Results of My Slider Research

[picker19]

I've been playing this game regularly since the date it came out three years ago, but overall the game has always been too easy. The worst record I've ever gotten was 6-10 with the Dolphins and Raiders, and that was even with a new coach and playbook. By the second season, I was already in the playoffs with a 10-6 or 11-5 record. I love the game so much that I don't want to stop playing it, but I have been in a desparate search for a challenge. So, I obviously turned to the sliders.

Like almost all slider combinations posted here, I always kept the Human and CPU sliders the same, but if the game is too easy for me even with a crappy team, I needed to give the CPU a boost. But something funky happened to the gameplay every time I changed a slider here or there. For instance, I'd change just the Human Awareness, and suddenly the CPU couldn't defend the pass or I'd up the Human RB Blocking, and nothing seemed to happen. Something was wrong with the sliders, and like a few others before me, I tried to run some tests to see if I could uncover a pattern. Here's what I found out.

The test I ran followed these rules:

• I did all my testing in Coach Now, so I could ensure that player learning was even for both teams.
• I did not use any gameplan boosts.
• I played with the same teams for all tests: Chiefs (me) and Bengals, since both teams have HCs with similar skil levels and the Bengals both run and pass evenly.
• I let the computer call all the plays.
• I kept the "control group" sliders to 40, since I wanted to be sure there was no quirks with the sliders being set to default.
• I tested each set several times to make sure results were the same and there were no deviations.

Default Set
All Human Offense Sliders = 40
All Human Defense Sliders = 40
All CPU Offense Sliders = 40
All CPU Defense Sliders = 40

Results -- Just like I expected, passing game was normal, but no running game to speak of, especially for the CPU. Results were the same I had been experiencing for quite some time with me easily beating the CPU, especially since they had no running game to speak of.

Set 1
All Human Offense Sliders = 10
All Human Defense Sliders = 40
All CPU Offense Sliders = 40
All CPU Defense Sliders = 40

Results -- It appears that by themselves, the human sliders do not affect anything, either Human or CPU. I saw no difference in gameplay for either team. My conclusion is that by changing just the Human sliders, there is no impact to gameplay.

Set 2
All Human Offense Sliders = 40
All Human Defense Sliders = 10
All CPU Offense Sliders = 40
All CPU Defense Sliders = 40

Results -- It appears that the Human Defensive sliders actually impact the CPU defense. The CPU pass defense was awful and the running defense was subpar (because the running game is already off to a bad start in this game, I'm not surprised to see that the impact was more on the pass defense). Conversely, it also seemed that my defense was slightly impacted by the slider change, but it was minimal. For instance, I noticed my LBs hesitated a little and the CPU run game was better, but overall, the Human Defensive sliders seemed to have a greater impact on the CPU.

Set 3
All Human Offense Sliders = 40
All Human Defense Sliders = 40
All CPU Offense Sliders = 10
All CPU Defense Sliders = 40

Results -- Now this was interesting...by themselves, the CPU offensive sliders affected both Human and CPU offense evenly and the impact was incredibly noticeable...no offense to speak of. Slow, rainbow passes by both teams and running backs were constantly tackled in the backfield.

Set 4
All Human Offense Sliders = 40
All Human Defense Sliders = 40
All CPU Offense Sliders = 40
All CPU Defense Sliders = 10

Results -- Wow...the CPU defensive sliders impacted just the Human defense, and boy did it make a difference. The human defense was suddenly swiss cheese. The CPU ran over me in in two possessions to a touchdown both times without having to pass the ball and my pass defense wasn't much better. There was no impact to the CPU defense. They seemed to play "normally." What was interesting is that I also tried this set with the CPU defensive sliders at 20 and 30, and still the Human Defense didn't seem to have improved at all. It's almost as if when the sliders are not the same as the Human Defensive sliders, there's quite a drastic effect.

Conclusion
For now, this is as far I've gotten. I started dabbling in changing two sets at time to see what would happen, but the reaction was sporadic, and I couldn't discern a clear pattern. I will try and revisit this when time allows, but for now, to me it's clear that the sliders are "broken." Yes, they work, but not correctly. No wonder why I kept having odd reactions in the past when I tried to change one set of sliders here and there to enhance the game to what I wanted.

The bottom line for me is that when the sliders are kept the same, the game is too easy, so based on this new info, I need to try and figure out a new slider set that does NOT match human and CPU sliders. Of all the sets above, the only option for me is to try some variation of Set 4, since I want to only impact my team and not the CPU.

Also, one more thing: the Human Special Team sliders do not appear to work, either. It appears that both Human and CPU are impacted by the CPU Special Teams sliders.

