Manual random number based offseason improvement

[Hellisan]

I used to write articles about NCAA Football back in the day and thinking back, they almost always came down to second guessing some aspect of the game and wishing it was better. Thinking back it's almost a little sad that I was always wishing for something developers never planned on doing. Take improvement. You recruit three quarterbacks in a class that are a similar OVR range. Go through 3 to 4 improvement cycles, and in any NCAA game to date, those guys are going to very similar ratings wise by the end. Very very rarely would you see one of them overtake the other in terms of OVR unless they were very close in terms of ratings.

I always wondered why this sufficed for people. Is that how football works? Obviously not. You have players transfer out and quit. Players who just don't have the work ethic others have. Why should I open the improvement tab and see that 70 players have all improved 3 OVR to 7 OVR points with the vast majority right at 5... I decided to come up with something where you could conceivably see players lose a few OVR points, or improve greatly to where you see a 65 OVR guy have a shot to be a 90+ guy someday. What made this possible for me is that this is the last NCAA game we may ever see, and I've got (what I think is) the best playing game to date and all the time in the world.. Why not?

Before I blither on too long here let me stop and say this is something I've only done for an offseason... It's just an idea in the early stages, something I would like feedback on from "numbers guys. Or something to try if you're interested in something different. It can be improved, I know it.

I originally figured I would count up the improvement points the team got, and then redistribute those points somehow. But quickly you realize if you do that, you'd have have a decent lower end of the roster but too many highly rated guys.

so whereas in my most recent offseason the team improved an average of 4.67 points the "old way", my system ended up with improvement slightly less than 3 OVR points per player. But that includes a few players that drop by as much as 5 OVR points.

I keep an annual roster (this will be necessary so you can edit players at the start of the season back to their original ratings) and it has the basic skills that apply to each position along with the OVR. So for running backs, ACC/AGI/SPD/STR/ and the "moves" ratings along with Carry. I also list pass blocking for that position.

At the end of this roster I have some created ratings for my players. One is Work Ethic - WE - which applies to the improvement. Each player has a randomly selected rating between 40 and 99 for this, which never changes (for me at least... do what you want). To originally set this up I recommend either using the random.org app or go to this site and set the random numbers with this site

http://www.wessa.net/rwasp_rngnorm.wasp - You can do multiple runs and look for the best distribution that fits what you're trying to get done. Then you could randomize THOSE numbers for applying to your players. Anything that takes it completely out of your hands.
Here are my settings in case this helps anyone:
41 Low Truncation Point, 99 High Truncation Point
Mean 78, Standard Deviation 15, Number of Bins 1, List Random Numbers in table? YES (This way you can take the list and go right down your roster for the players that need new ratings)
This gives me about 10% of players with really bad ethic ratings, 40% with average, and 30% above average. Around 10% of players will improve better than the CPU players do.

So this is pretty simple, each offseason you randomly select the player improvement based on that work ethic rating.

I'm currently using:
(WORK ETHIC RANGE)- IMPROVEMENT RANGE

(40-45) -5 to 4
(46-50) -4 to 4
(51-55) -4 to 5
(56-60) -3 to 5
(61-65) -3 to 6
(66-70) -3 to 7
(71-75) -2 to 7
(76-80) -2 to 8
(81-85) -1 to 9
(86-90) 0 to 10
(91-95) 1 to 11
(96-99) 2 to 12

I should mention here that I also had a randomly selected number from 1 to 4 that applied to the type of improvements they would make... I balance this with their "player type" rating - i.e. a "pass block" tackle will always improve more as a pass blocker than as a run blocker, but a balanced tackle will improve similarly in both.

