Any news on progression?

[CardinalStrong05]

Quote: Originally Posted by EvanRG

Personally, who cares if a team has more 90+ players -- as long as the game plays fine. People need to relax about one little number attached to the overall.

The problem is that it basically kills recruiting because players are going to progress to be great no matter what. This takes the fun out of scouting to find gems and busts.

[Craigsca]

Ok, so here's my question:

Is it TOO difficult for EA to write a program on a PC that will emulate all the interactions of rosters, progression, coach carousel, etc., and run 1000 seasons and then do a massive data dump, load it into a spreadsheet and then make sure everything looks kosher over the long haul?

I mean, to me, it sounds like none of this testing is done (see the NHL 12 blog posting on how they've programmed the sim engine in C# and then ported it over - as if this is a new concept) and I can only assume that it's never even attempted outside of the PS3/360 platform. Therefore, it's a whole lot of finger-crossing by the development team HOPING they get these equations right and then a whole lot of hand-wringing when the test bed (e.g. you, me and the rest of the purchasers out there) uncover that longtime progression is just downright broken.

This is so eminently fixable, I really don't understand why it's not.

[Rendezvous]

Well it definitely wasn't as bad when I had coaching contracts turned on, but the progression is still too extreme.

Starting my second season there are roughly 20-30 90+ players at every position and about 50 90+ overall players at all positions.

It wasn't as bad as my last test for sure where there were about 10 99 overall QB's.

[Milkmoney11]

Why is it so hard to fix this? I know 0 about computer programming but isn't that just an algorithm that could be used year to year once they got it right?

[Rendezvous]

Quote: Originally Posted by Milkmoney11

Why is it so hard to fix this? I know 0 about computer programming but isn't that just an algorithm that could be used year to year once they got it right?

Not a clue, that's why we have to come up with these stupid fixes every year.

Also, when coaching contracts are turned off I that coaching prestige does not progress. So I'm thinking a drastic edit for every coach on prestige level would lower the overall progression for the players.

I'm thinking about putting every coach prestige at 0 and seeing how progression works there. It would just take quite a bit of work doing all 120 teams. I think I may only do head coaches for now.

[Mtneer08]

Quote: Originally Posted by Rendezvous

Well it definitely wasn't as bad when I had coaching contracts turned on, but the progression is still too extreme. Starting my second season there are roughly 20-30 90+ players at every position and about 50 90+ overall players at all positions. It wasn't as bad as my last test for sure where there were about 10 99 overall QB's.

Yeah but you only simmed 1 season. When you saw 10 99 QB's how many seasons did you sim?

[Rendezvous]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mtneer08

Yeah but you only simmed 1 season. When you saw 10 99 QB's how many seasons did you sim?

It was actually like 7-8, but it was also after my first season as well.

[voodoo_magic]

Quote: Originally Posted by Craigsca

Ok, so here's my question: Is it TOO difficult for EA to write a program on a PC that will emulate all the interactions of rosters, progression, coach carousel, etc., and run 1000 seasons and then do a massive data dump, load it into a spreadsheet and then make sure everything looks kosher over the long haul? I mean, to me, it sounds like none of this testing is done (see the NHL 12 blog posting on how they've programmed the sim engine in C# and then ported it over - as if this is a new concept) and I can only assume that it's never even attempted outside of the PS3/360 platform. Therefore, it's a whole lot of finger-crossing by the development team HOPING they get these equations right and then a whole lot of hand-wringing when the test bed (e.g. you, me and the rest of the purchasers out there) uncover that longtime progression is just downright broken. This is so eminently fixable, I really don't understand why it's not.

So true. That blog for NHL'12 sounded really good and hopefully next year this game will implement something like that.
We get info on gameplay from guys that get to play half a game at community events, but because that's all they are allowed to play we never get anything in depth about how dynasty looks after a few years.
It's sad that we have to test this out every year and then wait for a patch to fix this kind of stuff.
You would think after last years progression problems one of their testers would be told to see how things look after a few seasons but obviously that didn't happen.
This ruins the excitement I had for the game.