Breaking Down Sliders... How They Really Work

[bill2451]

damn though those are completely different from what you had before lol... i am getting really excited to play now

[pbz06]

I just played as Vikings going against Philly.

The CPU run game just wasn't there at all in this game at least. Westbrook was getting stuffed time and time again, averaging 1.5 YPC and had about 40 yards for the game.

Meanwhile, the CPU was throwing the ball like crazy. I think maybe Pass Defense Reaction needs to be raised a bit. The CPU had guys open everywhere, and McNabb was picking my D apart with little 8 yard routes, mostly using the middle of the field. When manually trying to stop it, there would always be someone else open. Again, that could be just my user skill (or lack thereof).

At the half, they had 43 plays, and 320 yards passing...at the half. Just 1st down after 1st down like robo QB. He was 22-31 at the half and had a QB rating around 120.

Don't know if I suck, but I'll try again with the same teams....

[pbz06]

Sliders are starting to give me a headache!

I'm convinced you can see realistic stats on any slider set (unless you zero out the QB accuracy or something). As evident by the hundred slider sets on this forum, and everybody claiming "sim" and realistic stats, I don't think it really matters what slider settings we actually use in terms of stats.

I think the only thing sliders can tune in Madden is the "feel" or look of the gameplay.

For example, one slider set maxes out the CPU to 100 on everything and keeps the user at default Pro. Realistic stats overall.

Other example, just now I zeroed out every slider except for QB Accuracy (15) and WR Catching (45). The game actually played out really nice, lol. My stats again seemed to be spot on. In fact, the gameplay felt very natural. There was pressure on the QB's. I had 3 sacks and so did the CPU. Both QB's (Bulger and Shaub) were in the 55-60% range. The CPU actually rushed and had good yardage.

So I don't even know anymore, haha. Hopefully guys like Bill and DrewBledsoe can chime in on what they think about starting at all zeroes and adjusting one by one? Like obviously QB accuracy can't be at 0, but it seems like everything else is playable on 0 and doesn't affect the gameplay in any negative way. Maybe it evens the playing field and lets players act according to their attributes? On top of all this, I still don't know what to have the speed threshold at.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw that in there for discussion purposes and see what you guys have to say. I hope I'm not "hijacking" Bill's discussion/sliders.

[shadox]

Quote: Originally Posted by nxt

The CPU running needs some help with these... assuming the Parker 11/23, Avg 2.0 ypc is by CPU.

Your assumption is actually wrong. I was at home and lost.
I didn't forced anything on the ground, but the AI called some good plays/I was caught mostly due to the high acc clock.

And...as soon as a defender is in a clear tackling position, you will go down.

So I am pretty satisfied with the CPU Rushing!

@pbz06
Yeah, you can NEARLY have realistic stats with all slider combinations....but the way they establish is really different.

I really think M10 has some kind of "expected outcome" to reach the right stats.
That may a reason for some kind of "robo QB" or "hot QB" if the CPU is behind near to the end. So the only question - at least for me- seems to be: On which way do you reach good stats combined with fair gameplay / how to reach good stats naturally for CPU and HUMAN.

And after what I saw with bill's theory, I really believe that might be the right path to reach natural gameplay combined with correct stats.

@g2thecore
I will check out yours when I am at home...in about...8 hrs.

[g2thecore]

Quote: Originally Posted by bill2451

wonderful! without even playing them (or my base ones for that matter lol), I can already tell they are exactly in the direction I was headed... seems like you really got my idea and have figured it out awesome awesome awesome I still see some things that can prolly be improved on (but since i havent actually tried them ill let people play them), but that really is damn close to what i'm envisioning

Thanks dude! I spent hours of testing in Practice Mode to come up with those....Like you said, I still need to fix some things about them. But so far, they play well.

I can't wait till you give em' a try, and give me your input. I appreciate the love.

[bill2451]

heres a theory I was thinking about last night... in every sports game ever, going to a higher difficulty means "cheaper" and less realistic AI... now in many cases it also means smarter AI (something it seems Madden is missing), but most definately cheaper... on higher levels blocking breaks down, or players can get out of blocks unrealistically easy... db's have unrealistically quick reaction times and seem to know routes before your WR does, they can jump crazy high, their chances of intercepting a pass get higher and higher until its totally unrealistic, etc... the game breaks down at the core to make up for the AI and close the gap in skill level/flawed logic... you lose realistic animations, physics, and outcomes based on ratings are shifted heavily in the cpu's favor

well my theory was that, what if we made all the actual gameplay mechanics of madden as realistic as possible (like we've been doing w/ blocking, wr/db interactions, etc)... what if we got those as good as we could, maybe only making a few exceptions to help out the cpu just enough to make up for some flawed logic, etc, but not crazy like what happens when you get to higher difficulty levels on almost any sports game

what if then the way to up the difficulty level wasnt to take away realism to make it harder for the user, what if it was to bring the game closer to real time... dont cheapen the AI anymore than is necessary, rather make people who can think on their feet quickly and are good on the sticks stand out.

now right off the bat i'll say that I think very fast is actually unrealistically fast and looks weird, so i'm going to ignore that setting (although maybe my opinion of it would change with the correct settings)... and I like slow as much as many of the people on these boards, but what if the faster the speed the more it makes the truly skilled stand out for their stick skills rather than the AI/game flaws (or the bad stand out for their lack of skills lol)

this would allow people to play the same settings and get the same type of realistic gameplay, but contour to each individual skill level...

so what do you guys think... is it possible?

[shadox]

I think it is.
Acutally, I play on very slow for two reasons:
1.) The animations seems to be smoother and
2.) the user has more time to react.

You can see how the play develop and react accordingly. So if my intended receiver is covered, I have plenty of time to adjust.
On faster speed, I don't have this time and the right playcalling gets more into the focus.


So I think you are on the right track with that idea but I would also follow playmakers initial idea about the speed threshold.
The big difficaulty this year, as I see them, is that with the increased sliders and the new ratings, the possible combinations also increased...which makes it quiete hard to find the right mix.

If I find any time today, I will try to test your idea in combination with g2thecore's sliders.
Will post the results as I did the last time, if they are helpful.

[bill2451]

the speed could be tricky... thats actually something I plan to look into more in the next few days

ive got the feel for how the sliders actually effect the game now and what each one pretty much does, now it is a matter of bringing it all together, and in order to do that, realistic speeds are a must

before this thread, I used the speed threshold to create seperation in players to make stats more realistic (as most everyone does... the train of thought is usually something along the lines of, we lower it because we need an unrealistic speed difference in our fast guys because LB's cover them in man to man too well, or we raise the threshold because blah blah blah)

I hope that we can do away with that, and things like seperation in the secondary will be a result of realistic interactions, not unnatural breakaway speed... and in turn, the speed threshold can be turned to as realistic as possible

then, the game will always play realistic... the difference will be the users reaction time will increase on "easier" levels because the game is slowed down to a speed they can better react to