The "One and Done Challenge"

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Skolleck

For the second round, I would like to see a few veteran mentors on the team prior to the draft and see how much that improves the wins.

I like that idea, too. If I'm setting this up again, maybe we will go that way -- or at least start things off with that as an option - where you're free to keep any or all of the foundation mentors that you want, but don't have to. For development and chemistry purposes, I think that would make a good deal of sense -- though admittedly, it hasn't been too tough for me to find playing time for most of my players in this challenge, so development hasn't been a major concern.

[TRO]

SD, I plan on running this today as well. Danka.

[Skolleck]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

That doesn't sound to me like a career-ender, FWIW. You can slot a guy listed as "out" as your QB3.

I tried that and it still gave me the message that it would make a roster move. I have the game saved, so I will go back to it.

Thanks,
Scott Kolleck

[tarcone]

I am into my 3rd season

0-16
3-13

In the 2nd season, I was 2-2 at one point and thinking playoffs. I know, I know.
I concentrated on offense. In fact my 1st 3 picks went: T, RB, T. All in the 1st round. In my initial draft, QBs flew. I was surprised, but stuck to my run game idea.
Im in my 3rd season and lost game 1 35-21 to defending division champ washington at their house. Im liking my team.
I lost a LB due to lack of playing time. He prefered not to play at all then to play with me. I even offered him a huge bonus, 500k.

[digamma]

I am in the clubhouse after 2017.

[larrymcg421]

After winning 3 games in my first 3 years, I finally had a breakthrough season and went 6-10.

[tarcone]

I finished 1-15 in season 3. Ugh. Not sure what happened.
I did play a game and called the offense. I ran my 53 endurance guy a lot in the 1st quarter. Midway through the 2nd quarter his endurance rating was fair. He only got up to good the rest of the game. A real eye opener.
I need to play SP more.

[Vince]

0-16 in year one, improved to 4-12 in year two. This is incredibly difficult.

[Abe Sargent]

I went back to score a season in which i made it to the playoffs as a wild card, and noted that we don;t get any points for playoffs. Wow.

EDIT: By "wow" I mean surprised, not that its all bad or anything, just surprised.

[WelshWizard]

When you get a chance can someone set up a Thread for me for this?

Thanks,
Kevin

[Vince]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

I went back to score a season in which i made it to the playoffs as a wild card, and noted that we don;t get any points for playoffs. Wow.

EDIT: By "wow" I mean surprised, not that its all bad or anything, just surprised.

I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to keep score on a year-by-year basis. It's a cumulative career type thing.

[Subby]

Originally Posted by Vince

I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to keep score on a year-by-year basis. It's a cumulative career type thing.

You do get points for conference titles and bowl wins...

[Narcizo]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

I think that is, unfortunately, a function of the .fgr file that I used with this career. I had no idea that (for whatever reason) the graphics color settings and the global settings for cap increase and injuries are contained in the same file. My best guess is that I had it set to zero (holdover from some other career of mine) when I started this career, and when it selected the multi-year cap increase it was set to zero.

I don't expect it will have a material effect on anything your team does (the cap simply isn't a major factor in this career, or at least it wasn't for me), but there's bound to be a little more chaos for the AI teams during those several seasons.

Hi Quik,

very interesting and fun challenge. The cap thingy makes it significantly easier as the game progresses as players rated in the 10s pop up on a variety of teams. However I also suspect it's going to leave me unable to continue after 2015 because I can't fit everyone under the cap. (Wish I had tried to be a bit more stringent with the cap I should have taken my chances resigning my scrubs as FAs rather than resigning them to relatively large multi-year deals).

Anyway despite the weakening of the AI teams I'm pretty pleased with my effort as my slightly modified basic MP gameplan worked fine against the AI.

2008: 6-10
2009: 8-8
2010: 3-13
2011: 10-6 Wildcard
2012: 15-1 Bowl Champs
2013: 10-6 Div Champs
2014: 14-2 Bowl Champs

Anyway, thanks a lot for the idea for this, I think I've learned a little bit more about how players develop.

