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From what I'm reading it sounds like everything is pretty fun and decent in the game with the exception of the draft and the actual games themselves. Those are two pretty big break-points. As fun as the other stuff is, if my QB is throwing for 6 interceptions that are getting returned for TDs it's going to get shelved quickly.
I'm definately holding off until the modders get their hands on it. The fact that the game re-gens the settings upon exit shouldn't be much of an obstacle; just create a batch file to launch the app that will copy over the settings each time you load the app. |
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oh batch files, i remember the days of fighting with those until Jeff solved my pain. shudder at those weeks before he helped. |
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I'm not defending it because it's not my role to defend the game. But when people say something like that would never happen, I think they often ignore two important facts: (1) on this message bored alone, we'll have people sim more NFL Head Coach seasons in one day than there NFL seasons in history -- with a sample size like that, crazy things will absolutely happen; (2) completely ignore historical examples of things they are critizing just to try and prove their point. I see the same thing happen with FOF, especially with real rosters. People forget that Michael Vick is a nothing but ones and zeroes to the AI -- the AI doesn't know about the hype of Michael Vick. The AI looks at the ratings -- which I in the game for a lot of players I think are below public perception for those players -- and sees where it can improve ratings wise. If EA is looking to tighten up the game, I think there are other areas to look at first. The draft doesn't look like a problem to me at all -- it is our perception of these people interferring with how the AI sees these players and what their in-game ratings are. |
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As bad as that AI logic sounds its not totally out of the realm of possibilities. In 1989 Dallas drafted Troy Aikmen with the #1 pick. In the supplimental draft for 1989 they selected Steve Walsh, QB from Miami which costed them there #1 pick in 1990. While its not quite the same, it had the same effect. They selected to QB's in the first round during the draft season. Walsh and Aiken entered the the season as rookies for the Cowboys and battled it out for about 1 or 2 years before Walsh lost. With that being said, the draft of 2 QB's in the first round is still wacky. |
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Damn, I type to slow :p |
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OK, I suppose I have to explain everything in a ridiculous amount of depth to get a point across. Here goes: In the salary cap era, NOBODY will ever draft two QB's with first round picks in the same draft. NOBODY. EVER. Now, if this game were based on what football was in the late 80's with no salary cap, an owner with a ton of cash who was willing to spend the money at all costs, a team that had 500 draft choices over a three year period and thought the QB was a steal in the supplamental draft? OK. You got me. In this day and age? You are rarely going to see a team pick a QB two years in a row in round one. I could see scenarios where that happened (and SF would have been a perfect example this year if they'd have decided to do it), but even in that case, it would be an incredibly rare occurance. Drafting two QB's in round 1 within three picks of each other is AI insanity. There isn't any other way to say it or defend it. |
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When they traded Vick they ATE 24 million dollars in signing bonus. I don't see how some of you guys can defend this move. |
Alright, I am now at the point I am pulling my hair out. I have been trying to install this all night long.
I am now to the point I am going to uninstall my AV and ZoneAlarm....I have them both disabled right now. But this is getting to be a joke. |
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Have you checked their website? I had an install problem with Directx and found the solution on their website. |
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Yeah, it wasn't a directX problem... but honestly, after 5 1/2 hours of messing with this damn thing, it comes down to someone doing piss poor QA testing on the install cycle.... I finally got it to work by having to uninstall my AV and ZoneAlarm, this to me is utter crap. disabling them should have worked, not going through and uninstalling them completely. So it finally is installed, now at 11:30 pm and I have to get up early for work, this sucks ass. |
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Because if he plays to the top of his game, he's an 80 rated quarterback, and the Falcons start free agency in 2006 with 37 million free under the cap and 50+ players under contract. In those circumstances, 2006 is probably the best time to dump the guy, because a 65-80 rated scrambler isn't going to be a viable championship QB. After doing that, the Falcons will still have $12-15 million to play with in free agency and can find good players rather than filling roster minimums. But the flaw here seems to be based on the fact that Michael Vick isn't rated in a manner that justifies the $24 million in bonus money, rather than that the team chose not to build around such a player. The two QBs in one round thing, I think, may be a case of draftees not showing up as part of the squad until after they're signed. As I posted earlier, the game wanted me to do some odd things that didn't take my earlier draft into account. |
fun
