Jenkins would have the affinity now (accorind to what VPI posted), so i'm inclined to think affiniteis don't matter.

Maybe one day i'll test it, but it's unlikely.

Corey - any feel on how this compares with a mentor starting as opposed to on the bench and active?

The "Aaron Rodgers will sit on the bench and learn from Favre for two years..." type of thing.

Yay! (I always hated that strategy.)

I haven't tested it but would imagine a player would progress like he normally would with an active mentor and no playing time.

I was just looking back through another old thread and I think I may have been the first person to publicly disclose/advocate that strategy.

Of course, I've yet to test what happens if a mentor is on IR, so who knows... maybe they're somehow considered "active" while on IR.

Does a player's general ratings improve better with a mentor, or just the overall ability? Overall ability is occasionally misleading.

Could you be a little more clear, i'm not following?

Something that I wonder, especially now, is if you get any of the affinity benefits from a positional leader if he is inactive...

Don't know about that, considering players on IR don't get rings. :)

Another thing we may want to consider with the starting QBs (maybe seperate from the mentor study) is Pass Attempts in the case of the QB, or more accurately, plays in the game.. so for DE's it would be RPlays + PPlays... maybe the 24 early in the study is because for some reason the offense ran significantly fewer plays? Just a thought..

I ran some of my own tests to help Corey's study. With the use of 2 mentor's on a team. The results are very limited, but the damage (I mean data) was done, so here are the results.

The Players (M=Mentor; R=Rookie; V=Veteran)

K. Galloway (M) (34/39) - Ldr 69 Int 99 - 12 year vet
G Carello (M) (26/57) - Ldr 100 Int 88 - young 5 year vet
D Maloney (R) (14/41)
V Hawkins (R) (30/49)
H Rondeau (V)

All tests sim the exhibition and regular season (I then reload and run each test 3 times)

Test #1 (testing the effect of K Galloway (M) as the lone mentor in QB slot #3)

QB1 Hawkins (R) (30/49) improved by 11 pts; 10 pts; 14 pts -- 35 points total
QB2 Maloney (R) 14/41) improved 5 pts; 3 pts; 3 pts -- 11 points total
QB3 Galloway (M) No change

Test #2 (testing the effect of G Carello (M) as the lone mentor in QB slot 3)

QB1 Hawkins (R) (30/49) improved 13 pts; 13 pts; 14 pts -- 40 pts total
QB2 Maloney (R) (14/41) improved 5 pts; 5 pts; 4 pts -- 14 pts total
QB3 Galloway (M) No change

Test #3 (testing the effect of two mentors in active slots #2 and #3)

QB1 Hawkins (R) (30/49) improved 15 pts; 14 pts; 14 pts -- 43 total pts
QB2 Galloway (M) No Change
QB3 Carello (M) No change

Test #4 (testing the effect of two mentors with the young mentor in #2 slot)

QB1 Hawkins (R) (30/49) improved 14 pts; 13 pts; 11 pts -- 38 pts
QB2 Carello (M) 26/57) improved 1 pt; 0 pts; 1 pt -- 2 pts
QB3 Galloway (M) No change

Test #5 (testing the effect with mentor in QB1 and QB3 slots)

QB1 Carello (M) (26/57) improved 12 pts; 12 pts; 12 pts -- 36 pts
QB2 Hawkins (R) (30/49) improved 5 pts; 5 pts; 7 pts -- 17 pts
QB3 Galloway (M) No change

Test #6 (testing with no mentors)

QB1 Hawkins (R) (30/49) improved 8 pts; 7 pts; 7 pts -- 22 pts
QB2 Rondeau (V) (34/44) improved 0 pts; 0 pts; -1 pt -- -1 pts
QB3 Maloney (R) (14/44) No change

Dutch, did you run any tests with a lone mentor as the #2 QB?

I think this is a meaningful subtext to all this.

I suspect that most of the FOFC community just tends to shrug this sort of thing off -- "we don't want to have stuff spoon fed to us." And over time (maybe even a long time) things like this get unearthed -- and it's kind of exciting, in an odd way. The learning process continued.

At the same time, though -- would we stand for this in most software? It seems to me that the FOF game woudl, at the very least, benefit from having some reference in its documentation explaining how this works -- even if it pulls up short of a full explanation ans says (in this instance) something like: "The effects of the position mentor will vary based on several factors, and it is up to you to determine the best way to tap into their skills for improved player development."

As it stands, here's what we get on mentoring in the in-game documentation:


Heh... I actually created the quote tags before doing my search, fully intending to find the reference(s) to mentors in there and to post the full text. Alas, as nearly as I can tell, mentors are not even mentioned in the documentation for FOF 2004 at all, not even in a word search (buried under some other heading).


