Examining Franchise's Elephant in the Room: Coaching Schemes

[tarantism]

I posted a lot about this last year but after doing a ton of research I now feel that I understand them better before. I would have really liked to find some developer explanation on these but sadly I doubt any clarity from them will ever be forthcoming.

Make no mistake, the difference between having a great franchise experience and a poor one relies on these settings. The coaching schemes are the reason that people say their slider set acts differently during franchise, for example. These settings control way more then I originally thought. Basically what I am going to do is post all of the information that has helped me the most in understanding these settings. I may note that these explanations came from multiple sources, and that all credit goes to those who posted them.

I will also say that what follows is what I am using for my 32 franchise, and the results have been outstanding. As you will soon see, these settings have both in game and sim game effects. In addition, the in game effects are more then I ever could have imagined, and they change the way I play the game. Without further ado:

One last important note to remember:

Quote:

one thing you should know is that the opposing CPU uses the tendencies and priorities for the franchise your controlling as well. so if your HB's on 0, so is the CPU's. also, the only thing the CPU doesn't use of yours is the aggression and the run v pass. those affect the teams individually.

I would like to mention that on the part of the Madden developers, that last titbit is absolutely genius. When priority gets explained, you will understand better but basically it means that you don't need to go through and change a team's priority sliders before every single game, you can just have the global settings in the file of the team that you are controlling. Absolutely awesome.

Run vs. Pass, Played Games:

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this regulates how the opposing team reacts when you choose a run play versus a pass play. choose 0-40 for an aggressive run game and watch the opposing defense get eaten alive during the run. but, when you try to pass, the CPU will pass rush aggressively, blitz heavy, and play more man to man coverages. 60-100 towards the pass, is the polar opposite. you'll have a pocket, and the defense will eat your run game up.

Quote:

on the defensive side of the ball for the run v pass, kind of works the same way. except, that if you choose to defend the run, you could be eaten up if choosing the wrong run defense. same thing with the pass. choose the wrong pass D and the CPU could eat you up all day. one thing is for sure, if you choose to defend more the run then the pass or vice-versa, the CPU will lean it's playcalling towards what you are trying to defend.

Run vs. Pass, Simmed Games:

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RUN/PASS: This one is pretty simple, I keep the majority of teams on 50. Just moving it up or down one notch really makes a drastic difference so that's as far as I ever go. for teams that Rely heavily on the run I move it to 40: Oakland, KC, NYJ, BAL, CIN, CLE, TEN. I use MIN in my chise so I leave it alone but others should probly include them as well . For Pass heavy teams I move it to 60: ARI, NO, DET, SD, GB and NE. I simmed one season with GB and NE on 70 to see what happened and rodgers and brady both threw for over 5500 yards and had well over 500 pass attempts so that wasn't a good idea.

I can mirror that in my own Madden 12 experience. When you go anything above 60, the passing stats just go crazy. Rodgers and Brady threw something like ~650 passes with the slider at 70. At 60 I felt like they just weren't getting enough, though. What I later discovered is that I simply wasn't using the aggression slider correctly.

Better Understanding for Aggression:

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from what i've seen, this controls how fast the players develop in a play. if you throw a HB screen, try one at 0% aggression, then set it to 100% and the run the same play again. you'll definitely see the difference between the two. at 0%, the offense lineman will wait until the last minute to initiate contact and seem like they have no sense of urgency to set the edge for the screen. at 100%, watch them fly! they'll slide, morph, and basically defy the laws of physics to set a block for the screen. even the classic, "turn around and block behind them" animation sets in. this goes for both sides of the ball. the defense at 100% will make you think that the CPU's skynet has been activated.

Quote:

this slider is kinda weird because it doesn't seem to affect the amount of deep shots the team takes... and the only difference it seems to make is in the general effectiveness of their offense... at least in the games I've played that seems to be the case. I basically leave it at 50 except I move the worst teams in the league down a notch and the best teams up a notch. It's not a huge difference but it just seems to make them play more like themselves.

When I learned this, I realized my huge misunderstanding for what this slider actually does. I had most teams around 10 defensive aggression, and this reflected in my simulated stats, with some offensive players just going absolutely nuts. I also had many teams way low at 10-30 offensive aggression. Basically, I overestimated the weight of this slider on simulated games.

On the other hand, without me realizing what I had done, this has having a gigantic effect on my played games. For the longest time I just assumed that this slider would effect how many times a team would throw deep passes and such during simulated games. I know now that it does not do that at all.

