Football sims dead?

[Ben E Lou]

I just opened up the game to check, and this player pool thing appears to be completely silly. There are a ton of FBs in free agency in-season, and many are requesting stupid money, north of $6M per year. And this is a league with the default cap of only $100M. But there are ZERO free agents at RB, WR, DT, or LB. I'm guessing that if you get too many injuries at one of those positions you'd have to position-switch some guys just to keep playing.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

It really depends on what you're looking for and how you play the game. I know we've discussed this in person before, so I understand where you're coming from in wanting to get to know your players. But for me, I'm looking for a career/GM sim, not a coaching sim, so I don't want any development time spent on a feature that I know I'll never use. I'm interested in figuring out how to transition the franchise from one QB to the next and getting the players around him to match his skills, not in whether a particular linebacker gets fooled on the play-action fake more often than I think he should. And with limited gaming time, I'd rather get through two or three seasons in an hour or two session at my computer, not two or three games like I would if I watched every play in 2D.

I'm with Ben on this one - the things that appeal to me about FOF & TCY are not things that would be enhanced by a graphical representation. The experience I'm looking for is not really focused on watching the game play out in real time - like you, I just watch Solevision on fast speeds to quickly get through games while still getting a small semblance of an idea of what the game was like in terms of big plays, momentum shifts, etc.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Heh. I never even saw the video. Just watched it.

Well no wonder a 2D interface wouldn't do anything for you. For the rest of us, when we watch something, we are able to see it.

[flounder]

To me, the point of a graphical representation isn't so much that I need to watch the game. I just want to be able to know what happened on a particular play.

In FM, when I give up a goal I know exactly what happened. My fullback was too far up and was too slow to catch up when the attacker ran behind him. My defensive line was too deep and their midfielder with Long Shots 20 rifled one in from 30 yards. I may not be able to do anything to fix those problems, but at least I have something to go on.

In FOF, when I give up a touchdown I often have no clue what happened. Their tailback took it 60 yards. Why? Were my LBs out of position? Did their TE get a good block on my safety? Did he just get out juked by the RB? Was he too fast for my CBs to catch up? There's no way of knowing for sure exactly what went wrong. If we're lucky, an OL gets assigned a key run block, but we're not sure what that even means. All of this breaks immersion and leads to frustration when you're trying to design an offense or defense.

I'm not trying to denigrate FOF. It's a great game. I'm just trying to express my reasoning behind wanting a graphical view. If the information I'm looking for can be presented without graphics, then that's fine. I just want some more feedback into how exactly my team is performing.

[MJ4H]

The reason I like sports is it is real life, unscripted drama. A 2D display would allow me to hold my breath while the pass is in the air on the way to the single covered receiver. To hold my breath as the running back breaks it outside and has a little bit of daylight in a key spot in the game.

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. I want the drama of the games to be enhanced.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by flounder

To me, the point of a graphical representation isn't so much that I need to watch the game. I just want to be able to know what happened on a particular play.

In FM, when I give up a goal I know exactly what happened. My fullback was too far up and was too slow to catch up when the attacker ran behind him. My defensive line was too deep and their midfielder with Long Shots 20 rifled one in from 30 yards. I may not be able to do anything to fix those problems, but at least I have something to go on.

In FOF, when I give up a touchdown I often have no clue what happened. Their tailback took it 60 yards. Why? Were my LBs out of position? Did their TE get a good block on my safety? Did he just get out juked by the RB? Was he too fast for my CBs to catch up? There's no way of knowing for sure exactly what went wrong. If we're lucky, an OL gets assigned a key run block, but we're not sure what that even means. All of this breaks immersion and leads to frustration when you're trying to design an offense or defense.

I'm not trying to denigrate FOF. It's a great game. I'm just trying to express my reasoning behind wanting a graphical view. If the information I'm looking for can be presented without graphics, then that's fine. I just want some more feedback into how exactly my team is performing.

