Simming Sucks...

[Dean-Atlanta]

I've talked about this with a few of you, and we all know this even if we do not want to admit it. Simming thousands of games to find a play that gets slightly better stats is NOT real football. This does not happen in real football and simming is nothing like real football players practicing plays against their own team mates on the field.We can do that in exhibition mode in FBPro, I know one coach in the league who runs games of his own team vs his own team to practice this way. THAT is real football.Simming thousands of games is not real football.

We didn't play this way in the old leagues.We scouted teams and designed plays that would perform better against that team to make a game plan. THAt is real football. Simming is not. Now in the PNFL we are not only using the same play pool, which itself should have a wide variety of available plays. But Charlie is right, we submit lots of cloned or semi-clone plays, and as a result of simming, we all draw up game plans from the same much smaller group of plays in each category. Our gameplans are becoming PABULUM, the same old same old plays, ands games are won by slim margins based on getting breaks and other factors. And our ratings are so compressed, coaches think the only real way to get an edge is to sim more games and find the best six plays in each category, etc. That is not real football.

What is the solution? This is where the get off my lawn crowd will have their heads explode. Because change is long overdue. First, we need ratings differentiation and we need it soon, not spread out of 10 PNFL seasons which is FIVE real life years of time. Right now every single one of our teams has a WR6 that is nearly good enough to be a WR1. That ratings compression is part of the reason why we have devolved to simming thousands of games to gain an edge. We need to have more unique plays in the play pool and fewer clones, and I know Charlie is getting more strict about declining plays submitted that are clones. We need more originality and innovation in play design. Lo9ok at what Shuggy is doing with Green Bay, he is having fun making new plays every week and we want to see his game on Discord to see what stuff he will try out.THAT is real football. I feel like if we BANNED simming we might force coaches back into the play editor to gain an edge that way rather than endless mindless mega-simming. But I know we can't enforce a league rule that bans simming, so it makes no sense to have such a rule.

I do think if we rapidly adopted ratings differentiation, this would lead to a situation where simming is less effective and less rewarded, and maybe the practice of simming will fall out of favor.

These are some things to think about. Some of yiou will have some other ideas.Please propose constructive ideas, not just the "no change"responses here. I will post a separate poll on simming too, please take the poll it will be anonymous so you are not telling others whether you sim in voting in the poll.

[Rich-League Officer]

You really have not given a reason why simming sucks

#1
It not being real is accurate but nothing we do is REAL.
Do you spend 18-20 hours per day in your facility watching film and designing game plans?
Do our players have personalities? They are just made up names with numbers attached.
FbPro98 is not real football on any level. It's just a simulation and you must treat it that way.

#2
Old coaches/leagues did not do simming. Not true, I did.
My email exploded with interest 20 years ago when I posted a very lengthy detailed approach to coaching on the forum.
I know for a fact many coaches afterward started simming and winning more games.

Now, you can hate simming and refuse to do it but your success will be limited and more random.

Simming works and the better you do it, the better your results are up to a point. There will always be a built in randomness.
This is where "scouting" comes into play. Being able to predict and create your opponents PPP week to week is what will decide your success simming. Garbage in Garbage out.
I can't tell you how many times I have listened to a coach complain that he simmed a few hundred games and then watched his team lose 31-7 and then he says its BS and there is no point. My question to him is, did you re-create his PPP? did you check after the game to see how accurate your work was? If the answer was no, you wasted your time simming and likely created garbage.

Now, if nobody sims then someone has to win 12 games and someone has to win a SB. That does not prove simming is useless. It really depends what the other coaches are also doing. If you are slapping together your plans in 20 minutes or using old ppps from a successful victory 6 weeks ago, then good luck. The results will be very mixed, very random. If you are that style of coach and still enjoy it, that's great. That would hardly be like real football though. There are Junior HS coaches putting in more hours preparing for their meaningless game. How many of you would be fired based on the prep you put in + the results?

This notion that "scouting" (what is your definition?) and designing plays is more like real football is just not true. Andy Reid is not looking at a play log and creating 8 new plays each week.
I would think he spends his time watching hours of game film and going through his massive playbook of plays already created to decide what might work this week. I bet his playbook is 12" tall and his new innovations happen February through August.

In my mind, simming was akin to NFL coaches studying film for hours. Testing plays, what works, what does not work against your scout PPP. You can hate it, you can not do it but you can't eliminate it. And, you can try and shame coaches who do it but the only reason anyone would do that is because they know it's effective long term. The other component is, this is a game played by human beings who have a real lives and their motivations are all different. Some love to be competitive, others might like the comradery where winning is a nice byproduct but not important. None of that matters as long as you enjoy the game.

