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Forum > FAQ's, Player Guides and Game Help > Player Building 101 - Step-by-Step Guide on How to Build
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AirMcMVP
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I wrote this up last season when planning a team for newbs/inexperienced agents. A few vets have looked it over and felt it was good stuff. I'm sharing it in the public forums in an effort to help new players avoid some of the pitfalls of player building.

This guide will not tell you how to specifically set up attributes or how to spend skill points or ability points but will provide the basis on how one should come up with their builds on their own. I'm open to constructive criticism and am more than than willing to update the original posts with other points of view. With that said...

What do you want your player to be when he (or she) grows up? That is the question every agent should ask before starting their build. The answer to that simple question will be the driving force behind all the decisions you make during the build process.

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Before we get to how to answer that question, let's look at the key pieces of a player's build (pulled from Tooltips)...

Height - Taller players find it easier to deflect or catch passes, gain a technique advantage when tackling or blocking, and can see the field much easier. However, they also have poor balance, struggle with footwork, and are easier to push around and knock off their feet.

Weight - Heavier players find tend to be more powerful and have good balance, and are hard to take off their feet. However, they are also slower, lack quickness, and struggle with technique.

Attribute - Attributes define this player's base skill levels and skill maximums, and the skill point costs of training his skills. Higher attributes will make the related skills easier to train, while lower attributes will make them harder to train. Attributes have no direct effect on the performance of a player; only their training.

Strength - How powerful is this player? Stronger players hit harder, throw and kick further, and are better at power rushing and blocking.
Speed - How fast does this player move? Speedy players excel at sprinting, avoiding tacklers, and slipping past blockers.
Agility - How quick and flexible is this player? Agile players are great at changing direction quickly, keeping their balance, and mastering technique.
Stamina - How resilient is this player? Higher stamina players are tougher and more consistent, hold on to blocks and tackles longer, and take longer to become winded.
Awareness - How focused and alert is this player? Highly alert players react more quickly, are less easily fooled, and excel at accuracy or technique based skills.
Confidence - How confident is this player in himself? Confident players are tougher, more consistent, and are less affected by things not going their way.

Trait - Traits define the skills this player specializes in. They will make certain types of skills easier or more difficult to train by changing their skill point costs. They may also affect things such as player salary or chemistry.
Edited by AirMcMVP on Sep 23, 2015 14:24:41
 
AirMcMVP
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With that out of the way, now we get to the good stuff. How do you build your future star? Before I can give an answer, we need to get back to the original question. What does your player want to be when he (or she) grows up?

Well, let's see. I want to build an fast running back so I choose Halfback as my position.

I choose a name (Newb Sample Bad). Since I'm a newb I don't think much about height or weight so I leave them alone. I also (correctly) ignore skin color.

I then get to my Attributes. WOW! I've got 5 points to spend. Since I want to be fast I'll take Speed to 10. I'll be the fastest HB ever!

Now, let's look at Traits. There are lots to choose from. Rusher looks good. Slippery also caught my eye so I'll take that. I'll round it out with Egoist because I want to be FAST! Now its time to click Create Player!

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/player/172233

Let's take a look at a few things....
 
AirMcMVP
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There are similarities and differences between different positions. We'll focus on HB for now.

HB's have 5 major skill groups:

Carrying
Receiving
Blocking
Physical
Mental

Those areas are pretty self explanatory. Inside each area are corresponding skills. For some positions/builds you'll be putting points into every area and others you'll focus on only some. For example, only a few teams carry a blocking HB. The majority of HBs out there put very little, if any, effort into improving items in the Blocking area.

Each skill is starts out at a dynamic value, has a cap, and a SP cost to increase. All these values are determined by the height, weight, attributes, and traits you chose at player creation. For example, the HB create above has the following for Sprinting:

Initial value - 10
Cap - 98
SP Cost - 117 SP

The minimum cap for a skill is 25. The maximum skill value is 100. There isn't necessarily a "magic number" to aim for in any trait. That's one of the good (and bad) parts of GLB2. I view the skills in quartiles.