Those are very good points. One counter to that is that broken plays or screw-ups by players (which you see all the time in football) would be subject to gamers screaming "WTF?!?" when they see it happen in a game - just like what happens in games like Madden ("I can't believe my LCB left that crossing route go right through his zone without picking it up").

While I don't know the ins and outs of Jim's sim code, I'd bet that he could provide detail in his game logs about why plays turned out the way they did. In fact, I believe they already do to a certain extent - key blocks, blown blocks, dropped passes, etc.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

The reason I like sports is it is real life, unscripted drama. A 2D display would allow me to hold my breath while the pass is in the air on the way to the single covered receiver. To hold my breath as the running back breaks it outside and has a little bit of daylight in a key spot in the game.

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. I want the drama of the games to be enhanced.

Interesting ... because I was thinking a few posts earlier about how much more dramatic text presentation of, say, FOF is to me versus Madden or even 2d's.

What brought that to mind is how much more tension there is to me when following a game on something like Gametracker versus simply watching it. Granted, some of that is the delay between events popping into to the pbp log but I don't believe that's all of it for me.

[CU Tiger]

Yeah I have to admit, as much as I have wished for a 2d model it was more driven by what was lacking in solevision that left me baffled. I really dont care what fake players look like.
In my ideal game, as GM I wold hire HC and steer towards coords that implemented my preferred style direction. Then I would get detailed feedback from them, "We are not able to score because teams are stacing the box with our fleet of tall, slow posesion receivers. Can you go get me a Speed WR?" then I am on it.
I'd like to provide input like, "Run that young stud RB more, I'm paying him a ton."
If i had good text feedback or even detaild post game grade outs for each position/player I would never want 2d/3d representation. In the absence of those items, I would love it to develop them myself.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by GrantDawg

Not to me. If you really convert what you see from 3-d to 2-d, that is basically what you get. Lines locked unless someone breaks out or goes wide. But it does tell you whether linemen are breaking tackles or getting free even if they don't directly affect the play. I would love that.

Me too.

[Autumn]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

The reason I like sports is it is real life, unscripted drama. A 2D display would allow me to hold my breath while the pass is in the air on the way to the single covered receiver. To hold my breath as the running back breaks it outside and has a little bit of daylight in a key spot in the game.

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for. I want the drama of the games to be enhanced.

My friends and I, back in highschool, ran Pro League Football (I think it was) leagues for years. It had little Xs and Os that moved around in a 2-d rep of the play. I always thought it was amazing how much there drama was in watching a three pixel ball moving square by square towards an X on the screen, and then the short little pause as it got there and you couldn't tell yet if it was going to stay or bounce off. Simple 2-D can really add drama, for sure.

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

I had no idea you could still download and play the old FB Pro games, but evidently you can.

FBPRO-Online

Pretty cool. Which one is the good one?

[MizzouRah]

Football Pro 97 was the best in the series, IMHO.

[molson]

Originally Posted by flounder

In FOF, when I give up a touchdown I often have no clue what happened. Their tailback took it 60 yards. Why? Were my LBs out of position? Did their TE get a good block on my safety? Did he just get out juked by the RB? Was he too fast for my CBs to catch up? There's no way of knowing for sure exactly what went wrong. If we're lucky, an OL gets assigned a key run block, but we're not sure what that even means. All of this breaks immersion and leads to frustration when you're trying to design an offense or defense.

I think just including some of that info in the text would be helpful, and a lot of that stuff couldn't be illustrated in just an X and O depiction. I've never played FM (and I don't know much about soccer), so I'm not sure how it works there, but football coaches break down game film to evaluate players and see what happened - maybe a player took his eyes off the ball or the defender, or an offensive lineman didn't have good techique on a play - Xs and Os can demostrate where players are on a field, but I don't know if that's as critical to success/failure of a football player as soccer positioning might be. As in, I think players moving around on a soccer field can create the feeling that a game is going on, but with a football text sim, it's still going to be a result cacluated for a play, and then it's depicted visually, I just wonder if that would flow as well. I also think we may be way too far away to depict things as subtle as players being out of position causing big plays, etc. - I don't think any of that stuff was decided/computed for any FOF play (outside of the specific stats that needed to be generated).