yes, warts and all the game is fun. 5 minute quarters piss me off clunky UI is a little annoying weird AI I have all but come to expect. but I just designed a play were I moved Reggie Bush to the slot and the first time I ran it - 80 yard TD - woo hoo!!!!!! |
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And it doesn't bother you that that was so easy? |
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not sure how much in jest that is - but it is definitely NOT easy. In fact I was just going to post how pissed I am that I just threw a pick that was returned for 6. damn this game sucks!!!!:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :D |
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Heh. I've just seen posts at other forums that mention the ability to create money plays that score way too often to be realistic. I assumed that since you scored from 80 yards out the first time you ran the play that you may have created one of these broken money plays. But it may just be a fluke that you scored the first time you ran it. I'd be interested to see what the avg gain on that play is over the course of a season. |
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Maybe the two missing players are holding out? |
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I scored on it AGAIN the next time I ran it and started to get scared - then they stuffed it 3 plays in a row. another thing that I am really liking is how different the games can be, much like the real life NFL. In my first game it was a defensive struggle that I won 13-7. right now I am capping off a 44-22 victory in game 2 of the pre-season. |
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Yeah, I actually like that part of the UI – the problems I have with the UI are just some simple things that don’t make sense. For example – if I want to change my depth chart I should be able to make unlimited changes to that and substitutions during office hours – only being able to make 2 changes at a time is annoying as hell and really doesn’t make any sense. One good thing I noticed after changing my playbook 2 plays at a time was the “gameplan” meeting which only happens once a week, but in which you have unlimited access to changing your plays – this has sped up my playbook org quite a bit. |
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I don't think the salaries are correct - I don't remember what his numbers said but when I look at the Falcons now - they only have 4M in dead money. Too bad they didn’t screw up Alex Smith’s contract – I am paying him 6M a year to be my backup. |
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I was looking in-game at his salary numbers to get the 24 mil. He has a cap figure of 4 mil per year in bonus money for the next 6 years. So you'll see the Falcons take a 4 mil cap hit this year and then next year they'll have 20 million in dead cap space. |
Dola -
I may be wrong but I can't ever remember an NFL team trading a guy who is owed that much money under the cap. |
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And two rookie QB's with first round bonus money eating up cap space. It's always good for you when that much of your cap is handled by three QB's, one of which isn't on your roster. |
stupid question:
is NFL HeadCoach multiplayer ? Will there be online league ? |
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At least in practice, none of my created plays were money plays. Maybe, I'm just a bad play designer :( |
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You can play an exhibition game against someone, but there is no online league capacity at this time. |
We need more impressions...I'm still on the fence about this game.
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Bee,
Personally, I can overlook everything but the high interceptions. They are just so high that they take the strategy out of the games. If that is modded (quarter length would probably be modded at the same time), I'd recommend this game as a fun game. However, I'd recommend holding off for now until modders can fix those issues (if they can.) |
I'm surprised that there is as much positive talk about this game in this thread as there is - I picked it up yesterday and after 9 hours of game play I've actually got through the first exhibition game and to me HC is just a great idea with terrible execution. The things that annoy me far outweigh the things I like.
I took over the Lions and on the first day of free agency I was able to land Michael Strahan - apparently players don't care who they play for as long as you accept the contract demands of their agent and you get to act before any of the AI teams so I paid Strahan what he wanted and he was mine. I could have done that with anyone else in the FA pool too. And like it seems in everyone else's draft Hawk went first and my pick at #9 was a no brainer with Reggie Bush on the board. Young went 15th I think and Jay Cutler 30th or something. Of course my scouting director suggested some other QB at #9 over both Young and Cutler and Bush as well. Then after drafting Bush (in addition to having Kevin Jones and the signed Moe Williams on the team as HBs and only Dan Orlovsky as the team's QB) he wants me to draft Addai (Im sure I spelled that wrong). But the thing that pissed me off most about the draft is that you get roughly 30 seconds to try and make a trade. So much for trying to trade up. I think the 5 minutes you get for your own pick is fine but it's impossible to trade for a pick unless you're going for one like 10 picks from now. And then to top it off after you make X amount of trade attempts you can't trade anymore during that draft day. So in order to trade you have to be quick enough through the horrible UI to get