1 - physicality - STRENGTH agi/acc, rarely speed
2 - awareness - huge awareness gain, then minor improvement elsewhere
3 - position skills based - block shedding/pursuit for defensive players as an example
4 - all around improvement


The following correlate with when you roll a 3:

Skills Types

1 - Concentrate on best attributes
2 - Concentrate on weakest attributes
3 - Concentrate on "player type" attributes
4 - Major increase to non position specific skills if applicable (blocking if RB/WR) (Juking/Moves if FB/WR/TE)
5 - Concentrate on best attributes
6 - (HB: BTK/TRK/) (FB: BTK/TRK) (WR: RTE/CTH) (TE: CIT/IBL) (OL: PBK) (DL: TAK/PUR) (LB: TAK/PUR) (DB: CTH/PRS/MCV)
7 - (HB: ELU/SPM/JKM) (FB: CTH/RTE) (WR: CTH/CIT) (TE: CTH/RTE)(OL: RBK) (DL: POW/BSH) (LB: BSH/POW) (DB: BSH/PUR/TAK)
8 - (HB: BCV/SFA/CAR) (FB: PBK/IBL) (WR: RTE/CIT) (TE: RBK/CTH) (OL: IBL) (DL: PMV/BSH) (LB: PUR/FMV) (DB: ZCV/PRC/BSH)
9 - (HB: CTH/SPC/CIT/RTE) (FB: RBK/IBL) (WR: ELU/BTK) (TE: PBK/CTH) (OL: ALL3) (DL: FMV/PUR) (LB: TAK/MCV) (DB: ZCV/MCV/POW)
10- Concentrate on "player type" attributes
-------------------------------


So just as a couple examples. DE Zach Cable (son of Tom) is a pretty blah player but got a great work ethic rating in my game and spiked 12 points his first offseason and is now 70 OVR. Richard Mongtomery, my HB, looked like he would be a starter after a redshirt season but his improvement was 0 and other players passed him by. He will still play, and his work ethic is fine, just got a bad "roll." While the improvement overall is lower than you'd normally see, I think it's a lot more realistic.

This is pretty demanding on time at least for the first offseason as you implement the spreadsheets you'll need to keep track of it, etc. I have just taken it in stride spending an hour to a couple hours when permitted and basically taken a week for my offseason. After all, there's no rush. Thanks EA and players...

NOTE: AS OF MARCH 2018: Added a new facet to the ETH rating and it's really simple. If a player rolls their lowest possible improvement within the range they are at, they will go down a notch in ETH rating to the next lowest number that will be in a lower range. So taking from what is above, if a player has an 88 ETH rating he is in this range:

(86-90) 0 to 10

Let's say he rolls a zero: He will now drop to an 85 ETH rating. This can happen as many times as he rolls the lowest or highest number in the range. If he rolls a 10, he goes up to 91.

Any constructive feedback appreciated.

[Hellisan]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

These are my results, for anyone interested. However they don't include five players that were cut, three of which had -5 OVR and the other two at -4 OVR... So take that into account, there was a lower end you don't see here.

I won't be doing another one for a weeks until my next season is over, will bump at that time.

Player (Improvement) New OVR
Zach Cable (12) 71
Ryan Edwards (11) 72
Broc Westlake (10) 70
Delency Parham (9) 74
Kristoffer Olugbode (8) 75
Jordan Grabski (8) 68
Trent Cowan (7) 70
Brandon Wells (7) 66
Marc Millan (7) 74
Spencer Beale (7) 73
Deon Watson (7) 76
Chad Chalich (6) 80
Justin Podrabsky (6) 68
Andrew Williams (5) 68
Maxx Forde (5) 82
Jake Manley (5) 66
Brett Thompson (5) 67
Mason Woods (5) 65
Anthony Rice (4) 70
Eric Lemke (4) 65
Quinton Bradley (4) 64
Jordan Edginton (4) 62
Chris Featherstone (3) 69
Alex Stork (3) 62
Ben Westrum (3) 59
Jesse Davis (3) 63
Jerrel Brown (2) 72
Solomon Dixon (2) 72
Matthew Neal (2) 61
Marius Burgsmueller (2) 63
James Randall (1) 63
Dezmon Epps (1) 83
Cody Elenz (1) 69
Nick Edenfield (1) 62
Jacob Sannon (1) 66
Bradley Njoku (0) 75
Jayshawn Jordan (0) 66
Richard Montgomery (0) 70
Juan Martinez (0) 65
Eric Tuipulotu (-1) 61
Joshua McCain (-1) 64
A.J. Harris (-2) 58
Dallas Sandberg (-2) 66
Austin Rehkow (-3) 86
Matt Linehan (-3) 65
Mike Marboe (-3) 68
D'Mario Carter (-4) 58
Armond Hawkins (-4) 58
Tueni Luepamanu (-4) 56

