Originally posted by Bort
How? It is supposed to know you want to call a different play somehow when Michael Vick comes in as opposed to Dan Marino? It doesn't know what you are thinking. Casual league teams, I can see, but for the "MY TACTICS ARE THE LAW AND IT BETTER FOLLOW THEM" leagues, we can't be guessing what you want.
I'm still ttrying o think about that, but my guess would be bonuses to players attributes based on a vision checkdown list for 'impact' players that make a difference, with these bonuses growing through a game like the 'repeat play penalty'.
Presently you have autoadjust, which means a system like this is already in place. The Offense autoadjusts and runs plays that have worked before.
The Defense has the same. So this means the sim can keep track of things.
So, who not also addinto autoadjust a check down.
QB, HB and TE are really the primary problems. Yiou can switch out a B and the game runs completely different, but the Defense can;t plan for that. Now they can, with play tagging, but that means that Defenses/owners/game planners have to do another boatload of work to scout and plan something that actual football players just 'know'. They know what happens with personnel substitution and what is likely to come.
So, Defensive players make a vision check, these are based on players vision but with a bonus to everyone on the field based on the MLB's Defensive General SA. If you make the check, you recognise the personnel substitution and you get bonuses to reading the play (vision) which result in slight speed bonuses so that you'll get to the play faster.
Each play, players do a check down based on the positions that have a custom depth chart that can truly affect the way the game plays. Now defenses act more 'intelligently' without the Defensive Coordinator having to go through a team, tag all the skill players with various tags, create an even more in depth defensive ai, where all these tags are noted, introduce significantly more potential bugs in their AI, all just so that the players act smarter when they are on the field.
This intelligence should be sim based IMO, not owner based. You've already set up a system where the offense and defense can not react appropriately. They have to set a game plan and hope it works. Sure, more options to setting up the game plan makes it more likely to work, but each new level of granularity is offloading a significant amount of work onto owners. Running a team now is like having a job. It takes up entirely too much time for a _game_.
Both offense and defense should be able to make their 'reads' before a snap, and to some extent after the snap, and adjust or receive bonuses to how they act just based on this.
For example... Defensive players get three options, Run/Pass/Balanced(no focus) you set this for the entire game even though we all know what you expect is actually on a per down basis. An immense amount of difference could likely be made in the sim just allowing players to set individual tactics that are more intelligent.
This may even be a better plan because it gives players something significantly more involved to do as being an Agent only at poresent is hugely boring. If instead the 'ai' was written on a per player basis, then there is some involvement on the Agents/Players side AND a good agent will get better results then a bad agent because presently the only thing separating good from bad is has anyone actually showed them how to build or invited them to the right private forum?
If Players were able to create a set of inputs on their own for their behaviours, and you gave them pre-defined options to choose from as well, then maybe their dots would look and act more intelligently in the Sim itself. Without forcing huge amounts of work into a single point.
For Example, a MLB.....
He could create tactics inputs for first down,
Second and short, second and medium, second and long, third and short, third and medium, third and long, fourth and short, and fourth and anything over 2-3 yards.
The tactics he set could be things like, Run focused (gives a bonus to spotting the run and making the tackle) Pass Focused, He gives a cushion at the line to read the play and see if he has a coverage assignment, if not, he gets a bonus to pass rushing or what not. Screen Defense, he gets a bonus to recognise the screen and the ability to actually move into the position to defend it properly, etc.
Something.. anything... But increasing the complexity for the owners as a substitute for good basic Sim logic/ai is getting to be far too much.
As I and others have said, its getting to the point where its a full time job to be able to maintain competitiveness. Thats great, if we were real coaches and players and getting paid, but we're instead often paying quite a bit monthly to play.
EDIT to add -- Heck, you could also add in a set of options for the player based specifically on the personnel in the game. Where the player defines the priority of their reads (The MLB again for example may read QB first, then HB then TE) and if they make their vision check, based on the Players in their reads you give them the ability to define their players behaviour in addition to their normal player AI based on a per down model. So, Second and short, the player already has maybe set himself to think 'run' but he has in his personnel on the field AI, some additional modifiers so if on Second and Short they pu the 'rushing' QB in, he's already set to the run, but he may get an additional bonus if he makes the read because he has set himself to run defense as well if the rushing QB is in. Likewise, he may be set to run on second and short, but if he sees the pass catching/sweep HB in, he may have himselfself still set to run focus, but with some sweep/screen protection, so he's on the lookout for and reacts better to these plays.
This adds additional levels of the meta game as well as teams can call plays that trick a defense into thinking something and maybe getting something else. The defense could do the same because presumably this sort of system would work for the offense which has its own version of player AI's based on down but also on the alternate depth chart positions.
This would essentially help create audibles.
BTW -- I think a players 'designation' should be based on hidden attributes which are just a tally of what they do on every down they play. And then the 'ratios' of these actions are defined and their player type automatically assigned to them. These modify an initial tag created just by looking at the attributes on the player that help define what they may be more prone to. And maybe allow a scouting override where each team can define what they think a player is (The defensive coordinator can 'tag' the opposing teams players through the scouting tool and all players on his team will recognise the change if they select the 'Use Coaches Judgment' drop down option for their behaviours. So they would have, Use Default (This is based on players Attributes), Use Learned (Which uses the tallied scores based on what the player has done over their career) or Use Coaches Judgment which uses the D-Coord/Owners tagging of the players.
