Warrior General Games

Idea: put a limit to the amount of morale loss, say 50 for example. There are players running around with 20 morale that look like they aren't even playing the game. That way the player has a chance to regain his morale and or the team to regain its morale. Kinda impossible to do that once you hit that low number.

Why not separate the two into a "Momentum Bar" and Player Morale?

Originally posted by rangeroak
Idea: put a limit to the amount of morale loss, say 50 for example. There are players running around with 20 morale that look like they aren't even playing the game. That way the player has a chance to regain his morale and or the team to regain its morale. Kinda impossible to do that once you hit that low number.

Or......just make morale easier to recover.

IDEA: Change "Morale" to "Momentum"

Have a fixed amount of Momentum for every game, split evenly between the two teams at the start of the game (200 Momentum points; each team starts with 100 points).

For every Momentum-changing event, a team will either give Momentum points to the opposing team, or take points away from the opposing team. No team can exceed the total amount of Momentum assigned to the game (e.g. no team can go above 200 points in the example provided above). No team can drop below zero Momentum points.

Teams can raise their floor and ceiling levels (minimum and maximum Momentum points allowed) by using different boosts.

The effect of Momentum is:

Momentum assigned to the team, combined with the Confidence of an individual player, acts as a modifier to an individual player's Stamina.

Example A (formula is just an example):

Team A has 120 out of a possible 200 Momentum points (plus 20).
QB1 from Team A has 49 Confidence.
QB1 from Team A gets a (20*(49/100))% boost to Stamina for the next play.
QB1 from Team A gets a 9.8% boost to Stamina for the next play.

Example B (formula is just an example):

Team B has 80 out of a possible 200 Momentum points (minus 20).
QB2 from Team B has 49 Confidence.
QB2 from Team B gets a (-20*(51/100))% boost to Stamina for the next play.
QB2 from Team B gets a -10.2% hit to Stamina for the next play.

A "saving throw" is exactly what CON should do. Otherwise, why have CON at all

I won't address the details of implementation, but rather the over-arching philosophy that (should) inform the mechanics:


Defining Morale (momentum or momentum+will power)

Is morale simply a feeling good/feeling bad about recent events as a "momentum" sort of quality, or does it reflect a broader "I can dig deep and be a champion" sort of mental energy and will power as well?

It seems to me as though many folks assume it is the former, and this is a part of why many folks are dismayed when their dot rushes for 350 yards and 6 TDs but has abysmal morale at the end of the game. If morale is more of a mental energy measure, then this might make sense...he left it all on the field that day.

fwiw, I have always assumed it to be more of the latter, and as such the current morale system has never really seemed wrong to me (though it is unbalanced in certain cases...offense vs defense in particular).

I prefer the "mental energy" model, but the important thing is to make sure that there is a coherent guiding philosophy to morale and that the GLB populace understands it. In particular, the "mental energy" model supports a per-play decrement to morale rather then a simple swing based on individual and team events...again, I think this is more inherently balanced.


Feedback Loops
One thought in terms of balancing morale...any sort of self-reinforcing feedback looped (aka the "morale spiral") can be inherently imbalancing and lead to more blowouts, and two flurries of sacks and interceptions. While these should occur from time to time, I do think any system ought to have a safety net of sorts....for instance a player should perhaps be immune to further morale loss for a short period after suffering 2 consecutive morale damaging plays (an OT for instance needs a bit of a "floor" to prevent him from becoming a worthless rag doll after two sacks, simply for game balance purposes). Something should probably be done to help calm down iterative losses.


Results of poor morale
Should a player simply take a hit to some set of attributes, or should there be a qualitative effect to their play? For instance, should WRs just stop trying to block after getting tossed to the ground by CBs after a few tries? This might help prevent some of the spirals (not sure how to implement this at every position).


Offense vs Defense
It seems that defense has an across the board edge at the moment...this should be fixed, obviously.



I actually like how morale works in general right now, i am not sure the whole system needs revision....but it does need some balancing at the very least.

