Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

[DarthRambo]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

If you work from the basis that this is the Madden sim engine the results are a lot more sensible. Any given Sunday a 78 overall team can beat a 92 overall team. The problem is this concept doesn't exist in college at all so in the sims the 78 is basically the Raiders and the 92 is the Chiefs and those teams split last year. If EA insists on this sim engine then the top teams need to be in the same 90-95 range but the next tier needs to top out at around 75 so the common Georgia/Vandy 51-10 game is the norm and then the MAC/Sun Belt/FCS tier teams are topping out in the 60s where it's a miracle that they even hang with the P5(4?) teams much less beat them.

Crossing fingers with a roster update they realize this and do a massive overhaul to have it spread out to what you're saying. However, no way it happens because real life players would throw a fit if they're rated a 55 overall because you play for Vanderbilt. Kids these days are too much into their brand to allow that. It would be same way for NFL as well. If they updated a roster so the worst team actually only wins 2 or 3 in a simulated season, the players on that team would be crying so much that EA would put it back immediately.


The only way they fix the sim engine is if they can somehow do something like take in account the team's versus history (including those played in dynasty). Make home and away games matter even more. Especially for large schools with 60k+ capacity.


Sent from my Pixel 8a using Tapatalk

[moTIGS]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

Crossing fingers with a roster update they realize this and do a massive overhaul to have it spread out to what you're saying. However, no way it happens because real life players would throw a fit if they're rated a 55 overall because you play for Vanderbilt. Kids these days are too much into their brand to allow that. It would be same way for NFL as well. If they updated a roster so the worst team actually only wins 2 or 3 in a simulated season, the players on that team would be crying so much that EA would put it back immediately.


The only way they fix the sim engine is if they can somehow do something like take in account the team's versus history (including those played in dynasty). Make home and away games matter even more. Especially for large schools with 60k+ capacity.


Sent from my Pixel 8a using Tapatalk

Agreed, and that's precisely why I don't expect a change.

But as you note, there are other ways to address it.

Hell, EA could just make it so the game didn't weigh ratings in a linear fashion. Let everyone have visible ratings that make everyone happy, but make them *play* very differently.

e.g. A team full of 78-overall guys might be able to hang with a team full of 85-overall guys, but against a team of 88-90 overalls, they get run off the field more often than not. Because internally, the game recognizes the jump from 85 to 88 overall being far more significant than the jump from 78 to 85.

[BA2929]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

it's sad 3 weeks in everyone is testing bugs instead of enjoying the game. I thought with an extra year to produce the game much of this would have already been resolved.

99% of us ARE enjoying the game. You guys nitpicking sim stats over and over again are an extremely small minority.

Also: 3 years to make an entire NCAA football game basically from scratch isn't THAT much time. Not sure why you guys think they had a decade to work on this thing.

[Locke888]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

They should start at the result and work their way back with the sim. Sort of like how we force a win

1. Team A is 93 overall, Team B is 83 overall. Then Team A has 98% chance winning game. If we sim this game 100 times 98 will be wins by team A no matter what. It could be by 1 or 50 points. Seems everything is left to chance but we know how real college football goes. There are upsets but it’s rare

[ReturnoftheTmac]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

99% of us ARE enjoying the game. You guys nitpicking sim stats over and over again are an extremely small minority.

Also: 3 years to make an entire NCAA football game basically from scratch isn't THAT much time. Not sure why you guys think they had a decade to work on this thing.

It’s not from scratch. A lot of it used madden as its base. 3 years means they should’ve had time to see all these SIM issues

[Seanzino]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

I simmed like 10 dynasty's around 6 to 10 years deep (I was trying to futz around with XP sliders - but that's another story). I also played around with settings, like turning Wear and Tear off, trying to use XP sliders to make defenses underpowered and RB's and OL overpowered, and a bunch of other variables. None of it had much of an effect.

Post-patch, the first two years are always improved with 18-24 1,000 yard rushers. Then, it dips down from anywhere from 6 to 10 1,000 yard rushers. EA just needs to add 15-20 running plays per game for all teams, maybe take away 5-10 passing plays. Give higher rated RBs and scrambling QBs more carries than is typical for the engine. Especially option teams.

