Knowledge from the past

[Mike3207]

The skills stack

Thanks Picker much appreciated . This one is a quote from Josh that the skills do indeed stack:

Quote:

Lets say I bought the block shedding skill with my HC, if I do the same for my Defensive Line Coach will it improve it even more, or should I not even bother and work on something else? JOSH-Yes, they stack. You get a boost from the position coach, Def. Coordinator and Head Coach.

[Mike3207]

Play Knowledge

A post from Dan Bekins on how the play knowledge goals affect the whole team, not just the first string.

Quote:

Taking an example from the Prima Guide... 4-3 Under 2 BEFORE AFTER MASTERED 18% 24% LEARNED 22% 16% UNLEARNED 60% 60% Am I to understand that this means after my practice, only 40% of my defense has either LEARNED or MASTERED 4-3 Under 2? It also looks like after the practice no new players LEARNED the play but some of the players who had already LEARNED the play have now MASTERED the play. Am I correct? Also, do you LEARN plays that were previously UNLEARNED by running them in-game? I'd think that if you ran UNLEARNED plays in game you'd not have success thus not LEARN them. It's a bit more confusing than the original head coach where you actually ran the plays in practice and could do more than one in a particular practice. I think I like the aspect though that it'll take time to develop a mastery of your plays. Oh, one last thing, can I select the plays I want my guys to LEARN/MASTER or will it just be the plays that are available when your practice options are displayed? Thanks, NoleFan DAN BEKINS-In the example you gave, it means 6% of your team went from "learned" to "mastered" for that play. The number of "learned", "unlearned", and "mastered" should always add up to 100%. Note that these numbers include your entire team, not just your first string, so 40% learned is pretty solid. Once a player masters a play during practice, he will automatically be subbed out so another player can get some reps. Players do learn during the game. In fact, they should learn at a greater rate in the game vs. practice. You can experiment with this by running the same play over and over again and checking the knowledge meter each time. The options displayed in the gameplan selection screen are based on the plays that your team has not learned yet. You can get new options by backing out of the screen and re-entering it.

[Byron Yatch]

I always knew they stacked, now I got the proof. I always thought it was best to get the special skills for the positions, development for the coordinators and whatevers most needed for the team on the head coach.

As for the play learning stuff, never knew they subbed out mastered players in practice for people behind them to learn, thats sick. Like I should have figured it would be like that but never would have assumed that.

Keep it coming, just like picker said, this stuff is golden. I'll be back on hc every once in a while, gotta enjoy my new toy though(madden 2013) for a little longer, real hard to put down once you turn it on.....

[Mike3207]

Driven

A quick quote from Josh on the Driven personality trait:

Quote:

If you draft a player who is destined to be the next superstar, there's very little outside of playing time and injuries obviously, that can derail that. Especially if he has the 'Driven' personality trait, which makes him progress 2x faster than anyone else (ala Peyton Manning). And yes, potential basically guarantees players to be busts.

I knew Driven players developed faster, but twice as fast? I'll have to look at the Driven personalities later.

[Mike3207]

The GM

A brief quote about your GM from Donnie Moore, including how important the CPU GM is in off the field decisionmaking:

Quote:

The GM has a wide range of responsibilities in HC09. The GM can handle any responsibility you tell him too. If you don't feel like signing player contracts, you can delegate the GM to do it for you. The GM also plays a major role in scouting. Based on how good your GM is at rookie scouting (per position), this will directly determine how many guys you get to scout at each scouting stage. For example, a 5 rated GM might get 12 DBs to scout during NFL Combine where as a 1 rated GM only gets 3 guys to scout. The GM also affects your approval. If you make moves that are in agreement with the GM (like going with a draft pick suggestion he might have), then he will be happy with you. If you continually override the GM on decision after decision, he will eventually get mad with you and try and leave the team in the offseason for other opportunities. For CPU teams, the GM makes most of these decisions himself for the team. The CPU Head Coach does not play as large of a role as the user Head Coach would. So bottom line here for CPU GMs, they play a HUGE role in off-the-field decision making for a franchise.

[Mike3207]

Position coaches are most important

A post from Donnie Moore that position coaches are most important in player development, followed by the coordinators and then the HC:

Quote:

No, players will not always reach their potential at all. The players still have to be productive NFL players to reach their potentials. They do this mostly via stat accumulation and also practice time. When they get hurt, they don't progress whatsoever. Yes, coordinators play a big role in development, as well as position coaches and the head coach. We made the position coaches the most important component of progression, then coordinators, then head coach. The thinking was that the higher up you go, the less hands-on time coaches get with players. So a coach like Alex Gibbs in is rated as a guru for all of the OL positions where a rookie offensive line coach in the league is going to be rated a 1 or 2, therefore not getting near the progression points as the 5 rated across the board Alex Gibbs.

[NoleFan]

I'm very much considering picking this up on my way home. They have some and it's only 3 bucks. Only thing is the last time I had this game I had issues with it freezing on PS3.

[Mike3207]

Strength of playbook

Nolefan, I think the patch fixed the most severe freezing issues.You'll lose audio with Schefter and others before it freezes, the only real problem is having it happen during a game.

This post is from Josh on what the strength of playbook means:

Quote:

Regarding playbooks: the playbooks appear to have some sort of attribute to themselves, being categorized as "strong", "average", "weak", etc. I'm puzzled as to how a playbook can be strong or weak; could you elaborate on this, particularly going into what effects a strong or weak playbook will have on our team's performance, and also go into what we can do to improve the playbooks if need be? JOSH-Those are values we manually set for the playbooks. That's based on the creativity of the plays, the amount of players who know the plays and how many plays are there. If there is a playbook that is very basic and none of the players know it (Falcons), it is a weak playbook in our opinion.