Playcalling Questions/Suggestions

[peterk1]

Hey Guys,

Just responding to the email from Wolverine thanking me for trying the demo and inviting me to contact them! I did end up getting the game and am having fun with it.

I've been trying to find a good/fun football sim since the season ended and am sort of doing the tour of everything that's out there. I started with Madden 19 on PC and played the hell out of that for a few weeks It was fun, but frustrating, and not really accurate football. Not good for someone wanting to play as coach/manager even though they do some things really well. The clincher for me giving up on it was when I saw that they weren't storing any info for past seasons in Franchise mode and that there wasn't any way to watch games not involving your own team.

Then I moved on to FoF8. This one is really interesting. I learned tons about football in a short amount of time with it. But the "world" seems dead. The sim never really points you to any of the compelling stories happening.

...and now I'm playing DDS 2020 and am having a good time with it. I love seeing the plays happen in the 2D view.

Just one little issue bugs me a bit. I'm the weird type of player that likes to call my own plays. Football seasons are pretty short, so I don't mind playing games slowly and getting a bit more immersed in each game. Hitting simulate and looking at boxscores just isn't as much fun for me.

Now, the question/suggestion:

In FoF 8, they do something really cool for people who want to call their own plays. The head coach prepares his playbook for the game, but during the game you get a short list of all of the plays in the gameplan that match up with the current situation and if you want to you can pick the one you like yourself. It also shows you plays which have already been called at least once and plays which are being overcalled. Those won't work as well as they may have worked when they were fresh.

What makes it work really well is the naming convention for all the plays.
The plays look something like:

113 Pro PAct XAZB 0S32

in the little menus. It took a bit of work to learn and decipher, but I absolutely love this format now. At a glance I can see the formation, the personnel, any special toggles like Play Action, and I can see all the receivers, not only the primary, and their routes which lets me tell how conservative or aggressive the play is. On the defensive side of things, it's also really clean and the name of the play tells you everything important about it.

I'm having trouble having fun calling the plays in DDS 2020 because I don't have all that info at game time.

Is there an easy way to get used to the Head Coaches playbook in DDS PF 2020?

[peterk1]

Guess no-one likes playcalling! Oh well.

Hey! Last night I noticed that touchbacks on kickoffs were going to the 20 rather than the 25. Punts and kickoffs are both going to the 20. Is this a known bug? I did a quick search on here and it looks like it hasn't been mentioned yet. Guess it might not technically be a bug since it's a NFL only rule.

[peterk1]

So I've been playing for a couple of weeks now. Fun game. I do like the playcaalling in FoF 8 better but that's about it. I like almost everything else better in this game. I've been happy just making personnel decisions and watching my games play out. takes about 20-30 mins a game, but it can be quite enjoyable.

|'m just going to list a couple of bugs/oddities that I've observed in my handful of seasons, in the event that the devs take a look.

For what it's worth, the engine seems to be running with college rules at the moment, since I think some of these are consistent with that.

o As noted earlier, touchbacks on kickoffs should be to the 25, not the 20.
o On FG misses, offense should take over at spot of the kick, not the old line of scrimmage.
o No 2 min warning
o At start of OT, the timeouts should be reset. Right now they just get left at whatever was there at the end of the 4th.
o I've seen some odd penalties. Probably need to to filter out which positions should not get selected for some penalties. I've seen offsides by the QB and defensive delay of game pens. Not sure if those are reasonable, but they seem off.

o When playing out a game using the 2D view, some plays don't get shown. If a team gets a big gain at the end of the game and then the QB spikes the ball. You won't see the results of the big play in the PBP window, you'll just see the Spike Ball play. Final plays of games often seem to get skipped and not shown in the 2D view.

On safeties, you won't actually see the play with the tackle in the endzone. Game jumps right to the free kick following the safety.

o On Fumbles, the PBP is mentioning the wrong side of field. If New England fumbles on their 35 and Miami recovers, the play by play will say that the fumble occurred on Miami's 35.

o I display the jersey numbers in the 2D view when watching games, and noticed that 2 guys on my team had the same jersey number. I can obviously fix that myself by editing, but maybe run a quick routine at start of season and on transactions, to make sure it can't happen.

o The coaching AI seems very hesitant to use timeouts sometimes. I haven't really put my finger on what is causing it, but I've seen quite a few games lost just because AI won't use timeouts on the final drive of halfs. I just had my Miami team lose a game by 1 point. They had all 3 timeouts remaining and were on the opponents 25 yard line. That should not have happened. Should have been a good game winning FG chance.