*Limitations of simming*
Currently, there is a limitation to it and why some coaches might be frustrated sometimes.
As Dean pointed out, the players are so close in talent that it narrows the amount of plays that will even be effective week to week. 100% of coaches are using 20% of the plays. All the players are the same, all the teams use the same plays. It becomes much harder to make simming as effective.

It is in this area where Dean is 100% wrong.

Once you have a more diverse player universe, it also opens up a more diverse play pool. Coaches will begin using plays that were dormant for a long time because all of sudden, they work again.
This will give the coaches who sim a significant advantage over coaches who do nothing. That is a FACT.

Just the idea that Dean suggested that maybe we should ban simming tells you how effective it can be if done properly. That idea is as silly as saying we should ban all new custom play design. Neither is ever going to happen in this league. Sim or don't sim, love it or hate it, you play the game the way YOU want to play it.

[Dean-Atlanta]

How long do we wait for that expanded player universe? 10 seasons, or longer? 10 seasons is FIVE years of real life.

Look at our rosers from the 2035 season, FIVE years ago:

https://pnfl.biz/Seasons/2035/2035%20PNFL_roster.htm#A17

We have a more narrow player universe now than we did ten seasons ago. If this is reversed we might ONLY get back to a 2035 player universe by 2055 season, and maybe have some moderate level of ratings differentiation by 2065 season this rate. That would be TEN YEARS from now.

The Dollar Store approach to expanding that player universe is way too slow.

[Jerry-Redskins]

The players and plays have no affect on simming being valid. As Rich noted, this is a piece of software performing calculations. Nothing more. Nothing less. If you have the opponents PPP guessed right, then simming lots of games allows you to increase the odds of a given thing occurring that week and minimizing bad outcomes. Again this is just formulas being run. Rich was the best at it. He was also the best a roster management. Best roster, game planning the best, plus great simming means lots of success. No matter the roster spread, the best at gathering talent will get the most. That will not change. Teams poor at talent management, spreading more will just make it even harder for them.

Rich is also correct in that the real life comparison is determining what your opponent is likely to call and how they will attack what they believe you will do. If you are not good at determining your opponents PPP, simming does not work as well. Reading logs and looking at what your opponent does in certain situations is watching film. Building your PPP to attack what you see as a weakness in your opponents expected PPP is game planning. If you do not "watch film" and game plan well, simming is not as much of an advantage.

I've mentioned before that I stopped simming on game week years ago. I decided simming hundreds of games is boring. The fun part is determining your opponents intent and countering it properly. The actual game planning piece. I do not fret about my opponent simming a thousand games that week. I focus on what I can control and do my homework on game planning. I might be able to win more if I went back to simming, but I win quite a bit and have fun doing it. Do what you enjoy the most. This is a game.

I think some people are focusing too much on what they can change so they can perform better when they should be focusing on having fun and learning to win. It's all about the basics which always remain valid. If you are good at the talent piece and good at game planning you can still win a lot of games and a championship.

[Matt-Jacksonville]

Being a software developer and looking through parts of the game code, I lean toward what Rich and Jerry are saying. At the end of the day it's a game. Individual matchups are calculated that combined result in yards gains or lost. Those losses and gains add up to a drive and determine whether it was successful. At the end of a game who has the most points wins. FBPRO at it's stripped down basics is a game of matchups which tries to simulate real football.

Now, recently I have been pondering whether there is a difference between the "quick" sims done by many coaches who use simming and playing games out like Rich has been doing the last couple of seasons. While I have no definitive data, I'm leaning toward there being a bit of a difference. However, I've also noticed a fair amount of inconsistency between games using the same PPPs against each other. So, that's the rub. Yes, we can sim 15000 games in a week. However, I know coaches who do this and STILL lose games. BUT, I know Rich did it too and won multiple Super Bowls, so what's the delta here? The intangibles and what Rich said.

At the end of the day you have to ask yourself how do you want to spend your time. There is still only 24 hrs in a day and 7 days in a week. Do you want to spend the bulk of that week doing boring stuff or do you want to have fun? FBPRO will always be a PC Football Simulation.

As far as ratings, I agree that we need more variety. I think the PCFL has done enough to prove we need broader ratings; however, lessons learned in the XFBS, would say that Rich is also right and it has to be done with special care to maintain the competitive balance. We don't want to have a sudden shift in ratings only to realize next season that we are seeing big blow outs. I applaud Rich and Charlie for doing a good job maintaining the competitive balance in the league.

