If a QB went through his progressions he would have an order, but if for some reason that order changed here and there. On those here and there one could call that a differnent progression order. Not random.

I wonder if jdb could put it all on a slider, but i think experience comes in to play here. Reading the proper progresiions in the first place.

Either way to me its the same things.

Was Brady making all the reads properly when he was young. In other words was he puting out those reads in the order jhartson would have wanted on that PA FBflat.

It was 3rd and 2 and jhartson wanted brady to make that open short pass. But the young Brady held on to too long and took the sack or threw it to the doubled WR 1.

If the experienced Brady threw that PA FB flat 1000 times in his tenth year perhaps his main target would be the FB. ........

When i play good defenses my guy makes crappier reads. No doubt, but something is causing it. I visually watch all of them under perform. Wrs Missing easy ***** and QBs missing easy reads. They are all open deep short it doesnt matter.

Even more is when i visually have them covered those better offenses make the plays with catch over and catch over. Qbs maybe, but perhaps wr/db interaction causes the QB to throw to a more visually covered guy.

Alot of moving pieces could change things quick. I see passing as way more organic. With a likelyhood of reads dicated by other things other than this random progression.

How about when the QB decides to redistribute his pocket? I see that happen often....what happens with reads there?

How about how the QB looks to the deepest read in his vision? I use that as a read dictator all the time........is that even real? Dont care it works.

How about the dumpoff logic? Nothing really nothing.....noone even touched it in this conversation.....IMO alll this and more has to do with passing the ball, and i always thought there was a likelyhood of all of it happening.

If the dumpoff was up i bet those shorter pass get thrown quicker....

The passing game is going to get modified soon.

Thanks ray - always lots of thought :)

1 - how do you know passing game will change?

2 - I understand what you're saying re brady but surely when he's told a play, he knows who the first priority is (ie biggest weighting). Yes he may not make it to him but there must surely be a pecking order hence why coach told him to play it.

Glad this has sparked some discussion - will be interesting to see what jdb adds if anything

I haven't seen any comments about the passing game changing in MFN-1, so I'm not sure where that comment is coming from.

I remeber when you asked me....i dont think anyone really knows. Coincidentallty your QBs preform like mine. Generally out performing thier ratings. But why?

As a cause and effect the db/wr interaction will change results in the passing game. Changing passing imo

Imo. The db/wr interactions will change the way we pass. Some wr1 are targeted more than half of the time and have full return duties and are not injured while playing almost all of the snaps all season long.

Passing will inadvertanly change a bit cause these WRs are dominating leagues cause its too easy.

The trickle will change mfns 1 's GBs Deangelos stats. Or it better cause no way are numerous players in one league do this. It all to simple.

Passing seems complicated, but catching it is too easy. They all have a cause and effect so i label it all passing.

Even if you think not.

Blitz reaction is a completely different animal, my response was not considering that. Remember, there are a gazillion moving pieces here - this has the benefit of making the game very deep, but also has the consequence of making it difficult to drill down into an explanation about what's happening. I've worked hard to keep out 'magic formulas' - I acknowledge that some do exist - but I want you to be able to build your team with the philosophy that you want, and have it work with the right players and gameplan. Are we there yet? No, we're not. To the question about the passing game changing ... of course the passing game will continue to change. So will the running game, the line play, the secondary play, everything is on the table to make the engine more and more realistic. I'll be the first to acknowledge that the engine is in its infancy, and have been transparent about that fact. That's why I value your input, everyone has their own unique perspective and I love it.

I think we all appreciate having a complex game that we can do different things with to be successful.

What I'm concerned about, especially with the passing game, is when complexity leads to confusion of code and confusion of the end user.

For instance, currently, the passing game is designed to negatively impact a QB. The game calculates an ideal place to throw the ball - the 100% completion zone. Every player playing QB has an opportunity to see this ideal place (FOV), so we can assume that a QB with 100 FOV will almost always see it.

But to prevent QBs that have 100 FOV from completing all of their passes, a series of negative modifiers is applied. Accuracy is negatively impacted by experience, by a QB moving (partially negated by high Scramble), by having a defender in his face (which cannot be negated ever and is made worse by faulty pass blocking code), and by the distance the ball has to travel (cannot be negated). So at least four negative modifiers are working against the QB every play before receivers are factored in.

Now that we know how at least this one part works, we can mitigate the negative impacts by the following:

1) Having fast OL with good pass blocking to mitigate pressure and running
2) Having a QB with high FOV so he sees the ideal spot with the highest accuracy
3) Having a QB with a strong Arm so he will throw it to most spots
4) Having a QB with high Scramble so when he's running he's still fairly accurate
5) Getting QBs experience in a set of plays so they don't have a negative experience modifier
6) Finally, having a QB with a high Accuracy score so that initial starting point is high as possible

Notice how far 6 is down on that list? But that's the attribute labeled Accuracy. It's also misleading because of experience it'll either be higher or lower than the listed value if a player's experience with a play is high or low. A QB with high FOV, Arm, and Scramble, but low Accuracy is more accurate with plays he knows than a player with high Accuracy, low FOV, Arm, and Scramble.