a trade in that is going to be accepted since you don't have time to make a 2nd offer and you better make sure it will be accepted or else you will run out of trade attempts. I also hate the fact that you have to schedule everything. Why can't I just sit down and make a trade when I feel like it? Why do I have to schedule trade time. And like others have said, the interface sucks. You cannot see any information about players at a glance - not even single players. You open up the roster screen and their names aren't even listed so the only way to find out anything about players is opening up each position and then you can view one at a time. And to top if off the playcalling AI is just horrendous. Not only is there no real way to sub out your starters in pre season (you could manually sub them out in the game but the game is continuing while you do it so you basically would miss like an entire possession to sub players) but the plays it calls are stupid. I'm down 1 with a minute to go just behind midfield and two timeouts and guess what play it wants me to run...QB Kneel. WTF? And it suggests QB Kneel for every play in that final minute stretch - until I get to the opponent's 30 with 4 seconds left...and it suggests I punt. Maybe the opposing team's coach hacked into the frequency of my team's headsets and was trying to call the plays - either that or the AI blows. And of course the 5 min quarter thing sucks, the AI handles the last 2 minutes horribly (treating it like its the last 2 minutes of a quarter as opposed to the last 6) and there are virtually no penalties it seems and even when there are you have no idea what happened. The "trust" thing is another good idea implemented terribly. My trust is like halfway down already because each week I tell the special teams coach I don't want Jason Hanson to be the punter. I don't understand why a) he asks the same damn thing every week and b) why I have to take a hit to the trust rating for telling the assistant coaches or scouting director no to something. You either do what they want or your trust rating goes down. I have the same gripe with motivating the players - you can't motivate them as a group because it seems half of them hate the option you chose and the other half liked it so you piss off half of them to motivate the other half. There's some good ideas like the training camp drills but it's just not done very well at all overall IMO. What I don't get is you spend 5 hours of real time getting to the draft and getting all prepared and then the draft itself is over before you blink. I would much rather be able to get through all the preseason stuff in an hour and spend 2 or 3 hours doing the draft. Same thing with the gameplay. It's so rushed that you don't even feel like you have time to control anything. It's cool that you can talk to the players on the sideline - but if you do you either miss a play or run down the play clock so far that in reality you used up like 3-4 plays worth of time. If you had the full 15 minute quarter you could do stuff like talk to the players and then go back and call your play. Damn that was long but I was really looking forward to this and the design is just flawed beyond what any patch could repair. |
I agree with you Gary. I was really looking forward to this game, but it just sounds like it misses the mark for both the joystick jockeys as well as the sim crowd.
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got it - makes sense. thanks. |
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nope and nope :( |
Wow - Gary just single-handedly stuck a fork in NFL Head Coach for me. Thanks for the honest assessment, Gary!
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It is hard to believe that Madden handles FA better then Head Coach - that is really inexcusable. Madden actually had a pretty good system for FA, at least in theory where players decisions were based upon 15 factors including team talent, winning, money, coach, etc. - IMO this was a great leap forward in FA decision making and one that was far more realistic. Why they didn't build upon this is totally beyond me. Mostly I am unhappy to hear that Gary has wasted 9 hours playing a game when he should be working on Total Pro Basketball 2006!!!!!:D |
much like I wanted OOTP2006 to be the pinnacle of baseball games, I wanted HC to be the pinnacle of football sims. Sadly neither has come close to the mark.
at least for me though 2006 is far more frustrating because it is the 7th version, but I give HC a little more leeway because it is only the first version. having said all that there are some serious flaws in this game and I am by no means a fanboy of the game, I have said before I was looking for FOF with Madden graphics - I would honestly pay $1,000 for that game and this is not that game. the one good news is, I am having fun playing and hoping like heck that we will get some modding options for quarter length and INT. I do have to turn a blind eye to the fact that it is extremely lame that EA didn't bother to think those things through or even test them - EA can be quite the frustrating company. |
Is a patch already in the works ?
I played the demo and while there are some good ideas, I'm afraid this might be yet another EA Sports "visual experience" and not a football simulation in the way we like it. Obviously, we knew right away this wouldn't be FOF as far as the "easyness" of browsing through a player's card & specs but I have to admit that here, in HC, it is really ugly and absolutely uncomfortable to "see" a player on the roster screens. I'm still very interested though...want more inputs. |
Gary summed things up pretty well. While many of the things he pointed out don't get on my nerves, everything he said is 100% correct.