[GrantDawg]

Sorry, wrong thread.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by molson

...but with a football text sim, it's still going to be a result cacluated for a play, and then it's depicted visually....

Ding ding ding. We have a winnah!

This is the specific concern I have about this for FOF: taking a computerized dice and charts game and trying to render it in 2D sounds awfully like a square peg/round hole situation, and one that would very likely be more misleading than illuminating. It's something else if the actual game engine is using a grid and moving guys around on it. In that regard it would be useful. But a grid-based engine would have a *much* harder time with statistical accuracy and fine-tuning than would a calculation-based engine.

[Julio Riddols]

Even if FOF just continued to use text to explain the outcome of plays, the "dice rolls" could provide us a better range of textual results. If the dice roll ends up being 100 to 2, that should provide an explanation that describes the sheer dominance exerted by the player who rolled 100. Or if the QB threw a bad throw by dice rolls, and the receivers receiving skills were more responsible for the pass being completed, the text could reflect that by saying something like "Jones grabs the off target throw" or "Nice catch on that play by Jones" or "Jones bailed Smith out on that play with a nice grab". If there was more variety and more emphasis on who was most responsible for the event that occurred, I think text would be just fine. I think the current engine just needs more variety in the way of text output.

[MacroGuru]

There is this...

Front Page Sports Football

It has a free division and the 2 P2P divsions...

I don't know how close it is...I didn't have the patience for the slowness on the work network...but it might be something for some people...

[Passacaglia]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Ding ding ding. We have a winnah!

This is the specific concern I have about this for FOF: taking a computerized dice and charts game and trying to render it in 2D sounds awfully like a square peg/round hole situation, and one that would very likely be more misleading than illuminating. It's something else if the actual game engine is using a grid and moving guys around on it. In that regard it would be useful. But a grid-based engine would have a *much* harder time with statistical accuracy and fine-tuning than would a calculation-based engine.

Oh you've played Micro League Football too, huh?

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Ding ding ding. We have a winnah!

This is the specific concern I have about this for FOF: taking a computerized dice and charts game and trying to render it in 2D sounds awfully like a square peg/round hole situation, and one that would very likely be more misleading than illuminating. It's something else if the actual game engine is using a grid and moving guys around on it. In that regard it would be useful. But a grid-based engine would have a *much* harder time with statistical accuracy and fine-tuning than would a calculation-based engine.

Yep. I think people saying it would be easy to tack on this kind of visual display are not thinking through how the sim engine works - I have my doubts that the way Jim's sim calculates results will result in info to drive even a 2D representation that looks like what people want.

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Yep. I think people saying it would be easy to tack on this kind of visual display are not thinking through how the sim engine works - I have my doubts that the way Jim's sim calculates results will result in info to drive even a 2D representation that looks like what people want.

Yeah, I dont think slapping on a graphical playout to a FOF-engine would really make as much sense...though it could be a feature add which acts more like a bridge to the next version which actually does grid based calculations and uses more vitals & skills to define a player & simulate football behaviors rather than football stats.

I agree though, eventually that would get predictable & filled with logic fallacies that wouldnt fit with what you are seeing in 2d.

[flounder]

Well Football Manager's graphics aren't a real representation in the sense that Madden's graphics engine is.

For example, when the ball is loose you'll often see one player for each team running for it. Sometimes, if one player is closer than the other one, the closer player will slow down to a jog to make sure that both players arrive at the ball at the same time. What's going on? The game engine decided to have a dice roll for possession of the ball between those two players. The graphics engine then has to make those two players arrive at the ball at the same time.