To me, that's more confusing than it is complex.

That's not quite the order of importance, but I won't deny that the QB accuracy is not the top of the list. (Accuracy is far above scramble and experience, and arm strength is not important unless the strength is just too low to make the pass; FOV is about what the QB sees while looking at the WR, not whether he sees the open spot - all QB's try to hit the exact same spot, their computed error just changes the flight path of the ball) No one is a robot, no QB hits 100% accuracy on his passes. If you have a line that can't keep the DL out of the QB's face his accuracy shouldn't save him (in fact, there was a lot of frustration in previous versions of the game where a QB would be under extreme pressure with a DE right in his face, and then throw a frozen rope to a WR for a big gain).

Your comment that the passing game is designed to negatively effect the QB play - technically that is the way many decisions work. There are essentially two primary methods that decisions are made: one is simple probability, things like 'does this hit cause a fumble' or 'does this player get injured' or 'does this player commit a penalty.' But a lot of decisions don't fall in a simple probability. I can't compute a probability of a pass being completed at the point that the ball is thrown, because the game actually simulates the ball being thrown, the WR running to make the catch, etc. The actual pass being completed is a probability calculation once it gets into the range that the WR can make the catch, but it is impacted by the placement of the ball, whose flight path is generated based on calculating the -perfect- flight path and then adding error to it. So yes, many decisions - especially ones that determine the flight path of the ball - are adding error to the perfect situation. No decision - even if all influencing factors are perfectly favorable - has a 0 error calculation because by the very fact that a human is performing the action there is at least a small measure of error. That might be part of the confusion, because in your calculations for error you may be considering that to be probability, your comment that a QB max accuracy is 80 is more or less undefined, because an 80 doesn't mean 80%, it means an error of "20" which may mean something like a standard deviation of 2 degrees on the flight path error (I'm completely making that up, I'd have to look at the code to see what it really means)

I'm almost sure that your comment above on FOV contradicts something you have said before, but I don't want to go looking for it. I know that FOV will allow the QB to spot defenders and other receivers, but I'm almost certain that you said it also helped the QB identify where to place the ideal pass. I could be wrong. I should have been clearer above anyway.

I found the comment about FOV from before. I read that parenthetical as applying both to the spot and the defenders. Does it only apply to the defenders?




Is Arm important or not? It does, after all, control velocity. Does velocity not matter for completing a pass by getting the ball to the target faster? If the only use for arm is determining whether the QB will throw deep, I'll just stop weighting it at all.

If pass blocking worked effectively, and was not as easily exploitable as it is right now, I would agree with you that Accuracy should be more important than Scramble. Since it is as exploitable as it is, it's almost impossible to keep defenders out of the QBs face and there is no attribute that minimizes the negative impact of the defender in the face. I mean there is no "Toughness" or "Take a Hit" or "Aaron Rodgers" attribute that allows a QB to stand strong in the pocket and throw that frozen rope while getting pummeled. Some times the defender is going to disrupt a pass being in the QBs face, but why should in this game defenders always get an advantage over a QB? But I digress.

The one thing that QB will do when getting pressured in the game is move. And since they get a lot of pressure, they are moving a lot. Occasionally the QB will set his feet and throw, but most of the time he's throwing on the run. That's why Scramble is becoming more important than Accuracy because it mitigates a negative applied to a QB's accuracy rating that happens more 50% of the time.

And, sure, players could sign the right OL to help mitigate the pressure in the face. But no one was really sure what that meant, and I'm still not sure what the right OL is. I did an experiment in 75 where I drafted OL in rounds 2-6 of the allocation draft, and I get pressure almost every play. All of my OL have good pass block, but the tackles are slow, which leaves my QB a sitting duck for the DE. I'm trying the same experiment in 76 with all OL that have 90+ SP, ST, and Pass Block. We'll see if it actually makes a difference. (I'm also drafting a QB with high FOV, Scramble, Arm, and Accuracy. I still don't think I'll break 60% completion.)

That 'he may or may not see' was referring to the defenders in the path of the ball, not the best location for the ball to arrive. Sorry for the confusion with the way I wrote it.

Arm strength is important for long passes and fitting a ball into a receiver in coverage. Lower arm strength will mean the ball takes longer to get there which means the DB has more time to close on the WR, especially if he's in front of him. It most of the time will make the window that a receiver is considered 'open' by the WR smaller than one with higher arm strength, but will also result in more pass breakups/interceptions for WR's in traffic.