PS is there any way to see everyone else's posts in the special forum? I haven't really taken any notes (other than change tracker exports) so I don't feel like I have a lot to write about but I'm interested in seeing what players people took etc etc. However if people are interested in my players I'd like to have a forum as well.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Vince

I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to keep score on a year-by-year basis. It's a cumulative career type thing.

Not for the final three ways of getting points, its not. Only one score is cumulative. I want to keep a running total of those.

[Abe Sargent]

I'm thinking that maybe playoff loses shouldn't count towards your winning percentage. I don;t know that we want to punish teams for making it to the playoffs then losing. If I go 9-7 as a wild card team and then get beaten in the playoffs, its a better season than a 9-7 record that does not get to the playoffs, but the second season scores better.

Thoughts?

-Abe

[Narcizo]

Managed to cram everyone under cap by allowing their contracts to expire and then signing them to min sals, apparently nobody in the league wants to pay money to a veteran with a 12/12 rating, who'd have thought. Finally run out of players due to retirement at the end of 2017 (the only year when I had to start switching positions around).

2015: 10-6 Div Champs
2016: 13-3 Conf Champs
2017: 12-4 Div Champs

[Tasan]

I can't wait to see the rosters you guys had to be able to put together these championship teams. I just don't see my guys doing anything like this.

[Synovia]

I was able to win a championship in 2016, and then had to disband the team week 4 in 2017. Ran out of players.

Had an C playing NT in the championship game.

[johnnyshaka]

Originally Posted by Narcizo

PS is there any way to see everyone else's posts in the special forum? I haven't really taken any notes (other than change tracker exports) so I don't feel like I have a lot to write about but I'm interested in seeing what players people took etc etc. However if people are interested in my players I'd like to have a forum as well.

I believe those forums will become public on Jan. 15th so we can all share our results. Not sure I want to share the results anymore.

[Abe Sargent]

How about special points if my team goes undefeated? Currently 9-0 in 2013 after a QB change...



EDIT: Correction, I got ahead of mysel.f I was 8-0. Then we lost 18-20 on teh road against 6 win Green Bay the very next week. Grrrr. Nm about the undefeated thing.

[QuikSand]

FYI - January 15th is the date that all the OND sub-forums will be opened up and everyone will be free to share information on players, gameplans, and the like. I'm sure we will set up an extensive "spoiler" thread on the challenge at that point.

[Vince]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

Not for the final three ways of getting points, its not. Only one score is cumulative. I want to keep a running total of those.

Yeah, I think I'm just so disheartened by my results in the first couple of seasons that I wasn't really thinking along the lines of playoffs...

[Vince]

And I'm now thoroughly convinced that I have Rex Grossman on my team. It's like he flips a coin pre-game -- "Heads, I suck. Tails, I'm going to play lights-out."

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Vince

And I'm now thoroughly convinced that I have Rex Grossman on my team. It's like he flips a coin pre-game -- "Heads, I suck. Tails, I'm going to play lights-out."

Dollars to donuts you and I had the same guy there.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

I'm thinking that maybe playoff loses shouldn't count towards your winning percentage. I don;t know that we want to punish teams for making it to the playoffs then losing. If I go 9-7 as a wild card team and then get beaten in the playoffs, its a better season than a 9-7 record that does not get to the playoffs, but the second season scores better.

Thoughts?

-Abe

I agree there is a trade-off required between simplicity and accuracy in such scoring. I went pretty far toward simplicity, wanting to make it really easy to simply pull the stats right off the team summary page without having to back anything out or many any complex adjustments.

If your team plays 10 seasons, and occasionally gets to the playoffs, then maybe you play in around 166 games. Taking a 0-1 in the playoffs amounts to losing one game in 166, something like a -0.6 in the scale of the total point system. Given the extra point awarded for every win, even though that amounts to a slight penalty, it's still a far better proposition for a typical team to make the playoffs than not.

