Progression Forza Win II: The one-year potential boogaloo - Icarus2k9's Blog

Icarus2k9's Blog

Progression Forza Win II: The one-year potential boogaloo

Posted on September 3, 2010 at 01:37 PM.

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Before I launch into this, it's going to be a continuation of my last blog, which you can find here: http://www.operationsports.com/Icarus2k9/blog/9744-progression-forza-win-or-what-fifa-and-pro-evo-can-give-to-madden/

As a precis for those who read it, it advocated a simplified system for franchise progression, where three hidden graphs for physical, mental and skill attributes were used to dictate a player's development. There would be peaks and troughs, and it would make developing a player that much more interesting, and therefore franchise more interesting.

So what's the next step? This is something, after a lot of thinking, I believe would solve some problems we are facing with progression, particularly the definition of potential, and consolidate a lot of the arguments on the boards:

* Have a second, hidden database for the rosters.
* On this database B, have every player's attributes as they would be presented the following season, according to their development graphs.
* Display database A for the player to look at, but have every player actually play to database B's statistics.
* During the year at several predefined "progression points" have database A slowly resemble database B,based on your scout's abilities

The more I think about this move, the more it makes sense. When people argue against the current model of progression, they point to EA's willingness to bump players up from 60s to 90s as a season wears on, touting it as a reason why stats should drive progression. The sensible counter argument is "those players were ALWAYS that good. EA just evaluated them incorrectly. All Donny has to go on is past performances and statistics to form his rosters." This model replicates that to a T, and allows EA to remove some of the absolute nature of a number in a computer game.

Why should I care? Consider the following:
* At the end of a season, you know pretty much how good a player was for that year (database A now is database B), but barring scouts / coach analysis, you don't know how good they will be next year specifically. (My vague comments thing from the previous blog).
* You enter preseason with your players, and suddenly preseason becomes important. You're having to use your judgement to see which players have improved - which with EA's improved ratings relevance should be easier - and you're mentally creating position battles, while still having a hard number to go off.
Meanwhile, your rookies all have ratings your scouts / coaches have assumed from their college production and offseason, and their performance in the NFL may be much lower or higher than that - this allows for the general under rating of rookies, and first year progression can also now truly include regression.
* It can make the injury stat a lot more interesting. Just because a player has had an injury, doesn't mean they'll have one again, and just because a player is ironman doesn't mean their leg can't break. With the one year in advance model, you can generate shock injuries, or breathe a sigh of relief as someone shakes off the fragile tag.
* It also, to a certain extent, nips the stats driving progression thing in the bud for those players too. This way, if players are getting 2500 with a 62 OVR back that actually is 62 OVR, then they know it's game difficulty adjustment time. But it can also create breakthrough seasons that are not just created artificially by the player, but also coded into the computer.

One caveat: Progression / regression should be allowed to be a LOT more dramatic under this model. Let someone go up / down double digit points in season one, cap off in year two, then boost again into the elite or play their way out of football. (This is where part one's graphs come in).

I know plenty of people have probably suggested what I'm suggesting above, but I'm trying to produce the simplest model possible that still does the trick - that way, it could be implemented in the shortest time possible. This model so far would only require x amount of progression graphs with different starting points, and a parallel database that works off those graphs. And not single confusing element for the player in sight.

Next time: Trying to make modifiers less complicated for the casual player, and why the desire for stat-driven progression shows EA where their franchise resources should be concentrated

Author's note: Seeing as I'm a Brit, I don't feel that I can comment on the nuts and bolts of gameplay, and recreating American Football on the field (IIRC, as Aaron Rodgers said on Twitter, if you can't explain how to dissect a storm blitz, you shouldn't be talking football, and it's something I heartily agree on). But game mechanics, and attributes in general, are one of my nerdy favourite things to dissect, and I do so unashamedly.