While this specific study seems to have revealed something contrary to what had been posted before (which is nice), I think Icy has a point here. As much as I personally enjoy the sort of spelunking that we sometimes do around here at FOFC, I'm not sure that's really fair to the many other customers out there who don't frequent this site, and might completely miss a lot of the underlying functionality of the game.

Just a thought... I don't have a torch and pitchfork in hand or anything, just musing about some of the secondary issues this raises. I don't think Icy ought to be dismissed completely, just because he may be in the minority within the FOFC cadre.

I did a thread a good while back on undocumented features in FOF2K4.

http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/for...threadid=16787

I wouldn't disagree with you there.



Another part of the subtext worth considering, given that I don't think you're alone in that enjoyment, is probably something along the lines of: "How much fun would FOF be without the spelunking?"

Yes, FOFC has done its share in getting the word out about the game -- but all we can reach are the people who come here.

Plus, all we can do is speculate and sometimes test things -- that's a far cry from having the game developer explain things. I'm sure there are plenty of people who bought the game, played it to some extent, and shelved it long before they ever discovered many fo the little quirks in there that have been itemized in your previous thread. I think that's too bad.

I'm a little worried about the combination of "hidden, undocumented features" and "multiplayer play" and how they interact. SkyDog has made no secret that he believes people are doing their own research and not sharing it, in order to gain a MP advantage. There's no way to know how true this is... but if it is true, who knows how many people out there in my MP leagues or yours have already known about mentoring function (maybe even more than is in this thread) and have been beating us at this for seasons and seasons?

On one level, maybe that's fine -- they deserve payoff for their sweat equity. On another level, maybe it's granting a competitive advantage that exists somewhere outside thefour corners of the game itself... and perhaps that isn't the kind of competition that most people want to engage in.

2/3, Jon, the answer is always 2/3.

I think you missed my intent. I agree with you wholeheartedly that there needs to be more documentation. I was just confirming for you that there is no documentation on mentors.

My thoughts:

I think that many of these features should be mentioned in the documentation, but there are at least pieces that I do not want to be fully spelled out. As mentioned I would not mind something like, "Veteran players have the chance of being mentors. When a player is a mentor, he has the chance of increasing the current ability of both starters and non-starters." I would not want it to say, "A veteran player becomes a mentor when their intelligence + Leadership are XXX, they increase the ability of a player to develop by XX%... etc etc"....

So, there is still much to be unearthed that would help someone in an MP game..

Quik asked if we would take this in another game... I think we would, particularly if it was documented like above.. I take other sports games, even non text games..

Madden does not tell you what the chances of missing a tackle are if you use the "hot stick' button or whatever it is called.. ncaa college basketball does not tell you how much affect changing the focus during "practice" will have on shooting, etc, etc..

I agree with you. The fact is that i don't enjoy simming a season multiple times and comparing the results. So likely, I am at a competitive disadvantage at this game. For the most part, I play the game the way that I intuitively think it should be played until I read a thread like this. So my experience and knowledge (or lack thereof) of real football comes into play.

I already know that I don't understand the way "double team top receiver" works. I had been playing thinking that was used to actually double team the top receiver. But evidently I am wrong about that. :)

Unfortunately, I don't feel like spending my time doing this kind of testing to figure this kind of thing out.

You just summed up how I play this game to a T.

The only time I'd remotelty done any "testing" prior was running 2-3 preference drafts to deteremine how to set my sliders for IHOF.

Reading through another thread inspired me to do this (with the intent of making the results public). I think it'd be nice if we could sort of spur some more public discussion, analysis, and testing of features we're not really certain about.

So I'm glad for the people that do these tests and share the results.

Thanks, Corey.

I agree that I don't want to see percentages, but if the game docs would at least say "mentors must be active to have any effect, and will not have much of an effect on players getting a lot of playing time", there would be much less incentive to go digging to find exact numbers. You have to do the digging just to find out the basics.

Also, I didn't get a chance to post it but I had some extremely confusing results about some DT mentors I tested.

I drafted two DTs 1 and 2 overall specifically for the test. They actually showed more progress with NO mentors than with two. I'm hoping it was just an abberation that managed to hold over the course of 10 trials of each kind.

Heh, it would be interesting if it turned out that there were bad mentors...

I found another comment I made about this issue in general. My feelings haven't changed.


Of course, when so many posts like several in this thread and this thread show up, I can't imagine that they help the cause for more documentation. :(

It would be an awesome feature if two mentors keep guys from learning anything because the two mentors tell different things, confuse the young prospects and waste their potential in the end. ;)

Hey, I need to give the competetion some help if I want IHOF to be interesting.

Heh. Can you do some tests to help me figure out how to keep my QB from getting hurt going into a playoff game against the defending champs?


;)

I did notice how IHOF heavy this thread is ;)...

