[jyoung]

Playbooks definitely contribute to the realism (or lack of) in the league.

Back in season 1, when pretty much everybody was still using their team's default playbooks, I genuinely looked forward to each week's game because I knew my opponent would be using a totally different style of play from the previous week's.

That feeling died about half-way through season 2 when a bunch of the original owners dropped out and more people started switching over to the popular "tourney" playbooks.

It it is no coincidence that at the conclusion of season 2, Trojan also had to institute gameplay rules limiting or negating popular "tourney" tactics.

It is because many of the popular "tourney" tactics are tied to specific plays and formations that only occur within 1 or 2 playbooks.

Had I really wanted to, I could easily have been like other teams in this league and come out in the Jets 1-5-5 defense every down and run blitzes that confuse and exploit the o-line AI in ways that lead to easy QB pressure.

Or I could sit back in the 3-3-5 all game and watch as my defense magically plugs up all of the running lanes with only 6 defenders in the box.

Instead, I have proved by example that you don't need to abuse these tactics to win at Madden, and that the default team playbooks offer more than enough solutions to counter any type of offense or defense in the game.

When people complain about their team playbook somehow being "too limited," all that really says to me is "this playbook doesn't have the 3 to 4 money plays that I know I can run all game and still be successful with."

I ran with the Lions playbooks exclusively for three seasons and was still finding lots of new plays to run before I got sick and had to quit gaming altogether.

But if I am able to play Madden 11 come August, I sincerely hope that ACQB is run with one of the following rules in place:

1) Default team playbooks only. (simple solution, easy to manage).

2) Playbooks become a part of a team's "roster," such that no playbook can be used by more than one team, and a trade must be made between teams to "swap" playbooks directly. (tougher to mange, but allows for more flexibility)

Without some kind of rule in place to promote variety in style of play, the Madden 11 league will eventually just turn into what the Madden 10 league is now, where the same 2-3 playbooks are used by every team and each game just feels playing another "palette swap," to use an old fighting game term.

Really, the playbook problem we had in ACQB is no different than what happens in fighting games like Street Fighter or UFC where everybody just plays with 1 or 2 of the "top tier" characters and ignores the other 20+ fighters because they might actually have to think a little to win with them.