0-25 - Not very good
26-50 - Below average, but may be serviceable
51-75 - Average, but may not be enough
76-100 - Above average, the higher the better

PROTIP --- Having skills in the 0-25 quartile is perfectly fine...as long as that skill doesn't directly relate to the question we're trying to answer. What does your player want to be when he (or she) grows up?

Now, let's get back to our build...
 
AirMcMVP
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Keeping in mind the quartiles I mentioned above, let's look my new HB. I want him to be a fast, elusive HB. I don't particularily care about blocking or catching. I want the QB to hand him the ball and then watch him run past the defense into the end zone.

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/player/172233

Relevant attributes are below:

Fourth Quartile
Sprinting - 98

Third Quartile
Carrying Grip - 66
Power Running - 63
Elusive Running - 65
Carrying Awareness - 67
Balance - 66
Footwork - 62
Quickness - 61
Diving - 61

Second Quartile
Conditioning - 42
Toughness - 44
Heart - 43

We may have a problem here. My cool new HB only has 1 attribute that can reach the top quartile. The rest are stuck in the Average category which may, or may not be enough. This could be a problem.

Of course I, as a player new to the game, don't realize this. I post my shiny new HB on the marketplace and no one notices. I even posted in the Players Looking for Teams forum (and responded to Teams Looking for Players) and no good teams want him. What's wrong? My dude will be FAST! Blazing. The best ever! I'll just sign to one of these CPU teams to prove how good he is. These owners will see soon enough!

Well, all too often "soon enough" turns into, "this game sucks...I quit".

Let's look at how to change that perception and turn make this game more fun!
 
AirMcMVP
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We'll start again, asking the same question...What do you want your player to be when he (or she) grows up? Just like before, I want to build a fast HB. This time, though, I want to build a player that will get owners excited...one that will win MVPs...one that will take his team to multiple gold trophies and #1 ladder rankings...

OK, now, back to reality. We want to build a fast HB, but what else? How fast do we want our HB to be? Do we want him to elude tackles or power through them? Should he be able to catch passes? Block? The more detail you can build into your answer, the better you can key into your base build.

In this case, I want to build a fast, elusive HB with marginal receiving skills. That helps me define my build further and ensures I make good decisions with Height, Weight, Attributes and Traits. Let's consider each one individually based on the HB position...

Height - There's nothing to do with height that directly impacts my build...aside from the tie-in between height and weight. Since I was a fast, elusive back, I want my weight to be as low as possible so I pick the shortest hight available. Set height to 5'6".
Weight - I want a fast dude so I want light. Set Weight to 180.

PROTIP - Height and Weight affect skills differently. Using min or max values in both will have a slight impact on your overall build.

Note - I used GLB2Scout ( http://www.glb2scout.com/ ), created by Stobie, to lay out how changes in attributes affect skill caps. This is a great add-on tool that I highly recommend.

Strength - Impacts Carry Grip, Power Running, Receiving Hands, Catch in Traffic, Receiving Grip, Toughness, Intimidation, and a few blocking skills
Speed - Impacts Sprinting, Elusive Running, and a few blocking skills
Agility - Impacts Elusive Running, Route Tech, Route Elusiveness, Receiving Hands, Balance, Footwork, Quickness, Vertical, and Diving, and a few blocking skills
Stamina - Impacts Carry Grip, Power Running, Conditioning, Toughness, Intimidation, and a few blocking skills
Awareness - Impacts Carry Grip, Elusive Running, Carry Awareness, Return Awareness, Route Tech, Route Elusiveness, Receiving Hands, Catch in Traffic, Receiving Awareness, Footwork, Diving, Snap Reaction, and a few blocking skills
Confidence - Impacts Carry Grip, Power Running, Receiving Hands, Catch in Traffic, Receiving Grip, Receiving Consistency, Balance, Footwork, Vertical, Diving, Toughness, Heart, Intimidation, and a few blocking skills

With that in mind, let's pick set our Attributes...

Strength - 3
Speed - 9
Agility - 9
Stamina - 4
Awareness - 7
Confidence - 3

PROTIP --- Attributes can go below 5! The baseline is 5 and was set there by the devs to ensure people didn't completely mess up their builds. Unfortunately many new players do not realize traits can go up or down.