o QBs are spiking the ball quite frequently to stop the clock even though team has timeouts remaining. It seems to be part of the late FG algorithm, Spike ball right before the kick. AI is kicking the "final" FG with far too much clock left a lot of the time. There is very often time for another kickoff and a play or two from the opponent.

o It seems that playcalling AI almost always calls a run play after a play/penalty that results in a X and more than 10 situation. It does this even late in the game with that team trailing. It does not seem to be an attempt by the game to smooth out the run/pass play counts as hypothesized elsewhere in this forum.

o Small bug in single player with trades initiated from the trade block screen. If I try to trade for a good player from the normal trade window for a very poor draft pick, I as expected get a message from the other team that the trade has been rejected. If I select my draft pick and then go to the trade block window and try to perform the same trade, I don't get a message from the other team, but I lose my draft pick even though trade hasn't occurred.
It seems that trades initiated from the Trade Block window never result in a dialog containing a response from the other team.

[cdcool]

I hope all these bugs are not true as of today.
I don't call plays at all in both FOF 7 and 8 and this game.

"For what it's worth, the engine seems to be running with college rules at the moment, since I think some of these are consistent with that.

o As noted earlier, touchbacks on TDs should be to the 25, not the 20.
o On FG misses, offense should take over at spot of the kick, not the old line of scrimmage.
o No 2 min warning
o At start of OT, the timeouts should be reset. Right now they just get left at whatever was there at the end of the 4th.
o I've seen some odd penalties. Probably need to to filter out which positions should not get selected for some penalties. I've seen offsides by the QB and defensive delay of game pens. Not sure if those are reasonable, but they seem off"

[peterk1]

These are all off version 4.0.7 which I think is the latest version. It's the one I originally downloaded from Steam when I purchased.

When you just hit Sim and look at the box score, you miss a lot!

One more. Kickoffs are being taken from the 30 rather than the 35.

Mia - Kickoff of 65 yards. Returned by Allen, L. for 16 yards.
14:57 1st and 10 Mia - 21

(65 - 16) is a net gain on the kickoff of 49 yards.
Opposing team starts off from their 21 yard line. So kick came from the 30.

[cdcool]

These are all off version 4.0.7 which I think is the latest version. It's the one I originally downloaded from Steam when I purchased.

When you just hit Sim and look at the box score, you miss a lot!

I watch some and sim some games CPU vs CPU, I don't call plays, you are correct you can miss stuff. I've caught a couple of graphical errors watching games.

I play FOF 7, 8 and Madden Franchise, I'm a single-player guy GM guy, I don't call plays and I control all teams CPU vs CPU.

This 2D text-based Football game is the best on the market right now, it's really grown over the years and the College game is just as good!

[peterk1]

I watch some and sim some games CPU vs CPU, I don't call plays, you are correct you can miss stuff. I've caught a couple of graphical errors watching games.

I'm not trying to call plays anymore either. I just watch the games in real time with the plays being chosen automatically.

In FoF 8 I find it fun to call the plays because they basically give you a very small list to choose from and its very easy (once you understand the play naming convention) to see what every receiver, not just the primary, is doing. They also show you how effective the plays have been (ave yards) and how often you have already called each one. It's a bit of a fun game within the game, but I can live without it.

[cdcool]

I watch some and sim some games CPU vs CPU, I don't call plays, you are correct you can miss stuff. I've caught a couple of graphical errors watching games.

I'm not trying to call plays anymore either. I just watch the games in real time with the plays being chosen automatically.

The game allows for both ways of playing which is great!

[peterk1]

The game allows for both ways of playing which is great!

Except that I don't really get what a lot of the plays do. Is there a way to open up your head coaches playbook and take a closer look at what's in there? I haven't figured out a way to do it.

I can sort of tell what the primary receiver is trying to do on some of the passing plays, but how about everyone else? I know that there's a little button that shows you the play diagram, but you can't really tell route depths from those.

Anyways, not a big deal. I'm having fun just watching the games without interfering.

[cdcool]

The game allows for both ways of playing which is great!

Except that I don't really get what a lot of the plays do. Is there a way to open up your head coaches playbook and take a closer look at what's in there? I haven't figured out a way to do it.

I can sort of tell what the primary receiver is trying to do on some of the passing plays, but how about everyone else? I know that there's a little button that shows you the play diagram, but you can't really tell route depths from those.

Anyways, not a big deal. I'm having fun just watching the games without interfering.

LOL, I don't call plays, a different group of people. I play as GM and Watch all the games or sim them.