How to make the game harder?

[TheButter]

I'm running goody sliders, and I'd prefer to not have any house rules.

My first season was a tough one because my player's didn't know the playbook. Now that they do, we ****ing annihilate everyone. We won the Superbowl last season, but the playoffs were somewhat easy as well. Manning and Dungy seem to be the only competition, I barely beat them in the AFC Championship.

My team is stacked though, only position under 80 are the D Line, and a pretty good staff as well.

I want this game to be ridiculously hard. I'd like to struggle to win 9 games a season, but not at the expense of having stupid QB AI, game exploiting for a challenge or something like that.

What are the hardest sliders? Any other advice on this? I'll try to tone down my squad some, but I don't wanna intentionally try to not build a great team.

[TheButter]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Are there any ways to remove coaching attributes? Im thinking of removing all my preformance traits

[TLCJR4LIFE]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Just keep playing, contrary to popular belief the AI gets way stronger as the years go by and the bad coaches start to weed out and get replaced by nightmares like Hammermil.

I’m in my 4th season, 3 Super Bowl wins and 2 perfect seasons.

I’m 4-0 and nearly lost to Grudens cheap *** Bucks(Antoine Jefferson got a pick 6 on what could’ve been a game winning drive for them) I had to get lucky with big plays like Harry Douglas 60 yard run and a random kick return touchdown from Todd “Crash” Marino.

I play default sliders so I’m sure if you just gave the AI a boost it would be way harder, but if you just want an organic challenge then play through.

Most people believe the game is too easy due to exploiting the OP 2008 offseason and building a dominating secondary and drafting tons of studs in the first draft with the help of draft sheets. As you go along, barring the English Path it becomes much harder to manage salary cap along with buildings great roster. I feel most players would run into cap hill by their 4th or 5th season the way they play the game.

[TLCJR4LIFE]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Probably goes even without saying but the easiest way for that sort of challenge is to leave your team say year 3 and replace some recently fired coach, you’ll likely have a garbage staff, garbage players with insane contracts and on top of it, your former team will almost certainly be ridiculously hard to beat assuming you power gamed them a super roster.




Around year 4 a lot of coaches become difficult in my save


Gary Hammermil - Made the Cardinals into an overnight powerhouse singlehandedy, now Leinart is a 4000 yard passer each season and as the Rams I get to play this jerk two times a year. He has yet to beat me but he’sannoying.

Mike Holmgren - Another nuisance coaching my division, Holmgren has outcoached me straight up in games but never has the talent to win out. One game I found an overload blitz on the right side that he couldn’t deal with in his under center passing attack, and dropped Hasselbeck 6 times, the next 2 games Holmgren lined up his tight end on that side and stopped my cheese every time. He also almost beat me one year until my d-line injured his QB.


Jon Gruden - The nightmare of all nightmares, two straight games in two straight seasons going down to the final drive. Last season I came back to beat him with a game winning field goal and this season I held with a pick six. Not only is he a strong coach with an obnoxious tall ball abusing offense, his defense is loaded with pro bowlers. The Bucs managed to bolster their already strong defense with pro bowlers like Tommie Harris on my file. Dude regularly trots out 5-6 pro bowlers on defense each season.

Tony Dungy - Goes without saying but I actually usually dominate him with Cover 3, being out of conference Dungy doesn’t play us enough to adapt and I tend to run all over him.

Wade Phillips - Gave me a challenge in the playoffs one year after adapting to my Cover 3 defense the year prior which totally stifled Romo, but I’ve had insane luck and my defense managed to knock Tony out of the game and it was an easy win. They also blitz their safeties like hell(especially Roy Williams) and I can’t run on them despite being the best running offense in the history of football, but they are so predictable in their run blitzing Douglas gets career days against them.


And I’m just watching the rest unfold.

Tony Sporano got Darrick Conroy playing like an MVP after Harbaugh was fired but his stats don’t impress me. Andy Reid went to Detroit and now they are good and that is incredibly spooky to have Reid with an actually good QB and Calvin Johnson.

