Tips for new GMs in MP leagues

[garrettjones331]

Coming off of a Championship win in my 2029 PSFL season, as well as my 2nd season ever in a DDS game, I wanted to share some tips to help get newer GMs up to speed to being competitive in MP leagues. I found a lot of team building strategies through testing in offline single player that shed light on what ratings seem to make the biggest impacts on which positions, as well as what plays work and what don't. Implementing these strategies, the PSFL Jaguars went from a 4-13 team when I took them over, to going 15-2 in the 2029 regular season as well as winning the Super Bowl.

1) The MOST important thing is playbooks - For offense I would highly recommend starting with one of the playbooks here:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1paxMA92nxXaKMwloCmk1K83MQsOppvLz as they consist of the best plays for a full team of average rated players. From there you can adjust frequencies and try adding new plays and see how they perform. On defense it's a lot more trial and error since the game doesn't give a lot of data outside of watching games to assess play performance, however, it's generally best practice to limit your usage of 4 DB formations (unless you can reliably anticipate a run), as they can easily get blown up by the pass.

2) Player Rating Importance - For most positions, ignore OVR. The calculation for in game OVR isn't documented anywhere to my knowledge, but it appears to put more emphasis on ratings that have little to no impact on performance on most positions. OVR is also correlated to the general cost of players, so while a high OVR player may actually have all the right ratings they need (and many they don't) they will come with a higher price tag, which means cap space for depth, or player's who require a high OVR to perform well. Most high performing GMs will have a majority of their players ~70-80 OVR. I would only consider two positions for an exception to this rule: RB and QB. With a QB at high OVR you get versatility between the short and long game so you can perform well using balanced passing preference. For an RB you ideally want to have very high agility/speed/strength and generally this can only be found at high OVRs.

Here are the ratings, ranked in order of importance, that I build my team around.

QB - INT,ACC/ARM (SPD/AGI depending if he's a running QB),STR - If you're primarily going short you should focus on INT and ACC. With a long game you want to have a decent amount of STR (>40 if possible) as this will reduce risk of fumbles if he gets sacked and INT/ARM. For a running QB high STR is a must (>50)

RB - SPD,AGI,STR - SPD and AGI will effect rushing performance, STR will prevent fumbles.

WR - SPD,HNDS,AGI - SPD is king on WRs, and hands seems like the main determination for fumbles and has a very minor impact on catch rate from my testing. I think you really only need AGI if you're going short game with WRs. Be on the lookout for the "Deep threat" tag if you plan on going long. In testing I didn't see a notable difference in performance from a "possession WR" so it's not really a tag I try to go out of my way for.

OL - Weight,AGI,Pbl,STR - Weight is by far the most important stat on OL, prioritize this first and try to keep guys above 320 lbs. OL doesn't seem to have much impact on run game (so much so I put my backups in on run plays). Be on the lookout for the Tenacious/Athletic blocker tags, as they provide a large bonus to blocking ability. This is a position I personally would never go >80 OVR for since weight doesn't factor into the OVR calculation.

TE - SPD,HNDS,AGI, Weight,Pbl - I think these have more equal importance on TE than WR. Also depending on whether you go blocking TE or Recieving you're goign to build them more like a OL or a WR

Defense is a lot harder to guage IMO, it seems like a lot of it comes down to hitting "thresholds" based upon the guy they're covering. Take all of this with a grain of salt

DL - Weight ,STR, SPD, TCK - You want big guys on the DL. I noticed at RDE big strong guys seem to do better and at LDE faster guys performed better. This was tested using 2 different players so there could be some other stuff going on
LBs - SPD, STR, TCK - speed seems to be king on LBs. I like to have strength 55+, but higher is better for causing fumbles, and tackling I shoot for 60+
DBs - STR,SPD,TCK - the thresholds for CBs and S's vary, but generally this is the order of importance from my testing. This isn't to say focus 100% on strength and let speed fall to the wayside - the farther below a threshold you are
with the impact for being below threshold being roughly the order I listed the ratings in.


SKILL - Generally on non-line positions you want skill as high as you can get, but around 60+ is generally "good enough" as a starter, for line positions I shoot for 40+ as a starter, once you get above 60 there isn't really much benefit

Other helpful resources:
MP Playbook database: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nkUfy3G36OzAO9MrLrYvKcAT_bJ32s7a

[zac]

Appreicate posting Garrett! I think the gap between a player's overall (OVR) rating and their on-field talent can often be quite wide sometimes which leads to confusion for users more limited in experience so this is really helpful to focus on specific ratings and not overall. On that note, while I love that weight and size play a big role in this game, it sometimes feels in a certain way they’re overemphasized for the offensive line (O-line) and to some extent the defensive line (D-line).