Good Luck

edit: I'll shut up, this is for test server issues, I don't play there, feel free to delete mods.

So then, there will be some morale saving throw vs. individual confidence for one-on-one events, and a saving throw vs. cumulative/team morale for team events?

One thing I would like to see is dynamic ranges in terms of morale loss/gains against different quality opponents. It doesn't make sense to get the same amount of morale when scoring a TD against a team that is "better" as you would against a cupcake team.

I do a bit of coaching in real life and when our team plays against one of the better teams in the league, everything is enhanced. When we score, it feels better and the players get more pumped. This works both in terms of gain as well as loss. When a cupcake team scores on us, it almost seems to hit us harder because we know we are better then that.

Granted this could all be a very biased view, but I have seen this kind of thing in other RL teams as well.. Just some thoughts to add to the pile.

Good stuff in this thread.

Honestly, I'd just take morale out and use confidence to bring up the bottom range of various rolls... basically make confidence consistency. This seems like a lot of work for a system that, though realistic, makes games less competitive.

Originally posted by rangeroak
Idea: put a limit to the amount of morale loss, say 50 for example. There are players running around with 20 morale that look like they aren't even playing the game. That way the player has a chance to regain his morale and or the team to regain its morale. Kinda impossible to do that once you hit that low number.

The level of the Confidence attribute should help determine how low their morale can actually sink. A guy with 60 Confidence shouldn't sink all that low but can be lower than playing at an optimum level.

Why so complicated? Make it a simple, teamwide bonus or penalty for big plays. Max bonus or penalty is between -1 and +1% for teamwide attributes. Boom done,next issue. Just need to define big plays. This removes the morale spiraling we see bc it has a cap on both sides and isnt overly powerful.

how about -1 for a bad pass by the QB??

Originally posted by notthegint
Honestly, I'd just take morale out and use confidence to bring up the bottom range of various rolls... basically make confidence consistency. This seems like a lot of work for a system that, though realistic, makes games less competitive.

Originally posted by 5thyearcock
Why so complicated? Make it a simple, teamwide bonus or penalty for big plays. Max bonus or penalty is between -1 and +1% for teamwide attributes. Boom done,next issue. Just need to define big plays. This removes the morale spiraling we see bc it has a cap on both sides and isnt overly powerful.

These two things are great thoughts.

A) Why make the system so complicated?

B) if you have to make the system complicated, then it needs to scale by quarter. In the first 3 quarters of any football game, a team isn't completely demoralized because the other team makes a big play, or drives down the field and scores. If you're going to implement a system that has a morale penalty for just about every single event on the field, then it needs to scale by quarter as to be more in line with what would actually happen in a game.

Morale regen has to be fast. Just because an OLineman got revcaked, doesn't mean he's going to hold his head until he comes back off the bench.

Finally, Morale effects shouldn't linger for an entire game. Meaning, halftime they should be reset, then at Q3 they should be rest say 80% or so heading into Q4.

couple small things:
-remove morale loss from blocking. It's just dumb. An OLineman's entire life is spent learning to block and play in the trenches. They shouldn't lose morale because a defender beat them on a play. And also, due to the obscene amount of revcakes in the game still, the Dline is at an extremely unfair advantage.
-remove/specialize some of the SA's and/or VA's, like aura of intim. That should be a LB only SA. Big hit, etc. as well. The defense shouldn't be allowed to run these types of SA's/VA's etc on every player on the field. Also, get rid of VA's like fearsome. Their are 5 offensive lineman + a TE and/or FB/HB. That's potentially 8 players in max protect. Yet, if you run this on one of the positions that blitz, the QB automatically feels hurried? Shouldn't the blitz itself have to do that?


Finally, keep this in mind. Just because an event happens on the field, doesn't mean it has to be accounted for in morale loss/gain. If you think about, there are at least 12 events happening at any given time on the field. Let's assume that 180 total plays happen in the course of a game. That's 9,360 standard "events" to account for +/- special events like td's, picks, etc. etc.. That's a lot of events that could have either a positive or negative impact.