Warrior General Games

Give players the option to do more in their playbooks than in their DAI. The DAI and the D Playbook are a confusing mess of tags and possibilities. This idea gets rid of that. It is more work up front, but much easier to change as needed.

For players who like the current system, load the existing AIs and the existing playbooks.

1) The Playbook.

Okay, for starters, we are going to need more than a single dropdown menu on the play selection sheet. We need one for down, one for distance, and one for formation (the existing one).

Down Selection

This will have Default - 1st - 2nd - 3rd/4th as options.

Distance Selection

This will have Default - V. Short - Short - Medium - Long - Very Long as options.

Formation Selection

This will have the existing formation options.

The Default Setting

Rather than have to set every possible eventuality, you can select a "default" setting in case the specific instance is left with no plays in it. No need to over micro-manage.

Example: You don't care what down it is, but you care that it is short-yardage and they are using the spread formation? Set it to [Default][Short][4WR Spread] and choose your play call.

Minimum requirements to save a playbook

Currently you need two plays per formation to save your playbook. The current requirement would be at least two plays in each "default" setting for each formation-type. Anything else that is left blank will default up based on formation then distance then down.

Play tags

Existing play tags would be ignored entirely. If you put it in as a D that can be called in a situation, it will call the play or plays based on what plays you put in for that situation. You will still be able to set the play to be called more or less often by clicking the blue bars to increase/decrease the frequency of calling that play from that situation.

However, the existing play tags will come into effect based on the Def AI.

AI

Almost everything will exist in the playbook. The AI will be used for the following:

determining distance tagging

Here you determine what the playbook will consider V. Short, Short, Medium, Long, and Very Long for the distances. Maybe you've got "very short" plays set up to stop the easy inside run and you want that setting to be less than a yard for most teams? No problem. Say you are now up against a team that will run the ball inside on anything less than 3 yards... instead of adjusting your entire playbook, you can just set the very short distance to 3 yards. If you don't want to be so predictable, you can make the adjustment in your down specific settings in the playbook instead.

determining big lead, losing big setting

This will help determine when your AI will make adjustments (if any).

situational adjustments

This will be the bulk of where you make minor adjustments to the playcalling.

Example:
Big Lead 4th Quarter. Options: Increase Blitz % [Y/N], Increase Zone % [Y/N], Increase "Long" plays % [Y/N], etc.

This will make a universal adjustment to the play call settings to give more weight to plays that are tagged that way in your AI.

These settings can be turned off to prevent any situational adjustments, or turned on to permit situational adjustments (but not all of them).

[Obviously the ability to manually add/remove the [Distance] and [Run/Pass] tags would be helpful because I don't care what GLB thinks a play should be used to do, I care how I want the play to be used].

---

Anyway, I think we can all agree that the existing DAI and playbook options are actually really complicated to use well. The tagging system and the % calling options are so specific that often when you try and add lots of plays to a playbook, you only end up calling the plays in situations you didn't intend. This has led to overly simplistic SPAM playcalling and a huge difference between a top end DC who understands how to trick the AI into calling the right plays and the rest of the DCs who have to use very few plays in order to get the right playcall more often than not.

The current global AI system often overwrites %s in places you don't want them overwritten. The formation based playcalling with the %s to call in certain situations is frustrating to use because you have to bounce back and forth to see what tags might accidentally steal the playcall from what you wanted.

I have no problem with a matching OAI update, though the O has much better options than the D right now.

This isn't a change to make this a less casual game. Most of these options already exist in the current system, they are just almost impossible to use and are counter-intuitive on application.

I don't see this is a huge increase to the power of the D, but I can see where buffing the O a bit might be needed to keep the scores interesting.

Limiting the number of "specific" situational playcalls that you can use might be a way to keep this from being OPed. Maybe the bulk of the plays still need to be default in order to keep this from being OP or from making the D too complicated or "not accessible" to the average user. Limiting the number of tagged plays for the global AI might also be a way to do this.

I mostly see this as a change that needs to be made because of how frustratingly god-awful the current D playcalling system is.

Anyway, Corn+Bort, we need an upgrade to the D and I think of all of the solutions that I've read, this is the only one that makes sense. It keeps the values that I think you have tried to instill in GLB2 while fixing the least accessible part of the game.

I'm on a roll with the suggestions today, you are all welcome.

+1 and implement please.

Coward OC count post.

There are currently 2 cowardly OCs who have put their minus one vote on this thread.

+1

I would much prefer picking plays and assigning them to down/distance and formation instead of depending on play tags and percentages that you enter. The most frustrating part is that when you enter in the numbers for each down/distance in the current system it doesn't allow you to adjust based on formation. I hate the tags and I would rather determine myself how I will use certain plays based on formation AND distance, not solely on distance.

This idea will require more time up front, but will indeed make things better and less of a headache.

I'd endorse this.

Yes please - defensive playcalling is confusing. On GLB1 it was hard, with all the inputs you needed to manage and make sure were in the right order and various other complexities...but here, it's dumb. If I think that Middle Overload is the play I want vs deep passing, I shouldn't have to make a ton of "inside run" on my AI when I'm playing a passing team.

