EA Sport "NFL HEAD COACH"

[cwilloughby]

Here is the latest version of the HCSettings utility. Per bakersview123's from football-freaks suggestion, I have incorporated the INGI and SIMI sliders that control injuries. Download it here.

Changes:
-Added SIM Injury slider
-Added PLAY Injury slider
-Made the program create the Stats directory for any career that has game logs enabled automatically.

After a quick test, I found that SIMI of zero produces no injuries during simulated practices or games. I am unsure of the effect that moving the sliders above 100 has. Bakersview123 suggested that their maximum value is 300, but they only have 8 bits of data space, allowing for 0-255. I tried pushing the INGI slider to the maximum and playing a quick game, but there were no injuries. Let me know how they work for you.

Also, I would like to put a call out to any other fields or values you know of that I should seek out and include. I will be pouring through the data files this weekend and looking for any new relevent values. At the top of my personal list are the option settings for subbing in and out fatigue percentages. Anyone know where these are?

Anyway, make sure you backup your files before using this.

Enjoy!
Chris W.

[Eaglesfan27]

Excellent news. I played my last 2 pre-season games and had very nice stat results with the sliders and 7 minute quarters. I look forward to turning up the play injury slider and seeing if some injuries actually occur during games.

[AgustusM]

Originally Posted by wade moore

This is so weird to me that you and others were expecting this... I just don't see how this was a realistic expectation out of this game if you read the previews, the ads, and know EA Sports...

"knowing EA Sports" - your absolutely right, I have yet to play an EA game and not think - so close, but yet so far.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by cwilloughby

At the top of my personal list are the option settings for subbing in and out fatigue percentages. Anyone know where these are?

I don't, but if you can find that setting for the simmed games, that would be awesome. That seems to be the main stat problem.

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by cwilloughby

Here is the latest version of the HCSettings utility. Per bakersview123's from football-freaks suggestion, I have incorporated the INGI and SIMI sliders that control injuries. Download it here.

Changes:
-Added SIM Injury slider
-Added PLAY Injury slider
-Made the program create the Stats directory for any career that has game logs enabled automatically.

After a quick test, I found that SIMI of zero produces no injuries during simulated practices or games. I am unsure of the effect that moving the sliders above 100 has. Bakersview123 suggested that their maximum value is 300, but they only have 8 bits of data space, allowing for 0-255. I tried pushing the INGI slider to the maximum and playing a quick game, but there were no injuries. Let me know how they work for you.

Also, I would like to put a call out to any other fields or values you know of that I should seek out and include. I will be pouring through the data files this weekend and looking for any new relevent values. At the top of my personal list are the option settings for subbing in and out fatigue percentages. Anyone know where these are?

Anyway, make sure you backup your files before using this.

Enjoy!
Chris W.

I have to say this is the first time I've ever NOT owned a game and thanked someone for doing so much work. I'm not sure if I'm going to get Head Coach or not (9 hours before my first preseason game is NOT what I call thrilling), but the work you are doing is sensational. EA should send you some of the profits of the game.

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by TroyF

I have to say this is the first time I've ever NOT owned a game and thanked someone for doing so much work. I'm not sure if I'm going to get Head Coach or not (9 hours before my first preseason game is NOT what I call thrilling), but the work you are doing is sensational. EA should send you some of the profits of the game.

Agreed!! Its as if, EA knew about this guy, and thought "lets shit out a game, collect all of the monies, and this guy I know will fix it all...for free"

seriously you should patent the utility you made and make them buy it from you.

[Flasch186]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Excellent news. I played my last 2 pre-season games and had very nice stat results with the sliders and 7 minute quarters. I look forward to turning up the play injury slider and seeing if some injuries actually occur during games.

what sliders, i mean settings are you using to get your accurate results? +3 here -3 there etc.

[cwilloughby]

Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way I could swing the patent thing since I am only exposing data values that are already there. In addition, I had to reverse engineer their data file which I think would cause legality issues.

