Do simulated games use sliders?

[Wheeler Dealer]

In my 2015 season Singletary has 5 in performance and strategy but only 2 in play calling. He has 2 special skills that would help the QB. His offensive philosophy is power running but he delegates Offensive playbook to the OC. I would think Offensive playcalling would also go to the OC so I'm not sure what difference his offensive scheme makes.

The more interesting stat that came out of my two season simulations and playing through the same season was Dallas Clark. He had 187 and 157 catches in the simulations and 163 when I played the season as the Packers.

He played for the Eagles (we never played each other) who had a new first year coach, James Lofton, packers HoF receiver in the '80s mostly. It was his first year as a HC in my game. His passing philosophy is Vertical!

The Eagles WR weren't very good and had below average stats for the year. The QB, K Clemmens (88) was pretty good.

I don't know that you can draw any conclusions from that, I just thought it was curious.

I found a very strange sliders result. I'm going to post it in the sliders forum.

[Wheeler Dealer]

As far as the original question posed in this thread, we aren't going to convince each other.

My silly sliders that don't seem to influence the league stats don't convince you.

Your normal sliders that have coincided with three seasons of normal league results haven't convinced me.

We need to agree to disagree and move on to something else.

[algoody421]

Performance and strategy, thats what it is! Yeah, if you have a 5 in performance and a 5 in strategy, its like saying, every player plays as best as they can every down and they make the best adjustments throughout the game. So if you're simming their games, only other teams with that high in both will be able to stop him and his teams.

He doesnt need passing special skills or even to be able to develop qbs. His philosophy will not change how the oc calls plays either. Play calls in simulation are based on the playbook. Because he starts on the 49ers, I think he has martz's playbook. I tried with the saints, moved it to power running on payton, they still wont run the ball at all in paytons offense really. All singletary needs is a good oc and qb coach and his qb will go off if its that air martz playbook.

If you were on the year he got hired at hc, I think you can see the staff he hired by going to staff hiring recap and going to his team. You can do this every year at least once when they show it on the rotating menu to go over the staff changes you made. You just hold L2 and you can go through the different teams to see who they fired and hired. If he hires a passing oc and a great qb coach, his qb will play amazingly.

As for the original reason this was opened, you are more than welcome to give up, I just wont agree to disagree. Instead, Im gonna sim a full career and see if and when it breaks down(stops simulating realistically). I'll have a video for each season. I took a break yesterday so I didnt sim any further than where I was. I can get at least 4 seasons simmed tonight though and that should get me to season 8(Im on week 12 of season 4 right now).

At what point will you be willing to change your mind? Will it take a full career or is 8 seasons of realistic stats enough? I only take this hard a stance because I know they do use sliders in simulated games. If they didnt, I would still see 12 4000 yard passers and 4 5000 yard passers EVERY YEAR.

No one will get perfect stats but my full slider set has shown only minor anomalies easily based on the player, the coaching staff and the playbook. A combination of all three of those will lead to someone breaking a record. I tend to blame the playbooks the most.

Anyone on martzs team, and using his playbook will throw for 4000 yards and almost 40 tds. With b marsh, its more to do with shannahan being an amazing coach and no one else being there at #2 wr. I think if he were on a different team or shannahan retired, he would return to 1600 yard territory. Same with reggie bush, if he wasnt in sean paytons quick pass system, he wouldnt be targeted so much. Not to mention, its rare that reggie bush actually stays healthy an entire season...

Thats how I explain those people who do break a record on these sliders. The fact of the matter is, the difference is stark between default sliders and these, even on simulated seasons. On default sliders, 4 or 5 people WILL GET 5000 yards passing EVERY SEASON. In 3 years only 1 person has done it on my sliders and it took almost 700 passes to do so. We'll see how much more it happens over the career though. It could simply be that from year 8 on there are too many special skills to stop records from being broke by multiple players...

[Wheeler Dealer]

Quote: Originally Posted by algoody421

If you were on the year he got hired at hc, I think you can see the staff he hired by going to staff hiring recap and going to his team. You can do this every year at least once when they show it on the rotating menu to go over the staff changes you made. You just hold L2 and you can go through the different teams to see who they fired and hired. If he hires a passing oc and a great qb coach, his qb will play amazingly.

I only have save files from 2008, 2014 and 2015. I looked under "NEWS" where it shows this year's staff changes and didn't find anything for the Falcons in 2014 or 2015.

I'm about to get a close look at this Falcons passing juggernaut. We are playing in the Conference Championship. I'll play the game sometime Thursday.

Now here is something that might make me reconsider. If Rivers is able to pass for his average around 360 yards in a played game using your sliders I may have to reopen my thinking.

Quote: Originally Posted by algoody421

As for the original reason this was opened, you are more than welcome to give up, I just wont agree to disagree. At what point will you be willing to change your mind? Will it take a full career or is 8 seasons of realistic stats enough? I only take this hard a stance because I know they do use sliders in simulated games. If they didnt, I would still see 12 4000 yard passers and 4 5000 yard passers EVERY YEAR.

I would certainly go back to doubtful if you have several seasons with "normal" league stats.

A much easier way to change my mind would be a more scientific method.

Set the sliders to all 50s and, starting from a save after training camp, simulate the entire regular season. You don't need to do the weeks individually, all those random injuries will average out. Do the same season three or four times, it takes less than 30 minutes while you can have lunch or watch "Big Bang Theory". Record some key metrics like # runners over 1000 or # passers over 5000.

