Pre-Snap Adjustment Changes

[spit_bubble]

There's two problems with the points WFColonel56 brings up:

1. Everything he's talking about happens at once, all at the same time, and within just a few seconds at most. Entering all the commands he's talking about is not only not practical, it also really shouldn't even be necessary... Because a lot of what's he's talking about is built into the play, built into the formation.

2. Many of the things he brought up are reads and not adjustments. There is a huge difference. A read is just that, a read of the formation, and an automatic assignment based on that read. An adjustment is a diversion from the original plan, a completely new strategy.

[GGEden]

You've added a ton of great suggestions spit_bubble, thanks for contributing.

[lethimin]

I personally really like this discussion, the concepts of simplifying and quickening the presnap stuff, limiting presnap changes. One thing I have done on occasion, however, is push the wrong buttons and have needed to make extra adjustments to correct. But that could constitute the times when teams have to call timeouts and things like that, I suppose, when there is confusion on the field.

I wish that there was a full 60 seconds after team timeouts until both sides have chosen their play. The offensive playcalling dictates the length of non-official timeouts. In these situations, I have found myself rushing through screens, and needing to choose something quick and making adjustments presnap on defense.

I think one last thought is that some people 'piece together' their defensive or offensive play by calling a play and then audibling individuals, thus creating a play they wish they had in the playbook but don't.

Who knows, maybe 'Limited Presnap Functionality' could be a gameplay setting that could be turned On or Off.

[spit_bubble]

Quote: Originally Posted by lethimin

...I think one last thought is that some people 'piece together' their defensive or offensive play by calling a play and then audibling individuals, thus creating a play they wish they had in the playbook but don't. Who knows, maybe 'Limited Presnap Functionality' could be a gameplay setting that could be turned On or Off.

As others have noted, in this thread and elsewhere, playbooks are too limited. They need to be expanded to include slight variations of the same play, as well as a little more detail as to what players actually do in a given situation. This is where I think the points WFColonel56 brings up are valid. There's a lot of little stuff that need to be put into the AI, to bring out the complexities of what goes on.

Difficult to do, because so much can go wrong when programming this stuff, but the game would certainly benefit.

And again, the difficulty levels could reflect just how complex the AI was willing to go, so that easier difficulty levels didn't stray to far from very basic football... While harder difficulties brought a more rich and varied strategy.

[June6th1944]

None of us know what Manning, Brady or Brees are calling when they come to the line.They could call out 40 hot routes and we'd never know.Cause if we knew so would the defense.While I am in favor of a change it would have to be globally or everyone would use the Colts Saints or Patriots online because of the plethera of Hot Routes available.I surely wouldnt use the the browns or bills because of the limited options.I like the idea of halftime adjustments.Say 5 minutes and yes a run right, run left, pass option could work.Great ideas keep em coming.

[GGEden]

I agree with you June6th1944, it actually should be global.

The control mechanism I proposed in OP blended in with what bigeastbumrush and spit-bubble proposed, is the way to go.

Sometime in the next few hours or days, I'll put them all together into a graphical representation, and post here. So people can see how it might look like.

[TNT713]

Can't find my original post in this thread, but I assume I posted one because GG mentioned my two points:

No Custom Play Editors + Poor Stock Plays = Need for robust hot route/adjustment system.

That said... We really don't know how many 'adjustments' happen on the field on any given play. If we aren't a member of the Colts, we can't assume we know how many routes Peyton Manning changes. From what I understand of the history of the no-huddle offense in particular, most of the waving and hand signals used in football games are nothing more than dummy signals. IMO, it's irresponsible to assume he's not calling just as many changes as I might...

The idea that routes and protection are adjusted at the play call screen is odd to me... When I played 11-on-11 sandlot, I played with the same guys on my team every weekend - just like a Peyton Manning.

We'd line up so the QB could see our inside hand... Straight arm with a fist meant GO DEEP, while bent arm with a fist meant a Hitch and GO. When we lined up, two receivers were given option routes where they would tell me how they wanted to attack the defense. They tell me with hand signals. It only took a few seconds for them to line up, make a pre-snap read of coverage, then give me a signal.

That said... I'm not a professional. I'm sure the pros have more efficient ways to communicate much more complicated information even faster than we could.

Alas... The beauty of Madden isn't in it's realism. Never has been. Never will be. The beauty of Madden is in it's options. There's 24 different options just for defensive squad adjustments alone. There are another 8 for any individual defender in addition to audibles...

Limiting the options to reflect realism would literally hi-jack the beauty of the game.

Besides, Madden fans who are "MADDEN FANS" like the adjustment system. Just read all the 1st day impressions about the Strategy Pad on Madden 11.

No... They don't need to make the audible system vanilla to be realistic.

Later

[GGEden]

The idea is a mix of realism, avoiding the tedium of pre-snap, and to make it just a little less of a brain-explosion for new madden gamers to increase sales.

There are a lot of pro-teams where the QB just gets his play, communicates it in the huddle, lines up, and runs the play. Either doesn't have the authority to audible, or limited authority to audible/hot-route. More often it's the masters of playbooks (Manning, Brady, Favre, etc) who know the whole playbook, system, and the same OC for years that he has become an on-field extension of the OC himself, who will have the authority to make changes. But they don't always do that even tho they have authority. Manning is a rare example of it, but there are 31 other starters who don't approach anywhere near that degree of mass pre-snap adjusting.

Madden can either try to make certain attributes in players transfer over to how much they can use pre-snap adjustments, but making it a global thing like the last few posters have mentioned recently is better.

Madden is a video game, and video games can't always TOTALLY replicate realism. There are certain things that can be made to resemble realism by programming them a way that might not be true-to-life.

Example...online play degenerates into shotgun-scramble-throw versus constant heavy blitzing and nanos. Just watching that down after down, game after game, you know it doesnt resemble realism. As a visual and conceptual thing, it's not realistic and frustrates that desire for "simulation" football. HOW it appears as well.

Why the proposal to limit the number of adjustments people can do to 1 of each different thing. Why the proposal to have a broad but simpler set of pre-snap adjustments/audibles. It might not be true-to-life, but by having it in there, it will CAUSE the visual/conceptual thing to appear and play more realistically. And you'll get more of a cat-mouse defense vs offense mental challenge, like only having one of each type of card to play, so you have to be more cunning.