Very simple - bench him in the preceding playoff game.

That piece of advice is free, I charge for the next consultation.

I was waiting for that.

I took a very quick look at this, and didn't see any off-season growth at all. Their ratings at the beginning of next year were the same as the end of the previous year in all the instances i saw.



Also, i ran some tests on veteran QBs and they showed no mentor benefit. For example the starter stayed 51/51 (or whatever it was), and the veteran backups (5+ years) didn't budge, even if they still had potential to be fulfilled (41/45 for example).

I don't think the "end season" routine is a pivot point for player ratings. Nobody's ratings change there... except perhaps the veterans who are seeing some gradual declin in their ratings for age-related purposes. But I don't think there is any growth for your players at that point, under any circumstances.

I believe you may have to go to the point where you begin free agency and generate/import the draft class to see the next potential increment.

You're probably right. Of course this will make each trial that much longer and an even larger pain in the ass. Perhaps once I'm satisfied all of my own curiousity on rookie/single-season testing, i'll get into some more complex testing.

Didn't mean to point fingers or accuse you of slacking, just trying to let you know that the next important juncture is probably a stage or three into thefollowing season, if there's anything to be found that far out.

I understand. I'll have to plan out a two-year study where I look at guys across two seasons, dropping the mentor for year two in some instances.

Totaly agree with you. Don't confusse things guys, i don't want to know that setting running % to 75 i will win all games, but at least i want to know if having a mentor active or inactive matters for his positive effect, that kind of things are not related to real football so we can't apply any real football experience to guess it. I want to feel like a real GM that needs to guess the best startegies to beat their rivals, not that i'm playing wrong a game because i don't know how it works. To the ones that can't see this and think i beg because i want to know it all about the game mechanics, you could try to play the game with the screen off and you will see how challenging it is even to click on sim next game but that doesn't mean that you're enjoying a real GM experience that is what we are looking for when buying text sims. I'm glad to see that some veterans like Skydog and Qwiksand agree with me and underestand what i said.

What were the coaching ratings in this test? Both the postional and "Youth" ratings should have a major impact on player development. Even if you kept the same coaches (and I assume you did) the impact of mentor could depend on the coaching skill level. Coaches have major impact on player development, so leaving that part out seems a huge omission to me.

I've always had the gut feeling that a Mentor didn't 't do much to help an Excellent positional coach improve my players. that is, my guys seemed to get to where I expected them to be anyway. OTOH, a Mentor helped "Average" coaches quite a bit. I've gotten into the habit of only picking a Mentor for those positions where my coaches are less than stellar and it does seem to work. No stats, thought, just impressions that it worked.

So if you had an Excellent QB coach, the differential between Mentor and non-Mentor results would be diminished, IMO.

That's probably true, but it wasn't my goal. My goal was to simply determine how they work from a technical standpoint.
I haven't gotten into measuring the specific effect of a mentor, but just a simple "yes/no" to find out in which situations mentors have any effect.

I missed it the first time i read this thread, but you're DT experiment is what I was driving at. That is, the coaching effect overwhelms the Mentor effect in many cases. Thus you can't detect the Mentor effect becasue the random flux in the regular development is much greater than the Mentor effect. That's what you saw with the DTs, IMO.

Just to pick numbers, If player development swings range from +1 to +15 in a season, and the Mentor adds 0 to +3, you're not going to be able to pick out the Mentor portion of the change in an experiment.

If you had enough tests, you'd be able to. The average in your example would be let's say +7.5 without a mentor and +9.0 (7.5+1.5) with a mentor. Without a mentor you would also see ranges of 1-15, and with a mentor ranges of 1-18.

By the way, I feel I can confidently state that:

-Mentors on injured reserve have NO effect on the development of other players.
-Players on injured reserve cannot receive any mentoring.

I actually thought it was common knowledge that only mentors among the 46 active affect players and that the affected players also have to be among the 46. Perhaps it is because I've been doing most of my playing on the latter updates I've never gotten the other misconception.

I've never done any tests but I use the Change Tracker after every season and have deduced from that.

Another thing I'm fairly certain about is that if you change your rookie WLB to SLB he will not receive mentoring that season even though you have an OLB mentor and both are active.

Nice contribution Plundun. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, if you knew it was a straight forward two variable function, and you could also isolate the effects playing time, the postion curve, the specific player's development curve, and god knows what else had on the development. And you'd have to know that it was an arithmetic, not a geometric function. But we don't know any of that, and that's why we can't be sure of any of this.

Excellent stuff, Pludun. Thanks a lot.

One question on the LB posiiton switch, do you know if leaving a WLB listed as WLB but playing SLB will get mentoring or not?

We can always spy on how the all mighty Jim plays the game to figure out how it should be played...;)