I used to write articles about NCAA Football back in the day and thinking back, they almost always came down to second guessing some aspect of the game and wishing it was better. Thinking back it's almost a little sad that I was always wishing for something developers never planned on doing. Take improvement. You recruit three quarterbacks in a class that are a similar OVR range. Go through 3 to 4 improvement cycles, and in any NCAA game to date, those guys are going to very similar ratings wise by the end. Very very rarely would you see one of them overtake the other in terms of OVR unless they were very close in terms of ratings.
I always wondered why this sufficed for people. Is that how football works? Obviously not. You have players transfer out and quit. Players who just don't have the work ethic others have. Why should I open the improvement tab and see that 70 players have all improved 3 OVR to 7 OVR points with the vast majority right at 5... I decided to come up with something where you could conceivably see players lose a few OVR points, or improve greatly to where you see a 65 OVR guy have a shot to be a 90+ guy someday. What made this possible for me is that this is the last NCAA game we may ever see, and I've got (what I think is) the best playing game to date and all the time in the world.. Why not?
Before I blither on too long here let me stop and say this is something I've only done for an offseason... It's just an idea in the early stages, something I would like feedback on from "numbers guys. Or something to try if you're interested in something different. It can be improved, I know it.
I originally figured I would count up the improvement points the team got, and then redistribute those points somehow. But quickly you realize if you do that, you'd have have a decent lower end of the roster but too many highly rated guys.
so whereas in my most recent offseason the team improved an average of 4.67 points the "old way", my system ended up with improvement slightly less than 3 OVR points per player. But that includes a few players that drop by as much as 5 OVR points.
I keep an annual roster (this will be necessary so you can edit players at the start of the season back to their original ratings) and it has the basic skills that apply to each position along with the OVR. So for running backs, ACC/AGI/SPD/STR/ and the "moves" ratings along with Carry. I also list pass blocking for that position.
At the end of this roster I have some created ratings for my players. One is Work Ethic - WE - which applies to the improvement. Each player has a randomly selected rating between 40 and 99 for this, which never changes (for me at least... do what you want). To originally set this up I recommend either using the random.org app or go to this site and set the random numbers with this site
http://www.wessa.net/rwasp_rngnorm.wasp - You can do multiple runs and look for the best distribution that fits what you're trying to get done. Then you could randomize THOSE numbers for applying to your players. Anything that takes it completely out of your hands.
Here are my settings in case this helps anyone:
41 Low Truncation Point, 99 High Truncation Point
Mean 78, Standard Deviation 15, Number of Bins 1, List Random Numbers in table? YES (This way you can take the list and go right down your roster for the players that need new ratings)
This gives me about 10% of players with really bad ethic ratings, 40% with average, and 30% above average. Around 10% of players will improve better than the CPU players do.
So this is pretty simple, each offseason you randomly select the player improvement based on that work ethic rating.
I'm currently using:
(WORK ETHIC RANGE)- IMPROVEMENT RANGE
(40-45) -5 to 4
(46-50) -4 to 4
(51-55) -4 to 5
(56-60) -3 to 5
(61-65) -3 to 6
(66-70) -3 to 7
(71-75) -2 to 7
(76-80) -2 to 8
(81-85) -1 to 9
(86-90) 0 to 10
(91-95) 1 to 11
(96-99) 2 to 12
I should mention here that I also had a randomly selected number from 1 to 4 that applied to the type of improvements they would make... I balance this with their "player type" rating - i.e. a "pass block" tackle will always improve more as a pass blocker than as a run blocker, but a balanced tackle will improve similarly in both.
1 - physicality - STRENGTH agi/acc, rarely speed
2 - awareness - huge awareness gain, then minor improvement elsewhere
3 - position skills based - block shedding/pursuit for defensive players as an example
4 - all around improvement
The following correlate with when you roll a 3:
Skills Types
1 - Concentrate on best attributes
2 - Concentrate on weakest attributes
3 - Concentrate on "player type" attributes
4 - Major increase to non position specific skills if applicable (blocking if RB/WR) (Juking/Moves if FB/WR/TE)
5 - Concentrate on best attributes
6 - (HB: BTK/TRK/) (FB: BTK/TRK) (WR: RTE/CTH) (TE: CIT/IBL) (OL: PBK) (DL: TAK/PUR) (LB: TAK/PUR) (DB: CTH/PRS/MCV)
7 - (HB: ELU/SPM/JKM) (FB: CTH/RTE) (WR: CTH/CIT) (TE: CTH/RTE)(OL: RBK) (DL: POW/BSH) (LB: BSH/POW) (DB: BSH/PUR/TAK)
8 - (HB: BCV/SFA/CAR) (FB: PBK/IBL) (WR: RTE/CIT) (TE: RBK/CTH) (OL: IBL) (DL: PMV/BSH) (LB: PUR/FMV) (DB: ZCV/PRC/BSH)
9 - (HB: CTH/SPC/CIT/RTE) (FB: RBK/IBL) (WR: ELU/BTK) (TE: PBK/CTH) (OL: ALL3) (DL: FMV/PUR) (LB: TAK/MCV) (DB: ZCV/MCV/POW)
10- Concentrate on "player type" attributes
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So just as a couple examples. DE Zach Cable (son of Tom) is a pretty blah player but got a great work ethic rating in my game and spiked 12 points his first offseason and is now 70 OVR. Richard Mongtomery, my HB, looked like he would be a starter after a redshirt season but his improvement was 0 and other players passed him by. He will still play, and his work ethic is fine, just got a bad "roll." While the improvement overall is lower than you'd normally see, I think it's a lot more realistic.
This is pretty demanding on time at least for the first offseason as you implement the spreadsheets you'll need to keep track of it, etc. I have just taken it in stride spending an hour to a couple hours when permitted and basically taken a week for my offseason. After all, there's no rush. Thanks EA and players...
NOTE: AS OF MARCH 2018: Added a new facet to the ETH rating and it's really simple. If a player rolls their lowest possible improvement within the range they are at, they will go down a notch in ETH rating to the next lowest number that will be in a lower range. So taking from what is above, if a player has an
88 ETH rating he is in this range:
(86-90) 0 to 10
Let's say he rolls a zero: He will now drop to an 85 ETH rating. This can happen as many times as he rolls the lowest or highest number in the range. If he rolls a 10, he goes up to 91.
Any constructive feedback appreciated.
08-31-2014, 03:33 PM
