Can someone explain exactly how the scouting is supposed to be done? I can't seem to figure out how to do it.

Thanks.

-Cork55

Thanks for the question. I have added this to the blog queue - it does bear some explanation.

Throughout each play, decisions are made by the game engine as to what happens on the field, using the obvious factors such as skill, fatigue, etc. One of the variables that are used is how familiar that player is with the play they are performing - so the more familiar your players are with the plays in your playbook, the better they will perform them. There is also an influence from how familiar they are with the opposing team's play. As they see a play during a game, they increase in their familiarity of it, but the best way to increase their familiarity is to practice against it during the week. This is what the scout plays are - they are plays from your upcoming opponent's playbook that you choose to study and practice against.

On the screen they are listed with the play most frequently used by your upcoming opponent at the top. If you Rex the scout plays, it will choose the top 5 plays, but you might want to not bother with plays that your team is more familiar with or plays that haven't fared well for the opponent.

Does that help explain it?

One thing that would really help scouting is if you could choose certain games (like showing all the games played in the regular season with checkboxes), or a specific time period (like the current regular season, for example), so that you can see what plays a team has used and how often they used them in that time period. Right now, all you can see is ALL TIME for that team. If owners have changed, then playcalling has likely changed also, and the numbers you are seeing for number of times a play is called are skewed.

Because of this, scouting is generally irrelevant, except teams with the same owner and head coach with the same offensive and defensive style.

It's not all time, it's the current season + the previous season, so once the league gets into its third year and beyond the games will fall off the end. I do like the idea of being able to choose what games are being shown, I'll add that to the queue.

My issue is that I can't tell when the process is completed. Some sort of finished button would be nice.

-Cork55

You have to choose 10 plays to scout. If you can count to 10, you are fine. Also, you can look at the counter at the top of the screen. It tells you how many plays you have chosen to scout. Finally, you can keep picking until you get a message saying you've picked too many plays. Then you know you are at 11 and you can uncheck the last play you selected.

If you're referring to the warning, those get set during the sims; you can close the warning once you've gone in to scout, it doesn't go away without you closing it.

10 offensive and 10 defensive plays. If the "you have scouting ..." Banner is still present you can safely close it with the x on the top right corner.

I know how to count to 10 :)

It just seems like an odd way to do the scouting. If I load the recommended game plan, the 10 offensive and defensive plays are already selected, but even after I close out of the screen, I still get the banner telling me that i need to scout my next opponent, which is why I am never sure if I actually completed the scouting process.

-Cork55

I never said it wasn't odd. There are a LOT of things about how this game works that are odd. But, that's what makes it different from all the other games.