Coach Skills & It's Direct Impact On AI

[Gotmadskillzson]

Quote: Originally Posted by DucksForever

For user quarterbacks, does the strength rating determine how far a quarterback can throw? I get that Throw Power effects speed, but since this is a physics based game, the faster the ball travels (rpm), the farther it goes...theoretically at least.

How far somebody can throw seems to be hard coded in. Only thing that changes is the accuracy and how slow or fast the ball gets down there.

[Gotmadskillzson]

So I was messing around with the coach skills today determined to see what the game plays like without any of them. Unfortunately you can't turn them off, how ever what you can do is make the head, offensive and defensive coaches a Level 1. Which is basically only give them 1 attribute point to use.

I must say with everything 99% off, NCAA 14 plays just like NCAA 13, only with physics. The downside of that is the AI over all seems dumb. No pass rush is generated with the front 4. The CPU also have a hard time sustaining drives.

Without Big Game activated, the CPU struggles to score. Without Charge maxed out, the defense struggles to produce a pass rush. Same thing with No Fly Zone. Without that maxed out, Zones in this game is terrible.

[JoshC1977]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gotmadskillzson

So I was messing around with the coach skills today determined to see what the game plays like without any of them. Unfortunately you can't turn them off, how ever what you can do is make the head, offensive and defensive coaches a Level 1. Which is basically only give them 1 attribute point to use. I must say with everything 99% off, NCAA 14 plays just like NCAA 13, only with physics. The downside of that is the AI over all seems dumb. No pass rush is generated with the front 4. The CPU also have a hard time sustaining drives. Without Big Game activated, the CPU struggles to score. Without Charge maxed out, the defense struggles to produce a pass rush. Same thing with No Fly Zone. Without that maxed out, Zones in this game is terrible.

Good stuff man. Based on these findings, I definitely think that roster makers will need to carefully consider which coach skills they give teams and how to establish an appropriate coach level scheme. I think too many people too easily slap a Sun Belt team with a level 3 HC and level 1 coordinators. Based on what you have shown, that may be detrimental to gameplay overall.

I actually think that if you raise each coach's level reasonably high enough and then kick-in slowest coach progression at the beginning of a dynasty, that you could pick and choose the "good" skills for each coach in a roster file and it will take a lot of time before they accrue another skill point within a dynasty (lending some stability).

[therizing02]

Good stuff as usual, Skillz. Any thoughts on how this might effect play calling from the CPU perspective? The number of screen passes called in down and distance situations that it would never get called is beyond ridiculous.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Quote: Originally Posted by therizing02

Good stuff as usual, Skillz. Any thoughts on how this might effect play calling from the CPU perspective? The number of screen passes called in down and distance situations that it would never get called is beyond ridiculous.

The type of plays being called is controlled by aggression. The more conservative a team is, the more screens and short passes they will look for. The more aggressive a team is, the more deep passes they will look for. I find it to be best to be mostly aggressive or mostly conservative but never to the max in either direction.

I also find it to be helpful to change all the audibles for the different schools as well. That way when they do audible to something else, it won't be some dumb BS play that most teams have for an audible on offense and defense by default.

[Gotmadskillzson]

Some more tidbits:

Play recognition & Man Coverage does the same thing. They both control whether or not the defensive back will bite on a cut on a route. Because of this, do not give a defender high ratings in both. If one is high, the other have to be at 60 or below. By doing so, you will notice defenders are no longer joined at the hip when the WR is running his route. Instead it will be more of a defender sees, then reacts.

This will also lead to more deflections by defenders. Since they are more prone to being caught out of position, when they do try to make it back they will either be too late or make it just in time to deflect the ball away.


Pursuit & Hit Power are tied together. Therefore you can not have both high. Pursuit rating basically determines the probability of a hit stick like tackle triggering. You have to remember pursuit rating also gives a speed boost to defenders. Therefore if a player is traveling at a high rate of speed thanks to a high pursuit, it will automatically trigger a hit stick animation type of tackle.