Out of all the sims there was ONE TIME a Michigan RB had 340 carries for 2,200 yards and 24 TDs in the fourth year. There were still only 9 total 1,000 yard rushers that year, but this was by far the most attempts and rushing yards I had seen. After the first 2 seasons, you almost never see more than 1,300 yards.

To me, it feels like they put a band-aid on the problem, hoping no one would make it past 2 years to see the sim rushing stats are still basically where they were post-patch after those 2 initial seasons.

Additionally, sack, TFL, and INT sorting are still completely broken.

You would think this would be easily tuned, but maybe it breaks something else? The sim stat system really needs an overhaul.

[Locke888]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

I simmed like 10 dynasty's around 6 to 10 years deep (I was trying to futz around with XP sliders - but that's another story). I also played around with settings, like turning Wear and Tear off, trying to use XP sliders to make defenses underpowered and RB's and OL overpowered, and a bunch of other variables. None of it had much of an effect.

Post-patch, the first two years are always improved with 18-24 1,000 yard rushers. Then, it dips down from anywhere from 6 to 10 1,000 yard rushers. EA just needs to add 15-20 running plays per game for all teams, maybe take away 5-10 passing plays. Give higher rated RBs and scrambling QBs more carries than is typical for the engine. Especially option teams.

Out of all the sims there was ONE TIME a Michigan RB had 340 carries for 2,200 yards and 24 TDs in the fourth year. There were still only 9 total 1,000 yard rushers that year, but this was by far the most attempts and rushing yards I had seen. After the first 2 seasons, you almost never see more than 1,300 yards.

To me, it feels like they put a band-aid on the problem, hoping no one would make it past 2 years to see the sim rushing stats are still basically where they were post-patch after those 2 initial seasons.

Additionally, sack, TFL, and INT sorting are still completely broken.

You would think this would be easily tuned, but maybe it breaks something else? The sim stat system really needs an overhaul.

Another example of how 14 was better. You could go into each coach profile and increase their run ratio +5 while decreasing pass by -5. When you did this the sim stats would change dramatically. It’s a complete failure that they didn’t put it in. But how else they going to make you buy next years game. Oh wait, I would have bought it anyway.

[CWSapp757]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

99% of us ARE enjoying the game. You guys nitpicking sim stats over and over again are an extremely small minority.

Also: 3 years to make an entire NCAA football game basically from scratch isn't THAT much time. Not sure why you guys think they had a decade to work on this thing.

I'm enjoying the game too but I don't know how I feel about the term "nitpicking". Everybody plays the game differently. For example, me personally... I don't play online so any issues in that area would have zero impact on me but I'm still not going to knock anyone who is constantly speaking up on those issues because I want them to enjoy the game they paid full price for.

It may seem insignificant or silly to you but this is a game with zero editing options. I understand getting frustrated with constant threads about the same issue (which happens a lot when new games come out) but I also don't think the "1 percent" should just get over it because the other 99 percent are happy.

[bhoover89]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

Crossing fingers with a roster update they realize this and do a massive overhaul to have it spread out to what you're saying. However, no way it happens because real life players would throw a fit if they're rated a 55 overall because you play for Vanderbilt. Kids these days are too much into their brand to allow that. It would be same way for NFL as well. If they updated a roster so the worst team actually only wins 2 or 3 in a simulated season, the players on that team would be crying so much that EA would put it back immediately.


The only way they fix the sim engine is if they can somehow do something like take in account the team's versus history (including those played in dynasty). Make home and away games matter even more. Especially for large schools with 60k+ capacity.


Sent from my Pixel 8a using Tapatalk

I mean so what if the players are unhappy with it? Like what are they going to do about it exactly? Their choice would still remain the same, either appear in the game or not at all. They don't exactly have much bargaining power in this case when their choice is opt in, be in the game, even if you don't like your rating and get some money for it or you get nothing. People tend to chose the option where you get money even if it is not a large amount.

[matt2053]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

I don't care about individual stats so much as TEAM stats.

Where are the TEAMS rushing for 200+ yds per game?

Where is Air Force rushing for 300+ yds per game?

If you look at TEAM stats it's even worse when compared to IRL.

[Therebelyell626]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

99% of us ARE enjoying the game. You guys nitpicking sim stats over and over again are an extremely small minority.