Bobby April is winning a lot but I’m not that impressed with him, he met me in the super Bowl last season, their QB got sick before the game and we picked off the backup 7 times and won by 42.


I’m actually excited to see how the game world keeps developing, my salary cap management is god tier so I can hold an iron fist as long as I want to stay on the Rams.

[TheButter]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Probably goes even without saying but the easiest way for that sort of challenge is to leave your team say year 3 and replace some recently fired coach, you’ll likely have a garbage staff, garbage players with insane contracts and on top of it, your former team will almost certainly be ridiculously hard to beat assuming you power gamed them a super roster.




Around year 4 a lot of coaches become difficult in my save


Gary Hammermil - Made the Cardinals into an overnight powerhouse singlehandedy, now Leinart is a 4000 yard passer each season and as the Rams I get to play this jerk two times a year. He has yet to beat me but he’sannoying.

Mike Holmgren - Another nuisance coaching my division, Holmgren has outcoached me straight up in games but never has the talent to win out. One game I found an overload blitz on the right side that he couldn’t deal with in his under center passing attack, and dropped Hasselbeck 6 times, the next 2 games Holmgren lined up his tight end on that side and stopped my cheese every time. He also almost beat me one year until my d-line injured his QB.


Jon Gruden - The nightmare of all nightmares, two straight games in two straight seasons going down to the final drive. Last season I came back to beat him with a game winning field goal and this season I held with a pick six. Not only is he a strong coach with an obnoxious tall ball abusing offense, his defense is loaded with pro bowlers. The Bucs managed to bolster their already strong defense with pro bowlers like Tommie Harris on my file. Dude regularly trots out 5-6 pro bowlers on defense each season.

Tony Dungy - Goes without saying but I actually usually dominate him with Cover 3, being out of conference Dungy doesn’t play us enough to adapt and I tend to run all over him.

Wade Phillips - Gave me a challenge in the playoffs one year after adapting to my Cover 3 defense the year prior which totally stifled Romo, but I’ve had insane luck and my defense managed to knock Tony out of the game and it was an easy win. They also blitz their safeties like hell(especially Roy Williams) and I can’t run on them despite being the best running offense in the history of football, but they are so predictable in their run blitzing Douglas gets career days against them.


And I’m just watching the rest unfold.

Tony Sporano got Darrick Conroy playing like an MVP after Harbaugh was fired but his stats don’t impress me. Andy Reid went to Detroit and now they are good and that is incredibly spooky to have Reid with an actually good QB and Calvin Johnson.

Bobby April is winning a lot but I’m not that impressed with him, he met me in the super Bowl last season, their QB got sick before the game and we picked off the backup 7 times and won by 42.


I’m actually excited to see how the game world keeps developing, my salary cap management is god tier so I can hold an iron fist as long as I want to stay on the Rams.

Does Gruden ever stay put with a team? How much of an issue has General Sanders been for you?

[TLCJR4LIFE]

Re: How to make the game harder?

In my current file Gruden is still with the Bucks in year 4 and as stated they are the hardest team to beat consistently. I actually had a detailed gameplan on how to beat the Bucs for the playoffs last season and got lucky because they lost to the Giants. Giants gave me a good game but Eli ended up throwing 3 picks and we won by 3 scores.

General Sanders is garbage because he’s on the Falcons and their QB is Matt Ryan who can’t run his offense. He’s also on the hook for 10 million so they are in cap hell. He will probably get fired soon and picked up as a coordinator. They actually JUST drafted a scrambling QB in his third season but it will be too late by the time he ends up getting canned.


Anyway, today I actually had my first loss and ended my unbeaten streak at 48 games. The 1-3 Steelers of all teams completely shut down my inside running game and Willie Parker ran for 170 yards on my defense which has for the last two seasons been the number 1 rush defense in the league.


I’m also noticing I’m no longer getting any pressure out of my Cover 2 this season. Chris Long had 15, 17 and 21 sacks his first 3 years and in first 5 games has like 2. The other coaches and GMs are massively upgrading their offensive lines and the coaches are starting to get a lot more special skills.