So really all that's going on is an animated view of the dice rolls going on behind the scenes. It's a testament to the skill of the FM team that it provides such a good illusion of being a real 3d simulation. So I think that you can have graphics and still have a strong sim engine. You just have to be able to accept some "gameyness" in the graphics.

[MJ4H]

Originally Posted by dawgfan

Yep. I think people saying it would be easy to tack on this kind of visual display are not thinking through how the sim engine works - I have my doubts that the way Jim's sim calculates results will result in info to drive even a 2D representation that looks like what people want.

I might have missed them but I didn't see anyone suggesting tacking on something to an already existing engine that works in an entirely different way. At the least, I'm not proposing that. I want one built from the ground up to do it that way.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

I might have missed them but I didn't see anyone suggesting tacking on something to an already existing engine that works in an entirely different way. At the least, I'm not proposing that. I want one built from the ground up to do it that way.

I have yet to see that suggested, or that anyone said anything about it being "easy." Strawman much?

[dawgfan]

You're right, I'm conflating things. I was thinking of these comments:

http://operationsports.com/fofc/show...76&postcount=8

In re-reading this one, Quik is talking about a different approach than what I was describing.

http://operationsports.com/fofc/show...2&postcount=10

Not sure of MJ4H was referencing Quik's suggestion or not - he probably was.

[MJ4H]

I was talking about creating a 2D engine from the ground up.

[Icy]

Goal Line blitz 2D is good enough for me:

highlights sample:

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by Icy

Goal Line blitz 2D is good enough for me:

+1

Simple, but fluid. And with some minor words thrown in above the players like "Pump Faked" and "Spin" to tell you what they failed to do or why the tackle was broken is helpful.

That game is fundamentally flawed from a NFL-style sim but of course, that isnt their target base really.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

I was talking about creating a 2D engine from the ground up.

Got it. My issue is that, given what we've seen the last 13 years, I have very little reason to believe that there will be a long-term playable career professional football text sim in my lifetime apart from FOF, so I just naturally assume "2D presentation" = "FOF with a 2D presentation." I've see too many broken (or long-term deferred) promises from other developers of new games and too many fatally flawed games to get my hopes up regarding anything else. I'd love to be more optimistic, but I have little reason for it. PFS seems like the closest thing I've seen in 13 years, and I found massive, game-killing flaws in less than an hour of fooling with the latest version. That doesn't do much to help my lack of optimism.

[MJ4H]

Yeah I haven't really seen anything that indicates PFS was a serious contender, so I just kind of ignored it.

I'm not hopeful, either.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by SteveMax58

That game is fundamentally flawed from a NFL-style sim but of course, that isnt their target base really.

That's what I was thinking. I played GLB enough to know that for a serious sim, the game balance, physics and AI are just not even close to good enough.

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by sabotai

That's what I was thinking. I played GLB enough to know that for a serious sim, the game balance, physics and AI are just not even close to good enough.

Yep, I would guess that the engine would be fine to actually be a sim, the problem is that it is an MMORPG. Meaning...if the crowd there makes a HB with 2 billion speed (really, more like 160+), they expect that HB to be fast enough to where nobody could possibly ever catch him. So, GLB doesnt try to put caps onto attributes because it (theoretically) defeats the purpose of building your character better than somebody else does.

There are definitely diminishing returns beyond a point, but the player-building aspect of it (which is where the most money is spent on the game) is what completely invalidates the ability to simulate NFL-style football. So the engine is tweaked to account for the nonsensical player building rather than using a baseline of attributes expected.

But I think GLB proves that a 2d sim can be done, and done well for sim enthusiasts, but it certainly wasn't built for that.

[ShaneTheMaster]

The best thing that FBPro did that noone has been able to do since (including Madden) is that they simualte games using their graphics engine.

When games were simmed, the graphic engine was used (but wasn't rendered on the screen). This way there we no differences between simmed games and games played out. It is mind boggling why Madden doesn't do this.