I'm not sure if this information means anything to anyone or if it helps, but I wanted to share what I have discovered. I welcome any further insight, because by no means is this information gospel. If I find anything more, I'll be sure to post it. Also, if anyone has found a slider set that is challenging, please let me know! I would live to hear if someone else has already figured out what I'm trying to solve for.

[picker19]

I figured I'd share a new observation from my slider testing. Per my earlier post, I've been experimenting more with Slider Set #4, which impacts only the Human Defense. The reason for choosing to work off this set is that based on the hundreds of games I've played, it has always seemed to me that the Human team has a slight advantage over the CPU. And when you start adding new coaching skills, it magnifies this advantage. And my theory is that this advantage is mostly towards the Human Defense, which would explain why the CPU has difficulty scoring on me, especially once I get to Year 2 or 3 of any franchise.

So, this morning, I tested out Slider Set #4 above a few more times just to be sure the results were consistent, which they were. But I noticed that I was getting a lot more penalties with this slider set (I have not changed my penalty sliders for probably two years) than I was before I did my testing. So, I dropped Holding, Face Mask, and Clipping each down by one point (from 51 to 50), saved my profile, and started another round of testing with Slider Set #4, just to see if the penalty changes worked. I ended up getting more than I bargained for.

As I noted in my original post, Slider Set #4 made my defense into swiss cheese. The Bengals ran on me over and over and over again. It didn't matter if I had all the CPU Defensive sliders set to 10, 20, or 30. As long as they were lower than the Human Defensive sliders, the CPU Defensive sliders made my defense very weak. However, simply by changing the penalty sliders for the three options above, that swiss-cheese defense disappeared! My defense went from very poor to below average. Yes, the CPU could still run on me and pass on me, but gone were all the long runs and missed tackles and steady stream of completions. My defense suddenly had some life to it.

So, I went back and moved the penalty sliders up again by 1 for all three, and tested again, and the swiss-cheese defense was back.

I tried one more test. I defaulted all the penalty sliders to 50 and tried Slider Set #4 again. Again, I got the same results as I did above with the three penalty sliders dropped to only 1 -- my defense wasn't great or as good as it was before with the defensive sliders matched, but it was definitely better than the "swiss cheese" defense I had seen earlier.

Therefore, it appears that the penalty sliders do have some sort of impact to the gameplay sliders. What the impact is, I don't know, but based on my limiting testing, they are affecting my gameplay.

If time permits, I'll do some more testing and will be glad to share more results, but as always, I welcome any feedback, debate, or further insight if anyone has anything more to share.

[poopoop]

I have the same problem as you.

Game is pretty good but after my players learn the pb and my coach starts developing it's a wrap for the CPU. Then add in being able to outmaneuver cpu teams in the offseason the challenge goes away.

I don't like messing with sliders constantly and haven't found a set here that I like. Hopefully you can figure something out.

[picker19]

Thanks for the reply. In a weird way, it's comforting to know someone else has had the same experience as me.

I spent a few hours again testing another set of sliders, and here's what I found:

• Special Teams sliders DO impact gameplay beyond what they're intended to do. For instance, I matched the Human/CPU Special Teams sliders and used my Set #4 above, and suddenly my defense had life to it and the CPU could no longer run on me at will. However, when I kept the Human ST sliders at 50 and tweaked just the CPU sliders, my defense was back to being awful.
• I've seen some cases where it appears that the CPU Defensive sliders are reversed. For instance, when I tried an alternate of Set #4 above, my defense seemed to be worse when the CPU D sliders were at 40 versus 10.
• I have confirmed that penalty sliders also impact the gameplay. I tried tweaking penalty sliders against a control group of sliders, and they certainly affected the gameplay, but I couldn't discern a solid pattern yet.
• Depending on the slider set, I've seen a phenomenon that I like to call "hyper mode." Some tweaks will suddenly make the players all faster, like a game speed setting, and some shut this off. I've seen the penalty sliders do this, along with other tweaks. It just adds another layer of complexity to the testing.
• Finally, and this should be no surprise, whenever I tested a slider set that I liked in Coach Now mode in Career Mode, I got a very different experience. Obviously, with playbook knowledge and coach skills involved, I expected that, but sometimes the difference was huge, which adds a whole other layer of complexity.

I still have a few more variations to test, but so far the most frustrating thing is that I've found a couple sets that worked really well in Coach Now, but appear to act completely differently in Career Mode (I didn't expect the degree of difference). In the end, I'm just trying to find a pattern and work off of that, and so far from what I've seen, this game's sliders are super sensitive. You make one tweak to something and it throws everything else off, which is making it very difficult to find any pattern. So, for my next batch of sliders, I'm going to start on default for everything, including penalties, and work my way from there. I'm sure there will be more to come!

