Kinda Frustrated

Kinda Frustrated

Postby Becket » Tue Dec 08, 2020 10:36 pm

Howdy,

New to your sim games. Long time playing OOTP. I've played a couple of seasons now and this just isn't intuitive to me at all. I can't figure out or get any consistency with play calling. It all feels like a crap shoot with little to no feedback on where the play breaks down. If someone can point me to a decent video dynasty that explains the logic, etc., I'd appreciate it as this isn't real fun so far.

Thanks.
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Re: Kinda Frustrated

Postby brooks_piggott » Wed Dec 09, 2020 1:30 pm

If you have specific questions the community here can try and answer them. We also have a slack channel where folks hang out and may be helpful.

The GM Games guys have a youtube channel with some playthroughs: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... GyDkvQjC_3
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Re: Kinda Frustrated

Postby Becket » Mon Dec 28, 2020 7:39 pm

I want to like this game. I took a break because I did not want my personal frustration with it cloud judgment. I reviewed the youtube channel you suggested, but it is pro football unless I am missing something on my visit.

The main issue at the macro level is FEEDBACK.

Why am I not signing recruits? Why am I losing interest?

How do people reasonably pick plays to run? Why are major CBs continuously getting burned by less than avg wideouts? Is it my bad playcalling or are the ratings off by my coaches? How do I measure winning/losing the O/D line?

The main issue is when I have failure, I'd like to have a reasonable screen for feedback. When there are so many reasons something goes wrong, it's easy to deflect a problem and blame the user. I don't mind someone saying I'm a crap player with this game, but I'd kinda like to know why so I can improve. Why a kid didn't pick us? Coaches could provide suggestions? Why did a play fail? What broke down on it (DL, etc)?

X ran for Y yards doesn't help me figure it out.

This game just seems like an expensive game of rock, paper scissors and that's frustrating. If others like the game, it be nice to be directed to their suggestions/guides? The guide listed simply defines stuff and there a many things as to why something coulda, shoulda, woulda happened. If someone has a minute, I'd like to chat. If someone has a decent explanatory channel, I'd like to spend time learning it. I am not asking for a free pass/easy game, but I'm looking for a good source of info to keep buying your games.
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Re: Kinda Frustrated

Postby brooks_piggott » Mon Dec 28, 2020 9:13 pm

Normally it falls into a couple of categories. First, ignore Overall rating... it's useful as an evaluation tool, but to be really good you need to look at individual ratings for players and start picking guys that have ratings that match the system you want to run. Secondly, set up playbooks... lots of playbooks... for many different scenarios. It may take a couple of seasons before you figure out which playbooks work well, which formations work well, in general terms etc. and then you can move on to find ones that work better with certain personnel or recruits that you grabbed. Thirdly, play around with your strategy items... again, it all depends on your personnel... it's really hard to give a guide because what works for one team won't work for another. If your CB are getting burned then you may need to be running different formations to help them out... if your passing defense is good but you're getting run over then maybe shifting to run friendly defenses help.
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Re: Kinda Frustrated

Postby Becket » Mon Dec 28, 2020 9:54 pm

Thank you for the quick response and taking time to try to help. I continue to be frustrated and it bled through on my post. I'm sorry.

With that said, I didn't get much from the response though. It's still overbroad and filled with ambiguity.

Looking at ratings - I get that. So why is it when I do that, I get poor performance competing against teams with lesser ratings. It's been over multiple teams/seasons.

The response will be, maybe I need to call new plays. Take time to figure out what works. The implication is what doesn't work then I'm doing wrong or the my players don't have the right ratings or calling the wrong plays. Lots of scenarios with lots of playbooks compounded with ratings that could be off continues to be overbroad and ambiguous.

If the first two items don't work (or in conjunction with) change strategy items (play around with sounds like trial and error), adds another level of ambiguity. For a text simulation, there is an absurd amount of trial and error and it needs to be streamlined.

While you used my example, and I understand why, I can't truly understand if my CBs are getting burned? That's just one level, right? It could be the opposing QB, CBs are bad, DL not getting pressure, wrong play call - significant possibilities that are all summed up with -

Player X gained Y yards.

That's my point - no feedback. It's way too much of trial and error because nobody can reasonably explain what's going on. It's easily argued away (for lack of a better term) and tell the user they need to do a a ton of options because it's poorly explained, in my opinion. There should be some apparent causation somewhere and there isn't. Maybe I will get the hang of it but after getting basketball from you all, I understand what's happening there a hell of a lot more than what is happening on the football side. I've read where people like the game and I disregarded reviews off the site and gave it a chance, but I'm becoming more inclined to agree with the Steam rating.

And I am not whining. Happy to lose every single game if it made sense on how to improve. It just isn't there.

I'm glad you all have a base for this game. I'd love to support smaller developers but I don't see getting another one. I'm still open to learn though. If any user reads this and is successful, I'd love to jump on a discord and see how you play, have suggestions, answer live play questions. Love to understand the theory on what is being seen because I'm blinded I guess.

Thanks.
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Re: Kinda Frustrated

Postby Zeppelin462 » Thu Dec 31, 2020 2:50 am

I feel like this and other Wolverine games would benefit from regular releases throughout the year. It seems like these forums are only used to report bugs, as there are seemingly no releases outside of patches, which fix those bugs. Hell, I'd pay for a season pass of sorts to have access to monthly-ish updates of the game to add new features.