So somewhere between 200 and 300 different playbooks to set?

Hmm, sounds a bit steep.

I'd have to get a defensive coordinator... since I hardly touch defense as it is.

Originally posted by Corndog
So somewhere between 200 and 300 different playbooks to set?

Hmm, sounds a bit steep.

Nice try.

Like I said, you can limit the number of specific instance playbooks to make it not OP and to keep it casual.

The minimum you would need to set would be 6 playbooks.

Down--Distance--Formation
Default Default GL
Default Default 2WR
Default Default 3WR
Default Default 4WR
Default Default 5WR
Default Default Big

The above setting would be exactly what you have available right now. Any empty specific instances would default to the above.

If you decided that you wanted to keep the game more casual, you could also set a maximum number of specific instances at something like 15 or 20. Trust me, anyone who has ever tried to figure out the existing system of playbooks, instances, %s, and play tags would love to have something more intuitive.

As I said: "Limiting the number of "specific" situational playcalls that you can use might be a way to keep this from being OPed. Maybe the bulk of the plays still need to be default in order to keep this from being OP or from making the D too complicated or "not accessible" to the average user. Limiting the number of tagged plays for the global AI might also be a way to do this."

For instance, you might not want to set any specific instances for 1st or 2nd down. In that case, the Default setting would be used on those two downs, which would be taken care of by the six mandatory formation playbooks.

However, you might want to have something in place for the 3rd/4th and Short, which would be 6 specific instances. 3rd/4th and Medium would be 6 specific instances. 3rd/4th and Long would be 6 specific instances. That's 18 playbooks for the specific instances and 6 playbooks for the defaults and you've got a system in place to handle 1st and 2nd down situations using one playbook and 3rd/4th down with another.

I'd like to also maybe simplify this a bit further. I'm not sure that we need V. Short/Short/Medium/Long/V. Long distance settings for the D. I mean, I'd be quite happy with setting Short/Medium/Long distances and being done. Example: Under 2 yards = Short, 2 yards to 6 yards is Medium, 6+ yards is long (or whatever). A fourth setting might be necessary, but I think in a more casual game like this, five distance settings is overkill for the D.

Anyway, the D system is incredibly frustrating to use in its current state and I would say that it is a huge barrier to the enjoyment of running a team.

And if you exclude Goal line (as you can pretty much run default for almost all goal line formations), that's going to cut down the play calls even more.

As an OC and a DC I understand the logic behind this suggestion, but I also feel the limitations of the current system are also part of it's strength. Sure you are limited in what you can and can't do - but that is by design. You have to pick your poison so to speak and live with the results.

I spend enough time as it is scouting and game planning for several teams - even if I had the extra time to utilize more extensive tools I wouldn't want to. I would either have to cut down to fewer teams or just stop coordinating altogether. As soon as you add depth to the defensive side there will be a cry for more depth for the offense - etc, etc.

I do think it might be a good idea to have some kind of guideline that explains how the current plays work within the framework of the tactics, but even without that you can get a handle on it pretty quickly.

Originally posted by Corndog
So somewhere between 200 and 300 different playbooks to set?

Hmm, sounds a bit steep.

It's sounds like a lot, but it's much, much easier to understand and gameplan.

1st and 10 vs 2 TE's, I run these plays. I can just look and see exactly what the plays could be, and set the priorities the same as now.
1st and 10 vs 2 WR's, I run these plays.
1st and 10 vs 3 WR's, I run these plays.
etc.

Versus

1st and 10 vs 2 TE's, I have these 2 plays and one is an inside run which I then go to my tactics and set a 40% chance for, and the other is a medium pass so I set that to 60, and they're both man so that part is easy, but my inside run is a blitz and my medium pass is not so I set blitz to 40 (insert math here) even though that's not exactly going to leave me with a 40% chance but close enough for government work. Of course, in my tactics, I also have short pass defenses called so while I don't have to have one of those in my 2 TE page, it gets kinda random when it calls short pass in a formation I don't have a short pass defense specifically listed.

I mean, removing all of the tags from the plays and letting us set the tags would even make it a bit easier to work with. It is still a very counter-intuitive system to work with, but at least you'd be able to pick two plays without them overlapping in situations you don't want them to.

Corn, did Bort comment on this too?

For instance, how many times would you want two different blitzes versus the same formation, but for different times?

Like do I really want an outside passing blitz play to be called (like a double LB blitz) on 3rd and Short, or would I prefer those inside run stuffing blitzes for those situations?

Guess what, in the current system, you can't differentiate between when you would want to call them unless the tagging on the plays are different. And often they are not.

Well that is sort of a bad example as most of the inside run stuffing plays are Inside Run blitz's compared to the double OLB blitz's you are talking about which are just Short blitz's. You can differentiate between those.

But I do get what you are saying though. For example I have been stuck only being able to use one short blitz from 2 WR because a team mostly runs strong pitches but I would like to run some other short OLB blitz's on 2nd/3rd and long instead of this blitz. Unfortunately I am just sort of screwed there. The work around is that I could go zone on the early downs but that would suck.