Warrior General Games

The Passing Game:

1) Pump Fake is too effective, the DB coverage slider should have some influence as to rather the DB is playing the man or the ball; penalty to catch fake and/or creative routes with a bonus to ignore pump fakes for playing man and the reverse for playing ball.

2) OL/DL, as stated in numerous posts above there's too many pancakes/reverse pancakes leading to too many hurries/sacks. As is, there's no reason to pass anywhere in the sim, backs are seldom TFL (because they can run thru 6 blocking/blocked dots at the LOS) and passing introduces three new failures; interception, incomplete and sack.

a) reduce the number of sacks/hurries by reducing panckes/reverse pancakes.
b) increase pushing and pulling of blocks, collapsing pockets and opening holes/lanes.
c) make running backs run through holes not through players, I can't tell you how hilarous it is to see "surge" the cross LOS untouched SA go off while the RB is buried under so many dots I can't even see him.

3) Defensive/ST pathing, as noted above is wack.... watching everyone on the field do S waves simultaneously is ridiculous.

Passing game needs improvement.

*) Too many hurries. Not a big deal overall but probably better if a single DL isn't able to break through a double team OL so easily (3 DL vs 5 OL shouldn't mean that all 3 DL win every single time)

*) Passing should be a gradient of difficulty. 20 yard passes should not be the same difficulty as 5 yard passes. There should be less pass deflection capability on short passes and greater deflection capabilities on long passes. And interceptions should increase for long passes and decrease for short passes.

*) QB needs a brain. If a WR says "I'm Open" and the QB is looking right at him, don't check down to another double covered receiver and toss to him instead. Or if a receiver is wide open with nobody in sight, don't just sit on the ball until a DT or DE comes knocking on your door and then just toss it to whomever you happen to be looking at at the moment (I think this is a major reason for the 1st problem I listed as well). There should be a way to say, he is wide open and so just hit him. And it definitely isn't that 100% open receiver slider on the QB cause if it is, it doesn't work. Or rather it does stupid things like toss it to a HB 5 yards in the backfield instead of the open WR 7 yards ahead that has nobody covering him.

*) Add bootleg plays or something. Allow the pocket to move. Right now a QB stays in the pocket and doesn't scramble enough or if he does, he doesn't "unscramble" to toss the ball to a wide open receiver straight in front of him after that. Allow the pocket to move and free up pressure on the QB.

*) Allow better WR hot route spotting. The WR's who are uncovered tend to not sit in a hole in the zone and instead run into a zoned area instead. If a WR is in an uncovered spot and his route takes him into a place that is being covered, have him stop to catch the ball instead. No receiver in the NFL runs into coverage if he is 5+ yards and in an open spot already.

Originally posted by sevenbgbn
If you want it to be realistic, you need to look at the ability to make players. It's easier for me to make a speed DE with crazy speed and not sacrifice anything major for him to be that way. If I make a CB with crazy speed he probably won't be able to jump or have high vision. It should either be harder to make an unrealistic build, or easier to make more well rounded players. Until there is realism in that I think it's tough to make a realistic game like everyone wants. Maybe positional attribute caps or something, IDK.

Actually positional attribute caps or rather a "different softcap" for an attribute based on position isn't a bad idea. Instead of 49 being the softcap always, make 49 the softcap for primary attributes, 45 the softcap for secondary, and 41 the softcap for all others or something like that.

Originally posted by LordEvil
NOt sure if its been mentioned but at the peewee level Fakes are way over powered. Even in double coverage pump fakes are faking out both defenders leaving Wrs one on one. They fire way too many times a game. The Defenders come to a complete stop pretty much while the Wrs run 10 yds past the faked player.

Also agree on penalties, seriously we don't need them.

I like having the penalties in place actually as it adds a bit of randomness to the game. I think though that the susceptibility of penalties should be based on a players confidence (it might already I don't know), morale, and stamina.

As for the pump fakes, I think the real problem with that is the "complete stop". I've never in the NFL seen a pump faked defender stop. They tend to run off in the wrong direction instead. How about instead of stopping the defenders, you have them temporarily run in the wrong direction for a split second making them have to catch up while the ball is in the air to that receiver. Basically adds like a +2 yard cushion to the pass or something depending on the speed difference of the 2 players.

The passive/aggressive sending should have a factor as well. 100% aggressive should throw you way off course and 100% passive should have little effect.

Originally posted by dbrewington
I 100% agree.. Passing needs a lot of work. A QB shouldn't go 6-30 if he's one of the best QB's in the league..

Something amazing needs to happen for a single completion... [/QUOTE


This...

I dunno what happened this season, but passing shouldn't be a complete joke at any level (if the builds are right).

I think most of the Pro/WL community wants a couple of things:

1) Fixing catch fake/pump fake to activate on changes in a route (rather than randomly sending a player in the wrong direction and causing easy TDs).

2) A change or nerf to spin.

Those two changes should help reign in the crazy offenses at the WL level without impacting the lower leagues too much.

My teams had only a few troubles in the passing game this season. We gave up a lot of sacks and hurries, but in the 30s it shouldn't be uncommon to find OTs with Agility over 60, I would think, since this seems to my inexperienced eye to be the minimum necessary to stop a Speed 90/Agility 90 DE. I'd rather have them with Agility 70+, tbh.