The next biggie was positional priority. 99% of the community, including myself, just assumed that this meant how likely a team was to go out and draft/sign a player from that position. Thusly, most 32 team control guys simply left it all at 100, not wanting to go through and change them for every team every year and not really caring overall.

The truth is that this slider does so much more then just that.

Clarity for Priority:

Quote:

priority really means proximity. imagine a little circle around each player. the more the priority, the bigger the proximity of the circle. the bigger the proximity the quicker the reaction time. same thing with the ball. except it shares it's proximity circle with the QB. if the qb is set to 0, so is the ball. if you were to mess around with something as simple as turning the priority for the QB to 0, watch how long it takes for the opposing DBs to react to the ball if at all as opposed to the QB priority set to 100. set the HB to 0, see if your LBs tackle him easily or you see them basically run in to him and then tackle him. set the o-line to 0, and the d-line to 0. they will run into each other and then initiate a blocking animation. it's all about the reaction time. when everyone's at 100, everyone has the same reaction time. but switch them all to 0, and the game plays completely different. if you would switch all the priority to the o-line to 100, and set the d-line to 0, watch the sliding by the oline. this told me a couple of things. the offense has to wait for the defense to initiate contact and that the qb trumps all. the game doesn't do anything till he doesn't have possession.

Wow! I mean, when I read that it really changed everything. When I started testing it, the results really did seem to show. If this can be mastered (I am still trying to fine tune it) it can really be a game changer. I am sure that most of you can understand why. Once again, the most important part, and the end of the above quote:

Quote:

one thing you should know is that the opposing CPU uses the tendencies and priorities for the franchise your controlling as well. so if your HB's on 0, so is the CPU's. also, the only thing the CPU doesn't use of yours is the aggression and the run v pass. those affect the teams individually. everything i just mentioned is for gameplay, not sim. sim is a different ball of wax.

For a little more clarity, here is someone who was on the right track:

Quote:

This slider, contrary to popular belief does NOT affect the drafting process of cpu teams, or which positions the team values more. It actually has no affect at all on games that you do not play (simmed games). What this does is control which CPU positions and players on your team, as well as the entire other team that the game focuses on getting more invloved in the game. for example if other positions on defense were lowered to zero and the OLBs were at 100, the OLBS (whn controlled by the cpu) would be more likely to make the tackle. And the other players would practically have to have the RB run into them before they would make a play.

And then finally we come to position style sliders. Again I was surprised to find that these have an effect on played games, as well as simulated ones. On the part to simulated games, it's pretty straight forward. For the most part, CPU teams will attempt to draft and sign players who fit the style that you set on the slider.

Style Slider and Simulated Games:

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Player Style: Here the game did a pretty goopd job on a vast mojority of teams except for one glaring error: the game has ALL 3-4 D-lineman and ALL 4-3 DTs set to pass rush, and most 3-4 OLBs to coverage!! this is pretty ridiculous and is one thing that absolutely must be changed for your chise to have realistic defensive stats. Also A lot of 4-3 teams have their LBs both inside and out set to pass Rush. I changed most of them to coverage(which also means run-stop) but did leave a few at the halfway point (chicago lbs for example I put halfway between pass rush and coverage since they blitz their lbs a lot. also left the niners MLB at the halfway point... but you get the idea. A couple other examples I changed were SEA and CAR QB from pocket to scramble and PIT WR from possesion to speed... but that's just me.

But once again, this slider works totally different for the games that you play:

Quote:

if flipped to one or the other then that position is regulated by only one set of animations and plays. i keep it on 50/50. if you put the HB on speed, watch the CPU put 8 in the box only when you select a running play. for power, watch the gang-tackle animation happen every time you touch the ball. i like that every position is on a 50/50 basis. that way it selects from the wide array of animations (if you can call it that) that all the positions have to offer.

So it is vastly important to remember that whatever settings you have on YOUR TEAM are the ones that have an effect on the games that you play. This means that the priority and style sliders that you have set under your team's coaching settings have an effect on how BOTH teams play when you enter into a game.

Thus, what you need to do it set the other 31 teams position style sliders to how you want them to draft/sign free agents during the offseason. I know this saves me a ton of time because now during FA I only need to worry about bidding on players for my own team and I just kind of let the CPU do it's thing. Then, before the preseason I go through and make sure that everything makes sense.

