OK....I'm going to try to keep this brief if I can...
My goal is to get the following:
- Realistic Reactions
- Realistic Animations
- Realistic Behavior
To do this, the penalty sliders, along with the gameplay sliders, are critical. I'd like to touch on a few here (based entirely on my observations):
Kick Return Interference: Simply put, the higher, the more quickly the CPU reacts. Set it too high, and their reaction times border on per-cognition. Set it too low, and they are slower to react. Sounds like up is the way to go, right? Careful, too high and defenders in particular over-react to everything on the field (leaving them unrealistically susceptible to mis-direction....it can also lead to some head-scratching moments in coverage where they over-react in zone coverage). I believe that default is too high here.
Tackle slider: Jack it up and they hit harder. Simple, right? Not so much. Imagine a stretch to the left where the defense is in straight man-to-man. Assume the LOLB has a direct path to the ball carrier
if he takes a good angle. With the TAK slider high, the LB will take a path to the ball carrier nearly at the point where he receives the ball from the QB (an overly direct angle) and will often get caught up on the O-line. With the TAK slider too low, the LB will over-read and drift in space (to the point where I have actually seen them drift AWAY from the LB before closing on the sideline). Default is AGAIN too high as LBs far too often get caught up on the O-line. With a proper setting the LBs will read the play in their gap and then react by taking the proper angle to the ball carrier without getting caught up needlessly in traffic.
Pass Coverage: Very simple. The lower it is, the more the DB will follow the WR routes in coverage. Set it high, they will read the QBs eyes and attempt to bat down the ball (too high and they will literally stop in the middle of a route while in man-to-man....an issue I have seen at 30 with this set with KRI this low - with higher KRI settings, you can usually set this a bit higher).
DPI: How closely does the DB follow the receiver? High is tight and low is loose. This is
relative to the OPI slider (which is VERY important to note) but is more aggressive in nature the higher you go.
OPI: My favorite slider on this game. Low settings will lead to more sure-handed catches and nearly flawless route running. That comes with the price that the WR will take the safest possible play to make the catch. They won't dive, they won't jump, they won't attack the ball. Set it too high and they get incredibly sloppy. My original set had this at 75 and I am more than likely going to drift back to this setting.
Pass reaction: This is the only one of those listed here that I still have some doubt on as it functions differently than the run defense slider on NCAA. But as near as I can tell, it essentially serves as a tendency slider. The higher it goes, the more they favor the pass (eschewing the run). The lower it goes, the opposite. I am keeping this at 50/50 for the time being. Once we have everything else where we like it, THEN this can serve as a personal adjustment slider (run too easy and pass too hard - lower the pass reaction - and vice versa). If anyone has additional thoughts on what this does and can give me a concrete example (either by a video or giving me a specific thing to look at), let me know.
To the question at hand....
(remember....this is ALL based on making reactions realistic at a lower KRI slider setting - you start messing with that, many of these values change dramatically).
I have seen the best catch animations at OPI near 75 so that stays (I want the star receivers in this league to stand out). To do that and to keep things balanced, DPI goes up. As far as PCV goes, if it goes too high, CBs start drifting around like safeties trying to bat down everything in sight instead of doing what they are supposed to do (cover the receivers). If I have to watch one more animation of a CB stopping mid-route to turn around a bat a pass, I am going to puke
The approach you mention is quite similar to what I used on NCAA for a very long time (I used 20/19 OPI/DPI forever). There are definite advantages to low OPI/DPI, but on this game, I'd like to see more attempts at spectacular catches. As far as PCV goes, there is a bit of personal preference here..for the moment, I am going to keep it low.
So, things I want to look at thus far:
- Possibly bumping up KRI a tad (I'm talking a value between 35 and 40 - so only a slight increase)
- Increasing PCV a bit (probably to 25/25)
- Lowering OPI back to 75 and DPI lower than that to loosen up things a bit and get fewer coverage sacks.
Once we get these optimized, we can look again at the fumble settings and tinkering with the user run block setting. That should leave the pass reaction slider which people can tweak to taste.