Warrior General Games

I have to agree with you on this fact. It only makes sense to have strong/weak versus left/right. Any "real" defense is going to make a strength call when they recognize the str of the offensive formation.

Now how far does it go? I mean a favored offensive tactic is to let the defense get their str side set and then use motions and shifts to change the strong side and try to get the snap off before the defense can properly react.

One could say that with the Left/Right setup we have sort of given the offense that advantage right away. Just makes scouting even more important now.

Originally posted by OttawaShane
yeah the defence was way too overpowered...it was like the defence got to call an audible every single play based on the offensive formation, but the offence couldn't do squat.

there are still enough things for the defence to key on when selecting scheme though to keep scores from looking like NBA.

but yet the offense never failed to score points.

I think we're going to see arena football league scores this season. If anything defensive AI just got simpler, because you can't really pigeon hole plays with formations anymore.

The LB shifts are weak/strong side, not left/right. Therefore, if you do a weak side shift when the TE lines up on the left, you will be shifting your defense to the left instead of to the right. You will have to compensate this by having your players build more balanced OLB's and DE's.

Originally posted by shadowmane
The LB shifts are weak/strong side, not left/right. Therefore, if you do a weak side shift when the TE lines up on the left, you will be shifting your defense to the left instead of to the right. You will have to compensate this by having your players build more balanced OLB's and DE's.

I could care less about that, I hate that it's a guessing game with regards to blitzing.

I have to literally guess which side the TE is going to line up on. Want to do a blitz by the strong side LB? Better send both of them, because you can only choose L/R. What's worse, I can't even shift my LBs and blitz one of them with the intent of trying to go around the TE.

I think when Bort switched this, he should've changed LB shifts to left/right to coincide with blitzing. It still lets teams put the TE where they want and doesn't allow DCs to abuse weak side blitzes.

It'll be fixed eventually. And I think he wanted the guessing game. Eventually, you'll probably be able to put your LB's on specific players like you can choose between two different TE's or FB's. It would be nice to change the LB's to SOLB, SILB, WILB, and WOLB, and write a script where they switch when the TE switches. But that's probably in the works already.

Last season, the Defense got to be powerful. This season its the Offense. It'll level out. You just have to adapt and overcome.

Originally posted by shadowmane
And I think he wanted the guessing game.

The guessing is retarded. I should at the very least be able to control whether my LBs blitz directly towards the line or are trying to get to the outside via shifts. I have zero control of that right now.


Originally posted by shadowmane
It'll be fixed eventually.

Uh huh. So then I pose a question related to this statement:

Originally posted by shadowmane
Last season, the Defense got to be powerful. This season its the Offense.

What on Earth makes you think that it will be balanced eventually with such a large swing of the pendulum this season? We're no closer to the middle than we were before.

What pisses me off the most is that the addition of future AI improvements should only supplement the existing options, not make our control more limited. There should only be updates where if we are in a given situation as controlled by one side of the ball that the other has an equally viable option to counter it. Switching the TE takes control away from me as a DC.

Making this game less of a chess match really pisses me off. I understand weak side blitzes were over powered but....

The pendulum has certainly swung.

Well, you do understand that the Offensive Coordinators were feeling the same way last season, right? They had simple choices, while the Defense could run circles around them. And Bort has said he's working on man-in-motion plays as well. That'll really make things interesting.

I hardly made wholesale changes to my "book" and it worked as well as ever. Now, some things needed to be changed as you can no longer just sit on the Strong 'I' off-tackle but, so far, its been less uphill than I thought.

Originally posted by shadowmane
Well, you do understand that the Offensive Coordinators were feeling the same way last season, right? They had simple choices, while the Defense could run circles around them. And Bort has said he's working on man-in-motion plays as well. That'll really make things interesting.

And do you understand that putting the same shoes on the other set of feet was not the right answer, correct?

Just turning the suck around 180 degrees to the defense does not make the game better, it just makes it suck differently.

