As of last night's spin, I've had 3 of my 4 teams finish the regular season on the new engine. Here are my thoughts:

New to the Engine:

1) Punt returns are absurd (although I think JD knows this). I see my PR make a huge return and roll my eyes rather than cheer, because it happens **** new every time, and there's nothing opposing teams can do against it, other than implement no-punt offenses.

2) Sacks are over the top. Offensive lines full of talented 80+ players across the board give up 10+ sacks in a game, frequently versus underwhelming talent. High rated linemen need to play that way more frequently. Even the best will give up a play or two, but not at the current level (one team finished with 9 sacks per game average in L10!).

3) Score differentials are out of control. Every league I'm in is seeing massively polarized scores. All of my teams have finished the regular season scoring the highest points for and two of them also finished with the fewest points against in the league--by wide margins. In L10 I averaged 60 points per game to 11 points surrendered. In L8, 52 to 11. In L2--though by far the worst of my teams by a significant amount--still finished 42 to 20.

Part of this is unavoidable; the talent gap on a free-to-play game versus professional teams in the NFL isn't even remotely comparable. However, this can be mitigated by tamping down the punt return game and allowing subs in blow-outs.

For the most part, my teams have benefited from these changes, so I can't even imagine how frustrating it must be for those who've especially suffered from them.

Continuing issues:

4) Passing game is too unpredictable and subject to flukes, with a seeming far greater emphasis placed on RNG than on the players involved.

Thanks for your thoughts -



I do have a punt return fix running in MFN-1 that I think resolves most of the punt return issues. That will be in the next game engine, although I'd like to get a few more features cooked in before releasing it.



This has been one of those pendulum swinging issues that still has yet to settle, I agree that it is currently too far in this direction. I'm not sure if it's as simple as turning the pass blocking back in favor of the OL or if there is more logic that needs to be given to the blitz pickup or ... ? We'll keep playing with it, though.



In the previous game engine there was logic that caused the leading team to start to relax if they were up by 3 scores, that was removed in the 0.3.1 engine. I agree that giving the ability to pull your starters when ahead would help mitigate that but there will always be owners who want to run up the score and won't do that ... still, that is something I'd like to add. And you mention the punt returns being out of control; you can check out the games in MFN-1 to see the result of the current punt return algorithm, there are still some pretty high scoring blowouts but nothing like the 60 points per game you reference. (Not that we ever had that level of scoring in MFN-1)

Another issue I think that I'm addressing soon is the ability to fill your roster with top-tier talent all the way down the depth chart. I'm going to make it harder to retain that kind of a roster if you're able to build it.



I weakened the passing game (see #2 as well) to try to attack your #3 issue, I noticed that most of the insanely high scores were from teams with heavy passing.

As you watch the games I'm open to other perspectives on how to solve some of these issues. I'm always trying to find the pain points and tweaking things based on user feedback - so threads like these are very welcome.

How do you plan on implementing this? I'm certainly in favor of increasing parity, but as an owner of some loaded rosters I'd like to plan ahead.

The first stage players will begin to become unhappy if they are not the starter but feel they should be, or if they are inactive and they feel they should be active. If they are unhappy enough, they won't be willing to sign a renegotiation.

The second stage will be players holding out if their salaries are not up to par with similar players in the league, forcing you to pay them their demands, or if you cannot meet their demands, trade them.

Those would each be different game engine updates. I'd like to get the first stage in the next engine but need to probably let that play out a full season in beta first. It might be the kind of thing where the first stage gets implemented in terms of you seeing what the players' attitudes are but them not making decisions based on those attitudes until the next engine release, just to get feedback from a wider sample set than the beta league provides.

I may be in the minority, but I do not like this at all.

1. Having players hold out should be way, way, way down the line.

2. There are many, many other things that can be done to improve this game before either of these items are implemented.
#1 for me would be a tie between the ability to create a rule to pull (or put back in) your starters, and the ability to run true "drain clock" or "hurry up" offenses.
If both of these items were implemented it would go a long way to reducing some of the lopsided scores, as least for my teams.