[Rich-League Officer]

As for how long it will take to reach this magic moment when we have arrived is a fair question.
But, its impossible to answer that question unless we know exactly where we want to go.
I think a conversation is needed to determine to modern day low attributes across all positions.
Not the lows stated at the beginning of vpnfl.
Then it would require a decision on how many seasons are we willing to sit through as it happens.
I think doing overnight would be a disaster.
I think 10 seasons (roughly) a players career is about right.
Yeah that is 5 years. But why do this at all if you are not optimistic we will all be here in 5 years.

Drafts could be easily and quickly created over 10 years to get us to the finish line where all Charlie would have to do is add names.
Perhaps minor tweaks for certain individuals as the draft classes are known.
It's doable.

[Dean-Atlanta]

Rich wrote this above:

Once you have a more diverse player universe, it also opens up a more diverse play pool. Coaches will begin using plays that were dormant for a long time because all of sudden, they work again.
This will give the coaches who sim a significant advantage over coaches who do nothing. That is a FACT.

Those who do not sim are not doing nothing. They are using season data, plays of the week from Charlie's scouting reports, etc. This means they are using data that is driven by those who DO the mass simming, so those who do not sim are still deriving benefits, even if not as much, from those who are simming. I know there are at least 2 coaches who will likely make post-season in 2045 who do not sim, and they are not doing nothing.

But more importantly, the above comment about a more diverse play pool with the more diverse player universe. Not only will this lead to some old plays being more successful, including some that have been purged, but it will also open more opportunity for new play development and the success of new ideas and more innovation in play design. I have found in the last 3-4 seasons that our compressed ratings is also compressing play design, which is part of the reason our new plays are clones and semi clones.

We tested a more diverse player rating universe in the PCFL. The next thing we should test is a more expanded play design universe. I suspect it will be quite successful also.

[Dean-Atlanta]

As for how long it will take to reach this magic moment when we have arrived is a fair question.

It is a fair question and one that should have an answer. We should have a goal of just how much ratings differentiation we want.

But, its impossible to answer that question unless we know exactly where we want to go. I think a conversation is needed to determine to modern day low attributes across all positions.
Not the lows stated at the beginning of vpnfl.

I agree with this. If I could get a copy of that utility that allowed robust global editing on a bell curve, I would test various edits on league files and sim through seasons to show that data, which could help us make such a decision. This is the kind of testing they did back them to create the original VPNFL system. But their stats were based on using their plays, not our more robust custom plays. I think out ratings would not be as low in a league file that produced better results, but they would be more diverse than what we are using now.

Then it would require a decision on how many seasons are we willing to sit through as it happens.

I don't think we can wait 10-20 seasons to do this, and at the current rate we are moving it might tell well more than that. What we are doing now is keeping the game stagnant, the reaction to what we see in game play in the PCFL show that. We need change and we need it soon. We have less and nor more diversity in ratings now than we did in the 2035 season, which was five years ago in real life years.

I think doing overnight would be a disaster.

This argument is rubbish. IN 2001, when I ran the ECCFL, I saw what they were doing in the VPNFL, we tested a complete revamp of our ratings using a robust global edit that re-rated playing on a bell curve, and we tested it, showed the results, and in an off-season, 2/3 of coaches voted to adopt it, and we did. It was smashing success and we had the best season in the league right after that. It was ONLY the decision of Sierra to ditch the FBPro series that caused many coaches to leave our league as most leagues at the time suddenly collapsed. If we had that utility, we could easily do a global edit in an off-season.

I think 10 seasons (roughly) a players career is about right. Yeah that is 5 years. But why do this at all if you are not optimistic we will all be here in 5 years.

If we do NOT do it, we are much less likely to be here in 5 years. If we take 5 years to get it done, we may not survive that long. If it takes 20 seasons, or 10 years, we will not survive that long.

Drafts could be easily and quickly created over 10 years to get us to the finish line where all Charlie would have to do is add names. Perhaps minor tweaks for certain individuals as the draft classes are known. It's doable.

I understand that Mitch has proposed such a thing and created templates showing how to do it. The PNFL needs change to survive and thrive, the PNFL has evolved through its entire history and it would be gone it had remained stagnant.

[Rich-League Officer]

Rich wrote this above:

Those who do not sim are not doing nothing. They are using season data, plays of the week from Charlie's scouting reports, etc. This means they are using data that is driven by those who DO the mass simming, so those who do not sim are still deriving benefits, even if not as much, from those who are simming. I know there are at least 2 coaches who will likely make post-season in 2045 who do not sim, and they are not doing nothing.