[Scooby82882]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

I like the thought process behind this, not really sure I'd consider having players decline at the college level, but see how doing so would make the process appear more lifelike. Think the thing I like the most is that by doing this you could see some of the 4&5 star recruits actually reach a plateau and have 1-3 star recruits that become true gems. Are you going to keep the players work ethic static, or reroll for everyone each year?

[Hellisan]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

I like the thought process behind this, not really sure I'd consider having players decline at the college level, but see how doing so would make the process appear more lifelike. Think the thing I like the most is that by doing this you could see some of the 4&5 star recruits actually reach a plateau and have 1-3 star recruits that become true gems. Are you going to keep the players work ethic static, or reroll for everyone each year?

It's pretty much a static thing at least in my mind. I know it has been hard for ME to improve my work ethic over the years.... I'm always gonna be a C+ / B- effort type of guy... And yes, like you mentioned, the idea of having players improve at different rates, and in different ways, attracted me the most. The idea that a Zach Cable (58 OVR) might end up being a really solid player by the time he's a senior is exciting to me.

Thanks for the feedback, I'd like to know what you think makes most sense really...

[Scooby82882]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Your inclusion of work ethic as a variable is what interests me the most. I mostly play as small schools myself, I like building up a lower ranked team over the course of a few years. I've had guys ranked in the 60's set NCAA records, yet have no chance of being drafted as the simulated draft seems to look mainly at overall as the deciding factor.
I think it would cool to see a way to implement performance into their improvement as well, for example a guy that leads or is near the top of the nation in rushing yards would improve more than a similar ranked guy that seen limited use due to depth chart or injury

[Scooby82882]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Are you using the random number generator to determine how much a player increases in each individual stat? Curious as to how I might go about doing something similar, currently I give guys a bonus points at the end of bowl season for getting conference or NCAA Player of Week, or being a throphy winner. 1 point for each PoW, 5 points for a thopby and 10 points for the Heisman

[Hellisan]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Are you using the random number generator to determine how much a player increases in each individual stat? Curious as to how I might go about doing something similar, currently I give guys a bonus points at the end of bowl season for getting conference or NCAA Player of Week, or being a throphy winner. 1 point for each PoW, 5 points for a thopby and 10 points for the Heisman

Not really... I think that's something that is definitely in play but I found this did take a lot of time (I'm pretty busy). Like I may have mentioned here I did do the random number to decide what TYPE of improvement they made (1-4) and then when you combine that with the player type they are, you pretty much know what it entails.

[Hutton]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Nice to see an old MaddenMania guy still plugging away at NCAA football games!

I love the idea you presented, I was thinking of doing something similar in my current dynasty (just revived a NCAA'14 dynasty in the first season, about 8 games in) where I randomly picked some players from my team & either applied a stunt in progression (lower ratings to produce an OVR 2,3,4 points lower) and vice versa.

[ZN30]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

I like what youare doing a lot.

I think one more item I'd like incorporate is some means to put a ceiling on improvement, based on their physical features. Some guys will work hard, but will never achieve the results a more physically gifted individual will.

I have a couple thoughts on how this can be achieved:

1. Hard cap - Define the max-levels a player can reach in his career and if and when that that player hits those level, no more improvement may occur. [e.g. if a 60 OVR frosh with 99 working ethic and a 83 OVR cap reaches 82 OVR as a RS Junior, he can't improve any further*].
*using OVR for simplicity, results might be better if you set the cap on certain position-specific categories

2. Multiplier - use a "Physical gifts" multiplier as an additional variable when performing the improvement roll. [e.g. Player A "rolls" an improvement of 10 OVR, but his physical gifts multiplier is 0.7x, so he only improves by +7].** The multipler can be applied in a manner that yields a result where a highly gift, low-WE player neve improves, but also never gets worse.
**If using a formula, you'll have to incorporate absolute value, otherwise negative improvement cause the multipler to act as a compounding negative factor rather than a positive attribute.