I think items like this should take priority over adding code trying to get our players to refuse to re-sign (or play) for our teams.

Your items in #2 are definitely in the docket as higher priority items.

There are really three tracks of development on the game: 1) The game engine (what actually happens during a game), 2) The free agent/player progression engine (what drives player decisions and development), and 3) The user interface. I usually have 1 or 2 items in the game engine at a time, those take longer to build and test just because it takes time to see what those changes actually do to the game. There's not a lot that happens with the progression engine but that also can take time, so those ideas are small tweaks and let the test engine play it out. I've been working pretty extensively on the user interface in an effort to bring the back-end code up to 2015 standards (if you'll believe it the game began development back in 2006 and most of the current user interface code was written back then, one of the big things I've been working on is the UI for mobile devices and am hoping to roll that out in the next month or two). Much of the updates to the UI will also make it easier to add additional game planning options that you mention, so some of that is kind of on hold pending the new UI. (To note, the new UI will have very few changes to the desktop version, but there will be some cool new features added as well as a handful of UI suggestion items).

One item that I have noticed on some sacks where the QB is bolting toward the sideline is that linemen who have no one to block will run with the QB but not try to engage defenders. I'm sure it won't drop sack numbers significantly but here is a sample of what I mean:

http://fakepigskin.myfootballnow.com/watch/952#165459

#77 is just standing there and not trying to block either defender.

http://fakepigskin.myfootballnow.com/watch/952#165469

Same deal - 2 o-linemen sprint with the QB but do not engage the defenders who are bearing down on the QB

I don't disagree with your suggestions; I would love to have control over more areas of gameplay myself. At the same time, most casual players won't even touch those options at all, rendering those improvements to a smaller population. Additionally, if the leagues are top heavy with no talent available in the free agent pool, many new/casual players may decide to quit.

I think a good plan of action for now is as follows:

1. Allow us to set expected playing times for individual players. Improve coach logic so that coaches better determine which players to put in, using a formula that takes into account the score, fatigue, placement on the depth chart, and "GM-ordained" (provide a default is none is given) playing time. Basically, this would cause coaches to put rookies and backups in during blowouts.
2. Introduce player moods regarding playing time (only after we are able to have more control over play time).

For what it's worth, I led the league in scoring in all three leagues using a run-attack offense.

Here are some ways to -constructively- reduce obscene passing, in my opinion, without making it a total RNG crapshoot:

1) Predictable passing should be punished more. There's a team in L2 who has literally not run the ball at all for two seasons now, with a 100 QB rating on his primary passer each time. This would never work in the NFL because the QB would be crippled by the pass rush and safeties/LBs would never hesitate or need to mug the line.

One potential solution would be to add a 'rushing effectiveness metric' that would determine how focused the defense is on committing to stop the run versus the pass that would be dynamic throughout the game. Every pass would lower the metric, and every time you rush the ball would add points to the rushing effectiveness metric, with the amount of points contingent on the success of the run. The game situation would also adjust the metric, ie if you're up 17 points early in the fourth quarter, the rushing effectiveness metric will be dropping as the defense naturally begins to expect the pass in that situation. The lower the rushing effectiveness metric is, the higher the bonus to the entire defense's rolls when defending the pass, but the more vulnerable they'll become to the run (though to a lesser extent).

2) Make lock-down corners more lock-down. 100-rated CBs--the Shermans and Revis' of the sim--get picked on all the time.

3) Reduce tackle-breaking immediately after the catch or improve safety angles (or both). I score a ton of TDs off intermediate catches where the WR (with 10-20 break tackle skill) breaks the single coverage tackle and scores. Either reducing their ability to do this or having safeties immediately set a path to intercept the player's path downfield would help curb some of the success of passing.



+1 to all this, especially the "drain clock" and "hurry up" offenses. I definitely should have remembered to add that in my suggestions, so thanks for bringing it up as a solution!



The pull starters logic should start with a default 'mercy' setting (after +X score starting in X quarter) that the user can then adjust.