I'm new to this series, and wondering if you guys can help me out.

1. How do I set up blitz plays in a custom playbook? When I create a playbook, there are no blitzes listed among the default set of plays. I've noticed that Plays.xml has a set of blitzes in it, but these plays aren't available in the game. How exactly does the "blitz ratio" on the strategy screen for defensive playbooks work? Ultimately I'd really like to prioritize blitzing certain players in my gameplan (e.g. Sam LB blitzes), but this doesn't seem to be possible right now.

2. There appears to be a few problems with custom defensive plays. First, the graphic does not illustrate player actions for defensive plays:



Second, editing custom defensive plays doesn't appear to work properly; when the screen comes up it appears to believe that it's an empty offensive play rather than a defensive one.

Finally, is there a way to delete custom plays? You can "delete" them from a playbook, but this just puts it back into the list of all the other play. I'd like for a way to fully delete the custom play, or at least to rename it.

Blitzing is weird in this game. You set the blitzing percentage in your gameplan, and there are blitzes which are randomly chosen from when a blitz is called for. You can create your own blitzes, and when you put them into a playbook, give them a weighting, so some will be used more than others. What I've done is set up a playbook for each situation (almost), then I choose the blitzes I want and weight them accordingly. To make it easy for myself, I have 100 total weight, so I know if I want to blitz 20% on first down, my total blitzing weight in my first down playbook will be 20, while non blitzes will add up to 80. Takes time to set up, but worth it in my opinion. I also set the blitz percentage to zero so that it just uses my plays and not the random blitzes that I do not want.

Graphics for defense really suck, as do some options (like you can choose which way your players rush or blitz, nor can you choose who to cover). You have to make do with what you have until defense becomes more of a priority to the design team. Personally, I'd like to see a) rushing direction (rush left, rush right, rush center, stunt left, stunt right), b) blitz direction (blitz off tackle, blitz off guard, blitz up the middle), c) delayed blitz where you can delay then blitz, d) three options for what to do... for example, I could have my middle linebacker cover the RB. If the RB doesn't go out on a pass play, cover the TE. If the TE stays in, blitz or zone. Much more realistic gameplanning, especially considering if you put in the ability to do an unbalanced offensive formation. e) Finally, allow the ability to choose a defensive formation based on the personnel group the offense puts out on the field... so if the offense goes 3-1-1-0 (3 WR, 1 TE, 1 RB, 0 FB), then I could put out my nickel or dime defense to combat it... but I'd make the choice, using weighting. So, 3rd and 20 and the Jumbo set comes on (1 WR, 2 TE, 1 RB, 1 FB) I can use 52 or 43 or nickel or dime... whatever I choose.

Basically, gameplanning is very unreasonable on defense, and you have to work within what you have. I think it would be an AWFUL lot of work to make defensive gameplanning reasonable in one update. I will post a list of things I would like to see in the future, once I've tested everything in the game, which I have not yet done.

The editing custom plays issue that you are having... I am not having, so I can't give you anything on that.

Finally, not that I know of. I wanted to be able to delete custom plays also, but I don't think you can.

Yea, there are some good ideas here... right now the editor reflects what's available at a high level in the engine. Some of these features are more advanced and you may want to be creating custom plays for that. The editor was to make custom plays accessible to all players at least at a basic level.