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Main - General MFN Discussion

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By GrandadB
10/17/2022 9:30 pm
Appreciate this action by JDB and hope to see more improvement in future as noted in this thread and others, with the goal of more variety in play calling, reduction of exploits, and roster requirements.

We were implementing the rule in the DFL, Elite, and NCAA leagues to eliminate use of the FZ and FB Dive, so this is really helps with not having to have oversight and argument about it.

Penalty for overuse does not stop play overuse, Would prefer an Ai control, same as it is for roster violations (too many players, over salary cap, etc.) Would like to see play use capped at 8 times used per game, or thereabouts. When the play call hits the cap, the Ai kicks in and calls a different play from the full 40/30 list with or without being active. Same for a roster requirement, if there is a shortage at a position for more than 2 sims, the Ai manager steps in and corrects it. Thats probably asking too much but would be great if its not too difficult to put in to the game engine.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By setherick
10/17/2022 9:49 pm
This is why I think the argument about applying overuse to all man-to-man plays is moot. Here's a density plot of the four most common normal defenses against the 113, 203, and 212 passing plays.

Criteria: Teams from USFL and NFL leagues that completed at least 50% of their passes against defenses NOT the Flat Zone. This filters out underperforming QBs against all the other defenses.

Note that the density for the Flat Zone is almost twice that of the others at ~0 yards. So the others are in parity but the FZ is not.



But, Seth, come on, you're surely skewing the data by looking at all passing plays.

Alright, here's just the short passes:



...and short passes with the 3-4 Cover 1 added.

Last edited at 10/17/2022 9:54 pm

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By CrazyRazor
10/17/2022 10:15 pm
jdavidbakr wrote:
Greetings, MFN community! I have had several reports of certain plays in the playbook that are un-defendable. This is an unfortunate nature of the way the game is built - where each player has their own independent autonomous logic independent of what the plays may or may not be. I've decided that the best action to maintain parity in the leagues is to remove those plays from the playbooks. The plays in question at this time are the OLB Flat Zone and the FB Dive.

What does this mean for you? If you have been gameplanning normally (have had 40 offensive and 30 defensive plays in your active playbook) you will simply notice that these plays have been removed and will be able to replace them in your playbook if they were there. If you have worked to have the minimum number of allowed plays in your playbook, on the other hand, you may be at risk of the AI resetting your entire gameplan.

This change will take place within the next 24 hours. Please take a minute to ensure that you have a full selection of offensive and defensive plays in your gameplan before then, and ideally remove these plays if you have them.

-----

In other news, I apologize for not being on the forums lately - I've been hard at work under the hood with improvements to the user interface which I hope to release soon. I have felt for a long time that the user experience as you navigate the website has been extremely sub par - it's had little design updates since the initial launch - and is especially difficult on mobile devices. I've made that my top priority before returning to work on the game engine itself; it's just been a beast of a project, as I'm sure you can imagine. So thank you for your patience as I've been trying to keep myself fully focused on this interface update.

And as always, thank you for playing MyFootballNow!


This news just kept me from leaving the game completely. THANK YOU, JDB!!!

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By Bruno77
10/17/2022 11:01 pm
setherick wrote:
This is why I think the argument about applying overuse to all man-to-man plays is moot. Here's a density plot of the four most common normal defenses against the 113, 203, and 212 passing plays.

Criteria: Teams from USFL and NFL leagues that completed at least 50% of their passes against defenses NOT the Flat Zone. This filters out underperforming QBs against all the other defenses.

Note that the density for the Flat Zone is almost twice that of the others at ~0 yards. So the others are in parity but the FZ is not.



But, Seth, come on, you're surely skewing the data by looking at all passing plays.

Alright, here's just the short passes:



...and short passes with the 3-4 Cover 1 added.



Fair play, nothing I like more than this. I'm convinced

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By raymattison21
10/18/2022 6:29 am
jdavidbakr wrote:
It's easy to put overuse on all plays, however back when overuse was being beta tested we found that this caused offenses to become too strong near the end of games because in order to have enough balance in the playbook for various situations (short yardage or long yardage situations, for example) the bread and butter plays that should not need penalizing would break down.


We can easily prove the effectiveness of plays when they face each other. This enables audibles to be called instead of using this flawed overuse penalty. The entire time I have played this game blitzes have been the topics in discussion and suggestions during testing for fixes.

The process was like curb blitzes then curb offensive production due to monster numbers and now we’re here. Years later

First take out the penalties and let people blitz again but code in audibles for both offense and defense. Keep overuse (maybe use it at a low level somewhere) but it’s clearly the perpetrator of claims of the comeback logic being active back then.

Flip that logic to a “stay behind logic” and currently we are claims of a familiarity bug, one that makes it hard for offensive production thus keeping you behind

Essentially the it’s Same problem here as the game drags on overuse builds up making base defenses slightly over powered. It’s like the opposite of the team coming back from behind. It’s actually harder to come from behind in 4.6 due to the overuse penalties.

Put that last tested code with the zone cover updates in with goals of fixing the “static “ run blocking. It had 6000 yard passers. Cause right now man coverage is too strong but those high KR TDs and the FB dive are the same root cause.

Run blocking. Specifically Blocks being held too long near the ***** location at any particular time. Way too static

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By jdavidbakr - Site Admin
10/18/2022 6:51 am
The deed is done.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By setherick
10/18/2022 8:42 am
Someone asked if long passes would come back with this change, and I said no. Here's why. Same density plot as above for long passes. Note how much more common a sack(negative yard plays) is compared to 5 yard passes or even incompletes.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By Blondie1977
10/18/2022 9:49 am
setherick wrote:
Someone asked if long passes would come back with this change, and I said no. Here's why. Same density plot as above for long passes. Note how much more common a sack(negative yard plays) is compared to 5 yard passes or even incompletes.



Thanks for this.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By raymattison21
10/18/2022 2:32 pm
setherick wrote:
Someone asked if long passes would come back with this change, and I said no. Here's why. Same density plot as above for long passes. Note how much more common a sack(negative yard plays) is compared to 5 yard passes or even incompletes.



Coverage sacks are too high. That huge dip at -5 yards shows a low amount of a sack resulting from a bad block, uncovered blitzers, or a rare scramble by the QB after he sees nobody open and gets run down for a sack anyway. (AKA the rollout sack)

Essentially the QBs are lacking a “good” check down/throwaway/ QB run/ or find another open receiver logic. Currently for some reason(s) the QB just stands there and takes a sack at (-10) yards too often.

It’s like that deep outside passing logic doesn’t even look out there vs flat zone cause the LBs can get deeper than ever before. As the QB looks like a deer in headlights waiting for his outside receivers to get down field.

Re: IMPORTANT: Play Removal Notice

By setherick
10/19/2022 6:52 am
1 that huge dip is 2-3 times more likely than a 10-15 yard completion so you're missing the big picture.

2 the suggestion you gave doesn't solve the main problem which is that WRs are slower to 10 yards down field than a DE is running while blocked 10 yards to get the sack. I pointed that out 2 years ago and was ignored. But WRs take more than 2 seconds to run 10 yards or passing may work.

A good test by JDB would be to remove the B&R code to see if it's too strong.