Regardless, just like the rest of you, I wanted this game to be the new Front Page Football. While I feel it missed the mark, I am doing my best to make it a fun experience for everyone anyway.

[Mustang]

I tried to like this game.. really did but, I just can't get into this game.

Guess this thing will collect dust unless anyone is interested in buying or trading.

[MizzouRah]

EF, share those settings!

[Eaglesfan27]

Right now, I haven't changed much:

QB Accuracy up to 75 for both teams.

WR catching up to 90 for both teams (I went down from 99 because mediocre receivers weren't dropping quite enough balls.)

Interceptions at 0 for both teams.


I've still had a game or two with high interceptions totals, but I've also had games with 1 interception for one team and 0 for the other team and my completion percentages (in a still small sample setting) have been as high as 70% for McNabb and generally have been at least 50% even for below average QB's.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by cwilloughby

Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way I could swing the patent thing since I am only exposing data values that are already there. In addition, I had to reverse engineer their data file which I think would cause legality issues.

Regardless, just like the rest of you, I wanted this game to be the new Front Page Football. While I feel it missed the mark, I am doing my best to make it a fun experience for everyone anyway.

what can you do w/ FOF?

[Raiders Army]

Exxxxxxxxxxxxxcellent. Thanks a bunch Mr. W! I'm changing my injury settings to 200 and 200 for sim and play to see how it works. I'll post my results later this evening.

[cwilloughby]

Originally Posted by Hell Atlantic

what can you do w/ FOF?

Its funny that you bring that up.

I was writing a utility a little over a year ago that was taking the FOF data files apart to pull their data out into a more friendly MS Access file format for querying, reporting, and web access.

I was going this to make the USFL website UBER.

Then real life caught up to me, and my school work pushed that onto the back burner where it still lies today.

[Raiders Army]

Argh! My LB coach quit in Week 5! I guess I rode him too hard...

[AgustusM]

my 2 biggest complaints:

55 hours played - I have played 5 games. makes the argument about 5 minute quarters being too long for the "average" gamer even more absurd. Also kind of squashes the concerns of those who were worried the game ONLY goes 40 years.

Sliders, levels - I thank CW for the work he has done, but I damn EA for even making this an issue - coaching sims should NEVER have sliders or levels - they should produce semi-accurate results out of the box thus making sliders a moot point. Sliders are a crutch that puts the onus on the player to tweak and test, tweak and test - just get the damn thing right in the first place.

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

Exxxxxxxxxxxxxcellent. Thanks a bunch Mr. W! I'm changing my injury settings to 200 and 200 for sim and play to see how it works. I'll post my results later this evening.

why the same?

The sims injury is working on default. You get injury when you sim only.

Its the play injury that is not working. So maybe changing the play injury to max 300 first and see if you get any injuries with that when playing and doing your own practice.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by AgustusM

my 2 biggest complaints:

55 hours played - I have played 5 games. makes the argument about 5 minute quarters being too long for the "average" gamer even more absurd. Also kind of squashes the concerns of those who were worried the game ONLY goes 40 years.

Sliders, levels - I thank CW for the work he has done, but I damn EA for even making this an issue - coaching sims should NEVER have sliders or levels - they should produce semi-accurate results out of the box thus making sliders a moot point. Sliders are a crutch that puts the onus on the player to tweak and test, tweak and test - just get the damn thing right in the first place.

In my opinion, in a game where the user is calling plays, you will never realistically be able to get away from difficulty settings and/or sliders.

[rexallllsc]

Originally Posted by AgustusM

Sliders, levels - I thank CW for the work he has done, but I damn EA for even making this an issue - coaching sims should NEVER have sliders or levels - they should produce semi-accurate results out of the box thus making sliders a moot point. Sliders are a crutch that puts the onus on the player to tweak and test, tweak and test - just get the damn thing right in the first place.

I <3 FM

[Buckner]

Can anyone verify what Abner said in his blog today?

"I have a slight problem....

