with development.

The jist of the game is this: Each player controls a team in a fictitious football (American) league modeled after the NFL. Think of it as FOF lite. Instead of the pseudo GM/coach role that players have in FOF, this is more of a Director of Player Personnel type of game. You build the team, and the results are generated automatically. Each season consists of a FA/trading period and of course the college draft. After the draft teams are shown how their players fared during training camp (player development) and then how their teams did during the regular season. Wham bam thank you Fritz, rinse, repeat.

Here is an excerpt from my design doc regarding player ratings:

We are going to use a very simplified player rating system for Draft Day. There is no 100-point scale for players. Players will be rated based on a simple enumeration scale. The different player ratings are detailed below.

Football God
These players are once in a lifetime. They make games bend to their will.
You might see one football god (regardless of position) every 50 or so seasons. The rarest of the rare.

Legend
Legends are exactly that, legends. They utterly dominate the game when they are on the field.
Legends are very rare. You will probably see one at each position every 15-30 seasons, which means there is usually at least one in the league at any given time.

Superstar
Superstars are the marquee players of the game. They are usually the top players at their respective positions barring the presence of a current legend or football god.
Superstars are the great players that every team wants. There is generally one superstar in the league at each position for every 7-10 teams.

Star
These are the upper echelon players in the league.
These guys are good. You should find one or more on each team, and about 1 per position per 3-4 teams.

Starter
Starters are great players, no doubt about it. They just haven’t done anything to separate themselves from the rest of the herd.
Starters are fairly common in the league and make up a decent portion of the starting players on each team’s roster.

Reserve
These guys make capable backups and can start in a pinch if needed. But you wouldn’t want them starting for extended periods of time if you could help it.
There are plenty of reserves around for everybody.

Bench Warmer
Unfortunately for their respective teams these players do make it onto the field occasionally.
Take your pick.

So is there any interest in playing this? If I build it will you come?

[Ben E Lou]

Interest here.

[Logan]

If done right, a game like this could be very good.

[Marmel]

Sure. It sounds maybe too simplistic. Would there be finances? Would you set depth charts? Would be be able to hire coaches with different offensive/defensive capabilities and ideologies.

There might need to be more than drafting and Free Agency to keep interest going, IMHO.

Otherwise, you might realle be onto something appealing.

[JeeberD]

Sounds interesting...

[RonnieDobbs]

Sounds great man. The Draft is one of my favorite times of the year.

I think this game could be a lot of fun, but I would want the draft to be very involved, as involved as the real one. Trade talks that go nowhere. Mock Drafts prior to the event. A combine that would let you try to sniff out sleepers and busts. Stats in college for all years played. Personality of the players (is this guy tampering with his urine sample? etc.) I'm sure there's a ton more.

Good luck and keep us informed.

[Ben E Lou]

I'd like to see hiring coaches as an option. They'd have different tendencies, and you'd want to build a team to match your coaching staff, or vice versa.

[BishopMVP]

If you want to expand the scope some, you could make it the "true" Front Office Football, with just drafting/signing decisions and not add in all of the gameplan and coaching decisions that FOF does. It definitely sounds interesting.

[MrBug708]

Sounds fun

[GrantDawg]

Always looking at something new.

[Logan]

I hate to think negative...but mrsimperless, are you actually planning on making this game as complex as we have all seemed to think it will be?

I only ask because after re-reading your post, I feel like you have intended for this to be much simpler than a FOF-like game (minus the coaching).

If you are aiming for it to be complex, by all means, try your best. We'll all be very interested in it.

[Bee]

sounds interesting to me. You could always expand on it and use some of the ideas that have been thrown out in this thread if you decide to continue development after an initial release.

Good luck!

[DeToxRox]

i am down like syndrom.