Then, when it comes to the priority/position style of whatever team you decide to play, you need to set them to how you want to see then in game effects play out. For example:

Quote:

here's my settings, offense and defense 0% aggression with 50/50 run v pass (for both you and whatever team your playing) QB-50, RB-50, FB-50, WR-50, TE-50, T-0, G-0, C-0, K-50. DE-90, DT-50, OLB-90, MLB-90, CB-50, FS-50, SS-50, P-50. I'm still working on these but getting some good challenging games out of some of them.

For me at least, the above worked as a great template to start on. From there I am still tweaking to try to maximize the realism of my in game experience.

Well, I hope that helps shed some light onto this enigma for you guys. I suggest that anybody looking to run a realistic franchise controls all 32 teams and then follows these guidelines for doing the coaching settings. I also suggest that people hoping to have a realistic NFL experience no longer ignore these settings. It's a little more work but the dividends it pays are priceless.

I will also note that I am still tweaking my own sets of these, so if people have any suggestions and/or come up on anything helpful in their testing please post it here so that the community can discuss.

[tarantism]

I would also like to add a shameless plug for my Franchise blog, which will be starting here in the next few days. I will be posting it here in the Franchise Blog forum so anybody looking to see these settings in work can just look at the stats that I produce there. Okay, end shameless plug .

[89OneHanded]

Interesting stuff, sir. Thank you for sharing.

[KBLover]

Just a couple questions as I'm starting to tinker with this...

I want the DL to have very few tackles, as in real life. So I should lower their priority? I want LBs and S's, especially SS, so I need to make sure their priorities are higher than anyone else's on defense?

I want the CPU to run the ball more with more success, which should...SHOULD...encourage more desire to run the ball. I need to set the defense to 40 or less in run vs pass?

If I want the LBs to be more sack oriented, I put their style to pass rush? If I want them to be more run stop or read, react, and tackle, I need to put them to Coverage?

[tarantism]

Quote: Originally Posted by KBLover

Just a couple questions as I'm starting to tinker with this... I want the DL to have very few tackles, as in real life. So I should lower their priority? I want LBs and S's, especially SS, so I need to make sure their priorities are higher than anyone else's on defense?

Exactly. Think of the priority slider as that positions area of effect.

Quote: Originally Posted by KBLover

I want the CPU to run the ball more with more success, which should...SHOULD...encourage more desire to run the ball. I need to set the defense to 40 or less in run vs pass?

The CPU will play off of whatever your team is set to. So, if you want them to run the ball more then yes set your defense to defend the run.

Quote: Originally Posted by KBLover

If I want the LBs to be more sack oriented, I put their style to pass rush? If I want them to be more run stop or read, react, and tackle, I need to put them to Coverage?

The position style slider only effects what type of player a team goes after during the offseason. During a game it seems to only effect what kind of animations you see. It does seem to have an effect on simulated stats, but it's pretty subtle. If you set a team to "power" running back, for example, a speedy running back will have a worse average. I feel that is pretty realistic. I usually just keep everything at 50/50, except of QB and then DE/DT/LB depending on if it is a 3/4 or 4/3 scheme.

Remember, I am still testing these things and I did not produce the information myself. However, following these guidelines I am seeing some good results. There are still a few things, such as the running back carry splits, that I need to do some tweaking on to get them correct.

[KBLover]

Excellent. Thanks for the reply.

[byzzzz]

