First off I want to admit that I have not extensively tested this, only played around with it in CFM practice mode so far. That being said I've found that a player's "archetype"(i.e. scrambler/Strong Arm, etc) has a massive impact on how that player will behave. More specifically I found that QBs will not run past the LOS under any circumstances UNLESS they are SCRAMBLER archetype.
The "QB Style" that can be edited under traits seems to have no effect on this. For example a "pocket" or "balanced" QB Style will still run if they are a scrambler archetype while a "scramber" QB Style seems to have no effect on the willingness of a Strong arm archetype to run. The willingness to actually run past the LOS seems singulary tied to the archetype scramber, regardless of speed or any other attribute or trait.
Now what's more interesting is that the difference between scrambler and the other Archetypes is huge. Even an Improvisor seems to refuse to roll outside the tackle box let alone actually run. But if you take that same player & bump up his carrying and break sack rating(easiest way to change his archetype to scrambler-more on that later) all of a sudden he's behaving totally different and will run if no receivers are open after a few seconds. The good news is that just because a player is a scrambler doesn't mean he just immediately tucks and runs. He will go through his progressions and only runs as a last resort after failing to find an open target. This is a great news because personally i get too many sacks on CPU QBs and half the time they are coverage sacks where the QB refuses to leave the pocket and extend the play. The bad news is that it seems that once the QB does decide to leave the pocket and run, he is no longer considering throwing the ball, even if it means scrambling right into a user defender on a QB spy.
Now, what is the practical use of this information? Well, it seems to me that it could be extremely useful to "turn" QBs like Russell Wilson or Baker Mayfield into Scrambler archetypes before playing them that week & then reverting them back after the game. Reason being, very very few QBs in this game are actually scrambler archetypes. Most mobile QBs are actually improvisors and it drives me crazy to watch Russell Wilson just take a coverage sack without even putting up a fight.
But how do we change their archetype without massively influencing gameplay? Two attributes; Break Sack and Carrying. Now usually Break Sack will also increase their Improvisor rating, but it affects scrambler more. Carrying almost exclusively increases scrambler(note: BC move ratings have no effect on their OVR rating of any archetype). This is useful anyway b/c I rarely see broken sacks to begin with and if the QBs do start running more they could use a boost in carrying. Now this method would only be worth using on QBs with their scrambler rating within a couple points of their main archetype. It is extremely difficult to make Phillip Rivers a scrambler for example, without completely changing all his attributes. BUT that's fine because we don't want a guy like that scrambling anyway. I think ideally we would want to raise these attributes enough to change the archetype without drastically impacting gameplay. We don't want them breaking every sack or never fumbling. Because of this, like I said, only a select type of QB would benefit from this change without having to jack these rating both to 99.
I apologize for the long post, but I'll end on this. I don't think it's just the scrambler archetype that alters AI Behavior like this. It did seem like Strong Arm QBs were more likely to push the ball downfield. I'm willing to bet each archetype effects the QB AI in different ways. And I would definately not be surprised if it was the same for other positions as well.
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09-02-2019, 02:45 AM