[picker19]

After countless hours of testing, I wish I had good news to share, but I've come close to giving up on my goal, which is to give an advantage to the CPU using the sliders. The reason is that these sliders are officially broken in that either A) they don't do anything and/or B) they impact both Human and CPU. I've seen so many weird things happen by just changing one slider, even sliders that shouldn't be impacting the gameplay. Every time I think I've "cracked the code" further testing shows that I was wrong.

For anyone who's interseted, here's what I've learned:

• I have confirmed that Human Offense sliders do nothing, other than impact the affect of other sliders. By themselves, they have no noticeable affect to the gameplay.
• I confirmed that by themselves the Human Defense sliders do impact BOTH Human and CPU, but as the programmers themselves stated, the impact is very slight.
• Without a doubt, the CPU Offense sliders affect both Human and CPU.
• And the CPU Defense sliders again impact both Human and CPU.
• Human Special Teams sliders have no impact alone, but like the Human Offense sliders, they can affect other sliders.
• CPU Special Teams sliders impact both Human and CPU.
• Penalty sliders appear to sometimes impact slider sets, depending on the slider set. I can't explain this any further other than to say that the penalty sliders have sometimes affected the gameplay when I changed them on a particular slider set.

What has been the most frustrating experience of my slider testing is that there is no particular pattern. For instance, if you leave all the Human sliders at 50 and just dabble with the CPU sliders, you'll get certain results. However, change just one Human slider from 50, and that CPU slider set starts acting different. This means you can create so many variables that it's almost impossible to figure out what does what. It's also led me to believe that it's the Human Sliders that truly ruin the sliders. I have a couple of "odd ball" theories on the Human Sliders, which may explain why the Human team always seems to have the advantage over the CPU, but I haven't been able to prove any of them yet.

However, I have one last card up my sleeve. I found a slider set, for whatever reason, that seems to impact the Human Defense much more than the CPU defense. This slider set made my Human D look like swiss cheese, whle the CPU defense still looked decent. For instance, I played as the Seahawks against the Bills, losing 44-17, and Lynch ran all over me for 200+ yards and two dozen broken tackles and Edwards had an 80% completion percentage, meanwhile, I could only must up 80 running yards and a 56% completion percentage for my starters. This is just one example. Before I post it, I want to investigate a bit further the next couple days and see if I can tone down the CPU's offense just a bit. I'm certainly not holding my breath.

[Wheeler Dealer]

Thank you. I would never have the patience. I'm looking forward to trying out your results! This could make the difference between playing a few more seasons and playing multiple careers!

I'm in the 4th season of my first career. I played the first three seasons using a set of sliders I copied from one of ebongreen's posts. He kept the human and CPU sliders the same, beefing up the run game and toning down the passing.

I noticed a couple of anomalies and have been tweaking sliders during my 4th season, perhaps with unintended consequences! My kicker was getting 90% touchbacks on KOs, the rest of the league got maybe 20%. I've got the human kicking power for KOs down to zero with no obvious results! Wonder what else I've screwed up?

Some of the penalties are never called. I've never seen Offensive PI, interference with the punt returner, Intentional Grounding, Roughing the Passer or Roughing the Kicker. I've got those up to about 80 now.

I'm going to put everything back where I played the first three seasons and wait to see what you discover!

[picker19]

I've been MIA on my research due to the birth of my son, but I've now been able to continue my research, and the for me, the results are extremely disappointing.

As I've said above multiple times, I'm trying to give the CPU an advantage, because the game is too easy, but I've now concluded there is no way to "break" or "decouple" the CPU sliders from impacting the Human gameplay. I can't tell you how many slider combos I've experimented with, and nothing works.

In summary, here's what I've learned:

• Human offensive sliders do nothing.
• Human defensive sliders impact both CPU and Human
• Human special teams sliders do nothing
• All CPU sliders impact both CPU and Human
• When sliders are matched, the Human always has the advantage.
• Play knowledge is the #1 influence on gameplay success. Coach skills are important, but I've noticed that once your team knows your playbook, they can beat almost anybody.

I am now trying my last slider set, and that is, I'm doing what many others have said not to do: put some of the sliders to zero. I've noticed some interesting effects to the gameplay when even one slider is set to zero. I've also begun experimenting with setting both one Human and CPU slider to zero (like Interceptions), because I've noticed some odd (but possibly good) effects (e.g., suddenly the running game started to work really well).

I'm giving this one more chance, and then I'm going to go back to my original slider set that I had been using for the past year to some success.

I don't want to post a slider set just yet, because I want to feel confident in what I'm posting and why. But I feel like I'm close to completing my "research." Overall, it really is a shame the sliders are broken, because this is one of my favorite games of all time, and I imagine if only the sliders actually did what they were supposed to do, how much better it would be.

[Wheeler Dealer]

Congratulations on the addition to your family. Is it your first?

I spent countless hours with my two sons playing various video/computer games.