While more difficult to achieve, this would be the ideal way of 'simming' football games. If it could be done 15 years ago, it can be done now.

[dawgfan]

Originally Posted by ShaneTheMaster

The best thing that FBPro did that noone has been able to do since (including Madden) is that they simualte games using their graphics engine.

When games were simmed, the graphic engine was used (but wasn't rendered on the screen). This way there we no differences between simmed games and games played out. It is mind boggling why Madden doesn't do this.

While more difficult to achieve, this would be the ideal way of 'simming' football games. If it could be done 15 years ago, it can be done now.

But how good was that sim engine in comparison to Jim's? I would guess that most of us would characterize Jim's sim engine as the most accurate football sim out there. Can someone write a graphical sim that produces results as believable as Jim's?

That's where I'm skeptical...

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by ShaneTheMaster

When games were simmed, the graphic engine was used (but wasn't rendered on the screen). This way there we no differences between simmed games and games played out.

They *said* that this was the case, but I never bought it. I'd routinely win games by scores upward of 100-0 when playing them out, but using the same playbooks, my team's games always had "normal" scores. Clearly something was being done differently in the sim engine.

[MJ4H]

I probably have a wider range of acceptability than a lot of you on that one, honestly.

[ShaneTheMaster]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

They *said* that this was the case, but I never bought it. I'd routinely win games by scores upward of 100-0 when playing them out, but using the same playbooks, my team's games always had "normal" scores. Clearly something was being done differently in the sim engine.

For me, the main reason for this was because they were a few "money" plays that I knew they could take advantage of, and could call 10 times a game, and in crucial situations. The CPU obviously didnt do that when calling the plays when games were simmed. I am 99% positive the graphics engine was used for simming.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by ShaneTheMaster

For me, the main reason for this was because they were a few "money" plays that I knew they could take advantage of, and could call 10 times a game, and in crucial situations. The CPU obviously didnt do that when calling the plays when games were simmed. I am 99% positive the graphics engine was used for simming.

But that's the thing. I even set up playbooks with nothing but my "money" plays. (Well, pretty much all of my custom plays were "money" plays in that game. ) Even when I did that, the sim results never came anywhere close to the played-out results. It was really weird.

[sabotai]

Did you control the players or did you play in coach mode? I always did far better when controlling the players, not only because of money plays (which the AI usually didn't know how to take advantage of), but also on normal plays. The AI in FBPro clearly wasn't designed to improvise. If you told the RB to run to a certain spot in the play design, like on a sweep, he (when AI controlled) ran there whether there as a defender directly in his path or not.

[JimboJ]

To those of you who have tried the PFS demo and concluded the game is not worthwhile, have you reported any of the bugs to the developer? I'm asking because if you read the forum he does release frequent updates, and he does seem genuinely interested ib getting feedback and improving the game. I haven't had the chance to try it myself, but it seems like people are taking the attitude that because the game has some obvious flaws, its not worth taking the time to help improve it.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by JimboJ

To those of you who have tried the PFS demo and concluded the game is not worthwhile, have you reported any of the bugs to the developer? I'm asking because if you read the forum he does release frequent updates, and he does seem genuinely interested ib getting feedback and improving the game. I haven't had the chance to try it myself, but it seems like people are taking the attitude that because the game has some obvious flaws, its not worth taking the time to help improve it.

Here's the problem.

It's hard to go into a forum, with a good active developer, and start naming all of the problems.

You come off as overly-negative and trying to bash the game, even if you're trying to help.

I'd love to start naming the issues, but it would really come off looking like bashing the game because there are just so many glaring problems.

That's why I'm taking a "wait and see" approach. I'd rather check it again in 6 months and see what progress he has made.

[SteveMax58]

Exactly what Wade said.

I actually did post a few things I had seen very early on and he was responsive for a while. But it became clear to me that I was becoming an annoyance because I was a little more critical of things than others might be.