We just get one game a year that unfortunately doesn't seem to answer a lot of the needs of the community. I get it, this is a small operation, but similar small operations like CT Football Manager are releasing updates at least once a month with completely new features, like rivalries (something this game hasn't implemented but is integral to college football), scheduling future opponents years out (rather than flipping the schedule every year), a revamp to Top 25 rankings with logic to promote and demote teams based off of who they play, etc.

This game is so visually appealing, and it has some truly fun aspects to bring you in (I'm thinking of you, custom playoffs and the upcoming recruiting revamp), but there is SO MUCH that's just not there but could be. College football is so quirky and weird, so appealing to college football fans kind of requires appealing to that quirky weirdness.
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Re: Kinda Frustrated

Postby emperorsnapper » Thu Dec 31, 2020 6:02 pm

After playing for about a week, I have discovered the key to playcalling. Unfortunately, the answer is, in short, that things that work work far too well, and it bears little resemblance to anything you might find in the real world.

First, offense: it is way, way too easy to move the ball in this game. I recommend throwing out of a Spread formation, and sticking to short passes - you will get plenty of big plays, and throwing deep is just asking to be continually sacked unless you are playing with a team that has an elite O-line. Running the football - outside runs (sweeps and sprints) work really, really well from 2nd down on, especially 2nd/3rd and long. On 1st down, stick to inside runs, and it is best to run them from tight, blocker heavy formations. Off tackle from a heavy jumbo set is like a super power, as my 90%+ conversion rate on 4th downs will attest. The biggest problem with running, particularly from the Spread, is that occasionally your QB goes insane, throws out the play, and decides to run a QB keeper that is usually very ineffective - he drops back 10 yards, waits a while to make sure the entire defense is surrounding him, then makes a weak attempt at running forward. You just live with these and hope the next one is actually handed off.

Defense is another matter entirely. I tried everything, and my defense was always as tough as a wet paper towel. Stopping the run is tough, and dropping even 8 guys into coverage has little effect. An effective pass rush seems impossible when running sane defense (3 to 5 man rushes) Finally, I figured out the key --- blitz. Blitz like blitzing is your oxygen. Blitz like the wind.

In my 2nd season, my team (Cincinnati) was 6-0 thanks to an insane offense scoring well over 60 a game, but I was annoyed by the poor defense, that gave up 34+ points in 3 of the first 6 games and had just 7 sacks, despite two talented DE and a solid LB core. Out of frustration, I created my own defensive play, called "F You". It involved all 11 players blitzing out of a 3-3-5 wide formation. It was a stupid, stupid play. In my next game, I ran it exclusively against Tulane. Every. single. play.

We won 73-10, and had 14 QB sacks. The Tulane running game was swamped, and on the rare occasion they got a pass off over my blitz, my DBs were actually able to RECOVER and MAKE TACKLES DOWNFIELD. This is, of course, insane, but Tulane did not have a good team at all. Prior to my next game, I created some more plays - 6, 7, and 8 man pass rushes out of the 3-4, 4-3, and 3-3-5 alignments. For the 3-3-5, I created 2 8-man rushes - one where the safeties blitzed along with the LB, and another where the corners blitzed. In all cases, the remaining 3-5 defenders were assigned to play man defense on eligible receivers.

These defenses worked insanely well. After 6 games, my defense ranked in the mid-40s. By the end of the season, we led the nation in scoring defense, passing defense, rushing defense, and (of course) total defense. We gave up 21 to UCF but held everyone else to 14 or less, including a 70-10 win over Clemson in the semifinals and a 56-14 thrashing of Ohio State, undefeated and #1, in the Championship game. The Clemson beating was so bad that their run defense dropped from #1 to #5 in the country as we ran up over 400 yards on the ground. I mostly used 8-man pass rushes against these teams, scaling down to 6 if it was a 3rd and long and I wanted to avoid a big passing play.

My team led the nation in sacks, and my two OLB tied for the lead with 14 a piece. My backup RB led the nation in rushing yards (he got more carries because the starter would get benched with the huge leads). The started ran for over 2,000 yards, more than any player on any other team in 2 seasons, and had to settle for 2nd place on his own squad. We had 6 All-Americans and won the offensive and defensive POTY awards, RB of the year, QB of the year, etc. The team scored over 1200 points in 15 games, and allowed 230.

The thing is, players dropped into coverage are just amazingly ineffective. They are terrible at run support and aside from the occasional INT do nothing to inhibit the passing game. The best strategy is to try to match up man-to-man with some receivers and give the QB no time to throw. Standard pass rushes can be blocked almost indefinitely - I have watched a 4-man rush spend 15-20 seconds unable to get to the QB. An overwhelming blitz leaves unblocked players and results in either a sack or a rushed throw, which are rarely effective unless they hit the undefended WR (even then, there is usually a DB on that side of the field who slides over to make the tackle). Completion percentages only increased slightly against this defense, there were actually fewer big plays, and 10-15 sacks a game just ruined opposing offenses. INT basically stopped, as passes were always thrown either into single coverage or to an open receiver, but I will trade 1 INT a game for a dozen sacks any time.

When you build a big lead, the opposing offense will often go into a possession or two of "god mode", where suddenly the RB can break almost any tackle and the QB has perfect accuracy. Against any normal defense, these are 100% TD drives. Max blitzing, however, can create enough negative plays to hold these possessions to FG, and occasionally even punts.

Another interesting point: my team prestige started at 78. After going 14-1, then 15-0 in the most dominant season in football history, and winning two national titles, my team prestige was still 78.
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