It’s getting to the point where the average free agent offensive lineman is at 82 overall.

I actually was saving my points for motivator and spent them all on tackling and big hit for my head coach because I was so pissed at my run D, then made a trade for a new linebacker.

The game definitely keeps you on your heels as you go along. But yeah like I said, I think if you actually went to a bad team that has been drafting busts you will actually find it so hard maybe you wouldn’t enjoy it anymore. Because you will be stuck with so many 60 rated players getting 7-8 million dollars for 4-5 years due to the way rookie scale is in this game. It’s absolutely brutal if you don’t use draft sheets or have prior knowledge or use your GM to draft.

[nickoppel]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Are there any ways to remove coaching attributes? Im thinking of removing all my preformance traits

Get your assistants high enough and let them go in offseason and build young low rated coaches


Sent from my iPhone using Operation Sports

[jlech1805]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Maybe once every 3 months I get the urge to play this game. Remember my PS3 died a long time ago, then check this forum to see if people are still playing it.

Anyway ...

I believe the only way to actually make this game harder is to use a custom roster. I know folks called out tendencies and house rules to narrow your options but these are band-aids, minor adjustments.

Think about it if you are still playing there is no chance the draft isn't ruined for you. You will always win the cap allocation game, have the best draft, and your coaches will gain skills at a faster rate due to winning (and you get more just for playing). Unless you leave every 3 years your players will have a playbook knowledge advantage over almost every team. The game only gets easier you have to implement house rules to keep it to the difficulty you want.

Given these issues it leads me to believe a custom roster as the only way to create an uphill battle worth the climb.

Coaches
Sliders are mentioned in this thread, but in theory the ultimate sliders are the skills of your opponenet coaches. If you want to create a challenging experience you need to ensure the league is full of Dungy, Gruden, Reid, Ophamer, Hammermill level coaches.

Maybe 10 years ago now I did some sims and found a great coach could add at least 3 wins, an upgrade to a good playbook 1-2 wins, and players ... less impact unless it was a QB.

My suggestions (sorry for how long this was, i was thinking about it on a long drive )
1) Update all teams to have good offensive and defensive playbooks

2) Align philosphies to the playbooks

3) Set all opponent coaches to a min of level 3 for all the skills of the positions they are in charge of

4) Set all opponent coaches to have max potential for all skills

5) Change all coaches to loyalist (or something similar) personality and bump their approval to 99 to start. This will ensure less turnover in the league. This means less change of playbooks for your opponents.

6) limit the potential for all of your coaches and plan to keep them there as long as you run the franchise

These changes alone would make every game you play more challenging than season 1 vs Pats, Colts, Bucs etc.

If you want to go further ...

7) Give all your opponents perfect coaches. Find the ones with ambition or the highest amount of special skills make sure they are an HC, OC, or DC. Now as you progress all your opponents will spend all their skills on the special ones (you cannot edit these or GM skills sadly)

Even further ...
As you are always going to win the cap and draft battle you can modify the player subset of the roster.

8) Eliminate the cap ... you can't turn it off in game, but you can effectively. You can edit all contracts to be for 7 years at the minimum. When free agents and the draft hits it actually uses the average salary based off of starters in the league. It wipes away realism, but now you won't see good teams cut good players because of stupid cap moves

9) Help teams when they make dumb decisions. Example team has 2 strong RGs but a week LG you can swap the positions. OLine, Dline, LBs, and Secondary you can work around these issues to ensure the best 11 are on the field

10) i created one a long time ago, but load up the starting rosters with HOF caliber players. Want a challenge try facing 16 Dungy + Manning type combinations every season

I miss this game, maybe one day someone will figure out how to edit the draft and I'll jump back in

[TheButter]

Re: How to make the game harder?

I've just flipped my staff for the first 2 years and never upgraded my preformance skill and it's been challenging for me. Glad to see other people know much about this game, have you joined the subreddit for the Head Coach series?

[TheButter]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Maybe once every 3 months I get the urge to play this game. Remember my PS3 died a long time ago, then check this forum to see if people are still playing it.

