End of Game/Half CPU Play Calling

[paddyo7715]

It's well known that in version 2016 that CPU teams seem to make poor play calling choices at the end of the half or game. Example that I have seen numerous times: Team A is down by a touchdown or less and has the ball on their own 20 yard line with 2 minutes to play, and proceeds to run the ball the first three or four downs, rather than throwing the ball.

Is this going to be addressed in 2018, or is it on the list?

[brooks_piggott]

Yup, we'll take a look at it. The CPU teams need to have those issues fixed. The human owned teams are a different matter as if we tinker too much with overrides people get mad that their playbooks aren't being followed. If we follow playbooks people get mad that the AI isn't overriding them. So we'll have to find a good balance that doesn't make either side too angry.

[paddyo7715]

Brooks, why not make it a configurable item in your league setup or maybe on the team level to have the behavior turned on or off? That way people that don't want their playbook overridden could just turn it off.

[brooks_piggott]

The playbooks don't really get overridden, it's the run pass ratios that do. And that is already configurable in the league settings.

[JDB]

Actually I've had my run/pass ratio for "last two minutes behind" set to 90+ and have still seen some of the quirky things reported such as running plays up the middle that ultimately run out the clock. I don't think the issue is the AI's play calling. Keep in mind that even real teams make bad calls and call plays we don't always agree with. Even though I do get frustrated seeing my team lose the game, that part doesn't bother me from DDPFS as a game perspective. I think the real issue is the AI's "situational awareness" when executing the plays. It has got to know how much time and how many potential plays it has left. So we should be seeing teams trying more long passes and players trying to get out of bounds quicker to stop the clock. And the last play of the game/half should almost always be a hail Mary pass (probably with a less than 10% success rate) or a field goal attempt. I don't know how the programming of this game works but it sounds like this my be more an issue with the game engine. And one final point, the AI has GOT to know the difference between a 2 pt conversion and a PAT. I've seen it reported as well as seen it happen a few times in my league where a team would kick a PAT after scoring a TD when down by 8 in OT rather then going for two and would ultimately lose the game because of it.

So to summarize, I would just like to see teams in DDPFS have a bit more success when coming from behind late in games than what we currently do, especially teams with highly rated QBs and offensive players.

[brooks_piggott]

Yup, good points. We're working on several of those issues.