Also: 3 years to make an entire NCAA football game basically from scratch isn't THAT much time. Not sure why you guys think they had a decade to work on this thing.

While I agree with some of your sentiments, and there are in fact some really nice new stuff in CFVB 25, this game was not “built from scratch”. Maddens finger prints are all over this game in a variety of ways. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a very obvious one

[canes21]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

Alright, all 5 season 1 simulations are done and compiled. I'll show those 5 individual seasons first, then what the numbers averaged out to between them all.

Season 1 Sim 1

Spoiler

Season 2 Sim 2

Spoiler

Season 1 Sim 3

Spoiler

Season 1 Sim 4

Spoiler

Season 1 Sim 5

Spoiler

All 5 Simulations Averaged Out


First thing you'll notice is that the play count per game remains 11ish plays per team lower than what we saw in 2023 in real life. Given Madden has the same issue and both games are using the super sim engine, I think it's very possible this is an engine limitation that has the development teams' hands tied right now. Fortunately, we have the ability with our settings to change quarter lengths for played games, so we can at least get our snap counts in line with the simulated games.

What sticks out to me as the biggest issue in simmed games is the yards per play numbers and the run/pass ratios. You can see teams are throwing the ball more than they are running it, which is opposite of real life. And you can see yards per pass is more than 1 yard higher than real life which is a pretty decent jump up relative to the numbers we're discussing. It's also unfortunate that the tuning made to get more handoffs on RPO plays in simmed games doesn't look to have really caused an uptick in attempts, but did drop the yards/carry down by about a quarter of a yard. If you remember my first stats compilation pre-patch, the yards per carry were pretty much money, and in my 1st simulation here they were very close as well. It's the fact that in the other 4 simulations they were .3 to .4 yards lower than real life and given that's around 10% of the figure we're talking about, that's a decent amount.

As a result of these yards per attempt issues both in the air and on the ground, yards per play overall are off by a little under a full yard, or around 13%, which I personally feel is significant relative to the numbers we're looking at. Given the play call ratios in simmed games along with the higher yards per pass attempt numbers, that's going to naturally inflate yards per play overall like we're seeing. If we simply took the run/pass ratios from real life and applied them to simmed games and left the yards/attempt where they are, we'd see the overall yards/play number fall to 6.1 which is a lot closer to real life.

Ultimately, the issue here is that passes in simmed games are going too far on average. I don't know if this is an issue with YAC in the sim engine or a target depth issue in the simmed engine, but something is causing the yards/attempt to be too high. And, I bet given what I do know about the sim engine, trying to tune that number to be more in line with real life is going to introduce multiple other issues and become a headache.

The TD distribution is also noticeably off compared to real life, but again, this is easily explained by the run/pass ratios. If those were more in line, the TD distribution would be much closer to real life.

When looking at all of this on a macro level, I think the biggest issue with the simmed stats, especially if we're hard capped at around 55-56 plays/game by each team, is the run pass ratios. I'm wondering if these ratios were a design choice to get passing stats to look more like real life in volume and the rushing stats and yards/attempt had to be sacrificed to do so. If that's the case, I understand why it was done. It's not ideal, but I see the logic.

You'll also notice that I threw in 2 new stats in tracking 1st downs per game along with plays per 1st down gained. I did this fully expecting plays per game to be lower than real life by about the amount they are. However, I wanted to see if the amount of plays between 1st downs was similar to real life and it is actually very close. 1st downs are gained slightly quicker in simmed games than real life, but that's easily explained away by the increased yards per play average brought on by the higher yards per attempt along with the run/pass ratios.

Nothing really notable to say there other than if the run pass ratios were more accurate to life, then the number of plays between 1st downs on average would basically be spot on, so good job there to the sim engine team. They did a good job getting a lot of these numbers close to accurate, it's simply the run/pass ratios and yards/attempt that are really the biggest issues and the root of most differences, big or small.

I will end this post here for now. This was just a macro look into everything. I still plan to take one of these files and sim to year 5 and then compile all that data, but this takes a long time to do given I have to go team by team and add up all the attempts and enter all this into excel manually. If I had a way to export data, that'd be a time saver. Heck, if the team stats page just showed rush and pass attempts, that'd make this significantly quicker. But it doesn't, so I have to go in and manually add up all the rushing totals, all the pass attempts for teams that had multiple QB's play, and so on, so it gets a bit draining.

