Questions for experts from a potential new player

[Chris H]

Good morning all,

I have watched youtube videos, scrolled through a variety of forums, but wish to get some up-to-date answers regarding the following queries before I potentially purchase the game. I am desperate for an NFL variant of Football Manager but everything I have tried, including Front Office Football 8, has left me distinctly unimpressed. I am very grateful to anyone for taking the time to answer these queries;

1) I have seen numerous people reference the issues regarding the relative ease of signing high quality free agents for low salaries, rendering the game too easy. Using the salary modifier in the options, or another method, is it relatively easy to fix this before you start a new game? If so, what settings would you recommend to accurately reflect real life, as well a providing a suitable challenge for the user?

2) How straightforward is it to use real world mods regarding players, teams etc? Which one would you recommend, and is there a link to this with (very dumbed down!) instructions for how to install them?

3) One of my issues with FOF8, apart from the abysmal UI, were the limitations when playing a game with your team; you couldn't change QB's mid-way through a match for different plays for example. This lack of basic tactics removed any sense of immersiveness.
a) What is the match engine like in DDSP21? Can you rotate the QB's or RB's as the match progresses? Can you select a different QB for a trick play or a scrambling play? Can you double up on defence on that superstar wide-receiver the opposition has?
b) I've seen issues with the clock management be referenced, especially with regards to the AI in 2-minute warnings. Has this been patched? Are there plans to patch it?

4) Depending on the answer to question 3... would you recommend playing the game solely in GM mode? ie: not taking control of the on-the-field play calling? Is the game substantial enough to play this way?
I would much rather do both - GM and Head Coach, as without calling the plays it seems like half a game to me and a missed opportunity.

5) With the right settings, is the game capable of providing a challenging and realistic career mode for several in-game years? How would you set the game settings up to best achieve this?

6) Is there a user manual provided with the game, or something online with a basic run-through of what everything means and where it can be located?


Thank you to anyone for taking the time to share your knowledge and experience with me. I have tried several other games and it baffles me that such a popular sport is so lacking in this department. DDSF looks the best of the bunch and I am hoping it will be worth a purchase.

[AKH]

Hi Chris, and welcome to the forum.

First off - try the free demo - that should help you determine whether you like the game.

1) This issue is partly based on the misconception that overall rating is all you need to determine if a player is good. This is also partly based on people using various real world mods, and recognizing IRL stars in free agency and jumping to conclusions from that, even if those stars might not be stars in the game (after all the game doesnt know who peyton manning is - all it knows is the ratings of the player, whose name happen to be that). That said, sure you will be able to find good/old players in free agency, some steps have been taken to address this, but we feel fairly comfortable with how it is, and you can tweak salaries and/or ratings if this irks you. If the game is too easy, you can try in hardmode.

2) its pretty straightforward. It seems the most popular mod is slybelle's - head to the mods section of the main forum here to find it - slybelle usually posts instructions as well.

3a) yes to substitutions (if you are calling the plays - otherside it will use packages, but those can still be set up to feature different depthcharts for specific formations [not plays] and situations)- regarding the doublecover observe that there specific plays (identifiable by "TDouble" in the play name) that feature doublecoverage of the targetplayer you set in your gameplan.
3b) clock management is a thorny issue - we have tweaked this several times and continue to tweak it. The thing to remember here is that what users complain about in playcalling is always that the game doesnt confrom to THEIR perception of what the right playcall is. Recently someone complained that the AI sometimes ran on 3rd and long claiming that coaches would ALWAYS pass in this situation. but in real life runplays are called on like 20% (can remember the exact number - but its somewhere around there) of 3rd and long. In shot - yes we are always working on improving clock management and playcalling - but we will never make everyone happy in this regard.

4) it really depends on youer preferences, some people like to call plays some like to sim. Judging from the fact that we have users who exclusively do either of these, there seems to be enough substance in either.

5) there are various threads here with discussions of which settings work best. There are a lot of different ways to go about this. It is our impression that many are fairly happy, also with long term playability. But it of course depends on what each individual likes. The game is pretty accurate regarding statistical output - brooks spends a lot of time tuning the engine to achieve this - this is of course much more challenging for us since we are using a physics engine as opposed to a statistical engine that most other games have (where they can pretty much just type in what they want the output to be), but Brooks is a wiz at getting this impressively close to IRL.

6) we have collected some guides here : https://wolverinestudios.freshdesk.com/ ... 4000451919 - in addition - we and the community are helpful with answering questions, either here, on discord, on steam or on slack.

finally I should add that a focus of ours is to make as much as possible moddable, and add as many settings as possible, so that our many users (who are VERY different in what they like) can set up the game and the gameworld to what they like. And again, we recommend trying the demo, to see for yourself whether this rocks your boat