....there are no new free agents. None. Zero. Zilch-o. Well, that's a lie. The best new FA, by far, is WR Dennis Northcutt, who I failed to resign. Everyone else was in the FA pool at the start of the previous season and was never signed to a team because they all suck. It's the end of May, 2007 and there are no new UFAs in the league.

Am I missing something? Surely I'm just overlooking something; the game will have new FAs each year, right? Bueller? Anyone gotten this far?"

This would really suck if there are no FAs.

-mike

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by Buckner

Can anyone verify what Abner said in his blog today?

"I have a slight problem....

....there are no new free agents. None. Zero. Zilch-o. Well, that's a lie. The best new FA, by far, is WR Dennis Northcutt, who I failed to resign. Everyone else was in the FA pool at the start of the previous season and was never signed to a team because they all suck. It's the end of May, 2007 and there are no new UFAs in the league.

Am I missing something? Surely I'm just overlooking something; the game will have new FAs each year, right? Bueller? Anyone gotten this far?"

This would really suck if there are no FAs.

-mike

Now this I can see being a game breaker much more-so than quarter length .

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Buckner

Can anyone verify what Abner said in his blog today?

"I have a slight problem....

....there are no new free agents. None. Zero. Zilch-o. Well, that's a lie. The best new FA, by far, is WR Dennis Northcutt, who I failed to resign. Everyone else was in the FA pool at the start of the previous season and was never signed to a team because they all suck. It's the end of May, 2007 and there are no new UFAs in the league.

Am I missing something? Surely I'm just overlooking something; the game will have new FAs each year, right? Bueller? Anyone gotten this far?"

This would really suck if there are no FAs.

-mike

I don't think anyone else has put in the 250 hours it takes to get to the second season to find out.

[Eaglesfan27]

Yeah, I'm still early in my first season (2-0 with the Eagles right now) and I expect it will be a long time until I can comment on UFA's in 2007.

[ice4277]

Maybe they figured nobody would even bother to play through a season to get to that point.

[AgustusM]

Originally Posted by wade moore

In my opinion, in a game where the user is calling plays, you will never realistically be able to get away from difficulty settings and/or sliders.

Somehow in 1977 with a deck of strat o matic cards and some dice I was able to get "realistic" stats without any sliders, levels, etc.

Many games including the first NFL sim XOR NFL Challenge also were able to do so.

Obviously you are entitled to your opinion, but in my opinion sliders end up being a crutch and require constant tweaks to even get remotely close and even then what are we adjusting to - a level that is "real" or a level that we win enough to be happy, but not so much as to be bored.

[Barkeep49]

I'm glad this FA issue is being brought to light now. I have to go to Best Buy tomorrow and was likely going to cave and buy this. But if this latest report is true, it'll be easy to resist the urge.

[Flasch186]

perhaps Cwill can create a program that creates Free Agents each off season!!

[WSUCougar]

This game seems like the ultimate siren's song for computer/console football gamers. It's so much on-target with what you want...the features...the possibilities...the expectations...the drool...but it only lures you to your gaming doom.

[AgustusM]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

perhaps Cwill can create a program that creates Free Agents each off season!!

maybe we can get CW to create CW's NFL Head Coach!!!

[AgustusM]

Originally Posted by WSUCougar

This game seems like the ultimate siren's song for computer/console football gamers. It's so much on-target with what you want...the features...the possibilities...the expectations...the drool...but it only lures you to your gaming doom.

very, very true - this game is like that Hot Chick at the bar, who is so incredibly hot, but also so incredibly insane.

[SunDevil]

Originally Posted by AgustusM

very, very true - this game is like that Hot Chick at the bar, who is so incredibly hot, but also so incredibly insane.

So in the word's of the Sports Guy, this game is like Terrell Owens?