I often see experienced users opting to pay big dollars for a 72 OVR O-lineman with poor blocking skills just because they weigh 340 lbs, over a 300 lb, 90 OVR O-lineman. I get that an undersized O-tackle (like someone who is 6'3" and 285 lbs) might struggle despite elite skills and players too small should be limited. But even a fairly average-sized O-lineman (say, 6'5" and 301 lbs) can have trouble outplaying a much heavier 335 lb Tackle who are significantly worse skill-wise. Also, the fact that run blocking can be so undervalued means some people are subbing in backups to avoid injuries on run plays which feels less than ideal. The whole part of game where teams have one 11 man lineup for pass plays and another 11 man lineup (with backup QB to run or avoid injury to starter) run on to the field for a run play hopefully can be avoided eventually. Seems better to have packages more based on down/yard situation like defense is forced to do.

Maybe this isn’t an issue for everyone regarding big o-lineman playing so well, but one way to help too would be great to see weight and size factored into the OVR formula in the future, especially for positions where those attributes matter a lot. This could help ensure players are compensated appropriately and also help newer GMs not get fooled by OVR ratings that don’t match performance.

[garrettjones331]

I agree with everything you said Zac. I do have an idea for an improvement to punish the gimmicky "completely unique package for run/pass":
The old down/distance formation system needs to be brought back with % settings for packages and a feature needs to be added where the opponent has a better chance of anticipating the pass/run if the same guys are consistently used for only the pass or the run. As of right now if I ONLY run out of a specific package of players they opponent should anticipate that.

As far as making OVR useful, right now it tries to encompass a player's overall ability, which can mislead players if they're high rated in ratings that don't really matter with what a GM is trying to use them for. I think another layer of ratings needs to be added between the raw ratings and OVR. On defense it'd be nice to see ratings under OVR such as pass rush, coverage and run while OVR can be used as a versatility metric between the 3 different types of defender ratings. This way a GM could make sure they're picking a guy who is suited for the role they're looking for. Also if some sort of non-rating value has significant performance impacts and is already visible to the user, it NEEDS to be included in OVR. I shouldn't need to make a custom OVR spreadsheet to determine which players are the best based on visible information, the game should provide that to me. Only things that are actually hidden from the user shouldn't be included in OVR. As Zac said, right now OVR is essentially a useless metric for experienced players and misleading for new players, so in my opinion it needs to be fixed or outright removed.

[servo75]

Coming off of a Championship win in my 2029 PSFL season, as well as my 2nd season ever in a DDS game, I wanted to share some tips to help get newer GMs up to speed to being competitive in MP leagues. I found a lot of team building strategies through testing in offline single player that shed light on what ratings seem to make the biggest impacts on which positions, as well as what plays work and what don't. Implementing these strategies, the PSFL Jaguars went from a 4-13 team when I took them over, to going 15-2 in the 2029 regular season as well as winning the Super Bowl.
[/url]

Garrett this is gold! Did you put this elsewhere or give it to SOADeathdealer to put on CSFL?

If there are beginners looking at this thread, I just want to add some two cents just from the perspective from someone that's not-quite-beginner, but far-from-expert from my own experiences: When I was new to the game, I suffered a lot of frustration (and still do). It's good to seek help, by all means ask sages like Garrett, Zac, and others (just not me LOL). Here's the main point: Just expect, and don't be discouraged, if you ask 10 experts and get 11 different answers. It can seem like you're being pointed in 10 different directions at once (because you likely are). Although individually they mean well, what you don't want to do (and I learned this the HARD way) is don' start going down rabbit holes. I learned that the hard way in the early days and it led to a lot of frustration and angst for people around me too. Learn from my mistake. Take your time. Pick one person's strategy, start into it, and if it still seems you need to know something (which will prolly be the case) then seek someone else because he'll have new insight and a different perspective. The absolute last thing you want to do is (and it's tempting) try following everyone's advice at once. You'll make yourself (and everyone around you) crazy. I LEARNED THAT LESSON THE HARD WAY. and because I'm such a stubbornly competitive person, alienated some people in the process. No one person can teach you how to play this game, at some point you have to just have fun and experiment and it will come to you. As someone who's been a teacher in the past, I know that when you are expert at something, explaining things to people of less experience is very difficult sometimes.

Like I said, I'd probably place myself at maybe a 4 on a scale of 1-10 in terms of experience. We're all still learning. I've come far but still have a way to go. There are people who have been playing sim football for 10, 15, 20 years and they spend a lot of time doing tons of research, Garrett is the absolute master at that I've never seen anyone do exhaustive research the way he does so I would listen to him!! Recently I was 1-5 in one of my leagues, the team was coming apart at the seams and I was ready to cut the whole team and start over or quit, then I started seeking his advice (and others).... with just some minor adjustments we won 7 out of our last 8 (the only loss was in OT to a 14-0 team) and got to the conference championship (losing to that same 14-0 team by 13 points). The man KNOWS WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT!

Just don't let the experience of others and their 15-2 records intimidate you. Win the small battles and set reasonable goals for yourself.