Quote: Originally Posted by tarantism

I posted a lot about this last year but after doing a ton of research I now feel that I understand them better before. I would have really liked to find some developer explanation on these but sadly I doubt any clarity from them will ever be forthcoming. Make no mistake, the difference between having a great franchise experience and a poor one relies on these settings. The coaching schemes are the reason that people say their slider set acts differently during franchise, for example. These settings control way more then I originally thought. Basically what I am going to do is post all of the information that has helped me the most in understanding these settings. I may note that these explanations came from multiple sources, and that all credit goes to those who posted them. I will also say that what follows is what I am using for my 32 franchise, and the results have been outstanding. As you will soon see, these settings have both in game and sim game effects. In addition, the in game effects are more then I ever could have imagined, and they change the way I play the game. Without further ado: One last important note to remember: I would like to mention that on the part of the Madden developers, that last titbit is absolutely genius. When priority gets explained, you will understand better but basically it means that you don't need to go through and change a team's priority sliders before every single game, you can just have the global settings in the file of the team that you are controlling. Absolutely awesome. Run vs. Pass, Played Games: Run vs. Pass, Simmed Games: I can mirror that in my own Madden 12 experience. When you go anything above 60, the passing stats just go crazy. Rodgers and Brady threw something like ~650 passes with the slider at 70. At 60 I felt like they just weren't getting enough, though. What I later discovered is that I simply wasn't using the aggression slider correctly. Better Understanding for Aggression: When I learned this, I realized my huge misunderstanding for what this slider actually does. I had most teams around 10 defensive aggression, and this reflected in my simulated stats, with some offensive players just going absolutely nuts. I also had many teams way low at 10-30 offensive aggression. Basically, I overestimated the weight of this slider on simulated games. On the other hand, without me realizing what I had done, this has having a gigantic effect on my played games. For the longest time I just assumed that this slider would effect how many times a team would throw deep passes and such during simulated games. I know now that it does not do that at all. The next biggie was positional priority. 99% of the community, including myself, just assumed that this meant how likely a team was to go out and draft/sign a player from that position. Thusly, most 32 team control guys simply left it all at 100, not wanting to go through and change them for every team every year and not really caring overall. The truth is that this slider does so much more then just that. Clarity for Priority: Wow! I mean, when I read that it really changed everything. When I started testing it, the results really did seem to show. If this can be mastered (I am still trying to fine tune it) it can really be a game changer. I am sure that most of you can understand why. Once again, the most important part, and the end of the above quote: For a little more clarity, here is someone who was on the right track: And then finally we come to position style sliders. Again I was surprised to find that these have an effect on played games, as well as simulated ones. On the part to simulated games, it's pretty straight forward. For the most part, CPU teams will attempt to draft and sign players who fit the style that you set on the slider. Style Slider and Simulated Games: But once again, this slider works totally different for the games that you play: So it is vastly important to remember that whatever settings you have on YOUR TEAM are the ones that have an effect on the games that you play. This means that the priority and style sliders that you have set under your team's coaching settings have an effect on how BOTH teams play when you enter into a game. Thus, what you need to do it set the other 31 teams position style sliders to how you want them to draft/sign free agents during the offseason. I know this saves me a ton of time because now during FA I only need to worry about bidding on players for my own team and I just kind of let the CPU do it's thing. Then, before the preseason I go through and make sure that everything makes sense. Then, when it comes to the priority/position style of whatever team you decide to play, you need to set them to how you want to see then in game effects play out. For example: For me at least, the above worked as a great template to start on. From there I am still tweaking to try to maximize the realism of my in game experience. Well, I hope that helps shed some light onto this enigma for you guys. I suggest that anybody looking to run a realistic franchise controls all 32 teams and then follows these guidelines for doing the coaching settings. I also suggest that people hoping to have a realistic NFL experience no longer ignore these settings. It's a little more work but the dividends it pays are priceless. I will also note that I am still tweaking my own sets of these, so if people have any suggestions and/or come up on anything helpful in their testing please post it here so that the community can discuss.

Tarantism, your coaching schemes last year were great, also good job on these, can't wait to use them, do you have a list of all the teams, i could look at to print? Also what sliders do you use to play with?

[ghostlight85]

I just tried a franchise game with everything in my coaching scheme set to the middle, and I don't know if it is coincidence or if you are a genius, but it felt like a totally different game. I got destroyed and (mostly) didn't feel it was because of cheap game flaws or anything like that. I need to tweak my sliders if this is going to make as much impact as it looks like, but you sir have piqued my interest.

What sliders do you use? I have been using blueninja's sliders with a couple minor tweaks, but still at all madden level.

I usually am able to control the cpu on the ground and bottle up even the best runners. I give up a lot of yardage through the air, but generate a solid pass rush with well timed blitzes and such. In the first quarter everything seemed relatively normal, other than some interesting animation changes in the pass rush that led to more realistic development of plays from what I could tell. However, after rushing for 5 yards on 6 carries in the first quarter (I audibled to an overload blitz anticipating a toss and blew it up for a 4 yard loss) Chris Johnson absolutely torched me in the second quarter. He was darting around the line like I haven't seen on a football game since the days of NFL2k5 and it's cpu player profiles. He made cutbacks that I've NEVER seen the cpu even try on a madden game.

Like I said, maybe this was coincidence, but I've played a lot of madden over the years and this game truly felt different to me. This definitely warrants further exploration.