[pirateraider]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Are you taking season stats into consideration as well? A 70 OVR QB who throws for 30 TDs and 5 INTs for example should increase by a considerable amount.

[Scooby82882]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Currently it seems he was just using the work ethic variable, each additional variable would increase the amount of time spent in adjusting each player. Assuming that every team had a 70 man roster and you were in fact doing this for all 126 teams, that's a lot of time spent adjusting the rosters each year. Also consider the fact that you would have to write down the improvement each player gets in each skill from the built in improvement at the end of the season, and return them back to their original levels before doing the adjustments. I too had mentioned the possibility of seeing performance included as a variable, but to do so legitimately, you would have to look at how they performed against all other players in the nation. A guy with 1800 yards passing 20-25 td's and 6 ints might place around 40th in the nation, while another guy could have 3700 yards 25-30 td's and 12 ints and be 5th in the nation. There are a lot of factors that you would have to consider to really get an accurate reflection of performance in respect to improvement. That's always been a major gripe of mine with Madden roster updates, a guy has one good game and goes up 3-5 points, meanwhile another guy that's been performing consistently better than his ranking for weeks never changes because he doesn't have a breakout game

[Hellisan]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

I like what you are doing a lot.

I think one more item I'd like incorporate is some means to put a ceiling on improvement, based on their physical features. Some guys will work hard, but will never achieve the results a more physically gifted individual will.

I have a couple thoughts on how this can be achieved:

1. Hard cap - Define the max-levels a player can reach in his career and if and when that that player hits those level, no more improvement may occur. [e.g. if a 60 OVR frosh with 99 working ethic and a 83 OVR cap reaches 82 OVR as a RS Junior, he can't improve any further*].
*using OVR for simplicity, results might be better if you set the cap on certain position-specific categories

2. Multiplier - use a "Physical gifts" multiplier as an additional variable when performing the improvement roll. [e.g. Player A "rolls" an improvement of 10 OVR, but his physical gifts multiplier is 0.7x, so he only improves by +7].** The multipler can be applied in a manner that yields a result where a highly gift, low-WE player neve improves, but also never gets worse.
**If using a formula, you'll have to incorporate absolute value, otherwise negative improvement cause the multipler to act as a compounding negative factor rather than a positive attribute.

I definitely toyed with Idea 1, considered adding a POT (potential) rating, based on a random number from 5 or maybe 10 OVR points ahead of where they started to 99. If they rolled a 99 but had a horrible work ethic then obviously would likely never come close to the number... If I did that I would consider adjusting the other numbers a bit too. If limiting upward potential improvement for a lot of players, I might limit the down a bit. I like the idea, but in the end decided to see how everything worked out naturally. I rarely will add a speed point and definitely never more than 1, and strength only goes up significantly if they roll a 1 in improvement type... so I kind of like that their existing athletic ability somewhat caps their potential all by itself. If I had a low quality athlete that kept rolling huge OVR improvement it would all end up going to his skills, awareness, etc. Still open to suggestions.

Nice to see an old MaddenMania guy still plugging away at NCAA football games!

I love the idea you presented, I was thinking of doing something similar in my current dynasty (just revived a NCAA'14 dynasty in the first season, about 8 games in) where I randomly picked some players from my team & either applied a stunt in progression (lower ratings to produce an OVR 2,3,4 points lower) and vice versa.

Thanks man! always good to see people from MM :-)

Are you taking season stats into consideration as well? A 70 OVR QB who throws for 30 TDs and 5 INTs for example should increase by a considerable amount.

This has always been a chicken and egg situation for me and I'm more inclined to believe the good players make the stats. Never thought that you should be able to spam stats for improvement. The best I would suggest would be to reward players having great seasons with a 5-10 point random boost in work ethic... Leading to some chances at a better result. But I'd probably only do that once, not every time they had a great season. Just me though. The good thing about something like this is you can do whatever you please.