So rather than become a detriment to the forum I figured its better to just check back every few months as its really not helpful to take my full set of bothersome issues (to me anyway) and post them if they are not really welcome/wanted.

[JimboJ]

Originally Posted by SteveMax58

Exactly what Wade said.

I actually did post a few things I had seen very early on and he was responsive for a while. But it became clear to me that I was becoming an annoyance because I was a little more critical of things than others might be.

So rather than become a detriment to the forum I figured its better to just check back every few months as its really not helpful to take my full set of bothersome issues (to me anyway) and post them if they are not really welcome/wanted.

I see your guys point, but I guess its all in how you word your feedback. If you present it in a positive way as a list of issues that you found, then he can log the issues and work as them as he has time. Its how software support works. Also it probably helps if they are posted in the support forum and not in general discussions.

[Dutch]

Right, for instance, here at FOFC certain people have (or used to have) a good relationship with Jim and criticism wasn't viewed as being pessimistic. It was seen as assistance. But there was a certain level of trust that was built first (or at the same time) as the critiques that were pushed.

If you just (t)rolled into FOFC and started blasting FOF (when it mattered) you would get run out of town. This isn't a new phenomena. I suspect that for the old school FOF'ers, this is a path that they have seen trampled to death and starting from scratch witn a new company probably isn't high on the priority list.

I'm sure there are some extremely intelligent up and coming 20 somethings that would love nothing more than to jump into GLB, PFS or whatever and get involved in the community and make those games better. I just don't think you're going to get it from the tired old dogs of the FOF world.

[Ben E Lou]

For me, it's not any concern about how it's received. It's just a matter of wanting to have the time to do it properly. As mentioned, I saw several issues in the first few minutes. I'm just typically not one to want to log stuff without providing specifics about what screen it's on, detailed steps to reproduce etc. As an example, I'd never log the DT issue the way I put it on here. I'd re-start the league, write down every setting that I used, etc. etc. And right now, there are so many glaring things that I simply don't have the time to do it properly.

[SteveMax58]

Originally Posted by JimboJ

I see your guys point, but I guess its all in how you word your feedback. If you present it in a positive way as a list of issues that you found, then he can log the issues and work as them as he has time. Its how software support works. Also it probably helps if they are posted in the support forum and not in general discussions.

I don't mean to make it out that my feedback was argued or in any way scorned. It's just that you eventually take a hint when you provide data points about how many team sacks, team INTs, team FFs, comp%, etc, etc, etc, in a given NFL season the top, median, and lowest teams actually get. Then you provide the % that each of those appear to be off, and when there is no further response, you kinda (should) get the hint that it isn't the type of game you were trying to provide feedback for.

I guess my point is that these weren't even bugs, but were simply the "on the surface" issues that were obvious to anybody that is a stats-head. So, you have to just assume that the developer isn't building something intended for such audiences' satisfaction. Not a big deal, GLB isn't that type of game either.

[MizzouRah]

Anyone play, "Second and Ten"?

[Philliesfan980]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Anyone play, "Second and Ten"?

I have - It's a great single season football simulation. I believe all modern NFL seasons are available, and a ton of college teams/seasons as well.

While it's great game in its own right, one of the best things about the game is all you have to do is buy the game: the seasons are free.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Philliesfan980

I have - It's a great single season football simulation. I believe all modern NFL seasons are available, and a ton of college teams/seasons as well.

While it's great game in its own right, one of the best things about the game is all you have to do is buy the game: the seasons are free.

So it's more like a Diamond Mind baseball type game for football? (just single seasons)???

[Philliesfan980]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

So it's more like a Diamond Mind baseball type game for football? (just single seasons)???

Yeah, no career mode. Great single season game though.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Philliesfan980

Yeah, no career mode. Great single season game though.

+1

SAT is darned good & the original developer (for the dice & chart version) is a heck of a good guy. The p.c. version is an exceptionally faithful reproduction of the original, just in computer form, done in conjunction with a programmer.