Now set the sliders to something that should produce a radically different result. I thought all 90s for D and all 10s for O should do it but you may have a different idea. Run that same season three or four times and we should see radically different league metrics.

If that happens then the sliders are being used for simulated games. If the results are similar to default sliders then the sliders don't impact simulated games.

It's hard to draw conclusions from your simulated career. You may know what is the expected result from default sliders from your experience but I don't. I don't know whether you are looking at results 10% less than default (need a dozen of those to draw a conclusion) or 50% less (only a couple of those to draw a conclusion.

[Wheeler Dealer]

Quote: Originally Posted by Wheeler Dealer

I'm about to get a close look at this Falcons passing juggernaut. We are playing in the Conference Championship. I'll play the game sometime Thursday. Now here is something that might make me reconsider. If Rivers is able to pass for his average around 360 yards in a played game using your sliders I may have to reopen my thinking.

I killed 'em!

A bit of background. My QB (88 ovl) went down on Wednesday. Out for the season. My Backup QB (75 ovl) is a rookie. I have played him at the end of one sided games but he's still pretty raw without much playbook knowledge.

I wasn't hopeful, I was 11-5 on the season nipping Chicago 24-20 and coming from 18 down at half to pip the Giants 31-28 in the first 2 playoff games. I didn't have great personnel or assistants and this was my first year at GB.

Rivers had an NFL record season with over 5700 yards passing. He put up 512 the week before against SF in the divisional round.

I was happy to get out of the first quarter 0-0 even if I did miss a 43 yard FG. Rivers wasn't doing much. In the 2nd quarter I got a couple of good breaks including a TD with 0:02 left to take a 21-0 lead. The 3rd quarter was scoreless and I was feeling pretty good. I got a TD early in the 4th and on the next possession Rivers threw a pick 6.

With 13:54 left in the game I was kicking off with a 35-0 lead.

At this point Rivers had a QB rating of 0.0 with 80 yards, 2.7 yd/att, 0 TD and 3 INT. Against my mostly prevent D he managed to get up to 241 yards and 2 TDs to make his stats look bad but only slightly embarrassing.

Meanwhile my rookie backup had a nice game, 256 yds, 17/24 with 5 TDs & 1 INT. We won 42-14 in a game that wasn't nearly that close.

I think the main thing that happened was that I knew they were passing every down and I called all nickel and dime defenses. Actually they threw 40 of 41 offensive plays and I did call one run defense, unfortunately not on the same play when they they ran, they hit me for a quick 23 on that play!

I ran the ball 52 times for 107 yards! Bill Parcels would be proud!

[algoody421]

The best way I've found to test these sliders is from comparing a season on default 50 to a full season of whatever changes you made. Unfortunately You cant just put one side at 0 and the other at 100 because different sliders are weighted differently.

Understand that just because a slider is at 0 or 100 doesnt mean never or always. It just makes it less or more likely. So at 0 passing accuracy, brees and brady and manning, they all can still throw 300 yard games, its just less likely. Same with interceptions at 100. You have a 100% CHANCE of getting an interception on any play, but it doesnt guarantee one every play. But the best in the league on offense still have a chance to produce at 0, and the worst defense have a chance to play well.

But back to the sliders being weighted differently, the passing accuracy slider at 50 will allow 6000+ yard passers and 50+ td passes often. At 25, you rarely see many if any 5000 yarder/50 td passers unless they're in a hyper pass west coast or spread system(600+ pass attempts in a season).

I presume at 0 you would rarely see 4000 yard passers and 40 tds. Then again, it depends on what season you're in, what coaching staff roster and playbook/level of learning the player is in and the schedule they versed/their opponents coaching staff roster and playbook/level of learning.

But some sliders are set perfectly where they start(knockdowns, awareness, rba, pass block), others are too high at 50 (passing accuracy interceptions tackles) or low at 50(run blocking, also thinking of adding block shedding as well).

Im actually glad this has come up because with the amount of testing Ive done recently, and comparing to research, I think I found 2 sliders that might need to be raised, but I fear what will happen with receptions and sacks.

Drops are almost double any season you simulate or play compared to real life, with only a few receivers getting close to real numbers of drops. That could be due to targets though as wes welker averages about 175 a year in real life and he's getting over 225 easily every season in the game. But there are many receivers getting around 2000 yards recieving on 50 catching... I dont know if putting that up to 75 will allow 2500 yard receivers and 200 receptions or not so Im hesitant on that.

However Sacks are also low at 50 block shed and I think its because run blocking is at 75. I think if I match those two, we might actually see a 20 sack season more often. The most im seeing on my sliders are 17 and thats not even every year. There have been a couple where most players have been under or at 10 in a season and thats a little low for league lead(should be getting 14 at least as the high guy on a down season for sacks).

My hope is that by adding in more sacks(raising blockshed), it will lower the targets to #1 receiving options and lower reception/passing yards. just gotta hope sacks dont get out of hand at 75 though. I dont want to start seeing 10 20 sack players per season, but 3 or 4 close to 20 every now and then would be fairly realistic . Might end up just matching pass block run block and block shed at 75...

I have 4 successive seasons of video though where the max is 5500 by brees one year and then this last year a qb in an andy reid run offense got 5100, but he was the only qb to do so. There were like 10-12 4000 yard passers though... but after 4 seasons only 2 qbs have done it and thats close to reality.

As you get further into a career though, the game will shift to more of a pass happy league on most of the draft paths. Ozzie jones path features most of the best running backs in the game as well as great run blocking offensive linemen.