If you're within a point or two of the very top of the results board at the end, only out due to opening-round playoff losses, we'll be sure to give you your proper credit, sir.

[Abe Sargent]

heehee

[Abe Sargent]

That was tough, put a lot of time into it. Whew.

[Tasan]

And I'm done. The last two seasons were absolute torture, as my team sucked except for a couple of gems. 10 guys called it quits to start 2018 to end it for me. I think I may go back and do it again. Can you put me on the list to see others forums? I'd like to start reading some of the completed writeups.

[Ben E Lou]

I've gone through the forums and opened up all of the ones who appear to be done. Those who aren't done, we'll just trust that you'll stay out. It's too much of a pain at this point to do individual permissions for the number of forums we have.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Jeez, the pressure.

I'm thinking something like January 15th. Sound okay to everyone?

I sat down yesterday and deliberately just *flew* through my draft, and got my team finalized and ready to start playing games in about 90 minutes of game time -- not exactly the "slow and steady" approach, overall. This will by no means be any sort of world-beater team, though.

Bump. My clock says its' the 15th

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Anxiety

Bump. My clock says its' the 15th

You're correct. I'll open up all of the threads now.

[QuikSand]

Cool by me.

I didn't finish my second trial, but I did all the player acquisition, so there's no harm of spoilers or anything. I might yet get back to it. (yeah, right)

[Tasan]

Bump. Anyone want to give this a go again, with a different player set, and maybe some different rules, like no 1st round picks or something? I know I had a blast doing it the first time.

[QuikSand]

I'm not sure I have the time to set things up, but if someone else did so, I'd likely play it out. Always pretty fun, I think.

[Ben E Lou]

What Quik said.

[Tasan]

Okay. Gimmie a couple of days to get everything set. I think I have the necessary files, but I need to check a couple things.

[RedHawk00]

Curious if we are looking for alternative ideas for "Challenges"? Perhaps if we get enough ideas together we can do monthly challenges, with fabulous prizes! (prizes are not fabulous)

[QuikSand]

I'd be game for an occasional FOF challenge contest. Maybe it would be in order to do something based on the 2008-09 Detroit Lions? The "Megatron Challenge" or something?

[Alf]

Just saw this thread and I must say that this was a brilliant idea for a solo game. I might try it.

[QuikSand]

Okay, I don't think I have the time to set this up, but here's what I would propose:

Start with the real NFL rosters (whatever version seems to work best) and play through the 2008 season controlling Detroit. Wrap things up before the season ends by releasing everyone on the roster except for Calvin Johnson. Start the 2009 season, advance to the stage where free agency begins, and save the game at that point.

So, we would each have one good player, one batch of free agents, three years of draft picks, and one rookie class to work from. That would be our starting point.

We allow an added rule to make this less of a "how long can you last" thing and just say that the goal is to do the best over, say, 10 years. No adding players after the first year, other than maybe some allowance for <10 rated roster fillers that may be needed to field a legal roster.

[stevew]

I like the sound of this one. I like the added element of having one "real" player as the focal point as well. An All Day AP challenge or Matty Ice one would be cool as well.

[QuikSand]

In theory, we could even make it a combined challenge, where you get points not just for team performance, but for what you get out of CJ, too.

[stevew]

Yeah. I don't think it would be that hard to construct the scoring where CJ counts as say a third or a half of the total available points.

Also loosening the rules on signing RFAs a few years in might not be a bad idea. I like the one and done concept, but it got silly later on when you had to work rediculousy hard to keep a legal roster

[QuikSand]

I think it would still work well, as long as you had to stretch out pretty far. If your success over 10 years is what counts, then that makes for a fairly interesting decision whether to go after a decent-looking 6th year free agent, for instance, figuring that he likely helps you more right away than most rookies would, but that he likely won't be around (or useful) toward the end of the period.