Simming Sucks...

[Mitch-Oilers]

Isn't a scout team basically allowing a team to practice their playbook against what they believe their opponent will try to run against them? That's what simming replicates for me.

I've had a lot of success practicing in this manner along with Justin, Thomas and "sometimes" Jerry.

However, it's not flawless. If I scout my opponent poorly or I choose plays for my gameplan that aren't effective, I will likely have a tough game. Just like real football, you can scout your opponent but you can't always guess any new "wrinkles" they are going to do to their plans.

[Rich-League Officer]

Isn't a scout team basically allowing a team to practice their playbook against what they believe their opponent will try to run against them? That's what simming replicates for me.

I've had a lot of success practicing in this manner along with Justin, Thomas and "sometimes" Jerry.

However, it's not flawless. If I scout my opponent poorly or I choose plays for my gameplan that aren't effective, I will likely have a tough game. Just like real football, you can scout your opponent but you can't always guess any new "wrinkles" they are going to do to their plans.

What Mitch said is exactly correct and I know its something we have talked about. It's not really about having 4 computers and simming 10,000 games. Anyone can do that while they are sleeping or living their life. It's not like you are starting each game manually. The real skill is being able to create your opponents PPP accurately. Simming can hurt you if you are bad at scouting. If you scout great, it can work great. Either way, it's part of coaching in fbpro98 whether anyone likes it or not.

[Barney - Vikings]

As Rich points out, our league is thriving as most if not all of our coaches and commissioners have a firm commitment to continuing the league well into the future.
I do think Dean hit on an important point though.
I personally find simming the least favorite part of playing this game.
I do it only because it’s the only way I’ve found to gain a consistent edge.
Frankly, I don’t know how Jerry does it and I don’t see how you can win consistently without simming.
I would like to see other paths to victory, other ways a coach could distinguish himself.
One way is through play design.
I love drawing plays, but there are two reasons
I don’t do it very often.
For one, the play pool is pretty well developed already and it’s hard to come up with new ideas.
But more importantly we only allow “copyrighted“ plays for one game, after that they belong to everyone.
It would be nice if one could use his custom plays for a whole season.
The coaches who design most of the plays we use are not necessarily the same ones who win consistently.
This would give another road for the people who draw our plays to win a championship.
A fair reward for building the play pool.
Another way is making roster building more important.
All of our teams look alike.
Right now we get the draft list months before the actual draft.
That gives everyone plenty of time to analyze it and come up with a great plan.
From my point of view pretty much everyone does come up with a great plan as there are rarely picks that are objectively poor.
The result is cookie cutter rosters.
Instead of changing the ratings we could make drafting much more challenging to create more roster differentiation.
Release the draft pool only a week beforehand and Draftsock the draft.
It would lead to more variable rosters and would allow people who are cool under pressure and good at evaluation to shine.

[Rich-League Officer]

On the custom plays....I would actually be in favor of allowing exclusive use of your custom plays in the season you submit them.
If that would increase the motivation for coaches to get in the editor and create something, we should do that.
I would say anything you submit in pre-season through week 16 is yours alone.

I would want Charlie to be much tougher in screening out dupes or near copies.
Changing one pixel or a minor path of WR4 is not really a change in a play.
If the plays are new and unique, I like it.

Any edits of existing plays are still free for everyone to use.

But, custom plays fall under the Charlie purview and I leave this to him.

[Dean-Atlanta]

I completely supp[ort both ideas that Barney mentioned, the increased ratings differentiation because it will improve our game and expand the universe of usable plays, both old and new. And also the idea that teams submitting custom plays get exclusive use of them for the entire rest of the season, not just one week. This can be implemented by having a separate folder for those plays and then they are only added to the general play pool the following season. And 20 off-season plays is too few, we should be doing at least 20 each on offense and defense per off-season to make significant off-season changes in game plan, which is VERY realistic.

These are MODEST and moderate changes that would make the league better overall.

[Rich-League Officer]

On the draft....
We ask this each season and coaches overwhelmingly prefer the forum.
I am happy to use draftsock and know it out in 3 hours.
But, this means 18 coaches all have to show up at the same time.
Suddenly the internet stops working just as you are on the clock

It would create mistakes though and I always liked that.
I always loved the prep for a draft to be ready for every selection.

I do have an idea which I will write up in a new thread but I doubt coaches would embrace it because it makes success far less certain.

[Jerry-Redskins]

Might be time for me to focus more on other things and take a small step back. Tired of the incessant constant change talks. Just want to play ball. Maybe some folks need to spend all this change energy doing better than searching for game changes. Seems hard for some folks to sit still for a minute. Too much instance gratification going on r rather than figure out how to be better.

BTW. Hard to improve when the target keeps moving and winning is more about the roster (the small differences matter) and studying your opponent. Sim or no sim, studying the opponent and making the right call on their plan against you matters and adjusting accordingly. Just like the NFL the games outcome are based on a small number of plays.

[Matt-Jacksonville]

I tend to agree with Jerry. On a whim I pulled some data together.

In the last ten seasons,
15 of 18 teams have been to the playoffs at least one time.
3 of 18 teams have been all ten seasons with one additional team making the playoffs 9 of 10 seasons
7 of 18 teams have been to the Super Bowl at least one time.
Only one team has dominated that time with 8 appearances in the Super Bowl
Of the three teams who have not been to the playoffs at least one time, two have been in the league less than five seasons.

So, we have some pretty decent parity going on in the league at the moment. So, what problems are we REALLY trying to fix here?

1) Are we trying to make the league more competitive or are we trying to make the league more fun? I think we have the right level of competition.
We just need more education and learning for the teams that aren't going to the playoffs as often. They need time to learn and shape their rosters.
I don't think we need a ton of new rules, nor am I in favor of changing things every season. We need time to let the changes we have implemented work.
We have to be careful that we don't change too much too often and we don't have too many cooks in the kitchen.

At the end of the day I'm hearing we want to:

1) Have more variety in the ratings
2) Find incentives for play designers
3) Liven up the draft a bit

The problem is that we have 18 guys with 18 opinions and at times little concensus on how to achieve these three goals.

Admittedly, I'm not as knowledgable as the rest of you lifers, but I would like to see the ability for defenses to shut down teams. I don't think we want a ton of
70-0 games, but I would like to see a few 42-17 type games. It would be nice to be able to hold passing games under 200 yards. Now with that being said, there are
probably many different ways we can accomplish this. I'm not lobbying for ratings changes or play design changes, but we need to figure out the best
way to achieve our collective goals for the league and attack these issues in a way we can ALL agree with.