RFF's M21 32-man CFM USER v USER Sliders

[Aestis]

You should use these sliders IF:

• You are in a CFM with other humans, preferably 32 but a few leagues of 4-10 do use these as well.
• You want gameplay to be as realistic as Madden can get--this means coverage is tougher, pass rush comes faster, and your INTs & sacks may be high if you are more aggressive than an NFL QB would be.
• You want sliders driven by actual data from hundreds of games (strictly User v User games from After Work Football League), and based on per-play efficiency metrics built by an analytics director IRL. This set is not based on how I personally feel after playing a handful of games.
• You are comfortable with the fact that these may not lead to a great User v CPU experience--these are entirely optimized for our 32-man league, not CPU games.

The Methodology:

Spoiler

Dating back to M15, I've been measuring our league's User v User game stats & benchmarking against the NFL using per-play advanced metrics (e.g. Pts per Play, Net Pass Yds per Drop-back, Air & YAC Yds per Pass Comp, Sack & INT rates, 20+ yd run %, etc.) as well as NFL weekly medians (to understand volatility) to balance our sliders.

This means hard data from 32 humans across hundreds of games are what dictate my slider adjustments, NOT the subjective judgment by the slider creator on how they think they should be performing.

So if I'm personally having a hard time running the ball, but the league as a whole is tracking great vs NFL run success...the run game goes untouched. Without this visibility into league-wide stats in USER games only, there is no honest & objective way to balance a 32-man league.

Again, this is all benchmarked against NFL median per-play success, not just game-end point & yardage totals. Sim leagues who run 6-minute quarters where each team snaps 35-45 plays/game might end up with realistic looking 34-24 type scores, 280 yds passing by QBs, 90 yds rushing from RBs...but that's off 21 pass attempts and 13 rushes. Despite calling themselves "sim leagues," their actual gameplay is incredibly arcadey. Scoring is MUCH easier in these leagues. Scoring in the NFL is tough, teams have to punt often, and our sliders are designed to reflect this.

If you run this set, to succeed you will have to:

Spoiler

- Stop throwing it into the middle of sagging coverage. Hardest thing for most Madden players to learn. NFL QBs don't force it, and they don't try to thread tight needles 15 yards downfield at a huge risk of INT. Madden players tend to force it downfield into coverage no matter what then complain about INTs. NFL QBs check down & live to fight another day--even if it means punting.
- Get the ball out quick. Pass rush can come quickly. You better actually read Ds & have a progression. The "drop back 10+ yds and wait for someone to come open" age-old video game approach won't work.
- ID & adjust to possible blitzes. All the pass block sliders in the world won't make your 5 blockers protect against 6 rushers. In the NFL, 5 man pressure vs 5 blockers reaches the QB in 2.5 seconds or less about half the time. 4 man rushes vs 5 blockers reach the QB in 3 seconds or less about half the time. Better have your "hot" read ready when the D dials up a blitz.
- Get in 3rd & manageable. 3rd & long is just really really tough on these sliders, as it is in the NFL. Don't anticipate converting a whole lot of 3rd & 8+ on these sliders.
- Stop assuming a route will always get open because it always got open in previous Maddens. E.g. corner routes & outs are no longer automatic wins on these sliders. (But they can still be highly effective vs the right coverages with the right matchups!)

tldr; Good defense + limiting turnovers + field position = winning, with these sliders.

ver 1.17 - 2020 Season Wk 17
Updated: Oct 29
latest changes highlighted in yellow



*Important notes on XP sliders:

Quarterback
Due to QB regression being too harsh for age 30+ players, our league is 'refunding' some attributes for QBs in their early-to-mid 30s, and the 70 slider reflects this. If you are not doing this, my advice is to run QB slider at ~80. 100 is still too high.

Offensive line
Candidly, no matter what you read in other XP slider threads, there is no good XP slider for OL. What I mean is, at default or near it, you will see the mid-tier starters inflated massively in several years, which will really throw off talent and even gameplay balance, as it will be FAR too easy to get any scrub to high 70s or even 80+ OVR. But if you put it lower, you won't see ANY OL hit 90+. The reason is dev trait progression. The game doesn't generate nearly enough Superstar/XF players to match what you start with. To solve this problem, our league will be manually promoting 1 or 2 OL per year from Star to SS, and 1 or 2 OL per year from Normal to Star. In this way, you can keep XP sliders lower for better overall talent distribution, while still getting some guys to hit 85+ and 90+ OVR.

[umbe88]

Thank you for the best simulation slide every year!

[AlessandroTaballione]

waiting for..when they will come out?

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by AlessandroTaballione

waiting for..when they will come out?

I will post the sliders we're going to start the file with in the next few days, still doing some eyeball-based play.

But again the selling point here is the data from dozens of user games, and we probably won't kick off our file until roster update ~Sep 8, meaning probably mid-Sep before I get a couple of game-weeks of data to start really making data-driven adjustments. Until then it's based on how I feel.

But the good news is I kind of know by now what the gameplay should generally look & feel like from years of seeing how that translates to #s, so the initial set should at least be in the ballpark. I'm usually wrong about a couple of things, though.

[bucknut7]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aestis

I will post the sliders we're going to start the file with in the next few days, still doing some eyeball-based play. But again the selling point here is the data from dozens of user games, and we probably won't kick off our file until roster update ~Sep 8, meaning probably mid-Sep before I get a couple of game-weeks of data to start really making data-driven adjustments. Until then it's based on how I feel. But the good news is I kind of know by now what the gameplay should generally look & feel like from years of seeing how that translates to #s, so the initial set should at least be in the ballpark. I'm usually wrong about a couple of things, though.

Do you anticipate you'll be bumping up coverage to 100, and threshold to 80, as in last year's file?

[AlessandroTaballione]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aestis

I will post the sliders we're going to start the file with in the next few days, still doing some eyeball-based play. But again the selling point here is the data from dozens of user games, and we probably won't kick off our file until roster update ~Sep 8, meaning probably mid-Sep before I get a couple of game-weeks of data to start really making data-driven adjustments. Until then it's based on how I feel. But the good news is I kind of know by now what the gameplay should generally look & feel like from years of seeing how that translates to #s, so the initial set should at least be in the ballpark. I'm usually wrong about a couple of things, though.

thank you, really curious to test it. We run a 32 Human league from 2013 and always open to improve the slider set for our Franchise

[Aestis]

Quote: Originally Posted by bucknut7

Do you anticipate you'll be bumping up coverage to 100, and threshold to 80, as in last year's file?

Already done threshold testing this year and we'll be running at 70. Last year in order to get the diff between fast and slow correct, the game itself played a bit too fast. This year the game speed is a bit slower, so that's great. 70 is pretty close to the ideal sweet spot.

Coverage/PDRT will def be starting high, 75+, and I'll see how it goes.

Unless it's tuned in a future update, PBK will be at 0. The slider makes a difference but not a huge one, so 0 PBK is still too slow of a pass rush unfortunately.

QB accuracy will be lower. Previous years if you dropped too low, you'd get too many WTFFFFF throws 15 yds in the wrong direction, often straight to an uninvolved defender in what was clearly preprogrammed INT. It's much more organic now, lower slider means more off target throws but they're all in the vicinity of the target. I don't know what the sweet spot will be until I see some data, but this will feel much better even as we drop accuracy.

Everything else close enough to stock to start that I can't tell much without seeing some data. I suspect 50 RBK will be a tad high, may start around 47 and see how the #s look.

[Aestis]

Our initial set when we launch will look pretty close to this... keeping it out of OP for the time being until I get some data to validate: