Player overall vs sliders.

[TheCreep]

I've been wondering the same thing. I'm going to try a little experiment here in second. What if you nullify the sliders by putting them all at 0, so that the sliders have no effect?

I'm thinking if you kill the sliders, then we might see the ratings difference.

See what I'm saying? I dont know, if you have a player rated 90 and a player rated 70 without the sliders giving any input, it seems the computer will have no choice but to give the higher rated player the advantage.

Guess its worth a try. I'll post later.

[KBLover]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

Nor should they. I prefer APF2K8's way of showing players. Give us real world stats, and then Ball Hawk, Rocket Arm, Laser Arm, Speed Burner, Ankle Breaker, and the like to describe players. Numbers are a lazy way to convey a player's ability that sports games have relied on for far, far too long.

All the stats then become are the ratings.

HB A is 5.5 YPC
HB B is 4.8 YPC

HB B will have lower performance.

Those traits then become modifiers to players in whatever situation they apply to.

So the "ratings" are then the stats. The traits are the modifiers. Numbers aren't the lazy way to do anything, they are what computers understand.

[KBLover]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheCreep

I've been wondering the same thing. I'm going to try a little experiment here in second. What if you nullify the sliders by putting them all at 0, so that the sliders have no effect? I'm thinking if you kill the sliders, then we might see the ratings difference. See what I'm saying? I dont know, if you have a player rated 90 and a player rated 70 without the sliders giving any input, it seems the computer will have no choice but to give the higher rated player the advantage. Guess its worth a try. I'll post later.

Yeah, I'm thinking something like that would work. Maybe not at 0 (might be going too far to where guys don't play up to their ratings or other things get out of whack), but 50 might be overpowering the ratings differences.

[Madden Head]

Quote: Originally Posted by Valdarez

Nor should they. I prefer APF2K8's way of showing players. Give us real world stats, and then Ball Hawk, Rocket Arm, Laser Arm, Speed Burner, Ankle Breaker, and the like to describe players. Numbers are a lazy way to convey a player's ability that sports games have relied on for far, far too long.

I really like what you have to say Valdarez, so please don't take this as an attack, but you are unimformed here. 2k uses ratings just like everyone else, but in 2k8 they are hidden. The attributes are ratings boosts that your players have.

Generic players you choose from have three default ranges. For receivers you have deep threts, balanced and possession. Deep threats get a bonus to speed while they take a hit in their catch rating(s), balanced players have an even balacne between speed and catch ratings but aren't great at either rating and get an improvement to route running while possession receivers get a bonus to their catch rating while they take a dip in speed. The same is applied to all other positions.

For Bronze, Silver and Gold players, they get skill boosts. If you give a player speed burner they will get a bonus to their default speed rating, Ball hawks get a bonus to thier catch rating and minor coverage boosts, etc.

2k8 is polished 2k5 visually with the NFL stripped away and additional in-game presentation. The animations and ratings still work very much the same. they didn't get rid of their 2k5 ratings, they just wrote generic ratings for each position and you pick what kind of bonus and weakness you want the game to apply to your players when you pick generic guys or create your own players.

Numbers are how programs work. It doesn't matter what the game is. For example, Call of Duty Games have hidden numbers regarding how fast you can walk, run, crawl, jump, accuracy, how much health you have, how much damage bullets do, etc. etc. etc. You get to see a bar graph of the weapons strengths and weaknesses, but they are still nuimbers driven. It is no different when playing a sports game. the game has to know how fast to set an offensive linemen, a full back, a power back, a speed back, a speed receiver, etc. It still runs on numbers, it always will.

My understanding from a post by ian in the past regarding player weapons was that there was an "effective range" for ratings. A great example of this was the QB vison cone in prior Madden games. Once your QB went to like 75 or below awareness his cone wouldn't get any smaller. So a QB with awareness of 12 would see the same field of view as one with 74 awareness and until you go above that thresh hold you can improve. This is one reason punters can block defensive linemen in Madden, even though they are a 12, they play like a 40 or 50. I think an early blog EA/Donny More said they opened up the ratings to 40-99 or something like that. One big problem is that when it comes to a lot of the ratings [not all, but most] you can't really see a difference between a 40 or a 99 when it comes to pass blocking or block shedding or other attributes. you can stick to the default All-Pro sliders and compare the low end agaisnt the high end players and see little, if any, consistant difference in thier performance.

Use the scientific method. Create an offensive line and a defensive line. Create all the players on each side of the line as clones of each other. Same height, weight, etc. Give them all the same attributes as a "control" group. Repeat this for the defensive line. Once you have a generic [averave] offensive line make changes to core defensive attributes and make bad linemen and good linemen and tell me if you can see a difference. Then reset the ratings and repeat the process for the offensive linemen. You will begin to see, as I have tested this myself, that "ratings don't matter." At least, if they do make a difference, it is not a noticeable one that you can see and feel which would warent in franchise mode trading for, singing or drafting good players when the bad overall rated ones are cheaper. From a video game stand point, there is no reason to pay for players unless they are fast or are a good QB.

In 2k8, their ratings curve is much greater. You can see and feel the difference between Gold, Silver, Bronze and Generic players. Ian gave the impression that this was fixed, and I just don't know if that is correct/stayed fixed. I want to give Ian the benefit of the doubt, but the evidence speaks for itslef.

[TheCreep]

Ok, tried the 0 slider idea out. Suprisingly, it works for some of the sliders. Others, it throws everything off drastically.

For example, you can actually keep pass block at 0, while Qb Acc and wr catch, you absolutely have to have something there.

I think I might go ahead and come up with my own set of sliders (currently using playmakers) as I've actually put my eyes on about 5 new animations since I've started at base 0. I'm liking some of the changes I'm seeing.

I'm slowly raising the sliders up if I notice a deficiency on the field. The sliders I have to utilize so far are-QB Acc, WR catch, Fumbles, Pass Rush, and Blk Shed. Everything else is at zero for the time being. I'm still testing though, so it could change.

[Madden Head]

That sounds about right from my experience when I starte messing with sliders along time ago. Throwing accuracy is very touchy. 15 is about right for that. QBs tend to go 60% +/- with it set to 15 which is a league average. I have had Brady tear it up and go 80%+ while J. Russel was down into the 50's or lower. WR catching factors into the completion %, but there should only be so many drops. I find 40 is a good WR catching slider setting myself.

[shotgun styles]

I still think global roster adjustments would work real well. I was able to get some older versions of Madden to stop super-leaping the CBs by lowering all CB jumping stats by 50%.

While effective, it was EXTREMELY time consuming. It would be nice if there was a way to globally change the a given attribute for an entire position throughout the game.

Example: lower all CBs jump ratings by 20 points or all QB Throw Power ratings by 10 points.

This would allow some much faster results in adjusting the rosters to work better with flaws in the AI.

[stefancourt]

Creep i would love to join you on that slider set as i have been trying them at 0 too and agree with the ones that you have increased.