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Gary -
I agree completely with your assessment - I think the problem was early on the people at EA who produce the Sims got lost and ended up in a Head Coach meeting. There is far too much non-football stuff going on and idiotic comments like the guys from IGN who said it would have been "more fun" to have options for you coach to go golfing and buy more clothes are not helping. This game has so much potential - I feel like I need the remote from the Adam Sandler movie "click" so I can go to the design meetings and set these people straight - I would especially like to make the guy who suggested 5 minute quarters to fall and break his leg on the way to the meeting. |
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It's funny because I was talking to someone else about HC yesterday and I said it's like they combined Madden with The Sims. Like I said before, I think its a great concept - the thought of combining EA graphics with the engines of a FOF or TPB or something is what I've always wanted to see in a sports game - so I'm pretty dissapointed in HC. Surprised, no - but dissapointed, yes. |
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Damn, just when I thought they had worked a commercial for that movie into every possible venue, it pops up somewhere unexpected. :) |
BTW, is it just me or is anyone else really annoyed by the fact that a splash screen pops up every time you go between tasks? I think I spent more time looking at splash screens in the time I played it than the time I got to spend doing the draft.
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that is funny - from the reviews I read the movie isn't all that great - but I think the appeal of the idea is so universal - all I have seen is the commercials, but who wouldn't want to have a remote like that? |
I agree with most of what Gary says as well. I think the signing of players unopposed is a bug if he tried to sign them before the "UFA" period starts. The game will allow you to sign guys unopposed before that period.
Everything else he said is pretty spot on, yet the game was still quite fun for me until I played my first Pre-season game. I loved the training camp/practice drills. I still think I'll enjoy this game if the interceptions can be cut way down and the quarter length can be changed. |
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Dammit, this is what I feared. First I was actually hoping Maximum Football would be that game, but 90 pages later and that game is jokeware. Then I was hoping NFL Head Coach would be that game, and it seems as if the game is incomplete and/or rushed. When will I ever find that game? FOF2006? |
Even with the bad design, bad AI, bad UI, and other flaws, I am having fun playing this game. It's weird, maybe I am addicted to the music.
In my game Miami took QB Kellen Clemens with the #16 overall pick. He had the same overall rating 62 after being well scouted as Vince Young, and Cutler. And, in this game Miami does not have Culpepper on their roster he is still a Viking. I took Young with the #20 pick (playing as KC). And, Cutler went to Pittsburgh with the #32 pick. Also, Detroit took Reggie Bush with the #9 pick. So, there is some variation (x-factor) in player ratings. |
So I'm not discouraged at all by this thread. This is a first iteration game with some pretty major flaws. However, people are having fun playing it. I take that as a good sign. As we see with Maximum Football customization can be a bad thing. HC seems to have gone in the other direction, but I am hopeful that HC 2007 would allow sliders and such that we depend on in Madden. It seems like the game does a lot of things right and sounds like a game I would really enjoy if they are able to mod.
I think that this thread should show people that FOFC isn't demanding perfection as many people are complementing a flawed, but somehow still enjoyable, game. |
Anyone remember when EA was going to give Racing Sims a real shot? (NASCAR SimRacing)
Yeah, that's a distance memory for me, too. With what I'm reading on the game (and will see for myself in a day or Monday when it gets here from GameFly), the prospect of EA making another one next year is not good. Unless sales overcome the poor reviews. |
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I agree - this game is SERIOUSLY flawed, but still somehow very fun and addicting. Culpepper (and others) this is actually one of the things that EA got dead on right IMO - the game starts the day after the superbowl, so NONE of the real world off-season moves have taken place - at least for me this adds a lot. Now, if they added the option to either have the game start end of superbowl (as it is now) or beginning of training camp (with all the off-season roster moves in there) I think that would have been great, since it would allow us to play in different ways. |
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IMO - sliders are the WORST thing that could happen to a coaching sim> now I say that with the obvious qualifier that they need to get the stats correct in the first place. a coaching sim SHOULD produce results that are very close to the real NFL in terms of: # of plays completion % int % yards per carry yards per completion correct run/pass ratio you get those 6 things right - all of it comes together. They don't need to be perfect, they just need to be relatively close. you get those right and you will produce correct league leaders, pro bowlers, progression, everything. hell, you get that right I could even deal with the Sims aspect nonsense. Sliders have become EA's crutch against realistic play, I grant you they are a necessary evil in the joystick jockey genre- but is a "simulation" they are a bad, bad path. |
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I think they sunk so much money into the NFL license, that we will very likely see a second version. The big question is whether or not it will fix most/any of the flaws of this version. |
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Thanks, this puts the nail in the coffin for this game to picked up on the way home tomorrow from vacation. Next up I think I'll start digging into BBCF once again as I've been reading up on Mizzou and the Big 12. |
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