Before I come back with the future season stats, I probably will look at these season 1 numbers in a bit more detail. I'd like to look more at how much teams are deviating from one another in multiple areas compared to real life. Like I did with my original stats post shortly after release, I'd like to see what the top 10 teams in total plays looked like vs the bottom 10 and how big the variance is between teams. Same for rushing attempts. Are the top rushing teams running the balls are higher frequencies close to real life or are they even passing the ball too much in simmed games compared to real life.

It shouldn't be too hard to figure all that out, but I didn't want to make this post any longer than it already is. Sometime tonight or tomorrow I'll probably be back with the more in-depth look at the season 1 sims, then over the weekend I may do the future seasons sims and compile that data if I'm not too engrossed in my dynasty instead.

Also, just want to apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors above. I type fast, I hardly reread what I write, and I am a numbers guy, not a words guy.

[canes21]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

Also, I'd like to reiterate what I said yesterday. Please do not take these numbers and use them to attack EA. We all obviously would love to have the numbers match real life as much as possible, do know that this sim engine is a complex tool that's difficult to work with. I did not compile this data to make EA look bad, and I actually think my data makes them look better than originally thought because the numbers aren't horrifically off, it mostly just boils down to 3 issues in total plays, yards per pass attempt, and run/pass ratios.

If those 3 issues were fixed, then these numbers would be extremely close to being on the money. Knowing that the amount of plays is the same as seen in Madden and that's not been adjusted over the years, I think we need to understand it looks like a potential limitation with the engine that might cause a lot more issues if they mess with it. So understand the sim team is likely having to make some tough choices to get the numbers to be as close as they are right now.

I compiled all this data out of genuine curiosity, to share it with you all in the hopes you'd take it and could maybe adjust your settings to be more in line with simmed games if that was your aim in dynasty, and to provide what I hope is constructive feedback for the development team if they were to come across it. I am sure they are aware of some of these issues, if not all of them, but in the off chance any of this could help them isolate some areas and improve the numbers, I think it's worth the time and effort I spent compiling the data and getting it somewhat organized enough to look at on a basic level to this point.

In the end, we all just want this game and series to be as good as it possibly can and providing these numbers and using them for constructive reasons is the way to go about things. If you take these numbers and then go blindly bash EA, especially if you don't understand the complexities of the sim engine at all, you're doing nobody any good and just making it more likely the development team will pay less attention to the community. The team did a great job with this game and I know they know it isn't perfect and there are plenty of things to work on. They want to hear our feedback so they know what's important to us, like these sim stats. But if you just go around throwing shade at them constantly, your voice is going to lose a lot of power, so let's simply not go there.

If you want to discuss the numbers in a constructive manner, that'd be appreciated. If you have an undying desire to just flame EA and see this as more ammunition, please just move on and don't use my time and effort to fuel your tirade. That's not why I did this and I hope you all can understand that.

[BroMontana82]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

Just to confirm, dynasty quarter length does not impact simmed number of plays?

[CWSapp757]

Re: Thread to show how the sim engine looks post patch

Alright, all 5 season 1 simulations are done and compiled. I'll show those 5 individual seasons first, then what the numbers averaged out to between them all.

Season 1 Sim 1

Spoiler

Season 2 Sim 2

Spoiler

Season 1 Sim 3

Spoiler

Season 1 Sim 4

Spoiler

Season 1 Sim 5

Spoiler

All 5 Simulations Averaged Out


First thing you'll notice is that the play count per game remains 11ish plays per team lower than what we saw in 2023 in real life. Given Madden has the same issue and both games are using the super sim engine, I think it's very possible this is an engine limitation that has the development teams' hands tied right now. Fortunately, we have the ability with our settings to change quarter lengths for played games, so we can at least get our snap counts in line with the simulated games.