Pursuit also has a direct effect on the ball carriers reactions or lack of reactions. It also determines the chances of a defender being faked out on a route, juke, spin or cut back lane. Because of this I suggest the following pursuit ratings for the defense:

Linemen - 50s to 70.

Linebackers - 60s to 80.

Secondary - 70s to 85.

Unless you want that defender making a lot of tackles in the backfield a lot, I wouldn't give a linebacker 85 or higher pursuit. They can run sideline to sideline way too fast if you do and more often then not, beat your blockers while you are in the backfield.

With block shedding rating I would suggest 80 or lower for 99% of the defensive linemen and linebackers. At 80 you see more of a natural struggle animation play out between the offensive lineman and the defensive lineman since the block isn't broken instantly. I saw some defensive linemen do some cool dip animations where the duck under the blocker arms to get passed them.

VERY IMPORTANT - do not give any defensive back above 50 block shedding. If you do, they will end up hopping over blocks more often then not when blockers try to cut block them.

Tackle rating I would keep between 50 and low 80s. Reason being the lower the tackle rating, the more group tackles you will see and less solo tackles. Had a game where one team had 26 assisted tackles and the other 18 assisted tackles. Also a lower tackle rating means a defender have to be in direct contact with you to initiate a tackle as well. I noticed over the past year that when a defender have mid to upper 80s tackle rating, he magnetically gets sucked into the ball carrier, despite his position and body orientation. So if you want to take the suction out of tackles, give them a lower tackle rating.

Lowering the tackle slider will not work. Because even at a zero tackle slider, if defenders had mid to upper 80s tackle rating I still saw defenders get magnetically sucked into the ball carrier.

Strength, power move and finesse move are tied together. Strength basically determines how fast a break block animation, such as a bull rush, spin, swim or rip move triggers.

Strength & Stiff Arm are also tied together. Don't really notice it as much in NCAA 14, but on Madden 25 on the next gen consoles you definitely see a HUGE difference between a lower rated strength guy throwing a stiff arm vs a higher strength rated guy.

Strength & Truck are tied together as well. Same as above.

Spin rating determines how wide or how small the radius of your spin is.

Juke rating determines how far of a jump you make to the side.

Elusive rating is pretty worthless to be honest for the CPU AI. Don't make them do or behave any type of way.

Awareness = CPU AI brains. The higher the smarter they are. So you might want to be careful how many defenders you give upper 80s or 90s in awareness, because it also determines fake out logic for defenders. The higher rated they are in awareness, the less of a chance they will be faked out by a juke or spin.

So you want to limit the amount of passes a TE or the 3rd and 4th WRs get ? Give them very low route running, like in the 50s. Give them very low release ratings as well. This will prevent them from getting open so quickly.

Now moving on the importance of stamina. Basically lower it for EVERYBODY.

Offensive and defensive Linemen from 60 to 75.

Linebackers from 65 to 80.

WRs, TEs, DBs from 65 to 85.

Point being stamina controls a lot in the game. From pursuit logic to play calling to mistakes being made to injuries and penalties happening. You will never see it if people have too much stamina. And really in this game, anything above 75 is too much stamina.

[cparrish]

This is great stuff. I stumbled across this as well playing a dynasty with some friends four years into our dynasty. I was the HC at EMU for three years and then was offered the job at my dream school, Colorado, and took it in a heart beat. Colorado also signed on Dabo Sweeney as my OC and he came in as a level 23 OC. In the first three games of the season I found it much easier to move the ball while on offense as I did previously at EMU. That is when I realized Dabo was a 23 while my OC at EMU was like a 7. These really do change a game, in fact we had to completely re-tool our sliders because of the affect it had on gameplay and honestly, the game now plays better than before.

The next game I played against Stanford and their defense was unreal because of their DC and the talent they had on their roster. It was amazing, I went from averaging over 50 a game the first three games to 13 points against Stanford. I never felt cheated against them, they were just clearly better and played like it. Again, a great find and it really makes the dynasty game better imo.

[makmanmu]

Skillz,

What settings do you use? (difficulty, sliders, auto subs, etc.)

I want to know what you think is the most realistic. Thanks for all you do!