I have been battling with this update for a while and wasn't sure if it would get to a stable point early enough to put it into the beta leagues, but it finally stabilized enough that I'm ready to put it in. I was expecting it to take another week or two when setherick asked the other day if there would be any more updates before the playoffs.

So here's the update:

* WR Juking - WRs will now stutter-step when covered man-to-man to try to lose their DBs, and the DBs may lose them based on their M2M skills.
* The QB is now going to decide to throw to his receiver earlier in the pattern, and should be more likely to throw to an alternate target in his field of view. FOV and experience are primary influencers on whether he will throw to an alternate receiver.
* Pass throw-aways are now identified as such instead of as a targeted receiver.
* Reducing the probability that the QB will throw into tight coverage and increasing the impact of tight coverage
* DL interceptions should be significantly reduced

I'm very interested to hear how it feels and especially if there seems to be any power imbalance with this update. I want to work through any issues with this patch but unless there are significant unintended consequences this will probably be the primary update for the next game engine version.

Really excited to try this out. Thanks JDB!

The QB is now going to decide to throw to his receiver earlier in the pattern, and should be more likely to throw to an alternate target in his field of view. FOV and experience are primary influencers on whether he will throw to an alternate receiver


I was wondering if there was any reference to what causes the qb to decide to throw to his receiver earlier in the pattern ?

Was this update in the other Beta league for last nights game?

The trigger to make the decision is earlier - previously it was when the WR got to the end of the route, now it's as he makes his last cut in the route.

No, looks like I made a mistake in deploying it and the previous beta version was still running. It should run in tonight's MFN-1 and tomorrow's BETA-87 games.

I'll add plays for my examples as I can grab them. It's before 7am and I'm on my cell phone, so sorry for the initial lack of concrete evidence.



I'm guessing the graphical representation of this is a player stop-start or a quick direction shift. If so, I noticed this more in the backs than the WRs.



Holy mackerel. So I saw on more than one occasion that Washington's QB had the ball out of his hands lightning quick... Like hike, quick 1-step drop, throw.

It did seem like the QB was making throwing decisions sooner, but there were cases it felt like it was too soon in comparison to the previous version. Let's put it this way: there was one play I saw by the Washington QB that almost looked like a designed QB outside run. Heh.



This might need a little work. There were a few sideline throws that were still marked as to a receiver when there wasn't one in the area, and a few downfield throws marked as throw-aways that could've been just overthrown. Depends on the decision logic there.



Now was this a tweak to throws in traffic (multiple defenders in the area), or a single defender draped on a receiver? Because I didn't notice a huge difference either way. Maybe a slight tweak downward in amount of catches in traffic, but not enough to say this worked.



Not sure here. The picks against me were from an RDE and an MLB, but they felt right for the throws made.



So I'll say this... I know it was against my defense, but I felt like the Washington QB played like the high Accuracy, high Intelligence QB he was supposed to be. Not perfect, but very efficient. Whereas my QBs played mediocre and abysmal, more in line with their respective ratings.

I'll also say it was amusing to see 3 different QB passes that resulted in a sky-high ball representation. Heh.

A one game sample size is too little to say that this was a success or not, especially with my notoriously bad defense.

But I'd say we're trending better.

I truly try not to be overly critical...but this update is EFFING AWFUL! No further explanation needed. Was this really even tested or a test game watched??? This is the kind of update that would really make me consider leaving this game after all this time. I'd love to paste a few examples, but it was the WHOLE game!

General observations. I don't have time to do extensive film review. There are some good things in this updates, but there are many, many holes that concern me:


1) Passes to deep receivers are more powerful. - Hooray! More stupid offensive builds that send the WR deep every play.

2) Passes to RBs are now ****. - The QB throws the ball too quickly, and doesn't allow the RB to actually run his route. This means the RB gets the ball when he's still behind the LOS.

3) Hot reads to RBs are worse. - For the same reason for #2, the RB can't get in position for the hot read and gets hit behind the LOS.

4) Quick hooks are probably worthless now too. - They were great before because the WR hit the end of the route and turned up field, now the QB throws the ball immediately into the route. This doesn't give the WR a chance to separate. Although, they may actually work against zone defenses now, so maybe there's that.

5) I GOT AN EFFING OVERUSE PENALTY RUNNING A GL DEFENSE AGAINST A GL OFFENSIVE SET? THIS IS STUPID! WE WERE TOLD THAT SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AND IF IT'S A NEW THING, I WILL QUIT BECAUSE THERE ARE 5 GL DEFENSIVE PLAYS - ONLY 1 THAT WORKS AGAINST THE PASS - AND THERE ARE 50 GL OFFENSIVE PLAYS: https://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/watch/7226#1306225 (Just look at Cincy's last drive where one got called every time Cincy went to the 221 set.)

I may take the notification out because it does fire sometimes even when there is no penalty applied (because the offense is in, as this case, a goal line formation).