[Hellisan]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Currently it seems he was just using the work ethic variable, each additional variable would increase the amount of time spent in adjusting each player. Assuming that every team had a 70 man roster and you were in fact doing this for all 126 teams, that's a lot of time spent adjusting the rosters each year. Also consider the fact that you would have to write down the improvement each player gets in each skill from the built in improvement at the end of the season, and return them back to their original levels before doing the adjustments. I too had mentioned the possibility of seeing performance included as a variable, but to do so legitimately, you would have to look at how they performed against all other players in the nation. A guy with 1800 yards passing 20-25 td's and 6 ints might place around 40th in the nation, while another guy could have 3700 yards 25-30 td's and 12 ints and be 5th in the nation. There are a lot of factors that you would have to consider to really get an accurate reflection of performance in respect to improvement. That's always been a major gripe of mine with Madden roster updates, a guy has one good game and goes up 3-5 points, meanwhile another guy that's been performing consistently better than his ranking for weeks never changes because he doesn't have a breakout game

I have no interest or even the slightest inkling leading to interest of doing this for other teams, only mine... The process was lengthy but I was already keeping track of applicable ratings... While it ended up being a pretty time consuming process, it wasn't horrible, and I really like the results.. it's something different, I'm really glad I tried it and I'll be continuing with it.

[StoneCalf]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

I like what you've come up with Hellisan. I've been applying a system as well, although mine is not as in depth or far-reaching.

The system I've been using for the last several seasons affect 8 players per offseason. As I've tweaked mine, I wanted to make sure that the overall effect wasn't overly beneficial. Out of the 8 players that I randomly edit, 2 are modified for improvement, and the other 6 are edited to lessen their attributes.

For incoming players, I use my "Diamonds and Duds" system. (A "diamond" is a recruit that exceeds expectations. The "dud" is just what it sounds like- a recruit that didn't measure up to the billing.)

The players affected are randomly drawn.

Dud #1 (-100 attribute points*) (usually lowers a player by 14-20 ovr)
Dud #2 (-75 points) (usually lowers a player by 10-12 overall)
Dud#3 (-50 points) (usually lowers a player by 7-10 ovr)
Diamond (+100 points) (my last diamond elevated a 3 star MLB from 71 overall to 81 overall, last years MLB graduated, so this guy came in to start for me)

*attribute points deducted must be from relevant categories (for example reduce some points from an Olineman's strength and pass block rating, not his pass accuracy)

It's fun when a diamond hits on an incoming player that was a 4 or 5 star gem. Then you can get a mid to high 80's true freshman that can start right away, like Alabama's Amari Cooper, or UCLA's Myles Jack from last year. Conversely, it's a bummer when the -100 point dud hits on your blue chip player, but hey, it happen in real life that some recruits just aren't what they are hyped up to be.


I ran the diamonds and duds for a while, then I wanted to add another for other players (returning players, apart from incoming recruits)

I came up with "Low Achievers and Late Bloomers". Again, for every player that is improved, 3 are reduced in quality. Sometimes the reduction amounts to that player being about the same as the previous season, sometimes he regresses just a touch. The Late Bloomer is to emulate that certain player on your roster who made great strides in the offseason, really stepped it up.

One thing that is different with this one that applies to returning players is that there is a random effect on just how much they improve or regress(or effectively remain static). I use a dice roll to determine this, as follows:

Low Achiever #1 (dice roll between 1 to 4) (a roll of 3 yields -30 attribute point reduction, for example)
Low Achiever #2 (dice roll between 1 to 3)
Low Achiever #3 (dice roll between 1 to 2)
Late Bloomer = up to 60 attribute points added (dice roll between 1 to 6)

The attribute points added (to Diamonds and Late Bloomers) can be distributed however I see fit, with the limitation that no more than 10 points can be added to any one attribute category. (can't raise a DL's speed from 62 to 99, for example. Max improvement would be 62 to 72 in that category)

As with the diamonds and duds, the LA's and LB's are chosen randomly from returning players roster.

These systems I've been using don't take too long to apply, and have given me one more thing to look forward to in the offseason.

[Scooby82882]

Re: Manual random number based offseason improvement

Yet another nice idea to modify the vanilla improvement system implemented by the game