PROTIP --- The lower you take an attribute, the more impact it will have on corresponding skills. Taking attributes below 3, while viable in some builds, will have an extremely negative impact on others. Proceed with caution!


For Traits, I decide, once again, to go with Rusher. It just makes sense. Since I'm looking for a fast player, I'm going to stick with Egoist for the boost to Sprinting. I make note of the negative impact on Conditioning so I decide to offset that with Workhorse.

PROTIP --- Be careful with traits that impact salary. Teams are constrained by a salary cap and expensive traits can make your player less desirable (and perhaps unsignable) to some teams.

Let's check out our build...

http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/player/172333

Fourth Quartile
Elusive Running - 83
Carrying Awareness - 79
Balance - 86
Footwork - 88
Quickness - 91
Sprinting - 91
Diving - 78

Third Quartile
Carry Grip - 59
Power Running - 55
Receiving Hands - 59
Receiving Awareness - 65

Second Quartile
Catch in Traffic - 46
Receiving Grip - 50
Receiving Consistency - 36
Conditioning - 47
Toughness - 34
Heart - 32

As you can see, our build has many more attributes in the Fourth Quartile. All of those attributes are things we care about. Sprinting will lead to a fast back. Quickness and Elusive Running will make him quick. He'll have average ball security and has the caps to allow some catches. Just what we wanted.

PROTIP --- Caps are not a picture of your end-build. They outline the best your player can attain for each skill. You'll want to get close to (or reach) your caps on some primary skills but don't neglect secondary and supporting skills as you progress.

You've given your player a cool name, set his attributes and traits to ideal levels, checked his caps, and (most importantly) answered the question...What do you want your player to be when he (or she) grows up?
Edited by AirMcMVP on Sep 24, 2015 06:43:08
Edited by AirMcMVP on Sep 23, 2015 14:24:56
Edited by AirMcMVP on Sep 23, 2015 14:21:54
Edited by AirMcMVP on Sep 23, 2015 14:21:44
 
AirMcMVP
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If you grasp the concepts in this post, consider yourself a graduate of Player Building 101. You have the foundation for a great player. At some points I may put together Player Building 201. In that exercise we'll examine the second piece of building, skill point allocation (keeping in mind skill point allocation is much more subjective)!

At this point, I'll open this up for general questions and comments. Relevant questions (and the best answers) will be edited into this post as we move forward.
 
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Originally posted by AirMcMVP


What do you want your player want to be when he (or she) grows up?


Edited by Galactic Empire on Sep 22, 2015 15:50:11
Edited by Galactic Empire on Sep 22, 2015 15:50:01
Edited by Galactic Empire on Sep 22, 2015 15:49:46
 
Rob.
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Excellent work Air! This is a great addition for new players to look at.
 
Barakas
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One thing to take into account are the cap boosters which give +5 each. That can make a big difference in how low you can take a particular attribute as you can top off a cap that is reduced. (Stamina for a lot of positions comes to mind, you can take that lower than usual then top up conditioning with the cap boosters)
Edited by Barakas on Sep 22, 2015 19:16:47
 
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Originally posted by Galactic Empire
Originally posted by AirMcMVP



What do you want your player want to be when he (or she) grows up?




If that's the worst anyone finds, I consider this a massive success! Fixed it.

Originally posted by Barakas
One thing to take into account are the cap boosters which give +5 each. That can make a big difference in how low you can take a particular attribute as you can top off a cap that is reduced. (Stamina for a lot of positions comes to mind, you can take that lower than usual then top up conditioning with the cap boosters)


Cap boosters are something I considered adding but I felt like it was muddying the water. They are definitely something users should understand when starting their builds, but almost feels like 201 territory to me.
 
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It takes a couple seasons before you even receive your first cap booster. So I agree the cap boosters are definitely a 201 subject.

Great presentation. Definitely got the point across.
 
pastim
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Must reading for all players. This explains so much, so easily.
 
Torg
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Awesome post...hope it helps alot of people

Looking forward to the 201 class!
Edited by Torg on Sep 24, 2015 10:59:53
 
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