[Raiders Army]

With injuries in-game set to 200, I had injuries with the following lengths of recovery:

1st QTR: 7 plays, Season, 2 plays, 3 quarters
2nd QTR: 1 quarter, Game, 8 plays, 2 quarters
3rd QTR: 10 plays, 3 plays, 2 quarters, 3 weeks, game
4th QTR: 2 plays, 7 plays, 2 plays, 9 plays

It seemed as if most of the injuries occurred on the defensive side of the ball (about 75% of them). All in all, I think it was probably a pretty accurate representation of real-life.

[kcchief19]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

I don't think anyone expected FOF-like stats but its too much to expect them to be in the same zip code let alone ballpark as realistic NFL stats? This wasn't supposed to be Madden for the non joystick jockey crowd.

If you don't mind, what do you expect the point of the role playing game to be? If you enjoy the game as what it is that's cool - I'm just curious as to why the free pass when something so basic to the game (stats) are apparently horrendous? As a developer I'm curious about this - my upcoming game, Total Pro Golf, is a role-playing type game - will it be ok if people are winning tournaments with scores of -40 or something?

I'm not sure I would call it a free pass, but I definitely had low expectations for the stats of the game because it's essential the Madden engine. If I'm playing FOF or OOTP, I want the stats to spot-on because that's what the game is -- a statistical simulation. Head Coach is a coaching simulation -- not a statistical simulation. Would I like a game like Head Coach with FOF precesion? Heck yes. But I purchased this game with somewhat realistic expectations.

What do I expect the point of a role playing sports game being? By and large I would say interactive elements that put into a universe with other characters. It depends on the sport. I think NFL Head Coach is actually pretty accurate for what I would expect. I could definitely see more options for interaction, and certainly I would like some elements to be more robust. But so far, this game meets my (admittedly low) expectations.

If this game had competition, I think I might judge it more differently. For example, I tried Total Pro Football and thought it was horrible compared to FOF. But if I had never played FOF, I may have liked TPF. The only comparable game with NFL Head Coach in the sport RPG genre thus far is Inside the Park, and frankly NFL Head Coach is the greatest game ever compared to that horrific disaster.

I appreciate your comments here, Gary, but frankly I'm suprised to see you so critical and outspoken. No one else has said anything, so I must be in the minority, but I rarely see a game designer so thoroughly rip another game as you've ripped Head Coach. Personally, I think that's a risk because the first time -- if ever -- anyone shoots a 55 in your golf sim, this thread will get quoted a million times. The pressure's on, big guy.

[Buccaneer]

kc, nicely said. Someone griped that this was The Sims: NFL. Maybe not a good comparison but it is a role-playing game. Why expect something else?

I have not bought a GDS game and it looks like I might not buy its offshoot either. Unless Brian comes up with something this fall, I'll be 0-for-2006 in the text sims/sports games genres.

[Raiders Army]

What, you don't think Jim will come out with anything this year?

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Raiders Army

What, you don't think Jim will come out with anything this year?

Like I said...

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by AgustusM

Somehow in 1977 with a deck of strat o matic cards and some dice I was able to get "realistic" stats without any sliders, levels, etc.

Many games including the first NFL sim XOR NFL Challenge also were able to do so.

Obviously you are entitled to your opinion, but in my opinion sliders end up being a crutch and require constant tweaks to even get remotely close and even then what are we adjusting to - a level that is "real" or a level that we win enough to be happy, but not so much as to be bored.

Wow.. are you REALLY comparing strat-o-matic cards and XOR NFL Challenge to this? They're completely different worlds of complexity...

[SlyBelle1]

Originally Posted by cwilloughby

Here is the latest version of the HCSettings utility. Per bakersview123's from football-freaks suggestion, I have incorporated the INGI and SIMI sliders that control injuries. Download it here.

Changes:
-Added SIM Injury slider
-Added PLAY Injury slider
-Made the program create the Stats directory for any career that has game logs enabled automatically.

After a quick test, I found that SIMI of zero produces no injuries during simulated practices or games. I am unsure of the effect that moving the sliders above 100 has. Bakersview123 suggested that their maximum value is 300, but they only have 8 bits of data space, allowing for 0-255. I tried pushing the INGI slider to the maximum and playing a quick game, but there were no injuries. Let me know how they work for you.

