Warrior General Games

Originally posted by hookem888
Originally posted by drewd21

Originally posted by sckbleh


The best system is where you have at least 2 OCs and 2 DCs for each team who can divide the games up according to when they are busy in their personal life. If the DCs and OCs come in with very different experiences and schemes it's even better... they can pick up the best of what the other person has to offer, but more importantly the opposition gets confused when scouting due to the differing schemes, and even if they figure out what's going on they have no idea which OC/DC will be gameplanning for their particular matchup.

Then you're not ever bored or doing nothing -- there's no limit to the amount of scouting that can be done for your next opponent -- but you're not stressing over doing a 3-4 hour scout & gameplan job every other day.

The problem for most of us is finding the kind of quality staff that will reliably do this and do it well for a lower level team. In USA Pro I wouldn't think it would be that hard?




+1



Perhaps you all missed the other 10 or so previous posts where people have posted that teams are folding due to the difficulty of finding competent coordinators. Although having 2 per side is great and I agree would be ideal, but if teams can't even find 1 coordinator, what makes you think teams can find 4?

I hear what you and PP are saying. I do think it would be easier to recruit someone if they knew up front it was only going to be coordinating one side of the ball once every four games. For most USA Pro teams I guess it's more often than that due to scrimmages, but for us on the Maulers it's not.

I wouldn't be surprised to see some of those who are dropping their teams after this season, and some of their staff, resurface in USA Pro in this kind of shared coordinator role though.

I know coordinating is a lot of work -- this season I'm running two teams solo as Valhalla's owner is travelling out of the country. It might not be USA Pro but coordinating WELL takes time at every level. To be fair I do very little work from game to game on the defense AI, but there's some scouting to be done and a TON of work to do to prepare on O. I'm sure the D takes just as much time if you know what you're doing. Doing both O and D for a whole season, including a full scrimmage schedule, at Pro level would just be insane.

the thing is, it's really damn fun in reasonable doses.

Originally posted by Painmaker
The unwieldy AI situational interface also makes doing the work of an OC or DC about 10x harder than it needs to be. The OC/DC interface is this game's most glaring weakness imo: the game isn't as much fun for players unless their team has competitive coordinators, but doing the work of a good coordinator is often more work than fun. That's not because it's necessarily hard to decide what you want the offense or defense to do in any given game, but because the mechanics of inputting any single change to offensive or defensive tactics is both too cumbersome and too error-prone.

This is the biggest issue with the game imo. I've had a looksie at the AI's, and have no interest in tinkering with them. It's not a time issue, it's a hassle issue. Bort needs to make the AI more user friendly. People would be able to put up with silly bugs and glitches a lot more if they didn't ruin hours of their work.

Originally posted by The Duff Man
Originally posted by JTD

I'll sell my services to to a few teams. I like that idea Duff.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=290316714165



excellent!

hey maybe TSE call sell out his passing offense services - 40 interceptions or it's free

Originally posted by McGrai37
Originally posted by Painmaker

The unwieldy AI situational interface also makes doing the work of an OC or DC about 10x harder than it needs to be. The OC/DC interface is this game's most glaring weakness imo: the game isn't as much fun for players unless their team has competitive coordinators, but doing the work of a good coordinator is often more work than fun. That's not because it's necessarily hard to decide what you want the offense or defense to do in any given game, but because the mechanics of inputting any single change to offensive or defensive tactics is both too cumbersome and too error-prone.

This is the biggest issue with the game imo. I've had a looksie at the AI's, and have no interest in tinkering with them. It's not a time issue, it's a hassle issue. Bort needs to make the AI more user friendly. People would be able to put up with silly bugs and glitches a lot more if they didn't ruin hours of their work.

I actually disagree with this -- the simpler you make the AI, the fewer the options there are. People are either going to complain it's too complicated and hard to change, or too simple and not customizable enough. Once you know the playbook well enough and have the initial base AI set up with your situations, it's not that hard to change.

Originally posted by The Duff Man
Originally posted by JTD

I'll sell my services to to a few teams. I like that idea Duff.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=290316714165



this is wonderful... Expect me to snipe this bid... lol

Originally posted by The Duff Man
Originally posted by JTD

I'll sell my services to to a few teams. I like that idea Duff.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=290316714165



That is fucking awesome! Hilarious!

Originally posted by sckbleh
Originally posted by McGrai37

Originally posted by Painmaker


The unwieldy AI situational interface also makes doing the work of an OC or DC about 10x harder than it needs to be. The OC/DC interface is this game's most glaring weakness imo: the game isn't as much fun for players unless their team has competitive coordinators, but doing the work of a good coordinator is often more work than fun. That's not because it's necessarily hard to decide what you want the offense or defense to do in any given game, but because the mechanics of inputting any single change to offensive or defensive tactics is both too cumbersome and too error-prone.

This is the biggest issue with the game imo. I've had a looksie at the AI's, and have no interest in tinkering with them. It's not a time issue, it's a hassle issue. Bort needs to make the AI more user friendly. People would be able to put up with silly bugs and glitches a lot more if they didn't ruin hours of their work.

I actually disagree with this -- the simpler you make the AI, the fewer the options there are. People are either going to complain it's too complicated and hard to change, or too simple and not customizable enough. Once you know the playbook well enough and have the initial base AI set up with your situations, it's not that hard to change.



You can simplify the interface without simplifying the possibilities. For (completely random) example, let's say that you see a team only runs to the weak side of the field from the Pro Set. Let's say that you have 3 different defensive outputs that you use in 90% of game situations against the Pro Set but one of them, set up to stop strong side runs, is vulnerable to the deep pass. You decide that you want to eliminate this defensive output for this one game since you don't think your opponent will be running strong-side. Should you be able to do that with one, two, three, or four or more operations? Well, it turns out that if you have 71 different situational inputs which apply to the Pro Set, then you'll need to change 263 different values.