But, I've got only 2 on the two rosters with Agility 62 and none higher than that. Some are sub 50. I think few people know how to build pass blocking OTs and we shouldn't ask the sim designers to change their models to permit our collective bad judgment.

Originally posted by Fumanchuchu
And penalties.

Just get rid of them, they really add nothing to the game but frustration.

I would second this.

Originally posted by TaySC
ST pathing.

I have seen some very good returnmen that seem to almost always run straight into the gunner, when if they use their high VIS to make even the slightest adjustment to their routes, they gain a ton more yards on the return. It seems like the only time this really happens is when you play a CPU team, but a great returnman should not always be tackled by the first man downfield.

/2 cents

This is a big one, also think that the pump fake issue is getting a little out of hand. Good CB's are being burned unrealistically. I can see them giving up some catches, but not to be 10 yards off of the receiver and not able to catch up on a run to the endzone.

Coverage on special teams needs tons of work.

These are just my thoughts....The O-AI is too in-consistent. I use the same game plan yet I pass 70 to 80 percent of the time. I am not getting beat out, most of the time I am in the lead. I set my playbook to 80 percent run 20 percent pass and it still 60-70 percent pass 30-40 percent pass. I set one RB to get more carries and the other RB gets them instead. My second playoff game everything played out right, then my next playoff game it went right back to the opposite. The other thing is how long it takes the QB to read the defense. I know my players were lvl 14 but my QB would watch a wr get open then look another way. Often times there would be multiple open players and he would just look around until he got sacked. 10-15 seconds in the pocket often times was the average...thats just crazy!

In no particular order:

- OL x DL interaction (too many things to list here)
- QB behavior (both in scrambling and target choosing)
- coverage (no more throwing to triple coverage, higher chance for PD if well covered)
- defensive pathing
- returner "super elusive" behavior should be elusive again
- timeout/out of bounds logic should be, well, logical

These are the main things I remembered instantly. I'll just add a bonus since it is sim related, but not detailed at all:
- GET RID OF STUPIDLY HIGH SCORES. 21-14 is nice. 99-90 is not.

http://goallineblitz.com/game/forum_thread.pl?thread_id=3835684

One of several threads on the subject of the D AI inserting random un-called plays. The difference here is that it was with a team that had an ultra-simplistic 4 input D AI (all created plays). If there is a test where you should be able to identify why this happens, I'd assume that a scenario such as this would be close to it.

Have Bort or anyone else gotten any closer to figuring out why this happens and how to prevent it?

I'll temper my comments from the outset with saying I'm pretty much only familiar with WL sim this season.

- Slight reduction in Spin's effectiveness... nothing dramatic, but it's a bit overpowered right now
- Passing overpowered... particularly catch/pump fakes. Defenders reactions should be more realistic than "stop in tracks" except in the few instances where that makes sense... should head in direction of fake, not come to a stop, unless the fake is on like a hook route, etc. (sounds like passing may instead be underpowered at lower levels)
- O-Line morale seems like it's getting hit hard even with comparable/greater conf to D-Line counterparts... whereas D-Line's morale seems nearly infallible unless they're completely overmatched. Have we confirmed AOI is working for O-Line (and WRs) just like it does for the players they're lining up across from?
- In general... more "movement" of the winning/losing blocker/defender, less pancake/revcake. It's too binary currently. May also be a result of D-Line players seeming to "warp" sometimes when they break a block.
- If defense stacks the line, it almost seems like it's harder to tackle the ball carrier. Could be single O-Line person blocking multiple defenders... else seems like defenders don't "get through" into the backfield the same way an RB will just run right through a pile of 6-7 combined O/D players. There's supposed to be a slowdown effect when RB goes through a tight area like that... I think if that's the case, the slowdown needs a buff... way too easy to just waltz through and then off to the races on short yardage plays.
- Ball carrier still not adequately avoiding players being blocked on the outside... D player eventually breaks block or makes a tackle as ball carrier goes past, whereas by allowing just a little more breathing room ball carrier would have been in the clear.
- Desperately need ability to run a scrimmage against our own team to (a) test our AI options, and (b) test sim bugs/behavior/equipment/etc. Limit to one or two "saved sims" per team if data storage is an issue... to run another self-scrimmage you have to wipe/overwrite results of a previous one.
- Better defensive pathing... this is a tricky one, but too many players taking the "pylon" angle of attack, even when play is happening at opponent's 20 yard line, etc. It's like, if you have an unblocked teammate in the vicinity of the ball carrier, take a more aggressive angle towards the ball carrier. If ball carrier is running free with no unblocked defenders within 5 yards, then take the more conservative "TD prevention" angle of attack. Ideally, the better the player's vision, they better they are at making this determination, but that could be muddying things too much.

That's all I got off top of my head.

Originally posted by MikeInFl
Why do rushers seem to run right at CB and FS/SS that have blockers on them.

+1 I can't stand it when on a sweep my HB runs either right over the WR/CB or so close to them that the CB makes the tackle. CB's with 25 strength and 25 tackling should not be making tackles every time against a 68+ strength HB when he is also being blocked by a WR. The HB should at least move far enough away from the engaging players to not even have the CB get an attempt at a tackle.