dev diary #26 Mapping Old To New Skills And Throwing

[Rocketcan]

Hello Coaches!

 

Welcome to another Dev Diary for NewSim on SimFBA!

 

As Dev Diary #25 pointed out, we are currently adapting our current system to marry up well with a new one. Our top priority was finding a way to make all the skills we created (and that you can currently see on your teams' roster pages) relevant. Quite a bit of effort has been put into finding how this should match up and what level of skill is "good" and so on.

 

We are making some pretty good progress with that and can report on some of it now. We have more done, but we'll just focus on the throwing stuff for now. Basically, I want to answer the question: "What does the sim think makes a good QB?"

• Throw Power
  
• Throw Accuracy
  
• Football IQ
  
• Archetype
  

Ok, so how do each of these things affect how well a QB will play?

 

Throw Power: This is the most important of all of the attributes. The higher this value, the more likely the QB will be to complete a pass (barring other adjustments due to the other attributes, receiver ability, coverage, etc.). The likelihood of a QB to complete a pass decreases with downfield distance, but obviously, the higher this value is, the more likely they will be to complete deeper passes. In the end, this attribute determines the baseline ability of a QB to complete a pass that will be modified later based on the following skills.

 

Throw Accuracy: This value either provides a bonus or malus to the ability of a QB to complete a pass. A highly accurate QB will be more likely to complete all depth of passes compared to a player with lesser accuracy but similar throw power. Thus, a QB with high throw power AND accuracy will likely be highly successful.

 

Football IQ: The smarter your QB is, the more likely they are to make good decisions. This factors into a number of areas, but for throwing specifically it slightly affects the ability of the player to complete passes, but more importantly, a higher value will result in a lower likelihood of throwing a potential interception. Thus, a smarter QB, even with lower skill values for throw power and accuracy will still be able to make some completions and be a good "bus driver" for an offense.

 

Archetype: Finally, the type of QB involved will affect their playstyle. Each of them have their own unique style and provide different options for gameplanning and how to utilize them.

• Balanced: The ultimate neutral QB. This player receives no maluses or bonuses.
  
• Scrambler: This QB is at home in an option offense, and likely won't want to throw unless they are a unique specimen. They suffer maluses to throws of all depths and are more likely to throw a potential interception due to them focusing more on their running mechanics as opposed to throwing ones. Don't let that fool you, however. A Scrambling QB with good throw power and accuracy can still torch a defense through the air and ones with excellent throwing attributes will still likely be some of the best passers in the country.
  
• Pocket: The gunslinger. This QB loves to chuck it up there and would be at home in most Air Raid schemes and offenses that utilize deep play-action passes. This player receives bonuses on long passes and despises the check down throw. It would be unadvisable to put them into a West Coast style offense as they will have a harder time with the shorter, quick passes. Also, this type of QB will likely be easier to contain in the pocket and thus will not perform well in most QB run situations.
  
• Field General: This guy doesn't play QB because he has a rocket arm. He does because he is the smartest guy on the field and likely has practiced accuracy drills to the point of insanity. Thus, he is much more likely to complete quick and short passes than someone with similar skills to him, but he suffers throwing the deep ball and will be more likely to chuck up a duck that gets picked off.
  

Just to give you an idea of how much the modifiers can affect the baseline throw power ability, all of them can stack to increase or decrease the chance of a completion by almost 25%.

 

Full Disclosure: In order to do this stuff, I needed to look at the real numbers behind all of our current players. As a result I do have a small idea of how good these guys *might* be. I don't want to give too much away, but at the same time I know that conveys a bit of a competitive advantage. So, if any of you want to know a bit of the insider baseball on some of the players I looked at, I will be willing to share that with you. I will only do that for players I looked at (top 10 at each position) and only through DMs.

 

That is it for this dev diary. Work continues on and the recoding will begin soon. Again, thankfully a lot of work is already done so we are not at all starting from scratch. I am really excited for how this will turn out, and hopefully it produces a more realistic sim!

 

Until next time,

 

Rocketcan

[subsequent]

Rocket has been really hard at work adapting it. He's got some awesome ideas on how to balance it out. Great work!