Anyway ...

I believe the only way to actually make this game harder is to use a custom roster. I know folks called out tendencies and house rules to narrow your options but these are band-aids, minor adjustments.

Think about it if you are still playing there is no chance the draft isn't ruined for you. You will always win the cap allocation game, have the best draft, and your coaches will gain skills at a faster rate due to winning (and you get more just for playing). Unless you leave every 3 years your players will have a playbook knowledge advantage over almost every team. The game only gets easier you have to implement house rules to keep it to the difficulty you want.

Given these issues it leads me to believe a custom roster as the only way to create an uphill battle worth the climb.

Coaches
Sliders are mentioned in this thread, but in theory the ultimate sliders are the skills of your opponenet coaches. If you want to create a challenging experience you need to ensure the league is full of Dungy, Gruden, Reid, Ophamer, Hammermill level coaches.

Maybe 10 years ago now I did some sims and found a great coach could add at least 3 wins, an upgrade to a good playbook 1-2 wins, and players ... less impact unless it was a QB.

My suggestions (sorry for how long this was, i was thinking about it on a long drive )
1) Update all teams to have good offensive and defensive playbooks

2) Align philosphies to the playbooks

3) Set all opponent coaches to a min of level 3 for all the skills of the positions they are in charge of

4) Set all opponent coaches to have max potential for all skills

5) Change all coaches to loyalist (or something similar) personality and bump their approval to 99 to start. This will ensure less turnover in the league. This means less change of playbooks for your opponents.

6) limit the potential for all of your coaches and plan to keep them there as long as you run the franchise

These changes alone would make every game you play more challenging than season 1 vs Pats, Colts, Bucs etc.

If you want to go further ...

7) Give all your opponents perfect coaches. Find the ones with ambition or the highest amount of special skills make sure they are an HC, OC, or DC. Now as you progress all your opponents will spend all their skills on the special ones (you cannot edit these or GM skills sadly)

Even further ...
As you are always going to win the cap and draft battle you can modify the player subset of the roster.

8) Eliminate the cap ... you can't turn it off in game, but you can effectively. You can edit all contracts to be for 7 years at the minimum. When free agents and the draft hits it actually uses the average salary based off of starters in the league. It wipes away realism, but now you won't see good teams cut good players because of stupid cap moves

9) Help teams when they make dumb decisions. Example team has 2 strong RGs but a week LG you can swap the positions. OLine, Dline, LBs, and Secondary you can work around these issues to ensure the best 11 are on the field

10) i created one a long time ago, but load up the starting rosters with HOF caliber players. Want a challenge try facing 16 Dungy + Manning type combinations every season

I miss this game, maybe one day someone will figure out how to edit the draft and I'll jump back in

Have you played all 15 seasons for each draft path?

[TheButter]

Re: How to make the game harder?

I've just flipped my staff for the first 2 years and never upgraded my preformance skill and it's been challenging for me. Glad to see other people know much about this game, have you joined the subreddit for the Head Coach series?

I also only call my side of the ball and advance sim the defense, saves about 45 mins

[fairbanks freeze]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Goody's sliders got updated. I just posted on that again to share some insights.

However, the EASIEST way to add difficulty to this game is very simple. Your goal must be to MASTER EVERY SINGLE PLAY on both sides of the ball. That means you might not have a play that will work for the scenario, or it might not be the best one at least. Unlearned also allows for ERRORS. At learned, anyone who has learned the play will not make a mistake. They might get beat by someone who also learned their play and is just better, or a better playcall in general, but your players who have a play learned will not make a mistake. It gets worse on mastered, because not only will you not make a mistake, you get boosts to attributes.

So like I see people every year saying the game is too easy, but really, you're not playing like a head coach. You're playing like madden, where you know the scenario, the down and distance and so you're gonna go to that money play you know works. Thats not fun, using the same plays repeatedly.

Also, in the first year, you should have a brand new playbook for both sides, possibly even one that doesn't fit either side of the ball for your team. Make it so you have to build to a juggernaut by moving people and drafting for those who fit your new system. You should be a new coach and for the first year, don't even worry about skills. You're a 1 in EVERYTHING.