But more importantly, the above comment about a more diverse play pool with the more diverse player universe. Not only will this lead to some old plays being more successful, including some that have been purged, but it will also open more opportunity for new play development and the success of new ideas and more innovation in play design. I have found in the last 3-4 seasons that our compressed ratings is also compressing play design, which is part of the reason our new plays are clones and semi clones.

We tested a more diverse player rating universe in the PCFL. The next thing we should test is a more expanded play design universe. I suspect it will be quite successful also.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Yes, the coaches who do not sim are essentially copying off of the coaches who sim. They see what works for them and give it a try.
But, those coaches can rarely sustain long term success this way. The art of simming is finding the best 6 from a pool of 50-250 and using them that week because of what the opposition does. Is there a benefit for the non-simmers? of course there is. Especially when the usable play pool has shrunk down to where it is today.

Yes, it will lead to better custom plays because more ideas will work. And you just admitted what we all know, its tough to create new custom plays so coaches lean on old ideas that become essentially clones. So, greater diversity does enhance the part of the game you love.
It will also enhance the part that Mitch may love because he will be able to create more unique plans that become less predictable to his opponents.

[Rich-League Officer]

Dean wrote:
It is a fair question and one that should have an answer. We should have a goal of just how much ratings differentiation we want.

I don't think we can wait 10-20 seasons to do this, and at the current rate we are moving it might tell well more than that. What we are doing now is keeping the game stagnant, the reaction to what we see in game play in the PCFL show that. We need change and we need it soon. We have less and nor more diversity in ratings now than we did in the 2035 season, which was five years ago in real life years.

This argument is rubbish. IN 2001, when I ran the ECCFL, I saw what they were doing in the VPNFL, we tested a complete revamp of our ratings using a robust global edit that re-rated playing on a bell curve, and we tested it, showed the results, and in an off-season, 2/3 of coaches voted to adopt it, and we did. It was smashing success and we had the best season in the league right after that. It was ONLY the decision of Sierra to ditch the FBPro series that caused many coaches to leave our league as most leagues at the time suddenly collapsed. If we had that utility, we could easily do a global edit in an off-season.

If we do NOT do it, we are much less likely to be here in 5 years. If we take 5 years to get it done, we may not survive that long. If it takes 20 seasons, or 10 years, we will not survive that long.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Let me take these point by point.
#1
I agree we should have a goal and I have some thoughts on that but I do not control the draft.
Charlie does and it's his call. He would have to be on board and follow the numbers produced and be okay with essentially reducing his impact on these drafts.

#2
We very easily could do this in 10 seasons where nobody would feel any pain.
You are cherry picking a brand new league with no history as an example. And the game play on the field should not match the pnfl.
That is college, this is professional. You should have to work hard to move the ball. There should not be 80 yard bombs on a regular basis.
Yeah its fun to watch but that is not the NFL. Have you all noticed what is down in the NFL right now? Passing!
The run game is UP and defenses are learning to adjust to all the new rules and freedom offenses have. The PNFL should always be a league where moving the ball is not a given. Not a league were 63-31 is common place.

#3
Using a defunct league is hardly a good argument. So, a bunch of retired coaches agreed so that makes it right?
The PNFL has been here since 1999 and we also saw the demise of fbpro98, why didn't we fold?
Because we have always had a calm consistency in the leadership here. We do not overreact to situations.
If we did what you propose, coaches would quit because a sudden shift in player attributes would throw off a certain equilibrium in this league that has a 48 season history. It's like eliminating points or suddenly saying the cap is back at 300M. Coaches would not be happy.
As for us needing to do this is silly. We have a full 18 teams, plus a 19th in me and for how many seasons in a row?
When is the last time we had an open team? 2039 I think.

Nobody has reached out to me to say they are quitting.
Are you on the brink? Is this issue making you think it's time to go?
One coach is so dedicated to staying that he has no time because of real life so he sent me 19 PPPs to use for his season.
The podcast continues, FNL is thriving, coaches appear to be having fun.
Could it end tomorrow? of course it could but I think after 25 years of playing, I would put my money on being here 5 years from now.
If I continue to breathe, I will be here doing my part.
We have coaches who have been here 10-15-20 years! I bet half the coaches consider themselves lifers.
Nobody is saying the players are so close in talent that they need to quit.
We talk about it, we can change it.
But, it must be done slowly and smartly and perhaps more precisely.