Why would anyone need so many inputs? Because otherwise teams will try stupid stuff in otherwise-obvious game situations, like defending the deep pass from their own 12 yard line or defending the run when they're up by 10 with a minute remaining. Because Bort in his great programming genius has provided only a serial if-then interface for evaluating AI inputs, rather than allowing the intersection of rule sets to determine outputs. Easy to code, relatively easy to process (only assuming users quickly get discouraged and never achieve truly complex AIs), not easy to use. The end result is huge, cumbersome AIs which are still really quite simple in what they are able to accomplish because they are brute-force efforts.

Any wonder why it's the owners and coordinators leading the exodus from this game? One reason of many is because the AI interface looks like it was cranked out as quickly as possible with zero attention to operational efficiency. Intellectually lazy design imo.

sckbleh, I sure wasn't talking dumbing it down or removing flexibility and/or abilities from it. It just is setup in a horridly cumbersome fashion. Even just being able to copy/paste plays would be huge. There's a Grease Monkey, but it doesn't work.

Originally posted by Painmaker
Originally posted by sckbleh

Originally posted by McGrai37


Originally posted by Painmaker



The unwieldy AI situational interface also makes doing the work of an OC or DC about 10x harder than it needs to be. The OC/DC interface is this game's most glaring weakness imo: the game isn't as much fun for players unless their team has competitive coordinators, but doing the work of a good coordinator is often more work than fun. That's not because it's necessarily hard to decide what you want the offense or defense to do in any given game, but because the mechanics of inputting any single change to offensive or defensive tactics is both too cumbersome and too error-prone.

This is the biggest issue with the game imo. I've had a looksie at the AI's, and have no interest in tinkering with them. It's not a time issue, it's a hassle issue. Bort needs to make the AI more user friendly. People would be able to put up with silly bugs and glitches a lot more if they didn't ruin hours of their work.

I actually disagree with this -- the simpler you make the AI, the fewer the options there are. People are either going to complain it's too complicated and hard to change, or too simple and not customizable enough. Once you know the playbook well enough and have the initial base AI set up with your situations, it's not that hard to change.



You can simplify the interface without simplifying the possibilities. For (completely random) example, let's say that you see a team only runs to the weak side of the field from the Pro Set. Let's say that you have 3 different defensive outputs that you use in 90% of game situations against the Pro Set but one of them, set up to stop strong side runs, is vulnerable to the deep pass. You decide that you want to eliminate this defensive output for this one game since you don't think your opponent will be running strong-side. Should you be able to do that with one, two, three, or four or more operations? Well, it turns out that if you have 71 different situational inputs which apply to the Pro Set, then you'll need to change 263 different values.

Why would anyone need so many inputs? Because otherwise teams will try stupid stuff in otherwise-obvious game situations, like defending the deep pass from their own 12 yard line or defending the run when they're up by 10 with a minute remaining. Because Bort in his great programming genius has provided only a serial if-then interface for evaluating AI inputs, rather than allowing the intersection of rule sets to determine outputs. Easy to code, relatively easy to process (only assuming users quickly get discouraged and never achieve truly complex AIs), not easy to use. The end result is huge, cumbersome AIs which are still really quite simple in what they are able to accomplish because they are brute-force efforts.

Any wonder why it's the owners and coordinators leading the exodus from this game? One reason of many is because the AI interface looks like it was cranked out as quickly as possible with zero attention to operational efficiency. Intellectually lazy design imo.

Yeah, my old OAI took the guys minutes to load up. My DAI is only mildly quicker. Thank goodness for FiOS at home and T3's here at work

Originally posted by The Duff Man
Originally posted by JTD

I'll sell my services to to a few teams. I like that idea Duff.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=290316714165



Tempted to bid just so I can leave an awesome feedback. lol

Originally posted by joemiken
Originally posted by The Duff Man

Originally posted by JTD


I'll sell my services to to a few teams. I like that idea Duff.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=290316714165



Tempted to bid just so I can leave an awesome feedback. lol

Do it!

Originally posted by jktooley
Originally posted by The Duff Man

Originally posted by JTD


I'll sell my services to to a few teams. I like that idea Duff.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=290316714165



this is wonderful... Expect me to snipe this bid... lol

It expires after our game, so feel free.

Originally posted by Eli Blanton
Why?

I know it can be time consuming.
I know it can be frustrating.

But it's just a game. Can't it be fun without spending hours planning every game? Is it an obligation you fill towards your players that you put in all the time?

The problem is, if you start halfassing it, you will get destroyed. If you start getting destroyed, you can't recruit, and it makes 5x more work if you ever want to do well. Bort has a death spiral in the games and in the meta game, where once you fail, you have a hugely uphill battle. I don't do the majority of the work for my team, but there is definite burnout, and its hard for people even to take a short term break.
Originally posted by Eli Blanton

If you see a bug, a glitch, a coding error, a Nerf, a tweak, an overpowered or underpowered skill, you know we all are facing the same issue. Chances are it will be addressed by the next season.

I used to think this. Not anymore. I just expect the sim to get worse each season now.
Originally posted by Eli Blanton

Just build your guys and develop your teams and have fun with it. That's the way I see it.

Now enlighten me.
At the elite level, a crazy amount of time needs to be spent in the game to even make the playoffs. If you put in less effort, you will end up getting smashed down every game, your players will quit, and the game is no longer fun.

I'll be around for season 10, but I've prepared my players by saying it may be the last without drastic improvements in the game.