You go to the special skills and you can learn anything in the first row, but you cant go to the 2nd level of them till year 2. Your players will not develop fast at all, especially if you have a bad coaching staff. In year 2 you need to choose a couple positions(based on the special skills you picked) and build up 1 level, so now you're a 2 out of 5 for qb intangibles learning and physical. Pick 3 or 4 of them(maybe 2 on each side of the ball), then you can start learning some 2nd tier special skills. But that's gonna slow down how strong you get at special skills because that's 6000 points x 4 positions, 24000 points and you're still a noob at development... Maybe you can do one position on each side, then a couple special skills if you're struggling, then the other 2 positions.

If you want to go extreme difficulty, you never boost strategy, playcall, performance, or chemistry. You limit yourself to either passing or running the ball for skills and special skills on offense, stopping the pass or the run on defense. So if you wanna have it tough, don't give yourself passing boosts, you're a power run team now, and you don't get to pass on 1st and 2nd, now its 3rd and long sometimes. Your coordinators and position coaches pick up the slack but you're still at a disadvantage.

But the new slider adjustments I'll put here as well.

QBA 50, Catching 25, Pass Blocking 25, RBA 75, Run block 50
Awareness 50, knockdowns 25, interceptions 25, block shed 75, tackle 50
kp 75, ka 25, pp 50, pa 75, ko 25

Offsides 100, False Start 75, hold 50, face 50, 100 offensive pi, 75 def pi, kick interference 100, clip 50, 100 intentional ground, 100 roughing pass, and 100 roughing kick.



But again, the biggest difficulty adder is not allowing yourself to pick ANY PLAY YOU WANT. Its literally the 4 weeks in preseason and then another 8 weeks of just unlearned plays ON BOTH SIDES OF THE BALL, unless you're so far down that you need to use some learned ones because you need to win the game. In preseason you never use anything but unlearned. But you don't even think of using a mastered play in reg season, cause its not gonna help down the road, just now. Mastered is for playoffs and rivalry games really, until its all you have left.

Its a crutch to start a game with learned or mastered plays and then use unlearned when you're up. Flip that around, unlearned until you're in a hole that's 10+(2 scores). You can learn how to playcall with unlearned plays and still win. Im 8-3 in the first year, I have no skills, I have many of the first tier of special skills but not all of them and wont before the end of the playoffs more than likely.

But realize the ai is NEVER going to be better than the human at play calling if you know how to beat every coverage and stop every kind of offensive scheme. You need to make it so your team has disadvantages, like using unlearned plays against mastered plays...

[fairbanks freeze]

Re: How to make the game harder?

Another thing is to consider that you only have 15 years. You should not be keeping amazing coaches for longer than 3 years. Like if your OC is good enough to be a hc, HE SHOULD BE A HC. You let that dude go and allow some other team to have a better chance of being difficult to beat. You can hire whoever you want but you're not a bank saving every penny the whole career, you're an academy where people graduate every 2-4 years. If your position coach is good enough to coordinate, you fire the coordinator and hire from within. So someone might stay on your staff for 5 years give or take, and that's only if they were a position coach.

Another thing, if you keep the same great players your whole career(barring a few exceptions like possible franchise leaders), your team will always be great. But if you're instead only resigning a couple guys every year, you're trading or letting people walk in offseason and drafting new people who HAVE TO LEARN THE PLAYBOOK AND DEVELOP. That adds difficulty. So lets say you're on the ozzie jones path(my favorite). I might keep ozzie and Doki Somanu, but otherwise, you're prolly gone in 3-5 years... You can add names to the list of people you keep every year but it should be limited so as not to always have an allstar squad. You're the power broker, the developer of your opponents. You make it so bad teams become good by giving them people who are already developed. You don't make trades with good teams, only the worst when it comes to trading great players away.

Limit your first and 2nd round picks, most of your picks should come in the 3-6th. You should be drafting for need, not want...