At the end of every season there seems to be an explosion of rageposts on the forums about the engine, the formations and everything else. I don't feel the Supercup/COC/League threads are a place to have this discussion and I would like to ask everyone to refrain from starting discussions there and if you feel the need to vent, to post it in a seperate discussion.

When you do, it would be nice if you take a step back and actually consider what you're complaining about. Is it a few plays that didn't go the way you hoped? A game you lost you feel you should have won? What strikes me as odd is that a lot of people that blame losses on the engine, feel that their victories have little to do with that same engine.

Now before I go a bit deeper into this I would like the clarify that I'm actually part of the side that is asking for some changes for what seem to be the 3 major questions:

1) Should the out of position penalty be harsher?

2) Should the Shotgun Formation be tweaked down?

3) Should the lopsided tactics penalty be harsher?

My Personal opinion is 1) Yes 2) Only slightly 3) Maybe a little.

The first one I can't support with numbers because we really have no idea how strong this penalty is and what the exact influence is. I just have that gut feeling that if you have a trainer training your player specifically for one position all the time, which makes him evolve toward being a better player on that position, he should do considerably worse if he's played somewhere else.

The other two is because firstly I know that the shotgun formations have a slight advantage, which I personally would change by slightly increasing the interception rate. And secondly understand the feeling of some managers that put a lot of time into this game and can't make a difference against teams that take an easy approach. I feel it should be a little harsher, but we also need to understand that this game needs players and not everyone can or wants to commit the same amount of time, they should be able to enjoy the game as well.

Now as for my claims I actually can support with numbers, and I know several other managers that know these numbers too and somehow seem to forget them when it suits them. Yesterday a certain team was called out as the new "Poster Boy" for lopsided tactics. So I thought let's take a look at his last 10 matches and compare them to what the averages are spread over all 1.1 and Elite teams.

His average pass length in these games was 5,75yds, the overall average is 5,77yds. His overal rush length was 6,22yds, the overall average is... 4,09yds. So basically, he made the difference on the run.

You know why he made a difference on the run? Because no-one defends the run and he took advantage of it. Of the 900 plays I included in my research he ran the ball 368 times. Of those 368 only 56 were defended with Goalline D/5-3-3/4-3-3. If you want an easy number crunch for defending run plays it goes like this: 5-3-3 gives up 2 yards, 4-3-3 2,5yds, 3-4-4 4yds, 3-3-5 5 yds. FYI: those differences are way smaller for the pass.

What I'm trying to say is: If you feel the only reason you should win is because of you have a strong offensive playbook that took a lot of time and effort to make, but you don't feel the need to scout your opponents' "lopsided" playbook, and then put up a crappy generic defense using all 3-4-4 or 4-4-3 or like I've read in the past on the forums "Don't defend the run at all" maybe you shouldn't be so surprised that you can lose a game.

When you look at what Pete created here and dive into the numbers, it's a thing of beauty. All formations put on different yardages/completion percentages/sack percentages/interception percentages against different defenses, all of those changing depending on yards to go and left right middle split, the strength of each individual player and probably a lot of variables I'm not even aware of. That get's put through the RNG to get a semi-realistic game result. If you take the time to actually gather all these numbers, you'll find that they all make sense in a way. Is it perfect? No. Will it ever be? No. But it's extremely good and we have a creator that is listening to us and prepared to discuss the problems. Who has already said that there will be changes in the new engine and who has been working on this game for probably more than 8 years, and I'm pretty certain this project cost him money. Give him the credit and respect he deserves for that and try to contribute to further developing this game instead of criticising the flaws that are still there.

Spot on dude, and, Pete has given us all free Scrimmages so he can get the formations more "Balanced", Pete is on it

I support this, you said it very well. Yes, sometimes it's hard to accept lost against "one dimensional playbook" (I had "pleasure" with one team two times in this season, one even with MOTY on my side) but at the end of the day, this is game. And trying to find upgrades for your team/playbook/etc. to lowering frequency of this bad games is something why I still play this game after many years.

Thanks for such a relaxed, spot on post. Appreciated!

Amazing thread, congrats buddy.

All Scrimmages free then? It says ro me that only the first 10 are free. Is that changed?

I wonder if one thing that could be added to the oop penalty is a tweak to experience. If it's possible to split experience into individual positions.

At the moment if I have a player and train him using my CB coach, but use him as a FS I suffer the oopp. At the moment the fact that he is penalised for being out of position is not as important to me as the extra training he receives from using one of my prime coaches. (Eg he will improve by approximately 0.6 per training session as opposed to 0.3). Now if experience was jointly linked to playing and training I would be far more pressured to deciding when to move him permanently in training to FS.

For a very rough example, if it takes ONE season of starting to gain half a star rise in experience. Now, imagine if training at CB but playing at FS meant a half star rise in both CB and SF experience every TWO seasons. I would be compelled to change a players position in training to the position I want him to play at a whole lot earlier. If I drafted a player with three star experience it take roughly 4 seasons to get to full experience. With this change it would be 8 seasons. That's plenty of difference to my mind.

This could also be then implemented in the draft where a 4* experienced FB could be a 2* experienced at all other positions. Maybe even have other differences such as 4* at FB, 2* at RB and 1* at OL.

This is just an idea and I have no idea if:

a) this would be too much work for Pete
b) others see this as a deterrent to playing players out of position the way I see it
c) people think this would be too tough
d) people think OOP penalty should just be made tougher and instantly risk losing games if playing a player in such a way

Well Super - wonderful post.

But since you brought up the "poster boy" comment I will explain the meaning of it.

Pfletch of Shoulderiding Racoons II playbook that was openly declared as being penalized by the lopsided tactics was very eerily similar to poster childs playbook.

basically only 2 formations but predominately only 1. You know - what was kind of understood as what the lopsided penalty is for.

But doesn't seem to get equally applied.

I wonder if there will be less than %100 flank plays called this next game?

But anyway - Have a great RZA day!

This one. We had this discussion a few times before. The changed, split experience would cause some major work in the backend, frontend and the engine. This is out of focus, as much as I would like the outcome.

No problem

81 total plays. 3 formations.

69 plays out of just 1 of the formations.

Only flank.

Yet another thumbs down.

Yet another strong win.