What sticks out to me as the biggest issue in simmed games is the yards per play numbers and the run/pass ratios. You can see teams are throwing the ball more than they are running it, which is opposite of real life. And you can see yards per pass is more than 1 yard higher than real life which is a pretty decent jump up relative to the numbers we're discussing. It's also unfortunate that the tuning made to get more handoffs on RPO plays in simmed games doesn't look to have really caused an uptick in attempts, but did drop the yards/carry down by about a quarter of a yard. If you remember my first stats compilation pre-patch, the yards per carry were pretty much money, and in my 1st simulation here they were very close as well. It's the fact that in the other 4 simulations they were .3 to .4 yards lower than real life and given that's around 10% of the figure we're talking about, that's a decent amount.

As a result of these yards per attempt issues both in the air and on the ground, yards per play overall are off by a little under a full yard, or around 13%, which I personally feel is significant relative to the numbers we're looking at. Given the play call ratios in simmed games along with the higher yards per pass attempt numbers, that's going to naturally inflate yards per play overall like we're seeing. If we simply took the run/pass ratios from real life and applied them to simmed games and left the yards/attempt where they are, we'd see the overall yards/play number fall to 6.1 which is a lot closer to real life.

Ultimately, the issue here is that passes in simmed games are going too far on average. I don't know if this is an issue with YAC in the sim engine or a target depth issue in the simmed engine, but something is causing the yards/attempt to be too high. And, I bet given what I do know about the sim engine, trying to tune that number to be more in line with real life is going to introduce multiple other issues and become a headache.

The TD distribution is also noticeably off compared to real life, but again, this is easily explained by the run/pass ratios. If those were more in line, the TD distribution would be much closer to real life.

When looking at all of this on a macro level, I think the biggest issue with the simmed stats, especially if we're hard capped at around 55-56 plays/game by each team, is the run pass ratios. I'm wondering if these ratios were a design choice to get passing stats to look more like real life in volume and the rushing stats and yards/attempt had to be sacrificed to do so. If that's the case, I understand why it was done. It's not ideal, but I see the logic.

You'll also notice that I threw in 2 new stats in tracking 1st downs per game along with plays per 1st down gained. I did this fully expecting plays per game to be lower than real life by about the amount they are. However, I wanted to see if the amount of plays between 1st downs was similar to real life and it is actually very close. 1st downs are gained slightly quicker in simmed games than real life, but that's easily explained away by the increased yards per play average brought on by the higher yards per attempt along with the run/pass ratios.

Nothing really notable to say there other than if the run pass ratios were more accurate to life, then the number of plays between 1st downs on average would basically be spot on, so good job there to the sim engine team. They did a good job getting a lot of these numbers close to accurate, it's simply the run/pass ratios and yards/attempt that are really the biggest issues and the root of most differences, big or small.

I will end this post here for now. This was just a macro look into everything. I still plan to take one of these files and sim to year 5 and then compile all that data, but this takes a long time to do given I have to go team by team and add up all the attempts and enter all this into excel manually. If I had a way to export data, that'd be a time saver. Heck, if the team stats page just showed rush and pass attempts, that'd make this significantly quicker. But it doesn't, so I have to go in and manually add up all the rushing totals, all the pass attempts for teams that had multiple QB's play, and so on, so it gets a bit draining.

Before I come back with the future season stats, I probably will look at these season 1 numbers in a bit more detail. I'd like to look more at how much teams are deviating from one another in multiple areas compared to real life. Like I did with my original stats post shortly after release, I'd like to see what the top 10 teams in total plays looked like vs the bottom 10 and how big the variance is between teams. Same for rushing attempts. Are the top rushing teams running the balls are higher frequencies close to real life or are they even passing the ball too much in simmed games compared to real life.

It shouldn't be too hard to figure all that out, but I didn't want to make this post any longer than it already is. Sometime tonight or tomorrow I'll probably be back with the more in-depth look at the season 1 sims, then over the weekend I may do the future seasons sims and compile that data if I'm not too engrossed in my dynasty instead.

Also, just want to apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors above. I type fast, I hardly reread what I write, and I am a numbers guy, not a words guy.

What up canes. Hope you're doing well bro. As I was saying in another thread I'm doing a very very long test where I am taking control of each team and super simming game by game just to see what the numbers would look like. It's six years in and all fictional players. I know 99 percent of people wouldnt be willing to super sim every game
but im still interested in seeing how my stats compare to yours when I'm done. I'm on week 13 now.