Also, I would like to put a call out to any other fields or values you know of that I should seek out and include. I will be pouring through the data files this weekend and looking for any new relevent values. At the top of my personal list are the option settings for subbing in and out fatigue percentages. Anyone know where these are?

Anyway, make sure you backup your files before using this.

Enjoy!
Chris W.

I would defintely like to see fatigure and sub in/out next. My players never get tired. Secondly, maybe even the penalty sliders, although they are looking the best I've seen in any football game so far.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

kc, nicely said. Someone griped that this was The Sims: NFL. Maybe not a good comparison but it is a role-playing game. Why expect something else?

I have not bought a GDS game and it looks like I might not buy its offshoot either. Unless Brian comes up with something this fall, I'll be 0-for-2006 in the text sims/sports games genres.

Man, you must live a boring life. Both games are a ton of fun.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Man, you must live a boring life. Both games are a ton of fun.

Not really. Less than half of my spare time are spent playing games and of that, most of it are playing the ones that I love to (re-)play regularly and can get into a long career or history. That's why I do not fret about "wanting" to like any of the new games or care to have any expectations. If I take to a new game (like Civ4), that's cool but I am content with what I have and only play games that are fun and have replayability for me.

The other part of my spare time is spent yelling at others for being so anal about whether a new game is good or bad.

[AgustusM]

Originally Posted by wade moore

Wow.. are you REALLY comparing strat-o-matic cards and XOR NFL Challenge to this? They're completely different worlds of complexity...

How is this game so much more complex? the game of football is still played under the same rules (for the most part) - take the friggin X's and O's and make them pretty little 3D pictures.

hell, people talk about Madden all the time and don't realize that while you are joystick jockeying your one guy the other 21 guys on the field are basically playing coach mode.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by AgustusM

How is this game so much more complex? the game of football is still played under the same rules (for the most part) - take the friggin X's and O's and make them pretty little 3D pictures.

It's a just a bit easier said than done....

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by AgustusM

How is this game so much more complex? the game of football is still played under the same rules (for the most part) - take the friggin X's and O's and make them pretty little 3D pictures.

hell, people talk about Madden all the time and don't realize that while you are joystick jockeying your one guy the other 21 guys on the field are basically playing coach mode.

I'm REALLY not trying to be mean here...

But you show a complete lack of understanding of gaming design, programming, etc, etc...

[Gary Gorski]

Originally Posted by kcchief19

I appreciate your comments here, Gary, but frankly I'm suprised to see you so critical and outspoken. No one else has said anything, so I must be in the minority, but I rarely see a game designer so thoroughly rip another game as you've ripped Head Coach. Personally, I think that's a risk because the first time -- if ever -- anyone shoots a 55 in your golf sim, this thread will get quoted a million times. The pressure's on, big guy.

What can I say - I don't speak often but when I have something to say, I say it be it about my games, other games or anything else and it seems when I have an opinion on something outside of my games someone is always surprised that somebody selling games to people in this community dares to run the risk of having an opinion. I guess even though I'm young I have an old school approach to things - I'm not in the business of selling my opinions or doing the "PC thing" - if people wouldn't buy my games because of an opinion I have then that's their choice. I give this community more credit than that though - everyone here just wants to play great games and will buy them for the game even if they don't like the person or people who helped create them (and if there was ever an example of that, Head Coach would be)

[RANT]

Before I developed games, I played them. I spent hours upon hours playing Front Page Sports Football, running a FPS football league that is still in existence today and was one of the many extremely dissapointed people in what happened with Sierra and the FPS series. I only got into developing games because I wanted to make a pro basketball game the way I felt it should be done. I didn't like what EA offered with Live and thought that JSB and FBB were good ideas but that there was more that could be done - so rather than wait for someone to do it I decided to do it myself. I'm critical of this game because I'm one of those people still waiting for the next version of Front Page Sports Football and this could have been a step in that direction but it wasn't so as a gamer, I'm dissapointed, frustrated and yet somehow not surprised since it was EA Sports. To this day I'm still looking for that football game that can draw me in like FPS did.