And to counter your point of how offensive coordinators feel, the offense always has the control due to them being proactive vice defense being reactive. I can scout your team for hours and all the offense has to do is choose a different AI and all my scouting is for naught. In that regard, defenses should never have less control over their players and schemes due to that fact. I agree the offense needed a buff, and I've offered my solution a couple of times in this thread alone. The changes made were too drastic imo, and if this is the idea of balance ole Bort has in mind, then it hinders any faith I had about it being truly balanced.

I guess I'm lucky since I have faith in my OC and his offense. If the changes suck for me, they suck for all dc's. It just takes some of the fun out of the game due to game planning being less effective.

I feel your pain here. I'm a DC. My team has yet to play (and its a slow build anyway, so it will be a sucky game). But I think its not going to be as hard as you think it is. It'll just take a little more preparation.

No, it doesn't take more preparation. You cannot prepare for something that random. All it does is force you to simplify.

You can say "scouting is more important" all you want to, but every single OC can have a preset where the TE gets swapped in different situations therefore negating all that scouting.

You're right, it's not hard. It's more simple. That's why it sucks. Look at my profile page. Think I'm playing this game for any reason other than becauseI like scheming a defense?

LOL... looks like you have the whole team there. Or the whole defense anyway.

Originally posted by shadowmane
The LB shifts are weak/strong side, not left/right. Therefore, if you do a weak side shift when the TE lines up on the left, you will be shifting your defense to the left instead of to the right. You will have to compensate this by having your players build more balanced OLB's and DE's.

Has this been verified? The team we played in our only scrimmage so far didn't shift TE so I have no way of knowing

Originally posted by BleedsOrangeAndBlue
No, it doesn't take more preparation. You cannot prepare for something that random. All it does is force you to simplify.

You can say "scouting is more important" all you want to, but every single OC can have a preset where the TE gets swapped in different situations therefore negating all that scouting.

You're right, it's not hard. It's more simple. That's why it sucks. Look at my profile page. Think I'm playing this game for any reason other than becauseI like scheming a defense?

This pretty much sums it up.


Let me try to classify the different "types" of DC's.


The "Bad" DC: This guy pretty much uses a "vanilla" 4-3/3-4 for 80%+ of his plays. He'll make minor tweaks if there are 3WR sets or the offense goes into goalline formations. Very little to no scouting. This is about 70% or more of the DC out there.

The "OK" DC: This guy has an input/output for every formation the offense throws at them. Some of them also adds in down and distant input/output. They will scout the other team play selection (often using the firefox monkey script) and change a few of the output %. But, overall the adjustment are extremely minor. They set up their defense AI at the begining of the season and it a "set it and forget it" scheme. Around 25% of the DC plays this way.

The "Good" DC: This guy will scout 3 or 4 games of the opponents last games. He will watch every single replay. Collect a large data base with the goal of figuring out what the opponent's offense output/input are just by watching his game. Very time consumming that takes a minimum of 3 hours. He has a specific defense scheme that may be completely different from the previous game. He is able to be more aggressive because he can do risk analysis against another team. For example: He scouts a team that runs 100% of the time on 3rd and 0-3 yards. He can go with the goalline defense to shut them out because of his scouting. This accounts for less than 5% of the DC out there.


Now here is my beef with the new AI:

The new offense AI penalizes the "Good" DC.


In season 5:

The "ok" DC gained an advantage of 50%(just an arbitrary #) over the "bad" DC because of better schemes

The "good" DC gained an advatage of 75%(arbitrary) over the "bad" DC because of better schemes.


Now in season 6 its more like this:

The "ok" DC gains an advantage of 25% over the "bad" DC.

The "good" DC gains an advantage of 35% over the "bad" DC.


I think most of you who aren't complaining over this falls under the "OK" DC. While the guys who are pissed off are the "good" DC.


Contrary to popular belief, the new offense is helping the "Bad" DC more than anyone else. A game of chess has just become a game of checkers.

Originally posted by hep
Originally posted by shadowmane

The LB shifts are weak/strong side, not left/right. Therefore, if you do a weak side shift when the TE lines up on the left, you will be shifting your defense to the left instead of to the right. You will have to compensate this by having your players build more balanced OLB's and DE's.

Has this been verified? The team we played in our only scrimmage so far didn't shift TE so I have no way of knowing

No. I haven't verified it. Opinion. Sorry. Should have stated it that way.