Now its true I wouldn't make the comments I did had this been FOF or TPF because there are flaws in every game and mine are no different but the amount of work that goes into one of our games by one person is amazing. But EA has millions of dollars and teams of people with the best equipment to produce a game and rather than actually put in some effort to design a game that is realistic (without having someone hack into it and change things) all they did was slap some new screens on the Madden engine, gave you some RPG tasks and rolled it out to find a way to recoup extra money on their exclusive NFL license. If people from EA want to play my games and be critical on an internet forum I welcome them to do so.

I guess part of me is also envious of EA - some people on this forum were very critical of the interface in the first Total Pro Basketball complaining about too many clicks to do things and some people felt there were too many clicks to the recruiting interface in Total College Basketball but here you have a game where the interface design is so horrible that you literally click thousands of more times while playing and its something to overlook because there's 3D graphics. I remember people running multi year tests on seasons of Arlie's football game to see if the QB ratings were within percentage points of real NFL stats but the fact that running backs in Head Coach get 500 carries a season is a minor flaw that maybe can be tweaked with sliders. I'm just surprised that in a community of core customers for text sim sports that there wasn't more outrage at some of this kind of stuff and that seemingly so many people are overlooking it because it has pretty 3D graphics.

In the grand scheme of the gaming world the vast majority of people have never heard about me or know who I am. I don't understand why these games from EA can't be both fun arcade games to play and yet still appeal to gamers who want realism. When I think of what could be done if someone had millions of dollars to spend to form a company creating games and would hire the developers in our community to lead the projects --- a sports gamer's utopia but companies like EA don't care about that. If they did Jim would still be with EA. The people who help me make a living are the ones on this forum so I'm always interested in what you think about games and why you like or dislike them. This forum can be brutal on games, honest and fair but still brutal, and I expected that kind of reaction to this so when I didn't see it I was interested to see why people were overlooking the major flaws in the design of the game if for nothing else to help me deliver products that more of you will be interested in.

[/RANT]

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Gary Gorski

RANT

well said Gary

[Flasch186]

i disagree with Gary, everyone is upset, but sliders could be a saving grace (so far) that could fix some things, not all. Regardless of what everyone says, EVERYONE had high hopes for this, some feared what EA could do to a great idea, and it seems those people were right BUT deep inside we all had high hopes.

[Barkeep49]

Is there any more feedback on the Free Agent issues that Abner brought up?

[AlexB]

Originally Posted by Flasch186

i disagree with Gary, everyone is upset, but sliders could be a saving grace (so far) that could fix some things, not all. Regardless of what everyone says, EVERYONE had high hopes for this, some feared what EA could do to a great idea, and it seems those people were right BUT deep inside we all had high hopes.

I disagree - I was extremely pleased to find that this game wasn't getting a UK PS2 release: my crappy laptop won't play it, and I'm not going to pay an import price, so that means I can't be tempted in a moment of weakness to purchase another crappy EA product.

I have in the past bought Madden (lots of times), FIFA, NHL, NBA, Tiger Woods and none of them in the last decade have been better than average. The early Madden, FIFA NHL games were fun, but they've just not developed enough, and finally I've stopped thinking 'this is the one', and haven;t purchased either of last two Maddens (the last remaining franchise I had been playing)

HC was always going to be a let-down if you wanted a sim. I think the reason I don;t like EA games is I want less arcade, more sim - why on earth would a company who can't even get basic stats in a game that is 15 years in development suddenly be able to produce a sim that woiuld meet the needs of the people here at the first attempt? To think that they would, or even might, shows a naivety beyond belief...

[Flasch186]

...than Im naive because while I had the same fears everyone else had, deep inside I had hoped this would be awesome....

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

The other part of my spare time is spent yelling at others for being so anal about whether a new game is good or bad.

I was going to guess masterbating.